It is Never the 'Same'🔗

Every single happening in our lives is unconnected, even our everyday activities like eating and drinking. Each and every experience is independent by its own right. Drinking water yesterday and drinking water today are two completely different incidents.

The food that you ate yesterday and the food that you eat today are different, even if they seem physically the same! But your mind creates the shaft between these two incidents and says, 'I eat the same food every day.'

Please be very clear, you don't eat the same food every day. You may use the same word 'eating' for both the experiences, but they are not the same experience. Do not be cheated by the words that you use. Yesterday's eating, today's eating, and tomorrow's eating are separate incidents, separate experiences. They are completely independent and unattached.

A beautiful incident from the life of an enlightened master from central Bharat:

During the last ten years of his life, the doctors asked the master to eat a particular kind of food. He was not allowed to eat anything else. He had to eat the same kind of food three times a day, everyday.

After two years the person who cooked for him came and complained, 'Master, I am bored with cooking the same food. How are you able to eat the same food day after day?'

The master just laughed and said, 'I am not eating the same food every day. How can I eat the same food every day? I can only eat this food today. Tomorrow's food is totally different!'

Life is new every moment. It is the mind that makes it look repetitive, dull and mundane.

Just Let Go … And You Can Fly!

I saw this in my days of spiritual wandering. In the forests of Northern Bharat the hunters use a trap to catch birds. They tie a rope between two trees. In the middle of the rope, they secure a wooden stick. The rope is tied at the midpoint of the stick. This is actually a hunter's trap for birds.

You may think, 'How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?' Actually, all they do is just hang the stick between two trees using a rope, that's all. When a bird comes and sits on the stick, the bird's own weight turns the whole stick upside down; it turns topsy-turvy. The bird is now hanging upside down, clinging to the stick.

The moment it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance it feels totally shaken and tightens its grip on the stick. It simply holds onto the stick as if its life depends on it. Because it is hanging upside down, it thinks, 'If I unclutch from this stick, what will happen?

I will fall and die.'

There is no record that any bird has ever fallen and broken its head! But the bird does not have the intelligence to realize this. It keeps hanging on. By not letting go, not only does it lose its freedom, it loses its life too, because ultimately the hunter traps it.

Just like the bird, you don't realize that if you just drop your mind, at that moment you can become a Paramahamsa. That very moment you can be liberated. You can simply start flying.

The same fear that the bird clinging to the stick had, you have now. Your fear and the bird's fear are one and the same. The bird believes that it can't let go; if it does it will die. Similarly, you hold on to your mind and feel, 'I can't let go. If I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent and illogical thoughts, I might be lost.'

The hunter comes leisurely, after four or five hours, takes the bird, puts it in the cage, and leaves. Now the bird neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance. The foolish bird doesn't know that if it had just let go of the stick, it could have simply flown away!

In the same way, you hold on to whatever you think is your identity and security – your education, your mind, your life, your relationships, or your bank balance. Yama, the god of death, ultimately comes to remove the stick – that is your identity. Then you are neither a Para mahamsa, a liberated soul, nor are you able to hold on to your identity. You will neither have the freedom, nor will you have the stick of your identity that you are clutching, because the stick itself is an illusion.

Let me tell you, if the bird lets go and relaxes, it may flutter to balance for a moment or two. It may take one or two moments to balance itself, but it will never fall and die. When it leaves the stick, maybe for a few seconds it will fall, but then it will adjust itself and start flying.

Be very clear, let go and you will never fall and die. You will only become a Paramahamsa!

This moment, trust yourself. Don't bother about losing your identity. Just trust yourself and let go of your identity. You will immediately become a Paramahamsa and be liberated. All you need to do is trust that you are unclutched – even if you don't trust that it is still the truth!

When you unclutch, there will be some revolutionary changes in your life, in your day-to-day thinking, your decision-making, and your daily routine – your lifestyle. Courageously going through that revolution, going through the transformation that happens in you, is what I call tapas – penance.

On rare occasions during my wanderings, I have seen a bird hanging on the stick. Another bird that was once stuck in the trap, but had the courage to let go and open up, comes back. It pokes the hanging bird and says, 'Hey, let go! Relax! I was like you. I had the same problem. When I relaxed I just started flying. All it takes is just two or three seconds to balance. When I opened up, I never fell and broke my head or died. I only became liberated. I only became a free bird. Come on …' But the hanging bird will not believe it.

Understand that the responsibility of the free bird is to go about freeing other birds. It is the responsibility of the free bird to go and poke the bird trapped on the stick and say, 'Free yourself.' I am that free bird and I have created a safety net. Even if you fall, you won't hurt yourself. Relax! Let go, you will only fly! See, the sangha, the community of the master, is the net. Even if you fall, you will not hurt yourself.

First of all, you will not fall. But just to give you the deeper assurance, the sangha, the spiritual community, is created. So, I invite all of you to come and experience the sangha.

Understand that it's a free bird's responsibility to liberate all the trapped birds, to help them, to inspire them to free themselves.

Similar to the bird trap, hunters also have a trap to catch monkeys. They catch monkeys using a small box for a trap. They place some sweets inside a box that has a small opening. The monkey puts its hand inside the box and grabs the sweet. As long as the monkey holds onto the sweet, it will not be able to take its hand out because its fist is larger than the hole!

If the monkey lets go of the sweet, it can remove or slide its hand out immediately. But the monkey is not intelligent enough to realize that. It holds on to the sweet – and just because it is holding on, it is not able to take its hand out. If it just lets go of the sweet, it can take its hand out and be free. If you allow the understanding of this story to happen in you, you will instantly unclutch from your shafts and be free this very moment.

Living Intensely in the Present

Fortunately, by your very nature, you can have only one thought at a time. The moment a new thought comes inside your system, it means that the old thought has lost its power or influence over you. If the new thought has entered you, it means the old thought has been renounced because you can't have two thoughts at a time. You can have only one thought at a time. If you say that the old thought is also there, it only means that for that moment, the new thought has been renounced!

There is a beautiful story by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa:

A king who was inside a huge fort, was once attacked by an army that was two million strong. The king only had two or three people around him and got very frightened. He told his advisor, 'Two million people, and I am all alone. They will kill me!'

The royal advisor said, 'Don't worry, King. Open only one door. Surely through one door only one person can come in at a time. As they come in, stand on this side of the door and kill them one by one. Over! Do not try to fight with the whole crowd.'

If you think all your enemies are gathered together, you will start having unnecessary fears. You cannot have two thoughts at a time. You can only have one thought at a time. This means that every thought is replaced by the next thought.

I'll repeat: the first thing is that you can have only one thought at a time.

The second thing is that unless the old thought is pushed out, the second thought cannot come.

The third thing is that if somebody can push me out and sit here, he is surely more powerful than me! Any thought that comes in and pushes the old thought out is more powerful than the old thought. This means that any thought that is coming now is rooted in the present moment. It has more power than the thought that is being renounced, whatever that thought may be about.

By your very nature you are renouncing. You don't need to learn renunciation. Every moment you are renouncing. What do I mean by the word 'renouncing' here? I mean that at every moment you are letting go of one thought after another. Only then is it possible to allow new thoughts to keep entering your system. Every moment your inner space is getting cleared of the old thought.

Thoughts are constantly getting renounced by themselves. The only issue is that when you create the belief your thoughts are connected, you have the problem of linked suffering, the shaft. Your belief that you have some problem is your only problem.

Every moment your inner space is purified by the new incoming thoughts. If you allow this process to continue, it will happen by itself and clean itself also. There is no need for you to clean your mind. All you need to do is just get out – just get out of the system so that the system can proceed on its own.

One important truth you should know is that even if you want, even if you try consciously, you cannot possess or hold onto your suffering for long.

Even if you try to hold it, you cannot hold your suffering because continuously, your thought that creates suffering is also replaced by newer thoughts! In fact, to hold onto suffering will require a lot of effort on your part because thoughts are continuously flowing.

Be very clear, your power to bring on a new thought itself proves you have the power to drop the old thought. The problem is, instead of just watching the new thoughts flowing through you, you try to bring back old thoughts into your system. It is like picking up your trashed emails and bringing them back to the inbox. Is there any need to bring back trashed emails? No! If you constantly look to bring back the old thoughts, you will create only suffering.

Understand that if you nurture the fact that any suffering can be replaced by a stream of fresh thoughts then that becomes reality for you. And there is no suffering. If you are nurturing the thought, 'No, however much I allow replacing, the suffering comes back,' you will make that into reality. If you mother the thought that the suffering is going to come back, it will come back. If you mother the thought that it is going to go away, it will go away.

All you need to understand is that if even once you can replace a thought in your inner space without returning to the previous thought, you will get the confidence, 'I have replaced it once. I can do it again.' Then you can tell yourself, 'If the old thought comes back ten times, let me replace it ten times!' that's all. Soon you will see the old thought will stop coming back.

There is a very beautiful incident in Buddha's life:

Buddha says, 'Whenever I said in meditation, 'I am going to get up after a few hours', I never became enlightened. Once I decided, 'If I am not going to become enlightened, I am not going to get up from this seat. Let this body dry up in this very place. Until I become enlightened, I am not going to move.' Buddha says that the moment he created that strong clarity, the authentic sankalpa – vow, the next second, he became enlightened!

When you sit down to replace your suffering and think, 'Today I will replace it ten times. If it comes back the eleventh time, I can try again tomorrow,' then nothing will happen. No transformation will take place for you. Decide very clearly, 'Until it stops coming, I am going to replace the negative thoughts.' That is what I call courage.

Solutions for Physical, Mental and Emotional Problems

When we unclutch, the first thing that will happen to us will be an inner healing effect – a deep silence and peace in us.

Second, that inner healing will start radiating as physical wellbeing, which is our health.

Third, naturally it will start radiating in our relationships also.

Fourth, because these three are going beautifully, we will be creative and productive!

Solution for Chronic Ailments

People come and tell me, 'Swamiji, for the last twenty years I have had knee pain.' No, it cannot be! Please understand that in reality it cannot be. I am not disrespecting you or adding more suffering to you by saying all your problems are only in your head. I am just telling the truth: all your problems are in your head! I am just stating the truth.

The knee pain you experienced two years ago, the knee pain you experienced one year ago, the knee pain you experienced two months ago, and the knee pain you experienced two hours ago are independent experiences. Only because you connect all of them, you conclude that you have been having knee pain for twenty years. Is it really true that you have knee pain continuously for twenty years? What happens to the moments of 'no knee pain' in between? The important thing you need to understand is that because you connect and see all these as one continuous incident, you block the possibility of self-healing.

Solution for Depression

The depression that happened one month ago, the depression that happened one year ago, and the depression that happened three years ago are independent, individual, unconnected, and unclutched. The problem is the same as with physical pain. You start connecting them and concluding that you are having the same depression continuously. You create an idea that your life is depression. Then you start fighting with it. That only gives more life to the depressive thoughts.

When you strongly believe that your last ten years have been filled with suffering and depression, you create a strong mental set up surrounding it. Naturally you start thinking that your future is also going to be painful and filled with depression.

Suppose there is a person sitting in front of you who you think is an enemy. Suddenly if you notice that his head is separate, his legs are separate and his hands are separate, would you even feel like fighting with him? No! He is not even worth fighting! He doesn't even have a solid existence, as you imagined him to have. So what is there to fight?

In the same way, only when you imagine you have a huge problem in front of you, that a big person is in front of you, you start fighting and getting into more trouble. Your depression is not the huge enemy that you think it is. It is just like the person with disjointed body parts. It is you who joined the parts and gave it life. Your fighting with depression is the root cause of your depression.

In Ramayana there is a beautiful story. Whoever stands in front of the monkey king Vali and fights with him, loses half of his power to him. In the same way, whoever stands in front of the thought shaft and starts fighting with that shaft, half of their power will go away to that shaft.

The moment you unclutch from the shaft, you experience the neutral space, and inner healing starts. The moment inner healing starts, physically also you are healed.

Do not try to renounce your depression, because by your very nature it is getting renounced, flowing away from you. By your very nature just as joy disappears from your mind, depression also disappears from your mind. The moment you try to eliminate the depression, you will extend it and give it more life.

See, if you have a deep depression, will you stop going to the office? No! You may carry the depression in your mind but your body moves. You work. You may not be that productive or efficient. But your body still moves.

Instead of 'living depression', I am saying, 'live unclutched'.

When we live in depression, we don't have all these questions, 'If I am depressed, how can my body move?' We don't have such questions. The depression becomes part of our life. In the beginning you may have questions, 'How can I live unclutched? How will I even move my body?' Understand that the constant remembrance of unclutching does not interfere with your mind or body movements. It only removes the depression because it lets the depression thoughts rise and fall without clutching to them.

Solution for Addiction

What is addiction? It is a behavior or action that if you don't do it, you will feel terrible that you are missing something. But, if you do it you won't feel any joy, it will only be mechanical. Addiction means believing that joy or ecstasy happens due to some object, person, or situation.

Understand that this is the definition of addiction: trying to elongate the joy shaft by recreating it. You bring the same persons, situations, incidents, or happenings into your life again and again, knowing that the same joy is not going to happen. Some people are addicted to partying, some to smoking, and some to drinking – there are so many addictions.

Remember that anything you bring to your life again and again will not give you the same excitement as it gave you the first time. It can only lead to addiction, not happiness. The first time you enjoy a sweet, it is a wonderful experience. The excitement is totally different. But if you keep eating more of the same sweet, the same experience is not there anymore. Eventually if you eat enough sweets you will not even like the sight of them. You will look at them and say, 'Oh no, not more sweets. They make me feel terrible.' In the same way, when meeting a person for the first time, the excitement is totally different. Later on, the excitement falls off.

People come and ask me, 'How can I break my habits?' See, habit is a beautiful word. If you remove 'h', 'a bit' will remain. If you remove 'b', 'it' will remain. Only when you remove the 'I', the shaft 'it' will die. Only when you remove 'I', only when you throw 'I' away, will it completely die.

Be very clear, your smoking two days ago, ten years ago, and twenty years ago – all these three incidents are completely independent. They are not connected. Mentally, when you start connecting, when you start believing that you have the habit of smoking and that you are addicted to it, the belief creates a shaft. Then you start fighting with it. That is what I mean when I say the 'I' has to be dropped. It is your belief that makes it a habit. If you drop the belief, the habit drops.

If you believe it is a joyful experience, you continue to smoke more and more. If you believe it is a painful experience you start fighting with the shaft. Either way you don't win. Even if you believe that smoking is joyful, try to smoke without restraint and see for yourself how you feel. When you smoke and inhale, it can never be a pleasurable experience. It is never really joyful.

When you smoke, in that moment, just see what is happening in your inner space. You are not enjoying anything. You are just trying to escape from something. You merely believe that smoking is joyful. Even if you don't feel joyful when you are smoking, you try to squeeze joy out of it.

If you deeply scan your life and see, you will understand that whether it is smoking, or sex, or money, or any other pleasure, even if you don't feel the same joy as you felt the first time, you try to squeeze joy out of it. You try to console yourself, 'No, this is joy. What else is joy?' You try to cover the frustration by believing it is joy. You want to believe it is joy.

Try your best to drop some addiction. You can never be successful. Even if you drop it you may be dropping it out of some fear or greed, which is a much bigger addiction. If you drop smoking out of some fear or greed, you are not doing anything good to your consciousness, to your inner space. You are only damaging yourself more.

You might have dropped smoking, but the fear or greed that made you drop it will be added to your inner space. At least with smoking, you will destroy only this body. With fear or greed you will destroy your whole being, life after life! In the next body, you will carry over the fear and greed. The smoking habit may not carry over to the next body but the emotions of fear and greed will be carried with you to the next body. So the best way is to drop the idea that you have an addiction, and it will drop.

Unclutch – Work Smart, Not Hard

The moment you hear you are unclutched, the first fear that arises in you is, 'If I start living without connecting my thoughts, who will pay my bills? I could lose all my wealth. I could forget where I keep all my money. I may not be able to live successfully in society. How will I do my job? How will I take care of my things? Won't I not just lie down in my bed without doing anything? Why would I want to go to my office?'

I ask, 'Why wouldn't you go to your office?' The moment you ask that, it means that you inherently have a little hatred or a little vengeance against your office work! This is why the moment you find some excuse you want to escape from your work. By asking this question, you are only expressing your anger, your violence against your routine, nothing else! The question has nothing to do with unclutching.

If you have such questions, just unclutch and sleep for ten days. There's nothing wrong with that. Have a vacation for ten days. Decide, 'I am going to unclutch from both the identities.' How many days do you think you can sleep? How many days do you think the cessation of activity can continue in you? Only until the tamas energy in you is exhausted. After that you will automatically start doing something.

So, even if you feel it is a lack of responsibility or defeatist behavior, be unclutched for a few days. You will then understand and experience that when you are unclutched you will not have a lazy or passive attitude. Mentally you will be silent, but physically you will be active and alive.

When you are in that space of irresponsibility or defeatist attitude, mentally you are very active but physically you are tired. When you are unclutched, physically you are active and alive, but mentally you are silent.

You see, 33% of the body is sattva, pure silence. 33% of the body is rajas, restlessness and 33% of the body is tamas, deep sleep, laziness. Right now the first fear that happens in you is if you unclutch, you may become tamasic, a lazy person.

Unclutch. That 33% of your laziness will quickly be exhausted. It will disappear from your system within a few days. Then you will automatically start working from your innate intelligence. You don't have to be driven by fear and greed to live your day-to-day life.

I am not saying you should stop thinking completely. I am only saying, when you are unclutched, whatever thoughts have to happen will happen automatically. Initially when you are unclutched you will feel as if no thoughts are happening. Later you will understand, even after unclutching, whenever thinking is necessary, the mind is clutched. Whenever thinking is not necessary, the mind is unclutched. Your mind is being used as an instrument, not as a master.

We can live purely from inspiration. But the problem is, we are never given that confidence. We are never given the courage that we can live simply by inspiration. Sometimes you can see that for no reason you radiate excitement; for no reason you radiate intelligence. That is what I call inspiration. It may last only for a few moments, but you need to realize that those few moments can become a way of life for you. If we remain unclutched, then continuous inspiration will happen in our lives. Unclutching directly kindles the energy of the being. This energy is the energy of inspiration, the energy of unclutching.

Are 'You' Needed to Run Your Life?

Understand one important thing, we have an automatic intelligence that can run our lives, that can take care of our day-to-day responsibilities. Not only can it run our lives, it can maintain, extend, and expand our lives as well.

But society conditions you from a young age. You are taught that you cannot run without planning, without fear or greed. Your self-respect is taken away from you. You are made to lose trust that you can lead your life spontaneously, without fear or greed. That is why constantly you try to infuse greed or fear into yourself. You try to use fear and greed as fuel to make your life run, to make your life alive.

Be very clear, you cannot run your life based on fear and greed. If you are driven by fear and greed, you will carry a constant irritation in you. From morning until night, from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, you will carry a constant irritation in you. You just wait for a reason to explode. Just one small touch is enough, and you are ready to jump on the other person. He does not even need to make any mistake; just coming in front of you is enough to trigger you! This happens because of the strain of running your life through fear and greed.

If you just relax, the automatic intelligence of Existence will run your life beautifully for you. Your actions will be automatically propelled by the energy of Existence.

Unclutching – A Self-Purifying and Evolutionary Technique

Ashtavakra says,

You who have been bitten by the great black serpent of egoism 'I am the doer'

Drink the nectar of the faith, 'I am not the doer' and be happy.

Ashtavakra gives this technique to the king and seeker, Janaka. Please understand that simply thinking that 'I am not the doer' or having faith that 'I am not the doer' will not liberate you directly. This technique by itself will not liberate you. It will just make you tired! You are not able to remember that you are not the doer continuously without a break. The moment you understand that you are not able to remember 'I am not the doer' all the time, you will be completely frustrated and you will just drop the mind. The moment you drop the mind, the truth that you are not the doer will simply become reality! That is the technique suggested here.

This is a very simple understanding of unclutching. All you need to do is remember to unclutch whenever you start giving meaning to old thoughts or whenever you connect with old thoughts and allow them to bother you.

Do not create, maintain or destroy any thought. If you don't do any of these three things, you are the Supreme Self, Parabrahma!

Unclutching is like a self-purifying method. For any technique to be selfpurifying and liberating, the moment you become subtle, the technique should also become subtle, by itself. Unclutching is one such technique.

The technique that does not become subtle by itself stays in the gross level. If it is not able to kill itself, if the technique is not able to commit suicide, it will kill you! The beauty with the technique of unclutching is that it will become subtler and subtler by itself as you become subtler. Finally, it will dissolve.

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