Transcend time – be in the present🔗

Your thoughts are always about your past or your future. You can only think about what happened in the past or what will happen in the future. Your thoughts of the past are usually regrets about what you did not do or guilt about what you did. Thoughts of the future are about what you wish to do.

Please understand, neither the past nor the future is real. The past is dead and gone. Most often we do not even learn from the past. All we try to do is use our past to steer the future. It is like driving a car looking only at the rear view mirror! You know for sure where you will end up!

The future is even more unreal. It has not happened. You have very little control over your future the way you are, because all your actions are steered by the unconscious mind. You are driven by the embedded memories of your past. Your thoughts are nothing but the movement of your mind between past and future. Your mind never wants to rest. If it rested you will know you can do without it!

If only you allowed the mind to rest or even persuaded your mind to rest, you will find that you reach a blissful state. That state is the present moment. All your future has to happen in this present moment. It is what you decide now in this present moment that makes your future. Once you take care of the present moment, once you live this present moment consciously, you no longer will have cause to regret your past or feel guilty about it.

The shaft in the center represents 'time'. At any given time, the greater your TPS or Thoughts Per Second, the more far-flung you are from consciousness of the present moment. You are simply worrying about the future thus allowing it to slip into the past, without ever getting a glimpse of the present.

When your TPS comes down, you enter more and more into the present and when this happens, you have a clearer vision of the past and the future. You may wonder what is there to be clear about the past. One can understand that the future may not be clear, but why the past? I have lived it, so why should it be unclear! You need to understand that what you now remember of the past is your judgment of the past, not the way it happened. How many times do we talk about the golden past? How much has been written about the 'golden past'! There is nothing golden about the past. We just choose to remember the good parts, so it looks golden.

When you are in the intuitive state, be very clear: for those few moments, your TPS has dropped and you are more in the present. When your TPS is zero, you can clearly see the entire past and future.

The point where the future meets the past is the present. This is where your thought frequency is zero and you are in a no-mind state. You have not merely controlled or suppressed the mind, which is impossible. You have transcended the mind, which is possible.

Meditation brings the mind to rest. Meditation disengages the mind so that the mind cannot play games. We can also reach this state in the master's presence. The master is always in a no-mind state, which is the zero TPS state. When you are in his awareness, whether physically or otherwise, your own TPS also drops. You can reach zero TPS just by being in the master's presence. The presence of the master is meditation. Awareness of the master is meditation.

Physiological effects of Stress

We have looked at what the scriptures say and what I think about why stress is created. Let us now look at what science says.

We all have a part of our brain that controls our actions such as breathing, digestion and such activities that the body does automatically, involuntarily. Nature has designed a fail-safe system in a part of our brain called hypothalamus. This part of the brain also includes what biologists refer to as the reptilian brain.

Behavioral scientists often talk about the fight or flight response. When the body-mind perceives a danger to our survival the hypothalamus is alerted by our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind functions at speeds a million times faster than the conscious mind. So even before we consciously become aware of danger, we instinctively become alert. The hypothalamus activates the pituitary gland, the master gland, which then activates the adrenalin glands that secrete the adrenalin hormone, which is pumped into our extremities, the hands and legs. We then get ready for the 'fight or flight' reaction – either the energy prepares us to fight the threat or to run away from the threat.

The unconscious reptilian brain takes the decision to release chemicals into our body to protect us. This worked very well in the days of the caveman when he faced lions and tigers. He had to be ready even without thinking to fight or run away.

To study the effect of adrenalin on human beings today, experiments were carried out on athletes. Sprinters were lined up at the starting block and moments before the pistol was raised to signal to them to start running the umpire lowered his arm. So, the sprinters had to fall back and reposition themselves. This was repeated six times. Without even running a meter the sprinters collapsed at the starting block! The adrenalin level in their bodies had become dangerously high. The life saving adrenalin can become a killer when it is produced without reason.

The chances of our meeting a tiger or a lion are quite slim these days. Nevertheless our unconscious mind keeps sending signals of such danger. These are called 'fear strokes'. Psychologists estimate that we face at least half a dozen such fear strokes every day. These fear strokes produce large quantities of adrenalin in us. It has been established that depression is a direct result of such adrenalin production. Depression in turn is considered to be the main cause of many chronic and fatal illnesses.

Medical research has found that many young people in rich countries, even teenagers, have arteries so badly blocked that their arteries are similar to sixtyyear-old people! Doctors have established that the physical condition is only one part of the problem. A much larger part is the emotional condition. It is now fairly well established that an emotional trigger causes the immediate onset of a heart attack or stroke, even though the physical condition may have been present for a long time.

Stress is a killer, but it is in the mind.

Is stress work related?

In an IT company the Chief Executive received an enquiry for a project. He sent it down for a proposal. The team that worked on such projects did a full review and said that they could do the job in six months at a cost of a million dollars. The manager in charge of the team reviewed this and said the team can do this in 4 months at a cost of three quarter million dollars.

The proposal went up to a General Manager. The General Manager called everyone, gave them a pep talk and said, 'We should be able to do this for half a million dollars in three months.' Then he sent this as his proposal to the Chief Executive.

The Chief Executive called the client and told him that his company will deliver the product in two months at a cost of half a million dollars.

People who work in corporations can relate with this incident. People who make decisions and commitments are often out of touch with ground reality. Once such decisions are made their egos are in play. Anything can be sacrificed but not the ego! A simple study of corporate history can show how many companies have failed because of the egos of the people who led them.

I am told by some of my disciples in the corporate field about something called Level 5 Leadership. This is about those corporate leaders who put themselves behind the needs of the company and the people who work for them rather than placing their own ego needs first. Research has shown that the Chief Executives of companies that have been commercially successful consistently are hardly known to the outside world! These leaders are so humble, and focused inwards.

Stress at the workplace starts with our education system. We start ranking children from a very young age. When in a group three people are graded as heroes, the rest of the group feels useless. We are taught to compete from a very early age. This comparison continues into the workplace and converts it into a battlefield.

The so-called Human Resource programs specify that people must be categorized. I am told that in many corporations it is necessary to show that ten or fifteen percent of the people are bad performers. People are reduced to statistics! In order to survive people are forced to make others victims. This is probably why they call these offices 'concrete jungles'!

As long as people are driven by fear and greed, they cannot be inspired. They can be controlled and made to perform routine tasks but they cannot be inspired to do the impossible. This is the dilemma today's corporations face. They need people to perform but their kit of motivational techniques is not enough. It contains the whip and the carrot, nothing more.

A well known psychologist built a model of how human beings move up in their desires. This is now named after him as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the base of this pyramid are one's survival needs of food, shelter and other material essentials. People then look for fulfillment in the society they live in, such as building a network and so on. They then seek love and attention. Then they look for respect, name and fame. After all this they are still dissatisfied. They feel that there is something still missing in their lives.

That something is within. Maslow called it self-actualization. This is the zone where we flow free of stress. This is the zone of inner realization. This is the zone where you know that you are one with the universal energy. Whether you work at home, in an office or factory or you do not work at all, you still look forward to this state where you are centered.

This is what we teach in our basic Life Bliss Program courses. The five levels of the pyramid that Maslow drew correspond to the seven levels of energy that we carry within us. These seven centers of energy are called chakras in the vedic system. Each chakra represents an emotional state as well as a state of desire. As we fulfill the needs of each chakra we move up in energy till we reach a state of fulfillment. It is a process many thousands of people have gone through with remarkable effect. We have taught these programs in many corporations worldwide. I call this a 'Guaranteed Solution'.