You Are Not Aware of Your True Past🔗

First truth is: you are not aware of all the things which are happening in front of you. You do not remember your biography as it happened. You remember it only as you want it. That is the first truth.

If your thoughts per second or what I call 'TPS' comes down, you will have clarity about your past and future. You may wonder, 'Clarity about past? I already have clarity. Why should I have clarity about my past by bringing the TPS down? I already know my past.' No!

Please understand: you don't know your past. You don't remember, or recollect the past as it happened.

The pain shaft will stay only if you are unconscious.

You recollect the past only as you want of it, not as it happened.

Just take a simple example. See, your life is filled with different kinds of incidents relating to joy, suffering, guilt, pain, depression. You do not look at life as it is. Usually what do you do? What do we do?

I used the word 'we' because sometimes people think the word 'you' is too condescending. That is the reason I used the word 'we'. The problem is, in a public place, we can neither use 'we' nor 'you'. If I say 'you', somebody feels condescended to. If I use the word 'we', if I also have the same problem, how can I teach you? That is the big problem!

Your life is a collection, a mixture of some joy, some suffering, some guilt, some pain… Usually, you collect only all the incidents related to suffering and create a shaft, a connecting idea, and you think your life is nothing but suffering.

Understand, you collect suffering, guilt, pain, depression… all these kinds of thoughts, connect them, and you think that your life is a long chain of suffering, a pain shaft. I have seen people, the moment I ask, 'How are you? Where are you from?', the first thing everybody invariably starts with is, 'You don't know, Swamiji, nobody has suffered like me in their life…' This is common introduction for their biography! 'Even my enemies should not suffer the amount of suffering I went through, Swamiji.' Even in suffering they want to be at the top and not second!

See, it is not that they just tell this to me, they believe strongly in this. They forget the joyful incidents, the happy memories which happened in between. They collect only the negative things and create a shaft. I call this a 'pain shaft'. Very rarely, sometimes, you create a joy shaft. It is very rare, not only in number, but also in quality, that you collect the joyful incidents and create a joy shaft and you feel life is joy. Most of the time you collect all the painful memories and incidents, and create the idea that life is pain.

Understand, if you create the shaft 'Life is pain' the problem is, you will just be waiting for more and more painful incidents to be added. For anything you believe in, you will collect more and more experiences and arguments to strengthen that belief. Once you believe your life is a long pain shaft, that is enough. You will just be waiting to pick up only the painful incidents and elongate that shaft. You will never be able to remember or respect the joyful things happening in your life. You will be waiting, meditating for pain! I have seen people just waiting to add pain and elongate the pain shaft.

The important thing we need to understand is that we believe life is a pain shaft or that life is a joy shaft.

We think that life has continuous incidents of joy, or continuous happenings of pain. The moment you believe life is continuous happenings of pain, unconsciously, you will try to strengthen the belief, even though consciously, you will try to break the pain shaft.

Understand, unconsciously what will you be doing? You will be continuously collecting more and more painful memories and incidents to strengthen your belief… strengthen the idea… but consciously, you will be trying to break the pain shaft.

The big problem is, neither can you break the pain shaft, nor can you add to the joy shaft, because both the shafts do not exist! It is just your selective memory.

In the diagram, I have given a gap after every thought. Different thoughts are like different shapes, different sizes, just coming and disappearing. If you think your life is a big pain shaft, a chain of painful incidents, then you will pick up only the painful things and add them.

The other day, one man came to me and said, 'Swamiji, I am going to divorce, please bless me.' I said, usually we bless only for marriage, not for divorce. Can you tell me the reason? Let me analyze.

Now, this man came and asked me, 'I am going to divorce; please bless me. I said, first let us analyze why you want a divorce. Then we will try to sort it out. He said that the immediate reason was that his wife had brought coffee and spilled it on the floor!

I was shocked and asked him, 'Don't you see clearly, it is not reason enough for divorce?' He said, 'You don't know, Swamiji, today she will pour coffee, tomorrow she will pour acid!' He actually told me, 'You don't know, today she will pour coffee, tomorrow she will pour acid.'

I said, 'Why don't you be a little logical? Why don't you be a little truthful? How can you connect coffee and acid? Don't you see the gap is too much?! You are creating too many ideas in your head.'

He protested, 'No, no, Swamiji, you don't know, how much I have suffered with her for the last ten years!'

I told him, 'Do not just create a pain shaft. Just come out with the incidents. Then we can analyze and look into it.'

Please understand, your opinion about life as a pain shaft or a joy shaft will stay only as long as you are unconscious, not when you are aware.

I told him: 'Just come out, incident by incident, let us analyze.'

In South Bharat, there is a habit where, during the marriage ceremony, a small ring is kept in a small pot of colored water and both the bride and the bridegroom are supposed to try to pick up that ring. Whoever gets it wins. In those days such small games used to be played, because it was only during the marriage ceremony itself that the bride and bridegroom would see each other for the first time; so it was like a technique for zeroing down the distance between the couple.

This man told me, 'Even during that play she scratched my hand with her nail!'

I was really surprised. Then he started telling me all the incidents like this, from right after their marriage. After 2-3 minutes I said, 'Stop! Stop, Stop! This is much worse than a police record. I think you should not ask for divorce, your wife should ask for having put up with you!'

You may laugh at this incident but actually if you see, this is exactly what we are doing continuously, sometimes about others, sometimes about ourselves. Continuously we are creating either a pain shaft or a joy shaft. One important thing we forget, neither can we break the pain shaft nor can we elongate the joy shaft, because neither shaft exists.

Just try to elongate the joyful moments. If some joy happens, try to hold on to that experience. It won't stay. Not only that, try to reproduce the same ambience, the same people, the same place, even the same temperature again as at the time you felt joy; still you will not have that same joy.