Q: Swamiji, we experience disturbances in other relationships also, like between parents and children…🔗

Yes, in any relationship there are expectations. I don't think we have any relationship without expectations.

Parents try to chisel children, and children try the same with parents.

Parents try to live out their unfulfilled desires through their children. Parents dream for their children to become a doctor or an engineer. Why not find out from the child what he wants to become and then dream to fulfill that? That would help your child immensely.

The day your child starts back-answering you, that day he has become a man. You have to deal very carefully with him. Spend time with him, talk to him, be a good friend and find out what he really wants to do in life. Guide him with deep love and trust. Then, make his ambition your reality and help him in achieving it.

So many children tell me, 'My father wants me to become a doctor,' or 'My father wants me to become a lawyer.' Of course, if the child is unable to decide for himself, and he asks you what he should do, you can tell him what he could do based on your observation of his talents and capacity.

You can always suggest, but don't stuff anything down his throat. Also, make the child understand that you are giving him freedom and maturity in doing things and make it clear to him that there can be no blaming at the end of it. He needs to understand that clearly.

For homework today, I want you all to write down your ideas on how a perfect husband, a perfect wife, a perfect father, a perfect mother, a perfect child and a perfect friend should be. Choose any five relationships relevant to yourself, and note this. Do it honestly. When you read your paper, I am sure you will find, deep down in your unconscious, all your ideas are drawn from popular media.

You watch a television serial and start liking a particular character. The character becomes a solid reality for you. You unconsciously start expecting to see that kind of behaviour in certain people associated with you in real life.

People even carry the image of the 'ideal guru' in their minds. Usually it is the image of an old man, with grey hair and a flowing beard – what you see in books and television serials! And when they come and see me, they are unable to accept that such a young person can be a real master. So I too face the same trouble! I too have to free people of their expectations about the Guru, before they accept me!

Q: But sometimes we feel that we have to chisel… like when we are handling our employees at work. What do we do then?

Do your chiseling consciously. Be aware of what you do – then you will not do more than necessary. See if your expectations of your employees are realistic. Check if there is any alternate solution. Only when it is absolutely necessary, should you try to mould the other person.

When power has been given to you, learn to use it with awareness! Even anger and lust are great energies given to you by God. When you have respect for that energy, you will not waste it or misuse it.

Do we ever misuse money? You never misuse money, because you respect it. If a person does a job worth ten rupees, will you pay him one penny more? But with anger, you always 'overpay'. If a person makes a mistake worth 'ten rupees of anger', you always pay him with 'fifty rupees' worth anger! Why? It is because you use your anger unconsciously, not consciously like with money. If you use your anger consciously, it will pay off and you won't feel guilty about it also, I assure you.

You should never get disturbed by your own anger. If you get disturbed, it means that you have not gone through anger with awareness; you have allowed anger to overtake you. This is the scale to see if you have used anger properly!

A small story:

Once a sadhu – a wandering mendicant - was passing through a village, when he received a complaint from the villagers about a cobra that was playing havoc with their lives.

The sadhu was known to have the power to communicate with animals, so they begged him to convince the cobra to spare the villagers.

So the sadhu spoke to the cobra, and the cobra promised not to bite any of the villagers anymore.

A few months later, the sadhu was passing through the same village when he came upon the cobra, badly bruised and almost dead.

'What happened to you? Why are you hurt?' Asked the sadhu.

The cobra cried, 'O sadhu! It is you who made me promise never to bite the villagers! I have kept my promise to this day. But the villagers, who were earlier in fear of me, took my mildness to be weakness. Seeing that I don't bite, they started torturing me everyday. See what a state I have been reduced to!'

The sadhu replied, 'My poor foolish friend! I only asked you not to bite. Did I ask you not to hiss?'

You need to use anger in the right way in the right quantities. Anger is a tremendous energy if we know how to use it rightly.

Knowledge about anger reduces anger.

Many people come to me and tell me, 'Swamiji, I love my wife so much. That is why I want her to change for the better! That's why I fight with her.'

I tell them, 'You don't love your wife; you love the image that you carry in your mind.'

You love your image and whenever your wife matches the image, you love her. Your real love is not for your wife; it is for your mental image. If you really loved your wife, you would change your image to suit your wife. You would not expect her to match the image.

Most of us love our images. That is the beginning of unrest in our homes. That is the beginning of an intimate war! Honestly I tell you, lovers are intimate enemies. They are intimate but constantly on guard. They are constantly trying to dominate each other.

Real intimacy is when you are totally relaxed with the other. That is real intimacy.

Q: Swamiji, what you are saying is that we should accept the other person completely, with all his faults?

No!

Even the word accept carries a feeling of condemnation. When you say the words 'accept him with all his faults', it is like a silent complaint. It is like saying, 'What to do, we have to live with it.' No! I tell you, welcome the other person into your life, just as he or she is. There is a difference between accepting and welcoming. Accepting is like making a compromise. Welcoming is opening out your being to the other person without any expectation, unconditionally.

The whole of creation is a gift to you from Existence. Receive it with grace and humility. When you do this, the tremendous energy of the muladhara chakra is opened to you. To awaken this chakra is to touch a perennial source of energy. The tremendous energy that is usually locked in imagination, expectation and greed can be made available for creativity, for business, for life, and for reality!

Not only that, you will find your house becoming a kshetra, a shrine of peace. Our houses are meant to be dharmakshetras abodes of righteousness - but they have become kurukshetras abodes of war! And why have they become abodes of war? Because we are chiseling human beings. If we chisel idols or wood, we can make beautiful forms and furniture, but if we chisel human beings, only suffering will follow.

One man asked me, 'Swamiji can you please tell me a way to find a connection with the eighteen-handed Devi.'

I told him, 'First you try to find a connection with your twohanded wife and then we will see how to establish a connection with the eighteen-handed Devi!'

Another man came to me and asked for blessings for a divorce.

I told him that I would give blessings for marriage but not for divorce.

I asked him what the problem was and if I could sort it out.

He told me, 'Swamiji, this morning, I asked for coffee. She came with the coffee with such haste that she spilled it on my clothes.'

I was shocked and told him that the incident seemed too trivial to ask for a divorce.

He went on to say, 'Swamiji, you don't know. Today she poured coffee, tomorrow she will pour acid.'

I was shocked. I told him, 'Ayyah, why do you want to move from coffee to acid without any reason? All she did was spill coffee in some anger and haste and in any case, she is going to be the one who is going to wash your clothes!'

He continued, 'Swamiji, during our marriage ceremony, there is a custom wherein three pots of water are kept and the couple are meant to leave their hands in all three of them to try and find a ring which has been dropped in one of them. As early as that time, she scratched my hand with her fingernail!'

In order to zero down the distance between the couple, small games such as these are played during Hindu weddings. The man had been keeping a 10-year track of such trivial incidents!

I asked him, 'Ayyah, if you maintain such a police track record, how can one live with you?'

You see: there are two things that we do: One is, presenting arguments and looking for a judgment, while the second is, forming a judgment and then collecting arguments to support that judgment. The second is what we do 99% of the time.

There are many things happening around us but we register only what we want to register, never what is really happening. Because of this, we miss reality. Reality continuously exists but we see only what we want to see. In marriage, within the first few months, the man or woman forms a judgment about the other and from then on, whatever the other does, he or she sees from the point of view of the judgment. They search and collect arguments to maintain their judgment.

That is why, if you decide that your wife is a fool, she will always look like a fool no matter what. If you decide that your husband is the type who controls you, he will always appear in that way to you, whatever he may be doing.

If you do this, you will never be able to see the real aspects of your spouse; you will see only those aspects that feed your judgment. This is like when you are hungry, only restaurants hit your eye on the road. In the same way, before killing a dog what do we do? We call it a mad dog and then kill it.

Drop this attitude. Only then you will find a certain freshness in every person and thing that you come by.

A small story:

A man walked into a police station to complain that his wife was missing since three hours.

The policeman asked him, 'Can you give me details about her height, weight etc.'

The man said, 'Oh! I don't know.'

The policeman asked, 'What was she wearing when she left the house?'

The man said, 'I did not notice, sir. But wait, she took the dog with her. I know that.'

The policeman asked, 'What kind of dog is it?'

The man replied, 'A dalmation breed with grey spots instead of black; he weighs 50 lbs and has a pure white tail with no spots on it; he wears a brown collar with a silver chain. His name is Spot.'

The policeman said, 'That's enough. We will find them!'

A husband and wife live with each other with a certain freshness for probably a few months after marriage. In those few months, they collect judgments about the other. After that, they don't relate with each other at all. They don't actually see the other person itself. They relate with the judgments, that's all.

The husband relates with the judgments that he has collected about his wife and the wife relates with the judgments that she has collected about her husband. The actual husband and actual wife are different! They become four people in one house.

Just do an honest check. How long is it since you looked into the eye of your husband or wife and spoke to him or her? A very long time I am sure. And we feel that the early days were golden days and that life has become boring. If you really see, it is your attitude that makes it boring.

You give absolutely no room for a person to evolve. You are in such a hurry to typecast them. You don't want to take in anything new on their account. I tell you, you don't even see your wife or husband after a few years of marriage because you are happy relating with your image of them.

What will happen then? You will land up like this man who was clueless about his own wife's particulars! Not knowing a wife's particulars is a very superficial level problem. The understanding I am trying to express goes deeper than that. You actually miss the real person who is living with you. You live with your idea about the person.

For just 24 hours, make up your mind that you will see your wife or husband as if you are seeing her or him for the first time. Receive every word or action of hers with a freshness and innocence without jumping to conclusions. Feel lovingness in you towards her. Even if she says things that provoke you, listen to those statements with awareness and respond in a calm and loving way, instead of in the usual resistive way. You will see that you are actually opening out new avenues for both of you; you are giving the two of you a new space to relate.

Suddenly, you will realize that all along it was your attitude that made things look miserable. Of course, you might say that the other person too must reciprocate. You have the power to transform yourself and others. With just a change in your mental make-up, you can do much. When you decide to change, the other person will automatically change their ways too.

A small story:

A man was walking past a cemetery one day when he heard a loud cry from inside.

He felt obliged to stop by and see if he could offer help. He walked in and saw a man crying loudly near a tombstone.

He was repeatedly saying, 'Why did you have to go? Why did you have to go?'

The man felt really sad for his suffering, so he went near him and asked, 'Sir, I am sorry. Was it your wife?'

The man replied, 'No. It is her first husband.'

Relationships turn out to be a trauma because of a sheer mismatch between one's own imagination and reality. Still worse, people move from one relationship to another thinking that the next one is going to match their imagination. They go with it for some time and find out that there is something lacking there also and move onto the next. It never occurs to them that there is nothing wrong with the other person.

Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult for youngsters to tolerate one another and marriages are breaking up so easily. It is such a pity to see these things happening. An awakening is needed now. Only a deep understanding can bring about this awakening.

If you read all the love stories written until now, you will find that nowhere have the man and woman stayed with each other on a full- time basis at a functional level, in reality!

In a story about eternal lovers written by Rabindranath Tagore, the hero and heroine decide to live as eternal lovers on the two sides of the river Ganga. Periodically, they come by boat, meet each other and get back.

If they do this, obviously they will be at peace during the time they meet. Every time they meet, there will be freshness in the air because they know that they will be together for only a few hours; the moment becomes precious!

All eternal lovers, be they Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu or Ambikapathi and Amaravathi, never really lived together!

The problem is, life doesn't have background music! When you watch the love stories on television, they all come with background music and so you easily enter into a fantasy world. All the scenes that you see, especially the love scenes, come with background music. You enjoy it so much because of the background music. You are completely mesmerized by the atmosphere created in the television box.

In real life, you search for that music and don't find it! But if you find that music within yourself, then you won't look for it outside. Finding it within yourself is nothing but creating the beautiful space within you where everything is experienced as wonderful part of Existence.

Remember that your husband or wife is a creation of God. Your creation cannot compete with God's creation! Only His creation will win!

Today, there is a very large instance of pornography, fantasy, dreams and perversion in society. People have started going to other poor substitutes to fulfill their fantasies. Pornography does not fulfill sexual life; it creates more fantasies and perversion, that's all. But there is such a compulsion for fantasizing. Understand one thing: unless you are weak, nothing becomes a compulsion for you. When you are strong, you can drop anything.

(A lady shares her views) Swamiji, you ask us to be as we are. But how can we live in society just as we are? I think we have to change according to the family, the society.

Yes, everybody faces this problem on a practical level. You say, 'Swamiji, I have to act according to the other.' I ask you, why not also make sure that others act according to you? True, in society, we have to be dependent on each other. There is no other way. But be very clear of your limits.

Be independently dependent!

Be very clear, which is your space and which is the other's. Try your best to enrich your own life, without disturbing one another.

Q: Can't the other person's muladhara chakra be opened, so that he drops his expectations?

How will you do that? You can only make sure that your own expectations are dropped, so that from four people sharing one house, you at least come down to three!

How to change the other person...? These days marriage counselors suggest even hypnotism!

The other day, I read about a case where a woman wanted to bring down her husband's anger levels. I read that the Chicago University once performed an experiment where they implant electrodes in a person's brain and completely control anger. When they asked for volunteers to participate in this research, it seems hundreds of women forcibly brought their husbands!

After the experiment, 72 women – this is a fact – 72 women came back and told the university, 'Please remove these electrodes. I want my old husband back! I want my old angry husband back!' When asked why, they say, 'Life has lost its taste! Unless we fight, there is no interaction. He pays me no attention!'

Everybody needs attention! Behavioural psychologists say that a normal man can survive without food for up to 90 days, but without attention from others, only for 14 days! He will start going insane.

What has happened is that we have forgotten how to love each other and care for each other. Love is a forgotten language! So the only interaction and attention we can hope to have is by fighting with each other!

I think even the people sitting here and complaining that their husbands or wives are not spiritual… if their spouses become spiritual, they may come back and complain that they want their old partners back!

Carry heaven with you wherever you go

The beautiful thing about this muladhara chakra is, if this one chakra is opened, you will find that 50% of your problems have disappeared! This one chakra manages more than 50% of your life. In whatever you do, you will find a trace of this chakra! Even in your signature, you'll find a trace of this chakra! What I mean is, even the way you put your signature shows what kind of emotions are pent up in you. When the muladhara chakra is activated, even your signature will look different. If you pluck a flower, the way you do it will be different. It will be so soft and gentle, with no violence.

There are a set of Tamil saints called the Nayanmars. There is a song which says about them, that when they pluck a flower, the tree will not feel the pain! What do we mean by that? You become so sensitive and loving, when this chakra is opened. When the energy of this chakra is transformed, it will overflow from you as love!

Sex is carbon, love is diamond. Sex is mud, love is the lotus that blooms in the mud. It is the same substance. But the thing is, you should know how to process it. Just drop your expectations, and you will find a tremendous upsurge of energy.

Today I want you all to try this technique when you go home:

Sit down and concentrate on your muladhara chakra. If you notice, your muladhara chakra is always tense. It is always tight.

For five minutes, mentally forgive your husband or wife for anything disturbing that they have done. Really forgive them. Go to the root of all your misgivings and drop the feeling of resentment. Do it totally. Just welcome them as they are. Give them your deep love.

After just five minutes, you will see that the muladhara chakra is totally relaxed.

If just five minutes can give you this result, just imagine what will happen if you change your entire attitude! What a tremendous energy flow you will experience!

The way you are living now, it is as if you have got 100,000 rupees, but you have locked away ninety thousand in some place where you can't recover it. You try to manage your whole life with the remaining ten thousand. Then naturally you will feel that you are poor!

In the same way, all your energy has been locked away in this chakra – in anger, in sex and what not. You don't have enough energy even for your day-to-day living! Once this chakra is opened, your life will become rich. You will be able to think better, understand better, plan better. You will feel this energy consciously working in you. It will open a new dimension that you would not have experienced before. You will actually realize that your husband, your wife, and everyone in this world are spiritual beings!

You need to understand that heaven and hell are not geographical places. You can't locate them on a map. They exist only psychologically. It's up to you to transform your life into heaven or hell.

When you are full of expectations, you carry your own hell in you. So wherever you go, you will find that your personal package of hell travels with you! Like how a circus troupe carries and spreads its tents everywhere it goes, so also you carry this hell with you to any place you go to. And when two such people meet, there is a great clash of hells, not bells!

Why do you want to carry this load around with you? Just drop it!

Just think of all the energy you waste in trying to chisel the other person to suit your expectations. Isn't it much easier to just drop the chisel? If even 10% of that energy is channeled into meditation, your life can be transformed into true living.

Living is 'life led with awareness, with freedom'. We have a choice! We have a chance to become conscious. It is up to us to decide.

Lust to love, the alchemy process

Lust, like anger, is a tremendous energy. Actually, until such time when you understand what lust is and how it can be transformed, any action that you do is lustful. Even if you pick up a pen, it is lustful; if you are petting a small child, it is lustful. There is a certain animal nature in it because your energy is still driven by greed. It has not transformed into higher energy.

In the same way like how knowledge about anger reduces anger, so also, knowledge about lust reduces lust, because both are the same energy! The problem with lust and sex is, they have been magnified and imagined to be much more than what they are. Because of suppression, sex is made out to be much more than it is. There starts the whole problem. It has been contaminated to a great extent by media.

When your lust is not accepted by the other, it turns into anger against that person. That is why you read newspaper reports of teenage boys throwing acid on the faces of girls who have rejected them.

Society has always made divisions like lower humans and higher humans. Any one with passion or lust is said to be a lower human. There is no lower or higher; a transformation has to happen, that's all.

The people who go about setting these moral standards are simply people who pretend to be moralists. They are either afraid to go behind these feelings or guilty to go behind them and so they pass off as moralists. They become the ones who set standards like low and high in society.

Just understand that there is no low or high. The moment you think that you are low, you start fighting with that feeling and it becomes very difficult for you to overcome it.

When people try to impose the inferior and superior feelings in you, remember that every individual is a part of Existence and no one is inferior or superior to anyone. It is only when you forget this truth that you will use these kinds of words.

Lust is a result of deep ignorance. The process of changing lust to love is an alchemy process. Alchemy is the process of changing any base metal to a higher metal. Similarly, changing our base emotion that is lust to the highest emotion we are capable of, that is love, is an alchemy process. It is the ultimate alchemy.

Let me narrate to you something that actually happened to me when I was wandering in the Himalayas:

In the Himalayas, I used to simply walk anywhere I felt like. My belongings were very few and I used to wander and sleep anywhere at nighttime. I used to simply grip the branches and roots of trees and climb! I met many sages during that period.

On one such occasion, I met a sage, very barely dressed, with matted locks and with a fierce expression. He was a Naga Baba, belonging to the Naga sect of sages.

I was somehow attracted to him and went near him.

At that time I did not know much spoken Hindi, but I managed to converse with him in my broken Hindi. I was with him for a few days.

All day long, he would smoke his hookah. I was watching him and was amazed at what he was doing.

He would drop two copper coins in his hookah, smoke for some time and then empty his pipe and two gold coins would drop out!

He would then sell the two gold coins and get more copper coins and repeat the process!

I asked him how it happened.

He did not answer but simply gave me the pipe. Somehow, the smell of tobacco or alcohol never agreed with my system at any time, so I just took a few steps backwards.

I told him that I had come to the Himalayas for meditation and enlightenment and I was not interested in smoking or gold coins.

He looked at me and spoke in Tamil for the first time: 'Angam pazhuthaal thangam pazhukkum' which means: 'When your being ripens, gold will ripen.'

I was speechless. I wondered how he knew that I knew Tamil.

He playfully blew smoke rings into my face.

I was in deep bliss for three days after that.

Changing copper to gold is an alchemy process. It is an alchemy process in the outer world. The alchemy in the inner world is all about changing our base energies to higher spiritual energies. When you master the art of transforming your base energies to spiritual energies, you can transform copper to gold; it is no big deal. When you master the inner alchemy process, the outer alchemies are nothing. They become just child's play.

I have narrated this incident to you only to make you understand the concept of alchemy and not for you to pursue any outer world alchemies! Outer world alchemies are ordinary. The inner world alchemy is the one that makes you a real master.

What is it that actually happens in the process of alchemy with metals? First, the impurities from the base metal are removed. Then some components are added and the whole thing is taken through a process. At the end of it, the base metal becomes a higher metal.

Our animal emotions have to be changed to divine emotions. We all have lust, which is an animal emotion. At least animals have pure lust. They simply forget the whole world when they are having a relationship. But for us, even our lust is not pure. Lust is mixed with feelings of guilt and unsure desire all the time.

Either our conditionings from the past make us feel guilty and we withdraw, or intense desire to continue into the future makes us indulge, only to feel guilty again. It is a vicious cycle of pulling and pushing as a result of which the lust is contaminated. It is not pure.

Always if you notice, the moment you fulfill your imagination, you are engulfed by guilt. That is why sex makes you feel guilty. Family instills the first sense of guilt in you when you are a child. Then, you master the art of creating guilt for yourself!