4. Drop everything and surrender🔗

Drop everything and surrender. This is the gist not only of this final chapter of Bhagavad Gita, but it is also the essence of the entire Bhagavad Gita. In addition, throughout the ages it has been the basis of the teachings of all the spiritual masters.

Krishna concludes the Bhagavad Gita with one subject: Drop everything and surrender. Beautifully He says:

sarvadharmān parityajya māmekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja ahaṁ tvā sarvapāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ

Drop everything, whatever you know as dharma, whatever you know as life, whatever you think you know, just drop it. Drop everything and surrender.

Whatever you know is only your knowledge, it is just what you know. It is not what is. In fact, wisdom and truth are about what we do not know. That is all! What we know cannot lead us to the ultimate Truth. Knowledge of the mind, that we take so much pride in, functions like blinkers that we wear to shut out the truth of Existence. The French philosopher Rene Descartes said, 'I think, therefore I am.'

There may be no doubt that he was a human or that he existed because of his mind and thoughts. However, the mind is not the scale of measure of existence. What we are has nothing to do with our thoughts. What we are is beyond our thoughts. If our thoughts alone could circumscribe what we are, we would be nothing more than a biomechanical machine.

Animals have greater innate intelligence than humans. Animals do not clutter their minds with fantasies like humans do. They simply flow with nature.

A lion or tiger hunts for food when it is hungry. It eats when it must eat and sleeps when it is tired. No wild animal stores food, except in rare cases when dictated by Nature. No animal in the wild becomes obese.

Humans think. That is the problem. Our great sages, the ancient ṛṣis, declared the opposite of Descartes. They say, 'Drop your mind and you will be aware. You will realize your true potential as a human.'

Adi Shankaracharya, one of the greatest Hindu philosophers, proclaims this so beautifully in the verses of his Atma Shatakam. To define what he truly is, Shankara negates his body, mind, senses, emotions and all his relationships. By negating all this, he declares his inner divinity boldly and beautifully.

Understand, we are spiritual beings in human form, and not human beings striving to be spiritual. Our potential is huge. Our intelligence is unlimited. But our intellect is limited.

Knowledge is of three kinds

The first and the least relevant type is acquired through the mind and intellect. Scientific knowledge such as physics, math, medicine, etc., falls into this category. We think we benefit from this knowledge.

We believe this knowledge enhances the quality of our lives. In the end, we wonder why we are unhappy despite all this knowledge. The more we acquire knowledge belonging to this first category, the more disturbed we become.

The second type of knowledge cannot be taught in the same way as intellectual knowledge. This type of knowledge must be learnt. Creative arts belong to this type. We cannot learn to sing, dance or write by reading a book. It does not involve mere absorption of information. We must observe. We must internalize. We must imbibe and then we must express. In addition to the head and intellect, one's heart and emotions must be involved. Knowledge based on the heart is based upon intellect plus something more.

The third and highest type of knowledge is from the being. It is conveyed from the being to the being. This knowledge is the 'aha' experience that happens so rarely. The greatest discoveries and inventions are this type of knowledge. This knowledge is intuition. This is communion, as opposed to communication at the intellectual level and collaboration at the emotional level. Knowledge at the being level is a combination of knowledge of the head, knowledge of the heart plus something more.

Knowledge about God can also be of all these three types. When we started the Bhagavad Gita series, we learned what śāstras, stotras and sūtras were. Śāstra is knowledge of the intellect. It is acquired by reading and understanding. Stotra is knowledge acquired through learning, through the heart, that is through devotion.

Sūtra is learning through the being, that is through meditative techniques that cut to the core of what is essential. Even knowledge about God creates bondage when it is merely intellectual because we will only know about God. That is all! We will not know God. Please understand this. Knowing about God is not the same as knowing God. Knowing about God is different from knowing God. When we completely surrender everything, we will not even have the idea that we know God. When that idea does not exist in us, we know God. Otherwise we may know about God but we do not know exactly what the Divine is.

Words do not express God. No expressions can lead to the experience of God. God is when expressions cease. Zen masters say that the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. It is only a pointer, a reminder. Words about God in any form, however sincere they may be, are mere pointers and reminders.

The problem with religions is that they teach us about God. They do not teach us how to know God. All moral science and related classes do not help us reach God. Religions tell us a few things about God and instill fear and greed in us.

How many religions have helped enlighten people? On the contrary, we find that all the wars in the history of mankind have been fought in the name of religion. Millions of people have been massacred in the name of preserving and propagating religions. All colonization happened with religion putting out signposts. Religions caused destruction and death, not enlightenment.

Spiritual masters never preached that one should kill another or cajole, coerce and convert. No spiritual master preached violence. If he did, he would be no master!

Great spiritual masters come with the mission to raise us to a superconscious state. They aim to awaken individual consciousness so that we become aware that we are part of the collective consciousness of this universe. They come with a mission to make us understand that we must move from the attitude of 'I' to 'you' and 'us.'

The ignorant followers of the great masters fostered violence based upon their limited understanding of the truths that the masters expressed. Instead of spreading spirituality that integrates beings, they built religious institutions that divide people.

Unlike spirituality that spreads love among people, religion fosters violence. Understand: Enlightenment is a gift. It makes no difference what effort we put in. Whatever we may have put in does not matter. We may have stood on one leg for hundreds of years. We may have fasted for thousands of years. We may have practiced meditation or yoga or some other technique. These are equivalent to buying the one-dollar lottery ticket. Anything we put in is comparable to that onedollar lottery ticket. What we receive in return is a pure gift. Whatever we do is within the dream. How can that get us something beyond the dream?

What is real surrender?

Krishna says, 'Drop everything and surrender.' First let us understand the word 'surrender'. The word itself frightens people. We must understand that we are not going to lose anything when we surrender. We are only going to gain everything.

However, for lack of a better word, we must use this word. Realize first of all that we have nothing of any value to surrender! We only think we have something to surrender. The truth is that we have nothing to surrender. We simply need to open our eyes and see that everything that is, is divine. It is Existence. Whatever we think is ours does not exist! The 'I' and 'mine' that we hold onto are mere lies. The moment we understand this, we surrender. The moment we surrender, we understand.

When we call something 'mine', legally it may belong to us, but existentially, it does not. Legally we can fence off a piece of land and call it ours. Legally we can own things. But Nature or Existence does not know that it is ours. When a cyclone hits, it does not care whose property it is. It does not know the law! It does not know that legally a cyclone is not allowed on someone's property! For Existence there is no law.

Your idea of 'mine' is protected by the laws of society. You cannot truly use the term 'law of the land'. The land has no laws. Only society has laws. The land can have an earthquake at any time. We cannot have laws to govern Nature. The law of the land is beyond your comprehension. As long as you are caught with the concept of 'I' and 'mine', you will not understand the truth about Existence. You are caught in thinking that something is 'you' and something is 'yours'.

When Krishna tells us to drop everything and surrender, He asks us to open our eyes and see the foolishness of our possessions and expectations. Open your eyes and see the drama that you are playing. Open your eyes and see the game that you are playing. It is one thing if you play the game to cheat others; however, do not cheat yourself. By and by we forget this and cheat ourselves with this game.

Please understand, there is no 'I', there is no 'mine'. The person who is intelligent and willing to open his eyes and see reality, will sooner or later wake up to the truth that there is no 'I' or 'mine'.

Can whatever you think of as 'I,' either your body or mind, function without air? Can you say that the air belongs to you? This basic energy, prāṇa, which goes in and comes out, does not belong to you. If prāṇa stops happening, what you think of as 'you' disappears.

It is like saying that the foundation does not belong to me, but the first floor of the house is mine! You can do that legally. But it is impossible existentially. In the same way, the building may belong to you, but the earth that it sits on does not belong to you. The earth can give one small shake, and whatever you thought was yours just disappears!

The very foundation of whatever you think is 'you' does not belong to you. It belongs to the Whole. It belongs to Existence. It belongs to the universe. It belongs to Nature with whom you are continuously fighting. The base or root of what you think of as 'you' does not belong to you.

We take for granted the air that continuously goes in and comes out. We believe that the air belongs to us. There is no break in this natural supply. Maybe if God called a strike, like a workers' union strike, we would understand that we cannot take even the air for granted. Suppose He called a strike for a minute, then we would understand that it did not belong to us. But He is a Karuṇāmūrti, god of mercy. Out of His compassion, He never goes on strike! That is why we take life for granted. Just because certain things belong to us legally, we think that the concept 'mine' is solid. The truth is that both the 'I' and 'mine' have no base.

Anybody who is intelligent enough to open his eyes and see, realizes that 'I' and 'mine' are a drama. Whatever you may think is 'I', is not under your control. The moment the air that goes in does not come out, it is over. 'I' disappears.

Immediately your name will be taken from the name board outside your house and put on your tombstone. You will be called a dead body! You will be taken to the place where you can rest forever! Your house and car will be useless. So, whatever we think is 'I' and 'mine' is baseless.

Sometimes even the piece of land that we think belongs to us we may find doesn't, when we see the papers of that land! Our life itself is built on paper. The moment we have the intelligence to see this, the moment we wake up to this reality, we achieve the state of surrender. The moment we understand that in Existence nothing called 'I' or 'mine' exists, we immediately experience tremendous relief from the need to continuously protect ourselves.

These two instincts of holding onto 'I' and 'mine' are the reason for physical and mental problems. The instinct to survive and the instinct to possess are the root cause of our problems. On the other hand, when we realize that the 'I' and 'mine' do not exist, we laugh at ourselves. We realize how we have cheated ourselves and how foolish we have been in spending our whole life and energy in building sandcastles.

A small Zen story:

Some children were playing on the beach, making sandcastles. The whole day they worked hard to build beautiful sandcastles. At the end of the day, they jumped on the castles and destroyed everything that they had taken the whole day to make. And they enjoyed that too! A Zen master sat nearby and watched the whole scene. He merely said: 'This is life.'

A king also watched this scene. Then one child started crying because another child smashed his sandcastle. The king laughed and said, 'How foolish to cry over a sandcastle.' The Zen master laughed at the king. The king became angry and asked, 'Why are you laughing?'

The master explained, 'At least these kids know that they are playing when they make and break sandcastles. In contrast, when you make and break stonecastles, you think you are doing something real. The children are more aware than you; yet you call them foolish. That is why I am laughing.'

The important point here is that the children knew that both the building and the demolishing was a drama. That is the reason they laughed. They enjoyed building and destroying. In our so-called real life, we do not understand this truth.

Actually, our life is pseudo-life. The way children live is real life. They understand that it has no value intrinsically. One day it will be built and the next day destroyed. They do not sit and cry. They are not emotionally disturbed. They have no problems. But if our castles are shaken, we have a problem. We do not even have the basic understanding that all castles will be shaken and all palaces will be destroyed.

The whole thing is pure fun! We must understand that whatever way we live and whatever we may build, does not belong to us. If we do not internalize the outer incidents and if we treat them with the indifference they deserve, we experience what I call surrender.

There is only one thing to remember: Do not internalize sensory inputs and do not take things too seriously. When you take life too seriously, you can be sure of one thing, and that is sickness. All seriousness is a form of sickness. When you think the 'I' or 'mine' is the truth, you create trouble for yourself. The moment you believe that there is an 'I' in your being, you start moving away from life.

The idea that you have of yourself has no base, whatever you may think of as you. Sometimes you think you are the body. Sometimes you think you are the mind. And other times, you think you are the senses. No matter what you identify yourself with, it is baseless.

There is another critical aspect to understand in this regard. Whatever aspect you think of as 'you' will not grow. If you think you are the body, you stop the growth of the body because you do not like change. When you think you are the mind, you stop the growth of the mind. You stop the inputs to the mind.

That is the reason egoistic people cannot listen to new ideas or read about them. They cannot learn because learning is against their vested interests. They think that they already know and have nothing more to learn. When you think that your mind is you, the very attitude of learning, the beginner's mind, is lost. Wherever you cling, you destroy that.

If you think you are the body, you do not let the body rejuvenate itself. You do not let your body do its regular work. If you think you are the mind, you do not let it learn anything new. You do not allow anything new to enter. That is a sure way of destroying it.

The same applies to what you consider as 'mine'. This is based on the laws of society. In no way is it related to the laws of Existence. It is well known to science that of the trillions of cells in our body-mind system, millions of cells die each day and millions of cells are reborn. After a few years, there isn't a single cell in our body which existed two years earlier. Every single entity in the body is new. This means that there is really no constant 'I' as we imagine. Yet, we carry that label proudly.

All we are is a bunch of memories, value systems and beliefs, collectively known as saṁskāras. Our saṁskāras define us. Our saṁskāras rule us. And our saṁskāras make decisions for us. That is what this 'I' is all about.

We conduct Life Bliss Programs on meditation to eliminate these saṁskāras because saṁskāras rule us and we make our decisions unconsciously. We live unconsciously and instinctively, instead of consciously and intelligently. When we are focused on the 'I', our responses are unconscious and instinctive. They are defensive and protective. Studies have shown that when cells are in a protective mode they cannot grow. As long as we are focused on 'I', we never grow.

The feeling of 'I' arises from the svādhiṣṭhāna cakra, the spleen energy center, where the Self is established. This is the seat of insecurity. Until we relinquish our fears by energizing this cakra, we desperately grasp the apparent security of 'I'.

The feeling of 'mine' is more primal than that of 'I', 'mine', the ideas of survival and possession, precedes the identity of 'I'. It arises from the mūlādhāra cakra, the root energy center. All emotional blocks like lust, greed and anger arise through this feeling of possession.

Giving up possessiveness and identity are difficult when we are conditioned the way we are, yet it is not impossible. In the Nithyananda Order, all the teachers who take up mission work conduct the Life Bliss Programs, change their names to spiritual names that I give them.

Why do they change their names, sometimes even at the age of sixty? They will tell you that for the first time in their lives they feel a sense of liberation and freedom. They feel reborn and they celebrate. Initially people told me that it would be difficult to find teachers who are willing to change their names, since most people would not like to give up their past identity. The truth is that when you truly understand what 'you' is, you sincerely wish to give up your past identity.

Similarly, when we give up our possessions and attachment to possessions, we feel liberation. When I walked out of my home for spiritual wandering, I felt no loss. Today, the whole world is my home!

This does not mean that all of you need to become monks, renunciates and sanyāsīs. You can happily continue your normal life, but drop your attachments, fantasies, speculations, greed and fear.

You need not renounce what you already have. All you need to do to achieve happiness is to renounce what you do not have. This one statement has been a clarion call for awakening thousands of people.

For the first time in their lives, they understood the mistakes they were making. By dropping fantasies about the future which had no existence and by dropping regrets and guilt about their past about which nothing could be done, they reached a state of happiness that had thus far eluded them.

Renunciation does not mean sitting cross-legged with a tense look and eyes closed. If enlightenment could happen by shutting off our senses, it would be easy. We would just need to sit in soundproof rooms, wear blindfolds and have no contact with anyone. We would emerge enlightened after one week or so. If this method worked, all prisoners in solitary confinement should become enlightened.

Renunciation is a state of mind and not a mere state of the body. It is even more than a state of mind. It is a state of being. We can renounce attachments to relationships and possessions while being involved in material life. On the other hand, we could take sanyās, go to the distant Himalayas, and every time we close our eyes, our inner television would switch on.

The surrender that Krishna talks about involves dropping fantasies and surrendering to reality. The true reality, the only truth, is that we are part of the universal energy. We are part of the collective consciousness. When we have this awareness, there is no room for the individual 'I' and 'mine' to rule our actions.

Throughout Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about renunciation. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa said that the Gita is nothing but Ta Gi, meaning tyāg, or renunciation. Ramakrishna said, 'Keep repeating Ta Gi and you will understand Gi Ta.' Again and again Krishna speaks about renunciation: How we should surrender the fruits of action to Him, without renouncing the action itself, and how all knowledge and action should be surrendered at His feet. He prepares Arjuna for this final moment when He tells him that all that needs to be done is to surrender. That is all.

Three kinds of surrender

Surrender is of three kinds.

1. The first step is the surrender of the intellect. For most people, especially intellectuals, this is the easiest. Your ego must be ripe before it can fall. The more stuff you pack into your thick skull, the more bloated it becomes. You become intoxicated with your own knowledge. You become intellectually arrogant. You are then ripe for surrender.

When someone appears on the scene and proves that intellectual knowledge is a pile of garbage, a person with a truly ripe intellectual ego understands and accepts the truth. Only those with half-baked knowledge who pretend to have intellectual status have a problem in understanding such a truth. A true intellectual can understand that all acquired knowledge is a mirage, an illusion.

When this happens, such a person surrenders his intellect to the master who shows him the way. Many intellectual seekers and spiritual shoppers come to me with loads of questions. After spending time with me, most of them tell me with great surprise that they no longer have questions. I don't take the trouble to answer their questions. No one can answer such questions. All I do is add more words to them. They struggle with the new words and ultimately find the right answers themselves! Once a few questions are answered, the rest just drop.

When I do answer, I answer the questioner. I address the person, not his question. I look into his being and provide the solution.

1. The next step in surrender is the surrender of the heart. People ask how they will remember me when they go away from the ashram. I tell them that if I am their master, they will have trouble forgetting me! Remembering me is not an issue, forgetting me is.

The thought of the master will melt your heart. You will become emotional. You do not need to be in the master's physical presence. You do not need to see His picture. You do not need to hear His voice. The mere thought is enough. Tears will flow from your eyes. This is a powerful form of surrender. Ramakrishna says, 'Know this for sure: When the mere thought of your iṣṭadevatā (favorite deity) or your master reduces you to tears, you are in your final janma, your final birth.' What an enlightened master says is always true. So powerful is this surrender that it can liberate you, enlighten you. This is the power of devotion, bhakti. Krishna keeps repeating that this is the easiest way to reach Him. Do not worry about learning scriptures. Do not worry about performing rituals. Do not worry about techniques. He says, 'Just be devoted to Me and Me alone, and I shall save you.'

1. The third and final form of surrender is the surrender of the senses. When the surrender of senses happens, enlightenment happens, and when enlightenment happens, the surrender of the senses happens. Walking with Arjuna after the Mahabharata war, Krishna points to a bird on a tree and remarks, 'Arjuna, look at that green crow!' Arjuna responds, 'Yes, Krishna, I see the green crow.'

Krishna says, 'What a fool you are! How can a crow be green?'

Arjuna simply says, 'Krishna, when you told me to look at that green crow, what I saw was indeed a green crow.' Such was the state of Arjuna's surrender to his master, whatever He said was what Arjuna's eyes saw. This is the final state of surrender.

It may surprise you that an enlightened master has no freedom to do what he wishes. His surrender to the cosmic energy is so total that every move he makes is dictated by that energy. Ordinary people have the freedom to do what they wish.

All this talk about destiny has no meaning. Each of you has full freedom to do what you wish. After doing what you want and suffering, you claim it was because of your destiny! Whatever you do is within your power. In contrast, I have no power to move on my own. Every word I utter is at the command of Parāśakti, the cosmic energy.

Krishna's advice to Arjuna and to all seekers is to drop everything and surrender unto Him. That is the only and final solution.

Q: I believe I am a spiritual person. I have met spiritual masters from whom I have benefited. I seem to be guided by unseen energies. But I am not content to be where I am. I conceive the future and work hard to make that reality. Am I on the right path?

As I said earlier, all of us are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are not mere human beings in search of a spiritual destination. All of us at the core are energy. We are not matter. Therefore, we are driven by energy. Masters can guide us in traveling this energy path. But we need to give them the chance. We need to be open.

When you say that you are not content with where you are, it is a reflection of your inner restless state. The rest of the pronouncements that you are spiritual, you are energy and that masters guide you etc., arises from a restless ego. It would be an insult to attribute this restless ego to a master's guidance.

You are in the same state as billions of others. You are in a state of rajoguṇa, the attribute of restlessness, aggression and passion. There is nothing wrong with being in this state. It just means that you are still in the grip of your senses. It means that your senses control you and you don't control them. It means that you are on the periphery and not at the center where your spirituality is centered.

In order to be truly spiritual, you need to move to the core. The core is where you understand who you are. You understand that you are not 'I', but that you are 'we'. Even now you may pretend to be selfless and do charitable services. But they have no meaning as long as you are credited and they give you fame. You will rarely do anything anonymously or be charitable to others when they do not respect you.

Neither the past nor the future is relevant when you are truly in the present. You do not make goals for the future and you do not regret or hold grievances from the past. The present moment is the satva guṇa moment where the action is passive. You are no longer restless but centered. You act, but do not worry about the outcome. Whatever the result is, you no longer measure it as success or failure.

What happens is what should happen, that's all. When you are on the right path, only the path matters, not the destination. If you consider the destination more important, it is unlikely that you are walking the right path. When you focus on the path, whatever destination you reach is right. How do you know which attitude you are in?

Please understand that if you hold grievances, regrets or guilt from the past, you are far from the right path. People pretend that they are not emotionally connected with past events and that they are no longer disturbed by happenings or people who have seemingly wronged them in the past. Yet their blood pressure shoots up when they must face such people and recollect such events. Your body does not lie. Your voice will become shrill and you will complain. These people and events still haunt you no matter how much you deny it.

Living in denial of reality is the sign of being rooted in the past and future. The problem with denial is that you will not accept what others tell you. You are blinded by ignorance of your own behavior. You are like Duryodhana. The ego is the root cause of denial, because you feel that accepting that you are haunted by the past is a sign of weakness. Unfortunately, weaknesses do not disappear by your suppressing them. Instead, they become more harmful.

When you are in a state of self-denial due to your ego, you will not be receptive to the master. Even the master cannot help you. You are taught how to open up these past saṁskāras and dissolve them, in our second and third level Life Bliss Programs. One needs to re-experience and relive these past moments in order to relieve and expunge them. The memories will stay without the emotions. They will not haunt you anymore. You can truly smile when you meet the person against whom you have held the grudge.

I also personally train and initiate people into Nithya Spiritual Healing. Before initiation, they need to complete all three levels of Life Bliss Programs. They can practice the meditation only after all their saṁskāras have been dissolved through these programs. Hundreds of testimonials attest to their transformation. Participants no longer hold enmity against another person after these three programs.

In the Nithya Spiritual Healers' Initiation, potential healers who become my ordained disciples must take an oath that they will heal whoever seeks their help. They must take an oath that they will heal even their worst enemy. Surprisingly, again and again, these people say that they can no longer consider anyone an enemy. They say very humbly that they no longer hold a grudge against anyone for any reason.

Sometimes when a disciple tells me that he has had an outburst of anger against another person, I ask, 'Can you smile at that person now? If there is no guilt and no grievance, there is no problem. Then the anger has been expressed as energy.'

But don't do that ten times each day and shout at people and then say that you can smile at them! Especially if these people are obliged to you or employed by you, they have no choice but to listen to you. Whether you can smile at them or not is not an issue. Can they still smile at you? That will be the deciding factor. No energy should be misused.

When you are centered, you allow the future to happen to you. You do not direct the future. You may need to make some chronological plans if you are in business, but you do not become obsessed with it. You are not worried whether the result will be one way or another. You may ask, 'How is this possible when I am engaged in business activity? I must plan and be obsessed with the results. I must be with the goal twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Only then can I succeed.'

Not true. You will only be stressed out and have a heart attack. The wealthiest people in the world are focused, not obsessed. Wealth is created by being focused on the process of creating wealth, not by being obsessed about the end result, money. Someone who is obsessed about making millions or billions will only fantasize about the money. They will neither have the time nor the inclination to be focused on the process that delivers the wealth.

For a few days, act without being obsessed about the outcome. Do whatever you need to do and are used to doing, as and when the situations arise. But do not sweat about whether the result will be as you would like it. Focus only on the action. Experiment with this attitude for three or four days.

Nothing disastrous will happen to you in three or four days. Whatever happens will only be for your good. You will find out how relaxed you are and how much more energetic you are about what needs to be done.

To be focused on the process is to be in the present moment. In the present moment you are in reality. You say that you conceive the future and work hard to make it a reality. Are you in the present moment when you work? Or are you caught in the regrets and grievances of the past and the fantasies of the future?

Whether you are on the right path or not depends on the answer to this question. Ego combined with grievances and fantasies is a dangerous mix. This was Duryodhana's state. Personalities like Hitler, Stalin and Saddam caused havoc with this combination in recent history. Others, who may not be labeled as clearly as global villains, can equally harm others as a result of this combination. All these people conceived of a future and worked obsessively towards that future. But they were so focused on their ego and satisfaction of the ego that their mind was in constant movement between the past and future. Their attention was occupied with grievances and fantasies.

This is an area where many so-called fulfillment techniques mislead people and sometimes destroy people's lives. Many are based on unconscious or subconscious visualization techniques such as using the alpha state of mind. These are positively dangerous since one has no control over the unconscious mind. It is like opening a Pandora's Box. Along with what one wishes for, a host of unwanted saṁskāras come into fruition. This is what they mean when they say, 'Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.'

Others advise you to visualize in the conscious state. If such techniques worked, everyone would be a millionaire. Who does not desire to be rich, healthy and happy? If it is so easy to achieve that by constantly repeating it in your conscious mind through some process, there should be no poor, unhealthy and unhappy people in this world. All these self-improvement programs make the designers and promoters rich, no one else.

These methods do not work because intents only work when there is no selfcontradiction. There are two extremes when self-contradiction does not exist. The first is when one is completely deluded by the ego, as with Duryodhana, Hitler and Stalin. Their self-obsession was so complete that there was no self-doubt about their own fantasies. There is no reality in this state. There is no intelligence to accept reality. Such people are in complete denial. This is their route to selfdestruction.

The other extreme where there is no self-contradiction is the enlightened state. The enlightened being is always in reality and aware of himself. There is no selfcontradiction at this level. But unlike the state of Duryodhana, this is an egoless state. In either of these states, intent becomes reality since there is no selfcontradiction between what is desired and what is considered possible.

In every other state, there is self-contradiction between the present-moment reality and the future intent. This prevents any process from working, whatever the form of visualization. To make the intent work in reality is to make the intent congruent with reality. This happens only in a superconscious state of awareness brought about by meditation.

In the meditative state, you are in the energy field of the cosmos. You are the same energy as the universe. The energy guides you. Whatever you seek will match with what is to happen. In fact, if you are truly in a meditative state, you will have no desire to seek. Whatever happens is acceptable.

If you truly believe that there is a supreme power, even if you are still unaware that you are an inherent part of this supreme power, when you pray with the faith that this energy has the power to grant you what you wish, why don't you also trust that it has the intelligence to decide what to give you and when to give it!

This awareness can change the way you see your future. There is a supreme intelligence guiding your life and your fortune. All you need to do is trust that supreme power.