Suffering comes from feeling separate🔗

Your problems persist only because you go on trying to insist, trying to emphasize, that your being is separate from somebody else's being.

You think that the suffering caused to that being will not come near you.

You are separate, and whatever exists outside your skin is separate.

A devotee came and told me, 'Swamiji, I feel that my husband, my family, my brother, sister, everybody around me, is conspiring against me and working against me.'

It is not that she created it. She is helpless. She is caught in it. That is the gift or punishment given to her by society.

The unconscious hypocritical society constantly makes you feel threatened. The first lesson which you learn from the hypocritical society is that only if others are second can you be first; only if others fail can you be successful. It means you have to defeat everyone to win.

This is the lesson you learn on Day One in school. Unless you defeat others, you can't win. The very system encourages intense vengeance. The very system encourages intense jealousy. The very system encourages abusing other beings, creating distance between you and others, creating boundaries physically, mentally, psychologically, and emotionally.

First they teach you, you, you. Anything other than you is your enemy. Everything goes on, centered on you, you, you. Only then you are part of a family. Only then you are part of friends, team, country, and language.

Understand, this is the worst punishment society gives to a human being.

That attitude of separation does not stop there.

It just gets inside your system slowly. Even inside you, you start the game of separating.

Inside, you separate your intellect and emotion. You separate your emotion and being. You separate your being and consciousness. You go on separating, separating, separating, dividing, dividing, dividing. The more you divide, the weaker you become, the more problems you have, and the more enemies you have. This is how people feel that the whole world is an enemy for them.

When you integrate your intellect, it leads you to life solutions. When you integrate your emotions it leads to devotion; you will feel connected to the Cosmos. When you integrate your being, it leads to dhyana; you will realize the Cosmos.

Understanding, emotional connection and realization all happen just by being integrated.