The definition of Love🔗

Let me define love.

Love is not in any way related to two physical structures.

Love is not in any way related to even your own physical structure!

It is not even related to the mental qualities you carry.

It is related to the awareness you carry.

If two physical structures feel they are connected, it is called infatuation.

If one or more mental structures feel connected, it is attachment.

When awareness overlaps beyond the physical and mental structures, it is called love.

Now scan all your relationships with this understanding. Suddenly you will see that all the problems related to your love, relationship, friendliness, possessiveness, and worry, is just disappearing.

Your marriage will become a honeymoon. It will become a beautiful living relationship.

One of our brahmacharis wrote a poem when I was put in prison: This is the same thing we do forever. When they are alive, we throw stones at them, put them in the prison.

When they are no more in the body, we make golden statues and put them in the temple.

We do the same thing in life.

When the relationship is alive, living, we are in fear thinking, I don't know when it will disappear, when she may disappear, or when I may lose the love!

So we kill the love, put it in a frame, call it as marriage, and put it in the reception room. The smile which is shown in the family photograph never ever happens again with the same physical nearness.

Even at that moment, maybe that photographer would have shouted, Smile please! With a lot of uneasiness, your smile was brought out. This is because we do not understand love.

I can say, there are thousands of relationships which are perversions, and thousands of problems which are nothing but perversions of relationship problems. When the relationship is not fulfilled, suddenly, anything she does or he does irritates you. This is what I call perversions of relationship problems.

Fill all your relationships with this understanding.

Sit and scan, 'What is my relationship with my father? How is it? What is my relationship with my mother? How is it? What is my relationship with my spouse? How is it? What is my relationship with my brother? How is it? What is my relationship with my friends? How is it? What is my relationship with the world? How is it?

I have seen people wasting years just with their relationship with their dog! It is not love, it is not love! It is just foolish infatuation, a very third-grade perverted infatuation. I tell you having a pet deity, ishta devata, is a thousand times better than having a pet dog. But because people lack understanding, somehow, having a pet dog has become a fashion, while having an ishta devata is considered old-fashioned, outdated!

If you know real love, then you will start radiating healing energy. Healing does not mean just healing physical diseases. Healing does not means that you will just put your hand on some sick person somewhere, and that person will come out of his leg pain, stomach pain, head ache or cancer. No! First, put your hand on your own head! Heal all the headaches you have, and which you give to others. This is the healing stick that I am giving to all of you: the understanding about love.

Master your senses

The senses are the door through which you experience not only the world, but even the identity you carry about you. Please understand, you taste even the identity you carry about you, only through the senses. Mastering your senses means Mastering the identity you carry about you. The first truth I want you to understand is you do not experience only the outer world through your senses as you think. This is one of the important revelations I want you to understand.

Not only do you experience the outer world through your senses, you experience what your inner identity is also through your senses. You can see this happening in your life.

If you Master even one sense, your understanding about you will change.

For example, suppose you decide to Master your tongue, your sense of taste, and you start following the practice of eating only two healthy meals a day.

You will see that in your very inner identity, you will start feeling healthy. Mastery over the senses is required to experience you as a new you.

Independence and Freedom

I will try to share a few truths about independence and freedom. When you understand the law of a country completely, and you have the power to create or alter the country's law, what happens to you is called independence. In the same way, when you completely understand the Cosmic Laws, you will have the power to write it or overwrite it: that is called freedom. Please understand: when you are liberated from all the Cosmic

Laws and go beyond all the Cosmic Laws, then all the secrets of the Cosmic Laws will become known to you. Then, what happens to you is called freedom.

Whether it is independence or freedom, only the people who work for it will have it. The more you Master any law, whether it is the country law or the Cosmic Laws, you will know the grey areas, and naturally you will have the power to handle the grey areas, play with those grey areas and rewrite the law in the way you want.

If you work for political independence, you will enjoy political independence. If you work for social freedom, you will enjoy social freedom. If you work for spiritual freedom, you will enjoy spiritual freedom. Whoever works for it, they will get it. Whatever you work for, you will get that!

Breaking boredom in spiritual practice

The truth is this: your mind will be bored by any spiritual practice after few days. So the Master's job is to go on breaking your boredom pattern, and inventing new methods, techniques, process, through which you will be involved in the spiritual practices again and again in a way that is very entertaining for you.

Every samyama I give you, every technique I give you, every method I give you, is nothing but the original technique of unclutching. I just change the package, because after some time you feel a little bored – oh, this is the same thing! It finally boils down to de-programming the boredom patterns, and raising you beyond boredom.

Just like food is a basic need for your body's survival, doing the practices is a basic need for your spiritual life's survival. So the purpose of each new technique is to break the boredom pattern in you, and raise you to the space where you are inspired to do these techniques, where you are continuously following your spiritual practice without missing it, without moving out of it.

Understand your higher identity

You can never ever become a high achiever if you are not built on a foundation of high ethics. Your ethical principles create the foundation on which your personality is built. Understand, if the ethical foundation is not strong, even a small shake will send a tremor through you. The whole building will shake.

Every individual should understand his position in the broader context of society and the universe in which he is living. Let me give you an example. You usually settle down with a few small identities - I am the son of this person, father of this person, wife of this person, manager of this team, subordinate of this

boss, supervisor of this band. But this is not enough, because a small shaking from society is enough to cause an Earthquake in you, a mind-quake in you. Your whole personality will be shaken. You need to see your identity in the broader context, in relation to society and the universe also: what am I in this society? What is my social responsibility? What am I in this universe? What is my responsibility in the universal context?

Understanding your expanded identity makes the job of the smaller identity easy. When your identity becomes clear within the broader context, the identity which you carry with your family or your team will look very small, simple and easy! Remember the higher truths about you. When you remember your universal responsibility and social responsibility, completing your office responsibility becomes nothing! Or your household responsibility becomes such a simple thing. You will play this

game out of freedom. Remembering the higher identity makes you understand that the responsibilities you have are too small, too simple, and you are much bigger than them. Then you will perform well with your team, and have a beautiful relationship with your family.

Whenever a responsibility is easy for you, you will have no trouble following the ethics. You will say, let me be ethical, nothing wrong. Only in complicated situations, when you are in crisis, you compromise on your ethics. Understand, there is no crisis in the world. Even if the whole world is in crisis, you are not in crisis - because it will dissolve into you and come out as you.

If you think you are a body, you will never be able to wake up early in the morning, because the fight is between equal identities. Your laziness and your physical identity - both have equal powers. Always fight the lower identity problems with the higher identity. Associate yourself with the higher identity.

Remember your higher identity and infuse that into your day-to-day life. Keep your body, mind and consciousness infused with the freedom of higher identity. When you infuse the higher identity into your body, it is health; when you infuse the higher identity into your mind, it is joy; when you infuse the higher identity in your consciousness, it is enlightenment.

Stay centered in Consciousness

Human mind basically oscillates between fear and greed. It continuously moves from this extreme to that extreme and that extreme to this extreme.

Take the example of this web camera here. It continuously moves from this end to that end, looking at this corner and that corner. The camera is consciousness, and the movement from this end to that end is the mind. Mind is

that movement of your consciousness' attention, when it moves between the extremes of the fear and greed. As long as that movement is there, the highest possible coherence does not happen in you. The highest possible coherence happens when the consciousness just stays without oscillation. When the consciousness stays in restful awareness, then the highest possible coherence happens in your system.

How can the consciousness stay without jumping between the extremes?

Whenever your unconsciousness pulls you towards the fear extreme, consciously slap it with the greed extreme. Then it will come to the center. When the unconsciousness is rushing towards the greed, consciously slap it with the fear extreme. It will come to the center.

Understand, that is what Patanjali means when he says pratipaksha bhavanam. Whenever your fear is awakened, you forget your greed and you forget about your future. You have the fear that the one mistake which you made is going to finish you off. That fear makes you forget about the possible future you can have, and the greed about the future disappears – so you do more and more messy things, and get into deeper and deeper trouble! So, instead of one crime, now you will have to face hundreds of crimes. That is the unconscious flow of mind. Don't get into that mess.

Same way, whenever you are caught in greed, you forget about the fear and you do some foolishness. Only after that do you even remember the side-effects and after-effects of your actions. So when unconsciously greed takes you over, consciously slap your unconscious with fear. When the unconscious fear takes you over, consciously slap your unconscious with greed. It will come to the center. Being in the center suddenly raises you to the highest possible coherence. That is what I call niyama.

This is exactly what Buddha calls the middle path - constantly being in the center. Many times, when people take the decision to take sannyas, I tell them, when you take any decision based on extreme fear or extreme greed, whether it is the decision of sannyas or the decision of marriage, you will be a failure. If you take either decision when you are centered, you will suddenly see that you are taking the decision out of niyama, the highest possible coherence.

Only decisions taken in the highest possible coherence should be executed. Any decision taken out of the extreme fear or greed will lead to a mess. Even if you are successful in that decision, you will be completely depressed and missing something vital in the life. Yama and niyama are not just laws and rules. They are powerful processes to put you into the state of highest possible coherence.

Three kinds of karma

Let us understand this word karma. In Vedic tradition there is no good karma or bad karma. There is only karma. Whatever you are not able to make part of your life or your understanding is bad karma. Whatever you are able to assimilate and make part of you is good karma.

Understand this example:

Suppose you use a projector to project some scenes on a screen. Sometimes the projected light is too big, and only 70% of it falls on the screen, and 30% falls outside the screen. In this example, the screen is your experience about life, and the projector light is karma. Whatever is falling inside the screen is good karma, and whatever is falling outside the screen is bad karma. So now what do you need to do to make the whole thing into good karma? Just expand the size of the screen; expand your understanding about life.

Understand: whatever can fall inside your screen, whatever you are able to grasp, is called good karma. Whatever is falling beyond your screen, whatever you are not able to grasp as part of your life, is called bad karma. Now all you need to do is to integrate karma. As long there is good karma and bad karma, healing can never happen. There will be one part of karma constantly hurting you, haunting you.

If you increase your understanding about life, you will expand the screen. When all your life experiences come within the grasp of your understanding, then you will not call anything bad karma. That is what I call surrender - because life is an unpredictable happening. Surrender is nothing but being ready to expand the screen, being ready to expand your understanding about life whenever it is needed. Karma is like weight training! The weights which you lift are karma, the pain which you feel is bad karma, the beauty and strength of the muscles which you build is good karma. If you have the understanding that the pain is part of the muscle getting built, and there is no bad karma, there will be no pain. Then suddenly, you will see whole thing as good.

The attacks that you face in life are karma. The richness and strength that happens in you as a result of the experience is good karma. The pain you go through at that time is bad karma, but if you understand that the richness and extraordinary strength happens because of the pain which you go through at those moments of insecurity, there is no bad karma, and the whole thing becomes life.

Take up this practice: Look into all the incidents in your life that you have attributed to bad karma. See how you can expand the screen and see them differently, so that there is no bad karma, no bad happening in your life.

Who is an atheist?

Atheism has nothing to do with accepting the existence of God or not. Atheism means not looking at all dimensions of life as it exists. It is being fanatic about the technical knowledge which you got in one area or dimension of life, and ignoring the existence of all other dimensions. Deciding to be deliberately ignorant of other dimensions and aspects of life, just because of the arrogance and ego-fulfillment which comes by the technical knowledge of one dimension of life, is what I define as atheism.

Just because you learned how to be a doctor, don't think you know life. Or, just because you learned how to be a police officer, it doesn't mean you know life. These techniques don't work everywhere and in all aspects of your life. Somebody may have a huge organization. That does not mean they are able to tell the truth to the world as it is.

The danger of technical knowledge is that it makes you a fanatic and ignorant. Atheism is, having technical knowledge in only one aspect or one dimension of life and due to some fanaticism and ignorance, not looking at the other aspects of life.

I want you to know that if having technical knowledge in one area makes you feel that you know everything, you are in a dangerous zone. Fanaticism either makes you violent towards others, or it makes you ignorant about your own life and other dimensions of your own life. The major danger fanaticism creates is - you become violent and intolerant towards other ideologies and other ideas, and you become ignorant about the other dimensions of life.

Why do Vedic Masters teach theology in poetry? The unfortunate thing is that prose makes you fanatic, and does not let you look at all other dimensions or aspects of truth. If you remain a poet, it means you have not become violent or fanatic. The prose has not made you a fanatic and violent. The technical knowledge of one dimension has not made you deliberately ignorant about other dimensions of life.

It is most dangerous to receive technical knowledge or techniques from a person who has not completely experienced all the dimensions. Never learn technical knowledge from somebody who cannot give the experience without a technique. Please understand, if you want to check the ability of a Master, use this measure: he should be able to transmit the experience without a technique. He should be able to do this to at least a few people. Then you can be sure that he has a capacity to give you the technical knowledge and the technique. Only then you should go to him for technical knowledge and technique.

Owning Time

What do I mean by the word 'having time'?

Having time means, the time is your own.

YOU should be the owner of your time, not your thoughts or something else or someone else.

Look in at this simple thing: are you owner of your time?

No!

Everybody else except you owns your time.

The whole world is nothing but a huge fight to own more and more people's time. Whether it is the field of politics, art, science, or even the field of religion, it is nothing but owning people's time. If you own more people's time, you are a big guy, that's all.

Actually, trying to own more time is the subtle reason even for giving birth to kids, bringing them up as you want, and fulfilling in their life whatever you wanted to have in your life. You just want to have little more time!

Understand this secret: if you know how to own your own time, you will not be trying to own others' time. You will not be bullying around. You will not be bossing around. In any other field, if you own more people's time, you are big guy. But in spirituality, if you own your own time, you are a big guy.

The first thing you need to understand is time is just matter. Only when you understand this will you have respect for yourself, and you understand that you can own time. As long as you think of time as something mysterious, not understandable, uncatchable, indescribable, you will think that is too big. Time is simple matter, just like this handkerchief here. You can own it.

The second thing: decide to hate everything which tries to own your time. Anything, everything, which tries to own your time, hate it. Just escape from it, even if it is your Guru. If you think I am trying to own your time, escape from me. Understand: if you think I am trying to own your time, you have a wrong concept about me. I am constantly trying to make you own your time!

I can give you a very powerful technique to own your time. Take 21 days and make your daily routine very stable by creating a timetable for yourself. Decide that at 6 a.m. you will be doing this, at 6:30 a.m. you will be doing that, at 7:30 a.m. you will doing this, and so on. Make a clear timetable from morning until night, and decide that you will not change your routine for any reason. Tell your mind that you will be comfortable and happy doing whatever has been scheduled for that time. That's all; you will own time. It is a very powerful process.

The straight way out of ignorance

The great enlightened yogi Patanjali gives you a powerful technique to be out of ignorance, to raise you to the highest coherence. This is a process which you can practice the whole day. It is the only process which can change your muscle-memory.

Please understand, each technique or method transforms some part of you. If you practice yoga, your body will be transformed. If you practice unclutching, your mind will be transformed. This technique, called pratipaksha bhavana, is the only technique which can transform your muscle-memory.

Muscle-memory is that part in you which makes the decision to do any act spontaneously, and executes it within micro-milliseconds - even before you become aware of it! It is such a dangerous thing, as you can see.

You do not act the way you act because you are habituated to do so, or you are trained to do so, or you have engraved memories. No! Actually, there is no specific reason why you act the way you act. There is only one thing we know: the moment the decision happens in you, so much energy is spontaneously released, that without even a gap of a micro-millisecond, it is executed; it becomes action, it becomes reality. It is very difficult to understand and grasp. So, unless you understand the source of this happening, it is practically impossible for you to alter it.

In pratipaksha bhavana, whenever a negative thought happens in you, without allowing the feeling that it should be immediately executed, you need to replace it with an alternative thought, and establish that new thought in you.

Whenever negative thoughts which are against the purpose of your life happen in you, you just need to analyze, understand and take that thought to its logical conclusion. Create the opposite understanding, the right understanding of the purpose of your life, and raise the coherence of your system to its highest possible peak.

For example, when you have the thought of violence, how do you use pratipaksha bhavana to get yourself back to non-violence, and not allow the violence to get rooted in you? All you need to do is remember, 'Oh..! Violence will bring suffering and ignorance. I should not allow it!'

So he is teaching us reasoning; he is teaching us the applied science. If a Master of Patanjali's caliber is coming down to teach us applied science, it means that this one process is so powerful that it can transform your complete being.

The word 'confidence' means the courage to live and execute the truths that you grasp intellectually. Have confidence in your understanding and execute that understanding very strongly.

Creating the pratipaksha bhavana simply means creating thoughts contrary to the negative thoughts arising in you, and bringing yourself back to your center. It is not such a difficult job, but people feel lazy to do it. Inability to create pratipaksha bhavana means inability to create the contrary thoughts to destroy negativity, which means allowing negativity to grow in you. Once the negativity grabs you, it is over… over! Your life is hell; you are done for. That is why sometimes I need to push them to do that job. Sometimes I use love, and sometimes I use the fake, so-called hatred, to push them back to their center.

Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi sings very beautifully, Oh Lord, when my five senses entered my house to rob me and to destroy me, where were you? Were you not there in my inner space? So when the negativity enters to rob you and destroy you, immediately bring the right understanding, the right attitude, as your defense against the negativity. The timing is very important. Respond immediately to your negativity. Catch the thief at the right moment. Understand that if you miss the timing even once when creating the right thought against the wrong thought, you are caught! Catch the negativity the moment he enters your house.

~`~

Give life to what you want

Conflict-free life is the only way out of depression.

Learn the art of prana pratishtha; giving life to what you want. Then you will just live in a conflict free life.

Understand, it is a very simple truth.

During my wandering days, I was once resting at noon under a tree, with my head on a small stone on which turmeric powder had been applied. Usually, when turmeric powder is smeared on any surface, it keeps away snakes. So I thought that this maybe was a snake-infested area, so someone who had rested here before me had applied the turmeric powder to keep away snakes.

Around an hour later, a villager whom lived two or three kilometers away came running towards me, shouting, how dare you put your head on my Shiva! I saw in my dream that someone is showing disrespect to my deity, my Shiva!

When he came near and saw that I am a sadhu (monk), he said, because you are a sadhu, I am sparing you. Otherwise, I would have broken your head!

I was shocked! The villager has been worshipping the stone as Shiva, and he had a telepathic connection with that deity! He was sleeping in his house a few kilometers away when he saw in his dream that someone was resting with their head on his deity. I was amazed at his clarity, and his ability to do prana pratishtha – giving life to his ideal as he

Understand: in your life also, a conflict appears as reality only because you give life to it. But because you perceive it, you forget that it was you who gave power to it. In the villager's case, even though he was able to experience the stone as God, he did not forget the truth that it was he who gave power to it; it was he who did prana pratishtha to it.

Whenever you see that you are giving power to your perceived conflict, take back the power and give it to life, because life has no conflict. If you have given life to a conflict and it is hurting you, then just move it to life! That's all, nothing else. It is you who is going to decide whether to give power to the conflict or to life.

So always be optimistic. Even in the last moment of what you think of as the worst crisis, life can take over. Trust life. It has the ability to create miracles.

This is what I call doing prāna pratiṣṭha to life.

Choose the shortest path

February 02, 2012

Every day with the Master is a new life. Every response I teach you is a new way of living.

One of our brahmacharis who went away a few days ago was with me in his past life also. He went away because he wanted freedom. He is a slave to the idea of freedom! And the worst part is, this was the same pattern because of which he missed the Master in his last life also! The moment you see the Master and run away, be very clear, you did the same in your last janma (birth).

I told him, you are suffering with this freedom pattern for the last seven hundred years. You did not change that mind, though you changed many bodies. Sometimes with one body you go through twenty minds, sometimes without even changing a single mind, you would have gone through twenty bodies, twenty births.

Why was this brahmachari more comfortable living outside instead of here? That fellow does not have any other problem – he just wants freedom. But the frequency of freedom here is too high for him! Outside, the frequency of freedom is very low. He is comfortable with the low level frequency of freedom. Understand, you are a slave, whether you realize it or not. You either live as a slave to your mind, and to other fellows who are in the same frequency as you, or you voluntarily become a slave to your own highest ideal of gaining complete spiritual freedom, the highest freedom.

Either you live as a slave to your chosen spiritual discipline, so that you can be liberated once and for all, or you live as a slave outside, and remain a slave for lifetimes.

So do you want to be friend of the jailor who can liberate you from your prison, or do you want to be the friend of your fellow prisoners, who are suffering in the same prison as you? You can choose to be the friend of your fellow prisoners, but can they liberate you? Instead, work to create friendliness with the jailor who can liberate you.