What is Living Enlightenment?
Living Enlightenment or jeevanmukti is nothing but living a conflict-free life in the inner world and the outer world; living without a gap between the inner world and the outer world.
What are the dimensions of Living Enlightenment?
Shakti – the Energy to understand and change whatever you need to change in life.
Buddhi – the Intelligence to understand and accept whatever you don't need to change in life.
Yukti – the Clarity to understand and realize that however much you change, whatever you see as reality is itself a continuously changing dream
Bhakti – the Devotion, the feeling of deep connection to That which is unchanging, Eternal and Ultimate, and
Mukti, the ultimateLiberation into Living Enlightenment when all these four are integrated.
- The SPH JGM Bhagavan Nithyananda Paramashivam
LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT Awakening to your higher intelligence
When we work on the fourth layer, we bring the force of intelligence into our life, to enter the space of pure consciousness.
Living Enlightenment is nothing but living our life intelligently, expressing all our possibilities and functioning in a conscious and integrated way.
Understand, meditation is not apart from life!
Living your daily life consciously, with deep awareness and understanding in every moment, is the greatest meditation.
It can directly lead you into the space of superconsciousness.
When you work on the intelligence layer, two tremendous energies are awakened in you: the power of visualization, and the power of discrimination.
The power of visualization is the energy to transform all your dreams into reality.
The power of discrimination is the wisdom to realize that whatever you think of as reality is also a dream!
Understand, both these dimensions are available in this layer.
We can travel in whichever direction we want.
Awaken shaktis, visualize, transform, express!
When intelligence is used to transform our dreams into reality, it is known as shakti or energy.
The path that focuses on awakening our latent potential, raising our energy to its peak and expressing this energy in our life, is traditionally known as yoga-marga. That is why you will see, in yoga marga, a lot of importance is given to culturing the physical body, preparing it to hold the tremendous universal energy.
When it is pursued intelligently, yoga can awaken the tremendous kundalini shakti, the universal life-force that lies latent in us.
Understand, yoga does not just mean body-culture and breathing techniques.
Just though intelligence, through awareness, we can raise our consciousness to perform unimaginable feats in the material and spiritual world.
That is why it is known as jnana-shakti or intelligence-power.
Understand: this energy does not come from outside you!
Every moment, the energy of your Self is available to you. Whatever thought you place before your Self, that becomes reality.
If you place a picture in front of a projector light, that can be seen as reality on the screen. In the same way, whatever thought you place before your Consciousness, before your inner light, you see it in the outer world as reality.
The more often you place the same thought before your Self, the more you see it in the outer world!
Any desire, once you contemplate upon it, once it penetrates your inner space, will express its own power. Every desire that plays in front of your inner light becomes alive.
When jnana-shakti (the energy of intelligence) is added to iccha shakti (the energy of desire), it results in kriya shakti (the energy of action or creation).
Ichha shakti ___ jnana shakti___> kriya shakti
When the jnana-shakti or the intelligence is totally purified, any desire is instantly transformed into reality.
When a desire is submitted in front of the pure enlightened consciousness, it is instantly transformed into reality. The sankalpa (desire or will) of an enlightened being has the power to directly become reality. This is the secret behind the 'miracles' performed by enlightened beings! All siddhi (mystical powers) are nothing but the expression of awakened intelligence in its dimension of shakti, the power of visualization.
Whether you believe it or not, intelligence is a dynamic energy!
Even in your day-to-day life, you can see the power of intelligence at work. Simply by harnessing your intelligence, you can actualize all your latent potential, express all your possibilities.
When you bring intelligence into your daily living, naturally your ability to respond to new situations, your inner clarity, your decision-making abilities are all enhanced.
Whatever you visualize, you are able to execute.
You will see that you are doing things that you never imagined you could do! This is shakti.
Using your shakti, you can change whatever can be changed in your outer and inner world.
All our life, we try to change whatever we can in the outer world and in the inner world.
In the outer world, we constantly try to improve our life by changing our job, our home, our car, if possible even our spouse!
We are constantly trying to express our shakti.
As long as your energy and enthusiasm are at their peak, maybe till you are around forty, you will be on this trip.
Then, when your energies start declining, gradually your buddhi will start expressing itself!
Slowly, you will have the understanding that some things in life cannot be changed. All the changes you see in your physical body, your very diseases will teach you acceptance. When you have thrown yourself against life and hurt yourself enough, you will naturally learn acceptance. Understand, life is the biggest teacher!
Life awakens buddhi in you in the form of experience.
Slowly, you start accepting that, beyond a point, you cannot change anything.
You have to live with the same old body, same old life… same old wife!
Of course, if you are a little intelligent, you will straightaway understand that it is not necessary to change everything! You don't have to change the whole thing. Otherwise you will be too busy changing life instead of enjoying it!
If you think that you can enjoy life only if the world becomes as you want - it can never happen. If you have this understanding, you don't have to wait for life to teach you!
Directly you will have the buddhi to accept whatever doesn't need to be changed.
Learning to handle these two energies, shakti and buddhi, is the basic necessity for a balanced life.
Be very clear: I am not even speaking of spirituality.
Even to handle your daily life, you have to have a clear understanding of how to balance these two energies.
People ask me, how to know which things in life can be changed, and which have to be accepted?
This is an important question.
How to know when to use shakti, and when to use buddhi?
I can tell you, there is one clear experiential way to understand which energy you are using in your life at the moment, and which you need to use.
Just observe yourself when you wake up in the morning.
At the moment of waking, what is your mood?
Usually, the first few thoughts which arise in you upon waking will be about the day ahead.
The moment you remember your day ahead – your office, or the tasks you have to complete that day, if you experience a sense of depression – understand, you have taken on more than you can handle! If you feel that your sleeping state was more pleasant than your waking state, you are expressing too much shakti.
Now you are feeling the stress!
It is time for you to relax and accept.
It is time to bring buddhi into your life.
At the moment of waking, if you feel a sense of release, it means you need to express more energy in your life. If your sleeping state seems to be suffocating, if you are just waiting to wake up and act, it means you have not utilized your shakti enough.
It is time for you to express your shakti and change whatever needs to be changed in your life.
If you wake up feeling relaxed and refreshed, ready to start your day, it means you are living in the right way!
You are maintaining a perfect balance of shakti and buddhi in your life.
But you need to understand one thing: as long as you are expressing only these two energies, you are living life at the minimum.
At the most, you will be leading a peaceful life, but not a life of higher awareness.
It is only when the mind has jumped enough between these two points, between effort and acceptance, expression and relaxation, that a new understanding happens in you.
You finally realize that no matter how much you try to change it or transform it, the whole reality that you experience is itself no more than a waking dream!
Whether you transform or accept, everything in this world is changing continuously. What you imagine to be reality is itself an illusion. This is the awakening of yukti, the power of discrimination.