The Importance of Experience
From time immemorial, enlightened masters have been landing on planet earth and declaring that life is joy, ecstasy and bliss. Just this single simple understanding of enlightened masters declaring this is enough to make life blissful. We are not able to discard them by saying that they may be lying! We are not able to push their words aside because of their sheer authenticity. Their presence is too strong!
When Vivekananda addressed the Parliament of Religions in Chicago for the first time, he started by saying, 'Dear brothers and sisters of America'. In the reminiscences, the people who witnessed the scene say that it took at least several minutes for the crowd to settle down after the applause. It was such a strong experience for them! It is not just the clapping, it is the deep feeling that was stirred in them by the authenticity of Vivekananda's voice and presence.
Somebody asked Vivekananda, 'How did it happen?' Everyday we see in the streets so many people addressing gatherings in the same way as 'brother' and 'sister'. The problem is, when they call you 'brother' or 'sister', you don't know why they are calling you that. You immediately smell a hidden intent. When Vivekananda spoke those words, he spoke from his very being. That is why it touched the beings of the thousands who were gathered there.
One man goes to Mahatma Gandhi and says, 'I feel you are my brother'. Gandhi says, 'Yes, you are my brother. I accept you as my brother.' The man says, 'Then give me my share of your property.' Gandhi gives him just one penny and says, 'Please take it'. The man asks, 'How can you give me only one penny?' Gandhi says, 'I have 30 million brothers. Every single person in the whole of
Bharat is my brother or sister. I have to give all of them their share. So your share is only this. Please take it and go!'
So understand, you don't know for what reason people call you as 'brother' or 'sister'!
Anyway, Vivekananda very beautifully answers this question. He says, 'Before uttering those words, I felt it as my solid experience. I clearly felt that they are my own, that they just belong to me or I belong to them. That very feeling I simply expressed as words.'
There is a beautiful word ojas in Sanskrit. It literally means 'vigor' or 'depth'.
The listener cannot escape because the depth of the words will have such a gripping quality.
It has to enter into your inner space.
When Vivekananda says, 'Dear brothers and sisters', you cannot just brush him aside saying that he is lying or he is using sentimental
If the person who is speaking speaks from authentic experience, from that depth, the person who is listening has to listen authentically!
By nature, anything that comes out of pure inner space has to penetrate your inner space. words or he is just being socially polite or politically correct. No! You simply cannot brush him aside, because it will be such a strong experience for anyone receiving it! You cannot push the master's words aside because they will be so authentic and strong; you can't help being touched by them.
I always tell people: either you agree completely with me, or you disagree completely with me. But you cannot push masters aside!
Anyway, masters are again and again happening on planet earth and saying, 'Life is joy, life is ecstasy, life is bliss, life is ananda' etc. But in our daily routine, we don't seem to be experiencing this as true. It doesn't seem to be reality to us in our lives.
I have seen, many times, those who live closely around living enlightened masters cannot understand what is going on. They see him constantly radiating so much joy, so much ecstasy. I always tell people: if you live with an enlightened master, either you will become enlightened or you will become mad! There is no other way because you are too close to the Truth. It is a dangerous zone!
If you cooperate, if you simply allow the process to happen, if you involve yourself sincerely and be open, you will become enlightened.
If you resist, the resistance and energy needed will be too much because every moment you have to resist! You will not have enough energy to resist. The master's presence will be so strong, it will just penetrate you. You need almost equal energy to resist the energy of an enlightened master. That is the reason why you can't push masters aside.
So neither are you able to push masters aside, nor are you able to realize the truth spoken by them. Then where is the problem? Why are their words not becoming reality in our own life?
Chapter 8 The Abused Inner Space
Even people who seem to follow the words of the masters come out with the same question, 'Why has it not become reality in my life?'
I can say the only reason is the unused and abused inner space. That is the first thing in life that has to be taken care of.
Someone asked me, 'Can you give me only a single word of advice?'
Actually, this is the toughest thing. Many people come and ask me to give only one word of advice. I tell them: if I have to give you only one word of advice, I need at least two to three hours. If I can give whatever I want to, then I can give it immediately! One word means it has to be the essence.
Once, Bernard Shaw wrote a 100 page book. Somebody went up to him and asked, 'How could you write such a small book, just 100 pages? He replied, 'I don't have time; that is why I wrote only 100 pages. If I had a little more time, I would have written a much smaller book!'
To be precise, you need more time.
If somebody asks me to be precise and give only one word of advice, my advice will be, 'May you care for your inner space.' That's all.
Understand that without knowing, without respecting, without even having a little sensitivity, we are constantly abusing our inner space.
From morning till night, you do not know what you are sowing, what you are growing. You do not know what you are encouraging. Suddenly when you see the results, you exclaim, 'This is not what I asked for!', 'This is not what I wanted,' 'I don't know how this happened in my life,' 'I don't know why god is punishing me so much…'
I feel sorry for god! For anything that goes right, the credit goes to you. For anything that goes wrong, the blame is dumped on Him! And every one knows that He is 'sitting somewhere up there,' and He doesn't interfere much either. So we just take Him for granted and keep on complaining about Him, 'It is because of him…' God has become a way to escape from our responsibility.
The abused inner space or misused inner space is the worst thing that can happen to an individual. Very beautifully Shankara says*, 'Aahaara shuddhayo smruti shuddhi hi.' It means that if the intake is purified, your memory and your inner space will be purified. Understand, when Shankara says 'intake', he does not mean just the food which you take through your mouth. No! He means all the input that you absorb through all the five senses, the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch. Whatever you take inside through these five senses is called aahaara* or food.
Our inner space is constantly abused by a wrong diet. We swallow so much of violence visually through movies and media. I don't say that you should not read newspapers. To know the news the world over, to keep in touch with the world, the newspaper is perfectly alright. But we go on spending time and energy in enjoying and cherishing violent visualizations and information. When we read or watch such things, we are actually throwing so much negativity inside our inner space without realizing that our inner space is getting corrupted.
The corruption which happens to the inner space is what I call samskara or engraved memories. They are the memories that go and sit in your inner space and pull you to go through the same experience repeatedly, pull you to do the same kind of actions repeatedly, pull you to run through the same kind of thought patterns, even if you don't want to. Those memories are what I call samskaras.
Today's session is completely dedicated to work on our inner space, to work on our samskaras. We will do a few deep processes to cleanse the unnecessarily accumulated samskaras. Of course, all samskaras are unnecessary. You can be alive without any samskara. Your very body is made out of the samskaras which are needed in this birth. So your mind does not need to carry any samskaras to run your life, or to protect the infrastructure which you now have as your own, or to expand the infrastructure to add comforts and to do what you want to do.
Chapter 9