Awareness – The Ultimate Key🔗

You start giving attention to it, either to fulfill or to escape. Understand, it is like slides on a projector. Any slide which is kept in

When you suddenly become aware, any thought which flows in front of you becomes your life. front of the projector light is seen as reality on the screen. The problem is that in your inner space, the projector light is not continuously on. It just comes and goes, comes and goes… but you are not aware of your existence. Many times, even though your eyes are open, even though your body is moving, you will not be aware of your existence.

You can see in your life, you will get into your car from your house, drive for half an hour to the office. Only after you reach the office, park the car, and come out of the car, suddenly you will realize, 'Oh, I finished my driving! I have reached the office.' You have taken 200 decisions in that half an hour. Right, left, applying brakes, stopping for signal… but you are not aware of your existence. That is why you don't remember all these decisions you took, and these things that happened in you. It means that in those few moments, the projector light was off.

Any slide, which was moving in front of it during those moments when the projector light of your awareness was off, is not part of your life. Again, for no reason, the light comes on. When the light is on, when you are aware that you exist, whatever thought moves in front of you, becomes a part of you.

Understand, it is a very subtle truth.

Your life is the totality of all the thoughts moving in front of you.

Unfortunately, many times, many major decisions, thoughts and the life-changing incidents happen when you are not aware. These are also part of your life, part of your biography but, unfortunately, you are not aware of the scenes, decisions, thoughts which went on, which contributed to your life.

Either directly or indirectly it will add to suffering. Either directly you will invite or indirectly you will create situations for suffering. It is a very important thing.

Like when you turn your car, the indicators blink, in the same way your consciousness

Every single moment which passes in your life without you being aware of it is suffering. also blinks. You do not know when it is on, when it is off. If you just see the thought flow in front of you, suddenly you will realize, 'Oh god, all these things are going on in me! I myself do not know where I am heading. I myself do not know what is happening in me.'

First, I wanted all of you to understand, you are not aware of all the decisions, all the thoughts moving inside you, inspiring you to live the way in which you are living, inspiring you to think the way in which you are thinking, inspiring you to be the way you are.

You are not aware, but constantly we believe we are aware. That is the first illusion.

Whenever I make this point, people get frightened, 'Oh god, I have enough suffering, now he is adding one more suffering, one more fear! Now I don't know where I am heading.' Understand, I am not adding suffering. I am just helping you to experience and open up to reality.

One more thing: opening up to the reality, though it feels like suffering in the initial level, it will always lead you to joy and bliss, because sat, by its very nature is chit. Sat means the truth. By its very nature sat is chit, which means power, consciousness, and ananda, bliss. By its very nature sat leads to chit, and chit leads to ananda.

In the initial level it may feel like a little more responsibility, a little more load. Now, many of your minds would have decided, 'No, no, no… what he says may be right, that I am not aware of everything happening in front of me, but I can't become aware of everything happening in front of me. Living in the present moment and being aware of whatever is going on is not for me. I tried many times Swamiji; you don't know how many techniques I've tried!…'

Understand, we are not as dumb as we think! We have a huge possibility, a huge potentiality. Maybe, the right initiation has not happened, the right click has not happened. So, don't close the file saying, 'No, no, no… I have tried many times; you don't know how many gurus I went to and how many techniques I have tried.'

There are many people whose 'profession' is seeking; I call them 'professional seekers'. But, they don't go for learning; they just go for judging, 'Let me also see what he is teaching.'

People come to me and ask, 'I know everything Swamiji, just give me in essence what extra you can add to me. I tell them, 'Sorry, I don't know anything extra to add to you! I can only remove something from you. I can remove what you think as knowledge, so that the truth can happen.

Please do not come to the decision, 'No, no, I think he is going to teach living in the present moment. I have tried many times, it does not work out, and even if it works out it goes away after some time. No, I am not going to teach you living in the present moment, because you are living that already, why should I teach it! Even if you are suffering about your past, you are suffering in the present. Even if you are worrying about your future, you are worrying in the present. So, you are in the present. I am not going to teach you to be in the present. All I am doing is to try to take away some ideas, which you think of as your mind.

You Are Not Aware of Your True Past

First truth is: you are not aware of all the things which are happening in front of you. You do not remember your biography as it happened. You remember it only as you want it.

That is the first truth.

If your thoughts per second or what I call 'TPS' comes down, you will have clarity about your past and future. You may wonder, 'Clarity about past? I already have clarity. Why should I have clarity about my past by bringing the TPS down? I already know my past.' No!

Please understand, you don't know your past. You don't remember, or recollect the past as it happened.

Just take a simple example. See, your life is filled with different kinds of incidents relating to You recollect the past only as you want it, not as it happened. joy, suffering, guilt, pain, depression. You do not look at life as it is. Usually what do you do? What do we do?

I used the word 'we' because sometimes people think the word 'you' is too condescending. That is the reason I used the word 'we'. The problem is, in a public place, we can neither use 'we' nor 'you'. If I say 'you', somebody feels condescended to. If I use the word 'we', if I also have the same problem, how can I teach you? That is the big problem!

Your life is a collection, a mixture of some joy, some suffering, some guilt, some pain… Usually, you collect only all the incidents related to suffering and create a shaft, a connecting idea, and you think your life is nothing but suffering.

Understand, you collect suffering, guilt, pain, depression… all these kinds of thoughts, connect them, and you think that your life is a long chain of suffering, a pain shaft. I have seen people, the moment I ask, 'How are you? Where are you from?', the first thing everybody invariably starts with is, 'You don't know, Swamiji, nobody has suffered like me in their life…' This is a common introduction for their biography! 'Even my enemies should not suffer the amount of suffering I went through, Swamiji.' Even in suffering they want to be at the top and not second!

See, it is not that they just tell this to me, they believe strongly in this. They forget the joyful incidents, the happy memories which happened in between. They collect only the negative things and create a shaft. I call this a 'pain shaft'. Very rarely, sometimes, you create a joy shaft. It is very rare, not only in number, but also in quality, that you collect the joyful incidents and create a joy shaft and you feel life is joy. Most of the time you collect all the painful memories and incidents, and create the idea that life is pain.

Understand, if you create the shaft 'Life is pain' the problem is, you will just be waiting for more and more painful incidents to be added. For anything you believe in, you will collect more and more experiences and arguments to strengthen that belief. Once you believe your life is a long pain shaft, that is enough. You will just be waiting to pick up only the painful incidents and elongate that shaft. You will never be able to remember or respect the joyful things happening in your life. You will be waiting, meditating for pain! I have seen people just waiting to add pain and elongate the pain shaft.

The important thing we need to understand is that we believe life is a pain shaft or that life is a joy shaft.

Understand, unconsciously what will you be doing? You will be continuously collecting more and more painful memories and incidents to strengthen your belief, strengthen the idea, but consciously, you will be trying to break the pain shaft.

The big problem is, neither can you break the pain shaft, nor can you add to the joy shaft, because both the shafts do not exist! It is just your selective memory.

We think that life has continuous incidents of joy, or continuous happenings of pain. The moment you believe life is continuous happenings of pain, unconsciously, you will try to strengthen the belief, even though consciously, you will try to break the pain shaft.

In the diagram, I have given a gap after every thought. Different thoughts are like different shapes, different sizes, just coming and disappearing. If you think your life is a big pain shaft, a chain of painful incidents, then you will pick up only the painful things and add them.

The other day, one man came to me and said, 'Swamiji, I am going in for a divorce, please bless me.' I said, usually we bless only for marriage, not for divorce. Can you tell me the reason? Let me analyze.

Now, this man came and asked me, 'I am going to divorce; please bless me. I said, first let us analyze why you want a divorce. Then we will try to sort it out. He said that the immediate reason was that his wife while serving him his coffee spilt it on his shirt.

I was shocked and asked him, 'Don't you see clearly, it is not reason enough for divorce?'

He said, 'You don't know, Swamiji, today she will pour coffee, tomorrow she will pour acid!' He actually told me, 'You don't know, today she will pour coffee, tomorrow she will pour acid.'

I said, 'Why don't you be a little logical? Why don't you be a little truthful? How can you connect coffee and acid?

Don't you see the gap is too much?! You are creating too many ideas in your head.'

He protested, 'No, no, Swamiji, you don't know, how much I have suffered with her for the last ten years!'

I told him, 'Do not just create a pain shaft. Just come out with the incidents. Then we can analyze and look into it.'

The pain shaft will stay only if you are unconscious.

Please understand, your opinion about life as a pain shaft or a joy shaft will stay only as long as you are unconscious, not when you are aware.

I told him: 'Just come out, incident by incident, let us analyze.'

In South Bharat, there is a habit where, during the marriage ceremony, a small ring is kept in a small pot of colored water and both the bride and the bridegroom are supposed to try to pick up that ring. Whoever gets it wins. In those days such small games used to be played, because it was only during the marriage ceremony itself that the bride and bridegroom would see each other for the first time; so it was like a technique for zeroing down the distance between the couple.

This man told me, 'Even during that play she scratched my hand with her nail!'

I was really surprised. Then he started telling me all the incidents like this, from right after their marriage. After 2-3 minutes I said, 'Stop! Stop, Stop! This is much worse than a police record. I think you should not ask for divorce, your wife should ask for it having put up with you!'

You may laugh at this incident but actually if you see, this is exactly what we are doing continuously, sometimes about others, sometimes about ourselves. Continuously we are creating either a pain shaft or a joy shaft. One important thing we forget, neither can we break the pain shaft nor can we elongate the joy shaft, because neither shaft exists.

Just try to elongate the joyful moments. If some joy happens, try to hold on to that experience. It won't stay. Not only that, try to reproduce the same ambience, the same people, the same place, even the same temperature again as at the time you felt joy; still you will not have that same joy.

Addiction – Trying to Elongate the Joy Shaft

Addiction means believing that joy or ecstasy came due to some object or person or situation. People try to reproduce the same thing again and again, even though the same joy or experience does not come back again.

Understand, this is the definition of addiction: trying to elongate the joy shaft, by recreating or reproducing, or again bringing the same persons, situations, incidents, or happenings into your life, knowing that the same joy is not coming.

Some people are addicted to partying, some people are addicted to smoking, some people are addicted to drinking, and some people are addicted even to newspaper reading, especially about violence. You do not know how much violence we are swallowing.

Relation between Awareness and the Thoughts in Your Inner Space

Understand, the more and more violence you swallow, you will become aware only if the violent pictures are moving in front of you. The projector light which is inside you comes on, the awareness that you exist comes to life only when the violent thoughts cross in front of you. It is like an automatic alarm clock. You tell yourself, 'I cherish this kind of thoughts; when these kinds of thoughts are coming in front of my mind, please wake me up.'

If you are enjoying lustful thoughts, whenever lustful thoughts cross your system, you will come to the awareness, 'I exist'. If you are enjoying violence, whenever the violent thoughts come into your system, you will come to life and know that you exist.

If you empower a particular thought again and again, when those thoughts cross your inner space, you will come back to life. It will become a vicious circle.

This is what I call vicious circle, you empowering negativity and negativity bringing you back to life; you empowering again more negativity, and more negativity bringing you to life and excitement.

That is why, if you start cherishing violence, you don't have to reach hell, you are in hell! Even if you reach hell, you won't find any difference. See, I am not talking about getting information about life. For example, knowing about some accidents or murders that happened in your city is ok; it is knowing about life to be safe yourself. That is not what I am talking about. Many times we enjoy violence, reading tabloids and seeing violent scenes in the media.

An important thing we need to understand, the Western countries can afford to create violent movies; they can afford to create violent presentations in the newspapers, media or movies. They can afford because they have huge law enforcement and legal systems. There is no county, no village without a police station in the so-called developed countries. Of course, even with that, it is very difficult, but they can at least manage.

The other day, I was reading an article saying, with the support of a lot of scientific data and statistics, that in any city, if a boxing competition happens, within 30 days, the crime rate of the city goes up by 30%! In the same way, there was another study which said, that if a group of people meditate sitting in the center of the city, within 30 days, the crime rate of the city comes down by 67%. The study was done by one of the leading organizations teaching meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's TM group.

See, the West can afford to have these violent programs because they have the infrastructure to control and manage the society. In the USA, there is no county, no village without a police station and if you just dial 911, within 3 minutes, you will see a cop standing in front of your home to take care of you, to attend to you. We can't afford to copy, duplicate and bring about the same violence in the East.

Bharat is running because of Ramayana and Mahabharata, not by any law enforcement control! It runs by the eternal Cosmic Constitution. We call it Sanātana Dharma. So, we can't afford to break it.

I want all our intellectuals to please understand, we can't afford to break our dharma. We don't have the infrastructure to replace it. If we dump our dharma, we don't have something to replace and maintain the social balance. If we are going to dump our dharma, we are swallowing too much of violence, too much of these tabloid ideas. If you see these people who read these weekly tabloids, you will see in them a very low level of consciousness. They will be constantly attracting accidents in their life, suffering in their life, because they are just waiting for painful incidents, because that gives them excitement.