Enlightenment: The Goal and the Path🔗

Beloved Master,

You say that nithyanandam or eternal bliss is our true nature. You say that enlightenment cannot be a goal, it just happens. If I make no effort toward enlightenment how will I attain it? How will I attain bliss, nithyanandam?

In the Hindu epic Mahabharata*, this beautiful story is told.*

A monk aspiring to become enlightened lived across the street from a prostitute.

This monk had only contempt for this woman who he considered to be the source of all moral corruption. Every time a man visited her, this monk would set a stone aside and soon there was a huge pile of stones that signified her dissolute nature.

The woman on the other hand spent all her time in the worship of Krishna, even when she was with her clients. Whatever her body may have been doing, her mind was focused on Krishna and in her love for Krishna.

The monk and the prostitute died at the same time. Their spirits went in front of Lord Yama – Lord of Death and Justice. Yama sent the woman to the highest level of heaven and cast the monk to hell. In fury, the monk screamed that there was no justice in the land of Yama.

Yama said, 'it is not what you did with your body that matters to me. It is the intent with which you lead your life that determines what happens to you at the time of death. The woman spent her life with her mind focused on god. You pretended to focus on god while lusting after her body!

Yes, enlightenment just happens. It happens when your life is led in the path of awareness, not because you strive toward enlightenment.

Be very clear, whether you believe it or not, whether you understand it or not, whether you accept it or not, nithyanandam – eternal bliss – is your true nature.

Bliss happens in you all the time; it is just that you keep doing things to stop it all the time. You are enlightened even now. It is just that you are not aware of it. So, there is no need to work toward enlightenment. How can you work toward something that you already are?

That is the nature you were born with. Somewhere along the way, you lost that ability to continue to experience the state of bliss and the state of enlightenment you were born with.

If you see an innocent child, a child as yet uncorrupted by its elders, environment and society, you cannot but be awed by its ability to flow with Nature. The child is curious all the time about what is happening around it. It is open to receive all that is showered upon it.

Until adults teach it otherwise, the child is not afraid to experience at all. A child can stand at the edge of a cliff looking down without fear. A child does not have blocked energy centers. It is without fear and greed. It is in eternal bliss.

We lose this bliss through not our worldly experiences but from the conclusions that we create out of these. We create deeply biased memories about every single event in our life. We absorb a set of value systems and beliefs from others around us. We are constantly bombarded by 'do this', 'don't do this' from all sides and however strong we are we get influenced.

A small story:

Two dogs were walking with their owners in a park. One asked the other, 'My name is Jack, what's your name?'

'They call me no no Harry', replied the second dog!

'What kind of a name is that!' exclaimed Jack.

'I don't know. I am always told that. So I think that's my name!'

Each one of us is brought up as a 'don't do it' whoever! Quite soon, we lose the curiosity, the adventure attitude, the innocent rebellion which is part of our childhood. We believe that we have grown up. It is actually growing down! It is growing down because you go downhill from a state of bliss into one of sorrow.

Our system of education is not one of imparting wisdom. It is at best imparting knowledge. Knowledge is about facts; it is about what exists outside of us. Because of this, our present day understanding is very limited. Also, knowledge keeps changing. It does not merely expand, it contracts as well. Many things we believed in before, we do not believe and accept any more.

Not very long ago, people were killed for believing that the Earth was round or that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Whereas today, if you do not accept that the Earth is round, you will be committing a mistake! In the same way, many things we believe as gospel, as god-given truth today, will probably be disproven in the future as being superstitious!

Wisdom on the other hand is solid truth. It is the truth about your own self. It is the truth of knowing who you are, where you are going and why you are going. No education system teaches that today. If it did, there will be no takers, because it is not considered relevant.

What is relevant today seems to be to project yourself as someone else, something to others so that they will do what you want them to. It has nothing to do with what you yourself wish to be. It has nothing to do with your innate happiness.

In Sanskrit, there are two words that describe ego or your identity: these are ahaṅkār and mamakār. Ahaṅkār is the outwardly expressed ego, outer ego, your external identity. It is what you would like others to see you as. It is your projection of yourself to the external world.

Mamakār is the inwardly expressed identity or inner ego. It is what you internally believe you are, what you are worth. It is as if you see yourself, when you give yourself the time to see yourself.

Ahaṅkār is always more than what you really are. Mamakār is always less than what you really are! Ahaṅkār, your outer ego or pride or self-esteem, whatever word you wish to use, is about projecting yourself bigger than what you really are. It is about exaggerating your strengths to others and hiding your weaknesses from them.

Mamakār is your internal assessment of yourself. It is the expression of all your insecurities and fears. Ahaṅkār is the expression of all your greed and expectations. Mamakār is always a lesser esteem than ahaṅkār because you are always internally downgrading yourself.

You do not wish others to see you as you are. You would like to present a picture that makes you look pretty, but then you know you are not!

It is this conflict between your ahaṅkār and mamakār that leads to stress and suffering. No one else causes your suffering, it is purely this internal conflict that causes it.

Remember this: you may say that you think very highly of yourself. You may say that you have no self-doubts about your capability. However highly you may think of yourself, you are still lower than who you are, what you really are, because you are divine. Any assessment that you have of yourself that is lower than this is a degraded assessment.

In management training, they talk about a concept called Jo Harry's window. They say, we all live in four quadrants. In one of them you live openly, it is all about what you know of yourself and what others also know of you. There are no surprises here. You can interact within these limits without attracting any great pain or pleasure.

In another quadrant, you live with what you know of yourself but what others do not know. It is your projections, which are far in excess of your reality. You could be a celebrity by day and a maniac by night. You could be a Jekyll and Hyde character.

In the third quadrant, you live unaware of many of your characteristics that others are aware of about you. Your actions are driven by your unconscious, so you do not know where they are coming from. But others deduce who you are from those actions. Others may think far more positively or negatively of you than what you take credit for.

There is yet another quadrant, where you hide your own self from yourself and do not let others also see that part of us. This is the completely dark part of us. This is the completely closed window.

Do we need to be completely open? Do we need to hide part of our own self from others? Do others need to see us as we are? Will they take advantage of us if they see us as we are? How can we play our games if all our windows are open? All these questions will arise within us.

All our lives, we are constantly hiding from ourselves and others. We cannot trust anyone, not even ourselves. When you delve deep into yourself, you will find that you are one with everyone else. At that instant you realize that there is no need to hide; in fact there is no place to hide.

When people come to me with their problems, I tell them two things: I can very well see their being and make out where their problems are coming from, but I respect their privacy and I have no desire to interfere unless they expressly wish me to.

Second, I tell them that they must articulate their problems as they understand them. I don't need them to do that for my understanding. They have been hiding from their own problems for so long that they need to face up to them. Only then can I help them. I cannot solve your problems. I can only help you to solve your own problems by making you understand who you really are and what your so-called problems really are. I can do that by opening up the windows that you have shut so tightly.

In the story of Creation, the apple was the fruit of the tree of knowledge. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge instead of staying in the awareness of their divine nature, they became aware of their individual identities, their nakedness and their attraction for each other. As a result, they lost the awareness of their own divine identity. The loss of awareness of their true nature is considered the original sin committed by Adam and Eve.

It is now believed by many that this sin of Adam made all humans sinners. This belief is unfortunate. We are all born with the imprint of our own divinity. It is possible to be born in conscious birth when such awareness remains in conscious memory. But in most cases, it is reflected in the true innocence and bliss of the young child, till that awareness is destroyed by education.

In the gurukul system of education that was developed in Bharat by the ancient Masters, this awareness was retained through a formal process. The young child was left in the care of a spiritual master who initiated the child between five and 7 years of age through the sacred gayatri mantra. This mantra ignited the child's intelligence and kept its purity and awareness alive.

These children were trained based on their aptitude and not based on their birth. Out of the classification of their aptitudes arose the varna system, which degenerated into the caste system as it exists today. In the varna system, by gauging the aptitude of a child, the master educated them as scholars, warriors, businessmen or workers. This classification was not based on the social background of the child. The greed of humans took over this original classification based on aptitude and corrupted it into one of hereditary status.

The young child was initiated as a brahmachari, a word that means 'one who moves in reality, in tune with Existence'. This differentiates between the student who follows the path of awareness and truth and others who are immersed in fantasies and unreality. The children were taught all the great scriptures and their progress was monitored. Those who showed signs of spiritual awareness were directed toward the scriptures and those who did not were taught alternative skills that would guarantee them livelihood as grihasta, householders.

Those who followed the spiritual path and experienced spiritual awareness eventually became sanyasis or monks. The rest became grihasta or householders who married and led a family life. These householders too renounced family life after 40 while still staying in the household as vanaprastha. The couple lived together as true friends in companionship without physical relationships after this. Later, if they so chose to, they left home as wandering monks, into ashrams or forests or mountains, in pursuit of deeper truths.

The entire path from childhood to old age and death was based on preserving the awareness of one's true nature. Even if one was unable to accept that true nature and be enlightened, no one carried any guilt of being born as sinners.

This concept of sinners and sin is a creation of social and political organizations, of various faiths and cultures. Just like any other organization, commercial or military or civil, these organizations too rule through fear and greed.

Enlightened masters established most great religions. However, many religious organizations have been developed and nurtured by business savvy human beings who compromised all spiritual principles for commercial principles.

These organizations developed the concept of sin into a fine art of control. Their tools are fear and greed. They teach based on the concept of hell and heaven. The fear of hell threatens if one does not compensate for the sin and the greed of heaven pulls those who do. Just like how governments use legal weapons to control the masses, religions use fear and greed in a subtle but effective way to control.

I always say that guilt, carrying guilt for what one did, is the greatest sin one can commit. It is a sin that one commits against oneself. More than the act of sin, it is the guilt associated with that sin that makes one live in hell. To go to hell, you do not have to wait for retribution Just living with guilt is enough. It will be living in hell everyday of your life on Earth.

Drop your guilt and move on in awareness. Understand that when you are aware of your true nature and your interconnectivity with other beings, it is impossible for you to commit any crime or sin against them. It would be the same as hurting yourself.

At the highest spiritual level, there is no concept of sin. However, for day to day living, one does have to follow societal norms of truthfulness, non-violence, not coveting someone else's possession and so on. These are not scriptural laws but sensible social and religious regulations that allow us to live in peace with one another. If we are truly responsible and aware humans, we should be able to abide by these implicit regulations without being policed by a governmental or religious authority. Punishment does not reduce violation of human principles, only awareness does. Pure awareness alone can bring a human being to a peaceful and non-violent life.

The essence of terrorism lies in the non-acceptance of the interconnection of one being with another. If one group considers itself exclusive and considers all those who do not belong to the group to be enemies, be very clear that such groups are not founded on spiritual principles. Terrorists do not have the right to call themselves followers of any enlightened master.

Terrorism is a result of mass unconsciousness, a complete absence of awareness that is founded on external elimination but which will eventually result in self-destruction. It is the opposite phase of enlightenment, which is the outcome of individual consciousness.

Masters after masters have spoken of enlightenment. Many enlightened masters have chosen not to speak. Expression of the experiences of various enlightened masters differs, but the experience is the same.

Enlightenment is just the awareness of one's true nature. Therefore, enlightenment always IS, it cannot be made to happen, it happens. You do not have to go to the mountains or forests or dark caves to discover who you are. If you are not able to discover yourself wherever you are, you will have the same problem discovering elsewhere also.

Enlightenment is a spontaneous and instantaneous phenomenon. It is not a gradual or evolutionary process. Every one of you is at the same distance from enlightenment irrespective of wherever you may think you are now.

A sinner and a saint, a priest and a prostitute have the same chances of enlightenment!

There are those who believe that no master is necessary for enlightenment. They are correct. I had no master, but I could have progressed faster if I had had a master. Those who want to follow their own path to enlightenment will also succeed but they will take longer time and may be a harder path to follow. Those who follow such a path out of ego may never reach there, because ego is the biggest block to enlightenment.

As long as you are engaged in a gradual path and you believe that your efforts are leading you to enlightenment, it is a self-defeating exercise. It is an exercise played by your ego. The ego conditions you to follow past experiences. It is when you drop the ego that the real process starts.

Your ego has to die before you can be reborn, before you can be enlightened. That is what a master is qualified to do. He is the master surgeon who operates to remove your ego, as if it is a cancer. He neatly cuts and throws it out. The process may be painful. After all it is an identity that you have carefully built since infancy. The younger you are the easier it is.

So, when you choose a master and decide to accept him as your master, decide carefully.

Statutory warning! It is dangerous to run away when the operation is in progress!

The process of the real reflection and realization is instantaneous. However, you need to walk the path, which leads to that moment of realization.

In the Zen tradition, Zen masters believed in harsh methods to enlighten. In one incident, the master cuts off the hand of a disciple! The disciple bears it with the trust that whatever the master does is good for him, and he is enlightened.

The other disciples who watched the whole thing tell the master that it was too harsh a method.

The master says: nothing is too harsh if enlightenment results!

It is believed that the Hindu yoga system is a gradual path leading to samadhi, enlightenment, through eight steps. Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali refers to eight limbs or paths, not eight steps. These paths can be simultaneous, and any one path can lead to enlightenment.

In the modern age, meditation or dhyana is the most effective route to enlightenment.

You need courage to drop your identity. You need to develop the understanding that ego is connected to the past and the future and not to the present moment. Ego is an accumulation of your past memories and experiences – what you are to other people, what other people are to you, why you need them, why they need you and so on. Ego is also the future – your expectations, your fears, your greed and all that you wish to be and don't wish to be.

Losing the ego is the only way to reach enlightenment. How does one lose ego? Existence is continuously changing. If you trust that Existence changes and you also change, you can never get settled with your ego. Your ego is nothing but a rigid mechanism, a definite pattern.

Only a person who is egoless can trust that the universe is changing and he is also changing. The man who sells his time by doing work all the time will never understand that the universe is changing because he is caught in a routine.

Not being caught in a routine is a basic discipline for enlightenment!

If you are in a routine, you become so unaware that you stop believing, you stop realizing that Existence is changing. I have seen some government servants working for 30 years in the same office. They would not even have moved their table from one place to another and will eventually forget that their table can be moved!

Even in your house, don't live with the same kind of furniture arrangement for more than two years together. Shuffle it so that your mind does not get stuck with a single attitude. Once in a few months, change the order; create a little bit of chaos! Otherwise, you will become dead.

I have seen people, they will have 10 rooms and because of their habit, they will follow a certain track in their own house and as a result would not have stepped foot in eight rooms for even months together! Be very clear: the most certain location on planet Earth is your tomb, your graveyard!

The more you live with definition and security, the more you are dying. That is why, when you live with a definite track in your house, your house will have the vibration of a graveyard. Once in a while, dance in the main hall of your house; the space will be purified. If you live with the same things, you will create a track of memory. You will then have very little access to your own being.

Your mind and your house are one and the same. Your being and your house are one and the same. If you don't live in your whole house, be very clear, you are not living with your whole memory. Drop your rigid ego, break free from your mental patterns, understand change and discover the reservoir that you have within yourself. Learn to explode in all directions and realize your unlimited potential!

Ego is never the present, because in the present moment you just are, you are nobody. You do not become any one. That's why the Upanishad says tat tvam asi, thou art that. It does not say you were that, you will be that or you will become that; just, you are that.

You just are. In that state, the ego disappears, as there are no memories of the past, no expectations of the future. In that moment, you are both complete and you are empty.

You are complete because that is all that there is. There is nothing more, there needs to be nothing more. Once you are established in the present, you are automatically established in the future as well. Understand that it is the present that brings in the future.

When you are enlightened, you are empty, because you are empty of thoughts, you are empty of ego; you are complete and empty. That's why Sankara called this state purna – complete – and Buddha called it shunya – empty – and both were right.

The surest way to enlightenment is surrender to the master. The master represents the Truth or Existence.

Many of my disciples ask me, 'we have already surrendered to you, why then are we not enlightened?' The problem is, when you surrender to the master, you never surrender totally because you think that the master may not have experienced the situation you are in, that he is not married and what he knows about your problems, that he does not have the same background as you to understand, that this particular situation may not have risen in his life and so you need to use your own discretion. You think that after all, he only has said that humans work on the freedom of choice and therefore there is nothing wrong if you use your discretion.

Understand that the master may or may not have experienced the same situation that you are now experiencing, but the master certainly knows your mind. He knows that you have a monkey mind. His injunctions are not based on a complete knowledge of all experiences you are going to have in your lifetime. But his teachings and guidelines are based on a perfect understanding of how your mind and all the human minds work.

Either you follow blindly, mindlessly, senselessly or do not follow the master at all. When you follow in part and do not follow in part, you become schizophrenic. You split yourself. You disintegrate. You lose out.

There are masters who have said not to follow anyone, not even them. Yet, people follow them! J. Krishnamurthy denied that he was a guru all his life; he denied being a master; he denied masters. Yet, there were hundreds who followed him as a master. They accepted his theory that they should not follow any master, any master's path; yet, they followed him. They chose to follow the part of his teachings they accepted. They chose not to follow anything that they found not acceptable or difficult to follow. This is not the way to follow.

All his life Buddha denied that there was god. For a few hundred years after Buddha's death, his followers followed his teachings. Then they made him a god. They framed and hung his picture on the wall. They cast him in stone and solidified him. This is actually something like taking revenge on the master. It is a subtle technique to take revenge. It is not obvious when people build golden temples for the master, but it is the truth.

This is what followers do when they partly follow a master and partly don't. They take revenge upon him for trying to transform them. Masters try to destroy your ego. Your ego does not like it one bit. So, it tries to destroy him and waits for an opportunity. It rebels. It refuses to follow. Instead of making its resistance in an obvious fashion, it chooses its time and place not to follow.

Jesus was crucified in his lifetime. Now they hang him on the wall to remember Him. Hindus hang Krishna on the wall but don't follow his teachings! What and who you do not wish to follow and you want to destroy, you frame and hang on the wall!

You have no choice once you choose to follow a master. Either you are in or you are out. You cannot be in the threshold. Surrender to the master is not an option. It is a compulsion if you are choosing to be in.

Surrender comes in three phases. In the first phase, there is intellectual surrender. It is the surrender of all that the master stands for and says. It is about belief and faith. Always, there is never total faith initially; faith and doubt appear alternately till both disappear and the surrender happens. This happens with many who are true seekers and who have come to the right master.

The next phase is one of emotional surrender. The heart belongs to the master. You cannot forget the master. Gradually you move from the attachment to the form to carrying the formless energy in you. Your heart and soul are filled with thoughts of the master's presence. Devotees who reach this state become disciples. They no longer come to the master with their pains as they did when they were devotees. They appreciate the immense responsibility and compassion of the master and are willing to share it.

There is a final stage that very few reach: one of surrender of senses. You may ask: what is the difference?

You see, senses belong to the mind. So does the intellect and emotion. In the grand Hindu epic Mahabharata, there is an incident.

Lord Krishna walks with Arjuna after the war in a forest. Suddenly Krishna tells Arjuna, 'Look, Arjuna! There is a green crow in that tree. Can you see it?'

Arjuna responds, 'Yes, Krishna, I see that green crow.'

They walk a little further. Krishna again says, 'Arjuna, look! Look at that black crow on this tree.'

Arjuna looks and says, 'Yes, Krishna, I do see that black crow.'

Krishna turns to Arjuna and says, 'Arjuna, are you blind? No crow can be green. When I asked you to look at the first crow, why did you say you saw a green crow? That too was a black crow.'

Arjuna said, 'Krishna, when you told me it was a green crow, I saw a green crow. That is the truth.'

The truth is as the master says. This is the final stage of surrender. It is the ultimate surrender of one's ego to the master. Such surrender, total surrender of the senses, leads to enlightenment.

Surrender brings true liberation. It brings out the awareness in you that there is nothing in this life you are in control of, however much your logical mind may wish you to believe otherwise. When you realize this truth, it is not that you stop doing work. You continue to work, in fact with far greater efficiency and effectiveness, because you surrender the results of the action to Existence and focus on the work of action alone.

A small story:

A man was walking in the desert completely lost. He was thirsty and hungry and desperate.

He called out 'god, where are you? Please help me! Come and support me!'

He then lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he found that he had almost crossed the desert. He was jubilant. He then remembered his desperate call to god. He also remembered that god had accompanied him on his journey to begin with but he could not remember after that. He went back and saw the footprints in the sand. He saw that at the toughest times of his journey, only one set of footprints were to be found. He was upset that god had left him during those toughest parts. He asked god, 'Why did you leave me when I needed you most?' He heard a voice from above, 'Son! It was then that I carried you!'

Remember that Existence carries you, whether you are aware of it or not. In relation to the mighty intelligence that takes of us, what are we trying to control? Do what you need to, and what you must do; then let go! The rest will happen automatically and the way it should.

Awareness Meditation

Watching the breath continuously is the very essence of meditation. It has led more people to enlightenment than any other meditation.

The vipassana meditation technique, taught by Buddha to his disciples just before he left planet Earth, works with the simplest and toughest of methods: increasing awareness.

Instructions

There are three ways in which you can do vipassana:

(a) Deep awareness of your body, your actions, your mind, your heart.

When you walk, when you move your hand, when you smile, do it with deep awareness. Know perfectly well that it is you who is doing that action. Be alert. Not a single moment should pass in an unconscious state. Not a single action of yours should happen without your own awareness.

Just like your body, watch your heart and mind. Be aware of every emotion that rises in your heart. Be aware of every thought that passes in and out of your mind. Don't have any opinions about the thoughts, don't evaluate anything – just be a witness.

(b) The second way is to watch your breath. Feel your belly rise and fall with every inhalation and exhalation. The navel, the source of your life energy, is in the region of the belly. So when you pay attention to the navel, you become aware of the flow of life energy in your body. As you become more aware of the belly, you will see that your heart and mind fall silent.

This is the natural and relaxed way of breathing – from the belly. We have forgotten how to breathe like this. Babies breathe from the belly. Sometimes in deep sleep, we also go back to belly breathing.

(c) The third form of vipassana is to watch the breath as it enters your body – at the nostrils. Be aware of the cool air in the nostrils. Feel the ease with which the breath enters and leaves the nostrils.

You can combine two forms, or even all three forms. But do only whatever happens effortlessly for you.

Vipassana can be practiced both while sitting and walking.

Sitting Duration: 45 minutes + 15 minutes rest

Sit in a comfortable position, spine erect, facing straight ahead. Keep your eyes closed and breathe normally. Stay still without shifting positions.

Watch the rise and fall of the belly when breathing in and out. Don't concentrate on the breath, just watch it. If you find other thoughts, feelings or physical sensations coming up, allow them. Witness those also and continue watching the breath.

It is the process of watching that is important, not what you are watching. Witness everything.

(After 45 minutes, drop even the watching. Simply drop everything. Relax and let go.)

Walking Duration: 20 minutes + 10 minutes rest

Here, your awareness is totally on your feet, as they touch the ground. You can walk in a circle, or in a straight line of about 15 steps, going back or forth. You can practice this meditation simply going from room to room in your house, or out in your garden.

Eyes should be lowered, and focused on the ground a few steps ahead. Just as you watch the belly in sitting meditation, watch and be aware of the contact of each foot with the ground. If other thoughts and sensations come up, allow them. Nothing is to be seen as a distraction. When you have finished witnessing the sensation or the thought, go back to watching your feet.

To summarize

• 1. Practice the meditation for awareness
• 2. Intend that you will be aware in everything you do.
• 3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total awareness in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.
• 4. Let go.

1. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive every moment.

May you be aware and in nithyananda, eternal bliss!