Quantum Enlightenment🔗

Someone once asked me, 'Does the type of food we eat affect the pursuit of enlightenment? What are the types of food that we should avoid?'

Based on my findings, I can say that garlic, onion and green chilly are natural steroids and hence, they are recommended only for medicinal purposes. Daily intake of these as food will bring down your energy. As far as coffee and tea are concerned, I have not experimented with them. All I can say is…these are not good for your system. Meat, alcohol and cigarettes are considered as tamasic (laziness inducing) foods; they disturb your energy flow and make you dull. All these foods create a feeling of depression in the morning.

The first 20 minutes just after we wake up in the morning, play a vital role in our entire day's activity. The mood that we are in these 20 minutes decides the mood of our entire day.

You can check this out for yourself. Try a diet of Satvic food (foods that promote a sense of calmness) such as vegetarian food and foods devoid of garlic, onion and green chilly for the duration of time that you decide upon. Notice the effect that it has on your moods. You can compare for yourself the state of mind that was before this kind of a diet and during the diet.

Notice how it keeps one light and active throughout the day. Believe me it will break the depression in the morning!

However if we argue from the point of view of ahimsa (non-violence) though, eating vegetables and greens also is not correct since plants also have life. We can support the cause of vegetarianism only from the point of realization. If an enlightened master declares that vegetarianism is the best, it is the ultimate truth. Otherwise, all your arguments can be counter argued. According to my personal experience (of course, there is no proof that I can show you!), vegetarian food allows more sensitivity and ecstasy in the energy flow that happens in our system.

Right from my birth, I have been a vegetarian. I have never tasted non-vegetarian food. I know how the body works with vegetarian food and what happens to the energy flow in the body with vegetarian food. So, from my personal experience, I can tell you that vegetarian food increases the joy and sensitivity in the flow of energy and definitely one feels light and ecstatic.

Definitely, vegetarian food is better for meditative people.

The idea of vegetarian food, according to me, must have developed only after Buddha's time. He was so compassionate and believed strongly in Ahimsa.

During the time of the rishis (sages), there is no mention of the word 'vegetarianism'. Even in the Upanishads, there is only mention of sattvic food; there is no mention of vegetarian food. Further, there is enough proof to suggest that cows were offered in the sacrificial rituals. The meat offered during the sacrifice was also eaten by those performing the sacrifice. There is no mention of nonvegetarianism as being detrimental to enlightenment. So, I strongly feel that the concept of vegetarianism came into vogue only after Buddha's time.

One thing I am certain about is that it is good for the modern generation and hence I tell people to follow vegetarianism. However, if you eat non-vegetarian food once in a while, please do not create a sense of guilt in yourself. Be very clear, this guilt is worse than eating non-vegetarian food itself!

Understand this clearly…there is no ultimate rule as to what is right and what is wrong. All of us follow certain rules to understand and live a happy and peaceful social life. To this end we have an agreement amongst ourselves…do not kill me and I will not kill you…just follow this simple social law.

Even if we know that we are not going to be punished for killing someone, will we start killing others? No! If we do so, we are no better than wild animals; we have not grown!

The idea of punishment or reward should not influence any of our actions or decisions. That is what I call morality that will be from our Being, our consciousness. On the contrary, if we try to follow certain rules and regulations because of our social concept of morality, we will feel constrained and bound by them and attempt escaping them.

Remember that it is our innate nature to resist any rules and regulations. However when one starts to regret over violation of rules and regulations, this in turn inspires deep guilt in us. Do not carry any guilt! Be very clear…there are no rules or regulations which are the ultimate on this planet Earth. Therefore do not internalize any rules just because somebody laid them and said that it should be followed. Only agony and guilt will follow when you regret not following them if it is taken in this spirit. Remember that all rules have been created only for better harmony in society. Only when the understanding happens, you will follow rules!

A small story:

One night, a thief knocked on the door of an ashram which was located in the middle of a forest. The master opened the door and allowed the man to spend the night in the ashram. The next morning, the thief thanked his host and asked for permission to leave. He also confessed to the master that he was a thief and had burgled the King's palace the previous night. The master was aghast. He started weeping loudly, 'What a great sin I have committed by allowing a thief to spend the night in my ashram! I not only gave him shelter but also food. What can I do to atone for this sin?'

At that moment, he heard a voice from the sky, weeping even louder than him, 'You are upset and weeping because you have looked after him for one night. What about me? I have been looking after him everyday for all these years and I have to look after many others like him!'

All our concepts of sin are social concepts. Instead develop a sense of morality that is born out of a clear understanding of what is right and wrong from the point of view of ones own awareness. Do not internalize rules and codes of morality blindly and create wounds in your Being. Have a morality based on understanding and not out of greed and fear. Be very clear any morality based on greed and fear is only skin-deep!

Let me narrate a small, humorous story:

Three women died and reached the court of Yama (God of Death and Justice), for the final judgment. Yama asked the first woman, 'Did you lead a pure and faithful life?' The woman replied, 'Yes, I led a very chaste life.' Yama then checked her life record and verified her answer. He gave her a golden key and sent her to a special room in Heaven. Then he questioned the second woman to which she replied, 'Maybe once, mentally, I have committed a sin. But, physically, I have been pure.' Yama gave her a silver key and sent her to an ordinary room in heaven. When it was the turn of the third woman, Yama asked her the same question about her chastity. She replied, 'I have done all sorts of things, some of which may be even beyond your imagination. I am quite prepared for the punishment.' Yama quietly whispered to her, 'Alright, have my room key!'

Some people drop drinking here because they feel that they will get soma ras (the nectar of Gods) in heaven. I tell them, don't be foolish. Who knows whether you will get drinks in heaven or not! Even if you do…it might not be of the same quantity or quality.

Thinking that we are going to get something better there, we try to drop it here. Let us not do that…let us not give up something in the anticipation of getting something better or something more. Be very clear…thinking that we are going to get something better; we will lose whatever we have. In the end, we lose both!

Let our morality be based on understanding and not on our perception of rules.

We started with a discussion on the type of food we should eat…we discussed the merits of vegetarian food and the demerits of non-vegetarian food. Let me give you one more understanding regarding food.

Overeating is not good for our system, even if it is vegetarian food. It creates problems. Eat only what is required and how much is required. Never overeat because of greed.

Feeding me is considered a great prestige by many of my devotees. They fill up my plate with so many varieties of food and expect me to eat them all…they even advice me not to waste it! Be clear…wasting food outside is better than wasting it inside. When you are wasting food outside, you are only wasting food. But, if you stuff yourself with food just because it should not be thrown away or because it is very tasty, you are not only wasting the food but also wasting your body's resources in processing it. Food in the garbage bin is better than converting your stomach into a garbage bin! However, if one is aware of the quantity one needs, neither of these will happen.

Through awareness when our intellect is heightened, it becomes common sense or intelligence; however, the most uncommon thing on this planet Earth is common sense!

When emotion ripens, it becomes faith. When the Being ripens, it becomes Enlightenment.

We have three levels in which we live. The first level is our head from which we operate using our intellect and logic. The second level is the heart operating from our emotions and feelings. The third level is our Being which is our very identity.

If we work continuously using our intellect, it becomes intelligence. There are many meditation techniques with which we can work on the intellect. Similarly, there are a number of meditation techniques to work on our emotions. These will change our emotions to faith.

Remember this clearly…if we believe in a particular God or guru, do not bother about whether he has power or not. Our faith has the power!

A beautiful incident from the epic Ramayana will help you to understand this idea better.

Rama, the hero of the epic, had to go to Sri Lanka to bring his wife Sita back from the clutches of the demon Ravana, who had kidnapped her. However to do this an ocean that divides the two countries, Bharat and Sri Lanka had to be crossed. There being no bridge to connect Bharat with Sri Lanka, a bridge had to be built across the sea. Rama requests one of his devotees, Jambavan, to take care of the construction of a bridge across the ocean. He asks another devotee, Hanuman, to fly across the sea and locate Sita. At this, Hanuman says, 'Oh Lord, you are asking Jambavan to construct the bridge and you are asking me to fly over the ocean to Sri Lanka. How can I do it?' Rama replies, 'You just chant the name Rama and you will be able to accomplish the mission. Chanting the name of Rama is more powerful than my physical form.'

Interestingly, talking of the Ramayana…there are two versions of the Ramayana: the Tulsi Ramayana by Tulsidas (a great 16th century poet who wrote devotional poetry in a dialect of Hindi) and the original version by Valmiki (a common thief turned poet devotee of the times of Rama). The latter is only a recording of history whereas the former is very interesting and enjoyable. In the northern part of Bharat, especially in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, even the sweepers recite the verses of the Tulsi Ramayana, while sweeping the roads.

Now coming back to the original discussion, according to me, none of our activities or actions is related to enlightenment. Enlightenment is within the reach of one and all. There are no special categories for this.

An alcoholic or woman is also eligible; they have the same chance of achieving this status. At the same time, a man who claims to have led a pure and chaste life may not get enlightened at all.

Enlightenment is related to the understanding and experience of our inner energy. It is not based on our physical activities as we presume. This concept is not understood by many people. That is why it is not generally spoken about in public. If misunderstood, it can lead to unwanted complications. Many people will take it as a license to do whatever they want. They can turn out to be anti-socials and create bigger problems in the world. However if it is properly understood ones life can change for the better as did Valmiki's.

Vivekananda, a great enlightened master, used to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. Many may wonder how an enlightened master can do such a thing as it is very unbecoming for a person of his stature. Unfortunately, they do not know or understand that the enlightened masters have to create some desire to keep themselves in their body. When they are at the peak of ecstasy, they expand and lose their boundaries. At such times, these desires will help them come back to their bodies.

Vivekananda had to smoke or drink to be within the confines of his body. It would have been very difficult for him as otherwise the ecstasy is too great. Who would like to forego that unimaginable ecstasy and come back to the body? It is their sheer compassion which makes enlightened masters return to their physical form. They have a mission to complete on this planet Earth. Their presence is required for the good of mankind.

Instead of taking Vivekananda as an inspiration for Enlightenment, some people imitate his habits of smoking and drinking. They do not realize the reason why he did that, instead they take it as a license to do the same things. Forgetting that he did these things only after enlightenment they pick up only the smoking and drinking and drop enlightenment!

Ramakrishna, another great enlightened master, had a desire for jalebis (a type of Hindu sweet). When he was in an expansive mood, he used to ask for this particular sweet. People around him used to wonder why he was taking so many jalebis at certain times. They found it very amusing as it did not gel with the conventional image of an enlightened master. Never did they realize that he was doing it not out of greed but out of compassion! He had to be in his body to serve humanity…he had to live to accomplish what he had come for.

That is why I say physical activities are in no way related to enlightenment. An enlightened man can never fake his feelings. He can only be natural. However be clear…an ordinary man can fake anything…even his naturalness!

I have traveled all over Bharat: about 2000 miles, at a stretch. I did the Narmada parikrama (going around the Narmada River on foot) and visited many of the jiva samadhis (the resting places of enlightened masters) in Bharat. I ask my devotees to visit particularly 4 samadhis: Ramana Maharishi's in Tiruvannamalai, Raghavendra's in Mantralaya, Shirdi Saibaba's in Shirdi and Sadashiv Brahmendra's in Nerur. In all these places, you can feel the living energy of these masters. That is why a lot of healing takes place in these jiva samadhi locations.

Saibaba, too, smoked a chula (a pipe). Sadashiv Brahmendra used to take a concoction made of bel (considered a sacred tree in Hinduism) leaf and ganja (opium). He, too, was a great master.

When I was wandering in the Himalayas, I met an elderly sadhu who was very compassionate, blissful and simple. I stayed with him for about 6 months. He used to smoke ganja and I hated the very smell of it. It used to make me feel sick. One day, I summoned up enough courage and asked him why he smoked it and advised him on the bad effects it would have on ones health. He just laughed and asked me, 'Can you tie a big elephant inside a small hut? Similarly, unless I take ganja, I can't stay inside this body.' Then, I understood that enlightened masters had to do this reverse process to try and stay inside the body.

I have to relate to you another very interesting aspect about this Baba. He had a pipe made out of clay. He used to fill it with a copper coin, then put in the ganja and light it. After finishing smoking, when he cleaned the pipe, the copper coin turned into a gold coin. It was unbelievable…alchemy had taken place! He would then take the gold coin, go to the market, sell it and buy some more ganja. This was a regular feature. It may sound too far-fetched to you but I can bear testimony to it. It was from him that I learnt the art of solidifying mercury…of energizing the mercury.

In our ashram, we have an idol of Dakshinamurthy (the human form of God Shiva and the teacher instructing on absolute Truth). Before consecrating the statue, 50 kilograms of solidified mercury were used. Anyone who touches the idol can feel the energy given off from the idol. Both mercury and poison can hold and radiate energy and therefore both were used while consecrating the idol of Dakshinamurthy.

So, do understand that physical activities are in no way related to enlightenment. We cannot judge a master by his habits. Enlightenment is beyond body and mind. For example, when we learn cycling, we have to sit straight, hold one handle properly and keep our feet straight on the pedals. But once we master the art of cycling, we are able to balance ourselves well and we can perform any stunts on the cycle. Similarly, when we start sadhana (spiritual practices), we have to practice a few things a few times. Once we master them, we will learn to balance our energy and run our life.

A devotee once asked me about free will. I told her…if you have grace, you will have free will. If you have free will, it shows that you already have grace!

Another popular question put to me is, 'What is destiny?'

I reply…your present is a totality of all your past decisions and your future is the totality of all your present decisions.

The purpose of human life is to learn the techniques to live blissfully, without the help of the body and mind. Learn that. That is what I mean by 'being with God'.

Now you may ask…who is the creator? The words created, creator and creation are very confusing and lead to arguments. Actually, these are not three separate things! Creation itself is intelligence which is continuously creating. Only creating exists. Our ultimate goal is to live joyfully and learn to live without the help of body and mind. To this end we focus all our pursuits including following the different paths of yoga.

That yoga, which is the path leading to the understanding of divinity within us is Bhakti Yoga (science of devotion) and Jnana Yoga (science of wisdom). Our understanding of both these forms of yoga is wrong. We think that Jnana yoga means the intellectual process and independent of Bhakti Yoga. However, great masters like Ramana Maharishi, a great intellectual, express bhakti at its peak. He says learning to live ecstatically, blissfully without the help of the body and the mind is the only thing we have to learn because this is the ultimate goal.

We have other great masters like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Ramanuja who expressed great wisdom through bhakti. Both of them were great intellectuals. According to me, Ramanuja's Sribhashya is a greater intellectual work than Shankara's Bhashya. So, there is no difference between Jnana yoga and Bhakti yoga. Understand well…if we do not have faith, nobody can liberate us. We have to liberate ourselves by the power of faith. We have to work on ourselves. Then, the guru's grace descends on us and we get enlightened. Both these forms of yoga are not different.

It is not important on which path we travel. What is important is how sincerely we travel! Be very clear…if our travel is sincere and during its course we express our intelligence, there will be no conflict at all. There will only be harmony.

A certain someone who had met me only recently told me, 'Master, I have a problem. I am not yet comfortable. We have just met and I have known you for a very short time….therefore I am not able to accept what you say totally.'

You may also not be able to accept whatever I say; you may question me since you have doubts about the truth of what I say. I have no proof or certificates of the experiences I have had. It is a deep subjective experience. It is more intimate than a love affair. Even a love affair is between two people. Here, it is between one and the same one. Will you talk about your love affair to your acquaintance? You need a certain degree of intimacy before you can open up to others. Some of you may not believe what I am going to say. It is fine with me. You can listen and forget it all. Of course, there are a few people who are interested in knowing the truth. I relate my experience for their sake.

When I was a small boy, about 10 years old, I went with my family to see a sadhu. His name was Annamalai Swami. He was a close disciple of Ramana Maharishi. Just like any other child of my age, I was expecting only a candy at his place. When we reached his place, he was talking to a group of people about how we are not the body but something beyond it. He further explained that pain and suffering are beyond the body and that they do not affect us. I was surprised to hear this theory and I thought to myself …how is it that when my mother slaps me, I feel the pain? Why is he saying otherwise?

When I returned home, his words were still ringing in my ears. I could not forget those words. There was an intense urge inside me to experiment and see whether his words were true and so I cut my thigh with a knife. It started bleeding and I was in terrible pain. My parents were livid with me. As the bleeding did not stop, they took me to a hospital to stitch up the deep cut. I still have a big scar on my thigh as proof of this incident!

After a few days, I went back to meet the swami. I asked him why I had felt extreme intense pain when I had cut my thigh when according to him we are beyond the body and hence pain and suffering do not exist. The swami was flowing with compassion. He consoled me and taught me a simple meditation technique. All I had to do was to see where my thoughts were coming from, to search for the source of my thoughts. Though I had never done meditation before, I decided to try it out. He then blessed me and said, 'You might have had the pain…however you had the courage and curiosity to experiment. You were ready to take the risk. This attitude of yours will lead you to experience that you are beyond the body.'

I went back home and started trying the meditation technique. I did it in the most relaxed way and did it more for fun for nearly for two years, though not regularly. I was about twelve years old when I had my first experience. It was Buddha Purnima (the day Buddha got enlightened)…I was sitting on a rock below the Arunachala hills (in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, Bharat), meditating. It was sandhyakal (dusk, between 4:30 P.M.and 6:30 P.M.)…and I was searching for the source of my thoughts.

Suddenly, something happened to me. I realized I could see 360 degrees around me. Normally, all of us have a 120 degree vision…but here I was with something very much more than that…I had lost my very identity…there was no 'me'… Everything was 'me'. The stones, the hills, the trees, the sky… had all become 'me'. Everything in me started vibrating with the feeling that 'I am that'. I felt the whole existence with the same sensitivity with which we feel the body. For nearly 3 or 4 days, I remained in this state. Of course, within 3 or 4 hours after the experience, I started moving and walking. I became physically normal but mentally the ecstatic feeling continued for another 3 days.

The moment I came out of this, my first thought was that I had been possessed by a ghost…I never connected it to a spiritual experience. Out of fear, I never went near the rock for the next 3 or 4 months. But, soon, I was longing for that experience again. When I came out of the experience, I ran to an elderly sanyasini (female ascetic), who had a small ashram near the rock. She took care of me for a few days. She was the one who convinced me that I was not possessed by a ghost but that I had had a spiritual experience.

The moment I came out of the fear fully, I started meditating in earnest. The search had begun. The longing to know the 'truth' took me over completely….I started chasing it. I was around 13 years old when I ran away from home to North Bharat in search of truth. I had to come back after a while though because I was too young to cope with the hardships of such a life. Getting food became a big problem. However, the pull to know the truth was so strong in me that I ran away from home again within a short time…gradually I started taking these trips, especially to North Bharat, at regular intervals.

By the time I was 18, my parents, who were tired of my escapades, decided to get me married. Fortunately for me, a suitable bride could not be found for my elder brother and it was a custom, especially in South Bharat that the younger son should not get married before the elder one. I also made it clear to my family that they should allow me to follow my path. They soon realized the futility of their hopes and allowed me to follow my quest.

The next time I left home, I traveled the length and breadth of the country. I did all sorts of meditation techniques. In Gaurikund near Kedarnath (a temple town in the Himalayas), I had a vision of the great enlightened master, Mahavatar Baba.

That was a turning point in my spiritual journey. It gave me tremendous inspiration. It gave me a great boost because at that time, I had almost given up my spiritual pursuit. I was angry and disappointed. All the rigorous spiritual practices which I had religiously practiced were in vain. The ultimate realization had not happened to me. Mind you, the search had not ended…however; Baba's vision was like a new lease of life to my spiritual pursuit. I felt a tremendous surge of energy and courage in me…this gave me new vigor to continue with my search.

From Kedarnath I went to Varanasi (a holy city on the banks of the river Ganga). Here, at the Manikarnika Ghat (a place earmarked for bathing), I had another experience. While I was traveling from Tapovan in the Himalayas, in an army truck, I broke my back when the vehicle went over a pothole. In North Bharat, swamis are greatly respected by the army and they immediately offered to take me to a hospital for treatment. I refused. I just kept my hand on my back and felt the tremendous energy emitting from me. Within a few days, the fracture healed….for the first time; I realized I had the power of healing!

I came down to Madhya Pradesh (a state in North Bharat), from the Himalayas. I was traversing the Omkara hills when one night, on New Year's Eve, I had my ultimate experience. It was a full moon night and I was sitting on the banks of the river Narmada…totally relaxed. I had given up all my meditation techniques, mantras and tapas, just a week earlier…I had decided to relax totally and let go of everything…I was just sitting and enjoying nature's beauty. Maybe around midnight, the level of relaxation became deeper and deeper and the amount of verbalization grew lesser and lesser…the inner chattering totally stopped and an unimaginable ecstasy took over me. There was no body, no boundary…I had become one with the cosmic energy…the Divine…I had reached the ultimate goal…Enlightenment!

Now, I am like a tape recorder. When the tape recorder is switched on, it plays and you hear sounds. When it is switched off, there is only silence. Similarly, when I stop talking, a space is created…there are no words here…there is only blissful silence!

With enlightenment, the very basic idea of sex disappeared. The idea of male and female simply died. Though I have a male body, my being never identifies with a male or female body. Just as I am holding a handkerchief with the tips of my fingers, similarly, I hold on to my body.

There was a young woman of 28 or 29 years who stayed in our Bidadi ashram. The door to my cottage is always open. One day as no other assistants were present, I requested her to bring my dinner. She brought my dinner and left it on my table. Just as she was leaving, I asked her, 'Are you not scared to come to my room? After all, I am a young man!' She just started laughing. She said, 'Master, I have been with you for the last three years and not even once have I had the idea that you were a male. Now, for the first time, I am made to understand that you are a male.'

If you don't have the idea that you are male or female, others will also have the same feeling.

The enlightenment keeps me in tremendous ecstasy 24 hours…365 days a year. The word 'ecstasy' is not enough to describe the bliss that I am in. Whenever pleasure is stimulated in your system, a chemical called dopamine is released. Doctors call the point where it is released as the D-spot. When it is released, your body is flooded with enormous energy. The doctors at Oklahoma University realized that this phenomenon was happening in my system while I was in a meditative state.

When one is in that state of enlightenment, any idea of a boundary is lost. The sensitivity with which I feel with my body is the same sensitivity with which I feel with this entire cosmos…any feeling that my body ends here and the rest of the world starts here is totally lost.

When I had the first experience, the heightened ecstasy lasted only for a few days. It was the first glimpse. But, after enlightenment, I am in this heightened ecstasy continuously!

There are thousands of enlightened masters living on our planet Earth. Their energies are all one and the same. Only the expressions of it are different.

Understand clearly…when one is enlightened, one will stop being judgmental….there will only be compassion for everyone. One's very presence and energy will touch everyone!

As far as my educational background is concerned, I studied in a Tamil medium school. After finishing the tenth grade, I did a diploma in Mechanical Engineering….here again; the medium of instruction was Tamil. I never studied Sanskrit or English. I spent all my time in meditation.

Before enlightenment, I read just a few books to give me some knowledge about the Upanishads. After enlightenment, the whole scenario changed. I could access Sanskrit, English and information about various things in the past and present whenever I needed them. The moment I needed some information, it simply got downloaded. It appeared to me as if there was a CD package in my memory and all I had to do was to download it whenever necessary!

When I came to the US for the first time, I could hardly manage a sentence in English. This was the only apprehension I had when I was invited by an NRI devotee to visit the US. She promised to travel with me and be a translator. I readily agreed. Then, within a few days, I decided to talk in English. I felt there was no need for any translations. I conducted my first Ananda Spurana Program (ASP), in the US in English.

If you have an enlightened mind, there is no need for a formal education at all. Things will just flow. With my limited educational background and limited knowledge of English, I manage around the world…giving many discourses…taking so many classes.

Understand clearly…our memory is like a library. If we are attached to only one subject or one memory, we will never have the freedom to access other memories or subjects. But, if we have the emotional freedom from memories, we will have total access to any memory we want. We can download any CD and start playing it. No memory when it is downloaded should create any emotional bondage. Remember if we are emotionally free from any memory, we will be able to access any information we want…we will have a tremendous memory!

Ask our ashramites(inmates of an ashram) or close devotees and they will tell you about my busy schedule. I hardly find any time to read. So, where do I get all this knowledge from? I speak to thousands of people all over the world…hundreds of questions are asked and I am able to answer each one of them. Be very clear…it is my enlightened state that helps me download all those mountains of information.

A devotee once asked me, 'Master, how do we overcome karma?'

My reply was…I will give you a simple technique. Right from this moment, try and remember all the incidents in your life. Start going backwards from this moment till your childhood days. Remember what you can. Don't bother about what you cannot remember. You must realize that what you can't remember is only a hangover. It has not touched you deeply and that is why it is not retained in your memory. Try this technique for a year…re-living is a wonderful way of relieving! Put this into action and see the difference it makes.

I pray and bless you all. May all of you have this eternal bliss…Nithya Ananda.

Loneliness to Aloneness

Aloneness is the very basic nature of man…of the Being, from and even before the birth! This is the reality. In the womb the Being is alone, blissful, and peaceful. Scientists say that even the quest for enlightenment is the imprint of one's life in the mother's womb. That was the happiest moment of a Being's existence.

Be very clear on this…through out our life, even when we live, grow and die within a society, we are alone.

'I am the thread among the beads,' says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. The beads are the incidents in our life strung on the thread of aloneness. All cultures and religions speak of a time long ago when there was joy and peace. In Hinduism this was the Satya Yuga…in Christianity… the Garden of Eden. This was not real…just the impression of one's life in the womb, where the past was spoken of as being golden and just an imagined memory stored away.

In Mesopotamia 6000 years ago it was written, 'It is now the age of sin. Morality is bad. Children do not listen to parents. Wives do not respect husbands…' The Vedas written 5000 years ago says, 'This is the Kali Yuga. Everything is sinful…'

Understand that these statements are all just memories of a golden past that the Being yearns for in its search for aloneness. You mind can not be alive when you are lonely; it can only flourish in relationships.

The mind, ego and personality are all societal and are alive only in the various relationships that we build up within the society. Within this vortex of relationships we forget that our individuality is aloneness…that it is our very nature…whereas our personality is societal!

Have you noticed that our mind is starved when we are alone and it struggles? This happens when we think of ourselves as a personality and therefore end up feeling lonely.

'Personality' is only a title given by society. Individuality is what you are…this is your natural state.

What others think of you…what you have earned…what comforts you have…all these are only a part of your personality. It is a sad fact that most times we nurture our personality ignoring our individuality. Our personality is merely external whereas our individuality is internal. The cry of one's individuality to be heard above the clamor of your personality is what is expressed as the pain of your loneliness.

Let me narrate a small incident here…

Jane was seated in the doctor's waiting room waiting to meet the doctor. She was getting treated for depression. The lady next to her started a conversation with her and came to know that she was the mother of 12 children. The lady exclaimed, 'Twelve children and you look so young and beautiful!' Jane got her prescription and felt instantly better.

Attention is the food for personality…good or bad…it does not matter! Whether positive or negative…attention is what we seek! We seek and suck attention…we demand or beg for attention.

When we are alone there is no one to praise or blame us…and therefore our ego and personality are shaken.

The moment we realize that we are not our personality we immediately feel alone and shaken… however when we realize we are more than a husband, more than a Doctor, more than a Hindu or any other part that we may be playing…and these are just parts of our total Being we start feeling alone and yet very comfortable.

Our different roles are only different labels of the different parts of our total Being! Imagine a parcel being posted from the US to Bharat. At various points there are stamps and marks placed on the parcel to identify it and speed it on its way. Now the parcel may think it is these stamps…but it is not! It forgets that it is the stuff inside. Similarly we are not merely labels…we are the Being inside the labels.

As mere labels, we are continuously engaged in parties, shopping, or watching T.V. We read and reread the same newspaper. Old people having grandchildren who are married would still read the matrimonial column! Why? The sad truthful reason is …we are afraid of being alone with ourselves. Be very clear…entertainment is an avenue for running away from ourselves. However, have we ever pondered on how long we can run? We always believe that we will be joyful at some point or other, having achieved something or the other. By the time we are about forty we may get all we want…but we do not understand what for we wanted all this. We are still unhappy…we have reached the depression of success!

The more affluent we are, the more our chances of being afflicted with this depression of success.

The greatest illness in developed Western countries is the depression of success. Material success fails to make people happy and they end up experimenting in their search for happiness. Therefore they change possessions…change cars every year…change houses every second year and change spouses every third year… still they remain unhappy!

Addiction, suicide and meditation are the only three ways out of this depression.

Addiction is just not drugs or cigarettes or alcohol; it can be food or any other craving. When the empty feeling takes over men generally pour and fill…women generally dump and fill; one with liquor and other with food. It is a psychological craving that never gets satisfied. Be clear… increasing consumption can never satisfy the addict.

In developed countries, people who have everything that they can ask for and have seen everything else generally move to suicide. Meditation as a way out is rare!

Meditation is an intelligent way of living. It is nothing but sravan, manan and nidhityasan or in other words listening to, contemplating upon and expressing great truths. Meditation helps us realize that we are far more than a mere personality… that we are individuals. It helps answer the question of who we are rather than let society decide and answer it.

The query 'Who Am I' helps to let go our past ego. In this process the mind will definitely resist it. Understand clearly that it is adding the 'i' to our running; it ruins us.

Only when we understand our own Self and how we are just aloneness…can we really love ourselves and others. Otherwise whatever we express as our love it is only psychological slavery…a contract…a business deal.

Be very clear…between personalities only contracts can happen…only between individualities can contacts happen…only between Beings can relationships bloom!

The essence of the ecstasy that oozes out of that realization of our individuality is love.

To reach that core of individuality, of moksha, kaivalya, nirvana or liberation…we need to contemplate; we need to sit alone and think 'Who Am I?' Not just mentally; not as an intellectual exercise; but as a question that you ask within your Being… 'What Am I? What am I, if all my labels are taken off me?'

Express that feeling…do not give up even if it is painful to realize that you are alone… experience that pain again and again. Like a seed that has to suffer the pain for the tree to grow, you will give birth to yourself once again …you will be reborn to that natural state as you were at the time of your birth!

Understand this very clearly…aloneness is our very nature. Keeping asking, 'Who Am I?' Through experiencing the pain of the answers we grow and realize.

This inner journey alone will help us grow from ego to Self…from personality to individuality… from depression to expression…from loneliness to aloneness….from pain to bliss!

Welcome and enter loneliness without resisting, achieving Nithya Ananda or Eternal Bliss.

I pray and bless you all. May you all have this eternal bliss…Nithya Ananda.

Who Am I? The Ultimate Question

An English teacher teaching the last class of the academic year in Literature prepared a few questions to get feedback from the students on the effectiveness and style of teaching. One of the questions in the list was, 'Have I influenced your attitude towards the subject?'

One student had written, 'No. I still like it.'

Many a time the answers we get in response to our questions may not necessarily be what we expect. One such question is, 'Who Am I?'

Of all the questions we ask in our lives this is perhaps the most important. There are many questions we ask during our lifetime…some out of innocence like a child out of curiosity… some to exhibit our knowledge and ego…some to check if others know, and some out of ignorance… without knowing why… expressing our confusion.

Most people who meet me start asking me about enlightenment and God. They express their wish to follow the spiritual path with my guidance and ask esoteric questions on karma and moksha. Without their awareness; I change the subject to other matters, and we talk about their personal lives, their families, their businesses, everything except anything spiritual! They never come back to their original question on spirituality. It does not matter to them really. The fervor with which they started their queries to impress me with their keen interest as well as their knowledge evaporates very quickly.

Now instead of asking half a dozen questions, if they took sincere interest in asking themselves the question 'Who Am I', it will answer all their other questions. The questioning attitude itself will dissolve. Be very clear…our mind survives by questioning. More answers means more questions.

'Kim tat Brahma kim atyatmam?' 'What is Brahman?' asks Arjuna of Krishna. Krishna says, 'if I ask you to repeat the question, you would have forgotten what you asked.'

We keep asking questions about all external objects and issues such as, 'Who is this?' or 'Who is that?'…however we never turn our questioning inwards to 'Who am I?'

Understand this…the fuel of our minds is questions. Unless we question that state of our mind, we can never come out of questions. What ever answer is given to a question can lead to another question. In a child that reflects curiosity. In an adult it reflects lack of wisdom. I tell my disciples that the answers I give to question posed by new comers are mere brain candy, aimed at keeping them happy. Once I find that the seeker is serious, I stop answering these questions, and the questioning stops. A mature mind does not need brain candy!

If I ask you, 'Who are you?' you will tell me about your status and relationships. These answers however do not answer my question. When you are by yourself, close the door of you room and start asking 'Who am I'? If you are well read in philosophy you will think you are the Atman, the Brahman, or the body. You think of yourself as your body out of sheer instinct as a body or if you think through intellect, that you are the Atman. But have you experienced this thought, either as body or as Atman?

We play with identities. We practice spiritual pursuits, also to establish an identity. To our boss we are obedient, when we turn to our subordinate we put on another identity, another mask; we continue to play with pseudo identities. Our life is a journey between birth and death. We have no idea why we were born. We have no idea when we will die. Our life is a bridge between two unknown points. This is because we play with pseudo identities, we have never asked ourselves the question, 'Who am I? ...What am I doing here?'

Who ever asked Ramana Maharishi a question, he would counter pose the question, 'Who is asking this question?' Questioning would then stop.

The smallest, but the greatest, book I have ever read is the sayings of Ramana Maharishi titled 'Who Am I?' When you ask this question, your questions become a quest, and your urge becomes urgent. Any questions that lead to answers will only add to your confusion. Only questions that lead you to experience, lead to bliss.

Have you noticed that the first few days after we acquire anything new, a car or a house, we are very excited; however once we achieve, that excitement disappears. Ramana says, 'Before you get it, even a mustard seed looks like a mountain; after you acquire it even a mountain looks like a mustard seed.'

Until we know who we are, the question of what we want cannot be answered. Till we know what we want, we will never be satisfied with whatever we achieve and acquire. Otherwise, at the end, we will find that whatever we have acquired is of no value to us.

The desires that lead us on this path of wants is not our own, but those borrowed from others. The feeling of 'mine' is the most dangerous trap that mind can set for us. It is never ending, never fulfilling, always leading to suffering.

Mahavira Jaina, the enlightened master who founded the religion of Jainism, said that each being that takes birth in this world, comes into this world with whatever is needed for its living, which is already provided by the Universe. Universe never denies. Yet, we are grabbing all the time… not because we need…but because we want, out of sheer greed, jealousy, and lust.

Ramana says, 'This Universe has enough to fulfill the needs of every single being who occupies it; however it can not fulfill the wants of even one being.'

Let me share a true incident with you…

Towards the end of his life Einstein was very depressed. He had turned to spirituality after his discoveries were put to destructive uses. One of his assistants asked him what he would do if he were to live his life again. Einstein replied, 'I would like to become a plumber.' Shocked the assistant asked, 'Why? You have been extremely successful as a scientist, why would you want to be a plumber?'

Einstein replied, 'All my life I have worked for all this and achieved what ever I wanted, but now…at the end I understand that my life is a big lie, a sheer waste. Right from my childhood I have always wanted to be a plumber, and I have been denied the joy of doing what I wanted. That's why I want to be a plumber when I am reborn; to be what my Being wants to be.'

You see, the problem with winning a rat race is that even after winning one is still a rat! Be very clear….the depression of success is worse than the depression of failure. At least with failure we can continue to hope that we can succeed; but if we are successful we have nowhere to go. We may have climbed very fast yet that climb would have led us no where, or some where that made no sense.

People ask me in what way meditation help achieve ones desired goal…and whether it will give us whatever we desire.

I tell them that it may help in giving the required shakti (strength) to make all one's dreams a reality, but will certainly give you the buddhi (intellect) to know that your entire reality is only a dream!

Vivekananda put it very beautifully in his statement 'Until inner intelligence is awakened no book will help you; once it is awakened you do not need any books.'

Ramana says, 'Once you start asking 'Who am I?' you will feel that you are not this body. You are the observer not observed. If you witness your thoughts you can experience the moods and emotions of your mind, so you are not your mind. If you search deeply you realize you are something else. That pure awareness is where your search ends.'

The space where you have neither answer nor any questions, where there is pure awareness, is enlightenment…is freedom!

I cut my thigh to experiment with what I had heard from Annamalai Swamigal : we are not the body but something beyond it. I went back to him and said that I indeed felt pain. He gave me a mantra and asked me to follow my thoughts to their source. I started playing with this technique and when I was twelve I had my spiritual awakening, as I tried to go to the source of my thoughts. I felt that I was neither the experiencer through intellect nor the experienced through instinct, but the experience itself. That experience is the Being.

If you keep questioning yourself constantly, 'Who am I?' the question leads you to that ultimate experience…the experience of the awareness of your Consciousness. It will not solve your questions, but dissolve all of them once and for all!

Questions & Answers:

Q: When I ask 'Who Am I?' where does the answer come from?

A: If you ask just because a book says so, and ask for intellectual satisfaction, it stays only as a question. It has to become a quest…an urgent quest without finding the answer to which you can not rest. Your mind has to turn inwards and search desperately for the answer. Your questions will have to become a quest. Your urge has to be urgent. Let the question settle from your head to your heart and your Being. Meditate…you will then get the answer.

Q: What is Man's Eternal Quest?

A: Man's eternal quest is to find himself. Somebody once asked me if I am God. I replied that I am not God, I am above that. God is your imagination; the Self is real and superior!

Q: If I say that will I not be sent to an asylum?

A: Jawaharlal Nehru went on a visit to an asylum. There he met an inmate who thought he was Nehru. When Nehru introduced himself as Nehru to this inmate, this guy came up close to him and whispered, 'Don't worry. That's what I too said when I came here. If you stay here for 6 months they will cure you too.'

Q: How can you be above Balaji (the deity in the temple at Tirupati, AndhraPradesh, Bharat)

When you talk about God, you are talking only about the concept. When people go to the temple of Balaji, they go with faith not with understanding. Understand clearly that this is only business.

A small story:

Three businessmen took Balaji as a partner in their business venture. They agreed that one fourth of all the profits would go to Balaji. That first year, their profit was 4 million, however; they did not want to give Balaji one million as his share. The first man said, 'What will Balaji do with all this, he has no children, we are his children.' He said, 'Let us dig a pit…throw the money in the air and give him whatever falls outside that pit.' Another said, 'We will dig a larger pit and retain all that falls into it.' The third man said, 'Let us keep it simple…let us throw all the money up, whatever Balaji wants he will keep, whatever comes down let us keep. We can not offer to Balaji what has fallen on soiled Earth.'

Understand clearly…all our prayers are business. In spite of it we feel energy. All our prayers, all our pilgrimages and rituals are only techniques to awaken our own internal energy.

Remember this…if you experience what your being is, it is Balaji himself; when you only think of Balaji as a deity, it is no more than a concept…nothing more than a word.

Q: How do you reach Aloneness?

A: If you try to search for Aloneness you get into one more bondage. Just let it be. When you feel lonely do not resist. When you are alone you will try to relate mentally with others. Drop that. Do not blame others for your loneliness. Allow the loneliness to happen to you without resistance. You will then feel alone even when you are surrounded by people. To start with, you need to experience physical loneliness. Once the joy of aloneness happens it stays with you even when you are not physically alone.

Q: I understood in a way, but not fully …

A: To have aloneness you need to do nothing; it's your reality. For material comforts you need to work and struggle. A disciple asked a Zen Master, 'How long does it take to enlightenment?' The Master replied, 'Just the time it takes to blink you eye. You are already enlightened. You only need to declare.' The disciple asked again, 'What happened when you attained enlightenment?' The Master replied, 'Nothing, I decided that from that day I shall live my enlightened state.'

People often ask me, 'What will happen to my children, what will happen to my business when I get enlightened?'

I tell them…nothing will happen…however; you will be better than what you are, in whatever you do. You will not go to an ashram or to the Himalayas and run away from your life commitments. Do not be afraid of your own transformation!

A Man who was blind from birth went to a doctor. The doctor told him, 'I can give eye sight and you will surely walk without a stick.' The man replied. 'I understand all you that say, but how will I walk without a stick?'

You can keep going round and round with no understanding happening. It is not something that you understand with the intellect…you have to experience to realize.

Q: What about nāma smarana or repeating a mantra?

A: Repeating a mantra creates a relationship with a concept…it is again bondage…it is upassana or focusing outwards. Instead do vipassana, which is watching your breath, turning your mind inwards rather than upassana which is watching a name.

Q: Do I become spiritual upon enlightenment?

A: No, neither spiritual or material. Only till enlightenment, you are one or the other. All becoming is material, all Being is spiritual. Upon enlightenment you are as you are. You are enjoying everything; you are joyful; yet you are not attached to anything. It is not a state of mind; it is beyond mind. Do not bring words into this. Do not define it. Enlightenment is not anything.

Just ask what yourself what you have to do and not what others have to do? This is a high level technique. Do not ask for a method. Just declare that you are enlightened…accept yourself…that I am in the state I am supposed to be. Express your utter relaxation. Tell your mind…your emotions…your Being…I am enlightened. If your mind expresses doubts, accept the doubts and move on. Like a dog that barks at an elephant, doubts will recede as you face them and accept them. Change the focus to enlightenment…realize that you are enlightened…accept the doubts of your mind and move on.

I pray the Divine to bless you all. May the almighty bless all of you with Nithya Ananda! Thank you.

There are no Miracles in Life

A parable of Ramakrishna goes thus:

Once there were two brothers. One decided to become a sādhu and the other went into business. After 15 long years the younger brother who became a sādhu came back to the village. His elder brother who had stayed back in the village to become a businessman received him well. They started discussing what they had both achieved in the span of 15 years.

The elder brother told the younger about how well he has done materially and asked the sādhu how he had fared. The younger one stood up without a word and walked to the river near by. He started walking on the waters of the river and reached the opposite side effortlessly. The elder brother took a boat and joined him on the opposite bank. Crowed the younger brother, 'This is what I achieved in these years.' The elder brother responded, 'In all these years what you learnt was what I spent two rupees (5 cents) for. What a waste!'

Understand that miracles are foolishness. There are no miracles. They just happen in a different plane. People ask me again and again to materialize objects. Mind you doing it becomes a habit for some. People then come only for the magic show, not for transformation. When people asked me to materialize an object, I only had to clap my hands and produce an idol of Goddess Lakshmi, Goddess of Wealth in Hindu mythology. I told the group that it was only a trick. I can not create anything. I can only teleport it. I only moved the idol from my room to my hand. It is similar to waves moving between cell phones and how it transports voice. I converted the matter of the idol into energy, teleported it, and reconverted energy into matter.

Be very clear…there are no Miracles in Life!

At one time or another we all experience the phenomenon of precognition. We feel that some one is about to call us, and sure enough that person calls.

We are watching TV and suddenly we feel that the character we're watching is about to say something, and sure enough she obliges. We are about to sit down for dinner, the door bell chimes, and we know who is at the door; sure enough, it's the old school mate one hasn't seen in years.

I find that in my discourses often over 50% of the audience responds positively when I ask if they had experienced a similar phenomenon at any point in their life. When this happens, most of the time we brush it off saying that it is a coincidence. When to some this happens repetitively we attach the tag of a 'gifted' person, similar to those who see auras and sense the vibrational energy of people and places.

When the magnitude of the experience is far greater we no longer term it a coincidence. Some one predicts disasters accurately time and again, and forecasts deaths. Others heal people given up as lost cases by doctors. Some produce substances out of thin air. We then call them miracles.

What we see as coincidences or miracles, depending on the degree of the unexpectedness of the incident, are those where we do not see the causal linkage between these incidents and what we understand to be scientific laws. Anything that is not supported by what is termed as 'science' is either barbaric or a miracle.

I repeat…there are no miracles in life.

It is just that we do not yet understand the laws that govern the occurrence of such incidents which seem to defy 'scientific' laws. Once we understand that this universe supports laws that go beyond the 'scientific' laws that have been so far discovered by humans, we start understanding the cause and effect linkages behind many of these inexplicable happenings and start appreciating the mysteries of our Universe.

Astrophysicists now talk about a parallel universe. They have discovered that each time a star system dies as a black hole another start system is born in a big bang somewhere else in the universe. Every action produces a reaction.

The Chaos Theory now says that action and reaction do not need to be proportionate. There is no linearity in nature. A butterfly fluttering its wings in China causes a tornado in Mexico! This is science, not imagination.

Matter and energy were totally different entities until Einstein established their linkage. Even after Einstein, it was either matter or energy, never both in the same time and space. It is only recently that the principle of 'singularity' that allows matter and energy to exist simultaneously in a common time and space framework has been understood. 'Singularity' is the common universal platform, the Collective Consciousness that we call Brahman.

Making contact with Brahman is not impossible, once you know how. With thoughts crowding our mind, all that we normally do is to flit from one zone to another, from regrets to speculations, with no time to ground ourselves in the present. However, once we allow ourselves to settle in the here and now, in the present, thoughts gradually disappear. When thoughts disappear there is an expansion of our ability to expand in time and space, which allows us to traverse the past, present and future simultaneously.

Once we are in the present miracles become common place, and we understand that they can no longer be called miracles but are a natural flow of the universe.

Imagine a scene where all cell phones except two are destroyed. The two owners will surely become Gods in the eyes of those who do not know how a cellphone works or what a cellphone is. When we do not understand the cause we call it a miracle. I had a disciple, a magician, who used to produce vibhūti, sacred ash, from my feet. To people who cannot understand or make causal linkages this will seem to be a miracle.

Personal transformation is the ultimate miracle that we can get from a Master…but mind you this will happen in a state of heightened awareness, where you are conscious of the changes happening to you and your mind!

If alchemy comprises removing, adding and processing from base metal to get gold the ultimate alchemy is personal transformation…from the state of lust to the state of divine love, where you understand that you are a part of the whole existence…this whole universe…that you are God.

To attain the ultimate alchemy you may adopt any of the paths before you. In Tantra, which actually only means technique, there are two practices. The first is Dakshinachara which is just meditation; the other is Vamachara which relates to use of sex, meat, liquor etc. to realize divine power.

Human beings, as I mentioned earlier are gifted with the ability of choice as they are by their very nature intelligence. Nature has infused intelligence and choice in us…therefore the task of choosing the path to the ultimate goal is left to us.

I pray to the divine to bless you all with the intelligence to choose the appropriate path and attain Nithya Ananda…Eternal Bliss!

Now, Here or Nowhere

A small story:

An old man went with his whole family and his grandsons, to a movie theater. When the movie was moving towards a climax, the old man was found crawling on the floor and searching for something.

The grandson shouted, 'Grandpa! What are you doing? The whole row is getting disturbed by you.'

Grandpa replied, 'I have lost my toffee I am searching for it.'

At this the grandson shouted, 'Sit silently…I shall get you a new toffee.'

For a minute, Grandpa was found sitting calmly in his seat…then again he was found on the floor, crawling on his hands and knees.

Again the grandson shouted, 'What are you doing? Why are you disturbing the whole show? Sit silently! I shall get you a new toffee.'

'I can't!' said Grandpa, 'I want that same toffee.'

The grandson could not understand what was so special about that toffee.

Grandpa wailed, 'I need to find only that toffee because my teeth are stuck in it!'

Have you noticed that most of the time not understanding what we have lost…we do not know what we are searching for. Similarly in our life…not understanding how to live here and now in the present…we reach nowhere.

Now, Here or Nowhere…is the title of today's discourse.

Before we enter into the subject…let me explain a few basic concepts regarding time. We have a very wrong concept, a wrong idea on which we built our understanding of it in our mind. We always think there are three time zones… past, present and future. This is totally a wrong concept and a lie. Such a division has been created by us for our convenience of dividing the events happening around us into clear cut compartments. How many of us have been troubled by these compartments while learning languages? These concepts of past, present and future certainly help us to classify events so that there is no misunderstanding as to when the event happened.

But at a subtle level understand clearly that there is no past…no future. There is only one time zone which is the Present. Either you live the present or you don't live at all.

You may say: Tomorrow I will do something. But when tomorrow comes, it will arrive only in the form of today, now; never in the form of tomorrow. If you say tomorrow I will be happy; tomorrow I will become enlightened; tomorrow I will do the meditation…please understand that the tomorrow you are thinking about is never going to arrive as this very concept of tomorrow that is of the future will present itself before us as a today, as a now…as a present.

Forgetting this, again and again, you continue to say 'Tomorrow I will be happy; tomorrow I will be enlightened; tomorrow I will be joyful.' Do you honestly believe that these predictions will ever happen? Simply because you do not know the technique of living in the present, giving the present your 100% your cunning mind is merely locating reasons to postpone them.

A small mythological story from Bharat:

Sani (Saturn) is one of the nine planets and is revered as well as feared as a minor deity. Ganesha, the pot bellied elephant headed son of Siva, who is loved by all Hindus, is considered to be immune to Sani's evil intents. It is said that Ganesa has a big board outside his home that says 'Go away today and come tomorrow', and whenever Sani comes around, he reads that notice on the door and goes away. The next day when he returns, he sees the sign again and goes away!

Similarly, whenever we want to live, whenever we feel like expressing our being, whenever we want to live as we truly desire, our mind always insists 'No No No No No…Now is not the time; let us wait; let us do it little later. Let us give it a little time till tomorrow... tomorrow.'

By putting it off for tomorrow we never do anything now, in the present moment. We never achieve anything. We end up being cocooned in the comfort zone of searching for those reasons that our mind dishes out to satisfy us and hooking our postponement to this reason.

Be very clear…once the habit of postponing begins, it becomes a mental habit, a mental addiction…our mind will then be solidified into this comfortable zone of postponing things to a tomorrow that is nonexistent.

Our mind gets used to again and again postponing everything. To ensure that this is real we also start collecting arguments; busy finding some more reasons to postpone. We end up moving in an endless loop of postponement and never ever do we enter into the act of action itself.

Make a list of the all those things that you have promised yourself that you will do tomorrow… maybe some other time as you have no time now. Topping this list you will a number of things that relate directly to your own growth process. You will also notice that you have done everything for everyone else…yet have always postponed action where you yourself are concerned.

I repeat it is the nature of our mind that we wish to do many things, know that there are things to be done for our own growth which should be the priority. That there are many things which we say we shall do tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow and never ever do…never do till the end.

Let us plunge into the topic…Now, here or Nowhere right now!

A small Zen story:

A man went to the Master and asked, 'When I will become enlightened?'

The Master replied, 'Now.'

The disciple could not understand and endless questions started whirling in his head. '…How can I become enlightened now? I need a lot of practice. I do not know all the methods. It needs lot of meditation for long periods of time. So, how can it be now?' were only some of the endless questions in his list of questions.

Then the Master says, 'Never, go away.'

Why is this story relevant here? As I said earlier our mind is very cunning and comes up with endless reasons for postponement. We need to understand this one story whenever our mind says that we are not enough unto ourselves. We are not complete by ourselves. We are not full by ourselves.

Our mind will always be telling us the same thing. I repeat it will always be telling us the same thing. Ask yourself the same question 'When will I get enlightened?' and observe the answers that come up The mind will definitely come up with 'No No No No No…I have to do that meditation, this meditation, that practice, this practice; only then I can become enlightened; only then I can realize my self. Only then I can achieve my life*.*' Ask yourself the same question tomorrow and sure enough tomorrow also it will be telling you the same thing.

Understand clearly…we will never feel, we will never see that we have reached somewhere or that we have achieved something, if we have the postponing becomes our very nature. Let us forget about enlightenment; let us talk about normal life.

A Zen Master asked his disciples, 'How many of you have taken bath this morning? Every day, early in the morning he asked the same question. Almost all the disciples raised their hands dutifully.

The next question would be, 'How many of you are aware that you took bath when you took bath?' Not even one hand would go up. Merely taking bath all of us do, as a mechanical chore every morning. However, taking a bath with awareness is a different thing altogether. Surely, all of you must have taken a bath today and all of you must have brushed your teeth too. How many of you were aware of what you were doing when you did that? When you brushed your teeth how many of you were aware? When you took bath how many of you were aware of the hot water and the hot shower pouring on your body? Were you aware that your body was just getting ready after the bath, and that your life was getting rejuvenated after the bath? How many of you were aware of all these things when they happened?

A small Zen story:

A king went to a Master, and asked him, 'Master How can I become enlightened? What all the practices you follow? What did you do to become enlightened? Please teach me'.

The Master replies, 'Oh! I eat when I eat, I sleep when I sleep; this is all what I do'.

The king could not understand.

The Master explains patiently, 'When I eat I only eat, I do not do anything else when I sleep I only sleep I do not do anything else'.

Let us now examine what we do. Recall the scene of how we eat. We will remember that either we would have been watching T.V. or we would have been sitting with some magazine or talking to some one or continuously thinking of something.

If however you had been calm, sitting quietly, your spouse would have been there to tell you of some problems in the house or there would have been some other action that would take away your focus from the food that you are eating. In many western countries the pressure of time is so high on individuals that people end up having their breakfast while walking to the bus stop or while driving to work.

In some way or the other, when you eat your mind does everything else except focus on the eating. You do everything except eat with awareness, focusing only on the food, on every grain and morsel that you are placing in your mouth…chewing and swallowing.

Let us take act of sleeping. When you sleep you do everything else except sleep. Only when you sleep you dream and you have your fear strokes. You then end up having a have disturbed sleep. Understand that whatever you do, you do everything else except sleep.

Psychologists say that a man or woman, in a Western country, never sleeps more than 14 minutes at a stretch. 14 minutes is the maximum time and many times it is often less. Just after 14 minutes they come back to the dream state or wakeful consciousness or just float in the dream level. Again they goes back to sleep for only a maximum of 14 minutes and again come back to the dream level and again go back to sleep. This is called the rapid eye movement or REM sleep pattern.

We never sleep totally, when we sleep. However there are levels of mind in which we will never have dreams. We never need to have any dreams. We can just directly enter into deep sleep, if we know how to live in the now. We will then know the art of eating; the art of sleeping…the art of living.

Living here and now, always in the present, is the art of living.

Recall all the events from morning till night about how you live. You almost live like a being that is half asleep. You do brush your teeth; but, do you remember the cold water touching your mouth? Do you remember the feel of the taste of the tooth paste in your mouth or the pressure of your toothbrush upon your gums? And how did you feel after brushing? Or how was the water being poured on your body in the shower? How did the whole thing happen? What is happening after you have eaten your food?

We do things, but we never fully know what we do.

After our eating, nothing is recorded. Nothing is felt. Nothing is enjoyed. Just like a wave our mind lives. When we brush our teeth we are already in the office. When we take our breakfast we are already at the workplace. In the mind, when we are working, we are already back home. When we are home our mind has already planned for tomorrow's office work.

It is a vicious circle…a never ending vicious circle. We live in one way but our mind is working in another way. Our body and the mind do not dovetail into each other. We do not live where we live. We live in one place, but our mind lives in another place. If we are here, the only truth we can be sure of is that we are not here.

Ramana Maharishi, a great enlightened master, says beautifully 'If you sit for meditation, you can be sure your mind will be walking. Better you walk; you will see the mind stills. Mind will sit.'

He used to tell his followers to go round the hill, the hillock on which he stayed.

People used to ask him, 'Why are you asking us to go around the hill? Why can't we sit and meditate?'

He would reply, 'If you sit your mind will wander. At least if you walk, your mind will be still.'

We live in a half hearted manner. Never do we live totally. Never do we live with our full being. Our mind will be always thinking of something else except where we are at that moment in time. That is why our eyes have no glow. Just look how bored we all look. Just look at your face in the mirror and see how bored you are. This boredom is in tune with our life…very dull…terribly dragging…constantly living in the tomorrow instead of living in the now.

A small story:

After a long dry sermon, the priest announced that after the benediction, immediately, there would be a Parish Board meeting in the next room. After the benediction, when the priest entered that room he found an old man sitting there whom he did not recognize. Worse still he did not even seem a local, not even a Catholic. This guy was dressed like an Arab and sitting there in the adjoining room.

The priest went near him and quietly asked, 'Did you misunderstand? The board meeting is going to be held here. Are you sure you are part of the Board?'

The man replied, 'I do not know about your Board meeting. I thought you said a meeting of the bored. I came here to see how many others were also bored like me after your sermon.'

The priest said Board and the man understood bored. Note how the man replies that he wanted to meet others who too were bored like him.

Look at your life; look at your face; you are all bored. Somehow you are pulling along… attempting to infuse joy or pep into your life which sadly is not there in you. It is just a drag. Why? Because, all you do, all that you know to do for everything is how to postpone. Your mind never sits with your being. Your mind never lives the moment. Your mind never lives in the same moment that you are in.

You are always in the space of tomorrow or in the space of yesterday. It is never in the space of today, now, the present.

Your tongue never lives when you eat. Your eyes never see when you look. Your ears never listen when you hear. Your body never feels when you touch. How many times you shake your hands in a dead way? Remember, all that you do is to stretch your hands but never your being. It is just a dead hand; a dead man's handshake. Never has your being penetrated through it.

People ask me, 'Master, how does your touch heel so many people? How can just your touch do so much? So much healing is done physically, mentally, emotionally.'

People ask me: 'Do you chant any mantra when you heal? Do you chant any mantra? Please teach us we will also do.'

No, actually I don't chant any mantra. No chanting at all. When I touch you, I just became the touch that is all. My whole being touches. There is nothing else. My whole being feels the touch. I tell you there is no other secret.

Our being is nothing but pure energy. Whether we believe it or not, our being is energy. If our being is not energy, how will we be alive? We are alive and we are moving, because our being is energy. Our being is pure energy; nothing else. Just the touch; when I am touching I am totally in tune with the touch. It's total. That's all. That is the only thing that heals.

Totality is always energy.

Why do we touch the feet of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM? Simply, because he is total. His being is truly in the present. His being is in the field of now. He is in the present, now and here. He is present in this space, here, in the time, now. In space, he is here. In time, he is now.

However, all our life, throughout our life, from the moment we are born till we die, even after the death, we never face the moment of now.

Facing now means taking the responsibility of our own life; living with full of energy. But the cunning mind never allows us to take that responsibility and hypnotizes us into the habit of postponement. As I said earlier, humans are intelligent by nature and it is up to us to use the choice of living now or living later.

Let us observe how our mind works. Even before going to our friend's house, we do a complete rehearsal in our mind about what we should speak and if they ask something, how we should reply. We are afraid of facing even our friends; leave alone our boss; leave alone other managers and colleagues. Even our friends, we are afraid to face! We are afraid, because, at any moment we may express the truth and we feel afraid to express our true self.

You see, if you have to speak the truth, if you have to be truthful, there is no need to prepare the rehearsal. There is no need to prepare the script. We have to show something which is not, so we have to prepare a big script. Do we need a script, if we have to tell the truth? We don't need anything. We don't need to remember all these premeditated scripts.

I tell you if you speak the truth there is big freedom. We don't have to remember what we have spoken; because the data will always be the same. Only when we speak lies, there is a big problem. We need to remember the whole script. We need to remember the whole thing which we have uttered or plan to utter. The next time also we have to repeat the same thing.

If we live with the truth there will be no need for any more activity of the mind. There will be no need for any more hide and seek games. We will see that we can be relaxed. We can be total. There is no need for any script writing before entering into friends' houses or in any other situation.

Can you remember an incident when a friend would have left a message for you to call him or her back immediately? What suspense for you! Now recall how your mind will starts its gymnastics…before you ring him up, how many thoughts come in your mind? How many assumptions? How many fears? How many expectations? Before you ring back in just that two or three minutes, you can see the rush of thoughts happening in your system, in your being. Why? You want to be sure of your script before saying anything. You want to project yourself as only how you want to be projected, as per your ideas of yourself and in this process you resist being projected as you are. That is the reason you go ahead creating entire scripts. Continuously you create scripts, and when you are there in the middle of the play, sadly, you don't remember the script!

You can only once, may be twice, project your own scripted views. The next time or another endless time try repeating the performance…you will fail! That is why almost all love affairs end in failure. How long can you continue to act out? How long can you continue to prepare? How many times? How many days? How many times can you remember what you said the previous time? Not more than once, certainly. You will see that truth comes out eventually. In most failed love affairs the lady will say she has been cheated and the man will say that he has been cheated. Both feel that the other has cheated.

Be clear…there is nobody who cheats. It is just that your reality has come out. Love affair is like a dye and powder. When you walk in the rain, the color changes as the dye runs. Black runs here, and white goes there. How long can you maintain the pretense? Naturally the truth has to come out.

The truth comes out when you relax.

Once truth is out, you will be in greater trouble as you are now in a confused, agonized state.

I repeat, if we fall in tune with the truth, then there will be no need to remember what we had said before. Then there will be no problem. Then there will be no fear of having to create the script. We can live as we are. We can continue as we are. Otherwise we will have to be continuously finding arguments and in arguments, we do not know the mistakes we commit.

One lady after two years of her marriage goes to a lawyer and tells him, 'I want a divorce; please arrange for it.'

The lawyer is surprised and asks, 'Divorce? You must have some reason for it.'

The lady replies, 'Oh! Reason! What sort of a reason?'

The lawyer explains. 'Reason…as for example, he doesn't give you enough money*.'*

The lady replies, 'Money? It is I who gives him money'.

The lawyer continues, '…or, if he beats you continuously and tortures you'.

The lady interrupts, 'Beating me! No, I am the one who beats him'.

The lawyer continues, 'What about faith? What about being truthful? Is he truthful to you in love?'

The lady replies, 'In love? Yes. Now we have got him rightly. This is the right reason we can get. No. He is not the father of our third child.'

When we try to give reasons, when we try to find reasons, we end up in only this type of logic and fault finding. If we do not live the real life, we will be only living with these false reasons. Our mind goes in one direction and we go in another. When this happens and we don't live truthfully, we create a new energy field around us called a pain body.

Understand this one thing clearly…pain is nothing but the unawareness.

If we don't live now, here, in the present, our body will not be attended to. Our body will not have the attention of our being. Just imagine, living continuously outside our body! Our body is here; but we are somewhere else. Our body is in the house; but we are already in the office. When we are in the office your body is in the house. If we continuously live outside the body, our body will go without any attention…without being attended to.

Pain is nothing but the feeling which is created in the body when it is not attended properly. Understand this important secret…attention is energy.

Notice how good we feel when somebody attends to us. Recall the number of times you have felt that you are flying in the air just because somebody complimented you, appreciated you or praised you. How dejected you have felt when you have not been appreciated or praised?

When we are attended to; when somebody attends to us; when somebody serves us, we feel so good. We feel elated. We can see that politicians seem to be continuously energetic. Do you know why? Everywhere they are attended to. Thousands and thousands of people listen to their speech. You can see that if the crowd is more, their voice will go up; because the attention creates energy. If we are attended well, we feel energetic. We feel alive. Attention is energy. When we don't live inside our body, when we don't attend to our body, we will see that our body feels shrunk. Our body really contracts, it shrinks. It just begs us, 'Please give me your attention, please.'

The begging of our body, the begging sound of our body is what is called pain. Pain is nothing but the begging sound of our own body asking for our attention; asking for our presence.

We need to understand that if we continuously live in the past or live in the future; we are not present inside our system. When we are not present, the energy flow inside our system never happens totally and properly. Blood flow has nothing to do with energy flow. Energy flow is far deeper.

It is something like this…if our presence is here; the energy flow is present. If our presence is not here, then the energy flow is absent. If the energy flow is perfect, our intelligence will be perfect. We will be spontaneous. We will have the ability to respond spontaneously. The energy flow creates a tremendous awareness of spontaneity. Whenever we live outside our body continuously, some portion of our body does not get enough attention. So it just begs you for more attention through more pain. That begging is created in the form of pain. When we give our attention, we will see that the pain simply disappears.

I have given a discourse called 'Pain to Bliss'. If you feel that you wish to live in the now in the here and in the present without pain, listen to that discourse, and understand how to remove the pain just by meditation.

Some doctors in LA did this meditation. They said: 'It works miracles, Master'. And one oncologist, who is our devotee, also says that it works miracles. Every one should listen to that cassette. That cassette guides you on to how to create your awareness; how to create your attention, and create your presence in that place where you have pain.

Our pain is nothing but unawareness.

Not merely the physical pain but emotional pain also. Physical pain and psychological pain are both nothing but unawareness. If we don't live here and now, we will see that our pain body keeps growing. The thickness of pain body increases beyond control. Whenever our suffering is attended to, whenever our depression is attended to, we can see that it disappears immediately.

When we do not attend to ourselves, then it becomes deeper and deeper. If our suffering is not cared for then the wound only grows deeper and deeper. If we attend to our body and our mind and emotions we will see how totally our being transforms. The pain body totally disappears leaving behind a beautiful you. Sadly, many of us do not want the pain but only the beautiful self. How many of us are ready to work on ourselves to see the beautiful self?

The concept of the pain body is something new. We understand it as the gap between our real body and our mental body. I repeat…the gap between the body and the mind is what the pain body is. If we live out of our body for a long time, the gap becomes too much. If the gap is too much the strength of the pain body will also become too much. If the gap is less you will see that the strength of the pain body also grows less.

If we continuously live in the now and here throughout the 24 hours, if we live in the present be sure that not only we don't have pain but we have continuous bliss inside our being. We feel continuous bliss inside our system. Whatever pleasure we feel, whatever joy we feel in the form of pleasure, in the form of enjoyment are nothing but the reduced gap between the pain body and the mental body.

When the gap between the pain body and the pleasure body is reduced we feel pleasure. When the gap between our body and the mind is reduced, when we come to the present moment, we feel that pleasure. Whenever we do not live in the present moment we feel the pain.

There is a beautiful Zen saying, that if you bring your awareness to your body and to your pain, you will see that pain disappears…any pain!

Pain has no positive existence. It has only negative existence. It is like darkness. If we just bring light into darkness, it has no other option but to disappear. In the same way, pain is low energy darkness. It is low attentiveness. When we bring our attention to the pain, our energy to it, we will see that pain simply disappears.

What you think as pleasure is nothing but a present moment happening. Let us say that our mind continuously asks for a special kind of sweet. If we get that sweet, when we put the sweet in our mouth, immediately the mind which continuously asks, comes to the present moment. So, when it comes to the present moment, it continuously feels pleasure. We feel a kind of relief. We feel a sensation of peace. Immediately we start thinking that the pleasure or peace has come from the sweet. Note here that the pleasure is not from the sweet. It is from the mind which is a little calmer after having got what it asked for. It is from the being which has centered itself into the body.

Ramana Maharishi says beautifully, 'If a dog bites a dry bone continuously, blood starts pouring out from its mouth. Then the dog thinks that the blood is coming from the bone and it starts enjoying it'.

It works the same way with all the tastes of the world; all the pleasures of the world. We think that our joy comes from the outer world. When we enjoy it, our mind gets settled, gets a little calmer. It just goes inside our being and pleasure arises. However, when we come to the present moment, when we come to the now, here the pleasure and joy happens to our being. We are just like that dog, we do not understand and we start thinking that the pleasure arises only from outer comforts or outer objects.

No! It is not from outer objects that pleasure arises; it is just from our own inner being; from our mind; it is just from our own inner consciousness.

The past is something that is like the dead. The future is nothing but a promise, a potentiality…a seed. The present is the only the real moment. That is why the present is called present. God has given that to us as a present. It is a gift but the great sorrow is that it is unopened. We never live in the present moment. If we only live for 24 hours, just 24 hours, if all of us take an oath that we will live in the present for only 24 hrs…see what happens. Don't take the oath that I will live in the present for the next 1 year. That will not happen. No. Take just one oath; give a small trial only for the next 24 hours…until tomorrow evening. Try to live in the present moment.

Consciously choose to live in the present moment. When you go to the bed, sit and feel the bed. When you lie down, feel the comfort of the pillow. As soon as you wake up early in the morning from your bed, feel the carpet or the floor under your feet. When you go to the bathroom, when you brush your teeth, feel the water. Feel the paste. Start living throughout your body for the next just one day; then you will understand how by being in the now and here, how much of power and energy is created in you.

There is a beautiful book called 'Miracle of Mindfulness'. One famous Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says in 'Miracle of Mindfulness', that when you start living in a mindful way with every moment, then you will understand how big a miracle this life is. The bread that we eat becoming blood in our body is a great miracle. Thousands of miracles are continuously happening within us, but we never understand that life itself is a miracle. Only when you understand that life is a miracle, it is worth living. As long as you do not understand that life is a miracle, it is nothing much worth living. This is just a simple statement that I am making here…It needs to be understood and applied in practice to actually taste the fruit of the power of now.

We will understand the power of now, when we understand that life is more 'here'; that life is more 'now'. When we understand that life is now, not only all the pains, physical and psychological, disappear, but we will also see a tremendous sense of freedom happening to us. Because, if we live now and here, we will never bother about the next moment or about future fears; because, every moment is going to come to us only as now and here. If we can manage now, here, we can manage very effectively the next moment which will also come as a now, here.

Every moment takes birth only from this moment. Birth of a moment is only from this moment and this new moment is what becomes the next moment which is the new now or here. If we can live this moment, then the next moment also we can live. We will then live happily with no regrets, no guilt and no expectations and no surprises.

Our mind has conditioned us to killing this moment we live in. In the same way, we kill the next moment and the next. Killing the moments is what is happening to you now. As long as we don't live now here, we do not live in the present moment. We kill the moment. We kill life. We don't live it. When we come to now and here, we start living life. We start enjoying it. Unless we come to the now and here, we can't enjoy our whole body. We can't enjoy our whole mind. We will only live as a dead, dull mechanism. Being now here makes us alive and makes us live.

Now here or Nowhere. If we cannot, I repeat, if we don't live now here, we will reach nowhere. We will be nowhere. A man who lives now here, only lives. Everybody else is more or less like a ghost walking in sleep. Of course, we do not know what is happening, because our body is going in one direction and the mind in another. I repeat a man who lives now here only lives. Other persons…they think they live…they never live…they only live a lie deluding themselves that they live.

May you all enter into the space and time of now and here.

Let you enter into Nithya Ananda, eternal bliss. Thank you. We will now have a question and answer session followed by a meditation.

Questions & Answers

Q: Why do we sometimes while doing a job which is pretty boring like driving, we do something else, like listening to music, which takes the boredom out of it?

A: A great Master was living in Maharashtra. In the last phase of his life, for ten years, he was asked by doctors to eat only a certain type of rice and grains. Everyday he used to have the same type of food. One day his cook got bored out of her wits. She came and told the Master: 'I am bored just by cooking the same food. Are you not bored by eating the same food'?

He responds beautifully: 'No I don't eat the same food everyday. No I am not eating the same food everyday. How can I eat the same food everyday? Once I eat, it is over. Every meal I eat, I know is a new meal. It is a new '.

It is not the nature of the mind to make things as habituated. The mind never takes things for granted. However you condition your mind to take driving for granted. Then only you feel bored. Live the moment. Live the road. No moment is old. Especially driving can never become old because of new cars, new vehicles, new things, and new sights on the road. Is the road always the same? Is the sky above you always the same? Is nature around you always the same? You have fallen into a rut of being the same and wanting the same. You do not want changes and you do not want changes around you. Why don't you enjoy the new around you? Take time to observe, be sensitive and you will notice that it can never become old. Be in the present and live in the moment totally. You condition your mind to make things old and now because it makes things old, you feel bored.

Q: It is very stressful here, Master. You come to the USA thinking okay it is going to be a very comfortable life. Finally you end up finding that it is more stressful here than in Bharat. You have to kind of get up and do all the work at home and then go to office which is more stress and then come back. When one is doing all the things by oneself, it really helps when you do two things at one time. If I do something else while I am waiting I can get the work done faster.

A: One thing, be sure, you can never have efficiency by two things together. You can never have efficiency. You see it is not as if I am in a forest and do meditation whole day. If you live around me for two days, then you will understand how many hours I work. How many hours I work, you will know. You say it is stressful here; you think in Bharat they are not busy?

You see they may not have business, but they are busy. Busy without business. It is not that they are not busy. They don't have business, but they are busy in their own way. Yes, of course, they are busy in their own way. Of course, sitting in the same tea stall and speaking about the same politics. That is also in a way, business. It may not give dollars, but they are busy. It is not that in some place you are stressful and some place you are not stressful. It is just your mental habit.

Live totally. You see, you feel stressed only when you don't live totally. If you live this moment, you will never be afraid of other moments. Stress is nothing but psychological fear, just psychological fear. If you live this moment totally, you will never be afraid of next moment. You will never be afraid to face the other moments.

Now when you do this work itself your mind is continuously being boggled, burnt worried about the next moment. The question…What to do? What to do? What to do…keep swirling in the mind. You mark these words as a golden sutra, as a key word for your life. 99% of your worries never come true. Whatever 1% comes true is always good. It is actually true. 99% of your fears and worries never come true. 99% of your stress is just your own creation. Drop this folly of living in the future through worry and start living totally only in the now. Take care of the now and the later will take care of itself!

As I told you yesterday, you feel good if your enemy is too big, and bored if your enemy is too small. So, you know how to create stress. It is just a knack. You see when you put on your awareness cap and the level of awareness increases in your mind, naturally you will understand how much stress you create for yourself. Then all these things will be healed. All these things will be cleared.

Putting on this awareness cap is not easy as your pain body will never allow you to create your awareness. If you put on your awareness cap on your self, the pain body has to die. The pain body also wants to exist just as the other bodies exist. Every body wants to protect its existence. So does the pain body which wants to live. To be alive, the pain body never allows you to turn your awareness and attention on it. Experiment this for your self. Turn your awareness on the stress. Look into it as deeply as is possible. Ask yourself the question 'What is stress actually?'

Search throughout your body and the mind with awareness; search for any symptom of pain and the associated problem. Whenever you get into a somber mood, whenever you get into states of tiredness, irritation, anger…whenever you get the feeling that you want to shout at others, whenever you feel the headache… whenever you feel like giving headache to others, watch it carefully…observe it minutely. Watch what is happening. Observe the thought circuit of how you are planning. Why are you planning? What for you want to do this?

Turn your awareness and pay close attention to the thoughts in your mind… on the pain and you will see that in this process of close attentive observation the pain simply melts away like ice. Ice can remain as ice only as long as the sun rays do not touch it. When the rays of the sun touch it, it cannot be alive.

Your energy, your consciousness, your being present, your being now and here has the same effect as the rays of the sun. They just melt the ice. Go ahead… put your cap of awareness and you will see miracles happening in your system…just miracles. Don't bother about anything else. Just for 24 hours do this. Just 24 hours…only till tomorrow evening.

All your psychological pains, all your emotional pains, and all your physical pains, watch them keenly…do not ignore any one of them, however painful they may be. Remember I told you right in the beginning of itself that truth frightens us…do not be afraid…courageously go on watching them. Remember you need to just watch them. Do not anything to suppress them. Don't do anything to avoid them. Simply watch!

If you have a headache just watch it without thinking about the word pain. Watch as it is. Look at what is happening. If you have any emotional problem watch it as it is. Look what is happening. See if you have fear; any fear, watch…look…be here. Be in the present. When you start living in the present you will become a presence.

The master, because he lives in present, becomes a presence. You are no more a person when you start living in the present. You become just a presence. You become energy. You become God. As long as you live in the past or in the future, you just drag your pain body. You are being pushed from this side to that side. When you stop living in the present, you see that you just become a presence. Thank you.

Q: Can you explain what you said about your discourse 'Pain to Bliss'?

S: You can get the cassette and listen. It is a long explanation. The idea is from Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. It speaks about day dreaming and night dreaming. You have two types of dreaming; day dreaming and night dreaming. It is about, how to go beyond day dreaming and how to go beyond night dreaming. That is a discourse given in Los Angeles. The cassette is easily available. You can listen. It will be surely useful. The meditation is there in the cassette. We did that meditation in LA and after that in just two three days many people came and reported: 'Master, for a long time I was using pills; sleeping pills; now I don't need. I am totally having my rest. Two three days I am feeling quite comfortable. I don't need the sleeping pills'.

Many people reported, 'My sleep time has been reduced. The quality of sleep has been increased.' So it can work miracles for you. Of course, that also speaks the same thing; living in the present, but from another view point. I speak the same thing, however if you are aware you will notice that there are different, different connotations…different, different titles and different, different meanings.

For the next 24 hours do only this one thing; whenever you remember just start living in the present. Whenever you remember just bring your mind back to your body to where you are. And live just with this body. Over the next 24 hours, you will see just how many miracles can happen because of this mindfulness. Somebody was asking me: 'Master, can I do the Ananda Spurana Program. Already I have done one ASP. Can I do this ASP also?'

I want to tell you: Just by once attending ASP, just by doing once the 7 meditation techniques don't think that you can become God. Most of you think just once if I attend, that is enough. If you attend two or more sessions, then you will understand how much you missed. Many people come and ask me after attending the second ASP,' Master, these meditations in this ASP, you didn't teach us in the first ASP'. I tell them all that ASPs teach the same technique. Now in the second level called Nithyananda Spurana Program or NSP contains a different set of meditation techniques. Yes…all ASPs teach the same meditation techniques. In this context what the psychologists say is interesting. Only 2 % of what happens around you, the mind can grasp, which means you would not have harnessed the total benefit from your first ASP. So don't bother if you have done it earlier; if you can find time this weekend, even if you have done ASP already, do it once more; then you will understand how much you have missed last time.

Q: What is the difference between imagining and dreaming?

A: They are two different things. Imagination is different. Dreaming is different. Imagination is like creating your own future. Creating here means that not only do you imagine, but also you start working for it. You have a solid method. See, if you can imagine yourself 10 kilometers ahead of the same route in which you are traveling, it is absolutely certain that you can reach there. If you imagine yourself just floating in the sky, it's a dream. Imagining that which cannot happen, just fantasizing is in no way going to help you. Imagining which can happen in a creative way is going to help you. Creative visualization will always help you. Dreaming is like fantasizing about your future. Just dreaming and fantasizing is in no way going to help you. I have seen many people fantasying about being with great actors and actresses. That is in no way going to help. But imagining your own steps, leading you to where you are going to reach, is of great help as it will lead you to the goal. Please take the decision now here or nowhere what you want to do…imagine and create or just dream!

At the end of the NSP you will have a small compliment from the ashram; a rudraksha (seed from a tree strung together and worn around the neck), an energized rudraksha. Earlier, I was telling you about the total touch. Whenever Master touches something, it is total. The whole touch; that which is touched becomes holy; it becomes energized.

People ask me, why do you wear all these beads? Why these beads? You know, whenever the battery gets discharged, you plug the battery into the power source to recharge it. Much in the same way whenever your body gets discharged, whenever it reaches a low energy depression, these beads can supply energy to you. These beads, when they are energized by the Master, can supply energy to you, to your system. They can supply energy to your body. There are a few energized beads which were presented to the ashram, by one of our devotees from his own rudraksha trees.

So, each one of you will be given one rudraksha bead; a bead energized by the Master. You can wear it around your neck. If you feel in the work place you cannot wear it, at least in the night time you can have it on your body. You will see that it works miracles. It does lot of good things physically and mentally. The amount of good these type of beads, the rudraksha or the raktha chandana (red sandalwood) can do to you, you cannot imagine. It works with your body for 24 hours.

Not only that, it again and again reminds you to live now and here. You can use this as a one more tool. You can use it as a technique. Whenever you remember the rudraksha on your body, immediately, you can bring your mind to now here. It can remind you of the spiritual nature of you. So, you can have it around your neck or have it in the hand and or even if you have the mangal sutra (necklace Hindu women wear as a sign of being married, similar to a wedding ring for a Christian) attach this with it. Where ever it is possible, under the pillow, anywhere if it is near your vicinity, it can radiate and give you tremendous energy. All of you will have this as a compliment. Thank You.