A small story:
In a city, the emperor came out for his morning walk from his palace. While he was walking, he met a beggar and asked him, 'What do you want?'
The beggar laughed at the emperor and said, 'You are asking me if you can fulfill my desire!'
The king was offended by the beggar and said, 'What is it? Just tell me and I can fulfill your desire.'
The beggar told the emperor, 'Think twice before you promise anything.'
The beggar was the emperor's past life master! He had promised in that life to the emperor that he would come and try to awaken the king in his next life. The king missed it in his past life and so the master had come again to try to awaken him this time at least.
But the king had forgotten it completely. Nobody remembers past lives. So he insisted that he will fulfill anything the beggar asked for.
The beggar said, 'My desire is a very simple one. You see this begging bowl. Can you fill this bowl with something?'
The emperor called one of his ministers and told him, 'Fill this man's begging bowl with money.'
The minister went and got some money and put it into the bowl; the money immediately disappeared. Again he dropped some money and again it disappeared. However much he poured into it, the begging bowl remained always empty.
The news went throughout the whole city and a huge crowd gathered near the palace. The emperor's prestige was at stake. He told his ministers, 'Even if the whole kingdom is lost, I am ready to lose it. I cannot be defeated by this beggar.'
Pearls, diamonds and emeralds were becoming exhausted.
Finally it was evening and the people were standing there in utter silence. The king fell at the feet of the beggar and admitted his defeat. He said, 'You have won, but before you leave just tell me what this begging bowl is made of?'
The beggar laughed at the emperor and said, 'There is no secret. It is made up of the human mind. It is nothing but human desire!' This single understanding transformed the life of the king.
The mind is like a black hole. It simply takes in things endlessly and asks for more. We never relax or enjoy our lives. We postpone enjoyment. When we are studying, we say, 'I will enjoy life after marriage.' After marriage, we say, 'After I have children'. After children we say, 'After his education'; then we say, 'After retirement I will enjoy social security.' But by the time we retire, we are trained to run continuously. We have created within ourselves a mental set up that will never let us relax and enjoy anything.
I have seen in many cases that the son would have gotten married and even the grandson, but the old man will be going through the matrimonial column in the newspapers. He will be going through the entire paper from morning till night more thoroughly than even the editor of the paper! Why? Because he cannot sit with himself. We can sit with the television, the telephone, the paper, but never with ourselves. The capacity to sit with ourselves, the ability to be with ourselves silently in comfort is what I call life. Only this gives us a glimpse of real life. If we have nothing else to do, we start thinking: either planning or worrying. Here too we are bothered about lifestyle. Either we are collecting data, processing data, or conveying data! We are continuously running and running but never experiencing life.
If we really experience life fully, we will never have fear of death because life and death are not two separate things but are two sides of the same coin. If we have experienced life, we will realize that death is not an end to life but the climax of life, the peak of our lives - an intense experience; it is the intense energy of undergoing a transformation. The Bhagavad Gita (a discourse given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna) says that death is just like the changing of one's shirt. It is only a changing of our body into another one. And this changing of the body will lead to an inner transformation.
The second plane is one of fear. If you observe our whole lifestyle, it is actually based on fear. We are always afraid of something or the other. Even when we are enjoying something, we are afraid that we may lose that enjoyment. If we have experienced life to the core of our being, then we will know that we have nothing to be afraid of because we have nothing to lose. If something is to be lost then it is better to lose it fast. Anything that can be lost is not worth having!
We have so many types of fears: fear of losing material possessions; fear of losing physical and mental health; fear of losing one's loved ones and love; and then the fear of unknown happenings, including death, of which we know little. It is these things which bring about great unease and fear.
The ultimate fear we all have, is that of losing our identity, our ego. In many surveys, it has been established that while what most people fear is death, the second most common fear is that of public speaking! While these two fears may seem very different, they have a common thread - that of loss of ego. At death, we have no idea as to where we are going, what is going to happen to us. As a result, our ego feels threatened. Our ego is always used to having a solid identity and agenda. Death comes as a threat to it. In public speaking, the ego fears failure, of being shamed in public if the performance is not good enough.
In the meantime, society and religion keep instilling more and more fears into our system. The fear of sin, moral wrong-doing, of punishment in hell – all these are all drilled into us from childhood by those who wish to control us and our actions. None of these fears have any spiritual sanction. Spirituality never imposes morality on anyone. It always facilitates morality through deep awareness, never through compulsion or fear.
All these fears can only be overcome by facing them boldly. Fear is like a shadow; it follows us, stalks us. But one thing: the moment we turn around to face it, it disappears! That is the secret that we do not know. All we need to do is face the fear with understanding and awareness. The fear will simply dissolve. Then, we will understand that we were afraid of something that never had any truth in it.
The third plane is that of worry, what I call corrupted inner chattering. When our inner chattering or thoughts are corrupted, and they disturb our inner self, then worrying happens. All our worries are about our lifestyle. If we are centered on our lifestyle, we will be constantly worrying. The person who has a car will worry that he may not get the spare parts for it. The person who doesn't have a car will worry about not having one! We continuously come up with something to worry about. Worry becomes a crutch, a companion that we cannot do without.
Worries spring from the gap between our expectations and reality. Reality is happening as it should happen – in accordance with the flow of Existence. All we need to do is flow with it with deep reverence. But we start having our own expectations of how each moment should be. There starts the problem. The gap between the grand reality and our expectations, gives rise to a constant inner chatter of worry.
With increasing competition around us for everything - education, work, life partners etc - we find that we worry and feel stressful most of the time. Worry is almost our hallmark! When we worry in the office, we call it work; when we worry at home, we call it family issues; when we worry at the beach, we call it vacation. The body may be in different locations, but the mind is always on one focus - worry.
The interesting part is, we all believe that only we are special; only we have worries. That is not true. Every one has by and large the same worries; they are expressed in different ways, that is all. We worry with guilt about the past or with anxiety about the future. The past is buried and is history. The future is not at all under our control. The only meaningful thing is the present moment. If we understand this completely, we will stop worrying.
The next plane has to do with attention from others. Now our problem becomes a little more subtle; it becomes more emotional. As long as you are a lifestyle-based person, you will continuously ask for other people's attention. When we get attention from others, we feel happy; we are in an expanded mood. That is why people will give anything to become a celebrity. It gives them a boost; they get the attention of so many thousands of people. And all that attention gives them the energy. They feel more than life size! That is the reason why politicians feel so energetic when they are among their followers.
There is something called mob psychology. When you are in a crowd, you feel like you can do anything and get away with it! A person may scream 'Down, down' to the Principal of his college as part of a mob, but if we take that person out of the mob, he will simply shake with fear! This is the scale to see if you derive your energy from others or from yourself. If you are more energetic in a group, then your lifestyle is based on attention from others.
We always feel that the masses are led by leaders. The truth is, the leader does what the masses want. Leaders are the worst slaves because their energy is not based on themselves but on the attention of the masses. When the attention drops, they feel deprived and low. Similarly, when others tell us that we are good, we feel good. When others tell us that we are no good, we feel bad. Our opinion of ourselves is based on the opinion others have of us. If we are repeatedly told that we are 'a nobody', then we begin to feel like a nobody! We don't know who we are, and so we depend on others to tell us.
If you have had a solid experience with yourself, then you have knowledge about yourself. But if you are based only on your lifestyle, then you will depend only on certificates from others continuously, because lifestyle involves only the outer world. On the other hand, if you are based on life, you will get a deep satisfaction from anything that you do, not from what others say. When you get to know yourself, you measure yourself from your own opinion, and you will be living for life itself, and not for lifestyle.
How we build our self-esteem decides how our life is going to be. There are many things that we do because we need other people's approval, and equally many things we don't do because others may not approve. We feel the need to be politically correct to be approved of by society. In the end, we stop doing what we wish to do. We stop doing what gives us passion. We start living life for others, not for ourselves.
If we break out of this, buck the trend, and do what we are really passionate about, not caring what others may think of us, we are on the path to eternal happiness.
The fifth plane is that of comparing ourselves with others. We constantly compare what we have with what others have. We feel jealous about our friends, neighbors, colleagues and what not. If our colleague gets the latest car, our own car suddenly seems inadequate. We find the need to change our car every year, our house every three years and our spouse every five years! When we see what others have, we get jealous and immediately, our wants increase. Based on jealousy and greed, our wants increase. And there is no end to this. It will take us deeper and deeper into it. Jealousy is a terrible waste of our energy. It simply drains us. It is a wasteful emotion.
We are neither the best in anything nor the worst in anything. If we make people stand in a line depending on what they have and what they don't have, we will find that most of us will be somewhere in the middle. Yet, we are always struggling constantly to be number one and number two in something or the other. When we do this,
We quickly become number one in reaching the graveyard! The seed to this number game is sown in our education system, when we start ranking our children. Once we rank the first three, does it mean that the rest of the class is useless? No! There is such tremendous potential in each child waiting to express! Only when we get out of this habit of ranking people, can global happiness start happening.
We must realize that each of us in unique. There is no scope to compare ourselves with others. Every moment spent in comparison is a moment wasted in our own growth.
The sixth plane is ego or high self-esteem. Imagining yourself to be higher or lower than what you really are is ego. Again, this is based on another's opinion of yourself.
Yesterday, a news reporter was asking me how I could have so much wisdom at such a young age. I told him that wisdom is not based on the incidents that happen in our lives, but based upon what we have learned from the experiences that happen. It does not depend on the number of incidents, but the number of things we have learned from the incidents. If we are aware, and if we have our eyes open, we don't even have to experience a whole lot of things. Life is too short to commit all the mistakes and learn from them. We can learn through sheer awareness. Suppose you touch a burning cigarette; you realize it burns. Then you touch a fireplace and see that also burns. Then you touch burning charcoal and realize that also burns. Next you touch a matchstick and find that it burns too! By the time you touch all types of fire, and realize that all types of fire burn, your body will be ready to be burnt! This is called learning from experience.
The other kind of learning is when you touch one kind of fire and realize that all types of fire burn. That is wisdom! Experience is based on lifestyle; wisdom is based on life. When you have sharp awareness, intelligence and the consciousness of being, every incident will reveal its truth to you. You become more aware of what is happening both inside and outside your being. You become more aware of what is needed to fulfill both your life and your lifestyle.
There are people who run and run to fulfill their ego. They run to achieve something, but once they achieve it, they feel like fools because it gives them no fulfillment. The other day, a man told me that when he first came to America, he had an agenda for himself.
He had a list of things to achieve, and he gave himself 20 years to do it. By God's grace, he had achieved all that he wanted to in just 8 years. Now, in spite of all that achievement, he felt a deep void in himself. He had achieved 'what' he wanted to achieve, but wondered 'what for' he had now achieved. He achieved only to get joy and bliss, but he felt he had not achieved that.
When you achieve for the sake of joy, the experience of that joy is temporary. It is mostly the joy of achieving. Once one achievement is completed, another project has to begin to keep the adrenalin flowing; otherwise you will fall into depression.
When you achieve and achieve, and find no joy in spite of it, it causes depression of success - the empty feeling that arises even after having achieved whatever is the societal idea of success. Almost every 'successful' person in the 'civilized' world suffers from this condition of depression of success. People in the so-called 'under developed' nations of the world, are still struggling towards material success, and their unhappiness results in depression of failure!
Depression of failure is in a way, better than depression of success. In depression of failure, there is hope that you may achieve your desires tomorrow, but depression of success leads you straight to the truth. Hope acts like a buffer with the truth. But when you have to face the truth directly, it hurts. When you realize there is nothing more to achieve and nowhere else to go, deep hopelessness happens in you. From there three paths are open to you. The first is the path of addiction – to drugs, alcohol, or even food. That is why you will see that depressed people start becoming obese. At least with drugs and alcohol, you may realize that they are in addiction. But when they are addicted to food, you will not even realize it. That is why there is such a high percentage of obesity in developed countries.
Here, in countries like America, people have achieved whatever there is to achieve in their lifestyle, but have left a huge void in achieving in their life itself. Life is sold for the sake of lifestyle. We sell our eyes to buy a painting, our tongue to buy good food, our legs to pay for dance classes! We have what we want - the lifestyle, but we do not have the life. The desired lifestyle is achieved, but not the core of life itself. Life becomes a rat race. The problem is that even if you win the rat race, you remain a rat!
YOU ARE NO SINNER!
To feed our egos, we continuously run; but in the end we feel like fools. When you run after something you want, you get it, but you find that the desire for that has disappeared! If you want a car very badly, you do everything to get it, but once you get it, you realize that it is no big deal after all. Very often you find that you have paid too much for the desire; invested too much time and energy. As long as we continue to run after our 'dream' lifestyle, we will continue to be under pressure, under stress. We will have no time to rest and enjoy our life. And this is what leads to deep discontentment.
Discontentment is the seventh plane. If we are based on lifestyle only, then we will experience only discontentment.
In the Mahabharata - the great Hindu epic - there is a beautiful story about a king called Yayati.
This king enjoyed all types of pleasures for a hundred years. But when Yama - the Lord of Death - knocked at his door, he was unwilling to open the door for Him. He pleaded with Him for an extension of an additional hundred years.
Yama agreed, provided one of his sons was willing to die in his place. One of Yayati's sons agreed and Yayati was granted a hundred more years.
At the end of another 100 years, Yama returned to claim him and again Yayati pleaded for a hundred more years. Again he was granted his wish with one more son dying in his place. This continued 10 more times, with Yayati getting continuous extensions.
In the end, Yama said to him, 'You are pouring oil to put out the fire'. The moment he said that, Yayati had the first glimpse of enlightenment or satori.
Yama told him that he was trying to pour oil to put out the fire! It means, he was going behind more desires to get out of the cycle of desires. How is that possible? Can you quench your desires by pouring more sensory pleasures onto them? Can you quench your discontentment by improving your lifestyle?
Lifestyle can never fulfill life. To be ready to die, you should have had a fulfilling life. Lifestyle can never get fulfilling because it is based on 'more'. Life can become fulfilling because it is based on 'what is'.
I always tell people: don't add more years to your life; add life to your years!
We can add life to our years in three ways: live in the present moment, have more awareness about what happens in the outer world, and be more deeply conscious of the changes in the inner world. These three ways will give you a glimpse of life, of the energy of life and an experience of samādhi.
If you are centered in consciousness, you will be centered in deep satisfaction all the time. When you are like this, at the level of sex, or the first plane, instead of fantasies, you will have a deep intimacy with your spouse. At the level of fear, there will be only understanding of the transient nature of things, never fear. At the level of worry, instead of corrupted inner chattering, you will have clarity of thought. Instead of psychological worrying, you will do effective chronological planning. At the level of attention, instead of drawing attention and energy from others, you will start radiating energy to others. At the level of self-esteem, instead of having low or high self-esteem, you will know who you are, and you will start expanding or flourishing in your own way. At the level of ego, you will work with complete awareness of yourself and others, and not fall into the trap of the ego. At the level of discontentment, there will be only deep fulfillment, never discontentment.
So many great masters have left their bodies at a very young age - like Shankara at 32, Vivekananda at 39, Ramakrishna at 50 and Yogananda as well. They had such deep satisfaction because they experienced life fully. If you are centered on lifestyle, you will work towards increasing your material possessions and life years. But if you are centered on life, you will continuously radiate energy and your material possessions and life years will increase as a natural by product.
There is no proof to support what I am telling you in science. It has to be experienced. It is beyond logic like all great things are. We cannot prove the presence of God through logic. The moment that is done, logic will become greater than God! God is great because He cannot be proved by logic. In the same way, life also is beyond logic; it is paradoxical. When we try to look at it logically, we miss life itself. Let these ideas sink into your being. Let this consciousness and awareness flower in yourself; let you experience life in eternal bliss – nithyānanda!