Rise above myths and re-discover yourself…

Rise above myths and re-discover yourself… all gods are nothing before the Source of your Self.

— essence of chapter 3
Kena Upanishad

Never mess with myths people believe in. They can never be proved as true which explains the anger if others ridicule them. Religious tolerance essentially means you go ahead and believe in your incredible myths and I’ll believe in mine.

Myths have an awesome power over us. They were cleverly designed for the unconscious, designed to take deep twisted roots inside the unquestioning mind of dreams. Once they possess the dreaming mind, it is impossible to shake off. Try and discard one, the myth will return as nightmares, portents, signs from the heavens that a deep wrong is being committed.

All religions have embraced myths unto their selves. Hinduism has probably more than the rest put together. Hindu myths are known by the euphemism puraan. Every major God has a puraan. Many popular godmen have also wisely acquired puraans for themselves. If you plan to become a godman in the near future, better set a committee right now to churn up an exciting new puraan for your forthcoming avatar.

Sure, myths have been a great unifier of nations and cultures. The legend of Lord Ram helped unite India from north to south, kept up its spirit in the worst of medieval times. The legend of Jesus spread across the ends of earth into the largest most powerful religion the world has known. Myths add magic to our lives, take us back to giddy childhood days, unite us through a shared belief.

They are also double-edged swords. The second edge is hidden in the handle, and it slashes the wrists of those who wield it. Whatever the culture race or religion, the message embedded in all myths is the same. He is great, you are insignificant. He is a hero, you are a zero. He made water into wine, He made a bridge of floating stones, you did not. Eventually myths bleed your strength and weaken you into submission. It puts another person, idea or entity way above you and reduces you to a kneeling bowing grovelling person.

Vedanta says there is a time to embrace the myth and a time to rise above it. When you need to merge with your religious group, go ahead and cuddle up with all the myths you want. When you want to touch the silence within, it is time to go beyond and look at yourself and nothing else.

You don’t need to discard your faith. Just rise above it, rise above all the gods and demons the human mind has created. Rise above all the godmen and prophets who have held sway over the ages.

It is not easy, yes. Vedanta was never for the faint hearted. Walk on only if you have the courage. The road ahead is rough but the view is very beautiful.

Existence is made out

Joy is the stuff existence is made of. So whenever you are moving towards becoming more existential, you will be becoming more and more full of joy and delight, for no reason at all. If you are moving into detachment, love will grow, joy will grow, only attachments will drop because attachments bring misery, attachments bring bondage, attachments destroy your freedom. Indifference is a pseudo-coin — it looks like detachment, but it only looks like detachment. Nothing will be growing in it. You will simply shrink and die.

Don’t try to achieve happiness

When you are trying to achieve happiness you will miss. The very effort to achieve happiness is absurd because happiness is here: you cannot achieve it. Nothing has to be done about it, you simply have to allow it. It is happening, it is all around you; within, without, only happiness is. Nothing else is real. Watch, look deep into the world, into trees, birds, rocks, rivers, into the stars, moon and sun, into people, animals — existence is made out of the stuff of happiness, joy. Relax and it fulfills you.

Love is not attachment

Love knows no attachment, and that which knows attachment is not love. That is possessiveness, domination, clinging, fear, greed — it may be a thousand and one things, but it is not love. In the name of love other things are parading, in the name of love other things are hiding behind, but on the container the label ‘love’ is stuck. Inside you will find many sorts of things but not love at all.

Are you afraid of aloneness?

Watch. If you are attached to a person, are you in love? Or are you afraid of your aloneness, so you cling? If the person dies or moves somewhere else or falls in love with someone else then you will kill this person or you may kill yourself and you will say, ‘I was so attached that I couldn’t live without her or without him’.

It is sheer foolishness. It is not love, it is something else. You are afraid of your aloneness, you are not capable of being with yourself. And you use the other person as a means for your own ends.

To use another person as a means is violence

Immanuel Kant has made it one of his fundamentals of moral life. He used to say that to treat a person as a means is the greatest immoral act there is. Because when you treat another person as a means — for your gratification, for your sexual desire, for your fear — you are reducing the other person to be a thing, you are destroying his or her freedom, you are killing his or her soul.

Courtesy Osho International Foundation/ www.osho.com

Slowly start unfolding the spiritual self

he beginning of a new year brings new resolutions, a desire to give direction and control to life.

So, it was that the family sat huddled, reviewing the year gone by, discussing resolutions, setting goals and methodology to achieve them. Looking back, year after year, we had fixed physical, professional, financial, social, family and intellectual goals. Many were achieved, some goals became meaningless and new ones emerged.

It becomes apparent that a major portion of time was spent on fulfilling responsibilities and equipping ourselves to live more comfortably and peacefully. 'Intellectual goals' were the ones which stood out: reading, reflection and analysis were in the realm of challenging the mind and understanding life.

The most interesting aspect of looking back is that 'yoga' gently entered life under the head 'physical goals' and slowly made way to 'intellectual goals' in terms of understanding life and self. And, finally, yoga emerged as a means of 'spiritual goal', adding a new dimension to our lives. In some ways, intellectual and spiritual goals merged.

Over the years, this 'nectarine' aspect of life, though always present and experienced in parts, was not fully tapped. Yoga brings with it a lifestyle based in the 'spirit of the self' which pervades all other aspects of life.

Yoga teaches us that this body is essentially an instrument for realising the ` Param Atman' . Besides the physical body, there is an immensely powerful yet soft and gentle `spiritual body'. To build a spiritual body is a goal. The question is how to put this concept in 'actionable'? Here is where yoga as a discipline and as a 'body of knowledge' comes to our help.

Though conceptually, the spiritual body would be one 'established in its pure pristine self' we can take its outward manifestation and try to achieve them. Thus, a well-developed spiritual body would manifest in this world with the following attributes: i) Calm, ii) Serene, iii) Magnetic, iv) Efficient, v) Dynamic, vi) Tranquil, vii) Joyous, viii) Pure, ix) Disciplined, x) Graceful, xi) Physically fit, xii) Focused, xiii) Constantly learning and improving.

This list is not exhaustive. It is just a means to understand that deep within when the spiritual body will evolve what would be its manifestation in outer physical world. So, the output would be the list stated above. What would be the inputs to nourish the spirit so that the spiritual body develops? Yoga and 'yogic living' give us 'tools' to nourish our spiritual self. The list here is: i ) Mantra, ii) Jap, iii) Asana, iv) Pranayama, v) Pratyahara, and vi) Dharana .

Also develop i) Vivek or discrimination, ii) Vairagya or non-attachment, iii) Always make a conscious 'sattvic' choice, iv) Complete listening, and v) Considered speech. The above inputs and assiduous development of vivek, vairagya , always making conscious sattvic choice and considered speech would lead to an output of a calm, serene, emotionally stable, physically fit and a magnetic personality which is constantly learning and improving itself.

The 'mantra' breaks the emotional, mental and physical knots or barriers within. The vibrational powers of mantra make the spirit free-flowing. The 'jap' of 'guru mantra' pervades the spiritual self and connects the spirit of self to a very powerful source of energy and intelligence. The 'asanas' done with awareness make the body a more efficient machine. The 'pratyahara' leads to the journey within and 'dharana' leads to a focused efficient mind.

In the physical world, a person who is established in 'vivek' and 'vairagya' is like a magnet to others. The self comes nearer to its internal self, our spiritual body. The journey begins from the physical to internal with changed understanding of life. The new unfolding is that of the 'spiritual self'.

Love lessons from nature

To feel love and compassion for all, observe nature with totality of mind without letting it get affected by any previously constructed image,opinion or past knowledge.

Look around to observe things as if you are seeing them for the very first time. Become one with the object of observation.

The sun provides light and warmth irrespective of who benefits from it. It shines on all. The clouds, rivers, mountains and jungles follow the same example of universal love. Trees provide shade, fruits and flowers for healthy environment and food for hungry with the same unattached benevolence for all. They do not demand any favour in return. The earth matures the seeds into healthy plants irrespective of who planted the seeds or who will benefit from them. This truly is like mother's love which is equal and forgiving for all children even when some are the cause of hurt to her.

If one learns from nature, the world will be a much better place as the destructive tendencies like jealousy, envy, hatred and selfishness will be eliminated. A new era of mutual love and trust will dawn on earth. All differences of caste, colour, race, gender and age will melt away. Most of the modern age problems have arisen because we have stopped learning from nature and caring for it.

Imagine the blissful feeling one gets when listening to the chirping of birds at dawn, observing the river flowing its course, looking at the snow-clad peaks of mountains, taking a stroll in a forest with majestically standing tall trees and looking at the moon on a full-moon night or a star-studded sky on amavasya night. The divine feelings generated by such experiences compel one to ponder over the meaning of life, our place in the universe, and create an urge to become one with the Divine to experience eternal bliss. Live with nature, love nature, protect nature, learn from nature and you will soon rise above all parochial tendencies and become a votary of universal love.

Since long, we have been drawing spiritual inspiration from nature. According to Buddhist guru Daisaku Ikeda, who is also a keen photographer, response to nature's beauty is not merely aesthetic but reflects an ability to discern a deeper meaning and interconnectedness in things. With its universal language, the photographer of nature's beauty serves as a bridge connecting the hearts of people everywhere.

Osho in his discourse on 'Intuition' quotes the haiku of Basho the Zen mystic and master:

"When I look carefully I see nazunia blooming by the hedge!"

Osho says that the deep meaning of it cannot be understood intellectually but only intuitively. The idea Osho wants to convey is that one can draw deep spiritual inspiration even from simple things like looking at an ordinary flower and pondering over its beauty, its divine message, the mystery of creation.

The main cause of discontent of mind, heart and spirit is to spend too much time indoors and being away from the nurturing restorative powers of nature. So, try to get back to nature in some way. Give yourself some time in the woods, mountains, open meadows or walking barefoot on the beach. Drink in the beauty of nature as much as you can. Even if you live in the city, go and walk on the grass in a park. You will feel more complete, rejuvenated and blissful.

What bliss it is to love and be loved

Love is the most natural emotion of life. Love is the most euphoric, ecstatic, overwhelming joy one can
ever experience.

God has just dipped us into the nectar of love, which is the spice of life. Why does a newborn baby start crying the moment she comes into this materialistic world? How does a baby recognise her mother? Why does she sleep peacefully in her mother's arms?

A mother's womb for a baby is nothing less than a temple, for there is only love. Enjoying life in such a sweet atmosphere, the baby feels safe in her mother's womb. God resides in a temple, so a foetus is regarded as an incarnation of God. And when a baby comes into the world, she is separated from the spiritual world of freedom.

Every breath of the mother is connected to the breath of the baby. Every beat of the mother's heart is connected to the heartbeat of the baby. Why then shouldn't she recognise her mother? This is true love. When the universe was created, God showered his pure love on everybody. His love for us is boundless. We pray to God because we are grateful to him.

We tend to forget God in times of happiness. Most of the times we do not show kindness to others once we get happiness. God wants us to put our feet on the ground and live a life of love. Serving the children of God is the best way to love God. No human being should be deprived of love and kindness.

Kindness and courage both are different dimensions of love. Kindness is the virtue of being compassionate and merciful towards others, be it to our own baby or someone else's, be it our friend or a stranger. Every living being in some way or the other is an image of God. By showing love towards all we can hope to achieve this quality. In the same way, courage in troubled times is not everybody's cup of tea. Just as we should love others, it's also important to love ourselves and the life given to us by God. The holy spirit of God within us is called the soul. Hence, it is God who is responsible for every good deed that we do.

Joys and sorrows are like day and night. Joys or sorrows... we must welcome every emotion that God wants us to experience, with courage. Nothing is permanent, neither joys nor sorrows. No matter how dark the night, it is followed by day. No matter how painful the sorrow is, joy is bound to follow. Overcome sorrows with courage.

Nowadays there is terrorism in the name of religion. Terrorism is a dimension of hatred. God is a symbol of love. Spreading hatred for the sake of God is not justified since God can never ever be happy to see bloodshed. Gandhi fought for love and unity through the peaceful way of satyagraha . Unity cannot exist without love. Anything that brings us closer to God is love. Classical dancers worship God through their dance. Through this they gain wisdom and attain the highest spiritual freedom.

All her life Meerabai loved Krishna, she worshipped Krishna. She did not bother what the world would say about her. She just wished to be close to God, she just wished to be close to love. She is remembered as a great devotee of God. One should always choose the right path and then have the conviction and belief to tread it. This is what Meera did. Think of Krishna, and Meera comes to mind. True love brings us closer to God. God is love. Man, too, can become love.

Universal religion is moral behaviour

The word 'religion' is ingrained in our psyche. It is because of over-familiarity that people feel less inclined towards religion.

Today religion is acceptable only on the basis of experimentation. At one end are people who want forever to keep to tradition. They do not want any change. At the opposite end are those who reject religion. Both these extreme viewpoints are incapable of creating a balance.
If acceptance of the hereditary character of religion is not desirable, its rejection is altogether undesirable. No one who thinks in the language of unity, harmony and love can ever reject religion. In the absence of understanding the distinction between institutionalised religion and religion as spirituality, people make the mistake of rejecting religion.

Both rationality and spirituality have given rise to society. The first signs of non-violence arose when human beings started living in communities. The first principle of living together is acceptance of the other person's existence and adherence to ethical self-restraint, of people not transgressing into others' houses or robbing others of their possessions.

Ethical self-restraint prevents people from becoming a hindrance to others. It has its origin in religion, non-violence and non-possession. Our sense of discrimination enables us to distinguish between obligation and non-obligation, edible and inedible, nectar and poison. It is made possible by religious awareness.

A religion divorced from spirituality is shackled by externally imposed rules and instead of developing religious awareness, frustrates it. Don't abandon rules, just don't be a captive of artificial rules uninformed by spirituality. Religion ought to be the culmination of independent awareness and not an imposition. When people regard themselves as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs, they do so because of genealogy, not religiousness. Genealogy can be a source of inspiration to religion; it cannot be its soul. The soul of religion is spirituality. Only that person is religious who experiences spiritual awakening, irrespective of genealogy.

No system of government can pose a challenge to a religion that is spiritual. The question of protecting religion arises only when religion is supposed to have an existence separate from that of the religious person. Bliss and spiritual alertness are the soul of religion. They constitute the most attractive face of religion. We are seldom aware of them because we use introversion very little. Religion should spring from within, even as a well is sustained by its internal springs. The well digger should only connect the external world with the inner springs. He who is not aware of his inner riches remains deprived of prosperity. Mental conflicts result from the acceptance of the external and the rejection of the internal.

Morality is a relative term. If socially approved mores are deemed morality, their form can never be unchanging. Morality as end-result of religion is assessed not by social beliefs but by personal purity. There is no place for exploitation, oppression, arrogance and frenzy in the behaviour of a religious person. Propriety, truthfulness and simplicity constitute morality.

Shall we call him religious who does not reflect the spirit of religion in his behaviour? Just as whenever there is smoke there must be fire, wherever there is morality there must be religion. Encountering moral behaviour we can infer the religious spirit inherent in a man. Religion is first reflected in morality and only later in worship. Will a mansion without a strong foundation endure? Can a structure build on worship without morality be able to afford proper protection? In the absence of morality, the place of worship will tumble and religion will not be safe on this Earth.

Who are you?

Who are you? This is the unanswered riddle of ages. We all seem to know who we are. We feel securely rooted to ourselves, yet when we dream we are not rooted at all. In dreams we could be anyone, anywhere. In deep sleep we lose even that notion of ‘I’. It is as if we didn’t exist for that duration.
Who are you? Neuroscience is getting there. The notion of ‘I’ is like an image on a screen — a hologram created by hundreds of millions of neurons firing together. So long as we live, the neurons keep firing, the hologram keeps forming and ‘you’ exist. When we die the neurons stop firing, the screen turns blank, and ‘you’ will cease to exist. This is deep. But there is something deeper. ‘You’ are continuously dying and being reborn. ‘You’ are not the same person who started reading this article. In the space of a few seconds, ‘you’ died and were reborn many thousand times.
Neurons create an ever changing ever refreshing field. Think of it as a projector beaming a movie. Movie frames refresh themselves 24 times a second. Each of those frames are a different ‘you’ recreated quickly in smooth continuity.
It is happening so fast you can’t tell the difference. Who are you then? Are you the flickering image on the screen or the projector beaming the images? If you think ‘you’ are the image on the screen, who is the projector? Isn’t that also you? If it is not you who else could it be?
The ‘projectors’ are neuronal cells creating an electrical field. What’s making them create the field? You are already wading in deep waters filled with contradictions. Neuronal cells are made of billions of living molecules. Each atom is intrinsically ‘dead matter’.
The molecule is somehow magically alive. Inside the ‘dead’ atoms there is surprisingly perpetual motion, eternal life. If you dare go deeper, laws of physics will disappear in the quantum domain.
What a strange mind bending zone you pierced searching for yourself — a domain full of extreme puzzles, more mysterious than ‘science can ever imagine’. Back off. You won’t find that answer here.
So what is creating the images? Who are you? No one through the ages has ever had the faintest clue. Vedanta doesn’t even try for an answer. It just calls this mystery as ‘That’. Whatever it is, it is beyond the grasp of mind, but know this, the mind is completely in its grasp. You are That and even if you will never know what ‘That’ is, you can still feel its presence as truth, bliss, consciousness. Its truth is your life, its bliss your joy, its consciousness the music of your existence. You can never ‘know’ it, but you can merge with its mystery… and emerge rejuvenated into your every day self. It is the deepest most luminous layer of your being after all.
Vedanta Rocks. Feel that luminous self now. It is right here looking at you.

Live life joyfully!

If you are reading this, you have many more reasons to be joyful than you might think. You are alive, which is probably pretty basic, but all too often we don't realise that it is the most basic things that bring us the greatest joy.

We often forget to celebrate the things that are most important because they are so much with us. One of the few really wise people I have ever met once asked with great puzzlement, “Why isn't everyone dancing with the sheer joy of being alive?” Everything we do celebrate is a celebration of life, whether it is a birth, a wedding, or an anniversary. Religious festivals all celebrate some aspect of life as represented by the attributes of the deity, or the passage of some event of our lives. What we need to do is remind ourselves to consecrate every day, take time out at least once a day to quietly experience being alive. And the simplest way to that is to just pay attention to our breathing, which is another wonderful reason to be joyful.

Breath is the key to life and almost every spiritual discipline starts and ends with the breath, as does life itself. Every moment we are meditating. With every breath we are partaking of all the mysteries of the universe. Mathematically there are six molecules of Buddha in every square foot of air. A foolish friend of mine used to like to breathe in real deep to try and get some Buddha in him.

It seemed to work for him. Just for a few minutes pay attention to a gentle indrawn breath. Within that action is the key to sustaining our life. How does that happen? Whenever I think I need a miracle just to keep going, I stop and pay attention to one or two breaths. Each breath feeds the fire of the heart. Amazing.

Odds are that if you're reading this you have enough to eat. Most of us don’t eat gourmet food three times a day, but we are blessed with sufficient food, and I don’t just mean enough to provide the basic calory intake to keep us alive. We are blessed with all the associations of a loving mother that comes with the taste of some food, the memories of discovering new wonderful tastes every time we eat them again, and the love that we imbibe with food made by those who care enough about life to prepare good food, a spouse or a friend. I believe that food made by people who love to feed people has special nutritional properties.

If you think that nobody cares enough about you to prepare delicious food, let me invite you to go and get a banana, and pay attention to it. What a marvel of packaging, flavour and nutrition. I am not implying that that particular banana was grown just for you as an act of love, or may be I am. It grew, it made its way to you and it will sustain you. Now I can hear you arguing that it was provided by a chain of commerce.

What if that chain was forged to get that banana to you without any of the links being aware of the chain’s purpose? Might be, and even if it isn’t, the banana is still pretty amazing in its color, utility, taste and ability to keep us alive. I once knew a man named Rudy who only ate bananas, all different kinds and he was very healthy. And think about bread. I know that it is not much more than grain and salt and water but think about what that means. Bread, naan , chapatti, tortilla, pain, hobz, brot, or whatever you call it provides us with the elements of the earth. The process of growing, threshing and milling the grain transforms the earth into a form that we can use.
Sit in a comfortable chair with a large glass of water and take a small sip of water. Notice something about the water as you swallow. Feel it with you, feel the water’s presence. Take more small sips, noticing something different about the water each time until you drink one third of the water. Now take more small sips, this time noticing something about yourself each time. Keep sipping and noticing until two thirds of the water is gone. Now spend time with the remaining third of the water, notice its relationship with the glass, its relationship to you and your relationship to other things in the room.

So, there are a number of really elemental reasons to be joyful. Celebrate them everyday. Is this simple? Yes, but that doesn’t mean easy. We are all too often caught up in the drama of the day, our pain, the effort of work, the demands of family and friends to be full of joy. Yet, we each have a few minutes to celebrate the fire, earth and water and remind our selves to dance.

But there are more than elemental reasons to be joyful. You’re reading this in the my blog, which means you know English and most likely at least one other language. Every language is the key to wisdom that only that key can open. Whole worlds are yours to explore, and I don’t just mean Shakespeare or the Vedas, you also have the keys to the Marx brothers and humour in Hindi, Marathi, Kanada, French or whatever language you might know. Laughing can cure more things than you think.

How happy are you?

Are you the happiest person you know? Not necessarily the luckiest, richest, or most successful, just the happiest?

If not, why not? Most people will reel off their current worries — the job, the kids, the car, the price of fish. I don’t mean to sweep these aside: problems need to be solved, if you can, or waited out until they disappear . But as far as living happily is concerned you have to face a crucial fact. If you can only live happily after all your problems are solved, you are never going to live happily, because when today’s problems are gone and forgotten, others will take their place. So either living happily is just impossible, or you have to do it in spite of your problems.

Being happy depends not so much on external circumstances as on your inner life. This means all your thoughts, perceptions, beliefs, emotions, desires, dreams — your entire mental and emotional scene. Happiness is about how you react inwardly to events, what you think and believe, how you feel, how problems affect you. It may sound obvious, but like many obvious things it’s something that is often forgotten when it matters most. We focus almost exclusively on our external lives, on getting and spending and having fun, and then wonder why we are not happy. But it’s when our inner lives are tranquil that we are happiest and we call this inner peace.

So how is inner peace to be achieved? Is it a question of religion, perhaps, or yoga? These can certainly help but only if they have a positive effect on your inner life. The difficulty is that inner life is based on patterns and habits — some you were born with, most you have acquired . You don’t choose, occasion by occasion, how you respond inside when something happens. This happens and you feel angry; that happens you feel sad; you pass the patisserie and you feel hungry; you hear a tune or smell a certain scent and it reminds you of a particular time or person? Things produce a response without you thinking about it or choosing how you feel, and they don’t necessarily leave you with inner peace. So the trick is to break the pattern.

You can’t completely avoid problems, but you can change how you react to them by acquiring new habits that provoke peaceful inner responses. Training your inner life into different habits requires learning skills of thinking, feeling, and managing your beliefs and desires. These are very like the virtues many religions and philosophies advocate, but if you think of them as skills rather than virtues, you benefit from an important and liberating shift. Instead of “I must become a better person” you can think “I would live more happily if i worked on my skills” , so the change in attitude becomes a choice, not a duty. And to these remedial skills i’ve added an extra set of enjoyment skills, otherwise getting happier could turn out a very depressing affair.

This process is not something you can do overnight, it’s a whole new way of life, but the reward is what we all want most — happiness. There are five main skills you need to cultivate.

Mindfulness:

Borrowed from Buddhism , this involves developing your ability to focus your thoughts in the present. The problem most of us have with thought is having too much of it — the worrying and nonstop mental chattering our minds are prone to. Mindfulness is a key inner skill because, as it gets stronger, it lets you focus on your own inner life and catch your habits in the act. Once you can see how you are ruled by them, the change you are seeking often happens of its own accord.
Compassion:

Most religions rightly stress compassion. As well as being a virtue in its own right it is a practical skill that counteracts negative emotions like anger and hatred, which are terrible wreckers of happiness. Try it the next time someone annoys you: put yourself in their place and ask yourself what they might they be thinking or feeling to behave like that. Even bad people, let alone people who just mildly annoy you, often have a warped or mistaken view of the world which makes them do what they do. Wars are started and atrocities committed, for example, because someone decides that this is what their God wants. It doesn’t mean they should get away with their actions, in fact it may be necessary to take strong action to defend yourself.

Story skills:

These are very useful for problems with your inner belief system, as they let you stand back and explore alternative versions of reality. Beliefs have great power over your life because a belief is something you take as fact. Start to think of your beliefs as stories, and it is easier to accept that other things might be true as well, or even instead . Even true stories only select the little bit of reality we are focusing on at the moment: no one story is the whole truth about any situation. From a different point of view we would see a different story, sometimes a whole different world. This is not about make believe, it’s about reframing situations to look at them from a different perspective.

Letting-go techniques:

These are particularly helpful when we are unhappy not getting what we want. Generally, we are encouraged to keep wanting and to think that more will make us happier, whether it’s clothes or cars or even love. But wanting is a treadmill: as long as you have unsatisfied wants and desires you won’t be at peace, so to be happy you either have to satisfy all your desires, or let go of some of them. Letting-go skills also include forgiveness, which helps hugely if one of the things you think you want is revenge.

Enjoyment skills:

This last group includes skills such as patience , humour and, especially, gratitude . You don’t have to be grateful to someone, it’s enough to cultivate gratitude for things. Our minds naturally scan the environment for dangers and resources, a useful mechanism when we were hunter-gatherers . But it can make us unnecessarily pessimistic — focusing on the 10% we lack rather than the 90% we have. Cultivating enjoyment skills will help redress the balance.
Acquiring all these skills takes time and effort. The important thing is to practise them until they operate without you thinking about them. Your practice routine will be very individual , because everyone needs to prioritise different skills depending on the specific issues that are holding them back from being happy, but keep the skills in mind and you will constantly find new ways to try them out.

We have to create the future for there's no one else who is going to save us.

If we want to change the world in a significant way, if we're serious about creating a better future, then we have to face the fact that the
only way it's going to happen is through the evolution of consciousness itself. And for the universe to evolve at the level of consciousness, you and i have to be the ones to make sure it happens.

We have to create the future for there's no one else who is going to save us. Some of us cling to the hope that there is someone "up there" or "out there", a kind of higher power, that is directing the process, will intervene and make sure that everything will turn out all right in the end. Many have long since outgrown such beliefs, and it may seem utterly obvious to us that we need to save ourselves from self-annihilation. How much have we considered the deepest and most profound implications of accepting ultimate responsibility for the future?

To accept responsibility for the future means we know without doubt that it is up to us to create that future right now. Those of us at the leading edge have to stop waiting, hiding and pretending. We have to be the ones to take this leap because there isn't anyone else to do it. It needs divine intervention, but we have to be the divine interveners. We have to choose to be God, the creative or evolutionary impulse itself.

Billions of years ago, something exploded out of nothing. And who but God could have made the choice ^ to create an entire universe? That powerful urge to become is now beginning to wake up, through the unique capacity we have for self-reflective awareness. Through us, God, or the energy and intelligence that is driving this whole process, is just beginning to awaken to itself. So becoming God in an evolving universe means we have to be the ones to carry this process forward to consciously evolve for our collective salvation and transformation.

Spiritually, the enormous challenge for each and every one of us is to look directly into what it means to be the one who is going to do this. From the absolute or non-dual perspective, there is only One without a second.

We can only consciously evolve to the degree that we have actually realised at the deepest level of our being that we are that One without a second. Facing the truth of non-duality that the many is the one and that the one is ultimately who we always are in an evolutionary context forces a confrontation with any relationship to the life process that is less than whole, complete and fully committed.

To consciously evolve is to surrender unconditionally to the truth that there is no other and at the same time to accept responsibility for what that means in an evolving universe ^ a cosmos that is slowly but surely becoming aware of itself through you and me. That One without a second is simultaneously awakening to itself as it develops, as it evolves, and it is that One, as you and me, alone, that can now begin to take responsibility for endeavouring to consciously create its own future. That is the profound recognition that God is that singular energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process and is just now awakening to itself as we awaken to it. In that revelation, there is no other.

Know god through the prism of science

ome people raise doubts as to whether Newton's third law of motion - that every action has an equal and opposite reaction - is violated by M K Gandhi's principle that if you were slapped on the right cheek show the other to facilitate another similar action.

This is an example of misinterpreted science. The validity of Newton's law is restricted only to physical bodies.

Sometimes God is compared with a circle. An anonymous quote in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and Proverbs says: "The nature of God is a circle of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere." French philosopher Voltaire and Swami Vivekananda also said some thing like this. Swamiji took one step further and defined the nature of man in the following variant: "Man is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but the centre is at one place."

There is no fallacy in the definition of man. But the definition of God is not mathematically correct. There could not be a circle with its centre everywhere. A given circle, whether finite or infinite, cannot have more than one centre. However, there may be infinite number of circles with a given centre when the the circles are concentric.

God is beyond human imagination. God is the ultimate. Maybe, we can visualise God in our own ways. Since God is assumed to be Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscient, and manifest in all forms, shapes and representations the believer is free to worship, revere or adore one or more manifestations from among the infinite choices available. This is real freedom.

With reference to the likening of God to a circle, the following modification might be necessary: God may be an infinite circle with the probability of finding its centre, in a super space spanned by infinite space and time, is unity anywhere. The inclusion of time emphasises the dynamic nature of God. Therefore, the centre changes with time. In other words, God may be an infinite circle with a centre, and since the centre is a function of time, has infinite configurations.

The circle is a wonderful shape. It is the most symmetric of all shapes in two dimensions. Perhaps this symmetry is what makes it appealing to all. Any break in the symmetry introduces tilting in the nature of God, which is unacceptable since God is the manifestation of perfect symmetry in all aspects.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna could not comprehend the beginning and end of God. A circle, likewise, has neither a beginning nor an end. Any point on it can be a beginning or an end. Thus it has infinite beginnings and endings; the circle is a manifestation of the endless form of God.

Another interesting thing about the circle is that if we would start from any point on the circle and make infinite rotations about its centre, we would once again reach the starting point. This is equivalent to saying that an infinite action can be comprehended within the finiteness of a given point.

The Bhagavad Gita says: "Cherish gods with this (Yagna) and may these the gods reciprocate; thus cherishing one another, you will reap the supreme good". Do you not see an imprint of the law of action and reaction here?

The first choice has a practical completeness about it, while the second emanates from a mind agitated at its incomplete endeavours

The Sophoclean tragedy, Oedipus the King, ends with the chorus saying: "Count no man happy till he dies."

After having been an involved spectator of the tragic life of Oedipus, a man in conflict with himself and his destiny, the chorus, representing common men and women of Athens 500 years before Christ, comes out with, as it were, a verdict on man's ambiguous destiny and articulates these words of wisdom as borne out of the trials and tribulations of the protagonist. The idea is to make us realise that tragedy, whether personal or social, ennobles the man, chastens him, makes him accept reality and in the process makes him better.

However, equally true is the fact that the elements of caution, fear and seriousness that such wisdom necessarily carries, go against the restless and inquisitive spirit of man. Rather, there seems to be a continuous struggle between the wisdom, which is essentially pessimistic and debilitating, trying to ground the individual to reality and his urge to create new realities. This leads us to the other side of experience where tragedy is not an ennobling but an embittering experience.

It may be instructive to note that in the western dramatic tradition, the idea of tragedy having an ennobling impact on man is generally put forth through ploys like the chorus or chorus-like characters representing the viewpoint of laymen. But the protagonist himself, who acts out his conflicts and meets a tragic end, generally remains embittered at his fall. The artist who creates such a character and plot, despite all the moral undertones at the end, is usually 'suspected' to be on the side of the tragic hero, even though his character's choices do not conform to social norms.

As a result, we find two kinds of responses that tragedy offers. First to take the experience as a grim reminder of 'the special providence in the fall of a sparrow', to borrow a phrase from Hamlet, and thus to remain in awe of unknown forces working against man and his purposes. Or to consider the experience as a result of personal imperfection that can be corrected in all probability. The first choice has a practical completeness about it, while the second emanates from a mind agitated and resentful at its incomplete endeavours...

But is a man's insistence on endeavouring to 'prevail' over his destiny likely to end in the repeat of tragedy only? On the face of it, this appears to be an open and shut case, but perhaps it is not so. Because though history appears to repeat and move in a circular fashion, in reality the circle is never complete and events actually take the form of a spiral movement, where ends do not meet. Rather they open up new frontiers at the very point where at first instance they appeared destined to meet to complete the circle.

The spiral contour that the narrative of life takes upon itself is made possible not because there is an element of chance in life, but simply because the blighting experience of tragedy inevitably makes us rise up again and take up lost causes, subverting, as it were, the Sophoclean chorus's verdict.

Your auras reveal more about the real you

The world of the spirit begins where logic ends. Logic is limited by the boundaries of reason, which is further limited by the limitations of the individual's buddhi.

However, since most speak and comprehend only the tongue of logic, we can try to understand the aura which is of the spiritual realm.

All bodies emit heat radiation or vibrations. With non-living bodies, since there is no immediate change in their structure, this emission remains constant. In living bodies cells are constantly being destroyed and created; the rate of vibrations are continuously changing. This is the superficial or logical explanation of what auras are and why they are constant or changing.

A lot of 'scientific' study of physical auras has been done in the West in recent years. Researchers have variously called it the human atmosphere, force field, and bio-energy. The fundamental substance of aura is best described by the Sanskrit term, prana. For our present purposes we could understand it as the vital essence or force, which is the basis of all manifested life. It is the steam that runs the physical and mental machinery of life. The colours of our mental states are manifested in the pranic substance of our auras.

Logically, these colours are regulated at seven energy centres of the body called the chakras. Each of the chakras, mooladhar, swadhishthan, manipoorak, anahat, vishuddhi, ajna and sahastrar vibrate at a particular colour frequency. It is like software for each chakra. When the software malfunctions or the wrong software goes into the wrong chakra, imbalance and malfunctioning occurs. Any imbalance that stays for too long becomes chronic and manifests as an ailment in the physical body.

What the clairvoyant can see are the aura or chakra imbalances in the shade of the colour being too dark or heavy or colours other than the chakra's own colour manifesting. Considerations like what shade is mixing with the natural colour, in what proportion, the positioning, the luminosity. All determine the state of the being. Only an enlightened person would be able to interpret the infinite permutations and combinations correctly.

The real person stands revealed once you have the correct interpretation of the auras. You can hide your face by applying make-up or you may hide your true body by wearing loose fitting clothes, you may even lie about your character and intention but it is impossible to hide your true self from the eyes of a clairvoyant, for aura is something you cannot hide.

The entire spectrum of colour and light are in human auras. Different colours belong to different areas around the body. Lower centres or chakras of the body are associated with darker and heavier colours like reds and browns. The higher centres have light pink, violet and blue. Again, more evolved souls have much more luminescence in their auras than the average individual.

What does your aura tell you? Your aura indicates your state of health to come, specific diseases that are manifested or are going to manifest in your body, your mental and emotional state, your level of intelligence, and how evolved you are as an individual. Assigning meanings to specific colours is of no use to the novice. The positioning, thickness, luminescence, shade and changeability are some of the factors that are taken into account in interpretation. The interpretation is always left to the guru.

Raise consciousness, beware of character

My whole effort is to give you a consciousness, not a character. Character is needed by those who don't have consciousness. If you have eyes, you don't need a walking stick to help you find your way. If you can see you don't ask others, "Where is the door?" Character is needed because people are unconscious. Character is just a lubricant; it helps you to run your life in a smooth way.

George Gurdjieff used to say that character is like a buffer. Buffers are used in railway trains, between two compartments. If something happens, these buffers prevent the two compartments from clashing with each other. Or it is like springs: cars have springs so you can move smoothly ^ even on an Indian road. Those springs go on absorbing the shocks; they are called shock absorbers.

Then what is character?

It is a shock absorber. People are told to be humble. If you learn how to be humble it is a shock absorber. By learning how to be humble you will be able to protect yourself against other people's egos. They will not hurt you so much; you are a humble man. If you are egoistic you are bound to be hurt again and again. The ego is very sensitive, so you cover up your ego with a blanket of humility. It helps, but it does not transform you.

My work is of transformation. This is an alchemical school: I want to transform you from unconsciousness into consciousness, from darkness into light. I cannot give you a character; I can only give you insight, awareness. I would like you to live moment-to-moment, not according to a set pattern given by me or given by the society, the church, the state. I would like you to live according to your own small light of awareness, according to your own consciousness. Be responsive to each moment.

Character means you have ready-made answers for all the questions of life, so whenever a situation arises you respond according to the set pattern. So it is not a true response, it is only a reaction. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness responds: he takes the situation in, he reflects the reality as it is, and out of that reflection he acts. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness acts. The man of character is mechanical; robotlike he functions. He has a computer in his mind, full of information; ask him anything and a ready-made answer pops out.

Heraclitus says: You cannot step in the same river twice. And i say to you: You cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-flowing. Character is stagnant; it is a dirty pool of water. Consciousness is a river. A man of consciousness simply acts in the moment, not out of the past and out of the memory. His response has a beauty, a naturalness, and his response is true to the situation. The man of character always falls short, because life is continuously changing; it is never the same. And your answers are always the same, they never grow ^ they can't grow, they are dead.

You have been told a certain thing in your childhood; it has remained there. You have grown, life has changed, but that answer that was given by your parents, teachers or by your priests. And if something happens you will function according to that answer which was given to you 50 years before. And in 50 years so much water has flowed down the Ganges; it is a totally different life.

Excerpted from Be Still and Know, courtesy Osho International Foundation.

Rise in Love

Man needs to be needed. It is one of the most fundamental needs of human beings. Unless one is cared for, one starts dying. Unless one feels that he is significant to somebody, his whole life becomes insignificant.
Hence love is the greatest therapy there is. The world needs therapy because the world is missing love. In a really loving world no therapy will be needed at all; love will be enough, more than enough.
Hugging is healing
Hugging is only a gesture of love, of caring. The very feel of the warmth flowing from the other person melts many illnesses in you, melts the ice-like, cold ego. It makes you again a child. The psychologists are well aware of the fact now that unless a child is hugged and kissed, he misses some nourishment. Just as the body needs food, the soul needs love. You can give to the child all the physical comforts, but if the hugs are missing the child will not grow into a wholesome being.
A patient can be cured by love
You can know all there is to know about therapy, you can become an expert, but if you don’t know the art of love you remain only on the surface of the miracle of therapy.
The moment you start feeling for the patient, for the one who is suffering out of 100 cases, 90 people are suffering basically because they have not been loved. If you start feeling the need for love of the patient, and if you can fulfill the need, there will be almost a magical change in the condition of the patient.
Two dimensions of love
Love can exist in two dimensions: either as horizontal or as vertical. We are acquainted with the love which is horizontal. That is also the dimension of time; the vertical is the dimension of eternity.The yearning in the heart is not for permanency; there you have misunderstood. But that misunderstanding is almost universal because we know only one plane: the horizontal, the dimension of time. In that dimension there are only two possibilities: either something is momentary or permanent.
Let love be born out of meditation
I can teach you meditation, and out of meditation a different quality of love will happen. Then it is not fooling around. Then it is wisdom, not foolishness. Then you don’t fall in love, you rise in love. Then love is a quality to you. Just as light surrounds a flame, love surrounds you. Then it has eternity. It is unaddressed. Whosoever comes close to you will drink out of it. Whosoever comes close to you will be enchanted by it, enriched by it. A tree, a rock, a person, an animal, it does not matter. Even if you are sitting alone...

Let go for things to start happening

Let go for things to start happening

Take a dose of awareness and life is so beautiful, it is so utterly glorious, it is such an incredible splendor, that no drug can add anything to it. All that you need is awareness, and life becomes such a beautiful experience that you cannot imagine that there could be anything better. Ordinary life becomes so luminous. The ordinary tree that you have passed your whole life for the first time you see the luminous presence of the tree.

Life is such a gift, and we go on missing it. And the reason is, between us and life there are so many lies crowding. Your awareness will destroy those lies.

Wrong evaporates

If you are going deeper into silence and something disappears — you saw it receding, evaporating into the air — you can be certain it was wrong. The false cannot face you; it has not the guts. It cannot come in front of you, it cannot encounter you. And that which is real, which is good, becomes stronger. It becomes more a part of your actions, of your thoughts, of your being.

Meditator-Meditation

A moment comes in the life of the meditator when his meditation has reached the point where his whole mind is silent and there is not even a fragment of darkness anywhere inside him — all is light. Then whatever that person does is right, and whatever that person does not do is wrong. In that state, one never thinks about what to do. What is right, what is wrong are no longer alternatives. The right becomes spontaneous action, and the wrong simply becomes impossible — even if you want to do it, you cannot.

Higher things HAPPEN BY THEMSELVES

There are things which man can do and there are things which man can only allow to happen.

Bliss belongs to the second category. You cannot do it but you can allow it to happen, you can be available to it, you can be open to it.

All that is needed on your side is a deep trust, receptivity, love, surrender, let go, and then it immediately starts happening. It is never your doing, it can never be your doing. Even when it is happening, if you start doing something about it, it will stop happening.

Bliss and creativity

There are people who have been trying to be blissful without being creative and all have failed. All the monks and the nuns of the world have failed for the simple reason that they were trying something impossible.

They were trying to be blissful without being creative. And being creative is an absolutely necessary part of it, an intrinsic part of bliss. You cannot drop it.

Never compromise

On the circumference people are different, and they should be different, and everybody should maintain his individuality on the circumference. One should never compromise for any reason. Then only can we create a really democratic world. Real democracy means that the mob, the crowd, is no more in control of the individual life.

Democracy is more important than politics
Democracy is less a political phenomenon than a religious phenomenon; it is far more important than politics. Democracy is a totally new vision of life. It has not yet happened anywhere. Democracy means each individual has the right to live according to his light; he should not be prevented. Unless he becomes a disturbance or a nuisance to others he should be allowed every freedom in all the aspects of life. That’s my vision of a really democratic world.

Don’t interfere with anybody’s life
That is how I would like meditators to function: no interference in anybody’s life. Great respect has to be given to the other. But at the centre, everybody is the same. When you meditate you move towards the centre. You are universal there, not individual. And you have to be both: individual and universal. And you have to be very flexible and fluid between these two. A person should be capable of living on the circumference and at the centre easily. He should be able to move from the marketplace to the meditative space and vice versa — playfully, easily, spontaneously.

You are stranger to yourself
From the very childhood, in every sphere of your life you are told not to come in conflict — be polite. In other words, always manage some compromise. But when there are so many compromises — politically, socially — you become a stranger to yourself. You have so many masks, you lose contact with your original face. And a mask cannot enjoy, it is dead. It cannot laugh, it cannot love. Only the original face is capable of understanding the language of the universe. Love is the language. Dance is the expression of your gratitude.

Be easy, not lazy
My whole teaching is: take everything with absolute relaxation, with ease. Whether you are doing something or not, you must be overflowing with energy even when you are not doing anything. These trees are not doing anything, but they are overflowing with energy. You can see that in their flowers, in their colours, in their greenery, in their freshness, in their absolute naked beauty in the sunlight, in the dark night under the stars.