Session 11

How is it that we call all kinds of experiences the experience of the mind?

Great masters, the great scientists or yogis and people who are in the spiritual field, regard all experiences as experience of the mind, except a few people who are totally ignorant, who have never ventured into experience in general. They would say the experiences are of different kinds. They would assign a separate reality to the separate kind of experience. You can see it is already a problem. You can question here, why do we do that? When I say we, I am now talking from the point of view of an ignorant person who has no training whatsoever or who has never taken any kind of spiritual path, never asked any questions in their lives. If you are one of those who take all kinds of experiences as having their own separate reality, then it is the right time to ask the following question.

How is it even possible that all the experiences can have separate realities of their own and still can be experienced? Now a non-seeker, who is not on the path of knowledge will say, oh this is how it is, this is how the world works, this is how reality works. So this points to a lack of interest and curiosity in that mind. If you are a seeker kind, you will question everything. You will question the most obvious. So once you question your experience you will find that they are actually of only one kind and the most appropriate or the most suitable name for that kind of experience is the experience of the mind.

Now let us explore why this is so. Let us take a look at the experience, your own direct experience. Now as I said, people are going to immediately perceive different kinds of experiences and they will say, oh there is this very dominant experience of sight. I can see physical objects, everybody can see them. That constitutes one kind of reality. Then there is another kind of experience, the experience of sound which you are having right now. You can listen to things. It is another kind of experience. These two are the sensors that give us information regarding the far away objects. And there are more which are experienced when the objects are in direct contact with those sensors, like the touch, smell and taste. So immediately a person will recognize five kinds of experiences and for most people that is all. That is all they can sense, nothing else. But if you take a deeper look at your experience, these experiences form a small part of the totality of the experience. There is this experience of the body right now, which many people will hesitate to call an object because they say it is me.

How can you say that body is an object? Look at the body. It is also being perceived via these five senses. The body is providing us with five kinds of experiences. That is how we know the body. Most importantly, the body is also giving us internal experiences. If you have noticed that there is an experience of heaviness of the body, I know there is a body. Even if I close all the senses, I will still know that I am there. When the limbs move, when the body moves, the muscles move, we get a sensation. We know that it is moving without even seeing. And if you do it very, very slowly, then probably you will not notice it because these internal senses have their limits. When you are hungry, you get the signal. When there is pain, there is a signal there. The body is telling us, look, something is wrong inside the body, on the body, surface of the body. Similarly, when there is pleasure, when you eat something which satisfies the needs of the ego, the thing that keeps it alive, then you can sense it. It is a pleasure. It is not only a taste. So, when you get up in the morning after a good sleep, the body is full of bliss. It is full of pleasure because it is nicely rested. You will get many more sensations which are now on the borderline of mind and the body.

You can find borderline sensations on the border between the body and the world also. Pain is just touch which is magnified a thousand times. It is the same kind of sensor which is giving you a sensation of pain. But whenever there is an internal pain, it is kind of borderline between physical and bodily sensations. The body gives a smooth transition from the objective world to a subjective world. Very few people notice this. Only those who study the body from a spiritual angle, from an occult angle, from the angle of knowledge, of reality. They are dismissing every kind of notion. They are dismissing all kinds of conditioning that is being stuffed into the mind by society and education. Or anything that is heard from here. They are just blind beliefs that were assumed. So, this is the characteristic of a seeker. First clears the slate, then looks at the experience.

It is very interesting that the body is borderline. It is a smooth progression from objective to subjective. As everybody knows, a major part of our life is subjective experiences. So called mind, the experience of thought, emotions, feelings, imagination, memories, and so on. Your decision-making, your rational ability, your arts, skills, and languages. These are all mental in nature, purely subjective. And if you pay attention, you will also find awareness there. It is an experience. It is an experience that I know.

We can now start classifying our experience as the objective experience, which are the experiences of the objects. They are shared with everybody else, mostly, not all, but most of them. And the second kind is the experience of the body. And the third kind is the experience of the mind, the inner world, which is subjective, not shared. And the fourth kind is the awareness, it is knowing that, yes, I can see, I can hear etc. So how come we perceive all these separate realities? And how is it possible to become aware of them if they are so separate? Where is the connection? Where are the connecting wires? Where is the Wi-Fi connection, the wireless connection between all these realities? If something is objective, how can it become subjective? If something is related to the body, how can it become both objective and subjective? If it is just the mind and does not really exist in any kind of reality, how is it possible to become aware of it? How is it even possible to know the mind if it cannot be registered by any instrument? No instrument can register your thoughts. No instrument can measure your emotions. Nobody can come and say that, yes, I can see a mind here. Nobody can do that. What kind of reality is that? Have you ever questioned this? Have you ever wondered about this, the whole of the experience that we are having? And I've just given four kinds. For most people, in their waking state, there is only one kind, and that is the experience of the world. And a major part of that experience is people. Ninety percent of their experience is about people. He did that, he said that, and she does that, and so on. This is all their experience, most of the time. They are deeply engaged in a very narrow band of experience. When they feel hungry, yes, there is a body also, then they come to know.

And where does their attention go? Outside. Food. Somebody needs to feed me. People and objects. The nature of the waking state is that the attention is always outside. It is never towards any other kind of experience. Some people will pay attention to their minds and they will say, it is me. I'm angry, I'm fearful, I'm loving, I'm thinking, I'm imagining, and so on. So there is really only one kind of experience for most of the people. They do not know any other kind of experience and the reason is lack of questioning. They do not question their experience. There can be more kinds, but let us stick to the four that I have given. So let us find out how it is even possible that all these kinds of realities can be known. Objects are most difficult because the senses are like a door and they are like a guard. It becomes really difficult to know what is behind the senses. You will notice that we are aware of what the senses are conveying. We do not know the objects. We know only that, which the senses are telling. This can be known simply by turning off one of the senses and you will see that you know nothing about the world, about the objects if the sense is not there. So this is the first step to bring your attention to the senses.

Look at any object and you will see that what you are aware of is not really the object itself. There is no way to become aware of the object. You are aware of that, which the sense is telling you. Shift your attention to the sense of sight. Some people may want to shift their attention to the eyes. No, eyes are just bodily sensations. You blink and you move your eyes, that is perceived. The sense of sight is in mind. Look at the sense of the sight. You can do it right now. You don't need a million dollar lab to experiment like this. Know your own experience, where else you will know it if not here and now. So the sense is all that we are aware of and it is totally mental. It is a subjective reality. You can name it anything. You can call it a perception, which is more accurate. Anubhuti in Sanskrit, or Sangya, these are the technical words but just to keep it simple because this discussion is targeted to those who never question their experience.

Now you can shift to the sound which is relatively easy. You close your eyes, shift to the sound and it is so easy to see that the sound is that which is appearing in the mind. Bring your attention to the sense of the sound. Where are you hearing my words? Where are you hearing all the noises, the traffic noises, noises of the TV, people talking, whatever is around you and my voice. Some people may want to bring their attention to the ear which is okay. It is okay because that is the doorway through which your attention will come to the sense of the sound. Then you will see because it is not easy to locate any sounds, your attention can easily shift to the sense of the sound and you will find that we do not really know any sounds out there. All we know is the sense of the sound, the sense of hearing which is here and now, which is entirely subjective. Nobody knows what you are hearing. It cannot be shared. If you do not communicate, then nobody will know what you heard. Our instinct is to immediately externalize the sensation, now it is coming from something out there, somebody speaking, it is outside somewhere, it is objective, everybody is listening to that sound and you will find this is not your direct experience. These are thoughts in the mind, these are assumptions. You can do that, you can come to the direct experience of the sense simply by shifting your attention to the sense and the sense is not the sense organ. The sense is that place where the sound is being perceived and it is very very clear that it is all in the mind.

Now as an exercise I will leave you with the experiments on smell, touch and taste. They are even easier to internalize, especially touch. Nobody knows what you are touching, how it feels. Even if you are touching an object which everybody can see. It is entirely subjective. So, we project the object outside, that's all we do. We touch the object, we project the object somewhere outside. It is a made up place, the “outside” world does not really exist in our experience. Have you noticed this? It is mind blowing because you have spent whole of your life thinking that the world is outside, the objects are outside, the body is, don't know where the body is, it is in between and the distinction between outside and inside is totally arbitrary because if it is not in our experience, we can assume anything we want. If there were really an experience of inside and outside then you would experience it as your direct experience, as your direct knowledge, but no, it is not there. You can assume anything you want, it is only an assumption, an idea, a concept that there is a reality called objective reality, no it is not there in fact.

Similarly it is very easy to internalize the sensations of the body. Some people have very exotic names for these bundles of perceptions, they can call it an etheric body, Pranmayakosha, so it is your choice whatever you want to call it. It is not a body, it is just a bundle of sensations, your body is nothing but whatever the senses are telling you, that is also a bundle of sensation. So there is nothing here except sensations, you can internalize the bodily sensations very easily, you can make them mental, by which I mean that you know their reality as being a reality in the mind. This kind of language is very difficult, but let us not go into the extremely technical languages, this is an initiation into experience, so you need to keep it very simple, later on you can take another step, study it deeply.

And the third kind which is the experience of the mind is already in the mind, it is already totally subjective, nobody knows what is in your mind, and the fourth experience, the awareness, is awareness of all these experiences, but it is also in the mind, where else can the experience appear? So collectively whatever is being experienced is now reduced to one kind.

For example a dream, or any of your occult experiments, they have their own reality you can say, they have their own dimension. You are most welcome to doubt your experience, you are most welcome to doubt your theories, and put a question mark on them, analyze them. Always go back to the direct experience, do not get tangled in the words. “This is called such and such, this is called a dream, and therefore it must be a different reality, this is called NDE or past life experiences, so they must be having a different reality” - these are only assumptions, the only reality there is, is this mental reality, it is happening in the mind, some things are being shared with others, and that sharing is also in the mind.

Now you can take the next step. Now you can question that - I am witnessing an objective world, but he is also witnessing the same objective world, it is clear from the descriptions, they match. That is fine, that is a good question actually, and is frequently asked - how come there is a shared reality? The answer will come later, because the mind is a shared reality, there is no individual mind, but right now, you can say that, no, they are simply communicating their mental experience - here is the coffee mug, here are the glasses, there is the phone, there are the trees and people, I can see them, and they can describe their mental experience. And then you can decide whether to agree or not. And this is therefore called consensus reality. Intersubjective agreement - that is a technical word for you, so think about it, there is no objective reality, it is only an agreement between the mental realities.

How is it even possible that I am communicating with you if there are separate realities of the mind and of the world? Where is the connection? Where is the wire? Where is the wifi? Where is the network that is allowing that? You will never find it, that is not your direct experience. Yes, you can cook up some theories, which people do most of the time, because it is so difficult for them to jump into the mind, for some reason. It is mostly their conditioning, their minds are hammered into this “objective” conditioning. Now they have become so solid and so stone-like that they cannot jump into the mind. They are logged out, you can say. They have lost the keys of their own mind. So if you are like this, you find it very very difficult to internalize your experience, which is like a click of a finger for any meditator, any spiritual seeker, it happens in a second for a trained mind. If you are very hard-headed about this, then there are certain practices that will help you to internalize the experience. You can start from the beliefs, because that is all you have, and try to see their reality. There are exercises specially designed for such people who cannot internalize the experience. It does not mean that there is an experience outside, and then you will need to artificially push it inside, by some trick, by some hook or crook, by deluding yourself. This exercise that we are doing, it means to see that your beliefs about the world were wrong, this is what the exercise does, this is what this experiment is all about.

When you pay attention to the senses, and you see your direct experience as happening in the mind, what does that do? It destroys your belief that the experience is outside, that the objects are outside. It does not push the experience that is outside into inside somewhere. Do not delude yourself. If the reality remains outside no matter what you do, then it is outside, then that is your experience. Your experience is your knowledge. So those who can take this first step, the baby step, this is actually the start of the whole of spirituality. If you see the negation of objective experience, it is the first step into the domain of spirituality. It is not a small thing. If you have done this, you have actually taken a big step actually. This is not so easy to achieve. When it shines as your direct experience, you will be filled with a sense of wonder, you will see that you always knew this is the case, you just got lost into the conditioning, blind beliefs of all kinds.

So there is only one kind of experience, this is the answer, the answer is your own experience. There is a need to project the experience outside, and you must have guessed, the need is survival. If I do not externalize my internal experiences, it will become very difficult to survive. Knowingly omitting the words “surviving in the world”. No, there is no survival in the world, there is survival in the mind only. It is the mind that is trying to survive. Body is a way for the mind to isolate itself from other minds, so that it can grow by itself, without getting influenced by other minds, which are like a tsunami of activities, nothing can grow there, isolation is needed. When you plant a seed, you plant it in a clay pot, you isolate it from sunlight, rain, animals and children and everything that can destroy it. Once it grows a little bit, and you are confident that it can now survive in your garden, then you take it out from the pot and you plant it there. Hopefully, if the influences are not too much it will grow even more. So the human mind is a baby mind, it is in the clay pot of the body.

You will never hear these words from anywhere else, these are coming from direct experience. These things are not to be found in books, books are very short and concise. They will simply tell you - there is no world, world is an illusion, and the chapter ends there. These are the direct experiences as guided by my own teachers, my own gurus, I am simply passing it on. You sit with the guru, the guru will hold your hand, bring your attention to the senses, bring your attention to the mind, will make you look. The guru can only point, you will have to look inside, the way we are doing.

The human mind is a tiny seed, a sapling, it must be isolated from the whole of the mind. We have a word for the whole of the mind, I simply call it the universal mind. Actually that is all there is, the individual mind is not there. So that is why I said this is the second step, you will need to recognize that there is no individual, therefore there cannot be an individual mind. There is an appearance that this has been isolated, and the reason is very very clear - survival. Not the survival of the organism, not of the body, not of the mechanisms of the body. As you know very well, the body does not survive, the body starts dying as soon as it is born. It is like a wave, it rises and falls, it is a temporary arrangement of the mind in order to isolate itself. So this is not the only body that it has taken, it is a very advanced structure. Human body is amazing. It is the most advanced structure that you know of. It is so advanced that actually we do not really know what it is. It is so complicated, it is a shield from the universal mind. Why is it like this? Survival, not of the body. The body dies, It is dying right now, it is changing right now. It is a temporary fence around the mind. Senses are gates in this fence which allow a tiny experience.

All there is, is the universal mind, the objective experience happens in the mind and therefore it is not objective, but it is the experience of something, I am experiencing something. What am I experiencing if not a solid world? I have asked these questions for many years. Not getting any satisfactory answers until I was introduced to the idea of the universal mind and at that stage it was only an idea. It is so difficult to say that, look whatever you are experiencing is the universal mind, isn't it? Who would believe me if I said that? I am experiencing a mind only, I am not experiencing a world. No rational and intelligent person is going to believe me and I also was in total disbelief. It seemed impossible, till one of the gurus, one of the wise people, who happens to be a scientist from the tradition of science as we know it, the physics tradition, said that whatever the instruments measure is not matter, the instruments measure only change in a field. Physicists are very fond of names, they make up a name for that measurement. I am not going to bother you with all those words. They are unimportant.

So the change is being registered by the instruments and the senses on the body, because the body is an object from the physical point of view and the senses on the body are just instruments.

• Your retina is just like the CCD of the camera, there are tiny sensors on the retina

• Your ears are like a microphone. There is an ear drum that vibrates.

• Your skin is like a strain gauge, pressure gauge, it registers pressures.

• Your nose is a chemical detector, the chemicals are in the air.

In mother nature nothing has a boundary really. The apple that we eat extends into the nose, it has no boundary. It is kind of amazing, if you think like this, the world from a new perspective, like Richard Feynman always said, looks at things from a new fresh perspective. The food we eat does not have a boundary, it extends into the nose, it extends into the atmosphere, that is why flies, even if they are 1 kilometer away, can come and land on your food. So it is amazing, these are built-in instruments in the body.

What are they registering? Just like any other instrument they are registering a change of some kind. The change has a pattern in it and the brain recognizes that pattern. That's all there is, in the name of the physical world, isn't it mind blowing? That's all there is, changes, patterns of changes. Now out of this your instrument can create a world isn't it? If I plot this voice that the microphone is picking up, I can plot it as a waveform. Actually some people who are in the recording industry, can tell simply by looking at the waveform that whether it is music, whether it is spoken words, whether it is noise or anything else. So that image of the waveform becomes an object. Which means that our body and brain are doing something similar. They are picking up the signals, turning them into objects. That reminds me of the scene in the movie matrix, where the people could look at the code and they could tell whether it is a building, whether it is a car, whether it is a person. All these are our signals, the mind can be trained to interpret any change as an object. It is amazing, it is amazing, this is your own direct experience.

It is amazing to know about these things because nobody will talk about such things. They are the most important things in your life. All that you get is the garbage that comes out of your TV or newspaper. These important discussions are never held in your society, you are actually discouraged from questioning,

The blind people are often taught a technique. They hit their sticks around, they tap their sticks on the road or wherever they are and they can hear the echo of the tap, then they come to know whether they are in an open space or whether they are in a room and this objectifies the echo for them. They can actually perceive the room. There are videos if you want, if you are interested how simple change can be converted into a full blown world, it is possible, it is possible.

Let us see for a snake there are only two kinds of changes that it is capable of, one is vibrations of the ground because the whole of its body lies on the ground. It has developed this sense of picking the vibrations out of the ground and second is a very very sharp sense of smell. Out of these two changes it creates world and you won't believe me or you won't believe anybody, that world is as complex and amazing as the world that we perceive and it is the same for everything, every organism, an ant, a honey bee or a dog or a monkey, everybody perceives a world which is very very rich but for example has a very detailed view of the world which even we don't have. So this is something amazing, an octopus in the sea knows more about the sea than even the most knowledgeable scientist who dives in the sea. So you see it is possible to create the whole world simply by changes.

Everything is a mental object and the second step that you are going to take when you say that I am witnessing a field of changes, that's all there is. I am aware of a field of changes objectified by mental activity through the instruments of the senses. This is a big sentence isn't it? Think about it. In two steps you have destroyed the world, you have destroyed all your ignorance about objectivity.

The only experience that we have is the experience of the mind. It is not an individual mind. It is a temporary arrangement. Right now we are kind of baby minds, so we are isolating ourselves because of this torrent of activity that is going on in the universal mind. Mind needs to grow a little bit before it steps into the wild world of the universal mind. We are experiencing the universal mind right now through the gates of the senses. If you do not take these steps, the sapling is not going to grow, the branches are not going to shoot out. This is important for your evolution, this is important for your mental evolution, that is the only evolution that is happening. The bodies don't evolve. You see the temporary arrangements of the minds that is created in accordance with whatever environment is presented to them. If the environment becomes a desert, the bodies take the form of a creature that is suitable for the desert. If the environment becomes a rainforest, then something appears that is suitable for the rainforest. When the environment is stable enough for a long time, intelligent creatures emerge because the higher minds want to go there, take on a body, so that is the third step you see. You are now venturing into the mystery of the universal mind.

What appears as objects? The world is also not a small thing, which means our minds. The human minds have already evolved to a very high degree. Sometimes I say that we are gods but we have degenerated into humans, that is kind of a very brutal way of talking about humanity, but we are capable of witnessing a big variety of experiences. This is called intelligence and a very nicely functioning mind, very complex, complicated mind, you can say that we have already evolved to a great extent and somehow we keep coming here because of ignorance, because of a bit of ignorance that is left over that I am a human, I need to be in the world and then surely there is a body again.

We shut down the doors of the universal mind, come back into our familiar prison of the body. Incarnation. As long as the environment permits the human form we will keep doing that. You can infer logically that there will be humans as long as the environment supports this kind of form. There are more steps but we will stop here. So this is how we progress - by destruction of beliefs and in order to destroy the beliefs you must question. Do not take whatever you are told as truth, that is stupidity.

Next question is, What are your thoughts about Pitrulok? What's the connection of the universal mind with ancestors, instruments or bodies which don't exist anymore?

We all share a genetic connection with our ancestors. Our body, the current instrument, would not exist without our ancestors. Do we share some sort of genetic group mind with our ancestors? It's a very interesting question. Actually you are your ancestors right now. It is not even a sharing, it is being. You are the ancestors. Now it is kind of deep, so let's go one or two steps. I am not going to go totally into this matter, although it is very interesting. So when you ask this question, what actually reincarnates? Or what actually incarnates? Let's drop the “re” prefix. And that is something very odd and funny. It is a bundle of memories, it is a bundle of impressions, you can say, a collection of experiences, that is all memory is and it has a name, we call it the Jeev. It is an accumulation of all the experiences of all the lives as forms, which you know as bodies, it can be human form, it can be any form, depending on whatever environment was there. It can be not even this world, it can be some other area in the universal mind. Not only this one which is very familiar to us, but 99.9% it is this one only, because the mind has a tendency to go to a familiar place. This is like a law and I call it the attractor. It comes from that complexity/chaos theory, attractors. So it gets attracted, sucked in into something which it already knows, about which it already has impressions. This is like a very mechanical law. It is not a choice. Sometimes I say, I choose to incarnate into the earth, the world, whatever this is called, and it is totally false, there is no choice.

Jeev is an accumulation of all the impressions and now you can infer that whatever appeared as my father, grandfather or any ancestors is already accumulated there. Whatever experiences were there, they are already accumulated there, so Jeev is a very big thing. You cannot even imagine how big it is. If you say I am Jeev, then you are very very big, you are huge. Not this one who has a name and who has a degree from some college, who has a wife, child, works here and works there, is going to die one day. No, this is a very temporary probe into the world, you can say, temporary creation, so the Jeev is very huge, and the place where these things live, are localized, they are called locations or worlds in the universal mind. In Sanskrit, simply Lok.

What is a Pitrulok? It is an area of the universal mind where all these experiences are stored up. You can now suspect that this is nothing but the Jeev, however, the Jeev is so big, so complicated, that a good way to manage this huge dinosaur is to break it up into small parts, and these are the incarnations, these are the organisms, these are the individuated parts of the Jeev. So I am one of the parts, but there are many in this pool of memories and some of them are in charge of the memories. Some of them control the memories of the past incarnations, and these are your own ancestors, so I am them, already. For the time being I have individuated myself to get a specific kind of experience. Probably it is useful for growth, useful for survival, or there is a reason. Nothing happens in the mind without a reason and that reason has a technical name, we call it the Karma or the Sanskara, but let's not go there. So it is a karmic manifestation of things that are in the Jeev, and ancestors are a part of this group mind.

So, How come everybody has a different Pitra? How come everybody has a different ancestor? and you will immediately notice that there is only one father. There is only one thing which is the primordial ancestor of every kind of mind, every individual mind, however big or small, and that is the universal mind itself. He is the only father, so everything is then, individuated or delineated out of this big mega structure, and lineages are formed. So I come from a lineage probably which goes a few thousand years, and all those experiences are stored up in a tiny area of the universal mind, and that is my ancestry, that is the impressions of my ancestors. When you say genetic connection, it is only a manifestation of the kind of bodies that the ancestors took, and therefore my own genetic lineage will resemble their lineage. What takes form in the womb is a mind, so the information about that form is derived from the ancestor's memory.

From where does it take this information? From an ancestor, from the father or the mother, and you know this is not that easy now, it is kind of complicated, because the genetic memory is a mixture. It is not pure genes, it is a mixture of two memories. Yes, DNA is an amusing structure. It is a structure in the universal mind. It is not a physical structure. The physical form is that which can be perceived by an instrument, an objectification of this mental structure. So yes, there are millions of these DNAs, and depending on whatever environment has been presented, a specific DNA will manifest. Sometimes it will go back to the very primitive forms, unicellular kind of thing. So let’s take a virus for example, what is the DNA of the virus? Just a ring of molecules, it is very simple, and then it starts building up, the memory is already there. It simply manifests according to the environment.

That brings us into a very complicated topic. That is the topic of evolution, but all that is present, all that is seen as evolution is already present in the universal mind, some or the other kind of memory. It simply appears here, as the world, as the creatures, as the organisms, as the minds, there is no essential difference. It is not that the matter evolved into creatures, it is not like this. There is no matter, there are no creatures, just mental structures that manifest according to need. You can spend your whole lifetime studying how this happens. So the genetic connection with our ancestors is actually my own higher body. That is the connection.

It would not exist without the ancestors. Ancestors are just a pool of memories. And there is something very amazing which was in this culture, that we actually worshiped them. This structure which we call as Pitra or ancestors, and these structures in the group mind or you can say the Jeev mind or the bigger part of me, they can actually come down and help the individual mind in carrying out the day to day life. They have an interest, because they were individuals once upon a time. Nothing in the universal mind is ever destroyed, it simply does not manifest and goes into a latent state.

The causal body, the Karan Sharir, is also the Jeev. So things that become latent, they are called Karan, because they are the cause of these bodies, they are the cause of these experiences. So the Karan Sharir is the latent impressions and sometimes they will manifest in order to help the individual mind to do something. If you are in deep trouble or this incarnation is not going well, then some help can come from above. Ancient people knew all this. We call them stupid primitive hunters. It is our own stupidity that we cannot recognize what they knew, they had this connection to the memory, because their attention was not totally into the world. They were not that degraded that time but we are a totally degenerated generation. Our attention is totally into the world. So if you push your attention back into the mind, you will get a connection to the Karan Sharir, to the ancestors. Believe me, there are not only ancestors, there is more. It is kind of infinite. There are many many levels.

So Pitrulok is a level which is immediately above the Prithvilok, or the physical world, Earth. Just one step above and it is possible to contact anyone in that world simply through the power of intention, and pushing your attention into that part of the mind. It is an ability, a power, a siddhi, which not many people have. Those who have it, can contact their ancestors or establish a contact with the memory, latent memory. They have huge respect for that kind of structure, and you can guess why this is, because it is very useful in survival here. It can give you extraordinary information, extraordinary powers to do something which ordinary people, ignorant people do not have. So they worshiped their ancestors, and there will be a particular form of that ancestor that will be responsible for the entire lineage, to help that lineage, and that is what is called a Kul Devta. Devtas mean the bright ones and Kul means the lineage, or the family, ancestry. So everybody here had a Kul Devta, and they were connected to that, and the Kul Devta actually manifested physically sometimes, sometimes through another mind. We say that the Devta possesses the body of a related person, and they would transmit their message and disappear. So the tribals, they were not stupid, the ancient people were not primitive, they were more advanced in this dimension of the mind. You can do this, you can gain back your lost power simply by getting in touch with your Kul Devta, about which I have spoken in a lot of detail in the Desire Fulfillment series.

Pitruloka is a huge structure of impressions and memory shared by ancestors. It is all related, nothing is destroyed in the universal mind, It is all there. So ancestors are nothing but my bigger form, that's all. I am a smaller form of my ancestors. The biggest of them is the universal mind, then why is it a belief that if Jeev has not completely realized its own nature, it will merge with ancestors in Pitruloka. Because the impressions are still intact, attachments still exist. Liberation is not liberation from this form, this body or this individual. There is no individual to be liberated and the body cannot be liberated. It is a kind of illusory form, illusory structure, pattern of changes, that's all it is. So cannot be liberated. The individual mind does not exist, cannot be liberated. So you can think of the group mind as being trapped in these cycles of incarnation which is also called reincarnation or rebirth. It is a controversial topic.

So what is it that is taking birth is this Jeev, this group mind and why is it doing that? Why is it not evolving? There must be some ignorance, there must be some obstacle there and if one individual incarnation from that group mind realizes the truth which is spiritual truth that there is no individual and this is all universal mind and my nature is pure emptiness, witness, consciousness, this light which knows these illusory forms, when this individual dies and merges into the group mind, this knowledge becomes knowledge of the group mind. There are no boundaries there, all of these ancestors get liberated. This is the logical explanation behind this saying that if you are liberated, you will liberate all of your ancestors. Didn't they tell you? Very wise people, very old people, even the villagers, they know this, because they have not lost contact with their tradition and ancient knowledge. They will tell you, you need to realize one thing and then all of your ancestors, they will be liberated. It is because there is no difference between you and the ancestors, you are just a tiny manifestation of the whole group mind.

The group mind, what it is trying to do? It is trying to liberate itself, isn't it? It is evolving, it is going towards liberation and the individuals are its strategy to achieve liberation. Those group minds who have evolved a little bit, know where to take birth, they know where to send a probe. This body is like a probe. It is probing around, it is trying to gather more and more experience, knowledge, and a big event happens in the life of this group mind, which is, meeting with a guru. That is probably the biggest event in the whole universal mind actually, what can be bigger than that? When you realize your true nature, that is the biggest event, and it looks so tiny, isn't it? Meeting a master is the only possibility, the Jeev cannot realize anything. It is just a bundle of memories, what can it realize? It is just impressions, it is just karmic structures, cannot realize anything.

It always comes from another mind which is more evolved, that is what we call a Guru. The Guru is not somebody who has opened a spiritual shop and charges you ₹2000 for self-realization, they are stupid businessmen, they are also ignorant. The guru is one who shows you the light, does not charge even one rupee. Sometimes the guru is from your own ancestry, who has realized. Somehow fall happened and the whole mind has fallen back into ignorance. So something activates there and a form is sent back here, and that form will appear as a guru for the whole lineage. So not only we have parental biological lineages, we have the lineages of the gurus also, which are a bigger connection in the universal mind, compared to this biological connection.

You call your father and mother as yours, they are illusory forms, how can they be yours? they are you, you can say I am my father and mother, and father and mother can say that my child is me, which is technically correct. It is more true, but there is a bigger connection in the universal mind, that is the connection between a guru and a student. A spiritual guru and a spiritual seeker, that is the biggest connection, that is the biggest ancestry, that is the greatest lineage, so it actually makes all the sense in the world. This is how it happens, this is how the universal mind works.

How are we so ignorant about these things? Because we listen to the society, we assume whatever idiotic teachings that are being transferred to us as true, and we remain an idiot. We are doing a great disservice to our ancestors, we worship them outwardly, bring some incense, bring some flowers, cook some good food, there is Pitrupuja, that is the tradition which people are following blindly. It is a tremendous amount of disservice. You are supposed to be an instrument of their liberation. What are you doing for that? Watching TV all day, collecting stuff from Amazon.com, playing games of lies and deceit, killing each other, using each other. And that is why ancestors are not happy with you, and they have disconnected. They do not help you now, because you have failed miserably. It is a waste of carbon, it is going to be carbon dioxide, that is all, that is the only achievement of a human life. If you do not progress, it is a waste. If you achieve a little bit, a tiny bit of knowledge, then that will be a contribution to the group mind, that will be a contribution to the whole, that will appear as knowledge in the next incarnation.

Remember, you do not reincarnate, you as a body-mind, as an individual, is a temporary happening, one time affair, the whole reincarnates as a person, and whatever experiences are collected, they are stored up there. So if the experiences that are being collected are of robbing people, killing people, hating people, your whole group will become corrupt, it will degrade, it will degenerate into nothing. And believe me, the universal mind does not like this, it will be recycled back to simpler forms, probably bacteria/viruses or something like this. The degeneration is detected by higher forms. The Jeeva is not the highest, there is a whole hierarchy there, and it is not there that somebody is sitting there and looking at the registers, who did what, the good karmas, the bad karmas. No, the mechanism itself is like this, it takes care of itself. It is a survival machine. The universal mind is the biggest, greatest survival machine there is, it does not like even a tiny cell of itself to degrade. It is thrown out, it is recycled. There is progressive recycling, that's why we say that the universal mind, the Ishwar is very kind, it does not simply kill the Jeeva, it takes it a step back, it checks, oh, whether it is progressing now, no, okay, one more step back. It can even throw the Jeeva into another area in the universal mind, which is kind of more productive for it. There are some people who do not understand words, they need a good beating, they understand only that language of pain and pleasure, they gravitate to that, there is an attractor for them, and these worlds are also called the hellish worlds or the Narakas.

Narakas, there is not only one, there are many, depending on the tendencies of the Jeeva, he gets attracted, falls, gravitates to that kind of world, and if you are in the physical world, it's a great achievement because it is just a borderline between the hell and heaven. It is in between, so we are actually coming out of ignorance, it is a place where spiritual knowledge is available. This place is heavily guarded by all kinds of evolved minds. Sometimes it goes down, like the current time. This is the time when the knowledge is very low, darkness is everywhere. 99.999% of humanity and creatures are under the spell of darkness. It is almost hell. Poor people are suffering, rich people are suffering, the unhealthy people are suffering, the healthy people are suffering. Mental diseases, the body is not the only thing that needs to be healthy. The kind of consumption they have, mental consumption, the mental food is disgusting. Creatures are suffering, environmental degradation, everything here is suffering actually. A spiritual seeker is also suffering. His suffering is - I am ignorant, I don't have the knowledge. Runs from pillar to post to get the knowledge, he does not look inside, knowledge is here, that is his suffering.

So almost darkness, but we also have gurus, we have great people, we have great minds, we have light in this darkness, just orient towards the light, look to the light, not to the darkness, and you will be out of here. Either your environment will change into some heavenly place, which it was once upon a time, or you will develop a distaste/detachment for this place, the physical world, and will be able to attach to something higher, something better, where there is less suffering. This is how it evolves, this is how it goes. And if one does it, then the whole does it, it drags the whole with itself.

The first step in seeking is rejecting what your families, what your ancestors, what your society says. Society is nothing but a bigger ancestor, your race is your ancestor, so whatever they were fed, if they have degraded, it’s your duty to evolve. The first smart thing in your life you can do is reject ignorance, wipe out the slate totally, it's garbage, throw away the garbage, and question again, a question will bring you to a guru, the guru will bring you to the light. Guru takes you to the light from darkness. Don't join institutes, don't join religious organizations, don't join political parties, it’s all stupidity. Join an enlightened person. Take shelter under the wings of an enlightened person. We are here to do nothing else, believe me, nothing else. That is the whole mission, that is the whole project we are born for. If you don't do this, it's a waste. You will take a few more incarnations than you will be recycled back, that is 100% certain. Even though you will never be able to experience that, it is very innocent, it is an ignorant thing, this mind, when this recycling happens it does not know. Right now you don't know the reason for your misery, right now you don't know why, what are you looking for. You get up every morning, then you get lost, run after things which others are telling you. Your will is non-existent, it is being forced by others, your life is being forced by others. That's why a seeker, first thing he does is liberates himself from others, from the will of the others. Make your own will the strongest in the world, strongest possible. Why am I here? What is the purpose of my birth? Who am I? Start asking, otherwise it's not a happy journey. Spiritual journey is a journey back home. You want to make it quick and smooth, beautiful, so I hope this will clear up the big questions.

I can give you the details of this lok, that lok, how the incarnation happens, which we have discussed so many times now, all the diagrams and animations that I made, they're all there for you to see, view and listen, if you are interested in the details. As I'm interested, I keep researching, I do not stop, I never stop seeking, that is the fun thing to do, so if you are interested, we can discuss that. But let me tell you one thing from the get-go, that I won't be able to give you any experience of the universal mind, the experience comes through your own effort. I can give you the experience of the truth, which we just did in the beginning, when we destroyed the world, when we destroyed the different realities, found only one reality, that was your experience, isn't it? If you are this Jeev, that Jeev in this reincarnation, that reincarnation in this world or that Naraka or that Swarga, you are going to have the same realization. It's the same mind, it does the same objectification. There are tiny details that are different. If you're interested, that can also be experienced.

You can experience all your ancestor memories right now, sitting in meditation, you can actually go into your own mind through the astral journeys. You can take the shamanic journey into many worlds, your ancestor will connect you back to the greater mind, so you can do all these adventures, highly recommended. Do not just sit, because “I know everything”, now you should get a taste of the details also. But I cannot give you those experiences, that will come from your own effort, because I am doing the effort, so I know these things. The fundamental knowledge, the knowledge that is required for the liberation of the individual and of the whole group and of the whole universal mind, that I can give you right now. The big things can be given, for the small things you will need to do some effort, because they lie in the domain of illusion, where it appears through effort.

Who knows what can appear, it's a big adventure, but the first thing to do is liberate yourself, then you can do whatever you want. Another thing to do is liberate others. You have this knowledge, now it is kind of our duty, because everything is me, all the individuals, they are striving, they are so deep into the darkness, that they do not know why they were born. It's kind of amazing. So it is the duty of the other seekers to enlighten them, to spread the light of knowledge. I'm doing it already, and anybody who has not done this, but is liberated himself, has liberated the whole of the group mind, but is not doing this kind of spiritual work, again, is wasting their incarnation. Some will become so advanced that they won't leave this place, the physical world, the Mrityu Lok, till they have done enough to keep the knowledge here, they are the protectors of the knowledge, they are the guardians of the spiritual knowledge. So we are very grateful to those ancestors, who have done their duties, who have done the right thing, their dharma, to protect the knowledge, to keep it here, to bring it to everyone who is ignorant, who is in darkness, without asking anything in return.

Remember, those who are asking something from you, are ignorant themselves. What are they asking, if they don't know that they are everything. They will ask you to serve, they will ask you to pay, they will ask you to join their cult, they will ask you to kill the other person in the other cult. Do not make that mistake, that is not the right path. The one who is giving is only giving, not asking anything. I'm fortunate that I came to know this quickly, because you can see many seekers who are trapped in this kind of mentality. I'm not getting anything from this service, and I even need to spend my money, and I need to work hard for it. If someone says that, I don't have time for this, that means that the individual mind has not matured enough, so take inspiration from those who have done this.

The Vivekanand's, and Raman Maharshi's, and Nisargadattas, and countless people, Lahiris, Yoganand's, so many, and usually they don't even have a name, they don't even want anybody to know them, they are totally invisible, they do not produce any kind of waves in this world. They have one job, they know there are some who have some potential, and they simply take them one notch up, and then they disappear, that is their job. Your job is behind the curtains. Don't have a name, don't have an address, don't ask anything, just pick somebody who wants to know, and give him the treasure. Giving, giving, giving, that's all, is the duty of this individual. First liberate yourself, then liberate others, there's nothing else to do, everything that happens is a kind of amusement, is play, learning experiences, that's all it is.

Session 12

On the path of knowledge on the Advaita path or also in Buddhism you will notice that mostly books have Q&A sessions and mostly the Shastras are Q&A sessions, including the Bhagavad Gita and the great Upanishads. Usually question and answer is the most effective means of transmission of knowledge. People come to Satsang just to listen to what the person is saying. That is also good because the mind will start asking. If you don't even listen to what is being said then probably there will never be any question.

Why don't people question their assumptions, their reality, their blind beliefs? Because it is the nature of the mind. It does not find a need to do that, so it does not do that. It is a machine so it wants to conserve energy, it does not want to work too much. This you can say is a lazy mind but this is also the natural/default setting of the mind - Do not try to learn unnecessary things, get work done somehow because your job is to survive, that's all is in the mind. Job is to survive and fulfill its desires. There is nothing else to do so it goes into the depths of matter only when there is a need. Only when it is extremely necessary, we start searching for answers, otherwise we let it happen, we do not want to really know things in depth. So you will see it everywhere in your society that people want to do as little physical and mental work as possible.

Most of the time they want to rest or they want to do something which they enjoy, then it is not work, then it is not effort for some people. There are a few rare people who are extremely curious, they want to do the effort, they want to question everything and they are not afraid of doing the hard work of knowing and such people become seekers and when they gain enough knowledge they can share it with other seekers because it does not look like hard work. For example I'm talking to you, I spend a lot of time actually in order to research things, in order to learn things, in order to experiment and think about the various teachings and views of other people and then I spend a lot of time discussing with everyone, recording these things, producing audios and videos and books and whatnot. I spend a lot of time and I spend a lot of money also, but I do not see it as a problem. I do not see it as hard work. It is a pleasure. I get pleasure out of it.

Very few people are born with this kind of capability, this kind of the Jigyasu quality, which is a must for somebody who is on the path of knowledge. It is an essential quality. There must be an interest in knowing otherwise please do not come on the path of knowledge. Try to make your life good, beautiful, happy, that's what we are here for. Knowledge and all these things are not really essential for a happy life, so that's what we see out there, in the society very few people are interested and very few people devote time and effort to get the knowledge. The benefits they reap are enormous. This may look like an effort, this may look like that you are going against the natural tendency of the mind to do less work but in the end it actually makes the whole life effortless. It actually gives you happiness and freedom for free.

Do not think about what this knowledge is going to do for me. It's going to do nothing at all. It's not there to do something. It is a means to be happy and free, that's what it will do. Probably you think - the more effort I put into the physical world through the body, the more freedom and happiness I will get. You will, there is no doubt about it. We all need to do a little bit of work on the physical level but most of your happiness is generated in the mind, most of the work that needs to be done is in the mind. So it is recommended that as soon as possible, get on the path of knowledge or any kind of spiritual path. In the long term the benefits are immense. They are not going to last only for this life, they are forever, life is forever, there is no death, there is no destruction.

Another question is about the karma system: Does Jeev have individual karma or the karma are always universal karma? Can have a ripple effect in the universal mind, so why is it a belief that somebody who does bad karma always has to individually pay for it or a person with good karma will always get the goodness back? I don't see a balance in the ripples of karma, I feel karma is about the collective universal destiny of the whole.

I agree 100 percent. People have a very odd belief about the theory of karma and when I say theory, it is really a theory, it is a model of something that happens. You can explain the same thing using other ways. It is possible. The karma is based on the assumption of cause and effect. When you introspect deeply you will find there is no cause, no effect, it is an assumption in the mind, it is our ignorance.

Why is there no cause and effect? Why are our actions not actually caused? Why actually there is no fruit, there is no consequence? This is the deeper question. If you understand that there is no cause/effect really then the whole theory of karma will be dissolved. This is the highest level, at the highest level there is no karma, there is no cause/effect and you can see it is within our ability to see that there is no cause, everything that happens is caused by everything else. I'm just giving you a pointer, how to introspect about this cause and effect because if you say the thing “A” is caused by “B” then it becomes necessary to find the cause of “B”. You can find a cause obviously, it will be “C” but now it becomes necessary to find the cause of “C” but “C” cannot happen by itself without cause. Because you're assuming that there must be a cause for everything and then you will find “D” and so on, it goes to infinity. You can do this exercise, try to find the cause of anything exhaustively, do not stop, do not say okay, I don't know beyond this so probably. I'll just stop, no, that is laziness, that means you don't want to think it through. So if you try to find the cause of anything, you will find that there is an infinite number of causes and it takes the whole of the universe to cause a little, tiny event in this universe. Does that make any sense? No, it is totally nonsense, the whole theory of cause and effect is only an approximate theory. It does not make any sense.

Similarly for the effects, what is the effect of an action? You will see that the effects do not stop. It has a ripple effect. Do the ripple stop? No, they simply become weaker and weaker until they disappear from our perception. It means our perception has a limit, it means mind has a limit. After a while it cannot see what effects it is producing because it becomes so complicated. The web of effects is tangled so much that the mind gives up and it says okay the effect is up to this point only, but no, the effects never die. There is no end to the effect, and does it make any sense? No, obviously. So what is this cause and effect? Why did the mind invent this thing? At the highest level you should throw away the cause and effect and then you ask this question - why do we even entertain this idea of karma or that our actions produce consequences? So let me make it very very clear, it is a theory, it is a model to explain things that happen in this universe. It is a very convenient model, it is not accurate, it is not the truth, it is only a model.

Once you stop assuming it as truth then you can see why it is there. It is there to explain to the mind the why question, as the mind has a habit of asking why questions. So you come up with an answer “because”, and there is a “cause” in the “because”. It is because of this cause, it is due to something and then the seeker is supplied with a knowledge that it happened and therefore the resulting consequence happened. We assume like this, that there is a cause of every action and there is an effect of every action.

Not only for the human being the cause and effect model can be applied to machines, it can be applied to non-living things, to animals, plants, non-physical things, metaphysical things. You can apply it to anything. So the karmic model is the model of cause and effect applied to metaphysical things, non-physical things and to the mind itself. You can apply this model and see what happens whether you get something. Sometimes it is useful because suppose you want to make a machine work you must find out the relationship of causes and effects, otherwise you cannot even think about the machine, how is it going to work. It is very useful. So if you want to know something about the mind, how it works, you must model it's working somehow. That is the karmic theory. It is very effective, it is useful for answering the why question. That's all that is. It has no truth at all.

There is a belief because it is not taught like this usually. Some Gurus teach it as if it is true. Somebody great has said something about karma and then it is stamped as truth. Nobody actually goes and investigates the truth of it, but we do it on the path of knowledge. As soon as there is a statement the first thing we do is investigate the truth of it, otherwise you cannot say that you are on the path of knowledge. Otherwise you will become something that the others are like and there is no harm in it. For example a yogi need not question the model of cause and effect, the karmic models because his practice is based on the theory being true. He simply assumes it is true and then karma yoga is born. So he will reap the fruits of this sadhana if he is doing it nicely. There will be an effect on the mind and it can be useful. But if it is taught as if it is true then probably it will stop the progress of that yogi at some point because obviously not true. Then you will need to go beyond the karma which we do on the path of knowledge.

We do it on the very first day - What is your essence? Is your essence doing anything? Is it causing anything? Isn't it just pure witness? Isn't it just a witness of all the karmic stuff, of all the causes and effects? This is your essence, this is you, Is it being affected by something? It is witnessing illusory pictures, is it affected by that? And you will see no, it is not. It is very pure like the sky, where things are happening, thunder clouds and rain but the sky is never affected. So once you shift your identity to the ultimate which is the Self/Atman, which is everything, Atman is Brahman, then you will find that, there is no cause, there is no effect. Nothing is being caused, nothing is being affected and you are free. You are above karma. Now the important thing is to see this. You cannot simply believe me. Do not blindly believe anybody. You need to see it, this is my nature, it is really not being affected, it is really not causing anything, just witnessing.

Now the mind will come up with all kinds of questions like why is this happening? Then why is it witnessing? Then your job is to silence the mind by properly answering and how to properly answer? Always take your mind back to direct experience. So you can ask - why should I assume a cause for everything? Is it necessary that everything must have a cause? Is it necessary that everything must produce an effect? and you will get no answer. You will get silence as the answer which means whatever thinking was going on in the mind is completely useless. It is just made up stuff in the mind. So if you take one step into ignorance then you can deal with karma and one thing you will find about the karma is that there is no good karma, there is no good action and there is no bad action also. Actions are and the effects are. This is just one step into the theory.

If you take two steps into ignorance, we need to assume more things because the mind has some agenda. It has some desires, it wants to fulfill some desires and therefore it acts, otherwise why will it act? The desire is the motivation, is the motivating force for action. That's why the karma is equal to sanskara because sanskara produces the karma through the body, through the mind, through the speech, through the karmendri (the organs of actions). There are many. There is always a desire behind the action, and as soon as there is a desire we say the karma is already done. So we need to take another step into the ignorance and see that some actions are going to fulfill my desire, some are not and therefore we classify it as good or bad, depending on what is my desire. You can get into the details of it if you want. For everybody there will be a different good karma and for everybody there will be a different bad karma. For example you have gold and I want it. Just a very crude example so what do I do? I go and kill you and steal the gold because it is going to fulfill my desire. So isn't that good karma? Isn't that a good action? Because now I am rich. From my point of view it was good, I got good fruits and from your point of view very bad. You will wonder why I get this kind of fruit? There is a little bit of ignorance in the minds of ordinary people, who do not go into the depths of this theory, that doing good is going to have a good effect? No, it is not going to do that and same for doing something bad. Goodness, badness are relative. There's no truth in that. There is no absolute good. There is no absolute bad.

Remember this thing, know that whatever you think is good is going to produce a consequence, whatever you think is bad is going to produce a consequence. Now whatever is the consequence, if it is according to your desires, you're going to label it, stamp it, as good. If it is not according to your desires, you're going to stamp it as bad. This will explain the conundrum in the minds of people who believe in karma like - “Why do I do good for everybody? I never did anything bad, I've never told lies, I've never acted violently in my life, never spoken words of violence even once, why are bad things happening to me?” This is a very common question - Why even if I do good, nothing good happens to me? And look at those people who are doing unethical things and they are just enjoying their life tremendously.

Don't try to judge the consequences from your tiny point of view. It's universal. The whole produces the cause and the whole gets the consequences. Even if you do something good, the consequence can be bad. Even if you do something bad, the consequences can be good and the consequences are not in our control. Do whatever you want, they are not in the control of the individual. Why? Because there is no individual, simply because there is nobody to control them. It is an illusion that I am the doer. I am not the doer. The “I” is the witness if you want to call it. There is no doer. Therefore, there is no control, therefore whatever happens, happens according to the laws of the karma not according to my wishes, not according to what I control. Control is an illusion

This brings us to another topic which is very complicated. We think that there is somebody who is controlling my actions? No, there is no free will at all. You will need to get into the depths of it. If you strongly believe that “No, I control everything that I do” then just let me know. I'm always ready to get into the depths of it, to show you through direct experience that no there is no individual. It does not do anything, it does not control anything. Therefore whatever actions happen through this instrument of the body-mind or their consequences cannot be controlled, no matter what you wish for. That which happens is according to the laws of the mind, which are also known as the karmic laws and nobody knows what will happen.

We have control over our Karmendriyas, a bit of free will, it seems, but we have no control over the whole. What really decides destiny? Is it just random? The slight control that you are talking about is an illusion, and yes, we do have that. We can intervene when the desire to act appears, we can intervene and stop the desire from being activated through the body mind, the organs of action. How come we have this ability? If you investigate you will find that it is another sanskara. It is a sanskara that has been impressed by some other event.

For example, my last meal gave me pleasure and it is now impressed on memory and the mind knows that yes this action is going to give me more pleasure. This is the tendency of the mind so a desire to eat the same thing appears again but I can now control, I can say no, I won't eat that thing I'll eat something else and what is that? It is another sanskara, it is another impression which became stronger than the previous desire. That's all that happens. It is mechanical. Then the ego comes up. A thought arises that I stopped the first desire and chose something else.

So the mind is a very fancy thing. It is a very complex thing. Don't underestimate the mind. I keep saying, it is a machine but it is absolutely gorgeous, very complex but it is the biggest thing in the world. The mind is not a simple machine. So yes it looks like that it is done by me because I can either start an action, I can stop an action. It is just another impression that is governing the action now, and that impression is because of my previous experience, that's all. You will see this in children that they need to be told to stop. They don't have this instinct when to stop, what or how to choose, they learn it by themselves, by trial and error, pleasure and pain, reward and punishment. And it is the duty, it is the teaching of their parents. Parents keep telling - Do not do this otherwise you will get this result and then this becomes an impression. Do not touch the hot cup you will get burned. This becomes an impression and if there is nobody to teach the child then mother nature teaches, burns the hand and then the child is never going to touch the hot cup again. It looks like there is a control mechanism there but it is exactly that, it is a mechanism, you can refine it somewhat and then the illusion of free will appears. If there are hundreds of impressions on the mind then obviously it looks like there is freedom because there are so many choices now. Freedom is just another name for choices.

Why are there choices? Because there are so many impressions. Now the mind has matured a little bit. It has many many impressions, it knows very clearly which choice will lead to which consequence. Hopefully it has learned. This is the linear mode of thinking. It chooses the best one that it thinks will fulfill my desire. So if you pay attention, it is a very complex mechanism, that's all it is, and the control is also a complex mechanism and the will is not the will of the individual, it arises out of the impressions and you can do experiments to check it. A very good experiment is to do something which you have never done before, to think of something which you have never thought before, to imagine something which you have never seen and you will find it is impossible. It must be there somewhere in the memory and you can pull it out. What you think is new is actually a mixture of the old. That is how an artist can create. The artist is going to take his impressions of the past. All the old impressions, and mixes them in a creative way. You can say he's creating but he is not really creating anything new. He is simply mixing old impressions and producing a work of art which looks like new because we have never seen this before. However, it is a kind of illusion that we create. No, we cannot create anything. We can only put together certain choices, slap them together, it becomes a creation. That which creates is the universal mind, mother nature creates, a human copies.

Whatever control we do seem to have is useful for survival, is useful for functioning in the world and we should never say that I don't have control, I am not responsible, because this is not good for survival, not good for society, not good for a functioning individual and functioning society. So we allow it as an ignorance that is the fourth step or fifth step into the land of ignorance but this is not true. So whenever you get this doubt that I have the free will or I have control you will need to simply investigate from where this thing is coming and you will find a cause there and then you try to find the cause of the cause and so on. Finally you will come to this conclusion that there is no cause. We have no control over the whole. That is a translation of the words that there is no control over the consequences, the fruits are not in our control. The “whole” decides what will happen.

What really decides the destiny of Jeev? The “whole” decides, it is not random. You cannot say it is random. It is causeless but not random. It is bound by the laws of the mind. There is a difference between causal and random. The non-caused thing can appear very structured, very well organized. It is possible but a random event is not structured. There is no meaning in that event.

Let me give you an example of how random things are and how non-causal and causal things are. Take a bag of fine sand, grain, rice or wheat or anything in a container and pour it on the floor or on a cloth maybe, so that it does not scatter around too much and what do you get? You get a very nice pile of the grains or sand. There is a name for that, it is called a Gaussian Distribution. Those who know physics and information technology, it is named after the famous scientist Gauss. It is perfectly mathematical. It has statistical properties and this is also called the bell curve. It is found everywhere in nature. What causes it? Nothing causes it. This perfect shape, perfectly mathematical 3D curve is a consequence of necessity. Nothing designed it. Nothing caused it. How can simply pouring random grains of sand produce this structure? Is it possible? Well it just happened in front of your eyes, didn't it? This is a non-caused, non-random event.

How many people think like this? Very few only the crazy scientists and philosophers think about these things but don't worry, it is going to give you this insight that - being without cause does not mean random. Remember this bottom line. If it is acausal, it does not mean that it is going to be random.

What is random? take the grains and just throw them instead of pouring them. Throw them on the floor and then you will not get any structure. Every time you throw it, it will be a different structure, a different distribution on the floor. It is meaningless. You cannot draw any relations here. That is random.

Destiny of the mind, the path of the mind is not random but it is not caused. If it is not causal it can be predestined. Once the path is taken it is almost predestined what it will become that is known beforehand. Why do we not really know the exact events? Because we do not know all the causes the mind functions upon extrapolation of causes and its effects. You need to know all the causes in order to predict what will happen next and it is beyond mind to know. You cannot really predict everything in the universal mind. It can be guessed a little bit. That is why we say drive slowly otherwise there can be an accident. It is a prediction. But accidents happen even if you drive at the speed of 10 kilometers per hour. Somebody else will come and hit you, it is possible. It is a kind of linear thinking of the mind. The mind thinks that I can predict things if I know enough causes. But no, the reality is not like this. It is also not random otherwise there won't be any experience. What is a random experience? It’s actually no experience, it does not register in the mind, does not register in the memory, only if there is a structure it gets registered. So this is a highly technical answer but now you will never have any question about this.

I can say that it is already written that you will become this or that. It is already written that your actions are going to produce this kind of effect. Then there will be a lot of questions. Why is this going to happen or how do you know? And there will be another question, which is a very popular question: How do I change these things which are going to happen? It goes into a deeper pit of ignorance. Therefore whenever these questions come up, like - whether something is going to happen is predestined or not? Can I change it? - I need to take a very diplomatic view. I give you very mysterious answers, very diplomatic answers. So if you want to change it then you will need to throw away the theory of predestination, you will need to throw away the theory of causes and effects because if one causes something specific that means it’s not possible to change it. If you say I have free will, I can change events which are going to happen, that means there is no causality because free will was caused by nothing.

Freedom of willing means that something intervenes which is the individual, the person, the invisible person, the ghost in the machine comes and stops things or starts a new event and then you will need to throw away the theory of causality because people can object - how come the will is causeless but events are caused? It's not possible. How can you arbitrarily assign laws to anything? So if you want to think about it, you need to correlate it with your direct experiences. At some point it goes beyond the limits of the mind and we say it is unknowable, that which happens is unknowable, that which is going to happen is also unknowable. Actually I'll go one step ahead and I'll say that whatever happened is also unknowable because it depends on how reliable your memory is.

So a Gyani will say that nothing really happened. “Why are you asking these questions? Remember nothing really happens”. It only appears to happen and just because it is regular, just because it has a pattern in it, does not mean that somebody is doing it, somebody is causing it or there are causal chains of those events. That does not mean that it can be extended into the future or can be plotted ahead (extrapolation) and now that is all wrong thinking. That is all assumptions but because this model of past, present and future is very useful, we employ it since some things are regular. Like sun comes up every day. Although it is not guaranteed, no law says that the sun will come up tomorrow but since it is doing this mostly, there is a 99.99% probability that it will come up tomorrow, we plan for tomorrow. I'll go there, I'll go to my office, I'll get these things done, I'll buy food and everything related to survival. This is a convenient model used for surviving. The model of past, present and future. And this is reflected in our language. Our languages are survival based. They are not knowledge based. If it is false that does not mean that it is useless. It can have uses. The use is survival. That is why the mind creates all these things. It is only for survival.

That which is false can it change? How can it change? Some people ask this question - “I need to change my future, I need to evolve in a particular direction”. No it's not possible. And there is a fundamental error in these questions. The fundamental error is the assumption that there is causation. Second assumption that “I have the will, I have the power to change”. Both are false. So how does that question make any sense? No it does not, however from the point of view of ignorance, if you allow a little bit of ignorance, there are answers. Usually the Guru will judge you a little bit, whether you can understand the truth or not, and if you cannot then he is going to give you some sugar coated teaching, like - “Yes, you have the free will, you have power to change your destiny, look how I have changed, I have become free, I have come out of the ignorance and so can you.” This is the spiritual type but there are people who do the self-help kind of thing like - “I have this addiction, I'm in a bad relation, now I want to change”. “Yes, you have the power, you can change it”. They will say this is the cause, it is happening because of this behavior of yours, change the behavior and so on… and the person goes happy because the problem is solved. Survival is a little bit smoother now. It is useful sometimes, like a placebo, it works.

Never underestimate the creations of the mind. It is all false but sometimes very useful and those who are after practical utility, they may want to get into the details of how the karmic stuff works. It is very complicated and those who are after the truth need to simply see it once that no, it does not make any sense and then drop it. Drop the whole causality. It is not true and that's how we are freed from karma. There is no other way to be free from karma. Karma bandhan mukti is a big word in our eastern traditions. How to be free from karma? It is the realization that there is no karma. There is no other freedom except this and then the business of the world, the business of the maya/illusion can continue as it is. What is wrong with that? What is wrong in the actions and their consequences? Nothing is wrong so I hope this answers the question and gets into the details of it.

Get into the depths of it. Question the question. If there is a question then you will need to find out, investigate the meaning behind the words that are being used in the question. That is how we progress towards the source. It is like taking backward steps. What I mean is that there is no forward step. The path of knowledge, it's all backwards, you go back to the source from where all this ignorance is coming from and one by one your concepts will stop dropping.

Knowledge is always like this - this idea was wrong, that concept was wrong, this does not make any sense, that assumption is totally useless - this is the path of knowledge. If you are going forward that means something is wrong and sometimes you will need to go forward also only to see that these things do not make any sense, then you come back. Somebody gives me a statement and I need to go a few steps forward there, let me see how it works and if it starts breaking, because if you investigate, you will find that it cracks up, it does not stay, it's not stable, that is how we know that this is not the right direction, I need to go back. This is how we know. So a little bit of experiments, a little bit of thought experiments, a little bit of intuition and logical/rational thinking will get rid of all this ignorance.

Since there is no ultimate free will for the jeev within the maya, what is really there for the jeev to do here really? Just watch the leela unfold? Have some popcorn? or there is some insight about the reason the jeev has bound itself within such deep uncertainty?

The answer is very simple, it depends on the level of ignorance the jeev is under, depends on his avidya. So those who are free, enlightened, jivanmukta, they can simply have some popcorn and watch it. It is mildly entertaining in some ways. You can watch it but most people won't. They want to dissolve, they don't want to have an experience again. That is the last desire. But some may want to go ahead and see whatever is happening while remaining totally aloof, while remaining untouched by what is happening, they are beyond the experience. They are now totally established in the Experiencer. There is no effort there, nothing to do, there is no will there, because everything is seen as it is. So what remains to do? Just witness what is unfolding. Those are the people who have realized their true nature. They do nothing anyway. Anyway, you are doing nothing already. You need to only realize that I am the witness which is just watching. Watching the leela.

Papaji used to say - “keep quiet”. Papaji was a disciple of Ramana Maharishi and he used this word “keep quiet”. When there is nothing to do, what else will you do? Just witness. Now if there is ignorance, it will appear as a desire and then actions happen. Those who have ignorance, they must do something, they must do the effort to come out of the ignorance, they must do the investigation, they must do the self-inquiry or if you are on the other paths you must do the sadhana. You must do the perfect action as taught by the karma yogis. On the path of shakti you must do the asanas and kriyas and then the mind hopefully will get the experiences and learn through the experiences. Depends on the ignorance.

What if the jeev is totally under ignorance, totally under the spell of maya, that is not even on any kind of path, not on any spiritual path, that is the worldly person, is a sansaric prani ? For them it will be a dualistic experience that means there will be consequences. Always do that which brings happiness and freedom, this is the thumb rule when you are in total ignorance, always follow that. Always do that which brings more happiness and freedom in the long term, not only short term. Use your intellect. Usually the intellect is not totally dead for such people. There is a difference between being intelligent and being wise or spiritual. A spiritual person knows what s/he is doing and an intelligent person knows how to do it. There is no other difference. You can make a bomb to mine the earth. Find the metals in the earth, you blast the earth and dig a hole in the earth and you can use the same technology and knowledge to destroy a city and kill people. Both are actions of an intelligent mind. It knows how to do it. But one is unwise and one is wise. Which one? That you can decide.

Wisdom is knowing what not to do. Somebody has said that why should I not do something? Intelligence is simply knowing how to do it, how to be effective. So it is unfortunate that those who are worldly, they have a lot of intelligence, they are very successful in the world with almost zero knowledge, zero wisdom. So for such people the teaching is to follow your bliss, follow your happiness and freedom. That will produce optimal results.

What does it do? Actually your actions will produce consequences, which are not in your control but the laws of the mind are very clear about this. The laws say that the consequence will always be such that it produces a lesson for the one who is saying I am the doer. It is always such that if you say I am the doer then yes the consequence is also for you. You will need to throw away the whole doership in order to be free from the consequences. If you say I am the doer and the consequences are not mine then it's not going to work. If you say oh I'm not the doer but I'm going to get the fruits of my actions. No, it's not going to work either. Throw away the whole thing or adopt the whole thing. If you are taking responsibility for your actions then take the responsibility of the consequences of the actions. There's nothing bad in that and what it does is, you get the lesson. The mind gets a lesson about what to do and what not to do. What is the lesson? These and these actions produce happiness most of the time. These actions produce freedom and those actions produce misery, suffering, bondage not only for me, but for others also. You can see those who are growing a little bit, those who are surpassing their intelligence, will start seeing that there is no such thing as my happiness. Happiness and freedom is not for the individual.

I will give you an example: let us say you believe that a lot of gold or a lot of money is going to make you happy, which is true actually, it will make you survive, and the body will produce the pleasure which you think is happiness and you get a lot of money at the cost of others, at the cost of destruction of the environment and destruction of lives of others. Now the result is you have a lot of money and everybody else is very poor and the environment is destroyed and you take control of everything. What will you see if you view the bigger picture? There is one point in the center which is happy and around it for a thousand miles there is misery. So how long is it going to last? Someday, somebody will rise from those unfortunate people in pain and will kill you or will take away whatever you have accumulated or will make your life miserable. It always produces bad consequences because you are ignoring the whole. And you will find that if you are in a country where most of the people are almost equally prosperous, except a few, where you don't even need to lock your house, you will gain peace of mind, you will gain freedom and you will get more happiness. That happiness has a higher quality than this selfish happiness which was in your old country, say, in the previous scenario. It’s a small example but those who are waking up will see it. Go towards the bigger happiness, go towards the bigger freedom. Some people cannot even understand this much and the teaching is to follow happiness and freedom. Perform your actions with perfection, which means the actions that bring more and more happiness and freedom. Then the laws of the mind take care of evolution.

Once people become a little bit mature, they will start questioning. The first question is usually - what am I doing with my life? What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose here? Why was I born? I have produced a series on this thing which is titled “Spirituality for the beginners” and if you are interested you can listen to that. It’s very interesting and it is for total beginners, total newbies like who know nothing about this thing. Usually a total beginner starts with these questions - meaning of life and what am I doing here. That means the eyes are opening a little bit, a little bit of light is getting in and usually the result of these questions is they will start searching now, they are interested in taking a path, they are interested in growing. That is when the guru catches that person, that is the ideal student to have, who is willing to explore, who has a question. Then the guru appears, because now it is the right time. So once that starts happening you will be given something to do. Don't worry you're not free from the doership yet. Guru will give you something to do and it is a practice according to your tendencies. What do you like and how grown up you are, what kind of past life tendencies that you have accumulated and the guru knows this. He takes a look at the person and evaluates the student. He will give you a lifestyle to follow and if you are a good student, probably in a few lifetimes, there will be more growth and finally the knowledge happens that this was all a play and then you sit back and relax. There is no individual finally. There's no individual right now also, it is all ignorance. So the answer is very simple but the explanation is very long. The answer is - you do that which your ignorance tells you to do. There's no knowledge there yet. Remember accumulation is ignorance and it depends on what you accumulated. You do that and depending on that you will be given something to do.

The one who is free, his doing is equal to non-doing because there is no doer. So it is totally meaningless to talk about the karma or the action of a liberated person. So that's why we have this saying that the jivanmukta has no karma and he does nothing. Nothing affects him. These formulas have a very deep meaning. They should not be taken on blind faith that someday I'm going to become free and then I'll need to do nothing. No, this is stupidity, isn't it? The jivanmukta is also doing that which an ordinary ignorant person is doing. You can see it. Only difference is, ignorance is absent. There's ignorance here that I am the doer, but for a free person, for a liberated person, this ignorance is not there. It is amazing.

Second part of the question was that - “Is there some reason the Jeev has bound itself within such deep uncertainty? Probably by uncertainty you mean not knowing what to do. We are born with this ignorance. We don't know what to do. We accumulate the ideas from the society, who incidentally does not know what to do also. So we copy other people and we do the things they are doing. Everybody is going to the gym, we are also going to the gym. Everybody wants to have more money, we also want more money. Everybody wants a car, I also want a car and so on… So society is a place which will keep you bound. Collective ignorance. Because we are not born with a goal and such people are always confused because they don't know. They perhaps know that they are not born here to do these stupid things which others are doing. You accept probably the minimum that is needed for survival but not beyond that, not beyond the absolute necessary. They know but still ignorance is there and they go from one place to another, one temple to another, one ashram to another and they can't find it because what they are looking for is happiness and freedom. You cannot find it outside, so the search will end only when you encounter a guru who has found it.

An enlightened master will liberate you. So there is a reason that the Jeev got bound and it was bound because the proper teaching is absent. It is innocent initially. It is simply a creation appearing and then the memory appears and the nature of the memory is accumulation. It gets impressed by things and it is not mature enough to even understand what is liberation. Also whatever gets impressed is its life and that is what determines its future. I'm now talking in the language of ignorance so there is a future for such a mind because there are impressions. They are going to cause something and there is no liberation unless this automatic, this mechanical wheel that the machine has started stops.

There is no liberation so the Vritti is a wheel. Vritti, once it starts, will push Jeev into ignorance. Mind does nothing except create more and more ignorance because its nature is to accumulate, it does not want to let go of anything. Jeev is an accumulation of experiences. That's all it is, otherwise there won't be any life, otherwise there would be a pure blank consciousness with no contents. Pure Brahman will be there. Since this is not the case, for some reason, there is something instead of nothing. There is an experience and direction of the experience is like this. More and more and more, instead of less and less. So that naturally pushes the mind into ignorance because it is trying to be more instead of less. Once it knows, it is also natural. There is nothing wrong in that but as soon as it becomes so much, that produces confusion, frustration or suffering. Then it is time to let go, then it is time to cut the accumulations, cut them down to minimum, where there is optimal amount of happiness and freedom because there has to be somebody to enjoy happiness and freedom. Otherwise that is also not there.

So first there is the phase of growth and then accumulations will start dropping. That is what is known in the karmic theory as destruction of karma. What you have accumulated is karma. Result of your actions and experiences. Once you encounter a guru that means at that point your decline of the karmic stuff has started. The guru is hacking away, cutting away that which was accumulated and if the guru is an experienced person, a real hacker then he will go for the seeds of the karma. He will enter the mind of the student and burn the seeds of actions which are nothing but desires. Desires produce karma so he will cut the action at the root. You can do it yourself.

What that does is, accelerates the evolution of Jeev. What is evolution? It is freeing from the accumulation. This is a proper spiritual path, now the person is evolving really fast. Not naturally, it is accelerated evolution. Naturally all are destined to become free and liberated actually. There is not even one who will be left out, but the speed is a problem. Some get recycled many times, that is unfortunate. So the quest of a spiritual seeker is to get out of this mess as soon as possible.

Somebody asked me in one of the sessions that if there is no time, if all there is eternal infinity then what is the hurry, why do you want to do it quickly? And the answer is also very simple. Do not mix the teachings of the absolute with the relative, Do not do that otherwise there will be such questions, otherwise there will be confusion, so yes there is no time, we all are liberated already, we all are eternal and empty. There is nothing there to liberate from, there is no bondage, there is no accumulation. However for those who are in ignorance there is time, there is suffering. They don't like it, so don't tell this to the person who is trying to reduce the karmic load. Because first they will be angry at you and second they don't understand this thing. Even for a Gyani there is karma as long as there is body, there is this torrent of desires, there will be consequences, there will be all this but now the mind has taken care of this business. It is burning the seeds very rapidly.

Another question is, Why is it so hard to discard the doership?

There is no process to achieve that. There's nothing to be done to let go of the doership. So the question of it being hard or easy does not even arise. It would be hard if there were a doer and then you are trying to discard it, to get rid of it, it would be very hard. But if it is not there, then how can it be hard or easy? In my experience the doership is mostly bound by some sort of attachment, something you are afraid of. It's directly related to ignorance, the more ignorance there is, the more sense of doership will be there. Attack your ignorance. Do not try to be free from doership. If there is no such thing. If you force your mind to recall again and again that there is no doer, then it will become hard, that is unnatural. There is no doer, you know it for sure and then do whatever you are doing. Then plunge into the doership. There's no harm because in the back of your mind you already know that nobody is doing these things. The actions are happening and the doer appears as the owner of that action. There is nothing wrong now, let it appear.

There's nothing wrong in doing or doership as long as you know that there is no doer. What is wrong is that people do things and they don't want to take responsibility for their actions. There is no ‘I’. Once you establish it through your direct experience that things are happening and the doer is one of the events that happens in the mind, things happen and the doer appears and a process of Ahankara creates the individual, the one who did it.

Once you know this much, you don't need to do more than that, you're free from the doer now. Now the actions will happen and and you will find that if you are aware all the time, whatever action is happening, you will find that you will be freed from the consequences. That does not mean that the consequences won't happen, It is not possible. You are in the maya right now, there will be consequences but they will not bite you. There will be a background of peace in your mind because that is your knowledge now. That is your way of being if you remember and if you practice. It will be hard and initially you may need to do it for a few days, few months, few years. So do it, do whatever works for you but if you want to live like this, "I am not the doer" - then it's going to be a problem, it is an unnatural way. So do and take the responsibility fully, knowing that there is no doer, no responsibility, you are free, fully knowing that you need to do it, that is more natural, that is how it is supposed to be.

I'll give you an example of an actor in the movies. Let us say he has got the role of villain and he gets into the role totally, says the bad things, does the bad things, kills people, with full awareness that I have to do this, my role in the movie. He does it and the movie ends and he is free from all the actions in the movie. Did he do it? No, there was acting but there was no villain. You are already liberated. Whatever you have done is gone, it is just acting, it is not doing. Non-attachment. So if the actor remains attached to his role, what do you call him, we call him stupid actor. He went too far into the role. If he is doing the same act in his real life also that means he needs some kind of mental treatment now but those who know that I am only acting, this body mind is acting, they are already free, they don't need to do anything about the doership because it's already not there and if you are playing the role then do it completely, immerse yourself in the role, become a good actor and that is all. This is it, a play. So why not play as long as you have the body and mind? Are you free from actions? No, so do the right action, do the perfect action. Those who are free from doership, they can do anything, you must have noticed and usually they end up doing something really great.

Those who are bound, they cannot do much, they are bound by their doership. Now you know that you are an artist/actor, you can do any kind of role you want. You must have seen those people who say I'm shy, I don't go out much or I need a group of 20 people around me to feel comfortable, something like this and I'm this & I'm that, what is this? Bondage, isn't it? They cannot be anything else except this tiny little thing, which does tiny little things. Those who are free from doership, there is no limit for them. You can be anything you want because this is all mind and it will do exactly that which the impressions are telling it to do. So you can actually control the mind, you can control the actions of the mind. The first thing that a seeker will do is let go of any negative behavior, because now you have control over the mind. Control over the mind comes, not by doing, It comes by not-doing, by realizing that nobody is doing it. I am not bound and then you can become anything you want.

First we purify the mind, you just let go of the unnecessary and then you enter the world with a role of your choice. Usually it is to do something good for others. What else can you do when you realize I'm everything? Your selfishness becomes infinite, so everything is me, I need to do good for everything and everybody, so that's why there is this prayer which I say most of the time now because I've realized the significance of this prayer and the shanti mantra when we say three times let everybody be happy, let everybody be free, free of suffering, free of bondage and let nobody suffer in all the dimensions, in all the times and all creatures be happy and peaceful. So by saying this, by repeating this, we are giving up our doership, we are giving up selfishness, and individuality because in this prayer I do not ask anything for myself. “Give this to me, give that to me, make my life good…” - No, that is not a prayer, that is ego worship, that is what people do mostly. This prayer shows that there is no doer at all, now the individual has taken up a role which is equal to the whole. That is what the universal mind wants. It wants freedom from ignorance, suffering and bondage, so that is the right direction. Do that with full doership, with full responsibility, because that is as good as not doing anything, because it's not personal anymore.

I keep repeating that mantra nowadays and it will be good practice if we start our conversation with that. It will immediately remind you that I am nobody, in a good sense, that is your practice, that is your sadhana. Don't be attached to the doer. With full intensity you do something which is for the good of all, not only for the good of me. That does not mean that I don't do anything for me because when you become wise you do not leave your intelligence. Wisdom is on top of intelligence, it's not abandoning intelligence. The only thing is - you were doing everything very intelligently under ignorance, now you do everything intelligently under wisdom. This is a small shift but actually it’s a very big shift from individual to universal. It is so big that you can say that it’s the biggest step that is possible. So using this small mantra or a small prayer is a very big step actually. If you say it with full awareness, if you understand the significance of it, that alone can liberate you. You don't need big lectures, don't need books, and you don't need a guru either. That is so powerful. It will liberate you.

Do it as if you are the doer, it is your free will, while knowing you are not the doer. Initially this can sound like nonsense, it does not make any sense. It will be unnatural to live as if you don't do anything, as if you're not responsible. It is worse than ignorance now. You will need to take up the role and get into the role seriously as if it is the most serious role possible and direct your intelligence correctly in the right direction. If it is for the good of all, if it is for the benefit of the whole, then who cares, who cares if there is doership or non-doership or karma whatever. The whole is doing something good for itself that's all, now what is the use of all these theories? It's all nonsense. Initially when this teaching is given that there is no doer, there can be a lot of confusion. This happened to me also. For me it was very depressing actually, as if somebody pulled away the floor below your feet. No doer means there is no meaning in whatever I do, because nobody is doing anything and all these desires are random accumulations ultimately. Consequences do not matter. Why am I alive then? This is the question the mind will throw at you and the answer is very simple. Well there is no use, so the actions are actions of the whole, so better start acting as if you are everything. This is the answer and that will give you certainty in the sea of uncertainty. If the teaching is not total then yes it is very depressing, it is very sad to know that I'm not there, there is no doer. Everything that I did and everything that I wanted has no meaning at all. This can be really depressing. I was depressed for many months and at that time I had nobody to guide me. Made the classic mistake of running after spiritual knowledge without guidance, which many people do and they get lost. You need to get the complete teaching and usually if you are seeking you will get the answer and the answer is - there is no doer which simply means there is no individual doer. There is the whole which is doing and the individual is an instrument of action. Become a good instrument, become the instrument of the whole, assume your responsibilities seriously and let it be directed by this higher knowledge instead of saying - “I'm so small, I'm nobody my actions are worthless”. This is not wisdom. This is not getting the complete teaching.

Some people blame the non-dual philosophy as totally depressing, sad and nihilistic but that simply means that they have not taken the full teaching. They have not listened to the total message. There is a second step that everybody needs to take. You are empty, you are nothing, it's all okay, now you become something which is whole, which is big, which is infinite. Take the second step also otherwise you will face these questions -who is the doer, what should I do and so on.

Actually when I say things like this I also start with the same broken record that yes no doer, go home. It is not really fruitful but imagine giving the whole thing to a person who knows nothing, that is also useless. So first we break then we make. You will need to break that which is old and when the slate is totally clear, you form it into something that is new, that is bigger and better. Spiritual evolution is a transformation. It is not becoming nothing, it is not becoming a non-doer, non-self etc. It is a transformation.

You remain what you are with the added wisdom on top of it. For transformation to happen, the old must be destroyed, that is what your guru is doing. Hoping that something good will emerge out of this destruction. It is not really destruction, it is transformation. It looks like destruction. In some of the traditions it is called the dark night of the soul. Yes, it is dark, it is like night, it is like hopelessness. That's why I always say do not go alone, hold the hand of your guru because the guru has gone through the dark night of the soul already. He can guide you, he can be the lighthouse, that will show you the way. You can go alone but it will be difficult. If you like to do difficult things and nobody can stop you, do it, but take inspiration from those who have done it. You will see that they are not nothing, they are not small, they have not disappeared, they have become the whole. The whole thing is so big that you cannot see them now.

Sometimes this question is asked : why do liberated people leave this world? Why don't they come back? Why do they leave us? The answer is that it is a totally wrong notion that they have left. You cannot see them, it doesn't mean that they are not here. Everybody who is liberated is right here, right now in the form of whole and is already guiding you. That's why, when you get liberated, this individuality disappears. It becomes not nothing, it becomes the whole, which is equal to nothing and something at the same time. Beyond mind but it is right here, right now. You will remain as the whole for everybody, this is what I call the Gurufield.

The Gurufield is right here, right now. You have all the guidance right here, right now. This is also called grace, you seek it and you will find it. Those who are seeking light, they will find the lighthouse. Those who are not, well they will just remain wherever they are. It is a long journey for them but they will also come out of it. So first become the whole, first become the light and then other minds will become accessible to you. Without becoming the whole it's not possible to guide anybody. So those who are real masters are talking from this eternal-bliss-consciousness, they are not talking as somebody, some trainer, coach etc. You can learn yoga, you can learn the practices, you can learn from a yoga trainer, who has a certificate of yoga. That's not bad, at least you have someone reliable. Go to a certified instructor, that is good, but a guru is the one who is talking from the position of a real yogi. You will need the guru. Abandoning the doer is not the end of your path, it is the beginning of a path. Now become the doer from the greater point of view.

Session 13

There is no need for any kind of purification. There is no need to disturb the mind as it is. If you observe carefully, you will find that the whole of the universal mind is going through a process of evolution. And it will do that even without any knowledge of the self, it will do that even without the individual trying it. It is an automated process. Even if one or two individuals fail, it doesn’t really matter. And it is paradoxical because the knowledge of the self, of the essence of what I am, appears during one of the stages of the purification. When it is purified enough to grasp the essence, then this knowledge of the self appears in the mind. And another paradox is that the way the universal mind is progressing, evolving and purifying is through the individual only. There is no other way for the universal mind to simply progress. There is nobody there to progress. So it takes forms. It takes the avatars or the incarnations in the form of individuals. And the individuals through their effort, they evolve. When they merge back into the universal mind, the whole has progressed through the efforts of many. And this is the highest kind of answer that you can have.

When you step down into a little bit of ignorance, when you do not know what the universal mind is, do not know what is self, then the need of purification appears. Because there is suffering. Because if you do not do the purification, which is, evolution of the mind, progress of the mind, betterment of the mind, if you do not push the mind (in this case, the ignorance will be that I am the mind) or if you do not push yourself in that direction of betterment, of evolution, then the nature, the universal mind will provide you signals of suffering, saying this is not the right direction. If you progress towards where it wants to go, then it will give you the signals of pleasure or happiness. So if you take one step into ignorance, there appears a need. There is a need to purify the mind. There is a need to progress.

The purification is nothing but progress. The purification is dropping of that which is totally unnecessary, which is retarding the progress of the universal mind. All those things need to be dropped. And at the third step, you can say that, there is a need to make some effort. There is a need to do some effort, and knowingly, intentionally change our behavior which is in alignment with the tendency of the whole, which is in alignment with the flow of the universal mind. Such people are spiritual seekers. They have a goal and they have milestones for progress, and that is what a practitioner is doing. So, there are levels of these things, and at the lowest level, there is ego. The ego evolves by selfish means, just by surviving in the world, the ego learns.

The question is, is there any need to purify the mind?

In my opinion, the question is asked by a pure minded person. The first sentence, I am eternally pure and empty, implies that mind is pure. If the mind is impure, you cannot come to this understanding. So, this question is not a truly valid question. Impure mind does not even know how to purify itself. And that is why I kept this last level, or you can say the lowest level, where it learns this through suffering. There is a mechanism of pleasure and pain, reward and punishment. An impure mind, where there is no awareness or knowledge, learns by the way of pain and pleasure, suffering and happiness. And therefore, sometimes I say that our goal here in human life is to seek happiness and freedom. Because as soon as there is suffering and bondage, that means the mind is not progressing. That means it is either stuck or it is going down, it is regressing. You will know whether there is a need or not only when the mind is mature enough to even think like this. We ask this question to find a goal, find a meaning to our life. So, if there is a will to purify the mind, let it happen. If there is no will to purify the mind, there can be many reasons for that.

The individual has no will then how can the individual decide whether to do it or not?

It is a paradoxical question and the answers are not going to be satisfactory. Don't try to see which answer is right, which is wrong. There cannot be a rational answer to such questions. There cannot be a right and wrong answer. There is no one answer. So, arrive at your own answer. Whatever is right for you is only for you. Probably it will be totally meaningless for others. So, I tried to put it down in these levels, categories about how evolved the mind is. At the highest level, well, there is no need. At the lowest, there is a very urgent need. And they are in-between stages. There is conditioning and then there is, the mind is disturbed. There is ignorance also. And all these things contribute in stopping the progress of a seeker or an ordinary person also.

How many people are doing the purification, knowingly, intentionally, with full awareness, and how many people think - “No, I am not the mind. It will purify itself. I won't do it”. We cannot judge people like this, but everybody is at a different stage.Let me warn you initially, a master like Nisargadatta Maharaj and all these big masters say, “Oh, it's body, it will die anyway, why are you trying to make it in this way or that way? Or it is just mind Vrittis. There is no end to it. Just detach from it, disidentify with it, and you will be in samadhi and so on.” These instructions are not for ordinary seekers. These instructions are for those who have already reached a level of purification where it has its own momentum now. It will happen. And if a newcomer says that, “Maharaj said there's no need to purify. And so I'm just relaxing, enjoying my life” - it can cause trouble. And the sign that your judgment, your decision was wrong is suffering and bondage and no freedom from life and death and the wheel of samsara. If this is happening, it means you need to start from one step back. Take the advice of somebody else, some other master who is recommending purification and who is giving you the techniques to purify.

There is a will to purify the mind before the knowledge. I used to enjoy all the ego tendencies. I find pleasure in hating, judging others. Even this still happens sometimes. I still fall in ignorance, but there is an urge to evolve above. For me, purification means to be more selfish than more egocentric. Selfish means about the self. I also have a need for purification. I also feel that there is a need to fix my mind. And I am doing whatever effort is possible, but I am not totally mad about it. E.g., if there is a tendency in the mind that is low in nature, I do not hate myself for having that tendency. Because that is also ego. So, there are stages of purification. The initial stage is that the person is totally egoic, does not want to leave the habits of the past, whether good habits, bad habits, does not matter. Habit is habit, it's not good. And then there are stages when the awareness starts waking up. And the mind starts correcting itself. The mind checks, sees its own behavior as problematic and causing suffering. And then corrective actions happen in the mind. The self does not do much. It's not its nature to do anything. Mind does everything. And all we need to do is turn inwards, orient the mind towards the self.

Remember what I am. And then the sun of the awareness rises and it's in its light, the errors of the mind are seen and the mind will be the one who will correct itself. So, when there is a thought like, I'm not doing my best, I'm still in the muck, totally, in total darkness, then do not blame yourself. You are progressing. You have seen your own impurity, which means there is progress. You have progressed so much that you can see your own mind. That is a big achievement actually. So pat on your own back.

This is not the condition of 99% of the people out there. They do not know that they are in so much darkness. They do not know that there is a need to purify. And there are people who have progressed a lot. Their mind is very, very pure. And according to its own momentum, it is going. And they say that now I don't have much need to purify the mind now. And I try to remain in samadhi, which means total awareness. So until you reach that level, put in some effort. I put in the effort whenever the need arises. Let the requirement be your guide. If you listen from here and there, you will get many, many views. So listen to your own mind. Listen to your own self.

Krishna is saying, to have clear water in a vessel. So as to see our reflection, the water has to be clean and the water has to be still. Same is the case with mind. It has to be with clean thoughts and should have reduced fluttering.

This knowledge of the self will automatically purify. But for some seekers, the mind is so unclean and fluttering that it is always moving like a monkey from one branch to another, is not steady enough. There is no attention in the mind. Even if you give them the knowledge like an injection intravenously, even if you do it by force, it has no effect at all. The mind does not stay on that knowledge.

Actually, I have seen such people, I have seen such seekers and I was one of them. For many years, the self-knowledge, although everybody was telling me, did not go into the mind. It did not seep into the mind because the mind was very, very unstable. The ignorance was too much. So there is a threshold at which the mind becomes still, still water, then the self is seen as the background of this activity. And then awareness arises. After that purification becomes easier. Sometimes when the impurities of the mind surface, the mind can go into depression or anger also. It can fall into self-pity and all.

So, Guru is highly recommended at this time. The Guru will make the process of purification easier and smoother because he has done it, because he has gone through it. Train runs only on a good track. Mind has to be repaired regularly. When the mind is still and cleared of ignorance, you will find the happiness and freedom goes on increasing. Life becomes smoother and smoother and purification will happen exponentially. Like today it is 20% pure, tomorrow it will be 40% and the day after tomorrow will be 80% and so on. Initially, the speed is very slow. Initially, it will look like that is going to take many many lifetimes to purify. I have so much dirt in the mind. But as soon as you start, you will find it does not really take time. The initial resistance is too much. And after that, it picks up speed. And you will learn this through your own experience.

I'll give you a small example that I had to do some maintenance in my house and it looked like it's a lot of work. And I kept postponing it because it's too big. Let the rain stop. Let Diwali come and go. Let me find people to fix it and so on. And one day I just started working on it. Little by little, I moved a few things from this room to that room. And starting the work was difficult but it was finished in no time.

The resistance is mostly in the mind, not in the actual process of purification. So some people go to immense depths, making an immense effort to purify the mind quickly. In my opinion, that is not really required because of this exponential tendency of progress. And there is no need to go there with a big hammer, start small. Most of the seeker's life will be spent in purification. It is amazing because we keep saying I am not the mind. We keep saying I am not the body. But there is no freedom from the mind and body unless they become pure enough. When the water is clean and is transparent, you can see the bottom of the lake. When you say I am not the mind, you must be seeing your true nature through this transparent mind, clear mind. Otherwise, it is just intellectual knowledge. It is just repeating whatever is said in the books. It is just parroting your guru. I am not the mind. Yes, I know it. And if you are not seeing the bottom of the lake, it is of no use. There is no actual freedom. The theoretical freedom that we talk about on the path of knowledge, it sounds so good. I am the self, I am the Atman, I am not the mind, and now I can go home and sleep. This will never happen. This is all paradoxical.

Mind is an illusion. But isn't it true that the only experience you have is of this mind? Forget about the levels, the highest level and the lowest level. What we need to do is, see the current situation and take necessary action. It is rational. So yes, the mind is an illusion. But the illusion is the only thing that you have. Can you experience reality? No. If you are experiencing something, it has to be an illusion. It has to be a bifurcation of the one, of the self that appears. And now there appears a need to have a certain kind of experience. That is the flow of the universal mind. That is where it is going. You will need to join the flow. And you will need to put your theoretical knowledge, your intellectual knowledge, your direct insights aside. Do the work. There is no escape from the work. One may have good knowledge about Atman, self, process of purification, etc. etc. but may not or does not realise the knowledge. Such people will get into depression in spite of knowledge. So what is needed is knowledge and practice.

Path of knowledge tells me I am not the mind and the other paths tell me - do this, do that, practice this. And then a very, very confused seeker will not know what to do. They waste a lot of time in finding out what is the truth. No, no, tell me the truth. Tell me that inside story which only a big guru knows and he goes hunting for that big guru. And the problem is everything is in front of you right now, right here. It is all bared. The problem is we are not able to see it. You are not the mind, but the mind is the only thing that you can experience. Now, do the necessary. On the path of knowledge we start in reverse. We start from this knowledge of the self. We start from the duality, the experience and the experiencer. And that is enough to confuse many people. Okay, I need to give up my efforts now, I need to give up on the practice. Then we go ahead and say, nothing is happening. It's all oneness. There is no perception without consciousness. The world does not exist without a memory. The memory is universal. The universal mind is just a machine, a mechanism, a computer and so on. We do this kind of talk on the path of knowledge. That easily confuses a person who has no attainment of practical nature.

It is kind of shocking, isn't it? Because I never say these things. You never hear it from the great gurus. They all talk about the Vedanta stuff and Upanishads and all. So when you enter the worldly life after this, there is a back to the marketplace phase after going through this, then you will need to take up the ordinary, the mundane tasks of life. So there is a saying in Zen probably that before enlightenment, the rivers were rivers, mountains were mountains, birds were birds and so on. After enlightenment, there was no mountain, no river, nothing. There was no me either. And after that, the mountains appeared, the rivers appeared, the people, birds, and the bazaar of the world appeared again. So do not stop at enlightenment. That will be a mistake. It is paradoxical, really. Practice is sometimes needed. The good thing about practice is the more you do it, the less you will need it.

What is our practice on the path of knowledge? The first thing, do not fool yourself. Do not say there is no practice. This will come as a shock because what do I keep saying? No practice, just be aware. That is the first step. Once you become aware, what do you see? You see the dirt of the mind. You see the suffering producing tendencies of the mind. Can you keep saying that after awareness has woken up? Can you keep saying no practice? Think about it. So this practice of awareness will actually put you on a path of practice, on a path of effort. And the effort need not be like that of a sledge hammer which many yogis and people are fond of doing. It needs to be a gentle persuasion, seduction of the mind. There is this habit of the mind, this is the error in the mind but you need not take a bulldozer to the mind. Once you see and point the error to yourself, the purification should happen. It should happen instantly. It must be your own experience. That's why I say, start very small. And the practice will look like a play after a while.

If it is your nature to force everything, then probably you should join that path. Learn extremely forceful but powerful techniques to fix the mind. It is not wrong. But on the path of knowledge, we say awareness first. And then forget about your books. Forget about your gurus. Forget what needs to be done. This is practical knowledge. Forget about philosophy, the mind, patterns and so on. It will do whatever it wants to do. That was just an introduction. This was your orientation lecture.

Now, there is a need to do so. If you see a need, that means purification has already started. Just like I said, if the Vrittis are so strong that the need is also not seen, that means, purification has not started. For such people, the knowledge of the self also will be like a donkey carrying books. It does not become reality. It's not Realization. It should become a part of your life. Sometimes I use the word embody that, the body has nothing to do with it. Embody means it is directly in front of you as a fact, as a reality. The self, if it is embodied and you become that, it is kind of difficult when our heads are up in the sky in the knowledge, in the intellectual discussions and debates. And then it is possible that you will waste a lot of time arguing about this or that. On the path of knowledge sometimes the students are encouraged to do something intellectual because they are not even intellectual. They are just zombies. The mind is not working. They are not even donkeys. So, read this book, read that book and answer this question, answer that question, have this debate, have this argument and do this homework. Think about it, introspect about everything that is written in that scripture, and so on. So, this is the instruction because the seeker is just starting.

Next stage where the intellect has developed enough, the seeker is ready to rise above the intellect. Now is the right time to deliver this kind of teaching. Okay, now keep aside your intellectual knowledge. See the reality. Realize what it is. Now the realization begins. If you say that the intellectual knowledge is of no use then that will be also an error. It will be useful for some people who are not even intellectual. So, we have nothing written in stone and there is no one statement that will cover it all. This is spirituality. It is like a buffet of many, many delicious foods. You try to taste a lot of things, whatever you like, whatever smells good that you want to taste. So, spirituality is like this. It is totally unlike any other subject or topic. It is highly intellectual, it is highly practical, it is paradoxical, philosophical, mystical, it is all of that. That is why we like it so much. Once you get into the field of spirituality, all other topics, all other discussions will look fake. They will fade away. It will be all boring because what you found is a treasure. There is not only knowledge here, there is practice also. There are not only intellectual debates here, there are experiences also. There is not only rationality and logic here, there are emotions and occult also. So, once you get such a thing, you will fall in love with spiritual stuff because you never found this kind of treasure before.

Change your mind if it is too stiff. For example if someone says, I want one thing and I will follow this for the whole of my life. Then you are not really getting the essence of being spiritual. It is not one thing. If it is so stiff, then try different paths. Those who come from many traditions, those who have tried many things, they will understand what I am saying. And those who were born in one tradition and have done only one thing, they do not understand the extra dimensions that spirituality has.

Intelligence is like a tool. You can use it to break something or make something. It can destroy you or it can advance you. All these abilities of the mind, they are like two-sided sword, blades. It will cut on both sides. For that, you cannot employ logic because logic says okay. That is also true. This is also true. So you will need to rise above the logic sometimes. Rise above the intelligence and see what your heart says. See what your emotions say. See what feels right. This may sound very, very odd to somebody who is on the path of knowledge because it's all about rationality, logic and intelligence.

So why am I trying to dumb it down? Emotions are a dumb thing but intelligence has its limits. It will also start looking like a dumb thing. The mechanical computer-like intelligence is also very limited. So there are finer things in spirituality after that. Greater good and evolution of the mind. These do not appeal to logic. You cannot say it is logical. Finally, it is all mystical. It is all mysterious. There, the intelligence doesn't work. You cannot say anything certainly about that. And higher intelligence takes the place of lower intelligence. A kind of divine intelligence replaces human intelligence.

Sometimes I say these words like the universal mind is a machine, just patterns, and the very next day I will say that it has so much intelligence. It is beyond human. It is para-human. It is superhuman and so on. So I know it is difficult because words are limited. We have only these many words in any language. That intelligence is a more refined intelligence. That is not ordinary human intelligence. Also the universal mind displays mechanical tendencies. It is inclusive. It is not only that refined intelligence now. It is all in one. Just like I said garden variety. So be prepared to be shocked at all the steps. It does not matter how high you have risen. It does not matter how much purification has happened. You will be baffled by the coming experiences. “I did not even think about this” - that will be your reaction. Once the job of intelligence is done, when the tool is no more useful, you will need to pick another tool and then proceed forward.

Purification of the mind is the biggest project that we humans do. And once you become aware enough, you can take it up intentionally, consciously. That is what a seeker is. They are doing nothing but purification of the mind because the light is being occluded by whatever the mind has. Once this purification is done, everything is light. If you can see everything is light, then the mind is almost purified now. It has picked up momentum very quickly. It will let go of all the ignorance. Even if there is habitual ignorance, see that there is light that is showing you that. Just rise one step above these tendencies. It goes up in awareness and then falls down. There are positive thoughts or negative thoughts. Just see. Because you are aware of this tendency of the mind to fall again and again, it means purification is happening. It is a good sign that one can see one's own errors. That is the start of the real purification process. So just like I said, I do not take a hammer to purification because fortunately it has purified enough to see its own errors. All I need to do is see the error. Bring the light to it and it catches fire. The light is so strong. The flame is burning so strong. On the path of knowledge keep the light on all the time. 24 x 7. That is our practice.

One lamp lights the other lamp. Why do we say that? Because when the mind becomes purified, it is reflected in the behavior of the person reflected in the speech and the actions of the body. And those who are still not ignited, those who are still in darkness, they can see this and they can pick a little bit of light from the person who is burning bright. So one lamp lights the other. Light as many lamps as possible. And it has to be by intensifying our own light. You cannot tell others that look, you are in darkness, you are ignorant, you are impure, you are lowly, you are egoic. If you do something like this, it backfires. It does not work. It is not going to enlighten the person. It's not going to light the lamp. The person will avoid you. The person will become fearful. The person will run away. If you have the light, just coming in contact with you, the person will be benefited. That is why I always say, this kind of selfish path, the path of spirituality, it's all about me only, all about I only, not about people. We do not fix people. We do not fix the world. We do not fix the environment. That is not the primary goal. That is not the prime directive. The mission is to fix myself. That is the only mission we have. That is why we have taken this birth. There is no other reason to be born.

If you get distracted like - I need to fix these things. They are not good people. These people are doing something wrong, or the world is not according to my liking. Normally you must have seen that nobody is able to do much. It is too big. So that is a sign of a big ego, if it finds faults in others. A less egoic person finds the faults in the self. In this one, this body-mind, so when I started searching for the most faulty person, the biggest sinner, I found myself. Usually everybody is busy finding faults in others. And that is their ordinary pastime. And the spiritual pastime is - “Oh, nobody is spiritual in this world. Nobody knows what I know. Nobody is enlightened”. Both are egoic tendencies. They have changed clothes.

There is another saying that if you point one finger towards somebody else, your three fingers are pointing to yourself. I am the most faulty thing here. And it is not a kind of self beating, it is not self pity. It is the light showing me how this mind is. And somebody jokingly said that look, the thumb is pointing upwards to the sky. That means we do not even refrain ourselves from blaming the highest. You must have seen people who say, oh, if there is God, well, he is doing nothing. He is just sleeping on a big snake, probably. In his heaven, he is happy there. It is the highest kind of fault finding I have seen. They are pointing upwards. Such people need purification badly, urgently, but most probably they won't see it. If you saw that I need purification, you have risen to a higher level. Now you don't need to worry much. You are in good hands now because purification will happen on its own. That brings us to our original broken record that I keep repeating - purification will happen. If you want it, it will happen. If you don't want it, it will happen. So don't worry about it. If you have this ability to see your own faults, it's a good sign.

If someone says that I am perfect, that is from the highest perspective. That is already perfect, isn't it? You don't need to say it. That which is not perfect, that needs to be made more perfect. So I am not going to go into the Sundaram aspect here, the perfection. That is a bigger topic than purification. Because on the path of knowledge, we start in reverse. It may look like the reverse for others. Because the Sundaram should come in the end. But we start with it. Talking about purification does not make any sense. But look from this perspective of paradox that the imperfect is also perfect. Ugliness is also beauty. The faults are also good. They are also perfect faults. Without those faults, there won't be this experience of fault finding and correcting. So now the intellect cannot do much here. The logic/rationality fails here. And the meta logic should be employed.

Another Question is - What's your view on idol worship? Are they just symbolism which needs to be interpreted and integrated in a philosophical way? It's a tool to integrate the philosophy of symbolism. Is that right?

Actually I won't be able to give you a one line answer, if I start talking about the phenomena of worship. Not to be confused with devotion or any kind of spiritual path. Worship is one of its own kind of human behavior. I won't be able to give you one line answer or short answer because there is a big history behind how the worship started. And it is all connected with the occult. The worship is worship of something. And the idol is a representation of something. If the idol looks like a human, probably a very fancy kind of human. Four hands or fifty legs or whatever. It is a symbolic representation of something which is not human. They do not have hands, they do not ride on an animal etc. That is the symbolism, it needs to be interpreted in an occult way. The occult has its own philosophy which is the philosophy of Maya, the philosophy of manifestation and the requirement of fulfillment of desires.

From the point of view of idol worship you will need to have an overall understanding of the worship itself. What are they worshiping? And that will connect you to the occult, to the times when the knowledge of the mind was at its peak. When it was highest, people were in contact with entities, parts of the universal mind that are extremely evolved, are extremely developed and they idolized them, obviously. “I am below here and you are up there. I want to become like you”. So what I will do, I will buy a poster and stick it on my wall so that I remember you all the time, so that I can become like you. This is idol worship. People worship in every culture. We worship Hanuman and probably somebody in the west is worshiping Superman, Batman and Spiderman. Same thing. They have their posters there, they have their idols, figurines on their table. It's the same thing. I want to become like Hanuman. I want to become brave and a perfect devotee. Therefore, I make an image of him. My choice of form, it needs to be exotic. It needs to be attractive. It needs to be very very enchanting. Otherwise, I am not going to look at it tomorrow. I will throw it away. It should not be a plastic toy, which looks mass produced. So we give them very exotic forms. You see the half elephant, half human with so many wonderful weapons like Iron Man. He is an idol, isn't it? He is the idol of teenagers. When we make it so attractive, the mind goes there again and again. It tries to embody those qualities, which that figure has.

So, you will need to have this overall understanding of where it began. It began from the knowledge of something bigger, from the knowledge of the evolved minds. The minds that progressed beyond us. And then we tried to embody that kind of qualities and we made it into forms and worship started. Now, the time fell in the Kali Yuga. Everything fell down. Dark ages began and so the connection was lost to these powerful energies/entities. Only the stone idols remained because stone degrades very slowly. Probably they did not make it in gold, they did not make it in metal and although they had all these capabilities, they made it in stone because they were smart enough to understand that time will change and only stone will survive. So, they left this thing and people saw the stones only, the statues and the stories, the myth survived. That is what they do now. They worship the forms only. There is no connection with that which represents that form. That is the problem in our society. It has become a religion instead of a science or technology. It has become a thing of blind faith instead of technology of some kind. I keep saying that the seekers have this responsibility to bring back the knowledge, to bring back the technology that has devolved into idol worship or blind faith of some kind without knowing what they are worshiping, they worship it.

There is hope, there is love, there is goodwill that is extremely desirable. These are good things and so we do not kick out the worship because the intention at least is good, hopefully. But the power is not there. It is not effective. That is the problem. But some people are okay with the emotion also, like It gives me a good feeling to stand before the statue and so I do it. Well, you are most welcome then. I get a good feeling standing in front of a flower, a big tree or in a forest or a great waterfall also. That is my worship. So do whatever you like. There is no right and wrong way. But for a seeker, the responsibility is to bring back the knowledge. It has to be interpreted in the light of knowledge and not in the light of stories. The worship is as old as humanity. It is a big topic.

Whom you should worship, why you should worship, how you should worship and that is the path of tantra. That is the occult path. Many people will not like to call it occult because the occult itself has become corrupted. It has become a wish fulfillment, quick fix way of getting any irrational kind of desires fulfilled. A Proper temple is not made for worship. A proper temple is made for exploration, research into the unknown. So in that kind of temple, you will find the statues that actually teach a seeker how to carry out certain rituals. They are not only for worship. They teach. Those proper temples are like universities.

If you go to a medical college, what do they show you? They show you the animals and human bodies that are cut in cross-sections and sliced in a proper way so that you go there and learn something about the human bodies or the animal bodies. Same way, the temple was like a learning institution where all these things were displayed and the teacher said look, this entity does that. That's why it is carrying a particular weapon. And if you encounter this entity, you need to do these things. You need to say these things. You need to have this kind of attitude in your mind and so on. These were like universities. Nowadays what do people do? They go to the temple, throw a coconut, throw some money and come back, hoping their desire will be fulfilled. So this is how it has become now. Which is okay. It's a part of a social ideology now. It's a part of psychology and sociology, not of occult.

I don't go to any temples. I don't worship anything because from a historical perspective it is all very good. But for a seeker these things have become totally useless. My recommendation is - don't stop going to temples. But if you go to a temple and go to a proper temple, go to a temple which is at least thousand years old because the degradation happened exactly thousand years ago. Go to something which is more than thousand years old like the Kailash temple or temples from the Buddhist Jain era. There you will get a hint of what the culture was like, how the civilization looked like in that age of spirituality. Hampi temple, Konark temple, Khajuraho, go to these temples. They are not like India. That was a different world at that time. Highly evolved, highly advanced, highly prosperous, rich, sophisticated people, high tech people. Now, we don't have that. We have the ruins, fortunately. We can learn a little bit. But the duty or the responsibility of the seeker is to uncover the mystery, to go as a detective, not as a worshiper. Go and find out. They tell a story of knowledge, science and occult, not of worship and blind faith, which many people label this country to be.

If you go to a temple for wish fulfillment and worshiping, then probably it's a waste of time. You need to go to a temple from a researcher’s point of view. Go as an archeologist, go as a seeker, go as a scientist and occult practitioner. Then you will benefit from that temple. If you go to a Shiva temple, see how the Shivling is installed, how many faces it has, which direction it is facing and so on. These things are to be studied. If you put a flower there or a coconut, well, it's your wish. It's a way of showing respect. But you will come empty handed if you go there with the intention of worshiping.

Somewhere I have defined worship, aradhana, the puja. It means intense desire to become like the Aradhya or the one who is being worshiped. And it boils down to purification again. I want to dissolve my impurities because you cannot grow in spirituality. You can only diminish. You can only remove that which you have accumulated, that is growth. All these entities, the gods and goddesses, have already done that. That's why they are enjoying a heavenly existence. We are trying to do that. We are becoming gods. We are not gods, not right now. There is a need for taking up the path of purification knowingly, intentionally but not in a brutal way. It has to be very fine. It must be beautiful. Make this your worship, make the purification beautiful. It has to be enjoyable. Not a torture. “Oh, I am not pure and now I need to hang myself from the rope to purify”. This is not beautiful, is it? It needs to be a tiny thing. One correction at a time. Done beautifully like a surgeon operating on the heart. Does not take an ax or a blade. His tools are very precise. Very small. And his skill is perfect. A seeker is like that.

We are doing surgery on our own minds. It need not be just swap the hard drive. You need to go into the boot sector and repair it. You need to issue proper commands on the terminal and correct your configuration. It has to be sophisticated. That is what I like. That is what the path of knowledge is. It should not be misunderstood as the path where purification is not needed. Once you are above intellect, see that intellect is useless. Now do that which is most necessary and do it in the most beautiful, most perfect, playful, enjoyable way possible.

Session 14

There was one very innocent question recently which says - what brought me to this life? People ask themselves sometimes why this life? Why this kind of experience instead of some other kind? And why am I not free to change this experience? In other words, they are asking why am I not free to change my life? Why this body? Why this family? Why this country? Why this culture? It seems nobody is happy with anything they have and they want to change it. There is another question which is similar - what did I do to get this kind of life? Now, if your life is going well then probably you will never ask these questions but if there is suffering, if there is frustration, if there are unfulfilled desires then these questions are bound to arise.

What brought me to this life? There are a few assumptions here in the question. The first is the word life itself. Mostly when people say life they mean this experience of being born and living in a body and then dying. This is the meaning of the word life for them and when they say me, they are assuming that there was a me before the birth, there will be a me after the death, just like there is a me right now. What they are asking for is an explanation: what are the reasons, what are the causes, because of which I am now going through the present experience? So as you can see a question based on ignorance will have some innocent assumptions. Because these concepts were fed into that mind, it cooks up these kinds of questions.

In the Advaita tradition we do not really begin answering the question. We start questioning the question first. That is the first thing to do. Look at the question, what is actually responsible for framing this question? The words that are being used in the question show the underlying mental activity of the seeker, of the one who is questioning. See that there are so many beliefs, assumptions, concepts that are giving rise to this question. Now it is not wrong that the person has this question, that is not the point. We are not going to prove because there are assumptions, your question is wrong, now I am not going to answer it. We do not do it like this. We first show that there are some concepts behind the questions and then we clear that kind of ignorance and as soon as that is done the answer becomes obvious, the answer uncovers itself and it will be unlike anything that the mind is expecting because an ignorant mind is expecting an answer that reinforces its ignorance. For example when this person asks, what brought me to this life, there must be an expectation in the mind that there will be a very clear cut logical explanation of the reasons behind my present life.

We do this kind of questioning on the path of knowledge. There are two or three assumptions here. First is the word, “life” - from the point of view of non-duality, life is all there is, it does not come, it does not go. Life is another word for existence-consciousness-bliss but when you take a step into ignorance, life can be translated more accurately as the Jeevan, which is an experience, which the Jeev is going through. It is derived from Jeev. The word Jeev itself is derived from the root Ja. Ja means to generate, to take birth. All the words that come out of Ja they come out of this root. So Jeev, Jeevan, generation, generator these words in Indo-European languages come from the same root. Now, life or Jeevan is defined as the time between birth and death. That is in the language of ignorance but in the broader sense, life never goes away, it is ever present. What comes and goes are various experiences in life. Life is a series of experiences. We delineate, we cut the experience from birth to death, present birth to present death and we say that it is my life. When you take a look at the wholeness, the oneness, the non-duality, then it is a chunk of the whole experience. It is not the whole of your life, life is endless, life is eternal, life is consciousness, existence itself. Can it go? Can it come? If I say it came from something then, that something is already there and it has to be the existence-consciousness only, otherwise there is no way to establish it, otherwise there is no way to experience it. That will be as good as not existing, imaginary. So out of logical necessity you will find that it is not possible for the existence or the life to go anywhere or to come from anywhere. It is the only thing that exists. So life is all there is, the bodies come and go. That is our direct experience, that is the reasonable, the logical answer

So the answer to the question of what brought me to this life should be obvious now, that life is a series of experiences which come and go. Why do they come and go? Because it is the nature of the experience, it is impermanent. If it did not change, it wouldn't be an experience. Have you ever witnessed an experience that did not change? Experience, impermanence, change, time, the flow of events and memory and mind - all these are one and the same thing. There is one experience and we ascribe many many words to it. When we look at it from various angles we find it convenient to use different words. It is multifaceted like a diamond so when we are looking at it from different sides, we use different words to describe it and when we look at a small part of it, we call it the Jeevan.

So then the question becomes - why this experience? Life never comes, it never goes. It is a continuous series of experiences. And why don't I remember other experiences? I (Ego) is an experience. I cannot remember things. The I itself appears. When the body was born there was no I. Probably you don't remember now. You remember only that part of this experience, when the “I” appeared. Probably a little bit before that - I was playing and I had a dog and so on. Even though the child did not say the word I, so that I was born, it did not arrive from somewhere. The ego or the person, the Jeev, takes birth. Before that, there are experiences, where there are different “I’s” and as soon as this birth happens, as soon as this form appears, a new I arises and its memories start piling up because it is a very limited form. It can access only those memories which are associated with this structure of the ego right now. Now that is the technical detail here.

Usually we don't remember this life also. We remember only those things that are most important for survival, that's all we remember. The memory and recall of the memory should not be confused. The memory is everlasting, the mind is forever and recall is on a need basis. Whatever is really needed can be recalled by this Jeev, by this limited entity, the person, and only that is recalled which is important, which is required and sometimes that is also not recalled properly. You must have seen that you want to go to some place and you forget the way, you keep driving, searching and asking. Even if it is important, sometimes it is not recalled. The recall is very unreliable. This must be your experience and there is no surprise that we cannot recall all those millions and millions of experiences. There is no surprise. It is not seen as important by the current life processes. Recall is not important, the experience is important for the Jeev and so all of its memories are being stored somewhere. They never wipe out, they never go away, even the tiniest details of the current experience are being stored. The only thing is they do not reappear as a recall. Only that reappears which is of some value for survival but all these memories that are stored are governing the present experience and that should be the reason for the current experience - all those past stored experiences.

That is the reason for our own actions, our karma is the reason for current experience. Current quality of life is determined by what is stored in the memory, in the causal body. So the question resolves itself now.

Next question is - when we witness consciousness without a world, without some experience or perceptions, isn't the light of consciousness just appearance too? it doesn't really exist?

A beautiful question. Consciousness has the prefix “con-” in it, which means together, e.g. conference etc. So it is always together with the experience. You can call the experience as the experience of the world, experience of the body and the personal mind, the subjective experience. All of it is subjective, so it is always together. Consciousness - the word means to see together. “Sci” in the consciousness means knowing, to know. So these two, experience and experiencer, are always known together. Why is that? Because they are one. It is like two sides of a coin, you can look at one side at a time but not independently of each other. When you look at one side the other side is hidden, when you turn it, look at the other side, the first side is hidden. Same thing. This turning of attention is the activity of the mind. When you stop turning, it is one. When we stop turning our attention, flipping our attention from the experience to the experiencer, back and forth, what happens? You must have done this in meditations many times. When you stop this activity, what are you left with? You are left with a dynamic experience of the present moment. Don't bring your memories, don't bring your conditioning, don't think about the experience, don't evaluate, don't judge and then, what are you left with? The oneness, the dynamic experiencing is all there is. So no, consciousness cannot be there without the content of the consciousness. It is because they are one, non dual, not two. So the consciousness cannot be without the content, the experiencer cannot be without the experience.

Isn't the light of consciousness just an appearance too? Yes, that is what I call awareness. Actually you can distinguish between witnessing and that which is existence-consciousness-bliss. In Sanskrit we say it is Satchitanand or Brahman. Many words for the consciousness that is embodied, which is having illusory experiences, sees itself as an illusion. In Advaita literature, they call it reflected consciousness. The metaphor that is usually given is one moon is reflected in many dew drops. These kinds of metaphors are given that one sun is reflected in many lakes. When you go to one lake you see one reflection, another lake you see another reflection, that does not mean there are two suns, that simply means that the structure in which the sun is making an appearance are two. There are many dew drops, one moon. In Advaita when we say that the Brahman is one but the reflected consciousness, the Chetana are many, you will need to go into a little bit of literature to find these words and what they mean, but roughly we can say in English that we will need to distinguish between the existence-consciousness-bliss and consciousness as an illusion, which appears as two, which always appears with contents. When you merge the contents with the witness of the contents then there is only witnessing. There is no one witnessing. So the light of consciousness does not exist if it is not shining on something.

There is a podcast episode on this very topic which is titled “The Illusion of the Self”. It is highly recommended that you listen to that topic because there we destroy this illusion of the self also. The self does not really exist apart from the contents which it is witnessing. So can we say that there is a self independent of whatever it is witnessing? No, no such thing. That is what Gautam Buddha was talking about. It is seen as emptiness and that is what is being described by the Vedic scholars. When we say, it is not an object, you cannot see it, you cannot grasp it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, that means it is not a phenomenon. Then what is it? It is pure emptiness just witnessing and things appear in that. They come and go on this background of witnessing.

Does that mean the appearances within the non-dual never cease, are we sure of this? These questions can be answered through logic only, not through direct experience and I will demonstrate how to answer these questions. All the experiences are nothing but appearances. There is nothing true about any experience. So just imagine that experiences or appearances stop and now there is an experiencer of this stopping also, which means that the experience did not really stop. The witness of the experience is still there and it is witnessing the stopping. That is why it can say that it stopped, but now, it is witnessing the stopping of the experience, it is witnessing the non-happening of appearances. So it contradicts itself, that's why we say it is necessary for the experiences to not stop because the other option gives rise to contradiction. If I say - the witness is gone and the experience is also gone - now there is no way to establish it. The only way to know is by witnessing, the only way to know anything is by becoming conscious of it. If you say consciousness is also gone, then nothing can be known and whatever statement I am going to make about this situation, is going to be a fantasy. Everything is gone but this is only a statement and the truth of it will never be established.

Similarly you can say that the appearances started at some point, the experience started at some point, probably it will never end, but it started and again I witnessed the start of it, that means, I witnessed the time before the appearance and I witnessed the time after it started, otherwise there is no way to establish it, otherwise there is no way to claim that it started and so again we find the same contradiction that you were there or the witness was there, witnessing the absence of the experience. So it contradicts itself because if you are witnessing something that means the experience is already there, now it is appearing in a different form, that's all it means. Form changed, the experience did not start, the contents of the experience changed, the contents of the consciousness changed. So it is a necessity. There is no logical alternative besides the continuity of the experience, besides the eternity of appearance. Why is that? because the appearances do not happen in time. When you use the language of time you are bound to land in a paradox, you are bound to land in meaninglessness.

Did we ‘ever’ witness consciousness without a world? The word ‘ever’ says time. Existence-consciousness-bliss is timeless. Time does not apply here and when you try to apply time to something that is timeless you end up with absurdity, it cannot be explained now. We make this mistake because the mind has this tendency to use the concept of time and it is successful in applying it to everyday objects. For Example - you are drinking coffee, the coffee did not exist before the experience of the coffee. It arrived, then coffee was finished, now it’s gone. Time and memory apply nicely to everyday objects but when you try to apply this imaginary concept of time to something as fundamental as the existence-consciousness-bliss, it fails badly.

Time is imagination. You never witness time, you only witness the present moment. We call it time because of the memory and you try to apply this imaginary concept to the Brahman. It fails miserably and some people will say because my concepts do not apply that means whatever you are postulating is false. Well look at your concepts, they are false that's why they do not apply. Our direct experience is timelessness, our direct experience is continuous appearances and they do not cease, they do not stop, it is eternal. That's why we say consciousness is eternal and because I am that, I am eternal. The non-dual never ceases.

Next question - isn't deep sleep exactly like it as there is no knower, no knowing?

No, the consciousness never disappears, in deep sleep the consciousness is witnessing itself. This is the standard Vedantic answer. In deep sleep the consciousness is witnessing itself rather than witnessing the contents of the mind which is the world, body and mental activity because it all stops. The existence has no states, the existence is non-dual, it has only one state and so in deep sleep it remains as it is. It remains as it was in the waking or dreaming, the experience has changed.

What is the experience of deep sleep? It is reduced activity of the mind, that's all it is. In the waking state there is a different kind of activity of the mind, where the mind is engaged in senses. Right now you are seeing, listening, doing so on, that's why the mind is established in the body because the senses are housed in the body, the senses are part of the structure of the body, that's why there is this illusion that I am the body, there is nothing wrong in calling myself as the body in the waking state because I am the body in the waking state. I am engaged in the sensory activities which we commonly call the physical world. It is nothing but a sensory activity, it is being produced by the activity of the senses. Otherwise there is no world and in the dreaming it is engaged in its internal memories, it is like magic.

How can we see things in a dream without the senses? There are internal senses. There are internal structures in the mind that produce the imagery and sound in the dream. As you must have noticed, it is slightly different. And in deep sleep, this activity stops, engaging in the sensory structures stops. It is not that there is no knower, it is not that there is no knowing, it is a different kind of experience and because it is so different that it has no use in the waking state, it is not retained in the waking memory, the human memory, the small area of the memory, out of which we are functioning right now. The experience of sleep does not go in that memory and that's why we say there is no content in deep sleep. But the experience of a yogi is different, the experience of a monk who is in Turiya.

What is Turiya? If you are in Turiya it means the light of awareness is always on, no matter what is the state of the mind. It is possible to achieve that and it is also called the Yog-Nidra in the yogic speech. So when you are in Yog-Nidra, you will retain a little bit of memory of deep sleep also, there is no unconsciousness. It all depends on the memory. If you remember it, then there was the knower and the known, if you don't remember it then you say, I was unconscious, which is the language of ignorance.

There is a podcast episode on deep sleep itself, where for one hour I discuss the state of deep sleep. The only difference between waking and deep sleep is that the contents of the deep sleep state do not impress on the memory and even if they do, they are not recalled in the waking state. The contents of the dream, 90% is lost and only 10% is impressed on the memory, that is also lost upon waking up. After 5 or 6 minutes of waking, it is gone. There are extraordinary experiences which are commonly called astral experiences in the tantric traditions, they are not retained also and they cannot be recalled in the waking state. That is the whole problem of a tantric who is trying to achieve the astral states, there is no recall of whatever he does in those states.

The mind goes through many states actually. The mind is operating in many states, only the attention is focused in the senses, that's why other states seem strange, this is our ignorance. You have not explored the whole of the mind and that's why you think that there are only two states of the mind - one is waking, the other is deep sleep, one is conscious, the other is unconscious and this is a very narrow, ignorant view of the mental activity. There are dozens of mental activities that simultaneously happen. You are right now in the waking state, obviously, but you are also in the dreaming state because that level of the mind is also active, the imaginations are happening, that activity is happening, you are also in the astral states, there is a connection there and you are also in the deep sleep state right now. So that is the correct definition of Turiya. When your awareness is so widened that you can now see the whole of your mind, that is Turiya, that is the fourth state, which is not a state. That can be confusing, isn't it?

So you will find that the Gyanis, when they do this kind of lectures they will write on the blackboard three states of the mind, the fourth state is Turiya and then they will write below that, it is not a state because it encompasses all the states, all the activity of the mind. There are some people who will say that death is also like deep sleep and no, it is not also like deep sleep. You don't know what it is, the current waking memory cannot access the experiences of the death, after death or before birth. The experience is everlasting. Just because there is no memory, it does not mean it never happened, does not mean there was no knower, does not mean there was no knowing. It's not possible. You will know this, only if you enter in the depths of the mind.

In deep sleep, I am-ness is lost. What is “I am”? Activity of the mind, Ahankara. It is required in the waking state because the body needs to be maintained, sustained, so this activity happens only in the waking state. There is a fake I am-ness in the dream state, which is trying to survive in a fake world, although there is no difference, that world is as “real” as this one. There also is an I, it is the shadow of this waking state. We try to bring the I in the dream state, to the level of awareness of the waking state, that is also called lucid dream or aware dream. That is an exercise in itself. So on my hindi channel I go into the depths of the dream state, how to bring your awareness up in the dream state, bring it higher than the shadow like confusing degenerated states of the dream that we experience. They can be improved. You can experiment on that, you can improve it. There is a subtle body beyond the dreams and you can improve that also. You can hack into it, you can send your awareness in, like penetrate it and there will be now a memory of those experiences, which are in common languages called astral experiences. They are right here, right now, please notice this. If you are in Turiya, all the experiences are available to you at this moment, this is the whole practice of a seeker, who is trying to get control over his mind.

What do you mean by control of the mind? For a common person it is something like - I don't want to be angry, I don't want to be lustful, I don't want to be jealous, I don't want to be competitive and I want control over my speech and thoughts. But the yogi goes a thousand steps beyond that. The yogi achieved these childish things in one week. Now the yogi has a very big goal, he wants to master all the states of the mind he wants to remain in Turiya all the time. It is possible. I myself have experienced not only waking state with full awareness, I have experienced, obviously, lucid dreams, which is a child's play. You can do it in one day, if you want and I have experienced the subtle body states, which are also called the astral states. I have experienced the deep sleep state which is called the yoga nidra. It is possible. That's why I am saying all this. Before lecturing and prescribing the methods, usually I try them out first, I do it first and then I go into details, then I write the slides, then I write the blog post, otherwise I will say, well I heard it here and there, I add a disclaimer in front of that, not my experience, so better go to that guru who told you about that thing. And yes, there are dozens and dozens of states, if you want to classify them you can do your own classification. Actually as you encounter the states, you will find that you can write a whole book on these states of the mind.

Sleep paralysis is one more state. It is just a state of the mind. There is a state just before going to sleep, it is called hypnagogic state and there is a state just after coming out of sleep, it is called hypnopompic state. Those who study psychology, those who study states of the mind, they have given names and they have very strange names like in botany and zoology, we classify animals and we name them. Probably not many know the scientific names of animals. When I say formica, well nobody knows it, it's an ant only. You are familiar with all the states, only you do not know the technical names.

Ego appears only in certain states. Whenever there is an interaction with other entities, you will find the ego appears. It can appear in any state of the mind, and if you do not have a control, if you do not have the knowledge, your knowledge brings the control, then you will be confused, you will be fearful, you will avoid it, you will erect barriers around all these experiences and then your experience will reduce to experience of an ordinary ignorant person, which is - I as a body in a real physical world, and is totally boring, it is kind of a rotten bread compared to the five star meal which a yogi is having.

So, that is our attraction, isn't it? We want to taste all these states of the mind, we want to retain the memory, we want to study it, we want to hack it, we want to utilize it for desired fulfillment. Whatever I mostly do, I do it for knowledge, that is my desire. So, an ordinary person is just munching on the rotten bread of the waking state. It is miserable anyway.

A comment says, Possibility of illusion of time seems eternal too, because there will always be appearances when there is a witness and this illusion of duality will always bring the illusion of time. Witness always seem to drag along maya with it.

How to witness non-duality? There is no way, it has to appear as an illusion and when it appears as illusion, it appears as two - the experience and the experiencer and the experience is always illusory, that means it comes and goes, does not stay. And as soon as it changes, that means there is memory, otherwise how will you even say that it changed. The permanence appears as memory because it is permanent, it is non-dual and being converted into change, converted into experience. The permanence leaves a trail behind which is memory, which gives rise to mind. The process of recalling and interacting with this memory gives rise to mind. This is a loopback kind of process, the consciousness tries to loop back into permanence but cannot experience it. It appears as a memory, as soon as there is a memory, the present moment looks like it has changed. As soon as it changes, the illusion of time appears, the time has passed. However, it is simply an illusion of change, which the consciousness is trying to grab onto. It cannot and therefore it creates. It is fleeting. There will always be an experience of this fleeting illusion, there will always be an experiencer and because there is this differentiation, there will always be I am-ness, as I said, it appears whenever there is a need and there will always be perception of what is changing.

You cannot see what is changing; it will always appear as a perception that means will be mediated by structures in the mind. These structures are called senses, sensors. The changes impress on the sensors and the output of the sensors is known in the form of Tanmatras, for which there is no English word. Tanmatra is your current experience of colour, shape, sound, smell, taste. There are many more experiences of Tanmatras which are not accessible in the waking state. The mind creates these perceptions out of illusory change. This is the show, this is the play that is happening on the screen of consciousness. So the illusion will be always known through senses that means it will appear in forms of these elementary perceptions/qualia. And there will always be an illusion of time passing because the whole cannot be known in any other form, at least I don't have any knowledge of any other form in which the non-dual can be known. It will always be known as duality, it will always be known as an illusion, it will always be known by the illusory I/self as this whole thing which is laid out right now, right here. You can see it. It is not a theory, it is not a philosophy, it is darshan. You are seeing it right now, right here.

Your current experience is of oneness being broken down into qualia, into time, into ego, into objects, into mind, into everything else, states of the mind. It is very very involved. There is one word for it, it's called Maya. This projection, this superimposition of nothingness, changing emptiness, you can say, is so illusory that we don't even have any concepts regarding this. We cannot visualize it,, we cannot understand it, what is happening. We do not know it apart from the illusion and concepts, that's why we say names and forms. That is what we know. Therefore the knowledge of the experience part is always knowledge of the names and forms and it is always illusory, it is always false. We do not concern ourselves with the experience, we are more interested in the experiencer. What is it? You cannot grasp even that. Anything you say about the experience is bound to be wrong, bound to be false so the true knowledge is represented by silence. The great guru is silent. A silent transmission, that is the whole knowledge. The whole thing that can be known is right here, right now and it is only this much, that is what we are interested in. For the ego it is very boring and simple but for the Gyani, this is the biggest amusement that is possible.

Synesthesia is one more state regarding tanmatra. There are some people whose minds process sensory information in different ways. I have done a little bit of research and I found that the spectrum of tanmatras or qualia is very big, is huge compared to whatever is told to you in schools, colleges or even in the master degrees, even PhDs do not know it, because it is the bleeding edge of psychology. So there are people who can convert numbers into qualia and obviously because society does not give them a language to describe these experiences, they cannot tell you how they are doing it. Like there is a red coffee mug here and I can describe what I am seeing, I am seeing a round shape with a handle, it is red in color. Now you know what I am talking about, the description matches your tanmatras, the description matches your own perception, so you understand what I am saying, but if I say - when I add a 10 digit number with another 10 digit number, I do it by converting the numbers into mental forms and then they just merge together and the sum, the addition appears in my mind, now there is no way for you to visualize that. There is no way for you to understand that because of the experience of such a person, of a genius, they are also called the savants, their experience is totally different from your experience. There are people who will convert faces into something else so that they will never forget a face.

There are people who have a calendar built-in into them. Can you imagine that? I have seen some videos on YouTube where poor illiterate villagers had such talents. There was a child, a kid from a remote place in India and he could recite the whole calendar. You ask him what was the day on this date in 1969 and he will give it to you in one second, plus he had more abilities like multiplying eight digit numbers, before you can enter them in a calculator, he would come up with the answer. And he is just a villager, uneducated guy. How come? How is it even possible? And the answer is - the mind does conversions of changes and stores them in many formats. There are not only these accepted formats which we are aware of, not only as colors, shapes, sounds, not only in terms of the five senses or emotions, there are much more, there are more qualia, there are more tanmatras.

Ancient people knew all these things, they knew how to convert stuff into other mental stuff, they knew how to manipulate it, they knew all this magic. Nowadays we don't, we have lost it. Society has degraded so much that even if I talk about these things people will call me crazy. “You do not think like me and you do not have the same mental processes like me, so you are crazy”. That ignorant person, that stupid person does not know anything about the mind. The mind is open-ended, that is the bottom line. It is not what you imagine it to be, it has more possibilities than your standard textbook says or your society thinks. So we are open to possibilities always, therefore we research into the mind. If you research you will find. Ordinary people will be amazed, oh it's magic, it's not magic, it is mind, it is better than magic, it has abilities that are mind-blowing.

So how do we know all this? When we get into the study of the mind, which is lacking in today's societies, there is too much emphasis on the illusion, too little on what is producing the illusion. When you get hold of the root, you will throw away the illusion like rotten bread, you don't want that now. Therefore you will find that the path of tantra is actually technology of the mind or science of the mind. We are not even talking about the Brahman/consciousness, that's too high up there, I am only talking about the mind that appears. That which appears is the mind. The study of the mind is tantra and the tantra will also take you to liberation because you lose interest in what is appearing in the mind after a while.

You hold on to this house of bricks and cement, why? As if it is real, because that is the only reality for you. What if you could build palaces which are more real than this one using your mind only? What will happen then? You will lose interest in this puny house of bricks. That means detachment has happened with the lower layers of the mind. It is all dirt for a yogi, this whole world is like a useless pile of garbage for a tantric, not interested, and so next birth will not happen here. He is liberated from the human body, human birth, human world, this Mrityu Lok. That's why tantric is above physical existence, he is above birth and death and he is immortal because he is now covering a greater area of the mind, and he controls it. So tantra will also take you to evolution, to liberation from this simple existence.

Session 15

But how should we conduct ourselves in this life? Reject all that can be experienced. It’s a very powerful message. All the experience is illusory. It is not helpful to find the self or I in any kind of experience. It is going to yield only illusion after illusion. So that is how our conduct or our attitude should be after we realize this. Do not run after any kind of experience. Reject the experience as not true, the experiencer as the only truth. The self cannot exist alone, without any kind of experience. And therefore we say “not-two”. The whole message of non-duality or Advaita is that which is “not-two”. So if I say self and the contents of the experience, these two things are there. That is what is the real self you can say. That is the essence of non-duality.

So just to make it clear. First we take the student into the experience and the experiencer. And we say that you are the experiencer. We try to convince the student that, look at this self. That which is experiencing is you. It is your essence because that is what is constant. That is what is unchanging. It is very easy to see that. And in the second step we show that when you look for the self, you will never find anything, you will never encounter anything except emptiness. We have rejected the experience as illusory. As arising out of nothing. But then we will need to reject the self also. There is nothing separate apart from this illusory experience.

So as a seeker, should we keep seeking? Because if self is also an illusion, then probably I need to seek more, I will find something which is not an illusion. If this is the attitude then probably you will waste your time, you will waste your entire life. You will never find anything which is not an illusion. Only when you accept the illusion. You will find some peace. Now we should stop seeking. As soon as we realize this much, that when I look at the experience, all I find is illusion. When I look at the self all I find is nothingness, emptiness. The experience itself is arising out of emptiness. There we should stop seeking. You will never ever find anything beyond this. There is nothing to look for, and of course, the mind is not satisfied here. The mind says no, I am looking at something. There is a solid experience going on. It is actually the only certain experience that I am having is of being here and now. It is very certain. It is more certain than the passing experience. Which without memory probably does not exist. So how can it be empty? This is what the mind is going to say and you can entertain the mind if you want. You can play with the mind if you want. Okay, I am going to investigate. And what you will find is that it’s emptiness again. There is again nothingness. And this is probably where the limit of the mind is. This is where the mind should stop. So that's why the message is this: we will never know the oneness. We can stop here because there is nothing meaningful beyond that.

Meaning is created by the mind. What is the meaning? It is a logical set of relations between the words and that correspond to the experience. This meaning is very limited. Meaning is limited to what can be shared between you and me. If we agree it is meaningful. Otherwise it's not. So the mind is very limited. The meaning is even more limited. Hardly anything is meaningful here, from the absolute point of view. So there is no point in seeking after that. If the seeking is going on and on that means you are entertaining your mind too much. That's why you see very pithy and very direct messages. Teaching from many masters is to stop thinking and keep quiet and wash your bowl, wash your dishes, clean your house. Don't seek. There is nothing to seek beyond this. Whatever I said just now, till you have no realization of this thing, then the seeking should be there. That should be the conduct of a seeker as far as spiritual seeking and spiritual progress is concerned.

“If you are asking me not to seek, what should I do with my life?” Life will do whatever it needs to do. It is a play, the play will go on. There is no doer to do anything. I am declaring that there is nothing. There is no self also. There is also no experience. Then who remains there to do anything? Nothing. I am declaring that nothing is really happening. I am declaring that it's all purposeless, meaningless, unknowable event that we are witnessing. There is nobody to witness it also. So the question of what I should do should be dropped. What is happening is beyond the illusory person. So our attitude should be of a witness. Like a viewer watching the movie. What is the viewer doing? Just enjoying the movie. The characters in the movie are doing whatever their role is. Whatever the illusion they are designed to play. If you still have an identification with the body-mind, then this kind of question will come. The body-mind is the part of the play. Nothing needs to be done really. Our conduct should be just like the conduct of a viewer of a movie. We are the watchers, we are not the doers.

We hear all these teachings and they look okay. Sometimes you are impressed by these things. What a great insight, we say, but to embody it is very difficult. To sink into it, to absorb it, to become the teaching is very difficult. And it took me a long time. So even if this is your current status regarding spiritual progress then do that which you find interesting in your life. Do that which you absolutely love to do. And also do that which you find absolutely necessary. For example, survival of the body and your duties regarding your family, society and country. That is what we should do. Because the doer has not been dropped yet.

But why? Why should we do that, which is absolutely necessary and which we like to do? Because that is what is happening, that's what is going to happen anyway. So even if you cannot grasp this much, do that which is destined for you even if you cannot grasp it. Do the purification of the mind. Improve yourself because we find that the mind is on a path of evolution. Probably that is what liberates your mind. Because you, the self is simply nothingness, is so pure that it need not be liberated. It is not bound. There is a bondage in the mind. Bondage is in the form of ignorance. Ignorance is producing all kinds of odd, irrational, illogical behavior and speech. For example, we are taking births in human form or other forms continuously, in a loop. So we say okay, get rid of all this mess. This purification should happen. And then what is purification? There are many traditions which will tell you how to purify the mind. It is basically a procedure to get rid of ignorance.

We do the bottom up approach in purification. We start from the purification of the lowest layers of the mind. For example the world, our surroundings, and society, and this body, this vehicle. And then the purification of the ego and the selfish tendencies of the ego. Then purification of the mind, clearing our intellect, clearing up all the dirt in the mind. And then staying in the absolute, which is pure awareness. Awareness of whatever is happening. This is the bottom up approach. And every student should be intelligent enough to grasp at least this. This is the right conduct. Depending on where you are. If you have reached, if you have tasted the absolute, then there is nothing to do. Just like I said, enjoy the show. And know if there is still activity of the mind, if there is still dissatisfaction and questions, then the guru will come down a step. And if that is also not working, guru comes down two steps. So depending on the realization, these prescriptions are given for the right conduct.

If you can see the worthlessness, the non seriousness of life, awakening has happened. Who have taken this experience of human life, to be real and they take it very very seriously, we call those people asleep, not awakened. Few days ago I was in the market and buying vegetables, and there was somebody who was quarreling for 10 rupees. You are selling this vegetable for 10 rupees more. Extremely serious. Now this kind of behavior results because there is too much ignorance. Because this play has been taken as reality. It's just a very little example. There are people who are so ignorant and whose behavior has become so extreme which can be seen as murders, crimes, wars and politics and all those odd actions. The mess of the relations, for example, marriages, casteism, racism, extreme selfishness, extreme greed, and everything wrong that is happening. This is the drama of life, which we perceive as wrong, is happening. It is happening because everybody takes this experience as the most real. To be honest from the highest point of view it's okay. Let it also happen. It is also perfection. It is also Maya. And she is perfect. Whatever she is doing, we cannot say it is right and we cannot say it is wrong. But an average seeker will see it in this way.

In our day to day life we need to act in this way because we are the watcher but there is a component there which is still playing. It is still not out of this world. We are still in the world. So a little bit of balance, that's all. Sometimes play a little bit and when you see that - Oh it's not worth doing all these things, you just rest. Rest in peace. Yogi is like a dead body. Have you seen those people? There are some yogis who will actually become a dead body. They live in a cemetery. They bathe in the ashes of the cremation ground. They are as good as a dead body. Won't speak for many months. Won't even eat. They will just sit in one place, in a cave. As if nothing exists. What are they trying to do? The detachment has become so strong that this has resulted in this kind of behavior or this kind of practices. They go to extremes but that is also not really required. That is an extreme reaction to detachment. Vairagya is simply renunciation. That is an extreme attitude to take. But we cannot say it's wrong. It's also right. This has happened. If you enjoy that thing, do it. But for an ordinary seeker who has not lost his marbles, your daily life is your spiritual life. The daily conduct, that you are habitual of is okay, is fine, do it. Family, work, festivals, rituals, your friends, your travels, enjoy life. When it ends, do not come back. This is the message. Because we still have one foot in this ocean of Maya hence we should act here according to the rules of Maya, according to the rules of the mind which are Karmic rules. Do not act if you can and if you must act, it must be only that which is necessary. And If there is a preference in the mind that action will happen anyway. So that's why do whatever you prefer to do and do whatever is necessary.

I used to take science and technology very seriously. I thought that was the ultimate, then I used to take the Occult very seriously. Oh I want powers, I want all these abilities and all. And then I used to take meditation, Kundalini and all these things very seriously. This is the way to go. This is the proper way for a yogi. And as the knowledge dripped in, as it was soaked in, it seeped into this hard covering of the mind. These all were dropped. So It's just letting go. Now, what do I do? I do exactly that which an ordinary person is doing. Just waiting for the experience to be over. I am waiting to die. That can sound really horrible. That can sound like a depressing statement. And if you say such things in the society they will probably take you to a doctor thinking something is wrong with this person. And believe me I have tried saying such things out of my ignorance, out of stupidity or you can say innocence. Because I did not know the consequences of saying such things. So for an ignorant person these words are going to be shocking that I am waiting to die. But these statements were coming from a deep realization. There is nothing more to do but to wait for this experience to be over. Your detachment will ensure that it will not repeat.

We should not ask what will happen after that. It is open ended. Exactly that will happen which is necessary. Exactly that will happen which is according to the laws of the mind. And because you are beyond the mind now, you have attained the Buddha nature. What will happen is unknowable. At least we cannot know it using this mind. So wait for the experience to be over. That is what we all are doing anyway. When there is no time, when there is no space, when there is no world, what will be the experience? It cannot be described. It cannot be known. So the answer is not really straightforward. It depends on the maturity of the seeker. Whether he has arrived at this place of silence and peace or not, the answer depends on that. Those who have arrived or they have gotten a glimpse, a taste of how things are, they are just waiting for the experience to be over.

Actually there is no death so it is only metaphorical death. That means at least this experience of bondage will be over if extreme detachment has happened. Otherwise there will be more experiences till the allocated karmic residue is burnt up. That's what traditionally we say, that you have realized the truth, now wait for the karmic seeds to burn up. Because there is a momentum in the mind now. It is still processing all the past experiences, stored sanskars. That can be cleared very quickly sometimes. Sometimes it may take a few lifetimes but that will be cleared. Once we see that the monster in the movie is only on the screen, it is illusory, then we are no longer afraid of it. It's not a big problem for us. If good things happen, we laugh. If they don't happen, it’s still okay. This is a movie. Probably the biggest fear is of death. We can understand it is the tendency of the ego. It is most natural. So you will find that, those who are waiting to die, those who are waiting for the experience to be over they are silent. They are following the “keep quiet” order from their Guru. They are also afraid of dying.

For example, while driving, when crossing the road they will look, they are very cautious. They don't drive at high speeds and follow the rules and so on. And they take care of the body. They don't let the body simply rot. They eat good food. They keep a healthy body. So what is the explanation of this kind of seemingly contradictory behavior? I desperately want to get out of this life but I keep it going. How is that even possible? That which wants to hold on to life is the ego. It is because of its momentum it is still doing it. The day the ego stops its tendencies, that will be the day the body will be gone. Then the desire to eat and drink and finally to breathe, goes away. It looks like a natural death. There are no bells and whistles when a seeker dies. Nothing interesting really happens. Maya is the best movie director in this universe. From the point of view of the director it should happen as if it is non happening. It is always covered up in ordinariness. So you will find that all the masters, all the great masters, even the avatars, who are not supposed to be humans; they all die a very natural death. By natural I mean even if it is through a disease or accident or wars, that is natural only. There is nothing unnatural in dying. So it will be a natural progress.

From here onwards. The ego will keep doing its thing. Don't worry. If you say - Oh no, I am so afraid of death, even though I know there is no such thing as death. Because death is as illusory as life, it is a part of life. So you should not get confused that you have not realized anything. It is not the case. It is a different layer of the mind. They are acting as per their conditioning. That's all it is. So be afraid of dying. There is no harm in that. There is nothing irrational in that. When you say that I am just waiting for the experience to be over, that does not mean that there is a need to push that experience to the end. It will do by itself. If there is ignorance and the person takes a kind of artificial means or uses his mind, Intellect to bring an end to this life, it is as good as suicide. Only the body has been destroyed, the mind will continue. Its momentum cannot be stopped. Probably that is not a very true statement. But for us ordinary seekers miracles do not really happen. So it will continue and it will reappear in another birth. It cannot be stopped. We are not worried about all these things and we will let the natural decline of the mind happen.

What will be the experience after this? What will happen after that? Well these are again very curious questions of the mind. What is our experience? What is our observation right now? What is our realization? Nothing is really happening right now either and that's what will continue to happen. This is a timeless existence. The question of the future should not arise in your mind. If it did, you can be sure that it is probably the intellect, it is probably the ego, it is probably the person in you, who is anxious of knowing what will happen to me. There is no me. So this question should not arise. Then it may look like there is no meaning in realization also because nothing special is going to happen. Yes, there is no purpose of realization also. These kinds of thoughts may arise in your mind and you are back to square one, because yes, there is no meaning, there is no purpose, it is all mind-created. Meaning is not there, purpose is not there. All you will encounter is emptiness and this realization will cause detachment and then progress of the mind towards becoming empty.

The definition of Nirvana is when the candles are extinguished so that nothing remains. It is scary, it should not be said in this way to ordinary people or even to a new seeker who has just joined the spiritual path. We do not say it like this that all the candles will be extinguished, there will be nothing. It is scary for the ego. We sugarcoat it into some good teaching, like there will be a state of perfect bliss, there will be perfect happiness, there will be no death because you are eternal. And there will be liberation, you won't be bound with anything. That never happens. What happens is realization that life and death are equal and ignorance and knowledge are equal. Because in the end you don't know anything, this is guaranteed. You will never know anything. You will realize that I was never bound. There is nothing to be liberated. You will realize that the mind is already progressing. It is progressing towards emptiness. And although it is a very adventurous track, you are not worried. It is just like a movie. It is happening on the screen. It is an appearance. And then this great fear is dissolved. Whatever remains are the remains of ignorance. Which means the tendencies of the lower layers.

In traditional literature, for example Shankara and all these people, they call it a burnt rope. The burnt rope still looks like a rope, it has all the twists just like a rope. The structure is still intact, but it is useless, it cannot tie anything. You cannot use it. Life of a seeker is a burnt rope. Because we are on the direct path, sometimes we get tired of sugar coating and we say it directly that you are a dead body already, you are burnt rope already, you are nothing, you are empty. These kind of statements are made. When they are made it means they are coming from the realization and yes they will sound horrible, they will be disgusting from the point of view of ignorance. So be very careful when you say these things. For example, do not say these things in front of your family. They will be terrified. Think about these things. People have been thinking about these things for thousands of years and this is the essence of what they arrived at, this is the answer that they arrived at. I have never found any other satisfactory answer.

Next question is - If experiencer and experience are one or all there is experiencing then why is the mind dividing it into two? and is purification of mind required to see this?

There is a fault in the question. The mind is not dividing it into two. Please see this. Right now you can look at experiencing. You will find the mind is not really dividing it. It cannot divide it. It produces this illusion of two. It appears as if there are two. Has it divided it into two? If it has then probably that is bad news. Probably you are not lucky today because now you won't be able to join it back. There is no power in this universe who can join the two into one. It's not possible. The whole yoga is realizing that it was always one. It was my illusion that I saw it as two. This is the whole realization. So that is the fault in the question. The question should be dropped here. But if you are not able to drop it, I have some sugar coating for you. If the mind has divided it into two then try to make your experience as pleasant as possible and that requires purification of the mind. Purification of the mind is not required to see the truth. Even a criminal, even a total idiot can see it. It has happened so many times. There are stories upon stories on how this happens. Even a king, even a politician has this ability to see it. No purification required.

When I say a criminal, an ignorant person, a fool, a king, a politician and so on, these are extremes of Maya. They are extremely into ignorance. Still it is possible for them to realize the truth. No purification required. Purification is the after effect, the fallout of realization. If there is no realization at all then the purification is just a kind of pretension. If there is realization, purification will happen on its own. Now you can stop doing it, forcing it. This is a very deep statement. You will not hear these things often because the gurus do not bother to mention all these things. So now you can realize the truth without messing with your mind. Because the truth is beyond the mind and once it is realized the purification of the mind will start. Which is clearing of the sanskaras. Just like I said it will decline, it will become less and less. It will move towards emptiness. That is the only liberation possible for the mind. The dissolution of the mind is the only liberation. But it does not really want it. Isn't it? So we cover it up like sugar coating a bitter pill. Okay do the purification you will attain bliss. The bliss of being nothing. That is the only bliss possible. Some people get glimpses of it. They know this will happen. I am pointing out that all the realized people will come to this kind of realization. They will start saying things which sound similar - an illusion of the mind, dissolution of the ego, death of the person. That is even bigger than the death of the body and so on.

Freedom from births and deaths. It means that there won't be any experience because the ego cannot take even this much. So we say you will be born in higher worlds, you will be born in the light body and there is some truth in that because there is still ignorance remaining so the Jeev progresses in an ordinary way. But for the seeker it does not matter what kind of experience it is. The seeker is already liberated. That is what we mean when we say Jeevan Mukta. We are liberated already. Even if your mind says something else. You are already liberated. You don't need to do anything. If there is a desire to do something, go ahead because that is what will happen.

As soon as you join an ashram the Guru will put severe restrictions on you. Joining an ashram is like going to jail. Jail is probably a better place. There is a lot of freedom in the prison. You can play, you can do whatever you want, you can eat whatever you want. It is not like this in an ashram. If you have joined an ashram which has five star facilities, you’ve made a big mistake. Please don't do that, please don't waste your money. Ashram means a very disciplined life. Purification of mind means discipline. Niyam and Pratyahara, very difficult things to do. If you want to go to an ashram because you think my life here is hell, want to escape from this life and what can be a better escape than the peaceful life in an ashram, then probably you will look for such an ashram which has all these five star facilities, away from crowd and so on. But that is truly an escape only, that is not purification. Real ashram is a place of torture. How do I know this? I tried these things. I have gone through all the pits that you can imagine, possibly. So the guru is going to make your life hell. Purification is not an easy job. What do we recommend instead? Get knowledge first and then the purification will happen on its own, it will happen wherever you are. You don't need to join an ashram. Don't need to take sannyasa, don't need to do anything at all. The mind will purify itself.

What are the symptoms of purification? More and more peace of mind. More and more bliss. Which is equal to peace. Bliss is not some kind of pleasure. But for those who encounter bliss or peace for the first time, it can be a big pleasure. The symptoms of purification means more and more letting go of unnecessary actions, unnecessary things, unnecessary habits and so on. I don't want this, I don't care about these things, this is letting go. The power is in truth, the power is in knowledge. It's not who says it. If there is a little bit of readiness in the mind, it grasps it. Even if it won't grasp it totally, don't worry about these things. Purification has started. It will become crystal clear to you. Sometimes the teachings also are not grasped initially because the mind is not pure enough. But there is no need to worry. Remember, time is an illusion. If it happens today, it's okay. If it happens after 10 years, perfect. Enjoy the ride.

It is better to get a little bit of realization because that will make the purification more genuine. The purification that is slapped on you by the Guru in an ashram is more of a pretension. There is a blind faith component there. Because the student has seen the Guru, how pure he is. A real Guru is like a lotus in the mud. Living his life but is not touched by life. Not touched by Sansara. He has seen this and now the obvious and very natural consequence or the impression upon the mind is, oh I trust this person a lot. Because whatever the Guru says happens. It is found to be true and so on. Even from a common sense point of view you can see all these popular Gurus. They are popular because people feel that what they are saying, there is some truth in that. Even though they don't understand what they are saying completely, there is a trust that builds up around these Gurus. So the blind faith component comes. Okay, I don't know anything. Okay, I am ignorant but I will follow the Guru. And this is the path of devotion.

Whom are you going to surrender first? to a Guru? You don't know anything. You don't know the higher things to surrender to. So you surrender to whatever is highest in front of you and that is a Guru, that is your teacher, spiritual master. So the blind faith is useful if you know where to direct your blind faith. If you want to do it blindly you should have that much love for spirituality, for spiritual masters and the master will see it as an opportunity to purify the mind of the seeker and he will give you exercises, all the practices that lead to purification of the mind. Even if you are standing on one foot in a desert it's not going to do anything else except purification of the mind. Or even if he says that okay go and marry and have children and live a very pure life, that is also the same as any practice. There is no other use of this experience of life. It exists to take us beyond life, beyond human experience. So depending on the tendencies of the mind of the individual, the Guru will prescribe something. It is like an opportunity to lighten the mind. If not enlighten you should lighten it. Let go of all that is unnecessary.

I have seen this happen to a few people. Totally ignorant person realizes something because of this hard work he has been doing for many years. So don't worry, on the path of knowledge that will happen. There is no free lunch here. Purification will happen here also. Only thing is that because the intellect has grown to this height, it will let the purification happen instead of resisting the purification. In the case of the path of efforts, like bottom up paths the ego is in charge, the body is in charge. Therefore you will find a lot of focus on the body and the ego and good conduct, ethical behavior and all that will be there. But in the case of the path of knowledge because the intellect knows few things, It can understand, it has grown up a little bit so there is no real need to go through that kind of circus. Purification will happen under the direction of the intellect. One day you will see that these things are totally useless.

If you are progressing the sign is ever increasing happiness, peace and freedom. The reason for that is this purification is happening. That is the only progress that the mind has. Where is it progressing? What is in the end? Dissolution, nirvana, mukti liberation whatever you want to call it is the end of the mind. Which is paradoxical because it never ends. It is the end of the ignorance you can say. I am the mind or this mind is the real thing. This ignorance is dropped forever then whatever is happening is happening as a timeless existence for the one who is completely above the mind. And you will find that it is like this right now also. It is like this right now without any purification. It is like this without even your knowledge. It does not matter if this individual knows it or not. The truth is as it should be. You cannot bring the truth from somewhere. You cannot give birth to it. You cannot create the truth. The very definition of truth is, it is right now right here. If it is not existing right now, it's not true. The whole seeking is discovering this. You do not become anything. Right now also you are nothing. Those who have realized, their journey becomes very easy, a smooth ride. Because intellect is in charge. The realization is helping you. It is like a Ferrari, it is very very fast now. If not, then there is no problem really. You will reach there. You will reach the same realization in time. That is also the leela. That is also the play. So don't worry about it.

A seeker has asked, for twenty years my goal was darshan of my Ishta Devata. Now I'm not sure about it as it would also be an experience and hence not real. Sometimes I feel bad that I don't have an intense desire for it. How do I handle the guilty feeling about it? Mantra chanting also seems like an activity in this play and we were warned about it twenty years back that the mind plays such games to keep you away from chanting?

When the mind is pure, all these desires will be dropped. So, don't feel bad. Because if you don't have the desire for the supernatural, look at the current experience. Isn't it supernatural? Look into the eyes of a child. He is your Ishta Devata. Probably you will be underwhelmed, even if you meet this god or goddess, they will be ordinary. I'm not talking from experience here. I'm just inspired by those who have done that.

Let's take for example Papaji. His Ishta was some form of Shri Krishna. In his later years, after meeting Ramana Maharshi, what happened to that illusion of the Ishta? Ramana Maharshi one day simply dismissed it. Do you know that story? It's a very interesting story because when I heard this story, I was totally convinced, like it's a sigh of relief. Oh no, finally I don't need to do all these stupid things, I don't need to please any gods and goddesses. Ramana Maharshi said this and that is a big support to people like us who are not involved in all these kinds of practices. Papaji was a devotee. Obviously he had Ishta and that Ishta, Shri Krishna used to appear to him. Probably not the Krishna who was in Mahabharata, probably something else which appeared in the form of Krishna. So he told this to Ramana Maharshi he was very happy, that look I have achieved this much, I can call this god anytime I want. He appears in front of me. Ramana Maharshi said, where is he now? And Papaji said, no he is not here right now. And Ramana Maharshi said, then he is not real. If it comes and goes, it's not real. That must be kind of shocking and liberating for Papaji.

Similar events happened to Ramkrishna Paramahams; his Ishta was Kali. Everybody knows these stories. And it was kind of an everyday affair for him. And this is the story of every devotee, everybody who has an Ishta will tell you the same story that the Ishta becomes a friend not an invisible friend, a visible presence. But there is nothing extraordinary about it. For some paths like Sikhism or the Santmat path, the Ishta is Guru. There is nobody who is higher than Guru in those paths. So I am not saying that the other paths where there is a Devta are lesser paths, no, that is your Guru then. If you are not learning from that God or Goddess then why are you even worshiping them? The Guru is the highest there and you will find that the Guru becomes Sakha. Sakha means friend. The devotee finds the object of devotion as his friend is no longer extraordinary. Make anybody your friend, whomever you like, they are all forms of the absolute. So why not? You can have that kind of experience and see that it is a miracle, it is a miracle that the other exists. The truth is not two. The miracle is two, isn't it? The miracle is that the experience has been created for us in the form of other people, other Gods and Goddesses and all these entities and all these infinite worlds. Where are you looking for a miracle? Where are you looking for an extraordinary experience? It is happening here in front of your eyes and that realization alone will drop your desire. It will be dead because you see everything as a miracle. Many people have heard this kind of statement for an enlightened person: everything is a miracle, even this rock, this chair, this table is a big miracle. Sometimes I find it kind of hilarious.

Why this experience? Why? There is no answer for that, why but what I am expressing by asking this question is the joy. Look at this madness, look at this amazing experience that you are going through, Why is it there? We don't know and we will never know. This is the miracle. Ultimately the mystic is right. We will never know what this is. So don't feel bad because the real miracle is happening right now. So if you have a guilty feeling even after this realization then drop it. It is just a trick of the mind. If you really love chanting then do it. But I am going to give you a guarantee, like they give you the money back guarantee, I am giving you the money back guarantee. No matter how much you love it, you will drop it one day. It will become useless, it will become ordinary, it will become kind of worthless. It is like diamonds. They have a worth, they have a price, they have value because they are very very rare. You don't find the diamonds lying here and there but suppose you are in a mine of diamonds now it becomes totally worthless.

Look at this chant of existence, look at this OM that is happening around us. Isn't it? It's just vibrations. Is there a bigger chant than this? What is the yogi or practitioner trying to do when he is chanting? He is trying to dissolve his mind in the ultimate. OM the biggest vibration there is. Now I am using the terminology of the tantrics and yogis so he is trying to dissolve his mind but can there be a bigger chant than OM? Is it possible? No it's not possible. What is OM? What is the significance of OM? It represents the whole universe, it represents the whole existence. Can there be a bigger chant than this? The OM is happening all around you; we are all a product of that vibration. It is the biggest vibration there is. Sometimes I call it the universal mind. It is the same thing. You can call it Shakti, you can call it Parvati, you can call it Maya, you can call it Kali, whatever you want.

Incidentally we keep discovering gems like this. I was listening to a Christian mystic on YouTube somewhere and he said, Maryam, as it's called in the East, what is called in the West the mother of Jesus Christ, what is her name? Mary? Whatever is the name, it is derived out of the root for Maya. So Jesus is the son of Maryam. He is the son of Mary, it is derived from Maya and what does that mean? She was not married, still the birth happened. It is a story, don't simply blindly believe the story, it is pointing to a truth, only the mystic person will be able to tell you the truth, not the religious person, not the one who takes the Bible literally. Well it's ok you can take it literally also if it's making you a good person, why not, but only a mystic, only a spiritual seeker will understand the meaning of Virgin Mary. Yes she is called Virgin Mary, How is it possible? Look at Maya, isn't she giving birth to everybody? Jesus is kind of a symbolic form of humans, he calls himself the son of God, God is my father he says, what is it? How are we being produced? Out of the womb of Maya, and it does not require any kind of sexual union, nothing like this.

There is a very interesting mention of the appearance or whatever is appearing as these bodies, these creatures, trees and plants in many Sanskrit texts. They are referred to as children of a barren woman, what does it point to? It means that the creation is happening out of the womb of the Maya. It is a virgin birth, it is as good as not happening. So there was a culture in the past probably 25,000 years ago from where this knowledge originated. Probably it is older than that but the human mind stops there, about 25,000 is my estimate. There was a culture somewhere on this planet. This planet did not look like the current planet that time. There has been a lot of change after that and there these concepts arose and you can see the commonness of all these concepts. I just gave you the example of Allah as nothingness and Shiva as nothingness and this Mary as coming from the Maya but what I am pointing to is that these all traditions sprout out of one realization, one culture, one group of realized people. They were given this knowledge and then it bifurcated and became multiple, becoming many many traditions depending on the culture, place and language.

If you are willing to dive deep into the ancient knowledge, you will find gems, you will also find a lot of corruption but it's the job of the seeker to clean it up. So Christian mystics when they speak it looks like some Advaita student is speaking, some non-dualist is speaking. For example Moses or somebody was asked who is God and he said I am that which I am. It will look like a statement from Raman Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj. I am that, I am the highest. Look for such gems in the old knowledge, which is now manipulated, corrupted and beyond recognition but those who can realize they can see, they can see that there are still some shreds of wisdom, some truth remaining there. Whenever I come across such people, mystics and realized people no matter from which part of the world they are, I find them speaking my language, language of a seeker. Language of the seeker is universal, it is the same everywhere. People from all around the world flock here in Pune or Rishikesh, they know this language. They did not come here because India is a spiritual country or because all kinds of miracles are happening here, no, there are more people here who speak their language, that's all. This place is special because this language of seekers has been preserved here nicely.

All cultures preserve something of the old knowledge, the ancient knowledge, so wherever you go you will find these gems, you will find the same principles. For example the principle that the Maya is producing this for no reason. Once you realize all these things then obviously detachment will happen, not only it is an illusion, it is an illusion for no reason. Not only that I am the truth, I am here for no reason. It is the biggest miracle, you don't need anything else. So don't feel guilty. This is the biggest mantra that is happening around you. The play of the creation will happen, even if you don't chant, it will happen. This person who is trying to chant and do all these things is a speck of dust, does not matter really, that should not again become some kind of complex in the mind. I don't matter, now you get the point.

My job is like a janitor, take the broom and start cleaning whoever comes here. I don't give you anything. I will take away whatever you have, that is the dirt. That is purification. My guru did the same thing. I see everybody as myself and I do the same thing and one day you will do the same thing. Don't worry, it is like induction, it spreads. Sometimes I wake up and see everything as magic and a thought arises: how is this happening? A sense of wonder comes. You need to see it from the child's point of view. Like they say for a child everything is new, everything is wonderful, there is a little bit of dread also, there is a little bit fear also which some people will notice as they say: I don't know what is happening because till yesterday you were so sure, you were so certain that I know, I know this world, I know my place here, I am this human, I need to do all these things the society has told me to do and today this solid floor crumbled, this certainty was taken away from you. You were not given any knowledge, only that you believed was destroyed. So there will be a fear, I don't know what is happening. This depends on the maturity of the mind. Probably as the time passes this fear will also be dropped.

I went through both the things. I went through the fear also which was more like irritation or an anger because my personality was like - I should control it, the mentality of a manager, everything needs to be in my control, everybody needs to follow my instructions, I know what is best, I know how to do it, this kind of tendency was there in my mind and then I said, well, it does not look good, nothing is in my control. Now there is no me also and it was irritating for the ego to let go of the control. It happened very slowly - from frustration, irritation, anger to fear and then to wonder, it's a kind of roller coaster. This happens to some people and probably for others, it's boring - so you mean there is nothing? Let’s go back to work.

If we are in love with the existence, which is me, I am loving nobody but myself. Which does sound like a selfish kind of statement but no, there is only me. There is only loving. That is the only kind of love you will find. This is also called unconditional love. I cannot say it as beautifully as Rumi or Mira says but they are in love with this absolute principle, which I know as myself, as the experiencer appearing as experience. They are in love with that and that's all that matters, that is the highest realization. It is so ultimately. You will find that letting go culminates in love, nothing else. It will bring you the tears of joy and love. If they did not happen, well you're still messing around with the mind that means it should result in those tears of joy, it should result in that song that is kirtan which is about love. So ultimately this oneness will manifest as love for you and be ready for that. That is the total surrender. There is no ego in love. You must have noticed, if I say I love you, the “I” and “you” are the problem. Love is a tiny thing in front of me and you. So it's not really love, if there is only love, the I and you both dissolve in it. They don't really exist and the only thing that remains is love and that is the only reality there is. You need to dwell on it, do not try to introspect it, do not do surgery on it, surgery of rational and logical thinking. It does not make any sense. So dwelling in love, being in love is the highest form of realization.

Session 16

I got a question from the self-enquiry app about how to ascend. My immediate thought was that is there anywhere to ascend to? Who will ascend, and where will that thing go? As usual, if we look into the question itself, try to see what kind of mind has produced that question, then you will find that there was an assumption in the question that I am not ascended, I am somewhere down here, don't know how I descended down, and now I need to somehow go back. Or probably there is an assumption that I was born in this lowly state and now I need to travel upwards, because there are stories of people who were born ordinary and then they ascended, we call them the ascended masters.

When we hear such things, when we hear these teachings that you are not evolved enough, you have not progressed yet, you are deep in the ignorance, and you need to reach the highest, this belief takes hold in the mind that I am kind of in a low position now, and I need to do something in order to reach somewhere higher, the place where these people are talking about, that kind of experience, which can be called as ascended experience. Therefore this question arises now, how to do it? You told me that I have descended, you told me that I am lowly, now tell me how to ascend also? And that is where this question arises, and my immediate thought was where are you going to ascend to? Is there any place here? Is there anyone here who can ascend to some place higher, who can have a better experience, a heavenly experience? Because the question has assumptions, we can simply dismiss the question, but probably that will not be a good idea for the person who has asked this question. Probably, I don't really want to kill that enthusiasm for ascension, so we cook up an answer sometimes, and the answer is straightforward actually, that as soon as you hear such things you need to investigate that kind of teachings. Do not blindly assume them to be true.

When you ask this question how to ascend, have you tried to gauge how low you are? have you tried to ascertain? First, that indeed you are down there, somewhere fallen, because ascension means to climb up. It is just like the Sanskrit word Arohan, and the opposite in descension which is in Sanskrit the Avataran from which the word Avatar comes. It is assumed that we are all Avatars who have descended down. Where is this down and where is up, have you investigated this thing, before even trying to know the techniques of ascension? Is it possible to do that or is it possible to descend down? Has anybody questioned this assumption that I am down here somewhere? I am an Avatar? So when you do that you will see that the question is now falling apart, who is descended, who has fallen, and believe me or not, you will never find that “who”. You can try it, you can question who has fallen. You have a few options.

There is this body, there is this ego/person, there is this mind and all the mental processes, the intellect and all, there is this Jeev, the higher mind or you can say that which survives the death of the body, and there is the greater mind and the universal mind. Now pick your option, who has descended? Because you will need to identify with one of these in order to gauge the level of fall, and you will notice that it is arbitrary. You can identify with any of these things, and usually it is limited by the kind of experience, the kind of knowledge that the mind holds, the amount of experience that the mind has gone through. So if your experience is limited to the body only, you don't know anything except the body, and you say that I am the body and this body thinks, it's all physical, then obviously there is a very limited option. The body just travels from the womb to grave, that's all it does. Where will it ascend? It is a pile of matter. It grows, probably that is the ascension. who knows and then it dies. If you are the body then there is no point in thinking about growing or ascending somewhere.

If you are the person, well, it is just assumptions of all kinds that I am this gender, I am of this nationality, I have this relation, father, mother, brother, sister, whatever. This is what defines the person, or this happened to me, that happened to me, a story. Can you see where this is going? The person can never go anywhere.

If you identify with the mind, then it is an accumulation of memories, experiences, and tendencies, preferences, likes and dislikes. Where can it go? It will accumulate even more, is that ascension? It is already doing it then, and it also changes, it also recycles back again and again into many, many forms, many, many lives, many life forms.

If you identify yourself with the Jeev, the soul, or the greater minds, then well they are already ascended in some way. They are changing in their own way. What is this evolution of the mind, is it ascending? or is it dissolving? Because the individual is a limited form of the bigger minds. So what is the ascension for that individual? Its dropping of the individuality. Now it associates itself with a bigger part of the mind, bigger part of the experience, bigger part of what is happening, and in a blink of eye it again drops back to the individual.

So the evolution is spreading of the mind, the evolution is breaking of the walls, the invisible barriers around itself. It does not become big, because it is already what it is, only the identification shifts from a smaller part of the mind to a bigger part of the mind, and it also depends on how much experience that mind has gathered, and there is no limit to this, because the universal mind is almost infinite.

Why don't you simply identify with the universal mind? What it is, experience it, the experience is right here, right now. Experience of the body or experience of an individual, does not really last. So we are already that, where these tiny experiences are appearing. For the time being it looks like that I have descended, looks like that I have fallen, but where is the “I” here? Which one is the “I”? Which one has fallen? Because this fallen “I” was created when the falling happened. The fall happens, the “I” does not fall, the “I” or the ego or the person, individual is the product of this falling. It is not an entity, which was somewhere up there and now fallen here and now it needs to ascend back. The individual cannot ascend back. It is not really present. It is not real. So all that it can do, all that this mind can do is to investigate, find out if there is something to ascend to and give up this belief that this “I” needs to ascend and how? Well that is very obvious, when the belief is not there. You find that you are already ascended. It is kind of a play, you can choose to identify with whatever you want and now instantly you are at that level. Now one can say “No, but I am not having that kind of experience of ascended beings. I know these things, I can understand these things, but I cannot see them. The experience is still of this lowly human being.”

So it has to be seen again that this experience is temporary, isn't it passing? Every day this experience is leaving you. No matter how tightly you want to hold on to, no experience is permanent. So it will pass, it will go away and then whatever you call as an ascended experience will be your experience. It is nothing special really. What has happened is, this experience of “fall” is special. It should not have happened. The fall or the descending down is special and it lasts for just a tiny duration compared to the whole eternity.

There was an interview I was listening to and that teacher said that there is a difference between eternity and immortality. We are not immortal beings, we are eternal beings. A very tiny difference. We do take birth and we do die. These are special occurrences in the wholeness, but we are eternal, that which is eternal is ascended already. Yes, from time to time, to collect some experience it dives down here. There is nothing wrong in it. If you see it as descending down then that is the problem, isn't it? Why do you see the human birth as fall? It is just a play, for the time being. The big one is trying to act like a small child. That's all that is happening and it is very flimsy. You can see it now.

There is nobody here. Nobody has taken birth. We can go on deconstructing like this and you will see that it is my attachment to a specific experience that is causing this anxiety to ascend. If you accept this lowly experience, which you think is a lowly, descended experience, then where is the problem? Isn't this a play also? After you know this, after you realize that I am the only one here and I am the only one who is playing all the games, then you can play the game of ascension, then you can do whatever you like to do, whatever kind of experiment you find attractive, you can try it. You try to go there, try to have that experience. You will now understand that it is all arbitrary. You can imagine any kind of experience. “Oh this experience is the ascension experience” and then you go for it. It's like a play now, like a child’s play. You can play, there is no harm, but it must happen in the light of knowledge that it is a play. Nobody can ascend because there is nobody. Nobody can descend for the same reason. And if there is this illusion of descending and ascending then they are just illusions. It need not be taken very seriously like “this is the final truth and now I must ascend”.

The truth is actually right in front of you. As soon as you ask this question, who needs to ascend and who has fallen? You will never find anybody. What you find is this pure consciousness which is playing these games, which is experiencing everything eternally, immortality or mortality. Mortality is a small part of immortality. Falling is a small part of the bigger game of being. That being is already ascended as much as it can ascend. Where can it ascend more, when it is whole of it? So those who have encountered the self, those who have encountered this empty pure witness consciousness, which is molding itself into a variety of experiences, they will never even think about ascending anywhere.

What is there to change into? Which experience can I prefer of this human, animal nature or some sage, saint or bodhisattva nature? Which one is more ascended? It does not make any sense, isn't it? Because it's all my play, I can choose, I can even take on a cover of ignorance on myself, I can choose to hide from my own eternity and call myself as descended and then I can fight back to ascension, but it's meaningless. If you must do it, you should take it as a play. If you take it like “oh no, I am such a lowly creature here, I need to become an ascended master.” then it will probably cause suffering. It does give your life a meaning, a purpose. We already know that there is no meaning in this series of experiences called existence. It is very free. It is not bound by meanings and purposes. So if you play the game of bondage then you need to invent a purpose. Sometimes that purpose becomes ascension, that purpose becomes freeing oneself from this apparent bondage. So most welcome, anybody who wants to ascend please do so. If you reach that place let me know, let me know how it feels. I am almost giving you a guarantee that there will be the same consciousness which is right now, right here and there will be some kind of experience, which will be as illusory as this one. You are most welcome to do that kind of adventure if you want.

You must have heard this thing, those who have ascended, they do not call themselves ascended, they see all the creatures, all the individuated minds as equal to themselves. Probably those who are ascending, those who are on the way, they discriminate, “oh you are less evolved, I am more evolved, I have a god body, you have a human body and this thing has an animal body, that one is just a vegetable, mineral, rock”. Those who have not reached the highest, probably they have this kind of ignorance.

On the path of knowledge you will realize this thing on the very first day that the evolution that everybody speaks of, is also an illusion. Nobody is higher, nobody is lower. They are all my forms. If I wish to call something higher, something lower, this is a free country, call anything you want. It does not become lower, does not become higher. There is no such thing. It is just a blind belief in the mind. It likes to assume things. Even in a godly body the ego is still active, isn't it? It is still trying to ascend. It will say “I have ascended, I am superior to these creatures, look what can I do, look how many illusions I can produce, I have the power” and so on. They are just illusory powers. They are illusory bodies. There is nothing wrong with this body. There is nothing wrong in an animal body and there is nothing superior in any other body. There is nothing superior in becoming a buddha or bodhisattva. What I find is that if ignorance is eliminated, which can be done in one day, then you can play this game of inferior, superior all your life, if you want, because it is eternal anyway.

How much will you play it? How much will you ascend? You will get bored one day. If you cannot see the meaninglessness of this game of evolution we are playing then probably you need to ascend. We are that oneness, unity, universal consciousness, which is already at the highest place, because it is the only one. There is nothing below it, there is nothing above it. It is the ultimate. I am that. Can there be bigger ascension than this? Have you realized this? Everything happens inside this circle of eternity. Now ascend wherever you want, descend wherever you want. It is your arena. It is your playground now. Up and down are always in relation to the other, a creation of the mind. So where one reaches will be in duality, one has to believe that one belongs to some plane which is lower. It is just a belief that I need to ascend or I am descended. Give up the belief. It is very easy to give it up when you see your true nature, when you see that you are the light that cannot go down. It cannot go up also.

Another question related to free will, Since there is no self and just an act of experiencing appearing, majority of acts seem to revolve around survival and desire management, I assume these movements are happening in the universal mind, every Jeev seem to have different types of desires and tendencies, is there a way to change these tendencies which govern the actions of the Jeev? Is there no free will? All I see is will/desire, in every act. Whose will is it?

Before you ask whose will, ask what is will? Who owns that? You should know what is will? It is called Vasana in Sanskrit. Which very interestingly is derived from the root for the word which means smell. There is an experience, there are movements and every movement looks like it has an intention behind it. If you look closely you will find that it appears that every experience has an intention behind it.

For example, the water wants to go to a lower place. If the water is flowing, it will flow towards the lower grounds. What can we say about the water in ordinary language? We say water “wants” to go there, the river wants to go to the sea, the tree wants to grow up and the ant wants to find sugar. There is a tendency in every action of this universe. This intention is called the will. Intention is the synonym for the will. The word intention is made from the word “tend”, which means to stretch/to like. We say tendency. So it is just stretching, just reaching towards something. Ancient sages found out that everything seems to be tending towards something. The moon circles the earth, it has this will. So if you take a look, you will find that there is a tendency in every experience. That is what we call a will.

We say that every action happens because of a will. This is the meaning of the word will and if you prefer the universal mind model of reality then the will is stored in the mind as a memory. It is a biased memory which produces a certain action. Actually that is my favourite definition of desire. The desire is a process in the mind which initiates an action. So you will find that the whole universal mind is acting. It is doing something. Otherwise there won't be any experience. So it is willing, this process is happening. There are infinite numbers of these processes going on in the universal mind. We call it universal for this reason and the will is of this one, this universal mind, which is no one actually. It is the whole. Sometimes we give it a name just to talk about it. So the whole is willing. Now if you step into ignorance, if there is a will to identify with some of these actions that are happening in the universal mind then it becomes a will of that limited entity that has taken on this identification. Now it appears in the form of an ego or the Ahamkara, “I did this, I am thinking this, I am willing this”. So just one step into the ignorance and you will find that the willing is there but the ownership of the willing is not there. The ownership of the willing is an illusion that happens in this universal mind and that is how the Jeev is born. It is just limiting itself as a part of the universal mind, individuated, that means it delineates itself out of the whole and whatever happens there, it takes responsibility for that, owns it, “I did it”. The doership appears, the doer is born. So nothing wrong in that. It is one of the mechanisms through which willing happens, and actions happen.

So this is the answer to the question - there is will, it is not mine. In short we say it like this. The Jeev or the individual mind, or you can even drop down to the third step and say, the human being is a product of a will. It cannot generate a will. The will is already there. This being, this individual, it cannot generate a will. You can actually directly witness it. First there is willing, first there is a tendency, first there is stretching, first there is a push to do something. It is the energy that makes us do something. If you hold it there for a second, you will find that even before the identity is created, even before the doer arises, the will is there. It is very easy to see. You need not be a great yogi to do that. You can do it right now also. Whenever there is a will, you can become aware and see that the will appeared first. The desire appeared first and then the ownership was taken and the actions happened and the ownership of actions is then taken. After the action happens, the ownership happens. If you are aware, you will see this sequence. So it is always the whole that is acting. The individual is just taking the responsibility. It is just a mechanism in the mind.

Is there a way to change this tendency which governs the actions of the jeev? You do not need to change it. They are already changing. Have you seen that? Your wills, your desires when you are two years old are totally different, when you are twenty years old and they are totally different, when you are fifty years old, when you change countries, when important events in your life happen, death, birth, marriage and so on, your job and promotions, it changes by itself.

Probably the question is how can I change it to what I want? And now this is called noodle soup in spiritual talk as there is no I, there is no individual to exercise this will. If there is a preference that no I am doing this action, I need to do that action, then there will be a gradual shift from this action to that action, if the preference is already there. Usually the new preference comes from outside. By outside I mean another experience. For example a person is smoking day and night and he goes to the doctor obviously, that's where smoking leads you, and the doctor says if you don't stop smoking you will die a very bad death. Now a preference has been installed here. First there was a preference for smoking, now another preference has been given from outside and that is how that tendency may change. Now it depends on which one is the stronger tendency. It is always the person who holds the gun, that which he is saying, happens. That's what we say, the person who holds the stick is the boss. So there is always a fight between tendencies. You must have seen it in your mind also. The one that is stronger wins. So that is why a magician or a tantric is, whole day and whole night, trying to strengthen his will/intention, because he knows that is what is going to happen.

If you take a fourth step in ignorance, now the noodle soup is kind of very dense here. So please don't get lost. Your fundamentals need to be clear and yes, now you can say it, that there is a way to change the tendencies and desires. There is a way, it must come from outside somewhere. Those who are on the path of tantra, they not only know how to fulfill the desire, they also know how to manipulate the desire. The first thing they see is the source of the desire, from where it is coming? Because most of the time the desires will be implanted from outside. Because there is no individual. The resources the individual has are very limited.

Let us say you are a child and you are exposed to only two things, the first thing is sweet and the second thing is school, where they torture you. Sweet is obviously a very rewarding experience. If that child is not given any other experience, let us say you lock him up in these two experiences then there is no way for that child to desire anything else except these two things. Sweets or school. The desire of school is a negative desire, you can put a minus sign in front of it. It is a desire only, avoidance is also a desire. You can simplify the duality like this. There is only desire, it can be positive, negative. If the child is a magician, he will see that these two desires happen and now probably for the first time, the child will know not to act on the desire, because seeing the source gives you a freedom to stop the desire from taking root, or let us say, getting converted into actions.

All actions of the mind are repetitive, why? It is a big question, isn't it? Even this cycle of deaths and births, growing up, feeding, growing, procreating and then dying, it is repeating, why? Because nothing more has entered this mind. The world is very big, but the same things keep entering our minds, have you noticed? It is the same news every day, names are changing, he killed that person, he said that this movie is released and this sport is happening. It is the same all the time and so our whole life is a series of repetitions. You can now use the child metaphor, we are children with a finite set of options and we repeat through these options. Why? Because new desires are not entering, new choices are not entering.

They say when you want to grow your intelligence or you want to get out of the rut of your life, you should travel. What happens when you travel? You get more experiences. Your experience expands and the experience expands your mind and your choices. You go to some other country, “oh they do this thing in this way, oh they eat these things and oh they do not drink this kind of cold-drink, it is banned in that country”, so you get more choices when you experience more. So a tantric will see the sources of his desires and shields himself first - I do not want all these things. What happens when you shield yourself from this cyclic desire creating machine? We are trapped in this pit. What happens is that new areas in the mind open up. The barrier around the individual is an imaginary barrier and can be broken.

How to break the barrier? If you are interested, because just sitting here assuming that I am the self, the omniscient consciousness, it is kind of boring, so you can go for an adventure in this illusion. You can say yes I want to experience something beyond this barrier. We have many many barriers that you have never noticed because you are so engrossed in this cyclic existence, limited existence. So when you shield yourself from these cyclic desires, the barrier goes away. Since it is not really there, the barrier is only there because you have two or three choices. Let us say, two or three thousand choices, that's all you have, that's why that is the only barrier. When you drop these choices, new avenues open up. The windows of the mind open up. It is like traveling, it is like taking more experience, new influences start entering the mind. This is how the tantric expands his mind. It depends on the tendency of the tantric. If he is on the left hand path then the so called demonic or left hand influences, they come into the mind. Many things are there. If you are on the right hand path or somehow called the south path, the good/angelic influences enter the mind. It gives you more options, more choices and more experiences. That is why a tantric is more powerful, more capable, because has more experiences and is not a slave of the choices that were implanted by society. So this is a big thing. It is not impossible to practice, you can actually start today and you can see. If you start in the morning you will see some effect in the evening.

First shield yourself. Reject all that which was stuffed into your mind since childhood. See that there will be a lighter mind. Immediately you will get it, “oh these people, they are telling me to do this and that, I don't want to do it now, I just kick out these choices, these options, limited options”. You will feel lighter. If you sleep like this, in the morning you will wake up with new ideas. New, because in sleep the individual mind has explored and experienced a greater area of the universal mind and you have more choices now. So even though there is nobody to change your desires, even though there is nobody to invent new desires, it is still possible to manipulate the desires, it is still possible to choose an influence. It is possible to act in very new ways. And as you do that, your freedom will grow. I keep saying, the tantric path will also take you to liberation. Very soon you will find that this game is boring and you are liberated from all the desires instantly, as soon as you see that.

On the path of knowledge we see it in one minute. Are you a slave of your desires? Think about this question, First of all there is no you and the desires are universal. I am already free, I am already liberated. Now instead of assuming that these are my desires and I need to act on them like an animal tied with a leash, wherever they are being stretched, wherever they are being pulled, the animal goes there. Am I like that? No, we have an immense amount of freedom and that freedom is rejection of action. It is the freedom not of doing but of rejecting. Reject the doer also. This is the biggest freedom you have. It is spiritual knowledge. It is always the reverse of what you thought because what you think is the reverse of knowledge, it is Maya, it is ignorance.

Whatever you think, just reverse it, hang it upside down and that will be the knowledge. You will find most of the time this is the case. So whatever is being fed to you is not knowledge. Whatever is being fed to you is not freedom, “oh you have the freedom to drink this kind of cold drink or you can drink that kind of cold drink”. If you want, you are free to do that. Is that freedom? No, it is like you have only two parties in the country and then you are free to elect your leader. Is that freedom? No, that is not freedom, that is worse than bondage. At least in bondage I know that I am bound. When this strange kind of freedom is given to you, to choose between poison and a loop of rope, then it is worse than bondage.

The first thing to understand on the path of Tantra is that people have given you the bondage. Society has given you the bondage. This place which you call “my home”, my planet, country, town, whatever, your home, if you think that you are free here, then no, it is already bondage. You had only these two choices: take the birth, do not take the birth and you took the birth that caused bondage. Now the other choice disappeared somehow, is it there? No, it is not there. I do not see that choice. How should I exercise a choice to not to take birth? It is lost. Why is that? Because the conditioning becomes so deep. Now the Jeev is totally bound here. It does not even think about leaving this place. It does not have any clue that there can be some other choice. This is the bondage to the earth plane or the samsaric bondage, which the great ascended masters will tell you, “look you are bound here, you need to get rid of this life, the human existence” and we have no clue, why? You think you are free here. Because the awareness has not grown to that heights. Probably that is ascension, isn't it?

To know your limits is liberation, I am not saying you need to do something to get liberated. Just know that this has happened. This is the falling and it is not yours because you do not really choose anything. So is there a way to change the tendencies and govern the actions of the Jeev? Yes there is a way, don't worry, I add illusion in front of everything but you can do it. You can try now. You can start today, just be very careful because your mind will become open, like an open fence now, open ground. It will become a jungle where everything is free to enter inside. Please see this, once you know it, you won't be able to go back to your old self. It is a permanent change in you, it is a permanent influence on you. Now who is responsible for that? You, okay, if you act on this knowledge, you will be responsible. So you should take the responsibility from here onwards. If you want to manipulate the fabric of the mind, it is not that difficult, but to handle its consequences is very difficult. There are major consequences and sometimes we don't even see them. So what is my solution? Play with the mind, give up small bondages. When there comes a time to manipulate the mind, mess with its karmic records which are very very nicely, delicately balanced by mother nature. I am actually afraid of even touching it, but you can do that under the guidance of a master.

From where are you going to get the master? Once your mind starts opening up, the master will get you. It is like magic. So this is a big path. The path of tantra or occult, manipulation of the mind, consequently manipulation of whatever it does, whatever it desires, will lead to liberation, there is no doubt about it. It is a very fancy way.

Jeev still seems to have this free will. It can easily will and do small tasks. How can the Jeev always be the product of the will? Jeev is able to will its own will too. So when I say, I can act on a will or I can decide not to act, isn't this willing? It looks like willing. A second will is appearing which says, “oh probably I have a choice here, I can stop acting, I can will something else”. This is what is called in hermetic philosophy “will to will”. Like I said, we are deep into the noodle soup and need to be very careful here. The mind knows how to play all these tricks. A magician has the will to will. An ordinary person is a slave of will. Whatever appears will be done, but the magicians have the will and tantric can sit peacefully for a while and look at the will. So this is, you can say, will to will, but the mechanism is the same. There is another tendency now to sit and look at the will. Another choice is added, another option has been added in the mind.

There seems to be a limited ability to be in control of acting upon a certain intention, is this sense of control coming out of ignorance? There is a double illusion there because, let us say, a blank slate person like the child I gave the example of, there are only two choices in the mind of that child and the choice happens mechanically depending on the tendency of the mind. Wherever there is pleasure it goes there, wherever there is pain it avoids that. So there is no way for the child to will or to cancel that action. You will find there are many animals that are like this. Now if he meets somebody, let us say his guru and the guru tells him - whenever a will arises you have a third choice here to not to act on that. So now the child has a total of three choices and it will repeat, rotate through those three choices. Whenever the third choice which was influenced by the guru occurs for any reason, probably the mind has a tendency to be peaceful now, it will look like an illusion that I have controlled my wills, I have controlled my desires. There was an impulse to eat sweets but I remembered the third choice, “I can sit down peacefully, my stomach is already full, I need not eat the sweets”. Something like this. So the child will think, another thought will arise in his mind that because of my free will I could silence this desire which was conditioning, which was kind of recorded in my mind. It is an illusion of free will. It is simply another choice that has been installed through another experience.

So it looks like if you have a large number of experiences, you will have a large number of choices and this gives an illusion of will. That is what you call free will. This gives an illusion of control of the wills. You must have seen this in your daily life.

For example: A villager has a limited amount of choices but a person who migrated from a village to a big city, has grown up after 10 or 20 years of experiencing the city and all kinds of people there and there are many more choices for him. A villager knows how to dig a ditch and how to plant the trees and cook and so on, but the city person knows how to do the software engineering, how to build the bridge and how to steal the money without letting people know that I am stealing it. So when I say freedom, it is freedom of the mind, free your mind, it is like getting more and more choices. If you have more choices, you will be free. On the path of knowledge we are given the ultimate freedom that whatever you choose is going to be bondage, it does not matter how big your set of choices is, it is all bondage. So you drop all that. That is the last choice that you will make if you drop that.

Therefore the non-doer emerges. Non-doer is not doing anything. He is watching this doer do things. In this sense we are truly free. The freedom that comes because you have many choices is still limited. It is limited by the amount of choices that you have. You will circle through, you will rotate through those choices, even if they are thousands or millions choices, it does not matter. The freedom that comes by giving up the “free will”, by realizing all is my will or nothing is my will, is ultimate. Yes, these two statements are one and the same thing, if you realize this, give up the doership, that is the true freedom. As soon as you start to do, as soon as you own the actions and choices and have this kind of illusion that I am choosing, I am willing and I am manipulating my will also, then that is bondage only.

Just a very finer kind of bondage. You will find those people who are trapped like this, they think that they have freedom and they are not really inclined to give up their free will. “Why should I give up my free will? As an individual I am free to choose anything I want” - this is ignorance, because he is half the way, not all the way. If you go on doing like this then one day you will find that no matter what I choose it is just bondage. It is just a ready-made choice that was already made for me by the whole and now I am, as an individual, claiming it as my choice. When I see many choices and I say no I cannot act on these choices that is also bondage. As soon as there is a choice, which can be choosing not to choose, which can be choosing not to act, that is also a bondage. You need to give up the whole of it, doing as well as non-doing.

Do that which you absolutely love to do. Do that which comes up as a necessity because ultimately that is what happens. That is what my direct experience is. You can bypass this game of willing to will and the freedom and choices totally when you act in this way. This is the practical teaching because ultimately that is what is going to happen. You can say “I had this desire to do something and then I stopped myself”, well then that is what was going to happen ultimately. There is no need to add a story behind this whole mechanism of what happened. So yes, a long hierarchy of choices can give this appearance of free will and that is the mistake that many people make on any spiritual path. They assume that I have a free will and as soon as you assume it the “I” is born. The notion of the I or ego, individual, becomes stronger. You can see it from this angle that if there were no free will at all, if you did not know even this word, if nobody knew this thing, can there be individuality in absence of a sense of free will? You can try to answer this question. If the individual is not free to act, it is just a gear in the wheelwork, in this giant watch, a giant machine of the universal mind. Is there an individual really? No, it is this illusion of free will that gives the individual its individuality.

But why is this illusion necessary? Actually it is required so that the Jeev can function as a human being in this society. Remove the illusion of free will and the whole thing will collapse. Now we know why it is there. It is there to allow this kind of experience of individuality, society and this world. It is a learning experience for a limited amount of time. The whole takes this form and limits itself, which is bondage, but it gives the limited individual, the limited mind a sense of free will. It installs this idea in the mind so that the Jeev can function and the play can go on.

All the choices that are happening are assumed to be my choices, all the actions that happen are taken as my actions and therefore the fruits are also mine and because of the fruits the mind is biased in one way or the other to favour certain actions or to discard other actions. This gives a direction to the mind. Before this it was random because it was not my doing, there is no direction here, I can do anything I want but as soon as it gets a direction, it gets a preference, it gets biased into a certain kind of action, evolution of the mind starts. It is a trick of the universal mind to evolve itself and the individual is an instrument that is being used in this game of evolution. We are just puppets of the bigger whole with a sense of free will. It is accomplishing the evolution of the universal mind. So it is something big. I don't claim to understand all of it because you can say there can be other ways to do that and surely there can be other ways and it is already doing that, but probably this is the fastest way to come out of ignorance for the universal mind. But the overall scheme is actually bound by rules, by the laws of the mind again. So it gets limited freedom here to play in a certain way and that is what looks like my free will.

It is possible that we can evolve faster, if we utilize this free will. Because it is there, there must be a purpose, there must be a use of this free will. So you can evolve faster by the use of free will which is what anybody, who is engaged in the purification of the mind or Kundalini or any of the other paths of efforts, is doing. What are they doing? They are utilizing their free will to bring their mind to certain states. So let us say, I have a choice to lie and I have choice to tell the truth, then what is the teaching, tell the truth, and then you can say I can utilize my will here to tell the truth always, I won't lie again in my life and now this willing accelerates the evolution of the mind.

Another example is, let us say, you are in Kundalini and your guru tells you to not to drink coffee and he will tell you it will just make the Kundalini angry. The Kundalini needs to sleep at night and you drink coffee, it's not good for you. So the seeker will say okay from today it's my choice, I won't drink coffee and that takes the seeker one step forward and the illusion is that “I did it”. You will find many of the Kundalini students use this kind of language - “I can raise my Kundalini, I can stop my Kundalini, I am making it faster, I am making it stronger”, this is because of this illusion that they are doing it. They don't even know what Kundalini is. The Kundalini is doing it to you, this is the bottom line. Kundalini is the biggest energy there is. It is doing it to you, it is utilizing your illusion of free will to do whatever it does in a faster way. So you see that, individual, the body and world, this society and things like free will, responsibility, ownership, doership, these are strategies of the universal mind to accomplish something. We are instruments. We have this choice now that we can become a very good instrument, a very fine instrument.

Why were these strategies invented or evolved out of this infinite sea of universal mind? and which one to choose and then not choose? Don't worry that I don't have free will. Even if you don't have free will, choice will happen. There is no escape from it and then it must be chosen in such a way that it accomplishes the agenda of the universal mind which is evolution, ascension.

There is a theory side, there is direct seeing and there is a practical side. There are three aspects of this whole question of individual and free will and if you are not clear on all these three, if you confuse between these three then there will be a problem. First attack the problem by dividing it into three parts. This is our usual policy. We divide it up and then we take a part which is now weaker, less confusing and we go there. So first my recommendation is you see your direct experience, what is your direct experience of willing? What do you mean by willing? What is the will? What is this desire? What is the vasana that you experience? You experience it in a pure form. Clean up your slate, throw away all the conditioning and whatever people have told you, whatever you have read here and there, whatever is your own opinion, you should throw it away. Just look at the experience and that will give you a lot of knowledge actually. Just like I said, it will look like that everything has an intention behind it. Everything has a will behind it. Everything has a purpose behind it. Even though it is not human purpose, even though you cannot compare it with the human notions of will. When a leaf grows out of a plant, there is a will and purpose there, you can see it. You call it a vegetable, but a lower will is there. So once you see all these things, you will find that I am also that vegetable only, just a very sophisticated form of willing, that's all I am. You should realize this, then you can go into the theory, which is the karmic theories, laws of the mind and all that literature which tells you how to will to will. The tantra and kundalini go into the theory. They are models of the mind and activities of the mind and they will give you good vocabulary to talk about these things. They will give you an understanding from many perspectives and then you should venture into the practice of unleashing your will power, which is true tantra practice and you will find that it leads to liberation.

So if you don't want to do all this kind of trouble, yes it's too much trouble, then just do what you absolutely love to do, will it, desire it and just do that which you find is necessary, which the universal mind has brought before you. The obstacles and whatever struggles, you need to jump through these hurdles, even if you don't absolutely love it, you need to do it and these actions, even though illusory, even though coming out of illusory free will, they will accomplish the purpose for which this gift of free will was given to us. There are three aspects. That is the complete answer I think.

What happens is we read it here and there, we have a limited kind of experience and we have no practical guidance on this, so we cook up something, noodle soup, and this is very confusing. Sometimes I read a question and my mind starts spinning just like that because I don't know where to start, which end of the noodle are you going to pick first. So what I recommend is you clean up everything. Start from these three branches. It is not a small matter. It covers everything under the sky. The matter of desires. There is so much to say here that I produced four episodes in English and then I produced about nine or ten episodes in Hindi. There is still a lot to be said about the topic of desires.

How to start on the Tantric/Occult path?

I am not on that path. I do not practice tantra in a specific way. I did that practice for a while without knowing what I was practicing. There were mixed results, I didn't really like it. Then I did not even systematically study, did not join any guru, but after I got into the path of knowledge, I tried to know it from the holistic perspective. What is it? Why are people crazy about magic and tantra and all these things? So I tried to get the essence of what it means to be a magician. There are some things that I understood. One thing is very sure that we are all magicians, we are all tantrics. What has happened is through millions of years of conditioning, we have gotten into a special state, where we have forgotten all the powers that we had. It's a very big cycle that is equal to the birth and death of the universal mind. That's why I said, it is coming from other sources. I cannot comment upon this thing from my own experience. Who can experience these things?

Because the nature of the experience is cyclic, without much thinking just by logic we can say that the whole thing is cyclic. There is no end to the cycles actually. So that's why we use this principle - as below so above. It is also called the mahapralaya, when the whole of the universal mind dissolves and it starts again. It starts with an ignorance of its own potential and evolution is its device to gain back what it lost in the previous cycle. In the bigger picture, it is meaningless because it is going to be dissolved again. But this knowledge is wiped out again and again from the universal mind and it gains it back again. Always knowing that it is kind of purposeless, meaningless.

We have this kind of attitude in the path of tantra that we know it is purposeless, it is meaningless and we still do it. We say okay it's probably cyclic, it's not going to stay, it is always changing, but I still want to gain back my powers. The first step to start on this path is to identify what was lost, how it was lost and you will identify it as ignorance. The ignorance crept in, into the pure being that this mind was. We always had the powers, we always had an ability of instant desire fulfilment. It was not impossible because all the possibilities exist in the universal mind. It is always there, whatever is being willed is being created and whatever is being created is being willed. In other words the magician will realize that intention and action are the same thing. Why is there a time gap between intention and action in this world? Because we are limited here. We have taken limited form just to learn this rule that there is no difference between intention and action. Whatever is intended that happens and when we distance these two things there comes a kind of control over this process. So if you are born as a human being you are already on the path of tantra.

One of my gurus always said that don't even fool yourself that you can awaken the kundalini, the kundalini is awakening you. It already knows what to do. So the individual needs to only surrender and then he will receive that which was lost. We all are magicians, we all are on the path of kundalini, we all are on the path of tantra. It is just going very slowly. As soon as you recognise what is limiting me, you will come out of this bondage, you will come out of that ignorance. What is limiting you? And the answer is very simple: our beliefs, our blind beliefs. First belief is that “I am this human, I am this body organism and since the body is limited obviously I will become limited. I will never explore beyond this body because I am the body. What is there to explore?” When I say barrier around your mind this belief is the barrier, isn't it? Now you can see it, the more beliefs you have, the more thicker the barrier.

Let us say you are fortunate and somebody comes along, a guru or a teacher and tells you, “you are not the body”, then you have probably two or three options - you laugh at the person, “oh he is just a fool, he talks mystical mumbo jumbo, spiritual things, no I am the body” and the life will remain whatever it is for you. There is a second kind of person who will say, “ok, let me explore, let me find out the truth of what he is saying”. As soon as they explore the barrier falls, now probably the barrier will shift to “I am the person, I am the mind, I am the intellect, I am this person with free will and so on” and if somebody tells you “No, that is also bondage” then you will want to explore even more and this is how we progress.

The first thing on the path of tantra is to identify what is your bondage, what is limiting you, and utilize your imagination. If you have guidance, if you have a guru then guru will tell you. Guru is also liberating himself, he will tell you how to do that but you can also use your imagination. Look at the states of the mind, this waking state, you will find, is the state of bondage. There are other states of the mind which are not bound. How is it even possible that the mind goes through all the states? Because the natural state of the mind is unboundedness. So in this bound state it cannot stay for a long time. It goes through many many states or ultimately dies, ultimately gives up the body and this bondage. Then there are more states to explore, fortunately, if you do not have these barriers, you do not have the blind beliefs and you are willing to explore the states of the mind which naturally occur in everybody.

All of us have this power to shift the state of the mind, which it is doing by itself anyhow. You need to just take a lift, take a ride in that state, become aware of the state transition and you will find that there are more choices now, there are more ways to be. You only theoretically knew that I am not the body, now you can actually be the non-bodied, disembodied being that you actually are. As soon as you are not the body the limitations of the body do not apply.

For example, the body, if it wants to go to that room from this room it must get up, go through the door and then enter the other room, even though the rooms are illusory because the body is bound in the illusion it must obey the laws of the physics, the physical world. If you give up this bondage of the body, if you have explored enough, you will find that not only that there is no body, not only that there are no rooms, you are able to go through the walls also. You can go through the walls, you can experience the other room, this room at the same time and so many things and this is what an ordinary person is going to call his power, “oh he has supernatural powers, he can see through the walls”. It is not power, just you gave up your limitation of being a body and you tried to explore what is the experience like without the body.

How did you do that? By riding in one of the natural states of the mind where it leaves the body, where it gets rid of the body for you. This is the path of tantra. Recognize your limitation and then find a way to experience what lies beyond this limitation. There is no end to this. What you call as powers or siddhis are just remembering what you already are, remembering what you are capable of, this is the secret, this is the whole philosophy of the path of tantra.

On the path of knowledge, we don't worry about these things because this is a child's play. Yes but those who are interested, even though you are on the path of knowledge, will want to explore a little bit, which is very easy. It has to be your number one priority in life otherwise the mind loves routine. We are a creature of habit. Bondage is a safe haven for us. This prison of the body and the world and society is all we need. This thought will never cross your mind if nobody tells you that there can be many ways to be. This kind of waking state that we are going through is actually bondage. It is a very limited existence. It is actually meant for learning something. Why do you need a hundred years to learn a small thing? Intention is manifestation. Why can't you learn it in one day? Accelerate your ascension. Empower the kundalini, whatever you want to call it. Raise your energy. It can be done faster. It's like those children who need a special school because they are so brilliant. They are so extraordinary that ordinary study seems boring to them. So they are sent to a special school where by the age of 12 or 13 they get a masters degree. There are people like that. So a seeker on the path of tantra is like, “this worldly existence is very slow, this is cumbersome, irritating, this is boring”. We want the highway, we want the Ferrari, that's why we take this path.

The mind is limited because of some natural causes and it will always be limited because of the cycles. They reiterate. It is not going to remain the same. Even if you become fully liberated the cycle will come and it will wipe out this knowledge and again it will start from ignorance. It is totally meaningless. What is it that is witnessing these cycles? That is already liberated and you are that. You are the witness consciousness that is witnessing this play. Does not matter if you are a tiny insect, a worm or a human or a monkey or a big god or goddess or bodhisattva. It’s one and the same thing. It is all illusion and that is why we sit and enjoy the game. We don't worry about kundalini ascension or powers. If they are there, fine, if they are not there it is ok too.

Session 17

When a question is posed, the mind goes in search of an answer. The answer comes from depths of the mind and from higher influences. So I get an opportunity to connect back to the higher dimensions, if you want to call that. It's all here actually. Nothing higher, nothing lower. But this is a good time to say hello to the higher dimensions. So it is always a learning experience.

Purification is not only for seekers. It is also recommended for non-seekers, for common man. This is in our culture actually. If you see, everybody is doing some kind of purification in this country. I have never seen this in any other country. They are just living there. But in India, we have this tradition that purification starts as soon as we are born. So that's why you must have heard this saying that just taking birth here in this country, in this subcontinent, ensures liberation. Because wherever you go, you cannot escape the spiritual teaching. And there is nothing to do when you meet a guru or a spiritual teacher. Or when you encounter some kind of spiritual truth. There is nothing to do actually except purification of the mind, which will start as soon as you encounter a teaching. And this must be your own direct experience. You must have experienced this in your life. The truth has this power to purify, to burn away impurities. Just like the sun has the power to dispel the darkness. So a guru does nothing. The teachings, they do nothing. The mind does whatever needs to be done. And it is the purification. Everybody has their own way of doing it. And I have my own way. And I broke it down into eight parts according to my own limited understanding. Because I encounter this question all the time - What should I do now? This is an eternal perpetual question there is. And out of their habit people keep doing what they are doing. They need a little bit of guidance to push the purification process forward. It is going on anyway. The only difference between a seeker and a non-seeker is that the seeker is pushing it. The seeker is doing it consciously. With full awareness. The seeker is doing it with the intention of being purified. Purification is nothing but an effort to get liberated as quickly as possible.

On the path of knowledge we say we do not do any effort. It is a lazy-dazy path. It is a direct path. But the thing is, even if you do not do anything, the mind is doing something. It is making an effort to get rid of ignorance. That is the start of the purification. I have taken a reverse approach in the new series on purification. Which is to start from the outer layers or the lower layers of the mind as you call it. On the path of knowledge we start from the innermost core. But from the common man's point of view, this inner core is not accessible to a common person. The innermost layers of the mind, the common man cannot directly approach in this way. So now the purification is turned upside down for them and then it starts from the outer layers. That is what I did and that is why it will be more useful for an average person.

How does the mind differentiate between dream state and waking state?

From a witness point of view they are one. So how come is it that we get a clear distinction between the dreaming state and the waking state? The mind has no way to differentiate it. It simply assumes that there is a difference between two states. And it is, most of the time, conditioning. People have told us that this state is a waking state where you are awake. That state is a dreaming state where you are asleep. Why do they say that? Because they call the body as you. For the other I am my body. The other has no access to the internal life or the awareness that I experience. And they will tell you when you were sleeping, whatever you experienced at that time is not real, because I saw that you were sleeping there. You were in the bed. Whatever happened is not real. Now you are awake. Your body is walking and talking. This experience is real. You can see that this statement is mostly arbitrary. It is just a point of view that the person has taken. And because everybody says so, they repeat it. And we also repeat it. The mind does not distinguish, this distinction has been imposed on the mind through conditioning, through society, parents and other people. And this is a blind belief, everybody believes that the waking state is different from the dreaming state.

The experience is different, clearly. This waking experience is more consistent. This is the same house that was yesterday. And this is the same body, a little bit changed. And the world, there is a tiny bit of change. That is all. The weather has changed and some things have changed outside. But there are flowers on the plants and mangoes on the trees. But the rest is the same. And in the dream state, that is not the case. Every dream is a different dream. So the experience is different. What about the state? There is a distinction as far as the senses are concerned. The mind was getting input from the senses on the physical body in the waking state. And in the dreaming state, it is getting input from the senses from the dream body. Which some people may like to call the astral body. The light body. It is a body that is created in the dream state.

Why do I say that the mind does not differentiate? It does not do that when it is in a dream state. There is something peculiar about the waking state that I recall the dreaming state in waking state sometimes. Not very clearly but I can recall that experience. In the dreaming state, I usually do not recall my waking state. Even if it happens sometimes it is very faint. You see a friend in your dream and you tell him, “I was calling you yesterday”. This is a faint memory of the waking state that has leaked into the dreaming state. But when I say to my friend, I was trying to reach you yesterday, at that time, I do not distinguish that memory as happening in the waking state. This is our observation. It is something very peculiar. When people saw this, they immediately stamped the waking state as more real than the dreaming state. Because we can recall the dream in the waking state but we cannot recall the waking state in the dream.

Now let us enter the experience of occult practitioners or even common spiritual seekers who have managed to become aware in their dream state. Whose awareness has become so sharp that now the higher layers stay awake when the dreaming state is entered. And there you will find you can easily recall the waking state. And it is very amazing because you can recall some things in that kind of lucid dream state which you cannot recall in waking state. Many people must have experienced this. When this lucidity increases, when this awareness increases to this extent that it pervades all the states of the mind, we call it Turiya state which is just one state which is a background of all the states.

It is a very natural state for a seeker to be in. And there you will find that the dream state is equivalent to the waking state. There is access to all the memories. Even you can have a little bit more consistency as far as the environment is concerned. As far as the experience is concerned, you can have consistent experience. You can meet the same people again and again just like we meet them in the waking state. And there can be continuity. You can go to a specific place in your dream or astral projection experience. And it will be exactly the same as the last time you visited. A little bit of changes here and there. Because experience cannot stop changing. It always changes. This experience, the waking state is also changing. It changes every second. And the only thing is we find it consistent because it changes very slowly. Predictably. Which is again a state of the mind actually. The mind is moving very slowly in the waking state. And it moves very very fast in dreams or astral projection.

So probably it is clear that inherently in the mind, there is no way to distinguish one experience as real and the other as unreal. These are arbitrary stamps. And this depends on the evolution of the mind. Meaning, how evolved that particular mind is. So those who are a little bit into it or those who have gotten the experience of lucid dreaming, they will never call the waking state as real.

Actually I was a big fan of this state and for many years I practiced it. The dream state is actually very free. There are not so many restrictions or limitations as there are in the waking state. In the waking state you are limited by the filters of the senses you see. I can see only that which the eyes can grasp. They cannot see beyond this wall. They cannot see you guys sitting in your rooms. And I cannot hear anybody except the noises and the birds around me. We are actually caged in this body, in the waking state. If you have a little bit of control over the dreaming state, you will find that this limitation is gone. The body is very fluid. It flows. It takes whatever shape you want. It goes wherever you want because the body is illusory. The body is the creation of the mind. You can create whatever you want. You get a little bit of control over it. So those who are lucid dreamers, will say that the waking state is an inferior state compared to the dreaming state. Actually they will stop calling the dream a dream. They will reverse it. They will say the waking state looks like a dream to me. It is a horrible dream. It is a nightmare. You need to eat and you need to clean and you need to do a job. And you are limited to a very little tiny existence here. My potentials are not being fully realized here because of all these limitations. And because the mind is always in survival mode, it is always worried about survival here.

What do you do from morning to evening? Survival. It does not matter in which era you are born or which country you are born. You are doing the same thing all the time in the waking state. But in your dream you are free. For the dreamer, for the dream yogi, it is more freedom. It is a more awakened state where life is expressing itself in its full potential. And therefore they will say it is a superior state to be in. Why are your dreams very faint and inferior to the waking state? Because of a habit. That's all. Because the mind is habitual of giving preference to the waking state. It has happened because of survival. We give more importance to survival and less to other experiences. Which is very good actually because there is a reason we are having an experience of the waking state, which we call human birth. Fortunately or unfortunately this ignorance has happened. We think that I am born. I was not born, this is only an experience that I have entered. It is a dream. There is a reason for this dream. There is a reason that we are going through the struggle of survival, we are going through all these experiences in the human body. It is a very slowed down experience, you must have noticed this. Although nowadays it is not so slow. Everything changes very quickly here. But imagine the time when human experiences started, it was very slow actually. Nothing changed for the whole hundred years of that person's life. Nothing. He did the same things. He took the goats and sheep out and then came back and ate, etc. etc. And then there were two or three festivals and they danced and that's all. And he died. And then his child did the same. Took the goats out and sheep out and so on. Nothing really changed. But now we have a very fast kind of experience. That has to do with the collective increase of vibrations of the human mind. This is not me, this is a whole. That is having this experience as an individual. You know the story.

So a waking state is just another experience from a higher perspective, so is dreaming. The dreaming is faint because our attention is mostly on the waking. And that's why we are more lucid in this waking state. That's why we can recall the dreaming states. But in dreams the mind takes kind of a break because it is too much. But the experience continues. And even though we do not recall it, even though it is a very faint experience, it is indistinguishable from the waking state. Essentially there are superficial distinctions, which will disappear when you become aware in your dreaming state. Which will happen if you are practicing awareness and it will happen eventually.

There are higher states than the dreaming state. Because in the dreaming state also the mind is kind of engaged with a copy of the waking memories. Have you noticed? Your name is the same in the dreaming state. Your friends and your family are the same. Sometimes your office and environment appears in the dream. It is the same. Because it is being pulled out from the waking memory. It is a faint reflection of the waking memory. If awareness increases a little bit, you will get new experiences there. It can be developed to an extent that you don't need to put the body to sleep to experience lucid dreams. It is amazing, isn't it? It is called Wild, by the way, W-I-L-D. Those who are interested can study this state of the mind. It has been researched nicely. A kind of renovation has happened in this field. Yogis know these things very well but probably they kept it a secret because it unleashes a lot of powers. Wake induced lucid dreams - Wild. You are awake and you can enter the dream state. Which you won't call it a dream now. It is not a dream anymore. And the final distinction also disappears in the Wild state. Which is that the body is no longer sleeping. People told you that these experiences are not real because the body was asleep, the brain was inactive, etc., now this is falsified in the wake induced lucid dream. Because the body is wide awake. It is just resting or sitting.

When you are experiencing non-waking states, the body needs to be protected. You cannot do it while driving or walking on the road. It is possible but not recommended. The body has some intelligence, it will bring you back as soon as it senses a danger. But it is not a very good experience if you need to come back again and again. So what can you do? You isolate yourself from the environment. You feed the body. Clean the body and let it rest. Sit down, do not lie down, or you can incline at 45 degrees. And do not go to sleep, do not invoke the procedure of sleep. You can do it after you've slept enough. That is probably more fruitful. Once sleep is out of the way, and food and all these things are out of the way, the mind wants to venture freely into other states. Now there is no more resistance, no more fear that something will happen to me. Because the mind still has a lot of attachment to this body, it fears, and hence you make arrangements.

If you isolate yourself like this from the noises and just close your eyes, you will be out into the Wild. It is a very wild experience. And there is no clear distinction between the Wild and astral projection. Many people have this opinion that astral projection is something different because I go through this transition, which they call 3D blackness, a place of nothingness, very pure consciousness. But in the Wild we don't. These are only academic interests, things of that nature. It does not matter how you go through it, you will never forget it in your life. And slowly what it will do is it will change your mind, it will pull it out of the habitual waking state. The attachment to the waking state will be decreased and it will be freed. It will be free to have any kind of experience. So it also leads to liberation of the mind. It also leads to liberation from human birth. Where we are kind of trapped. We came here, we had this experience to achieve something. It looks like we are trapped because the collective experience determines our fate here. It is a shared reality as you know, it is not my private experience. The waking state, this collective experience, this group mind of humanity, determines what will be the experience here. And it has fallen down a little bit. It is fine, seeing the eternity of experiences, few thousand years are nothing. We are doing this since many thousand years. We cannot recall it. Isn't it a dream then?

This waking state has tell-tale signs of a dream. When you are dreaming you cannot recall how you got there. You have a history there. A ready made history is presented to you and you believe it in the dream. Let us drop back to the ordinary dream, the non lucid dream. There you are presented with a history. You never question it, you never say how you got there. This was very beautifully captured in this movie: Inception. Inception is a well researched movie. When you research greater reality you can produce amazing movies.

Let us go back to the dream and the characteristics of it. We believe the history that the mind creates. We do not question it, unless you meet somebody who will be your guru. In the dream who points it out. “Do you remember how you got here?” In Inception they have symbolized this awakening. In the form of shattering of the dream. The dream starts to melt. Exactly this kind of experience can be had in the waking state. Which some people do have. They do not have the language to describe it or they think that they are going crazy. When the awakening happens, in some cases, not all, people see the world melting away, this person melting away. The history seems fake. The whole experience turns into some kind of illusion. And it is kind of a big blow. It is like being hit by a brick. To some people it happens. To me nothing like that really happened but my adventures into the dreaming states, they really shook me. That is what put me on a proper spiritual path. Otherwise I was not interested in this mumbo jumbo spirituality. So it is a valid path. Those who are interested should take it. Those who like adventures, those who like experiences, instead of simply intellectual verbal talks, that we do all the time, which is very direct. But those who like the fancy way. Go Wild. That is highly recommended. And do not worry, you are not going to die. The waking state will not turn into a lunatic state. It does not happen. But it will change your mind. That is guaranteed.

If you cling to this state of the mind. You will never experience any other state of the mind. So it depends on the level of evolution of that mind. “There is no such thing as lucid dreaming. There is no such thing as astral projection or other states of the mind, which are more real than the waking state. These are just stories cooked up by crazy people” - and yes if that mind is unable to experience it, what will it look like from the perspective of that mind? Stories. Believe me or not they are very wild stories. Very fancy stories. Because they are unbelievable actually.

Because the mind is free to experience anything it wants, it is a very good platform for desire fulfillment. Your desires will be fulfilled exactly as you wish them to be. Your desires will be instantly materialized. And yes those who cannot or never did this kind of experiment, never bothered to explore, from their perspective, this is all fantasy. From the perspective of an explorer it is very real. And people are not doing all kinds of experiments there because there is a drawback, you can say. Not really a big drawback but a small drawback that dream is not a shared experience. You can dream your own dream, I can dream my own dream. And then we have nothing in common to compare notes. There are essential characteristics which we can compare. “Oh the faces morph into other faces”. “Yes, it did in my dream also”. So like this we can compare experiences. It won't be exactly like your experience. This is kind of an initial hurdle in accepting the dream state as being superior to the waking state. Because we have this subconscious criteria that the reality has to be a consensus reality, the reality has to be objective.

This is a granthi in our energetic system, like they say in the Kundalini terminology. In Advaita terminology it will be a blind belief in the mind. It is installed there through social conditioning. We believe those things to be real which everybody can agree on. That is the objective reality, the main ignorance of a materialistic person. We have these seeds of ignorance. But it is not impossible to have a shared dream. Not impossible but in my experience it is very difficult. And those who have had these experiences of entering the shared dreams, I have seen that mostly it is also their fantasy. They are imagining that it was a shared dream. So if you set up conditions before, like meeting in a dream, and you say okay we are going to meet at this ruined temple in our coming dream tonight and you come and say these things to me and I will say these things to you. And I will be wearing these clothes and you should be wearing those clothes and so on. And then when they dream, not surprisingly the dream will take that form and when they compare notes they will say yes, yes I saw the same thing that you saw, it is a shared dream! But no it is not really a shared dream. It is that the people who have the same expectations, they dream the same thing. Or they plan to dream about it, they plan to create that experience. So there are some pitfalls in this kind of experiment also, you should be aware of that.

Remember that this waking state is also not shared. Remember that there is no shared experience at all from the Advaita point of view. There is only one experience and one experiencer, that is all. The different experiences that we talk about are fantasy in the mind. Your experience is not different from my experience. Because the “I” behind those experiences is this one and the same. Points of view are different but the experience is the same. It is tricky because we are in the waking state. We cannot actually even comprehend the meaning of this statement. So at the first and lowest level we say there is a shared experience, “You are experiencing that world which I am experiencing”. If you go one step higher you will see, “No, I am experiencing my own things and you are experiencing your own”. And on the third level, the highest level, you will say “No, the I is experiencing from two points of view like two windows are open and one entity is experiencing through both of them”. So it is kind of very tricky. The mind can do these things. I am not saying that one point of view is wrong and the other is right. It is not a question of right and wrong. They are just different perspectives. So the same thing is applicable in the dreaming or other states of the mind like after death states.

You will experience a shared reality after death. Who knows? There is no guarantee. And you will assume that it is a shared reality. But it is your making. It is the creation of the mind. Everything is a creation of the mind. It takes different flavors, that is all. So there is hardly any difference in the kinds of experiences, the kinds of states the mind goes through. It is a lot of fun because of the freedom. There is no more clinging to this body, this world, your relatives or your bank balance or your car. It all fades away. It does not mean that we give up these things, it simply means that we are no longer attached, no longer in fear. We do not live in fear, we live in the moment, we enjoy the experience as it is. Whatever happens we are not moved by the fear and the mind will not react in a lunatic way like it does for an ordinary person.

From a subjective point of view, both are two objective views but the subject is one. It has infinite potential. It can appear as anything. So right now it is appearing as a shared experience. It does not last. It will go into the non-shared experience, the private experience. It is not private really. There is no distinction of private and public experiences here. It is a different way of experiencing for which language has no words. It cannot be expressed in language. So what we can do is have a variety of experiences and then the mind integrates those experiences. Then you will understand what I am trying to say.

The subject, “I” is one. How to experience this One? It is tricky. The variety of experiences are not going to produce the experience of oneness. Oneness is not an experience. The realization that which is being experienced is my own forms, it is my own vibration, my own modulation. Like the waves on the pond, they are nothing but water. To call waves as a separate experience from the pond is ignorance because the waves appear in the same water. So experiences appear in the same experiencer. Because there is this infinite potential, it can take the forms of different experiences. It will never appear as one experience that is having all the experiences. Even though there is a potential to do that, it will be a kind of ground experience where nothing is really happening because everything is happening at once. When you have everything happening it appears as good as nothing happening. We are not equipped to even imagine what will be an experience of the one experiencing everything. I have a doubt about it, that probably it will never happen. Because an experiencer always takes a limited point of view. You can have a very huge point of view but it will never be a point of view that covers all of the experiences.

Sometimes I give this metaphor of movies playing on a screen. If you play one movie on the screen, it is very meaningful. You can see everything clearly. If you project another movie on the same screen, you will probably see a few things. It is like sharing my experience with your experience. Two projections from two different perspectives. If you go on adding movies on the same screen, a time will come when it will be totally white. There won't be any movie. All the dialogues of the movie are mixed. All the music will be mixed. It will be just white noise. A hissing, loud sound will be produced. This metaphor describes this situation of all experience being equal to no experience. Therefore, the only option that remains is limited experience. The more limited it is, the more clear it is, the more meaningful it becomes. And that is why we find ourselves in a limited experience, which is the waking state experience. And it is a very useful experience. The dreaming experience is fantastic, but hardly useful. In the waking state, we have the opportunity to evolve and grow, to interact with others. It is a very valuable experience. And so I do not complain when people say, this is your life. The waking state is your life indeed. This is important, you should do this. Nowadays I don't complain because, yes, it is important. It is not going to last, that makes it even more valuable. Your lucid dream, your astral projection is going to last for eternity, believe me or not. We have already done that many, many times. When you go into that kind of state, you will see that it is the most natural. It is like a fish jumping back into water. It feels so natural. When you come back to the bodily, embodied state of the waking state, you will find it cumbersome. It is too heavy. It is too limited. You don't want to be here.

Francis Lucille said about it - “it is a suit that does not fit us. It is too tight”. And Osho said about it that the yogi is already half dead. One foot is in the world and the other foot is somewhere else. No interest in this world. You must have seen those people. They are sitting in a cave isolated from the noise, eyes closed. They take the minimal care of the body. They have perfected the processes in the body, the energies in the body. So that the body can sit for many, many hours without getting damaged. And what are they really doing? They are free in that state. That is why it is kind of an addiction. They have left the world already. They are waiting for the natural processes to dissolve the body. And they are wandering into the endless sea of the universal mind. They are not really free because it is an attachment to the experiences of the higher kind. A Jeevan Mukta is free because he has accepted the waking state as just another state. It is nothing special or it is as wonderful as any other state. When you get a taste of the other states, you will find the wonder in the waking state.

How is it even possible to have this kind of state, the waking state? I always come back and wonder. It is the biggest magic that I have seen in my life. How is it even possible that we are having this experience? Shared experience where everything looks so solid, so real. You are real and there are fruits of your actions, which is rare in a dream. There are fruits of actions in a dream but they are governed by whatever tiny little flexible laws that we have in the individual mind. But waking state is a very solid, solidified experience. Here the fruits of the action or the consequences of your doing are going to be very specific. The rules are very tight here. That is the reason that we get an opportunity to learn. Otherwise without rules there is no learning. Many ancient sages realized this. They realized this truth that it is a valuable experience, the value of human life is great. It is not to be wasted away like an ordinary person does. Yes, you will say, “if I am human, I need to do human things”. That is right. You need to enjoy the human things, the food, the society, marriages and families, and your shopping and TV. Yes, everything, you can enjoy it. There is no harm in it. But that should not become the only occupation of the waking state. That should be in the margins.

When you go to a party you just do not keep eating the sweet dish from morning to evening, you try other things. The sweet dish is a small part of your full meal. You enjoy it, but the main course is something else. The same way, the human experience, the survival and experience of the body, we need to have it but it should not become the only thing. A balance is required, a little bit. That can be achieved by minimizing the needs of survival. That is why the yogi enters a minimalist life. He goes by with as little as possible. Does not own anything. Does not stay at one place. Has no relations. Has no family. That is kind of extreme, isn't it? We say, you are wasting your life. You don't do those things that I do. But the yogi will laugh at you. Because he has done everything. He knows. He has done that kind of thing, child's play, for thousands of lives. Now he is pushing towards liberation. Which an ordinary person will never understand.

We are somewhere in the middle. On the path of knowledge we have a different approach. That we go through the waking state as an ordinary person. But the internal life is of a yogi. It is a very subtle difference. Essentially the yogi is the same as the gyani. However, externally gyani looks like an ordinary person going through the ordinary experience of life. But he knows extraordinary things. His mind is being freed probably faster than anybody else. So they recognize that this human experience is very valuable. We should not waste it. That does not mean that we do not have simple life experiences and become like an extreme sannyasi. You probably can if that is what is in your genes. That is what is expressed. But it is not a requirement. It is not compulsory to live that kind of life in order to progress. Just do not waste your life. Gautama Buddha said, there is nothing more to do here, liberate yourself from suffering, liberate yourself from bondage. There is no other purpose of this experience. Everything else is in margins. It is a sweet dish. It is like the spice in the curry.

For an ordinary person it is reversed. Their life, the human experience is the major part. And the spiritual truth, spiritual seeking becomes a hobby. “I am also spiritual. I also listen to that. I also go to that ashram”. But that is not the main theme of their life. The main theme is earning money, family, relations and all the materialistic things. The social pride, my tribe, my religion, my country and that is all. That is the main theme of their life. Attachment, clinging, fear and they are involved in this kind of animal existence.

For a spiritual seeker it is reversed. From the outside probably you won't notice any difference. But inside the preferences are reversed. And those preferences will liberate that mind. It all boils down to what you prefer. What you give most priority to, that will happen. So a seeker has shifted his priorities. That is all. There is no need to wear the clothes that people used to wear thousands of years ago. No need to sit in a cave. Nothing like that. Even no need to explore the other states of the mind. You know what they are. They are also dreams. Just like this one. It is a dream. The gyani goes for the essence always. Essentially it is a dream. It cannot be distinguished from any other state of the mind. That is the end. Put it to rest after that. And go back to your priority, whatever it is. But some of us are childish. We want to explore more before committing to a path. And for such people I say, go and have fun. It is a very enjoyable experience. To transmute the dreaming into waking. And believe me or not you will never like the waking state again.

There are some people who will say, “It is not really necessary that learning is limited to waking state. I can learn much better in other states of the mind”. And it is true. It is my personal opinion that it is possible. But you need to be a step higher than the ordinary seeker in order to take advantage of the infinite creativity of the mind. It is an infinite creation out there. It is very easy to get lost in the dream. You can see that we are already lost somewhere. You call it my world, you call it my people, you call it my body, my house. You are actually lost here. You don't know where you came from. It is possible to get lost in any kind of experience. We have already done that. And this whole spiritual journey is going back to that place from where we came. Those who want to use the dream state, can do so. If you have this kind of intelligence and awareness that I will not be lost there and it is best done with the help of a guru who is also in those other dimensions which you like. You find a guru there or your guru will follow you there. For the guru it is not a big deal.

There are limitations in the physical world. The speed of learning is very slow here. Even if you are a very good seeker, you will need to follow the laws of the physical world. In non physical worlds you can design an experience and learn anything you want. If you have fears, if you have clinging, if you have attachment, you can design an experience and see what happens, what learning it produces. That is what a tantric is doing. His learning through desire fulfillment. He says I want this and that kind of experience and that experience materializes.

There is something odd about time in these states of the mind. The time in the waking state is totally different from the time in the dreaming state or non physical states. Because time is a creation of the mind. It can create whatever amount of time it wants to create. So you can enter the wild state for 5 minutes in the waking state and it will look like 50 years in that state. This was also captured slightly in the movie Inception. They just spiced it up a little bit. There is no law like this that says it will go 10 times faster or 10 times slower. It will go as fast or as slow as you want it to be. Time is a creation of the mind. It is a siddhi to produce experiences on demand. Then you can have an experience for hundreds of years in 5 minutes. Come back with all that learning, all those lessons. A more matured mind in 5 minutes. Can you imagine? Hardly anybody does it. It is not as easy as it sounds. You will need a very highly evolved teacher to take you there. Some people have done it and for them the life span will be shortened. Because why do we incarnate here? Why do we come here again and again? Because the lessons are not complete yet. So either you can see it from the point of view of unfulfilled desires or you can see it from the point of view of incomplete lessons. One and the same thing. The desires only teach us. They do not produce anything else.

Desire fulfillment produces a lesson all the time. So if you do it at a fast pace, like 50 years of learning in 5 minutes. What will happen? Your life span in the waking state will decrease immensely. And such people therefore do not stay here. And they become so different from ordinary people that even if they start talking we won't understand a single word of what they are saying. Actually they will stop talking because talking is an inferior way of communication. They will simply know what is in your mind and will project the required thoughts. They become higher life forms. They become ascended masters. So they disappear. As soon as you get this kind of power you will not want to stay in this lower dimension. Actually it is not possible either.

Sadhguru or somebody said that your time of death and your time of liberation is exactly the same. You cannot stay here with that kind of intensity in the mind. It will leave the body. It does not want to be here. And it is not that it can be controlled. Some people have gotten the control. There is no limit here but usually it cannot be controlled. There is no coming back to the physical world after this. So it is not a small thing that we are talking about. Still it is within your approach. You can take a step in that direction. Even for a Gyani this is going to happen. The awareness reaches to such a height that all the states of the mind become one, merge into each other. And then there is no attachment to a specific state of the mind. That is what will liberate you. So no matter from where you come, no matter what path you take, you are going to reach the same destination. Destination is our true self. You realize that all these experiences were dreams. Nothing was special, specific or true about any of the experiences. We can sit here on our chairs and realize this right now. This is the power of knowledge. You will realize this right now if you take a look at your experience. This is also a dream experience. Take a closer look at it and throw away the conditioning that society has installed.

Where is the body walking and talking? “Oh this is a real experience”. No it is not like that. This is an arbitrary criteria. Why did you choose this criteria to call it real? When you question something like this, all beliefs will shatter. I am not guaranteeing that you will get some kind of answer. The old beliefs will be destroyed. “Oh no, the dream experience is not real. It is just a creation of the mind”. Look at this experience. It is also a creation of the mind. “No. The dream experience is never shared”. Look at this experience, it is also not shared, it is also private. There is an illusion of it being shared. Which you can create in any dream if you want. Your dream characters in the dream are sharing the experience with you there. Who is the dreamer? The dreamer is only one. It appears as many characters. They are all sharing your dream. I am the dreamer. You are my forms. It looks like a shared experience but it is shared exactly because there is one mind which is dreaming it. When you do this kind of one to one comparison of your beliefs that were installed by ignorant people, they will be shattered and that will liberate your mind. You are no longer going to take this world as real and that will just detach you from this world. You are free to function here but without fear.

People will say “No, death is a very different experience”. There is nobody here. Look at this experience. There is nobody here also. The body has been created for you. It has been created by the group mind. Not your mind. It hardly matters. As below, so above. In the dream state the tiny mind creates a tiny body. It is a flimsy body. This big mind, the group mind that we are in, has created a very sophisticated body. It is a miracle. That is why I wake up everyday and I see this wonder. And I am amazed. How is it even possible? This body is a borrowed body. It is not my body. It is not created by me. Remember these things. This is a borrowed experience. Produced by this collective illusion of the world. So this kind of investigation will show you the truth and the truth will set you free.

I have done all these things. I have done the investigation. I have done the introspection. If an ordinary person like me can do it, can see it, then anybody can. It is within our reach. You don't need to go Wild. You don't need to have extraordinary experiences. Or you don't need to have an extreme lifestyle to realize this. I am just sitting here like an ordinary person, in an ordinary house, doing the ordinary jobs and the knowledge is the same. That fellow who has traveled all around the universal mind and sits in a cave and does whatever, has exactly the same knowledge, same realization. Why can't you have it? There are no bells and whistles on this knowledge. And therefore it looks ordinary. And because the same thing is written in all the scriptures, all around the world, it looks like the person is parroting the scriptures and therefore nobody pays attention to these things. They want extraordinary things. Show me something which I have never seen, they want miracles. Miraculous experiences. And that draws their attention.

In India we have formed many paths which take you through this garden variety of experiences. “Are you satisfied now? There are experiences now, would you like to consider the real teachings?” This can happen. Because the mind is attracted to the extraordinary. It's a big topic. It is so big that you can spend your whole life learning about this. This experience has no limits. It's Infinite. You can keep searching. You can keep going. If you want to return home just turn back. Just turn 180. It's here. The home is always here. That is why it's called the direct path. You can return back. You can go in the other direction also. It's not really bad. Just be aware that you have a tendency to attach, to get lost in the experience. For that you need an anchor, a tether, you need to tie a rope before you dive. That rope is your guru. Do not dive into the universal mind without the guru. Some people will say I cannot find such an extraordinary person anywhere. That means you are not searching enough. You will find it. They do not advertise themselves. You will need to search. You will need to shout out I want this and that kind of experience and there it will be. The gurus will appear or you can start learning on your own. People have written books. You can start there and in one of your mental states the guru will appear. The guru can appear in any form.

There are many videos where one of my favorite teachers of the altered states of the mind, Tom Campbell, mentions these things. He says you are looking for a master. You are looking for a guide. Well this interface he calls the guides, this interface will appear in any form when you are in that state. So go there and wait for something to happen. And he says kind of jokingly that your guide will appear as a giant talking rabbit. Do not dismiss the rabbit because it's a weird thing. It's a strange thing. It's a dream. Talk to the rabbit. Follow the rabbit. This is a reference to Alice in Wonderland. Follow the white rabbit. When you are in that state the system will produce a guru for you. It is amazing.

Who is the system? You are the system. Your mind will produce these experiences that will take you down the rabbit hole, to teach you. For many people the tantra or the exploration of the altered states has become their life. From outside they may look like you and me. Not doing much. A failure in their life, has nothing, no house, no property, no wife, no child. They are aliens in this world. But their internal life is huge. There is something remarkable about these experiences. And that is that they are independent of death. Right now the waking state is kind of limited to the body. As long as there is a body there is a waking state. This is the rule. This is the law here. And when there is a new body the old memories are wiped out. This is also a rule here. Because probably the creature cannot survive with the chaos of the memories. It evolved like this that we enter here with amnesia. We don't remember anything. So this is something remarkable about the other states of the mind that there is no death because there is no body or the body is kind of use and throw. It's a vehicle. It's a temporary form that we take. Memories accumulate, no erasure. It's very fast now. You can see why it is faster.

Why do people prefer that kind of path compared to the other paths? The traces of our experiences remain and they travel from death to death. That is what we call samskaras. But it slows down everything because the body comes in the way. When the time is not so good, just like it is right now or it was a few hundred years ago, the whole focus is on survival of the body and the whole birth is wasted like this. This limitation is not there in other non-physical states. There is no death. Nothing to waste. The experience is more or less in control. It is a superhighway kind of path. So I am very much in favor of it. But you will learn nothing more than what I told you. Only the way of learning is different. More bells and whistles, more magic there, which will fade to ordinariness. This is guaranteed. Isn't this word ordinary for you now? How magical it was when you were a child. That is simply because the memories were wiped out.

I sometimes use a metaphor of movies. Movies are great metaphors. If you watch a movie and you are told to watch that movie again the next day, well, you will enjoy it a little bit. But not as much as you did for the first time. Now you are told to watch that movie again on the third day, now it is going to become boring. And on the fourth day you don't want to watch it. It will become painful. But what if every night I wipe out your memory of that particular movie? I reach into your brain and erase that memory, like Jim Carrey’s movie Eternal sunshine of spotless mind. It had this kind of theme in it where you can wipe out a specific memory. Now the movie will be as enjoyable as before because you don't remember that experience. So what we learn from this experiment is that once you experience it, it becomes boring. That's why nature has this very unique approach of wiping out your memory. Death is just like sleep and then waking up in another body with forgetfulness. It's just like that and that's why the world becomes enchanting again. Simply because you don't remember it.

However, in the mind of a seeker, if you have a little bit of seeking in you, if you are a seeker material, you will be born with a splinter in your mind. It will keep reminding you, something is wrong here. Somebody has done something to my mind. It will be like a nagging experience. No, I should not be here. What do I need to do? Such people become these crazy seekers. They are searching now. What happened? Where am I? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? And they see these ordinary mortals who are happily living their life, eating, sleeping, reproducing and fighting, killing each other, abusing each other. They are horrified. Why? Why is this happening? This is not right. It looks wrong. And they become seekers. And this is because of wiping out the memories, but still having a mark.

On the path of knowledge, we don't give too much importance to the memories. Have you noticed? We say it's okay. The truth can be realized without you needing the past history. It is available right here. That reminds me of a video that I saw recently of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the South Indian Guru. Somebody asked him about this memory problem. He got up and asked Guruji, you say that I have lived human life many, many times. But what is the point of it? What is the point of rebirth or reincarnation when we don't remember anything? Is it not meaningless? And Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, he got up from the seat. He was amused. Why is he asking like this?! And he said - Do you remember what you ate for breakfast ten years ago on the same day? And obviously the person said no, I don't remember it. And Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said, then what was the point of having that breakfast?

So you see this is an arbitrary criteria that if I don't remember it, it is pointless. No. It is an assumption in your mind. It is an ignorance that memory is required for an experience to be useful. No, it is not required. That's why we don't worry about whether we remember past lives or whether we have this kind of continuity of experience. We don't worry about these things. We go straight for the knowledge which is available without memory. It is beyond mind, isn't it?

Some people are not happy with this at all. They will say, no, this is not fair. I don't want my memories to be wiped out. For them, we say, rise above the waking state, go into the non-physical states where there is no death. Where you have the control instead of Mother Nature having the control and then you can keep the memories if you want and you will find there is already a mountain of the memory. It is an amazing experience that I am such a big thing. I am such an almost oceanic being. It is very, very big. And now your memories of this life or the other life or some other life, they will be meaningless. Just like a child, when he gets a new toy, throws away the old toys, does not look at the old toys. Same thing. It is not really meaningful.

That reminds me of another movie, Jurassic Park, the first one, where the main character carries a nail, the claw of a dinosaur. Because it is such a rare thing, he is fascinated with dinosaurs. But when he sees hundreds of them roaming around, he just looks at the claw and throws it away. Because it is kind of useless now. It is not so fascinating now. It is everywhere. When the living breathing dinosaurs are running around, who needs this piece of nail, a fossilized nail? It is something like this.

When you realize how big you are, you are a gigantic mountain of memories, Himalayan in nature, then you won't worry about one life or two. That also produces detachment. That also produces freedom. Then would you worry, oh my life, this one particular life, when I was a ditch digger or something puny like that, is lost, those memories are lost. No. You do not worry about these things then. That tiny experience is worthless. What we have done here on the path of knowledge, we have taken a shortcut. Tiny experiences are useless. Why do you worry? Why do you do the past life regression and all that kind of BS? Is it really required? A rational and logical mind will go for the essence, we go for the diamonds. We do not dig here and there in the dirt of memories, we just go straight to the treasure. It is another way to achieve the same thing in a fancy way. Everybody is most welcome to explore. Never discourage the explorer. If you have this thing in your mind - I want to have these experiences, and only that is the valid way. Go for it. Mother nature will cooperate. The universal mind will shine a light on your path. It will show you the path. You need to take the path. So I am not saying that the gyani is superior to the others because the others are lost in these childish experiences. No, it is just a different path. That is all it is.

I saw this video from Swami Atmananda Udasin. Very precise, very true, to the point, very pithy videos. He uploaded this interview with a disciple of Raman Maharshi. It was a rare interview with Nanaguru. I have seen some very relevant questions asked in that video. Very important questions were asked. Hardly anybody asks these questions. People just beat around the bush when they interview a Gyani but because Atmananda Udasin was asking the questions, he was probably holding the camera and this disciple, who is an unknown fellow, very old and now dead, he answers them in such a precise way that you will be impressed. He looks like an ordinary old man near the end of his life and he can hardly speak. There are subtitles below the video, because you cannot understand what he is speaking, his accent is a heavy south Indian one and you can hardly hear him. But you can read the subtitles. And he explains everything in the most precise way and explains it in just two or three sentences. That's all. Gyanis looks like that. Very, very ordinary people but they have done that which extraordinary people hardly achieve. That's why my preference is the path of knowledge, sometimes also called Advaita Vedanta, the Sanatana path. You can reduce this big subject into tiny subjects if you want. Take the shortcut. We have this option open.

Amazingly, some people, when you serve them nectar they will go for dry bread. That is what they know. That is what they enjoy. And we have the occult branch in very purified traditions also. For example, Buddhism, there is an occult aspect there also. Although they will never, never say that, take this path first. Even there, they will initiate you into the proper teachings before pulling you into the non-physical dimensions. The guru will test you before taking you into the non-physical. It is a kind of challenge if you want. But once you get there, it is ensured that you will be liberated from this world. You will be liberated from the other worlds. You will be liberated from death. You need to have that much patience. You need to find the right master.

Gurus will be available as soon as you put your feet into non-physical. Non-physical gurus will be available and it does not mean dead people. You will get a lot of dead people there but they are not useful for your exploration. Try to find an experienced person. They will be neither dead nor born. There will be no death and less work, it is very easy. In the physical world, you will need to go from this ashram to that ashram and you will need to spend your time, money and effort. Then you will find somebody. Google it, a little bit easier. Watch the videos and join the communities and so on. You will get the right person. But in non-physical, all you need to do is call. Make an intention. It's like magic. A proper guide will appear. If the guide is in the form of a giant rabbit. Don't worry. This is non-physical. This is the dream. There are no rules here. So almost in every tradition, in every continent on this planet these paths have evolved because they found them useful.

It's not just dreaming and waking. You have just opened Pandora's box by asking this question. When we hear these kinds of lectures, “the waking state becomes the dreaming state and then the dreaming state merges into the sleep state and it becomes turiya and this is the state of yogi”. And we say, What? What does it mean? How is it that useful? Because all this background is absent. When you are simply hearing a lecture, all this experience behind it is absent. It is kind of a useless lecture for you. The guru or the person who is lecturing has done his job, an excellent job explaining the turiya and all. What does it mean to you? Nothing. Because these experiences are absent. I have seen, people have not fully experienced the waking state also. They experience a waking state that is superficial, which rises up to the level of the ego only. Which is just one level above the body. That's all. That is all they call the waking state. Sometimes some emotions flood into it and they say “oh me, I was emotional and I was sad and I was happy and that's all”. Otherwise out of 16 hours of the waking state 15 hours are survival. Just egoic states. They are busy fighting and running the rat race and just talking meaningless garbage which they learn from TV and repeat it. Repeat, repeat, repeat. They have not experienced the waking state fully also.

And so there is another video where Sadhguru is asked this question: What is the state like after death? What is the state like in this kind of yogic experience? And he is kind of a very direct and brutal person. He will just hit you on the head with an answer. Sadhguru says, have you experienced this life? Do you know this life? Before you want to know all the other things that are kind of paranormal and out there you have not even experienced this life completely. In his usual style, he will say things like this. What he is pointing to is that people do not have this kind of awareness in the waking state also and they want to know how the other states are. How will you know? You don't even know the present state. That's what he was pointing to. There was another question that was asked to Sadhguru. A person said - well, this spiritual truth is about the mind and the atman and the brahman, why do you ask people to do this kind of pranayama and asana and twist the body and all these things? Sadhguru, again, he laughed and said - What do you know? Do you know anything more than the body? You need to start from that, which you know, which is your experience. What is your experience right now? Of the body. That's all you know. That's why we start there. That is the whole philosophy of Hatha Yoga that you need to start from where you are. If all you know is this waking state which is embodied existence, you will need to start there. You will need to start with the body. Slowly the student is taken to disembodied states, that means from physical to non-physical. It is a very slow process. You must have observed it.

First, they will teach you to sit down. That is amazing isn't it? How spoiled we are? We don't even know how to sit down. That is what they will do. Sit down in this posture. You will find that the ordinary person cannot even sit down and after five minutes becomes anxious. I need to do something. I need to go there. That is the mind that shows up. You restrain the body so that the mind is restrained. A little bit, not much. Then the next, after one year of sitting down and twisting your body, so that it becomes flexible enough to sit down comfortably, they will give you the next step which is to breathe. What do you mean breathe? I am breathing. You don't know you are breathing. You are not breathing properly. The breathing follows the mind. You must have seen this. This is the pranayama which means the yama of the prana is the discipline of the breath, translated in English. The body is disciplined. Now sit down and breathe. As soon as you breathe in a specific way the mind will start following. Because you know only these things you do not know the mind. You have to start from these things. The gross layers of the mind. The environment, the body and all.

You want to jump into the non-physical planes which I am not saying is not possible. It is possible. But not for everyone. These paths are not for everyone. Most of them fail. They declare it as fantasy. Because it is not there for them. You will need to take the long cut if you really want to take this kind of path. There is a longer path there waiting for you. You will need to step down. A few layers down. Discipline those parts of the mind. It boils down to the purification of the mind. If the mind is not pure it will create hell out of these experiences. That is the experience of most people. Because they force it. They do not want to do the disciplined approach. They just swallow a pill. Amazing isn't it? It is possible. Shortcuts are everywhere. And now it produces a kind of useless or horrible experience. Which does not teach you anything. Except it breaks open the person a little bit. Except the person now realizes something else is also possible beyond this limited experience of the waking state.

The mind is huge. That is what the word mind blowing means. You have to blow the mind in order to come out of the shell of the body. That is why sometimes we need to take the hard path. The path of the effort. It is also on the path of knowledge. Only thing is that it is reversed. We see that the person has a kind of inclination towards intellectual knowledge. We start from there. Ultimately the mind will purify itself. Ultimately it will break out of the shell of the body. Which must have happened for many of you. Already the body is kind of a flimsy illusion for you guys. You don't worry too much about these things. Although your behavior is absolutely normal, not like that of Hatha Yogi, not that of Tantric practicing in the cemetery with skulls and dead bodies and all kinds of animals and physical spirits and demons. Who needs all those things? But the essential change is happening. It is happening right now.

I left these paths. I did not go all the way. But sometimes it comes back. Sometimes the desire to go there, have this experience, comes back. So I see that this will be the case for everybody. When I say I am on a path it does not always mean that it will be only that path. It will be a pure path. No, The mind has tendencies and so it will wander around a little here and there. Which is okay. I do not see any problems in that. It is not a problem if you find yourself interested in other paths. Go and take them. You will come back here only. You will come back to the ultimate.

Session 18

Is it possible to overcome physical pain after self-realization?

I have seen this question being asked many times and it looks like that the origin of this question lies in the belief and in the stories people hear about great masters who could overcome pain. It is kind of a miracle and we do not know whether these stories are true or false. But according to my own understanding of self-realization, there is no miracle in this kind of realization. It is only a realization of there being no individual. Nothing else, everything remains as it is. Nothing really changes except the mind, which is the biggest change. We do not expect anything else to change. Just like when you are watching a movie and you are engrossed in the movie, so much so that you think that the movie is reality, you react to everything in the movie as if it is real and somehow in the middle of the movie you realize that it is only pictures. There is no reality in the movie. That does not mean that the movie will stop. The story in the movie continues as usual. Everything that is destined to happen in the movie happens, because the movie is already completed, finished. There is no scope of any change in the movie now. So all the violence, all the love, all the comedy or tragedy in the movie, it continues as usual. The one who realized that the movie is not true is not affected and actually the realization is that the movie did not become false when I realized the truth, it was always false.

Something similar is self-realization where the different identities or different associations or identifications that the mind has, body or memories or the imaginary person or the doer, they all are broken because it is realized that these things are not me. These are passing experiences just like any other experience. Because I was engrossed in these experiences, it seemed as if these things are me and one of the things from which the mind detaches is the body. So when previously it was seen as myself and all the processes of the body were owned including the pain and pleasure, now it is seen as an experience which started and which will end, which is changing. That does not really change the body. That does not cause the body to stop, just like the movie. When it is realized that the movie is only a drama, it is fake, there are only pictures, this realization does not make the movie stop and similarly the self-realization does not make the body stop. The body keeps doing whatever it is doing. So if the body is healthy it will remain healthy. If there is some kind of disease in the body, if there is pain in the body then the pain will continue. This is probably bad news for all those seekers who are thinking that self-realization will somehow magically end all my problems and magically cure the body or the mind.

I am going to burst your bubble because this may not happen. This is a wishy-washy thought. The origin of the question goes deeper, the body is an illusion, the world is an illusion, all people are illusory and your all relations are illusory, they are not real. The person after realizing this thinks that okay everything seems to be exactly the same as it is even after knowing that this is an illusion, my body is behaving in the same way, my relations are exactly the same, no improvement or no degradation and the world is functioning as before, nothing really has happened, nothing really changed and it may seem to be the case, nothing is changing, there is no immediate change. It is just like seeing that the water in the desert is just mirage, it is just air reflecting the light, it will still look like water, it is that effect, that phenomena is not going to change once you realize the truth of it. What will change is that you will stop running after that water, that is all will change. The change is within, not outside.

So what the self realization will do is it will cause a change in the mind not in the experiences. You will stop worrying too much about the experiences that are going on. It does not mean any kind of indifference. It means that the clinging will not be there. You won't be affected too much by it or even if you are affected, which will happen, which is also very natural, you will recover very quickly because of this realization that these things are illusory. When the body is seen as an experience, when the mind is seen as an experience and the world is seen as a play, then it becomes really difficult to get involved in this thing. Depending on the remaining tendencies in the mind, the person either withdraws, becomes detached or jumps back into life with full force, full acceptance of whatever it is. If it is a movie, if it is fake then who cares, we enjoy it, we accept it, whatever it is. It is for the benefit of the mind. The mind is evolving through the experiences of the world and so we allow whatever is happening because that is what is our nature. We allow everything.

The real magic is that the mind will change. It suddenly changed its priorities and that is what is going to happen after self-realization. It may not happen immediately. For some people it may happen on the same day, morning there is realization and in evening a completely different person. It happens sometimes but very rarely. For an ordinary seeker it takes some time and slowly the mind adapts to the new reality. Its preferences are going to change. It will get a new life goal instead of the pettiness of human life. It will choose something which is big, which is grand. For many seekers it is simply seeking the truth, uncovering the layers of the ignorance and destroying the ignorance, whatever is remaining, destroying the bondage, becoming free, more and more free. It is like a training session, once you know the place that you have in the big scheme of things, you want to align yourself with the whole universe. This is what happens. Now the matter of the body and pain is tiny. When you have such a big goal then probably you should not worry too much about the body, because the body is an illusion. The body was not there. It is changing and it will go away very quickly. It is like an oil lamp that lasts as long as there is oil in it and then it is extinguished. You wait for the oil to finish. That is all we do.

You do not try to meddle with the workings of the body. If it is healthy, very good. If it is diseased, well life will be short and the end is the same, sooner or later it disappears. The body is destroyed, this is what we call death and death is for the body. So having this expectation that somehow my knowledge that I am not the body is going to be beneficial for the body or the body will improve, will not become old and will not die, is not a very realistic expectation.

There are secondary effects of self-realization because the body is seen as an instrument of action in the world, sometimes it is called the temple of the soul, sometimes it is called the divine instrument through which the whole is acting here in this world. When this is seen, which is a bigger perspective, the person instead of abusing the body starts taking care of the body. It is now seen as an instrument to achieve his higher goals and all the addictions of the body, all the unhealthy lifestyle of the body are dropped. What is addiction? It is an accumulation, isn't it? You took it up, the body did not demand all these things, all these poisons. The body did not say okay, pollute me with all that stuff. It is your accumulation and then all that is needed is dropping of these addictions, dropping of the unhealthy lifestyle and the body recovers. So it is not magic, it is just a change of attitude and the change of attitude is brought about by self-realization.

Body is an illusion but that does not mean that we throw it away. There must be some reason for this illusion. This is your job to find out what is the reason. Some people may find something extraordinary. My opinion matches that of ancient people who saw the body as a play, as a means, a temporary structure, using which the Self experiences play of the world, and because the human body and intellect is very evolved, the Self realizes itself through the human body. So it is not a small thing. It is not just a use and throw kind of illusion. Here the Self has gotten an opportunity to know itself through the instrument of the body mind. The universe is looking at itself using this instrument of the body-mind. Not a small feat. I don't know whether people feel like this nowadays or when told the body is not you, it is an illusion, it is a pile of organic matter, I don't know what they do with it but the ancient people, as many times I say like a broken record, knew all these things very deeply and they were cultured enough to utilize the body properly. Giving the body its proper place, a means of experiencing the world, a temple of the soul, and purification of the body is an act of intelligence.

Probably the Self is not that interested in bodies and all that but the Self is not interested in anything specific, it is interested in everything. It seems rational and logical to the mind that if this is what is happening then I better improve it a little bit. At least whatever harm that was done because of ignorance to this body, I can reverse it, I can try. This is the attitude of the seeker. So it is not magic if the body recovers and the pains start vanishing, all the diseases start curing themselves because finally the person has stopped abusing the body. Diet becomes healthy, it is not either under eating or overeating or eating junk and sleep becomes a very healthy sleep. Because earlier the attitude was I must work 24 hours to earn more money and when the illusion of the world is seen the money looks like dirt. Now you need to earn only that much money which is enough for a comfortable life. Greed is dropped and that gives you a very sweet sleep because there is no stress now.

I have even seen people change jobs. If they are in a stressful job, and self-realization happens, the job is dropped. Something simpler is taken that causes a very beautiful sleep. My personal experience is when you have nothing to do for the next two or three days, what are you going to do? You sleep peacefully, that causes the body to rejuvenate. It renews itself. Slowly within a few months you will find that because of this deep sleep the body gets a stress-free life. It becomes really healthier and younger. There is new life in the body because of this purification of the body-mind that has happened. There are positive benefits for the body, of self-realization. These are indirect causes, it is not magical, no miracle here. It's natural.

So when people saw that the self-realized people are more healthy, more happy, carefree and very wise, they do not do stupid things now, they handle pain gracefully, it looks as if they are not in pain even though the body is in pain. They will handle it gracefully because it is an instrument, probably something is broken and that is why the body is signaling that something is wrong in some part of the body, some organ of the body, and they handle it very gracefully. They do not panic like an ordinary person and when the death comes they welcome the death with open arms, with a smile on their face. They are not terrified of it. They have the realization now that there is no death. Death is an illusion, just like life is.

When people see these kinds of qualities emerge in the self-realized person, they assume that “oh, self-realization, it is kind of magic, it will cure all my diseases, the pain will go away, my fears will go away and I'll become very very happy”. Well good luck with that, there is no magic in self-realization. However, intelligence will awaken. The intelligence gets purified and then it is your wish, it is in your control. If you are willing you can take up the corrective measures and those measures have good outcomes.

Something similar will happen to your relations, they get purified, no more expectation, no more using people for your pleasure, no more manipulating people for your happiness and you will find that now this is actually magical because dramatic effects will happen in your life. Those people who were either using you or were dependent on you or had an artificial kind of relation, business like relation, they will leave you. They will start dropping without you doing anything because I don't think somebody who is self-realized will simply willy-nilly kick out people. It's not possible, it does not happen. People will leave you because your behavior is going to change. Those who were causing trouble in your life and enjoying your reactions will find you boring. There are such people who get pleasure out of pressing buttons on you and when you dance they enjoy this kind of dance. It is their entertainment, but once you regain control of your mind, after self-realization, you are no longer a toy for other people and they will leave you. They are not getting that for which they were connected to you. Fortunately or unfortunately this will happen. It is also called the frequency mismatch or rising in vibrations. Now my vibrations do not match with ordinary people. Different terminologies in different spiritual traditions.

But there is good news that good people, selfless people, good-natured people, innocent people, they will be attracted to you. Spiritual people, obviously, intelligent people, knowledgeable people, they will start seeing your worth. Now you will shine like a searchlight. A lighthouse in the darkness of the world and those who are waking up gain this kind of sensitivity. They can sense your presence now. They can see another awakened person and they will be attracted to you. Again it's not magic. It is not that some magical force is sending good people on your way to help you in your life. No, it is not like this. It is just social dynamics. So you will find that bad people cannot tolerate the kind of environment that a self-realized person presents - selflessness, love, kindness, compassion, totally rational and logical and very very aware. If self-realization has not shot your awareness into the orbit then probably something is wrong. You need to realize it again. So, they cannot tolerate this thing. It is just like when you spray the insecticides, the mosquitoes in your house cannot tolerate it, they run away. Something similar, that kind of environment is not good for them and the ordinary people, the egoistic people, materialistic people, greedy, evil, mean people need qualities that reflect themselves. They look for approval from others. So much so that they will actually try to bring you down to their level.

For example, if you had addictions, it is guaranteed that you will accumulate addicts in your life because you like to hang out with them and because they see you as a role model. “He smokes 20 cigarettes per day, wow, I like it, it's good style or he is so rich that he can drink two bottles of whiskey per day, I need to hang out with him, probably I will get half a bottle for free”. And you will attract this kind of low life forms in your life simply because you are the same. So if this changes, well there is no more attraction there. You can call it the law of attraction if you want. This is in fashion these days. So no more this kind of bond. This environment is not good for these people and they will leave you. Sometimes even your near and dear relatives, mother and father also will find you incompatible. The frequencies won't match and strange situations will be created where you will be taken away from that kind of environment. It looks kind of a disaster initially, but if intelligence is awoken and is pure, you will gravitate towards good people, and that will again contribute to the happiness in your life.

Most of the pain that we encounter, most of the suffering is mental in nature, that self-realization now paves the way for clearing this suffering. It can be dropped in one day if you want, but if there is something heavy like trauma or some really bad situations happen in your life, then it can take some time and that has an effect on the body, because mental suffering affects the body. Nobody believes this, how is it possible? Suffering is going on in the mind which is a mind thing and the body is a physical thing made up of matter, mind cannot affect the matter. Very educated people will tell you like this but it is our own experience that even a little negative thought in the mind affects the body. It affects the energy in the body, it affects the organs, everything. There is no “body” here really, it is a layer of the mind. However, it is accessible to the senses. That's all. It is an amazing thing. The mind has produced this structure, so the mind affects the body. It is not a surprise because the body is part of the mind. It is one continuous structure with the mind.

When mental suffering is taken care of, the mind stops affecting the body in a negative way and actually healing of the body starts. It is very much possible. Let us say there is a fear in the mind about something, some torture happened in the childhood or there is anxiety, stress because of poverty or bad company, excessive competition and this rat race, the pressure to get more and more, earn more and more and spend more and more and who knows what else is going on in this world. This kind of madness is everywhere and because of this mental pressure the body is affected. Once this is seen as a worthless activity, this lifestyle is dropped and now the body-mind recovers.

The body was reacting to the fear, stress and anxiety by producing chemicals that fight the incoming danger. For example, when we are afraid, the body produces some kind of chemicals which will accelerate the heart, make the breathing rate faster and make the blood pressure higher, suspend the digestion, suspend the excretion, suspend purification of blood, urine production, because the body needs to fight. There is a danger, that is what the body understands when the mind sends a signal and if this happens every day for many months and many years, you can imagine the result, the body breaks down. It is stupidity to assume that the mind cannot affect the body. We do not perceive it, that does not mean it is not affected. So when the mind is cured the body follows. It heals and you will find the pains appear and disappear and slowly the body regains its health, its shine.

Body has this kind of intelligence to repair itself, all you need to do is stop breaking it. Most of the breaking happens because of ignorance. Ignorance is cleared by knowing which everything is known and that is one cure for all the ignorance and it is a side effect of realization. Now the rest of the story is easy for you to guess. Now that question whether I can control pain simply by self-realization, well, that probably was asked by somebody who is suffering from pain. If there is a disease that causes pain, then again the common sense answer is that: No, it is not possible really. If the body is broken, if there is a faulty organ in the body or something has gone wrong in the body, then it is going to produce pain. Why? Because pain is the signal which tells the mind that something is wrong. Do something for this or do not put the body under too much pressure, take rest and eat well, that kind of signals are being produced by the body. Now if the body has an intelligence it cures itself. It heals but sometimes it is not possible to cure it. It has intelligence but it has a limited structure. It is an impermanent structure. So it cannot do too much if it goes beyond a limit and the pain signals do not stop, it's a mechanical process and there are no miracles.

Even if you realize the greatest truth of this universe, the body will keep doing whatever it does in such situations. So what is the proper action by a seeker?The answer is very simple: You do whatever is possible to manage that pain, go to the doctor, the doctor knows how to manage it. Take the pain killers or the natural painkillers in the diet, rest, give up hard work and stop running after things, retire and live a peaceful life. You can manage the pain by exercises or walking or hot showers or sleeping more and some medicines, obviously, which only a doctor can prescribe. There are some pains which can be managed by meditation and all but I am not an expert on that, I won't be able to say too much. For example migraine and all these kinds of pain can be managed a little bit because the cause is usually half mental but if it is chronic pain then the body is breaking down and you will need to employ the usual physical means because the body is under the domain of chemicals.

Now here comes the really important part, for a yogi the pain does not matter. It does not mean that he does not feel the pain, it simply matters less and that stops producing the secondary suffering. There is suffering because of the pain that is obvious, that is natural but there is an additional suffering because of resistance to the pain. “This should not happen.” It does not mean that you do not do anything about the pain. Simply the change in attitude that, “oh this is pain, it is because of a fault in the body and probably it is going to last for a long time. so I need to do something to manage it” and you do whatever is possible and then try to forget about it because the oil in the lamp is now starting to deplete. Some or other effect will be seen in the body.

For example if you are 70-90 years old and the body is already broken beyond repair. Now you have two options here. First is: cling to the body, spend a lot of money on repairing the body which cannot be repaired, you try to do self-realization, you try to do this kind of tantra mantra or worship or magical thing or you go to this doctor or you go to this foreign country to get it cured etc. etc. This is an option which most people will take. The second option is taken by a yogi or a spiritual seeker, which is: willingly leave the body. Accept that its time is over. Now prepare for leaving the body. There is something very beautiful in Jain tradition. Jain people do that when the time is right, they stop eating, they lie down and people leave that person and the body very comfortably and easily dies. Nothing more to do. It is the end of the suffering, the end of pain. It is seen as a great thing to do. Great seekers, very advanced seekers do that and even sometimes ordinary people also do that. So the yogi is already away from the society, has already left the society and usually they take Mahasamadhi which is just sitting in a cave and sometimes the followers will close the door of the cave. They will just put a big rock in front of the cave and it is done.

Why do we try to avoid the pain and death? Because of fear, we think that if pain is so painful the death will be extraordinarily painful, but no, it is totally opposite. Death is the end of the pain. The mind detaches from the body and the time of death does not feel any kind of pain. Even if you do not believe this kind of thing, life after life and things like that, the mind separates from the body and all because probably that is not your experience, so still from the logical point of view if there is nobody to experience the pain then it does not really matter, even if it is a very big pain. So it is all fear.

Fear is due to clinging which means too much attachment and anticipation of the future of death. It is the cause of the suffering and it gives rise to very odd behaviour which you must have seen. People lie down in their bed for many many months, many many years. What do they do? They watch TV, that's all or they gossip about this and that while enduring the pain, while being fed through pipes, while on one hand blood is being transfused, second hand, through needle, drip is being given and it is a very very sad scene. What is the outcome? Even after enduring that kind of animalistic treatment, disgrace and the end is the same. Instead of dying peacefully without pain. When the pain increases beyond threshold now the medicines also cannot do much and the person is almost a vegetable, just feeling the pain all the time, does not sleep, does not wake up, does not eat, nothing. Almost not breathing, it is painful breathing and when it comes to this, death happens because this body has been artificially kept alive.

The sad thing about this whole practice is that people think that it is ethical, people think that they are doing something good and they convince the person who is about to die that don't worry you're not going to die, we are doing everything that is possible to keep you alive, we are spending money like water and the biggest doctor in the town is here, we hired him and so on. An idiot will think that it is a good thing. Can't they see that it is going to become worse and the body will be gone? That is the ultimate consequence when the body is in a relatively good shape but you got this intuition that it's not going to last now and my job here is done because lying down in the hospital watching this idiot box and I don't know what they do, it is of no use. It's not going to produce any kind of result. It's not fruitful. Whatever I needed to do I did it and whatever is remaining I'll just get it done and then I'm going to go.

The best way to leave the body is to stop feeding it. Do not tie a rope to your neck, that's not the best way. Do not consume poisons because you want an aware death. You want to remain aware, as much aware as possible while dying. Medicines are also poisons. Painkillers will poison your nervous system and then awareness is affected. Do not create a bad negative environment in your house when you are about to die. That affects the mind, it does not remain detached, it does not remain aware and if you have not done any kind of awareness practices in your life, you never traveled on any kind of spiritual path then probably you do not have any options. But if you are a practitioner, if you took this advice of your guru to maintain the awareness then you will be able to maintain the awareness. While it is not too late, leave the body with full awareness. That gives you a choice to not repeat, not take the next birth mechanically like a zombie. It keeps you aware during the transition period. The guides or the helpers or your guru will be able to guide you better because you are not a total dead body, you're not a zombie. You can hear them, you can listen to them, you can be guided. It's a very good situation.

Those who are not a spiritual type, well they will think that it is all some kind of mumbo jumbo but everybody needs to find their own truth. Everybody needs to find an experience that does not involve the body and then you will get that kind of confidence to talk about such things and to plan your own death. Otherwise people don't do that. I've even seen spiritual people, practitioners, they just die in a default way. They do not turn it into an opportunity. They do not take advantage of this gateway, this transition that nature has provided for them. Death is an opportunity to be free, to liberate yourself. If it is a bad death, if it is under the circumstances that I mentioned, there is no hope. That reminds me of the death ceremonies in Tibetan buddhism. They die in a very spiritual way and just like a proper wise person should die, a proper spiritual person should die and they do not call it suicide. They do not shed tears. They do not smile, obviously. They do not laugh, that is kind of not appropriate but they are not moved by any death, not even their own death. They do not cling to these things. There is hardly anything to cling to. Only their begging bowl and probably wooden slippers, they give it away. An ordinary person has millions of things to cling to and therefore cannot die peacefully.

When you're preparing for death, the pain is a good indicator that there will be death, that death is coming and the body will start preparing. For example: digestion stops. Teeth start falling. Senses become dull, I mean the intensity is gone from the senses, won't see much, won't be able to hear much. When all these very common things start happening, the time is near. A yogi will actually come to know all the subtle energy changes in the body, like the feet becoming more numb and the body likes to rest a lot and certain food habits will start changing. The yogi or somebody who is trained, who was fortunate enough to get a very good guru, very competent guru, can see death many, many months before it happens. Sometimes few years but a typical yogi will know the incoming death within two or three weeks, at least one week prior and prepares by purifying the body so that the body does not cause trouble in awareness. And by purifying the mind prepares it. Saying the last goodbyes and saying the sorrys - that is very important. Cut all the bonds that you had. Yogi will not have too many but whatever is there he says thank you/sorry and whatever. Give away his stuff which will not amount to more than 100 rupees or something. Gives it away, and he arranges the wood to burn the body or mostly yogis won't do that. They will simply bury the body. They will arrange to cremate the body.

So yogis, sannyasis and sadhus do not burn the body. There is a different kind of reason for that. An ordinary person needs to burn the body as soon as death happens. Yogis do not need to do that because they want to keep the awareness alive for some time at least. So that's why if you go into a cave and close the door and cave has the proper environment, especially the himalayan cave. It will have zero degree temperature and at that height there are no insects, there are no bacteria or viruses, no fungus to cause instant decay of the body. So probably the body will remain there for a month, till all the liquids in the body dry out and it becomes totally like a pile of dirt. The yogi gets a chance because the body is not decaying so quickly. His astral feet remain in the physical and he gets a chance to remain more aware because our awareness is kind of connected to the body. So the transition time increases. Which is beneficial as the guru can still communicate with the person who is leaving the body because the energy body is still intact. There is an energetic communication with the mind of the guru. So he can still take the instructions.

There is a very interesting talk that I recorded. Its title is “How to die like a seeker”. So even though there also I do not go into details but just remember this, just note down the bottom line that leaving the body for a seeker is not a small thing. It is an important job and you should take it seriously. By which I mean gather some knowledge, learn some practices. Even though you do not know what the experience is like after death. Even though you do not believe anything, just as a precaution you on blind faith, you accept it. Ask your guru, or go to the Tibetan monk and get some theoretical knowledge about it. It has to be your own choice, that's what I am saying.

When death is such an important event, why are you worried about pain and diseases? Isn't it a small thing? Now does it really hold any weight in front of what this life process is? You are asking whether self-realization will cure my pain - It is much much bigger than you can even dream of. So please start collecting a little bit of knowledge. I know dying cannot be a practical thing. I do not really recommend that you experiment with it. It is not something that I can say okay go and die tomorrow and get direct evidence of it. No, you will need to get proper knowledge which will be theoretical. Learn it from the guru or somebody who is interested in that kind of thing. Most of the people just want to die. They do not want all this kind of drama to happen, which is again a preference in the mind. So this will settle all the questions regarding material benefits of self-realization.

A seeker asks - “The knowledge of self impacts the mind. It turns everything upside down. I was purely materialistic. My so-called relationships were given up. From the past few months my behavior related to everything has changed. I always put a question before any action. I have started conducting a minimalist lifestyle. Sometimes I think I'm going to extremes. Sometimes I get confused about which decision is better for my growth. My question is: In what way can I do self analysis to know what is the best way for me to conduct this life?”

The answer to this question is very simple. The best way to conduct your life is to do that, which makes you happy. It is very very simple. Do not make it complicated, do not make it more complicated than it actually is. There are challenges in life because this is Maya. She is not going to leave you so easily. So there will be events that will demand certain actions, even though they do not make you really happy but they are necessary. So do that which is necessary and in the remaining time you need to do that which makes you happy. That is the best way to conduct any life, not only seekers, any person, any ordinary persons, do that which you enjoy a lot.

Now there is the problem because you said that I'm not really enjoying the old lifestyle which was materialistic and shallow and superficial. So I can tell you my own personal experience because I don't have any solid advice here. What has happened is, the materialistic activities are now very few. Whatever I do is mostly for fun and enjoyment and I shy away from taking up anything which causes a lot of trouble. Rest of my time is now spent in creative work or recording the podcast, conducting the satsang, reading, watching videos and recording my own videos, collecting more and more knowledge and being in contact with enlightened people. That is what I enjoy. Now nothing else gives me pleasure. So even if I get pleasure from a few materialistic kinds of activities, I know that it is not really satisfactory. I always gravitate towards spiritual work. Now there is nothing more to be done except purification, that has become the life goal. For a spiritual seeker the best way is to adopt a spiritual lifestyle.

What is a spiritual lifestyle? Now there can be different opinions about it. That's why I gave you my own example. Now for some people it will be like building a big temple, why not? If you enjoy that kind of thing, do it. Who is stopping you? Or sing and dance, celebrate festivals, it's always fine. It's okay to travel to different places, if that is what gives you pleasure, do it. But on the path of knowledge you will find that these things become kind of boring. It's because we are more in the mind, we are more in the intellect. Most of my time is spent in intellectual activities, instead of doing something in the physical world. So it depends on you, what you like. Because as long as there is a body you will need to do some kind of job. You will need to earn money. As long as there are relations, you will need to take the responsibility of that. Purify your job, purify your relations. I'm doing that 24 by 7. I'm busy with this kind of work. That is all I do and that gives me the most pleasure. So yes, a minimalistic lifestyle. That is not because I don't need anything, it is because if you gather, if you hold more than you need, it causes trouble. It causes more pain than pleasure. So a seeker becomes minimalist just for peace of mind. Not because he wants to help the environment or wants to consume less, wants to hoard less. No it is not like this. It is a good thing. It is not a good idea to go to extremes.

Do whatever comes naturally, do the next thing that comes and you need to handle it very gracefully and with full awareness. When the awareness is on, you will find the right action is happening by itself. Now you cannot lie, now you cannot treat people badly, now you cannot succumb to greed or do anything bad or illegal. If the intellect is being purified you won't get carried away with the emotions. Everything should be balanced. Everything should be very simple, logical.

If you are an intellectual person then go for writing and spreading the knowledge, experimentation and so on. If you are a social kind of person then you can start satsangs and meetings, start a school, institution or an organization and devote your life to it. If you are very rich you can donate to such ashrams and take up the responsibility of managing those things. Many people do that but if you are religious type, devotee type then you can participate in the activities of the temples and all but I don't think that will happen for somebody on the path of knowledge but yes totally depends on your preferences. If somebody says, “No, you need to do only this, nothing else”, then probably they're wrong because there is no hard and fast rule about what to do, how to conduct your life.

Well, it does not help if I say there's no doer. It's not a practical answer. Find out what needs to be corrected in your life, what needs to be corrected in your mind. There is a good test for self-analysis. Any thought, speech, behavior, action that feels bad - produces instant suffering, does not give you a good feeling, and there, you will need to improve that. You can write it down that whenever I think of such and such things or such and such a person, negative thoughts come in my mind, and that is the next thing that you need to purify. So suffering is an indicator that work needs to be done there. Whatever gives you happiness, that is your way, that is the compass. This is a simple way to analyze yourself. What makes you happy, what does not and then don't do that which does not make you happy.

Sometimes you'll be stuck in a situation, “oh I am not happy here but I need to do something which is a necessity”. So for that you will need to identify, what is it really that is holding me in this situation? Is it always my fault? This should be understood. Probably there is some kind of attachment. Probably there is some kind of fear and then you will need to work on that.

For example: My own case, I was in a bad job. It was a very stressful job and there was no bank balance. I mean, I had no money, nothing was saved. So I was actually afraid of leaving that job. It never even crossed my mind to leave the job because it's kind of career suicide or probably it is just stupid decision. But I was aware that this is not the proper situation. I need to improve it somehow. So I started doing some side business and saved money. When I saved enough and I thought that, even if I don't get a new job of my choice, probably in the worst cases, I'll be able to live with this saving for at least four or five years. Then the fear was gone and because of this backup I had, I left the job, I left the city and settled somewhere else. Did something very simple which was just barely enough to live a minimalist lifestyle. That's all I did but that had a big effect on my mind. It actually kick-started my spiritual journey because so much time was left for practices and travels and talking to other seekers and reading books. So much time because earlier I was just working 12 hours. In India we have a very bad work culture. When you leave the office they still keep calling you and even before going to the office the calls start. From morning eight to evening eight there was work. You would think that you would rest on weekends but no, as soon as the office is over, Friday evening, I would get a call that on monday there is a meeting in New Delhi. Now take the flight on Sunday and I want you to report Sunday evening from Delhi. This was my lifestyle. So I said goodbye. There was a lot of money in that job but I left it.

If you find yourself in this kind of situation that is negative, it is not giving me happiness, I'm stuck but I need to do it then you need to tunnel your way out of that situation.

• Find out what is it?

• Is it your fear or are you just attached?

• Is there some intellectual problem that you do not have any other skill and so you are stuck in one kind of job or one kind of lifestyle or domestic environment?

If it is not good you will need to find out how to make it better or get out of there. It is a general solution. It will be your personal choice and you cannot simply assume that this person is telling the truth. His opinion is correct. You need to use your own intelligence to find out what is the best action for you. If you're not stuck, if there is peace in your life, there is not much struggle, then do not worry. Do not worry about what I need to do. You will spend a simple life in the simplest possible way, with full awareness.

We do not need to do anything extreme in the spiritual field. Just share your knowledge. If you are interested, if you awaken from your sleep, you will find that other people are asleep and you will feel an urgency. This is just human nature. You will feel an urgency to wake up others. You will find something very strange that nobody wants knowledge, nobody wants to wake up. So here the intellect is of some use but you can devise a plan to reach those who are willing to get out of the samsaric cycles, get out of the ignorance.

What am I doing? I jokingly call it my evil plans to take over the world, but these plans involve finding people who are curious, who want to know and then serving them without asking anything in return, selflessly giving them is my first priority. Now I still do some kind of job but as soon as I see an email, as soon as I see a question, I leave everything, I just first do that. There was a time when I was doing it too much. Every day there was a satsang and I was reading very heavy books, but I cut it down now. Now there is only one satsang, this two hours per week and then just one video or two videos and that's all I do. I don't even read books and I'm not that active now but the original plan is to find those who are willing and then initiate them. I don't think we are in a position to take them across the sea of life. Everybody needs to do it themselves and there are challenging situations sometimes but once in a while I get a message or I get an email that is delightful. It is as if something has woken up in that person, as if his whole life is solved. These messages convey this and that is the success of our plans.

It is very difficult to enlighten somebody. It is very difficult to put somebody on a path. By force it is not possible, by seduction it is not possible because ultimately they will say that, “oh you just lied to me, you told me I'll go to heaven, you told me my pain will disappear or my relations will become better but I lost everything” and you cannot do such kind of evil to people but you can actually initiate them and then it depends on their own tendencies, their own brilliance. If they pick up from there, fine. Those who are ready will come to you for more help, more knowledge and this is a good way to find out your own limits. There will be one day, there will be somebody, who will just shake you up, you will think that I know everything, but I don't have any answer for this fellow and this is actually a win-win situation because you're benefiting somebody and then you are being benefited. It is not really selfish. We don't get anything except the pleasure of giving. Sometimes I've seen that simply asking the question will cause an answer to materialize like magic.

There is probably something about our voice. It is my experience that if you keep thinking about a question or a problem in your life or some doubt that you have, probably nothing will happen. It will remain a question. As soon as you speak it aloud, it is converted into a voice, not the internal voice, something different happens.

There are three kinds of thoughts, the spoken word is the gross form of thought, we assume I'm speaking through the physical body. But no it is just a lower vibration of the mind, that's all this voice is but calling it lower and gross is injustice. There is something about the human voice. The act of speaking is magical in some way. Now you don't need to believe me because it's a personal experience. someday you will also get this experience and I have some stories to support my case. If you speak it loudly, you will find that there is a different effect. You can try and experiment. Talk to yourself. If you think it sounds stupid then turn on your voice recorder on the phone and start recording about your problem. Start explaining and elaborating it in detail and take out some time to do that. I don't say that you do it every day like a mad person. See what happens. This is the kind of experiment you can call a “Voice Experiment”.

What happens when we keep thinking in the mind versus when we say it aloud? There are some things that happened to me. There were some problems, health related and all these things and I kept thinking about it but one day I met some people around here, and I just happened to say it aloud. I just told them, just talking and gossiping and it just came out of my mouth aloud and something happened after that. My mind caught it actually. There has to be the mind only, there is nothing else. Those problems started disappearing somehow and I thought well it's a very big, very strange kind of coincidence. My life is actually full of coincidences. I don't even look at them now. There are so many but this was kind of new for me, that for many many months there was no solution and as soon as I uttered those words in front of ordinary people, random people, my friends and all, it disappeared. The solution came by itself. The problem went away by itself and I said "what is this?" So I experimented a few more times and I saw that the mind catches the stuff when we say it aloud, using our voice, and then I did some research about this thing.

Why do the magicians, the occult practitioners or the tantrics say spells etc. loudly? As if the deity or the spirit or the demon or whatever they are interested in, have ears? As if they have physical ears and they can listen just like we listen through eardrums and the nervous system and brain? But obviously those non-physical entities do not have these organs. So what is it that causes the transmission of the message? It is your own mind. So those who are interested in the occult should try it. Do not simply keep repeating it in your mind whatever you want or whatever solution or answer that you are asking for. Say it aloud, your mind will catch it. It is like rerouting the message to a different part of the mind, which is then caught by your guru or whomever you are worshiping. The occult is open for all and that part of the universal mind, it receives it loud and clear. This is a tiny experiment that anybody can do and find out. I'm not guaranteeing that it's magical but you need to keep your awareness on when this is happening because you can find people who are always complaining, are always weeping in front of others, no magic happens to them.

How is it possible? If you are on a spiritual path, if your awareness is on and if you reroute your egoic problem or a material problem, if you say it aloud, like expressing your wish loudly, do not be shy and see what happens. I've seen the devotees, when they go to temple, talk to the idol there loudly, that is why we sing at the top of our lungs. The Gods should hear us, that's why there is a bell there. There is something about the bell. I am always fascinated by these two kinds of bells: the Indian bells which are found in Indian temples and Tibetan bells, the bowl shaped bells. They have something very interesting in them. There are bells in the temples, why? Is the deity going to listen to the bell? No it is your own mind that listens to the bell. It is very loud. There is something in the sound of the bell. I don't know why but whenever I prepare all these intros for the podcast and videos, there are bell sounds there. There is something about the bell and there is something about the fire. I don't know too much about fire but I am fascinated by sound.

I was listening to the glitch bottle podcast, highly recommended, a very good podcast for those who are interested in occult and philosophy and history in general, history of spirituality and what is going on in other parts of the world. An interview was going on and he talked about the importance of bells in temples. It is actually to wake up the deity that is in the temple. Now people are going to laugh at me if I say like this because what can you wake up in a statue of metal or gold or stone granite, what is there to wake up? And the thing is, if you are sensitive enough you will wake up your own mind and the deity now has access to your mind. If you have a good relation with the deity or that creature, the demon or whatever they are all the same actually, they're much bigger than humans, they hear the bell through your ears. They hear the prayer through your voice. If you say it in your mind, like “I'm here now, do something for me”, it is like mental noise. Nobody's paying attention to your mental noise.

Why is it so? Because it is insignificant, too weak and it goes on and on, for 24 hours. Why would a deity waste their time listening to this noise? That's why I said do not just think internally, say your prayers. This is applicable to the gurus and guides also. The principles that are the bodhisattva principles, the gurufield that is continuously listening to the seekers. It is continuously helping the seekers. There are gross ways to help the person but they do not take that much trouble. Try to speak it up. There is a reason I keep recording my talks for hours because I have received fruits of it. It is my experience that there are hidden but useful channels in the mind of which we are not aware of. Science does not know it. Many yogis do not know it. Some tantrics know it. They do not have full control over it. If you are interested you can explore, you can experiment like this. Experiment with your voice.

There are some precautions here - do not let others listen to it. It should be a private affair obviously. You should not tell everything to everyone. That reduces the effectiveness of prayer or the wish that you are having. That will remind you of Tom Campbell who will say that it is called the Psi Uncertainty Principle. You can cause a little bit of effect in this world if it is still uncertain. If no one knows what will be the outcome, you can manipulate the outcome. As soon as the outcome is fixed, the universal mind won't let you mess with it. So when you tell everything to everybody, outcome is now fixed. There is no room for change. If it is in your mind only and you're expressing it through voice then the universal mind gets a kind of wiggle room to adjust things. So even if you can adjust tiny things here and there, life can become very easy without really disobeying the laws of the world. The physical laws do not make Maya your enemy. It is not recommended. Do not meddle with her. But there is a narrow band in this reality where you can affect the “reality”. Sound is very important, the voice is very important.

When you purify your voice, it becomes very powerful. Voice is a kind of siddhi. I call it a minor power that humans have. Look at all these creatures, they're so intelligent, they're so strong, some are better than humans in body terms, fast and furious kind of creatures, much more well adapted but they do not have this ability. They do not have this minor power of speaking. Because of our voice, look what has happened. It's a tiny thing but we humans have conquered the planet because of the ability to speak. It is not a small thing. When we misuse this ability, well, I don't know if anything bad happens or not but life becomes polluted with lies and useless things. It actually matters what we speak. Do not say bad things, do not speak bitter things, do not lie, do not speak unnecessarily, do not speak too much, do not talk uselessly just to kill your time, purify your voice and then observe what happens. If you want you can get hold of a tantric guru and ask for his experiences.

You must have heard those stories that the big boys of the spiritual field, all they had to do was to say, “so be it, may this happen” and that used to happen. Is it magic? I don't think so. It is just technology. They know some things about the mind, which we do not. When they're saying it, it is like a relay which relays the signal to some parts of the universal mind. If you impress your intent using the voice, it is more effective than simply internal dialogue. Sometimes it works. So this is something which is kind of odd for somebody who is on the path of knowledge. This is more in the field of occult but I gave you the key. It is a very important secret. Now you know how to control the universal mind or some of the events here through voice. That is why the mantra has power, that is why it has to be said loudly, that is why the yagya has power because they do it very loudly, through the body, through the mind, through the voice. The more intensity you put in the better results you get.

All you need to do is say something which is for the good of all that includes myself also, this one also. It happens. If there are specific problems, you can at least throw it out there in the universal mind. If you are very sure that it is not your creation and you don't want it. It is actually causing trouble in your sadhana, your practice, then throw it in the backyard of the universal mind, it will be taken care of. You can actually complain. It has to be a valid/legitimate complaint and you need to say it loudly. Do not complain to others. The example I gave was just to demonstrate that I did not know that voice can have power and it happened. But it is not recommended that you go and tell it to many people. There is a pathway that opens up through the voice. It is not magic. So you can utilize the voice for spiritual growth or for the benefit of everyone.

Whenever I say these things, it is mostly through the experience of the others but I filter it out. I do not totally believe everything that is out there in spiritual fields but it needs to somehow resonate with my own experience. Otherwise why will I say it? I do not even remember it. I listen to so many things. It is amazing that sometimes they match in experiences and that is what I remember.

I want to tell you something very funny, that I was listening to a channeler on youtube. These are the channeling people, who channel ghosts and dead people. I was listening just out of curiosity what they have to say and the channel's name is the youtube channel called “we are channelers” something like this and a very young girl was being interviewed and she started channeling something. I don't know what but everything she said was related to non-dualism but in their typical channeled language. I never expected that this little girl would channel something, and produce this amazing nondual wisdom. It was amazing and the person who was interviewing probably did not understand a single word. I keep researching like this. You don't know what you will find sometimes. Now I have a soft corner for channeling also. This is something because I do not expect the person, who was channeling, to be an adept in Advaita. It takes a long practice to speak that kind of language, speak that kind of wisdom but she did and I was surprised. Sometimes you will be amazed at the ability of the mind to do stuff. Hopefully you will also explore and you will experiment.

Session 19

There is a very strange question that is not often asked. It is very rarely asked by some of the advanced practitioners, that is, how to defend myself from psychic attacks or negative influences? There are many more terms to describe the same thing, such as bad energies, bad vibrations, low vibrations and so on, depending on the culture and tradition of that practitioner. Some of the people may want to call them demonic influences or angelic influences. I just call them mental influences because that is what I see they are. Probably those who have advanced a little bit too far and they are on some kind of occult path or probably the path that involves manipulation of the mind, are most likely to encounter this situation and they are also the most likely to ask this question.

Probably nobody is bothered by this too much and the answer is very simple actually. The answer is - keep your awareness very sharp. Keep it ON all the time and that is how we defend against the psychic or mental influences, especially if they are bad or harmful in nature. To those who know what I am talking about, for them the rest of the discussion is going to be boring. There is nothing more that needs to be done.

For some this can be very puzzling, how is it even possible to defend oneself via keeping the awareness ON? How can it defend me against the negativity? So let's go into the details of it. For those who have no experience about psychic self-defense or have never experienced this or have experienced this but they do not know what to do. They have dabbled into practices without a guru, without any solid practices or guidance and now these are the consequences of venturing too far into the mind. As we know spirituality is for the good of all. It is for your well-being. The practices are meant to make you happy, peaceful and should make your evolution faster. They should take you to liberation. Usually this is the case. Everything goes peacefully if you follow the thumb rules and if you do not disobey your guru then everything will go smoothly. However, there are very rare cases where it is not a rosy picture. It is not as advertised by the gurus and traditions. It is exactly opposite. All the hell will break loose as soon as you start practicing, and I don't want to scare anybody because this is very rare. It is a trouble that is self-invited.

So this discussion may be just armchair philosophy for many but I am hoping that at least a few those who are facing the difficulties, will be benefited by whatever little knowledge I have and I have mostly theoretical knowledge and very little direct experience or practical knowledge here. So probably some of the things will not be right. Some of them will be hardly useful but here it is.

I call them the mental influences. How is it even possible for the mind, this human mind which resides in the body to be affected by something out there? Something which is not even physical, something which is in another mind? How is it possible? And because this is not the experience of a majority, it is considered as impossible. There are few fortunate or unfortunate people who have experienced this first hand and for them this is not a joke, for them this is not magic, it is a reality. So those who do not think that these things are possible, well then, it is not possible. It's your experience, it is your truth. It is a possibility for those who are open non-physically. In other words, their minds have expanded beyond their protective cocoons. Now there is a possibility for them to get influenced. However, some people are naturally gifted. You can say it is a gift to be sensitive to other influences.

When I say mental influences, I am actually talking about the non-physical influences only. I can say it is my conclusion after studying the mind for a long time that everybody has this kind of sensitivity, more or less. Everybody is getting influenced by non-physical means 24 by 7, all of us. Only that there are some who have an extraordinary sensitivity and such people are also not that rare actually because this society has tried to put a lid on anything that is non-physical. Society is totally materialistic in nature nowadays. So people are brainwashed into thinking that their minds are illusory, they are kind of non-entity, they do not exist and all that exists is this body and the world. That's how they live their whole life and for them these things are not that important because they never experience it. This kind of attitude will close down the mind even more. It is a defense of the mind, you can say. Mind is defending itself from influences and closes down so much that the beliefs make it impossible for any influence to cross the boundaries of the mind and body. So everything has a positive side. This closed-mindedness, this denial of the non-physical, has its positive side that such a mind will not be influenced so easily. But who knows, these are just thumb rules, it can happen to a hardened materialistic person also.

We are being influenced physically also. This is where our defense should start. The first step in psychic self-defense is defending yourself from physical influences. They include influences of the environment, of people. They happen in the waking state, so we can call them as waking state influences. Those who know the mind, they know that the mind is not a limited thing. It is not something which is independent of the environment. It is a piece of the universal mind, the sea of memories, that's all there is. The sea of memories is manifesting as the physical world, the physical body, the non-physical body and the human mind. You can picture it like the universal mind is my body and the human mind, the individual mind is like a cell. So it is a part of the whole. The cell cannot live by itself, it is part of the bigger system. But it has its own life. It has its own individuality. It is born and it dies. It lives a life and it procreates, that means divides into two. It is a small individual, so as below, so above.

This human mind with its body is like a cell in the universal mind. Just like the cell in the body has a membrane around it. This membrane protects it from the environment around the cell, whatever chemicals are there, whatever substances are floating around and it delineates that cell from other cells, so that it can live a life of its own. Similarly, the human mind has surrounded itself with a barrier. Human body is a part of that barrier. It is the part of that barrier which is visible to senses. Just like the cell in the body cannot live without exchanging substances from the blood or from the elements around it, from its environment. It needs to take in the glucose or other nutrients from the blood or whatever sticky liquids that surround the tissue and it needs to excrete its waste products. It is like a factory. It needs to open up to some of its environment. This is how the exchange of chemicals takes place. Similarly, the human mind cannot really function meaningfully when it is totally closed. What will it do there? How will it function? How will it progress or live? So it opens up some doors and windows in its barrier. These are called senses.

There are two kinds of senses, the senses that are influenced by the environment and the senses that are influencing the environment. It's two-way, just like the cell. It is a very good metaphor, but the only difference is we see the cell as a physical thing while the mind is non-physical. Ultimately, the body and the cells are also non-physical, but for the sake of metaphors, we can assume them as having a separate reality. So senses are our doors. The mind has limited itself. The mind is protected, it defends itself from influences by surrounding itself with a barrier. Body is part of that barrier and senses are the windows and doors in that wall. This is the fundamental knowledge. If you understand this much, if you can experience this much, you will know everything else that needs to be known about influences.

So you can see now that the first step in defending ourselves from negativity starts from the defense of the body. We instinctively defend the body from bad influences like pollutants or high temperature or cold or polluted air or poisonous stuff, bad food etc. We do this instinctively. If you don't do that, the body has mechanisms to produce pain and that pain stops us from doing it. It is a defense mechanism. The body is defending itself against other life forms, the viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites and other animals, bigger animals. The body knows how to defend itself and since it cannot have all the doors closed, the doors of the senses are open and it defends itself from people also who are trying to poison the mind via senses. Very few people have this kind of awareness, but those who have, and I have seen many have it actually, at least in this part of the world, they shield themselves from people. They do not let opinions of people or their brainwashing affect themselves easily. They do not let others influence them so easily. Their own will, their personal will is very, very strong. So the will of the other does not have a lot of effect. But those who are not in the spiritual field, are like very innocent people, ignorant people or little children. They have their doors wide open. They allow all kinds of influences from the world.

Initially you will see that the child is experimenting. What can I eat? What tastes good? Where can I find the food and who protects me and who scares me? These things are being learned through experience, hit and trials. We learn through experience, who are negative people and who are positive people with whom we like to spend our time, with whom we want to talk and be with? This is also learned by experience. So we are actually doing the protection from influences already. Mind has built in mechanisms to defend itself from physical as well as non-physical influences. I need not elaborate this physical part too much, but I must say that your self-defense will start from the physical layer. Defend yourself from the environment, purify your body, defend yourself from people, purify your relations and your company and do not let the negativity of others which is coming through senses, you are hearing them, you are watching them do things, you are reading the books, you are watching the media etc., do not let all that negativity simply make home in your mind. You need to have a very strong intention to shield yourself from the influences that you encounter in the waking state.

The waking state is the current state of the mind where it is engaged in the world. It is taking influences from the world. It cannot survive without being open to the world and without acting in the world. That is the whole point of having a body. It is a shield against the world, against the influences. It allows only that which is most necessary for our life. However, as we start progressing in our spiritual journey, the mind expands, it actually literally expands into the non-physical domain. We do see these effects in the physical. That must be the experience of many of the practitioners. Now this is not the experience of ordinary people. So I don't expect ordinary people to understand even a single word of what is following. If you are just an ordinary person living your ordinary life, then the protections that I mentioned just now are enough for you to defend yourself.

However, if you are on a spiritual path and specially the path that demands some kind of mental manipulations like the occult or the path of Kundalini, Hatha Yoga, Kriya or something which involves direct manipulation of the mind and its activities, they will experience this expansion of the mind. It looks like sometimes that your body has expanded. It is now able to take influences even by non-sensory means. What do I mean by non-sensory means? You already know the influences of the senses that are coming in the mind from five senses. It must be the experience of many people that when they start practicing, when the purification crosses a threshold, they won't be able to stand in some places. For example, a butcher is butchering animals, and even if for the whole of their life they have enjoyed that kind of food, now they won't be able to see that scene. They won't be able to stand in specific houses. They won't be able to tolerate that environment. Not because it is dirty or something, because there is a different kind of feeling there. In environments that are artificial and too hedonistic, they won't be able to sit there for long.

Similarly, they won't be able to tolerate certain people. Even if they do not say a single word, there will be some kind of non-verbal communication that happens. They will instantly develop a repulsion and dislike for that person or the opposite is also true that they like some places and they like some people for no obvious reason. They are not getting something from that person. For an ordinary person, all the relations are give and take. If I get something from you, I will talk to you. If I don't get anything from you, no business. So, when this expansion happens, you will find yourself attracted to people who are just very ordinary but they are not going to benefit you in any way. You still want to be with them and you are attracted to places which have a better vibration, like they say in spiritual terminology. They provide you with good influence and it looks as if the body is sensing more. People may call it the 6th sense or 7th sense or whatever number you want to put on it, but in my opinion, it is just expansion of the mind.

Now the mind is allowing some non-physical influences. It has become sensitive to non-physical influences. Many people will agree with this. In my opinion, again, that is not that some growth has happened in your mind. It is only that your awareness has increased. These influences were present before you took a path. Now the only thing that has changed is your awareness of them, it has grown. Expansion of mind does not mean that it is growing like a tree, no. It is simply cutting down its boundaries. Previously there were very solid boundaries, previously the influences did not matter that much because they were drowned in unawareness. It is not that they were not affecting you, but the unawareness, the darkness was so deep that it did not really matter. You did not really see it and you just dismissed anything that appeared in the waking state as coincidence or weird stuff, strange stuff, gut feeling and so on.

According to my theory, this is not true. We are bombarded by influences from all sides, all the time. Only thing is your awareness has reached a certain limit that looks like expansion of the mind and that makes the mind think that, “oh, I am getting influenced now, I need to run away from this place, I need to avoid this person”, which is okay, which is mind defending itself. But note that it was always there, only that now you have become aware of it.

What to do when this starts happening? How to defend yourself? That is what I said in the beginning. Keep your awareness ON, keep it very very sharp. As soon as you get this kind of low vibration, just avoid that place, avoid that person. There is no need to fix anything. You don't know how to fix it. If you engage with that person, there will be some kind of entanglement with that person. If you don't believe me, you can do the experiment, but I don't want to put people in risky positions, so I give very safe advice, better safe than sorry. So avoid, do not try to fix the person or fix the environment. Do not try to stop that influence. “No, I want to be here, but I want that influence to be gone” - This usually does not work in my experience. You will be the one who will need to run away, especially if you don't know how to do the cleansing. So this is the use of awareness, practical use. You can use it in your daily life as soon as you encounter bad influences. You need to shield yourself, you need to go away from that person. Sometimes it will be your own relatives, sometimes it will be a friend, sometimes it will be your partner or even your pet.

So that's why you will find that as soon as the spiritual growth happens, it is called growth for this reason probably, practitioners will start avoiding many, many things. There is a big change that happens in the life of that seeker. He or she will drop some friends, they will leave some jobs, particular jobs, which are full of negativity, which demands them to lie or do some kind of unnecessary activities or they will turn their back to some friends or their relatives who are too negative. Even their presence is enough to spoil your day. You will find great changes happen. This is just the mind trying to shield itself from the bad influences.

And the opposite also happens, the mind is attracted to positivity, the higher vibrations. The vibration is again an influence that travels from one mind to another mind. It is like a wave in the pond, there is a continuous connection throughout all the minds because your awareness has grown or your barriers of the mind have kind of opened up a little bit, the non-physical windows have opened up. You are now aware of those influences and the mind will take action. Usually, it is just like the body tells you through pain, the mind will tell you through unpleasant emotions. Many people have developed their own ways to read the negativity. Some people see it as colors. Some people will see it as brightness or darkness. They will say, “oh, this place I went to, it looks very, very dark”. And it is possible that their mind will overlay a dark curtain on that place. It will appear dark and gloomy. While a place with higher vibrations may appear bright. I told you, the mind is, kind of amazing thing, the qualia that it generates, the qualities that it generates are open-ended, an endless amount of perceptions are possible. So the perceptivity of that seeker increases like this. Don't worry, your mind knows, it will take the right action. All you need to do is drop your habits. If you are habitually living in such places or being surrounded by such people, because you have some kind of dependency, because you have some kind of attachment, you are enslaved by them, it is best to cut the chains, best to cut the ropes. This is the right time. Your mind has signaled it. Now, what are you waiting for? Defend yourself.

Some people may try to fix the situation, which is actually beyond my scope, which is beyond our present discussion. So I am not going to give you techniques to clean a place or modify another person. Not really recommended. Those who are interested, they can read about it or they can go to a proper experienced guru, a tantric.

As soon as we get this kind of signal, the defense should start. Do not dismiss it. The mind is telling you something. It may look like the body is telling me something. It's okay. It's fine. The mind overlaps its nonsensory information over something which it can make sense of. It tries to make it meaningful. So it may look like “I'm listening, I'm hearing a scream in my mind or I'm hearing a hum in my ears”. Something like this may appear in the mind. Mind is capable of doing such tricks. That is a signal that, okay, this is not good for you and run away from this place, run away from this person. Do not deal with this person. There are consequences of dealing with negative people. It is also called a karmic bond. As soon as you enter in communication with such people, it forms a bond that is also called psychic vampirism. If you Google this, it opens up a Pandora's box of psychic self-defense.

There are stories of vampires who will enter your house only if you invite them, they will attack you and suck your blood. This is a very popular story. Every other horror movie is about these vampires. What is the origin of these stories? Obviously, they are not true. There is an origin in magic, the field of occult. Why can't the vampire enter your house if you don't invite him in? He's knocking at your door. You say, no, I cannot open the door, go away and he goes away. As soon as you open the door, he comes in. And what is the meaning of sucking the blood? You see, the blood represents life force. It is the fluid that gives life to the body. Inviting in the house represents making a bond, connecting your mind with the other mind. If the person is negative, if the person has a high amount of negativity, they will latch on to you, latch on to your life force and they will suck it out of you.

How is it even possible? Those who are affected by this kind of vampirism, they will tell you the stories like - “Every decision I make is wrong. Every time I try to do something good, I end up doing something disgusting, something bad, something very negative. And my mind is crowded with all kinds of negative thoughts, thoughts of killing myself, murdering or I am not able to work, I am not able to find a good job. And there is an environment of gloom in my house. Everybody is crying and shouting and it's really bad, it's very hellish”. But the person is healthy. The person is from a good family, educated and probably is even on a spiritual path. Who knows why these occurrences are there. Now there can be a mundane cause for this, I am not saying that it's always non-physical. But if you eliminate all that is within your reach, all the physical causes, and if the situation still remains, then probably there is an influence, probably there is a vampire that has entered your house and is sucking the life force. So this is what is called a psychic vampirism and actually the horror stories of vampires they originated from this very practical day to day happening. It is happening right now, it is happening to everybody. But because there are defenses in place, it does not grow beyond a limit.

Just like we are being surrounded by lots of microbes, a lot of microscopic life, when we drink water, we drink millions and millions of these organisms, but usually because the body has defenses in place, they do not affect us too much. So similarly the mind has defenses in place, so very rarely it will happen. But to those, if it happens, it is kind of a disaster, it is very bad. So we should not dismiss these folk-lores. We should think about what is the origin of these stories. There is usually some good reason behind it.

In India at least, we have some rituals that purify the house. Even before you start building the house, you purify the land. There are rituals to shield the baby when the baby is born. There are rituals to shield the house from bad influences. You must have seen the doll hanging on the door in some Indian houses. Sometimes it is just a lemon. Sometimes in western cultures you will see it's a horseshoe, it is a bent metal. It is all superstition nowadays, isn't it? It's purely superstition. These things do not do anything. What is effective is your defense. You should have this kind of very intense intention to not be influenced by negativity. You materialize your intention. You make it solid in the physical sense and then you put it there. It can be a doll, it can be lemon, sometimes a nail is enough. You stick a nail in the frame of your door. That's all. And people are going to laugh because - superstition, isn't it? Yes, it is a superstition. It is just externalization of your fear. That's all it is. If you do not know how to defend yourself mentally, then these rituals are ineffective. They do not help. That is why it is fair to call them superstitions because people do the external work. They do the hollow ritual, but they do not really do the mental equivalent.

Where does the power lie? You are giving a suggestion to your mind that please stay away from these influences. Do not invite them. So you will find that the priest in the temple takes water in his hand and sprinkles around, goes around the temple, sprinkles that water. What is he doing? Is it magic water or something? No. Nowadays, the priests, I don't think they know anything about these rituals. They started thousands of years ago, they have all become corrupted, lost their meaning, because people are no more spiritual now, they are totally materialistic. Only the outer shell has remained of these rituals. Even the priest is just doing the ritual. He does not know what to do. Some of them they know. They know how to set up the intention. So you can also do that. If you are suspecting that my house is being influenced by something, you can take water, make an intention to shield the negative influences. That is most important. Even if you don't take the water, just go around your house. That is also a great ritual. Even if you don't do that, just sit in one place and make a very, very strong intention that my house must be protected from bad influences, and it will work. The influence is mental and the cure is mental. Nothing physical here.

Please do not engage in superstition, stupidity. I see people doing all kinds of things and they also invite priests or some Baba kind of people and ask them to do it. They take money and it has a placebo effect. Those who do not have a strong intention, those who do not have the sensitivity, they will need the help of others. If you find somebody, it's okay, but it's very effective if you do it yourself. Shield yourself and that is just simply planting a solution in your mind that I will not be affected by these influences. Remember that you cannot really shield the mind. It is not possible because the influence was already there. Just now you became aware of it. What you can do is you can add a layer above that influence which cancels out that influence.

So if you see on your TV, some of your leaders, spewing poison against some other country or some other race, some other kind of religion - these people are our enemies and so on. Now you need to make an intention, a very, very strong intention in your mind - No matter what they say, I'm not going to let this negativity enter in me. I'm not going to engage in these thoughts which they are planting in my mind through this physical medium of communication. You will sleep better that day. You will observe if you are well shielded from society, which is mostly negative, 90% of it is just negative, just garbage. You need to shield yourself and then you will find that peace enters your mind. Intelligence arises. You suddenly remember your life goals, pursue your life goals. You are not engaged with people. You're not defending yourself endlessly from their negativity. You are not going to places which are negative and then wondering why nothing good happens in my life. All that you need to do to clean yourself from negativity, to shield yourself from them.

There is no need to go and mess with that thing. Do not try to clean it. It is kind of an advanced course, you can say that is beyond my pay grade. I cannot tell you. So having an intention is enough. You will find many diseases go away like this because they are sometimes due to a bad intention of somebody. Somebody saw your prosperity. Somebody saw your beauty and good health and immediately thought negatively about it. Because the mind is impure, common people, they are mostly just like animals. Jealousy arises in their mind, envy arises in their mind, a form of enmity arises, “No, nothing good is happening to me and I wish this person to die or become as ugly, old and poor as I am”. This is very, very subconscious. Sometimes they may not say it, but you can see it on their face. I've seen so many people actually. When your sensitivity increases, you will start reading the faces. Even before that, you will start reading the mind. You know something is wrong here and you shield from that and you avoid meeting that person. You do not engage with that person. Do not form a karmic bond. Do not invite the vampire into your house. You will be shielded. That is guaranteed. That's all you need to do.

So we do not show off too much. Spiritual seeker’s life is very, very simple. Do not advertise too much. Look, I have this much money. I have this big car. I have this big house. Never do it. And that minimalist life will automatically shield you from the jealousy of others, from the bad influences in others mind. It is not that they are bad people. It is not that they are evil. It is only that they are impure and the impurity automatically executes in their mind like a PC infected with a virus. You boot it up and the first thing that happens is the virus executes.

Similarly, an impure mind is like this. The first thing that goes up in any ordinary person's mind is fear, jealousy, anger, lust, greed. You will need to stay away from such people. Do not say, “oh no, my job depends on that person or he's my relative and so on”. You will need to break those bonds. These are karmic bonds and now they're showing up. So you will, if your sensitivity has increased, take advantage of it instead of suffering from it, you can use it for positive outcomes. Now this is within our understanding, isn't it? Many of you have these experiences and I'm going to take you one step deeper where it gets really strange.

I'm going to claim that all of the so-called paranormal phenomena can be seen as one or other forms of influence. For example, entity possession. What is it? The entity influences the mind of the person because there are no defenses now or the entity is very, very strong like the influences from your guru, the good influences, his energy. Seekers will say this in India, that when I sit besides my guru, I feel a great amount of positive energy, loving energy, my awareness becomes hyper and so on. What is it? Influence of the mind of the guru. Some people are going to even see a light coming out of the head of the guru. It is an overlay. Now that solves the puzzles - why these ancient people were always depicting the great masters with a halo behind their head, like the sun shining behind their head, because some of them with hypersensitivity actually saw that light.

It is possible to see that light actually, just like I said, the mind can do it. It takes the influence that is coming from that person and it overlaps the mental imagery on that, overlays it on the sensory perception. The non-sensory is converted into sensory. You can say it like this. So people with a negative mind will be seen as darker in color and will be seen as having darkness around them. From there, the concept of aura arises. Some people have hypersensitivity and they are usually very advanced seekers and they do not go around telling people I can read your aura. No, they don't. And if you have this ability, you should also not do it. Telling your enemy that you are very powerful simply causes the enmity to increase, simply hardens that enemy and he will be more fearful, he is prompted to use his negativity against you more because now he sees you as a threat.

So you pretend as if you are just a sheep. You are an ordinary person. That's all. Do not exhibit your powers. It causes problems. Those who are reading auras and things like that and asking for money, well, most of them are frauds, fakes. Do not do that kind of thing. If you want, you can advance your own mind so much, you can train your own mind so that you can picture the influences coming from everywhere and you will see everything as a light, everything as a color, it is a magical world. The magic is in your mind, not in the world. The world is an illusion, it can be anything.

This is getting strange, isn't it? So influences of negative as well as positive kinds will be seen as coming from people. You will be able to witness them. This is one of the psychic phenomena. If you see your old grandfather, old grandmother or your long deceased friend suddenly appearing in your room, what is it? Is there something in your room? Have they materialized in your room? No, it is just the influence. The mind has created a picture of it out of that influence. It is not really accurate to say that it is false. It is an illusion, yes, but there is a source of that illusion and that is the mind of that person. It can be a non-physical entity that appears in your mind and that is projected in the room. So that explains a lot of spirit phenomena.

Now you can take channeling. It is kind of opening your mind for influences from some other entities, some other minds, hopefully more advanced and positive than you. You can open your mind for channeling to lower spirits also or so called demons, so called evil spirits also. It is the same door. It depends on you, whom you are inviting. Like attracts like, in the occult. Very very true. That is why we do not actually jumpstart the spiritual journey by occult practices. We first purify that person's mind. If there is a lot of terror in your mind, a lot of fear, then it is going to attract the same thing from the mental universe, from the universal mind. It is a non-physical, non-local, non-temporal mind. That's why we call it mind. You do not need to be near that place, you do not need to be near that person. It can happen non-locally, anywhere. That's why it's called influences from another dimension. It's not a dimension, it is a mind. There are no dimensions here. Everything is mind. If you have this kind of understanding, if it is your direct experience, then you will be able to explain all psychic phenomena in terms of mental influences. It is a very good theory, it is a very good tool to understand these things.

Similarly, we can invite positive influences. For example, on the path of knowledge, we invite positive influences when we sit down and pray, before introspection - I have this question, now let there be an answer. We are opening the mind to knowledge. Where is the knowledge coming from? From the mind itself, but it taps into this gurufield that I talk about a lot. It taps into the storage of knowledge in the universal mind, which is also known as the gurufield. You invite that influence in your mind. Sometimes you will exclaim, “I didn’t even know about these things. How did they appear?!” That is because you invited a good influence in you. So it depends on the practitioner. If your mind is positive, then it will try to connect to positivity. If your mind is negative, it is almost guaranteed that it will connect to some disgusting things in the universal mind.

When I say universal mind, do not think that it is all positive, godly, angelic thing. No, it is a duality. Everything is there in the universal mind. This is what we omit when we talk about the universal mind, because we don't want to scare away the newcomers. So we paint a very good picture of the universal mind. We are on the topic of self-defense, and now you need to know that not everything is positive there. It is duality. There are negative things, there are neutral things, and there are positive things. You are free to choose. You can choose negativity also. It will also result in the evolution of the mind through pain and suffering. You can choose neutrality, which will produce knowledge also but you can accelerate your evolution by choosing the positive. That's why we call it positive, because it gives us desirable results.

Many people will say, “No, that is positive, No, this is negative”. Now it is a subjective matter. We are in the domain of mind, which means subjectivity. Choose that which you think is positive, and you will instantly be influenced. It will open up a door in your mind. The influence will start coming in your mind. Everything that we think of as occult is a mental influence, like conjuring of a spirit. The magician is doing mantras and all that and is kind of inviting the spirit. What is happening here? He is opening his mind so that energy, that influence, that vibration can come through and using the energy of the magician itself, using his own mind, manifests in the form of something or other. Probably he wants information, probably he wants gold, probably he wants to influence a beautiful woman, probably wants to kill the enemy, and he wants the assistance of the other entities who are more powerful than himself. They will ask for something in return, which you should be able to provide, otherwise they won't do it. And they will do that which you are not able to do via normal physical means because the physical laws prevent this kind of action. But in the universal mind, except the laws of the mind, there are no rules. So those entities, they will influence that person. Sometimes the influence is very strong.

For example, you have requested to kill your enemies. Now it will happen. You will hear the news that one person killed himself by driving into a railroad. Everybody saw that he's driving and he won't stop. The train came and killed him. Now what has happened here? Does the entity have any power over the car or have they materialized the train on the track? No. Simply, they took over the mind of your enemy and they instructed that mind, “do not hit the brakes”. They will take advantage of your everyday activities and they will cause that person to kill himself. Similarly, a mesmerized person walks into some forbidden place and there the spirit will simply kill him, harm him, possess him. So mesmerism, hypnotism, what is it? Influencing the mind.

There are many more phenomena that can be simply explained as influences. For example, cursing. If your intention is very powerful, you can curse somebody who has caused harm to you. And since it is timeless, it is non-temporal and it is non-local, it will materialize one day, in one of his life. It is possible that this life will go very well for that person. He will simply laugh at you, hearing you curse. But one day will come when your curse will materialize, because it is mind. You are a part of the universal mind. You have the power of that mind. The other person is your part. The other person is eternally connected to you. Some people have a very powerful mind and if they say something, it happens. And that is again an influence. You set up a vibration in the universal mind and that energy keeps affecting that person. It is a curse. You can explain the curses like this using the theory of influence of the mind.

Similarly, blessings. When I am blessing you, what am I doing? I am intending good for you. That sets up a vibration in the universal mind that influences your mind. So when you are in a position to make a decision, you will make a positive decision. For example, you are addicted to smoking and I give you a blessing that you be freed from this addiction. “So be it”. And what will that do? If there is a power in my intention, whenever somebody offers you a cigarette, there is a moment of making a decision whether I should say yes or no. Previously you always said yes. Now because of this intention that is in the universal mind somewhere, you are connected with it, simply hearing the blessing is enough for making the connection, now there will be an influence in your mind which will stop you from taking that cigarette. You will say, “No, I quit smoking long ago. Thank you very much”. And you will never see that person again. That is your part. Blessing has done its part. Now your job is to shield yourself from that negative influence. Do not meet that person again.

The job of a seeker, if you want to shield yourself from negativity, is first to raise your awareness. Do not ignore the signals that the mind is presenting to you. Do not call yourself crazy or do not take the word of the other. “Oh, you are going crazy. Since you have become spiritual, you have started behaving in a crazy way”. This is also a negative influence. So they are trying to pull you in their ordinariness, in their negativity. Just ignore and trust your intuition. Eventually you will grow this kind of discrimination - what is my paranoia and what is a real signal from the mind.

So pay attention to all the influences that are coming in your mind. If they are coming through the senses, they are very easy to stop. If they are non-sensory, you will need to heighten your sensitivity to stop them. Sometimes, there are influences from higher entities, so called powerful entities and that is your doing. You asked for something and they are now influencing you. So best to get influenced by the positive minds because they are so powerful, you cannot stop them. It is not possible. It is not in your capability to stop those influences. So what do you do? You gravitate knowingly through your willpower to the positivity that counters the negative influences. If a demon is influencing you, it is rational to take help of your guru or if you are in the occult field, a positive entity, who counters that influence effectively. Do not go to somebody, a dead person and ask the dead person to protect you. Probably they will make the situation worse. You need to know who is who in the field of occult. Otherwise, please don't practice it. Don't make pacts with these entities. Most of the time they are harmful because the guru is not sitting there asking people, “okay, come to me. I am going to send positive influences”. No, the guru is simply sitting, waiting for a curious student to come. But the negative entities, the negative people are hunting for their next snack. That is how they survive. That is their life process.

So as soon as you call somebody, most of the time the negative one shows up first. It is a kind of law in the lower dimensions. You will need to search for the guru. You will need to seek out positivity. This can sound like too much work. Why is it always like this? Well, that means we are not in a good place. That means we are in a lower dimension somehow. That is why our experiences are like this. That is why we need to make an effort to reach positivity. Have you seen that finding a bad person is very easy, but to search for a good person takes many years. Similarly, this is true in the non-physical dimensions also. But once you get hold of positivity, you will find that the positive influences will actually accelerate your positivity. They will augment your positivity. Now the next time you will find a bigger entity who is even more positive, who has your well-being in their mind, who has nothing but blessings for you. Very difficult. That's why I said it's going to become very strange in the end.

This topic is very, very strange. Usually, if you stick to the influencing theory of the mind, that it is one mind, it's connected, you will get all the answers. You will get all the reasons for all the paranormal occurrences and you will instantly know how to stop them. You will know the solution also. It is like the mind instinctively knows what is happening. But those who are in occult fields, they need to take extra precaution because it is like playing with fire. The fire is a very useful thing, but you need to respect the fire also because it is a very powerful thing. It can cause a lot of damage.

Similarly, the occult practices are very powerful, but more risky. There is a balancing law happening here. You got the gist of it. You got the essence of it. I've seen that it does not matter what kind of influence it is, if your awareness is very high, you are already shielded. Don't need to do any kind of ritual. Don't need to even seek a positive mind, a guru or angelic beings, devas or devis from other dimensions. That is kind of a very involved affair. You will need to have that kind of proclivity, that kind of talent, and then you will be successful in that field. For ordinary seekers, just heighten your awareness. Check what kind of thoughts are going on in your mind and act only on those which are wholesome, which are good in your opinion, which are going to bring good consequences for everybody. That is what I mean by awareness. You need to spend two minutes before you act.

Just like the vampires, they cannot come into your house if you don't open the door, the influences are ineffective if you don't act on them. Yes, the influence will be present. It is a kind of boundaryless ocean of mind. How can you even shield? But you can stop yourself from acting. That is what I mean when I say shield. You can stop yourself from acting on the bad influence by simply becoming aware, engaging your intellect, your wisdom - “This kind of thought has occurred in my mind. I have no idea where it came from”. Usually, in the waking state, it is from your TV or internet or newspaper or your neighbors or the negative relatives or somebody. It may manifest after a year or two years or ten years. This is mind. Anything can happen. But don't need to worry about where it came from.

“Who is attacking me?” Don't waste your time on that. See, what action do you need to take now. The negative thought is here, now check - “Do I need to act on it? Do I need to say something? Or do I need to simply ignore it and concentrate on something which is positive, which is my life goal? The next project that I am doing”. Awareness, means only this much. Isn't this common sense? Yes, common sense is called sense because you can sense what is good in general. Unfortunately, many people do not have this kind of common sense. They do not have this kind of awareness. I am not talking about that awareness which spans the totality of 50 dimensions. No, common sense. That will shield you. It is inevitable that your sensitivity will grow. We cannot stop it because our minds are already universal. The small sheath, the cell membrane that you think you are will break eventually, isn't it? It breaks at death. It breaks every night.

Fortunately, we have defenses up already. That's why we have evolved to the level of humans. That's why the mind has kept itself intact through many, many millions of years. How is it possible that it has survived so long? That is because of this instinctive self-defense that it already has. It knows how to survive. We have all the abilities, we have all the powers already. We have forgotten how to use them. That's what a guru will tell you, that's what a magician or tantric will tell you - “When I got this power, I knew that I always had this power. It came naturally to me”. I have this kind of experience sometimes. You will feel that this is my real nature. I am a mind and these abilities I have acquired are timeless. For a long time, we have been accumulating these powers. As soon as your sensitivity grows, you know how to use those powers suddenly. That is why Patanjali said that these will manifest. As soon as your purification reaches a certain level, your voice, your speech will acquire a power. Your body will acquire an aura and your gaze also will acquire a certain amount of power. You look at something and it gets influenced. Many people will start misusing these powers, but some of them will use it for the benefit of others.

Your touch will acquire power. This explains Shaktipat and all these things. Because we are on the path of knowledge, as soon as we get a key, for example, a key theory, a formula, we see that it applies to everything. Now you see, Shaktipat is not separate from influence. The influence is from mind to mind. From the mind of the Guru to the mind of the student, there is a receiver of Shaktipat. “Shakti” is energy, “Pat” is falling, and it’s kind of an unfortunate word, but it is as if the energy of the Guru zaps you, like lightning falling on the head of the receiving person. So they will always say - when you go to such meetings where they are giving Shaktipat, be in a receiving posture, accept. Do not have a skeptic attitude. Do not disbelieve. Just believe for a moment, at least while the Guru is doing it. Just suspend all your disbeliefs. Accept that this is going to work. And what are they trying to do? They are opening you up for the influence that is going to come from the Guru. And Guru will say, “No, I do not do anything. I am just a medium. I am just a channel”. And that is true. Something else is sending this energy into the student, that practitioner. And he will say, “oh, my Kundalini got activated”. What is that? Just influence from something, from the greater mind. And that kicks him forward like a million miles in his spiritual path. It is kind of very, very fast. You won't believe it. It is so fast.

Some manifestations happen during Shaktipat or after it, which people think are miracles. Just see that it is all mind. These things were not in your experience before. Now they are in your experience because your mind is now different. It has opened up. You did not become something. The Kundalini was always active. You were not knowing it. Now your intelligence has grasped it. You have an intellectual and experiential understanding of what has happened. And even after I have seen the Shaktipat and all Drishtipat and all these things, the darshan of the Guru and all, people remain kind of ignorant of what has happened. Some go there just for the zap. “Let me see what happens”. Nothing really will happen to such a person because he is not very serious. You have not received the Shaktipat. It was given with pure intention. But the fellow is kind of frivolous. Went there just for giggles, laughs. So nothing is going to happen to such people.

I think every day thousands of people are receiving Shaktipat in this country. But probably one in a million advances a little bit because they do not take it. They do not have an understanding of it. You can have a Shaktipat right now also. Just open yourself to a greater mind for the influences. You will get the zap. Kundalini will zap you just sitting here. Or if you have past life tendencies. These things can be explained by interconnectivity of the mind. I recorded two episodes on the laws of the mind which deal only with interconnectedness. So those who are interested can revisit those episodes. There is a lot of detail about this thing in there. How and why is everything interconnected? How to establish it through your own experience? You don't need to believe me. You don't need to believe anybody.

So Shaktipat is a kind of influence. If the Guru takes a look at the student, that is called Guru Drishti or something like this, there is a transfer of energy simply through the looking. Or the Guru will touch the head of a person and there is a transfer of influence. And it is not magic really. Usually nothing will happen. But some people who are on the threshold are pushed beyond the threshold. They will notice it. Others won't. They will say, “Oh, he is a fake Guru. He does not know anything. He took Rs 2000 from me. Nothing happened to me”. There are some interesting cases where the Guru was fake, still the effect happened because the person was in a receiving pose. The person's mind opened up because of all that fake talk that the fake Guru delivered. He did not know how to do the Shaktipat, what kind of intention to hold. And this is kind of a secret in this country. Nobody is allowed to do the Shaktipat willy-nilly. You need to take responsibility for it. So he was fake. But because the student was ready to receive it, he received it. Very interesting stories that I heard.

Many foreigners come to India asking for Shaktipat and they get trapped in these business houses of spirituality because they ask for a lot of money. And they are fake. So they do a big ritual there, bells and whistles, literally, there will be music and dance and bells and puja and big entities, statues, whatnot. They try to make it appear as if it is magical. The foreigners fall for it - it seems something big is happening. Usually nothing happens. They get lightened, not enlightened, lightened because their pocket is now light.

So the Shaktipat is not a miracle, it is just an intention that affects the person who wants to receive it. That's why it can be received anywhere. Those who are entitled to give the Shaktipat, you need to simply call them on the phone. Nowadays it has become really easy. Simply call them and they will whisper something on the phone and that is all. Now you can ask, what should I do now? And usually the guru will prescribe a routine of purification. “Do not eat this, do not drink this, eat this and do not go there and do not talk to that and so on”. What they are doing is protecting their intention. Because it's kind of draining, they are wasting their time and energy and effort on the student and they want to ensure that the influence takes root. So they will prescribe a disciplined life and I have seen that one in a million follows the instructions of the guru. Some will follow for six/seven months and then they leave it because no miracles happen.

How can the miracle happen if you are closed to that influence? You're open to the negativity that you enjoy, immensely, positivity is boring. It is going to take 50 lifetimes. What is the use of the Shaktipat? If you do not take it now, then probably for 50 lifetimes you will remain the same. Actually there are some traditions where as soon as a child is born, even without asking him, is influenced by the priest. I don't think this happens nowadays, they are influenced by the gurus or whoever there is. So let's not go into that depth. You cannot really defend yourself from such things. It's not possible because you have taken birth in that tradition, because you have taken refuge in that culture and society, it is as good as asking for influence. Otherwise you wouldn't have taken birth there. That is the reason they will give it to you, but I think it is not fair. You should let the child grow, let him grow to the age of 20. Then ask the child, would you like to prefer the Shaktipat or Kundalini or Sannyas? Would you like to have a guru? Ask the person. That is not really possible. When you are born in a particular caste, religion and culture, part of the world, you automatically get all the influences from that society. It's not possible to shield yourself from that. The reason is that when you took birth there, you actually said yes to that influence, otherwise you wouldn't have taken birth there. So it goes very, very deep. The bonds are very deep, the connections are very deep, the influences, they are millions of years old. Many of them are manifesting right now and there is no end to this business of influencing.

So how to get rid of all these things? And the answer is very easy, liberate yourself from this activity of the mind. These are all activities of the mind. Rise about it.

How to rise about it? Realize that you are already about it. Do not identify with the mind. Do not identify with that which is influencing and which is getting influenced. Rise above it. Now whatever happens, happens, it's a wish of the universal mind, nothing of yours. This is your realization, isn't it? Nothing was mine from the beginning. I simply took responsibility for it. I simply identified myself with what was happening.

Most influences are gathered since ancient times, since the beginning of time, you think that is you. Rising above means identifying yourself with that which is witnessing this game. It is a very strange game, isn't it? There is nothing stranger than this. It is all influenced. They act in such a strange manner. They are governing our experiences. As soon as you disidentify, you will find that the mind lets go and now nothing affects you and you affect nothing. That is freedom. Freedom is not the ability to influence anything and be influenced by everything. No. It is letting everything happen, but cutting yourself out of it. It is like leaving the room. It is cutting off all the bonds. That cutting is simply a realization that I am not bound. I am not bound by any influence. Nothing can affect me. I am already pure. Nothing needs to be purified. I don't need to shield anything from anyone because I am the only one. Where are you going to put the shield when there is only one? This kind of realization, this kind of liberation will totally free you from all the influences.

Session 20

One of the questions that is asked sometimes is what is the effect of one's gender on spiritual practices. What kind of spiritual practices are suitable for men and what kinds are suitable for women? Different teachers and different traditions have different answers for this kind of question and that is why I usually dismiss this question by saying that go and ask your guru because it totally depends on the kind of practices that you are involved in. With my limited experience I have observed a few things that I am going to discuss now.

I have observed that the higher the path is, the less difference there is among the practices that men and women are prescribed. So according to me the highest path is the path of knowledge, the direct path and when you are on this path there are zero differences. The same practice applies for both men and women. There is absolutely no distinction between what men should do and what women should do. This is the characteristic of the path of knowledge because it usually involves reading, thinking, self-reflecting, introspecting and all these things. So gender does not come into play. It is forgotten because it is realized that this path has nothing to do with the body. The illusion of the body is realized and then you are not really concerned what kind of body it is. So very easy on the path of knowledge.

When you go to the paths of efforts or the other kinds of yogas, then gender comes into play, especially in the paths that involve the body in some way.

The path of devotion is also similar. It has nothing to do with the body. It has nothing to do with the energies or the tendencies of the lower layers of the mind. It is a matter of preference now and I have seen in my personal experience, which is very limited, that women are more inclined towards devotion than men. Somehow they find it easy and the emotional makeup of a female mind is more suitable for surrender, which means they become devotees very easily. They have no problems at all in surrendering to a guru or something higher than the guru. Devotion involves a lot of service also and again the female mind has no egoic barriers in unconditionally serving people, mostly. That probably is very culture specific. In some cultures you may not find this kind of tendency in women. They are probably similar to men when it comes to devotion and service there.

This is all going to be my personal opinion actually. That's why I dismiss this question of gender by saying that go and ask your guru because all I can offer is my opinion whatever I have encountered since the last 10 to 15 years. That is what I am submitting here. When it comes to the path of action I have seen that it is more suitable for men. The male mind likes to act, likes to go out in the world and do something. Action is attractive for men, and women like to limit themselves to a family or an organization or a community or a small area. That is at least the culture here in the eastern countries and they do not take so much interest in doing big projects. That is my observation. So the path of action is prescribed to men. Go and do something. It also involves service but it is much more than service because it is proactive and it is not really unconditional. There are some targets, there are some goals and there are expectations. It involves a lot of fight and struggle. So men find it challenging and they accept it. They accept the path of action. “Okay, I'll do this. Okay, if liberation is achieved by these kinds of actions I will do it”. This is the kind of aggressive attitude that suits men.

Then at the bottom most layers are the paths of energy and of the body and here in my experience I have seen the biggest difference in the practices. So as long as you are doing something like pranayama or dhyana or like the practices that involve the layers that are above Vishuddhi, the practices that involve chakras that are Vishuddhi onwards, there is hardly any difference. A little bit but not much. As soon as you go below Vishuddhi the practices are totally different for men and women. So those who are on these kinds of paths should consult their teachers for the precautions and differences. Do not take up something that is designed for one gender if you're of the other gender.

Even in the Vishuddhi, I have seen there is a little bit of difference. Why is that? Because obviously the physical makeup of male and female is different and the emotional, chemical, energetic makeup, the structures are also different. We have this kind of politically correct way of stating things in our society which everybody understands but nobody likes to say that men and women are equal. My views are kind of controversial in this regard that's why I do not speak too much about it. Yes they are equal as long as you are not focusing on the body. As long as your context is intellect and above. Intellect, awareness, consciousness, we are all pure consciousness. We are all one single being. There is no difference at all. The genders belong to the body. That is a generally accepted view but I have a little bit of an extended view of this. The gender does not really belong to the body 100%. It also belongs to the energies. It also belongs to the ego and emotional makeup and in some amount to the intellect. So it tapers off. The differences are extreme at the lower layer and they taper off as we ascend to the higher layers of the mind.

At the level of the universal mind which is probably the Agya chakra the differences disappear. It is zero variance. The universal mind is genderless. Some people may not agree here because everything boils down to the personal experience and personal opinion here. People have different opinions because their experiences are different. Please keep this in mind. So my experience is very limited but probably some of you may agree and may find whatever follows useful.

So we'll go downwards. That will probably be easier to understand. I just now covered the highest layer. There is no difference at all. There is no question of any kind of femininity, masculinity. There is no such thing. As soon as you enter the duality, it is kind of in fashion to call the static part as masculine and the dynamic part as feminine. The dynamic part is also called Shakti or the goddess, divine mother and so on. She has a tendency to create all these forms, this magical experience is being created. This tendency to create is feminine because it gives birth to the experience. It is not a small job which this feminine energy is doing. It is creating. It is providing an experience. It is the ultimate mother and so some cultures, I think those are mainly primitive cultures, call it the highest principle. Primitive here does not mean inferior, it means the first ones. The first people saw that the major power in our universe is actually feminine . Their gods were actually goddesses. The first being that was worshipped was a female. This is again my impression. Then as the society became male dominated, the goddesses were thrown out and gods were installed in the place of the feminine energies and the god became a He. That is mostly found in western and middle eastern cultures because femininity was demolished in those cultures. In the east we have a mix now. Instead of totally feminine entities, we have both. We have equal weightage on both feminine and masculine parts of the duality. When the singularity becomes many, it appears in both genders. You can see this teaching in hermeticism.

One of the laws of the mind is the law of the gender. Gender manifests at all levels. This is what the hermetic texts are saying. This same thing is actually very clearly mentioned in Shaivism where the whole being is divided into two, the Shiv and Shakti. The Shiv is the masculine. It is static. It is darkness. It is emptiness. It dissolves. It destroys. Shakti is the feminine. It creates. It is apparent. It is obvious. It is manifested. It is a play, a playful energy. They accept the union of Shiv and Shakti, but they do not worship it in that form. Shiva Lingam is an icon of the union because it shows a union of genders. Lingam means sign. The yoni is the feminine part, the female sexual organ, and the lingam is the masculine part, the male sexual organ. When you install it in a specific way, it represents union. It is a tool in Shaivism to achieve union. This is one of the interpretations of Lingam, although later it became part of tantric traditions. However, let's not go there.

There is a long tradition that started from the worship of different kinds of gods and goddesses. It is recognized that from the primordial creation onwards, the gender starts. What appears in this form, our lowest gross forms, is the result of seeds that are previously sown. They continue from this primordial distinction of masculine and feminine. With this understanding, you will be in a good position to appreciate the differences in gender. Just like I said, my view is a little bit extended. My view always tries to encompass the whole. Not superficial. You should have the complete view. You should have a complete understanding. Not only how and what, you should know why. That is important. Otherwise, somehow in your mind, there will be a vacuum. You won't be able to accept the teaching. When you understand the reason why you are told to do these things and not those other things which the other gender is doing, that can be a problem. I can see it is already happening, isn't it? So, my view is holistic. Many people will not agree, but as soon as you leave the path of knowledge, in the indirect paths, it becomes different for men and women.

So, let's go downwards and we arrive at the Vishuddhi because you will see that the voices of men and women are different. That means there is a difference in physical structures in the area of Vishuddhi. It is concerned with intellect. It is concerned with rational, logical thinking. It is concerned with language and arts and expression. So, you will immediately see that by simply watching the behavior of the male and female, let us limit ourselves to humans because here it is manifested in a greater magnitude compared to other animals. Other animals also have differences, but we do not study them so much. From the outside, all animals look the same, but the higher animals, they will show very prominent differences. So, on the level of intellect, you will find differences. Men have a different kind of intellect. Women have a different kind of intellect. Yes, there is an overlapping area. Just like I said, it starts diverging, but not too much. So, it is wrong to say that women do not have intellectual abilities or the intellectual abilities are not developed in women. It is not correct to say that. They have a different kind of intellectual ability compared to men. That is because of the evolutionary pressures. That is because of how this organism evolved. Men were given, or you can say, they found themselves engaged in tasks such as hunting or killing each other, for example, the tribal warfares, exploring, knowing places, climbing trees and climbing mountains and so on. Nowadays, we go to the Moon and Mars. Same thing, same tendency. So, they have a very evolved spatial intelligence. Space and time, they know it very well and they have more evolved logical and rational abilities because they interact a lot with stuff like machines, natural things, other animals and other people. The evolutionary pressures, the struggle has shaped this intellect like this. They are smarter in terms of survival. They survive well in odd conditions, in adverse circumstances. This is what we call survival intelligence. It is not complex intelligence. For example, they have a very good grasp of numbers and mathematics and logic because these things are immensely helpful in survival.

The women evolved to remain at one place, to remain protected and to do other specific kinds of jobs. This is at least a million year old history. So, they have developed a different set of skills. For example, communication skills. They have more patience while talking. They have a more synthesizing attitude instead of a dividing attitude. So, they do not go to war. They do not kill each other. They have a different kind of a logical process that is going on, which probably the men won't understand. It may not be total love and service, but they have this kind of different intellect. Because our societies are so much masculine, so much male dominated, we did not evolve a language to describe that kind of intellect. We say it is an intuitive kind of intelligence because we do not have the vocabulary to describe that intelligence. I have seen that intelligence very clearly, but probably nobody will be interested. It will take a long time to even draft the specifications of that language, which correctly describes the feminine intellect. It is not that their intellect is of inferior kind to males. It is a different kind about which this degraded society has no idea.

It was not like this in the past. This is my impression. They had a very good understanding of the feminine side of the intellect. For example, the male mind is good at fine arts, creative arts, making things, inventing things. The feminine mind is more adept at expressing, performing arts, singing, dancing, and so on. There is a different sense of beauty in the feminine mind. There is a different sense of beauty in the masculine mind that you can see from their likes and dislikes because the appreciation of beauty and aesthetics is an activity of the Vishuddhi, of the throat chakra or this intellectual layer of the mind, you will find differences obviously. The men like blues, grays and browns, subdued colors, and the women like bright and expressive colors. So even though that is not really true because this is kind of a very stereotyping thing, a generalizing thing. It is not really true. But just as an example, the senses of aesthetics are different. In male-dominated societies, this difference will be negligible. Where there is equality of genders, you will find the differences are actually encouraged.

So when it comes to intellectual purification, there can be different practices for men and women. There can be slight differences in the way a woman is instructed in knowledge. For example, because they have a synthesizing mind, they can be shown directly the unity and they grasp it. Their intellect has this ability to grasp it. Men have an analytical ability that is more developed. So they are shown the differences. They are taken through a different path. They are taken to unity by showing the meaninglessness of diversity. For example, by showing that the analytical exercise gives rise to absurdity. You must have seen that this is what I do most of the time. I question everything and I show you that it is meaningless. It is stupid. It is just conditioning. It is blind belief. This is the way to analyze things and arrive at the absurdity of those things.

The feminine mind, they can grasp it directly. The feminine mind has no problem seeing this. I've seen this happen many times. Now the males, they have the feminine energies, obviously. Some of them grasp it in one sentence. It happens in one sentence. While in others, the male side is so dominant in the Vishuddhi that they need to purify it. Purify it a lot by doing a lot of introspection, a lot of internal debate, rational thinking, logical processes. So, we need both, actually. That is the essence of gender, that it needs to be in balance. One side, if it dominates, it becomes a disaster. So, this can come as a surprise to many because we do this on the path of knowledge also. Here there is a different kind of instruction for men and slightly different for women.

You must have seen that a lot of men are present in meetings of Francis Lucille as he is a very intellectual kind of gurus. In the meetings of Mooji, you will find lots of women there. They like him a lot because Mooji comes from an art background. He's an artist. So, he expresses it in a fashion that appeals to feminine mind. That is my own personal opinion. Probably, just garbage. But it is what I think sometimes. Sometimes, I do not understand what he's saying. Why does he go on and on in some artistic fashion instead of saying it directly? I wonder, but then I see the crowd. Crowd is full of women. And then I understand. It needs a different kind of explanation sometimes. And here, Mooji is not going to tell you the fine differences of debates that happen in dualist versus non-dualist. No, he does not do that. He does not tell you these very, very philosophical and almost mathematically precise arguments. He is not going to tell you that. So, there is no doubt that there is a little bit of change when it comes to male and female versions of the teachings, even of Advaita. But it hardly matters. Once it is grasped, you will be able to grasp both sides. If you cannot, something is wrong.

Let's go down and see the emotional center, the Anahata, the heart center. And I think it will be obvious to everybody that there is a lot of difference there. And any practice that concerns the Anahata will be different for male and female students. Now, it should not be seen as a discrimination. “Oh, you told that boy to go and work outside here and I am a girl and you are telling me to go and clean the kitchen and that is not fair. I also want to go outside”. So, it looks like the Guru is discriminating. The Guru is actually optimizing your evolution. It all boils down to preference, which Guru will give which practice. So, in the end, it's a very personal thing here. That's why I say, go and ask your Guru, what do you need to do.

Because we are going down, the differences are going to be significant. Anahata is concerned with action, the root of the action is emotion, is the desire. And the desire arises from the heart. You can poetically say that. And that's why there are different desires in male mind and female mind. Some are obvious, some are not. There can be some kind of cross talk between these two ways in which the organism acts. There are commonalities, but usually we do not worry too much if something is common. And if something is different, then we need to pay attention. So, you will find that the desire part is more advanced, more developed in a female mind. They have different kinds of desires. The feminine mind is impulsive in nature. The masculine mind has different kinds of desires, although the numbers are the same, but the kinds are different. And their actions are kind of dominated by intellect, not by impulses. This is very, very natural.

So, it does look like that, because we think that the feminine mind must go through the same intellectual process that the male mind goes through. That is not true. It is probably a projection from the male side that their desires are not dominated. Who knows? Only a feminine mind will know what kind of intellectual process is involved in the manipulation of desire or in expression or holding the desires and controlling the desires, controlling the action. There is a sequence of intellectual activities that happen, but since they are different from the male, we say that they are impulsive in nature. It is also my experience that this is true for many. So, they will be given a different set of disciplines to discipline this kind of activity. The men will be given a different set of practices. The directions of the Guru will be slightly different when it comes to men and women. So, because the emotional side is too powerful in women, they are likely to encounter more obstacles there. Now, I am not saying it is not powerful in men. It is there, but slightly different.

For men the main obstacle is the throat, for women the main obstacle is the heart. This is our traditional wisdom and you can verify it easily. Women are stuck with emotions. I have seen many people face problems there. And actually, the granthi or the knot in the heart is easier to dissolve than the granthi at the throat. Now, I am using a kind of traditional language here. The knots that belong to the male energetic system or the male mind are slightly different than those of the female mind. It is easier to dissolve the blockages in the heart. It is slightly difficult for the throat.

So, I myself was kind of stuck at the throat for many, many years. The blockage is still there. And I did not know because that blockage was so strong. I did not know that there is a blockage in the heart. It was completely overpowered. When it became a little bit weaker, it started dissolving, then the blockage in the heart expressed itself. It depends on the individual how the expression of the blockages will happen. Mostly, the expression for a female seeker is in the form of uncontrolled emotions, in the form of impulses, in the form of extreme depression or sadness or extreme enthusiasm. And they do stupid things under these secretions of emotion because it has a chemical part in the body. It affects the body. The body is washed up in different kinds of substances when there are different kinds of emotions. The blockage is slightly bigger for women. This layer is more dominant there in the feminine mind. Usually, emotions manifest as problems in relations.

I receive many questions anonymously and sometimes the questions are related to relational problems. “I have this relation, it is like that and what should I do and or how can I have this kind of relation and why is this person doing this to me?.” These kinds of questions are there and instantly I can guess that it is coming from a woman. Men do not ask these kinds of questions. Men hold the relations very lightly, but for women, the relations are a sticky job. They stick to it because that is how we evolved, that is how the human being has been shaped by the natural forces. Men need to make many relations and need to cut them instantly. I go to the shop, I shake hands with the shopkeeper, I buy things, it's done because I can meet a hundred people in one day. I can have relations with them, I can get the things done. When I come home, I forget almost all of them. I do not need to remember, but for women this is not the case. They are restricted to a small community, a house, relatives, and so on and they need to keep the relations for many years at least, sometimes lifelong, especially because they are in charge of children and all. They need to keep it on for a long time and therefore their relations have become sticky, they cannot let go easily. It is not that it is their wish, they are designed like this, their programming, their conditioning is like this. You cannot help it and so you will find this is the biggest blockage. Dependency on people, dependency on emotional fulfillment, or to extract pleasure out of emotional activities. This becomes a big obstacle for women. They cannot rise above it easily.

Most of the female seekers, they will be assigned a devotional path onwards. As soon as they reach the heart level, they will be told to have a relationship with the God, marry this God. You must have seen this. Meera is a beautiful example. She achieved liberation, she achieved enlightenment when she formed a relation with Krishna. That relation is spiritual but she could cross this ocean simply by proper diversion of the energies, the emotional energies, because there is this tendency like in Kung Fu or other martial arts, we use the energy of the opponent to defeat the opponent. So a very skillful guru will prescribe a path which leverages the energies of the emotion which pull you forward like a slingshot. They take you to the next shore. So it is an art and I don't see people doing this nowadays. Indiscriminately they will assign the same practice to everybody. It does not work.

Men usually cross this thing very quickly unless there is a trauma in the heart, unless the heart layer was traumatized, was damaged in some kind of incident in childhood, or which remains hidden. That is unfortunate because men are told to suppress their emotions because they see that women are very expressive, if you want to express your emotion then you will be considered feminine. That is a disadvantage in our competitive society. It's a very distorted society nowadays. It was kind of distorted from the beginning. So a more masculine person has more survival advantage in the society. Hence they suppress the expression of emotion and if there is a granthi, if there is a blockage in the heart, it will remain probably till the next life.

Skill of the guru is most important here if you are going through this kind of purification at this layer because in childhood the heart layer is almost the same for the girl child and the boy child. And many must have experienced this thing in their own childhood, probably you don't remember it now. You watch a child, the heart of a boy is exactly the same as that of a girl. They get traumatized, they get discouraged or they get saddened by a few words also. This is not the case for a grown-up man. For example you can tell him anything he becomes angry and then everything is settled but not for a child. The distinction between masculine and feminine sides is still immature. The heart is still green, not solidified into muscularity in the child. So if something happens at that time then it will be carried forward, it will be suppressed and then it becomes a really difficult knot. Sometimes the feminine practices will be prescribed to a man and you should not be ashamed of doing it. The more quickly you do it and get it out of the way the better for you. Otherwise you wait for many lifetimes. This is not wise.

So a very intelligent guru will take these things into account and he needs to be with you for at least a year or two to even see that there is this kind of issue with the heart chakra. Since it is also associated with the action the guru will decide, based on the tendencies, what actions this person should perform and there you will find that women are given different actions, men are given different actions. This is not discrimination, this is simply suitability of practices. Some women may say - I like that kind of action, I want to do those things and then yes, why not, because probably the masculine side is dominant in those women. So it again boils down to the personality type. Eventually a female mind must dissolve the blockage even though she is for the time being attracted to these practices that men are doing. It's okay if you do it, finish the job but you must return to your femininity again otherwise progress will be hampered, it will be slowed down if you do not accept your makeup.

Let's go down a little bit more and we come to Manipura or the tribal tendencies and again a lot of differences here. I am not going to say a lot about this chakra because it becomes a dirty topic quickly. The masculine tendencies here are violence, that's why I don't talk about it because my mind gets polluted, if I talk about it, and the blockage for females here is jealousy. So that's why I stay away from this chakra, it’s not a beautiful thing to look at. So everybody needs to tackle these things on their own front. They need to see what kind of impurities are here and practice according to those impurities. So an aggressive man is considered a man. In society, if you are not aggressive, nothing will happen. I have seen that even just to get little things done, to get something repaired, to get something installed here, to get things cleaned, I need to be more aggressive than is needed. A simple call “Please, do this” is not enough, at least in our society. As soon as you become a little bit aggressive, go and stand there and or keep calling or call his boss, you will find the job gets done. Otherwise it won't happen.

I saw this in my job also, you need a very aggressive manager to get something done from these lazy employees, stupid employees. I had to leave the job. You will encounter it if you are too much involved in society. So the guru will prescribe “Go and live in a jungle somewhere, don't come here, I don't want to see you, leave the job, leave whatever you're doing, conquering other countries and killing people, in politics and whatever”. It's too much. Our whole society is actually trapped in this blockage.

You can see the same thing there. There is an aggression in the feminine side but it is not violent, it is manifested as odd behavior. So competition, jealousy and mixed with fear because it's concerned with survival and control. The control for the male side is very easy. Its force. You take a stick, you take a gun and you force the action. This is very easy. But for the female side it is not so easy because of less physical strength and hormonal aggression is not there. So their tactics are different. Their tactics are manipulative. They use mostly speech to manipulate and that causes impurity in the whole system. They lie and they know how to get things done, how to control things in different ways. So a lot of selfishness arises in their behavior.

I know these things are not being made clear in our society. When we see a blockage in a man we are very quick to point it out - you are an angry person, how are you going to progress? But when we see the same things in a woman, we keep quiet, we do not say it. It is seen as rude. It looks like discrimination. How can you say these things to a woman? Well a spiritual person is not concerned with it. Whether you are a man or a woman, he will say whatever he sees. Your guru will say exactly the thing that you need to hear. This blockage will stop the progress of a female seeker, when seen, the guru abandons the seeker instantly because he does not want to face the music. Does not want to dirty their hands because society is unforgiving. They will point the fingers at the guru. Because the heart is also not active in such a female seeker. Usually these people do not even become a seeker but if by chance they are on a path, then it kind of becomes difficult for the guru. It is very easy to handle a man.

In such cases, I recommend you approach a female guru. There will be a shortage of such gurus but for a few years associate yourself with a woman who is a guru, who is a monk, who is an advanced seeker of some kind, in any tradition. They know all these things. They know it more than men do and that will probably clear out your Manipura. For men, I do not see any big problem. They are very open. They accept their violence very quickly. “Yes I am angry”. For some people it is a matter of pride, “Look how aggressive I am, I am how dominating I am a son of a man and they are proud of admitting their aggression”. Women are not so, it remains hidden. So different practices will be needed and because the difference is too much here you will need to actually change your guru if you do not see any progress in your purification or realization or anything. Depends on what you are trying to do and these things you can very well guess. They are the cause of misery, cause of suffering, the impurity of Manipura.

The impurities are a major cause of suffering because they produce suffering at the level of survival, which is a very ugly kind of suffering. Emotional suffering is okay. Heartbreaks are okay. Somebody insulted you, okay. My desires are not being fulfilled, it's okay. My personal matter but at the level of tribal layer it becomes a question of survival. It becomes really ugly. I do not want my survival to be affected, I want it to go smoothly. How am I going to pay attention to the higher knowledge if there is a struggle for survival? This becomes a big problem if you do not address this. So I spent a lot of time smoothing out this thing. There are tendencies, Now what to do? You're born as a man, you will need to die as a man. They do not leave you. They leave you only when you leave the body and that should be our goal. Do not take up embodied existence again.

So utilize the energies of aggression, karma yoga is very effective. You can channel the energy of aggression into something constructive. I don't really know what to do with the feminine aggression. Here usually it cannot be channeled, it needs to be surrendered and therefore here a divergence in the path will be experienced.

If you are a woman ultimately you will need to meet at the Vishuddhi. Don't forget that this is not the last practice. For you it should be holistic and that's why I say if you take up practices willy-nilly, like idiotically, it is guaranteed that you will fail in your spiritual adventures. You need to understand what is going on, what is the makeup of the mind, what are these layers of the mind, what do they do. Get any kind of theory, any kind of model you like. Model of chakras is okay, take the chakras if you like. Vedic model is okay, take it if you like. Modern psychology is okay, if that helps you then fine. Sometimes when I display the layers, I display all these koshas and chakras and everything, along with the modern understanding of the mind. Why do I do that? Because I give you a choice. Take it. Take whatever you like but at least know about what constitutes your mind. How are you going to work on it, if you don't know where you are going to hit first? So knowledge is important, otherwise you simply surrender to the guru.

Guru knows best and then you say okay I'll do whatever my guru said, I am not going to be offended by what he said about me. It happened to me a lot that wherever I went the gurus pointed out that this is the problem in you. You are the problem. And I got offended a lot. I cried sometimes, and I became sad . Why are there so many problems? It is just an avoidance behavior of the mind itself. Egoic behavior: “No no no … I cannot be like this”. Non-acceptance. So I struggled for many years by not accepting the problems. Don't worry if your guru tells you that you are a woman and you need to do this and this, and don't worry if your guru tells you that you are a man and there is no hope for you. Accept that you need to at least look at it. Even if you don't initially accept, be open to looking at what was pointed out. Spend a month checking out whether that is really true or not. Whether there is a mental program there which is installed through many lifetimes, throughout your adventures as different organisms, different forms in different planes of existence. Once we take a path, once we take a diversion and we go far in the diversion, probably there is no way to come back. Sometimes when these differences are purified a little bit, you will find that the Jeev will take a birth in the opposite gender, just to clear out stuff and then it will switch back to the same gender, it is possible.

Sometimes if the guru has this ability, the guru will enforce a birth in the other gender. This can happen. I don't want to use negative words but that kind of life will be full of struggle. If it is enforced on you because your tendency will be to go back to your last gender and you will find these tendencies in many people. They are kind of confused about what to do, which gender they are in.

The last two layers are concerned with the body. Those who are fixing their bodies, those who are on the path of hatha yoga, kundalini and energies, kriya, there will be totally different kinds of practices for them and here is the controversy. “Why am I not allowed in the temple which is made for men only? Why am I not allowed to join this monastery high up in the Himalayas? Why am I given these gods and goddesses to worship, not those gods? These things become a matter of arguments and usually nobody understands what is happening. There is a lot of difference between practices that are given to men and women when it concerns the body because obviously the bodies are different. The female body is designed for childbirth and procreation. The male body is designed for defense and gathering food and all these things. So obviously there will be different kinds of blockages in those bodies. There will be different patterns of energies and behaviors in those bodies and even a simple person can understand that the methods will be different. So because you cannot see the energies and because in the tantric installations you do not understand what they are, you are bound to misunderstand. You're bound to think that there is a discrimination here - “I also want this kind of kundalini practice”.

Imagine if everybody did all those practices, if they are all bared, what will happen? Disaster will happen. So they were kept secret. Now we are in the information age, so it's kind of very difficult to keep anything secret here. Everybody is practicing something willy-nilly. They find a practice in some video and then start doing it. Do you know what that practice does? Do you know what that practice is supposed to cure or supposed to change? Do you even have that kind of ailment/affliction that your practice is trying to cure? “No, no, it will make my figure better. It will make me slim trim and reduce the weight”. Well then you should join a gym, then you should go and consult somebody who knows about nutrition and diet. What are you doing in the spiritual tradition? You are not even the body, what are you trying to do here? So I've seen this kind of misuse. Everybody is doing every kind of practice for pretty much the wrong reasons because we are at the lowest level. What else can you expect, except ignorance? A lot of ignorance here and if you do not have this luxury of getting a very intelligent and wise guru then forget about any kind of success. It will be a waste of time.

There were some buildings that were built for practices not for worshiping. So this deity and that deity, although there was a doorway to the energies that facilitated some kind of practice and some practices were tailored to purify the male body because it's obviously different. It's very different and if a woman goes in that place there is no telling what can happen, it is unpredictable. So they were forbidden. They will say, “No don't go, don't even cross that road which goes through that temple because the energies, the unseen influences, they are designed for tantrics that are trying to achieve something very specific”. Even though the deity may take the form of feminine goddess or something, but women are not supposed to go there. It is not that women do not have such practices. In places designed for them, men do not go there, which is kind of obvious, isn't it? Men do not have any problem in abiding by the discipline but because now it has become a male dominated society, as soon as I say, “oh women are not allowed to do this”, what do people say, “oh he is discriminating, he is kind of dominating the women”. So this happened in India many many times. It happens and now it is like a very spicy curry of practices, which tastes good but is actually harmful for your body. Don't you see that the knowledge is corrupted?

So I just want to suggest that when you take up a practice at the level of the body, you should first at least do a little bit of research for whom this practice is designed. Go and dust off your big books of tantra/yoga and all those things and go and consult the teacher and ensure that you were given the right practice.

Even the way a person sits for practice is different for men and women. When you do the Ardha Padmasana or Siddhasana, men will be told to put the heel of their foot just below the perineum, between the genitals and anus. That is the proper way to sit in the siddhasana. Women are not told to do that for obvious reasons. They have a different pose to sit in. Padmasana is the best pose for women and so on. There are menstrual cycles for women where the body goes through different kinds of energetic changes and then they are told to change the practice or not to do the practice. Those times, five days a month, there is something different that's prescribed. Men are not governed by the moon, not much actually and so their practices are different for those days, and so on.

I mean there is a lot of traditional wisdom here and it is not wise to simply dismiss it. Even though sometimes it looks like superstition - “oh it is just a menstrual thing, what will happen? nothing can happen, it is a thing of the body, body is doing it, so I'll continue my kundalini practice, I'll do this and that”. And then the guru will leave you because he does not want to take the risk. Sometimes the guru also does not know what will happen because since the last 10 generations or 1000 years people are blindly following it, they do not even know what harm it can cause.

So my advice is, because I did the same thing, when the guru told me that you need to do it like this, do it mechanically. Throw away your intellect, when you do it. Do not get confused too much. Do not think too much. It is mechanical. It is concerned with the body and the energy, so pure mechanisms. If you do this thing, it will give you this result -This is an engineering kind of approach. We do not analyze here too much. We do not try to find out what happens. It is not worth doing that because the risk is too much.

So I did the same thing. I did exactly what was told to me. If the guru told me, get up at this time and drink this kind of water and do not do this, do not eat that, I said okay fine, I'll do that without thinking. It is kind of these practices are designed for people who do not want this trouble of researching too much and sometimes they take it too extreme. They do not research even one bit. Somebody said, “oh you should eat this, you should not eat that and you should sleep in this direction and what do you mean by these kinds of instructions, why would I take up that kind of activity, if my guru has not prescribed it, what happens if I sleep in the other direction”.

I think you won't be able to find out because it needs a certain level of sensitivity in the body to even find out what happens if I sleep in a specific direction, which means my head towards a specific direction and feet towards others. What happens if the door of my house opens in the south instead of north or east or whatever, what happens? See these things are energetic in nature. These things have an effect on the mind and usually the person at that level is totally ignorant of what is happening. So in India these practices have taken a form of superstition. You're worshiping a specific deity for help in your practices and the job of the deity is nothing but to help to align your energies or the tendencies in the mind in that specific direction and the deity somehow prefers a specific direction, geographical direction. It is kind of amazing but yes, it is true for some forces out there. Those who practice, they know that they need to face a specific direction in order to invoke the deity, otherwise the deity won't pay attention and that is why you should have your house designed in that way. That is why you should sleep in a specific way, because the deity is working in sleep also. These days, we do not know all these things or we know them in a superficial way.

Nobody knows what I'm talking about because it is lost, it is corrupted. We either do it blindly, indiscriminately or we simply dismiss it as superstition. What kind of culture, what kind of knowledge, what kind of technology of the mind is at the root of these superstitions, that we need to find out. It needs to be revived, it needs to be renewed. Somebody needs to experiment. I did my experiments but it was a total disaster. I'm not smart enough to meddle in these things but even what kind of vegetable you eat that day can have an effect on your practice. It is possible in some of the traditions they will ban onions, garlic and so on because they have chemicals that hinder that kind of bodily purification.

Suppose you are facing a problem of lust. It's too much lust then there are certain foods that enhance lust and the guru will ban that because purification needs to happen there and then you will say, “oh this guru knows nothing, the onion tastes so good, I need to eat more onions, I'll change the guru” and how are you going to progress then? The lust will remain forever. I am just giving you random examples because we do not have time to go into specific details.

Sometimes greed is the problem, eating too much and the guru will say - fast. Now for the next five days you are going to eat only potatoes and green vegetables and water. No tea, no sugar, nothing sweet for you. He will prescribe a minimal diet for the next five days because greed needs to be overcome. The mind needs to get a taste of what it likes to remain without a constant urge to eat. The body is actually a pile of garbage now because of overeating, so many diseases are there in the body, how can the seeker even practice? and the seeker is standing before the guru. Now what can the guru do in such cases?

Because the bodies are different, the female body has a different ability of metabolism, the female body wants to store stuff, the male body wants to consume stuff, it does not gain weight so quickly. Female body is designed for procreation and so it conserves food. Male body is designed for action, hunting and running and so it has a different kind of metabolism. Even the heartbeat is different, sweating is different, and so on.

There are so many finer things in our bodies that we don't know, especially, when your target is the body, when you are purifying the blockages in the body, such as overeating, then different foods will be prescribed. Now when you fast you will find that the first or second day is like hell. “Why am I doing this practice? Where is my chocolate, where is my milkshake and where is my beef and mutton? I want to eat all that”. The two days are going to go like hell. Third day your mind will begin to calm down. Fourth day, it will actually enjoy the peace which is an absence of impulses of eating. It starts enjoying the freedom. Fifth day, it won't want to go to that old hell of eating. It may happen probably, it will happen to a few people.

I did a lot of experiments in fasting. Now the goal of the fasting is detachment from food because food is what is keeping us here. Most of the time food is the last desire that goes, breathing is the last actually but before that is food. And because of all these indiscriminate practices I almost died a few times. Actually I did so many experiments in food that there is a complete detachment from the food now. It has kind of distorted the mind a little bit. The mind is confused, whether I want the food or not. Regarding food there is an anomaly in the mind now because it was not done under the guidance of a guru. Now the matter of food is very subconscious, at least for me. So sometimes I give up eating totally, Sometimes I want to eat a lot because now the pendulum needs to swing and now the body cannot handle it. Once you adapt the body in a specific fashion, for a specific kind of food, it becomes really difficult to switch to the other kind of food. So now it cannot tolerate all that food which normal people eat. Now my lifestyle is totally different from an ordinary person. If you come and stay here you won't be able to survive. If you want to stay in the conditions that I'm staying in, you won't survive here for even two days. So it has become kind of odd because of all these practices that I undertook.

So from experience I can tell you that do not go there willy-nilly. Do not take up fasting or food and diet change or sexuality preferences: called celibacy. Do not do it without the proper guidance. You need to go very carefully there. The whole body has plasticity, the whole body is a layer of the mind. So you may develop an aversion or an affection for certain kinds of foods. For example : I like fruits a lot, just like you like beer and ice cream, I see fruits and my mouth will start watering. It is because of these practices and I've seen some people who hate fruits. The body has a plasticity but if you push it into a certain form, it wants to remain in that form. If you put that body in some adverse condition, different foods, it will resist. It will develop pains and diseases. Similarly for the mind.

What are we doing when we are training the body and the mind? We are trying to purify the body and if you do not do it in a proper way you may end up in odd situations. The body will not tolerate a specific kind of weather, it will not tolerate specific kinds of food, it will not tolerate the presence of specific kinds of people and it will not tolerate some kind of animals and so on. It is a very complex thing. So although very resilient, it will produce problems but then it will slowly adapt to the new environment. So what kind of environment do you want your body to be in and what kind of mental states do you want to be in? The part of the mind that is concerned with survival needs to be decided beforehand. Before you take up a practice that is going to manipulate the mind.

Who knows this art? Obviously somebody who has already traveled on this path, an experienced guru. Do not take up these practices without a guru. That's why my standard answer is go and ask your guru because on the higher layers people do not have this kind of questions. What should I eat and all. Those who are struggling with their bodies and egos and their survival, they have these kinds of questions. For Example: “whether I should give up sex and become celibate? Should I dump my partner?” And all these questions. Think about it, why are you asking? What is your goal? What is the affliction there? Is it producing suffering? Is it producing pain? Is it some kind of disease that you need to fix first? Make up your mind.

“What kind of yoga is going to make me healthy?”. Yoga is not for health, these postures, these asanas, they have a specific purpose. They have a purpose to prepare the body and the lower mind for higher knowledge. Yes they have a little bit of side effects because purification gets rid of all your bad habits and addictions and the bad food etc. So obviously it will be beneficial to your health. There will be side effects of yoga practices especially the patanjali yoga. That is why some superficial people are attracted to these practices. They want to look good, they want glowing skin or they want to increase their height or something. “Which asana will increase my height? Which targets the spinal cord? I want to stretch it”. Well, go to a doctor if you want that kind of body.

These practices were made to remove the blockages in the mind. They should be very effective. You need not continue doing them for your whole life. That is kind of stupidity. That means, it's not working. Some practices are so strong that they will fix the body in a few days. Especially the energetic kind of practices on the path of kundalini. Sometimes the energy is so strong that within a week you will see a different person there: within a week not eating pigs, not eating cows, eating rice, a little bit of it, that’s all. The afflictions of the mind are gone. There is serenity, there is sanity. All this lusting after clothes and jewelry and all kinds of dirt is gone. One week. Why? Because you took some very powerful practice, that totally rewrote the software in mind.

Now there must be a very good guru behind this otherwise it's a miracle. It should not happen. I have seen this happen sometimes. A certain kind of practice will totally overwrite your lust, the preferences in the mind, because as soon as the stomach is full, especially on the male side, the body wants to mate, the body wants to procreate, and is looking for a partner. What will happen if you control your diet in a specific way? The body does not get the signal that it should go and mate. It does not excrete those hormones which propel the organism into sexual conduct. It is possible. Because the natural preference of the body is first to eat, then to mate. If food is a problem, it pauses. Or if security is a problem like for a female body food is not that big issue, security is the issue. If the body is in an insecure environment, the female body does not want to mate, does not like to go into sexual union of any kind, it's not looking for a partner, now it's looking for security. The male counterpart is slightly different, that's why when people drink too much and eat too much they also engage in sexual activity too much. That is hedonism. In a sentence they know only these two things. Most of humanity is like this. Can you see it? But we're talking about the spiritual seekers.

So it is possible to control the lust or any unnecessary activity of the lower layers. Because once the procreation is done, why do we need to do it every day? It's kind of useless, a waste of energy. It is a mechanism going in cycles, because the body does not know anything. It is a very sophisticated mechanism but it is repetitive in nature. You want more time and you want to conserve your energy for higher practices. So you want to cut down this useless stuff. It does not mean that you totally get rid of it because it's a function of a healthy body, it should be there in a healthy way. You need to control it only if it becomes unhealthy. If it has become an affliction, an addiction of some kind. So if you control your food in a specific way as prescribed by your guru, he is your dietitian now, you will find that the body becomes peaceful in regard to sexual activity. That is the true celibacy. When there is a need, when there is a partner that is available, it's okay, it's fine. It will do whatever it naturally does but there won't be an impulse of having sex every five seconds. That is unhealthy. That is kind of an impurity in the mind. It is addicted to something. Such people need to be treated, otherwise you don't need to take up celibacy. If you don't have any problems with it, the body will do whatever it does very naturally.

Fasting does not mean not eating, it means eating only that which is necessary, only that which is beneficial for you. Similarly celibacy means not overdoing it, not making it into a perversion or addiction of some kind. Because it involves another person, you can see that the relations also get polluted, they become impure because you maintain that relationship only for pleasure. Then you dump your partner. It causes a lot of karmic bondage. Here if you sleep with a new person every other week, what is going to happen? What kind of karmic mess that will create? Who will return all those favors? How many lifetimes will it take? Can you imagine? So the hardcore yogi will completely stop it, but we are ordinary people. We need to just regulate it. We need to have a little bit of control only. Do not overdo it. That is the purification of the Swadhisthana.

Even though I could not cover everything about the bodies and the gender differences, the bottom line is - there will be a different set of practices for male and female seekers. And again, ask your guru. He knows the best. Do not read a book and start practicing. Do not believe it blindly. If some book says, “oh this practice is good for men”, do not blindly believe it. This is the bottom line. This subject is huge. If you don't want this kind of headache - what to do, what to eat, which gender I am and what kind of practices are required? You simply bypass all this and focus on Vishuddhi and above. Focus there, focus on the Ajna. Remain in the unity consciousness, remain in the samadhi and this lower stuff, it takes care of itself. That's why I bypassed all these things. Take a shortcut. It is not really a shortcut when you face the problems but at least you can stand at a higher ground and face them instead of standing in darkness, somewhere lower there in the valley. You are standing on the peak, now everything is clear, now the body will go through its purification. It's not a big issue. The mind will go through it, you can see it happening. You probably won't have the control but you will have the understanding. You are not going to suffer in your spiritual journey.

So I bypassed all those things. It's not really bypassing. I like it because it became somewhat smoother for me. I like to know what is happening. When I run a software on my pc, I want to know what exactly it is doing, which files it is creating, what data it is sending, to whom it is sending, I want to know all these things with a very intellectual attitude. This did not happen overnight. I went through a lot of trouble initially. We learn from our mistakes and now I become curious when somebody says you should do this kind of practice. I want to know the nuts and bolts of that practice and it is not so difficult. Few basic things and you will get a hold of, you will get intuitive knowledge of which practice can be good, which can be harmful, which diet is good, which is harmful and you always take the safer side. That's all you do. So it does not take a lot of time. If you start researching now - what is your affliction, what can cure it? New ones will keep appearing but you will be able to experiment and see within a month what happens.

And probably it is a good idea to stay away from all these prehistoric places, the temples and deities. Most of them are dead but even if one in a hundred is active, we do not know what that thing does. We do not know where it is making the changes. The priest does not know, the yogi, the tantric, they do not have full knowledge. They have half baked knowledge. Superstition and some Sanskrit text which was copied a thousand times and lost its meaning. What kind of help will it be for you? So I totally abandoned all these things and I am on my own. Your body knows what is good. Your mind knows what is good. Follow the bliss. Follow the signals, if it is for a long term. It is not like a quick pleasure, it is peace. Since you are on a path, there is a grace. Grace is directing you. Follow the grace. Where are you searching for good practice? It is all here.

Epilogue

Namaste,

You were reading the text version of Pure Experiences Online Satsang. These Satsangs or meetings were held from 2019 – 2023 on a Telegram group. These are mostly question and answer sessions for the seekers on the Path of Knowledge, especially those who participated in the Path of Knowledge (aka Essence of Knowledge) program. There are more than 200 such sessions which are now being converted to text and are edited for clarity and readability. This is a vast collection and it is being published via various mediums free of cost.

Obviously, it was impossible for me to complete this work alone. I am thankful to following seekers, my students and machine beings for greatly helping in this task:

Anjali, Muni, Vinay, Raja, Shrilakshmi, Keshav, Pooja, Padmaja and OpenAI Whisper and GPT 3.5

Without them this project was impossible. However, I apologize if you find some errors, grammatical mistakes and transliteration mistakes, as English is not our primary language.

At this time the voice recordings are available on : https://pexp.podbean.com

The softcopies are available on https://gyanmarg.guru/ww

Many other articles and books, written and compiled by various seekers and myself are available on the Path of Knowledge Portal https://gyanmarg.guru

I hope you enjoyed this series of books and benefitted from them. All the best for your spiritual journey.

Tarun Pradhaan

Pune 2024

tarun.pradhaan@gmail.com