Love gives tremendous courage and energy

When his teacher initiated Ramanuja, he gave him a special chant. The teacher told him not to pass on the chant to anybody and that if he did so, he would go to hell. Ramanuja asked him what would happen to the others with whom he might share it. The teacher said that they would be led to salvation. What would we have done? Naturally we would have kept quiet, thinking, ‘Why unnecessarily go to hell?’

Ramanuja immediately stood on a platform in a temple and called out to the whole village. He loudly pronounced the chant given by his teacher and told the people, ‘Let you all go to heaven! I am not bothered about me going to hell. Let you all reach heaven!’

When you are deeply in love, you feel as if your whole being is open and you are ready to go to any extreme for the sake of anybody. Your being is totally open. You don’t feel insecure when you are wild with love. That is why people who are in love always do risky things. They take the risk because they feel they have nothing to lose. They feel so expansive. Love gives tremendous courage and energy. It opens you up. It makes you finally available to yourself. As of now, you are not available to yourself. Love can make you available to yourself.

Power of Thought and Prayer

Another real incident from history:

When India was under British rule, the British soldiers found that when they carried water from England to India in their ships, the water got spoiled even while on the ship. But when they carried water back from India to England, the water not only stayed fresh through the voyage, but also remained fresh until they consumed all of it back in England! When scientists studied this surprising phenomenon, they found that this fresh water was from the sacred river Ganga in Calcutta which was worshipped by millions of people from around the world. It had the natural properties of neutralizing harmful bacteria and purifying itself.

Billions of people have been praying to Ganga for over thousands of years. Naturally they have left their prayerful thoughts as imprints on this water which is so energizing and self-healing.

Even in Egypt, the river Nile has been studied by the Egyptians over thousands of years by measuring its flow, level, turbulence etc. They have found that many times these parameters reflected the calamities like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis, that have happened or are about to happen in even distant parts of the world.

Imagine the effect of words of love on each of us then!

The perfect wedding gift

Adapted From "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

A husband and wife were celebrating their fifty years of marriage. The wife presented the husband with two shirts. He was very touched and declared that they would go out for dinner instead of cooking at home. It was a very tender moment for them.

He freshened up and to make his wife happy, wore one of the gift shirts and appeared from his room. As he came down, she looked up and smiled, but soon her expression changed and she asked, ‘So the other shirt is no good?’

We always want to make sure we wont deceive anyone. We go out of our way trying to satisfy everybody. You can go on maintaining certificates, but understand that ultimately, you can never satisfy everybody!

Feeling like your world is collapsing?

Adapted from "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

If you have seen children play, you might have seen them building castles with cards. They will place the cards at a certain angle to each other and build several layers of such patterns in a pyramid shape. It will be beautiful to look at. But if you remove even one card from the castle, from anywhere, the whole castle will collapse! The higher the castle, the more the chances of collapsing.

Just like this, we build our own self-image like a castle, out of people’s opinions of us. We collect certificates or signatures from our father, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend, teacher, friends and what not, and arrange all these certificates and build a castle to form our self-image. The image will look beautiful and we will feel happy. You will feel in ‘love’!

But if even one person withdraws their certificate, what happens? The castle collapses! You start feeling miserable about yourself. You feel depressed. You feel that the whole world has come to an end, that nobody loves you!

At least in the case of the children, they build their castles with their own cards. But we build our castles with others’ cards, with others’ certificates!

The solution: start investing a little more time and energy in knowing yourself. Give yourself an appointment from time to time! This way, you will never get deceived, and you will never depend on others to feel in love.

Drop 80% of your problems!

Adapted from "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

80% of our problems is due to this asking for attention or approval. If you just sit and write down, in a day how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in family and society, you will see.

You will find that all the 24 hours, all your lifetime, you are involved in getting approval from others. All your life, you are on a signature campaign, getting approval signature from family and society.

In a big register you make a column: Good Father, and for everything that you do for your children, you expect their signature of approval under that column! Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends. You prepare columns with suitable headings like Good Husband, Good Employee, Good Friend…etc, and wait for them to sign under it.

Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature! You too need to sign on their registers under the columns applicable to you!

We spend so much energy in maintaining our certificates of approval. Why? Stop it, that’s all. 80% of your problems will wash away. You will see, your life will suddenly feel so light and free!

A small story: Love Wealth and Success

Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success

Once an old woman saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in front of her house. She did not know them. She went upto them and said ‘I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.’

‘Is the man of the house home?’, they asked.

‘No’, she replied. ‘He's out.’

‘Then we cannot come in’, they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened.

‘Go tell them I am home and invite them in!’

The woman went out and invited the men in’

‘We do not go into a House together,’ they replied.

‘Why is that?’ she asked.

One of the old men explained: ‘His name is Wealth,’ he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, ‘He is Success, and I am Love.’ Then he added, ‘Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.’

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. ‘How nice!’, he said. ‘Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!’

His wife disagreed. ‘My dear, why don't we invite Success?’

Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: ‘Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!’

‘Let us listen to our daughter-in-law's advice,’ said the husband to his wife.

‘Go out and invite Love to be our guest.’

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, ‘Which one of you is Love?
Please come in and be our guest.’

Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: ‘I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?’

The old men replied together: ‘If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would've stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!

Are you psychologically handicapped?

Now, what happens when we don’t get the attention from the other? How do you feel?

Just imagine waking up one morning, and your spouse totally ignores you. Or if you said I love you to a dear one, and you get no answer back… We feel down, depressed, low on energy.

But if we do get the attention, some nice words, ‘I love you!’ Then we feel good, we feel high and energetic.

What happens when we depend on the others to feel in good spirits? When you are dependent on external sources for energy, you become psychologically handicapped. When you need physical support, you are physically handicapped. When you need psychological support, you are psychologically handicapped.

With a physical handicap, you know that you are handicapped because you can see it clearly, but with psychological handicap, you don’t even know that you are handicapped. When you are not aware of it, you will not know the consequences that it can give rise to. When the real consequences or dis-ease happens, you will wonder what the reasons are.

Meditation is the best way to become free of this handicap. Look for 'techniques' in this blog!

True meaning of love

A Devotee's perspective

Right from childhood, we are programmed to believe that certain morality helps create a good life. Even the new age self-help promotes the idea that whatever we give to the universe comes back to us. We are taught being loving as in being kind to others and helping others is a way to live a good life. However, to be honest, how often does helping others doesn’t leave us feeling used? The kind person is actually a victim of manipulation? On the other hand, even if we succeed in serving others it adds to our ego and arrogance. Isn’t it a paradox?

During my days of teaching school students I realized that whenever I was lenient with students, encouraging and motivating them, they used to take advantage of it and although, harsh treatment would get good results, guilt of ill-treating small kids was the price to pay for it. It was a double-edged sword.

Why is it that love doesn’t work in our lives? How long do we need to ‘try’ and ‘make’ these truths work for us? And if these are the ‘truths’ they should work automatically.

Swamiji explains the basic flaw in our approach in this video.

People’s attention is our energy booster!

Whatever we do, whatever we think, we are seeking concurrence and approval from the people around us in some subtle way. We are very keen that we should earn a good name from everyone. We may not do this in a very obvious fashion, but if you analyse deeply, you will not be at ease without the appreciation and endorsement of the people around you. This endorsement, this approval, is what we call ‘attention-need’.

Why do we bother so much about others’ opinions about us? Why can’t we judge ourselves by our own strength and continue to do our work? Why are we deriving strength from others?

All this is because of two things: one, we don’t know anything about ourselves. We know ourselves only through others’ opinions of us, only through others’ certificates. Second: when others give us their approval and attention, they are actually giving us energy to move on. Attention IS energy! That is why we feel so boosted when they give us attention.

I want you to understand that attention is nothing but energy, which keeps us in good spirits. It is a subtle form of energizing ourselves, and we are not even aware of this. When we need something, that something is not love; it is attention. You don’t need love; you are love yourself. So when you say that you need love, when you say that you need to be loved, you are really in need of attention, not love.

Using Love as a Gateway to Higher Consciousness

A Devotee's Experience

During our NSP in Chennai, it was as if we could see Swami in each one of us. The energy in the space was so high that there seemed to be no boundaries. We all used to meet even before the program, but it was strange to experience such profound connection with the devotees, each radiating energy. As we start getting in touch with the peace and clarity inside us, we start merging with others around us. There was no judgement, each one looked like a flower.

On the last day of the program, it was very sunny and warm. Soft clouds spread on the sky and cool breeze caressed us the way it would caress the flowers. As we were gathering for the evening session, it started raining heavily. At once, we were one with mother nature.

Life changed after the program, there was deep peace inside us. Even while talking, words emerged from a placid zone. It was becoming increasingly beautiful to the point of being unbelievable. Being good, nice and harmonious as a natural expression was becoming a way of life and not forced courtesy. There was no need to be alone in order to feel peaceful, and even the most difficult people seemed easier to handle. A new vitality had replaced all pervasive tiredness. The fear of not having enough for our fulfillment, the greed of possessing as much as we could gave way to an undercurrent of an unknown energy. It was then we realized that the journey to Chennai was infact a journey from lust to love. The constraints of being confined to our boundaries were no longer there and we learnt the secret of expanding.

What is love?

All the energies which move the cosmos, the very force, very life, very energy, which is cosmos, can be called as love.

I will talk about different dimensions of love – how love has become this matter and how the love resides as energy inside this matter and how love activates as energy the matter and how love makes matter to move.

I can say, the beginning and continuous flow and end, everything is love.

The very life force is love. The different levels and different dimensions of love, if we understand, you can understand in which level you are. In which dimension of love you are experiencing, in which level we need to move, which dimension we need to experience and how our being can become more and more blissful and spiritual, experiential. That is the main thing.

The first reason why we don’t experience the experience in its purest form is the senses are impure. Please understand, all our senses have lost its purity. You can see in your life, the ability to smell is lost, how the animals have the ability to see in the night is lost. See, human system is the best possible system which has all possible intelligence put together. Even animal is able to see in the night. If our system is much better than the animal system, why we are not able to see in the night? Slowly, slowly, we started moving away from the eyes. Even though you think you are seeing through the eyes, there is many layers of conditioning. That is why only when you feel hungry, you will see the restaurant boards.

Either you are taught, if you love you will be caught in bondage or if you love, it will lead to suffering. What was the formula taught to you about love, that is a very major important thing how your love is going to end. Please understand, if you are taught right formulas about love, you will not have conditioning. If you are taught wrong formulas about love, that very wrong formulas will not allow you to relax in love.

Radiating Love

What we normally understand and express in our life as love is just a pseudo frame that we have constructed around a few emotions which we have wrongly named as 'love.' Actually, true love can only be effortlessly expressed by us even without our knowledge about it. People around us will automatically experience it. Pure love manifests as clarity and overflowing energy from us.

Just like how a rose bud flowers into a beautiful rose when it grows in the right kind of soil, with the right mental set up, our innate loving energy flowers within us naturally & effortlessly. Just like how a lower metal lead turns into gold with the right kind of processing, with the right kind of attitude, the lower energy forms in us such as lust, greed, and anger can be transformed into high and intense loving energy.

Love is consciousness

Love is consciousness and consciousness is Love. Basically, when we work on increasing our awareness, we expand. When we operate from our head with awareness, we express intelligence. When we operate from our heart with the same awareness, we express loving energy. And when we operate from our very being with this awareness, we express blissful energy. Thus, love, intelligence and bliss are all manifestations of the same consciousness or awareness! Alternately, this means that when we experience and express loving energy, our inner space and our consciousness expand. And when our consciousness expands, we naturally experience and express intelligence and bliss. Therefore, increasing our awareness and operating from our heart results in expanding our loving energy and this in turn is a direct key to increase our intelligence and bliss!

Love can make matter move

Why is our love only in parts? Why are we not able to fall in love with the Whole?

If it is to a particular person or particular object, it is not devotion. Devotion will be for the whole, why we are not able to feel? Because of the emotional suffering, emotional connection to only few forms. You have enough energy to love everything in this moment but that energy is used with all the memories, the emotional attachment to the past memories.

If you understand this example of your hardware: your computer memory is filled with too many high-resolution pictures, not only it will crash but you will also not be able to use it at this moment. Many high-resolution pictures, means your emotional attachment to too many things, that is why whole emotion is taken away by the past memory.

You don’t have enough energy because all your emotional energy is taken away by the past incidents or the people who are in your memory, either as attachment or anger or as guilt. Your whole energy, inner space is occupied.

If your inner space is occupied by too many high-resolution pictures, you will not be able to directly open, feel connected, and fall in love with the Whole at this moment. All your fear, all your greed, all your guilt, all these things are just because your energy taken away by the past memory. That is why you are not able to completely relate with the present moment with the pure consciousness, with the pure energy, with the pure being, in the present moment, in this present experience, with this present truth. Anybody whose inner space is not filled with high-resolution pictures, like too much emotional attachment, will be able to feel connected to any thing.

The truth behind Love Stories

When we talk about love, we immediately associate it with romance, feelings, passion, intimacy. Eternal lovers! Isn’t it?

Romeo and Juliet! Cleopatra and Mark Antony! Napeleon and Josephine! Orpheus and Eurydice!

In a story about eternal lovers, written by Rabindranath Tagore, the hero and heroine decide to live as eternal lovers on the two sides of the Ganges River. Once a week, they come by boat, meet each other and get back.

If they do this, obviously they will be at peace during the time they meet. Every time they meet, there will be freshness in the air because they know that they will be together for only a few hours; the moment becomes precious!

All eternal lovers, be they Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu, Tristan and Isolde, they never really lived together! If they had lived together their eternal love would have to be retold!

Our lives often show another kind of love story...

The problem is, life doesn’t have background music! When you watch the love stories on television, they all come with background music and so you easily enter into a fantasy world. You are completely mesmerized by the atmosphere created in the television box.

If we look sincerely into what we call ‘love’, we’ll realize that there are many expectations. Very often, this so-called love is a mere transaction, a business deal!

What do we look for in relationships?

We all go through several stages of relationships in our lifetime. If you observe very closely, whichever stage we are in, when we ask for love we are actually asking only for the other person’s attention. That is not love When we say a person doesn’t love us, we actually mean that the other person doesn’t give us enough attention. The basic need for any human being is attention from others. The attention need, along with our dependency on others for survival, is what we call love.

The dependency on others might be psychological, physical or spiritual. For example, when you expect someone to lend you a shoulder to cry on, you are dependent upon that person psychologically. When you expect someone to provide you with money or fulfill your bodily pleasures, you are dependent upon them physically. In whatever way people may fulfill this dependency, what it boils down to is the attention that they give us! The whole idea of what we think of as love is nothing but getting the attention of the other in some way. Love is not something we need, love is an energy that flows from us unconditionally.

Love-hate relationships

Hatred and love are opposite sides of the same coin as long as love is conditional. Love can flip into hatred the moment we feel that our expectations are threatened. In love of this type, it remains love only as long as the conditions remain as expected. The moment the conditions change, the love also changes.

Often what we believe as love is actually related to time and space. So long as the distance between lovers is large and the time of contact is minimal, they feel love towards each other. However, once they get closer and spend more time together, they feel that they are not so much in love after all! That is why they say ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. Familiarity can also convert love into hatred. To transcend both love and hatred, we first need to drop expectations. Expectation is the first enemy of love.

Love is a transaction

Whenever we look at something, the first thing we do is to calculate what we can get from it. It can be a person or an object, that doesn’t matter. Our thoughts start functioning either through fear or through greed to calculate what there is in the situation for us. Our attention is centered on that object or person.

Right now, most of our doing has some degree of expectation. When reciprocity from the other side dips a little, you will know; you will be able to observe the tension in you, the agitation in you, the disappointment in you. This agitation, this tension, this disappointment is the result of the expectation that was inside you when you did your duty. The degree of these may vary with each person, but it is bound to be there at some level.

Have you ever bought a present for a dear loved friend for their birthday? You were so happy to give at the time. Then, when your birthday comes around, even though you may tell yourself, ‘I do not expect anything in return’, what if nothing comes your way? What if that friend forgets your birthday altogether?

When the tension arises in you, you suddenly realize that you were not acting out of just an expression of the loving Energy in you; you are doing it out of a lesser, limited quality called duty or so-called love. It is not an expression of the Existential Energy in you; it is a mere outer world transaction, that’s all.

Love brings great courage

In all great love stories, be it Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, you’ll notice the lovers always show great courage in defying rules of their families or society to be together, to share their love, even for one night!

When you are deeply in love, you feel as if your whole being is open and you are ready to go to any extreme for the sake of anybody. You are ready to go to any boundary, as there is nothing to protect within your being. Your being is totally open. You don’t feel insecure when you are wild with love. You experience the sheer force of attraction of the energy called love.

That is why people who are in love always do risky things. They take the risk because they feel they have nothing to lose. There is no insecurity about anything. They feel so expansive. Love gives tremendous courage and energy. It opens you up. It makes you finally available to yourself.

Love is a basic necessity of life!

Love is an intense experience in one’s inner space. Many of us think love is a choice. We think experience and expression of love is a choice. We think that if we want to, we can handle love; otherwise we can let it go. No! It is not a choice as we think. It is a basic necessity of life.

When I say life, I don’t mean just breathing and staying alive. I mean being alive at the innermost being level, as a live Consciousness. If you can express love, if you can experience love, that is the only way of being alive as a Consciousness. If you don’t experience and express love, you may inhale and exhale, but you can’t say you are a live being. There are so many animals, plants and other things that breathe day in and day out. You will continue to exist like them, that’s all.

Love is the ultimate experience of a human being. When the experience happens, we will not be able to possess the experience, only the experience will possess us! When the experience possesses us, whatever we do will be like a beautiful song. Any word that comes out will be poetry. Our being will be so light. We will simply float. Our walking will be a dance. Our body language will radiate grace. All our expressions will be of great service to humanity.

Love Makes Life Auspicious!

If you fall in love with something, suddenly you will see anything connected to that object or person is auspicious. If you fall in love with something in your life, you will realize anything connected to that person or that object will be auspicious.

Let me tell you a small incident, I have seen in my life. I have a small car to travel in India. My disciples tell me – 'anywhere we see that car, we do namaskar swamiji. We don’t know who is traveling in that car, we don’t know who is going in that car, anywhere we see that car, we just feel so much of joy. Just that car is enough to create so much joy in us'. Not one or two people, so many devotees have told this to me. There are some devotees who came and told me, ‘When I came to your program, I saw people bowing down to my car.’ I went and asked them, ‘Why were they bowing down to my car?’ They said, ‘Our Swamiji uses the same type of car!’

Ramakrishna says, ‘Even some people come from the same village of the Master, you will feel something connected.’ There is a beautiful saying. When you fall in love with something, that object looks like God for you. Understand, when you feel connected, when you fall in love, whatever happens will become auspicious, it will look auspicious, it will look holy, sacred,mangala.

In your life also you can see sometimes you feel everything is great; whatever is happening around you is great. When you are filled, when you are overflowing, when you are fulfilled with energy, when you fall in love, even stone looks like God. When you don’t feel connected, even if God comes in front of you, you will ask for ID card. If the connection happens, even in front of stone you will feel the divine presence; then even stone is enough to awaken the divinity, the divine presence in your life, in your being.

Love

What is love? How can I experience true love? Is there more to love than sex? How do I have better relationships?

Whether you are a teenager or a happily married adult, whether you are from the modern West or the traditional East, these questions have been timeless. They reflect the deep recesses of the human mind on one level. On another level, they are the signboards of a deep spiritual quest.

Get an enlightening perspective on true love from the Master Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

Daily Awareness Practice - Be Intense

You might have experienced, when you do anything intensely, you will forget yourself. You might have experienced this many times in your lives. It can be anything that you do. It can be as simple as coloring or painting or reading. When you go deep into it, you forget yourself.

When you have an intense headache, just try doing something interesting very deeply; your headache will go away. It is because you are continuously aware of your head that your headache continues to bother you. The moment you go deep into something else and lose awareness of your head, your headache will simply disappear. Only when you remember your head, you can have a headache.

When you go deeply into any emotion, only that emotion remains and you cease to exist. This is what we mean by 'totality'. Be total and intense in everything you do. Then 'you' will disappear. This moment of 'you' disappearing, you may experience for just a few seconds. But if you work on being intense and total in everything, this experience of 'you' disappearing will happen more often to you and for longer periods also. Soon, you will master the art of doing work intensely, and being absent yourself! You can then turn off and on at your will. You become independent of the work that goes on outside.

Technique: Find whether you live with the senses or the mind?

This is a beautiful technique Swamiji gave during the Shiva Sutras discourse, ‘From Logic to Love’:

“This is a technique for those people who are living intensely with the senses. I want all of you to understand we do not normally live with senses. We live with the mind. Let me tell you how to find out whether we are living with senses or the mind. For example, let us say you have your fantasy or visualization about some ecstasy or experience or joy, maybe about drinking or smoking or physical pleasure or lust or some food. If you have a fantasy about how it is going to be, then when you actually enjoy it, just ask yourself ‘Is this actual experience deeper than my fantasy?’

If the actual experience is stronger than the fantasy about it, then you are living with the senses. When you are enjoying, if the actual experience is less intense than the fantasy about it, you are living in the mind.

Fantasy is mind, experience is senses. You yourself can find out whether you are living in the mind or in the senses. If you are living in the senses, enlightenment is easy for you. Unfortunately, we do not live in the senses. We have stopped living naturally because of so much of advertisement for almost anything! Ads for the food make your fantasies about food too big and experiences too small.

We have lost connection with the senses. We are living in the mind, cerebral layer. Our life is now centered in the cerebral layer. For a person who is centered on the senses, enlightenment or experiencing the reality, truth is lot easier.”

Love to the Master: A devotees experience

Love to the Master is indeed love towards the divine because master is the divine in a human form - A Devotees experience!


This reminds me of one incident that stands evidence to this great truth. It was the evening of October 17, 2009. The night was unusually bright because every home was brightly lit with diyas and colourful lamps...It was the evening of Diwali - the festival of lights! There was a lot of excitement in the air as the half a dozen kids we had at home were hurrying in and out of the house each with their share of crackers (fireworks). I stepped out into the living room wearing a new cotton saree bright green in colour.

My son shot a glance at me, smiled and said 'you are looking so nice mom.' I smiled back and stepped out of the house looking forward to a evening full of noise and fun. This was literally my daughter's first diwali. She never stepped out of the bedroom during the past Diwali evenings because she was too scared of fireworks. This year, however, she was the first to go out with her share of crackers - pencils, flower pots, match boxes and a couple of other soft or not so loud fireworks.

I was excited to see that she finally got over her fear for fireworks and was confidently playing with them all alone. I slowly moved towards her as she lighted a pencil. I fondly stroked her head. She turned towards me with a wide grin. For a few seconds both of us were lost in joy. I was suddenly jolted by a warm feeling on my knees. I looked down and was shocked to see that the fire from the pencil cracker my daughter was holding caught on to my saree below my knees. The fire was spreading fast and I was shocked for a few seconds unable to move or think.

My daughter and the other kids around were screaming now. The first thought that I had was that I should run away from my daughter else she may try to come towards me and hug me in her panic. I started running away from her towards the back of the house. The fire was spreading faster every moment and almost touched my face now. I quickly pulled the remaining portion of the saree off me...I was holding swamiji's mala in one hand and with the other hand I tore the saree off.

Almost 75% of the saree was gone now totally burnt to pieces in the fire. The rest of it just came off me as easily as the peel of a ripe banana coming off the banana (This was amazing given that I had used atleast 6 safety pins to tie the saree firmly) . I was surprised that instead of being scared, I was immersed in a wave of peace and bliss! I just closed my eyes to see the smiling face of my master gesturing kindly that he is there with me! I felt the warmth and protection of a mother's lap. Smiling with joy I slowly opened my eyes to find myself staring into the anxious faces of my family! There was chaos around me. Everyone was shouting, crying and running around me trying to find out if I was okay. I kept assuring them that I was fine and they did not understand how I could be so cool especially after such a huge fire accident which left me with burns on my lower back and forehead.

As the house returned to normalcy a few minutes later....a pleasant feeling spread all over me despite the burning sensation on my lower back and forehead as I could still feel the strong, warm hands of my master holding me gently and firmly...and it was then that I cried aloud saluting to my master and silently telling him how much I love him and thanking him for saving my life. This incident remains in my memory without a trace of fear or pain and just as a beautiful evidence of the everlasting presence of the divine in my life!


Loving the master is indeed loving the divine because master is the divine in a human form! I know now more than ever before that my love for my master is eternal :-)

Exercise: Practice Selfless Love

Try this small exercise: choose a partner from amongst your acquaintances or work-related colleagues, of the same gender. Look after that partner completely without letting them know you are doing this as an exercise.

Your first concern should always be for the other person's comfort. You should always look to see if he or she is happy and comfortable. Find out if the person needs anything. If you are at an office function, give him or her a plate before grabbing one for yourself. Don't choose your friends or relatives or people with whom you would like to be friends later! Just choose at random.

Almost all our lives, we worry only about ourselves. Outside of ourselves, at the most, we worry about our close family, that too because we feel that it is our duty. But we think that it is love. When you start doing this exercise, you will get a chance to see what selfless love is like! It is selfless because you don't expect anything from the other person.

How do I purify my senses?

Somebody asked Swamiji, ‘So how can I heal myself and how can I come down to the senses?’

Shankara gives a beautiful technique to bring us down to the senses. He says aahara shuddhi, cleansing of the diet. It means, censor whatever you are adding into your system!

When I say aahara, I do not mean just food that you eat, no! Even television is aahara, whatever you are feeding in through the eyes. Whatever you eat through the eyes is also aahara. Similarly, whatever you listen through the ears, is also aahara and whatever you experience through your hands and legs is aahara.

Just for a month, decide that you will be on diet: a diet not just with what you eat but with whatever you swallow, everything; a diet on whatever you swallow through each of the senses.

The other day I was reading a very strange but very funny article in a magazine related to food and diet. They say that people sit and eat during TV programs; watching TV and filling themselves. And they don’t know how much is put in front of the table. The moment the program is over, the table is also over. There is a study about the relationship between eating and watching television. They say that if the program is too violent, the quantity of food that goes inside is high because our body feels highly violent. So we tend to swallow left and right and we do not know what we are putting inside.

Not only with regards to the food which we eat, even with the ideas which we take inside, even with the things which we put inside, aahara shuddhi is the best way to bring us down to the senses, to bring us to reality, to make us simple, blissful and down to earth.

The Power of Words, Thoughts and Emotions

There is an interesting research by Japanese scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto who has studied the effects of thoughts and words on water. The results show clearly that even water responds clearly to our words, thoughts and feelings. Over 70%of our body is made up of water and 70% of planet Earth is covered with water. So you can imagine the power of words!

Japanese scientist , Dr. Masaru Emoto collected water samples from different sources and exposed them to various kinds of thoughts. Then he froze the samples and studied their crystalline structure through a microscope with the help of high-speed photography. Thousands of these crystals were studied under tightly regulated conditions of temperature, cooling time and lighting.

He did various experiments on these water samples, playing different types of music to the water, talking to the water, reading out from ancient life teachings, praying with a certain intention etc. He found that when the water samples were exposed to healing music, the water crystals that formed were very beautiful and graceful.

The water exposed to negative feelings or thoughts did not form crystals but rather an irregular structure which reflected the emotions of the person handling them.

You make me sick, I will kill You

Courtesy: Emoto

Another series of experiments was done to study the effect of words and sounds. The water used was distilled water. The water sample was divided into two parts and placed in different bottles, one labeled ‘Thank you’ and the other labeled ‘You are a fool’ in different languages such as English, Japanese and Korean.

After exposure to these labels, the frozen water samples when examined under the microscope showed a clear difference in the crystal structure. The water labeled ‘Thank you’ showed a beautiful, well-balanced crystal structure. The water labeled ‘You are a fool’ showed a very irregular, amorphous structure.

Water samples with negative labels like ‘You make me sick’ showed distorted and dispersed crystals. The water samples with positive labels like ‘love’, ‘appreciation’ and ‘peace’ showed beautiful and uniform crystal structures.

Even the tone of the words made a huge difference on the microscopic forms! For example, the collaborative words like ‘Let’s do it’ caused a very beautiful crystal structure compared to the crystals formed by the commanding words ‘Do it’.

A major component of our body is water. Planet earth is covered with over 70% water. After studying the effect of mental thoughts on water, just imagine the tremendous effect our thoughts, words and intentions have on the planet and us!

Imagine the effect of words of love on each of us then!

Daily Awareness Practice: A technique

Stop asking and start giving! We need to radiate energy instead of asking for energy. But we don't even know how to shift the focus from us to the other. We are so used to seeing ourselves as the center of attention. We need to start seeing the world outside as the center of attention.

Be the Center of Your World

See yourself as in the center of a small circle. Imagine all the people in your world as being in concentric circles moving out from the center. The closest people to you are in the first circle - your husband or wife, parents, children, etc. Then, the next circle would contain close friends and relatives and so on. Finally, the last circle would include acquaintances. Outside the last circle would be everyone else on the planet. Now see your energy as moving out from you, through each circle. This is your world and you are responsible for it. You need to keep your world energized and full of love.

If you do this, soon the different concentric circles will disappear and everyone will become the same to you as far as showering love is concerned. There will not be any difference between family, relatives, friends or strangers. The whole world will become one to you. If you see your world in this way, you will radiate energy causelessly and you will be fulfilled.

Power of Opinon

A young, healthy and intelligent man wakes up and gets ready to go to work. His wife looks at him and tells him, ‘You are looking tired; are you alright?’

He feels irritated by her comment and tells her to stop imagining things and leaves. As he takes his car out of the garage, his neighbor is watching him and shouts out, ‘Are you feeling well? You look out of sorts!’ The man is surprised this time but tells him that he is alright and drives out.

He reaches his office and as he walks in, the receptionist looks at him with concern and says, ‘Sir, you look ill! Why did you come to work?’

The man replies, ‘Well, I think I am fine. Let’s see….’ And he goes to his office. He starts to work and a colleague enters and says, ‘Hey! You look awful. What’s the matter? You have fever or something?’ Now, this is too much for the man. He begins to feel uneasy and sick. Just then his boss calls him and he goes in. The boss takes one look at him and says, ‘You look really unwell. Are you sure you can carry on today? Why don’t you go and see the doctor?’

The young man has had enough. He feels positively ill by now; he says he would like to go home, and leaves.

As he drives home in his car, he feels his temperature rising. When he reaches home, his wife is surprised to see him back. She reaches out and touches his forehead and finds that he has high temperature!