Just relax and enjoy the movie!

In the previous post, we spoke about how scared we are to peep within ourselves, lest we get exposed! "Ok, I am ready to look within, but tell me how" you may ask. You just have to decide to become a witness. It is actually simple if we want it to! Let me explain.

Imagine you are watching a movie, completely relaxed. And in that movie, characters jump with happiness in one scene, and there is bloodshed in the other. To what extent do we let this affect our so called "real" lives? At most our eyes become moist, but we immediately console ourselves "It's after all a movie! Cheer up!" and once we are out of the movie hall, we forget about those characters, isn't it?

Now, why is it that we treat our lives any differently? Why is there so much seriousness in whatever we do? Why is it that we are a bunch of emotions and mood swings? We literally have become slaves to those emotions. They rule our day. They decide whether we have had a good day or a bad one. If we got a shouting from our boss at office, or a quarrel with our spouse or parents, then depression or anger takes over. If we get a promotion or some pay hike at office or a surprise gift from our spouse or parents, excitement and happiness rule. These emotions decide how our day goes, we have given them 100% power to rule our lives. Why have we done this to ourselves?

Now you may say, it is not that we are slaves to those emotions, but slaves to the incidents. It's not very different. We are slaves anyway. So how do we take charge of our lives? Just become a witness. The moment any emotion rises within you, just watch it. Imagine you are playing a role in this movie called "life" and you are the spectator as well. Just sit back and enjoy the movie!

Trust me, when we develop this witnessing attitude, we simply rise above the events and emotions of the day. We remain completely calm, relaxed and learn to smile at everything and take everything in the stride. Next logical question: how do we develop this witnessing attitude?

Ok, here are some practical tips that Swami Nithyananda gives. These can be practiced when you sitting in the bus, traveling to office or when you are waiting for a friend - any spare time that you have. We just have to start experimenting, it's like playing a game with ourselves. So here goes:

1. Witness your breath: Buddhists call it Vipassana, a very powerful yet simple technique. Just bring your awareness completely on the breath. As you inhale, watch the air going in, watch the tummy getting inflated like a balloon with the air coming in. As you exhale, feel the warmth of the air on the lips. As you breathe, watch what happens inside.

2. Witness your boundary: Normally, if we are sitting in office, our mind is at home and vice versa - completely disintegrated. Just become aware of where you are, the physical surroundings, you will fall in tune with the present moment!

3. Witness your thoughts and emotions: I will write more about these inner thoughts (called "inner chatter") in another post. To put it simply, when thoughts arise, just watch them like watching clouds in the sky.

Practice these techniques and let us know how you feel!

Here is a youtube video where Swamiji talks about how witnessing erases the boundary that we have created with the world and makes us realise our true consciousness. Enjoy!

Nithyanadam!
Ma Nithyananda Arpana

Sitting on a Volcano

'Hey man! finally, weekend is here..', told my colleague. I replied, 'yeah, finally... So whats the agenda for the weekend?' He did not say much. Monday morning, I asked him, 'So how was weekend man?' He replied quite lazily, 'nothing.. the same old thing. Watched TV .. had lunch, watched TV again and then had dinner and again watched TV.. ' He even admitted, 'man, I was bored of watching TV.'

I asked him, 'if you were bored watching TV, why didn't you do something else?' He replied, 'nah, there was nothing much to do.. so I was just watching TV..'

I am sure we have done this many times. While we are sitting at home, we suddenly feel theres nothing much to do. And we do something or the other which is not at all interesting to keep ourselves busy. We watch TV, we watch sitcoms on computers, we blast music at the highest possible volume... if nothing works out, we call a few people and check with them if they are free in the evening..

On a lighter note, Swami Nithyananda says - on sundays you will see there are so many people who sit and read the whole news paper, from the first line to the last.. they don't even spare matrimonials and classifieds' :)

Have we ever tried to analyze this situation? Why do we do this to our system? What is happening inside us when we are given an opportunity to be alone? Why do we look for avenues to fill that space?

A simple answer is we are scared of our own self. We do not want to look inside us. We are scared of our fears, of our desires, of our whole being. We are so scared that we just find different ways to escape those fears. Imagine a volcano brewing inside us, ready to erupt anytime. We are sitting on top of it, desparately hoping nothing will happen.

The fact is we can't sit quietly for more than 5 minutes.. I guess 5 minutes is too much, may be not more than 2 minutes. We become restless. Just sit for a few minutes alone and check for yourself. We just can't sit alone. We get scared. Our mind plays all kinds of games. We scared to see our fears, insecurities, greed, desires, cravings and what not. Our mind races between hundreds or even thousands of thoughts.

To escape from this scenario, we resort to external sources to fill that space. We watch TV, taking in whatever junk is coming. We go out spend some time outside meeting friends and talking something which sometimes we are least interested in.

If you see my question in the beginning, I said, 'What is happening inside us when we are given an opportunity to be alone?' Yes it is an opportunity.. Nithyananda says that being alone is an opportunity for us to look into ourselves. When we peep inside and understand what's going on, we suddenly become more aware of ourselves. With a better understanding of ourselves, we can channelise our resources, energy better. When we understand our desires, fears, worries, we can tackle each of them better. Meditation is all about infusing awareness into ourselves.

We normally let our mind take control of us. We are not even aware of what is ruling us. When we understand what's inside, we stop letting them take charge. We take charge instead.

We have always tried to look outside and fill the gap. For a change, why not look inside and fill it with awareness...

Science of Energy Healing

Recently I had a conversation with a friend of mine when she was suffering from viral flu..

She: I caught a bad flu. Went to the doctor. He gave me some antibiotics. He says its a viral flu...

I: Hmm.. ya now-a-days flu is in the air. Do you want healing?

She (suspiciously): What...what kind of healing?

I: Nothing.. its just energy healing.. no side effects ..

She (almost immediately): I just have viral flu.. I have flu because I am infected with virus.. I just have to take some medicines and I guess that should work.. I do not believe in this healing thing..

Well that was conversation and like she said she did not believe in it. So I did not ask her any further... and not many days after that, I too caught a viral flu and I too went to a doctor. He told me, 'you have viral flu, 102 degrees F and gave loads of medicines for cough, sore throat, fever etc.

I went back home and dumped those medicines on the table.. all I did was meditation that heals. I went to the doctor in the morning at about 9 am and by evening I was fit and fine.. though I was feeling a little weak, the fever was completely gone.. I was in the normal temperature zone when I checked the temperature in the evening.

You can still find those medicines intact in their covers :)

Lets just understand for a moment what this virus is doing in our system and let us talk in terms of energy. We are an energy mechanism and there is no doubt about it. When a virus enters our system, there is another energy mechanism entering our energy system. This virus or can we say a negative energy system is creating some impact on our energy system. All healing does is to create a energy pattern that nullifies the negative energy system of the virus.

Bruce Lipton, a well renowned cellular biologist says - 'During energy healing, the recipient is getting an energy that is interacting with their body through interference and through that interference, changing the character of the energy reflected in the physical matter because the matter is the energy. This is the future of medicine although we are not there with it right now. It is important to note that quantum physics, which describes the mechanics of the universe, emphasizes that energy signals are a hundred times more efficient than drugs.'

Ancient asian energy healing methods like accupunture work on similar principles. Western medicine talks in terms of matter; virus being a foreign matter entering our body matter and affecting our cellular matter. Eastern energy based healing talks about one energy system affecting the other.

I am not saying western medicine does not work. All I am saying is energy based healing can complements the western medicine. They could coexist together.

We always reject this because of our unfamiliarity with it. Science today is accepting this and the top quantum physicists are again and again asking the basic questions of what this body is, what is reality. And their answers are tending to what has been labelled as spirituality and mysticism... They are tabooed because they do not fall in line with our understanding of matter and energy.

Paramahamsa Nithyananda initiates people as healers into Nithya Healing. There are umpteen number of terminally ill patients who were suffering from cancer, Parkinson's disease etc. and are now still alive dancing in nithyananda, eternal bliss :) More about Nithya Healing can be found at this blog post.

Before signing off, let me add that, scientifically, recipients of Nithya Healing were studied. Energy patterns have been documented and studies are going on. Well, more on this, I will post later ...

- Sri Nithya Arpanananda

Another dimension???!

Have you ever experienced a nightmare? Have you ever woken up in the middle of it, sweating and panting heavily only to realise with relief that is was a mere dream?? Am sure most of us have.

If it was just a dream, why were we sweating? Why did we find it so real? The answer is that when we are dreaming, we THINK it's real! There is no way for us to know that it is a dream while we are dreaming. The minute you realise it is a dream, you wake up from it. Isn't it?

Why bother about analysing dreams you may ask. But this can lead us to a rather big question. How are we so sure we are not dreaming now? How are we so sure that the life we are leading now is not another dream? Just think about it, when you are dreaming, the entire set up, all the people, the voices, the characters, everything was created by the mind. Why is it that we assume what we see now is reality? If the mind is so powerful to create a whole new world every night in our dreams, then why rule out the possibility of it creating this world around us?

Let me quote a small story that I heard from Nithyananda earlier:
There was once a Zen master who woke up crying one morning. His disciples rushed towards him and inquired what happened. The master said "I dreamt that I was a butterfly last night in my dream". The disciples looked at each other not able to comprehend why this could be a matter of concern. The master went on "Now the problem is, I do not know whether I am a Zen Master who dreamt that I was a butterfly or whether I am indeed a butterfly which is dreaming that it has become a Zen master"!

This story is just to question the same point: Are we sure we are not dreaming now? If we have never woken up, then how can we be sure we are not dreaming now? :)

This process of waking up is what Masters calls "Enlightenment". All sages and great Masters, for thousands of years have claimed that there is another whole dimension, which we are completely unaware of. How can we be aware if we are so fond of our 'dreams' and hold on to them as reality? These Masters have woken up and out of their compassion try to wake us up too. They are here to say 'Don't weep, don't worry it is all just a dream. Wake up and see for yourself'

Now, we want proof for everything. We are trained to reject anything that doesn't appeal to our intellect. As Nithyananda says: a seed asks for proof to the tree 'If I break open, what is the proof that I will become a tree?' For that the tree replies 'You break open and see for yourself'. The tree cannot happen unless the seed opens and the seed refuses to open until the tree happens! So how can the tree happen?

Here is a very interesting video how how a 2-D man is scared to believe there could be a 3rd dimension. The 3-D man out of his compassion wakes the 2-D man into the 3rd dimension, which he had never ever witnessed before:

http://www.worldwidenlightenment.com/51.html

Had the 2-D man remained inside the fence out of fear of lack of trust, he would have never experienced the joy of the 3rd dimension. Let us be open and allow the Masters to show us the new and beautiful dimensions within ourselves!
-- Ma Nithyananda Arpana

From Within to Without - A Technique for World Peace

Let me start by presenting an excerpt from a real story:

A Hawaiian therapist used a technique to cure a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. Now you will be shocked when I tell you what this technique is all about. He used to look at the file of each patient and express words of love and empathy. That's it. This ancient Hawaiian method of healing is called Ho'oponopono, which consists of the phrase "I love you"! How can this be? The most dreaded of the patients became healthy and were released just by some words of love which the therapist uttered to himself?!!

This is a true story. You may wish to visit this site to read the whole story. The name of the Hawaiian therapist is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, who has worked with organisations like UNESCO. There is also a book written about this called Zero Limits by Joe Vitale. Quoting the book "In Ho'oponopono, all change happens inside. When you perceive a problem out there, you don't try to change "out there." Instead, you work on the issue within yourself. As you do, the outer actually begins to change. This is how the therapist healed criminals. He didn't change them; he changed himself. As he changed, they magically got better."

This leads us to wonder. We see so much of terrorism and destruction all over the world, so can we do something about it by looking within? Every day when we open the newspapers and see news of a bomb blast or some shooting attack, people losing their lives in an earthquake or tsunami, what is it that we do? We think "poor people, how unfortunate, this shouldn't have happened to such innocent ones, God is so unfair!" or we think "the world has become such an unsafe place to live in, hopefully nothing is going to happen around here"...or we think "the government officials up there are taking such wrong decisions - they could have stopped the war".

We fail to realise that the calamities, wars, terrorism etc. are nothing but a projection of the collective negative energy residing in each one of us. We will be writing more about this collective consciousness, collective positivity and negativity in the next post in the blog.

Let me tell you, each of us can sit where we are and contribute to the world peace. It is not as absurd as it may sound. When one single doctor could cure a whole ward of patients, imagine what would happen if thousands of people around the globe were going to be sending out thoughts and vibrations of love, peace, harmony. As you read Sri Arpana's previous post about Dr. Emoto's "Messages from Water", our thoughts can create a tremendous impact around us.

Last year during UN World Peace Day, all the Nithyananda centers worldover had meditation rallies (some 24 hours) sending vibrations of peace. In fact recently, Swamiji was being interviewed in Seattle by a popular host Rosemary Brocholli and asked him his views on calamities. She mentioned how agitated she gets on hearing such news. Swamiji says very beautifully that each time you get agitated, you are only contributing to the collective negativity. Instead think of how you can contribute. Just add to the collective positivity. Meditate and express the peace within. Click here to watch the full video of this interview.

Last year, when we getting trained by Swamiji for Nithya Yoga, there is something so simple yet so powerful that Swamiji told us "Normally as a cleansing process, people tell you to breathe in positive energising life force and breathe out all the muck inside, but I tell you - breathe in all the suffering from the world and breathe out purified peaceful energy". How wonderful! Thanks Swamiji!

-- Ma Nithyananda Arpana

30 Minutes of Cleansing

If someone had told me, 'every thought of ours affects everything around us' a year ago, I would have laughed at him. Obviously, most of us would react in this way. But now I totally agree with it!! For the next few minutes, lets us go inside and see how we process such statements.

Generally, we work this way. Lets say someone makes a statement. Immediately, we start referring to our bank of knowledge. We might have gathered it from books, internet, magazines and what not. If there is a strong scientific and logical explanation to that statement, we immediately accept that statement. If some book says: Force = mass x acceleration, we immediately accept it because it has been proven by scientists.

Now the problem is there is a limitation to this knowledge. If a person quotes something totally different, he is looked at with suspicion. This was the reason why people threw stones on people who claimed - the earth is round, the earth is not the center of the solar system, the earth revolves around the sun. The people then had no priori knowledge about it and hence their intellect did not accept it.

There is another way in which we can process that statement. This is how the select few went beyond intellectual knowledge and came up with amazing truths. It is through experimentation. Actually, we used to work in that state when we were kids. If our mother said, 'don't put your finger into that socket,' we used to do exactly that. If someone said, don't stand on the parapet wall, all we did was, just go there and stand.

We had an element of curiosity, inquisitiveness which has been lost along the way. Why? What happened to us when we started so-called 'growing up'?

We were getting conditioned. This conditioning was not just by society but due to our own acquired knowledge. Can you see what has happened? Our own bank of knowledge has put boundaries on our curious behavior. If someone makes a statement, instead of experimenting and finding it on our own, we immediately look back into our encyclopedia of knowledge. That is how our mind works. It just starts to flip pages and checks for it. It simply rejects if it can't find it. That's it, end of story!!

We fail to realize one important thing - the limitation of our intellect. We fail to acknowledge the fact that our intellect has limits. Every great scientific invention was made because Newtons, Edisons, Einsteins, Galileos, Marconis were not clouded by suspicion and knowledge of the past. They were daring and courageous to experiment, they put their foot forward to experiment. You may call it hypothesis or whatever but they had the guts to experiment and tell the whole world what the truth is. When Einstein told about relativity theory, people laughed at him. When he was alive, most people did not even understand it. Now every kid who knows the word - science wants to become an Einstein.

In the same way, enlightened masters and beings, whether he is Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Krishna of prehistoric age or Ramakrishna, Nisargadutta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Nithyananda of this age, were like us, simple humans. The only difference between them and us is that they dared, they braved to experiment and know the Truth but we are just rejecting it based on our knowledge.

So anyways, linking back to the very first statement of this post, 'every thought affects everything around us,' let me quote some interesting scientific revelations that can give a scientific angle to this post. Let me take you to Dr. Marasu Emoto's experiments on water. To be very short and crisp, he took several samples of water in petridishes and labeled each one with a different emotion like love, hatred, gratitude. On one he labeled Hitler and on the other Mother Teresa. To each one of these, he used to express that particular emotion. E.g. to the dish with gratitude, he used to thank and express his gratitude and to the one with hatred, he used bring out all the hatred. After a few days, he crystallized them and examined them under the an electron microscope (if you want to know how it is done, check this video). And lo and behold! What did he see? There were beautiful symmetrical crystals for gratitude but ugly, distorted crystals for hatred. 'Hitler' petridish showed scary crystals and 'Mother Teresa' showed loving crystals.

Yes, this is all scientific. If you want references, please go to this website or this home page. There is a book also written on this called - Messages from water. Now our questioning mind will ask again - how can you prove that what is happening outside is actually happening inside us? So here you are. Go to this link, you will see some experiments done on DNA. The same kind of experiments were done on human DNA by quantum biologists. And the results were mind blowing.

There are many more, probably I will write about it in length in another post. Just imagine, if 100ml of water can react so vividly to our thoughts, our body is 70% water. Just imagine our state if all our thoughts are that of fear or greed or hatred. And on the other end of the spectrum, what happens if our thoughts are those of love and gratitude?

In my previous post I said - people ask, 'what's the use of sitting in silence for 30 minutes?' Here I answer briefly. During these 30 minutes of silence, we can cleanse our inner space, we cleanse our thoughts. Let that be a beginning.

- Sri Nithya Arpanananda

(images courtesy: http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm)

The Marathon of Life

Recently, I was catching up with an old high school friend of mine. He was asking me the standard questions: - 'so how is work?', 'how is married life?', 'how are studies' and so on. Naturally, when these are the only thoughts we are living in, can we think beyond? All our lives we have been carving an identity for ourselves - our career, our personal lives, our parents, our job, new house, new car! Isn't there more to life I thought. My friend then went on to tell me about his new job, the pay hike, the complaints with the new job, the boss etc.

Nothing wrong about this, but it led me to wonder. Are we ever really enjoying and celebrating what we have? If so, great! Most often than not, we are blindly running the race. We are so busy making 5-year plans, 10-year plans and what not. We slog in office, run an extra mile to make an extra dollar till we drop tired each day. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Are we really enjoying this process from within or running out of fear and greed? Let's ask ourselves honestly.

Are we switching jobs because we are not happy with our current job or because the new one offers a higher pay? Is that higher pay going to make us happier? Few months after we join the new job, will we stop looking for other companies that pay higher? What happens now if our friend gets a better job than us? Will we be as happy? Is there a 'finish' point to this race that we are running?

Have we ever given a thought to what lies beyond this running race? Whether we like it or not, we have to say 'goodbye' to EVERYTHING that we believe is us and ours. Then what happens? Is our bank account going to save our lives? Maybe it would help to pay the hospital bills and delay this farewell process. But one day we must leave. Have we ever sat down and wondered why then did we run so foolishly, without stopping even for a brief moment to ask 'why' and 'what lies beyond'? As Swamiji says 'Only if we have 'lived' well, we can 'leave' well'.

Swamiji quotes a beautiful story about a man who was granted a wish - whatever land he could cover by running before sunset would be his. He ran and ran and ran, ran out of breath, but still ran. He covered large fields enough for his entire family for many generations. But he didn't stop. He covered buildings, temples, all the land he could see. The thought of having it all, the greed ran for him. His throat parched, body begging him to stop, but 'No', he wouldn't stop. He ran till it became dusk, almost falling apart. When he saw a stream he thought he would stop there. By the time he reached, he dropped dead into it.

Till such time it dawns on us that everything we see is temporary and transient, we take life too seriously and never enjoy what we have. Let us celebrate what we have and be grateful. We don't even know whether we are going to breathe our next breath!

-- Ma Nithyananda Arpana

Are you really???

When I talk to people about how blissful we become after doing meditation, people generally ask, 'what do you mean, you become happy after meditation. Aren't we happy? Aren't we leading a happy life without meditation?'

They start defending their state. This has happened not just with me but many friends of mine who have started meditating. If we think for a moment, if we truly believe we are happy, why do we become defensive the very moment I say that statement? Many people who are reading this post might also be thinking on the same lines - 'do you think I am not happy without meditation?

Let me take a small detour and get back to these questions.

If we ask ourselves, how many of us can say honestly - I do not get worried, I do not get stressed out, I do not get anxious. I am sure all of us have these problems and yes, I mean all of us including me. I am in no better state than you are in :)

Now this brings us to the next question - does that worry, stress, anxiety affect us? When we are getting worried, how much of power are we giving to that worry? When we are getting anxious, how much does that anxiety control us? When we answer these questions honestly, we will see that our worries, our stresses, our anxieties, our happiness, our sorrows control us and this where a person who meditates will differ from a person who does not.

We can find three categories of people. I am sure each of us can surely relate to one of these three kinds.

The first kind would just love to be worried. One worry after the other, they keep on worrying. Lets say, one day they do not have money to do something and if by some means they get that money, then the next moment some other problem starts. They just love to be in the worried state.

The second kind is the category of people who know that they are getting worried but they do not know what to do about it and in this process they give power to that worry. They keep on saying - 'its so stressful. What can I do? There is too much work.' They know very well that they are getting drained out but at the same time, they do not know what else to do; how else to tackle it.

The third kind is the category of people who know how to just be a spectator when a worry bothers them. There is a difference between this category and the second category. Here when the person is getting worried, he floods himself with awareness. He is aware of the worry but he does not allow the worry to take control him. He just laughs at the worry instead of giving power to that worry. But in the previous case, he knows that he is worrying but he gives worry the power of attorney to control him.

Meditation helps us to fall into the third category. Intellectual people may call meditation useless or pointless. They think - 'whats the point of sitting for half an hour silently? What do you hope to achieve anyway by just sitting silently?' They just close the doors even before peeping outside and seeing the beautiful landscape outside.

Meditation brings in that awareness inside us. That is what I meant by my very first statement - how blissful we become after doing meditation. If you read it carefully, I said blissful and not happy. Bliss is a state when no external thing can control our emotions. Bliss is internal and happiness is external. Something goes according to our way, we are happy; suddenly it changes we become sad or we start to compromise or complain. But when we flood ourselves with awareness, we are within ourselves. We become a spectator to happening inside and outside us.

There is enough scientific evidence to prove this. If someone says -whats the point of sitting silently, let me tell you, that silence speaks a lot. I will write more on this in this next post but for now if you think you are happy, just think for a second - are you really???

- Sri Nithya Arpanananda