Courage to experiment

Paramahamsa Nithyananda recalls one of His childhood memories in His biograph and many discourses. Very briefly, He was just 9 years old when he went for a discourse that was being given by an enlightened master named Annamalai Swami, a direct disciple of Ramana Maharshi. He says, 'That night Annamalai Swami was talking about how we are not body, we are not disturbed or we do not have pains. We are beyond body. We are beyond sufferings... All these high Vedantic ideas. I was surprised to hear those words. So I went home and took a knife and cut my thigh. Of course I had pain; I was taken to doctor and also got two from mother.

'After few days, I went back to Annamalai Swami and asked Him, 'What did you teach me? I tried this after listening to you and now I have pain.' Annamalai Swami says, 'Son, don't bother about the pain. Try to see where that thought is coming.' He taught me a technique to find the source of thoughts and finally said, 'The very courage to experiment with the truth will liberate you. Don't bother about anything else.'

The whole point of having so many of His discourses on youtube is to inspire and encourage people to experiment with the truths He is talking about. All enlightened masters had one thing in common. They were daring enough to experiment with the truth. Paramahamsa Yogananda in His Autobiography of a Yogi also talks about how He used to experiment with the ideas of intention or sankalpa. Similarly, another enlightened master Nisargadatta Maharaj comtemplated on the idea of 'I am' that was given to Him by His master as an experiment and eventually it became a meditation for Him.

Most of us read, listen or watch some discourse of Nithyananda or any other master and we either forget about it or brush it aside for the time being. As long as we listen to the discourse, we say, 'wow, this is awesome; this is so true.' Once the discourse is done, all the enthusiasm also goes down. We are back to our normal lifestyle with the same tensions, same worries and same stress.

Why do we do this? If the discourse was so awesome and answered our problems, why don't we practice them? The simple answer is we do not have the courage and strength to experiment and go against our engraved memories and emotions. We choose to be in the same state. That's the word - choose. We choose to be in the luxury of the known worries, tensions and stresses. The great truths by enlightened masters seem like unknown territories and we dare not to venture into those areas.

We forget one thing in this choosing process that what we think as unknown and what we are scared of is actually leading to our own self, the bliss of realizing our own true potential.

Simple techniques like watching breath or laughing out, being in a blissful mood etc. should be experimented; only then we see the truth behind them. In our meditation courses, we keep reminding people, please go back and experiment and know for yourself.

Nobody can force anyone to do a meditation. Only when one experiments with himself, can he really see the true potential of the great truths from the master. Let me end this post with our Masters own words in this video titled: The courage to experiment.