Why search when you have found?

A few weeks ago, we visited the house of a devotee to perform the Sri Vidya Puja at his place. While we were setting up for the puja, he was showing us his 'spiritual' collection. A huge book shelf in the living room had books by all Masters one could think of. He also has a little corner where he does his meditation and daily prayers, where he had kept souvenirs from various ashrams, holy places. He was reading our selective passages from different books to us in the context of a few conversations we had.

It was an interesting experience for me as I was for the first time meeting someone whom Swamiji calls a 'professional seeker'. It was amazing how he was quickly referring to various sources and quoting lines. Later after the puja, this gentleman shared with us how he feels so touched by Swamiji after he met Him. But he expressed how he is undergoing a big confusion in his life as a seeker with so many masters, so many different methods, so many different ways of expressing the truth. Although he was now clear from within about that special connection he shares with Swamiji, he was going through a painful dilemma about whether he should choose to go with just Him or whether it is okay to have many Masters.

This reminded us of what Swamiji beautifully clarifies in one of His discourses on seeking (watch below), that at the initial level, when the seeking is first triggered in a person, a seeker is encouraged to explore. If every Master is a garden, then he should visit as many gardens, pluck those flowers he likes and make a garland or bouquet for himself. This is a good inspiration in the beginning because the spark of "seeking" that has just been triggered is fanned in the process of searching various sources.

However, once we have found the click with a particular Master, then there is no point in continuing to search. The Master warns that if we are really serious about finding out the truth, then it is the intensity that matters (Here are our previous posts on intensity of seeking). And for this intensity to happen, He says drop all else once the connection with a Master has happened. Just dive in with all heart and soul. There is no logical explanation to feeling connected with a Master. An intense connection with the Master is a gift of Existence. Something much deeper than our logical analysis guides us towards him.

And when this happens, and we drop all else and go to that one Master with all conviction and trust, the true miracles start to unfold. Otherwise we will just be wasting our time with analysing, criticizing other Master or passing our judgements/opinions about them. If we are smart enough we will realize that none of this analysis is actually going to help us progress spiritually.

An enlightened master's touch can do much more than what a thousand meditation sessions through one's own effort can do. Such is the compassion of the master. But to avail of this grace, one has to be open. When we trust the Master and are ready to receive, it's only then we are truly open. Master is like a river who has abundance. It is upto us whether we want to go to Him with an empty teaspoon or an empty mug or an empty bucket or an empty reservoir! If we are really smart, we would consider building a dam!

Here is a discourse where Swamiji clarifies this beautifully in His own words:

Spirit + Ritual = Spirituality

========================= THOUGHT PROCESS 1=========================

Lets go through this questionaire:

(1) What are our first thoughts when we wake up in the morning on a Monday morning?
(2) What are our first thoughts when we wake up in the morning on any weekday?
(3) How do we feel when it is Friday?


The answers are (for most of us...):

(1) Oh God! Its monday again...
(2) Let me sleep for some more time... or let me go a bit later.. or should I take the day off ...
(3) TGIF (thank God, its friday)


========================= THOUGHT PROCESS 2=========================


Each of us want to live happily. We work because we want to make money and we intend to live happily. We think that working hard or studying hard will give us the happiness that we are looking for. We think getting a promotion in job, getting a higher degree in university, getting a better post will help us live happily, will help us lead a successful life.


================================================================


Aren't the two thought processes that we go through totally contradictory? We want all the wealth in the world; we want to live happily; we want a big post, a big name in the society. We want everything but we are unwilling to put in what it needs to get those. Given an option, most of the times, we want to relax and enjoy but when we are given an option to relax, we are scared about our future, we get frightened to be left behind in the race to the top.


Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, "As a human being, we are gifted with two things - freedom and will. We exercise our freedom in every possible way but we do not exercise our will. We use our freedom to postpone things and relax but we do not have the will to actually sit and work towards what we want."

This is so true. We procrastinate and postpone even our sources of enjoyment. We want everything and we have all the freedom in the world to work towards getting those. But what is missing is our will to actually for it.

We are not intense in whatever we do, that is the problem. At work, which we believe brings us money, name and happiness, we are not intense. We are not enthused enough to really go and work. At the same time, when we are given an opportunity to take a break, we are not intense even to enjoy that. At work, when we go for coffee or tea, how many of us really enjoy that cup of tea and relax completely?

We do not have the will, the intensity and the enthusiasm for anything. Nithyananda says, "Your own lack of intensity and awareness is the main reason for all our stress, worry and all your emotional problems. We blame the external world for everything but the problem really lies inside us."

Nithyananda says beautifully,

"A ritual is a mechanical process till you add spirit to it; then it
becomes a meditation. Similarly, spirituality is all about adding spirit to
life. For most of us life is a mechanical process or a ritual. All we need to
add is spirit to life; then the ritual becomes spirituality."

The meditation and yoga programs like Life Bliss Program (LBP1) and Nithya Yoga, teach only this - adding intensity and awareness, just to enjoy every moment of life. They are not about some mystical stuff labeled as 'spirituality'. They are life solutions to explode in 360 degrees.

Come, enjoy life... enjoy spirituality...

Intensity + Awareness + Enthusiasm = Beauty + Grace

Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, 'Beauty and grace happens in us because of three things - intensity, enthusiasm and awareness.'

And we can clearly see that in His body language. One thought that 99% of the people get when we see Him (either we are seeing Him for the first time or we have seen Him hundreds of times) is, 'What a beauty and grace?' Not just with Paramahamsa Nithyananda, the same happens with Masters like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda, Paramahamsa Yogananda, Sharada Devi, Lahiri Mahashaya. If you see the videos of Ramana Maharashi in youtube, you just fall in love with His silent grace. The pictures of Ramakrishna show that beauty of devotion; the pictures and words of Vivekananda show His strength; the potraits of Sharada Devi show that simplicity and the smile of Lahiri Mahashaya and Yogananda are worth thousands. In every movement of Paramahamsa Nithyananda who walks and talks to us in flesh and blood, we see that beauty and grace pouring out.

Why is that so? Simply because they are/were aware of every single movement, every single thought and every single breath that they used to take. We on the other hand are hardly aware of what we are doing. We move our hands, legs and body every where without even being aware of them. We would have done thousands of things in a day but in the darkness of unawareness (most of the times).

We do things, we speak, we move or rather we live not with intensity and enthusiasm but in the shackles of our engrave memories (engrams) or samskaras or past experiences and emotions. Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, 'We keep doing the same things over and over again. We keep making the same mistakes again and again. In fact, we have the same thought patterns at specific times of the day even when the situations are different on different days.' This is simply because most of the times we operate mechanically.

Everything that we do is either because of our fears or because of our greed for wanting more and more. These two just take the beauty away from what we are doing. That awareness brings that beauty to our movements, thoughts and actions. If we see Paramahamsa Nithyananda in His discourses, every movement of His is hand is graceful. There is a sheer beauty that radiates from every movement of His. There is no unnecessary or violent movement or word.

He is blissful inside and hence the beauty, grace and bliss on the outside. The blissful smile of Lahiri Mahasaya and Yogananda is an expression of their bliss inside. The thousand watt gaze of Vivekananda is a manifestation of His strength of bliss inside. Meditation techniques and Nithya Yoga that Paramahamsa Nithyanada keeps talking about in all His discourses are meant for us to build that intensity, awareness and enthusiasm so as to realize and radiate our true nature - bliss.

The path of selfless service

Recently, Ayya, one of the first disciples of Swamiji was in Singapore and shared some beautiful truths about how working for the mission makes us grow in our own path. The previous post spoke about how when we set unreasonable targets and work, our mind-body entity has to drop. As Paramahamsa Nithyananda says "Don't think that depending on your energy you should take up responsibilities. I tell you, just take up more and more responsibilities; the energy to carry them forward will just gush through you".

This post throws light further about how seva or selfless service towards the master/mission is only for us to evolve spiritually. The Master understands the modern human mind only too well. In olden days, simple techniques like watching the breath or just witnessing thoughts could lead one to enlightenment. Today, life is so fast paced and filled with activity. A whole new layer has formed in the brain called the 'cerebral layer' to cope up with this fast lifestyle. The thousands of ad hoardings, TV commercials, magazines, newspapers etc are filled with junk information that the brain cannot even handle.

By and by, our whole mental set up has become that of 'restlessness'. Swamiji quotes Ramakrishna's simile about modern human mind as a drunk monkey which has been bitten by a thousand scorpions. This was hundred years ago that Ramakrishna uttered those words, you can imagine now! We need to add more qualifiers to that simile :)

Now for such a mental setup filled with 'rajas' (restlessness), if one prescribes meditation alone, then the restlessness takes over after some time. Or once the meditation is done, we revert to our usual stressful lifestyle. The same goes with Yoga or devotion or any other traditional path of silence/going inward. Working for the mission is a means to channelise that energy that is otherwise getting dissipated.

By working for the mission, there is an undercurrent intention of working towards enlightenment. Any action done with a strong intention only strengthens that intention further, there by adding intensity to the whole process. The best part is that with Paramahamsa Nithyananda, there are infinite options to choose from so that we do what we love doing and still can get the satisfaction of working for Him. Starting from transcribing, editing and writing books to organising/managing events to volunteering to composing/singing songs or painting to teaching...

When we do mission work with a deep feeling of connection with the Master, then that work is not work anymore. It's just a blissful expression from within. It becomes a celebration!

What a beautiful opportunity the Master is giving all of us to connect to Him even when His form is absent and to intensity our penance in a fun-way by doing what we love doing. That is the specialty about doing mission work - the master doesn't need us, we do not help anybody but ourselves in the process. His energy will do it's work anyway, with or without us being involved. It is for us to understand that when we immerse ourselves in seva or selfless service towards the master/mission, only we expand and connect more and more deeply to our core.

Intense Yearning: The basic Ingredient

What makes a Parivrajaka different from just another conducted trip? The mystics and sages who wander in the quest for truth certainly don't treat their journey as just a sight-seeing pleasure trip. So, what's the necessary ingredient that makes a Parivrajaka what it is?

Intense yearning or seeking for the Truth This was one of the main messages, or should I say, the message of the Varanasi Trip - intense yearning for the Ultimate.

At each and every place, the Master kept drilling this single point into us. He said, 'The two things that are important during parivrajaka (wandering) are intense yearning for the Truth and intense excitement.'

All the enlightened masters, whether they wandered or not, had the intense yearning to find out the Ultimate Truth. That is what makes them so different from any other person. They would do anything to find the Truth. The Master gave various examples of how all enlightened masters had this single emotion in common before they got enlightened.

At Bodh Gaya, the Master narrated the story of Buddha's life which showed the intensity with which He was yearning for enlightenment. Buddha was weak and feeble and was almost dying without food for many years in His pursuit for the Truth. One day, while He was lying down almost dead, a lady offers Him a handful of food. After eating that, with whatever energy He got from that food, He sat up with no other thought but knowing the Truth. With burning determination to seek the truth, He made a vow to Himself, 'Idam aasanam sushyate shareeram', which means 'Let my body dry up and wither away but I will not get up from this position till I get enlightened.' That was the intention which came out with such force, intensity and strength that He got enlightened immediately.

In Dakshineswar, the Master narrated similar incidents from Ramakrishna's life. He used to rub His face on the ground, hurt Himself and cry to Goddess Kali, if at the end of the day, He found that He hadn't yet realized the Divine. Ramakrishna used to say, we cry for so many things in life. But one day, just one day, 24 hours if we genuinely cry to see Her (the Divine Mother), she will appear!

The Master also talked about His own experiences; how He was immersed in one single thought - enlightenment; how He was unperturbed by whatever people said, whatever society thought; how only one thing mattered to Him - enlightenment.

At one point towards the end of the trip, with regards to enlightenment, the Master said, 'Even if you meditate for 24 hours, without the intensity of yearning for the Ultimate, you will go nowhere. But if the intensity is so strong that even a tornado cannot push you away if you were sitting in the middle with the resolve of seeking the truth, then even if you do not meditate, you will see the Truth.'

He also gave us another analogy: If a person's head is on fire, will he be thinking of anything else but to ran to a nearby pond and cool it? His FULL attention and intensity is to put off that fire first. He would do anything for that! Just like that, the sole focus of our lives should be that of seeking the Truth.

His concluding beautiful words of the trip were: This trip need not end here. All you need to do is to maintain that intensity even after the trip and you will see that this trip never ends! He also reminded us that the very intensity will show us the path. So, whenever we a low or a dip in the intensity for the truth, let us remember these great inspiring words and pull ourselves back. Let the fire of seeking be alive in each of us, guiding us forward...