Many people get worried about what they see in their dreams and come to me for interpretations. I tell them that we are unable to even accept what happens in reality, then why bother about what happens in our dreams?

On day, a man dreamt a strange dream and became very curious to know what the dream meant. He went to his master, told him about the dream and asked for an explanation.

The master told him, ‘Come to me with dreams that come to you in your wakeful state. We will work them out. The dreams of your sleep belong neither to my wisdom, nor to your imagination.’

If you are still worried about your dreams, you should know that dreams tell you about the state of your mind during the day. Learn from your dreams and think how to transform the mind during the daytime. For example, if you think too much about lust when your are awake, your dreams will be lustful. If you worry too much about passing with high grades, you will write exams in your dreams! If you worry too much about relationships, you will fight with someone in your dream. So wake up to what your dreams indicate to you. There is nothing more to interpret from your dreams. Wake up and see what is as it IS.

A small story:

One disciple kept asking the master, ‘Master, where is paradise?’
Finally one day, the master asked him, ‘Do you really want to know?’
The disciple sat up and said, ‘Yes!’

The master said, ‘Alright, my first disciple Hemachandra is in paradise.’ After saying these words the master closed his eyes and went into meditation.

The disciple knew it would be a long time before the master opened his eyes. So, he went and asked some of the disciples if they knew where Hemachandra lived. No one seemed to know.

Finally one disciple said, ‘I know how to guide you there, but I have never been there myself. It is in a deep valley beyond a range of ice covered mountains.’
The disciple wrote down the directions carefully and went back to the master. He told him, ‘Master, I wish to pay a visit to Hemachandra!’
The master was absorbed deeply in some work. Without even looking up he said, ‘Go ahead.’

The disciple started on his journey. He walked for many days, passing through sun, rain, snow, and what not. He became exhausted, on the verge of death. It took him one hundred days to reach the valley. When he finally reached it he looked at the valley and thought, ‘This valley doesn’t look all that great. I have seen many more beautiful valleys. Why did the master call this paradise?’

He looked around and walked further and finally found Hemachandra’s hut. Hemachandra was very pleased to see him. He served him food and asked how the master and other disciples were doing.

All along, the disciple was thinking to himself, ‘Master called this place paradise? I can’t believe it.’

After a week-long stay he left and returned to his master. It took him another one hundred days to return home.

He went straight to the master and stated, ‘You said that the place is paradise. But what I saw was the most ordinary place ever!’

The master said, ‘Oh god! At the time of your enquiry, had you been more explicit about your intention, I would have told you the truth.’

The disciple asked, ‘What is the truth?’
The master replied, ‘Hemachandra is not in paradise. Paradise is in him!’

When you live close to Existence, without any expectation, seeing what is as it is and finding the blessings in it, you will carry heaven in you! Heaven is not geographical, it is psychological. It is not physical, it is mental. If you decide, you can be in heaven right now.

One man got onto a bus and sat down next to a young man. He could see that the man was a hippy. He was wearing only one shoe.
He asked him, ‘You have lost one shoe?’
The young man replied, ‘No, I have found one shoe.’

Stop naming any situation, person, or thing! Just see, that’s all. Don’t give room for condemning or accepting thoughts.

Initially there’s a compulsion to pass judgment on anything that you see because that is your habit. But when you experience the great energy released in you by seeing what IS, you want to remain that way – free from thoughts, worry, and suffering.

When you see what is as it is, you are in heaven. When you want to see what you want to see, you are in hell. If you understand that everything is auspiciousness, you will drop expectation and see things as they are, because everything is auspiciousness.

Someone asked J. Krishnamurti*, the famous Indian philosopher, how to fall in tune with what IS. He beautifully says, ‘Just don’t name it, you will find you are in tune with it!’

Usually, when we see something, we either try to identify with it or we try to condemn it. For example, if you are told you are arrogant, you either accept it or you try not to be arrogant! You never understand or go beyond arrogance. You can only understand within your frame of reference, what you are familiar with. Because of this, you are caught in a limited view of possibilities. To really understand, you need to go beyond this limited point-of-view. To do that, you have to stop naming it arrogance, that’s all! There will be no more arrogance. Only by naming it, you start the conflict. That is how you see what IS – by not naming it.

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J. Krishnamurti – Renowned Indian philosopher.

How can you keep thoughts away from what truly IS? How can you enjoy each moment all the time?

Try this small technique. When you see something, for example a person, or a situation, or a book, or anything, normally old thoughts and familiar reactions immediately rise in you. Bring in the awareness that these conditioned thoughts and memories cloud your judgment and visualize shattering those thoughts. Next, see the situation, or person, or object now with a fresh eye, as though you are seeing it for the first time! Suddenly you see how much you missed, because of your own worry and thoughts.

Even when you see your husband, wife, brother, or anyone, look at them as though you are seeing them for the first time. Suddenly, you realize that not only does worry not arise, but also that you start seeing everyone alike, whether they are strangers or familiar to you. That is the right way. No one is familiar or unchanging. Even your wife is not known to you. Everyone is constantly changing every moment along with Existence. Only your mind is trying to make them appear to be permanent.

Once you start seeing what is as it is, all your energy will integrate within you. There is no more worry, no more conflict. Worry arises because your thoughts resist what you see. Once the conflict disappears, all the energy invested in worry is released for you to integrate!

Buddha*, an enlightened master, used the word tathata – seeing what is as it IS. It is seeing what is there as it is, without any judgment.

But most of the time we see things only through our worry. When we see everything as it is, there is only joy, and when there is joy, no thoughts get recorded in you. There are only empty spaces. That is why when you are joyful you feel light, because nothing gets recorded. When you see everything through worry, more thoughts get recorded in you and you feel heavy.

There is a common saying, ‘We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.’ If you feel there is something wrong with what you are seeing, then you should look back in at yourself because what you see outside is only a reflection of what is inside you. If you feel pure love inside, then you see only pure love outside. It always has to do with you, not with what you are seeing.

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Buddha – Enlightened master and founder of the religion of Buddhism.

In a classroom, the teacher found that one boy was sitting with a very sad face.
She asked him, ‘What happened? Why do you look so worried?’
The boy said, ‘It’s my parents. My dad works all day to provide good clothes and an excellent education for me. He buys me anything I want. My mother cooks the best food for me and takes care of me from morning until I go to bed.’
The teacher asked, ‘Then what is your problem? Why are you worried?’
The boy replied, ‘I am afraid they may run away.’

The mind has a clear identity only with pain, never with joy! That is why recalling even joyful moments becomes painful.

Joy never gets recorded as thoughts, but pain does. That’s why our internal recordings are always negative thoughts. Joy is like a blank recording! For example, if your entire life is like a time shaft, on that shaft the joyful moments are simply empty spaces! There won’t be any recording corresponding to it. But the moments of worry and suffering will be clearly recorded as black impressions.

On a beautiful white wall if there is a small black dot, and I ask you what you are able to see, what will you say? You will say you only see the black dot. You will not see the big white space surrounding it! That is how you conclude that your time shaft is only made up of worry and suffering.

It is like this: there is a continuous current of chatter happening in you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. From this current a few spikes rise. These spikes are what you feel and express as worries. Worries are nothing but spikes in the current of thoughts constantly moving within you.

These thoughts are mostly negative. That’s the problem. If I ask you to write your life story in a few pages, you will write a few incidents highlighting how and when you struggled. You will not highlight the many joyful incidents that happened in between. The mind is trained to record only negative things. Even when something joyful happens, you remember only the moment when it ended, never the moments when you felt joy. Because even when you are at the peak of joy, you are always worrying about when the joy will end! The mind is trained from a very young age to think that life moves from one worry to the other or from one pain to another, never from one joy to another.

Nithyanandam,

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In Nithyananda.

Worry takes root from your own thoughts or words. There are two things that continuously happen in you. The first is dialogue, and the second is monologue or what I call ‘inner chatter’. You either talk to people outside or you continuously chatter within you. In any case, words and thoughts are the ‘building blocks’ that make up worry.

When you speak to others, what you say is strictly governed by societal rules. You automatically don’t use prohibited or ‘politically incorrect’ words. But what you say inside yourself, no one except you knows. The thoughts that you generate inside constitute your real worries.

Khalil Gibran*, a Lebanese poet of the eighteenth century, beautifully says, ‘You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts!’ and ‘Our very verbalization is because we are not able to handle ourselves peacefully within us.’

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Khalil Gibran – Lebanese American poet best known for his ‘The Prophet’.

What is meant by ‘worry’? Worry arises whenever things are not happening as you want them to happen. It is the discrepancy between your expectations and reality. For example, you feel your son should stay at home with you, whereas he feels he should be by himself, away from you. You feel your salary should be a few thousand dollars more. Your boss feels otherwise. You want to finish your project by a certain time. But things are happening too slowly and it seems an impossible task. These are all causes for worry. What you want and expect does not match what others want and expect.

You continuously expect things to happen in a certain way. Whether it is as big as your career or as small as what time your husband should come home for a meal, you continuously impose your will upon what is happening and worry about it.

We talked of love so far. Love is about our relationship with others. Love is also about our relationship with us. Without loving ourselves we cannot love others. What prevents us from loving our own self is the constant worry or irritation that we generate within us. Whether things go right or wrong we worry. There is nothing more corrosive to our self-esteem than worry. What is this worry?

A small story:

A man walked into a bar looking worried and upset.
The bartender asked him, ‘What’s the matter? You look very worried about something.’
The man said, ‘My wife and I had a fight and she told me that she wouldn’t talk to me for a month.’
The bartender consoled him ‘It’s okay. One month isn’t that long.’
The man said, ‘I know. The month is up today!’

Everyone has his or her own set of worries! If I ask you what you worry about, you will tell me, ‘I don’t have a job, that’s my worry.’ Your neighbor will say, ‘My job is my main worry!’ Someone else will say, ‘My children are my worry.’ Another person will say, ‘I don’t have children, that’s my worry!’ One person’s dream is another person’s worry! You will not find any logic in it at all.

Sit down comfortably by yourself and close your eyes.

Focus on your heart region. Exclude everything else. Focus only on the heart.

Visualize your heart as an endless reservoir from where blessings can flow.

Feel every heartbeat deeply. Let every beat resound throughout you.

Between the heartbeats, feel the energy of love happening.

In the deepest parts of your body, mind and soul, the love energy is waiting to be acknowledged.

Invite the love energy of the heart to flow and fill these deepest parts of your body, mind and soul.

Slowly open your eyes.

When a person passes away, you grieve only because you regret not having loved him completely. You can love him completely only when your love itself is complete. It doesn’t have anything to do with the other person. It doesn’t matter what kind of person he is. That is the beauty of real love. It loves for the sake of love, not for the sake of the other person.

If you are grieving for the loss of a person, be very clear, you are grieving because you missed loving him in totality. If you had loved him in totality, you would say goodbye to him with complete restfulness, not with grief. You grieve only because you missed something somewhere. Even if it is your own father or husband or wife, it is the same. If you had radiated your causeless love to them when they were alive, then when they left there would not be any regret. But if you had loved them with rationalizations, then when they left, the incompleteness of your love towards them would create a hangover, and that hangover is what you feel as grief.

One of the ashramites* asked me one day, ‘Swamiji, everyday you see all of us, all our mistakes and confusions. It is the same thing for you every day. Are you not bored by us?’ It was a very honest question! I told them, ‘For enlightened beings, just because of their very love, they feel everybody is unique. They do not look at people as mere numbers. They see each one as unique.’

That is why, with so much patience, masters continue to work with everybody. If it were just a matter of numbers, it would be very different. When you have this love, your inner space is such that there is no logical reason behind your actions. You will just feel connected and you will radiate love, that’s all!

Not only that, causeless overflowing love is always total in its expression. It doesn’t carry the usual dilutions of greed or fear. So any person whom you love, you will love totally without any reservations. Irrespective of the way he is, you will love him. When you love this way, even if the person leaves your life, you will not grieve.

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Ashramites – Residents of ashram.

These days I see people gifting each other with so many things to show their love. Gifting has become an expression of love. If the gifting happens as causeless overflowing, it is okay. But if it is a condition to be fulfilled, it becomes a problem! Then it becomes a poor substitute for real love.

As long as real love is there, no relationship can become boring. Understand, as long as love is there, every object or person is unique. For example, if the coworker in your office dies, nothing will really stop you in your life. Along with the others, you will console his family members and continue with life, that’s all. But what happens if you are in love with the same coworker who passed away? Life will never be the same again, am I right? Whenever you are in love with some object or person, or somebody is in love with you, the whole relationship becomes unique. Love makes things unique.

With real love, there will be no fear or insecurity either. In normal love, physical distance between two people causes a lot of insecurity and a lack of trust.

A small story:

A young soldier went to his senior officer and said, ‘Sir, my friend is not yet back from the battlefield. I request permission to go out and get him.’

The officer said, ‘Permission refused. Your friend is most probably dead. I don’t want you to risk your life going there.’

The young solider went all the same and came back mortally wounded and carrying the corpse of his friend.

The officer was furious. He shouted, ‘I told you he was dead. Now I have lost both of you. Tell me, was it worth going out there to bring a corpse?’

On the verge of dying, the soldier replied, ‘It was, Sir. When I got there he was still alive. He said to me, I was sure you would come.’

Real love doesn’t look for utility. It operates on sheer trust and is also beyond space and time.

In real life, we always look to express our love towards others in some tangible way. Only if love is demonstrated in tangible form, it is considered to be love nowadays.

True love is like a communion. It is a resonance between two beings. It can be felt without any expression. It doesn’t need communication because it is already happening as a communion.

If you really love a person, then your very body language will show it. It will be too much to express in words. You will feel that words are inadequate and will only bring down the love that you feel. But if you are using words, then somewhere the love has not really happened. When you have to speak to express love, then somewhere there is a lie in it! You are using the words just to decorate the lie.

Real love liberates because it doesn’t compel you to express it all the time. It just is. Real love also gives you the freedom to freely express what you want to express. You can easily express anything like disapproval or anger and it will not be mistaken for reduced love.

Not only that, with real love, there will be no domination or power play in relationships. Each person will be like a beautiful flower that has blossomed to radiate its unique fragrance, that’s all.

People ask me, ‘Swamiji, how are you able to travel so often and not feel unsettled?’ This question comes mostly from people who travel for business. They say, ‘If we go to one or two places and come back, it takes one week to recover, settle down and get back into our routine and feel comfortable, to feel like ourselves again. How do you travel so continuously?’ The secret is the same thing I told you earlier. I don’t feel attached or connected to any one house, so I feel connected to the whole world! There is a deep feeling of being at home with the whole world. With this feeling, wherever you go, you will experience a deep, relaxed bliss and ecstasy because that bliss doesn’t come from the outer home but from the inner home.

When I travel around the world, people ask me, ‘Did you sleep well last night? It is a new place for you.’ I tell them, ‘Only when you have attachment to a particular house does another house become a new place for you and you struggle. When you don’t have attachment to any house, you feel at home wherever you go!’

I never feel any place is mine or not mine. I feel totally at home anywhere. The comfort is always within us, never outside us. When there is no comfort within us, we look for comfort outside us. Feeling comfortable within us is the result of the causeless love energy. When we don’t feel attached to one home, we feel at home in the entire world. We are totally relaxed anywhere in the world.

You may be attached to your beloved or god or master or friend or whoever. To move from that attachment, to move from the form to the formless, this is the technique. You can take a quantum jump into love with this. With this jump you will see that love happens not as an attachment to a particular object but as an overflowing energy that doesn’t look for any attachment in the outer world. It is just your own overflowing that you share, that’s all. It happens irrespective of whether the object is there or not.

When love happens as causeless overflowing, you simply liberate yourself and the other person from your own attachment and possessiveness, because possessiveness as you know it, binds not only the other person but you as well. It tortures the other person as well as you! Real love simply liberates both of you. It gives freedom to you and the other person.

The big problem is that you never sit in a relaxed way. Either you are driven by greed, meaning you are in a hurry to say or do something, or you don’t know what you are doing and so you are caught with fear. You just try to finish your job and escape! Either you are in greed or you are in fear. But for now, just relax. Be neither in fear nor in greed.

Just sit in the present. Just feel the other person’s presence. Accept the other person as he or she is, as that being is, and feel what happens inside you. Try this for a few days. Suddenly you will see that you will experience a different space that you have never before experienced in your life.

This is a technique from the Shiva Sutras*, a collection of techniques for enlightenment delivered by Shiva*. This technique will take you through a quantum jump from the form to the formless, from possessive love to causeless love.

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Shiva Sutras – A collection of teachings of enlightened master Shiva in epigram form as techniques. Includes Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Guru Gita, Tiru Mandiram etc.

Shiva – enlightened Master from India who delivered the universal Truths in the form of scriptures like Shiva Sutras.

The next time you are with someone, when you are with your friend with whom you are completely open, remember to practice this technique.

Just sit next to him or her. Don’t bother about what you are going to do or what you are going to say. Just sit, that’s all! That is the technique. Actually, speaking is nothing but avoiding the other person. Because you cannot look into the other person’s eyes, you go on speaking. That is the truth. The other person listens so that he can start speaking whenever you take a break! If a person is listening to you, it means that he is either thinking of something else or he is preparing for his turn. He sits there so that he can start once you finish.

Now if you try this technique, it can take you to a different space altogether. When you are with the master or your friend or your beloved, whoever you feel deeply connected with, whoever you are very open with, you can try this technique. It will straightaway lead you to enlightenment. Be very clear, I am not teaching this technique for you to have better relationships or for you to develop your personality. No! I am giving it to you to straightaway experience the pure love that can lead you to enlightenment.