Sutra 1- 1: Exposition of life. In life without practice nothing can be achieved, practice joy, a daily practice of joy it is the solution, mere philosophy will not satisfied you, by words alone you cannot reach any goals, so, practice life, practice joy. The practice of joy it is very easy, I am sure that at list ones in your life you have experience joy, so, just remember that moment, remember the feeling, do not pay attention to the cause of the joy, just remember the feeling of joy and your heart will be open, your heart is the corridor to bring the inner joy to the outer, do this often and in no time you will be pure joy, it can not be other way because the essence of your soul is joy.

Sutra 2-1: The restrain of the Mind Stuff. All the problems you may think you have, have been created by your mind, so by changing your mind you will resolve or better say dissolve your problems, but, first lets understand the thing call mind, Where is the mind? The mind is all over you, all around you, there is no particular location for the mind, every single cell of your physical and non physical body it is a piece of your mind, if you think that you are thinking with your head is because the brain is the organ with the most cells. Now, the mind have three distinctive aspects or parts: The ego, the intellect or discriminative faculty and the desiring part which is command by the senses, all three together it is the total mind, this three part act separate but so fast that you are not aware of. Let me give you an example so you can understand totally how the mind works. Let say that you are sitting quietly at home in this summer afternoon, you say to yourself what a nice day, let go for a nice walk, then you are walking in a very peaceful state of mind which is your natural state when all the sudden you see this beautiful wrist watch though a window shop, Mmm what a nice watch, you say to yourself (Desire is born), how much is it?, expensive but I think I can afford it (Intellect kicks in) I got to have it, I want it, (Ego took over), now, what about the peaceful walk? Well, is over, now your mind is in a mission, I want that watch, now, the Ego say, I really love that watch the desiring part of your mind say, and the discriminative part or intellect is busy trying to figure the way to get the money to buy it. All this happens in three stages but it happens so fast that appears to be a single act of the mind. All problems in life arise from an uncontrolled mind, the way you think is the way you are, and so you think so you become. Everything in life is about perception, imagine that in this life time you are a fisherman, and the bigger fish you will ever catch is the self-fish, and the only way to catch the self-fish is to catch it in the act. So, the only thing you need, to resolve all your problems is a watchful mind, Watch every thought, watch every ripple of the mind, the outside world will not change, the way you see it can change in an instant by simple changing your perception of it. Tonight you are sleeping by the side of the Love of your life, the best thing that ever happens to you, the one you cannot live without it, that same night the love of your life say something to you or do something to you that did hurts you, now She/He is your enemy, in an instant the person change from being the love of your life to the enemy of your life, how that happens? The person change?, NO, your perception about that person have change, and that have changed your life, so in order to change your life it is not necessary to change your life, only change your perception of it. It is up to you to create your own hell or create your own heaven, have control over your thoughts and change them as you want, if you control your mind, you have controlled everything, remember, don�t control, be in control.

Sutra 3-1: The real you, The Seer, The Knower. You, yourself, you are a soul having a human experience, you are not the mind, you are not the body. You are the knower, the soul knows everything, same as the apple seed knows that it is an apple tree, you don�t need to tell or teach the apple seed to grow in to an apple tree, the seed already knows it, the only thing that is need it for the seed to show what already is, are the proper conditions, in this case, a bit of dirt, a bit of water and some sunshine, same with the soul, all is need it is the proper conditions for the soul to show and shine, forget the body, quite the mind, those are the only conditions. To forget the body complete immobility will do it, to quite the mind focus in the middle of the forehead while you are sitting still, that�s the way of the seer.

Sutra 4-1: Identification with the mind, Identification with the body; Are the wrong Identifications. If I ask you, who are you? And you answer I am a man/woman, you are Identifying your self with the body, or I am short/tall, beautiful/ugly, white/black, slim/fat, etc, those are all identifications with the body, if I ask you who are you? And you answer, I am a professor/ mechanic/doctor/salesman/astronaut/mother/father/husband/wife etc, you are Identifying your self with the mind, but, if you forget all about this wrong Identifications, lets say you put it all aside, then, who are you?, the answer is: I am, just that, I am that, I am. Let me put this in a more simple way, in this 21st century all scientist agreed that everything is energy, the rock is energy, the trees are energy, the stars are energy, you and I are energy, atoms, molecules, particles and everything that you see and don�t see are all different forms of energy, they say: different forms of energy, but energy. In reality there is only one energy, one soul, one spirit taking different forms, we are all one, we are all made out of the same stuff, whatever you consider that stuff to be, or whatever you consider that energy to be, so the spirit in a dog or cat or any other conscious being is the same as your or my spirit, better than that, the energy in the rock, the trees and the stars is the same as ours, because there is only one of us, all of us conscious and unconscious beings is the one. We can not see this because of the wrong Identifications, as longer you Identified your self with this or that you will see your self as separate, if you drop all Identifications you will brake free from the illusion of separation. I am that, is the technique. Practice this: Look at a rock and say in your mind: I am that, I am. Look at a tree and say in your mind: I am that, I am. Look at the movie star in your television set and say in your mind: I am that, I am. Look at the millionaire and say in your mind: I am that, I am. Look at the homeless person and say in your mind: I am that, I am. Look at that Men/women/child/star/clouds/mountain/animals etc, etc, etc. Look at everything and anything and say in your mind: I am that, I am. Practice this daily and in no time you will free your self forever from the illusion of separation, you will see that we are one, one with God. We are God.

Sutra 5-1: Pain, Pleasure. Many minds. How many minds do we have, well, only one, but with many modifications, some thoughts bring us pain and some thoughts bring us pleasure. But, watch out, sometimes a moment of pleasure can end up been the pain of a life time, or the other way around, some experiences are seem to be painful at the beginning but leave us with long lasting peace. The mind has five distinctive modifications of thoughts which we can simplify in to two: Selfish thought and Selfless thoughts. Selfish thought will cause you pain and all Selfless thoughts will bring you peace and pleasure. We all agreed that loving somebody or something it is a pleasurable feeling, but what if that very same love brought you lots of unhappiness, hatred and jealousy; The answer is very simple, that type of love is not pure, that type of love is base on expectations in return, if financial, physical, or emotional gratification is expected, then it is Selfish love, that�s way it is causing you pain. Love is an energy without condition, in other words love is unconditional. Any Selfless thought is born out of love, any selfish thought is born out of fear. Now, we all agreed that a thought of anger is not very pleasant, it is painful, but, what if for example a teacher get very angry with one of his/her students for not studying and applying his/her self. Although that type of anger may cause somebody to fell bad at the beginning, ultimately it help that person to correct his/her self and lead a better life, the anger of a selfless person have no personal motives behind it. Whatever the thought is if the thought is selfless it can never bring pain to nobody, specially not to you. So the key here is to cultivate selfless thoughts by analyzing all our motives, be completely selfless in what you think, be completely selfless in what you say and be completely selfless in what you do. Practice this technique daily and it will not only bring you pleasure, but it will bring you eternal peace.

Sutra 6-1: Right Knowledge, misconception, verbal delusion, sleep, memory. The mind has five distinctive modifications or thought forms. We have to watch carefully the moment a thought form arises in the mind, become an analyst of your thoughts and you will be really practicing life-watching our own thoughts and analysing them it is one of keys to master your mind.

Sutra 7-1: Perception-Right Knowledge. There is several ways to acquire knowledge, one way is to see something your self, if you see something face to face you don�t have any doubt, this is what we call direct perception. Another way is by inference, if you see your child shoes all wet, you infer that he/she was playing with water, or if you see smoke you infer that there is fire, because without fire there can�t be any smoke, or wet shoes without water. Another way is if someone tells you about something that you have not seen personally and may not have anything from which to infer, but you consider this person to be a reliable authority and he/she who has really understood something tells you, and you accepted and adopted as your truth, well, NO, you investigate, you analyze, that�s the key, analyze and investigate before you adopt anybody else�s truths. First of all, ultimate truth touches the soul, expands the mind and tingles the body, so if someone comes to you with something which she/he considers to be truth but within you there is no reaction, then this is the time to analyze and investigate. In life there is no right or wrong, there is only what works for you and what doesn�t work for you, if you are not sure then consult the scriptures written by masters from all over the world throughout the ages, their techniques have been proven to work over and over, scriptures have nothing to do with what some people call holy books, scriptures are ancients treatises of ultimate truth, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is considered one of those scriptures also called sacred text. The words of the sages, saints, prophets and masters are finalized; they have seen the truth and expounded it, truths is ever expanding but there is some basic truth that is always the same, that�s why in the east there is a tradition, if anybody ask you to do some practice, it is expected that the scriptures also recommended it. You should not do something because I say so or somebody else say so. Everybody who has gone the same road should agreed, and the scriptures should approved, because the paths are many but the truths is one. Now the presentation of the truth can vary if presented through words, forms and modes, each teacher will presented in different ways to suit the individual and the trend of age, but remember that the truth of the self is always the same, and it is easy to recognise, truth tingles. One of this truths is: All negatives thoughts are born out of fear, all positives thoughts are born out of love, negatives thoughts are disempowerment , positives thoughts empowers you; Thoughts are the tools of creation, so if your reality is not entirely to your satisfaction it is because of your thoughts pattern, change your thoughts change your reality, but how, you may ask, well, by simple monitoring your thoughts and replacing them or eliminating them. But before eliminating all thoughts, it is better to analyze them and eliminate one set at a time, it is like recycling: paper here, cans here, plastic here and so on, you can not just empty the mind at ones, for example, if you decide to renew your wardrobe, you just not take your clothes off, empty your closet and throw everything away, because then you�ll be standing naked, and how will you go shopping for new clothes? With the mind is the same, so, you analyse, this thought or this type of thought is painful, away you go, how? By just been aware that you are thinking negatives thoughts, as soon as you become aware of a negative thought, away you go, then the conscious action of elimination of the negative takes place, and nothing is more creative and powerful than a conscious mind. The mind it is not your enemy, you are a triad, compose of body, mind and soul, but at this point the mind it is like a wild horse that need to be trained, use the elimination technique daily and in very little time your life will be as you think it to be.

Sutra 8-1: Knowledge not base on true form is: Misconception In life, erroneous impressions creates thoughts waves of terror or calamity if it is sustain, for example if you are walking in the twilight see a coiled rope and mistake it for a snake you will surely get frightened, in reality there is no snake but still created terror in your mind. So, in life, misconception it is a delicate thing, it is a misunderstanding of, it is a mistaken thought, idea or notion of something, so if you see your beloved talking to an stranger do not assume he/she is having an affair, or if you boss is upset do not assume she/he is upset at you, or if the mail is not in time do not assume that the mail person do not like you, or �etc. Misconception can be eliminated from your life by looking at a situation twice.

Sutra 9-1: An Image that arise on hearing mere words not base in reality is: Verbal delusion Your friend says to you, I don�t think Mary likes you very much, she is not coming to the party tonight, why don�t she likes me, you shout, then you ask to your self, but, who�s Mary?. Someone comes to you and say: be careful that guy is a thief, immediately you get on your guard, or another say, my cd player was stolen, that�s why I couldn�t call you, oh my goodness that is to bad, how it happens?. I saw your wife talking to this other man, I think they where holding hands. Stop, Stop, Stop, All this is verbal delusion, there is nothing to support what you are hearing but still create and impression in your mind. Wars start because of verbal delusion, divorces occurred because of verbal delusion, so the key here is: Stop and Think. To never get trap in verbal delusion simply stop and think.

Sutra 10-1: The mental process of knowing of nothingness is sleep. Many people think because they slept very well they knew nothing during their sleep, they even think that there are no thoughts during sleep, if the person awakes and say: I had such a wonderful sleep I knew nothing, but you know that you knew nothing, so, there is already a thought, while you are sleep there still thoughts even if it is only the thought of emptiness and all other thoughts are suspended, you still have the one thought of emptiness in the mind, which leaves its impression upon waking. If there was real emptiness you will not know that you had slept. Do not mistake the thought of emptiness with �Emptiness�. Real emptiness it is attain only through meditation, and it is call samadhi which is a non-dualistic state of consciousness. Meditate daily without any expectations and samadhi will happen.

Sutra 11-1: A mental modification experienced in the past that comes back to consciousness is call memory. Memories can arise during sleep, we call it dreams, memories that arise wile awake are daydreams, daydreams can be projections un to the future or images raising from the past, in either case these are dreams that take you away from the golden NOW moment which is the only reality, this memories thoughts forms must be controlled to make the mind void and let the inner peace that you are shine for ever through. Be in control of your mind; don�t let the mind control you. Been aware that you are dreaming it is the easies way to control this type of mental modifications and by been aware of the dreaming recycling of the unnecessary thoughts is possible.

Sutra 12-1: Mental modifications can be restrained by the practice of non attachment. Thought control it is a great practice, but when the practice is done without any expectations, it is even greater, so practice any form of thought control and do not be attach to outcomes or results, even if there is only a 1% change a week and you don�t even see it or feel it, don�t worried, in a year you will be more than 50% better person.

Sutra 13-1: Practice and only practice will cause steadiness of the mind. Continuously scrutinize every thought, continuously scrutinize every word and continuously scrutinize every action, it is the way to conquer the mind, if you meditate for one hour or thirty minutes a day and then you let your mind go wild for the rest of the time then the conquering it will take a very long time, you must become eternally watchful of all you think, all you say and all you do. By doing this you will master your destiny.

Sutra 14-1: By practice for a long time, without breaks and earnestness , the practice becomes firmly grounded. Any practice qualified as a practice only when is done for a long time, unfortunately in this century we want everything microwave speed, and that is not possible, the most important ingredient is willingness, the secondary important ingredients, but, not less important, are; Patience, devotion and faith. So if I give you a mantra or suggest a particular meditation to you, and say to you practice this you will become calm, peaceful and make you realize wonders whiting you, you will go home and practice for a week and then call me: �Sutrananda, I have patiently practice the technique you give me all week and did it with devotion and faith that things will change, but everything is the same, maybe there is a better technique for me� You see, nothing is happening because the most important is missing: �Willingness� willingness to keep up the practice for as long as it takes. I tell you this: Microwave enlightenment do not exist, remember, paths are many, truth is one, there is many paths, there is no best meditation, there is no more powerful mantra, any of the paths, any meditation or any mantra if practiced with willingness, patience, faith and devotion will take you to the truth in which you already are, you just don�t know it. The truth is, the truth of oneness, we are one. You and I are One, God and I are one. Let me help you understand this better, let me tell you a little story that I heard from Swami Satchidananda, it is a small story taken from the Hindu scriptures, it is the story of Narada: Narada was a great Sage travelling all over, and from time to time stopping on hearth to see how we are doing. So, Narada one day was passing through a forest and saw a meditator, which have been meditating under the same tree for a very, very long time. The person looked at Narada and said, �Narada, sir where are you going?� �To heaven to see Gog.� �Oh could you please do me a favor.� �Sure, what can I do?� �Could you please ask God, for how many more life�s should I meditate before I attain the ultimate, I have been sitting here for quite a long time� � Sure, Narada said�. Then Narada walked a few miles further and saw another man, but this one was jumping and dancing and playing the flute with all joy. When he saw Narada he said: � Hi Narada, where are you going?� � To heaven Narada said� � Oh great, Could you please find out how many more life�s do I have here on hearth before I attain Nirvana?. � Sure, I will, Narada replay.� So, after many years Narada came back and went to see the first man, who was still meditating under the same tree, the man when he saw Narada was very excited, Narada did you ask God, What did the Lord say? �I ask the Lord and the Lord said that you have another four births� � WHAT�..Another�.FOUR� births!!!???� �Havent I waited long enough!!!???� � The man start shouting, lamenting and crying. Narada kept on walking and went to see the other man, who was still dancing and playing his flute. � Hi Narada, what is happened,? did you get some news for me?� �Yes� �Well tell me� �Do you se that tree over there?�Yes� �Why� � God said that you have as many lives as the number of leaves on that tree� � That�s all, only one tree, please Thank God for not giving me the leaves of the entire forest, one tree I can quickly finish it of.� And at the minute he said that, out of thin air a messenger from God appears holding two horses, the messenger look at the man and said: �My brother this horse is for you, would you mind coming with me? The Lord have sent for you.� � Have I attain Nirvana? I am going to heaven now?� �Yes� �But, Narada just toll me that I have to take as many births as the number of leaves on that tree�. �Yes, but you were ready and willing to do that, so why should you wait? Come on.� This is a very significant story, when you choose to do something for as long it takes, you already have patience, you are already devoted and of course faith is already there, so, just work on willingness, just keep on doing it, it can happens at any moment.

Sutra 15-1: Been free from cravings for what you have seen or heard is Non-attachment, is Self-mastery. Let me tell you a little story that I heard from a wise man long ago. �This happens on a far away kingdom long, long ago, there it was this passing by beggar, begging around the streets for many days now, but you see this was the kingdom of a very proud king and begging was not aloud, his kingdom was prosperous and magnificent and anybody not leaving up to his standards was not allowed to stay, much less begging on the streets, the king heard about this and order his imperials guard to arrest the man and bring him to him, so they did. The king look at the skinny man, very poorly dress, his only position was a begging bowl, the king felt a little compassion, so, he said I will not throw you in jail but I want to leave my kingdom now and never come back your Cain is not permitted rooming around my streets. The beggar look in to king eyes and said, Oh blessed one, your compassion fills my hearth, but I have one small favour to ask you, please fill my bowl and I will leave immediately to never come back, the king look in to man eyes and saw something different about this man, so he agreed and call one of his servant and say, fill his bowl with gold so he can be on his way, the servant brought a hand full of gold and put it in his bowl, but at the minute he put it in, the gold disappears, the king astonish saw this happening and order the servant to this time bring diamonds, at the minute he put the diamonds in the bowl, the diamonds disappear, the proud king in his mind thought I will not be defeated by a beggar, so he order to bring more gold and more diamond, but each time they fill the bowl, everything disappears, this went on all day, no matter what they put in to his bowl, disappears. Finally the king said to the man, you win, but please, before you go tell me what is it about this bowl, the man looking the king eyes said: Sir, this bowl is carved out of human desires.� This story is very significant, it tell us that no matter what the mind desires it will disappears, that is why each time we fulfill a desire, another is immediately is born, a bigger one, a better one, a higher one the mind says, but you see, no matter how much bigger, how much better, how much higher, they still only desires. Non attachment does not mean that you have to be desire less, that it is impossible, the mind can not be completely vacant in order to function in the realm of the relative, but, you can cultivate a noble desire, a selfless desire, as the desire of helping other for example, the desire of seen others happy, the desire of promoting well being for others, the desire of removing suffering from others, the desire to serve others, this type of desire can never bind you, any selfish desire will bind you, a selfless desire can never bind. When you are completely unattached from personal gratification you can serve others, and by doing that you will find more and more joy, more and more peace, more and more happiness, sometimes the selfless person will appears to be the more selfish, because the selfless person do not want to lose his/hers joy, happiness and peace, and that is perfectly find. Remember the mind or the ego part of the mind feed it self mainly with what he/she hears or see, for example if you are standing in line at the banc and hear a person say: �I did make $20.000 last week� immediately your ego wants that, or if you see a diamond ring on the finger of someone else, your ego immediately wants that, so, even with God do not have a personal desire or attachment, there is some people that even with God they try to do business, they go: God if you grant me this I will fast for three days, or, if you give this, I will light candles for you, what is this: bargaining with the divine, how ignorant that can be. The soul will never do that only the stupidity of the mind can come out with something like this, the soul which is your essence will never do that, the soul knows that God and the soul is one, so basically you are trying to do business with your self, you are trying to bargain with your self. Everything in nature lives for the sake of another, trees, birds, animals, rocks, etc, everything, sentient or insentient lives for the sake of another, in nature selfish do not exist, a candle burns and melt for the sake of giving light, an incense stick burns to ashes for the sake of giving fragrance, a tree grow tall for the sake of giving fruits, I have never seen a tree giving fruits and then try to keep it. We are here to give, give and give, if you can understand this and you can do this without attachment to the outcome, you are already traveling the road of self mastery. Non attachment alone is enough to change your entire life in to a joyful one, into a peaceful one, into a happy one.

Sutra 16� 1: Prosperity is attain by ultimate detachment. Prosperity it is our God given birth right, the ultimate truth is that we are born destine to live a prosperous life and not a life of struggle, but first let correct your perception of prosperity; the riches person is not the one who have the most, but, the one who need the list, the healthiest person it is not the one who recover from illness very quickly but the one who never get sick, the happiest person it is not the one who never encounter challenges or never experiences pain, but, the one who do not get affected by, prosperity it is an state of being not an state of mind, in ultimate detachment you don�t even need to think of been prosperous, you simple are. You can be detach from all personal desires, you can even have complete control over the mind, if there is a desire arising you can simple tell the mind, NO, and that will be it, but what about the impressions that are already in your mind, the memories of having experiencing something will still there, for example the person who used to drink and having lots of fun while doing it, or escaping easily while doing it, or if you used to smoke and getting some satisfaction from the act of smoking, or making lots of money by been dishonest, all of those modifications of the mind now call memories still there, even so you succeed to master the mind and now you are free of all those desires because of the great meditator that you became, the memories may still rise once in a while and tempt you again, ultimate detachment is when all impressions are erased, When? When you succeed in going within and realized the peace and joy of your own self, the moment you understand your self as the true self, the impressions of the petty enjoyment you experience before disappear completely and you lose interest in them permanently, that is ultimate non-attachment. But how do we get there? you may ask!: Simple by stopping labelling things and experiences as good or bad, as right or wrong, as better or worse, etc. Simple bridge the gap between the ordinary and the extraordinary and KNOW that everything that has happens in your life, is happening and will happen, is divine. Consider the possibility that there still something that you have not understood about God and life, and the understanding of this will transform your life, understand that things are not always as they seem, simple detach from all expectations or judgement and KNOW that in your life there is always divine intervention. Let me help you understand this better, by telling you a little story that one of my students send me via E mail, I do not know who wrote this wonderful and significant story, so I say God bless the person who did. �Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem." The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow,! whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field. The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could you have let this happen? The first man had everything, yet you helped him, he accused. The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you let the cow die. "Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied. "When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it." "Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead. Things aren't always what they seem." Sometimes that is exactly what happens when things don't turn out the way they should. If you have faith, you just need to trust that every outcome is always to your advantage. You just might not know it until some time later... Ultimate detachment is the secret of success in life, practice this and you will always succeed, prosperity is our goal and birthright.

Sutra 17 -1: Non-dualistic state of consciousness is achieved by contemplation, accompanied by reasoning, reflecting, rejoicing I am. In the science of Yoga the non-dualistic state of consciousness is call Samadhi and it is in Samadhi that all spiritual powers begin to show. When we have achieve control of the mind by meditation, then the mind is single pointed, it is important to take the mind to one-pointed ness state because in the practice of samadhi we use the entire mind, you can experience Non-dualistic state of consciousness in one month, but for that is necessary to split the practice in to four stages, let me explain why: We are a trinity so our nature is divided in to the gross material, the subtle elements or mind stuff and the ego or individuality. So, samadhi is practiced first on the gross objects, then on the subtle elements, then on the I am or ego and finally on the �I� alone. For seven days we are going to contemplate a physical object, something uplifting, in this case we are going to use a candle, so the first step in to samadhi it is best if practiced at night, light your candle and placed about four to eight feet in front of you, seat on a chair or lotus position whatever is more comfortable for you and for 30 minutes contemplate the candle burn, contemplating simple means loot at it, look at it without any thoughts in your mind and with complete immobility of the body, complete immobility is as most, by completely relaxing the body the mind will give up, so, just contemplate. now that you have become one with the candle let move in to something more subtle, the third eye, for the next seven days your point of contemplation is you third eye, right in the middle of your forehead, seat comfortable on a chair or lotus position, close your eyes and look with your eyes close in to that spot in the middle of your forehead call the third eye, with your mind deprived of any thoughts contemplate, with complete immobility and relaxation of the body simple contemplate, surrender your breath and contemplate, deeply and with full awareness, without trying to control anything contemplate, in no time you will start seen colours, like miniature galaxies, miniature nebulas, they will go on changing colours, they will go on changing shapes, simple enjoy the show, you are contemplating. More and more you contemplate in to your inner eye you will start experiencing and inner joy exploding from within, that joy it is your very nature, it was always there, it just didn�t have a chance to show up, lets say that your filters were a bit clog, after the seven day are over you will have a very good idea of how joy feels like it, then move in to third stage of seven days, this time you will contemplate the joy that I am. Seat comfortable, do not move a muscle, completely relax, with your eyes close or your eyes open doesn�t matter, bring the felling of joy to the surface of your being, crack a smile and contemplate the joy that you are, simple watch the joy amplifying bit by bit, after one week of contemplating your joy, you are ready to drop the I am �Joy� and simple be, in other words �I� alone, at this stage I can just give you a hint of how it feels or what it is, It is LIKE sleeping, I said LIKE sleeping, it is not sleeping. In this type of samadhi practice, contemplate nothing, eye open, eye close, not important, simple contemplate, in to the infinite. I said at the beginning that the practice of samadhi will give powers, what to do with this powers is up to you, just remember that what you do to others you do to your self, remember that you will effect what you cause another to experience. The first samadhi will give you power and knowledge over the concrete world, in other words the benefits of this contemplation is the understanding of the inner secrets and power of your object of contemplation, that�s why I choose the candle, a candle gives light. So, be careful in the chosing of the object, for example if you contemplate on a pizza, you may start gaining wait for no apparent reason, that is why there is people that they put themselves on a diet to lose wait and it is not happening because even if they don�t eat they constantly thinking about food. So the object of your contemplation must be uplifting, like the candle light, a star, the sun, a deity, nature etc. Scientist practice this type of samadhi constantly, a focused mind is a powerful mind, and when this powerful mind focuses on a particular object, as the atom for example, the entire knowledge of that object is revealed to it. In the next form of samadhi you contemplate subtle elements, as for example love or beauty or the inner eye or any subtle reality of the universe, your mind gets the capacity to understand the abstract only when the understanding of the concrete is conquer. When you contemplate on the subtle of life you gain the power of raising above time and space, when you succeed on this second form of samadhi you come to realize that time doesn�t exist, you come to realize that space it is not exactly what we conceive space to be. It is in this type of samadhi that you abandon your past because it is no more, you abandon your future because it is not there yet, and finally you start living your only reality which is the golden present, from this moment on, you will live the self realization that there is only life, death never was. On the third form of Samadhi we go into still subtler one, here discrimination or reflection which was present in the first and second form of samadhi, is no more, here is no need for the intellect, here you contemplate just the tranquil mind itself, here you gain the power of bliss, there is no reasoning or reflection in contemplating the joy or the peace that you are, always was and always will be, but, there is more, when you achieve to experience this peace and joy even for a fraction of a second, you can call forth the peace that you are, you can call forth the joy that you are at any given moment, if you fell disturbed just say in your mind, �The peace that I am� and you will be, at that instant, you will be peace, you will be joy, you can make it a permanent blissful non-dualistic state of consciousness. In the fourth samadhi there is only awareness of individuality, you contemplate the �I ness�, you are there and you are aware of it, nothing else exist, here you get to face your own ego by transcending your individuality, lets put it on a more simple way: First there is ego, then ego creates an individuality and everything else follows individuality, so what we have done here is going back word, we have transcend everything to get to individuality, then transcend individuality to get to ego, then you will transcend ego to get to the all, call God. This process is call involution.

Sutra 18 -1: The dissolved ego, is home. To better understand this sutra let me tell you a little story. In a remote small town there it was this great meditator committed to the core to his spiritual path, he was after the dissolving of the ego, he read all he could read about the subject, he practiced fervently his meditation and his priers, he did practice his hatha yoga early in the morning, he practice his karma yoga by constantly helping others, his meditation where dip and long, but his ego was always there taking over when he list expected, so one day he decided to withdraw from the world and went live in a cave far away from everything and everybody, many years of solitude and meditation pass by and he start to become very wise the rumour spread about this master living in constant retreat up on the mountains, so people start to come and visit him looking for some advice, looking for some blessings, looking for some comfort and spiritual guidance, he did never turn anybody away because that was his nature, one day the people from the town came to ask for a special favour, they said: master you will honour us if you could come and give a speech at the occasion of our town anniversary, it will means a lot to us if you could come and bless us all with your presence, the master in his mind thought, well and don�t see why not, my ego has finally dissolved after living in this cave for so many years, so he did accept the invitation, so, he went down and the town was pact with people coming from all over to hear the master talk, he was very move by the event and went on walking around, all of a sudden a young man step on his foot without apologizing, the master got angry and shout: Young man come here and apologize to me, don�t you know who I am? At that precise moment he came to the self realization that his ego was never dissolve it was only dormant by lack of challenge, so he decided to move back in to town and live his life surrounded by people just like anybody else, and at the minute he took the decision, ego was no more. This story it is of great significance, it tells you exactly what to do. You see there is no need to escape the world, your temple is exactly where you at, you can have your spiritual retreat by living right in the middle of the biggest city, actually you can achieve nirvana faster than hiding in some cave renouncing everything. The dissolve of the ego it is the ultimate samadhi, when this is achieved by somebody we call this person liberated, but, liberated from what you may ask, well you see even when you have succeed complete absorption the seed of past impression are still buried deep within, this seed of the past are not only from this life , but also from past lives, this seed can still come into the conscious mind when the proper conditions or opportunities are presented and drag you back in to worldly experiences that you may not want. We say that the ego dissolves when the ego felling is there no more and when this happens the seed of past impressions are rendered harmless, in that state only the pure consciousness is there is nothing else, there is no more illusion of separation, this is what we call a liberated person, not that a liberated person is someone who dies or renounce the world, you can be liberated right where you are, and the fasted way is the understanding of nature, the understanding of life, the understanding of God.

Sutra 19 � 1: If there is death, there is rebirth. When physical death occurs there is certainty of rebirth, no only because you will reincarnate or you will be reborn in to this life again, but, by also been reborn in to the spiritual world. There is no death, there is only life, what we cal death it is only a transition, a transformation. When the physical form it is left behind immediately you are reborn in to the spiritual world, so, where is death? There is no death. When you have spend sufficient time in the spiritual world living as an spiritual being you may decide to continue experiencing physicality again, so, you re-incarnate in to flesh again, you may decide to continue your physical experience in this plane or another plane, it is up to you to decide which is your next grandest adventure according to the highest vision of your self. Now, you may ask, what about my spiritual progress? What about all the work that I have done? What about my growth? Well, nothing to worried about it, you carrier that with you eternally, your growth its belong to your soul which it is the real you, so, you will take over where you did left off after leaving this world or the other, nothing is lost, evolution it is only progressive, never regressive, it is like a bank account that�s take only deposit, where accumulation of interest is possible and withdrawal are not. This is the magic of life, there is only growth never sets backs. Liberation it is the knowing of ourselves. No more fear, no more guilt are the keys to quickly attain self-realization. �Life and death, energy and peace. If I stop today, it was still worth it. Even the terrible mistakes that I have made and would have unmade if I could. The pains that have burned me and scarred my soul. It was worth it, for having been allowed to walk where I�ve walked� which was to hell on earth�Heaven on earth�back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it and above�� �GIA�

Sutra 20 -1: Faith, courage, memory, contemplation, discernment. For any practice to be successful some elements must be present, faith must be there, faith simple means trust, except that trust becomes faith when the act of will is involve, so just have faith in your practice. Courage must be present, Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. So, just have some courage and your practice will lead you to victory. Good memory must be present, so you can easily remember your mistakes and turn these mistakes in to lessons already learned not to fall back into again. Contemplation and discernment must be present so easily you will make the difference between the real self and the ego. If all, or some, or one of this elements is present in your practice, then you have a perfect practice, remember that paths are many, there is no better path, there is no better practice, all paths, all practices lead to the one truth. Paths are many, Truth is one.

Sutra 21-1: Intent, Keen. Been a keen practitioner mean moved by a strong and urgent desire and intent is the planning and desire to perform an act, so, if you are a keen and intent practitioner, the non dualistic state call samadhi will comes very quickly.

Sutra 22 -1: Practice: mild, medium, intense. How fast you want to get there, it is up to you. It all depends on whether your practice is mild, medium or intense. The intensity of your practice will determine the speed of your success.

Sutra 23 -1: Total devotion. Another way to get success is the total surrender to God, whatever you conceive this force to be.

Sutra 24 -1: The supreme God is not a He or a She or an It, but rather the cosmic consciousness, the all there is, the all that was and the all that there will be, there is nothing in the universe that is not God. If you see a comet on the sky would you say that God make that comet pass by, or that the comet it self is God, well, both, the comet is God and is God who did make it pass by, so God is the creator and the created. In life there is never nothing going on, there is always something happening, there is always something changing, life is a process, a never ending process, so if you see your self changing, if you see your life changing is because you are part of the process, you are part of God.

Sutra 25 -1: Complete manifestation of the seed of omniscience. Is God all knowing? or is knowledge itself?. God is both, is the cosmic knowledge, is the supreme soul, is the all in all. But, how can we imagine or visualize God? I am sure you can easily accept the fact that this is the universe of opposites, if there is male, then there is female, if there is up, there is down, if there is cold, there is hot, and so on. So, if you know or accept that your mind and knowledge are limited and finite, automatically you have to accept an infinite one, there is a source of infinite knowledge beyond that, that source we call God, You can use this force as the object of your contemplation, by doing so, you will awake the seed of omniscient within you.

Sutra 26 -1: The teacher of all teachers is not conditioned by time. The time of the individual master is over. The time of the individual Guru is finished. In this new century we are all Masters, we are all Gurus, and we are all Messengers to each other. Speak your ever expanding truth softly and clearly. Help each other remember that �we are all one,� that �we are interdependent,� that �we are unity,� that all living things are born out of the same source, whatever you conceive that source to be. Learn from all of those who speak of unity. Learn to remember that separation is an illusion and when you remember that "We Are All One"; spread the good news to all those around you because you are a messenger, no more, no less, than those who came before you. But, who was the first master? who was the first guru? who was the first messenger?. It is the one who always was, always is and always will be, some people call the One, God, some others the Force, some others the Source and some thousand others names are been given to the Omniscient higher power from which all beings, sentience or insentience, and all things in the universe emanated from, the shortcut in your spiritual path is to surrender to the source of all. It is true that all knowledge reside within you and you don�t need any external source to get it, but, someone is need it to remind you what you already know, and there is where a teacher, a guru, a messenger is need it, so listen to those who speak of unity they are here to help you remember who you are, they to they have come to remember because of other teachers, other gurus other messengers, and so will you help other to remember in due time. There are hundreds of different techniques there is hundreds of different meditation, there are hundreds of different paths, and all of them lead to the one, but there is a shortcut to what you call Nirvana or ultimate self-realization and this shortcut is devotion, complete surrender is the fastest way to achieve eternal peace, one of the many great masters that have walk the earth said: �I and my father are one�, to be able to affirm this one must raise above ego, must raise above mind, it is the only way to be One. When we practice, we practice with our ego. We say, Oh, I can meditate, I can love unconditionally, I can empty my mind, but, if you recognize that is because of the Lord that you love unconditionally, if you recognize that is because of the Lord that you can meditate, if you recognize that is because of the Lord that you can empty your mind, and you can say �I am Thy; all is Thy; Thy will be done.� The moment that you step aside and resigned your self completely, you have transcended your ego, you have transcended your mind, and there is you no more, there is only one. Freedom comes once you surrender completely to God.

Sutra 27 -1: The sound, the name, the form. Have you ever listen carefully to silence? If you do, you will notice that there is a humming sound to silence. Have you ever go deep within your self, stop all thoughts, and just been within? If you do, listen carefully, there is a humming sound. That humming sound is the sound of the universe in constant motion, inertia do not exist, everything is in an eternal constant motion, God is constant motion, God is constant transformation. Some scriptures say: �At the beginning was the word, and out of the word everything was created.� Other scriptures say: � At the beginning there was only the sound, and the sound created everything.� Well that sound is the sound of the highest vibration, it is the vibration the all in all, is God talking to all, all the time, there is motion in all, even in an unanimated object as a rock scientist will tell you that the rock is in constant motion, there is an entire mini universe of atoms, molecules and particles in the rock which are in eternal motion. Inertia doesn�t exist, nothing is permanent, there is never nothing going on, there is always change, there is always evolution, allow transformation, welcome transformation and change in to your life, because doing so, it is welcoming God. There are thousand of different names given to the All in All, God is one of them, Isvara another, Alla another and thousand others, but the one that comes the closest to express the form and the name, is OM; OM in some tradition it is chanted or repeated as a mantra, it is only a humming sound, Mmmmm, so, by repeating the mantra OoooMmmmmmmmmmm in full surrendering, you are elevating your vibration to emulate the highest vibration, practice this, and you will fell a peace within that you have never felt before. By practicing the mantra OM you will become in tune with God, at that moment you can say: �I and God are one�. This is our eternal truth, there is only one of us, we are one.

Sutra 28 -1: Repeat, reflect upon. The way you think is the way you are, and so you think, so you become. So, think uplifting thoughts, think purifying thoughts, think holy and you will be holy, and the most important, think that often, because repetition is the mother of perfection, anything that you call a habit was not a habit at the beginning, it became a habit because you went on repeating the action over and over till it became second nature, any skills are taking to perfection by practicing over and over, in other words by repeating the action over and over; any athlete will confirm that, a surgeon will confirm that, a baker, a teacher, a painter, a runner, a musician, an artist, anybody who has become good at something or perfected something will confirm that, so if you repeat a holy, uplifting, purifying thought, word or deed over and over, you will become that thought, word or deed, every religion use the repetition of what we call mantra even science use the repetition of a mantra. A mantra is simple a word or a thought which represent something holy or elevating according to your believes, for example: �Hail Mary�, �Are Krishna�, �Hari Om�, �Om�, �Jesus is my saviour�, �God and I are one�, �Bless the Lord�, �In God I trust�, �Allah, Allah�, etc, etc. The same is true for the opposite, if you think war, war, war, eventually you will have your war, or if you think violence you will do violence, so it is very important to choose carefully your mantra, you can repeat in your mind or out loud for 20 minutes every day �I am wealthy� and you will start attracting wealth in to your life, or �I am in perfect health� and you will slowly become healthier, this is true because the way you think is the way you are, and so you think, so, you become. Think Godly thoughts, repeat out loud Godly words and lowly it will absorb you and you will become that.

Sutra 29 -1: Obstacles disappear when knowledge is released from the inner self. In the realm of the relative we are limited by the body and the mind, even so we are not the body and we are not the mind, we are soul, but the body and mind limit us if we do not tune with the cosmic power, by tuning with God you will feel that force in you, you will imbibe all God�s qualities and you will transcend the finite, by doing so, you will get rid of all the obstacles and your path will be made easy. To tune with the cosmic force simple think that you are in it, that you are part of it, this is very easy to imagine because it is a fact, when you think God, or talk to God, or thank God, you look up in to the cosmos, you look in to the sky, that is the macro cosmos, you are the micro cosmos, you live on planet earth, basically you are standing on the surface of this magnificent planet and it is gravity that hold you on it, every day you walk on this surface, every day you fly at a tremendous speed around the sun but you don�t feel a thing because you are protected by envelope call atmosphere, nevertheless you are living on the surface and flying around the sun, this planet is part of the solar system which is part of a galaxy call the milky way, which is inside of this universe, in other words you are inside of the universe, you live inside of the universe, you are surrounded by it, this is a fact, so it is not very difficult to imagine, close your eyes and imagine your self been inside the cosmic force, see your self been inside this force, if you are inside is because you are part of it, isn�t it?.Do this daily and you will imbibe all of the cosmic qualities, you will get the cosmic vision, and will transcend all limitations; you will become the transcendental reality.

Sutra 30 -1: Obstacles, are nothing but distractions of the mind. Do not worried to much about disease, illness, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, failure, false perception or any other negativity that comes your way, because this are only distractions of the mind, they are only mind stuff, beside all of those obstructions are put there by our self so we can pass through it and help us understand and express who we are at full capacity, we all have the strength to surmount any obstacle, we just don�t know it, so, welcome any challenge in life, because it is there to awake the power within, in life you do not need to go on gaining on power, only awakening, the power is already there and all is need it is a little challenge, so, obstacles are nothing but the trigger of your power. Remember, this is the realm of opposites, for every illness there is a cure, any doubt comes with an answer, and any problem comes with a solution. Slow down is the key to move from one extreme to the other, so next time you encounter an obstacle, SLOW DOWN and observe.

Sutra 31 -1: Mental distractions are accompanied by distress, despair, trembling of the body and disturbed breathing. Distress, stress, despair, disturbed breathing, sweating, trembling, etc, etc. We all have at list ones felt any of this symptoms, very common on this 21st century, but you see this is nothing new, Patanjali wrote the sutras anywhere from 300 BC to 3000 BC and he advise that if there is physical symptoms is because the physical body needs your attention, if the physical body it is disturbed then the mind it is disturbed you see this two function as a unite, and when the mind is not in good shape, the body is not in good shape, that is way they say that when the mind suffers the body dries up, meditation alone will not give you a peace of mind, you have to take daily care of your body, so, proper diet, exercise and rest are at most, and never let your body to be lazy or dull, if you experience any physical symptom, well, consult your doctor, this symptoms are sign of physical weakness, and in this 21st century we are very lucky, we have a very advance medical science that can help you resolve this issues in no time. We are a trinity, we are a body, a mind an a soul, the combinations of this is you, in other words you are human being, a being of light having a human experience, and to take your experience to accomplishment, the care of your physical body it is very important because while you are living or better say experiencing life in this realm you need your physicality to function, a healthy body equals a healthy mind and vice versa.

Sutra 32 -1: The practice of one single technique is more than enough to prevent obstacles. There is only one truth and thousand paths to get to it, no matter which path are you following, no matter which technique you are practicing, no matter which philosophy or way of life you are adopting they all get you home. There is no better meditation technique, there is no more powerful mantra, there is no better God, there is no particular or perfect way to pray, there is no more sacred object or deity to focus on, if you have a particular meditation that suits you, that is the best meditation for you. If you have a mantra that calms you down and uplift you, that is the best mantra for you. Your God is the best God, whatever you conceive God to be. The way you pray it is the perfect prayer. The object you choose to focus on, it is sacred indeed, so, stop looking for the best of, you already have it, The point here is: do not go on changing your tool, because they are just that, tools, and any of this tools will get you to the ultimate truth, it is like digging looking for water, when you choose a spot on the ground you start digging and keep on digging and digging and digging till you reach water, you do not go on digging a little bit here, a little bit there, and a little bit there, if you do so you will never find water, same if you are digging for the truth, pick your technique and dig, dig, dig, never stop digging, if you do this, it is guaranteed that you will reach the truth.

Sutra 33 -1: The mind remains undisturbed and calm by cultivating friendliness, compassion, delightedness for all of life and complete disregard for the wicked. Even if you are not interested in reaching samadhi or nirvana, even if you are not interested in finding the ultimate truth or God, I am sure you want peace of mind in your daily life. Friendliness, compassion, delight and disregard are the four guiding light to keep your mind always serene. Everybody wants serenity of the mind, everybody wants to be happy always, but, happiness escape you, happiness elude you because when you see somebody happy, that, makes you unhappy, if you see a person wearing beautiful clothes or driving a very expensive car, you immediately fell jealous and criticize that person by saying it must be a crook, it must be taking advantage of poor people, Oh I am sure somebody pull some strings to help him/her out, Oh, so so so and so, You see, by you felling jealous of that person you are not disturbing his/hers serenity, but, you are deeply disturbing your own serenity, that is why happiness is running away from you, so instead of felling jealous and criticize, use the friendliness key and say God Bless that fortunate person I whish everybody could be as fortunate as he/she is, because the world will be a better place, so, each time you see a happy person be extra happy for them, because what you think of others and what you feel for others, it is what you think and fell for yours self, this is the easiest and faster way to attract happiness in to your life. Another reason why happiness and serenity eludes you is because when you see a person being unhappy or suffering immediately you rejoice by saying to your self: �It is her/his fault, he/she disserve to suffer�, �he/she must of done something pretty nasty and now is paying for it, so, let her/him suffer�, �he/she it will never be happy is paying for past life karma�, or anything in that line, this type of thinking happens very fast within you so you have to be alert and at he minute you cut your-self somehow enjoying somebody else�s misfortune immediately use the key of compassion, be merciful always and by doing that you will retain the peace that you are, always remember that compassion it is part of your true nature. The third key is: Be delighted, when you come across virtuous people be delighted for them, admire their qualities and try to imitate them, say: � Oh how great, how wonderful she/he is�, appreciate the qualities of virtuosity and try to cultivate those qualities in your own life. The last key is: �Evil we do not fight, evil we ignore�, when confronted by the wicked, complete disregard is as most, that way we don�t empower them, even advice avoid give it to them because this type of people seldom take advise, instead they will take it as an insult and you will loose your peace of mind, beside be reassure that the fastest way to learn is through our own experience, so, let them learn at their own speed, the best you can do for the wicked is to let them be, and stay away. Always use friendliness with the happy, compassion with the unhappy, gladness with the virtuous and indifference with the wicked, use the right key with the right person and nothing and nobody will ever disturb your inner peace.

Sutra 34 -1: Calm is attained and retained by breath control. Master your breath, master your mind, master your mind master your destiny. Breath control is the key to the mastering of your mind, in this sutra Patanjali give us a pranayama technique. Prana means life force, Yama means retention, put together means retention of the life force, but it will be more accurate to translate this as manipulation of the life force, the entire universe is permeated with prana, so we could say that prana is the breath of God, and it is in the air you breath, the prana and the mind are intrinsically related, that�s why when your mind is agitated you breathing is chaotic and when your are in deep concentration your breathing is calm and slow, it is almost not existent, that�s why some people in deep meditation experience the stopping of the breath, in love making the breath go on continuously changing, that�s proof that the mind, the body and breath are inter-related. There is about 70 different pranayama techniques, this is one of them. To quickly calm the mind down breath out completely and watch the air come back in, breath out completely and watch the air come back in, after a few rounds just watch the in and the out of your breath, do this and in seconds your mind will be calm and serene. When you are experiencing and outburst of anger take a deep breath in and watch the air go out, take a deep breath in and watch the air go out, do this an in seconds the anger will disappear.

Sutra 35 -1: Steadiness of the mind can be achieved by a subtle concentration of the senses. It is very normal to experience distraction you when you seat for meditation, do not be discourage because of this, contrary, take advantage of this, anything can become a point of focusing, anything ca be used to attain pointed ness of the mind, if you are meditating and start getting distracted by a thousand different sounds or noises, do not fights it, used, focus your mind in your ears and you will increase your hearing, you will be capable of even hearing the flapping of the wings of a butterfly or a hummingbird, if your are distracted by different smells, do not fights it, used, focus your mind on the tip of your nose and you will amplified the sense of smell, soon you will be able to distinguish the most subtle fragrances, a good healer can even smell the affected glands or organs inside the body, if you seat for meditation and start getting distracted by bodily sensations, do not get upset, used, focus your mind in your entire body, be aware of every itch, every discomfort, every tickle, every change in temperature of the body, by doing this you will gain great knowledge of your anatomy, this is how yogis thousands of years ago where able to design charts of the nervous system, if your are distracted by your saliva or different tastes, focus your mind on your tongue or pallet or throat and you will develop and incredible refine pallet, wine or food tester knows this very well, if you close your eyes and start seeing thousand colours or images, do not chase it away, look at it and focus on the middle of your forehead, this will develop your third eye.

Sutra 36 -1: Focus on the light within- blissful felling arises. In 384-322 BC Aristotle wrote: �We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit�. Albert Einstein said that �imagination is more powerful than knowledge�. Patanjali in this sutra instruct to imagine a divine light in the middle of your chest, a light beyond all fear, a pure white transparent light glowing inside your chest, this light is pure divine consciousness, the mind will easily get absorbed in to this light, at the beginning you will have to imagine the light, but with the constant practice of this meditation the light will become a reality and in no time you will no longer be a seeker of the light but a bringer of the light.

Sutra 37 -1: Focus on a great soul � Become that soul. If you do not have much trust in your own heart, then meditate on the heart of a noble person, when I say meditate I simple mean think of. Think of the heart of Buda or Christ or any saint or master that you know to be pure of heart, think or imagine that your own heart is full of that light, is full of that pureness, this technique will trick your mind and it will be easy to become that noble heart, because in ultimate reality We are all one, it is the mind that creates the illusion of separation, so lets trick the mind and meditate on a noble heart to slowly absorb the qualities of that heart. This technique take very little time to start working because you already are that noble heart, you just don�t remember.

Sutra 38 -1: Focus on an experience occurred during deep sleep or dream state. Sometimes we have dreams of divine beings, sometimes in our dreams we fell elevated to higher planes, sometimes we just have a very sound peaceful sleep, no matter if you have dream of divinity or felt elevated to a higher reality or simple had a peaceful sleep, let your mind dwell on it as longer you can, dwell on the peace you felt when you awoke, dwell on the serenity cause by being on the presence of the divine, dwell on the harmony of the higher planes of existence, dwell on it, dwell on it, dwell on it, spend all your awaking moments dwelling on this peace and serenity, by constantly remembering you become. Human beings we are creatures of habit, so take the habit of serenity and you will be that serenity, the secret of life is not in the doing, but in the being, you can not do happy, you can just be happy.

Sutra 39 -1: Meditate on anything that is elevating You do not need to be initiated to faith, you do not need to be initiated to meditation, you were initiated to life at the minute you were born, and there is no higher initiation than life, so, meditate in anything that elevates you, if walking along the beach cause you to be calm and serene, then walking along the beach elevates you, if going in to a forest cause you to be calm and serene then being in the forest elevates you, if calmly walking in the downtown and do some window shopping cause you to clear your mind and be calm and serene then window shopping elevates you, if jumping in your car and go for a nice drive cause you to be calm and serene, then, do that, meditate on anything that is elevating means, think or do repeatedly what causing you to be calm and serene. If there is times that you are unable to physically go to the beach or the forest or window shopping, or driving, simple seat and think of it, bring the felling of calmness and serenity back to you, that is meditation. Do this often and in no time your essence will be calmness and serenity.

Sutra 40 -1: On the road to mastery your focus or concentration will expand from the primal atom to something of greatest magnitude. We are the microcosmos, meaning, we are made out of the same stuff of the universe or macrocosms, what Patanjali try to explain here is that you can attract to you anything you want, you can have anything you want, you can have anything from a single atom to anything else by just mastering any meditation technique, if you have master meditation is because you have master the mind, and from there you can meditate in anything you wish for, you can meditate on perfect health, you can meditate on abundant wealth or anything else that pleases you. Life it is meant to be lived to the fullest, without pain and suffering, without struggles and without barriers, if there is pain, suffering and struggle in your life, is because your own mind has created this, not life, life sustain life and the universe or God is there to give you wherever you want, know this: The tools of creation are your thoughts, your words and your doing, so, what you think, say and do are of paramount importance in the creation of the life you wish to live, think only positive, always disregard negatives thoughts, never get caught in dark imagining, the words coming out of your mouth let them be always the truth, never criticize, never judge and never condemn, let all your actions be actions to serve life, your life and others. The way you think is the way you are, so you think, so you become.

Sutra 41 � 1: The culmination of meditation is samadhi. Samadhi is when we get to know the knower, the knower is devoid of differentiations. When a person has meditated for a while and has mastered the mind by single pointed the mind, meaning, the meditator has attained single pointedness, in other words, the meditator is capable of holding one single thought and disregarding all others, at this point the meditator enters Samadhi which is and state of bliss, we call this an state of bliss because that is the feeling that stays with you for long after you get out of your meditative state and go on with your daily activities. Samadhi is a natural state of being it is the state of the real being, we are meant to be happy, joyful, peaceful and in a constant state of freedom because that is what the soul is, and you know very well that you are not the body and you are not the mind, you are a soul having a human experience. Samadhi feels like sleep, because at this point there is no mind, there is no body, even so you still carried your body and still using your mind, this two have become one with the soul, that is why in the state of Samadhi you feel no body, you feel no mind, you feel no time, you feel no space, if you feel this, it is because you as an individuation of the all have melted in to the all in all, imagined that you are a drop of the ocean, and you have been put back in to the ocean, even so, you are still conscious of been a drop now you are back of being part of the all call ocean, that it is, your spirit is and individuation of the energy call God, in Samadhi you go back in to the all in all call God. The state of Samadhi can be attain through meditation, through contemplation, through prayer or by simply, deeply, enjoying nature. Samadhi is nothing more than an state of bliss and it can be attain by the practice of any of this methods, a person can experience deep samadhi or light samadhi, nevertheless it is samadhi. The main key to enter samadhi or better say to experience samadhi is to do your practice without any expectations, do your practice without the need for any particular result and you will experience bliss at any given moment, when you less expected. Some people attain deep samadhi by fervent prayer, other reach deep samadhi by the continuous practice of their favorite technique of meditation, others by deep devotion to the creator, others by practicing service to others, others by communing with nature, the method or technique that you are using it is not very important, what is important for you to know is that you will experience the state of bliss call samadhi as longueur you constantly pay attention to the needs of your soul, which in ultimate reality is the real you, the only you. Samadhi it is our natural state of being, so keep experiencing samadhi, even if is light samadhi and it last only a brief moment, experience this often and you will eventually become pure bliss.

Sutra 42 -1: Deliberated Samadhi. There is a state of bliss that can be provoked by separating sound, form and knowledge, let analyse this so you can understand better. For example, if you hear the sound apple which is a word, your mind immediately associate the name to a form because you have knowledge of it, you see there is sound, form and knowledge all at ones, if you hear the sound or word energy, your mind will look to associate the name energy to something, in this case not to difficult, your mind will associate this word with electricity for example or other know form call energy, if you hear the word spirit, now your mind have no choice but to call upon imagination because there is a very personal form associated to this word because there is no preconceive image for this sound or word, or what about the word eternity or God, when you hear a word the mind try to understand the object denoted by the sound and gain knowledge of the object, but what if we change the meaning of sound or simple put, what if there is no attach form to the sound, then what? Kids to this naturally as a game, the kid say what if an apple is not an apple and it is a dog, what if for now on I call the table pants? Yes the kid is right, you can attach any form to any sound, Samadhi with deliberation happens simple because you can detach sound form and knowledge, languages are only sounds put together, and every sound is associated to and object that is how we gain knowledge of that particular object, the mind is accustom to associate every input to something, for example if you are sitting quietly in you living room and you hear a noise car pass by, by the roar of the engine you can determine if it was a very fast car, this happens even without seen the car in question, you did associated the roar sound to fast car, but maybe it was a little slow car with a bad muffler, the mind go's on associated every sensory input to whatever knowledge you have accumulated, the key here is to keep the mind silence, meaning, a sound is just a sound, do not associated with anything, what you see is merely what you see, do not associated with anything, if you go for a walk in a sunny day, don't go on talking in your mind saying what a beautiful day, just enjoy the sunshine and just watch the mind been silence, this way easily you can separate sound, object and knowledge, This is the way to provoke Samadhi, this is the way to maintain the natural state of bliss. We can arrest the process of thinking at any time by simple disassociation.

Sutra 43 -1: When there is no memory the object of concentration shines alone, this is call samadhi without deliberation. In this days we know very well that the observer affect the observed, quantum physicist have proved countless times, the same way the object of meditation or what it is observed can affect or influence the observer or the meditator, when the mind is purified of memory or external influences the meditator can gain the knowledge or the wisdom of the object meditated upon. This is how scientist have come to discover or invented so many things. If you free your mind from all preconceive ideas, if you silence your mind completely you have put your self in an state of samadhi, at this point you you can gain knowledge of the knower, in other words you get to know your real self. As yogis say; you get the Jnana alone, translated: you get the wisdom alone.

Sutra 44 -1: In reflective or non reflective samadhi, subtle objects are explained. Subtle object are: for example , love, compasion, life, God, Peace, Freedom etc, etc. By meditating on the subtle, the subtle it is revealed to the meditator, the important here is to free your mind completely, take your mind in to a complete state of emptines and calm, not a single ripple of thoughts must be present, then you can reflect on the subtle, you can put in your mind one single thought as for example love, and love will be reveal to you, you will become a beacon of love, it is in complete silence and complete stillness that you can be completely present, in this state, the secrets of creation will be reveal to you.

Sutra 45 -1: All objects of concentration, subtle or non-subtle, end at the undefinable. All objects or forms, including the EGO will desapear in the primal force, the disolvance of the ego can be attain by always being in the present, when there is no thoughts in the mind, you are in the present moment, which is the only reality, that is why all mastes are saying to forget the past, not to woried about the future, just live the golden present. By just and constantly living life in the present moment the ego will go on loosing power and finally disapear, ego it is the only thing that can stop you from entering the unmanisfested, in the unmanifested condition there is no names, no thoughts, no forms, only the completely balanced and tranquile state of nature there is. Your mind has the power to enter the very root of the unmanifested nature, in other words God, just be still, just be quite, and you will experience who you realy are.

Sutra 46 -1: All samadhis still have seed that can bring you back to mental disturbances. Yes, even the greater meditator, even the greatest samadhi practitioner can be brought back to all cain of mental turmoil and worries. Why? Because all your desires still in seed form, so does seed can sprout at any given moment. The mind need to be conciously purified, conciously we must drop all labels, conciously we must drop all greed, conciously we must drop all jealusies, conciously we must drop all desires that do not serve life, concioully we must accept the fact that we are interdependent and that we are all one. There is nothing that is not you or a part of you, we are all creators of the created. You may ask: How do I free my self from all those negatives desires?, how can I get rid of all not serving life thoughts forms?, how can I, end my separation from life? Simple: Conciously stop labeling, conciously stop judging, conciouly stop condemning, and conciouly always stay in the NOW moment. This is the one way to conciously purified the mind. Be concious that in life nothing is bad, it depends on how you use what life give you, you can not label a knife to be god or to be bad, it depends on how you used it, if you used the knife to cut your vegetables you will say this, it is a very good instrument, if you cut your finger then it is not so good. Same with everything, atomic energy can be used for the higher purpose or it can destroy the entire planet, purification of the mind it is as most.

It is reported in the life of a great Sufi mystic, Farid, that a king came to see him. He had brought a present for him, a beautiful pair of scissors, golden, studded with diamonds--very valuable, very rare. He touched Farid's feet and gave him the scissors; Farid took them, looked at them, gave them back to the king, and said, "Sir, many thanks for the present that you have brought. It is beautiful, but utterly useless for me. It will be better if you can give me a needle. Scissors I don't need; a needle will do." The king said, "I don't understand. If you need a needle, you will need scissors too." Farid said, "I am talking in metaphors. Scissors I don't need because scissors cut things apart. A needle I need because a needle puts things together. I teach love. My whole teaching is based on love--putting things together, teaching people communion. I need a needle so that I can put people together. The scissors are useless; they cut, they disconnect. Next time when you come, just an ordinary needle will be enough."

The Zen master Hakuin is one of the rare flowerings. A warrior came to him, a samurai, a great soldier, and he asked "Is there any hell, is there any heaven? If there is hell and heaven, where are the gates? Where do I enter from? How can I avoid hell and choose heaven?" He was a simple warrior. A warrior is always simple; otherwise he cannot be a warrior. A warrior knows only two things, life and death--his life is always at stake, he is always gambling; He is a simple man. He had not come to learn any doctrine. He wanted to know where the gate was so he could avoid hell and enter heaven. And Hakuin replied in a way only a warrior could understand. What did Hakuin do? He said, "Who are you?" And the warrior replied, "I am a samurai." It is a thing of much pride to be a samurai in Japan. It means being a perfect warrior, a man who will not hesitate a single moment to give his life. For him, life and death are just a game. He said, "I am a samurai, I am a leader of samurais. Even the emperor pays respect to me." Hakuin laughed and said, " You, a samurai? You look like a beggar." The samurai's pride was hurt, his ego hammered. He forgot what he had come for. He took out his sword and was just about to kill Hakuin. He forgot that he had come to this master to ask where is the gate of heaven, to ask where is the gate of hell. Hakuin laughed and said, "This is the gate of hell. With this sword, this anger, this ego, here opens the gate." This is what a warrior can understand. Immediately he understood: This is the gate. He put his sword back in its sheath. And Hakuin said, "Here opens the gate of heaven." Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

Society goes on telling you, "This is right, and that is wrong"--that is conscience. It becomes ingrained, implanted in you. You go on repeating it. That is worthless; that is not the real thing. The real thing is your own consciousness. It carries no ready-made answers about what is wrong and what is right, no. But immediately, in what-ever situation arises, it gives you light --you know immediately what to do.

Be alert. Each moment has to be taken as if this were the last moment. And there is every possibility this may be the last moment! So use it totally. Squeeze the juices out of it totally. In that very totality you will be alert.This special realization of spontaneous self-awareness completely transmutes the entire being and there is total change. All other habits and tendencies are overcome by habitual self-awareness .

Don't be bothered too much about utilitarian ends. Rather, constantly remember that you are not here in life to become a commodity. You are not here to become a utility--that is below dignity. You are not here just to become more and more efficient--you are here to become more and more alive; you are here to become more and more intelligent; you are here to become more and more happy, ecstatically happy.

Your mind goes on playing infinitely-- the whole thing is just like a dream in an empty room. While meditating, one has to look at the mind just frolicking, just like children playing and jumping out of overflowing energy, that's all. Thoughts jumping, frolicking, just a play--don't be serious about them. Even if a bad thought is there, don't feel guilty. Or, if there is a very great thought, a very good thought--that you want to serve humanity and transform the whole world, and you want to bring heaven onto earth--don't get too much ego through it, don't feel that you have become great. This is just a frolicking mind. Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it comes up--it is just overflowing energy, taking many shapes and forms. The dimension of play has to be applied to your whole life. Whatsoever you are doing, be there in that activity so totally that the end is irrelevant. The end will come, it has to come, but it is not on your mind. You are playing, you are enjoying.

The thinker is creative with his thoughts--this is one of the most fundamental truths to be understood. All that you experience is your creation. First you create it, then you experience it, and then you are caught in the experience--because you don't know that the source of all exists in you. Once a man was traveling, accidentally he entered paradise. In the Indian concept of paradise there are wish-fulfilling trees, kalpatarus. You just sit underneath them, desire anything, and immediately it is fulfilled--there is no gap between the desire and its fulfillment. You think, and immediately it becomes a thing; the thought realizes automatically. These kalpatarus are nothing but symbolic for the mind. Mind is creative, creative with its thoughts. The man was tired, so he fell asleep under a wish-fulfilling tree. When he woke up he was feeling very hungry, so he said, "I wish I could get some food from somewhere." And immediately food appeared out of nowhere--just floating in the air, delicious food. He immediately started eating, and when he was feeling very satisfied, another thought arose in him: "If only I could get something to drink..." And there is no prohibition in paradise so immediately, precious wine appeared. Drinking the wine, relaxed in the cool breeze of paradise under the shade of the tree, he started wondering, "What is happening? Have I fallen into a dream, or are some ghosts around and playing tricks with me?" And ghosts appeared! They were ferocious, horrible, nauseating. He started trembling, and a thought arose in him: "Now I am sure to be killed. These people are going to kill me." And he was killed.

Wherever you are, become more centered, become more alert, live more consciously. There is nowhere else to go. Everything that has to happen, has to happen within you, and it is in your hands. You are not a puppet, and your strings are not in anybody else's hands. You are an absolutely free individual. If you decide to remain in illusions, you can remain so for many, many lives. If you decide to get out, a single moment's decision is enough. You can be out of all illusions this very moment.

When inferiority disappears, all feeling of superiority also disappears. They live together, they cannot be separated. The man who feels superior is still feeling inferior somewhere. The man who feels inferior wants to feel superior somewhere. They come in a pair; they are always there together; they cannot be separated. It happened... A very proud man, a warrior, a samurai, came to see a Zen master. The samurai was very famous, well known all over the country, But looking at the master, looking at the beauty of the master and the grace of the moment, he suddenly felt inferior. Maybe he had come with an unconscious desire to prove his superiority. He said to the master "Why am I feeling inferior? Just a moment ago, everything was okay. As I entered into your court suddenly I felt inferior. I have never felt like that. My hands are shaking. I am a warrior, I have faced death many times, and I have never felt any fear--why am I feeling frightened?" The master said, "You wait. When everybody has gone, I will answer." People continued coming to visit the master, and the man was getting tired, more and more tired. By the evening the room was empty, there was nobody, and the samurai said, "Now, can you answer it?" And the master said, "Now, come outside." A full moon night--the moon was just rising on the horizon... And he said, "Look at these trees, this tree high in the sky and this small tree. They both have existed by the side of my window for years, and there has never been any problem. The smaller tree has never said, 'Why do I feel inferior before you?' to the big tree. How is it possible? This tree is small, and that tree is big, and I have never heard any whisper." The samurai said, "Because they can't compare." The master said, "Then you need not ask me; you know the answer." Comparison brings inferiority, superiority. When you don't compare, all inferiority, all superiority, disappear. Then you are, you are simply there. A small bush or a big high tree--it doesn't matter; you are yourself. You are needed. A grass leaf is needed as much as the biggest star. Without the grass leaf God will be less than he is. The sound of the cuckoo is needed as much as any Buddha; the world will be less, will be less rich if the cuckoo disappears. Just look around. All is needed, and everything fits together. It is an organic unity: nobody is higher and nobody is lower, nobody superior, nobody inferior. Everybody is incomparably unique.

Devotion is a way of merging and melting into existence. It is not a pilgrimage; it is simply losing all the boundaries that divide you from existence--it is a love affair. Love is a merger with an individual, a deep intimacy of two hearts--so deep that the two hearts start dancing in the same harmony. Although the hearts are two, the harmony is one, the music is one, the dance is one. What love is between individuals, devotion is between one individual and the whole existence. He dances in the waves of the ocean, he dances in the dancing trees in the sun, he dances with the stars. His heart responds to the fragrance of the flowers, to the song of the birds, to the silences of the night. Devotion is the death of the personality. That which is mortal in you, you drop of your own accord; only the immortal remains, the eternal remains, the deathless remains. And naturally the deathless cannot be separate from existence--which is deathless, which is always ongoing, knows no beginning, no end. Devotion is the highest form of love.

We are born to be blissful, it is our birthright. But people are so foolish, they don't even claim their birthright. They become more interested in what others possess and they start running after those things. They never look within, they never search in their own house. The intelligent person will begin his search from his inner being--that will be his first exploration--because unless I know what is within me how can I go on searching all over the world?--it is such a vast world. And those who have looked within have found it instantly, immediately. It is not a question of gradual progress, it is a sudden phenomenon, a sudden enlightenment. I have heard about a very great Sufi mystic woman, Rabia al-Adawia. One evening, people found her sitting on the road searching for something. She was an old woman, her eyes were weak, and it was difficult for her to see. So the neighbors came to help her. They asked, "What are you searching for?" Rabia said, "That question is irrelevant, I am searching. If you can help me, help." They laughed and said, "Rabia, have you gone mad? You say our question is irrelevant, but if we don't know what you are searching for, how can we help?" Rabia said, "Okay. Just to satisfy you, I am searching for my needle, I have lost my needle." They started helping her--but immediately they became aware of the fact that the road was very big and a needle was a very tiny thing. So they asked Rabia, "Please tell us where you lost it--the exact, precise place. Otherwise it is difficult. The road is big and we can go on searching and searching forever. Where did you lose it?" Rabia said, "Again you ask an irrelevant question. How is it concerned with my search?" They stopped. They said, "You have certainly gone crazy!" Rabia said, "Okay. Just to satisfy you, I have lost it in my house." They asked, "Then why are you searching here?" And Rabia is reported to have said, "Because here there is light and there is no light inside."

Nothing is lost in the universe The first truth is that nothing is lost in the universe. Matter turns into energy, energy turns into matter. A dead leaf turns into soil. A seed sprouts and becomes a new plant. Old solar systems disintegrate and turn into cosmic rays. We are born of our parents, our children are born of us. We are the same as plants, as trees, as other people, as the rain that falls. We consist of that which is around us, we are the same as everything. If we destroy something around us, we destroy ourselves. If we cheat another, we cheat ourselves. Understanding this truth, the Buddha and his disciples never killed any animal.

2. Everything Changes The second universal truth of the Buddha is that everything is continuously changing. Life is like a river flowing on and on, ever-changing. Sometimes it flows slowly and sometimes swiftly. Once dinosaurs, mammoths, and saber-toothed tigers roamed this earth. They all died out, yet this was not the end of life. Other life forms like smaller mammals appeared, and eventually humans, too. Now we can even see the Earth from space and understand the changes that have taken place on this planet. Our ideas about life also change. People once believed that the world was flat, but now we know that it is round.

Once there was a woman named Kisagotami, whose first-born son died. She was so stricken with grief that she roamed the streets carrying the dead body and asking for help to bring her son back to life. A kind and wise man took her to the Buddha. The Buddha told her, "Fetch me a handful of mustard seeds and I will bring your child back to life." Joyfully Kisagotami started off to get them. Then the Buddha added, "But the seeds must come from a family that has not known death." Kisagotami went from door to door in the whole village asking for the mustard seeds, but everyone said, "Oh, there have been many deaths here", "I lost my father", I lost my sister". She could not find a single household that had not been visited by death. Finally Kisagotami returned to the Buddha and said, "There is death in every family. Everyone dies. Now I understand your teaching."

The cause of suffering The Buddha explained that people live in a sea of suffering because of ignorance and greed. They are ignorant of the law of karma and are greedy for the wrong kind of pleasures. They do things that are harmful to their bodies and peace of mind, so they can not be satisfied or enjoy life. For example, once children have had a taste of candy, they want more. When they can't have it, they get upset. Even if children get all the candy they want, they soon get tired of it and want something else. Although, they get a stomach-ache from eating too much candy, they still want more. The things people want most cause them the most suffering. Of course, there are basic things that all people should have, like adequate food, shelter, and clothing. Everyone deserve a good home, loving parents, and good friends. They should enjoy life and cherish their possessions without becoming greedy.

The end of suffering To end suffering, one must cut off greed and ignorance. This means changing one's views and living in a more natural and peaceful way. It is like blowing out a candle. The flame of suffering is put out for good.

Once a very old king went to see an old hermit who lived in a bird's nest in the top of a tree, "What is the most important Buddhist teaching?" The hermit answered, "Do no evil, do only good. Purify your heart." The king had expected to hear a very long explanation. He protested, "But even a five-year old child can understand that!" "Yes," replied the wise sage, "but even an 80-year-old man cannot do it."

Proper conduct shows respect for oneself and others. Our bodies are gifts from our parents, so we should protect them from harm. Young people should especially keep their natures pure and develop their virtue. It is up to them to make the world a better place to live. In happy families, the husband and wife both respect each other.

No lying Being honest brings peace into the world. When there is a misunderstanding, the best thing is to talk it over. This precept includes no gossip, no back-biting, no harsh words and no idle speech.

Misery only means that things are not fitting with your desires--and things never fit with your desires, they cannot. Things simply go on following their nature. Lao Tzu calls this nature Tao. Buddha calls this nature Dhamma. Mahavir has defined religion as "the nature of things." Nothing can be done. Fire is hot and water is cool. The wise man is one who relaxes with the nature of things, who follows the nature of things. And when you follow the nature of things, no shadow is cast. There is no misery. Even sadness is luminous then, even sadness has a beauty then. Not that sadness will not come--it will come, but it will not be your enemy. You will befriend it, because you will see its necessity. You will be able to see its grace, and you will be able to see why it is there and why it is needed. I have heard an ancient parable--it must be very ancient, because God used to live on the earth in those days. One day a man came to him, an old farmer, and he said, "Look, you may be God, and you may have created the world, but one thing I must say to you: you are not a farmer. You don't know even the ABC of farming. You have something to learn." God said, "What's your advice?" The farmer said, "You give me one year's time, and just let things be according to me, and see what happens. There will be no poverty left!" God was willing, and one year was given to the farmer. Naturally, he asked for the best, he thought only of the best--no thunder, no strong winds, no dangers for the crop. Everything was comfortable, cozy, and he was very happy. The wheat was growing so high! When he wanted sun, there was sun; when he wanted rain, there was rain, and as much as he wanted. This year everything was right, mathematically right. But when the crops were harvested, there was no wheat inside. The farmer was surprised. He asked God, "What happened? What went wrong?" God said, "Because there was no challenge, because there was no conflict, no friction, because you avoided all that was bad, the wheat remained impotent. A little struggle is a must. Storms are needed, thunder, lightning is needed. They shake up the soul inside the wheat."

When there is no past, when there is no future, only then is there peace. Future means aspirations, achievement, goal, ambition, desire. You cannot be here now, you are always rushing for something, somewhere else. One has to be utterly present to the present, then there is peace. And out of that is renewal of life, because life knows only one time, and that is the present. The past is death; the future is just a projection of the dead past. What can you think about the future? You think in terms of the past, that's what you know, and you project it--of course in a better way. It is more beautiful, decorated; all the pains have been dropped and only the pleasures have been chosen, but it is the past. The past is not, the future is not, only the present is. To be in the present is to be alive, optimum--and that is renewal.

You are born with a tremendous possibility of intelligence. You are born with a light within you. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. Nobody else can guide you, nobody else can become a model for your life, because you are unique. Nobody has there ever been who was exactly like you, and nobody is ever going to be there again who will be exactly like you. This is your glory, your grandeur--that you are utterly irreplaceable, that you are just yourself and nobody else.

Whenever people become very greedy they become very hurried, and go on finding more ways to gain more speed. They are continuously on the run because they think that life is running out. These are the people who say, "Time is money." Time is money? Money is very limited; time is unlimited. Time is not money, time is eternity--it has always been there and will always be there. And you have always been here and you will always be here. So drop greed, and don't be bothered about the result. Sometimes it happens that because of your impatience, you miss many things.

When you desire something, your joy depends on that something. If it is taken away, you are miserable; if it is given to you, you are happy. But only for the moment! That too has to be understood. Whenever your desire is fulfilled it is only for the moment that you feel joy. It is fleeting, because once you have got it, again the mind starts desiring for more, for something else. Mind exists in desiring; hence mind can never leave you without desire. If you are without desire, mind dies immediately. That's the whole secret of meditation. A beggar knocks on the door of an emperor; it is early morning. The emperor was coming out for a morning walk in his beautiful garden; otherwise it would have been difficult for the beggar to have an appointment with him. But there was no mediator to prevent him. The emperor said, "What do you want?" The beggar said, "Before you ask that, think twice!" The emperor has never seen such a lion of a man; he has fought wars, has won victories, has made it clear that nobody is more powerful than him, but suddenly this beggar says to him, "Think twice of what you are saying, because you may not be able to fulfill it!" The king said, "Don't be worried, that is my concern; you ask what you want, it will be done!" The beggar said, "You see my begging bowl? I want it to be filled! It does not matter with what, the only condition is that it should be filled, it should be full. You can still say no, but if you say yes, then you are taking a risk." The emperor laughed. Just a beggar's bowl... and he is being given a warning? He told his premier to fill the beggar's bowl with diamonds, so that this beggar would know who he was asking. The beggar again said, "Think twice." And soon it became apparent that the beggar was right, because the moment the diamonds were poured into his begging bowl they simply disappeared! The word began to spread like wildfire in the capital; thousands of people arrived to watch. When the precious stones were finished the king said, "Bring out all the gold and silver, everything! My whole kingdom, my whole integrity is being challenged." But by the evening everything had disappeared and there were only two beggars left--one used to be the emperor. The emperor said, "Before I ask your forgiveness for not listening to your warning, please tell me the secret of this begging bowl." The beggar said, "There is no secret. I have polished it, made it look like a bowl, but it is a human skull. You go on pouring anything into it and it disappears." The story is tremendously meaningful. Have you ever thought about your own begging bowl? Everything disappears--power, prestige, respectability, riches--everything disappears and your begging bowl goes on opening its mouth for more. And the "more" takes you away from this. The desire, the longing for something else takes you away from this moment. There are only two kinds of people in the world: the majority are running after shadows; their begging bowls will remain with them till they enter their graves. And a very small minority, one in a million, stops running, drops all desires, asks for nothing--and suddenly he finds everything within himself.

The longing of the mind is to be extraordinary. The ego thirsts and hungers for the recognition that you are somebody. Somebody achieves that dream through wealth, somebody else achieves that dream through power, politics; somebody else can achieve that dream through miracles, jugglery, but the dream remains the same: "I cannot tolerate being nobody." And this is a miracle-- when you accept your nobodiness, when you are just as ordinary as anybody else, when you don't ask for any recognition, when you can exist as if you are not existing. To be absent is the miracle.

Pain is natural; it has to be understood, it has to be accepted. Because naturally we are afraid of pain, naturally we avoid it. Hence many people have avoided the heart and are hung up in the head, they live in the head. The heart gives pain, true, but only because it can give pleasure--that's why it gives pain. Pain is the way that pleasure arrives; agony, the door that ecstasy enters. If one is aware of it, one accepts the pain as a blessing. Then suddenly the quality of the pain immediately starts changing. You are no longer antagonistic to it, and because you are no longer antagonistic to it, it is no longer pain; it is a friend. It is a fire that is going to cleanse you. It is a transmutation, a process, in which the old will go and the new will arrive, in which the mind will disappear and the heart will function in its totality. Then life is a benediction.

Try this method from Atisha: When you breathe in--listen carefully, it is one of the greatest methods--when you breathe in, think that you are breathing in all the miseries of all the people in the world. All the darkness, all the negativity, all the hell that exists anywhere, you are breathing it in. And let it be absorbed in your heart. You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They say just the opposite--they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breathe out, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy, positivity, happiness, cheerfulness." Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery and suffering of all the beings of the world--past, present and future. And when you breathe out, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all the benediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the method of compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of the world inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms the energy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed into blissfulness... then pour it out. Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like to do it again and again.

Whatsoever you do, do it with deep alertness; then even small things become sacred. Then cooking or cleaning become sacred; they become worship. It is not a question of what you are doing, the question is how you are doing it. You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it--then you miss something beautiful. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience--you missed it; the floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, alert, not only the floor but you yourself would have felt a deep cleansing.

Those who say, "We are waiting for an opportunity," are being deceptive, and they are not deceiving anybody but themselves. The opportunity is not going to come tomorrow. It has already arrived, it has always been here. It was here even when you were not here. Existence is an opportunity; to be is the opportunity. Don't say, "Tomorrow I will meditate, tomorrow I will love, tomorrow I will have a dancing relationship with existence." Why tomorrow? Tomorrow never comes. Why not now? Why postpone? Postponement is a trick of the mind; it keeps you hoping, and meanwhile the opportunity is slipping by. And in the end you will come to the cul-de-sac, death--and there will be no more opportunity left. And this has happened many times in the past. You are not new here, you have been born and you have died many, many times. And each time the mind has played the same trick, and you have not yet learned anything.

If you have done something wrong, go to the person. Be humble, ask his forgiveness. Only he can forgive you, nobody else. And remember, that is the meaning of the word sin: forgetfulness. So now, don't forget again and do the same; otherwise, your asking forgiveness becomes meaningless. Now be careful, be alert, be conscious; and don't do the same thing again. Remember not to commit the mistake again--it should become a decision in you; then you are really repentant. Repentance can become a very, very deep phenomenon in you if you understand the responsibility. Then even a small thing, if it becomes a repentance--not just verbal, not just on the surface; if it goes deep to your roots, if you repent from the roots; if your whole being shakes and trembles and cries, and tears come out; not only out of your eyes, but out of every cell of your body, then repentance can become a transfiguration.

A professor of philosophy went to a Zen Master, Nan-in, and he asked about God, about nirvana, about meditation, and so many things. The Master listened silently--questions and questions and questions--and then he said, "You look tired. You have climbed this high mountain; you have come from a faraway place. Let me first serve you tea." And the Zen Master made tea. The professor waited--he was boiling with questions. And when the Master was making tea and the samovar was singing and the aroma of the tea started spreading, the Master said to the professor, "Wait, don't be in such a hurry. Who knows? Even by drinking tea your questions may be answered... or even before that." The professor was at a loss. He started thinking, "This whole journey has been a wastage. This man seems to be mad. How can my question about God be answered by drinking tea? What relevance is there? It is better to escape from here as soon as possible." But he was also feeling tired and it was good to have a cup of tea before he started descending back down the mountain. The Master brought the kettle, poured tea in the cup--and went on pouring. The cup was full, and the tea started overflowing into the saucer, but he went on pouring. Then the saucer was also full. Just one drop more and the tea would start flowing on the floor, and the professor said, "Stop! What are you doing? Are you mad or something? Can't you see the cup is full? Can't you see the saucer is full?" And the Zen Master said, "That's the exact situation you are in: your mind is so full of questions that even if I answer, you don't have any space for the answer to go in. But you look like an intelligent man. You could see the point, that now even a single drop more of tea and it will not be contained by the cup or the saucer, it will start overflowing on the floor. And I tell you, since you entered this house your questions are overflowing all over the place. This small but is full of your questions! Go back, empty your cup, and then come. First create a little space in yourself."

Each day it happens: you could have done something but you didn't do it, and you are using the excuse that if God wants it done, He will do it anyhow. Or, you do something and then you wait for the result, you expect, and the result never comes. Then you are angry, as if you have been cheated, as if God has betrayed you, as if He is against you, partial, prejudiced, unjust. And there arises great complaint in your mind. Then trust is missing. The religious person is one who goes on doing whatsoever is humanly possible but creates no tension because of it. Because we are very, very tiny, small atoms in this universe, things are very complicated. Nothing depends only on my action; there are thousands of crisscrossing energies. The total of the energies will decide the outcome. How can I decide the outcome? But if I don't do anything then things may never be the same. I have to do, and yet I have to learn not to expect. Then doing is a kind of prayer, with no desire that the result should be such. Then there is no frustration. Trust will help you to remain unfrustrated and alive, intensely alive.

Orgasm is a state where your body no longer is felt as matter; it vibrates like energy, electricity. It vibrates so deeply, from the very foundation, that you completely forget that it is a material thing. It becomes an electric phenomenon--and it is an electric phenomenon. Now physicists say that there is no matter, that all matter is only appearance; deep down, that which exists is elec-tricity, not matter. In orgasm, you come to this deepest layer of your body where matter no longer exists, just energy waves; you become a dancing energy, vibrating. No more any boundaries to you--pulsating, but no longer substantial. And your beloved also pulsates. Only in deep love can one move into it.

The only antidote for the misuse of psychic powers is love; otherwise all power corrupts. It may be wealth, it may be prestige, it may be politics, or it may be psychic--it makes no difference. Whenever you feel powerful, if you don't have love as an antidote your power is going to become a calamity to others, a curse; because power blinds the eyes. Love opens the eyes, love cleanses the eyes... your perception becomes clear.

Sorrow and suffering and misery--everything has to be taken nonseriously, because the more seriously you take them, the more difficult it is to get out of them. The more nonserious you are... you can pass through the suffering, through the dark night, singing a song. And if one can pass through the dark night singing a song and dancing, then why unnecessarily torture yourself? Make this whole journey from here to here just a beautiful laughing matter.

Mind is so cunning that it can hide in the garments of its very opposite. From indulgence it can become asceticism, from being a materialist it can become a spiritualist, from being worldly it can become otherworldly. But mind is mind--whether you are for the world or against the world you remain encaged in the mind. For or against, both are parts of the mind. When mind disappears, mind disappears in a choiceless awareness. When you stop choosing, when you are neither for nor against--that is stopping in the middle. One choice leads to the left, one extreme; another choice leads to the right, the other extreme. If you don't choose, you are exactly in the middle. That is relaxation, that is rest. You become choiceless, unobsessed, and in that state of unobsessed, choiceless consciousness, intelligence arises which has been lying deep, dormant in your being. You become a light unto yourself. The middle is the point from where the transcendence happens. Think about it, contemplate about it, watch it in life.

Awareness comes through sensitivity. You have to be more sensitive whatsoever you do, so that even a trivial thing like tea... Can you find anything more trivial than tea? Can you find anything more ordinary than tea? No, you cannot--and Zen monks and masters have raised this most ordinary thing into the most extraordinary. They have bridged "this" and "that"... as if tea and God have become one. Unless tea becomes divine you will not be divine, because the least has to be raised to the most, the ordinary has to be raised to the extraordinary, the earth has to be made heaven. They have to be bridged, no gap should be left.

When it is morning, it is morning. When it is evening, it is evening. There is no question of choice. Drop the choice and you are free everywhere--freedom can be only in choicelessness. So when you are young, it is beautiful; when you are a child, it is beautiful; when you are old, it is beautiful; when you are dying, it is beautiful--because you are never separate from the total, you are just a wave in the ocean. The wave in the ocean can start thinking of itself as an individual--then there will be trouble. The wave in the ocean never thinks of itself as separate, so wherever the ocean is taking her, she is willingly, joyously, dancingly moving in that direction.

Things happen when they are needed to happen; things are bound to happen when they are needed to happen. All goes well--just trust. Remember the difference. The theologian will say, "Believe in the concept of God." The mystic says there is no need to believe in the concept of God, just sense the harmony in existence. It is not a concept, it is not a belief--you can sense it, it is everywhere. It is almost tangible. The moment you think you are one with the whole, there is relaxation; a sudden let-go happens. You need not keep hold of yourself, you can relax. There is no need to remain tense, because there is no private goal to be attained by you. You flow with God. God's goal is your goal, his destiny is your destiny.

The only problem with sadness, desperateness, anger, hopelessness, anxiety, anguish, misery, is that you want to get rid of them. That's the only barrier. You will have to live with them. You cannot just escape. They are the very situation in which life has to integrate and grow. They are the challenges of life. Accept them. They are blessings in disguise.

A man had a very beautiful horse, and the horse was so rare that even emperors had asked the man to sell it--whatsoever the price--but he refused. Then one morning he found that the horse had been stolen. The whole village gathered to sympathize, and they said, "How unfortunate! You could have got a fortune--people were offering so much. You were stubborn and you were stupid. Now the horse is stolen." But the old man laughed; he said, "Don't talk nonsense! Only say that the horse is no more in the stable. Let the future come, then we will see." And it happened that after fifteen days the horse came back, and not only alone--it brought a dozen wild horses with it from the forest. The whole village gathered, and they said, "The old man was right! His horse is back and has brought twelve beautiful horses with him. Now he can earn as much money as he wants." They went to the man and they said, "Sorry. We could not understand the future and the ways of god, but you are great! You knew something about it; you have some glimpse of the future." He said, "Nonsense! All that I know now is that the horse has come back with twelve horses--what is going to happen tomorrow, nobody knows." And the next day it happened that the old man's only son was trying to break in a new horse and he fell, and his legs were broken. The whole town gathered again and they said, "One never knows--you were right; this proved to be a curse. It would have been better that the horse had not come back. Now your son will remain crippled for his whole life." The old man said, "Don't jump ahead! Just wait and see what happens. Only say this much, that my son has broken his legs--that's all." It happened after fifteen days that all the young men of the town were forcibly taken away by the government because the country was going to war. Only this old man's son was left, because he was of no use. Everybody gathered--they said, "Our sons are gone! At least you have your son. Maybe he is crippled, but he is here! Our sons are gone, and the enemy is far stronger; they are all going to be murdered. In our old age we will have nobody to look after us, but you at least have your son and maybe he will be cured." But the old man said, "Say only this much--that your sons have been taken by the government. My son has been left, but there is no conclusion." Just state the fact! Don't think of anything as a curse or a blessing. Don't interpret it, and suddenly you will see that everything is beautiful.

Either you make your energy creative, or it will turn sour and become destructive. Energy is a dangerous thing--if you have it, you have to use it creatively, otherwise sooner or later you will find it has become destructive. So find something--whatsoever you like--to put your energy into. If you want, painting; or if you want, dancing or singing; or if you want to play an instrument.... Whatsoever you want, find a way in which you can become completely lost. If you can be lost playing a guitar--good! In those moments when you are lost, your energy will be released in a creative way. If you cannot be lost in painting, in singing, in dancing, in playing guitar or a flute, then you will find lower ways of being lost: anger, rage, aggression; these are lower ways to be lost.

Gautam Buddha initiated a murderer into sannyas--and the murderer was no ordinary murderer. Rudolf Hess is nothing compared to him. His name was Angulimal. Angulimal means a man who wears a garland of human fingers. He had taken a vow that he would kill one thousand people; from each single person he would take one finger so that he could remember how many he had killed and he will make a garland of all those fingers. In his garland of fingers he had nine hundred and ninety-nine fingers--only one was missing. And that one was missing because his road was closed; nobody was coming that way. But Gautam Buddha entered that closed road. The king had put guards on the road to prevent people, particularly strangers who didn't know that a dangerous man lived behind the hills. The guards told Gautam Buddha, "That is not the road to be used. This is the place where Angulimal lives. Even the king has not the guts to go on this road. That man is simply mad. "His mother used to go to him. She was the only person who used to go, once in a while, to see him, but even she stopped. The last time she went there he told her, 'Now only one finger is missing, and just because you happen to be my mother... I want to warn you that if you come another time you will not go back. I need one finger desperately. Up to now I have not killed you because other people were available, but now nobody passes on this road except you. So I want to make you aware that next time if you come it will be your responsibility, not mine.' Since that time his mother has not come." The guards said to Buddha, "Don't unnecessarily take the risk." And do you know what Buddha said to them? Buddha said, "If I don't go then who will go? Only two things are possible: either I will change him, and I cannot miss this challenge; or I will provide him with one finger so that his desire is fulfilled. Anyway I am going to die one day. Giving my head to Angulimal will be at least of some use; otherwise one day I will die and you will put me on the funeral pyre. I think that it is better to fulfill somebody's desire and give him peace of mind. Either he will kill me or I will kill him, but this encounter is going to happen; you just lead the way." The people who used to follow Gautam Buddha, his close companions who were always in competition to be closer to him, started slowing down. Soon there were miles between Gautam Buddha and his disciples. They all wanted to see what happened, but they didn't want to be too close. Angulimal was sitting on his rock watching. He could not believe his eyes. A very beautiful man of such immense charisma was coming towards him. Who could this man be? He had never heard of Gautam Buddha, but even this hard heart of Angulimal started feeling a certain softness towards the man. He was looking so beautiful, coming towards him. It was early morning... a cool breeze, and the sun was rising... and the birds were singing and the flowers had opened; and Buddha was coming closer and closer. Finally Angulimal, with his naked sword in his hand, shouted, "Stop!" Gautam Buddha was just a few feet away, and Angulimal said, "Don't take another step because then the responsibility will not be mine. Perhaps you don't know who I am!" Buddha said, "Do you know who you are?" Angulimal said, "This is not the point. Neither is it the place nor the time to discuss such things. Your life is in danger!" Buddha said, "I think otherwise--your life is in danger." That man said, "I used to think I was mad--you are really mad! And you go on moving closer. Then don't say that I killed an innocent man. You look so innocent and so beautiful that I want you to go back. I will find somebody else. I can wait; there is no hurry. If I can manage nine hundred and ninety-nine... it is only a question of one more, but don't force me to kill you." Buddha came very close, and Angulimal's hands were trembling. The man was so beautiful, so innocent, so childlike. He had already fallen in love. He had killed so many people... He had never felt this weakness; he had never known what love is. For the first time he was full of love. So there was a contradiction: the hand was holding the sword to kill the person, and his heart was saying, "Put the sword back in the sheath." Buddha said, "I am ready, but why is your hand shaking?--you are such a great warrior, even kings are afraid of you, and I am just a poor beggar. Except the begging bowl, I don't have anything. You can kill me, and I will feel immensely satisfied that at least my death fulfills somebody's desire; my life has been useful, my death has also been useful. But before you cut my head I have a small desire, and I think you will grant me a small desire before killing me." Before death, even the hardest enemy is willing to fulfill any desire. Angulimal said, "What do you want?" Buddha said, "I want you just to cut from the tree a branch which is full of flowers. I will never see these flowers again; I want to see those flowers closely, feel their fragrance and their beauty in this morning sun, their glory." So Angulimal cut with his sword a whole branch full of flowers. And before he could give it to Buddha, Buddha said, "This was only half the desire; the other half is, please put the branch back on the tree." Angulimal said, "I was thinking from the very beginning that you are crazy. Now this is the craziest desire. How can I put this branch back?" Buddha said, "If you cannot create, you have no right to destroy. If you cannot give life, you don't have the right to give death to any living thing." A moment of silence and a moment of transformation... the sword fell down from his hands. Angulimal fell down at the feet of Gautam Buddha, and he said, "I don't know who you are, but whoever you are, take me to the same space in which you are; initiate me." By that time the followers of Gautam Buddha had come closer and closer. They were all around and when he fell at Buddha's feet they immediately came close. Somebody raised the question, "Don't initiate this man, he is a murderer!" Buddha said again, "If I don't initiate him, who will initiate him? And I love the man, I love his courage. And I can see tremendous possibility in him: a single man fighting against the whole world. I want this kind of people, who can stand against the whole world. Up to now he was standing against the world with a sword; now he will stand against the world with a consciousness, which is far sharper than any sword. I told you that murder was going to happen, but it was not certain who was going to be murdered--either I was going to be murdered, or Angulimal. Now you can see Angulimal is murdered. And who I am to judge?"

To think that "I am the mind," is unawareness. To know that mind is only a mechanism just as the body is, to know that the mind is separate.... The night comes, the morning comes: you don't get identified with the night. You don't say, "I am night," you don't say, "I am morning." The night comes, the morning comes, the day comes, again the night comes; the wheel goes on moving, but you remain alert that you are not these things. The same is the case with the mind. Anger comes, but you forget--you become anger. Greed comes, you forget--you become greed. Hate comes, you forget--you become hate. This is unawareness. Awareness is watching that the mind is full of greed, full of anger, full of hate or full of lust, but you are simply a watcher. Then you can see greed arising, becoming a great, dark cloud, then dispersing--and you remain untouched. How long can it remain? Your anger is momentary, your greed is momentary, your lust is momentary. Just watch a little and you will be surprised: it comes and it goes. And you are remaining there unaffected, cool, calm.

The most basic thing to remember is that when you are feeling good, in a mood of ecstasy, don't start thinking that it is going to be your permanent state. Live the moment as joyfully, as cheerfully as possible, knowing perfectly well that it has come and it will go--just like a breeze comes in your house, with all its fragrance and freshness, and goes out from the other door. This is the most fundamental thing. If you start thinking in terms of making your ecstatic moments permanent, you have already started destroying them. When they come, be grateful; when they leave, be thankful to existence. Remain open. It will happen many times--don't be judgmental, don't be a chooser. Remain choiceless. Yes, there will be moments when you will be miserable. So what? There are people who are miserable and who have not even known a single moment of ecstasy; you are fortunate. Even in your misery, remember that it is not going to be permanent; it will also pass away, so don't get too much disturbed by it. Remain at ease. Just like day and night, there are moments of joy and there are moments of sadness; accept them as part of the duality of nature, as the very way things are. And you are simply a watcher: neither you become happiness nor you become misery. Happiness comes and goes, misery comes and goes. One thing remains always there--always and always--and that is the watcher, one who witnesses. Slowly, slowly get more and more centered into the watcher. Days will come and nights will come... lives will come and deaths will come... success will come, failure will come. But if you are centered in the watcher--because that is the only reality in you--everything is a passing phenomenon. Just for a moment, try to feel what I am saying: just be a watcher.... Do not cling to any moment because it is beautiful, and do not push any moment because it is miserable. Stop doing that. That you have been doing for lives. You have not been successful yet and you will never be successful ever. The only way to go beyond, to remain beyond, is to find a place from where you can watch all these changing phenomena without getting identified.

I will tell you an ancient Sufi story... A king asked his wise men in the court, "I am making a very beautiful ring for myself. I have got one of the best diamonds possible. I want to keep hidden inside the ring some message that may be helpful to me in a time of utter despair. It has to be very small so that it can be hidden underneath the diamond in the ring." They were all wise men, they all were great scholars; they could have written great treatises. But to give him a message of not more than two or three words which would help him in moments of utter despair... They thought, they looked into their books, but they could not find anything. The king had an old servant who was almost like his father--he had been his father's servant. The king's mother had died early and this servant had taken care of him, so he was not treated like a servant. The king had immense respect for him. The old man said, "I am not a wise man, knowledgeable, scholarly; but I know the message--because there is only one message. And these people cannot give it to you; it can be given only by a mystic, by a man who has realized himself. "In my long life in the palace I have come across all kinds of people, and once, a mystic. He had also been a guest of your father and I was put into his service. When he was departing, as a gesture of thankfulness for all my services he gave me this message"--and he wrote it on a small piece of paper, folded it and told the king, "Don't read it, just keep it hidden in the ring. Only open it when everything else has failed--when there is no way out." And the time came soon. The country was invaded and the king lost his kingdom. He was running away on his horse just to save his life and the enemy horses were following him. He was alone; they were many. And he came to a place where the path stopped, came to a dead end; there was a cliff and a deep valley. To fall into it was to be finished. He could not go back, the enemy was there and he could hear the sounds of the hooves of the horses. He could not go forward, and there was no other way.... Suddenly he remembered the ring. He opened it, took out the paper, and there was a small message of tremendous value: it simply said, "This too will pass." A great silence came over him as he read the sentence, "This too will pass." And it passed. Everything passes away; nothing remains in this world. The enemies who were following him must have got lost in the forest, must have moved on a wrong way; the hooves slowly, slowly were not heard any more. The king was immensely grateful to the servant and to the unknown mystic. Those words proved miraculous. He folded the paper, put it back into the ring, gathered his armies again and conquered his kingdom back. And the day he was entering his capital, victorious, there was great celebration all over the capital, music, dance--and he was feeling very proud of himself. The old man was walking by the side of his chariot. He said, "This time is also right: look again at the message." The king said, "What do you mean? Now I am victorious, people are celebrating. I am not in despair, I am not in a situation where there is no way out." The old man said, "Listen. This is what the saint has said to me: this message is not only for despair, it is also for pleasure. This is not only for when you are defeated; it is also for when you are victorious--not only when you are the last, but also when you are the first." And the king opened the ring, read the message, "This too will pass," and suddenly the same peace, the same silence, amidst the crowds, jubilating, celebrating, dancing... but the pride, the ego was gone. Everything passes away. He asked his old servant to come on the chariot and sit with him. He asked, "Is there anything more? Everything passes away... Your message has been immensely helpful." The old man said, "The third thing the saint said, 'Remember, everything passes. Only you remain; you remain forever as a witness.'" Everything passes, but you remain. You are the reality; everything else is just a dream. Beautiful dreams are there, nightmares are there... But it does not matter whether it is a beautiful dream or a nightmare; what matters is the one who is seeing the dream. That seer is the only reality.

A great saint, Narada, was going to paradise. He used to travel between paradise and earth. He functioned like a postman between that world and this world; he was a bridge. He came across an ancient sage, very old, sitting under a tree and repeating his mantra. He had been repeating that mantra for many years and many lives. Narada asked him, "Would you like to ask about something? Would you like some message to be given to the Lord?" The old man opened his eyes and said, "Just you inquire about one thing: how much longer do I have to wait? How long? Tell him it is too much. For many lives I have been doing this mantra, now how long am I expected to do it? I am tired of it. I am bored with it." Just by the side of the ancient sage underneath another tree was a young man with an ektara, a one-stringed instrument, playing it and dancing. Narada asked him jokingly, "Would you also like to inquire about how long it will take for your enlightenment to happen?" But the young man did not even bother to answer. He continued his dance. Narada asked again, "I am going to the Lord. Have you some message?" But the young man laughed and continued to dance. When Narada came back after a few days he told the old man, "God said that you will have to wait at least three lives more." The old man became so angry that he threw down his beads. He was almost ready to hit Narada! And he said, "This is nonsense! I have been waiting and waiting and I have been doing all kinds of austerities--chanting, fasting, all forms of rituals. I have fulfilled all the requirements. Three lives--this is unjust!" The young man was still dancing under his tree, very joyously. Narada was afraid, but still he went and told him, "Although you did not ask, out of my own curiosity I inquired. When God said that that old man would have to wait three lives, I inquired about the young man nearby, dancing and playing his ektara. And he said, 'That young man--he will have to wait as many lives as there are leaves on the tree under which he is dancing.'" And the young man started dancing even faster and he said, "Just as many leaves as are on this tree? then it is not very far, then I have already arrived!--just think how many trees there are on the whole earth. Compare! So it is very close. Thank you, sir, that you inquired." He started dancing again. And the story says that the young man became instantly enlightened, that very moment.

Your mind is the wish-fulfilling tree--whatsoever you think, sooner or later it is fulfilled. Sometimes the gap is such that you have completely forgotten that you had desired it in the first place--sometimes the gap is of years, or sometimes of lives, so you can't connect the source. But if you watch deeply you will find all your thoughts are creating you and your life. They create your hell, they create your heaven. They create your misery, they create your joy. They create the negative, they create the positive. Everybody is a magician, spinning and weaving a magic world around himself, and then he is caught--the spider itself is caught in its own web. Once this is understood, things start changing. Then you can play around; then you can change your hell into heaven--it is just a question of painting it from a different vision. Or if you are so much in love with misery you can create as much as you want, to your heart's content. But then you are never complaining, because you know that it is your creation, it is your painting, you cannot make anybody feel responsible for it. Then the whole responsibility is yours. Then a new possibility arises: you can drop creating the world, you can stop creating it. There is no need to create heaven and hell, there is no need to create at all. The creator can relax, retire. That retirement of the mind is meditation.

The poet has been searching for God for millions of lives. He has seen him sometimes, far away, near a star, and he started moving that way but by the time he reached that star, God had moved to some other place. But he went on searching and searching--he was determined to find God's home--and the surprise of surprises was, one day he actually reached a house where on the door was written: "God's Home." You can understand his ecstasy, you can understand his joy. He runs up the steps, and just as he is going to knock on the door, suddenly his hand freezes. An idea arises in him: "If by chance this is really the home of God, then I am finished, my seeking is finished. I have become identified with my seeking, with my search. I don't know anything else. If the door opens and I face God, I am finished--the search is over. Then what?" He starts trembling with fear, takes his shoes off his feet, and descends back down the beautiful marble steps. His fear is that God may open the door, although he has not knocked. And then he runs as fast as he has never run before. He used to think that he had been running after God as fast as he could, but today he runs as he has never run, not looking back.

Have you ever taken note of one thing?--the present is always juicy, the present is always blissful. Worry and suffering are created either by what you wanted to do in the past and could not do, or by what you want to do in the future and don't know whether you will be able to do or not. Did you ever notice, did you ever look at this small truth, that there is no suffering in the present, there is no worry? This is why the present does not disturb the mind--anxiety disturbs the mind. There is no suffering in the present. The present doesn't know suffering--the present is such a small moment that suffering cannot fit into it. In the present only heaven can fit, not hell. Hell is too big! The present can only be peace, can only be happiness.

I have heard that an old woman was traveling on a bus, and she was anxious, worried, and continuously asking what stop it was. The stranger sitting by her side said, "Relax, don't be worried. The conductor will go on announcing what stop it is, and if you are too worried I will call him here. You can tell him where you want to get off so he can keep a note of it. And you can relax!" He called the conductor and the woman said, "Please remember, I don't want to miss my stop. I have to reach somewhere very urgently." The conductor said, "Okay, I will make a note of it--although even without your asking I will be announcing each stop. But I will make a note of it and I will come to you particularly and tell you whenever your stop comes. But you relax, don't be so worried about it!" She was perspiring and trembling and looked so tense. So she said, "Okay, you note it down--I have to get off at the bus terminus." Now if it is the bus terminus, why should you worry? How can you miss it? There is no way of missing it! The moment you rest, the moment you relax, you know that existence is already going, moving, reaching towards higher peaks. And you are part of it. You need not have separate ambitions. This is relaxation--resting, dropping all private goals, dropping the whole achieving mind, all the ego projections. And then life is a mystery. Your eyes will be full of wonder; your heart will be full of awe. We are not to become something--we are already it. This is the whole message of all the awakened ones: that you are not to achieve something, it has already been given to you. It is God's gift. You are already where you should be, you can't be anywhere else. There is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. Because there is nowhere to go and nothing to achieve, you can celebrate. Then there is no hurry, no worry, no anxiety, no anguish, no fear of being a failure. You can't fail. In the very nature of things it is impossible to fail, because there is no question of success at all.

Gather courage--the journey has already started. Even if you go back you will not find the old shore again. Even if you go back, those old toys will not be of any help anymore; you are finished with them, you will know they are toys. Now the real has to be found, has to be inquired into. And it is not very far away either--it is within you.

A man who lives according to the past is bound to feel boredom, meaninglessness, and a kind of anguish: "What am I doing here? Why am I continuing to live? What is there in tomorrow?--another repetition of today? And what was in today was a repetition of yesterday, so what is the point? Why go dragging yourself from the cradle to the grave, in the same routine?" It is perfectly good for buffaloes and donkeys--because they don't have a memory of the past, they don't have any idea of the future. They are not bored, because for boredom a certain consciousness is needed. This consciousness is aware that you have done it before, you are doing it again, and you will be doing it tomorrow also--because you don't move away from the past, you don't let it die, you keep it alive. This is the dilemma that everybody faces in life, and the only solution is to let the past die.

There is a beautiful story in the life of Jesus. He comes to a lake; it is early morning, the sun has yet not risen, and one fisherman is just going to throw his net into the lake. Jesus puts his hand on his shoulder and says, "How long are you going to do this thing, every day--morning, afternoon, evening--just catching fish? Do you think this is all life is meant for?" The fisherman says, "I have never thought about it, but because you have raised the question, I can see the point, that life must be something more." Jesus says, "If you come with me I will teach you how to catch men, rather than catching fish." The man looked into Jesus' eyes... such depth, such sincerity, so much love that you cannot doubt this man, such a great silence surrounding him that you cannot say no to this man. The fisherman threw his net into the water and followed Jesus. As they were leaving the town a man came running and told the fisherman, "Your father who was ill for many days has died. Come home!" The fisherman asked Jesus, "Just give me three days so that I can do the last rituals that a son is expected to do when his father dies." And this is the statement that I want you to remember: Jesus said to that fisherman, "Let the dead bury their dead, you come with me." What does he mean? "The whole city is full of dead people; they will manage to dispose of your dead father. You are not needed. You just come with me." Every moment something is becoming dead. Don't be antique collectors; that which is dead, leave it. You go with life, you flow with life, with your totality and intensity, and you will never face any dilemma, any problem.

Only one thing has to be remembered: be authentic, be sincere to yourself. Declare your truth, whatsoever the cost. Even if life is risked, risk it, because truth is far more valuable than anything, because truth is true life.

The state of no-mind is the state of the divine. God is not a thought but the experience of thoughtlessness. It is not a content in the mind; it is the explosion when the mind is content-less. It is not an object that you can see; it is the very capacity to see. It is not the seen but the seer. It is not like the clouds that gather in the sky, but the sky when there are no clouds. It is that empty sky.

When the consciousness is not going out to any object, when there is nothing to see, nothing to think, just emptiness all around, then one falls upon oneself. There is nowhere to go--one relaxes into one's source, and that source is God.

The heart has its own reasons, which the mind cannot understand. The heart has its own dimension of being, which is completely dark for the mind. The heart is higher and deeper than the mind, beyond the reach of it. It looks foolish. Love always looks foolish because love is not utilitarian. Mind is utilitarian. It uses everything for something else-- that is the meaning of being utilitarian. Mind is purposive, end-oriented; it turns everything into a means--and love cannot be turned into a means, that is the problem. Love in itself is the goal.

Saint Francis came to see the pope, and the pope thought this man was a fool. But trees and birds and fishes thought in a different way. When Saint Francis went to the river the fishes would jump in celebration that Francis had come. Thousands witnessed this phenomenon--millions of fishes would jump simultaneously; the whole river would be lost in jumping fishes. Saint Francis had come and the fishes were happy. And wherever he would go birds would follow; they would come and sit on his leg, on his body, in his lap. They understood this fool better than the pope. Even trees that had become dry and were going to die would become green and blossom again if Saint Francis came near. These trees understood well that this fool was no ordinary fool--he was God's fool.

The joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of being alone, because then only do you have something to share. Otherwise, two beggars meeting each other, clinging to each other, cannot be blissful. They will create misery for each other because each will be hoping, and hoping in vain, that "The other is going to fulfill me." The other is hoping the same. They cannot fulfill each other. They are both blind; they cannot help each other.

I have heard about a hunter who got lost in the jungle. For three days he could not find anybody to ask for the way out, and he was becoming more and more panicky--three days of no food and three days of constant fear of wild animals. For three days he was not able to sleep; he was sitting awake on some tree, afraid he may be attacked. There were snakes, there were lions, there were wild animals. On the fourth day early in the morning, he saw a man sitting under a tree. You can imagine his joy. He rushed, he hugged the man, and he said, "What joy!" And the other man hugged him, and both were immensely happy. Then they asked each other, "Why are you so ecstatic?" The first said, "I was lost and I was waiting to meet somebody." And the other said, "I am also lost and I am waiting to meet somebody. But if we are both lost then the ecstasy is just foolish. So now we will be lost together!"

That's what happens: you are lonely, the other is lonely--now you meet. First the honeymoon: that ecstasy that you have met the other, now you will not be lonely anymore. But within three days, or if you are intelligent enough, then within three hours... it depends on how intelligent you are. If you are stupid, then it will take a longer time because one does not learn; otherwise the intelligent person can immediately see after three minutes: "What are we trying to do? It is not going to happen. The other is as lonely as I am. Now we will be living together--two lonelinesses together. Two wounds together cannot help each other to be healed."

We are part of each other--no man is an island. We belong to an invisible but infinite continent. Boundless is our existence. But those experiences happen only to people who are self-actualizing, who are in such tremendous love with themselves that they can close their eyes and be alone and be utterly blissful. That's what meditation is all about. Meditation means being ecstatic in your aloneness. But when you become ecstatic in your aloneness, soon the ecstasy is so much that you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing you. And when it starts overflowing you it becomes love. Meditation allows love to happen. And the people who have not known meditation will never know love. They may pretend that they love but they cannot. They will only pretend--because they don't have anything to give, they are not overflowing. Love is a sharing. But before you can share, you have to have it! Meditation should be the first thing. Meditation is the center, love is the circumference of it. Meditation is the flame, love is the radiation of it. Meditation is the flower, love is the fragrance of it.

Truth is your own experience, your own vision. Even if I have seen the truth and I tell you, the moment I tell you it will become a lie for you, not a truth. For me it was truth, for me it came through the eyes. It was my vision. For you, it will not be your vision, it will be a borrowed thing. It will be a belief, it will be knowledge--not knowing. And if you start believing in it, you will be believing a lie. Now remember it. Even a truth becomes a lie if it enters your being through the wrong door. The truth has to enter through the front door, through the eyes. Truth is a vision. One has to see it.

Naropa was a great scholar, a great pundit, with ten thousand disciples of his own. One day he was sitting surrounded by thousands of scriptures--ancient, very ancient, rare. Suddenly he fell asleep, must have been tired, and he saw a vision. He saw a very, very old, ugly, horrible woman--a hag. Her ugliness was such that he started trembling in his sleep. It was so nauseating he wanted to escape--but where to escape, where to go? He was caught, as if hypnotized by the old hag. Her eyes were like magnets. "What are you studying?" asked the old woman. He said, "Philosophy, religion, epistemology, language, grammar, logic." The old woman asked again, "Do you understand them?" Naropa said, "Of course... Yes, I understand them." The woman asked again, "Do you understand the word, or the sense?" Thousands of questions had been asked to Naropa in his life--thousands of students always asking, inquiring--but nobody had asked this: whether he understands the word, or the sense. And the woman's eyes were so penetrating--those eyes were going to the very depth of his being, and it was impossible to lie. To anybody else he would have said, "Of course I under-stand the sense," but to this woman, this horrible-looking woman, he had to say the truth. He said, "I understand the words." The woman was very happy. She started dancing and laughing, and her ugliness was transformed; a subtle beauty started coming out of her being. Thinking, "I have made her so happy. Why not make her a little more happy?" Naropa then said, "And yes, I understand the sense also." The woman stopped laughing, stopped dancing. She started crying and weeping and all her ugliness was back--a thousandfold more. Naropa said, "Why are you weeping and crying? And why were you laughing and dancing before?" The woman said, "I was happy because a great scholar like you didn't lie. But now I am crying and weeping because you have lied to me. I know--and you know--that you don't understand the sense." The vision disappeared and Naropa was transformed. He escaped from the university, he never again touched a scripture in his life. He became completely ignorant, he understood--the woman was nobody outside, it was just a projection. It was Naropa's own being, through knowledge, that had became ugly. Just this much understanding, that "I don't understand the sense," and the ugliness was transformed immediately into a beautiful phenomenon. This vision of Naropa is very significant. Unless you feel that knowledge is useless you will never be in search of wisdom. You will carry the false coin thinking that this is the real treasure. You have to become aware that knowledge is a false coin--it is not knowing, it is not understanding. At the most it is intellectual--the word has been understood but the sense lost.

I have heard about two men who were lost in a forest on a very dark night. It was a very dangerous forest, full of wild animals, very dense, with darkness all around. One man was a philosopher and the other was a mystic. Suddenly, there was a storm, a crashing of the clouds, and great lightning. The philosopher looked at the sky, the mystic looked at the path. In that moment of lightning, the path was before him, illuminated. The philosopher looked at the lightning, and started wondering, "What is happening?" and missed the path.

Look at the path and do something--follow the path, act. Thinking will not lead you, only action, because thinking goes on in the head. It can never become total; only when you act, it is total. Become interested in life!--living is the real thing. Don't go on collecting information about what meditation is--meditate! Don't go on collecting information about what dancing is--there are encyclopedias on dance, but the whole thing is utterly meaningless if you don't dance yourself. Throw all those encyclopedias! Unburden yourself from knowledge and start living. And when you start living, then ordinary things are transformed into extraordinary beauty. Just small things--life consists of small things--but when you bring the quality of intense, passionate love they are transformed, they become luminous.

Ego is a social phenomenon--it is society, it is not you. But it gives you a function in the society, a place in the hierarchy of the society. And if you remain satisfied with it, you will miss the whole opportunity of finding the real self. Have you ever noticed that all types of miseries enter through the ego? It cannot make you blissful; it can only make you miserable. Ego is hell. Whenever you suffer, just try to watch and analyze, and you will find, somewhere the ego is the cause of it.

Two Buddhist monks are returning to their monastery; they come to a ford. The current is very powerful, it is a hilly place. A young, beautiful girl is waiting there, waiting for somebody to help her to cross. She is afraid to enter alone. One monk, who is the older one of course... because he is older, he walks ahead--all games of the ego. If you are older, you have to walk ahead; younger monks have to walk a little back. The older monk comes first. The young girl asks him, "Would you help me; just hold my hand? I am afraid, the current is so strong and perhaps it may be deep." The old man closes his eyes--that's what Buddha had said to the monks, that if you see a woman, particularly if she is beautiful, close your eyes. But I am surprised: you have already seen her, then you close your eyes; otherwise how can you determine she is a woman, and beautiful? You are already affected, and now you close your eyes! So he closes his eyes and enters the ford without answering the woman. Then the second, younger monk comes. The girl is afraid, but there is nothing else to do--the sun is setting, soon it will be night. So she asks the young monk, "Will you please hold my hand? The ford seems to be deep and the current strong... and I am afraid." The monk says, "It is deep, I know, and just holding hands won't do; you sit on my shoulders and I will carry you to the other side." When they reach the monastery the older monk says to the young one, "You, fellow, you have committed a sin and I am going to report that not only you touched a woman, not only you talked with her, you carried her on your shoulders! You should be expelled from the community; you are not worthy of being a monk." The young man simply laughs and says, "It seems although I have dropped that girl three miles back, you are still carrying her on your shoulders. Three miles have passed, and you are still bothered by it?" Now, what is happening to this old monk? The girl was beautiful; he has missed a chance. He is angry, he is jealous. He is full of sexuality, he is really in a mess. The younger one is completely clean. He took the girl across and left her on the other shore, and that's that, the thing is finished. Never fight with greed, ego, anger, jealousy, hatred --you cannot kill them, you cannot crush them, you cannot fight with them. All that you can do is just be aware of them--and the moment you are aware, they are gone. In the light, the darkness simply disappears.

Next time you feel angry, go and run around the house seven times, and afterwards sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else.... Anger is just a mental vomit. There is just no need to throw it on somebody. Do a little jogging, or take a pillow and beat the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening--it is a beautiful phenomenon, it is just like electricity in the clouds....

A Zen student came to Bankei and said, "Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?" "Show me this temper," said Bankei, "it sounds fascinating." "I haven't got it right now," said the student, "so I can't show it to you." "Well then," said Bankei, "bring it to me when you have it." "But I can't bring it just when I happen to have it," protested the student. "It arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you." "In that case," said Bankei, "it cannot be part of your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it--so it must have come to you from the outside.

Even while anger is happening, if you suddenly become conscious, it drops. Try it! Just in the middle, when you are very hot and would like to murder--suddenly become aware, and you will feel something has changed: a gear inside, you can feel the click, your inner being has relaxed. It may take time for your outer layer to relax, but the inner being has already relaxed. The cooperation has broken...now you are not identified. The body will take a little time to cool down, but deep at the center everything is cool. Awareness is needed, not condemnation--and through awareness transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching in your inner sky. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body--a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.

Laughter is eternal, life is eternal, celebration continues. Actors change but the drama continues. Waves change but the ocean continues. You laugh, you change--and somebody else laughs--but laughter continues. You celebrate, somebody else celebrates, but celebration continues. Existence is continuous, it is a continuum. There is not a single moment's gap in it. No death is death, because every death opens a new door--it is a beginning. There is no end to life, there is always a new beginning, a resurrection. If you change your sadness to celebration, then you will also be capable of changing your death into resurrection. So learn the art while there is still time.

I have heard about three Chinese mystics. Nobody knows their names now, and nobody ever knew their names. They were known only as the "Three Laughing Saints" because they never did anything else; they simply laughed. These three people were really beautiful--laughing, and their bellies shaking. And then it would become an infection and others would start laughing. The whole marketplace would laugh. When just a few moments before, it was an ugly place where people were thinking only of money, suddenly these three mad people came and changed the quality of the whole marketplace. Now they had forgotten that they had come to purchase and sell. Nobody bothered about greed. For a few seconds a new world opened. They moved all over China, from place to place, from village to village, just helping people to laugh. Sad people, angry people, greedy people, jealous people--they all started laughing with them. And many felt the key--you can be transformed. Then, in one village it happened that one of the three died. Village people gathered and they said, "Now there will be trouble. Now we have to see how they laugh. Their friend has died; they must weep." But when they came, the two were dancing, laughing and celebrating the death. The village people said, "Now this is too much. When a man is dead it is profane to laugh and dance." They said, "The whole life we laughed with him. How can we give him the last send-off with anything else?--we have to laugh, we have to enjoy, we have to celebrate. This is the only farewell that is possible for a man who has laughed his whole life. We don't see that he is dead. How can laughter die, how can life die?" Then the body was to be burned, and the village people said, "We will give him a bath as the ritual prescribes." But those two friends said, "No, our friend has said, 'Don't perform any ritual and don't change my clothes and don't give me a bath. You just put me as I am on the burning pyre.' So we have to follow his instructions." And then, suddenly, there was a great happening. When the body was put on the fire, that old man had played the last trick. He had hidden many fireworks under his clothes, and suddenly there was a festival! Then the whole village started laughing. These two mad friends were dancing, then the whole village started dancing. It was not a death, it was a new life.

Go on feeling something in you that is the same no matter what happens on the periphery. When someone is insulting you, focus yourself to the point where you are just listening to him--not doing anything, not reacting, just listening. He is insulting you. And then someone is praising you--just listen. Insult-praise, honor-dishonor, just listen. Your periphery will get disturbed. Look at that also, don't try to change it. Look at it; remain deep in your center, looking from there. You will have a detachment which is not forced, which is spontaneous, which is natural. And once you have the feeling of the natural detachment, nothing can disturb you.

In a village where the great Zen master Hakuin was living, a girl became pregnant. Her father bullied her for the name of her lover and, in the end, to escape punishment she told him it was Hakuin. The father said no more, but when the time came and the child was born, he at once took the baby to Hakuin and threw it down. "It seems that this is your child," he said, and he piled on every insult and sneer at the disgrace of the affair. Hakuin only said, "Oh, is that so?" and took the baby in his arms. Wherever he went thereafter, he took the baby, wrapped in the sleeve of his ragged robe. During rainy days and stormy nights he would go out to beg milk from the neighboring houses. Many of his disciples, considering him fallen, turned against him and left. And Hakuin said not a word. Meantime, the mother found she could not bear the agony of separation from her child. She confessed the name of the real father, and her own father rushed to Hakuin and prostrated himself, begging over and over for forgiveness. Hakuin said only, "Oh, is that so?" and gave him the child back. For the ordinary man what others say matters too much, because he has nothing of his own. Whatever he thinks he is, is just a collection of opinions of other people. Somebody has said, "You are beautiful," somebody has said, "You are intelligent," and he has been collecting all these. Hence he's always afraid: he should not behave in such a way that he loses his reputation, respectability. He is always afraid of public opinion, what people will say, because all that he knows about himself is what people have said about him. If they take it back, they leave him naked. Then he does not know who he is, ugly, beautiful, intelligent, unintelligent. He has no idea, even vaguely, of his own being; he depends on others. But the man of meditation has no need of others' opinions. He knows himself, so it does not matter what others say. Even if the whole world says something that goes against his own experience, he will simply laugh. At the most, that can be the only response. But he is not going to take any step to change people's opinion. Who are they? They don't know themselves and they are trying to label him. He will reject labeling. He will simply say, "Whatever I am, I am, and this is the way I am going to be."

You cannot improve upon yourself. And I am not saying that improvement does not happen, remember--but you cannot improve upon yourself. When you stop improving upon yourself, life improves you. In that relaxation, in that acceptance, life starts caressing you, life starts flowing through you. Nobody else has ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this--and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms.

I have heard: A king went into his garden and found wilted and dying trees, shrubs and flowers. The oak said it was dying because it could not be tall like the pine. Turning to the pine, he found it drooping because it was unable to bear grapes like the vine. And the vine was dying because it could not blossom like the rose. He found Heart's-ease blooming and as fresh as ever. Upon inquiry, he received this reply: "I took it for granted that when you planted me you wanted Heart's-ease. If you had desired an oak, a vine or a rose, you would have planted them. So I thought that since you put me here, I should do the best I can to be what you want. I can be nothing but what I am, and I am trying to be that to the best of my ability." You are here because this existence needs you as you are. Otherwise somebody else would have been here!--existence would not have helped you to be here, would not have created you. You are fulfilling something very essential, something very fundamental, as you are. If God wanted a Buddha he could have produced as many Buddhas as he wanted. He produced only one Buddha--that was enough, and he was satisfied to his heart's desire, utterly satisfied. Since then he has not produced another Buddha or another Christ. He has created you instead. Just think of the respect that the universe has given to you! You have been chosen, not Buddha, not Christ, not Krishna. You will be needed more, that's why. You fit more now. Their work is done, they contributed their fragrance to existence. Now you have to contribute your fragrance. But the moralists, the puritans, the priests, they go on teaching you, they go on driving you crazy. They say to the rose, "Become a lotus." And they say to the lotus, "What are you doing here? You have to become something else." They drive the whole garden crazy, everything starts dying--because nobody can be anybody else, that is not possible. That's what has happened to humanity. Everybody is pretending. Authenticity is lost, truth is lost, everybody is trying to show that he is somebody else. Just look at yourself: you are pretending to be somebody else. And you can be only yourself--there is no other way, there has never been, there is no possibility that you can be anybody else. You will remain yourself. You can enjoy it and bloom, or you can wither away if you condemn it.

Be true to yourself, because your own truth can lead you to the ultimate truth. Nobody else's truth can be your truth. You have a seed within you. Only if that seed sprouts and becomes a tree will you have a flowering; then you will have an ecstasy, a benediction. But if you are following others that seed will remain dead. And you may accumulate all the ideals in the world and become successful, but you will feel empty, because nothing else can fill you--only your seed, when it becomes a tree, will fill you. You will feel fulfillment only when your truth has come to flower, never before.

The seed is never in danger, remember. What danger can there be for the seed? It is absolutely protected. But the plant is always in danger, the plant is very soft. The seed is like a stone, hard, hidden behind a hard crust. But the plant has to pass through a thousand and one hazards. And not all plants are going to attain to that height where they can bloom into flowers, a thousand and one flowers.... Very few human beings attain to the second stage, and very few of those who attain the second stage attain the third, the stage of the flower. Why can't they attain the third stage, the stage of the flower? Because of greed, because of miserliness, they are not ready to share... because of a state of unlovingness. Courage is needed to become a plant, and love is needed to become a flower. A flower means the tree is opening up its heart, releasing its perfume, giving its soul, pouring its being into existence. Don't remain a seed. Gather courage--courage to drop the ego, courage to drop the securities, courage to drop the safeties, courage to be vulnerable.

A great king had three sons, and he wanted to choose one to be his heir. It was very difficult, because all three were very intelligent, very courageous. Whom should he choose? So he asked a great sage, and the sage suggested an idea.... The king went home and he asked all the three sons to come together. He gave them each one bag of flower seeds, and told them that he was going for a pilgrimage. "It will take a few years--one, two, three, maybe more. And this is a kind of test for you. These seeds you will have to give back to me when I return. Whosoever protects them best will become my heir." And he left for the pilgrimage. The first son locked them in an iron safe--because when the father comes he has to return them as they are. The second son thought, "If I lock them up just as my brother has done, these seeds will die. And a dead seed is not a seed at all. And my father may argue that "I had given you live seeds, there was a possibility for them to grow--but these seeds are dead; they cannot grow." So he went into the market and sold the seeds and kept the money. And he thought, "When my father comes I will go to the market, purchase new seeds, and give him back better than the first." But the third was the best. He went back into the garden and threw the seeds all over the place. After three years, when the father came back, the first son opened his safe. Those seeds were all dead, stinking. And the father said, "What! These are the seeds I have given to you? They had the possibility to bloom into flowers and give great perfume--and these seeds are stinking. These are not my seeds!" He went to the second son. He rushed to the market, purchased seeds, came back home, and said, "These are the seeds." The father said, "You are better than the first, but yet not as capable as I would like you to be." He went to the third. With great hope, and fear too: "What has he done?" And the third took him back into the garden and there were millions of plants blooming, millions of flowers all around. And the son said, "These are the seeds you had given to me. Soon I will collect the seeds and give them back to you. Right now they are getting ready to be collected." The father said, "You are my heir. This is how one should behave with seeds."

Let your gestures be alive, spontaneous. Let your own awareness decide your lifestyle, life pattern. Don't allow anybody else to decide it. That is a sin, to allow anybody else to decide it. Why is it a sin?--because you will never be in it. It will remain superficial, it will be hypocrisy. Don't ask anybody how to pray. Let the moment decide, let the moment be decisive, and the truth of the moment should be your prayer. And once you allow the truth of the moment to possess you, you will start growing and you will know tremendous beauties of prayer. You have entered on the path.

A famous story about Moses: He was passing through a forest and he saw a man praying. The man was saying such absurd things that Moses had to stop. What the man was saying was profane, sacrilegious. He was saying, "God, you must be feeling sometimes very alone--I can come and be always with you like a shadow. Why suffer loneliness when I am here? And I am not a useless person either--I will give you a good bath, and I will take all the lice from your hair and your body..." Lice?! Moses could not believe his ears: what is this man talking about? "And I will cook food for you--everybody likes what I cook. And I will prepare your bed and I will wash your clothes. When you are ill I will take care of you. I will be a mother to you, a wife to you, a servant, a slave--I can be all kinds of things. Just give me a hint so I can come..." Moses stopped him and said, "What are you doing? To whom are you talking? Lice in God's hair? He needs a bath? Stop this nonsense! This is not prayer. God will be offended by you." Looking at Moses, the man fell at his feet. He said, "I am sorry. I am an illiterate, ignorant man. I don't know how to pray. Please, you teach me!" So Moses taught him the right way to pray, and he was very happy because he had put a man on the right track. Happy, puffed up in his ego, Moses went away. And when he was alone in the forest, a thundering voice came from the sky and said, "Moses, I have sent you into the world to bring people to me, to bridge people with me, but not to take my lovers away from me. And that's exactly what you have done. That man is one of the most intimate to me. Go back and apologize. Take your prayer back! You have destroyed the whole beauty of his dialogue. He is sincere, he is loving. His love is true. Whatsoever he was saying, he was saying from his heart, it was not a ritual. Now what you have given to him is just a ritual. He will repeat it but it will be only on the lips; it will not be coming from his being."

It is not a certain sequence of causes that brings enlightenment. Your search, your intense longing, your readiness to do anything--altogether perhaps they create a certain aroma around you in which that great accident becomes possible.

The moment one is capable of feeling grateful for both pain and pleasure, without any distinction, without any choice, simply feeling grateful for whatsoever is given... Because if it is given by God, it must have a reason in it. We may like it, we may not like it, but it must be needed for our growth. Winter and summer are both needed for growth. Once this idea settles in the heart, then each moment of life is of gratitude. Let this become your meditation and prayer: thank God every moment--for laughter, for tears, for everything. Then you will see a silence arising in your heart that you have not known before. That is bliss.

The first thing is to accept life as it is. Accepting it, desires disappear. Accepting life as it is, tensions disappear, discontent disappears; accepting it as it is, one starts feeling very joyful--and for no reason at all! When joy has a reason, it is not going to last long. When joy is without any reason, it is going to be there forever.

The real thing is not a path. The real thing is the authenticity of the seeker. Let me emphasize this. You can travel on any path. If you are sincere and authentic, you will reach the goal. Some paths may be hard, some may be easier, some may have greenery on both sides, some may be moving through deserts, some may have beautiful scenery around them, some may not have any scenery around them, that's another thing; but if you are sincere and honest and authentic and true, then each path leads to the goal. So it simply can be reduced to one thing: that authenticity is the path. No matter what path you follow, if you are authentic, every path leads to the goal. And the opposite is also true: no matter what path you follow, if you are not authentic you will not reach anywhere. Your authenticity brings you back home, nothing else. All paths are secondary. The basic thing is to be authentic, to be true.

It is reported about one great mystic, Milarepa: When he went to his master in Tibet he was so humble, so pure, so authentic, that other disciples became jealous of him. It was certain that he would be the successor. And of course there was politics, so they tried to kill him. One day they said to him, "If you really believe in the master, can you jump from the hill? If you really believe, if the trust is there, then nothing, no harm, is going to happen." And Milarepa jumped without even hesitating for a single moment. They rushed down... because it was almost a three-thousand-foot deep valley. They went down to find his scattered bones--but he was sitting there in a lotus posture, very happy, tremendously happy. He opened his eyes and said, "You are right, trust protects." They thought it must be some coincidence, so when a house was on fire one day they told him, "If you love your master and you trust, you can go in." He rushed in to save the woman and the child who were left inside. He rushed in, and the fire was so great that the other disciples were hoping that he would die--but when he came back out with the woman and child, he was not burned at all. And he became more and more radiant, because the trust.... One day they were going somewhere, they were to cross a river, and they told him, "You need not go in the boat. You have such great trust, you can walk on the river"--and he walked. That was the first time the master saw him. He was not aware that Milarepa had been told to jump into the valley and told to go into the burning house. But that time he was there on the bank and he saw Milarepa walking on the water and he said, "What are you doing? It is impossible!" And Milarepa said, "Not impossible at all! I am doing it by your power, sir." Now the Master thought, "If my name and my power can do this to this ignorant, stupid man.... I have never tried it myself,"...so he tried. He drowned. Nothing has been heard about him after that.

No situation is without a lesson, no situation at all. All situations are pregnant, but you have to discover; it may not be available on the surface. You have to be watchful, you have to look at all the aspects of the situation.

One of the great Sufi Masters, Junnaid, was asked when he was dying... his chief disciple came close to him and asked, "Master, you are leaving us. One question has always been in our minds but we could never gather courage enough to ask you. Who was your Master? This has been a great curiosity among your disciples because we have never heard you talk about your Master." Junnaid opened his eyes and said, "It will be very difficult for me to answer because I have learned from almost everybody. The whole existence has been my Master. I have learned from every event that has happened in my life. And I am grateful to all that has happened, because out of all that learning I have arrived." Junnaid said, "Just to satisfy your curiosity I will give you three instances. One: I was very thirsty and I was going towards the river carrying my begging bowl, the only possession I had. When I reached the river a dog rushed, jumped into the river, started drinking. "I watched for a moment and threw away my begging bowl--because it is useless. A dog can do without it. I also jumped into the river, drank as much water as I wanted. My whole body was cool because I had jumped into the river. I sat in the river for a few moments, thanked the dog, touched his feet with deep reverence because he had taught me a lesson. "I had dropped everything, all possessions, but there was a certain clinging to my begging bowl. It was a beautiful bowl, very beautifully carved, and I was always aware that somebody might steal it. Even in the night I used to put it under my head as a pillow so nobody could snatch it away. That was my last clinging--the dog helped. It was so clear: if a dog can manage without a begging bowl... I am a man, why can't I manage? That dog was one of my Masters. "Secondly," he said, "I lost my way in a forest and by the time I reached the nearest village that I could find, it was midnight. Everybody was fast asleep. I wandered all over the town to see if I could find somebody awake to give me shelter for the night, until finally I found one man. I asked him, 'It seems only two persons are awake in the town, you and I. Can you give me shelter for the night?' "The man said, 'I can see from your gown that you are a Sufi monk....'" The word Sufi comes from suf; suf means wool, a woolen garment. The Sufis have used the woolen garment for centuries; hence they are called Sufis because of their garment. The man said, "I can see you are a Sufi and I feel a little embarrassed to take you to my home. I am perfectly willing, but I must tell you who I am. I am a thief--would you like to be a guest of a thief?" For a moment Junnaid hesitated. The thief said, "Look, it is better I told you. You seem hesitant. The thief is willing but the mystic seems to be hesitant to enter into the house of a thief, as if the mystic is weaker than the thief. In fact, I should be afraid of you--you may change me, you may transform my whole life! Inviting you means danger, but I am not afraid. You are welcome. Come to my home. Eat, drink, go to sleep, and stay as long as you want, because I live alone and my earning is enough. I can manage for two persons. And it will be really beautiful to chit-chat with you of great things. But you seem to be hesitant." And Junnaid became aware that it was true. He asked to be forgiven. He touched the feet of the thief and he said, "Yes, my rootedness in my own being is yet very weak. You are really a strong man and I would like to come to your home. And I would like to stay a little longer, not only for this night. I want to be stronger myself!" The thief said, "Come on!" He fed the Sufi, gave him something to drink, helped him to prepare for sleep and he said, "Now I will go. I have to do my own thing. I will come back early in the morning." Early in the morning the thief came back. Junnaid asked, "Have you been successful?" The thief said, "No, not today, but I will see tomorrow." And this happened continuously, for thirty days: every night the thief went out, and every morning he came back empty-handed. But he was never sad, never frustrated--no sign of failure on his face, always happy --and he would say, "It doesn't matter. I tried my best. I could not find anything today again, but tomorrow I will try. And, God willing, it can happen tomorrow if it has not happened today." After one month Junnaid left, and for years he tried to realize the ultimate, and it was always a failure. But each time he decided to drop the whole project he remembered the thief, his smiling face and his saying "God willing, what has not happened today may happen tomorrow." Junnaid said, "I remembered the thief as one of my greatest Masters. Without him I would not be what I am. "And third," he said, "I entered into a small village. A little boy was carrying a lit candle, obviously going to the small temple of the town to put the candle there for the night." And Junnaid asked, "Can you tell me from where the light comes? You have lighted the candle yourself so you must have seen. What is the source of light?" The boy laughed and he said, "Wait!" And he blew out the candle in front of Junnaid. And he said, "You have seen the light go. Can you tell me where it has gone? If you can tell me where it has gone I will tell you from where it has come, because it has gone to the same place. It has returned to the source." And Junnaid said, "I had met great philosophers but nobody had made such a beautiful statement: 'It has gone to its very source.' Everything returns to its source finally. Moreover, the child made me aware of my own ignorance. I was trying to joke with the child, but the joke was on me. He showed me that asking foolish questions--'From where has the light come?'--is not intelligent. It comes from nowhere, from nothingness--and it goes back to nowhere, to nothingness." Junnaid said, "I touched the feet of the child. The child was puzzled. He said, 'Why you are touching my feet?' And I told him, 'You are my Master--you have shown me something. You have given me a great lesson, a great insight.' "Since that time," Junnaid said, "I have been meditating on nothingness and slowly, slowly I have entered into nothingness. And now the final moment has come when the candle will go out, the light will go out. And I know where I am going--to the same source. "I remember that child with gratefulness. I can still see him standing before me, blowing out the candle."

People come to me and they ask, "What is right and what is wrong?" I say, "Awareness is right; unawareness is wrong." I don't label actions as wrong and right. I don't say violence is wrong. Sometimes violence can be right. I don't say love is right. Sometimes love can be wrong. Love can be for a wrong person, love can be for a wrong purpose. Somebody loves his country. Now, this is wrong because nationalism is a curse. Somebody loves his religion. He can kill, he can murder, he can burn others' temples. Neither is love always right nor is anger always wrong. Then what is right and what is wrong? To me, awareness is right. If you are angry with full awareness, even anger is right. And if you are loving with unawareness, even love is not right. So let the quality of awareness be there in every act that you do, in every thought that you think, in every dream that you dream. Let the quality of awareness enter into your being more and more. Become suffused with the quality of awareness. Then whatsoever you do is virtue. Then whatsoever you do is good. Then whatsoever you do is a blessing to you and to the world in which you live.

Let me remind you of a situation that happened in Jesus' life. He took a whip and entered into the great temple of Jerusalem. A whip in the hand of Jesus...? This is what Buddha means when he says, "an unwounded hand can handle poison." Yes, Jesus can handle a whip, no problem; the whip cannot overpower him. He remains alert, his consciousness is such. The great temple of Jerusalem had become a place of robbers. There were money-changers inside the temple and they were exploiting the whole country. Jesus alone entered the temple and upturned their boards--the boards of the money-changers--threw their money around and created such turmoil that the money-changers escaped outside the temple. They were many and Jesus was alone, but he was in such a fury, in such a fire! Now, this has been a problem for the Christians: how to explain it?--because their whole effort is to prove that Jesus is a dove, a symbol of peace. How can he take a whip in his hands? How can he be so angry, so enraged, that he upturned the boards of the money-changers and threw them outside the temple? And he must have been afire; otherwise, he was alone--he could have been caught hold of. His energy must have been in a storm; they could not face him. The priests and the business people all escaped outside shouting, "This man has gone mad!" Christians avoid this story. There is no need to avoid it if you understand: Jesus is so innocent! He is not angry; it is his compassion. He is not violent, he is not destructive; it is his love. The whip in his hand is the whip in the hands of love, compassion. A man of awareness acts out of his awareness, hence there is no repentance; his action is total. And one of the beauties of the total action is that it does not create karma; it does not create anything; it doesn't leave any trace on you. It is like writing on water: you have not even finished... it is gone. It is not even writing in sand, because that may remain for a few hours if the wind does not come--it is writing on water. If you can be totally alert, then there is no problem. You can handle poison; then the poison will function as a medicine. In the hands of the wise, poison becomes medicine; in the hands of the fools, even medicine, even nectar, is bound to become poison. If you function out of innocence--not out of knowledgeability but out of childlike innocence--then you can never come to any harm, because it leaves no trace. You remain free of your actions. You live totally and yet no action burdens you.

Do the small things of life with a relaxed awareness. When you are eating, eat totally--chew totally, taste totally, smell totally. Touch your bread, feel the texture. Smell the bread, smell the flavor. Chew it, let it dissolve into your being, and remain conscious--and you are meditating. And then meditation is not separate from life. Whenever meditation is separate from life, something is wrong. It becomes life-negative. Then one starts thinking of going to a monastery or to a Himalayan cave. Then one wants to escape from life, because life seems to be a distraction from meditation. Life is not a distraction, life is an occasion for meditation.

A disciple had come to see Ikkyu, his master. The disciple had been practicing for some time. It was raining, and as he went in, he left his shoes and umbrella outside. After he paid his respects, the master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella. Now, what kind of question...? You don't expect masters to ask such nonsense questions--you expect them to ask about God, about kundalini rising, chakras opening, lights happening in your head. You ask about such great things--occult, esoteric. But Ikkyu asked a very ordinary question. No Christian saint would have asked it, no Jain monk would have asked it, no Hindu swami would have asked it. It can be done only by one who is really with the Buddha, in the Buddha--who is really a buddha himself. The master asked him on which side of his shoes he had left his umbrella. Now, what do shoes and umbrellas have to do with spirituality? If the same question had been asked to you, you would have felt annoyed. What kind of question is this? But there is something immensely valuable in it. Had he asked about God, about your kundalini and chakras, that would have been nonsense, utterly meaningless. But this has meaning. The disciple could not remember--who bothers where you have put your shoes and on which side you have put your umbrella, to the right or to the left. Who bothers? Who pays so much attention to umbrellas? Who thinks of shoes? Who is so careful? But that was enough--the disciple was refused. Ikkyu said, "Then go and meditate for seven years more." "Seven years?" the disciple said. "Just for this small fault?" Ikkyu said, "This is not a small fault. Faults are not small or big--you are just not yet living meditatively, that's all. Go back, meditate for seven years more, and come again." This is the essential message: Be careful, careful of everything. And don't make any distinction between things, that this is trivia and that is spiritual. It depends on you. Pay attention, be careful, and everything becomes spiritual. Don't pay attention, don't be careful, and everything becomes unspiritual. Spirituality is imparted by you, it is your gift to the world. When a master like Ikkyu touches his umbrella, the umbrella is as divine as anything can be. Meditative energy is alchemical. It transforms the base metal into gold; it goes on transforming the baser into the higher. At the ultimate peak, everything is divine. This very world is the paradise, and this very body the buddha.

"Things aren't always what they seem." Two traveling angels Keep reading to the bottom of the page -- don't stop, at the feet (You'll see). Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion's guest room. Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, "Things aren't always what they seem." The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest. When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow,! whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field. The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could you have let this happen? The first man had everything, yet you helped him, he accused. The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you let the cow die. "Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied. "When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it." "Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead. Things aren't always what they seem." Sometimes that is exactly what happens when things don't turn out the way they should. If you have faith, you just need to trust that every outcome is always to your advantage. You just might not know it until some time later...

"The second illusion is: Failure exists. The idea that God's Will (assuming that God has one) could not be done runs counter to everything you thought you knew about God--namely, that God is all-powerful, ever present, the Supreme Being, the Creator--but it is one that you nevertheless enthusiastically embraced. This produced the highly improbable but very powerful illusion that God can fail; God can desire something but not get it. God can desire something but not receive it. God can need something but not have it. In short, God's Will can be thwarted. This illusion was quite a stretch, for even the limited perception of the human mind could spot the contradiction. Yet your species has a rich imagination and can stretch credibility to the limit with amazing ease. You have not only imagined a God with needs, you have imagined a God who can fail to have his needs met. How have you done this? Once again, through the use of projection. You have projected your self upon your God."

"The third illusion is: Disunity exists. The only escape from the conundrum of The second Illusion was to create a third: The Creator and the creation were not all one. This required the human mind to conceive of the possibility of the impossible - that That Which is One is not One; that That Which Is Unified is really separated. This is the Illusion of Disunity - the idea that separation exists. Your species reasoned that if creations were separate from the Creator, and if the Creator allowed the creations to do whatever they pleased, it would then be possible for the creations to do something that the Creator did not want them to do. Under these circumstances, the Will of the Creator could be thwarted. God could have something but not give it. Disunity produces the possibility of failure, and failure is only possible if Need exist. One illusion depends upon another."

"This is the fourth illusion: Insufficiency exists. It arises out of the third illusion, for without of the idea of disunity, the idea of Insufficiency is unsupportable. If there is only One Thing, and that One Thing Is All That Is, there can be no Insufficiency of any kind, because That One Thing Is Everything, and thus... It Is Sufficient unto Itself. This is a statement of the Nature Of God. This is not however, the experience of humans, because humans imagine themselves to be separate from God, and separate from each other as well. Yet no human is separate from God, since God is Everything That Is. Therefore humans are Not and cannot, be separate from each other."

"This is the fifth illusion: Requirement exists. The existence of Insufficiency led rapidly and inevitably to the idea of the next illusion. If there were enough stuff, there would be nothing you would have to do to get whatever it was that you wanted or needed. You would just reach out and it would be there. But that is not how humans decided that it is. They said there is not enough. So now they faced the question: How does one get enough? How does one qualified? You imagined that there must be something that you had to do in order to get the stuff of which there was not enough - something that would allow you to lay claim to it without argument. This is the only way that you could figure out how to get everything - including God - divided in your favor without killing and squabbling. You imagined this to be the Requirement."

"This is the sixth illusion: Judgment exists. Your decision that there is something that you must do in order to obtain that of which there is not enough - including God - required you to answer difficult questions: How will it be determined whether a person has met the requirement or not? And what will happens to those who have not? Your answer to these questions produced the invention of Judgment. Someone, you reasoned, must be the final arbiter. Since the Creator was the one who established the requirement, it seemed only logical that the Creator would also be the one to decide who had met the requirement and who had not. For a very long time your species has held the thoughts that there was something you had to do in order to please God - and that failure to please God produced dire consequences. That you came to such a conclusion was understandable. Looking around you, you saw that some people's lives went well, and some did not. Primitive mind asked, why? And primitive mind came up with a primitive answer."

"This is the seven illusion: Condemnation exists. There had to be a consequence of Judgment. If it was true that Judgment exist, there had to be a why. Clearly, one was judged in order to determine whether one should receive the rewards of meeting the requirement. That's how humans constructed it. Seeking insight, trying to find answers, you went back to your original cultural stories, and to the first Illusions on which they were based. You told your self that I separated you from My Self when you failed to meet my requirement the first time."

"This is the Eight Illusion: Conditionality exists. In order for Condemnation to exist, there must be something you don't understand about Love. This was your conclusion, and you invented Conditionality as a characteristic of life in order to resolve the dilemma that this presented. Everything in life must be Conditional. Wasn't this self-evident? Some of the thinkers among you asked. Have you not understood the second illusion? The outcome of life is in doubt. Failure exists. That means you can fail to win God's Love. God's Love is conditional. You must meet the Requirement. If you do not meet the Requirement, you will be separated. Is this not what the Third Illusion taught you?"

"This is the Ninth Illusion: Superiority exists. Humans concluded if Conditionality existed, then knowing the conditions would be necessary to enjoy and create the life - and the after life that one desired. This conclusion was unavoidable, as was: Those who knew the conditions were better of than those who did not. And it did not take much time for the human race to remove the word "off" from the previous sentence. Thus the idea of Superiority was born. Superiority had many uses. Chief among them was providing inarguable justification for doing whatever was needed in other to guarantee that "enough" of everything - including God's Love - was available. Knowing the conditions gave one the right to ignore others, or seek to convert others, or simply eliminate others who did not know the conditions, or agree to them."

"This is the Tenth Illusion: Ignorance exists. Increasingly, as each illusion was pilled upon the last, Life became more and more difficult to figure out. Humans asked more and more questions that could not be answered. If this was true, then why that? If this was true, then why this? It wasn't long before philosophers and teachers began throwing up their hands. "We don't know," they said, "and we don't know if it's possible to know." Thus, the idea of ignorance was born. This idea served so many purposes that it spread quickly and soon became the ultimate answer. We just don't know. Human institutions began finding in this not only a refuge but also a certain kind of power. "We don't know" turned into "We are not supposed to know," which became "you do not have a need to know," which finally became "what you don't know won't hurt you." This gave religions and governments the authority to say what they choose, and act as they pleased, without having to answer to anyone."

To become more aware of your thoughts you can set the intention �I am the master of my thoughts.� Say it often, give thanks for it being done, and as you hold to it emphatically, by the law of attraction you must become that.

"I have never been a millionaire. But I have enjoyed a crackling fire, a glorious sunset, a walk with a friend and a hug from a child. There are plenty of life's tiny delights for all of us."

"So what do we do? Anything - something. So long as we don't just sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late."

"Don't be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That's only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself."

Crowd out all inferior thoughts by superior thoughts, evil thoughts by good thoughts, ugly thoughts by beautiful thoughts, distressing thoughts by pleasant thoughts, and you will begin to overcome the growth of all negative and confused states of wrong and discord. In other words, learn to think constructively of all persons, all things, all events, and all circumstances. Appraise them from the ideal point of view. As you do this you will gradually transform your whole existence for the better. These are the means whereby you may steadily promote your welfare and advancement. As you train yourself to mentally look for the good, you will move towards the good; and, as you form higher and larger conceptions of the good, these elements will begin to find expression in your words, acts, character, person, talents, powers, attainments, and achievements; that is, all things in your life will commence to improve as the direct result of your improved thinking. This process does not imply, however, that you are to ignore the wrongs of life, the empty places, and the undeveloped states of being; but that you are to think right through and beyond them towards the hidden good or the principle within that is ever seeking a higher and fuller expression. You will, therefore, cease to condemn and to criticize in a destructive manner; instead you will seek to bring out the good in yourself and in others, and to discover and develop the greater possibilities everywhere.

The Parable Of Brother Leo An old legend tells of a French monastery that was well-known throughout Europe because of the extraordinary leadership of a man known only as Brother Leo. Several monks began a pilgrimage to visit Brother Leo to learn from him. Almost immediately, the monks began to bicker as to who should do various chores. On the third day they met another monk who was also going to the monastery. This monk never complained or shirked a duty. Whenever the others would fight over a chore, he would gracefully volunteer to do it himself. By the last day, the other monks were following his example, and everyone worked together smoothly. When they reached the monastery and asked to see Brother Leo, the man who greeted them laughed. "But our brother is among you!" pointing to the fellow who had joined them late in the trip. Today, many people seek leadership positions not so much for what they can do for others, but for what the position can do for them: status, connections, perks, or future advantages. As a result, they do service primarily as an investment, a way to build an impressive r�sum�. The parable about Brother Leo teaches another model of leadership, where leaders are more preoccupied with serving than being followed, with giving than getting, with doing than demanding. It's leadership based on example, not command. It's called servant leadership. Can you imagine how much better things would be if more politicians, educators, and business executives saw themselves as servant leaders?

"You are, at this moment, standing, right in the middle of your own 'acres of diamonds.'"

"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell'em, 'certainly I can!' - and get busy and find out how to do it."

"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do that counts."

Many people today live their entire lives on the basis of "seeing is believing." That is to say, the only images they get emotionally involved with are the ones they can discern with their physical senses. But the individuals of real "vision," down through the ages, have always known the overriding principle is, "what you see is what you get." Expressed somewhat differently, what this means is that the images in people's minds, actually precede the concrete images, which pervade our material world. Therefore, you should be aware of the fact that the fascinating physical world we see before us, with all of its conveniences for making our lives more comfortable, has been built largely by image-makers - men and women of vision who knew what they could do, and EXPECTED everything else to "fall into place," regardless of what their critics might say to the contrary. Remember, you will only receive what you truly expect, not what you only wish for.

Whenever I found myself focusing on the negative aspects of the situation, I would attract more of it. When I focused on the good, I attracted more of it.when the most unexpected events rock our world, none of us need be a victim of circumstance. We have the ability to choose our thoughts, words and actions in every situation. And that is what ultimately determines the outcome - so long as we hold true to the image of what we want without violating the rights of others.

"Our self image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other."

"I live by this credo: Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations. Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to laugh about if you try hard enough."

Accurate analysis of over 25,000 men and women who had experienced failure, disclosed the fact that lack of decision was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of failure. This is no mere statement of a theory - it is a fact. Procrastination, the opposite of decision, is a common enemy which practically every man must conquer. You will have an opportunity to test your capacity to reach quick and definite decisions when you finish reading this lesson, and are ready to begin putting into action the principles which it describes. Analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million dollar mark, disclosed the fact that every one of them had the habit of reaching decisions promptly, and of changing these decisions slowly, if, and when they were changed. People who fail to accumulate money, without exception, have the habit of reaching decisions, if at all, very slowly, and of changing these decisions quickly and often. The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs, are, generally, easily influenced by the "opinions" of others. They permit the newspapers and the "gossiping" neighbors to do their "thinking" for them. "Opinions" are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by "opinions" when you reach decisions, you will not succeed in any undertaking, much less in that of transmuting your own desire into money. If you are influenced by the opinions of others, you will have no desire of your own.

"Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time."

"My father used to say to me, 'Whenever you get into a jam, whenever you get into a crisis or an emergency...become the calmest person in the room and you'll be able to figure your way out of it.'"

You are God's highest form of creation. You are a living breathing creative magnet. You have the ability to control what you attract into your life. There have always been small select groups of individuals who are aware of how to work in harmony with this natural law of the universe: The Law of Attraction. This law clearly states you can only attract to you that which is in harmony with you. Everything in the universe vibrates. That is based on the Law of Vibration. That includes your mind and body. Look at your body through a microscope, it is a mass of energy that is moving and vibrating. Your mind controls the vibration you are in at any given moment. You control your mind by the thoughts you choose. No one can cause you to think something you do not want to think. This is where freedom comes in, this is also where the problem begins with most people. They permit what is happening around them to determine how they think. They have become the play-thing for outside forces. Ninety percent of the population wish positive but think negative. Their negative thoughts puts them in a negative vibration which by law determines what is attracted into their lives. As a creative individual you will continually attract good things into your life by thinking positive thoughts and expecting the best life has to offer. You deserve it.

"No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction."

"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."

Today I Will Make A Difference Today I will make a difference. I will begin by controlling my thoughts. A person is the product of their thoughts. I want to be happy and hopeful. Therefore, I will have thoughts that are happy and hopeful. I refuse to be victimized by my circumstances. I will not let petty inconveniences such as stoplights, long lines, and traffic jams be my masters. I will avoid negativism and gossip. Optimism will be my companion, and victory will be my hallmark. Today I will make a difference. I will be grateful for the twenty-four hours that are before me. Time is a precious commodity. I refuse to allow what little time I have to be contaminated by self-pity, anxiety, or boredom. I will face this day with the joy of a child and the courage of a giant. I will drink each minute as though it is my last. When tomorrow comes, today will be gone forever. While it is here, I will use it for loving and giving. Today I will make a difference. I will not let past failures haunt me. Even though my life is scarred with mistakes, I refuse to rummage through my trash heap of failures. I will admit them. I will correct them. I will press on. Victoriously. No failure is fatal. It's OK to stumble - I will get up. It's OK to fail - I will rise again. Today I will make a difference. I will spend time with those I love. My spouse, my children, my family. A man can own the world but be poor for the lack of love. A man can own nothing and yet be wealthy in relationships. Today I will spend at least five minutes with the significant people in my world. Five quality minutes of talking or hugging or thanking or listening. Five undiluted minutes with my mate, children, and friends. Today I will make a difference.

"The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it."

"If you have a positive thought your body actually goes into a positive vibration, you actually attract everything that resonates with that vibration."

How can I best serve humanity? By being genuine and authentic. By being prepared to expose myself, to break down the persona, to peel back the layers and living the real truth of who I am. By walking through this world with a quiet mind and open heart. To live in the now, to face my perceived fears, to feel compassion, to see the divine in all of life. To see the divine in all of humanity - no matter what the color, race, sexuality, creed, age, or walk of life they may come from. To look into the eyes of another human being, and look into the depths of their soul, to see the divine with in. To talk with passion and not just speak, to listen without judgment and not just hear, to look with the eyes of wonderment and not just see. To live from a place of truth, respect, forgiveness, acceptance, freedom, harmony, spiritual connection and love.

"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong."

"The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own."

"Don't cry over anything that won't cry over you." People will often create tremendous suffering for themselves just because they're in debt or have lost money. They'll generate intense feelings of anger, sadness, and fear, all of which are destructive and actually make it more difficult for them to regain the wealth they lost. Because they're upset, they may fight with their spouse over money or become severely depressed, not realizing that the power to create abundance for themselves once again is always available to them. When you understand that money is simply one form of the tremendous force known as abundance or wealth, and that you can always receive riches from our ever-giving Universe, it becomes easier to let go of negative feelings about money and the destructive belief that material wealth is more important than other manifestations of abundance. Ask yourself how much money you would take in exchange for your eyesight and your abundant health. How much would I have to pay you for you to give up your relationship with the person you love the most? My guess is that your health, your eyesight, and the people you love are far too precious to trade for any amount of money. If what you receive isn't money, open yourself up to it with gratitude and joy. Allow your creativity to flourish and you can discover ways to convert the abundance into the form you could most use right now. Wisdom and knowledge are types of abundance that we often overlook. An antiques dealer I know often purchased items from homeless people who brought him furniture and other objects they'd found in the garbage. He was always gracious and kind to them, and one day one of his regular sellers, who was a homeless man, noticed that the dealer had recently acquired a gold record by a celebrity. "You have that under priced," he said. "I used to work in the music business. I know." The antiques dealer listened to what the man had to say and decided to take his advice and quadruple the price. A few days later, the dealer's dentist came in, got very excited about the gold record, and said, "Listen, I'd love to own that, but I don't have that much in cash to spend. How about if I do that dental work I recommended to you, in exchange for the gold record?" The antiques dealer was able to pay for expensive dental procedures he needed and couldn't afford, because he valued the abundance that came to him from an unexpected source and converted it into something he could use.

"The Universe wants to give to you. The moment you begin to change your vibration to one of abundance, it will start sending you people, situations, and opportunities that reflect your inner state."

"Defeat is a state of mind. No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth."

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

These habit-moulds are also to be treated as sources of psychic distress or disturbance and got rid of in the manner described already .

Where there is no interest in or attraction whatsoever even for the highest kind of intellectual knowledge and experience and where there is uninterrupted self-awareness there comes a state of enlightenment which is like a cloud that showers virtue or order.

When thus order is restored in the mind and therefore in behavior, all actions that favor psychic distress are effortlessly avoided.

Then, since all the veils have been removed and all the impurities have been destroyed, there is infinite knowledge - little remains to be known or experienced (or, the objects of knowledge or experience are seen to be conditioned, finite and worthless.)

Then, since all the veils have been removed and all the impurities have been destroyed, there is infinite knowledge - little remains to be known or experienced (or, the objects of knowledge or experience are seen to be conditioned, finite and worthless.)

Thus, they who have realized this have fulfilled their mission in life. And the beginning less succession of changes of the qualities or characteristics, that was falsely assumed to be related to the self which itself was the first notion - comes to an end. (Or, the succession of changes of qualities which have reached the fulfillment of their purpose comes to an end.)

What is regarded as continuous succession is only a series of individual and independent moments. When the last moment is not apprehended as being part of a continuum, the false notion of succession and therefore of time comes to an end.

The qualities and the characteristics of a person have no goal nor motivation any more. They return to their cause, ignorance! There emerges creative independence. The undivided cosmic intelligence which is omnipotent regains as it were its own identity.

The time of the individual master is over. The time of the Guru is finished. In this new century we are all Masters, we are all Gurus, we are all Messengers to each other. Speak your ever expanding truth softly and clearly. Help each other remember that �we are all one,� that �we are interdependent,� that �we are unity,� that all living things are born out of the same source, whatever you conceive that source to be. Learn from the people listed below and from all of those who speak of unity. Learn to remember that separation is an illusion and when you remember that "We Are All One"; spread the good news to all those around you because you are a messenger, no more, no less, than those who came before you. You brought your self to this page because you are a seeker of the light and because now you are ready, and now you understand that you are no longer a seeker of the light, but a bringer of the light.

"Your ultimate goal is to be happy. Where is that happiness? Within you. If you want to have permanent happiness, it will never come from outside. If somebody makes you happy today, the same person will make you unhappy tomorrow. You are happiness and peace personified. Find that happiness and peace within you.�

"Will is the instrument of the image of God within you. In will lies His limitless power, the power that controls all the forces of nature. As you are made in His image, that power is yours to bring about whatever you desire."

"The first illusion is: Need exists. This is not only the first illusion, but the grandest. On this illusion are all other illusions based. Everything that you currently experience in life, everything that you feel moment to moment, is rooted in this idea and your thoughts about it. Need is non-existent in the Universe. One needs something only if one requires a particular result. The Universe does not require a particular result. The Universe is the result. Need is likewise non-existent in the mind of God. God would need something only if God requires a particular result. God does not require any particular result. God is that which produces all results. If God needed something to produce a result, where would God get it? There is nothing that exists outside of God. God is All That Is, All That Was, and All That Will Ever Be. There is nothing that is that is not God. You may better grasp this idea if you use the word "Life" in place of the word "God". The two words are interchangeable, so you will not alter the meaning; you will merely increase your understanding. Nothing that Is not Life. If Life needed something to produce a result, where would Life get it? There is nothing that exists outside of Life. Life Is All That Is, All That was, and All That Will Ever Be."

God Says: Become an instrument of My Peace. ``Where there is hatred, sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy; Seek not so much to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For Love is who you are, and who have always been. It is all there was, is now, and ever shall be. You have searched for a truth by which to live your life, and I give to you here again. Be Love, My Beloved. Be Love, and your long journey to mastery will be over, even as your new journey to bring others to mastery has just begun. For Love is all that you are, All That I am, and All That We Were Meant to Be. So Be It.

Be the change you want to see in the world, We are one, No more fear, no more guilt. Namaste