Public Talk Series: 2

DISCOVERING LOVE

Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Arsha Vidya Centre

Research Publication
Chennai
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O Swami Dayananda Saraswati

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 Contents

i. Preface v
ii. ~ r o m
the Chief Editor's Desk vii

iii. Key to Transliteration

Talk 1
Introduction

Talk 2
Any Love Is For One's Sake

Talk 3
. I Am The Pleased Self

Talk 4
The Vision Of 'I' Is Limitlessness

Talk 5
Gaining The Eligibility For Knowledge

Talk 6
Appreciating h a r a As Psychological
And Dharmic Order
 I am very happy to see in print the series of talks I
gave in Chennai under different titles for meaningful
'Living'. I enjoyed my reading these manuscripts
inasmuch as the material therein was an outcome of my
open thinking. In fact in some places I was amused as
well as surprised. Anyone who reads this book, I am
sure, will find it refreshingly useful. I congratulate the
dedicated people at the Arsha Vidya Centre, Research
and Publication, for this thoughtful publication.

Swami Dayananda Saraswati

Rishikesh
27 May 2006
Swami Dayananda Saraswatihas been expounding over four
decades, the wisdom of Vedanta in public talks and
classroom lectures. His public talks, given all over India and
many metropolis of the world, unfold the truth of oneself in
a most appealing and understandable language. His
classroom lectures are well known for their astounding
clarity.
It is high time that this magnificent material appeared in book
format. True, they are available in one form of electronic
medium or another. Some of it is also available as books and
booklets; but these do not form a regular series and besides
do not add up to much, considering the wealth of material
there is.
Consequently, Swami Dayananda Education Trust
established Arsha Vidya Centre, Research and Publication,
in February 2005 for the sole purpose of collecting, in one
place, all available materials - public talks and lectures in
the form of cassettes, CDs, books, souvenirs, photographs
and books about Swarniji - from various sources.
Arsha Vidya Centre, Research and Publication, plans to
publish the collected material under five different series:
Public Talks
Upanisads
Exploring Vedanta: Enquiry into some significant
sentences: vakya vicara
Dialogue with Swamiji: Satsang
Explanatory Treatises: prakamnn gmnthas

vii
Arsha Vidya Centre, Research and Publication, trusts that
these publications fulfil the long cherished desires of all
Swamiji's ardent admirers, devotees and disciples.
Arsha Vidya Centre, Research and Publication, has a
dedicated and intelligent staff; they enjoy the transcription
work since,they hear Swamiji everyday.
The Centre gratefully acknowledges the immense editorial
assistance it has received from Smt. Sheela Balaji, Dr. Martha
Doherty and Swami Sakshatkritananda Saraswati. Being
students of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, they gladly and
enthusiastically offered their help, for which the Centre owes
them much.

viii
Sanskrit is a highly phonetic language and hence accuracy in
articulation of the letters is important. For those unfamiliar
with the Dmanagari script, the international transliteration is
a guide to the proper pronunciation of Sanskrit letters.

37 a (but) Z ta (krue)*3
rn ?l vather) a tha (anthillP3
3 i (it) 3 da (drum)*3
f f (bat) 3 dha (go&ead)*3
J u cyiL11ln n a (under)*3
J; ii (pool) 3 ta (path)*4
x r khythm) eT tha (fiunder)*4
T€ P (mafine) da aat)*4
5 2 (reveb) B aha (breaM*4
Y e (PI@) 7 na (~ut)*4
h ai (aisle) Pa (put) 5
33 0 (gd pha (loo&ole)*5
3 au (lud) ba (bin) 5
7f; ka (seek) 1 bha (a&or)*5
W kha (block&ead)*l q ma (much) 5
rl 86 (get) 1 Ya (logll)
8ha (lo~ut)*l T ra (red)
3: ria (si@ 1 3 la (luck)
B ca (chunk) 2 va (vase)
3 cha (cat&im)*2 V Sa (sure)
3 ja (jump) 2 B $a (shun)
P jha (he&hog)*2 sa (so)
3T An (bunch) 2 ha (bum)
 m anusvara (nasalisation of preceding
vowel)
: h visarga (aspiration of preceding
vowel)
* No exact English
equivalents for these letters

1. Guttural - Pronounced from throat

2. Palatal - Pronounced from palate
3. Lingual - Pronounced from cerebrum
4. Dental - Pronounced from teeth
5. Labial - Pronounced from lips

The 5&letterdof each of the above class - called nasals - are

also pronounced nasally.
LOVE IS A very ancient topic. The Vedic sages, playwrights,
musicians and poets have glorified the word 'love', the
meaning of the word 'love'. Love is not an emotion that is on
par with the others. It is not that there are many emotions of
which one is love. No, and that is precisely why we have to
discover love because it is the only emotion which in certain
forms is called compassion, empathy and sympathy. It is the
same love that accommodates another person. It is that love
which also provides you the space to understand another
person. It is that love that really turns into hatred. It is love
that turns into your dislike, anger and so on. Love appears to
stifle and strangulate, more painful than ennobling. Poets and
artists often speak or express love as pain and anguish. It is
the anguish of unrequited love, lost love, missing love, love
that cannot be found. Love appears to defy all reason and
logic inasmuch as it induces people to even destroy
themselves and others. It is one emotion, which has these
various positive and negative expressions. It is not something
that is to be swallowed as we have swallowed many things.
Love has to be discovered.
As we all know, emotions have neither nationality nor
provenance, neither culture nor history, neither gender nor
age. Such factors do not inhibit the nature of a given emotion
in any way. For instance, if we take anger, be it royal or
plebeian, be it in a child or in an adult, its nature and vision
do not differ; it is anger. Emotions such as anger, hatred,
 2 Discovering Love

compassion, sympathy, love, in their simple forms, have been

always there. A cat is always affectionate and so is a dog.
They express their emotions, express how much they missed
you and so on. If animals can express emotions, how much
more can a human being? He or she is the most self-conscious
of life forms. Naturally then, in a human heart emotions are
very well pronounced.
When you encounter the world, you do not remain a mute
witness; you actively respond to persons, objects and
situations.The response is not always dispassionate or totally
objective, such as from a computer. The emotional person
that you are always inhibits the response. Emotions, therefore,
form the basic theme of an individual's biography,
~motionzdriveyou to accomplish, no doubt, but they also
subject you to a sense of failure and depression. There are
times when you just want to quit. In short, emotions drive
you crazy. To have a complete mastery over one's emotions
always remains a dream. Emotions make the person, much
more than even cognition does. In fact, they sweep aside the
cognitive person and take over. Emotions are what you are,
what you have. The emotional person is the core person and
it is this core person who feels that he or she is useless. It is
also the very same person who complicates his or her life as
well as that of others'.

- A CASE S
DURYODHANA ~ OF A
Y CHILD DEPRIVED OF LOVE

If you look into the Mahnbharata, you will find that the
individuals' behaviour, the causes of the war were all
 bzfroduction 3

< \

emotional. Duryodhana, for ihstance, did not have a father

who could see him, who could applaud him and make him
feel good about himself. His father was blind.

A child is born helpless, totally helpless. Such a child has

been endowed with this great capacity to trust totally. Total
trust implies that the trusted person, in the eyes of the child,
is infallible, almighty. Infallible means that the person cannot
fail and cannot fall ill. It is this infallibility that a child sees in
the person it trusts. You cannot totally trust a person who
has limitations, who fails.
.
A child starts its life with absolute helplessness. It cannot
survive without help. It needs to be held by loving hands
and brought up for years. Therefore, the child cannot afford
to distrust if it has to survive. So, this total helplessness is
compensated properly in the setup that we call the jagat, the
world.
The human child is self-conscious. This self-consciousness
naturally results in self-judgement. From the child's
standpoint, everyone around is bigger, more capable and
therefore, better. With its limited knowledge, therefore, the
child judges itself to be insignificant and useless. This is how
every human being starts his or her life, that he or she is
useless. Whether the child is a prince or an average citizen,
this is the starting point. However, this sense of inadequacy
is neutralised to a large extent by the parents, who are Gods
for the child. Their approval, their welcoming the child as a
blessing, as a gift, enables the child to handle this feeling of
being useless.
 4 Discoverirzg Love

Further, whether they know it or not, the parents, as

creators, participate in and share the joy of creation. Their
joy is expressed in their approval, their care and concern,
although the expression is often inhibited by their anxieties
and ambitions for the future of the child. Moreover, the
approval and care are not demonstrated in a manner that the
child can understand. In their anxiety for the child's future,
the parents are often so busy that they have little or no time
for the child. It is not a surprise, then, if such a child grows
into a Duryodhana or even a Hare Qsna. The child needs
the express approval of its parents. The father has to look
into the child's eyes and make it feel that it has brought joy
to the home; that it has enriched their life. It is this approval
that, to a large extent, offsets the child's sense of inadequacy.
If a child judps from a ledge or a table, no matter how low, it
has a sense of achievement. It looks to its parents for approval.
In their approval and applause the child's sense of inadequacy
decreases and it visibly flowers. As a result, perhaps, society
gains a sane member. We contribute to the increasing neurosis
in society by neglecting these basic principles.

Unlike the professional world, there is no specific training

to be a parent. You learn on the job, a time tested trial and
error method. In a joint-family system, you observe and learn
by the law of osmosis as it were. You watch the many
members, their interactions and so on and replicate these in
your life. Unfortunately, contemporary society has lost the
traditional family support system. What was valid in a joint
family is no longer valid in a nuclear family situation. There
are no aunts or grandparents either for the child or for the
parents to turn to for help, advice or comfort. The young
 % ,

parents are forced to turn on themselves to find solutions to

the problems they face. By trial and error, they figure out
how to bring up an emotionally healthy, confident child; a
child that has a sense of being wanted, of contributing to the
joy of the parents and of the home. Parents must pay attention
to this aspect of a child's upbringing if they want their child
to be self-accepting, self-confident.
Duryodhana was deprived of such parental care and
approval. Even if his father was not available, his mother
could have stepped in. Unfortunately for her son, she did
not. A misguided sense of loyalty made her blindfold herself.
I cannot understand this action. Some people praise her.
Perhaps there was some good in it, but as a result poor
Duryodhana was denied a mother's appreciation. She was a
good wife; that is true. In fact her husband approved, "I cannot
see and now you too cannot. I am very happy". What kind of
man was he? He should have said, "Be my eyes". She should
have been his eyes and ears. Blindfolding herself was a
mistake, a mistake born of emotions. In fact, the entire
Mahabhrafa is a tragedy because it is a series of mistakes that
people committed out of emotions. Kama is a case in point.
I have looked into the original Mahabharata and found that
Karna is a character to study. He was an abandoned child
even though he was a born prince with the blessings of lord
sun. Yet, circumstances were such that he was brought up as
the son of charioteer, a siifa-putra. However, Kama never felt
at ease with his foster family. He knew that there was
something different; he just did not belong. He always felt
different. He felt that he was better than any of the bafriyas
around. He could not bear to be called a siifa-pufra; his very
 6 Discovering Love

being rebelled against it. Further, when others around him

addressed him or referred to him as siita-putra, he thought it
unjust and seethed with suppressed anger. Therefore, he
desperately wanted to make a mark, to be better than
anybody, to achieve so that he could overcome this feeling.
He says in one place, "I give because I want to be told 'no one
can give like Karna'." It became an ideal for him. Like
compulsive eaters, he became a compulsive giver. The reason
was the pressure within to prove himself to be different,
entirely different from others. The inner pressure that
compelled him to give also made him singularly responsible
for the war. Even if Duryodhana wanted to listen to the elders'
advice, it was Kama who refused to yield. He made sure that
Duryodh%na did not heed their advice.

Thus, I find that in the Mahabhrata, each character has a

particular emotional problem. In fact, the epic is a treasure
trove of psychological study, a veritable gold mine. The
variety of characters enacting their roles on the epic's vast
canvas, reflect the depth of Vyasa's knowledge of psychology.
Each character is an archetype. You can understand from a
study of these characters, that history was made of emotions.
Emotions make your life, your family's life, and your
children's. Hence you cannot afford to be ignorant of the
dynamics of the emotional life.

It is unfortunate to hear people say that you should have

emotions but not be emotional, that emotions are good but
emotionalism is bad and so on. It is not a question of good or
 bad. If people say that'eAotions are good but not
emotionalism, who is to decide? Everyone is emotional; Who
is not emotional? You can turn on anybody.

Suppose someone says, "I am not emotional. I am a rational

person," I can make him emotional in just three minutes. In
fact, three minutes is too long.

I tell him or her, "No, no, you are emotional. I tell you,
you are emotional".

"No, I am very dispassionate. Ask anybody."

"No, believe me, I know. Your father was emotional and

. so was your grandfather. In fact, your gotra, lineage, is
emotional. It is not the non-emotional type at all."

Suppose I carry on, a few more lines and he will become

emotional. "Don't bring my father into this."

Every person is an emotional being. Life is made of

emotions. Emotions make marriages; they also break them.
Emotions create sane people and insane ones too. Therefore,
it is very important to understand the nature of the emotional
person in us. It is this emotional person who makes or mars
our life. When I look into the various forms of emotions, I
find that they are merely different cuts of the same cloth;
diverse manifestations of one single emotion and that is what
we call love.

Love is the dominant theme in music, particularly modem

music. In our classical tradition, the Lord was the altar at
 8 Discovering Love

which saints like Meera, Tyagaraja and others offered their

devotion in various ways. In modern music, where rhythm
is more predominant than musical content, the lyric is only
about love, reciprocated love, rejected love or dejected love.
A line typical of today's songs is "I love you this time, truly".
Every lyric is about love, a love that is lost, that is hurt, that
you yearn for. However, I cannot accept that this is how love
is going to be because you are always going to talk of the
thing that you crave for. From the days of Adam, if that story
is true, the problem has persisted. I want to be loved. The
reason for this want is not far to seek. It is because I have no
love for myself. It is the same reason, why I feel ten feet tall
when someone tells me that he or she loves me, that he or she
accepts me as I am. It surprises me for how can anyone love
me whoxas no love for myself? My lack of self-love makes
me turn away from myself. I cannot stand even a moment of
loneliness. Even while waiting on the phone, I have to doodle
to pass the time, to take my mind away from myself. Our
telephone service providers have understood this point so
well that we now have music on hold. I cannot bear the few
minutes waiting for other person to answer the phone, hence
the music. Again, I misinterpret every situation to validate
my lack of self-love with the result that I suffer emotionally.

When somebody expresses love for me, I must have the

nucleus, the emotional infrastructure to absorb that love.
Similarly, in knowledge, I must have the intellectual
framework, the cognitive ability to absorb that knowledge,
otherwise I am not going to understand what is being said or
spoken. Therefore, I should know in order to know. I should
have in order to receive. If I do not have some love for myself,
 . % i

some self-acceptance, I cannot absorb love even if it is lavished

on me. As a result, when someone professes love for me, I
constantly question and doubt the person. "Do you really love
me? Why do you love me? How much do you love me?" The
person has to invent stories to reply to my questions. What
else can he or she do? If I continue, "Why do you love me?"
the best I can expect is, "Because I am an idiot, that's why".
There is no other answer, because there is no calculated love.
Love is blind in the sense that it does not measure, demand
or set agenda. Love is reckless; it gives all the way helplessly
because that is the nature of love.
A lack of love for myself also makes me misunderstand
love as control. I love the beautiful flower and at once my
hands stretch out to pluck it. No one really knows what love
is. Therefore, love becomes control; at least for most of us it
does. In fact, the love of our parents is only control. It starts
when the child is barely one month old. Since we only know
to control, we cannot enjoy what we love because it is not
possible to control situations. They do not always go the way
we want and we find ourselves cheated. The story of love
turns into a story of woes.
Every tragedy is unassimilated love, misunderstood love
or obsessive love, be it Hamlet or Othello. You cannot afford
to be ignorant of what love is. If you do not have an image of
yourself, if you do not have love for yourself, love translates
into control and consequently obsession. Then, when
someone accepts you for what you are, just as you are and
declares love for you, because it is the truth, that person
becomes an object of your obsession, which is not healthy
either. You need not change or control the person you love.
 10 Discovering Love

All that I want to say is that love is not the ordinary topic
that we understand. It is not what we read in magazines and
novels. Love has become a commonplace word, a much
bandied about word. Some religions also profusely use this
word, particularly the Televangelists in America who repeat
in varying tones, "God loves you". What do they mean by
this? God loves us and yet makes us suffer? Is God a sadist?
What is this love? The God who loves us creates the many
viruses and continues to create newer and newer strains. Is
that a sign of his love? It is more cruelty than love.
Further, they say that God is love and in the same breath,
they try to convert you. A religious person is the core person,
connecte8 to Pgvara. Conversion breaks this bond and wounds
the person, the society, and the culture. It is a wound that
does not heal easily. Programmed conversion is wrong. If
something is wrong, we should say so. Religious conversion
is politically motivated. They are not interested in your
spiritual growth; they want numbers. Conversion is a hurt
and we must understand it as such. It is himsd. We have no
right to cause himsa to anybody.
Another expression that is not understood is that God is
love. If God is love, then what about hatred? Is that not God?
If it is not, then poor God becomes completely inhibited and
paralysed by hatred, anger and then we call him almighty.
There is no thinking, no understanding. Sometimes sentences
can be misleadingly simple; hence we have to understand
them properly. Such sentences are in fact very profound.
There is prasannatd, simplicity, and more the prasannata more
 s \

< 7

the giimbhiya, profundity. So what appears simple is really

very profound if it is from a person who knows. It is the
prerogative of the well informed to be simple. Often, people
hide behind big words to confuse others, because if the words
are understood, their 'intellectual emptiness' will be exposed.
Simple sentences are not to be taken lightly. 'God is love' or
'God loves you' have to be carefully studied and understood.
I thought that this word 'love' should not be ignored and
should be discussed thoroughly. It is not a prepared speech
that I am going to unravel. I am going to explore along with
you this great topic, a topic that makes your life meaningful.
Life becomes wasted if this topic is not understood correctly.
You seek something that is hard to find, and when you find
it, you become secure and happy. Love is something that is ,

hard to find.
 WHEN SOMEONE SAYS that he or she is unhappy, it reveals
something significant to me. It reveals that despite the vast
expanding universe, the wonders of the world around, one
can be unhappy. This is a desperate situation; even God will
despair at the person's incapacity to be happy. Therefore,
when I explore the question of love-what does it mean to
love, to be loving-I find that I am intimately, inextricably
connected to the world. I am not apart from the world, a
distant spectator; I am an active participant in the theatre of
life. The various situations that I witness or participate in are
sources of constant amusement to me. Perhaps, this is the
result when you explore and discover what is love, the
meaning of the word love, prema in Sanskrit.

Our scriptures discuss the topic of love, particularly the

, Byhadaranyakopanisad. Yiijiiavalkya, a well-respected great
scholar, decided that he would retire to the forest to lead a
contemplative life, a life of a sadhu, a sannygsin. When he took
leave of Maitreyi, she insisted on the reason for his leaving
her. When he said that it was for nzoksa, she demanded, "Will
I get mok~awith the wealth that you have given me?"
Yiijiiavalkya, a truthful man, had to say, "Vitfena nWSD asfi
amyfatvaya, there is no way of gaining immortality by
wealth".'
 14 Discovering Love

In this section of the upani~ad,Yajiiavalkya explores the

root cause underlying all human pursuits such as wealth,
power and pleasure. He encourages Maitreyi, question by
question, to discover the basic desire beneath all desires. For
example, he asks her to see if her desire is for wealth or for
what wealth can bring. When she replies, he leads with
another question until she realises that it is love for the self
that drives all human beings to do actions.

When I say love for the self, it is not the ordinary unhappy
self that I am talking about. No one is interested in that. In
fact, it is because of our unhappy self that we gossip, to get
away from ourselves. We are only interested in the happy
self, the self that is pleased, that is contented. Thus the upanisad
analyses love and unfolds the vision of what love is, what
every emotion is.

If we look at other life forms, emotions are more instinctive

rather than deliberate. What makes a human being so unique
is that he is the most self-conscious among the various living
organisms on this planet. It gives him the capacity to be
conscious of himself and a freedom to explore, to discover,
to know, to choose, to feel and so on. Basically, a human being
is cognitive. We call this capacity, jfilina-Sakti. Psychology is
born of this jfilina-Sakti. Not only is a human being a conscious
person, with a capacity to know, he is also a dynamically
emotional person. He is endowed with a capacity to emote,
to feel, which is icchaiakti.
When he or she appreciates another, it is cognitive, a form
of both jfilina-Sakti and icchd-Sakfi. The appreciation can turn
into desire, a longing. This is what we call 'love at first sight',
 Any Love Is... 15
s ?

but this love belongs to the iealm of fantasy. It is love of

anticipation; he or she fantasises the object of love, what it
would be to be with the person, how wonderful it would be
and so on. The fact is that each person has a preconceived
notion of the ideal 'other'. A man has his anima and a woman
her animus. The person whom each one feels corresponds to
their anima or animus, and that person becomes an object of
love. A short period of euphoria later, the fantasy wears off
and one finds that the person is not the ideal that one thought.
The romance either ends in the couple drifting apart as one
wants to change the other to match the ideal.

Although a human being is cognitive, the emotional

inhibits the cognitive person. The capacity to know is
inhibited by c6rtain emotional upheavals. Under such
circumstances, even therapy does not help unless the person
discovers a space between the emotional condition that is born
of the unconscious and the adult person. That space, which
is cognitive, has to be discovered. I have found my students,
who were otherwise very brilliant, at sea when it came to
facing themselves. The reason was the core person, the
emotional person. Unless this problem is resolved, it is almost
impossible to assimilate the vision of the Sastra. Further, in
daily transaction, the cognitive person is completely
overpowered and paralysed by the overwhelming emotions.

Emotions such as anger, krodha, completely deny wisdom.

Anger dissipates whatever knowledge one may have. It is
not just anger; any overwhelming emotion takes control of
the person. This is not something unique to modern man; it
is an age-old problem. According to our puranas, the sages,
despite their erudition, used to get angry. In addition, they
were powerful people, which made it worse. Ordinary
persons cannot do much harm, but when it came to powerful
sages, yogins, and others, they could curse those who
displeased them. A little later, the very same person will also
help to release his victim from the curse. From this we can
understand that before and after anger, the person is in
control. It is only in between that anger takes control. It can
happen to anybody. It is just that we have to pay attention to
the emotions. Emotions and their nuances are many, but all
of them have their basis in one emotion and that is what we
call in English, love.

A desire to possess, to own, to experience, to win, to

succeed, all these forms of desire for various ends exist
because there is an element of liking towards them. The word
'hma' reveals that the object of desire is fascinating, pleasing
or going toqlease. The objects of your desire are objects of
&ma. Kama does not mean lust or passion 4s is commonly
understood. It is love for the desired objects. Heading the list
of desires, interestingly, is the husband and wife.

In the Byhadarnnyakopanisad Yajfiavalkya says2to his wife

that one loves one's spouse, partner, not for the sake of the
spouse, but for one's own sake. It is a very disconcerting idea
that he or she does not love me but loves himself or herself.
From this it is clear that love is something that is possible
and it flows towards an object. The object of love is Atma-Se~a,

na vd are patyuh kdmdya pafih priyo bhavafi. dfmanasfukamdya patih

priyo bhavafi. nu vd are jdydyai kdrndya jdya priyd bhavafi. dtmanastu
kiirnaya jdyd priyd bhavafi. (Brhadaranyakopani:ad 2.4.5)
connected to you. Further, being connected to you, it is
supposed to please you. If it pleases you, it becomes an object
of love; if it displeases you it ceases to be an object of love.
Therefore, what you love is really that which brings out the
pleased person in you.

Every person has a public face, a certain form that is

presented to the society. You have a persona, a mask, behind
which the real person hides. You have no love for yourself,
no self-esteem. This lack drives you to be different from what
you are, be it in clothes, profession, appearance or any other.
Costumes, cosmetics are masks. In ancient India, the use of
cosmetics, alankiira, was meant to bring out the beauty within,
like a beautiful painting on a good canvas. It was not
considered a make up. You did not make up what you lacked;
you enhanced what you had. As I said, every one has a mask
because you do not want people to know you completely.
Even though you complain that no one understands you, you
do not reveal yourself. How can others understand you, who
hide behind a mask? Sometimes the mask continues in a
relationship also, even between husband and wife.

DISCOVER LOVE, TO GAIN MO-A

Marriage is an institution that we need, an institution

where an individual completely bares himself or herself. It is
a fusion of two egos. In fact, at the end of the Vedic marriage
rituals, there are a few lines that read like a modern love story.
Hrdayam te dadarni, I give you my heart. Tava cittam anucittam
bhavatu, may our thoughts be in harmony. Both the partners
have to enunciate these lines, otherwise one remains a noun
 18 Discovering Love

,while the other is reduced to an adjective. To make the other

a nonentity is not marriage. Marriage between two
individuals is a pilgrimage towards a common goal. Every
human being is a pilgrim, really speaking.If you have a sacred
goal you are pilgrim, if not you are a wanderer, a lost traveller
with nowhere to go. At the end of the pilgrimage is the goal,
moksa - a very profound word. It is really our own self-growth,
self-discovery. Therefore, in marriage moksa is the goal, with
two pilgrims meaningfully coming together. This is
symbolised by the seven steps, saptapadi - one step for
prosperity, one for progeny, one for health, one each for the
health of both sets of parents, a step for friendship and finally
a step for dharma. The marriage is solemnised with this
saptapadi. The saptapadi is followed by the snkhya-homa, a ritual
for friendship. Please understand that friendship can exist
only amongst equals. So friendship means equality; two
equals marry each other. In our culture, age commands
respect. Since the husband was usually older than the wife,
naturally he was respected. Unfortunately, what started as
respect later turned into inequality, with the husband taking
on the role of the master.

Marriage becomes a pilgrimage only when two equals join

together because the sacrament of marriage is a means for an
end; marriage is not an end in itself. If marriage is the ultimate
end, it should be ideal; but what is ideal? Ideal means it should
be custom made. Even if you specify, in detail, your
requirements in a spouse, these requirements will change in
time. Ideal marriages, ideal anything does not exist. If you
enter marriage as the ideal end, it will end or if it does not; it
will merely drag. Some people tell me, "Swamiji, we remain
 Any Love Is... 19

e ?
married because of our children". This is because they have
not understood that marriage is not an end; it is a means to
an end. If marriage is a means, then there cannot be a bad
marriage. The problem is that both the people concerned
should understand this; it will not work if only one partner
understands. Anucitta is understanding. It is not an echo of
the others' thoughts. Two persons, two different interests,
but they understand each other, that is anucitta. This is what
we call love. It brings about a change in a person; makes him
or her capable of trusting another. As we grew older, we
gradually discovered distrust; trust becomes a casualty of
growth. It is the lack of trust that constantly seeks reassurance.
I never saw my parents or grandparents discussing their.
relationship. But now, the couple needs to discuss all the time
about their relationship, even their marriage. If there is trust,
and two people love each other, what is there to discuss?
Instead, how wonderful it would be if they could start doing
something together; it would be a work born of love.

As a child you could trust completely. Later, when you

found that your parents were fallible, you began to distrust.
It was not only parents; others in the society were also fallible.
Further, you are warned not to talk to strangers. The constant
message to the child is not to trust. Your capacity to trust is
destroyed. You can relax only in trust, whereas in distrust,
there is suspicion, fear and anxiety. You have to be on guard
all the time, to ensure that you are not taken for a ride. You
are forced to distrust and this is suffocating. Lack of trust is
also the cause of people 'living' together and not marrying.
They cannot trust themselves to a long-term commitment.
However, this suffocation eases when you understand
 20 Discovering Love

another person, when the two egos fuse together. In

understanding there is love. That is why marriage becomes
an important institution for human emotional well-being.

Indian classical texts describe various types of marriages

such as gandharva-vivaha, brahma-vivaha, arsa-vivaha and
pniiaca-vivaha. In gandharva-vivaha, personal choice is the
predominant feature. The next two refer 'to marriages
arranged by the families concerned. The paiiiica type refers
to a marriage that is forced on an unwilling partner, abduction
and so on. Whatever be the type of marriage, understanding
is the fundamental ingredient for a successful marriage. Love
becomes understanding. Without love you cannot
understand; without understanding you cannot love.
9
LOVEFOR ENYTHING IS FOR ONE'S SAKE
Yajiiavalkya explains to his wife that love for oneself is
expressed as love for the spouse; it is for your own sake and
not for the sake of the other. You love an object, person or
situationbecause it evokes the pleased you. Love is, therefore,
the emotion that connects the pleased person and an external
object. If an object evokes the displeased person, love turns
to dislike. If love is for the object, then love must last as long
as the object is, which it does not. The moment the object
fails to bring out the pleased person, love vanishes and dislike
or indifference sets in. In addition, your poor self-image
prevents you from accepting another's love. You have so
many complexes in terms of your looks, hair, colour,
qualification, wealth and so on. If mere looks can create
complexes in you, where is the question of intellect and talent?
When you are displeased with yourself, no matter what you
 Any Love Is ... 21

* ?
achieve, you can never be pleased. Constant reassurance does
not solve the problem at all. The other person will always
come back with yet another why. When someone loves you,
it means that he or she accepts the whole of you, including
appearance, hair, colour of skin, sense of dress, body, mind,
emotion, intellect, knowledge, skills, and your limitations.
You cannot love partially; you love the whole person. The
fact that there is another person who loves you is a wonderful
thing. That someone in the world accepts you as you are,
does not judge you, what more can you ask? The simple
sentence, I love you, implies a complete acceptance of the
other. In your acceptance, the other feels accepted. Despite
the person's illnesses, complaints, feeling of lack, despite all
of this and more, he or she is acceptable, completely
acceptable to someone. Nothing is comparable to this feeling,
which is what we call relative love. I use the word relative to
differentiate it from the absolute. You can now understand
why love is so important for a healthy emotional life.
You cannot afford to underestimate the feeling of complete
acceptance. Criticism, pointing out others' mistakes, these are
our habits. In fact, the most commonly heard mantra today is
'didn't I tell you'. We go on holidays, pilgrimages, organise
events, didn't I tell you is the mantra that relentlessly follows
us. Didn't I tell you to bring the water? Didn't I tell you to
pack the woollens? Didn't I? Didn't I? In a cemetery there
was a slab with the last words of John who was buried there.
His wife had placed the tombstone and the epitaph read,
"Didn't I tell you I was sick?" These were his last words. He
is dead now because she did not listen to his 'didn't I tell you
I was sick'. Well, we can see why love is the least understood
 22 Discovering Love

of emotions. There is love and trust but it is inhibited by our

agenda for others. Let us try and understand love, relative or
otherwise.
As we saw earlier, love is always for whoever evokes the
pleased person in you. In turn, you become an object of his
or her love. For one's own happiness alone, a person becomes
beloved. Therefore, each should enrich and encourage the
other. That is what love is all about. Love is for your sake
alone, be it a person, an object or a situation.
You want to bring about a change in society, home,
community and so on, it is all meant for you alone. People
talk of selfless service; there is no such thing as selfless service.
You cannot do any service without the self, the ego. Everyone
has an egz Sometimes, however, the self is confined to one's
own body and mind and the person satiates his or her
passions at the cost of others. Such a person is a self-centred
person. Another can sacrifice his ragas and dvesas, likes and
dislikes for the sake of his family, his children, their education
and so on, because the family is his extended ego. The self
has grown to include the family. A third can give up for the
sake of his community. He is sensitive to the needs of the
community and feels that he cannot be happy if his
community is unhappy. He cannot be like a slumlord living
in luxury amidst dirt and squalor. It is not an intelligent way
to live. A sensitive person would like the people around him
to be healthy and the environment to be hygienic. He is able
to identify his welfare with that of his community. This man's
ego has extended beyond himself and his family. It has grown
to include his community.
 Any Love Is... 23

When we talk of selfles&ss what we mean is that the

person is more alive to the problems of the people around. It
is not that the self is absent; it is a kind of community living,
but can get out of hand if one is not careful. It is one thing to
identify with one community, but it is quite another to incite
one community against another. That is sheer opportunism
for you to become a 'leader', political, social or whatever. It
rises out of selfishness and not selflessness.

When you identify with a community, as I said earlier,

your ego expands to include the community. From the
individual, to the community, to the country, the nation, the
culture, your ego can grow to include all of these and more.
You can work for their growth and welfare. However, if you
pit one against another, then pettiness steps in, it becomes an
ego trip. The self is very obviously present and bigger the
self, the more dangerous it is, if there is no wisdom. For
example, you cannot neglect your family in the process of
working for the country. You have to do both. You have to
work within your limits and whatever you are able to do, let
that be a satisfaction. Life is not all or nothing; it never is.

Therefore, even in the so-called selfless service, there is

the self, the ego that has expanded to identify with the
community, country and so on. If such a person does not
work towards the welfare of the country, he or she will be
miserable. But it is wrong to assume the role of a saviour.
Even Qsna could not prevent the Mahabharata war. He could
not convince Duryodhana despite all his wiles. You cannot
change another. I thought that I could change people but in
three months they made me realise that I cannot change
anybody. However, if you want to change, nobody can stop
 24 Discovering Love

you. You can try to cognitively change people; make them

see. The more mature you are, you reach out to more and
more people; it is natural. You do not wait for applause and
recognition but do what has to be done; although you must
remember that through this service it is your own happiness
that you seek.

If someone says, "I am doing selfless service," I ask, "Why

do you do it?"
"Oh, I want people to be happy."
"Why should they be happy? Let them be as they are."
"No, no, if they are unhappy, I will be unhappy."
"Oh, so you want to be happy. Your happiness is the
reasoR for your work."

So, the central person in all this is only you. You are the
pleased one. Vedanta starts from here.

Vedanta recognises the fact that love for the various objects
is only because they evoke the pleased you. Your love for
this or that sometimes makes you unmindful of others'
felicity, others' happiness. You are oblivious to them. You
fight for things to evoke the pleased self. It is not the
displeased self that you fight for. The displeased self is the
one who is unhappy with the situation and wants to change
the set up. The change can be simple changes such as
rearranging the furniture at home, the carpet, the painting
and so on. It is not for the sake of the furniture, it is only for
your sake, wtmanastu hmwya.
 Any Love Is ... 25

When an upani~admakes a statement, it is final. You cannot

touch it. Atmanastu kfimfiyasarvam priyam bhavati - it is a
watertight statement. Vedanta begins right here. Is the pleased
self your nature or is it the displeased self? It is a simple
question but profound. If the displeased self is your nature
and the pleased self appears now and then, we do not need
Vedanta. It has nothing to offer that we do not know already.
This is who we are, anyway. We do not learn anything. It is
like a village schoolmaster who explains a text using the same
words but a different tone, for example, father - faaather,
mother - mooooother, apple - aaaaappple and so on, and the
child is not going to be any wiser. It is meaningless.

There are people who define life as a constant effort to

bring in the pleased self more often than the displeased self.
They have a few favourite lines of encouragement: "Life is
like a fortune wheel; what goes up has to come down. When
you are unhappy, wait it out for the wheel will turn." How
will such lines help me? I know life is full of ups and downs,
with more downs than ups. Restating what I already know
cannot help me. It only makes me more frustrated. These are
what I call as semi thinking, such as 'thought for the day',
'words of wisdom' and so on. They do not help you; you just
repeat them day after day and nothing happens. On the
contrary, you develop a complex. "Oh, I should be like that
but I am not. I am no good." Further, at home your partner
waits to say, "Didn't I tell you so?" Such ideals are
psychological calamities. They have destroyed humanity;
 26 Discovering Love

have made us mediocre. Ideals have to be understood as such

while the reality is different. People love ideals. They give in
to them; they yield their thinking to the ideals. These sentences
may have some truth, but the truth has to be discovered. Why
am I unable to face a problem? Why do I run away from
difficulties? What should I do to face them? This is what
enquiry is. This is what Vedanta is. Please do not reduce
Vedanta to a few sentences.

Let us enquire if the displeased self is the real you. You

know that two contradictory things cannot coexist. You
cannot have a cold fire. Light and darkness cannot coexist in
the same place at the same time. Two contradictory things
cannot coexist, viruddha-svab&vatvdt, being opposed to each
other. The9 how is it that I am both pleased and displeased?
Why does the pleased person come now and then, while the
displeased person is almost always there? Could the answer
be that perhaps the pleased person is what you are and the
displeased person is because you do not know what you are?
Are you like that sugar cube, which longed to be sweet?

There was a sugar cube that somehow had a human mind.

It needs a human mind. It complained, "I am bitter. I want to
be sweet".
I asked the sugar cube, "Do you want to be sweet today
or tomorrow?"
The cube said, "I want to be sweet, today, tomorrow and
the day after also".
"You want to be sweet, sweet all the time?"
"Yes, I want to be sweet all the time."
"Okay. Do you want to be sweet at home or outside
 Any Love Is... 27

;; ?

home, inside the container'where you are or outside the

container?" A container is its home. In the world, there
are only two places, inside the home and outside.
The sugar cube said, "I want to be sweet both inside and
outside".
Next, I asked, "Do you want to be sweet sitting by the
side of the chilly powder or the tamarind sauce?"
It said, "I don't care who is a around me, I want to be
sweet. Related to all of them I want to be sweet".
What does it mean? There is no other way except to be
already sweet. If it wants to be sweet at all times and at
all places, sweetness must be its nature.
"Do you want to be happy today or tomorrow?"
"I want to be happy always."
"Do you want to be happy at home or outside?"
"I want to be happy everywhere."

All the questions that I asked the sugar cube, I could ask
you and your answers will not be any different. It means that
you should be happy now for it is your nature. Maybe that
pleased person whom you come across now and then is
exactly what you are. "How come I do not know?" I will
counter that question, "How come you do not know? How
come you do not know your own nature?" You need Vedanta
to answer these questions. \
IN THE VISION of the Veda, what one really loves is not an
object or a person outside, but oneself alone. One loves
oneself, the self that is pleased. Consequently, if an object
outside pleases me, makes me more secure than what I am or
makes me happy, then it becomes an object of my love. If I
love the pleased self, then I must at the same time recognise
the dislike I have towards the displeased self, the displeased
me. I do not like to be discontented with myself. Of these
two, the pleased and the displeased me, which is the real
one? It is similar to the dual behaviour of a quantum object.
It is both a wave and a particle depending on how you observe
it. If you wish to measure the velocity it is a wave and a
particle if you wish to pinpoint its position. The self also
appears to have a dual nature, pleased and displeased.

When I review my life, I find that by and large it is the

displeased self that operates. The pleased self appears briefly
and disappears as quickly as it came. No sooner do I discover
I am happy, then, the happiness passes. Is it not natural for
me to assume that the displeased self is the real me? Any
pleasure or happiness I experience, perhaps it is an
epiphenomenon, an adventitious occurrence at a given time
that passes away. As far back as I can remember, I have always
been a wanting person, as a child, as a teenager, as an adult.

Who amongst us who did not want to score hundred

percent in every subject matter? Come first in every sports
 30 Discovering Love

event? Who did not want to score sixes off every ball in an
over? Who did not want to be the greatest bowler, the greatest
batsman or the greatest soccer player? We only fantasised
but we could never accomplish. Our parents thought their
child would be a genius. As the child grew, they also edited
their ambitions for their child. They constantly revised and
edited their vision of an Einstein or Newtort and settled for
something less. Our wants remained, many of them
unfulfilled. Finally, we always settled for something less.

There was nothing wrong in our desires. Desiring is a

human privilege. An animal does not have this privilege. A
cow does not ask the bullock, "Honey, shall we eat Chinese
or Indian tonight?" Desires are endowed to us and should
not be looked upon as liabilities. They are expressions of the
iccha-Sakti. Emotions and desires are manifestations of this
power.

However, desires do not remain as privileges. They

become wants that demand fulfilmentand unless I fulfil them
I feel I have not achieved, I am not successful. Of course, I
could not fulfil many of them; my life is replete with
unfulfilled desires.I could go so far as to say that these unfilled
wants constitute the individual.

If I am a wanting individual, it is understandable. Yet, in

spite of these various desires that keep me wanting,
occasionally I also find myself happy. This is not peculiar to
any given individual; everyone has his or her moment of joy,
however few or far in between they may be. Here again, we
have a dual phenomenon. I am generally unhappy with
occasional moments of happiness. This is a contradiction in
 .;
terms. Those who have inquirkd into happiness have drawn
certain conclusions. You become happy when you fulfil a
desire. Therefore, happiness lies in between the fulfilment of
a desire and the rise of another. This means that if you do not
have any desire, you will be very happy. We have to analyse
this conclusion.

The experience of happiness appears to be adventitious,

an event that has happened in one's life. The displeased seems
to have become happy. If that is so, I should see what made
me happy. One thing we all know is that there is no object in
the world called happiness. We have many objects in the
world, the sun, stars, moon, mountain, cow, eagle, apple,
potato, man, woman and so on but we do not see an object
called happiness. If happiness is not an object, perhaps it is
an attribute, adjective to an object. For instance, green is not
an object but is an attribute to an object, a green leaf or green
apple. Similarly, although there may not be a substantive
called happiness, there can be an adjective, an attribute to a
substantive, a happy substantive. I have seen a green leaf, a
bitter fruit, a sweet orange but I have never seen a happy
object, happiness sticking to an object.

One American asked me, "Swami why can't we say happy

Dayananda?" I replied, "Happy Dayananda? How do you
know I am happy? You are making an inference. May be it is
a part of my training to appear happy. And when I go to my
room, I bury my head in the pillow and cry. How do you
know that I am happy?" As I inquire into this thing called
happiness, I find that happiness is not an adjective, much
 32 Discovering Love

less is it a noun. Please understand this well. By dismissing

the substantive and the attribute, I have covered the entire
world. What is left out is time.

Is there a particular time when you become happy? The

clock strikes and at once you become happy and a little later,
you become unhappy. Is it true? No, you can be happy any
time. In the West there is a 'happy hour' when the pubs sell
drinks at a small discount. This is just after office hours so
that people can drop in on their way home. I consider it the
unhappiest hour. So, there is no particular time you become
happy; no particular place you become happy. You may think
heaven is such a place, where you can be happy. It is not
true; you can be unhappy even in heaven. In fact, you will
definitely be unhappy there because there are comparisons,
varying degrees of comfort. This is the description of heaven.

HAPPINESS IS NOT WITHIN

There is no particular place of happiness; no particular

time is a source of happiness; no substantive, no object can
be called happiness. Happiness can never be an attribute to a
substantive. If that is so then what makes you happy
whenever you are happy? You may say, 'happiness is within'.
This is another myth. Happiness is within? What does within
mean? Is it the liver, heart or kidney? Organs cannot feel
happiness, so it must be the mind. Does that mean that there
is no mind when you are sad? In fact, sadness requires a lot
of thinking. Therefore, you cannot say the mind makes you
happy.
 IAnl The... 33

There is another option and that is happiness lies between

the fulfilment of one desire and the rise of another. That is
also not totally true because, sometimes you fulfil a desire
and wish that you were never born. You fulfil a long drawn
desire and you find that you are not happy: Further, you also
find that you can be happy without fulfilling a desire. You
read a story or hear a joke and you laugh. The correlation
between happiness and the fulfilment of a desire is at best
variable.

Two friends bought a horse each. They had a few acres of

land and they allowed the horses to graze there. One fellow
asked the other, "How do we know which horse is mine and
which is yours?"

The friend suggested, "Why don't you paint your horse

with some stripes?"

The other man agreed and painted his horse with stripes.
However, a month later, the rains washed away the stripes.
Again there was the problem of identifying the horses.

"Now what shall we do?"

"Cut the mane on your horse. The one without the mane
is yours."

So, the man cut the mane of his horse, but then, it grew
back again, and the problem remained. Next, he cut the tail
but that also grew back. Then, the other fellow had a bright
idea. So he said, "Why not do it this way, the white horse is
yours, the brown is mine". (Laughter)
 34 Discovering Love

Did you fulfil a desire now? Has your circumstances

changed at home or the office? Yet, all of you laughed. Can
you not see the logic? If, in spite of your wants, you are happy
occasionally, it only proves the point that you need not fulfil
desires to be happy. This leaves us the possibility that perhaps
I am the very happiness. When I am happy now and then, it
is this happiness that I come across, although I attribute it to
some other source.

It is similar to a dog, while chewing on a dry bone cuts its

mouth. It tastes its own blood, and attributes it to the juiciness
of the bone. It thinks, "Before I ate the bone there was no
blood. Only now I taste blood. So it must be the juicy bone".
When you listen to music you are happy. Hence, you attribute
the happiwss to the music. Before listening to the music you
were not happy but while listening you are happy. Therefore,
music must be the source of happiness. This is your logic.
However, the music that you listen to is a source of
unhappiness to your son who prefers contemporary music.
The same music is a source of happiness for one and
unhappiness for another. herefore, you cannot cite it as a
cause for happiness. You commit the same error of attributing
happiness to the object of your experience.

There are some who say that the world is a trap; it does
not make you happy. On the contrary, it makes you unhappy.
This also is not true. The world does make you happy. Look
at the stars, the beauty of nature, theaworld of music,
thousands of examples to prove that the world makes you
happy. Here, our SDstras come to our help. They categorically
state that happiness is your nature. The happiness that-you
experience is exactly what you are. It is what you are. It does
 I An1 The... 35

r i'

not exclude the world, your bbdy, mind or senses. Despite

your mind and senses being very much present, you are
happy. Your next question could be, "When I am unhappy,
what am I?" Well, let us look at these two experiences and
see which is the one that you love to be.

What is natural is not a matter for complaint. That I have

hunger, thirst and so on, is not a matter for complaint; it is
natural. That I sleep every night is not a problem. No one
complains, "Oh, I have to sleep every night. I don't know
why, but I sleep at night". It is not a matter for complaint. It
is, however, a matter for complaint if they do not get sleep.

If my eyes do not see, my ears do not hear or if I have no

appetite, these are all matters for complaint. The reason is
because it is not natural. If the sun is bright, tamarind is sour
or sugar is sweet, it is their nature to be so. Similarly, that I
am happy is not a cause for complaint. If I am unhappy,
however, it is definitely something to complain about. I worry
about my unhappiness. I look for solace and comfort from
people. I seek diversion from myself. In fact, according to the
modem measure of success, the more diversions I have, the
more successful I am. You can understand clearly that
unhappiness is not acceptable, even though it is part of one's
life. Whenever I am unhappy, I always try to be different.
Equally, if someone else is unhappy, I reach out and try to
help relieve the sorrow. However, when someone is happy I
do not offer my condolences. It is a welcome state and most
acceptable. Therefore, to be happy is as natural a commitment
as it is to be away from being unhappy.
 36 Discovering Love

Our Sastras tell us that the happiness that you experience

is yourself alone, which is why you love to be happy, not
now and then but all the time and at all places. Unless it is
your own nature, you cannot accomplish that. Therefore, in
the vision of the Siistras you are that happiness. Happiness is
an experiential word. A better definition would be, freedom
from the sense of limitation, freedom from the sense of want,
freedom from the attempt to become, and it is this freedom,
moksa, which is your nature, which is you. Thus the Sgstras
reveal the self to be the very thing that you love. What you
love is the fullness, the freedom from limitation. Let us call it
piirnatva. This piirnatva, fullness, is exactly what you seek and
it is you.

While There is every reason for one to feel small and

insignificant, in the vision of the Sruti you are the whole. If
one looks at oneself from the scheme of things called the jagat,
one cannot but see oneself as an insignificant entity. Equally,
there is reason for you to say that you are the whole. What is
the reason? It is the shift in your vision. First, I should like
you to understand clearly that a point of view is not the view.
Only if the view is clear, a point of view is possible. Without
a complete picture, you cannot have a point of view. For
example, let us take an abstract painting. Unable to
understand the painting, I ask the artist, "What is the
significance of this painting?" He points to the title written
below, 'Perspective of a table'. I turn to him, "It doesn't look
like a table". He explains, "Swami, when I lie down on the
floor and look up at the table, this is how it looks". For the
artist it is a perspective because he knows the full view of the
table. A perspective is not a perspective if the total view of
 I An1 The... 37

the object is not known. A spare part of a machine is not a

meaningful part if the whole scheme is not understood. Your
point of view is that you are small and insignificant but you
do not know the whole view of who you are. When the whole
vision is not clear, how do you come to this conclusion?From
a point of view it does appear that you are small and so on.
We have seen that earlier. However, let us try to understand
what the whole view is and whether your conclusion is
correct.

YOUARE TKE WHOLE

If there is something that includes everything,
encompasses everything, we can call it piirna, the whole. Will
this pzirna exclude you? If it does, can it be the whole? Should
not the whole include you? It should include you; it can never
be separate from you. This is what you experience in a
moment of happiness. When you listen to music, you are
happy. The music, the mind and you are there. There is no
wanting and wanted. This is the situation where the
wholeness is experienced. You do not lack the experience of
the whole; you need to understand the experience of the
whole. Please see the difference. You experience the whole
whenever you are happy. You can never be away from the
whole.

When you look at me, I become an object of your

consciousness. What is the distance between consciousness
and the object that you are conscious of? Is there a distance?
You are conscious of space. Space is the object of your
consciousness. Between space and consciousness is there a
distance? If there is a distance, what causes that distance? Is
 38 Discovering Love

it space? Space, as I said, is already an object of consciousness.

Therefore, the object space is never away from consciousness.
Similarly, the universe is not separate from that
consciousness. In fact, you are unlike everything else in the
sense that everything else is the object of consciousness.Space,
time, th'e earth, the sun, the moon, any object micro or macro
is an object of consciousness. Any subject matter is an object
of consciousness. The numerous forms, the different colours,
the sounds of various frequencies, flavours, tastes, concepts
and ideas, every one is an object of consciousness. Further,
the objects are variable. What is invariable is only
consciousness. We call this consciousness in Sanskrit, samvit
or cit. This is what you experience when you are happy. It is
the same consciousness that you experience when you are
unhappyyalthough you do not know it.

YOUARE W I K E ANYTHING ELSE

Yet, despite my explanation, the problem of being small
does not disappear. The smallness is really not a problem,
however, if you are the only being on the planet, since there
will be no one to compare with. The problem arises only when
you compare yourself with another and find yourself falling
short. Being self-conscious, you compare and comparisons
cause complexes. That is the problem. Further, comparisons
are only with people, not with other dissimilar objects or
beings. You do not compare yourself with a rock or a tree.
You can be jealous only of another human being. A great
musician compares himself to a rock star and not to a rock.
Compared to a rock star, he envies the other's popularity,
wealth and success. It is comparison with the similar that
causes complexes.
 I Ant The... 39

,, ?

Our Sasfras prod you to tpestion the object of your

comparison. As you analyse you will find that everything
else in this world is unlike you. Every object be it time, space,
quasars, quarks, individuals, anything that you come to know
inferentially, presumptuously or directly through your own
senses or with instruments, is an object of your consciousness.
When I say everything, it includes concepts also such as
heaven, hell, and so on, they are all objects of consciousness.
You are the only source of consciousness; the rest are objects
of your consciousness.

You have pronouns in every language. The second person

pronoun is you. You can use the word 'you' to any number
of people. The third person pronoun 'he' or 'she' or 'it' can
be used for any number of men, women or objects. However,
when it comes to the first person pronoun I, in how many
places can you use the word? What is the locus of 'I'? Is there
a second place that you can use 'I'? There is only one locus
and that is you, for there is no second 'I7.There is no second
consciousness. It means that everything is unlike
consciousness. As a result, you have nothing to compare with.
You are like yourself alone. There is nothing, no one like you.
Moreover, the object of consciousness, which is unlike you,
is not separate from that consciousness. It does not have an
existence apart from consciousness.

You think of anything, it is in your consciousness, whether

it is a concept of beauty, an aesthetic sense, a sentiment, it is
never away from consciousness. Your dream is in
consciousness.Your sleep is in consciousness; in fact, all these
are but consciousness. It is the wholeness of the self that is
you. This is the view, understand, the whole view. The point
 40 Discovering Love

of view is with reference to a specific, your body for instance.

You can say that with reference to your body, you are limited.
With reference to your knowledge, to anything you can say,
you are limited. However, with reference to yourself, you
are free from limitation. There is a reason for you to be happy
because that is what you are. You cannot avoid being happy,
despite all the limitations. Even the most miserable person
smiles at times. Sometimes, I find some people in the audience
very serious, trying hard not to laugh. Often, they become
my challenge and I see them finally laughing.

In spite of all the tragedy and sorrow, you are going to

come across yourself. That is what happens when something
captures your imagination - a purple moment, something
beautiful? a sentence, a phrase, a colour, an arrangement,
innocent laughter of a child - at that time the wanting 'you'
is drowned. It is due to grace that we can suspend our memory
and for the moment the wanting 'you' is forgotten. You have
to make an effort to remember the wanting 'you'. The real
you, the joyous you, like the sun, reveals itself at such
moments. You find that you and the world have become one
whole. It is the wholeness that you experience when you are
happy, because the nature of the self, the atman, is happiness.
The self is unlike anything else. Referred by the word 'I' the
self becomes the centre of all your experiences.
 THEVISIONOF 'I' IS L ~ E S S N E S S
IN THE WORLD I find that there are only two things to begin
with, that is '1', the subject and everything else, that is 'not-
1'. When we look into what is 'I' and 'not-I' the obvious line
of division is the skin, the extremities of my body. Beyond
the skin is 'not-1'. So, the shirt I wear, even though it is close
to the body, is 'not-1'. It is mine but it is 'not-1'. The Siistras
question this. The physical world is an object and exists
because you have a means of knowing it. You cannot say
that it exists, unless you know it. When you say 'this is', you
have a valid means of knowledge to prove the existence. In
other words, what I say exists, is what I objectify by one of
the means of knowledge.

If the same principle is applied to a pot, ghata-drast~

ghrztDd
bhinnah, the knower, the seer of a pot is distinct from the pot.
A pot is because I am conscious of it. It is an object of my
consciousness. Therefore, when I say 'pot is', it can be read
as 'pot consciousness is,' since pot has already become an
object of my consciousness, of my knowledge. Therefore,
whatever becomes an object of my knowledge can be said
differently. So, 'pot is' can be said as 'pot consciousness is'.
A flower is, flower consciousness is. Swami is, Swami
consciousness is. Time is, time consciousness is. Anything is,
that object consciousness is. If this is so, my physical body
also cannot be an object outside my consciousness. It is only
my relationship with it that differs.
 42 Discovering Love

However, the manner of my relating and the reality of the

object do not change. For example, there are many houses
and one of them is my house. There are many people and
one of them is my father. There are many bodies and one of
them is my body. In all the above examples, it is clear that I
have an intimate relationship with one and not with the others
of the same category. This is my house and that is not. This is
my father and this is not. This is my body and the others are
not. It is clear. So, I am intimately connected to, related to my
physical body and it is an object of consciousness, but there
is an obvious confusion, I do not look upon my body as an
object of consciousness; instead I look upon it as myself.
Consequefitly,I identify myself with the condition of my body
in terms of appearance, weight, mortality and so on. By
identifying with the physical body, I also identify with its
functions as well as with the mind and senses. I know that
there is hunger, thirst. There is hunger consciousness and
thirst consciousness,but I say it differently; I say 'I am hungry'
or 'I am thirsty'. Equally, if I look at myself from the
standpoint of the senses, if there is no sight or hearing, I say
'I am blind' or 'I am deaf'; even though blindness or deafness
is something you are conscious of. It is an object of your
consciousness. This confusion arises only because of my
identity with my physical body, mind and senses. Therefore,
when I say 'I1, it is to these that I refer, although they are
objects of my consciousness.

When I say object, I mean the grammatical object. It is an

object of consciousness. When I say 'I am blind' or 'I am deaf',
I cannot say so without 'seeing', without being aware of my
 The Vision Of... 43

.: i

blindness or deafness. I see thAt'1 do not see. So blindness is

an object of consciousness, like those mentioned earlier.
However, the conclusion, 'I am blind' or 'I am deaf', is
based upon the experience of the person; that is, the
conclusion is the experience, or the experience is the
conclusion. Either way it is a conclusion. There is experience
of not seeing and the conclusion is that I am blind. There is
experience of not hearing and the conclusion is that I am deaf.
The conclusion of my mind is my condition. The emotion
prevailing in the mind at a given time is my condition at that
time. I am angry or I am jealous and so on.
Thus, I assume the condition of my mind and the mind
keeps changing. The only truth here is that the mind changes
all the time while I remain constant. The self, 'I', identifies
with the varying conditions of the mind. So the angry 'I' is
now the understanding 'I', the accommodating 'I', the
loveable 'I7.The confused 'I' is the clear 'I' now. The hesitant
'I' is the decisive 'I'. The forgetting 'I' is the remembering '1'.
In fact, memory is an object of consciousness. Knowledge
is an object of consciousness. Emotion is an object of
consciousness. Yet, we say, 'I am both knowledgeable and
ignorant'. This is amazing. However, it is true because it
depends on the standpoint from which the person says I am
knowledgeable and ignorant. He is knowledgeable with
reference to what he knows and ignorant with reference to
what he does not. Similarly, he is a liker with reference to
what he likes and conversely a 'disliker' with reference to
what he does not. It appears that the 'I' can be viewed from
different standpoints, but it is a point of view.
 44 Discovering Love

With reference to the body I am tall, short, old or young.

From the standpoint of prana I am hungry, thirsty, healthy or
otherwise. From the mind standpoint I am restless and so
on, from the standpoint of knowledge, either knowledgeable
or ignorant. These are all standpoints.
I can also look at myself with reference to the people
connected to me. With reference to my father I am either son
or daughter, while with reference to my children, I become
mother or father. So I see myself differently with reference to
different people connected to me. Each one of them is a point
of view.

'I' IS INVARIABLE CONSCIOUSNESS

However, the question now is what are you? A point of
view becomes clear only when the view, the vision is clear. If
the view is not clear, the point of view becomes the view and
it is confusing because it is variable. So, that which is
invariable in all the points of view is the '1', aham. What is
that I? It is consciousness. It cannot be but self-revealing
consciousness.
Therefore, any object that you objectify implies knowledge
and that implies the presence of consciousness, which is
present invariably. When I say 'I am', the 'I' is invariable
and consciousness is invariable. Are there two things,
consciousness and I? It is only consciousness, which is
invariable and which is referred by the word '1'.
Consciousnessjoins every situation.With sleep you say sleep
consciousness. With dream, it is dream consciousness. With
waking, it is waking consciousness. With any object, it is that
object consciousness. The objects and situations vary but
 .. 45
The Vision Of.

., ?
consciousness is constant; it is invariable all the time. This is
the real meaning of the word '1'. Therefore, when you say 'I
am', you are saying that consciousness is. If this is so, then
nothing is totally opposed to consciousness. This is the next
step in understanding. Nothing is outside or separate from
consciousness.

TWOORDERS OF REALITY
You cannot separate an object from this consciousness in
the sense, when one is, the other is; when the other is not, the
one still is. If A is there, then B is there. If B is not there, A is
still there. It is two orders of reality. Let us take a pot. It is
made of clay. So, pot is; clay is. Now, think of a pot without
any material, like clay, metal or any other. If nof a pot, let us
imagine a shirt without a material. Imagine anything without
its material. It is amazing how people miss the obvious. We
say it is a clay pot. It is linguistically correct except that clay
becomes an adjective to pot, whereas the word 'pot' does not
really have an object. The weight of the pot is the weight of
clay. It feels like clay. In fact, I could say there is only clay.
Pot is not the space; it is neither of clay nor in clay. Then,
what is this pot? This is Indian magic. This is real magic, I tell
you. There is no pot; there is only clay.

However, you cannot dismiss a pot as non-existent. It has

its uses; it holds water. Therefore, a pot has to be given a
certain status in terms of its existence, an ontological status.
The pot was a possibility that was collapsed by the pot maker.
Collapsing a possibility is to actualise it. So, this pot is a form
and that form alone is the meaning of the word, pot. Form is
not a substance; it is only an attribute. If pot is not a substance
 46 Discovering Love

and it is an attribute to clay, we should call it potty clay and

not clay pot. In potty clay, pot becomes an adjective, which is
the correct term, because clay is the substance; it is satya. Pot
is definitely mithya. Mithya is not a delusion or an illusion or
false. It is a reality. It has a form and a function. This is what
we say is Bhagavm's s?.$fi,creation.

If clay is the substance, can we say that the pot is an

attribute? No, simply because pot-ness, the nature of pot, is
not intrinsic to clay. Every time you think of clay, you do not
think of pot, is that not true? A pot is of clay and so is a plate.
There are many forms but one clay. You can have a million
pots but if I count clay, I have counted all of them. Ekasmin
vijAnte - with the knowledge of one, everything else is as well
known because the substance is only one and everything else
is form and function. In terms of reality it is the only one.

We have these two orders of reality. One is without being

a pot, a chain, anything. Clay is without being a plate or a
pot. Gold is without being a chain or a ring. However, a
golden chain is gold; golden bangle is gold; golden anything
is gold. In other words B is A; A is not B. This is an amazing
reality. It makes the difference in life, because A happens to
be you while B happens to be everything else. Think of
anything and it is sustained by that consciousness, such as
space consciousness, time consciousness and so on. There is
no distance between consciousness and the object. Further,
while consciousness is free from all objects, objects are not
free from consciousness. It is this consciousness that is the
nature of the atman, I. Consciousness has no form or parts.
Therefore, it is dimension free. We have seen already that it
is spatially free and temporally free. Consciousness is not in
 47
The Vision Of...

\. t
space, whereas space is conscio'u'sness; it is in consciousness.
Consciousness is what you experience every time you are
happy.

Consciousness is not bound by space or time. If you look

at the nature of time, it is a strange phenomenon really. When
you think of the past, you are thinking of the past right now.
Can you think of the past in the past? No, you think of the
past right now. Similarly, you think of the future, right now.
Now is the reality of time. If you look into what is the now,
does it imply a length of time? No, because every length is
subject to further and further divisions, If we take a minute,
it has sixty seconds. A second has one million microseconds.
A microsecond has one million picoseconds. You can keep
dividing until there is no length of time. Then, what is 'now'?
You think of time, time consciousness is. You look into time;
the content is consciousness, length free consciousness,
neither spatially limited nor time-wise limited. Therefore, we
say consciousness is cit, sat and ananda. Ananda is
limitlessness; it is not bliss. If you use the word, bliss, it
becomes experiential and you will be waiting for it forever.

When you use words such as bliss, communication stops.

All of you have the experience of some kind of bliss-ice
cream bliss, music bliss, disco bliss and so on. This atma bliss
is the best of them all. Often, you will find the word written
with a capital B or all the letters in capitals. It only leads to
confusion and there is no communication; whereas this
 48 Discovering Love

knowledge is entirely communicable. This is our teaching

tradition. There is nothing mystic about it.
A mystic cannot create another mystic. If a mystic has a
certain experience of some underlying harmony in the world,
he cannot make the other person have a similar experience.
He can only say something. If he has a means to communicate
his vision, then there is nothing mystic about his experience.
In our teaching tradition, there is a parampara, guru-s'isya-
parampard, teacher-student lineage. The teaching can be
passed on.
We employ words and they have to be chosen carefully.
They should make you see. Of course, words have limitations
and we should be aware of them. We create a situation from
where yodhave no choice but to see. This is what the teaching
is about. For example, if you wish to point out a particular
star or any celestial object to someone, it is difficult to point
with your finger. So, you choose a tree or a building and lead
the person from there. First you point out a tree. Then lead
him to a branch and from there to its tip. "Now next to that
tip, do you see the bright star?" His excited exclamations
speak for themselves. This is how the teaching takes the
student through to understand the vision. This is how the
vision is communicated. Since the subject is you, I have to
only create a situation like the branch of a tree and help you
recognise that limitlessness is the nature of the self, that it is
not limited by time, by space.

You believe that you are the body and therefore you are
subject to trividha-pariccheda, three-fold limitations: desatah,
 The Vision 05.. 49

< ?
spatially, hlatah, time-wise andvastutah, object-wise. When
you say that you are limited, you are wanting, you are useless
and so on, it is the body or mind's limitation that you identify
with. This is due to error that is born of ignorance. The Snstra
corrects this error.
From the point of view of the physical body, it is good
that it is not limitless. If it is so how are you going to get up?
The truth is the 'I' is limitless. The problem is centred on this
'I' and not elsewhere. The body has no complexes; you have
complexes. The mind also does not have any problem,
although the mind is generally everybody's whipping boy.
Mind is only an instrument, antah-karana. The problem is the
individual who has every form of complex: 'I am fat, I am
useless, I am a failure'. Fortunately, the 'I am' is limitless
consciousness which is dnanda. From a point of view, the
limitless 'you' has a limited body, limited mind, senses, but
it is not a problem. It is like an actor playing the role of a
beggar. He studies the beggars on the streets and picks up
their nuances. On stage, however, he does not lose his identity
but plays the role very well. No real beggar could be as good
as this actor. What is more, he enjoys his role, because he
knows who he is and that he is going to be popular and richer
by playing this role. Similarly, despite the limitation of the
body, mind and senses, you are free from the sense of
limitation because you know what the 'I' is.
Therefore, you are free enough to have a limited body, a
limited mind, limited senses. This is the freedom and it is the
nature of the self. It is this self that you love. The love is for
the pleased self. The self is already self-pleased but because
of your wrong conclusions about yourself you struggle to be
 50 Discovering Love

happy. Thanks to some grace, you find yourself in a situation

where the wanting you is suspended for the time being. This
is the greatest grace when we are able to suspend the
dissatisfied 'I' in moments of happiness.
It is the same happiness that you discover in love. When
someone says, "I love you," you accept yourself for the time
being through the eyes of the other, because he or she totally
accepts you. That is why love seems to produce happiness
and joy. At that time there is complete suspension of this
wanting, smarting self. The petty person is given up for the
moment because of an overwhelming experience, either of
music, of a joke, of something beautiful, or of something
profound. It captures you and you find that you are the whole.
This is whgat is called happiness, and you experience this
happiness in different degrees.
Love is the wholeness or nnanda or happiness manifest,
related to an object. It is a dynamic form of the wholeness, of
the atmniz. Wherever there is love, there is wholeness. You
love the wholeness through another object that brings you
wholeness. It makes you discover some wholeness about you.
Therefore, that object becomes an object of love.
RA~~FIcATIoNsOF LOVE

Further, love itself undergoes changes. It becomes

compassion when the object of love requires consideration,
some consolation or help from me and I respond because that
person deserves help. From compassion love turns into
service. It creates a condition within you to help you
understand yourself. There can be love only where there is
understanding, otherwise love cannot sustain. You may
 The Vision Of...
51 /

.. Z

marry because you love someone br marry and discover love

later. Either way, marriage will be rewarding only if there is
understanding. Love is the basis for understanding.

Love requires that you free yourself from your agenda for
the other. Unless you drop your agenda, you cannot
understand another. Love paves the way for this
understanding. Unfortunately, we do not understand what
is love, not even relative love. In absolute terms, love is only
ananda. It is a manifest form of the atman, of the wholeness of
the atman. That is why love accommodates, because it is
whole. Since it accommodates, any omission or commission
on the part of the other does not cause concern.

Due to our lack of understanding, love turns into

obsession. When this happens, love not only gets hurt, it also
causes hurt. We are supposed to rise in love and not fall in
love, as is the commonly used expression. It has become a
money spinnhg theme these days, commercialised to such
an extent that love is nothing but a bubble, a make believe
bubble. Without understanding, love becomes obsessive and
it can also turn into hatred. Recently there was a news item
of a man who shot his ex-wife and her new husband. The
reason was obvious. The ex-husband could not bear to see
his wife with another person. If I can be happy at the other's
happiness, despite he or she being with another person, that
is love. It is not indifference. When I cannot control the object
of my love, I begin to dislike the very object that I profess to
love. In extreme cases, the hatred can even lead to murder.
You destroy that which you love. Love is now hatred. In fact,
there is no such thing called hatred. It is only unfulfilled love,
love that has gone sour.
 52 Discovering Love

Jealousy also is love. When someone gets the thing that

you love and want, you become jealous. This is what is called
as drsfi, evil eye and so on, in Sanskrit, matsavya. In the Gita,
this emotion, matsarya, is specifically mentioned. When
talking about a jfianin, a wise person, he is said to be vimatsara,
free from jealousy. In Sanskrit jealousy is defined as anguish
at others' success, particularly if that success is conjoined with
your failure. Jealousy, another ramification of love is, in fact,
the most illegitimate of emotions.

Anger also is love. When your love for something is

thwarted or denied, you are hurt and there is pain. It is this
pain, duhkha, which manifests as anger. Anger is not pain of
the preseq. It is always some old pain manifesting. The
current situation merely evokes the latent feeling. Everyone
has his or her erroneous zone, vulnerable area. There is
already buried pain inside. All it requires is a trigger, someone
to touch the button, and there is an outburst. We need to be
aware of ourselves; we need an insight into our inner world.

Thus, there is only one emotion, which is real, which is

your nature, and that is love, love as compassion, as
sympathy, as understanding, as giving, yielding, and as
friendliness also. People often say, "You should be friendly,
you should be accommodating, you should be this and that".
It is not a question of should or should not; it is what you are.
You do not ask a sugar crystal to be sweet; its nature is to be
sweet. We are misled to have ideals without understanding
that these are not ideals; these are ourselves, our nature. It is
a question of understanding; it is not to be commanded or
demanded. That is why we are all mediocre, mediocre not in
our professions or achievements, but in our living. It is not
 The Vision Of... 53

that we are incapable of living intelligently; it is just that we

are misled. Compassion is our nature, as is sympathy, and
empathy is the key that unlocks these emotions.

Empathy is not the prerogative of a special heavenly

individual.It is a natural human trait. When you see suffering,
any suffering, you pick up the pain. This is empathy. I often
give the example of a tennis match. You can watch this clearly
on TV, the expression on the faces of the two players. The
winner, when he comes up to the net to shake hands with the
opponent, after a hard won final, picks up the disappointment
of the other. His earlier ecstasy is quickly replaced by
sympathy for the other's defeat. This is empathy. The world
enters you through empathy and invokes compassion.
Compassion, in turn, moves you to act, to reach out and help.

Meanwhile, even as compassion wells up in you, you come

up with reasons why you cannot help. The so called practical
within you quickly overwhelms the natural'you. First you
are human, and then you are a practical human, pragmatic
human. Returning to the question of empathy, it is so very
evident in our encounter with people begging at the traffic
lights. If a begging person asks, with dignity, "Please give
me some money sir, I have not eaten for days", you will
probably not give him a second of your time. However, if he
should plead, pester and beseech you, "sir, sir, sir, food sir,
hungry sir, not eaten sir," you will definitely give him
something. This man knows the psychology of begging. He
makes you feel so wretched and you cannot stand the pain.
So, you give him something to ease your pain. He evokes
your empathy.
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE of oneself is wholeness; it lacks
nothing. Basically, you want to be, to live. Everyone wants to
live; nobody wants to die. There is a love to be. Then there is
the love for freedom. In other words, there is love for freedom
from the limitation of time. You want to be timeless, full,
complete and whole. You cannot stand a sense of
incompleteness, of lack. Thirdly, you cannot stand ignorance.
There is the need to know. If you want to make your partner
lose sleep all you have to do is to say :
"I have something important to tell you. But you shouldn't
tell anyone this."
"Okay. What is it?"
"Oh, it is too late now. I will tell you tomorrow."
That is it. The whole night, the person will wonder who it
is about, what and why. Sleep'has vanished for the night.
The love to know expresses itself even in the desire to read
the gossip weeklies. You want to know everything that is
happening around you. You are hurrying to your office. On
the way you see a small crowd on the pavement. You stretch
your neck out to see what is the cause. This is what they call
rubber necking. Two people are in deep conversation.As you
walk past, you cannot help slowing down. Your entire
attention is behind the ear; even your head bends slightly, to
 56 Discovering Love

get the gist of their conversation.It arises from the basic love
to know. You cannot bear being ignorant.
Therefore, in one sentence if I have to describe the basic
urge of a self-conscious being, it would be that you want to
live; you want to live a day more, happily, without being
ignorant. To live a day more reveals the desire for eternity,
timelessness that is the nature of the self. Your desire to be
free from ignorance arises from the notion that you are
ignorant. Please note the word 'notion'. It is not the truth; it
is your notion. In fact, you are neither ignorant nor
knowledgeable, for you are ignorant with reference to what
you do not know and knowledgeable with reference to what
ybu know. You are cit, consciousness,which makes you aware
of both ignwance and knowledge. You are also aware of the
need to be free from any sense of limitation, because fullness
is your nature. That is the reason why you want to be happy.

ANY KNOWLEDGE PRESUPPOSES ELIGIBILITY

Knowledge is freedom from ignorance. By knowledge it

means here knowledge of yourself, of your nature. Self-
knowledge, like any other knowledge, presupposes certain
eligibility. Knowledge requires certain factors. If you wish to
see an object you require certain factors-light, the object,
eyes capable of sight and the mind behind the eyes. If all these
factors are present definitely you will see the object. Even if I
ask you not to see the object, you cannot help yourself. You
will definitely see. Knowledge does not depend on your
permission or your will. It takes place if the requisites are
fulfilled. Be it sight, smell, taste, touch or sound, knowledge
will take place. Even inference takes place automatically.
The knowledge may not be useful or helpful to you, but it
 Gaining The Eligibility.,. 57

.: :
happens all the same. The requifed conditions must be there,
that is the only prerequisite.
If the knowledge is of a different nature, sometimes it
requires preparedness, eligibility. For instance, at school, if
you are qualified, prepared, you can understand the subject.
Sometimes, you may be ready, but the teacher is not. It
happens more often than not wished for, particularly these
days. However, if the teacher is prepared, the student is
qualified, eligible, eager to know, knowledge will definitely
take place. The student must be eligible. Merely because the
father is a great mathematician and the mother a physicist
and they try to teach their two-year-old child, the child is not
going to respond. It is too young; it is not eligible, not ready
for knowledge. It can also be that the child is intellectually
not very bright or has a learning disability. Naturally, such a
child, no matter what its age or genetic lineage, is not going
to absorb calculus or particle physics. The adhihra, eligibility
to know is not there. You can learn only when you already
have some basic knowledge of a given subject for you to build
upon. This is how human knowledge has been gathered over
the centuries. So, adhiktasya adhiMrah, the eligibility is for
the already eligible, for one who has accomplished something
from where he or she can know more.

When it comes to self-knowledge, what is the adhikiira,

eligibility? It means that the teacher, the subject matter taught,
and the student being available, knowledge should take place,
provided, there is a condition required here, a clause. In
Indian logic, this condition is called upiidhi, which means 'if
 58 Discovering Love

you are ready'. The condition is introduced to account for

the realities. The reality is that in spite of my exposure to the
teaching, knowledge does not take place. The subject matter
here is the atman. The teacher and the student are available.
If knowledge does not take place, the reason is the lack of
adhibritva, eligibility or preparedness. In Sanskrit, the eligible
person is called adhihrin, and the abstract noun of this term
is adhihritva, the eligible status. It is this person who is being
discussed.

The subject matter is unlike others. If you have covered

enough areas in mathematics, you can understand and
appreciate calculus. Vedanta is different. You have to be an
adhibrin. You have to grow into a person who is eligible for
this knowledge. Although academic qualifications do help
you with the necessary intellectual infrastructure to think
logically, clearly and see through false statements, it is not
adhibritva. For instance, let us look at a remark made by a
politician that in the world there is no language greater than
Tamil. When I asked him how many languages he knew, his
reply was that he was content with just Tamil. His claim that
Tamil is the greatest language is obviously false because he
does not know the greatness of Tamil language compared to
other languages. One needs the intellectual capacity to see
through the false statement. How can he say that Tamil is the
greatest language when he does not know other languages?
You need to know not just other languages but also linguistics
before comparing languages. Language is a means of
communication, a tool, but to dedicate your life to a means of
communication when you have nothing to communicate is
ridiculous. This is what I call as wrong thinking. Often people
 Gaining The Eligibility ... 59

do not think properly. You hiGito think clearly before making

categorical statements. Education helps you to think clearly,
but it does not make you eligible to know yourself. You may
not be academically qualified, but you may be able to know.
For self-knowledge, all you need is a capacity to think
cogently.
Beyond eligibility, the question of the individual arises.
Who is the person who wants to know? The person is very
important because the knowledge, the subject matter is what
one wants to be. Generally, in the other disciplines of
knowledge, you do not want to be the subject matter. For
example, when you choose microbiology, you do not want
to become a microbe. When you choose geology, you do not
want to become a stone or any other mineral. What you want
to study, you do not wish to become. You learn the subject as
a distinct entity separate from you. In this respect, Vedanta
is entirely different.
The subject matter of Vedanta is the fullness, the wholeness
that is your nature. It is what you want to be. You will not
and cannot settle for anything less. You are like a river rushing
towards its source, the ocean. The river will not brook any
obstacle. It will struggle to find a way across. Be it mountains,
valleys, boulders, it will overcome all of them in its yearning
to merge with the ocean. Finally, as it nears the ocean, for a
few miles upstream, the water is already saline. You cannot
distinguish where the river ends and the ocean begins. The
ocean appears to welcome the river in its arms. At the sight
of its source, the river relaxes. The story of the river is the
story of every human soul, its yearning to be free from a sense
of limitation, the yearning for fullness.
 60 Discovering Love

Everyone loves sleep only because of this yearning for

fullness. As we analyse our love for sleep, we come to
understand the nature and content of our seeking. It is an
obvious fact that everyone loves sleep. Nobody complains
that they have to sleep every day, day after day. Nobody has
this problem. On the contrary, the love for sleep is so much
that everyone first wakes up and gets up later. Perhaps, that
is the reason why we wish each other 'good morning'. It is
not a good morning at all, since we have to wake up from
sleep. Between waking up and getting up, there is a conflict,
should I get up or not? It only reveals our intense love for
sleep. The reason is that in sleep we experience a freedom
from a sense of limitation. This freedom is what we call molqa,
freedom fro9m what I do not want to be.

Returning to Vedanta, the subject is what you want to be,

that is freedom from a sense of lack. Naturally, a person has
to grow in maturity before he or she becomes eligible for this
knowledge. This growth is not natural; it is not physical or
biological growth. You can live to be a ninety and not be
mature. You will age but not grow. The inner person remains
a child, a child that cannot face disappointments in life. From
losing a balloon to losses in the stock market, the person
cannot handle the downside of life. You have to grow and
that means you have to make the effort. If it is simple
biological growth, you need not do anything; nature will take
care of it. On the contrary, inner growth requires initiative
and effort on your part. It does not happen naturally.
 Gaining The Eligibility... 61

c ,

You do not learn anything 'without effort on your part.

Experience does not teach unless you actively learn from it.
People often say that experience teaches. I wish it did. People
are what they are, not for want of experiences. There is enough
and more experience in everyone's life. You need not
experience everything personally to learn. You can learn from
other's experience too. If we have to learn only from our own
experience,human civilisation would not be where it is today.
If you have to know what electrocution is through experience,
would you be alive to share the knowledge? Therefore, it is
not for want of experience that people do not know; it is
because we do not learn from it. Learning comes with
initiative. When you make use of an opportunity to learn, it
is an initiative. A good example is your choosing to come
here to listen to my lecture. You have come here through your
initiative. Further, areas of learning are vast. You may know
one area well and others not as well or not at all. However, in
order to know a particular subject, you have to make an
initiative. Discovering love is no different. You have to make
the initiative to know, to discover what love is.

If you can command a degree of love, a degree of the

meaning of love that is freedom from limitation, from
division, then I would say that you are mature. The loving
will be naturally compassionate, naturally sympathetic,
understanding, giving, and yielding. It is the loving person
who is truly eligible for discovering that he or she is the
content of love, which is fullness. It is this fullness that
manifests in the form of love. The dynamic form of Dnanda is
what we call as love. Unrelated it is ~nanda;related it is love.
It undergoes various changes as the objects you relate to differ.
 62 Discovering Love

HOWTO DISCOVER LOVE FOR ONESELF

One thing you must understand is that first, you have to
have an infrastructure to receive love. If you cannot receive
love, you cannot give either. You cannot command love. You
can be a loving person only when you love yourself. If you
do not, you cannot receive love. You cannot even take love.
Since you do not have love for yourself, if another seems to
have love for you, that person becomes an object of obsession.
You will strangulate the very thing that you love. You will
destroy that love because that love becomes a need. It is no
longer something that you can absorb. Even if someone says,
"I love you," you will question because you do not have love
for yourself. However, if you can discover love for yourself
as a person? as an individual, you have an infrastructure to
absorb love. Therefore, you can give love without loss,
without reservation. As we saw earlier, the self is love. In
fact, the self is ev\erything. It is the content of love itself.

Having said that, however, is it possible to love oneself? If

I look at myself as an individual, I find that it is difficult, if
not impossible to have self-love. My body, mind, family,
situation and so on, all of these have been given to me. The
reasons could be on the basis of either genetics or karma. If
you take one more step from genetics, it becomes karma.
Whatever be the reason, the fact is that I have been placed in
a particular situation over which I have no choice. My
parentage, physical body, mind and senses, emotions,
intellect, memory, all these are given to me. The world, the
sun, the solar system, the black holes and the galaxies are
also given. The basic forces, the laws within the whole
structure in this expanding universe are given. Thus,
 Gaining The Eligibility... 63

< \

everything is given to me. ~'ve'rythin~ that is known, not yet

known, including that which cannot be known at all, these
constitute the world, the jagat. It is a given reality. Whether I
know it or not, everything has a place in the scheme of things.
The scientists try to find out their places, their roles. They are
given the wherewithal to explore the phenomena around
them. Matter or energy is neither created nor destroyed; it is
only in one form or another. This is how the jagat is.
Everything is given.

We can also look at the world from a different perspective,

'
the perspective of orders. There is the physical order,
biological order, psychological order and so on. These orders
constitute the universe that is given to us. This universal order
is what we call niyati, bhautika-niyati, physical order, pranic- ,

niyati, physiological order, and much more. Since everything

is a system, an order, when you study animals for example,
you find an interconnected world wherein the organisms
manifest a similarity. This is the reason why we experiment
with rats and monkeys in medical research. If a particular
medication works on either of these animals, the scientists
feel confident that they can try it on human beings. It is
because of the order, the physiological order.

The psychological order is yet another system. A neglect

or lack of understanding of this order has contributed to the
many problems we face in family and society today. Our
parents did not know nor did their parents before them.
Earlier we had a highly structured society without too many
choices. Each person knew fairly well what his or her future
would be. Professions and careers were passed on from father
to son. There were no surprises or anxieties because
 64 Discovering Love

competition was minimal. Without competition, there was

inner leisure, which contributed to the growth of the classical
arts.
Today, society presents a completely different picture.
Children are pushed into schools before they can even walk.
They have to compete when they are least equipped to do so.
The child feels abandoned and this creates tremendous stress
within the child. Unable to bear the mental pain, the child
pushes the pain inside. The unconscious is nothing but the
pain gathered in the first four or five years of a child's life.
Moreover, it takes years and years of processing to resolve
the unconscious, if one cares to process it at all. Without
processing it, the problem that one is not loved or cared for
will continue even if one lives to be ninety.

A child is incapable of handling pain. When it is sent to

school at the tender age of two or three, it feels that its Gods,
its parents, have abandoned it. The child feels that it is in
some way responsible for being sent away. It cannot afford
to displease its Gods, the almighty mother and father. So, the
child pretends to love school and smiles at its parents.
However, deep within the child blames itself because its
mother cannot be wrong. Since the child is so young, its
conclusion is that it is being sent to school because it is not
good enough for its parents. From then on, this feeling of not
being good enough builds up with each hurt and pain. Later,
it comes out as, "My son does not love me. He does not write
at all. My children have abandoned me". This is an eighty-
year-old father's feeling. It is the same as the conclusion of a
three-year-old child. It continues throughout one's life if one
 Gaining The Eligibility... 65

, t t
does not pay attention to oneself. This is the psychological
order.
Besides these orders you have the cognitive order also
known as the epistemological order. It deals with how you
gather knowledge and whether the knowledge is right or
wrong. Fundamentally, you are a cognitiveperson. Therefore,
you can manage your life only cognitively. It cannot be
otherwise. The emotional person cannot manage life. In fact,
the emotions, if they are not understood, will take the
cognitive person for a ride. There is another order, that of the
memory, which helps us to record as well as to erase our
many experiences.It is amazing that we remember something
only for a few minutes or a few days and then it gets erased.
Selective destruction helps to make space for important facts
to be stored. There are various types of memory such as short-
term memory, long-term, semantic, episodic, conscious and
unconscious. There is an order in memory, which means that
there is a law operating in this field also. Memory is included
in the epistemological order. This in turn lies within the
psychological order, an order within an order.

Despite the many orders, it is important to understand

that all of them form one order and that is the Brahrnanda. It
is one huge order. The question is from whom does this order
come? Who is the giver? Is there a distance between the giver
and the given? As we inquire into the order, we find that it is
intelligent since a lot of knowledge is involved in each one.
Further, where there is knowledge, a conscious being is
definitely involved. If we look at any part of our body, we
find that each one is intelligently put together. Be it our eyes,
 66 Discovering Love

ears, heart, liver and others, they reveal knowledge,

tremendous knowledge. It is true of the entire jagat.
If the given is so intelligently put together, it must
presuppose a giver with the necessary knowledge. Who is
this giver? This is the beauty of the Veda whose vision alone
we can accept and assimilate. The giver is neither far away in
heaven nor is heaven separate from the giver. The entirejagat
is non-separate from the giver since the material necessary
for creation rests with the said giver. The maker and the
material cannot be separate; they are non-separate. If it is
separate, there must be something that separates. If the
separating factor is space, space itself is part of the creation,
just as time is. Therefore, the maker and the material being
9
one and the same, the entire jagat is the manifestation of
I~vara.Words such as omniscience and so on, unless we
ourselves are omniscient, we cannot even begin to understand
their meaning. The only way we can understand fSvara is
that he is in the form of this intelligent order, an order that is
complete. The whole order includes everything that is yet to
be discovered or that which may not be discovered at all.
Consequently,you appreciate h a r a in the form of the various
orders such as physical, biological, psychological and so on.
The entire order is ISvara, sat-cit-Dnanda with the power of
mDy&the Sakti. An appreciation of this order is not a belief; it
requires understanding. It is purely cognitive. It means that
an awareness of what we call God, ISvara, gives me space.
When I say space, I mean an inner space within the
psychological order, to observe my thoughts, my reactions
including my love or dislike of myself. A good analogy would
 Gaining The Eligibility.. . 67

,t t
be a machine with a motor, retdlving some revolutions per
minute. The motor is not aware of its revolutions. However,
suppose it is aware that it revolves at some hundred or
thousand revolutions per minute; the motor is no longer
mechanical. This is an insight. Similarly,the moment I become
aware that there is nothing wrong with me or with anybody
I am no longer mechanical.
The fact is that there is nothing wrong with anybody in
this world. There are no criminals; there are only crimes and
there are people given to crime. It is caused by anger against
the society, the establishment. It is childhood anger. Some of
the people in jails suffer from MPD, multiple personality
disorders. You may wonder why the person commits the
same crime in the same manner again and again only to get
caught by the police. There is no doubt that these jailbirds
are not criminals. They are not even given to crime; they suffer
from multiple personality disorder. They themselves do not
know what is going on. They require proper counselling.
Therefore, I say that there are no criminals; there are people
given to crimes.
 IF I UNDERSTAND that I am within the order, that nothing
happens in my mind outside the order, it means that I am in
order. This is what happens when someone says, "I love you".
It means that he or she accepts you as you are, without
reservations. This is within the order, the order that is h a r a .
ISvara cannot be surprised by anybody simply because he is
the order. He is the all-knowing order. In the awareness, the
understanding of that order, you can completely relax. The
result is love, nothing but love; love for yourself and for
others. There is no other way of finding self-love. Without
ISvara, you cannot discover love for yourself. It is impossible
t to love anybody or anything without discovering self-love.
In fact, everything in this world I can love only if I have love
for myself. This love manifests as sympathy, compassion and
SO on.

What I basically seek happens to be myself. Hence, the

love for a sadhya, that which is to be accomplished, an end
that you love, is already siddh, accomplished. The problem
is that despite an exposure to the teaching, it is difficult to
accept this fact. Even if one is able to see this fact, one is unable
 70 Discovering Love

to reap the benefit of the knowledge. In other words, I am

not loving or compassionate, spontaneously.
You are happy when you see yourself a loving person. If
you are not happy, you can neither love nor be loving. Since
you do not often come across such loving persons, you look
upon a very loving person as a saint. That person becomes
special, a holy person. However, the fact is that everyone has
the potential to be a saint. saintliness is one's own nature. It
is characterised by love, compassion, understanding,
sympathy, giving, a readiness to help and much more.
In day-to-day life, however, the opposite seems to be the
norm. People are more prone to hatred, jealousy, dislike and
so on. These opposing traits inhibit the natural ones.
Consequently, we do not need to cultivate love; we have to
neutralise the inhibiting factors. That is why our SQsfra
completely differs from theologies and religious preaching.

The first inhibiting factor is ignorance and this is not easy

to remove. Even if you have had the opportunity to study
the Sfisfra,despite an exposure to the teaching for a length of
time, if you do not see or understand what the nature of the
self is, it is due to some obstructing factors called
prafibandhakas. These obstructing factors are due to emotional
problems. They hold the cognitive person hostage. The
emotional person appears to have the power to decide how
loving I can be or how happy. It is very important, therefore,
to understand the emotional person. In order to understand
our emotions, we need some inner space, for which we need
a cognitive change. We have to learn to relax in the awareness,
in the understanding of our emotions.
 Appreciating i h r a As ... 71

, t 3
By relaxation I do not refer*tothe many techniques that
are offered in the 'spiritual' market today. Every newspaper
carries announcements of various workshops peddling
techniques of how to relax, breathe, meditate and so on. I am
not talking of such a relaxation. Any technique wears out. It
is useful only for some time. Later, it becomes mechanical
and you grow out of it. You start looking out for newer and
newer techniques. It becomes an endless, futile search.

RELAXING
IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORDER THAT IS ~SVARA

The relaxation I am talking of is born of understanding

the reality of the world. I had said earlier that things are given
and they are not separate from the giver. The giver is IBvara
who is in the form of one total order consisting of many
orders. We have seen the various orders such as physical,
biological, psychological and so on. The cognitive order,
including memory, lies within this psychological order.
Cognition and memory help me recall and recognise
persons, objects and situations. Even emotions are included
in this order. Anger, for instance, is memory based. It comes
from the unconscious, the unconscious memory. It is the
cognitive order that also helps me to appreciate I~varaas this
one vast order that is the creation. It is equally responsible
for the feeling of low self-esteem and self-loathe.
When I compare myself with the vastness of the world,
one obvious consequence will be a sense of 'I am not good
enough', a lack of self-worth. Each one of us has a niggling
self-doubt, 'Am I all right? Am I acceptable? Am I normal?'
The doubt persists mainly because situations get the better
 72 Discovering Love

of us. The word normal means being consistent in our

responses. However, we find that our responses are
unpredictable. Mornings we smile but by evening we are
cantankerous. Why do our moods and responses change? It
means that we have no control over our moods, our emotional
responses. They control our actions because they stem from
the unconscious over which we have no control.

The unconscious repeatedly tells us, 'you are no good, you

are not acceptable' and so on. The various situations that we
face further confirm our self-non-acceptance. This is within
the psychological order. For me, psychology has a limited
scope in the sense that it helps us to understand ourselves in
a broad manner. It restates our emotional condition for clarity.
However, $ does not resolve our emotional problems.
We can understand now that the emotional life of a person
has its roots in the unconscious, the ka~aya.However, we must
recognise that it is also IBvara. This is very important. We
have to leave aside psychology and move on to realities. From
a psychological reality we turn to cognitive reality in the sense
that we understand that this is the order, the psychological
order and the order is IBvara.

In fact, I should include one more order, the law, the order
of dharma, which is also IBvara. The reason is that there is
right and wrong in the world. While good and bad are
judgements, emotional responses, right and wrong are
realities. For instance, if I wish to open a door or turn a key,
 Appreciating fSvnra As ... 73

, k >
there is a right way of doing'if and a wrong way. Even in
speech, there is a right way and a wrong way of pronouncing
words. Right and wrong are not opinions; they are not
personal notions. It is just that things are either right or wrong.
There is a right and wrong means of achieving an end. What
is important is that the means must be in keeping with the
ends, for it is the ends that decide the means. Right and wrong
have always been there but good and bad are your
judgements; they are relative. What is good for one may be
bad for another. Further, there is no bad person, only people
given to wrong actions. If you continue to analyse you will
find that you are much more alive to the reality of the world.
If not, you will be living in your own judgemental world, a
world of your projection.

Right and wrong are what we call in Sanskrit as dharma

and adharma. These are not rules given by a few wise men,
demanding implicit obedience from us. If right and wrong
have to be taught, then they cannot be called universal.
Universality means that everyone commonly senses it; that
is why the term common sense. For example, if you ask
anyone, an Eskimo, a Harvard professor, a Boston Brahmin,
a Chinese peasant, or any other, "Do you want to be cheated?
Do you want to be hurt? Do you want to be robbed? Do you
want to be taken advantage of?" uniformly, every one of them
will reply in the negative. No one wants to be hurt or robbed
or cheated or taken advantage of. Every one knows that the
other expects the same from him or her. It is commonly sensed
knowledge or common sense. Knowledge, in turn, implies a
reality. There is no knowledge without an object. If there is
no object, you cannot call it knowledge. The criminal laws,
 74 Discovering LOVE

civil laws, they are all based upon this commonly sensed law,
called samanya-dharma.Just as a baby monkey senses that if it
falls down it will get hurt and therefore clings on to its mother
for safety, these commonly sensed rules or laws form the basis
of siinziinya-dharma.The monkey senses it instinctively; it is a
survivor. Every living organism has this survival instinct
embedded in its software. It is programmed to sense danger,
to know how to survive. It is amazing how, without being
taught, a baby monkey knows so much.

In a human being, the common sense is manifest within a

matrix of norms to make the necessary choices. We can sense
these norms without being taught. Therefore, these norms,
dharma, exist in our heads and not somewhere outside, in
- books or rdes given by a few people. Dharma is something
that is inborn; if not there would be a lacuna in the creation,
which is neither acceptable nor true. It is not as though a
human being has been given the faculty of choice but God
forgot to give the norms to exercise the choice. It would mean
that every one is out to destroy the other, a grave error on the
part of God the creator. It would be the mother of all
manufacturing errors.

Similarly, we do not say that God appeared at a given point

in time and laid down the rules of dharma and adharma. I
cannot understand why God chooses dreams to express
himself. Anyone can claim that God spoke to him or her in a
dream. I can certainly say that God appeared in my dream
and said that he never comes in dreams. It would be a
Bertrand Russell kind of a problem. He said 'I am a liar'.
How do we understand this sentence? If he is speaking the
 Appreciating fSvara As ... 75

.: *
truth, then he is not a liar. If Re is not, his sentence has to be
understood as the opposite, that is he is not a liar.

The argument that the laws of dharma were laid down at a

given time in history is based on the concept of God. The
concept is that God is in heaven, separate from the creation.
We have seen that the creator, the giver can never be separate
from the creation, the given. Further, that everything that is
here is ISvara. It means that every law is a manifestation of
IBvara. Every form is the lord's form. Dharma is not different;
it is the very manifestation of ISvara. We do not say that God
gave us a mandate. We say that the mandate itself is God.
That is why it is ridiculous to say that you believe in God. It
is not a question of belief; it is a matter to be understood.
Even if someone does not care about Vedanta, if he lives a
life of dharma, he has ananda because he is in conformity with
ISvara, but without knowing it. If he knows, the knowledge
makes the difference between success and failure. It makes
you understand that what is, is ISvara. There is no other.

When we look at dharma and adharma as another order,

we find that where there is dharma there is karma also. Our
Sastras do not introduce dharma and adharma, they confirm
what we already sense and add one other element, that of
karma. It tells us that we may escape all the man made laws
but we cannot escape the laws of IBvara. The law of karma
will catch up with you either in this life or in the hereafter.
You have to experience the result of your action. If yours was
a reaching out action, prayer or service, the result is punya,
positive results. It is credited to your account; while the
opposite actions produce what we call papa, negative results.
Both punya and papa are a d ~ ~ funseen.
a, Punya translates into
 76 Discovering Love

pleasant situations while papa brings unplesant experiences,

sukha and duhkha. This is the law of karma.

Without the law of dharma, there is no karma. Any living

being that does not have the faculty of choice is called vimukta.
It means that they are free from dharma and adharma and
consequently from punya and papa. If a tiger kills a goat or a
donkey kicks, they do not attract papa, since their actions are
instinctive and not born of deliberate freewill. However, if
you or I should eat an animal, it is definitely papa because we
can choose. Food is basically vegetarian; only a prepared meal
is non-vegetarian. If we deliberately exercise our choice to
eat by causing harm to another living being, it is definitely
adharma and the result is papa.
9
Our Sastra intervenes only to the extent of pointing out the
results of dharmic and adharmic actions that is punya and papa.
It is a belief no doubt, but a belief that has some logic and can
be assimilated, since it does not conradict our experiences in
the world. A wrong action on your part results in some
punishment, a prison sentence, a psychological punishment
such as guilt, fear and so on. Our Sastra adds one more to the
list and that is karmic punishment. The law of karma does
not take into account the punishment meted out here in this
world. It follows its own rules and methods. One part of the
law is dharma and the other is karma. It is another manifestation
of ISvara. By following dharma, you are not obliging ISvara,
but you are in harmony with PSvara. In life, things are not
always black or white; it is often in shades of grey. At such
times, we need help to choose what is the appropriate action
and what is not.
 Appreciating f h r a As ... 77

, k :
Words such as appropriate'or inappropriate are variable
depending on time, culture, society and so on. Table manners,
social etiquette, customs and other patterns of behaviour
require some training. What is accepted in one country may
not be in another. In the West, it is considered polite to talk
during a meal, while in India it is not. In India eating with
your hands is the norm while in the West it is not.
When we are in doubt, the best thing to do is to seek help.
This is the intelligent way to live. Ask a person who is
supposed to know the nuances of dharma and karma. The Sastra
also warns us to be careful regarding the person from whom
we seek help. They should not benefit from our actions. They
should be aliik& dharmahm$z,dispassionate, who will not
take advantage of a situation. It is not wrong to be ignorant,
but it is foolish to continue to be so.
Thus, the order of dharma and karma is part of one vast
order that is I~vara.When I look upon my psycholgical and
emotional issues, I understand that there is a reason for their
existence. It means that I am within the order. It is very
important to understand this. I need not blame myself for
my lack of self-love, for my sense of persecution. There are
many others like me and we are all within the order. It is due
to some psychological background and I can resolve them
with help. The background is part of IBvara's law. This
understanding helps me to validate my feelings. It also helps
to prevent me from victimising others. The more I validate
my feelings, the freer I become. This is the greatest truth in
managing one's emotions, in living. The more I am aware of
ISvara, the more I appreciate life. In my appreciation of Bvara,
 78 Discovering Love

I find the greatest therapist, a super therapist who is always

with me.

ACCEPTING
MYSELF AS BEING IN ORDER
IS GATEWAY TO RELAXATION

The moment I accept myself as being in order, as being a

part of the vast order that is ISvara, my life becomes successful.
When I say that I am fine, I am all right it is different from
saying, I think I am fine, I think I am all right. The thinking
becomes another superimpositionwhich is not at all helpful.
At first, I felt I was no good. Later, with some positive
thinking, I superimpose a feeling of being fine. One
superimposition is bad enough. To have a double
superimpo@tionis impossible. It is just a cosmetic cover from
the many workshops on positive thinking, relaxation and so
on. The positive effect lasts for barely one day and the old
feeling of 'I am not good enough' or 'I am not acceptable'
returns with bag and baggage. Therefore, it is very important
to be aware of and appreciate the presence of h a r a as the
order that pervades me. He pervades me in all my emotions,
my cognitive skills, in everything there is the presence of
TSvara. It is an expression of the law, the order that is PSvara.

If I understand this, then the behaviour of the person or

persons I am related to is because of the order. The order
includes the capacity to change. I can work towards the
change. It may require more effort on my part and more time
to bring about a change. I need to understand this clearly. I
cannot say that fSvara is all pervasive except in my mother in
law. I cannot allow my emotions to interfere. She may have
her own problems and so has her daughter in law. Everyone
 Appreciating f h r a As ... 79

.! :
is an angel if only each one dderstands ISvara as the order
that is. When I relax in my awareness of ISvara, I can take
people as they are, with compassion and understanding. I
become pragmatic.

Once I was asked, "Swamiji, if I become loving, do you

think that I will be the same when I deal with a snake? Will I
accept that the snake is also ISvara? Will it stop biting me?"
Yes, it is true that the snake is also ISvara. However, you need
some pragmatism here. We must remember that pragmatism
and wisdom are also ISvara. It is your nature to turn away
from danger and it is the nature of the snake to bite you. Both
these natural traits are Bvara. We must understand things in
their proper perspective.

It is your own anxieties, fears, your agenda for others that

separates you from the world, from understanding. You
cannot enjoy your family, much less your children. You are
unable to share their childhood, their growing years, the
friendship of their adulthood. Your anxiety for their future,
providing for their security prevent you from reaching out
to them freely, whole heartedly. The problem does not lie in
the planning for the future. Every prudent person will
definitely plan. The problem is that you want them to obey
you implicitly. You do not think that your child is an
independent person. You think that your child is an extension
of you and this is where the problem lies.
If you understand a child is born of you, yes, but it is not a
part of you. It is like a candle lit from another candle; it is not
half a candle. Similarly, from life is born another life. The
 80 Discovering Love

child has its own body, mind, senses, fitman; it is complete,

piirna. It is whole from a whole, pnrnat piirnam. Please
understand that it is a growing whole. It is a beautiful thought.
The child is given to you; born of you; you are a nimitta, cause.
It is the same Tvara's order and you are merely an instrument.
It is because of a lack of understanding, that you cannot
enjoy your children. It is not because you cannot love. Which
parent does not love or care? The problem is that you consider
that the child is a part of you. What you think is good for the
child; the child must also think so. Often when I visit people's
homes, the parents want their child to chant or sing for the
Swami. "Come, chant Suklambaradharam. Come on." The child
protests. It is asserting its independence. The parents cannot
understand &d are disappointed. They have not understood
that the child is not a part of them. Please understand this
well. A child is independent; it is whole. Learn to enjoy the
whole. You can never enjoy a part, but you can enjoy the
whole. Your love for your child is inhibited by your agenda
because for you, love means control.

When you say, "I love you," it means the person whom
you love must obey you. You cannot trust simply because
you have no self-love. If you can learn to relax, you will
understand that love is not control. Do you know why you
control? It is part of the psychological order. You control
because you could not trust your parents. You could not
communicate with your parents. Perhaps, it was a problem
caused by alcohol. Whatever be the reason, between the
parents and you, the child there was neither communication
nor understanding.
 Appreciating l h r a As... 81

,.
As a child, you had to figure out how to win your parents'
approval, your Gods' approval. Hence, you had to ensure
that you were right all the time. You had to draw lines within
which alone there was predictability; there was no
vulnerability. Outside the lines, you were vulnerable. You
had no control and it became a problem. You tried to
manipulate situations as well as you could, but things always
got out of your control. Therefore, you need to be aware that
you tend to control. If you can say it out aloud,."I tend to
control. I think that control is love". It can help you
understand that control is control, that it is not love although
behind the control there is love. That is why there is so much
pain, the pain of a child that was not understood.
It is important to understand that control is not love;
possessiveness is not love; ownership is not love. Often, we
think that anything that I love, I should have, should own. I
love this flower and at once I reach out and pluck it. No, it is
not necessary. Let it be where it is. Let the stars be where
they are; I love them as they are. Another point I wish to
make is that you need not marry whomever you love. It is an
important thing to know. You love the person that you are
married to. You need not marry every person you love. You
just love, nothing more. It does not have any other
connotation. It is simple.

The truth is that you are love, whether you are loved or
not. When you give or receive love, you are the same person.
When I ask you to extend your love to another, it does not
matter whether you realise that you have love or not. You
 82 Discovering Love

fake it and make it. When you reach out and extend love, the
very action brings out the loving person in you. Love will
become real because love is you. All that it requires is for you
to know and understand the fact.

As you look further into yourself, you will see the presence
of PSvara in the form of your emotions. You accept them as
valid. You also accept that they have a background. It makes
you normal in every way. You must understand this well.
Every one of you should say that. You are normal. When you
say, "I am normal," you will find that there is nothing
inhibiting your love. What is love? It is nothing but
compassion, which is sympathy and which in turn, is
understanding. The more loving you are, the easier it is for
you to understand what the Slsstra says. It says that the atman,
the self is the whole. The wholeness naturally comes to
manifest; it does not remain as an ideal. It is this wholeness
that you love. When all that is here is the whole, where is the
question of your not loving? When you understand this, you
have discovered love; that there is nothing here but love.
SUCCESSFUL LIVING
 Contents

Talk 1
Introduction

Talk 2
Discovering Moksa As The Prime Value

Talk 3
Happiness Is Centred On The Self

Talk 4
You Are The Whole

Talk 5
You Are Self-evident

Talk 6
Relative Success Through Yoga

Talk 7
Every Form Is k a r a
ANY PERSON CAN say, "I am a failure". However, I have
arguments to prove that he or she is also successful. When
someone returns home in one piece, he or she is a very
successful person. With all the two-wheelers on the road,
there is every chance of getting hit. That you come back home
intact is in itself a success. When you open your eyes and see,
it is a success. A retinal detachment does not take time; it can
happen any time. If you look at the emergency ward of a
busy hospital, it is always full. If you ever ask any one of
those patients, "Did you have a prior appointment to come
here?" All those people never thought they would end up in
the emergency ward. Each one had his or her own plan; one
wanted to go home, another wanted to attend a marriage, a
third wanted to attend an interview. Varieties of goals were
there, but all of them ended up in a place that was neither
expected nor desired.
It is a success that we have escaped such a situation all
these years. It is a story of success that our eyes still see, our
ears still hear, and that the food we eat continues to be
digested. We do not know what is in the food that we eat
outside, and yet we are able to survive and maintain fairly
good health. We have enough reasons to say that we are
successful. If you remain married and if your spouse still
appreciates the fact that you are his or her partner, which is
indeed a great success. If you are employed and your
employer thinks that you are an asset, if not an asset, well,
not easily dispensed with, that in itself is a great success.
 Equally, there are enough reasons in everybody's life to
drive a person from the society to a life of a sannyasin,
renunciate, like me. It is not that people are not sannyasins
because there are no reasons for it. Such thoughts do occur
because in our society we have a slot for such a life. An
American, seeing my clothes, asked this question,

"What do you do?"

"I do not do anything."
"Do you have a job?"
"No."
"Oh, do you have a bank balance?"
"No."
"Oh, y m have a family to support?"
"No."
"You do not have a family?"
"No."
"No job?"
"No."
"No money?"
"No."
"Oh, you are a hobo!"
Hobo is a single word that indicates a person who does
not have a job, money or a family. Such a person is a hobo, a
vagabond. They cannot place a person like me who does not
have a slot in their society.
Suppose an Indian asks me,
"Do you have a job?"
 >, ?
"No." b ,.

"Do you have a family?"

"No."
"Do you have any money?"
"No."
"Oh, are you a slrdhu?"
"Yes."
In our society siidhus have a slot, and it is a revered and
highly respected slot. Why is there so much respect for this
slot? The benefit of doubt is always given to that person. If
that person has some difficulties in living a life of dharma,
then that is his or her problem. From the standpoint of the
society, that person who gets into that slot is valued because
we consider that he or she represents a pursuit that we all
value.
You cannot say that a sadhu is a failure nor can you say
that he is a successful person. Among siidhus we do not know
who is a successful person. We do not know whether he is a
dropout from society and therefore a siidhu, or if he is an adult
who has chosen to be a sadku, since both are sadhus. A
businessman who had lost his business empire, did not have
anything left, and who had to repay a lot of loans, said, "I am
going to be a siidku". He did become a siidhu, and I asked him
"What did you renounce?" He said, "All my debts".

Just because one is a sadhu, I cannot say that he is

successful; nor is the person who is busy answering the many
phones in his office. Obviously he is doing a lot of work. He
 4 Successfitl Living

answers three phones at the same time. You may think that
he is successful and making money. Really speaking, he is
answering three creditors who are demanding repayment at
the same time. Therefore, we can give enough arguments to
prove that everybody is successful and that everybody is a
failure. So the word 'successful' is relative. The concept of
success itself has to be examined and understood properly.
NO ONE CAN FULFIL ONE'S ALL DESIRES
Suppose I ask you, "Did you ever have one single day of
twelve waking hours totally free from all desires, totally free
from the backlog of all your unfulfilled desires?" All of us
procrastinate. There is always a backlog, in the office and at
home. We have personal letters to write, and we do write
every day,?but mentally. Then, one day we clear the backlog
both at work and at home, and we feel good. Why don't we
fulfil all the desires that we have at least for one day? The
fact is that nobody can say, "I have fulfilled all my desires
today".
As a child you had desires, but not all those desires were
fulfilled. Is there a student who does not want to score one
- hundred percent in every subject? Every student wants to be
the best, but settles for something less. Everybody wants to
come out with flying colours in every game in which the
person participates. Well, you always settle for something
less. Anybody who plays cricket or has played cricket
fantasizes that he is hitting all six balls in every over for sixes
and fours. If you do not hit the ball, you want your man on
the other end to hit it. He loses the middle stump. It is always
said that Indians do not have the drive to do well. It is not
-
true. When things just do not click, they become hesitant.
 Introduction 5

> \ <
Therefore, everybody wants tb'do well. In fact, your desire
to do well is so intense that you become nervous.
As a young boy or a girl you had a number of desires that
you could not fulfil. You always wanted your father to be a
little different, your mother to be a little different. Later, as a
young man or as a young woman, well, you had a number of
new desires. In fact every young man thinks he has a solution
to every problem in the country. His only problem is that
nobody consults him. A few more years are necessary for
him to become more objective. Once he gets married, then he
understands that he cannot fulfil anything; before marriage
it was all a fantasy. Everybody has dreams, but then you find
that they were not really dreams; they were desires. Later,
however, they did prove to be dreams.
At all times there are desires, an innumerable variety of
them. You want the people in the society to behave differently,
but nothing really changes. I was looking into a particular
Tamil newspaper, and I noticed that the page was full of
reports of death-somebody died, somebody was killed and
somebody committed suicide. The whole page carried only
reports of deaths. The second page did not fare better. When
I became a sadhu, I chose not to read a newspaper for three or
four years. Then, one day, I picked up a newspaper. I felt
that I had not given up reading one at all; it was just the same
old thing. I did not find any improvement or change
whatsoever. Even now, the only change I find is this 'dot-
corn'. Every advertisementhas one more line now, 'dot-com';
there is no other improvement.Do you know why? Even with
the addition of the dot-com industry, you still had desires
that people should behave differently, that there should be
more order in the traffic, that there should be more dharma in
6 Successfiil Living

the society and so on. People should enjoy whatever they do.
There should be dignity of work. You had all these ideals
that were never fulfilled. You always wanted the politicians
to be a little different. You wanted the world religious leaders
to be different, to be more responsible. They should not sow
seeds of dissensions, violence by leading people wrongly. So,
we find that this problem was there before and continues
even now.
Desires are always there at different levels and all of them
remain unfulfilled. One way of measuring success is by
dividing the desires you had by the desires you fulfilled. The
quotient that you arrive at will be negligible. You will see
that the desires fulfilled are few and far between, whereas
the desires entertained outnumber them. You always have
only a frac6on of success in fulfilling desires. If that is the
concept of success, well, no one is successful.
I am a self-conscious person. Being a self-conscious person
I cannot but make a self-judgementand the judgement is that
I am wanting. Any which way I look at myself-strength-
wise, health-wise, knowledge-wise, memory-wise, morally
and emotionally-I am wanting. Money-wise I am always
wanting. I cannot command a mind that is somewhat cheerful,
if not all the time, at least more often than not. Emotionally,
if I am wanting, at least in terms of ethics I would like to be
free from conflicts. However, I find that I am wanting, even
in these terms.
Therefore, my wanting to be different from what I am is
very natural. It is a human urge. Everyone is in the process of
becoming. It is obvious that in the different person that you
want to become, you want to see a person who is satisfied.
 Introduction 7

,< ?

Even though you want to chahge your house, the change is

not for the sake of a change or for the sake of the house. It is
not that the house wanted itself to be changed. You are
uncomfortable in this house and hence want to change the
house. So, any change you want to bring about in the society
or at home is only for your sake. Therefore, how can one say,
'I am successful' when one is still in the process of becoming?
The wanting you always has so many wants. All of them
remain unfulfilled, and some of them cannot be fulfilled at
all. Not only do you settle for something less, but your parents
also settle for something less. The parents' desire is that their
son should become a scientist or this or that, whereas the
child proves to be a Mohammed of Ghazni in the sixth grade!
So the parents also have to edit their ambitions with reference
to the children. They have to change and reshuffle their
ambitions.
At a given time there is a pressure to fulfil a given desire.
It becomes very predominant. When you come out of high
school your predominant desire is to get admission in a
college. College admission is a routine affair in many
countries, but in India it is a result of great tapas, intense
efforts. The most unfortunate thing is that somebody wants
to study, but cannot get admission to college without seeking
help from politicians.
There is no way you can fulfil all your desires. In this sense
everyone is a failure. Each one of us has too many unfulfilled
desires. It is very obvious. We want to be successful. We also
read books such as 'How to Achieve Success'. Everyone buys
that book because everyone wants to be successful. Even the
person whom you consider successful is reading the book
8 Successful Living

'How to Achieve Success'

It is very clear that as a spouse you are not successful; as a
parent you are not successful and as a responsible member
of the society you are not successful. In your own self-image,
which you can enjoy as a person, you are not successful. There
is always a lack in you. So success just cannot be taken for
granted.

YOUALWAYS MISS WHAT IS OBVIOUS

Living is successful when you understand what it takes to
be a successful person. We always miss the obvious. One
unfortunate thing about a human being is that he always
misses the obvious. He goes for complicated things. You must
have heardabout Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Both Holmes
and Watson went on a camping trip. It had been a long day
and they were tired. They had a good dinner and went to
sleep. In the middle of the night, Holmes woke up and called
Watson, "Get up".
Watson woke up and asked "Now what?"
Holmes said, "Look up".
Watson looked up. There was a beautiful sky full of stars.
Holmes asked him, "What do you see?"
"Stars and stars."
"What does it convey to you?"
"Every star is a sun and it must have a system of planets.
All these stars have planets; millions and billions of planets
are there, astronomically speaking. Astrologically speaking,
today the moon is in Leo. Horologically speaking the time
 Introduction 9

, \ t
should be 1.00 a.m. now. Meteorologically speaking,
tomorrow will be a sunny day."
Sherlock Holmes listened to all this, paused for a moment,
and then said, "Idiot, we have lost our tent, somebody stole
our tent!" Like Watson, we miss the obvious.
It is obvious that I continue to be a wanting person. Forty
years have passed and nothing has happened. The starting
point was 'I am a wanting person'. Forty years later, I continue
to be a wanting person. After ninety years, I will still be a
wanting person. A ninety-year-old person does not say, "I
had a wonderful life, ninety years of a great life". Instead he
says, "Swamiji, I am ninety years old. I deserve respect from
all my children. Nobody cares for me, nobody writes to me,
nobody wants me". Even if his friend wants to talk to hirn, he
cannot, because if the friend just asks hirn, "How do you do,"
he starts from his first marriage onwards. In fact the ninety-
year-old should be happy that nobody disturbs him and since
he cannot go around, he need not knock about. He should
enjoy his freedom, for which he should have lived
successfully. He misses the obvious.
Here, the obvious is 'I', the first person singular, the
individual. I am the obvious. I am the one who is wanting. I
should do something about the basic problem of being a
wanting person.

TODESIRE IS A HUMAN PRlVLEGE

One should know that having a desire is not a problem.
Desiring is a privilege. Only a human being can have the
power to desire. A cow cannot ask the bullock, "Honey, shall
 Living
10 S~~ccessfiil

we eat out today? Let us go to a Chinese restaurant". It does

not have that privilege. You have the privilege of desiring.
Lord Qsna, in the Bhagavad Gita says,' "In the human beings,
I am in the form of their desires, unopposed to dharrna". The
capacity to desire is a great privilege really. It remains a
privilege only when I am able to look upon it as such. Many
of our privileges become sources of problems if we are not
on top of them. To live successfully I need to have this
understanding, this insight. I need the capacity, in keeping
with that understanding, to enjoy the privilege to desire, to
act and to accomplish. If I enjoy the privilege of desiring, then
I am a successful person.
It is not the fulfilment of all desires that makes me
successful, because that is not possible. However, if I begin
to enjoy thgPrivilege to desire, to act in order to fulfil the
desires, then I am a successful person. That makes a clean
change, a total change, in my attitude towards myself,
towards the world, towards varieties of things and even
towards the desires themselves.
Desires need not be wants. Desires can be just desires. Not
only do you have the privilege to desire, but also to decide.
You may fulfil the desire or you may not; you may even just
look at it as a fancy and smile away. You need not go after it.
Therefore, unless I am able to put the inner house in order,
the privileges become tyrants; they become curses. That which
ought to make me happy makes me feel I am a failure. Once
you know how to put the inner house in order, you can begin
to feel that you are successful after all or, that it is possible
for you to be successful. We will begin to change.

dharmaviruddho bhutesu kflmos'mi bharatar~abha(Bhagavad Gita 7.11).

LORD KRSNA-IN the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gitli
makes a very pertinent statement. He says: "With reference
to the ultimate end in one's life, there is only one well
ascertained understanding". There is only one ultimate end
to accomplish if one has really understood, with clarity, what
one is after in one's life. I think every human being has to
accomplish at least this much. Once we choose an end that is
achievable and which cannot be bettered, then the other ends
in life will be viewed in their proper perspective, without
exaggeration.

Everything is useful in the creation. Nothing is absolutely

useless. Even a broken timepiece is useful because it shows
the correct time twice a day! Everything has its value. Our
problem is that we attach more value to an object than its
actual worth.

Nobody, including a Swami, can say that money has no

value. Money has a value. We respect money. We look upon
money as Laksrni. We do not separate it from Evara. We will
discover that there is a reason for it, which is something very
beautiful and very significant.

yavasflyfltrnikfl bliddhih ekeha klirunandana (Bhagavad Gitd 2.41).

12 S~rccessfiilLiving

An average Indian may not know what the Gitg is; much
less what is said in it, but he or she knows that money should
not be desecrated. In our culture, stepping on money is
considered an act of desecration. If a person happens to step
on it, accidentally, then he or she asks for pardon. Even if
you happen to step on an Indian history book that you may
not like to read, you will ask for pardon because a book is
Sarasvati, again not separate from fgvara. This is not taught
by anybody. This attitude grows upon one who is brought
up in this culture. It is something very significant. It reveals a
lot.

Do not take these attitudes for granted. You cannot instil

this attitude despite all your media power, all your
commerciab. It is not easy to build up such an attitude. It is
an attitude in our culture, an attitude that has come to be
with us because of certain wisdom behind it. Every act, like
cleaning the front yard of the house first thing in the morning,
drawing rangoli is cultural; it is religious and has its basis in
our wisdom. Every cultural form in our day-to-day life is
connected to wisdom. We may not find this connection
between culture, religion and wisdom in other cultures. If
there is one such culture, then it is a culture to be preserved.

There are certain facts, certain truths that are not variable.
They stand the test of time and can be communicated.If there
is a tradition to communicate these truths and if it is also
culturally rich, that tradition is a treasure for humanity.

Thus, money has a value but to add your own value to it

is purely, I would say, a projection. In Sanskrit we have a
very appropriate word for this psychological projection; we
 Discovering M o k ~ aAs ... 13

, :.
call it adhyasa, seeing somethhg that is not there at all, like
seeing a snake instead of the water hose or the rope. On the
contrary, knowledge is seeing the object in the given object.
There is a flower and you see it as a flower. This is knowledge;
it is a perception without error. However, if you see something
in an object that is not there, then that is a projection.
Psychologically, you project something upon an object and
then you deal with the projected object. Here, you have a
problem that does not really exist, an illegitimate problem
born of your projection.

We can solve an illegitimate problem by realising its

illegitimacy. For instance, we can help the person who was
afraid of the snake realise the illegitimacy of his or her fear. It
takes an extra ounce of care for that person. When you help a
person having a real problem, you have not done anything
extraordinary. It is a human action. When someone sees a
snake where a rope is, and despite telling him or her that
there is no problem, he or she is jumping and sweating, then
helping such a person does take a little more compassion on
your part. Simple human compassion is not enough because
you have to solve a problem that does not exist. The only
solution is to help the person see that there is no problem.

Every human being is endowed with empathy. Therefore,

you always pick up the pain of the other and naturally reach
out and help that person. In the process, not only do you get
rid of his or her pain, you also get rid of your pain. This is
like the psychology of a person given to begging. A begging
person who asks, politely, 'Sir, please give me something'
will not get anything. He has to persistently plead and pester,
in a certain way, 'Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, please sir, hungry sir,
14 Sl~ccessfrrlLiving

not eaten sir'. It is a time-honoured method meant to disturb

you. It makes you feel wretched; you want to get rid of your
wretchedness and therefore you give him a coin. The begging
person in the street is a psychologist. He knows exactly what
he has to do.

One projects due to ignorance. Ignorance is universal.

There is ignorance about many things. In fact one is born
ignorant, ignorant of oneself and of the world. There is no
born-again ignorant; there is only the ignorant who may be
born again. We have enough ignorance in spite of our
education, our knowledge, and our Internet. In fact the more
you know, the more you realise how much you do not know.

The human being is someone who has a capacity, a power

9
not only to know, but also, to project. That you can project is
a power and a reality, but then later, you have to deal with
that reality, with that mistaken perception. What is worse is
the situation where you add a value that, unfortunately, it
does not have.

Let us understand more about our projection on money.

Money has a value; it has buying power. It is not the paper;
the paper is only a promissory note, a bill. However, money
does not have the capacity to solve all your problems. Money
can buy a book, but definitely it cannot make you read.
Suppose the author of a book says, "I will give you this much
money to read my book". You will read the book in one day
and get that money, but it will not make you understand what
is written in that book. Even if there is nothing there to be
understood, you should be able to understand that there is
nothing there to be understood.
 Discovering M o k ~ aAs ... 15

, # :
Therefore, you need to look into the value of money. Do
not say, "Money has no value". If anybody says so, he has
got an eye upon your money. He says, "Money has no value.
In earning money there is a problem, in keeping the money
there is a problem, and if you lose, it is a problem. There is
always a fear, fear of the tax authorities of the State, fear of
people who want to rob, fear of inflation. Therefore, give it to
me". So money has a value; it is just that it cannot solve all
the problems.

Money can provide a very well furnished house, but it

cannot make a home. A home is a place where there is
communication, honest communication; otherwise it becomes
dysfunctional. Without honest communication, everybody
walks on eggshells. The father comes home and the people at
home become nervous. Each member rushes to his or her
room. What a life! Something is drastically wrong in the
person's attitude that frightens the children, the spouse. The
very arrival of the father is a problem to be dealt with.
Therefore, you cannot say you are successful there. You
cannot make a home unless you understand what it takes to
make a home. It can be a hut, but it can be a warm home. The
house can be a palatial building, but it can be absolutely
dysfunctional. This is true with reference to everything else
that money buys. Everything has a value that is objective as
well as subjective.

In a relationship, you project all the time. You add a value

to the relationship, a value that does not exist; thereby the
object of the relationship becomes an object of obsession. Love
16 SliccessfitlLiving

turns into obsession. Anything you desire becomes a fixation.

Mere desires do not remain as desires, as privileges. They
become fixations and drive you crazy, causing you to make
judgements about yourself and about others also.

We project this subjectivity with reference to people. This

is more so in the case of married couples. Let us take a typical
Indian marriage. I want you to see this well. You marry a
person whom you do not know, although you may have some
knowledge of the family. You match the horoscopes because
you are entering an important phase of your life. You enter
into it with an open mind. Nobody knows how it is going to
work. Please tell me now, who or what is it that you trust?
Do you trust your parents? Do you trust the other parents?
Do you trust the other person? Do you trust your judgement?
What do the parents trust?

All of us trust something beyond us, something that is not

human. We trust in the goodness of things, in the order of
things. This is called trust. It is this trust that is at the heart of
an Indian marriage; you have enough space to discover the
other person.

You can love anybody in this world. I have seen people

who have got rats as pets. You can love a brat also. You can
love a cripple. However, when you marry a person in total
trust, you discover love which is nothing but understanding.
You accept the other person. Therefore, in your trust in the
other, you feel secure. Once you feel secure, whatever is in
your unconscious will surface and be projected upon the
other. The other person cannot understand your behaviour
and attitude. This is possible. That is why, after the wedding,
 Discovering Mokga As ... 17

,< ?
for one year it is an emotional 'roller coaster ride. Of course,
you can very well understand that it is not done wilfully by
anybody. It is a projection. Many a good relationship is broken
because of projection. You see things in the person that are
not there; you impute motives to actions and behaviours for
which the person is not responsible at all. It is not done
consciously, but unconsciously. This is what we call adhyasa.

Therefore, all of us live in a world wherein there is both

understanding and projection. You do not see the world as it
is available. If you see it, as it is available, you are objective.
Only then you can think of any success. Prior to that, there is
not even growth.

You have to reduce subjectivity. Really speaking, reducing

subjective value is successful living. Subjectivity is fear of
sources that do not cause fear, seeing a value in an object
that, unfortunately, it does not have. If you are able to reduce
this subjectivity, you are a successful person.

If I see an object as a flower, so do you and so does

everybody else, then this flower is available for public
appreciation. However, when you see something, which is
not there either in terms of value or in terms of the object
itself, well, that is subjective. Therefore, you are in touch with
the world only when your subjectivity is not there.

HOWTO REDUCE SUBJECTIVITY

To reduce subjectivity one has to see clearly, first, what is
the prime value in life. In our tradition we have the parama-
18 Sz~ccessficlLiving

purusflrtha, the ultimate end in human pursuit. Parama is the

prime, the ultimate, the last value. The last is not in terms of
time and order, but in terms of status; it is the cardinal value.
What is that value? We say that it is mok~a,freedom. What a
word!
All the other religions in the world talk about salvation
because they believe that you are already condemned.
Therefore, you have to be salvaged; you have to be saved.
They talk about saviours. Somebody asked me on the 1" of
January, 2000, "Swamiji what is your message for the new
millennium?" said, "I have a prayer: Oh Lord, save us from
saviours. In this millennium let humanity discover that they
are saved already".

We have a value for freedom. The Sanskrit word for

freedom is, moba. It is an amazing word. Moba means bandha-
nivrffi,removal of bondage. The root meaning is freedom and
not salvation. What does the word freedom mean, freedom
from what? You always want freedom from something that
you do not like. You may not like certain people and hence
you seek freedom from them. That is not the freedom we talk
about in moksa.

Moksa is freedom from bondage. The fact that you allow

yourself to get frustrated or upset due to someone's behaviour
is itself bondage. No one can really bind you emotionally.
You give your head, your emotional head, to the other person
to allow yourself to get disturbed. Others have the capacity
to disturb you emotionally only to the extent that you give
 Discovering M o k ~ aAs ... 19

, :
them the power to disturb you. Physically, anybody can
disturb you, but emotionally, nobody has the power to disturb
you. You get disturbed to the extent that you give value to
the other person's opinion, behaviour, or approval.
Really speaking, moka is freedom from being what you
think you are. It is not freedom from the world, freedom from
people; we do not need it. Freedom is such that you should
be free enough to enjoy the world.
Such a person, who enjoys whatever he or she has, is a
successful person. He or she has made it. If you have to worry
about what you do not have, even if you are a rich person or
a highly accomplished person, you will always have a reason
to feel wanting. Freedom is enjoying what you are. That is ,

freedom. Freedom is not diversion from oneself.

In today's world, this is the freedom that we seek. We
consider the best welfare State as one that is able to provide
the most diversions. The more affluent the society is, the more
diversions one has in that society. People think that-for five
days they must work for a weekend holiday. The whole year
they work for a long holiday. Their whole life they work for
a good retirement. Constantly, they keep looking to the future;
they are never in the present moment. Why? It is because
they need diversions, diversionsnot from anyone or anything,
but from themselves.
When you telephone somebody and the person is not
available, they say 'hold on'. While holding the call, you hear
music. Please tell me, why do you have music while holding
a call? Tt is to help you' get relief from boredom. Bored with
what? kou are bored with yourself. Suddenly you are with
20 Sllccessfrrl Living

yourself and you cannot handle this boredom. You cannot

stand yourself. There are note pads in the telephone booths
that are very revealing. They become thinner and thinner not
because you wrote telephone numbers or messages, but
because of doodling. Page after page is covered with doodles.
Why? You are bored; all the time bored. You are stuck with
yourself.

Modern music also reveals how bored we are with

ourselves. To enjoy classical music you must have some space
inside. Where is that space? Where is that leisure? v e r e is
the understanding? Even to understand, one requires leisure.
With modern music you cannot relax; you cannot just sit and
listen to music. You have to stand and move about; you 'do'
music. Yoq have to divert yourself. Modern poetry is no
different. You write a paragraph, type it vertically and call it
poetry. Thus, constantly, in various ways, you seek freedom
from yourself. Where is the question of success?

You are successful the day you can enjoy yourself as you
are. You should be able to enjoy the baldness of your head.
You should be able to enjoy your height, your weight, your
thinking, and your health or the lack of it. Just enjoy or
dispassionately accept the facts as they are. In other words
these things do not count at all for your sense of success. You
enjoy yourself as a person. I, Swami Dayananda, am not
telling this. This is our ancient wisdom, communicable
wisdom. Our whole culture, our whole way of life is based
upon this wisdom. The unfortunate thing is that we do not
know it. If I say that I do not know, it is all right; it is
acceptable. However, if I do not want to know, then that is
unacceptable. This is the modem method of expression:
 Discovering Moksa As ... 21

, *
"What are you going to db after high school?"
The person shrugs his shoulders and says, "I do not
know".
"What about doing medicine?"
"I do not know."
Shrugging the shoulders means, "I do not know," and, "I do
not care to know".

A COGNITIVE PERSON IS A SUCCESSFUL PERSON

To live successfully as a human being you have to know a
few things that you cannot afford to be ignorant of. You need
a minimum qualification for everything. To be a telephone
operator, the minimum requirement is that you should be
able to talk and hear. To be a mountaineer, you must have
two legs and two hands; that is the minimum. Similarly, to
live successfully as a human being you cannot afford to be
ignorant of certain facts. You have to know; that is the
minimum.
You have to live your life intelligently because basically
you are a rational, cognitive and intelligent person. No matter
who you are, you have to give respect to that. Nowadays,
people seem to have developed an allergy to thinking. They
also say, "Swamiji, your talks involve some thinking, at times
a lot of thinking". What is wrong with that?
Basically, you are a cogrutive person. You have to know a
few things that really count in your life. The worst tragedy in
life is only one; there is no other tragedy. That the father
passed away is a tragedy. The mother passing away is a
tragedy. That money is lost is a tragedy. The loss of one's
22 Sl~ccessficlLiving

hair is another small tragedy. These are all tragedies, no doubt,

but the greatest tragedy; is that I cannot think of myself and
smile. When I think of myself I pull a long face. I begin to
whistle a song. A person is driving a car and gets into a traffic
jam. He gets upset and is cursing everybody on the road.
Then suddenly he begins to sing. Do you think he sings
because he is ecstatic about the traffic jam? No. He begins to
think of himself. Some sadness, some inner pain surfaces. He
wants to divert himself from himself and the music comes in
handy.

Therefore, you cannot just think of yourself and smile, a

smile that is an expression of contentment, of satisfaction, of
just being what you are. If you can, then you will find that
everythingplse you have is an addition to your success. Any
accomplishment becomes an additional luxury.

Our forefathers lived a very simple life, perhaps in huts

with a couple of bullocks and buffaloes. This was their life.
They did not go to a school or a college. They were not under
pressure to score ninety-nine and a half percent to get
admission to a college. All these neurotic situations were not
there for them. These were our forefathers and that is why
we are still sane today.

It looks to me that progress in terms of modern civilization

still has a long way to go. Our forefathers were perhaps not
civilized, in a certain way. They did not have toothbrushes;
instead they may have used twigs. We, on the other hand,
are civilized now.
 Discovering M o k ~ aAs ... 23

What is civilization anyway? Any improved thing that you

get is always a luxury in the beginning. When I was a boy in
the village, all of us used to walk barefoot to school. One boy
got a pair of shoes and for him it was a luxury. On rainy
days, the roads became slushy. Then, this boy would remove
the shoes and carry them on his head. The pair of shoes was
a luxury for him. Later, when everybody had shoes, it was
no longer a luxury. Once you get used to wearing shoes, they
become a necessity. The first time that you get a bike, it is a
luxury. You take good care of it by wiping and cleaning it.
Once you get used to it, then without a bike you have no
mobility. You do not even think about the bike, it has become
a necessity. Similarly, you buy a car. At first, it is a luxury,
but soon becomes a necessity. The air-conditioner, you have,
is a luxury at first then it becomes a necessity.

Therefore, civilization is converting luxuries into

necessities. The more civilized you are the more luxuries you
have converted into necessities. This is an observation of a
fact, but it does not mean that I want you to change. Continue
to enjoy whatever you have. I am just examining the truth of
this civilization. The more luxuries you have, the more
freedom you have with reference to them. You can be happy
even without these luxuries, but if you cannot, then the
luxuries become necessities.

Therefore, we have hundreds of necessities. I would say

necessity is like a woman who, at first, is a guest in your house.
You can be without her. After some time, she makes herself
indispensable. Without her the house cannot run at all. This
24 St~ccessficlLiving

is what has happened to us, we have more necessities.

Outwardly, we are civilized, perhaps, but really speaking,
inside, we are strangled completely. Each one is strangled in
himself or herself as a person because there is no self-
.approval.

IN SELF-APPROVAL EVERYTHING BECOMES A LUXURY

Suppose, you are able to discover something, so beautiful,
so complete and profound about yourself, that it makes you
completely acceptable to yourself, then, everythinelse
becomes a luxury. Your mind is a luxury, your body is a
luxury, your pursuits are luxuries, your successes, well all of
them, are luxuries. Everything else is a plus, because you are
at home ~ i t yourself.
h If you look at yourself as an
unacceptable person, then you have to re-look into yourself.

POSITIVE
THINKING IS NOT THE SOLUTION

Positive thinking will not help here, only right thinking

will. I always tell this story to prove this point. This person
was doing his doctorate, but his thesis was not coming out
well. In the meantime he took up a job as a lecturer in the
local college. He liked the job, but his Ph.D. was still
incomplete.Then, he got married, was happy and well settled
in life. Everything was fine, until his friend, who was also
doing his Ph.D., was appointed as the Head of his department.
All his feelings of 'being happy and well-sekled' vanished.
He started feeling 'I am a failure, I should have finished my
Ph.D., I did the wrong thing, I ought to have completed it'.
He became very depressed and went to a therapist. The
therapist, who thought of himself as a very positive person,
 Discovering M o k ~ aAs ... 25

;t

had one type of therapy, positive thinking therapy. He asked

this person,

"How many blind people are there in the world?"

"There are millions."
"Are you a blind?"
"No."
"Should you not be grateful for having good eye-sight
since you have 20/20 vision? Is it not wonderful?"
"Maybe, I should be grateful."
"Are you deaf and dumb?"
"Not at all."
"Do you know how many people are deaf and dumb?" ,

"Yes I know."
" Should you not be grateful?"
"Yes, I should be grateful."
"Are you on a wheel chair?"
"No."
"Should you not be grateful? So many people are on
wheel chairs."
"I think so."
"Are you not educated?"
"Yes. I am educated."

"Should you not be grateful?There are millions of people

who are not educated, who cannot read, who cannot
write. You have a Master's degree, my God! What a
qualification you have! Should you not be grateful?"
26 Sllccessfitl Living

The person started feeling better. "Yes, yes, I think I should

be grateful."
"Are you not married?"
"Yes I am married."
"Should you not be grateful?"
"For what?"
"That she still thinks you are wonderful."
"Ah, I think I should be grateful for that."
"And you have a job, should you not be grateful?"
"Yes, I think I should be grateful to the powers that be.
I think I have been thudsing wrongly."
"Ah, think positively; you have so much."
The person felt so good, walked out smiling and just then
a new Mercedes car stopped in front of him. He saw a man
getting down from the car and standing on his legs. He had
eyes, did not even wear glasses and was not deaf and dumb,
as he was talking to someone. He had everything plus a
Mercedes. All the positive thinking vanished. This person
was depressed again. Do you know why? It is because it is a
fact thathe does not have a Mercedes. He has an old
dilapidated Ambassador car whose spare parts you can hear.
Except for the horn every other part is heard. When he goes
to his car and opens the door he needs help to open it. How
can he retain his positive thinking when what he does not
have is a grinning reality, a teasing reality? It is a reality that
makes him feel, 'I have not made it'. All his positive thinking
evaporates. Positive thinking may be helpful to face an
interview. In life it is not going to help because what you
 Discovering Moka As ... 27

. *
want to have and do not have'is a reality. What you have, of
course, is a reality.

In fact, the reality is that in spite of what you do not have

and what you have, you are someone who is to be reckoned
by yourself as a person. It is not positive thinking, but just
thinking, objective thinking. It is recognising what is. This is
wisdom.

Without this wisdom, we have a lot of projections, not only

upon things outside, but also projections within ourselves.
Unless the basic projection that is inside is taken care of, we
cannot take care of any other projection. We have to look into
this very thoroughly.
IT IS VERY funny to say that you have to free yourself from
yourself. We always think that we are tethered by a number
of external factors; but basically you loathe yourself. This is a
very humbling discovery. You are not able to approve of
yourself as you are. The constant attempt, therefore, is to be
different from what you are. In the process of this becoming,
you create more problems for yourself and naturally for others
also.

There is a statement in the Taittiriyopani$ad :3 "Why did I

not do the right thing? Why did I do the wrong thing?" Even
if you forget to notice or do not take them seriously, you
always have someone around to point out your omissions
and commissions. Your own omissions and commissions
leave you guilty, while the omissions and commissions of
the 'significant others' in your life cause you hurt. 'Why did
he or she not do this for me or why did this person do this to
me?'

You are the subject and you are also the object. As the
subject of action you are guilty and as an object of somebody's
action you are hurt: Therefore, for the self-conscious person
the guilt and the hurt are naturally against himself or herself

kimaham siidhu niikaravam, kimaham piipam akaravam iti

(Taittiriyopani$ad 2.9).
30 S~~ccessficl
Living

as a person. The Gita says:4 "One is an enemy to oneself".

One becomes an enemy to oneself because one loathes oneself.
Positive thinking is not going to help one here.

EVERYTHING
IS PRIVKEGE IF THERE IS SELF-ACCEPTANCE

You have to see yourself as acceptable to yourself. If you

do, then you are a free person. Everything becomes a
privilege. Your mind is a privilege, because even without
thinking you are satisfied with what you are. Thinking
becomes a privilege. Without willing you are happy being
yourself. Willing becomes a privilege. Without remembering,
recollecting, you are happy being yourself. Recollecting,
remembering becomes a privilege. Without desiring anything
you are happy, desires become privileges; you are free to have
a desire or desires. In the very self-awareness, there is a
satisfaction.

Your physical body is a privilege. Its limitations do not

really count if you are a satisfied person. This is called
freedom. One is free enough to have a limited body, a limited
mind or a set of senses with their limitations. Everything else
that is external is a plus for you. This freedom is not relative.
A relative freedom is always variable because you are free
only for a moment-when you forget yourself as a person
who is not acceptable. Therefore, relative freedom results in
only relative happiness.

afmaiva ripurafmanah (Gita 6.5).

 Happiness Is Centred ... 31

, *
HAPPINESS IS NOT AN OBJECT 'OR AN ATTRIBUTE

Happiness cannot be a particular object. If it is, then all of

us can keep it with ourselves. Happiness is neither an object
nor an attribute to an object. A leaf is an object. When you
say, 'green leaf', green is an attribute to the leaf. Similarly,
there is no object called the happy object that has the
discernible attribute 'happy', like the colour green. Happiness
is neither an attribute that is visible nor is it a substantive.
There is no particular place that can make you happy or
unhappy. In fact, any place can make you both unhappy and
happy. There is also no particular time you can call as the
happy time. You cannot say at 5.00 p.m., every day, you
become happy. It means that the rest of the time you are not
happy. That is not true.

You cannot call relationships as happiness. Every

relationship has its own friction. This is all we have in the
world-time, place, objects, attributes and relationships-and
none of them can be called happiness.

YOUNEED NOT FULFIL A DESIRE TO BE HAPPY !

In spite of this, occasionally you find that you are happy.
Since occasionally you are happy you do understand one
thing very clearly; that this happiness is not due to something,
is not even due to an effort; it is in spite of you. If you become
happy in spite of all the unfulfilled desires, should it not
enlighten you to the fact that that you need not fulfil desires
to be happy? If you have to fulfil every desire to be happy
you cannot discover a moment of joy in your life.
32 Successficl Living

The pending desires are too many. Consequently, the

ongoing desires also remain unfulfilled. Then, when are you
going to be happy? Someone said, "When you fulfil a desire
you become happy. In fact, happiness is between the
fulfilment of a desire and the rise of another desire". This is
not true. There is no guarantee that one will be happy after
the fulfilment of a desire. In fact, sometimes one has regrets
after fulfilling a desire. Perhaps one wanted a particular job;
one joins it only to discover it was the wrong thing to do.
Therefore, there is no guarantee that every time you fulfil a
desire you become happy. Further, there is no such rule that
you can be happy only when you fulfil a desire.

Once, I read a hoarding in Mumbai. It was a hoarding

prornotin{~tandard Battery. There was a question, "Why is
a mother-in-law like a Standard Battery?" The answer was
given below, "Because she goes on and on and on and on...."
(laughter). Please tell me, which desire did you fulfil? Did
you get your tenant evicted when you wanted the house for
yourself? Did you get rid of the squatter on your land? Did
you pay all your credit card dues? Did you collect the money
that you had lent? Did your finance company give you back
your deposits? Did you get all the hair back on your head?
Did the politicians undergo a total change? Did the clergies
of different religions realise their responsibilities?What desire
did you fulfil? None. All the desires are still there. Some of
them do not seem as though they can be fulfilled at all. At the
same time you are able to discover a moment of joy. This
only proves a point. You need not fulfil a desire in order to
be happy.
 Happilzess Is Centred... 33

This is not an ordinary fact. You need not change anything.

Yet, at the same time you can discover a moment of joy
without fulfilling a desire. More often than not, you find that
the moments of joy you pick up in your life occur when you
do not fulfil any desire. For the time being, your attention is
caught by a situation that draws you away from your notions
of yourself. The self-loathing attitude towards yourself
dissolves for the moment and therefore you are happy.

Happiness rests neither within you nor outside you. The

outside world cannot deny you happiness, nor can it create
happiness for you. It can only provide situations wherein you
can be happy. Much less does your mind create happiness ,

for you; yet, you find yourself happy. When you see a flower,
you relate to it as an object. You say that 'this is a flower';
and similarly, this is a Swami, this is a chair, this is a tree and
so on. However, you cannot point to something and say, 'This
is happiness'. You relate to happiness as, 'I am happy' or 'I
am not happy'. That means the fact of your being happy or
not happy is centred on yourself. Hence, there is no reason
for you to say that you are not successful at all. If you think
you are successful only if all your desires are fulfilled then,
indeed, you are a failure.

As a teacher, my job is only to bring your attention back to

yourself. Without fulfilling any of your desires, if you can be
happy, if you are acceptable to yourself, then you are well
set. You have a very meaningful journey ahead of you. This
is what is meant by the Sanskrit word, 'moksa', freedom;
freedom from the notion of what you think you are.
34 S~~ccessfitl
Living

Technically, we say it is samsiirifva-nivytti, freedom from the

mistaken notion about oneself that one is limited and
unhappy. This freedom is not merely a hope, but an insight
that is more than a hope. Your own experience of happiness
gives you an insight about yourself and it is not just a hope
anymore.

THENOTIONS ABOUT ONESELF

ARE NOT INTRINSIC TO THE SELF

When you see the sun covered by clouds you do not

conclude that there is no sun. The very fact that you see the
clouds reveals that there is a sun. The silver lining around
the clouds also reveals the existence of the sun. You will see
the sun, hgwever cloudy the sky is, for the clouds are not
stationary; they keep moving. As one body of clouds moves
away and the other body of clouds is yet to close in, you see
the sun in between.

Similarly, despite all your tensions, disappointments,

sense of failures, and your judgement about yourself that you
are no good, you find that you are happy. This is so because
all these notions are variable and are not intrinsic to the self.
They are only thoughts and cannot stay, since they do not
have a foundation, a basis. Being variables, they move away
and you recognise yourself as a happy person. A happy
person is one who is not afraid of the world and who is free
from the notion of insecurity.

Whenever you forget yourself, you are happy. Suppose I

ask the question "When do you want to be happy?" You are
not going to say, "I want to be happy tomorrow, today I am
 Happiness Is Centred ... 35

ready to be unhappy". Perhaps; as a bargain, you may accept,

"Swarniji, I am ready to be unhappy today, but make sure
that at least I am happy tomorrow". Therefore, where is your
heart? Is it in unhappiness? No, your heart is always in
happiness. You want to be happy now and forever, in all
places and in all situations. If this is so, then you have to
assume that this happiness, which you experience at certain
moments despite all your desires, must have a certain truth,
and that should make the self totally acceptable. Thus, one
gains an insight into the problem of insecurity.
Securities do not solve the problem of insecurity. Money,
power, influence, name, health, friends, all these create a sense
of security. There is nothing wrong in having them. I do not
say that you should give up any of them. However, you
should know that as long as these are necessary for you to be
secure, you are insecure.

Nobody holds on to crutches for fun. Suppose someone

had a fracture and had to use crutches for three months. Then,
one day the person is able to walk on his or her own. The
doctor says, "Now you do not need crutches any longer. You
can walk on your own". The person, however, insists, "Doctor,
I have been using these crutches for the past three months. I
am in love with them. I would like to use them forever".
Nobody would like to have crutches. It is human nature to
want to be free.

Everybody wants to be on his or her own legs, to be

independent. This is what we call 'standing on your own
legs'. You learn it even from childhood.At first, a child needs
36 Successfnl Living

something to hold on to. Later, as it grows, it learns its sense

of balance and has the power to stand on its own. It does not
need crutches any longer. The love is always for freedom,
freedom from crutches. Therefore, if money gives you a sense
of security, you accept it, but at the same time, it reveals your
basic insecurity.
As a person, you are aware of your deep sense of
insecurity, your sense of incompleteness.Therefore, you seek
something secure to make you feel complete. You want to be
different from what you are; you want to be approved of by
others and actively seek everybody's approval. However, the
others also seek approval from you. Both are seeking mutual
approval and we do grant it sometimes, but conditionally.
My attefhpt here is to make you see that you seek approval
because you do not approve of yourself. That is the reason
why, if somebody says that you are wonderful, you always
question, "Do you really think that I am wonderful? What
makes you say so?" This is because there is self-doubt. You
do not totally approve of yourself.
Therefore, let the goal be very clear to you. The self has to
be totally acceptable to you. Let the whole humanity say that
you are no good; if you see .yourself as good, then there is no
question of any confusion. If the whole humanity were to tell
you that you are not a human being, would you begin to
doubt it? Are you going to check if you have a tail? Even if
the whole humanity is crazy enough to tell you so, you will
only say that humanity has gone crazy. This is knowledge.
You are not going to buy others' ideas. What others think
will not mean anything to you as long as you think properly
about yourself.
 Happi~zessIs Centred ... 37

In the vision of our Sastra the self is totally acceptable. You

sense this whenever you experience a moment of joy. In a
moment of joy it is very clear that you are secure, you are
happy. The world has not changed. The stars, the sun, the
earth, the people, everything is the same. Nothing has
changed, and yet, you are able to laugh heartily. The reason
is that you see yourself differently when you are happy. In
fact, you see yourself as the person you want to be. What you
want to be is the person that you already are. That is why, I
say, you are the problem and you are the solution.
If this is so, then, this freedom from self-non-acceptance
and self-confusion is what is called 'moksa'. It is entirely
different from going to svarga, heaven. Most religions are
promoters of tourism asking you to go to heaven. We look at
this heaven purely as a holiday out, a 'get away from it all'
vacation. If there is no self-approval then one can remain sad
even in heaven. Going to heaven is not moksa. Moka is here
and now. Right now, one has to know the truth of what is.
One thing is definite: our problem is not other than
ourselves. Therefore, nobody will come to save you. You are
the saviour of yourself. In fact, you do not need to be saved.
You are already saved, because you cannot be more than what
you are.
Modern science has proved the fact that everything is a
manifestation. When you look at the sky, you see the stars
twinkling at a distance. The light of the stars takes thousands
of years to reach the earth. With the Hubble telescope you
can even see the star whose light began travelling twelve
38 S~iccessfrclLiving

billion years ago. Yet, there are people who say that the world
was created two thousand years ago.

A well-educated Baptist once argued with me in California.

This was an interesting episode. His argument was that this
world was created three thousand years ago.

I said, "What are you saying? What about all these

Dinosaur's skeletons that are millions of years old, whose
existence has been proved by carbon testing?"
He said, "We do not accept the carbon test".
"Who are you to accept it or not. The carbon test is a
proven test."
Then he asked me a question, "Do you accept that God
is almighty?"
I said, "Yes".

Then he said, with that special smile, "If God is almighty,

then was it not possible for him to put a few skeletons when
he created the world three thousand years ago?"

I asked him, politely, "Sir, how will you have your coffee,
with or without milk?" I realised that it was useless to talk to
him further.
How can one say that the world was created three
thousand years ago? I do not know how they continue with
this notion against all evidence. If, against all evidence and
against all science, somebody were to persist and be
committed to a belief system that is blatantly wrong, well,
that person's head has to be sympathised. This is a
psychological problem. The evidence is so glaring. Science
 Happiness Is Centred ... 39

,:
has already proved beyond doubt that the world is not just a
creation; it is more a manifestation. All that is here is nothing
but quantum objects; it is all particles.

If everything, including an electron, is a quantum object,

then, who is the person who is conscious of the electron? That
person is being discussed in our Sastra as the person who is
the content of everything and who is the answer to what we
call the human predicament.

The human predicament is due to his being self-conscious.

If the self-consciousness were not there, there would be no
self-judgement, no complex, no problem of becoming, no
problem whatsoever, except the problem of survival as a
living organism. There is a self-judgement, however, and in
that judgement the self should be approvable, otherwise one
is not going to accept or approve of oneself as a person. Such
self-approval is experienced by you, but not recognised. The
self is approved of when you experience moments of joy,
when you are happy with the world, with yourself, with
everything. You are the solution; nothing less can you accept.
Therefore, moksa is not a trip. It is freeing yourself from your
notions. This is what we call spirituality.

A religious life is not a spiritual life, whereas every spiritual

person lives a religious life. A spiritual person cannot really
become spiritual without being religious. Being religious is
not just religiosity. It is to understand f~vara.You settle
accounts with PBvara; we will soon look into what is ISvara.
People who have a set of beliefs, and who pursue it only to
go to heaven, need not undergo any change whatsoever. All
they need is to just live with their beliefs and die with them.
This is a religious life.

In India, the religious, spiritual, cultural and social aspects

of life are all closely connected. The fact is that everything is
connected to the spiritual life, but we have to know it. We
have forms, but we do not know the content. Spiritualityhelps
us to see the spirit behind those forms. A spiritual life is
recognising the fact that you are the solution. You have to
know yourself as the truth of everything. If this is the goal,
then your life itself becomes spiritual. This is called
vyavasfiyatrniE buddhih, clarity with reference to one's goal,
understanding that one seeks nothing else except freedom
from insecwity. You are not seeking security, but you are
seeking freedom from insecurity. Freedom from insecurity
is the security and that is what you are. Our iastra says that
there is nothing more secure than yourself. Everything else
has its being in you alone. What a vision! You are the most
secure. That you have no problem is a challenge for you. You
say, "Swamiji, I want to be saved, I want to be saved. But,
you are saved already!

Mirabai says in one of her songs: "I went to the guru; I

saluted and pleaded with him to save me. Do you know what
he did? He turned my eyes towards myself. I came to my
guru to be saved, to cross this ocean of becoming. Lo and
Behold! I found that there was no water under my feet". What
a wonderful song! We have this vision; it is everywhere. In
our songs, in our literature, in all our languages, be it Tamil,
Hindi, Telugu, Gujarati, Assamese or any other, the vision is
very much there.
 Happiness Is Centred ... 41

.
YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL WHEN l%IB END IS CLEAR TO YOU
The ultimate end must be very clear to you. Once the end
is clear, I tell you, you are already successful. There is no
reason for you to conclude that you are not successful because
you are the end. It is a question of your owning up; it is a
process of learning and gaining clarity of the vision. That
insight itself is amazing.

I will give you that insight with an incident. It is a village

scene. One Subramaniam, affectionately called Subbu,
inherited a lot of money. He was neither working nor wanted
to work. He spent his time idling, constantly chewing a betel-
leaf. He lived only to eat. It was just impossible to cook for
him. He used to throw tantrums and fling the plates if the
salt in the food was slightly more or slightly less for his taste.
When one lives to eat, then eating becomes the only
committed project. In the morning he would talk about the
lunch menu; at lunch he would talk about dinner and at
dinner he would decide what he would have for breakfast
the next morning. No cook could satisfy him. He was always
angry. The lady next door asked me to do something about
this. I talked to Subbu and found out that he could sing and
had a good voice. I told him, "You have a very good voice.
You are gifted".
"Really, really Swamiji?"
"Yes, you have good voice and a talent for music."
"Do you think that I can learn music?"
"You should learn music and there is a musician already
nearby."
42 S~~cccssficl
Living

Subbu started learning classical music and slowly it caught

hold of him. Because he loved music, after a few months, he
was singing while eating, while walking, even in between, in
short, all the time. It was no longer a problem to cook for
him. He realised that music is a much more profound and
aesthetic pleasure than eating. This is change.

THEVISION OF THE SASTRA CHANGES ONE'S PRIORITIES

This is what we have to undergo, a transformation, a

change. The change is not from the role of the officer, the
husband, the wife, the father, the mother, the mother-in-law,
the daughter-in-law; the change is you, the basic person who
is playing all these different roles. When you change your
whole attitude towards yourself, you are successful.

This change is like the big signboard in the transit lounge

at London Airport. It is very interesting to watch it. On the
signboard there are names of different Airlines such as Air
India, British Airways, Air Canada, Air France, KLM and so
on. At the start, Air India was not there at all. Then Air India
appeared at the bottom of the signboard with its scheduled
departure time. When the information on the signboard
changes, there will be a sound 'gada, gada, gada gada' to attract
your attention. Otherwise one generally sleeps while in transit
and misses the flight also. Now, there is the sound 'gada, gada,
gada, gada' and you find Air-India that was at the bottom has
gone up by one step because British Airways at the top has
taken off. After sometime, again you hear the sound, 'gada,
gada, gada, gada'. Now Air Canada is there on the top. Then
you find Air India also climbing up to the top slot and soon,
it is ready for boarding. 'Gada, gada, gada, gada', and Air India
 Happhzess Is Centred ... 43

,; P
takes off. A similar 'gada, gadit, 'gada, gada' has to unfold in
your mind also. Priorities have to change; a shift takes place
for a take off.

You need not change anything. You need not change your
job; you need not go to an ashram; you need not go anywhere.
You change just being where you are. Priorities change for a
take off. This is successful living. Our Sdstra gives you that
vision, gives you the hope. Not only hope, it points out your
experience and reveals what it is. What else do you need?
You do not need anything else. No assurance is required.

Therefore, once this change takes place in your mind, you

prioritise your goal. Then, everything else becomes
subservient to this goal. There are no failures. This is
wonderful! You can accomplish a number of things in your
life. Relatively speaking, you can also accomplish the relative
concept of success. Basically, however, you should be able to
see that you are the solution.

There is nothing better than the discovery of what I am.

Whenever you are happy you are the whole. It is the
wholeness that you experience which is called happiness. That
wholeness is your nature. You have to know this. That is why,
being happy you are at home. You do not complain: "These
days I am happy, I do not h o w why I am happy." It is natural
to be that whole person. We will look into this whole person
and into the relative concepts of success.
 You ARETHEWHOLE
WE HAVE ALREADY seen that there is no possibility of
anyone becoming happy if one has to fulfil desires in order
to be happy. We also saw that in spite of one's desires, wants
and struggles, one does see oneself full and complete in
moments of joy. We must see the implications of that moment.
We generally gloss over the implications. That is our problem.
People say that we learn from experience. I wish we did. We
hardly learn.Unless our attention is turned to the implications
we will always assume a stance, the stance of a 'ninja'.
A 'ninja' is a mythological fighter or perhaps he was a fighter
once. He has hundreds of weapons. He has swords, a bunch
of cakras, discs that he knows how to throw and if that is
exhausted then he has a bunch of nails that he can use. He
has smoke bombs, ropes and so on. He can jump all over. He
can even do karate. A ninja fighter is one who does not give
up. If you think that he is dead, as you walk away, he gets
up. He is a 'never say die' person.
Every human being has this stance against the world. If
you know some astrology, then you take a stance against the
stars and planets. You think that they all conspire against
you. The fear, the sense of being persecuted by every force,
every person and every bug makes you assume the stance of
a fighter.
46 S~lccessfirlLiving

A MOMENT OF HAPPINESS IMPLIES 'YOU ARE THE WHOLE'

The implication of a moment of happiness is this: the very
world to which you are alive, that is full of snares and
threatening situations, seems to be perfect. The moment you
have a complaint against the world, you can no longer be
happy. Your happiness is edited and abridged to the extent
of the complaint, the severity of the complaint. It is like the
laughter of a man or woman, who does not accept the
alignment or the colour or the number or the size of his or
her teeth. Such a person cannot laugh with the mouth open
totally, but laughs with tightly closed lips. It is a complex. If
you do not like your teeth do something about them. You
can have false teeth. These days you can always have a thing
without theJhing being there. You can have coffee without
coffee or milk without milk; you can walk without walking,
row without rowing, cycle without cycling, without moving
anywhere. You can have hair without hair, you can have hair
of any colour without that colour; you can have teeth without
teeth, exactly as you want!

When you laugh tight-lipped there is a smile inside, but

your complex of not wanting to show your teeth inhibits it.
When you burst out laughing at a joke or whatever, at that
moment you find the world is totally acceptable: your teeth
are acceptable, your height is acceptable and more
importantly, your weight is acceptable. Everything that you
complain about is now acceptable to you, which means that
you see yourself as totally acceptable and one who cannot be
bettered. It reveals a wholeness about you that is not opposed
to the world. You do not shy away from the world. If you are
 Yotr Are The W~ole47

>

afraid of the world you have $ perennial problem, since the

world is there wherever you go.

Once a Swami came to Rishikesh all the way from

Kanyakumari, wanting a quiet place for meditation.
I suggested a hut near the place where I was staying, but he
chose a place beyond Rishikesh called Brahmapuri. It was a
nice place on the banks of Ganga with facilities for bhiksa,
food in a temple nearby. There was nothing else around
except trees. He had a very quiet life. After a month he came
to me and said that he wanted to go to Uttarkasi. When I
asked him:

"Why do you want to shift from Brahmapuri?"

"Swamiji, this place is noisy."
"How? Nobody is there."
"Swamiji, there are too many birds. All around me there
are birds. In the morning I cannot meditate because they
go on making noise."

I discouraged him from going to Uttarkasi as the place

would be very cold during November. Nevertheless, he went
and afterwards he never came back to Rishikesh. I made
enquires and learnt that within fifteen days he had gone back
to Kanyakumari-at least he was enlightened. The
enlightenment is that wherever you go the world is with you.
The problem is not the world; the problem is you.
Lord Krsna in the Bhagavad Gita gives us a wonderful
advice. He says5,"Keep all the external sense objects external".

spar6an krtva bahir balzyiin (Bhagavad Gita 5.27).

48 S~~ccessficl
Living

What an advice! The sense objects, that include everything

that disturbs you, every being that bothers you from a
mosquito onwards, are already external. Therefore, why
should you keep them external? It is like saying 'keep the car
outside' when it is already outside. One can accomplish only
something that is possible. Suppose there is a mandate, "Do
not drink fire or molten iron". Such a mandate is not valid'
because nobody drinks fire or molten iron when one is thirsty.
If however, 'Do not drink alcohol' is a mandate, it can be
followed because it is possible to drink alcohol. You can
prohibit somebody from doing something only when there
is such a possibility.

Therefore, when all the objects are external, why should

Lord KrsnZ ask us to keep them external? This is because
some of them are not merely external, but are also internal.
Anybody who bothers you is not only outside, but inside also.
Even if the person is out of sight he is still inside because we
carry a lot of load inside. To unload the people and to allow
them to be what they are, definitely takes a certain
understanding, a certain know-how. Most of the people are
those who have hurt you at one time or the other, in one
manner or the other. They become the objects of your
frustration. In other words, you have an agenda for them.
Your agenda for the other may be very noble, very reasonable
and proper but the other person also has agenda for you. The
main item in his list is, 'Please drop your agenda for me'.
This is his first agendum. Therefore, everybody has agenda
for the other because people are not acceptable as they are.
Consequently, you do not meet the person as he or she is. He
or she is always a futuristic person in your thinking; that is,
 You Are The Wzole 49

.
he should be this or she should' be that to be acceptable. In
spite of all this, I want you to understand that the implication
of a moment of happiness is that the people inside your mind
are kept outside. You find that all your frustrations get
resolved. This is called wholeness.

THE WHOLENESS INCLUDES BOTH

THE SUBJECT AND THE OBJECT

The wholeness is not against the world; it includes the

world. The very world that you complain about is the world
that does not pose a threat to you. You are the subject, the
experiencer, and the object that is experienced. When you
are the experiencer of your favourite melody in music, and
you are happy listening to it, the object, the music that you
experience, is able to completely swallow, devour all your
complaints. In fact, it swallows the memory-based you, the
wanting you. What remains is the objective 'you', the
appreciative 'you1.The subject, you, and the object, music,
become one. This is what we call wholeness. The drk, subject,
and the drsya, object, form one whole.

This wholeness is never lost. It is a reality. It cannot be

completely relegated to the background just because you
think in a particular way. The thinking itself is suspended,
your will is suspended, your notion about yourself is
suspended. In sleep you do suspend them, in a moment of
happiness also you suspend them. This is a great blessing
that we have. People look for the Lord's blessings. The
greatest blessing, I say, is that you can suspend all your ideas,
all your notions for the time being; otherwise it is not possible
for anybody to be alive. Lord Krsna says that forgetting,
dropping all your ideas is the key to learning. That is how
we learn. You may have well-entrenched ideas. You may have
emotionally invested a lot in certain conclusions, about people
and their opinions, about gurus etc. Later you do not want to
give up those ideas, including those ideas that we can give
up, in the wake of understanding. For the understanding to
take place we should be able to keep all our ideas suspended
for the time being and be alive to what we read or listen to
now. That capacity is the basis for all learning. We have been
given that capacity. That is the reason why if there is anything
striking or inspiring, it devours the memory-based you, the
wanting you, completely and you find there is wholeness.

HAPPINESS
IS YOUR NATURE
9
Our Sastra says that the wholeness is exactly what you are.
There should not be, need not be, any reason whatsoever for
you to be happy. You are happy without any reason, which
means you are unmatta, abnormal. There are two types of
people who are considered abnormal: people who are
depressed or hilarious all the time and people who are wise.
The hilarious one will stand in the middle of the road and
suddenly laugh. You do not know the reason for his laughter,
for he lives in his own world. A wise person has a semblance
to the hilarious person. In fact, a wise person sees something
within and he laughs, but externally there is no reason. A
sugar crystal is sweet because it cannot be otherwise, whereas
there is a reason if the water inside the pot is hot. There you
can ask a question and get an answer.

"Why is the water hot?"

"Because the pot is hot."
 You Are The WJzole 51

, .;
"Why is the pot hot?" i ,,

"Because the pot is sitting on a hot plate."

"Why is the plate hot?"
"Because it is sitting on fire."
"Why is the fire hot?"
"But there is no cold fire."

There can be a scientific answer for the heat in the fire, but
that does not change the fact that the fire is hot. Fire is hot.
Similarly, one is happy for no reason. There is no answer to
the question: "Why is a wise person always happy?"

Being happy is not a matter for complaint for anybody.

That is why when somebody is happy you do not sympathise
with that person and enquire, "Why you, of all people, should
be happy? You are such a great benefactor and a good person
and therefore you should not be happy at all". Nor does
anybody come to me and complain, "Swamiji, I do not know
what is happening to me these days, I am very happy".
Sometimes when you are very happy you become
apprehensive that something untoward is going to happen.
Otherwise, nobody complains about being happy and nobody
enjoys being unhappy either. So the unhappy person is always
consoled and sympathised with, because that is not natural
to him or her. What is natural is not a matter for complaint.

You do not go to an ophthalmologistand ask him, "Doctor,

please do something for me".

"What?"
"My eyes see."
52 S~~ccessfirl
Living

The doctor, a kind man, and patient to this patient asked:

"Oh, do they see two where there is one?"
"NO,no. I see one as one and two as two."
"Oh, are you not able to see objects very near?"
"NO doctor, I can see, I can read."
"Oh, are you not able to see things far away?"
"No, I can see and read t h g s far away too."
"Oh, are you not able to see in the evening?"
"No doctor, I see very well in the evening."
"Oh, then are you not able to see colours?"
"No, I can see all the colours. I see you are wearing a
blue shfkt."
"Then what is your problem?"
"I told you doctor in the beginning itself. My problem is
that my eyes see."
The doctor said, "I see!" Being a kind person, he
recommended that the person consult a specialist on the floor
above.

Eyes are supposed to see. Ears are supposed to hear. You

cannot say, "I ate in the morning and I am hungry again. I eat
and I become hungry again. Therefore, there is something
wrong with my stomach". Everything is all right with your
stomach. If you are not hungry at all or always hungry, then
that is a problem. Somebody complains, "Swamiji, I have too
many desires". It means you are healthy. Your problem is
not in having many desires. You do not know how to manage
 You Are The Whole 53

, \

them; that is the problem. It is'a'management of riches. We

do not know how to manage our riches.

So, what is natural is not a matter for complaint. That you

do not complain about being happy itself shows that it is
natural for you to be happy. If it is natural to be happy, then
why are you unhappy? It is very clear that you have a
distorted view of yourself. The truth about you is totally
different.

There is no one like you. Not only is no one like you, there
is nothing like you. First, let us understand the implications
of this statement. In English, like in other languages, you have
pronouns such as he, she, it, they and so on. A pronoun can
stand for any noun including a dog. One can use the word
'it' for any neuter object and for any number of objects.
Pronouns such as 'he', 'she', and 'you' can refer to people,
and 'it' can refer things. 'I' also is a pronoun. However, how
many people are there for whom you can use 'I7?There is
only one referent of '1'. There is no second 'I' in the world.
Do you know why? It is because there is only one 'I' and
everything else is an object of that '1'. One is 'I' and everything
else is what becomes evident to that '1'. There is nothing
similar to this '1'. It is just amazing.

All your complexes are born of comparison. You compare

yourself with the similar and develop a complex. You can
never compare yourself with the unlike and then develop a
complex. Suppose there is a great western classical musician.
He is jealous of a particular rock star, because when this rock
54 Si~ccessfilLiving

star performs, his concert attracts millions; but when the

classical musician gives a concert there are hardly twenty-
five people, generally old, but who can understand his music.
This makes the classical musician angry and jealous. The same
classical musician will not sit by the wayside rock and lament,
"Oh, rock, you are at peace with yourself whether it is sun or
rain; you do not care whether somebody sits on you or spits
on you; you are so at home. Whereas, at home, I am not at
home, neither am I at home, outside. In fact, I am not at home
with myself. I am jealous of you, oh, rock". He is, however,
jealous of the rock star. Do you know why? A complex is
always born of comparison, comparison with the like.

There is no other person, significant or insignificant from

the standPo& of 'I*. The 'I' is unique. Everything else is
evident to the '1'. Our Snstra tells us very clearly that there
are two facts one has to recognise. One is 'I', ntman, the seer,
and the other is 'not 1', anatman, the seen. There is no third
factor. One may ask, "What about heaven?" Either heaven is
'I' or it is 'not-1'. If heaven is '1', then you have to understand
what that heaven is. If it is not '1', then definitely it comes
under 'not-1'.

Then what about God? If God is 'I' then he is five feet nine
inches. If God is other than 'I' he also comes under 'not 1'. Is
God 'I' then? What is the implication? Maybe, God is both 'I'
and 'not 1'. Maybe everything is God. That is a possibility.

It is very clear that I am the subject and everything else is

the object. This means that you cannot compare yourself with
anybody. Therefore, when you say that a person is successful,
 Yori Are The Whole 55

.
.s

it is a statement that revealst a judgement. People are

judgemental. Those who are judgemental, I say, are mental.
We even make God judgemental. People say that after death
there is a judgement day. God will ask who you are and send
you to hell if he does not approve of your name. He will
choose those who will go to heaven. God is made into a
judgemental person. I thought that God, at least, is free from
being judgemental and is someone in whom I can seek refuge,
someone who, in his wisdom, can accommodate me. He can
look at my background and then say, "It is because of a
background you are like this; in fact, you are as good as
anybody else". At least that is what he is supposed to say.
Every therapist is able to say that. We do not need a
judgemental God.

There is nothing wrong in one's concept of God. One is

free to have and practice his or her set of beliefs. However,
one cannot go about converting another person. This is
violence because the aggressive religion thinks there is a rich
harvest for conversion available and therefore it has to plant
the cross in Asia. Are you a crop to be harvested? A harvest
means a wholesale harvesting by conversion.

In spite of this person committing the sin of calling you a

sinner, is not a sinner in the vision of our Snstra. That is India
and her culture. We have to be aware of our riches, our
culture. In spite of these onslaughts, India still survives. We
survive, in spite of the politicians, in spite of our callous
attitude towards our tradition, our culture, our religion, and
our spirituality.
56 Stlccessfill Living

'1'1s SELF-EVIDENT AWARENESS

Our Sastra says that you are unlike everything else.
Everything in this world is evident to you. You see a flower
in the garden; it is evident to you. A thing exists because it
comes to your knowledge, through a means of knowledge.
The sun, the moon and the stars are, because they are evident
to you. Black holes are; they are evident to you through
inference. That he is or she is, is evident to you. Your body is;
it is evident to you. Your eyes see; it is evident to you. They
do not see; it is also evident to you. You have this particular
thought at this moment; it is evident to you. You have, in
your memory, your experience of Delhi; that is evident to
you. That it is not in your memory is also evident to you.
What you kngw, the knowledge is evident to you. What you
do not know, the ignorance is evident to you.

Everything becomes evident to you; 'you' also means 'I7.

Now I will ask you a question, "Do you exist or not?" What
will you say? You cannot say that you will consult someone
and let me know. When you say 'I am' it means 'I exist'. The
'am' is a verb of being. 'I am' means 'I is'.

To whom is 'I am' evident? If everything is evident to you

then are you not there? "Yes, I am." To whom is the existence
of the self, evident? The self is evident to the self. In other
words you are self-evident. Everything else is evident to you
and therefore you are unlike everything else. Everything
becomes evident to you, no matter what exists, how far it
exists, how great it is, how big it is.

In Sanskrit there are these two words, bhati, meaning shines

and anubhati, meaning shines after. We have to know these
 You Are The Whole 57

,, *
two words very well. Anu is a'p'refix whose literal meaning
is 'after'. When you say that a thing exists, it exists because
you happen to know it. The objects in the world do not have
a capacity to reveal themselves without your knowing them
through the appropriate means of knowledge.

You have eyes that are capable of sight. Your eyes cannot
perceive anything without picking up the light. Sight is
always in terms of picking up the light. You see your physical
body. It does not shine on its own. It is lighted. Therefore, the
physical body shines after, whereas the light shines. All
opaque objects are not self-radiant and are picked up by our
eyes, in terms of reflected light.

The sources of light like fire, the sun, the stars, a lamp and
even a glow-worm are self-luminous, but they also shine after,
anubhati. How? The light in your eyes lights up the sun. It is
a light of perception, of awareness. The light in your eyes is
the light of awareness because of which you are aware of the
sun, moon, stars and so on. All objects, including all sources
of light, shine because the eyes shine. The eyes shine because
the mind behind the eyes, shines. The mind shines because
the 'I' is behind the mind. The 'I' shines because I am self-
evident, self-luminous. The shine here is the light. What kind
of a light? It is the light by which you see lights. It is the light
because of which everything comes to light. This is 'you'.
The Self-luminous 'you' is the one to be understood. When
you recognise this fact, then that is the ultimate success.When
you understand the self-evident 'you', you are freeing
yourself from being judgemental.
 You ARESELF-EVIDENT
YOU ARE A singular person. This is not merely by your
unique individuality, but because of the very profound fact
that you are the only person who is self-evident while
everything else becomes evident to you. Anything you
objectify is evident to you including time and space, either
by direct perception or inference. Whether the object is macro
or micro, it becomes evident to you. Your own body is no
exception; it is evident to you. Lord Qsna in the Bhagavad
Gita says6 that this body is a lqetra. Getra means a field of
experience, an object of experience, an object of knowledge.
Even though you identify your physical body as 'I', Lord
Qsna says that it is an object of the pronoun 'this' because
you are able to objectify every part of your body as 'this'.
Therefore, your body is a ksetra. The only one who is self-
evident, is the one for whom everything else is evident. In
every piece of evidence, what is present is consciousness.

I can put it differently for better understanding. When you

say that the Swami is, Swami consciousness is. The sun is,
the sun consciousness is. Space is, space consciousness is.
Time is, time consciousness is. Your body is, body
consciousnessis. A given thought or emotion is, that emotion

idam Sariram kaunteya ketram ityabhidhiyate (Bhagavad Gita 13.1).

60 Szicccssf~tlLiving

consciousness is. Memory is, memory consciousness is.

Ignorance is, ignorance consciousness is. I am, I consciousness
is. Therefore, consciousness is always present and is unlike
everything else, because everything else is an object of
consciousness.

This consciousness does not have any particular form or

size. Suppose I ask you, "What is the distance between these
two hands?" You can guess that the distance is, more or less,
two feet. If I ask, "What is the distance between the hand and
the space?" Any distance is between two points in space.
Between a point in space and space, there is no point in asking
'What is the distance?' There is no distance. Space, being all-
pervasive, is in and through my hand. Therefore, between a
point in spacoand space the distance is zero; between space
and stars there is no distance; between space and your body
there is no distance; but between your body on this earth and
the stars there is a distance, a distance of light years, because
they are two points in space. Between your body and my
body there is a distance.

Now, what is the distance between consciousness and the

body? If you say space, then what is the distance between
space and consciousness? There is no distance. Space is
consciousness. Time is consciousness. But consciousness is
not space or time. This is the most important fact. It means
that consciousness is not located in a place. Consciousness
has no height. It has no width. All that is there is one spatially
limitless consciousness.
It is this limitless whole that you experience whenever you
are happy. Neither the subject nor the object is away from
 You Are Self-Euiderzl 61

, k ,

consciousness nor do they starid opposed to consciousness.

They are sustained by this consciousness, which is the
meaning of the word '1'. What is, is nothing but consciousness,
which is both the subject and the object. This wholeness is
you. Our Siisfra goes further to point out that you are not only
spatially limitless, but you are also time-wise limitless. Time
is not going to bind you anymore, for you swallow time and
survive time. Time is, time-consciousness is. When you are
in deep sleep, time disappears; when time is not,
consciousness still is.

The concept of time, whether subjective or objective, is

not always the same; from time to time, the time series keeps
on changing. Einstein once said that if you want to understand
the relative nature of time, all that you have to do is stand on
a hot plate, barefoot, for a minute. You will find every second
excruciatingly long. However, when a person talks to his or
her beloved, then he or she finds that time develops wings.
This is the relative nature of time. It either hangs on you or it
just disappears; well, it all depends upon what it is that you
are engaged in. This is subjective time.

There is an objective time related to the speed of light,

which is 184000 miles per second. We measure the speed of
everything else only in relation to this. There is no absolute
time, truly speaking. Whether time is subjective or objective,
it is not away from consciousness.

If this is so, then, do you experience time in sleep? No. In

sleep, time disappears, space disappears, your knowledge
62 Siiccessfiil Living I

disappears, everything disappears. All differences are

resolved; a beggar is no longer a beggar. Similarly there is no
royal sleep when a king goes to sleep. The scholar is no longer
a scholar, the ignorant no longer ignorant. Sleep is a levelling
experience. The kings, the citizens, the rich, the poor, the elite,
all of them are levelled in sleep. In fact, all are the same as
long as they are asleep. You can only say that everyone is as
good as everyone else in sleep. All that is there is the
experience of 'I do not know anything'. Your individuality
disappears, but you, the basic person, consciousness, does
not disappear. That is why, getting up in the morning, you
can say, "I slept well". You are very much there in sleep.

In sleep you are not aware of time and place, whereas in

the dream thew is time. You create time in the dream. In deep
sleep you are there, minus time. The consciousness, being
not bound by space or time, is limitlessness, which is the
Btman, the 'I7.Timelessness is always in the form of 'now',
the present moment. If you look at what is 'now', it is going
to be timelessness alone. There is a beautiful verse7,"The past
and the future were 'present' at their own time. Is not the
concern about the past and future, without understanding
the truth of the present, a matter for laughter? It is similar to
counting without knowing the numeral 'one7."

When you think of time in terms of the past, or the future,

one thing becomes very evident. The past was always present;
the future will unfold itself as present. Then what is present?

bhntam bhavi~yaccabhavat svahle, tad varttamanasya vihaya tattvam,

hasya nu kim syEt gata-bhavi-careit, vinaika s a n k h y ~ mgananeva loke (Sat
DarSan Verse 17).
 You Are Self-Euident 63

. .\ ?
We can say a block of time iB the present. How do you
understand this block of time in terms of the present?

Let us analyse the truth of the present block of time. What

is the length of time the present should have? If you say the
present block of time is one year, then one year has twelve
months. If the present is taken as one month, a month has
four weeks. If you say one week is the present, then there are
seven days in a week. If one day is considered as the present,
a day has twenty-four hours. If the present block of time is
one hour, sixty minutes make an hour. Maybe, the present
block is one minute, but there are sixty seconds in a minute.
Is one second the length of the present time? A second has
one million microseconds. Can we say one micro second is
the present? No. It has again one million pic0 seconds. Thanks
to the progress in information technology, one can
mathematically go on dividing further.

Then what is the present? Well, the present is

consciousness that is aware of the disappearance of time.
When you think of a length of time, time consciousness is
there and when that length of time disappears, there is
consciousness. This is the present. In fact, the presence of
consciousness is the present. It is always whole, always
limitless.

Therefore, will it not be a matter for laughter when you

are so concerned about the past, and worried about the future
without knowing the- truth of the past and the future? The
past was the present and the future will be the present.
Therefore, understand what is the present. It is like a person
64 Sltccessfitl Living

who does not know what the value of 'one' is and yet wants
to study calculus.

You are not subject to time, not subject to any spatial

limitation, and therefore, you cannot say that you are affected
by the world. In fact you sustain the whole world. You are
already free. This is what they call sat-cif-iinanda. Sat means
not bound by time; it is always present in all situations. Cit
means consciousness and finanda is the spatial limitlessness.
This is the truth about you. This is the insight I want you to
have. If this is you, then how can you say that you are not
successful? Own up the truth first; nothing can be more than
what is the whole.

WHATIS NO#-NEGATABLE IS SATYA

Somebody asked me, "Swamiji, you have been saying that

'I am the whole' and the upanisads also say the same. Suppose
a modern philosopher proves that I am more than the whole.
What will I do?" I said to him,"What cannot be bettered is
the whole; what cannot be negated is satya".

Once, I was addressing the faculty members in a university

campus. One of them was a physicist who was listening to
my talks. I had about four or five talks. In the first talk I said,
"Vedanta is a means of knowledge to reveal the truth of
yourself, truth of the world". Then, at the end of that talk,
this physicist came to me and asked:

" Swami, may I ask a question?"

"Yes."
"Did you say Vedanta reveals the truth?"
 You Are Self-Evident 65

, ., ?
"Yes." .,

"Is not Vedanta words?"

"Yes."
"Do you say the words reveal the truth?"
"Yes."
"How can words reveal the truth?"
"Why should they not?"
"No, words are limited."
"I know they are limited. In fact, I can talk much more
about the limitations of words. In spite of knowing the
limitations very well, I say the words reveal the truth."
"So you are going to define the truth."
"Yes, I am going to define the truth."
"If you can define the truth, then every definition is from
a point of view."
"That may be true. But I have my own definitions."
"Then, tell me, how."
"I will tell you tomorrow, please come to the.lecture."
He wanted it just then. He said, "Swami I am coming to
the lecture tomorrow, but please tell me right now. How are
you going to define truth?"
I said, "What cannot be negated is truth.
"What?"
"What can never be negated is truth."
"My God, that is a very big definition."
66 Successful Living

The physicist went back, came the next day and before
the talk asked me:
"Swami, this is an amazing definition, but then is there
such a thing? I cannot wait; I have to know now. I will
come to your talk later, but please tell me now, is there
such a thing?"
"Yes, there is such a truth."
"What is it?"
"It is you."
"Me?"
"Yes."
"How?"
9
"Try to negate yourself, come on. The one who goes
about negating cannot be negated."
He said, "That is true, that is true".
Afterwards, his problem was, "How come I did not know
this?"

Consciousness cannot be negated; but you can negate

everything else. You can dismiss anything from a different
standpoint. You can say, "This is a disposable cup". You can
also invert the same cup and negate it saying, "This is not a
cup, but merely a form of plastic". There is no cup. It is gone.
After inverting the cup, you cannot say that it is a cup and
pour coffee into it.

You can define a thing from a point of view and dismiss

the very same thing from another point of view. You can do
 You Are Self-Evident 67

.! ~

this with all things. You c a h o t , however, dismiss the

consciousness that you are. You are satya. You are what you
really want to be.

To look upon yourself as a failure, is absolutely a

judgement and that too a wrong one. Neither are you a failure
nor is anyone else a failure. If this is the insight you have
about yourself, everything else is a plus for you. At the level
of consciousness itself you are complete, limitless, whole.
Then the mind, which is an addition, is a luxury. That the
mind can emote, can desire is a blessing. That you can have
ambitions is a blessing. That you can will is another blessing.
That you can explore and discover is a blessing. That there
are other truthful people who are your contemporaries is a
blessing. That you have a good memory, like a floppy, to store
information and to be able to remember and recollect at the
right time is yet another blessing.

When you are the who!e, the limitless, where is the

question of your feeling incomplete and lonely? The
loneliness that you feel is not because you have no people
around. In fact, there are too many people around, but still
you feel lonely. Do you know why? It is because you feel that
others do not understand you. It has nothing to do with the
others; it has everything to do with only you. You feel that
you are not understood. Why do you not understand others?
Seeing yourself as a person who is empty inside there is a
sense of want, a sense of inadequacy. You want to break that
sense of inadequacy and therefore you seek understanding
from others.
68 Successful Living

You have to see yourself in the light of the Sastra, wherein

you cannot be made better. Nobody can improve the whole
or make it better. You are the whole and nobody can change
that. That is the greatness of our Sastra, for it has the truth.
We have the last word; no one can improve this, not even the
Lord.

If a new theology arises it will say only something less,

and that is, 'You are not the whole'. You miss what is evident
and then study all these theologies. What is your conclusion
after seriously studying these theologies? You come to the
very same conclusion that you are not the whole. Even
without seri9us study, long before entering the study of
theology, your conclusion was that the world is different from
you. Therefore, no theology is going to improve this vision:
You are the whole, piirna. The word puruSa itself reveal's that
meaning. Puru~ameans the indweller of this bod?. The one
who indwells is you, the individual. Again, the one who fills
up everythinggis purusa. The word fitman also has the same
meaning. Apnoti sarvam iti atma, the one who pervades
everything is the atman. What more do you want? Our rsis,
seers, have given us the heritage. They have given it not just
to us, but also to the entire humanity. It is too ancient even to
claim that it is Indian.

No knowledge can be considered as Indian, American or

Argentinean. Knowledge is knowledge for everybody,
---

purau usati iti puru~ak.

pnrnatvat purusah.
 You Are Self-Evident 69

whether it is simple arithmetic&one plus one or the profound

truth that you are the limitless. The advantage we have in
India is that we have a tradition of teaching. Unfortunately,
it is not available elsewhere in the world. Though there may
be people conveying the same thing, there is no tradition of
teaching. Thanks to our 8cbryas, our masters, who spent and
committed their lives for this and held it together, we have
the vision; the tradition of teaching is still available today. If
I am able to communicate this vision to you, it is nothing but
the grace of all these great masters, their efforts to retain this
against all odds. It has to be preserved.
Suppose the Egyptian government comes up with a new
housing scheme. It decides to retain just one pyramid and
knock off all the other pyramids and use the stones for
building houses under this big housing scheme. Do you think
that humanity will let it happen? Never. That sacrilege will
never be allowed to happen. Do you know why? It is because
the pyramids are not Egyptian anymore. They belong to the
human genius. It is a standing, colossal monument of the
human genius. Even though the culture that built them was
Aestroyed totally, they stand there as a monument of human
genius; they are not Egyptian anymore. Egypt has the
privilege only to protect them.
Similarly, this tradition of communicating the vision that
you are the whole is a blessing to humanity. It is the treasure
of humanity. It is also very ancient; we should not allow it to
be destroyed by a papal intervention and a programme of
conversion. There is nothing emotional here. I am absolutely
clear about what I am saying. I love freedom for all people.
Every person has the freedom to practice his or her religion;
70 Successful Living

but the freedom to practice is not a sanction for the elimination

of other religions. A programme of conversion goes in that
direction. It is wrong. Every culture should be preserved for
there is something unique in every culture. It will be a
misfortune to miss that culture. If humanity has something
as the last word in human endeavour, in human
accomplishment, something that is ultimate, this is it. You
are .the who1e:Nobody can improve it.
What cannot be negated is satya and that is what we are
talking about. It is neither bound by time nor space; it has
neither a beginning nor an end. When you say, "I am sat-cit-
ananda," they are not words for you; the words are you. And
what is more, that satya is what you are and it cannot be
bettered. Thergfore, you cannot be more successful than what
you are already. Until you discover that, the journey
continues.
 AS SELF-CONSCIOUS BEINGS, we have complexes that
we are small, we are limited, and so on. These complexes
prevent us from accepting the truth of ourselves. If the truth
of your self is intimately understood, you have made it. You
cannot say, "I am not qualified". What can deny you this
knowledge? For what are you not qualified? Is it
mountaineering? It is neither mountaineering nor learning
calculus. It is just seeing what you are. Nothing disqualifies
you; but if you find that there is some problem in seeing this,
then it is worthwhile resolving it. That is what life is about. I
You can be very successful only if you completely resolve all
the inhibiting factors.

Relatively speaking, success does not mean fulfilling all

your desires because it is a fact that you cannot fulfil them.
As we have already seen, no human being has fulfilled all
his or her desires. Everybody has unfulfilled desires.
Therefore, there is no way you can become successful by
fulfilling all your desires. Then, what is the way? Perhaps
these is relative success when you know how to manage your
desires. Desires are a manifestation of a privilege that you
have. The cow does not have the capacity to desire a video
camera. You have this capacity. So, you look at this desire as
a privilege.
 Living
72 S~~ccessfil

Desire is not a problem. People who are supposed to

enlighten you create a complex in you when they say, "Desires
create problems and therefore do not have desires. If you do
not have desires, you will have no disappointments,no blood
pressure problem". Then there is a workshop that says, "You
should be free from desires. If all desires dry up in you, you
will realise yourself". You attend this workshop and now,
you have a new desire that from now on you should give up
all your desires. You also develop a new complex. Previously,
you could not fulfil all your desires and therefore you were a
failure. Now, you cannot give up this new desire and therefore
you are a worse failure. These people encash everything,
including your breathing. They will advise you to breathe
this way and breathe that way and call it a special way of
living. You rave to review all this.

In fact, desires are a manifestation of I~varaand hence,

desiring itself is not a problem. It is the lack of understanding
the whole dynamic of desiring, desires and their fulfilments
that needs to be addressed. The more you understand, the
better you are at handling and managing your desires.

Basically, you are a cognitive person. Even the person who

argues, "Swamiji, I am emotional," is also cognitive. He may
say, "Swamiji, I do not like too much thinking, too much
reasoning because reasoning makes me tired". Reasoning
does not make one tired; it is wrong reasoning that makes
one tired. When the person argues, there is no emotion in his
argument. It is only when he loses the argument that he
becomes emotional. Therefore, basically one is cognitive.
When one studies psychology, it is all cognitive. Any therapy
ends in a cognitive situation. You have to resolve a lot of
 Relative Success Through Yoga 73

. \ :
things by changing cogrutively.'Inother words, you have to
understand the 'whole'.

HINDUISM IS A VIEW AND A WAY OF LIFE

'

The Gita gives us a way of life. Once, our Late President,

Dr. Radhakrishnan, was asked by somebody, "How will you
define Hinduism?" He said, "It is a view and a way of life".
You cannot say it better. It is a view of life and the way is to
accomplish that view. The view is that you are the whole.
You are not a sinner. You are not born of any imperfection.
You are not born of somebody's criminal action of going
against God. You are born within the order of I~vara.This
means that you can see that you are the whole. This is the last
and the ultimate message.

In India also, there are different theologies, different

schools of thought such as dvaita, dualism, vis'istadvaita,
qualified non-dualism, and so on. You name any theclogy in
the world, we have it here. Even though they are theologies,
one good thing about them is that they do not cause any
problem because they do not have the 'saviour' concept.
Nobody interferes in your relating to P~vara,because of the
basic vision. The view of life is that you are the whole, and
the whole way of life is meant to help you understand that
view. That is why the way of life in our society was designed
for this. It was a society with no competition. By profession,
the son of a goldsmith was a goldsmith and the son of a
blacksmith was a blacksmith. So, there was no competition.

Nowadays, because the child has to compete, the child is

pushed so much that he or she cannot have a childhood. This
74 Slrcccssfd Living

is not our society.We did not bargain for this. Our forefathers,
I think, were much safer. They had the leisure to sing and
listen to music. They produced classical literature and so on.
However, it is different today. For instance, a father wants
his teenage son to learn classical music. The son has different
ideas. Not only must his music come from abroad, he must
also have a music hero. The father wants him to have an
exposure to Indian classical music and takes him to a concert.
Within a few minutes the boy looks at his watch because he
cannot handle slow music. He cannot sing or listen to music;
he only knows to do music. Today, there is no leisure and
there is nothing classical. The only classic we have is the Coke
Classic. You have to thank the Coca Cola Company, because
thanks to thep we have something classic!

I do not say that the society that was there before was right
or wrong. All I can say, definitely, is that there was no
competition in the society and a child had his or her
childhood. When there is no childhood, what is progress and
where is the structure in a society?

The earlier society had a structure. In this well-defined

structure, even a mediocre person would pass because
excellence was only in one's growth as a person. One excelled
in whichever field he or she chose, whether it was the Vedas
or the auxiliaries of the Vedas, like grammar and prosody, or
it was music or art. There was growth because there was
something to accomplish. It was a perfect structure for a
spiritual goal. That is why Dr. Radhakrishnan said that
Hinduism is a view and a way of life.
 Relative Success Throllgh Yoga 75

.
Even now, the view of life has not changed but the way of
life has definitely changed. There is nothing wrong in the
change, if one has a certain inner strength to face all these
competitions. Therefore, it is important that you understand
the way of life, which is called yoga in the Bhagavad Gitd. It is
much more necessary now; otherwise we cannot make it.
Everybody has to know this. The entire humanity has to
know. It is a question of understanding and in the wake of
understanding there are certain attitudes, which are
consequential, which will bless you.
The way you live your life should be such that it helps you
discover yourself. To be in touch with yourself is to be in
touch with the whole. You also know that you cannot meet
with success in life by fulfilling all your desires. There is only
one way that is open to you. You have to learn to be on top of
your desires.
The desires can be looked at from two different
standpoints. One is the desire to acquire, to possess, to own,
to experience and to accomplish what you do not have. There
is also the desire to retain what you already have, your money,
your health, your youthfulness, your current weight, a
relationship and so on. All these consume your time and
energy. They all demand action on your part. Lord Qsna
calls these desires ragas or likes.
The second type, the opposite is an equally powerful
desire. This is the desire to avoid what you do not want. You
want to avoid illness, old age, loss of money, loss of face, loss
of power and so on. You also want to avoid certain people.
76 Slcccessfiil Living

In fact, this type of desire is also equally time consuming and

action demanding. Lord Qsna calls this dvesa or dislike.

Therefore, one is raga, to acquire what you want, retain

what you have and the other is dvesa, to avoid, get rid of what
you do not want. You do not court a headache, but you
experience it. You do not court any illness, but you do fall ill.
There are a lot of things that sneak into your life, which you
want to get rid off. Sometimes, you want to get hold of
something and with great enthusiasm you pursue and get it.
Soon it becomes a thing that you want to get rid of. What you
wanted earlier, you do not want any more, or what you did
not want earlier, you want pow. Thus, raga-dvesas sometimes
jump from one category to the other. They are variable. They
are neither gaod nor bad; they are there.
Human life is lived, dictated and driven by one's own likes
and dislikes. There is nothing wrong in it. Even Lord Qsna
had his own likes; he loved to play the flute, he loved to dance.
He had his own style of standing; he always stood stylishly
with three bends, the tribhanga, and he loved to adorn his
head with a peacock feather.

Your likes and dislikes are not really a problem. The

problem arises only when they decide when you should be
happy or unhappy. A lack of mastery over your ragas and
dvesas keeps you under their control. They dictate your life
and tyrannise you. They are no longer privileges.

If a privilege becomes a curse, you have to restore that

privilege. In order to do this, you must have a certain space
 Relative Success Tllrotrgh Yoga 77

, >

to look at your likes and dislikes. You should be able to choose

and have the upper hand. In other words, you have to be a
'swami'. Everyone has to become a swami. Swami means
the one who is in charge of his or her life. To be a swami or a
swamini is to manage these likes and dislikes for which Lord
Rsna gives us a whole plan of living as well as an insight
into fulfilling this plan through yoga.

One of the definitions of yoga in the Bhagavad Gita is 'yogah

karmasu kauSa1am,'l0 generally translated as 'skill in action is
yoga'. By this definition, a pickpocket or a clever criminal is a
yogin because he is very skilful in action. In fact, Indian
women are all yoginis in the kitchen, because they watch the
movie on the television and cook at the same time. It is great
skill in action.
Diligent practice of any activity can make you skilful. It is
obvious then that skill is not yoga. It has nothing to do with
karma-yoga. KauSala is an important word in^ the definition to
understand karma-yoga. Krsna further defines yoga with
reference to the results of action. Samatvam yoga ucyate,ll yoga
is defined as evenness of mind. So samatva and kauSala are
the defining words for karma-yoga.

A life of karma-yoga is meant to make you a swami, a master

of your likes and dislikes. Whatever little knowledge you have
about yourself, about the world, about actions and results,
about your concept of success, well, it has only created
problems for you. The Gita presents a different vision about

lo Chapter 2 Verse 50.

" Chapter 2 Verse 48.
78 Succcssfill Living

actions and results in the second chapter to help you manage

your likes and dislikes and become a swami.

There are sentences in the Sastra that are siddha-vastu vi~aya,

that are statements of fact, such as, the fire is hot or Indra has
a thunderbolt in his hand. There are also sentences that
prompt you to act or request you to do something. Let us
look at this sentence12 in the second chapter of the Gita :
"karma?zyeviidhifirastema phale~ukadacana, you have a choice
only with reference to action, but definitelynot with reference
to the results of action". This is a statement of fact and not a
piece of advice. Lord Krsna does not say here, "Perform
action, but do not expect results". Who will perform any action
without expecting a result? I get this question all over the
country, and& has travelled outside India also. "Swamiji, how
can I perform action without expecting any result. That is
difficult." I tell them, "It is not just difficult, it is foolish, please
understand".

There is nobody who has performed an action without

expecting a result. Even an involuntary action like breathing,
closing and opening of our eyelids and so on produces a
result. If involuntary actions produce results, then voluntary
actions definitely produce results. My communicatingto you
is meant to produce a result, the result of being understood
by you. Lord Krsna taught Arjuna, because he expected
Arjuna to understand his teaching. Therefore, it is wrong to
say, 'Perform action without expecting results'. If you say
that the Gita teaches this, then either the Gita is wrong or you

l2 Chapter 2 Verse 47.

 Relative Success l7zrough Yogn 79

., :
have misunderstood the teachhg. If you dismiss the Gita as
wrong, then you have no Sraddha, but if you look into your
understanding, then that is called Sraddhd.

Let us look into what the Gita says. In action alone there is
a choice, but definitely not with reference to its result. It is
not asking you to act without expecting a result. So both the
prevalent definitions, namely, 'skill in action is yoga' and
'perform action without expecting a result' are wrong.

ONEHAS CHOICE ONLY WITH REFERENCE TO ONE'S ACTION

Gitd states a fact-that you have a choice over your action.
This choice is not there for animals. A donkey, for instance,
is not going to deliberate on whether it should kick this person
or not. Animals do not have a choice over an action. They are
free to act, but they are not free enough not to act. They are
programmed to behave in a certain manner, whereas as a
human being, even if you feel like kicking you can stop
yourself. The capacity to refrain from an action, impulsive or
otherwise, makes you a singular person among the living
organisms on this planet. You have this privilege, which is
freedom of choice over your action.

Since you have the privilege of choice, you have to decide

what is proper and improper in your interaction with the
world in terms of any action. All considerations come into
the picture because what you do should not hurt'others.

Once you perform an action, the result is taken care of.

Taken care of by what? Well, the results are controlled by the
80 Successfiil Living

natural laws. In fact, the whole jagat is nothing but equations

and laws. For instance, you have a choice to bring both the
hands together to clap. Up to this point, the freedom is literally
in your hands. However, once you choose to clap and you
do clap, then the result is already predetermined and
inevitable. If you want to clap and at the same time avoid the
sound, then you have to bring the hands together differently.
If you want to avoid the sound, just join the hands together
to say namaste. However, if you bring the hands together by
clapping, the laws, which are the order, take care of the result.
You cannot avoid the resulting sound being produced. You
realise that there is somethingwrong, because what you want
is one thing, but what you produce is another. You have to
learn from ~perience.

Your knowledge is very limited. When you perform an

action, you expect certain results. However, there are many
hidden variables that influence the outcome of your action.
When you cannot control even the known variables, how can
you control the hidden variables? A number of laws,
including the law of karma, are involved in determining the
nature of the result.

If that is so, you have to understand very clearly that you

can only plan and execute your action. You have to plan; you
cannot dart into darkness.That is why the buddhi, the thinking
faculty, is given.,Once you have executed your plan you have
to be ready to accept the outcome. This is called samatva,
evenness of mind with reference to both success and failure.
 Relative Success Through Yoga 81

For instance, you want to cross the road and catch the bus
to reach home. There is nothing wrong in your desire. It is
what everybody does. You want to ensure that you cross the
road safely. Therefore, you do not just dart across, but do
your homework. You look on either side, cross the road and
catch the bus. Nevertheless, things do not happen always as
you plan. There are four possible results for your action. You
cross the road and catch the bus, which often happens.
Sometimes, you cross the road and miss the bus. You cross
the road and get a ride, a rare possibility. The fourth option
is that you were crossing the road. Two days later you wake
up in the nearest local hospital, and ask some fundamental
questions such as "Who am I?"
The four possibilities can be stated differently. It can be
equal to your expectation, that is, crossing the road and
catching the bus. It could be less than your expectation, which
is, missing the bus. It could also be more than your
expectation, which is getting a ride. It could be just the
opposite of your expectation; you did not even cross the road.
So Lord Kgsna says that you do not have any choice over
the results of your action. The results are taken care of by the
laws that also include the law of karma. The law of karma
sometimes works in your favour and sometimes against.
Many of you have experienced this. When the stocks were
going up, you thought that you would buy some stocks. The
day you bought the stocks, they went down. Then you wanted
to sell them, so that you could get back some money. The
day you sold them, the stocks went up. What does it mean?
82 Successful Living

It only means that you do not produce the results of action; it

is the law of karma that produces the results.

This is where karma-yoga begins. You perform an action to

achieve a desired result. You plan, you organise, you do your
homework. That is the correct thing to do. Subsequently, the
expected results may or may not happen. You learn from your
experience. You need to have a certain attitude born of
understanding. This attitude forms a part of karma-yoga. The
understanding here is that it is given to you tc act, while the
result is taken care of by the laws, by the order of 'iSvara.
ISvara is not only the Lord of the laws, of the order; he is the
order. Lord Krsna says13that 'a human being gains success
by worshipping him from whom everything has come, by
whom all +ese are pervaded, through the performance of
one's duty'. This verse is meant to convert our entire life into
yoga. It has to be thoroughly understood for successfulliving.
-
ISVARAIS THE MAKER AND THE MATERIAL
Now, is there a Lord? Is there a creation? The word creation
is a red rag for every physicist, every scientist and every
biologist. This is because, for them the jagat, the universe is a
manifestation.It is amazing how a scientist is able to see even
the stages of manifestation and present how the universe was
twelve billion years ago, long before it came about. Therefore,
for him, it is only a manifestation and not a creation at all.

Our gastra supports the scientists' view of the universe

l3 yatah pravyttirbhiitanam yena sarvam idam tatam, svakarmana tam

 Relative Success Through Yoga 83

, :
that everything is a manifestation. Your eyes are particles, as
are your ears. Wherever there is a cell, there are molecules
and atoms in the molecules. There are particles in the atoms.
Can the particles be intelligent enough to become your eyes,
your ears, to become the right and left side of the brain? Do
you think they assemble themselves intelligently?Or are they
in the hands of someone intelligent?

This is where 'Theo', God comes, because without

knowledge, all things being 'intelligently put together' is not
possible. The word 'all,' sarva, means things that you know
and do not know. There is no other 'all'. So this 'intelligently
putting together' presupposes all knowledge and knowledge
cannot rest anywhere, except in a conscious being. There must
be a conscious being, who is all-knowledge, without whom
there is no possibility of anything being intelligently put
together.

Every theology in the world has a concept of God. Where

is this God? What is his location? They say that God in heaven
created the world. A child can ask his father, "Dad, who made
this sun?"

"God."
"Where is this God?"
"In heaven."
"Where is this heaven?"
"Up above." -
"Dad, did you ever go there?"
"Not yet."
"Can we go now, dad?"
84 Sz~ccessfillLiving

"No, not now, later we will go, do not worry."

"Dad, did God in heaven create this world?"
"Yes."
"Dad, who created heaven?"
"God."
"Oh! God created heaven?"
6'Yes."
"Dad, where was God before he created heaven?"
"Shut up. Do not ask silly questions."
The boy has not yet lost his innocence, his questioning
mind. He thinks for a while and comes up with an answer
that seems logical for him.
"Dad, 1 h o w where was God before he created heaven."
"Where was he?"
"Dad, you said there is one more place called hell. So,
God in hell created the heaven."
Poor dad said, "That is true, it looks like that".
The boy did not stop with this:
"Dad, tell me who created hell?"
"God created hell."
"Why did he create a hell for himself?"
"Because he made a mistake."
"Dad, does God also commit mistakes?"
"He committed a mistake just once."
Therefore, questions such as who created heaven and hell,
where was God before he created heaven, what was the
material he used, beg for an answer and they will beg forever.
 Relative Success 'l7zrough Yoga 85

Nobody is going to answer t&se questions; they cannot. The

theology itself has to fold up because it has no answer. All
the theologies believe that God sits somewhere above and
watches you all the time; this is precisely what the scientists
are against.

You could, however, frame the question differently.

Instead of asking, "Where is God?" you can ask, "What is
God?" You need not conclude that God needs a location. Since
both space and time are part of the whole setup, the jagat,
God cannot be within space and create space. Your car is
outside and you are inside, but both the car and you are within
space. What does outside space or inside space mean? There
is only space. Where is the question of God being inside or
outside space?There is, however, one other possibility, a third
possibility, which is, perhaps space itself is not separate from
God. That is a great possibility.

Once we have understood the concept of space not being

separate from God, we need to look into the question of the
material. With what did God create this world? Where did
he find the material? You cannot say that he created out of
nothing. One can argue that God can do anything, but can
one assimilate it? Space and time, as we have seen, are a part
of the creation. So, the only possibility is that the maker is
not separate from the material. There is no other possibility.

If you talk of creation, then it implies a maker, a creator,

who must necessarily be all knowledge and all power. It is
easy for the human mind to appreciate an efficient cause, a
maker, who has all the knowledge and all the power to make
86 Successfir1 Living

whatever is here, Further, creation also implies material that

cannot be different from that maker.

Let us look at this example. A pot-maker creates a pot out

of clay, the material. The clay is separate from the pot-maker.
When you buy a pot, the pot-maker does not come along. If
he did, then you would not buy anything. Such things,
however, do not happen because the maker is different from
the material. Between the pot-maker and the material, clay,
there is space, where there is neither the clay nor the pot-
maker. This is very important for separation. With reference
to the all-knowing, intelligent being, however, it is different.
If there is a separation between the maker, the all-intelligent,
conscious being and the material, that gap has to be
established by space; and space itself is a manifestation.
Therefore, the material cause and the maker cannot be
separate.

So, although the pot-maker is separate from the pot,

between the product and the material there is no separation.
The material is where the product is. For instance, you cannot
have a shirt without the material. You cannot even imagine a
shirt minus its material. The shirt is the material. In short,
you cannot have anything without the material that
sustains it.

The logic that the maker and the material are separate is
not applicable to the total creation. The logic that is available
for something within the total is not applicable to the total.
In mathematics, you know that one plus one is two. Yet, when
you think of infinity, infinity plus one or one million, is still
 Relative Success Through Yoga 87

. :
infinity. Infinity plus infinity is infinity, infinity minus infinity
also is infinity. What cannot be improved upon is infinity.
Therefore, the logic applicable to a finite quantity dpes not
extend itself to cover infinity. Thus, when the GitE says, "From
the Lord everything has come, by the Lord everything is
pervaded," it means that the material cause is not separate
from that Lord. Therefore, all that is here is a manifestation.

The physicist is ecstatic when he hears me saying, "All

that is here is a manifestation". This is what he looks for
because he knows how the particles move methodically. Yet,
the physicist has a problem to solve. He knows that the
probability of anything not being there is equal to or greater
than its being there. Particles have to turn at the right place
and in the right way; otherwise you will have something else
manifesting. The whole progression is gradual, methodical
and intelligent, which means that it is a manifestation of
knowledge, all knowledge. The maker and the material being
identical makes the whole thing very alive, and the
knowledge of this, is highly redeeming.
YOU CAN ASSIMILATE the vision of the maker and the
material being identicalby using the dream world as a model.
All of us have the experience of sleep. Your individuality,
your world experience, the subject-object division are not
there in deep sleep. There is no concept of time or space. You
do not know where you are or what the time is. In fact you
are not manifest in deep sleep. In Sanskrit the unrnanifest is
known as ayakta. So, the individual is ayakta, not manifest,
in deep sleep. If you wake up from sleep, completely wake
up, then you are with this world. You have to deal with the
objects of your senses. If, however, you are only half awake,
then it is called the dream state. This dream experience can
help you understand 16vara7smanifestation.

'DREAM'
MODEL TO UNDERSTAND THE IDENTITY BETWEEN
THE MAKER AND MATERIAL

In a dream, you are the maker, the author of all that is

there in the dream world. The dream world is born of your
knowledge. In a dream you cannot create an object that you
have never seen before. What you think of is always what
you know. You cannot think of what you do not know. If I
ask you to think of gagabugain, you cannot think of it. Even
while awake you cannot think of gagabugain much less while
dreaming. You may ask me, "Swamiji, what is gagabugain?"
If I knew, I would not use it as an example. I have been
keeping this group of syllables for a number of years to teach
90 Successful Living

the fact that you cannot think of an object you do not know.

So, in a dream you cannot see something that is totally

unknown. You may say that last night, in your dream, you
saw a man with two horns. It is true that you have not seen
such a person in real life, but you see such people in Star
Wars, in cartoons, and science fiction. You have, of course,
seen an animal with horns and you have seen human beings.
In the dream both the man and the horns became jumbled,
and hence, you saw a man with horns. Therefore, in your
dream, you create only what you know. You think of space,
space appears; you think of time, time is there; you think of
the sun, the earth and the people; all of them are there because
you think of them, and they are there the instant you think of
them. P

The material for the dream world is not borrowed from

somewhere outside. This is an amazing Sakti, power. It is not
mere imagination. In imagination, you know that you are
imagining. In fantasizing you are aware that you are
fantasizing, whereas a dream is not a fantasy. The dream
objects have a degree of reality. In the dream, the man who is
chasing you is real. Your running, falling, and having cramps
are also real.

You are the intelligent cause for the dream world because
you have the knowledge. You are also the material to create
that dream world. Therefore, being the material cause for the
dream world, you, the maker, are not away from the dream
world. In other words, the maker can be without the dream
world, but the dream world cannot be without the maker. In
our model of the dream, the dream space, air, fire, water,
 Eve y Fornr Is fSvara 91

earth and everything else that is there, is you. Therefore, you

are all pervasive in the dream. The dream world is not
separate from you. The consciousness that is you is the
consciousness in which space, time, the world, every person,
body, every cell, the subject, the object, exist. It is one complete
live organic whole. This is your experience. Waking up, you
are able to relate this. If, in the dream, someone were to realise
this fact, it would be marvellous. You could learn Vedanta in
dream. Unfortunately, in dream you do not have your freewill
because you are not a complete person. You are only half
awake, but that is good enough to create a world for yourself.

Then, when you are awake you confront this world, which
is exactly like the world you created in your dream, created
from the standpoint of the knowledge implied in making that
world. It is a manifestation because, in dream, you manifest
as space, as time and as whatever else that is there. Similarly,
Igvara, being the intelligent and material cause for the
creation, manifests as space, time, sun, moon, stars and
everything that is here. This is the reason why we approach
any form with reverence.

Every form is a manifestation of ISvara. When every form

is ISvara you can invoke him in any given form. You can
invoke Igvara as a male, as a female and as male and a female,
father and mother. Therefore, you have no problems in
offering your prayers to any form. One has to understand his
or her culture. It is a profound culture, although, as yet, we
have not understood its profundity.
92 Sz~ccessfillLiving

There are people who say that we worship idols. They

also say that we even worship milestones. If somebody is
able to invoke the Lord in a milestone and offer flowers and
worship it, should you not walk miles to see that person?
This vision is not ordinary. Nobody worships an idol. You
only worship the Lord whom you understand. Therefore, you
can worship the Lord in every form. The 'non-idol'
worshippers have removed forms because their religion
forbids them from worshipping an image. They do not realise
that they have lost a great deal. For us, every form is the Lord,
whereas for some others, the Lord created the world expressly
for human beings. Consequently, they do not respect other
forms. All the environmentalproblems are due to this lack of
reverence for form.
9
Since we see the Lord in every form, we can worship even
an animal. Unfortunately, we are immediately labelled as
animists. What is wrong in worshipping animals? In fact, they
are worthy of worship because they have no ego. You can
even worship another person, except that the person has his
or her own ego with all its resultant problems. Therefore,
you cannot worship another person. However, we can and
do worship a saint because he is presumed to have resolved
that ego.

Some people criticise us saying that we worship Gods with

forms, with families, with preferences, and that we transform
them to suit our individual tastes. There is absolutely nothing
wrong in our choice of forms. In fact, it helps us to relate
better with the Lord. Carl Jung appreciated this aspect of our
culture. He appreciated the fact that we are able to imbue
our Gods with likes and dislikes and still worship them. It
 Every Font1 Is iSvara 93

.
means that we are able to accept realities. Those who oppose
forms do not have even a ritualistic prayer. They cannot
perform a piija. The ritualistic prayer is very effective because
in doing it, you are complete. You physicalise your emotions
there. When you physicalise your emotions, when you
express them, the emotions become real.

We can invoke f~varain any one form. For us, everything

is a form. Language is a form. The script is a form. Your dress
is a form and your greeting each other is nothing but a form.
In the court when you address the judge as 'Your Lordship,'
it is nothing but form. In fact, every thought is a form. There
is no formless thought. When you think of a pot, it is a form.
It is form, all the way. The whole of life is lived in forms.

People who criticise the worship of forms do not

understand this vision. They do not realise that their altars
and prayers are also forms. Moreover, when they say that
we should worship only one God, they have a problem. They
say one should not worship other Gods.

Everything that is here is fSvara's manifestation.Then how

do you look at and understand this manifestation of ISvara,
who is all knowledge? Space and time are not separate from
ISvara, the Lord. Anything that is in space and t i m e t h e sun,
moon, stars, your body, mind, your senses, the earth, the
elements, the elementals and everything that is h e r e i s not
separate from fSvara. We look upon even death as f~vara,as
Lord Yama. We are not afraid of death. We worship death.

We see an order in this manifestation. Suppose a flower

does not remain always a flower. If it suddenly changes into
a scorpion, you cannot wear the flower on your hair. The
head itself might turn into something else! There will be
confusion. In the creation, however, we find that there is an
order, both at the macro level and at the micro level. If a flower
is definable as a flower, there is an order; that is why
knowledge is possible. We can look at the whole manifestation
in the form of various orders.

fSvara is manifest in the form of physical order, the physical

universe which includes all the forces, geology,
thermodynamics, your physical body and its behaviour and
so on. When you study physics, you are in touch with ISvara.
Besides the inert objects, there are the life forms that imply
9
certain possibilities.They form the biological order; trees and
plants also come under this order. When you study biology
you are studying ISvara. Then, there is pana, the life force, in
every living organism. The functions of this life force that
govern health or ill health come under the physiological order,
which is another manifestation of fsvara. A study of
physiology would be a study of ISvara.

The psychological order, including the memory, is yet

another manifestation of ISvara. The human behaviour is
within this order, since all our responses are memory based.
Then there is the cognitive order by which you understand
all these orders. It is because of the cognitive order that you
can distinguish knowledge, error, the right conclusion and
so on. Epistemology is based on this order. The cognitive
order also includes an aspect of memory. That is why you
 > >

are able to recognise the persoh you had met earlier, in the
recent or remote past.

There is no distance between one order and another. Where

there is a physical order, there is a biological order too. There
is no spatial distance between physiology or biology or
psychology. Thus I~vara,who is all knowledge, is in the form
of one maha order, total order. In this order, I am given the
freewill to desire, to choose, to act. The result, however, is
taken care of by the laws, that is fsvara. That is why you cannot
blame the order, the laws. If you stick your finger in the fire
it will burn. The laws produce the results of actions and fsvara
is in the form of the laws.

The laws include the laws of dharma and adharma. What

you do not want others to do to you is adharma, what you
want others to do to you is dharma. We did not create this
order, but we sense it and that is why it is universal. You do
not see gravitation, but you sense it and so do the animals
and birds. Without the knowledge of gravitation, no monkey
can jump from tree to tree. Well, you sense gravitationbecause
it exists. It exists in your mind. Dharma also does not lie outside
you. It is in your mind, manifesting in your life, manifesting
in your desires and actions.

The fact that you have desires, that you want to fulfil them,
that you can plan and execute an action, is a privilege. These
are all privileges. It is also a fact that there are four possible
results to an action. That is the reason why you are prayerful.
Before you start anything you always pray, because you do
not know what the outcome is going to be. In India, you pray
before starting the car. The prayer is meant to avoid
96 Sl[ccessfitl Living

undesirable things. You see the green light and you proceed.
The assumption is that the other person has seen the red light.
Unfortunately for you, he sees too many lights. How do you
control that? Therefore, you say a prayer; this is our culture.
Now you can understand why we have ritualistic and other
forms of prayers.

If all that is here is ISvara, then with this understanding,

you can have a proper attitude. All the laws are manifestations
of ISvara, are not separate from ISvara. Therefore, when you
say the laws produce the results, it means ISvaraproduces
the results. Every result comes from ISvara. Since you have
9
the opportunity, the privilege of growing in this culture, you
have an inbuilt attitude that has grown upon you; that is the
attitude of glad acceptance, prasnda-buddhi.

Anything that comes from I~varais prasada. Prasada can

be anything. It can be a laddoo, or a sugar crystal or just a
tulasi or a vilva leaf given in the temple. It can be a home that
is given to you. It can be your child that you are blessed with.
Your body itself is a prasada. Your set of senses is prasada.
What is given is prasada because it comes from ISvara. Please
tell me what is not given? Everything is given. That you can
put things together, that capacity, is given. Therefore,
anything that comes to you is prasada. Prasada also means
assimilation of facts. A person who can assimilate facts and
go ahead with his or her life is successful. Assimilating facts
is done with the attitude that everything is prasada. If you say
 Every Fot~izIS ISvnra 97

:
that you cannot accept a lesser result as prasada, and that you
need the other result, then go ahead and work for it. However,
you must ensure that you do not succumb to the emotional
pressures created by your likes and dislikes, and follow
dharma.

Generally, it so happens that whatever you like to do is

what is not to be done, a wrong action, and whatever you do
not like to do is what is to be done, a right action, like going
to work early in the morning. What you want to do is not to
go. What you have to do is go to work. Therefore, what is
success in life? Successful living is when you go by what is to
be done, with a prayerful attitude, with understanding. In
the beginning, there is a conflict between what you do not
like to do and what is to be done. Yet, you are able to pull
yourself together and do what is to be done at the cost of
your dislike, dvesa. It is the same with reference to what should
not be done, when it is exactly what you want to do. Here
again, with an understanding, you conform to what is right,
and avoid doing what is not to be done at the cost of your
desire, raga. This is called kaus'ala, discretion.

When you practice what is right, even though you do not

like doing it, and avoid what is wrong, even though you want
to do it, you slowly change. Later, you find yourself in a
position where what is to be done is what you like to do and
what is not to be done is what you do not like to do. That is,
indeed, a successful life.

When you do the right thing, you conform to dharma that

is I~vara.Lord Krsna says, "In a human being I am in the
98 Successfir1 Living

form of desire that does not transgress dharma". When you

transgress dhrma, you are rubbing against TBvara. When you
rub against dhrma, you are not intelligent. You are just a loser.
When you conform to dharma, then you are in tune, in
harmony, with Pgvara.

Therefore, by doing your duty, svakarma, what is proper,

what is appropriate at a given time, place and situation, you
are worshipping IBvara. You are the most successful person,
siddhim vindati manavah. It means that such a person is
spontaneously good and is successful. This is successful
living. There is so much to own up, there is so much to enjoy,
if one achieves this success.