enlightenment....

Before, I used to work in a particular way, trying to convince people about spirituality. Now, people around me know that I do not "work" per se. I leave everything in the hands of Bhagavan. This is the best realization that has ever happened to me. The more I used to work the more I spread ignorance. It only spread ignorance because "I" was the one doing the work. Now I prepare for people to come. I read quite a bit and meditate and write during the day.Prepare and develop yourself. Do not waste any time. Like Bhagavan says, avoid misuse of one single moment. However, you will always be frustrated if you work and do not get the results that you want. If you develop yourself internally instead, then, you will be a steward. You will not be affected by whether or not people become spiritual.So always focus on yourself first.

What is meditation? Why do we do this? Is just about practices? Meditation means engaging our mind with one thought, any thought that you like. We keep our thoughts on God because they are powerful thoughts that absorb all of the unimportant and negative ones. From the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep we have billions of thoughts. Yet as you try to recollect these thoughts before you go to sleep you cannot remember all of them. You may only recollect one or two. The rest go unnoticed. This means that most of our mind is wasted. The mind is nothing more than a collection of thoughts. So the mind works for 24 hours without any productivity. What I see is that the unimportant thoughts eat up all of the important thoughts. Even if you are not a spiritual person you must manage your mind so that you can accomplish a specific task.

So what does the Guru first do in order to work with person's mind? He engages that student's mind with the use of a mantra. This mantra or sentence has been given to him by his guru. So it travels from generations of master to disciple and then again as the disciple becomes a teacher. The vibration of water is seen in a different way as we learn to watch the waves disappear from generation to generation.

Hare Krishna, this mantra, is very simple. Hare means to steal. Here, God is compared to the robber. Why is God a robber? Because he takes things away from you without you even knowing that they are being taken away. In the same way God, or the strength that binds and enlightens you is the subject. We pray to him to steal our thoughts. We pray "Oh God, please steal my ignorance, my darkness and my sufferings, steal my mortality and make me immortal, steal my negativity, show me the Truth, bind me to the Truth, to the light."

So start this chanting slowly and softly and with reverence, like a prayer. It does not matter if you chant all of the time. The length of time is not the issue. Sincerity and honesty are the issues. Sincerity is the process, the subject and the Master. You must also be sincere to everybody and most of all to yourself. This means that when you chant you should not drift into your thoughts. True, when you meditate or chant thoughts will come. But you must notice that all these thoughts are there. You must see them, notice them, and also, the quantity of them. Then, concentrate more and more on each and every vibration and part of the chant "Hare Krishna". You will use this to see all of the thoughts as completely separate from you.

As you chant the mind becomes quiet. All of the thoughts are vibrating consciousness. The waves of consciousness are like the waves in the water, but they are the vibration of the water. We see that this water in the deep sea is still, but the waves on the surface are at a high frequency, and are disturbed. When your mind is absorbed in chanting, the extra vibrations decrease to zero. Then the vibration less and still nature of ourselves, without thoughts is revealed. The nameless, space less, formless identity of the Self is glimpsed and comes forth as the vibrations cease. We see the same thoughts but become much closer to our consciousness, much closer to the awareness of the observer.

Today in the morning my friends came to talk about the Self. "Neal is a name. Vineeth is a name. I know everything about Paula, Amit, Alexis etc. But I do not know the "I". I know about the association and the form only. When I am enlightened I know who I am.

What is enlightenment? Here is a very simple example. At night I see a dream. In this dream a tiger chases me and I run to save myself. I am shouting and I am crying and I desperately want to leave this, in any way I can. I do not want my death to be the next step. Suddenly the dream stops and I get up. When I get up, I find myself. The tiger has gone. The same man who had the dream that frightened him and was looking for a solution, is the man who found the solution to that dream. He found himself. He found the "I".