Its weird and yet it has become normal. Whatever moves faster is better. Communication is at the speed of light. The world is a global village. Electronic mails have to be responded to within the hour. We all are always in a tearing hurry. Doing what?

We are all driven by greed and fear. Greed tells us that there is no time to lose. Fear tells us that we are going to lose. So we hurry not knowing what we are going to lose, not knowing what its value is.

We run because we are afraid to stop; afraid to stop and reflect on what we are doing and why. We are afraid to be with ourselves. To be silent can be terrifying as it makes one vulnerable to oneself.

A young man came to see me.

He said: Swamiji, I have everything sorted out. I am building a house with a 25-year loan. By that time my daughter (a two-year-old holding his hand) will be ready for marriage. My son (an infant that his wife is carrying) will be in a good job. The house would be very valuable and we can get a lot of money by selling it. We will invest most of it and settle down with you at the Ashram.

He had finished off 25 years of his life in just ten minutes. He still feels that his calling is spiritual. Is mortgaging the present for the future spiritual?

This constant running is a reflection of our inner restlessness. We certainly feel we have missed out on life. Has the running been worth it? This is the fastest route to suffering, the expressway.

There is good reason to plan for tomorrow, it’s important. However, let’s not forget to live today!

We take ourselves too seriously. What we do in our lifetime hardly matters in the bigger picture. It is lost in the vast expanse of the universe.

Things go on silently in the universe; so peacefully without any contradictions; millions of solar systems function with such beauty! Things happen in nature in spite of us not because of us.

When we realize this we relax into ourselves. We feel centered in our being. There is a deep sense of trust and peace that envelops our being. When this happens, we will not find the need to hurry through our lives.

Meditation helps to experience this space of relaxation and live enlightenment.

• PARAMAHAMSA  NITHYANANDA

The Karma theory (theory of action and reaction) has no basis according to me. It is only a faith, a belief created by man. By creating this law, man has done a great service to society, but he has done a great conspiracy against humanity. For social well being, this theory or law is good. For example, one implication of this is that you will not kill me, so I should not kill you. It is only an understanding between people so that they can live in peace and harmony. There is no spiritual attribute to the law. But, we can start giving a spiritual explanation saying that you will be punished for your sins. This sense of torture is not correct. It is just to instill fear in you so that you follow the dictum of morality as dictated by society.

May be when you are teaching kids about morality, you may resort to telling stories to teach them the idea of right and wrong and what repercussions can happen if they don’t follow morality. But this type of fear is not necessary to make mature people understand morality.

The truth is that you neither carry your sins nor merits with you. Then you may say that means we can do whatever we can in our lives without regard to others. What you carry with you is the mental setup. For e.g, a murderer carries the mindset which tortures him. Be clear , it is not the burden of a hundred murders actually that he carries with him.

You think that you will go to hell if you do sin. Actually, it is the other way around; you sin because you are in hell! when you are in bliss, you can not harm anyone. It is only your conscious attitude that will make you joyful.

As long as the Karma theory is based on fear, it will never give fulfillment. No morality should be based on fear and greed. It should be based only on understanding. Man should be given techniques to create such a deep awareness; he should be taken to that level of maturity to understand the laws, there should be no fear of hell and heaven. Surely there is no hell or heaven based on Karma theory. In fact, if you associate yourself too much with the so-called ‘wrong actions’, you are tied so closely to your body that you can’t disconnect yourself from it at the time of death.

For instance, a man who has lived only for sensual pleasures can’t leave his body easily at the time of his death. There is too much pain and that is really what hell is.

If you live with awareness and consciousness, you will radiate joy, bliss and compassion. You will experience life to be so enjoyable and radiant that living leaves little time for anything else.

This is the reason I never give rules even during our meditation camps. I never ask people to refrain from non-vegetarian food. Surprisingly, even confirmed non-vegetarians have become vegetarian after attending my meditation camps. The awareness and consciousness will become so sharp and heightened that your very being will start guiding you. There is no need for any law. If I force vegetarianism on people, they will come up with excuses for not giving up non-vegetarian food.

So, I don’t believe in morality since I know it is not going to work. I believe in experience. I don’t believe in conscience; I believe in consciousness. When the consciousness happens in you, automatically, awareness will happen in you. All the social morality will start happening in you. There will be no conflict between inside and outside. Morality will become your life.