Mind is in constant inner chatter. It starts as soon as you wake up. If you record all of your inner chatter you need a recorder for all your waking hours, say 15 hours. All this chatter creates problems unconsciously. You are comparing yourself unfavourably with others. Of these 15 hours of tape, all spoken by you, why don’t you convert the chatter to give you positiveness and freedom? No man is so poor that he cannot create words that create bliss. We are not poor in capacity, only in consciousness.
This 15 hours of tape are of our karmic system. Let at least ten hours of tape create freedom in you, to start with. When all 15 hours give you freedom from chatter, you have reached liberation or live enlightenment.
Now your mind is locked into one space, as an engineer, as a doctor, whatever; you cannot touch any other part.

All of you are endowed with memory of past life, yet you do not recollect. Why? That’s because you are so caught up in this life’s memories. If you can come out of, relax from, your mind, you can enter all sections of your mind. You can log in and log out.

As of now you can only log in partly since you are afraid to log out. Is it possible to log out, walk out of inner chatter? Asks Buddha: when you have the capacity to create, don’t you have the capacity to walk out? Unconsciously you invite suffering. When everything is right you look for trouble.

A guy living by a railway track is so used to the noise of trains that he wakes up if he cannot hear the sound. You are so habituated to the incessant inner chatter of worry that if it stops you miss it. If your worries are reduced you lose your importance. This world runs not because of us, but in spite of us.
Let us be a little more intelligent and use words that liberate us instead of making us addicted. Napoleon on his deathbed told his subordinates: place my hands out of the coffin so that people will know that even the great Emperor Napoleon carried nothing with him when he left this world.
When you drop your cravings, they may get fulfilled. When you keep craving even if they get fulfilled you are not content. Choose between filling and fulfilment.

PARAMAHAMSA  NITHYANANDA

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