We all believe that without the mind we cannot function. In fact we function better without the mind.

When any of our senses perceive an object, say your eye seeing a flower, it is the energy behind that sensor, called chakshu that comes into play. Chakshu is a digital signal processor which creates a digital image of the flower and sends it to our memory. This part of our mind called chitta has the ability to filter the information by comparing it other images on its data base.
The partly processed information is then sent to another part of the mind called manas which makes a positive identification. Even with all the computing power available today, this kind of optical identification which even a child can do, is not yet practical.
Up to this point, the activities of sensory perception and identification of that experience are conscious processes. Once the identification is done, the file moves to ego, another part of the mind, which stores all our past experiences backed up with emotions. These emotion filled experiences are our samskara, and ego is their warehouse. The jump from manas to ego is an unconscious process.
Ego decides for you. You express that decision and act upon that decision. This zone of ego is not under the control of your conscious, logical and rational mind. Ego never sleeps, not for one moment. Samskara drives you to take illogical, unconscious and irrational decisions.

For instance, a person decides to smoke knowing fully well that it is bad for health. His action is driven by his samskara, his desire that is unfulfilled. Samskara confuses you, depresses you, disturbs you, stresses you and can kill you.
This process of perception and identification of what you perceive, the process that happens between your eyes and your mind happens with your awareness, consciously. However, the process the information file takes between your mind and your ego happens without your awareness; it happens unconsciously.
This process is instinctive, a legacy from our sub-human origins. It is a much faster process since the unconscious mind processes data far faster than the conscious mind, and was designed for life threatening emergencies. The only way to make this process of transfer conscious and meaningful is by bringing in awareness through meditation. Meditation dissolves samskara, frees from suffering.

• PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA

“Ananda” means bliss.

“Nanda” is something that can die out, disappear and related to suffering. Ananda is that which can never disappear from your being, it is bliss. It is not joy. Joy brings suffering in its wake. Ananda is beyond joy. It is eternal bliss, Nithya ananda.
Pleasure is what you feel through your senses based on an outer object; music, a fragrance, a beautiful sight, physical touch. When you meet nature, a mountain, a sea, a forest, you feel joy. When you feel ecstasy without sensory inputs or nature, not even inputs of forms of God, only from your inner core of energy, your atman, without any external input, it is bliss. It can be with no reason. It comes from within your being. That is Ananda.
Yoga: it’s important to understand what yoga is not. Yoga is not physical exercises or breath control; these are but a part of Yoga. Yoga is union; the union with the divine; union with the cosmic power. It is chitta vritti nirodaha: it’s the cessation of the mind, to take it beyond the mind, to be one with existence. The blissful technique to unite your own self with the divine is ananda yoga, using bliss itself to unite.
Life has no goal, it has only purpose.

Living has a purpose. If  life is a goal it’s a rat race; even when you win this race you are still a rat. The very living is bliss when you go without a goal, only with a purpose of enjoying the path.
You cannot look at God as a goal. You cannot run towards God. In inner world, logic is very different. Goals are not reached by running towards them. Vivekananda says: Arise, awake, and do not stop till the goal is reached. I say: arise, awake, stop; goal is reached.
Seeking makes you tense, will make you miss your purpose. In a relaxation course you are so tense that you lose the purpose.
I say accept all guilt, all mistakes, and all failures; even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax; guilt will drop from your mind.
If your mind is tense it can never stop. Only when you relax it can cease. You have to drop goal orientation. If you accept what you are, what is, mind will lose its roots- Meditation just happens. When mind is, bliss is not. It is either mind or bliss.

-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

A POMPOUS professor came to a Zen Master to learn. Instead of listening, he started blowing his own trumpet. The Master asked for tea and when it was brought, started pouring a cup for his guest. He kept pouring tea into the cup without stopping. The cup overflowed and the tea spilt on the table. Irritated, the professor shouted: stop, can’t you see the cup is full?
The master said: so is your mind. Unless you empty it what can you learn? Acquiring knowledge is a transmission process. For this transmission to take place effectively and effortlessly, one’s mind has to be empty and still. Only then the teaching, learning and above all the transmission can happen.

Basic knowledge that we all learn from childhood, the type that learn our three ‘R’s with, is intellectual knowledge. To read, write, and calculate we use our head, our mind, to acquire the needed knowledge. At this level of knowledge transfer what happens is communication.
Another type of knowledge needs the heart to be involved; one’s head is no use here. Can you become a poet using your head; can you become a singer or a painter using your head? You need passion to be a master.
The son of a potter watched his father and picked up the art. He became famous as a master craftsman. People came to him and asked to be taught the way he learnt it. He said, “I don’t know how to teach you. If you want just watch me and do.” What was merely an intellectual communication becomes collaboration between master and the taught, when the heart is involved.
Spiritual knowledge is knowledge of the highest kind; it is not knowledge really but wisdom. This can neither be taught nor learnt. Spiritual wisdom, the Truth of the Universe, has to be experienced, by transmission from an enlightened Master who is willing to transmit it from his Being to your Being.

At this level, it is a communion of beings, far beyond collaboration and communication.
Spiritual wisdom happens; it’s not taught or learnt. It happens in the silencing of your mind. It happens when your chatter, both inner and outer are stopped. Meditation is the key to silencing the mind. No spiritual knowledge is possible without the aid of meditation. Ego fills the mind otherwise. To go beyond ego, to go beyond mind, to go beyond chatter, meditation is the answer.
PARAMAHAMSA  NITHYANANDA

One man was telling me, “Swamiji, I am allright as long as I am outside my house. The moment I enter my house, I start feeling Stressed ,”

Not just this one man; many people tell me the same thing. They say they are alright till the moment they enter their house.

You see, the space inside our house is filled with ether, which is a subtle form of the Existential Energy. Ether is one of the five elements that are earth, water, fire, air and ether. These five elements are all forms of the Existential Energy.

The space inside your body is called chittakasha, the space in which you are living is called katakasha and the space of the Universe is called mahakasha, The third that is mahakasha always remains pure. The other two get impure by our thoughts.

So understand,The space in which you are living is not just matter, it is Energy and it becomes impure by your thoughts. Every single thought of ours settles down in the energy level of your house like a cobweb. Once the energy is contaminated with these thoughts, the energy that is in the house relays these thoughts back on us. Because of this, we feel stressed the moment we enter our house,

If you analyse our thought patterns, you will observe that the same set or the same pattern of thoughts keep getting repeated in our mind. These thoughts are our mental make-up.

They are what you call our worries. They are nothing but collective negativity that we keep repeating to ourselves. But this negativity settles in the space of our house; that is the thing. We are totally unaware that this happening.

Our irritation when we enter our house is nothing but our own thoughts being reflected on us. Instead of understanding the root cause of an unhealthy atmosphere in the house, we call experts in Vaastu Shastra or read books in Feng Shui and try to restructure our house, or we perform fire riftals to cleanse our homes. All that is airight, but the fundamental science behind the space in our homes has to be understood, We work so hard in maintaining our homes in a neat and clean fashion. We scrub the floors and walls and keep the best of furniture in our house and what not, We keep the ‘place’ clean, but what about the ‘space’?

The space has to be kept cleansed. By doing regular meditation in our house, we can cleanse the energy that is circulating in it. The energy created during meditation will cleanse the space. Second, we should imbibe a clear and positive mental setup and stop airing repeated negative thought patterns in our house.

An interesting point I want to bring in here: The space in your house is like a small pond of murky water The water in this pond can be washed away and pure water refilled, when an Enlightened Master steps foot in your house! Just by the presence of the Master the ether is cleansed and pure ether fills the space in your house. Then, it is up to you to keep it clean by doing regular meditation and not radiating negative thoughts.

So understand the significance of a positive mental setup and keep the space in your house cleansed and energised. Be Blissful!

Paramahamsa Nithyananda

Nine out of ten people, if asked where their mind is, will point to their head, where we think our brains are!

Brains are not where our minds are. Mind is all over our body; within each cell, within the cell structure, embedded in the intelligence of the DNA and other building blocks of the mind body system that we are. There is as much mind in our little finger as there is in our head or our heart.

Mind is not fixed and permanent; not our cells as well. Cells die and are recreated every second. Our entire mind body system undergoes renewal every so often. What we are now is not what we were a year ago, not what we will be a year from now. Our mind body hardware is constantly renewed.

Yet, we behave the same way as we did a year ago or ten years ago, by and large. We are just as greedy, just as angry, just as depressed as we were a year or many years ago unless we have taken dramatic measures to change. We seem programmed in our behavior pattern.

We are programmed. We are programmed in our belief systems and attitudes based on our past experiences and memories of these experiences. It is these memories that drive us in all our actions. Unfortunately, all these memories lie in our unconscious mind.

We are driven by our unconscious, not by our rational mind as we wish to imagine.

We call this software of emotion filled memories that lie buried deep in our unconscious, samskara. Samskara are the embedded memories of our past, sometimes of previous lives, that drive us into action in the future (Karma). Since samskara are from the unconscious, we are unable to do anything to stop them, to control them or modify them. Unless, a big unless, we learn to penetrate the unconscious.

We can indeed penetrate the unconscious and dissolve our samskara, so meticulously built by our mind since childhood.

All we need to do is to bring ourselves into the present moment. In the present moment, no samskara exist, as these are products of our past. In the present moment, we have neither regrets nor anticipation. We just are.

Meditation leads us into the present moment. Meditation leads us into awareness of our samskara and from there into their dissolution. Meditation gives us control over our life, taking it away from the embedded software of our mind.

Nithyananda

www.nithyananda.org

Our mind is a minefield; it is a madhouse; it is a monkey.

The only thing certain about our mind is its absolute uncertainty. The only thing factual about our mind is that it is totally and absolutely illogical, irrational, random and unconnected.

If we were to sit down and pen our thoughts over even five minutes with no editing, we would think that these belong to a madman. There would be no logical sequence, as one would assume in our mind’s working.

Thoughts flit through our mind, past to future, future to past, back and forth. At one level, it is thoughts, ideas, and concepts. At another level it is memories of past experiences leading to anticipation of future possibilities. Then there are dialogues and rehearsals about how we could have done things better and how we should do things better. Imaginations, fantasies, and dreams follow. Then follow a spate of emotions from lust, greed and anger through fears and jealousy to discontent.

There is always in the background a constant chattering noise of worries.

We have no control over any of these activities of our mind. The more we try and control the more vigorously the thoughts that we try to control break out.

Just imagine a situation if someone tells you not to think of a monkey. The only certainty then would be that you would think of nothing but monkeys!

Suppression of thoughts is impossible. It only ensures creation of more such thoughts. That is why people trying to follow the path of renunciation and celibacy as monks and priests erupt into behavior patterns that they so desperately try to suppress.

All that you can do to stop your mind is to refuse to get involved in its shenanigans. Watch your thoughts as if you are an observer, without getting involved, without being an actor in the drama. Watch your thoughts as you would watch clouds in the sky with no involvement. Your mind loses interest, your thoughts will slow down and you will move towards a no mind zone. You need to say, stop; I want to get off.

Meditation leads you into the awareness to stay uninvolved with your thought process. It helps you stay in the present moment, without being tossed to and fro into the past and future. Meditation alone can still your mind.

Nithyananda has revealed a  unique  meditation technique called Nithya Dhyan that one can explore!!

http://www.lifeblissmeditation.org/intro.htm

Twisting body into pretzel-like poses is simply that. It is not yoga.

People often think that yoga is all about physical exercise and breath control. They can be concluding this from the poses that a Yogi, practitioner of Yoga, maintains. The expertise with which a yogi performs and maintains the positions appears to them as yet another kind of kind of physical activity.

But this is the last thing Yoga was meant to be! It is a far cry from what yoga is all about. Yoga has many deeper levels. At every level, a marvelous and almost miraculous blending of the mind and the body takes place.

Let us watch our mind at work. It does not move in a linear progression. The thoughts are not connected to each other logically or sequentially. Thoughts jump from one idea to the next. One thought keeps us in the present, while the successive thought can be in future.

In an advanced yoga practitioner, the mind and the body are in balance and harmony. The regular practice of yoga leads us from the body into our mind. Intense practice of yoga leads us beyond the mind. It will lead us beyond the body and mind into a sate of our spirit where we become aware of the truth of our Existence.

Yoga, a Sanskrit word, is understood to mean Union. This union refers to the melting of human self with the divine or the Cosmic Power.

Truly speaking, Yoga does not mean Union, it means Uniting. Yoga is the process of Uniting, not the end result of Union.

The process of Uniting helps transcend one’s identification with the mind body system. A Yogi transcends the body and mind identification through a process of meditation, into a true awareness of his spiritual identity. His mind and body are perfectly in-tune with the vibrations and energies of the cosmos.

This awareness brings another welcome side effect—bliss! We now walk the path of bliss or Ananda while doing our Yoga. The ever blissful union of the cosmic energy with a human mind is Ananda Yoga.

The bliss that results from practice of Yoga is not a goal or end result that is aimed at. It is an experience of just walking the path of Yoga. When the path is right, the Yogi says, the destination you reach is always right, it is always blissful.

This is what we teach in our Nithya Yoga programs.

Nithyananda

Life Bliss Meditation

Meditation results in holistic health. It gives good health on the physical, mental and emotional levels. Specific health benefits reported by some who meditate are:

1. The stabilization of high and low blood pressure, blood sugar, body heat and heartbeat.

2. The balancing of mind/body rhythms.

3. Reduction of muscle tension, stronger bones, immunity from disease.

4. Cleansing – quicker elimination of toxins and body water.

5. Overcoming insomnia and improved quality of sleep.

6. Enhanced energy, increases work capacity

7. Longer life span – improved body metabolism and body cells with a longer life span.

8. Secretion of healthy body chemicals – increased secretion of natural anti-depressants, enhanced secretion of endorphins, the body’s ‘happy chemicals’

9. Relationships – Meditation inherently puts you in tune with yourself and others. The direct result of this is deeper, more meaningful interpersonal relationships with family, friends and with everyone you encounter in your daily life.

10. Intelligence – To work efficiently, one needs intelligence. Meditation ignites your innate intelligence making you more aware and sharp. The natural result of this is improved, efficient and effortless performance in whatever you do.

11. Creativity – Each of us holds within us an undiscovered treasure of talent and potential. Meditation reveals and helps you realize your inner talents and latent creativity.

12. Authenticity – Meditation allows you to touch base with the real you, and makes you realize your uniqueness. Self-confident then becomes a natural by-product.

13. Balance – Most of us live life as a roller-coaster ride, held in the sway of emotions like: worry, jealousy, discontentment, fear, anger, guilt etc. over which we have no control. Meditation enables you to be centered in yourself, have a solid inner balance and thus, be the master of your own self.

14. Relaxation, peace, bliss – A natural by-product of meditation is something we spend almost a lifetime trying to attain; inner relaxation and peace. With meditation, you automatically drop out of the vicious cycle of fear, greed and stress and enter the virtuous cycle of bliss.

15. Holistic spiritual growth- To measure intellect, we have IQ or Intelligence Quotient, which is measured by many standardized tests. Of late, another measure is gaining importance, especially in the corporate world, namely EQ or Emotional Quotient. However, the most important factor of our lives – inner satisfaction and fulfillment – is what matters at the end of the day. Meditation enhances this very important factor of life, SQ or Spiritual Quotient, besides also increasing IQ and EQ.

16. Life – As of now, our mental setup is rigid and reflects our personality Because of this self-image we carry in our minds, we face a lot of troubles in life and are not able to enjoy life completely Meditation simply reprograms the software of the mind so that we can live life completely.

17. Ultimate potential – You are like an airplane with the potential to fly, but you think you are an ox-cart because you have not actualized your potential. Meditation simply makes you realize and experience who you really are and the enormous capabilities you have been born with.

Meditation is just being blissful in the moment

Meditation is just being blissful in the moment. When you are at complete peace in the present moment, you are already in a state of meditation.

Recall any moment in your life when you have experienced extreme beauty: the sun rising suddenly from behind a mountain, or the first time you heard a lovely piece of music. Suddenly you became totally still, wordless. In the presence of the beauty you became spellbound, you couldn’t think any more. You were just silent, relaxed, in thoughtless awareness. You were completely dissolved in that beauty. That moment was meditation!

After a few moments your inner chatter started again. Your mind said, “What a beautiful sunrise!” The moment the words appeared, you were out of meditation! You can either think or meditate you can never do both.

Meditation is just being. It is experiencing the present moment without resistance.

The possibility to become a different conscious being is present only in human beings. Animals don’t have the potential to become enlightened, to become different conscious beings.

Another thing about meditation is, being playful meditation is a big adventure. To become serious about meditation is to miss the whole point. Celebrate meditation. Simply enjoy it.

Another aspect to meditation is to have patience. Don’t start worrying about the results the moment you start meditating.

If you are greedy for instant results, you actually prevent the process from settling down in your system, you yourself block the whole process.

Enjoy solitude. Give yourself a chance to experience your inner environment. When meditation becomes a part of you, bliss will flower naturally.