“### The Secret Of Success (Vetriyin Ragasiyam) – Vishuddhi”

### The Secret Of Success (Vetriyin Ragasiyam) – Vishuddhi

Comparison and jealousy lock this chakra. When we exhibit our individuality without caring about others, and express fully our Shakthi (capacity), uniqueness and creativity, this chakra opens.

When we are not able to bear others’ excellence, we get jealous. Comparison is the seed and jealousy is the fruit. Comparison and jealousy are actually non-existent. We create them ourselves and talk endlessly on how to overcome them. This concept can be clearly understood by looking into the very name of this chakra that is Vishudhi. Shudhi means pure. Ashudhi means Impure. Vshudhi means beyond both pure and impure. The name therefore suggests that chakra can never get impure and hence never needs to be cleansed. Comparison is like a shadow without an object. There is no basis for the concept of comparison.

Anyway, let us look at the major areas of comparison amongst people. All points of comparison can be brought under the major heads namely money, status, beauty and knowledge. In Zen Buddhism, there is a meditation technique wherein any problem is looked into clearly and steadily. The problem then is said to dissolve automatically. Buddha went to his routine lecture session one day with a kerchief in his hand. The kerchief had a knot in it. He asked his students if any of them would come forward to untie the knot. One student came forward and untied it easily. The technique is this – you first have to look at how the knot is tied and then it will become obvious how to untie it. Every problem is pregnant with the solution like a woman is with the baby.

When our ego is hit, we shrink like a mango. Poverty itself doesn’t trouble us. The thought that we are poor troubles us. People tell me to release cassettes and books on my ASP discourses. They say that they will practice my teachings by repeatedly listening to them. Actually, if you understand clearly and consciously just once what I say, you will automatically practice it. Listen to this example: To know that fire burns, do you have to put up posters in every room? Will you forget that fire burns and touch fire if these posters do not repeatedly remind you about it? No! In the same way, if you understand my statements correctly, you can take back with you a torch of gnana (true knowledge) to guide you for a lifetime.

This microphone here has a positive existence and therefore I can remove it from this room and place it in the next room. Now imagine that there is darkness in this room. Can I remove it if I want to? Can I take it to another room? No! The reason is that darkness has a negative existence. It does not really exist. If I bring light into the room, the darkness will automatically cease to exist. In the same way, thoughts in you such as ‘I am ugly’, ‘I am rich’ etc all have a negative existence. Jealousy has negative existence. You cannot deal with it directly. Even if you tell yourself repeatedly not to feel jealous, you cannot overcome it. If you queue up all the people in the world in ascending order of money, where would you be? You will be somewhere in the middle! You will not even able to count the number of people on either side of you in the queue. Now, with your thoughts, you have to decide if you are going to look at the queue in front of you and feel jealous or look at the queue behind you and feel relaxed and grateful to God! It is in your hands.

Never in history has a jealous person truly succeeded. A man was leading in a 1000-meter race. After running 200 metres, he looked back and saw that the rest are after him and he ran on. After 500 meters, he looked back again and was happy that he was still leading and ran on. Every few meters, he did the same thing and finally won the race. If the man had not looked back and concentrated only on running faster, he would have won the race in a much shorter span of time. In life too, our concentration is always on others and not fully on our progress. We never fully live our own lives. Mahaveerar says ”When we come into this world, we bring with us all the shakthi (energy) needed for our lifetime. God does not send us empty-handed.” We spend this energy on watching others’ activities and others’ desires. When you are at home your mind will say ‘It is enough if I have a home and a car for myself.” Your mind will be relaxed at this thought. When you step out in your car and stop by at a traffic light, the Mercedes Benz that pulls up alongside your car with a jolt will jolt the relaxed state of your mind. You again start working out others’ desires.

Albert Einstein, a famous scientist belonging to the last century was in his deathbed. His junior scientists asked him what he would like to be born as if he had a re-birth. They expected him to come out with desires of being born as a greater scientist in a field other than atomic theory or something to that effect. Einstein replied “I would like to be born as a plumber. Initially, I wanted to be a plumber, but I was deceived by the fame and status of the scientists and hence chose to become a scientist. Today, I have everything except satisfaction of having lived. I gave many truths to man but deceived my own life.” This is a classic example of how we should start living our own desires and lives instead of our neighbors’. When you want something, think whether it is for your own sake or because your neighbor has it. Drop the so-called prestige problems. Live in your own way and die peacefully with full satisfaction even if it were in a platform; it is better than dying a prolonged death in a marble house in an air-conditioned room on a six-inch high bed.

We will never meet failure if we live our lives by competing with ourselves. Win yourself with yourself, never with others. Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in your own progress. A great problem in the rat race is that even if you win you are only a rat! Lock yourself in a room and analyze how much of time and energy you waste in comparison with others; more than 60% I am sure. We talk of conserving petrol, water and electricity. What about conserving our own Energy?

Listen to this story of Buddha’s: One man was doing rigorous penance in a jungle for God to appear. God condescended and appeared before him. He told him to ask for what he wanted. The man replied that he was a landlord and had lost all his wealth and that he wished to become wealthy again. God said that the following day, if the man ran from dawn to dusk, all the area covered by him would be his. The Man was happy. The next day the man started running even before dawn. He ran as fast as he could. Close to noon, hunger beckoned but he didn’t pay heed and kept running. Early in the evening, thirst and fatigue gripped him but he was goaded on by the thought of the neighboring landlord who owned many acres of land. A little before sunset, he felt giddy and weak but managed a few more steps by merely thinking of the neighboring landlord, but faltered and fell dead. This is how we all live our lives. We run the race without feeling any true satisfaction, without even stopping to think why we are running! Shankaracharya describes this as “thatha kim, thatha kim…” meaning “what next, what next…”

Buddha says to watch the Monkey trainer instructing the monkey. He holds a stick in his hand and shouts ‘Dance Rama! Dance Rama!” and the monkey dances. He then shouts “ Turn cartwheels Rama! Turn cartwheels Rama!” and the monkey turns cartwheels. In this same way, the Maya Shakthi (The power of illusion) uses a stick called ‘Comparison’ to run our lives.

We have everything we need for our lives but still feel that we are missing something. Here’s another story of Buddha’s: A King came to Buddha and asked “Please explain to me what gnana (true knowledge) is. By the way, why do all these Buddha stories revolve around kings? Well, an ordinary man would not have gotten past Dharma (Justice), Artha (***) and Kama (lust) and hence will go to Buddha mostly to deal with these and not to deal with true knowledge. A King would have gotten past these 3 given the pompous life that a King normally lives and hence will go to Buddha in search of the missing factor that is true knowledge. Back to the story, Buddha replied “Go to my garden and see the cyprus plant in my garden. It is a gnyani (enlightened with true knowledge). The king went and took a look at the plant but could not understand the message. Buddha explained that the cyprus plant was next to a rose plant but never aspired even for one day to become a rose plant. Similarly, the rose plant never ever aspired to become the cyprus plant. They just attended to their own duties of growing and blossoming everyday. If Man had been the cyprus plant, he would have compared himself with the rose and felt jealous at the attention that the latter was getting from people. Similarly, if he were the rose, he would have looked at the cyprus enviously thinking how peaceful the latter was without the torture of getting plucked by people all day!

Ramana Maharishi says “The mind is like a kabalam” (what Lord Shiva holds in his hand). It absorbs everything fed to it and says ”what next…?” A wall clock in a shop will look very attractive and will lure you to it. Once you purchase it and place it in your home, it will be left without care and covered by dust no later than the fourth day of purchasing it. The mind would be caught up with “what next…?” How do we overcome this? In the story of the two plants, they are able to prosper because they use all their energy on their own growth. They don’t spend any of their energy on the other’s growth. Likewise, you too stop running the race with others! Run only with yourself. This is the only way to acquire peace that cannot be disturbed by others. If you know fully and consciously about yourself, you will never get disturbed by what others say about you. If you get disturbed, it means that there is a problem within you. There is no such thing called Society. Society is the name which we give to our own weakness. The sky is the limit because there is no such thing as the sky! Expansion is Life and Contraction is Death.

Pathanjali says, “If you can bend 6 inches today, try bending 6 ½ inches tomorrow”. A Shakthi (Energy) in you will grow and become a force. The Vishuddhi chakra is a storehouse of a great treasure that is Energy. The key and the lock to this are with us. When we don’t know that what we have is a key, it is no more a key, it is just an iron rod! A small story to elucidate this point: In a beautiful place called Almora in the Himalayas, there is a small ashram with a few huts for those who wish to meditate. This place is surrounded by ice-capped mountains and is known to be frequented by tigers at night. I was there for a short while during my days of wandering. When the head of the ashram senses the tigers, he would ring a bell and the Sanyasis would get into their respective huts and close the doors behind them. On one occasion, the bell rang and all of us got into our respective huts. The next day, the head came around to see if we were all OK and found that one of the huts was closed and the Sanyasi inside was shouting through the window that he couldn’t open the door. Four of us got in through the window and found that he had placed a grinding stone against the door which he now couldnt move. We jointly nudged and moved the stone away to open the door. It suddenly struck us how the man might have moved the stone single-handedly against the door in the first place? He was more surprised than us and he replied “Moved it? I simply lifted it and placed it!” When he had heard the call of the tiger, he simply lifted the stone to place against the door that’s all. There is a tremendous amount of energy in our Vishuddhi and we don’t know how to open it out. The key to open it is this meditation technique that we are going to practice now.