“A small and beautiful story from Ramakrishna, the great Bharatn master…”

A small and beautiful story from Ramakrishna, the great Bharatn master and mystic. Once upon a time there lived a poor woodcutter near a forest. He used to cut the trees in the forest and sell them as firewood for his livelihood. One day an enlightened master suddenly appeared before him and asked him to “ Go deep “. The man went deeper into the forest and discovered a copper mine. By mining the copper he earnt enough for a very comfortable life. After some time, the enlightened master appeared again and repeated what he had said earlier, “Go deep “. The man went still deeper into the forest and this time discovered a silver mine. He mined the silver and now became a rich man. A few months later , the master appeared again and repeated the words, “Go deep”. Intrigued, he did as bid and went deeper into the forest to discover a gold mine . By mining the gold he was now an immensely rich man. The master appeared for the fourth time and predictably said, “Go deep” . No longer wondering he followed the instructions to find a treasury of diamonds. He was now as rich as a king. When the master appeared a fifth time, he forestalled the master before he could speak and asked him not to ask him to go any deeper, as he done all that and achieved everything that any person could possibly wish for. The master simply laughed and repeated, “ Go Deep “. It was then that the woodcutter realized the true implication of the master’s words and began to look within himself to finally realise the ultimate wealth, Gnanalakshmi or enlightenment.

The story is simple but has a significant meaning; when you start digging into the minefield of your mind, you begin to achieve some useful things in the outer world and also some extraordinary powers. But in the end , you achieve something which is beyond the comprehension of your mind. In the initial level, you achieve the Shakthi to convert your dreams into reality. When you go deeper you achieve the Buddhi to realise that whatever you think is reality is nothing but your dream. Two things ; first, converting your dream into reality and second, realizing that the reality is but a dream.

Now , about the Shakthi to convert your dreams into reality. A doctor was telling me ,” You swamis have the Sankalpashakthi “(The power to translate dreams into reality ).I tell you that Sankalpashakthi is not the quality of a Swami , an enlightened person. Translating dreams into reality is just one path. Realising that whatever you think is a dream, is the real path. Shakthi and Buddhi ; the former to give you the power to achieve your dreams and the latter to realise that the reality is your dream. A person becomes a swami only when he realizes that whatever is termed reality is nothing but a dream. A person who has Sankalpashakthi , or the power to convert his dreams into reality, could be called a Yogi . But only when he realizes that the reality is but a dream would be become enlightened; when the experience of the ultimate happens to him.

From the above story it is apparent that as the woodcutter went deeper into the outer world, he kept reaping the benefits of that world. The power of the mind is such that it can help fulfill any desire .But the master in asking him to “Go deep” is trying to convey that there is a world beyond what he is seeking . He is inspired to go further till he realizes the ultimate in himself. The Shakthis serve as beacon lights to travel the path of the outer world but this path itself was not the end.

Patanjali speaks beautifully of the Siddhis, or the extraordinary powers that meditation can achieve by exploring the mental powers of man. Let us look into the aspect of powers that can be achieved by working on the mind, or rather, with the mind. He describes the word, Samyama ( concentrating the mind completely on a particular object ). The word ‘concentrating’ is itself intimidating, as something not within reach of the normal person . Let us analyse therefore, what concentration means , with an open mind.

We say we cannot concentrate because we often choose the wrong object to concentrate on. A small story – an elderly lady once went to Ramakrishna for help as she found that she could not concentrate on anything . He asked her to what she was attached so much that her concentration was affected. She replied that her attachment to her grandson was the cause of the disturbance . Ramakrishna then advised her to concentrate solely on her grandson and not to think of him as a disturbance. By doing so , her concentration would become a power by itself , so much so ,that it could be wielded as a separate energy. An object for concentration is required only in the initial stage ; later this would not be necessary and one could divert the concentration into oneself.

Another person approached Ramakrishna and said he had a drinking problem and wondered if this technique would work for him ! Unfazed, Ramakrishna advised him that if he concentrated hard enough on his problem it would simply disappear . The people were shocked as to how a Paramahamsa could advise a person to indulge intensely in drinking ? ( laughs). But to everybody’s surprise the person returned after a week to say that he could now not drink anymore .

It is important to understand the theory of Karma . Anything half done , leaves a Samskara ( hangover ) in your being . Anything not lived fully leaves an imprint or Samskara in your being , which time and again pulls you, attracts you to travel the same path and fulfill it. This is a very important concept of Yoga which explains the cause of addiction . In my own experience of having worked with lakhs of people individually, atleast a few thousand cases of addiction have been healed by meditation. The basic truth about addiction is something lived vaguely, of not having lived fully or with the whole being. This creates a Samskara which pulls one back to fulfill the experience.

Any emotion lived intensely simply liberates one of that emotion, be it anger , fear, desire to eat, attachment to any object or person .One is liberated fully of anything when he lives it fully. If a person keeps going back to a problem time and again, it only means that he or she has not lived out the problem fully. Patanjali has propounded what may be termed as a law in human behaviour : When we live, half our mind is somewhere else When I first read this , I wondered how this could possibly be , for, a man who is addicted to sweets would surely eat more of it. Patanjali says beautifully,“The more the quantity, the less the quality “. The moment the quality of enjoyment of any object increases, its quantity decreases in direct proportion, of its own accord . Therefore, it is the quality that needs to be increased.

Ramakrishna asks an addict to concentrate intensely on drinking to the exclusion of everything else. I have given this technique to many people who are addicted to smoking and drinking. They simply dropped the habit, or rather, the habit dropped them. Drinking and smoking can happen only when we are unconscious. It is not possible for a conscious person to blow smoke into his own system. The moment one becomes aware of the harm these habits do to his system, he automatically drops it, rather, the habit leaves him. I tell you this from the conviction and experience of having worked with a vast cross-section of humanity.

We have a wrong idea of concentration because we choose the wrong objects. One of the noteworthy predicaments of the mind is dilemma. People coming to the ashram to attend discourses ask me if they ought to attend the weekend workshop. When I say yes, they immediately bring forth reasons or excuses as to why they cannot attend it. But if I ask them to go ahead with their work, they again begin to talk of the experiences they would be miss in the workshop if they did not attend it ! The mind is such that if you were to sit on one side, the other side immediately argues why you should sit on its side. The nature of the mind is dilemma which is why when you choose an object for concentration, you are always in a dilemma as to which object to choose. This is why Patanjali says “Concentrate on whatever gives you a beautiful, comfortable feeling “. I feel he is the first and last person to offer a solution to the problem of concentration; concentrate on that whatever gives you a feeling of comfort or relaxes you. People are shocked and say,” Swamiji, how can this be ? Are we not supposed to concentrate on the Divine, on what is right ? “ Patanjali says that the moment you concentratre on anything, the object of your concentration simply disappears. Even if your notion or idea is wrong, the moment you concentrate on it intensely, the object disappears. It is the concentration itself which is important, not the object of concentration . That is why Ramakrishna says that when you have concentration and Bhakthi, even a stone becomes God and blesses you. When you don’t have concentration, even if God Himself appears before you, you would probably ask him his id card !

There is a beautiful Sutra the Narada Bhakthi Sutra which says that to whom you surrender is not important. It is surrender itself that is important ; you can even surrender to a stone and you will see how God speaks to you through the stone. Vivekananda , in his commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras , says that the object of your concentration is not important ; the concentration itself is enough. He adds that all your prayers to God does only one thing ;that of awakening your own inner potential energy. When you pray intensely , banish the thought that your prayers are heard somewhere and someone blesses you. Your own inner potential energy is awakened and it showers its blessing on you in the form of God, irrespective of what form you worship.

Vivekananda reveals that when you pray intensely the Kundalini Shakti inside you is awakened and this energy showers you with blessings and guides you. So it is the concentration that is of paramount importance. You may concentrate on whatever gives you happiness. Patanjali says that once you master the art of concentration or Samyama, the object of your concentration would disappear and the light beam of concentration could simply be turned into you. He goes on to say that it does not take years or months to achieve Samyama ; a few weeks are enough. Any person with normal, average intelligence can achieve Samyama in 21 days. All one needed to do was to choose the object towards which his mind automatically flowed.

To be alive , attachment to something was essential , be it a house, God , money ,comfort , relationship and so on . Begin concentrating or meditating on that for 21 days. Patanjali is the first and last master who liberates us from the problem of concentration. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a struggle at all. It becomes a struggle only when your mind is in a dilemma. Another technique : tell your mind not to remember the object of your concentration and you would not be able to forget it. For instance, if you want to spread any secret , whisper it to a few middle aged Bharatn women who are jobless and swear them to secrecy ; in less than an hour the whole city would know of it ! Our minds are no different.

There is a beautiful story explaining the workings of the mind . A man wanted the Siddhi or extraordinary powers of reading others’ minds, walking on water and flying in the air : people who seek such powers are invariably asking for trouble ! He went to a master in the Himalayas and requested him to grant this power. The master advised him not to ask for such powers but seek enlightenment instead. The man insisted that he wanted only the powers. The master relented and gave him a medicine to take but without remembering a monkey when he took it. If he did so, he had to take a bath and repeat the process. To his utter chagrin the man found that he could not take the medicine without remembering a monkey ; so much so, he was engaged in constantly taking baths . He was reduced to a state where he could think of nothing but monkeys ! He returned to the master and begged him to take the medicine back and liberate him from monkeys ! This is the way of the mind .

If Patanjali’s instructions appear to be paradoxical, it must be understood that the mind itself is paradoxical. It is like using a thorn to remove the thorn already in your mind. Patanjali was a person who completely understood the working of the mind. That is why he asks one to concentrate his mind on any object that attracts him. After research on this subject for many years, it is my own conclusion that in concentrating on any object it drops or disappears , but leaves the power of concentration with you like a beam of light. This beam of light can be directed on any subject for it to simply open itself to you . In Patanjali’s words, what one needs to do is create the light beam. The beam could then be directed on any subject to know it completely . If this can be achieved, it is possible to achieve anything in this mortal world that is worth achieving.

Vivekananda says that by studying a handful of clay intently it is possible to know about all other types of clay on earth. Similarly the moment you concentrate on any object, the object itself dissolves leaving the beam of concentration with you and that is enough for you to direct it towards any subject.

In Mahabharata there are 3 Gitas – the Bhagavat Gita and the Anugita , both Bhagavan Sri Krishna ; the third and important one is called Vyadagita , the song of a butcher. This Gita is delivered by a butcher, a man who is considered a sinner or a Chandala . It is surprising how this is delivered: There lived a great Yogi ( a person with special powers but not enlightened , the state between the normal and enlightened state and therefore a highly egoistic state) who was once meditating under a tree in a forest. A bird sitting on the tree , relieved itself and the droppings fell on him. Disturbed, he opened his eyes and directed his angry gaze at the bird. The bird was killed by the power of his gaze. Here it must be noted that in real meditation it is inner silence that is necessary. Egoistic people like the Yogi who do not have the inner silence, create outer silence to the discomfiture of all around them.

The Yogi is proud of what he has done and his ego is now on a high. He goes to a house and begs for food chanting Bhavati Briksham Dehi (“ May I have some food “ ). The lady of the house calls out from inside the house , asks him to wait as she was serving her husband. The Yogi is upset that the lady, instead of giving food to a great yogi like himself, should be serving her husband instead. He was only thinking these thoughts when the lady’s voice is heard again as if in answer ,” I am not like the bird to be killed so easily . Your powers may be used against birds but not with me , so relax ! “ . Shocked , he apologises to the lady when she comes out to give him food but wants to know how she had divined his thoughts and about what had transpired in the forest. She replied, “ You achieved only Shakthi , I have achieved Buddhi”. He begs her to teach him Buddhi whereupon she directs him to the butcher for his lesson.

The butcher explains how he himself had achieved Buddhi, the ultimate experience. By concentrating intensely on his job he could achieve Samyama and the moment he did so, the object disappeared leaving the beam of concentration in its wake. He now realizes that the light beam could be directed towards anything and thus the truth was revealed to him.

In a way the Vyadagita can be considered to be higher than the Bhagavad Gita because in the latter you receive instructions from God Himself. And you know God can never be practical for he is so loved and pampered ! But the Vyada is a working man earning his livelihood from day to day. Such a person’s experience is therefore more practical than Krishna’s. This is why the basic qualification of a Master in Bharat is that he should have traversed the length and breadth of the country on foot. This is a basic necessity and the only way he could gain an insight into the practical problems of the people , by seeing for himself how the people really lived their lives. Only when he knew and understood this could he teach them . Most difficulties could be attributed to people who could teach but who lacked the practical knowledge of what they taught. They taught the academic knowledge they had learnt but seldom with a view to benefit the people they taught. This is why in Bharat the qualification for any religious preacher was that he should have wandered atleast a few years from city to city, village to village, begging from house to house before he could teach or preach.

I wandered for 9 years doing my research towards enlightenment and spirituality and not contributing anything useful to society. I had taken a vow not to touch money or carry the next meal with me. But the culture of Bharat is such that I was supported for all these 9 years, with respect and honour. This is something not imaginable in any other country. In other countries I would have been called homeless but in Bharat I was respected as a Parivarajaka Sanyasi. This is also why so many enlightened masters are born time and again in Bharat. Bharat is to an enlightened master what an incubator is to a premature baby.This is why the Vyada is in a way, superior to Krishna.

Patanjali says that it takes thousands of techniques to realise the different energies , powers and Shakthis of the mind. He shows how the mind can be a minefield. Amusing as it may sound, it is possible to achieve anything with closed eyes. He not only declares but proves it.

The outer world is but a projection of the inner world and it is the eye which projects it. Whatever is visible as the outer world is but a projection. For instance, if there was a scene in movie you did not like, you would not be able change it by trying to clear the screen ; instead, what you needed to do was switch off the projector or change the reel. Likewise, our frustration and depression was owing to our attempt to manipulate the screen, not the projector; when we try without success to change things in the outer world . You fantasise of holidaying on a beautiful beach in Hawaii and imagine it to be the ultimate in bliss but when it really happens, your thoughts are not of the beach but your office and deadlines ! I often tell people: If you sit in the house and worry, it is homework. If you sit in the office and worry, it is work and if you sit on the beach and worry, it is vacation ! The mind is the same, only the location is different. How can you change the mental state by changing the place ? We are engaged all the time in changing the status, not the state.

We need to work to change the state , not the status. When you begin to change the state, you would be working with the projector and would make progress , but if you changed your status it would be as working with the screen. Changing your wife, house or car is like working with the screen and does not help you. Changing your mind and therefore your fantasies, is the only way. This is why Patanjali says that it is possible to achieve anything simply by closing the eyes. This naturally poses the question : how can one live by just closing the eyes ? I assure you that if you learn the art of sitting with closed eyes , you would earn ten times what you earn now ! The method and creativity would find expression within you. All negative energies like exhaustion, depression and worries disappear. You would become far more effective in the outer world than you are now. We never trust ourselves to transform ourselves.

As a chain we always try to judge our strength by our weakest link. But this logic is applicable only to a chain, not to yourself . We disrespect ourselves by constantly judging ourselves by past mistakes and decisions . Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi was once asked the qualification for enlightenment. Bhagavan replied simply that being alive was the only qualification. If we are alive , it is enough to concentrate and achieve the Samyama. To sum up in a few words. First , do not create a dilemma on what object to concentrate. Next, concentrate your mind on what naturally makes you happy and comfortable. The moment you achieve concentration, the object of your concentration will disappear leaving behind the light beam which is what you must pursue to achieve. In Zen Buddhism they enlighten people by archery; concentration by aiming, directing the concentration to within themselves and ultimately gaining enlightenment.

Above all, the one message you need to convince yourself of– that you can concentrate . You have convinced yourself that you cannot concentrate ; you need to de-hypnotise yourself by saying that you can. Carry this message in your life. Let us pray to the great master Patanjali, the Divine energy to bless us all with the Ultimate Experience , Eternal Bliss, Nithyananda. Thank you.