Yearly archive for 2016

Do you know that memory is the source of all good things and bad things?

In the 11th verse of Patanjali Yoga Sutra, he said that recalling of mental impressions of past events from the subconscious mind is memory. Memory is responsible for what you are, how you behave, and the way you live. The difference between you and another person, a doctor and a lawyer, a yogi and a man, is only memory. Memory is also responsible for both your remembrance and forgetfulness.

There are people who have a large quantity of memory but they can’t retrieve it with a sharp quality. There are people who have a sharp quality of retrieving memory, but they don’t have access to a large quantity of memory. Only those who are able to access a large storehouse of memory and retrieve precisely what they need, they become a leader. A leader is a person who can handle a large quantity of memory with a very sharp quality of remembrance.

In the outer world, when you handle more and more memories, intelligence and power will start happening in you. All scientific research can happen only based on memory, we need a memory to process all the analysis and achieve the result, then continue to do further R&D based on the results. This applies in all the fields such as medicine, construction, aviation, administration and execution, memory is the base material. However, in the inner world, the more you are relaxed from memories, the more energy of spontaneity will start happening in you.

If memory is used properly, retrieved properly, lived properly, memory brings so much joy and comfort. If it is not used properly, it can become a source of the greatest suffering for you. All your diseases and disturbances have sources in memory, this includes your physical problems because most of your physical disorders are from psychosomatic problems. Even these happen because you are unable to handle the memory. When it comes to outer world, you need to know how to handle more and more memory, whereas when it comes to the inner world, you need to know how to unclutch more and more from memory.

Not knowing how to handle memory not only creates problem at the young age, it creates very complicated problem in the old age like the old folks who can’t stop talking about their past or they just develop mental disorder like Alzheimer. You need to know that Alzheimer is very closely connected with a strong subconscious decision to forget certain memories due to pain and suffering.

So learning to handle memory in the correct way is the formula for a successful inner-world and outer-world life. Only the grace of an enlightened master can shower us with such sacred knowledge.

Paramahamsa Nithyananda, a living incarnation (fondly known as Swamiji) gave a powerful truth and technique. He said that only a person who feels completely secure can unclutch from his memory. Only a person who can unclutch from his memory can feel completely secure. He said that whenever you unclutch from memory, wherever you go, whatever you do, a tremendous feeling of security happening inside you and radiating around you. You radiate Mahima (grace) when you have unclutched from memory.

When you are not able to unclutch from memory, you will be constantly preparing your speech – what you should say, how you should say in response etc. You would have prepared at least 30 statements in your mind with the so-called ‘right response’ but the moment you meet the person, she just changes her third statement, and you are at a loss! Being too dependent on memory makes you dead, boring, lifeless. The truth is our schools and society teach us how to gather more and more memory, but they don’t teach us how to unclutch from them when we don’t need it and how to handle it correctly when you really need it. That knowledge was not taught to humanity, so much of memory is put inside our system such that it becomes a slow poison. We don’t know how to retrieve the information when we want it and sometimes we are overcrowded by it when we don’t want it.

One more important truth – when you learn the technique of unclutching, the quantity of memory available to you and the capacity to retrieve them – both just explode a few hundred times, without disturbing you. When you are clutched to certain memory with emotions, it is like having high-resolution pictures which take too much of your inner space. Unclutching is like converting the high-resolution files to word document so that retrieving the information becomes fast and easy. In addition, you will have more inner space for more information. Speaking from my own experience – I notice that the more I unclutch from the memory, the more capacity I have to handle more memory.

In essence, the secret to handle memory is to keep on unclutching from the memory so that you stop converting memory into high resolution files which crowd your inner space. Relaxing from memory brings you tremendous joy and peace. Namaste 😀

Source: 108 truth of Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda

In the last article, we understood the first level of nidra (sleep) – waking-sleep. The next level of sleep which human beings go through is dream-sleep. Just like the waking-sleep, there are also two types of sleep in the dream state: sleeping during thinking and sleeping during dreaming. The first thing you realise about your dreams is that in the dream state, you experience completely confused identities For example, you may have a dream that you are going to school with your colleague, the mixed identity, or you could have mixed two separate incidents which happened when you were ten years old and forty years old and see them together in one dream. This shows that when you are dreaming, there is a discontinuity which happens in the dream.

According to a living incarnation, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji), he said that ‘if you are able to be aware even while the dream continues, you will be able to use your dream to enrich your life. If you can master this art, your whole life will be totally different. You can straight away achieve whatever you want. Mastering your dream means being aware even while you are dreaming and not letting the disconnection or the pause happen while you dream.’

Do you know that the Aghoris are the people who master dreams? Aghori means ‘compassionate, soft’. Aghoris belongs to a great spiritual tradition in India which works only on dreams. They use dreams state to solve all their problems and to find out the mysteries of the planet earth and the Universe. The Aghoris believe that dreams are an extension of the waking state, so they would go and ask for forgiveness of a person in waking state even though the incident happened in their dream.

Another thing you need to know about deep sleep. Deep sleep is the time when you go back to the source which you created this body. Your body was create when your mother was fast asleep, the energy which was there inside your mother’s womb when she was fast asleep, in that space, you were created. Every night you fall asleep, you actually go back to that same energy, recreate your body by doing the repair work inside your system and feeling rejuvenated and come back to live the next day. So this sleep is no way going to lead you to anguish or pain. Those who suffer from insomnia, they are depriving themselves from this natural self-renewal capability from within.

Here’s the sacred secret – if you are not daydreaming or falling asleep during your waking state, your dreams and sleep will also be continuous. If you are able to maintain the continuous flow of awareness during waking state, you will also be able to maintain that continuity in the dream state.

How to master dreams?

Swamiji gave a powerful technique from Tantra which Patanjali also speaks about in Sadhana Pada and Vibhooti Pada in Yoga Sutra.

He said – Whatever makes you feel very pleasant – it could be something, someone – just remember that, alive inside you while you fall asleep. For example, if you feel very pleasant by remembering your master, you can meditate on him, connect with him and feel him. Feel him inside your inner space visually, alive. Just remember that when you lie down on your bed – alive, vivid, visually in multi-colour, 4-D and continue to be with that intense visualization till you fall asleep. In 10 days, you will see he is there continuously, you will see his form in the dream clearly in multi-colour. If you try this technique for 10 days, you will see that the vivid visualization will penetrate your dream state within 10 days and will continue to be there throughout your dream. It means that you have mastered that dream and created a continuity in the dream. You have mastered the knowledge of how to avoid dream-sleep – this is the technique to get out of dream-sleep.

If you continue to practise this technique for 3 months, you will start experiencing his presence and his energy in the deep sleep state as well. The moment you wake up, you will know you have been with your master throughout, even though you do not remember his form, the colour of his dress etc. You know you were with him and you have been with him the whole night. This is exactly what Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita – ‘A Yogi is a person who does not sleep when everybody sleeps’. It means you are awake throughout, your consciousness is awake throughout.

If you try this technique step-by-step, you will master waking-sleep, dream-sleep, and deep-sleep. There will be a continuity in all the 3 states of consciousness, then you experience the 4th state – Turiya state. If you are continuous, unbroken, conscious in all the 3 states, what you experience is called the 4th state – Turiya. Being continuous in the 3 states will lead you to joy, otherwise it will lead you to anguish and pain. One more important sacred secret: that continuity itself is a deep restful awareness that you don’t need any separate rest. This is the ultimate break you can give to yourself. The continuity is the ultimate brake from sleeping, dreaming and waking. Only when you can break your break, only then it is a real break! Living in the 4th state – Turiya is living enlightenment (Jivanmukti).

In essence, to experience the ultimate state – the Turiya state, we have to start transcending the waking state from all kinds of daydreaming and the lack of continuity in the dream state and deep sleep state. Then you simply fall into Samadhi – sleeping with awareness. Namaste 😀

Source – 108 truth of Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda