Obviously, Guru or a help is needed in cases when one is living in a hope that there is somewhere some solution outside of my day to day mundane living capable of changing my life to one in harmony, to enlightenment, to liberation of some sort. But what if one lives AS IS in complete awareness? What is he going to hope for? And why?

If I see I’m erring, I stop erring. If I’m bleeding, I stop my bleeding. Need I wait for any outside help when help is already with me? To live without any hope is the only rational choice man faces – there is simply no other choice.

The ‘I’ that dreams is shaped and confirmed by my dream society. In my dream, the ‘I’ has a society with its goals and suggestions: Life has to have a meaning, a purpose, a goal; my dream society in my sleep state with its impressive knowledge knows what that goal is, how to reach that goal, how to be happy, how to be powerful, how to be enlightened, how to be liberated, etc. In my slumber, I dream all these on and on without actually terminating my slumber; and my life continues endlessly in that format until I drop dead.

A dreaming ‘I’ has all kind of needs: psychological, physical and social. One of these needs is the need to have a guru, someone that would teach us how to live, how to be free, etc. But how does that guru inform us of his teaching? You may say ‘A’, and if I’m not totally resonant with you I’ll hear ‘B’, which you might miss altogether unless you are totally resonant with me. How do you communicate with shadows in a dream state? If I’m already open to you, am I not open to this ‘me’ already? And if I’m open to myself, do I need to continue with this charade?

Only when I’m totally with myself, when I’m up and awake, could I possibly know with certainty if I need any guru or any manual for happiness or liberation. And if my waking up is conditional to having any guru, surely I’m still in my dream state, am I not? My waking up needs to be totally dependent on ‘intelligence’, if any, and that too has to have its own movement, own momentum without any footing in the ubiquitous society that defines ‘me’. Guru, therefore, is a concoction of my petty mind; so long it remains embedded in its own design how could it be even free to see with clarity whether or not one needs Guru at all?

Saumen

We can’t try to analyse the thought that we haven’t understood by thinking about it but , we have to use the observation of the present mind to look at the thought and understand it as *though* it were a situation at present.

We think because we haven’t understood the situation or the thing that we are thinking. If we can sit and give some time to see what is that thought and what is that i haven’t understood. While understanding one thought, the power of observation and understanding comes out and then understanding happens for other thoughts without much effort. Anger, violence, fear,.. are are interrelated, understanding one helps to understand the other.

We can’t try to analyse the thought that we haven’t understood by thinking about it but , we have to use the observation of the present mind to look at the thought and understand it as thought it were a situation at present.

As we need to give full attention to that thought which was not understood, we need to be free of other routine tasks for that 5 minutes or 50 minutes or 5 hours, whatever is required for understanding that thought.

I think that one of the reasons why our thinking is so flawed stems largely from the fact that we really don’t have a good sense of who we are as human beings. We often think of ourselves as separate, and, puny forms – when in fact – the universe is folded within us.

And, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it: “we are not human beings of having a spiritual experience, we are – in fact – spiritual beings having a human experience.” Unfortunately, there are people whose flawed thinking will not allow them to appreciate this manifest truth. With clear thinking, one can see from the context of the sun, there is only a continuous steam of light, or, one could say that there is only and always day, and, never night. While from the context of the earth – there is day and night. Only clear and rigorous thinking will allow to see this simply and manifest truth, yet, it seems to be most hidden! Hence: “the context is decisive!”

As such, whenever the yield that derives from thinking seems to threaten one sense of him/herself – then, human beings tend to selectively disassociate from that seemingly nihilistic or reductionist thinking, and, sticks to the one view that gives them a sense of perpetuity.

In the end then – one’s concept of oneself – significantly informs one’s ability for clear and flawless thinking. The foregoing then are my thoughts at this theme at this time!

To live in relationship implies living right now with all the intensity, care and understanding. If I’m in relation with you, what is it that binds us now at this very present? Obviously, it cannot be the memory of the past or the thoughts of future in terms of success and failures, but right now being together, listening to each other, caring for each other, celebrating each other for no other reason but because we are. Sure, there might be a past, but if I’m disturbed by it I’d still be marooned in my past, I’d be missing this current NOW with all its nuances, textures, smell, laughter and tears. Therefore, to LIVE is to give oneself in generously without condition, without constraints, without any baggage. This is what LOVE is. It is synonymous with LIFE because it is not caught in the snare of time.

LOVE is freedom. One cannot try to become free, one cannot intend to be free – one has to be free. There is no becoming in LOVE or LIFE, either you are in LOVE, and hence, living, or you are not. In freedom, there is no room for comparison, for violence, for reminiscing the past, for dreaming about the future, except LIVING. Therefore, living implies compassion, implies empathy, implies kindness, forgiveness without condition. And only then a relationship fosters like a tender young plant getting nourishment and water from the soil encouraging it to grow.

Often enough we are too hard on ourselves. We think that a relationship has to match some ideal we need to strive for. But as long as there is an ideal beckoning us, we are trapped in a formula losing all our sensitivity and all our love. In following an ideal there is no joy, no originality, no spontaneity, no thriving in the madness of living, no rejoicing in the silence that a being confers. LOVE and LIVING are all these. A plastic flower, however beautiful, cannot cast its perfume to all and sundry, but a naturally grown flower would do so without any reserve because that’s what it is meant to do. And in being what it is, it doesn’t particularly care for anything else – it just does what it does best!

Both these issues are ego related: they either inflate or deflate our ego depending on what emerges. All of us are well-aware of the play of our ego, our little “I”, our little “self” as we play this game over and again to please ourselves or hurt our adversaries. A more cunning ego might even deflect its barrage of criticisms by erecting some excuse to escape them (the dog ate my homework) or blaming someone else instead for them (it was your fault really).

Ego seeks pleasure to continue. It creates its own universe continuously, and in that created universe it selects, it chooses outcomes, dramas. Consider an old tale depicting an event at the court of Emperor Akbar, the Mughal Emperor of India. At the urge of his Emperor, the rumor has it, the courtier Birbal demonstrated how to shorten a given straight line already drawn on the sand without ever touching it. To touch it would be to own it, to be responsible for it, to care for it. But the Emperor was adamant: Could it be shortened without ever touching it? The courtier drew a longer line just underneath the original one and claimed the job accomplished. Surely, in terms of the longer line the original line appeared now pitifully short and wanting; the Emperor was happy witnessing Birbal’s burst of intelligence yet one more time, he decided to reward his courtier for this gratifying demonstration of ingenuity.

And this is the point of Birbal’s story! We often discredit or criticize others in order to appear larger than life in front of others even though all these creations are totally mental. Mind creates poles of pleasure and pain, and mind moves within these poles creating further eddies thinking that they are, in fact, actual and, therefore, need to be responded with more movements of mind. Thus, our ego is sustained and nurtured by its own movement creating meaning when there is none, creating reality when all are self-composed.

So what can we do? We need to see our ego at work from all different angles without any judgment. Only then it could be truly exposed in its entirety. Perhaps, only then we can say with a joyous smile: Nyah! I had enough of it already.

Let’s assume that it’s true. In that case, the PAST bears all the responsibilities for the quality of PRESENT and FUTURE. Correct? If PAST is studded with misfortunes so would be the PRESENT and the FUTURE. But on which PAST should the blame be posted? The PAST that I see to be the source of all problems is itself a product of some other pasts earlier. And, if we continue this way, the fault or reward lies with the first initial PAST. Where is in this flow any possibility for any one to be redeemed? If I am bad, blame it to my gene. And if I’m bad I’ll remain bad for the rest of the world no matter what I do because any doing would be predicated by the texture of my past. Do we see the difficulty in it?

To say PRESENT is sandwiched between PAST and FUTURE, we are saying PRESENT is different from these two. If it is different, surely PAST cannot affect PRESENT. If PRESENT is a continuity of the same PAST, all there is a PAST without any PRESENT. So what would it be? Again, we are in a dicey state.