"Shedding the personality"

Right now, whatever you call as ‘yourself’ is simply a certain formation of the mind you have collected. It is a certain type of information in your mind. When you say, “I’m a good person,” “I’m a bad person,” “I am haughty,” “I am meek,” or whatever you may say, all those things are simply certain formations of the mind, or in other words, it is just past accumulation. You simply live through your past. If the past is taken away, most people are just lost. Everything depends on the past. It is the previous moment which rules everything. This moment is not important. As long as the personality is important, it simply means the previous moment is important. This present moment is not important, because the personality belongs to the past.

In this moment you really have no personality, do understand this. The personality that you carry is a dead thing. When you’re carrying a dead body over your shoulders, you can’t walk very far. With a dead body, which way can you head? Only to the burial ground, isn’t it? If you carry a dead body for too long, you will have to bear with terrible smells. Your personality, the stronger it is, the more odoriferous it is. You can go far in life only when you can leave your past. This is like a snake shedding its skin. Do you know how a snake sheds its skin? One moment it is a part of its body, the next moment it sheds its skin and just goes on without turning back. If every moment one is like a snake leaving the skin behind, only then there is growth. Only a person who does not carry the previous moment to this moment, only that person is free from everything, and that quality will be felt everywhere. Within a few moments of meeting you, people will trust you to the extent that they would not even trust their parents or husbands or wives, simply because you don’t carry the burden of the past with you. If you carry the past with you, then you will also smell like anybody else. The whole world stinks with personalities. Everybody has his own strong smell or personality. These are the various stenches in the world, and they keep clashing all the time. When one does not carry this odour, one can cross over this existence. One not only passes through this world effortlessly, one will pass through the very process of life and death effortlessly. This person crosses the ocean of samsara without any effort. What looks like a great effort for somebody else will be happening for this person without any effort. Everything just simply happens.

There may have been some moments in your life when you felt true compassion towards something or somebody. In those moments, all your personality, who you are, what you are, everything would have melted. Nothing would have been there. You are simply there in that moment. 

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

SOURCE: CHENNAI ONLINE
LINK:http://archives.chennaionline.com/health/yoga/2006/11yoga113.asp
LINK: http://www.ishafoundation.org/

"The snake and ladder of life"

Whatever the past karma, it is like this: let us say, until the age of 30 you earn 10 million rupees Now you can either squander it or make it grow. In the past, you might have created some riches within you. In this life you may either add to it or squander it; but definitely some quality of that will be there in your life, though in unconsciousness it may go to waste. So because of your spiritual practices, those riches may manifest now in terms of material comfort, like a good house, the right kind of atmosphere, or maybe good people around you. In spite of all this, you may not make use of it and just become complacent. That is the whole cycle. Why I repeatedly say that the whole game is like the Snake and Ladder game is; you climb the ladder and there you’re happy. The very comfort that comes out of it, that comes out of good karma, may make youcomplacent and that is it, down through the snake you go. Then once suffering comes, you start looking and grow. You may squander it and go down again. This is the way of the fool, wasting his energy; but someone who has sufficient intelligence in him should even take each breath as a step towards growth. It is very much possible. Even after reminding a person hundreds of times, if he still does not wake up, if he is still lying down in his comforts, what can we do? He will be lost. He has to suffer once again, and then maybe seek growth. This whole spiritual process is not happening to even one percent of the population. For all others, when things are going well they are laughing, and when things go bad they are crying. There are very few people in the world who, whichever way it is, are okay and balanced. For them nothing is a great benediction, nothing is a problem. Everything is just another life situation through which they can become free. The rest of the people are all the type who will go the way the situation pushes them. They are like cattle. You have evolved into a human body, but otherwise there is no real difference. Between the way animals live and generally the way people live, is there any great difference qualitatively? Maybe quantitatively there is a lot of difference. There is more variety to your activity; you drive a car, you watch television. All that nonsense you do, but qualitatively, where is the difference? If the difference has to come, it can only come with awareness; there is no other way. Generally, mental alertness is mistaken for awareness, but awareness is a far deeper dimension than just mental alertness alone. When awareness arises within you, love and compassion will be the natural follow-up; then each breath becomes a step towards growth. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

SOURCE : CHENNAI ONLINE  LINK:http://archives.chennaionline.com/health/yoga/2006/12yoga119.asp

I Would like you to throw some light on dreams . Are they the projections of the soul ??

QUESTIONER : I Would like you to throw some light on dreams . Are they the projections of the soul ??

SADHGURU: On dreams ? All dreams comes from your mind. Dreams cannot go into your soul, if there is one.
They don't even touch the two soles of your feet . Much importance has been given to dreams today .
In the West, especially in the process of psychoanalysis , Freud and Jung have given too much importance to dreams . In the East , the enlightened have always ignored dreams because they are just another outcome of the madness that you call 'mind'. Your mind , as I already said , is just a garbage bin that gathers things from the people around you .This mind is of appropriate significance as a good survival tool. That is all . To survive in the world you need this stuff, but in terms of life itself, it is of no real significance . Generally most people live their lives like a dream and they even have an investment in their dreams . it is like this .

Have you heard of Jack Stevenson ? Once Jack Stevenson was sharing his dreams . He was regretting ,
"Today I made a big mistake in my dream ". People asked , "What nonsense. How can you make a mistake in a dream ?  A dream is a dream and how can anyone make a mistake in a dream ? " He said , "No, you don't know .Do you know what happened ? I went to the Vatican and the Pope himself  offered me a drink .
We sat there and he offered me a drink and he asked me , "Do you want it warm or cold ?"  I said , "Warm."
So he went inside to heat the water, and that was the mistake ." Someone asked, " What is the mistake about that ?  In the dream you asked for a warm drink , what about it ?" Jack said , " By the time he could heat the water, I woke up . If I had just told him , I would have it cold, you know , I could have enjoyed the drink ."
Life is going on like this for most of the people . People think that before the water heats up they can have another drink on the side -- a cold one ; and they miss both .

All you dreams are straight from your mind . So it doesn't matter what kind of dreams you have . whether you see a GOD or you see a DEMON in your dreams, it doesn't matter . What ever is utmost in your consciousness reflects itself . Generally , ninety percent of dreams are just an expression of unfulfilled desire.
There are certain other dreams which happen on a different level which could be intuitive . There could be some amount of intuitiveness in your dreams .

In dream states , accidentally , sometimes you can touch your subconscious mind .When you touch your subconscious mind , you transcend the limitations of time and space . Time and space are a  creation of your conscious mind . You may have a dream like this : early morning you saw yourself  sitting in a garden ,
your friend came and said something to you , something , an ordinary situation . Tomorrow morning you are sitting in the garden and the same friend comes and says the same things to you . Things like this happen .
You dreamt something and then it happened . This may happen simply because you transcend the limitations of time and space when you touch the subconscious . It has got nothing to do with deeper dimensions of who you are . Dreams always come from the mind . Do not attach too much importance to dreams . Stop dreaming and start living , it's time .


SOURCE : ENCOUNTER THE ENLIGHTENED [CHAPTER 2 UNVEILING ]
LINK :http://www.ishashoppe.com/India/encounter-enlightened-p-2861.html