In this way, you run to the end of your life and realize that none of your desires really gives you true happiness and you turn towards spirituality and meditation! This is the life of a man who learns with physical age, by experience. A man with an advanced mental age is one who learns through intelligence; he is the one who clearly understands from his first desire, that no desire when fulfilled will give him true happiness. There lies the difference. He will be able to see through the whole and analyze the whole thing. He will know that real fulfillment comes from inside and not from outer world things. To attain this wisdom, you need not be aged, you need to be in the present, that's all.

When you are in the present, Existence itself will teach you. Existence is the greatest Master. When we are not in the present, when we are all the time running behind the past and the future, we take our own sweet time to learn, that's all. Over the years, if you take the lives of Masters like Buddha, Sankara, Ramana Maharshi and Vivekananda, all the enlightened people who created the history of India, they all attained enlightenment at a very young age. So understand that age is not related to spirituality and learning. That is why they say, You are as old as you are. It means, you are as old as your mental age is. You are as old as your maturity is, not as old as your physical age is.

You may be 70 years old but have the understanding of only a 20-year old. Or you may be 18 years old and have the maturity and understanding of an 80-year old. So please dont claim superiority just because you are old by age. A beautiful story about Swami Brahmananda, a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna: One day Swami Brahmananda was meditating in Brindavan. A devotee came and placed a costly blanket before him as an offering. Swami Brahmananda said nothing. He just silently observed what was going on. A couple of hours later, a thief came by, spotted the blanket, came up to him and took away the blanket. Still the Swami watched in the same way, silently, with no reaction! The gaining and losing of the blanket made no difference whatsoever to him.

In the same way, there is a story of Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi: One day, some thieves entered his ashram. They took whatever little they could find and before leaving, even gave him a blow. It is said that not only did Bhagwan show no reaction, even the pace of his breathing did not alter during the incident! He was supremely unperturbed by the whole incident. When we become a mere watcher, our mind becomes just a tool in our hands. We can then use it as we wish to. Otherwise, our mind can simply make us its slave. If you can use your mind when needed, you have learnt to drop it! And you have become a Master! So, in these few days, we will see how to handle our emotions and become a watcher of our lives; how to center ourselves well inside us and function in the periphery in an undisturbed fashion.

We will see how to create a mental set-up which is free from engraved memories that are responsible for our unconscious decision-making. We will see how to harness the energy of intuition in us; how to move from unconscious to conscious to super conscious; how to move from instinct to intellect to intuition; how to bring forth the fountain of bliss from within us! We will meet for the next session. Thank you. W e will now enter into the anahata chakra. This chakra is located in the heart region. In Sanskrit, anahata means that which cannot be created. This chakra is locked when you seek attention and love from others, and it flowers when you express selfless love without expecting anything in return! (meditation Technique: Mahamantra meditation a Tibetan Buddhist technique.

) What is attention need The anahata chakra is concerned with love, sentiments, and similar emotions. This chakra gets locked when we constantly seek attention from others instead of exuding love from ourselves. Its very meaning is that which cannot be created and it signifies that real love can never be created from outside and put into you; it can just happen in you, that's all. It can happen when a deep awareness enters you. When real love happens, we will stop seeking attention from others and become a source of energy ourselves. What do we mean by attention-seeking? You see: whatever we do, whatever we think, we are subconsciously seeking concurrence and approval from the people around us in some subtle way. We are very keen that we should earn a good name from everyone.

We may not do this in a very obvious fashion, but if you analyse deeply, you will not be at ease without the appreciation and endorsement of the people around you. This endorsement, this approval, is what we call attentionneed. 80% of our problems is due to this asking for attention or approval. If you just sit and write down, in a day, how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in society, you will see. You will find that all the 24 hours, all your lifetime, you are involved in getting approval from others. All your life, you are on a signature campaign, getting approval signatures from family and society. All your activities, all your efforts, are to get the signature of the others around you.

In a big register you make a column: Good Father, and everything that you do for your children, you do, and expect their signature of approval under that column! Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends. You prepare columns with suitable headings like Good Husband, Good Employee, Good Friend etc. and wait for them to sign under it. You are requesting approval signatures all the time, that's all. Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature! You too need to sign on their registers under the columns applicable to you! Each of us is continuously on a signature campaign. We need to collect as many good opinions as possible from society and prove our worth to ourselves and to society.

Why do we bother so much about others opinions about us? Why cant we judge ourselves by our own strength and continue to do our work? Why are we deriving strength from others? All this is because of two things: one, we dont know anything about ourselves. We know ourselves only through others opinions of us, only through others certificates. Second: when others give us their approval and attention, they are actually giving us energy to move on. Attention IS energy! That is why we feel so boosted when they give us attention. Attention in any form is alright for us. In most of the houses, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law will be constantly fighting with each other. They will be constantly complaining about each other to the poor man, the son or the husband.

But for a few days, if one of them goes out of town, what happens? The other starts missing them! Although they are fighting all the time, they miss each other when they are not together! Why does this happen? When they fight with each other all the time, they are actually getting that much of attention upon themselves from the other person! Dont think that only positive attention is energizing! Any form of attention is energizing. Both of them subconsciously enjoy the attention that they get from the other when they fight; that is why they miss each other; they actually miss the attention! But when they start missing each other, they term it love! They say that they miss each other because of love.

Of course, it is perfectly possible; but I want you to understand, that attention is nothing but energy, which keeps us in good spirits. It is a subtle form of energizing ourselves, and we are not aware of this. When we need something, that something is not love; it is attention. You dont need love; you are love yourself. So when you say that you need love, when you say that you need to be loved, you are really in need of attention, not love. People come and tell me that their sons and daughters do not love them enough in their old age. What they really mean is, that their sons and daughters are not giving them the attention, the energy that they need in their old age.

Actually if you see, as we grow older, we should become more and more centered within ourselves out of growing sensitivity to the existential energy inside us. But what happens is, because we have been dependent on others for attention and energy all our lives, because the love that we know exists only in relationships, because we have lived with no awareness and sensitivity to what is inside us, when we get older, we start missing the love that came from outside or the attention that came from outside. Your family becomes busy with other things and they dont interact with you as they used to. So you start complaining with age.