Baba Sri Siva Speaks:

"The trees and birds do not go through the agony of human consciousness. Everything depends upon how you spend your thought energy. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of thoughts: 1. thoughts about this world and 2. thoughts about the other world or enlightenment. We spend most of our time thinking thoughts about this world. This is because of the strong influence of the three impurities in consciousness: ego, karma and maya. These three impurities work together to constitute human life.

Ego is the "I" consciousness. Karma is what you experience on the earthplane in this lifetime. This karmic force comes from many, many lifetimes. Ego and karma join together and manifest a lifetime on this earthplane. When you are born, you are born into a world of maya. Maya is the principle that engages your attention while you are on the earthplane. As an illusionary principle, maya attracts you. It works in conjunction with the senses. The senses are the means of enjoying good or bad experiences of this earthplane.

You become a victim of maya. Maya creates desire to enjoy. It does not create the desire for Enlightenment, but it creates the desire for getting more and more involved in this world. Maya leads you to samsara (sorrow). It leads you to a life in which you get married, have children, raise children, grow old and die. You spend very little time in realizing the Self. In fact, in a life guided by maya, there is no priority for enlightenment. Very, very few people can clearly see the trap of this worldly life, which is composed of ego, karma and maya.

I am going to give you some steps to understand the process. Everything starts with your thinking process. So you should constantly be absorbed in looking at what you are thinking. Now, if you begin to observe your thoughts, you will find that what I said about the thoughts is true- which is that all the thoughts that you have, or 99% of them, are devoted to this world: How can I survive in this world? What are my relationships with others? What are my job situations? What about my health? All these are worldly thoughts. And these are the thoughts that occupy you all the time.

So, once you observe these thoughts, worldly thoughts, then you have a choice to go with them or to regulate them. And those people who want to regulate these thoughts will eventually, at some point, begin to understand the need to get liberated from the thought process. So, this is the first step that everyone should follow.

Now it is important to realize that it is very difficult to stay away from the worldly thoughts. It is because we live in this material plane, which makes constant demands to stay focused on the thoughts about day-to-day survival. Also, one is under constraints to act in accordance with one's karma, which brings you a set of thoughts with it. These are thoughts that you decided to think in this lifetime. Then there is maya, which always keeps you engaged.

So, the bottom line is that you acknowledge that it is difficult to not think thoughts about this world, and these thoughts about this world are almost an involuntary process. It goes on even without asking your permission to think or not to think. It seems to be an autonomous process. But it is not so. The moment you begin to evaluate things, evaluate your own thinking process, you will understand that you really do have a choice to either think worldly thoughts or go to the other side and think thoughts about Enlightenment and higher states of consciousness.

There are a couple of things that you need to do. One is to look at this overwhelming experience of processing worldly thoughts. Second is to look at the thoughts about the other world and Enlightenment. You may want to begin dealing with the worldly thoughts. How do we deal with the worldly thoughts? It is not a good idea to get rid of them. You many want to do that. But you cannot. At best you can do one thing. And that is to choose the thoughts that you want to think and then stick on to that.

I just want to give you some guidelines. You wake up in the morning and there are a number of obligations for that day and you need to do that. However, it will be possible if you just come up with a set of thoughts that you might want to think on a daily basis which are very productive thoughts. You may want to think a few thoughts like this. Of course, you need to be thinking about your finances. So have some financial thoughts.

Here there are some options. You have a job and your job gives you a certain amount of money. In most cases, the money is not enough. You need to do something to change the situation. How do you do that? You must think of a sum of money, which is more than you are now making. And that will give you a new consciousness. You may not find a way to make that money right away. You may not even know how that money is going to come to you.

Here there are some divine principles. As your goal, you put out a reasonable amount of money. You should not be greedy, but select an amount that can give you a reasonably good life so that you do not have to work until the end of your life on this earthplane. Once you have that amount in your mind, then pray to God. Bring in the divine energy. The divine will help you manifest it. You do not have to really stretch your mind to figure out the means. The divine will give you the means and the end down the road. But all that you need to do is to consistently think it as a contemplation and then make the prayer periodically. You may want to do it at least twice a day where you can spend at least 15 to 20 minutes on this thought and then you can periodically remember the thought too. Once you do this, you will find that you are manifesting this situation. This is taking control of your worldly thoughts. Similarly, you have to entertain thoughts about your health which is very, very important. You may want to regulate the food that you are eating and perform a little bit of exercise that you require to keep your body in good shape.

You are a social being and it is terribly, terribly important that you develop inter-personal relationship skills. If there is one principle that I want to emphasize for success in your life, or business life, that is having very good inter-personal relationships. Relationships are not easy because they are full of hallenges. You don't agree with the other person or the other person does not agree with you. There are suspicions, there are jealousies, there are some things that you always have to keep private. There are so many other issues. The bottom line that you have to learn in creating a good relationship is that you should not carry on your judgments about the other person. Every moment is new and you should be willing to look at that person in a different way. And even if that person is a scoundrel, you pretend as if there are no problems between you. Then you not only pretend but you believe that it is true. And then you will find that things do change. You cannot change the other person. You can only change yourself. So, let the other person do whatever he wants to do. As far as you are concerned, this is what you are going to do. You are going to be open, you are going to be friendly, you are not going to be judging. Or, even if you judge, that will disappear in the next moment and then you are open. And then you go on with your life.

We have principles, which are very important, to regulate the worldly thoughts. The thoughts about enlightenment should be within you all the time. You should always try to stay in the shushumna, which is the central nadi, and then act in the world from the shushumna. You are not going to be overwhelmed by any experience. What is important is just to stay in the shushumna and remove all those things that block the original soul in the third eye. And then all these things will be removed and you'll become liberated. You'll become a light being and that is really the goal for the other world. If you can take care of these two things, your life will be very organized and fruitful."