If your goal is right, it means you are already living it. By taking sannyas, you are taking the Conditioning is first conscious the reason that step to drop the you miss the past and enter a goal. When you new world. were born, you came as a free bird, a Paramahamsa or the supreme swan, to flit and fly blissfully around and enjoy the whole of Existence. But after coming, not only did you fly around, but unknowingly you also landed on planet earth. That was the problem. There are many people waiting to catch such birds that land! Society waits to fit you into the frame of country, religion, caste, community and creed. You were a sweet soul when you landed on planet earth.

You were not a Hindu, or an engineer or a worker. But understand that society wants engineers and workers. It is not bothered about your consciousness. Actually, neither your parents nor society are aware that there is something called consciousness. They themselves don't have that intelligence. They teach you what they were taught. That's all. Their conditioning is not a deliberate attempt to restrict or condition you. Conditioning is the unwanted dowry that has been handed over for generations and lives, from person to person. First, there is parental conditioning. Then there is societal conditioning. Based on these two, you create certain ethics for yourself. This is the self imposed conditioning, your own dharma* , your own path of righteousness. living ENLIGHTENMENT Because we create so many layers of conditioning, we are unable to see the Truth directly.

We are not able to perceive the goal directly. We are not able to live the goal directly. We are caught in the conditioning and forget who we truly are. The conditioning creates certain limitations in us, and we start thinking that the limitations are the real us. Even the clothes that we wear condition us to believe we are the clothes! Many of the conditionings are created in society in order to peacefully co-exist. For example, for easy communication, many languages are taught. There is nothing wrong in learning a language, but taking it up as a conditioning and making the language your very life, and creating sorrow for yourself and others is wrong. That mental attitude is wrong. So many people have sacrificed their lives for the sake of language.

If the conditioning were not there, so many deaths would not have happened! The very history of mankind would have been written differently. Conditioning is the reason for terrorism among human beings. Today, conditioning-based-divisions go right down to the level of belonging to specific political parties! By taking sannyas, you are taking the first conscious step to drop the past and enter a new world. The past is familiar, so you like to carry it. The mind always likes familiar patterns. Also, society teaches you to carry the past so that it can put guilt and fear in you that are based upon the past incidents. The past is unwanted baggage. Sannyas is Dharma - Sanskrit equivalent of the Pali word dhamma used by Buddha. Also translated as righteous behavior.

disconnecting from the past. When you disconnect from the past and move to a new future, initially, there is utter insecurity. Sannyas is utter insecurity. In utter insecurity, there is nothing else to hold on to, so you will find god! Why do you think I give you a spiritual name? I give you a spiritual name to help you more easily disconnect from the past. The new name that I give you will constantly remind you of the psychological revolution that has happened in you, the new understanding that has happened in you. The name also indicates your individual spiritual path, according to your own innate nature, which will lead to the ultimate flowering of your consciousness. A sannyasi works for the present moment. He works to give his whole life to Existence and doesn't care about the results.

The results take care of themselves. That is his way. He knows only the moment, nothing else. Therefore, he learns directly from Existence every moment. That is why he has no doctrine, no religion. He moves in synchronicity with the whole of Existence and learns through it. There is a Sufi saying, The Sufi is the child of the moment. In Sufi texts, every moment is called a breath. And the Sufis are called the folks of the breaths, because they live in full awareness of every breath, of every instant. According to them, every moment, a new Self arrives. That is the spirit of sannyas, it is being fresh every moment. A person of the moment learns from the moment. For him, Existence is his teacher.

When the great Sufi mystic Hasan, was dying, somebody asked, Hasan, who was your master? He said, I had many masters. If I relate their names it will take months or even years, and it is too late now. I am going to die any time. I will tell you about three masters. The first one was a thief. Once I got lost in a desert, and when I reached a nearby village, it was late and everything was closed. At last I found a man who was trying to make a hole in the wall of a house. I asked him where I could stay and spend the night. He said, At this time of night it will be difficult. If you don't mind staying with a thief, you are welcome to stay with me.

I stayed with this man for one month. Each night he would tell me, Now I am going for my work. You take rest and pray for me. When he came back, I would ask him, Did you get anything? He would say, Not tonight. But tomorrow, god willing, I will try again. He was always happy and hopeful, never in a state of hopelessness! When I was meditating for many years, and nothing was happening, many times the moment came when I was so desperate, so hopeless, that I thought I should stop all this nonsense.