Master in his message on the occasion of a seminar on Superstition and Spirituality way back in late sixties of the last century made a series of remarkable statements when he said "When we are out of light we fall in darkness. When we are out of wisdom we become fools. When we are out of reality we become Satan." He was talking about the deterioration that happens in religions and makes another categorical statement that '...the religion is for the masses and spirituality is for the selected few.' Differentiating between the grosser things and finer things in religion, he stated that 'To the subtle minds the idea of the greatest is understood and to the grosser minds only the idea of grossness is evident. They connect the grosser things with the religion and if even a lie is spoken a hundred times it becomes the truth'. How religions degenerate over a period of time and how ritualistic practices replace the spiritual disciplines is all too evident for one who seeks reality and our Master makes this simple by saying it is LIE that is perpetuated with all gusto and commitment. In his inimitable style Dr. K.C.Varadachari stated "There is a fatality that when thought tries to expand and influence many it simply shrinks into nothingness. Quantity and quality refuse to go together. The doctrine of Reason of Buddha led strangely to the doctrine of licence, indifferentism and nihilism.; the doctrine of an integral dynamic consciousness (Advaita) led to a thorough going staticism and hypocrisy, the doctrine of individual existence continuous with the Universal Divine Life (Visistadvaita) to mere unworldiness; and the doctrine of Leela, creative harmony of the society (Dvaita) to a chaotic mass of superstition and social putrefaction parading as orthodoxy."

Master has stated that "In any religion which becomes old such things creep in and then saints come to remodulate." It is obvious that the lies have been spoken consistently and continuously that over a period of time they have become the truth.

After these statements I would like to bring the concept of Satan being the son of God and also that he is the first rebel against the sovereignty of God. He was taught every thing by God and is as competent in every respect as the Lord himself. The seeds of independence (individual souls) were sown for the first time by God and the Divine Drama in search of wisdom where one would choose God and not Satan started. If a plebiscite is held now putting up the claims of Satan and God I wonder whether God will not loose.

Aspirants who seek to know the nature of reality and are students of spiritual training have always accepted some Master in the path to guide them though we cannot deny some persons tried to know the nature of Reality on their own. We in the Natural path of realisation adopt the practice of PAM to succeed in our enterprise. It is obvious that to realize ones nature one must abandon that which one is not. This includes all ideas about that nature, for ideas are not the Nature. The idea of love is not love, the idea of food will not feed you, the idea of beauty is not beautiful, the idea of a dog is not a dog, and the idea of freedom is not freedom. Many an intellectual who thinks he got an idea of the reality and freedom by reading books is deluding himself by such an idea. Reading books and understanding the same is not the same as real Understanding

We train ourselves and also seek guidance to train our mind. An animal trainer manipulates an animal by making what he wants the animal to do. The easiest thing to do is first taught and then when the animal does what was desired he is given a little reward. The animal has what seems to be a choice. With humans it is the same and the rewards are money, property, prestige, sensual experience, relief from pain or (even more subtle and insidious) the promise of these thing or the fear of losing them. Think of it, every advertisement you see falls into this realm. Political and spiritual propaganda and other artistic deception also offer these rewards.

For many true Self-Inquiry seems impossible. People of all nations, colors and creeds have imbibed from birth so much that is false and intellectualized it to make sense because this is what everyone was doing and it was how they were educated. Perhaps trained is a better word than educated or socialized, and of course this will upset people because it is unflattering. The point that I am trying to clarify is the folly of taking something that is contrived and try to make it appear natural. This is a fundamental absurdity that we find in most of the so called educative processes.

I make it clear this folly is resorted to by those teachers who say they are rebels or make others feel they are rebels against indoctrinations and trainings. When we look carefully we find these rebellious teachers promising the very same rewards the earlier trainers promised and attempt to pass another lie! If we think well we can see there is none who would rebel against what is unreal for there is no need to. Any rebellion makes what is rebelled against seem more real and this is why people swing from rebellion to conformity and vice versa. All societies have this in common. If we see someone not doing these things then that person may appear very odd.

One thing I have benefited from the practice of PAM and the style of life proposed in the Commandments of the Master is that life is to be enjoyed in full and that I can move with the Divine abreast. I embrace life fully and am free to enjoy because I do not seek more things to make me whole and the company of the Divine in the core of heart is more than a substitute to many charms and comforts that are offered and dangled. I am not separate from who I am (devoted to the Lord) so the experiences of life simply come and go as they do, and to me the coming and the going is in the midst of true freedom.

Living in freedom, is a lively, interesting, and fully involved expression far out side the realm of fear. This freedom is what I feel in the company of the Master whose presence in my being is such as it vibrates in every pore. I am fortunate beyond what I ever imagined, to have the grace to live in the His company. As against the common notion when once Master takes over we lose everything I have learnt that there is nothing that I have lost by engaging my self consciously with him. What I have noticed is that rather than having lost anything, my ability to discern, to effectively clarify what's real from what's imagined has been ignited, and nurtured by truth itself, as my own awareness.

One of the greatest lies is that 'which is familiar is trustworthy'. But this is a myth and I have found that the familiar is not trustworthy. But because it is familiar it has the habit forming capacity of making us feel it is trustworthy. We should not trust what is familiar or that which has become habit. Habit does not grant clarity but unfortunately it can and does often obscure clarity. Living in freedom in the company of Master, is not only easy and joyful and rewarding as by its very nature, truth nurtures the ability of the mind to clarify.

Because of this I have been requesting co-travelers to be aware of the presence of the Master and be with him rather than in their own realm of ideas and imagination, illusions and delusions about the goal as the very ideas of the goal is based on imagination and fiction. We need to go no where to be with Him, He is in the innermost core of our being. If we check for ourselves how close he is we will surely feel sorry that we did not care for him all these days. We should be in his company in conversation, in friendship, in love, however we can, even fighting. Because, even struggle with him has yielded clarity many times as I have confided with some of my friends several times, whereas "struggle" in any other environment we know keeps us remained unclear. Conflict is generally a river moving into a desert and dying hopelessly. Or it has yielded nothing but strife. In the strife with the Master as I have found it has been a river leading always to the vast ocean of my own Being. I request others to join me and see for themselves, how being in the company of Master can and does open our opportunity to notice who we are.

Master wants us to be identical with Nature. I have found that when we are not natural or not recognizing our very being in the inseparable relationship with the Divine, we tend to seek rewards in myriad forms to appease the discontent. This discontent is due to the sense of separation from our essential nature. There is no arbitrary reward that will quiet the anguish born of this delusion of separation. Putting it plainly no money, property, prestige, sensual experience, relief from pain or the promise of these things will help in feeling contented. This is not to say that our nature is against these things, for it is not relative to these things. Obviously this is true because our nature is not more or less as a result of having or not having these things.

One of the problems of speaking or particularly writing about the freedom of self-realization is that the conditions of life have trained people to dismiss anyone who are not offering the ephemeral rewards. There is no reward for realizing; this is not an acceptable idea to many indoctrinated in the lies of religion and pseudo spirituality. There is offering of experiences or objects as a reward for doing the "right" thing. Those things happen on their own or as Master put it automatically or naturally. In truth there can be no training for self realisation except through the natural Pranahuti which utilizes a common inheritance. The most natural way of being is Self-Realization. So natural it is, it is not a "way of being", it is 'Being' itself. It is what we can't but be.

We cannot find any place or plane where Being is not. Even if we try to imagine a place where Being is not, that very imagination will be coming and going with in the Being. Being is what we cannot lose and it is only identification with the false that obscures the realization. That is why Master invites us to be with him in silence or in meditation and then learn the language of silence. In that silence all experiences that take place within become clear to us and, then we need not have to be with the conscious effort of meditation. We then abide with him always and that is real constant remembrance.

Many experiences we have during our spiritual practice reveal to us that there is more to life than just mundane day to day perceptions of the world and thoughts about these perceptions. There are mind boggling psychic and energetic experiences during meditations and as we advance in our spiritual life we come to understand the value of the initial introduction to the path and also the individual sittings we have had with our trainers and masters.

For one not in the path of PAM, it is beyond his or her own habits of mind (samskaras and vasanas), to see beyond and so most of what we experience is not anything that is possible for them. There is also a myth that once a person is introduced and then initiated into the spiritual mystery of life, awakening to the truth of the Self or Being would be a natural progression. It may surprise many when I state that it is not so.

What really happens is, that as one progresses in the path along with the newly acquired wisdom at each stage the very experiences become the identity of our being. One in the path having moved from the stage of Viveki to the level of Bhakta remains not the same but moves his identity of being to an altogether different plane which is more subtle and has its own laws and logic. As a person experiences great openings and consequentially develops phenomenal energetic shaktis in his being, he is in fact owning up those very experiences which he has had during periods of meditation and contemplation. Then one is sure that he is evolving.

Though a person may feel that he has got awakened during meditation to the real nature of his being, there is scope for the experience to fade into a memory without establishing its identity in the higher plane. Unfortunately if we allow ourselves this fall, then our identity is in turmoil again. This is why I have always appealed to co travelers to own up the experiences during meditations by conscious and concentrated efforts

This creates the need to go deeper into the methods, having more faith in the Master and committing oneself to the total mergence or more appropriately total identification in the Being. This is when there is scope for great falls in the status of our identity in the finer level planes acquired assiduously by negating everything of the identity of the lower planes. If we unfortunately lose our connection through false notions of real identity other than that of our being in the Master that is when we lose touch with the Reality and we emerge as Satan for all those who are in the lower planes than ourselves.

The solution to the problem of an 'experience getting faded out' and not owned up is to ever remain in the thought of the Master and remembering nothing but Him in all that we think, speak and do. By being aware of the possibilities of the newly acquired status (though temporarily to start with) and committing to live in that plane of being, the thinking "If only I could remember Him and be in his thoughts in all thoughts, actions and things that I do constantly, I could maintain the experience" we should be able to live in that condition. If instead we start being aware of our status of identity at the level at which we live and move forgetting Him there is the scope of Satan emerging in us. It is the inability to live the teaching constantly, and perfectly, that is the problem.

It has been said before and I say it now, it is almost impossible to speak of what is Reality and awakening oneself to Reality. It is not because realisation is very complex but it is so supremely simple, that its very simplicity is obscured by the mind. This is a veil that needs to be removed or as Master puts it turn your head towards It and do not turn back. I have been harping always on the 9th Commandment as ' Enlightenment in Action' and many have in fact shared with me this by embracing in full the life that is gifted to us by the Divine and are aware of the supple and joyful ease of Being.

Somehow some persons cannot imagine what that is truly, but they try to realize with all their endowments. I find them and their imagination rooted in the past and restrained by preconceived ideas. It is not what is imagined by them that is the problem. But the very habit to picture awakening in their mind as lovely circumstances that are ideal and fit a particular criterion that carry with it a sense of security and a confidence that these circumstances will not be threatened, that is the problem. In fact this is one of the problems generated not necessarily by religion per-se, but by the artists and poets and novelists who wrote their imaginations in the field of religion. Wisdom and greatness have been thrust on poets and singers and thereby tradition has effectively effaced the difference between a sage and songster or a mystic and musician. Many may feel bad if I say Annamayya or Tyagaraja and many more Tamil, Hindi Telugu and Sanskrit poets are only good religious poets and the state of realisation is miles off their reach. Saint Kabir however esteemed he was in the mind of our Master was only stated to have had access upto the 16th circle in his diagram of stages of Realisation comprising of 23 circles. I do not draw any parallels but only state that we tend to judge wrongly because of certain ideas and notions that have arisen from falsehood and fiction.

The idea of Divine resource development that I have been talking several times, some how got twisted in the minds of well meaning persons as a call to pull out from the shelves and almirahs the old and dusty copies of the beautifully yet falsely portrayed items of dance and drama of imaginary divine beings and all forms of art supposedly helping the fountain of spirituality to emerge. If one happens to be a centre of such pseudo spiritual energy, then he will be imagining a world where the old arts presumably inspired by energetic phenomena (shaktis) gives evidence of their evolution in spiritual plane and would like others by extolling the same art forms, with the same kind of confidence and security they feel they have but which in fact deserve a place in the museums of history This is one of the most disturbing features of modern world for a sincere seeker. The variations on these themes are as diverse as people can be.

Imaginations are pregnant but one cannot afford to deliver demons however imaginative the form conceived might be. Virtual screens have become oflate the major problem for many who would like to live in reality and not in images and imaginations. Such a divorce from reality can only create the atmosphere most conducive to Satan and his perfect dramas and plays. Obviously imagination is unreal by its very nature and as such cannot liberate anyone. Imagination is the realm of Satan and reality the realm of God. This should be remembered by all aspirants in the path. Once this type of succumbing to the virtual images start one is surely bound to end in fabricated pre-occupations that churn up the water and then of course the mind sharks come to consume the make-believe-butter.

Explaining how all religious and ritualistic attempts to know reality has only put us into greater and more beautiful chains and shackles has been the theme of all those who tread the path of spirituality and every attempt to expose these as superstitions led many a times to a total mistrust on the person who tries do shatter their belief systems. This is because unfortunately these beliefs induce such sentiment that to expose them brings mistrust. It is not distrust that arises from being lied to or manipulated but the mistrust has its origin in the people having been told to believe that these ideas are needed.

It would be better if we can examine certain belief systems to understand the point. The most commonly held superstition or belief is 'that rich people are happy.' We know rich people who live a hellish life, but still in the imagination of others it is believed that it would be different if it were they who were rich, (or richer as the case may be). This belief persists even when people reject it and give lip service to ideas to the contrary. So often rich people are uneasy trying to hold on to what they have, though they can indeed lose the same easily and purchase peace. Many are adept at eclipsing ruthlessly their hold on riches and they are afraid to share. This fear is not just limited to the rich.

Sharing has its challenges. Love is essentially based the principle of sharing. But sharing threatens the ego and consequentially love equally threatens the ego. This may not be palatable for many. Many spouses say they love and are intimate but when asked if they would tell their partners the things they tell their friends then they avoid any answer. If we can tell a friend something we won't tell our spouse then obviously the better half is really a worse half and how true it is every one has to think. The intention in making the above statement is not to deny the desire of these people to love and be loved, but to point out that genuine love is not had without the principle of sharing.

The difference between love and the ideas of love is vast. I am told that there is a stone that imitates the look of gold, called pyrite. I was also informed that many a miner has been disillusioned to find that the glittering nuggets of his labor are not gold. The term "fool's gold" must have emerged from this experience. Imagine the elation of a miner who has been seeking and slaving to find the precious metal only to discover that he slogged for the fools-gold. The imagination, elation, and emotion that would have been fired, finally led one only to learn that it is worthless. That would be painful, and so would it be for persons who are fired with imaginations of the company of damsels and angels which was imagined in the beautiful gardens of the Divine, that is sought to be had after performing certain sacrifices and rituals. This is so with love of any thing but the Reality or Master.

Wealth has converted many desires into the stature of needs and the number of needy persons has been a growing factor in the consumerist society that is threatening our life styles. It is not that our old life styles were more satisfactory than the emerging ones. But the fact that the emerging pattern also owes its origin to the very same superstition 'that we never have enough' that is the cause of alarm. 'Enough is Enough' is the philosophy of our land and could easily be the philosophy of the human race. The constant striving for more and more exposes that satanical sacred discontent which is now getting globalized.

A sister superstition to this belief of not having enough at any time is the belief that wealth grants security. We learn sooner or later in life that all the pleasure that wealth can buy does nothing but postpone the inevitable. They are seeking in circumstances the promise of security but alas that is the one thing circumstances cannot give because the very nature of existence is Change. Constant change. We can examine in similar manner the myths of beauty, prestige and power etc.

Beauty, money, strength etc., are not inherently bad, but they cannot do what people believe they can do, they can't make an imaginary sense of self, real. Cosmetic industry, new styles of dress, new hair styles are born in myth, grow in myth and like the ancient Asuras live long enough before they die. Even as proverbially competent Asuras these would also give a replicate or duplicate before leaving the scene. Our imagined self is always threatened by reality. There are no exceptions; it is only a matter of time until the threat becomes obvious. The more sincere a person the sooner he walks out of these myths and plays of Satan. Out of reality one cannot escape the influence of Satan in whatsoever fine manner one may try to.

There is a superstition that the path is evenly paced. This has come about in spite of the fact the path has been shown as zig zag by the Master. I am fortunate in having met our Master in person and many other masters in the system and else where. Meeting one who is free is a very different event entirely. My meeting with Masters is similar to my walking down stairs (supposedly) equally spaced apart and taking a step expecting there to be another step only to realize that there is not only a different distance to the next step but there is no step at all has led me many times to feel out of control. Amusingly now a days when I have problems with my feet which remain in a state of eternal numbness (diabetic neuropathy) I get reminded of the steps I had with the masters. The stairs are a good metaphor for imaginary relationship models. In a way the metaphor has two implications because people also use relationships to try to get where they imagine themselves going. These people use other persons as a means to an end, like stairs. One who does not understand the real nature of the guide or master will surely end with a dummy and Satanical guru. This of course would be unfortunate.

Having reached where I am, I do not accept any identity when it is offered, either positive or negative because it is unreal. I also do not offer identity to others as the identity is ever changing and therefore many get perplexed sometimes with me and my behavior. Many say that it takes courage to meet me and that is really un-understandable to me. I am plain and straight and have no masks in the ordinary sense of the term, in other words I live real. I used to hear the same about my revered father Dr. K.C.V. who is almost feared as Tiger. For persons accustomed to meet always others in proxy, this may be so. It is Satan who resists the Real. Satan has an excellent way of making false appear as more than true and those who smell this trick of the original jester (Satan), naturally are avoided.

In the realm of the Real there is nothing as fear or lack of confidence. One who is awake does not need confidence because an awakened one does not look to the circumstances of life to get a sense of self. Neither circumstance nor people's ideas are the measure of who an awakened one is. The true self is always obvious in every circumstance including unpleasant ones. The by-product of self-realization is not to be in conflict, there is no conflict even with conflict. A self realized person cannot be controlled, neither are they predictable. Just look at life and it becomes clear that the awakened one is simply in harmony with life. It is only those who expect to predict the circumstances in life that get disillusioned because life is not predictable. This realisation is what our astrologers should have. But tradition and its lies have made this not acceptable and the search for the black cat is on in the dark room.

Many suffer from a spiritual superstition! People want spirituality to fulfill all their egoistic dreams, and to bring security where it does not exist. It is for this reason that seeking is endless because the ego is a sense of self that exists only in thought and can never even be real let alone secure. In one moment of no thought, the essence of meditation that is imperienced by us in the path of PAM, the ego is gone and with it the need to make it secure. It is a great superstition to think that one can make the Ego secure and confident. Ego itself is a superstition and a closely cherished myth and this will become clear only after one crosses the rings of egoism and till then the chase for security for this non-entity called Ego is on. A splendid avocation that kept the imaginations of millions alive for several millennia. But then by the time one reaches that step in the ladder one should have got accustomed to find him naked with himself.

One of the most destructive consequences of Ego is its identification with ideas and its basic inability or unwillingness to look directly at any reality which is unflattering to that contrived sense of self. Life is always exposing what is unreal but avoidance keeps the Real just out of reach. This is the problem of Ego and in the modern persons we find this as a particularly bad case of affliction-of-avoidance. There is desire to maintain a confidence in that which is not only dubious but also unreal. It is no wonder that many modern schools of enlightenment who are selling some of the innumerable forms of this confidence and enlightenment are having many and varied categories of clients. Satan is very busy and popular now a days selling superstitions of varied tastes and statures.

There are too many masters and messiahs of the modern world marketing freedom, liberation and enlightenment. Name the type of freedom we want we have a dozen persons ready to serve us. From the therapists talking about how it should have been, how we should be and what we needed and didn't get, the service range has a broad spectrum from sex to spirituality. All these marketing messiahs have one appeal namely "What you would be like "if"..." The lifelong quest for "more" becomes more and more ingrained and individuals have moved to their last resting place having spent their lives chasing the travail, overrated shaktis and popular wisdom. Now it is important to note that inducing emotion, using drugs and other means is not inherently bad or good nor will the dream/promise of fulfillment be attained by these means. These things can't be what they are not and the idea that is held is, they can be what they are not. That idea is what I understand as superstition and an institution of the Satan. The ideas of what these things mean, is false and is far away from reality.

Confidence is by its nature relative and is based on circumstances. A person who has been successful indeed may have a sense of confidence that the one who has been loosing may not. But even when it appears to be working it is often also pretence. People often feign confidence when found in the wrong places doing wrong things or anytime they are frightened. A few years ago many Soft ware professionals who took their high wage jobs for granted and even confidently considered themselves entitled to a particular way of life are now disillusioned. Now, if they even have a job, they manifest themselves in the workplace with feigned confidence because there are many competitors who would be willing to take their place, perhaps for less money. Many corporate bosses behave with the workforce giving them a direct or indirect threat. Where confidence once reigned there is now timidity.

There are countless examples; a woman losing her looks, a man loosing his health. All this however is getting lost somehow in life or death. The question of 'Who are you?' is still there. All these things can tear away the false security of the fictitious safety net that is woven in the mind from ideas. Then the desperation to find the ideas that really work becomes very strong. Hence the superstition of seeking new systems and some how ending up with reliance on weak and undeserving authorities, the comfort of a group, return to tradition, and hiding the ignorance behind a display of knowledge. But no effort or experience that is achieved will ever make what is unreal real. Confidence is of less substance than a soap bubble and even more fragile. Any event can expose its transitory nature. Confidence itself thus is a great superstition.

There is need to differentiate between this type of confidence and the faith (more appropriately reliance) in a master in the path. If we want to know the ease and splendor of being, the blissful peace of our real nature that embraces all events then we will have to abide in our true state of being in the blessing splendor of the Master. That is why I say let us find out who we truly are. Meditation is not about attaining a higher state. It is about the removal of all that which obscures our true nature. For that the PAM is the fastest way.

I had many occasions when some one questioned my reliance on the Master as my guide in life and felt that I was becoming superstitious as they found him as an ordinary person. I found that this is due to the fact that people in general have the habit of often trusting that which is untrustworthy, and they mistrust what is trustworthy. Master did no miracles and has in fact spoke about persons who do the same with certain amount of disgust. Many of the persons who questioned my trust in the Master were in fact worshiping the gurus of sorts. I wonder, perhaps they were already awkward and afraid and they simply felt this when they were in the presence of the great master in person or as an idea. I am sure many aspirants would agree with me when I say that we felt our own smallness and cunning state of mind while we were near him which we have felt as resistance to his company. This experience is not any particular individuals' reaction before the Master but is a shared one. In other words we feel our resistance to the real and our own identification as mind is threatened just by being in the presence of the master. The resistance of grossness to the super fine consciousness is a matter of experience and I called this else where as the holy war. In fact many recognize the Satan as being more useful than reality itself. We really do not know our friend. The difficulty to know the difference between Reality and Satan may be likened to the inability to recognize food from junkfood or to a learned blindness to see the difference between the clean and polluted water.

One needs to prune the tree called ego to realize his true nature. Ego is the cause of all superstition and our being away from the true and real. But the saving grace is that the ego is willing to experience pain if it believes it can achieve something it wants as a result. Spiritual seeking and working on oneself is like pruning this tree to cultivate a better harvest of experience. This process is endless. I say cut the tree down removing all the branches with its fruits and flowers. The way to cut it down is in silence through meditation and cleaning. Then we find the tree itself was a product of our thought or what Master calls our individual creation. Once this is achieved we need not feign freedom. Once one is free there is no need to "act" like one is free.

Thus we can draw the curtains for the drama of Satan that has been all the time pressed and presented in service to us by him at every opportunity when ever we tried to peep out of Reality. Peep into Reality and continue to live and abide in Reality is the only way to keep Satan out of our range of attention.

Out of Reality we surely get into the consciousness of Satan and there is no solution to avoid this problem than practicing Constant Remembrance in every sense of that term.