 Namaskaram. I am Sheetal. Yes, Sheetal. I have this question that there are times when I feel I get pulled, like sucked in experience. It's very quiet, but very full at the same time. When if I have to talk about it, I will get emotional because I feel very grateful at that moment and it's really beautiful to have that experience and it happens mostly when I am in amazing spaces. Special places are not generally in my day-to-day life. I don't really know what is it, but I want it more. So does that mean anything and should I be in that space more or should I look something about it? What you are speaking about actually is an expansion of consciousness that happens. Normally you are in a linear conceptual consciousness. We are thinking about things, you are reacting, you are acting, you are responding and so on. In certain atmospheres where surrender is evoked in you, samarpan is evoked. Let's say in a satsang, instantly the consciousness starts to expand. It's instant. If you are present and you are here and now and your eyes are open in a sense, then what happens is that expansion happens within the system. But let's say if you go into long meditations or japa mantras or long hours of singing or chanting or things like that, you may actually start to leave the system. So it's like that you are not present here, but you are someplace else. What you are describing sounds like an expansion within that you actually start to deepen in the experience of the vibrancy of that moment. The reason why it's almost unbearable is because your system is not yet strengthened to hold the experience. Because there are times when I feel so sucked in and I have to sit and close my eyes and then within few seconds or minutes my system will become, I mean I feel like my head is going to burst and I'm going to die. So I quickly have to open my eyes and come back and sometimes I even scream and cry because it's so unbearable, but I also like it. I mean I don't like the unbearable experience but I know something amazing is happening and I'm not able to take it. The way by which you can strengthen your system to hold an experience which is an expansion of consciousness rather than to go into mantra or japa or things like that, is actually to go into samarpan, surrender. When the experience becomes overwhelming, you just say this is only an instrument. This is an instrument of the truth, of the truth. Only an instrument, it's all right, hold, hold, and then you strengthen yourself. You reduce the porosity of your system, you become more coherent because you're present. If you space out, your system will never be able to hold those experiences. It will go into wild trance states for example, into what we've seen with many of the spiritual masters, famous spiritual masters who went into states of ecstasy and actual states of crying and expression of that kind. One can choose that path if one wants, but it does not lead to coherence and presence and thisness. Finally, even those masters who were enlightened and went through all those experiences, they had to return into thisness. So if you don't want to take an unnecessarily journey into space which might also harm the body and does most of the time, you can also say that I want to be here, I want to hold the experience, contain it, sahan-shakti. You know sahan-shakti? Stop the shivri, hold it. Presence, deep breath, and that is sahan-shakti, to hold the experience. Not to shiver out of it, but to hold it. You have to practice it. Quiet the system down. Be present, look at me, don't close the eyes, look. It's called sahan-shakti, you know that you're in Indian, you know the word. You know the power behind the word sahan-shakti? It is the ability to bear. And when you hold that, you know what happens? The consciousness starts expanding inside the system, it doesn't leave. Why the consciousness leaves into transcendental experience is because the system can't hold the power of the experience. So next time it happens, even if you shiver for the first few times, presence, presence, keep your eyes open, hold it, hold it because that's what makes this strong and able to hold sahan-shakti. Otherwise you know what will happen? When you start spacing out, in a couple of years you'll be, which is not what is going to bring joy to the system. So remind yourself to hold it. You can even do this motion, like holding it. It is not going to actually hold it. Like that. And deep breaths and hold the experience. Because what you're feeling now is the intensity of the satsang and of what I'm telling you and the vibrations of my very voice, you have to be able to hold it. And you hold it, and you hold it, and you hold it till you're coherent and present. Because otherwise the consciousness will start taking out and then you're spaced out and then it's japa-japa and chau-chau at one point. And you haven't really experienced this-ness of this life. What do you mean by this-ness? What's your name again, dear? Sheetal. This-ness means the experience of being here and now in this body and connecting with it. And I say that in the context of that, of the large spiritual moments that have actually taken the consciousness into a transcendental experience, into Samadhi states and into trying to merge with that, sometimes merging, sometimes not. But with the idea that it is that, that is actually what is to be experienced in this life, the enlightenment, that-ness. That is what the goal is. Yeah, and what I'm saying is it's not a goal because all of those who went up there had to come back. Anyways, whether it was Ramana Maharshi, whether it was Ramakrishna Paramahansa, whether it was Ananda Mahima, those are the well-known names, they all had to come back to this-ness. This is where the challenge is. The actual solid, totally present cellular experience of this-ness is the future of spirituality because it is the unknown. It's the unknown. That is known. This is unknown. And there was a time when that had to be known from the Upanishadic times, the Upanishadic Rishis, they spoke about Purna-Madha, Purna-Medha, you know, fullness there, fullness here. Why did they say that? Because they had slowly passed the Vedic period, started to move outward all over the world, not just here, in Europe, in Americas, Norths and Souths, all over the world. It was a concurrent experience all over, exploring the cosmos, you know, by transcendental movements out of this-ness. So you, someone like you, if you don't hold the experience, you'll start becoming that. And at one point you'll have to come back to this. And because you've been out for that long in that, your experience of this-ness is never really complete. Hold the experience, keep it in the system. Don't let it space out. It is not anymore sought as an adventure, because it's already known what's out there. The adventure is now here. It's to actually make the very cells of the body conscious of themselves to an extent which is unknown up until this point as a general experience to humanity. So even when I try being present, I start feeling this quiet and... You're more stable now, it's called Sahanjakti. Pull yourself in, always. And take up the practice of I need to understand this practice exactly what it is, because I'm not able to really understand it fully. It's actually not that complicated. The starting point of the practice is to accept an identity. I'm Sheetal, I'm daughter, what's your mother's name? Indira. And where were you born? Chennai. So I'm Sheetal, daughter of Indira from Chennai, let's say. That's your identity, not more, not less. Not more because otherwise it becomes ego, so. And this Sheetal, from moment to moment to moment, is discerning Viveka Shakti, using her Viveka Shakti, discerning, between that impulse of the truth that she has known when she was a child, so it's a known thing, and the loud demanding voice of the ahankaram, the ego. So she's trying to see, is this action coming from the ego, is it coming from the truth, or the impulse to that action, or the need for that action, where is it coming from? And then if she's not sure, she can always ask. And if she gets that impulse from the soul, then she knows ah, yes or no. She's asking in a state of surrender, in a state of samarpan, she's bending down to the antar guru, to the soul within, to the master. And she goes through her life in this state of surrender to the antar guru. Whenever there is doubt, she asks, she moves, she moves. And she becomes more and more of an instrument of her master. And that is the sadhana, in a nutshell. This has to be done throughout the day, like every movement, right? In the beginning you do it as much as you can, sometimes you do it once a day or twice a day. It starts out as a, it's actually a whole posture of the system. The whole system is in that state. The entire system is moving into a deeper and deeper state of surrender.