Sannyas is not a game of one world against another, of material versus spiritual.

First thing you need to understand is there are no two worlds like material and spiritual. There is only one world.

Second thing is sannyas is not a doctrine. It is a certain attitude of living in the world without suffering. It is an understanding of how to live in the best possible way. It is a conscious decision to live life as close to reality as possible, because living in reality is living in the most optimum way.

What is living in reality?

One person asked me a question, ‘You say that currently our waking state is not reality, it is also a dream. But how can it be? Whenever we sleep and come back to the waking state, we find the things around us to be the same – house, belongings, people etc. But when we go to the dream state, things in the dream are not the same. So obviously, we can conclude that the dream is a dream and waking state is reality.’

Just like in the waking state, you came back to the same identity every time. So, coming back to the same identity every time as you said, the same belongings, the same place, etc. is not the scale to prove it is a permanent reality! Am I right?

Carefully understand what I am going to say now…

Sometimes, in one night’s dream itself, you will dream ten to twelve years of your life. Am I right? You will start with your college and by the time you come out of sleep, you would have finished your marriage, kids, everything! You would have lived something like one decade overnight!

What does it mean?

It means you have lived ten years of your life in ten hours. Am I right? But when you are dreaming the dream, you don’t feel that you are doing a fast forward. You are very clear that you are living your ten years of life in its own pace. But when you wake up suddenly, you realize you have spent only ten hours in sleep! In the very same way, at any moment, you may wake up and feel you have not spent seventy years on planet earth, but that you spent only seven hours!

Let me explain.

Let us imagine that between today and tomorrow you dream as if you lived for one decade. In the ten hours of sleep, you dream that you are studying in your college, and that you fall asleep for a few hours everyday, and come back. For the whole ten years, you can’t be without falling asleep, right? So you dream that you are falling asleep as well, and living a regular life.

Now understand an important thing. In these ten years of life, in one continuous dream, from the 9th night to the 10th morning, you lived ten years of your life. Many times you would have fallen asleep and come back as part of the life in the dream itself. Within this dream, whenever you came back from sleep, you were with the same identity as you were before going in to sleep. Am I right? That is, in your dream, if you went to sleep as a college student, you woke up also as the same college student. That is why starting with college, you moved to the next step…the next step…the next step and so on without any confusion.

What does this mean?

Just like in the waking state, you came back to the same identity every time. So, coming back to the same identity every time as you said, the same belongings, the same place, etc. is not the scale to prove it is a permanent reality! Am I right?

What does it mean?

It means that just falling asleep and coming back to find the same bank balance, car, house and wife, also does not mean you are in reality!

This is a very important understanding. This understanding can lead to such a sharp analysis of your life. You will get clarity in so many things.

If you understand this one concept, that everything is maya or illusion, you will not renounce anything. You will live with everything without being disturbed by it.

Now, just like how this ten year dream happens in ten hours, there may be a different calendar where your 70 years, for example 1950 to 2020, may be just seven hours for somebody who is in a different space!

If the number of thoughts per second is more, you will feel as if you are living for a longer time. For example, if you are sitting with someone who you are completely in tune with, you will feel that time is moving very fast because your thoughts per second at that time will be very low. But if you are sitting with somebody with whom you don’t feel connected, what will you do every five minutes? You will keep looking at the watch. Your thoughts per second will be high. You will be restless. So you will feel as though a lot of time has passed.

That is why in the vedic tradition, the unit of time is called kshana. It is not measured as a chronological second. According to Western understanding, the chronological time is calculated with the unit of second. It means that one unit of time is equal to one second. In the vedic tradition, the unit of time is called kshana. Kshana means the gap between one thought and the next thought. According to the Western calendar, your one second and my one second are one and the same. But according to the vedic calendar, your one kshana and my one kshana will be different! This is because the gap between one thought and the next thought for me will be different from the gap for you. Here, time is not chronological, it is psychological.

Whenever your attention moved from the seen to the seer, that is from the object that you were seeing to the person seeing it, you came to the next state, you woke up! So understand, whenever your attention is diverted from the seen to the seer, you wake up.

We refer to Thoughts Per Second as TPS.

Now, in the dream state, you have too many thoughts or a high TPS. That is why you feel as if you have lived for a long time. In the waking state, there is a medium number of TPS. That is why it seems like time is moving fast. For the celestial beings, the TPS is very less, and that is why their one day will be one year for us! You can see this in the vedic calendars. If you bring down your TPS considerably, you can enter into samadhi or turiya, merging with the divine consciousness, which is ‘reality’. So understand that it is only when you bring your TPS down, that you will understand reality. 

Now, let us come back to our dream and waking states. In the waking state, when your TPS is lower than in the dream state, you realized that the dream state was not reality. Am I right? But when you were in the dream state, did you realize you were not in reality?

No! 

You felt it was real because you were going through everything realistically. You responded to everything. You had nightmares, you had all the regular problems. Only when your TPS was brought down in the waking state, did you realize that the dream state was an illusion. Now… in the same way, to understand that your waking state itself is an illusion, you need to bring down your TPS further! Come down… come to the turiya state. Suddenly, you will realize that this waking state is also an illusion! In the dream state, if your TPS was, let us say 1000, then in the waking state it might be say 100. In the samadhi state, it is zero. Because of a reduced TPS in the waking state, you understand that the dream state was an illusion. In the same way, only in the samadhi state, you will understand that the waking state is an illusion! As of now, your inner space is occupied with all that you experience in the waking state. That is why you never enter into the samadhi state. One more thing to realize is that this whole situation is like a vicious circle. As long as you are enjoying the dream, you will never get out of it. Only when you get out will you realize it is just a dream. Similarly, as long as you are enjoying the waking state, you will never understand it is an illusion!

Here is where Shiva comes to help us.

He gives a technique or method to get us out of the illusory waking state. This is a very subtle and important point. Whether you are in the dream state or in the waking state or samadhi state, the dreamer is the same, am I right? Whether you are seeing a 1000 TPS dream, or a 100 TPS dream, or you are in 0 TPS, the dreamer is the same. But what caused you to wake up from the illusion was the shift in attention from the seen to the seer. Am I right?

Whenever your attention moved from the seen to the seer, that is from the object that you were seeing to the person seeing it, you came to the next state, you woke up! So understand, whenever your attention is diverted from the seen to the seer, you wake up.

This is the technique. This is the key: turn your awareness from the seen to the seer. You will wake up!

Sannyas is nothing but nurturing the awareness towards the seer. All the techniques of renunciation and meditation are methods to pull the awareness from the seen towards the seer.

Once you become the seer, you start experiencing your aloneness. Aloneness is your original nature. You experienced it in your mother’s womb when you were by yourself. Aloneness is different from loneliness. Society teaches you to always be with people at home or any club or party or at least with the television. It weakens you by giving you these supports. When these are not there, you feel lonely. Loneliness always brings suffering. Aloneness on the other hand is the causeless bliss that is in you all the time, the bliss that all great enlightened masters have spoken of again and again. Aloneness gives you strength.

Sannyas is all about rediscovering that aloneness and relaxing into it.

source: Living Enlightenment