deaths and births, who wish to be Jivanmuktas and get the experience of Paramatma, cannot succeed except by "giving up life".

Now what remains of this "life giving?" Does it mean jumping out of a running car or committing suicide by any undesirable tortures of the body? Not at all. "To give up life" means to give up Maya's delusions or false impressions of the material world, experienced and enjoyed through this gross body and mind. In other words to give up life means to die in the real sense of the word; to surrender to a Sadguru: to fall at his feet and get hold of them so firmly as not to leave him. Just like these champals (sandals) go wherever your feet go, sometimes in a king's palace, other times in the Narka (filthy) place. The champals' duty is to go with the feet—not only that, but to stick to the feet so strongly as to eventually be one with them; to be the feet, leaving behind their present existence as sandals.

To surrender and stick to a guru means not only to be ostentatiously wise by getting his darshan twenty times a day, but to strictly obey his orders and carry out his every word.

To live without any thought of "self"—that is, to live selflessly, means to die a living death, the death and destruction of all desires, thoughts and the mind itself—that is "giving up life."

You people die a thousand bodily deaths and stay just where you are, going through the ceaseless round of births and deaths because you take the "tea cup"—which is the means— as the "tea" or reality. You take this body and this life to be truth, whereas this body is only the means to advance to the goal of Truth. All this is the mischief of those devilish sanskaras. Free yourself from the bindings of these sanskaras and you will realize God.

Your dying and taking birth again and again is like your tearing off an old coat and your tailor preparing a new one each time. The coat is the body; the tailor, the sanskaras. One coat falls off and the tailor makes a new one; your one body falls, and your sanskaras prepare a new one. So, to prevent this "sewing and destroying" process once and for all—the tailor —the producer—must himself be cut up and destroyed; in other words, the sanskaras. All this mischief of the sanskaras must be got rid of.

But how? Imagine a knotted string wound up on a reel. Those knots, and the turns around the reel, are all "natural". The string is the Self, the knots and turns are the "natural" sanskaras, which, by their puzzle of twists and turns, makes the Self concentrate only on the twists and turns, not on its Self. To reverse the turns, someone must get hold of the string from the top end and unreel it in the opposite direction, so that all the turns automatically disappear. The moment the string is unwound it realizes "I am the string—and I am FREE!" It had originally no knowledge of its "freedom", being in the grip of the knots and turns; but once unwound, it immediately realizes it was as free originally as it is now; the only difference being that now it knows what originally it did not.

Now, this can be done if the string is held from the top where the turns begin. Who is it that handles the string from the top where the turns or sanskaras begin, and can unwind them in reverse? It is the guru. The moment your string falls into his hands, the duty of untying the various knots and turns also falls into his hands. Meaning: once you have surrendered yourself to a Sadguru, you are sure to make progress and advance towards the Mukti-Marga (the way to be free from the ceaseless round of births and deaths and towards Realization).

Let us take another simile. Suppose you are in a dream, and in that dream-state you enjoy a fine motor ride in America. This enjoyment is an imaginary dream. Take this dream to be the "right-handed" sanskaras. Now just as there is need of "reverse" sanskaras for Realization, to bring you to the awake-state and prove the falseness of the dream there is a need for such "reverse" or left-handed sanskaras to make you awaken at once. What would such a reverse sanskara be? Quite the opposite of the pleasure-ride in the car: something that strikes terror in you—for example a big dragon (Raksha), the very sight