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In a departure from cultural conditioning, this scholar-mystic teaches not only that lack of money can hold one back from enlightenment--but tells us, in detail, just what to do to attain the abundance we want.
Sri Guruji Pillai (called Sri Siva by some) is the first guru to come from the Tamil Siddha tradition of western India. He received his Ph.D. in Hinduism from the University of Pittsburgh, holds a Masters degree in English Literature and a Masters of Letters from the University of Madurai in India. He is the founder of the Tripura Foundation and lectures around the world and in the United States.

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The Monthly Aspectarian: I know that your attitude toward money is quite different from what most of us have been taught. But to begin with, please give us a thumbnail of how you started out and got to where you are now.

Sri Guruj Pillai: I was born in India and had initial spiritual training with a number of masters. A prominent man was the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Then I studied under some south Indian masters until I had to find my own way. This was to introduce some important changes in our spirituality. The question that people ask wherever I go, whether in the United States or Europe, is, "Why is it that people are so poor in India if spirituality can really get us money?" I tell them that, believe it or not, there are more people here in the United States who meditate than there are in India. It's an irony, but it's the truth.

TMA: Most spiritual teachings have talked about the virtue of poverty, but you take the opposite approach. You say it's good to be spiritually oriented and financially successful at the same time. How is that?

SGP: The mainline approach to spirituality is that money is bad and you have to stay away from it because it will distract you from God. My approach is that when we don't have money, we can't even sit down and meditate. So it's wrong to think that money is going to be a hindrance to one's spirituality. In fact, it is going to help you to engage in spirituality with peace of mind. Without money, you cannot even sit for five minutes. The moment you close your eyes, you begin to think about the unpaid bills or where is the money going to come from for the next month. These kinds of things come up and then we cannot even meditate. We get up and go about trying to do something to protect our financial situation.

TMA: It's said that if the Buddha has a toothache, there is no enlightenment. But you're saying that if the Buddha can't make his car payment, there's no enlightenment either.

SGP: You cannot close your eyes to practical reality. That's why I insist that first you take care of your financial problems. Make sure that you get X amount of dollars a month so that you're assured that you don't have to worry about it. Then you can meditate for even one hour or two, whatever you're comfortable with, without problems. My meditations are geared to securing the financial freedom. Freedom is financial first, and once you have it, then you can be authentic. That's why I tell people, "If you don't need your paycheck, you can tell your boss what you really think about him." You can't do that now because you need your paycheck. So money makes you authentic; it doesn't make you phony any more.

Poor people somehow think that if they have money, they'll be distracted. That is deep down within the consciousness. The culture has promoted it, religion has promoted it and we have become victims to this conditioning. All that we need to do is to reject these concepts and then build new concepts. It's a learning process.

TMA: What is this learning process?

SGP: The learning process is to begin to reprogram our minds. That's the meditation that I taught Wayne Dyer. I'll give you the history of how I came to give this meditation to him. Somebody was driving me in a car, traveling to a seminar on how to manifest money. It was by an enlightened Master from southern India. As I was reading his book, this Siddha Master appeared before me and said, "Would you teach this technique? People are really hurting for money. It is very easy to make money, and this is the process." In Heaven, where he is from, "we do this meditation in order to create whatever we want to create whenever we want to create it." This meditation also works on the Earth plane.

The basis for this meditation is, creation takes place in two centers. One is the sex center, the sex chakra, from which the energy is released to create a baby. Creating a baby is a mystery, a joyous act. You can also create through the third eye chakra, which is between the two eyebrows and the pituitary gland. Everyone has an option to create either through the lowest chakra or through the third eye chakra. You create through the sex center to create a baby " but the same energy can be taken to the third eye chakra and can be released from there. That's the meditation I taught, in which I said, "Bring any thought that you want to manifest to the third eye and interject this thought with the sound AH "This sound has the power to empower your thoughts. I gave the meditation during the seminar, and I sent a copy of it to Wayne Dyer. I told him, "Experiment with this in your life and if it works, then take it to the world." I'm glad that I did this now, and that at least a million people in the world are using the technique.

TMA: Can you be a little more specific about how it works?

SGP: You take the energy from the lowest chakra, the sex center, and through the meditation, you mold your energy through a channel in the subtle body. You visualize the energy moving from your sex center. It moves up and goes to the third eye and any thought that goes into the third eye manifests. Here, you empower this thought with the sound AH, because AH is the sound of creation. Anyone, prior to procreating, in ecstasy, uses this sound .... ahhh, ahhh, ahhh. It is the sound of creation. This has been the discovery of this Siddha Master. Just as you create a baby, you can create anything that you want to create. The only thing is, the centers from which you want to create are different.

TMA: So would you say that for a male, it's important to conserve the sexual energy and bring it upward?

SGP: No, this has nothing to do with asceticism. This energy is the kundalini power, which stays at the sex chakra. You visualize this energy moving through a channel within the spinal column to the third eye. Wayne Dyer has put out a CD and tells about it in his book, Manifest Your Destiny, and I have put out a tape explaining the process of this guided meditation in which you move this energy step by step to the third eye. Once the energy moves to the third eye, you visualize whatever you want to create. It is all because they are able to hold this thought. Anything, before it becomes a material reality, is a psychological reality. If you don't put your blueprint in, you cannot build a house. When you put the blueprint within the third eye, you keep it there and you go on empowering it with this sound AH. If you want to buy a home or apartment, say, a two- or three-bedroom home with a library, you visualize everything within that house that you want to have, and then go on empowering that image with the sound AH. Just as the baby is created with the sound AH, this house, or this car, is also going to be created by the power of the sound AH. That's how it works.

TMA: Does the sound need to be spoken out loud?

SGP: You vocalize it in the beginning. Vocalize it for maybe two or three minutes after you get to the third eye. After that, you can mentally chant it.

TMA: How often, or for how long should a person do this?

SGP: 20 minutes. But if you want to, and have more time, it's good to do for an hour or two.

TMA: And is this something a person would do once or twice a day?

SGP: Twice a day, morning and evening.

TMA: How long does it generally take to have effects?

SGP: Some people have gotten results after the very first sitting. Others haven't gotten any results for six or eight months. It varies from person to person.

TMA: Does this take a consistent effort with a single image or can it be done imagining more than one thing?

SGP: I usually say, first manifest one or two things which are very critical for you right now. That may be a home or a car, a job, a contract, a business or whatever you want to manifest. Don't put more than two things out to manifest. When you have manifested those two things, then you can move on.

TMA: Do you recommend that people focus on specific things, or could it simply be "sufficient abundance"?

SGP: It is very important to visualize an image of what you want to have. If you want to have a business, see the business growing. If you want to have a job, see yourself being in the job, or if you want to have a car, visualize the car. If you want a house, visualize the house. If you want to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, then visualize ...

TMA: So if a person has a business and they need more cash flow in that business ...

SGP: Just visualize money flowing in and out, a lot of checks coming in ...

TMA: How long is an AH? Is it an AH for each breath?

SGP: If you go on saying AHHHHH, AHHHHH, AHHHHH [continual chanting] hold the image in your third eye and go on holding the house (if that's what you want) and let the sound go inside the house and empower this image that you have. If it is a business, then go on visualizing the business being successful with lots of checks coming in and different divisions of the business, and go on chanting AHHHHH. You have to bring all the emotions ''' it should not be cerebral. It is the emotions that manifest, not the mind. Procreation is a process of ecstasy. It is a highly emotional act. You bring the same kind of emotion as Ah, Ahh, Ahhh, Ahhhh--this is just another kind of creation, like a procreation. Procreation is just coming out of the mind and you are in a state of ecstasy. This is the process that you are to use here to get a business or a contract or whatever you want to create.

TMA: So you want to bring joy to it.

SGP: Bring joy to it! That's the key. It should not be cerebral. Then you'll find the emotions attract. If the mind kicks in, you will lose the joy. That's why in order to create a brand new Mercedes Benz, you have to allow that. You have to allow a beautiful house with exquisite furniture.

You'll remember, Yogananda came to the United States with no money. But all the places he created in Los Angeles, so beautiful, because he loved those beautiful things, and embraced those things with sheer love. On the other hand, if you become a philosopher ... that's what happened to the Buddha. As the Buddha began to hate the palace, he became a beggar. He hated his wife, he hated his child, he hated the kingdom, he hated everything about the world. And what did he like? He wanted to meditate, he wanted to go to the forest, he wanted to get enlightenment—and after enlightenment, what did he do? He still hated the obvious worldly things, so he thought the best thing is to go and beg for your food. That's how he started his monastic tradition. He got a group of people who went and begged for their food. This is a wrong model! For sure, it won't work in the United States.

TMA: It might have been right in its time and its place, but it certainly isn't right for now and here.

SGP: I don't know if it can be right in any time. As you said, if you have a toothache, then you can't meditate. If your tooth is dying, the pain is excruciating. You have to go and numb the root. You cannot close your eyes to practical reality.

TMA: What else would you like to communicate to our readers?

SGP: Everyone must seek financial freedom. I'm not saying that everyone should create being a millionaire; it's not necessary. But at least you should have no worries about paying the bills. The purpose of life is not to become a millionaire. The purpose of life is self realization, to realize what this is all about. Right now, we don't have either. From nine to five, and for some people, nine to nine, we spend prime time just to make a living. Survival. Survival efforts consume almost ... there is very little time left for other things, to meditate or to read things on enlightenment or to seclude yourself for three months and meditate " there's nothing better. The first thing that I want to tell the reader is to secure your financial freedom. You don't need to become a millionaire, but you need to have enough money to pay all your bills and have no money problems. That is the first step. Then, of course, we can go and experience samadhi. But you cannot put the cart before the horse.

TMA: Exactly the phrase I was thinking.

SGP: I do a lot of charity work in India ... but these people don't have any food. I cannot just go and talk about higher states of consciousness to these people. They're hungry. We have to give them food first so that they can live.

My basic teaching is, you become as you think. You must be very, very careful about what you put in your mind. You really have to correct your thinking process. You should not allow any negative thoughts to come and have a grip on the mind. Purge the thought the moment it comes in. Say, "I cannot think you. I don't like you. I would rather live in ease. Shut up and get out!" Go on doing the sound meditation and visualizing. Yogananda wanted to find a house. He had no money, no visa, no work permit, but he wanted to live in a mansion which today would cost several million dollars. He did not worry about money. He said, "Money will come." Even though you may not have a dollar in your pocket, you should not become negative. It may be0 real that you don't have a dollar, but you should never become pessimistic. You are the reflection of God's energy, and God is not poor.

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