Preethaji distinguishes transcendental forgiveness—which flows from a state of deep connection and expanded self—from the habitual, conditioned forgiveness most people practice. Real forgiveness requires presence and awareness rather than automatic behavior patterns. When forgiveness becomes merely a habit, like eating when hungry or checking social media, it loses transformative power and perpetuates a cycle of unconscious repetition. True forgiveness emerges only when you expand your consciousness beyond the small self and reconnect with the fundamental interconnectedness of existence.
What Is Transcendental Forgiveness?
Preethaji opens the talk by establishing what transcendental forgiveness is not. Most people have learned forgiveness through conditioning—from parents, teachers, religious institutions, or books. This conditioned forgiveness, she explains, is merely a habit. When you practice this kind of forgiveness, you're not truly processing anything. Instead, you're mechanically performing an action designed to make yourself feel better, the way you might eat breakfast when you're hungry or scroll social media when you feel bored.
The forgiveness taught by tradition and culture lacks genuine awareness. "You're just doing it so that you can feel nice about it," Preethaji says. This habitual apology operates without thought, emotion, or real feeling—it's purely behavioral. You do it because that's what you've been trained to do, not because something has shifted within you.
Why Habitual Forgiveness Keeps You Stuck
When you operate from habit rather than consciousness, you remain trapped in repeating patterns. "When you are going to keep behaving in a habitual way, you're not going to create anything new. You are just going to have the same life over and over again," Preethaji explains. This repetition breeds boredom, and from that boredom emerges continued harm—both to yourself and others.
Habitual forgiveness is actually part of the problem. It allows unconscious patterns to persist because nothing genuinely shifts in your internal state. You say the words, you perform the gesture, but your consciousness hasn't expanded. Without expansion, you cannot help but keep hurting people.
The State of Connection and Expanded Self
Real forgiveness comes from somewhere else entirely. According to Preethaji, true forgiveness "is coming from a state of total connection. It is coming from a state of an expanded self. It is coming from a state of being present." This is not something you can force or perform. It's the natural outcome of a shift in consciousness.
To forgive authentically, you must first examine why you need forgiveness in the first place. This examination requires going inward, not outward. It requires questioning whether your impulse to forgive or ask for forgiveness is genuine or merely habitual. Real forgiveness doesn't bypass the wound—it arises when you've reconnected to something larger than your individual hurt or guilt.
Becoming a Real Human Being
Preethaji calls for a fundamental shift in how we exist. "We all have to become human beings who are real, not just keep behaving in a habitual way," she says. This isn't poetic language—it's a practical diagnosis. Most people are operating from scripts written by their conditioning, not from their own awareness.
A creative life—one that moves forward and creates something genuinely new—requires an expanded consciousness and a state of connection. Without these, you're locked in repetition. This matters not only for your relationships but for how you interact with the world itself.
The Larger Context: Consciousness and Planetary Crisis
Preethaji situates this discussion within a cosmic and ecological perspective. She notes that humanity represents only 0.01% of life on Earth, yet has managed to destroy 80% of the planet. We've destroyed oceans, rainforests, and cultivable land at an accelerating rate. This destruction is not separate from our inner state—it's a direct expression of it.
"What we are doing to ourselves, what we are doing to everyone else and to this planet Earth is destruction," she states. This has been possible because we remain unconscious, habitual, and disconnected.
It took 13.8 billion years for the universe to create the gift of life, family, friendship, and the specific gifts present in your own life. Yet most people cannot genuinely enjoy, nurture, or connect to these gifts "from a beautiful state." This inability stems directly from operating from habit rather than consciousness.
The Path Forward: Expanding Your Self
The implied practice is clear: if you want to move beyond habitual forgiveness to something real and transformative, you must expand your sense of self. This isn't about becoming a "better person" in a conventional sense. It's about recognizing that your individual self is connected to everything—to the 13.8-billion-year history of creation, to all beings, to the planet itself.
From that expanded state, forgiveness is no longer something you do. It becomes something you are. You cannot hold grudges or ask for forgiveness as a transaction when you recognize that separateness itself is an illusion born from contracted consciousness.
Where to Go from Here
Consider where you might be practicing habitual forgiveness in your own life. Notice the moments you apologize without genuine feeling or forgive without real release. These are opportunities to pause and ask: Am I connected to this person right now? Have I expanded my perspective to include theirs? Or am I simply performing a script?
Preethaji's teaching suggests that working toward expanded consciousness—through meditation, reflection, or practices that reconnect you to the whole—is prerequisite to authentic forgiveness. Forgiveness, in this framework, is not something to practice; it's something that naturally emerges when you're not contracted into a small, separate, habitual self. The work is internal. The forgiveness follows naturally.
