QUIETNESS OF THE MIND OPENS THE HEART
Because you are Divine, every cell in your body is Divine. If we say God is omnipresent, He should be present in every cell of you. The only failure man has is that he does not recognise or have the cognition to know that he is Divine.
If you stand down on the street, you will only see part of the road. But climbing a hill will give you a panoramic view of the city.
Another thing happens when the person meditates besides the physical and psychological benefits. The person becomes more aware of himself and his environment. Your awareness expands, and with expanded awareness, all your actions will be the right actions. Then, not only does the mind develop, but it also goes to its quieter self and quieter centre – and that quietness experienced by the mind opens up the heart. When the heart, which is the core of the human being, the core of the human personality, opens up, there is greater coordination between the mind and heart, so you become more loving.
Someone tells me, for example, “No one loves me.” So, it is very easy: become loveable, and everyone will love you. You do not need to go to call the butterflies. They will not come. Make your garden beautiful, grow beautiful flowers, and automatically, the butterflies will come.
IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENT THROUGH MEDITATION
Through meditation, one adds that extra depth to one’s life. One discovers oneself, and thereby, life becomes better. When life becomes better, everything around you becomes much more enjoyable. There is joy. You are made of joy, but we have lost the art of enjoying joy, but this art can be regained.
Through meditation, you will find that your entire environment improves. A greater understanding develops between husband and wife, employee and employer. You will also learn how to forgive and love. People talk of love and say, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” But how can you do that when you do not know yourself?
Through these spiritual practices, you start knowing yourself, you start understanding your true worth, and you will begin saying one day, “I and my Father are One.” For you are at-one-ment with Him all the time. The only thing lacking is the recognition or the realisation of that oneness. When you discover this oneness, how can you hate another, for there is no one else to hate except you, and do not hate yourself? Then you would say, “I am my brother’s keeper” in its truest sense.
ACHIEVING THE TRUE GOAL OF LIFE
From these straightforward meditational practices, you achieve the true goal of life, for man’s goal is to recognise his reality. We are living only on the surface level. Like the ocean’s surface waves, the turbulent waves, and those waves are tossing us around. But if you dive just a bit deeper within yourself, you will find the ocean calm, and once you experience the calmness, you will appreciate the beauty of the waves. Then you would not say, “Oh, look at these waves, how turbulent they are!” But you will become a surfer and enjoy surfing on the waves.
What do you learn there? You learn acceptance of life. With the growth of awareness, you become more and more accepting, and when you learn to accept things or situations as they are, you will naturally start surrendering. You see how all these virtues, all these good qualities which religion talks about, which all theologies speak about, are so interrelated that when one quality is developed, you automatically start creating the other attributes.
BECOMING FEARLESS AND GUILTLESS
Fear is the greatest bugbear in the life of man today. He fears everything. Everything becomes fearful when there is nothing to fear. You go down a dark road, and because your mind is filled with fear, you would think that a shadow you would see there on this road is a mugger that is going to mug you. Meanwhile, it could be a tree stump, but you would be afraid to go through the road. If you have fearlessness, by recognising and experiencing that Divinity within you, every aspect and every facet of your life will improve if you do not fear.
Another significant problem that human beings suffer from is the sense of guilt. Guilt they are riddled with guilt, and that causes untold psychological problems. But in a way, it is suitable for some people to be guilty, or else the psychologists and psychiatrists would starve. The idea that is implanted in us since childhood is the sense of guilt, and you grow up with the idea that “I am a sinner, I am a sinner, I am a sinner.” You do not need that. You are not a sinner. You are placed in certain circumstances by the various impressions that whirl in your subconscious mind, which you must work through. In Sanskrit, they call it karma. That is a different subject altogether.
How about approaching life with the attitude, “I am strong, I am strong, I am strong.” Not with the attitude of “I am weak, I am weak; I am weak.” For if you say you are weak, you will become weaker.
A Frenchman started a clinic in France, and many clinics opened afterwards, but there was only one principle he used. He used to tell his patients that when you wake up in the morning and before you go to sleep at night, you say that I feel better and better. I feel better and better. I feel stronger and stronger. The cures were remarkable. They started feeling better and better, and today, doctors agree that all illnesses come first from the mind. They used to say that about sixty per cent of diseases were of mental origin, but now they have started saying that a hundred per cent of illnesses come from the mind.
BECOMING JOYFUL
You think, and your thoughts make you what you are. Therefore, when you gain strength through our meditational practices, you will feel that strength within you, and you can honestly and truly go about life and say I am strong, I am strong, I am strong, and thereby become stronger and stronger. After all, what is your mind? The mind is a whole set of patterns you have created yourself.
You cannot eliminate these patternings, but you can superimpose good patternings over the negative patternings, and thereby, the negative patternings are pushed to one side. In meditation, they are not only moved to one side, but they are also dissolved, and the new patternings and positive patternings start functioning, and life becomes joyous. Then you are living your true nature. For, in reality, you are nothing but joy. You are Divine as you are now, and with the realisation that “I am Divine,” and because the nature of Divinity is joy, you become increasingly joyful.
THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN MIND
You are the one that creates an atmosphere around you, and everyone must have had this experience, that when you go out to someone’s house, at some places you wish you could get away in two minutes, the atmosphere seems so negative and heavy. Everyone has had that experience, and at some homes, you can sit and feel relaxed, and you do not want to move away; you can sit there for hours. It is not the home but the people in the house, how they live, and how they think to create this atmosphere.
From there, you could also see how susceptible your mind is to the idea that the atmosphere in a particular person’s home would make you run away, while in another person’s home, it would make you stay. Yet, it is not tangible. The atmosphere is not tangible; you cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or taste it. Yet it is there. You can feel it. You think it is cumbersome, and you want to go.
This proves how susceptible the human mind is. Another thing that meditation does for you is that it strengthens the mind, so you do not become vulnerable to any negativity around you. You become non-attached and not affected at all. Then, you can truly stand on your own feet and feel the joy and strength of Divinity.
IMPROVING YOUR LIFE
I am trying to point out all the benefits of meditation, from the simple art of meditation, which relaxes your body and the mind, making you more attuned to the Kingdom of Heaven within. It improves the quality of your thoughts and enhances the quality of your actions.
Then you are a true human being because you have been born endowed with all these qualities, all these virtues of kindness, humility, compassion, and love. What more can we ask for in life? And that is the goal of life. When the body and mind are relaxed, you perform actions and become more efficient.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1983 – 47
