THE PHYSICAL BODY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT THE SUBTLE BODY You do not need to recognise the ego to go beyond it, because that would become a mental process, and the mind itself is ego, so the ego is trying to find the ego. It is like saying that you will see your own eyes. You cannot. You cannot see your own eyes; you need a mirror. So, to recognise the ego, one has to go beyond it to observe it. The ego is a bundle of experiences. It is not necessary to annihilate the ego, because it is impossible to annihilate the ego. When we talk of ego, in the sense we use it, we talk of ego as self-centred, so ego again qualifies egotism, a self-centred ego. In other words, it turns inward to itself and not beyond itself, and is caught up in the work of doing. It is like the silkworm spinning and spinning and spinning and gets caught up in the end, in its own silk and it cannot escape So, what is the solution? All these impressions gained in what is termed the ego are binding; they bind one to a certain pattern of action, because the mind is ego and the mind is patterned. We have to unpattern the mind, or unpattern the ego, without destroying the ego. If the ego is annihilated, as many Eastern philosophies propose, then you cannot exist. You would not be able to be part and parcel of the evolutionary process. Everything has an ego – everything does not have an ego, it is an ego. I am sitting here; you are sitting there. We are nothing but little egos. We are definitely all a bundle of impressions, created over so, so many lifetimes, and now we want to get rid of ourselves. That is what annihilation means; annihilation of the ego is committing suicide. Because once you get rid of all those impressions that you are made of, your entire body will disintegrate, because the body cannot exist without the mind, and the mind is a receptacle, the container of the impressions called the ego. So, by annihilating the ego, you are annihilating the subtle body, that is within yourself and the physical manifestation, the physical body, cannot exist without the subtle body. EXPANDING THE EGO TO BECOME ONE WITH THE UNIVERSAL SELF So, what has to be done within this ego self so that it could become conducive to our evolution? That is the question. What can be done? These impressions are there; they cannot be annihilated; they are eternal; they have to exist. I have said many times that every thought that is thought is eternal; it cannot be destroyed. The vibration set up by that thought goes on and on and on, through eternity. So, what one does is expand the ego. Our actions are contracting the ego; we are taking all those experiences of millions of years and compacting them, so that by the very act of compacting them, we are combining one impression with another, and a great number of permutations take place, where new impressions are created. That is how the ego assumes greater and greater importance, and we become more and more self-centred with all those skeletons in the cupboard, multiplying like rabbits. So the idea here will not be the annihilation of the ego, but its expansion, like stretching opaque rubber so it becomes transparent. That is the way to deal with the ego. When the ego is stretched and it becomes transparent, the inner light, the spiritual light, shines through. I have used this analogy many times: if the window is clean and a bright light comes through, you do not notice the glass, even though it still exists. The glass becomes one with the light. The glass, the barrier, is not perceived, because who is the perceiver, except the ego itself. The ego perceives; the ego experiences life’s varied experiences. But if that is expanded to such an extent that the pure light is shining through, all the shades and the shadows on that glass automatically disappear. All the skeletons disappear. One does not need to work through all those impressions gained through lifetimes. One does not need to shake hands with all those skeletons. They are automatically refined. Those very skeletons that have a grosser form become so subtle that they become totally transparent, and that is the way to handle the ego. It is easy to say, let us make the ego transparent, so the light shines through. To make that possible, we have to practice meditation and other spiritual practices, recognise our shortcomings, and address them constructively. Here, desire is valid, desire for betterment, although it has some binding effect, but that desire is of such a nature as choosing between the lesser evil and the larger evil. When we desire to better ourselves, we make or create the conditions within ourselves to draw upon that which is called Grace. And with the help of Grace, meditation, and wanting to better ourselves in positive action, that ego-self expands, it stretches to such an extent that it loses its individuality and assumes universality. This means that the extent of the expansion of the ego is as vast as the universe, so that, while maintaining the little ego self, one is also in atonement with the Universal Self. And when all those impressions are spread across the entire universe, what effect can they have? For having been extended to that vastness, where else could they be placed to put in more impressions, because you have covered the whole field with your little ego? So, the ego in its expansion knows the whole universe. The individual becomes universal. EXPANSION OF THE EGO IS EXPANSION OF AWARENESS When he becomes universal, that is the recognition of the personal God, that we spoke about, for the personal God, too, is a refined ego. So, we must not worry so
Path to Inner Peace: Transforming Negativity through Acceptance, Meditation, and Willpower
ACCEPTANCE IS THE FIRST STEP IN DEALING WITH NEGATIVITY If, subconsciously, the negativity within oneself comes to the fore and produces adverse circumstances, then one has to accept it because accepting it is dealing with it. In everyday life, we find that the expressions of our experiences and thoughts, whatever they may be, are so deeply ingrained in our subconscious that they cannot remain there. If all those thoughts had to remain in the subconscious, we would explode. So, the subconscious mind has to find release, and that release comes about through the conscious mind. When all those weeds from under the ground are pushed up to above the ground, which would mean that when those subconscious thoughts and negativities that we ourselves have put there in the first place – that must never be forgotten – are pushed up into the conscious level, the conscious mind, whereby those negativities become cognisable, then we feel utterly miserable and hopeless. We feel utterly miserable, hopeless and helpless to be able to accept the situation. By developing feelings of hopelessness and helplessness in us, we are not helping ourselves. We are actually watering the weeds and making them grow stronger in the conscious mind, and when they grow more in the conscious mind, they reach deeper into the subconscious. If you want to do gardening, do it the best way. That is the best way: you find its conscious expression more powerful, while at the same time letting the roots grow deeper into the subconscious mind. So, what to do? FROM ACCEPTANCE TO RESOLUTION When we talk of acceptance, we mean facing the problem. The roots are there in the subconscious. They have to express themselves. They have to rid themselves of these burdens. There is no escape. There is no escape from it. We have put them there. We have sown, and we must reap. But when they reach the conscious level, it is up to us whether we feed those weeds, and that is where the bulk of acceptance comes in. From the subconscious mind, a thought arises: “I am going to steal tonight.” Are we going to give vent to the idea of stealing with the conscious mind? Are we going to do that? Are we doing so? Are we doing so? Are we going deeper into the roots? Acceptance means not only the circumstances we are confronted with, but also accepting the fact that I tend to be a thief. That is a true acceptance. I have had a lot of dealings with alcoholics. Sometimes these various organisations call me in to give them talks, and the most important thing which I would have to make the alcoholic realise, is to admit to himself that he has alcoholism. Once he admits that sincerely to himself, I can wean him off his alcohol. So, acceptance means to admit the weakness that is now being pushed up from my subconscious mind. That is what acceptance means. When the alcoholic admits to himself that he has alcoholism, and number two, he does not have the power to deal with it myself, then I go for help. I go to an adviser for help planning my life. One kind of help. I go for another kind of help also, and that is in surrender, surrender to a power which is beyond me. So, firstly, I admit honestly to myself. The problem with alcoholics for example using this for an example is that they do not want to admit that they have alcoholism. That is the biggest problem which any social worker has, or those who deal with people afflicted with this disease called alcoholism. That is the biggest problem they have. So, it is to get the person to admit that I have this weakness, that I am an alcoholic. I have automatically accepted the idea, and when I have accepted the idea that I am an alcoholic, I will try to find ways and means whereby this weakness can be dealt with. And if outside counselling fails, I still have the greatest counsellor of all, and I do not need to find that counsellor in tangible form. No, I just surrender and say, “Thy will be done.” What greater acceptance is there than that? This applies to every problem in life: you just do not accept; you face the problem; acceptance comes on its own; and when acceptance comes, ways and means automatically follow. When one sincerely accepts that one is in trouble, one automatically finds the cause of the trouble, and once the cause is found, as a doctor would say, proper diagnosis is half the cure; one has reached halfway in solving the problem. And after reaching halfway, the other half can be achieved by the acceptance of the injunction “Thy will be done.” THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF MEDITATION See how devotion works? How systematic is it? The whole idea, the whole transformation of the human personality, depends upon one factor, and that factor is the ability to face ourselves squarely in the mirror. When we hide the problems away, like the alcoholic who does not want to admit that he has alcoholism, he can never solve his problems. As these weeds push up from the subconscious into the conscious mind, we know it can be very uncomfortable. Perhaps, most of the time, it could be uncomfortable. To set off this discourse. Meditation does two things simultaneously. One, it stirs you up and makes you face your problem, and secondly, it gives you the strength to solve it. And if that problem is faced face-to-face, pulled out of the subconscious to the conscious level of cognition, and we face it, then meditation also gives the strength to face problems. And if I face the problem squarely and combine strength with a bit of determination and devotion, then there is something higher than me that can eradicate this problem. All that initial knock, that initial disturbance, is lessened immeasurably.
A Human Journey: From Tangible Gods to Abstract Divinity
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MAN NEEDS SOMETHING TANGIBLE TO APPROACH THE ABSTRACT We know that the spiritual energy that exists in the universe is abstract. The human mind is so constructed that it could never conceive of anything abstract, because it is tangible in a very fine, subtle form of energy. In contrast, the abstract is an energy beyond all tangible energies. It is an intangible energy. So, for the human mind to have any little comprehension of the universal energy, the intangible, the abstract energy, what must he do? Ancient Sages have devised a means; this was not something devised by the Sages, but something revealed to them. By revelation, we mean that the human mind can be brought to such a fine level, and yet, going beyond that fine level of the human mind, one can be in absolute communion with the abstract. In other words, we are led very systematically to that abstract state, whereby the abstractness produced in us becomes one with the universal abstractness, which means that the inner self of man finds its oneness with the universal self of man. That is the abstract conception, and therefore, we say that Divinity is indefinable by man’s mind. But man has to have something tangible. So, how to find that tangibility? If we have an air conditioner in the room with the heat on, we do not see the heat, yet it is there, warming the room. Because the human mind is incapable of conceiving, seeing, feeling, or touching the abstract heat or the abstract Divinity in our sense, he has to have a way and means by which he can communicate. We know for sure that the tangible cannot communicate with the intangible. So, in this case, the intangible or the abstract has to concretise itself so that the human being or the human mind can have a conception of something which is beyond itself. Through analysis, he can find that there is something more to me than just me. Through feeling, he can extend this principle in actually experiencing that there is more to me than the apparent me. THE ABSTRACT MADE TANGIBLE THROUGH PERSONALISED DEITIES So, to find all these various deities, a formulation has been developed. For example, the Hindu people have so many gods, tangible gods, gods that lived householders’ lives. If you take the God Brahma, the Creator, he would have his Lakshmi, and Shiva would have his Parvati. So, those Gods, those conceptions were brought down to such a level that the ordinary man can identify himself with something tangible. A householder can definitely identify himself with another householder. By that, we mean that a husband and wife can identify with a being that also has a husband-and-wife relationship. So, personal Gods were formed. What has happened here is that the abstract God has become a personalised God. What is the personalised God? A personalised God necessarily has to be the son of man, and the son of man we regard to be a personalised God. In different times and in different climes, the same principle has been followed. Buddhists have their Buddha, the Hindus have their Krishna and their Rama, and Christians have their Christ, the Mohammedans have Mohammed. Human beings will find it a spiritual and psychological necessity to have a personalised form of God, and that is why we find in the Bible the phrase “Our Father which art in Heaven.” It has many abstract meanings, but the literal meaning is time and place: there is a place where the Father is in Heaven. Yet the abstract Father is beyond the Father that we conceive of sitting in Heaven with long robes and a big beard. MAN NEEDS A TANGIBLE IDEAL ON THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY For man to proceed on the spiritual path, and this is worth repeating, he needs a tangible form to which he can relate. The best way that man can relate is to a superman, and that is the origin of all these films, like James Bond. Because man within himself feels that he has a greater capacity, a greater capability, and he is forever trying to identify himself with that greater capability and capacity. Therefore, we have these James Bonds, where, while watching James Bond in action, the viewer identifies with that James Bond on the screen. And the reason is not only escapism or daydreaming, because even escapism and daydreaming must have a basis. The basis is that man inherently has far greater capacity within himself than what he displays without himself. So, we know, and all psychiatrists and psychologists will tell us that we use less than ten per cent of our potential. Ninety per cent is lying dormant. So, for man to awaken the ninety per cent dormantness within him, he has to personify an ideal, an ideal which is greater than himself, and that is the purpose of having personalised Gods where God is seen in person. A PERSONIFIED GOD IS A COMBINATION OF THE CONCRETE WITH THE ABSTRACT According to Vedic tradition, certain forms of meditation lead one to the supreme state. The first form is what they call Savikalpa Samadhi, which means to reach Samadhi, to reach a supreme state with form, Kalpa, Savikalpa with conceivable form. So, by having an ideal which is a super-human being, we lead all our attentions to that super-human being and by leading the attention to the super-human being, we try to, and we do identify ourselves with that super-human being, which is Krishna, Buddha, Christ. And when one reaches total identification with the ideal of the personified God, we go beyond that to find the abstract God. So, the conceptions of a personalised God or an abstract God are not contradictory. The one idea is an extension of the other. They are stages that man has to go through. We cannot find Divinity by solving mathematical problems. Divinity has to become very, very tangible. What is a personified God? A personified
The Path to Truth: Where Is Truth Truly to Be Found?
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THE SPIRITUAL ARCHITECTURE OF TRUTH To be true to yourself means coming together with the essence of yourself, and that essence within yourself is truth in itself. But how does one discover that? Do you think you could discover that with your mind? Yes, but very partially, because what would seem true to you today might prove to be false tomorrow. Because of the mind’s ramifications and modifications, truth assumes different properties at different times. What is true today might be untrue tomorrow, and what is untrue tomorrow might, the following day, yield another truth. So, truth is a process of continual search, and you, seeking truth, are involved not in truth, but you are involved in the process of truth because truth is forever building up unto itself. A four-foot wall will seem quite tall today if you are small, and as you grow up, the wall gets smaller, so you have to add another two feet to it. And as you grow still taller, you need a still higher wall. And that is how truth is a process of building, and what do you build upon? You build upon the foundation of thought. When thought in the beginning has a firm foundation, that wall will not crumble, and it will not fall. So, if we could regulate, by coming to Courses, attending Satsangs, listening to tapes from this old guy here, whatever, you are building the foundation of true thought upon which truth is built. So, you are nothing but a builder. You build and build and build. But then you have to have that level, with the little thing in the centre, to see if the wall is straight. It is the level you use to build the wall. Where do you find that level? Only from a true Spiritual Master. A lot of gurus falling around over their own two left feet, but it is the true Spiritual Masters that give you the level, so in the thought processes to find the truth, your wall is built straight instead of wavy, wavy, wavy. To recap again on this point, you have a good level, and you start building your wall. The foundation must be on sincere and true thought, and then the wall will have the foundation of stability, and stability itself is truth. TO FIND YOUR TRUTH, YOUR FEET HAVE TO BE FIRMLY PLANTED TO THE GROUND It is only when people’s minds become unstable through their various mental processes that you will find the wall can waver, rumble, and fall. So how do we get to that stability? How do we become stable? How many of you, for example, really walk on the ground? Not very many. Some do; others just float across the road, unaware of the ground beneath them, on which their feet are firmly planted. And that is also the way you think. How many of your thoughts are firmly planted? Just try to examine this tomorrow, just observe your thoughts. They are floating and fleeting all the time. So, to get your true foundation, to find the truth, your thoughts have to be firmly planted on solid ground, and where is the solid ground? Here, in your heart. Not there in the mind. That is why the mind is always upstairs. The heart is downstairs. So why live upstairs all the time? I will get suffocated, I am sure. Come downstairs. And by coming downstairs, you are coming to the truth, to the ground. Your feet are firmly planted. That is how you find truth in life. Why become an airy-fairy? Come down to the dairy and suckle your mother’s breast. That is where your food has come from. That is what has made you grow, made you live, and that is why we call the mother, the foundation, the Holy Mother, for every mother is holy. TRUTH IS TO BE FOUND ONLY WITHIN YOURSELF To realise these things is the truth in itself. Truth does not come from anywhere else; it is within yourself all the time. You are born of truth, you are fed with truth, and you live truth all the time, unless you are twisted, and that is why you need a guru to untwist you. You get so knotted up, and if we cannot untie the knot, we get someone to do it for us. Everything in life, for example, is never all done by you. You always have someone doing something for you. Like food, you have a girlfriend, your wife, or whoever cooking for you. For example, Anu has been running up and down the stairs, taking notes from me for various meditators and sending them messages. I might have sat down to write a message on a piece of paper, but she did the running. There is always someone doing something for you, even in lovemaking. I would like to see you make love by yourself alone. That would be an aberration. So, we do take the assistance of something outside ourselves, and then with that assistance, you, the externality, you make it into internality. Do you see? Internality. How many thoughts do you think in a day that are original or creative? Very, very few. It is just the ramblings of the mind that turn to imagination, imaginary thoughts, not concrete thoughts, and the very concreteness of your thoughts is truth. Truth is to be found only within yourself. I will say this a million and a million and a billion times: be regular in your practices, for that is the level at which you build that wall. But then, after building the wall, remember you have to break it down. The building of the wall is the path. Breaking down the wall will take you to the end of the rainbow where the pot of gold lies. Life is like that rainbow; you see all those colours there. Can you reach it? Can you touch it? No, you cannot,
The True Nature of Wisdom: Superconscious Awareness and the Unexpressed Mind
THE PERSONAL GOD IS STILL A LIMITED DIVINITY WITH QUALIFICATIONS In meditation, you have Savikalpa Samadhi, which is meditation with form, and Nivrikalpa Samadhi, which is meditation without form. In Nivrikalpa samadhi, the totality of the mind is still not transcended, but you have reached the finest level of the mind, the finest level of the superconscious mind; therefore, you are still alert, and what else can give you this alertness if not the mind itself? So even in that state, which is the highest state man is capable of, you have still not transcended the mind, and yet you read thousands and thousands and thousands of books talking of going beyond the mind. Yes, you can go beyond the mind in a lunatic asylum. So, all these flaws are there, and many of these flaws are to be ignored. The underlying quality of that impersonal state is to be remembered—a constant remembrance of that in all actions, a constant remembrance of Divinity. For the personal God is not the final Divinity. It is still a limited Divinity with qualifications. So, by meditation and spiritual practices, which are so, so necessary, we can only reach the finest level of the mind, the superconscious mind, where we can experience. And that experience, to say again, is of joy and bliss and of knowledge, and this knowledge, this wisdom, is more important than the joy, than the bliss. It is because of this knowledge that all is one. THE MIND CANNOT BE CONTROLLED, BUT IT CAN BE GOVERNED Everything constitutes this vast feast. Finding the sameness in it all takes away the rough edges that we find in life, and we accept it. And with the acceptance of what just is, the acceptance of oneself, that is the most difficult part. People just do not accept themselves for what they are. That is the root of all trouble. That is the root of all the surface suffering that people go through, because they just do not accept themselves. And once they learn to accept themselves by reaching this higher layer or level of the mind, self-acceptance becomes easy. And with self-acceptance, all the things that happen on the relative conscious level are automatically accepted. Because I can accept myself, all anxieties in the mind cease, for it is only because of fearing the repercussions of things that anxiety is bred within a person. You only feel anxious if you have fear. If you have no fear, you do not feel anxious. Does she love me or not? You are fearing, and with fear there is doubt. Like that in every aspect of life. Will I be losing my business? Will I be losing my movement because of this, that or the other? Why fear? If it is to be lost, it is lost. So, who cares? And having that attitude, it develops further. Fear and anxiety are your greatest stumbling blocks in every aspect of life. You have to interview a big client tomorrow, and you have that fear: “Oh, will he sign the contract or not?” And you can be very sure that your very fear will stop him from signing the contract. But if you just do not care, I am going to do my blooming best, and that is all I can do. That is the attitude. If the man does not sign the contract after I have been doing my best, there is another place I can try, for he is not the only one who has that business, that hotel or that industrial establishment where I want to sign a catering contract. There are other establishments, other factories. So, I lose one. I will gain ten more. No anxiety. No fear. Then you enjoy. There is joy in everything. The very effort put into work is joyful because there is no expectation. And this can only be done if we touch upon the finer levels of the mind, the superconscious level. Ah, then only can it be done, and that automatically controls the conscious mind. When I say ‘automatic control,’ I mean governing. For the mind cannot be controlled, but it can be governed. So, automatic control means that the higher level of your mind is governing the lower level of your mind. Then we can truly stand apart and watch the workings of the world. For is the world not a projection of your own mind? So, the higher level of your mind is watching the workings of the lower level of your mind, and enjoying those children playing in the garden, in the park, on all the swings and roundabouts. Up and down and down the slide. Climbing up the ladder again, just to come down the slide again. Beautiful, is it not? That is wisdom, not acquired knowledge from books. THERE IS ONLY ONE MIND When a person, through meditation and spiritual practices, reaches the superconscious level of the mind, they experience inborn wisdom. For everything that was known, is known or is to be known, is existent there. If you say I am wiser than you, you are wrong. We have the same amount of wisdom. Mine is expressed and experienced. Yours is not. That is the only difference. That is how I can see the Divinity in you. That is how I can find myself at one with you, for it is the same mind. The same mind: because there is only one mind. The one pond and little bubbles here, there and everywhere, thinking they are so apart and individual. Yet, they are not. They have the same amount of air and the same amount of water. And this apartness of every bubble is only seen in our dimension; just dive a little deeper, and you will not see the bubbles. They are gone. One mass of water, just slightly below the surface. That is wisdom. THE IDEA IS TO REACH THE SUBTLER LAYER WHERE NOTHING CAN HURT The impersonal
The Journey Within the Mind: The Mind is Our Only Vehicle
DARKNESS IS PRODUCED BECAUSE OF THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT The conscious mind recognises itself within its own boundaries. The conscious mind feels all the pains and pleasures that surround it, empowered and brought forth from the subconscious, which is the repository of all the experiences that the entity has gained through this further process of evolution. All those experiences manifest through the conscious mind, and, through the association of one’s personal inner experience and environment, the conscious mind interprets them as pain or pleasure. The conscious mind recognizes itself within its own boundaries. The conscious mind feels all the pains and pleasures that surround it, empowered, brought forth from the subconscious, which is the repository of all the experiences that have been gained by that entity through this further process of evolution. All those experiences manifest through the conscious mind, and, through the association of one’s personal inner experience and environment, the conscious mind interprets them as pain or pleasure. Something could be very painful to one person, while to another it could be pleasurable, and we find this in daily life. If I have a backache, for example, I do not try to analyse where that backache came from. Why should I try to analyse where that backache came from? I accept the backache. It is a backache. So, it is a backache. If it is a headache, it is a headache. If it is another ache, it is another ache. I accept it. There could be no spiritual forces that could have prevented that backache, and it has nothing to do with karma. It is just a natural physical phenomenon. We blame everything on karma; that is one mistake we always make, and it is not always so. You go downstairs for lunch today, and it might not be as good as the one you had yesterday. Are you going to blame your karma for it? Life’s feast has so many varieties. There are sweet foods, there are sour foods, there are pungent foods, and all kinds of poppadums and condiments. It all constitutes life’s feast, and we do not accept the totality of life’s feast. Why? Is it through ignorance, or is it through the absence of knowledge? These, too, are different things. Is it through ignorance, or is it through the absence of knowledge? You need neither to enjoy life. What produces darkness? The absence of light. Darkness is there all the time. If a house is locked up for two hundred years and there is no light in there, and then you come along with a little candle, the darkness of two hundred years is not going to tell you that you must wait two hundred years for light to be there. Light is instantaneous, and in that instant, it banishes two hundred years of darkness. With this little realisation, all the karmic values of life assume a oneness. You can call it good, bad, pleasurable, or painful, but there will be instant illumination by lighting the candle that will banish hundreds of years of darkness that existed in this castle. Just that one little understanding to be able to accept all the workings of the mind by the mind. One does that by utilising the finer and subtler levels of the mind. THE REALM OF KARMA IS ON THE LEVEL OF THE MIND I know of a story where it was the son’s birthday. So that morning, the father thought, “What is the best deed I can do for my child’s birthday, which will bring blessings upon my child?” So, he got into his car and went around to various organisations. He went to the child welfare society and donated two hundred dollars. He went to the blind society and made a $200 donation there. He went to people with disabilities, people who are deaf or hard of hearing and the deaf institutes. He went to many places and donated $2,000. To bring blessings upon the child whose birthday it was that day was a real sacrifice on his part. When he reached home, he found that the child had had an accident and had passed away. He just ran out of the front gate, and a car came along and knocked him down. Dead on the spot. Now, this man started wondering, “This very morning I did all this totally unselfishly to bring blessings, because there is nothing greater than charity to bring blessings to a person, because it is a giving, an unselfish giving, and yet, when I came home, my child was dead. What kind of a law is this? What kind of a law has operated here?” He could not understand. But the answer was so simple: that, karmically and by a certain tendency, the child had to expire. So, the donations given for the child, or, according to this man’s thoughts, those things poured for this child of mine, had definitely benefited the child. Who knows that it might not have been a long-suffering death? A long period of illness. Perhaps that was averted? I explained to him that your child had to go. But is it not better to go this way, in a second, than to suffer for months and months and then go? So do not think your charity has been useless; look what great use it would be to you, too, because you have also accrued good karma. We always have to remember that the realm of karma is on the level of the mind. The mind screws itself up, and it has to unscrew itself. All these flaws are there and will be there. The only way is to reach the finest, subtlest level of the mind. This superconscious state is the primal manifestation of the Manifestor or the primal manifestation of the Unmanifest: the impersonal God that no man can reach while in a body. ONLY WHEN WE ARE ESTABLISHED IN THE SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND CAN WE REACH THE IMPERSONAL GOD All this
How to Cope with Mental Illness in the Family: Acceptance and Strength
Acceptance, Christ, Dharma, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Faith, Force, God, Grace, Guru, Heart, Karma, Krishna, Love, Manifestation, Meditation, Mind, Peace, Self, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Master, Spirituality, Strength, The Abstract
Supporting Loved Ones Through Difficulties Mental illness in the family is just to be accepted for what it is. It is just common sense to do our best for those who are mentally affected or schizophrenic, or paranoid, or whatever. I could name you a hundred diseases, and some of them are considered terminal. The family can only accept it. But to accept it, you have to be strong. You need a hundred times more strength to accept than to reject. So, if you can make yourself strong enough, you will be able to accept the condition of your child or a family member, realizing that there is no accident in this world. Nothing happens in this world by accident, and it is the past karma of this person, family member, or friend who is afflicted by this ailment. So, the best one can do is send forth love. Every person has an abundance of healing energy in them, but if it is coupled with the right, sincere, selfless quality of love, those energies can be imparted. You can never take away someone’s illness, but you can ease the person’s problems, and this has happened in our organisation a lot: the blind have learned to see, the deaf have learned to hear, and the lame have started walking. I was looking at a newspaper clipping someone brought me, about a person who could not walk for 13 years and has started walking, things like that. It is the grace of God that does that, if energies are channelled. But it is very important to remember that no Spiritual Master can take away your karma. Never. He can defer that karma, or the payment for it, to a future existence, which will not help that person, because he will have to pay for it in some way or another, unless that person changes his entire lifestyle and banishes the karma. THE SPIRITUAL MASTER’S GENTLE PUSH In the time of Jesus, why did he only make a few people see, or a few people walk, when there were thousands and thousands of blind people in the world, thousands and thousands of people that were lame, thousands and thousands of lepers? Why only for one person, or two, or three, or five, and not the rest? Is everyone not a child of God? Here is what happened there. This person with a particular ailment was just on the verge of completing that little karma that was left. A true Spiritual Master can give him a little push, like a schoolmaster, where a child needs fifty percent to pass his exam to go to another standard. Still, the schoolmaster sees that the child has potential, but is only one point short of the fifty percent. So why take away a whole year of a child’s life and let him do the standard, or the form, as you call it here – different countries have different systems, we call it standards in South Africa – standard one up to standard ten, which is matriculation, and then you go to University. That is what the Spiritual Master does, “Look now, there is only one little per cent left. Let me give him a push,” and that push the Spiritual Master pays for by intense meditation and rebalancing certain energies. But if that person still has a long way to go, karmically speaking, it will not be removed by the Spiritual Master because it will only be deferred to another existence. That is how it works. So, they are very careful not to defer the payment where they would have to pay perhaps in a more extreme form, but if they require a little push, he will do that because they could meditate that away. Yesterday I received a little note sent by someone. One woman who is in a severe, severe nervous condition and very elderly wrote this note to me: “Guruji, would you please take over my total nervous condition.” She could not even write, so she had someone write it for her, and when you see her signature, you can see she is a total nervous wreck. “Could you please take it over?” So, in other words, look at the selfishness. ‘Oh yes, I must be totally well. It means total selfishness: “Take away my troubles, but you suffer for it.” THE MAHABHARATA’S LESSON IN SELF-CENTREDNESS There is a very amusing story in the Mahabharata, which is one of the great Hindu epics. It is a story of five brothers called the Pandavas, who fought the Kauravas on the field of Kurukshetra, which is the name of the place where they had this big battle. It is in this battle that Krishna taught Arjuna, and that is how the Bhagavad Gita was born. The Mahabharata is the background of the Bhagavad Gita. But amongst these five Pandavas, there was one brother who was a big eater; he could eat up five big platters of food. This is mythology, but it has a lesson. So, this brother was in such deep worship of this particular deity that the deity appeared to him and said, “Look, you have been so faithful, and your worship has been so deep; ask for a boon.” Meanwhile, he had an uncle, whose name was Shakuni, remember this is mythology, and he did not like this uncle. So, he says, “Lord, seeing that you have appeared to me and offered me a boon, may I ask you the boon to be able to eat even more, but Shakuni must go to the toilet.” So, is that not the general mentality? I must have the enjoyment, but let someone else do the suffering for it. That is the meaning of the story. It was reflecting the world’s mentality. SERVICE TO HUMANITY AS SERVICE TO THE DIVINE But a true Spiritual Master will show you, guide you, and help you to get rid of that which is bothering you and impart a
Selfless Service: Trusting Divine Will in Service
Acceptance, Attachment, Attitude, Buddha, Christ, Devotion, Dharma, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Evolution, Evolve, Force, Freedom, God, Guru, Heart, Impressions, Karma, Krishna, Law of Nature, Love, Meditation, Mind, Non-Attachment, Philosophy, Renunciation, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self, Self-Realization, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Wisdom, Yoga
SERVING FOR THE SAKE OF SERVING Many things in life are paradoxes; one can be totally devoted to someone and yet be totally non-attached. There is a difference between detachment and non-attachment; detachment is to withdraw from all activities of life and to remain distant, becoming reclusive. To be non-attached is to be able to partake in every activity of the mind, body, and spirit, and yet be above it all. When one goes into detachment, it can be a form of escape. When one cannot face up to the responsibilities of the world, some tend to escape from the world. In India, there was a time when there were six million Saddhus, wandering mendicants, and after meeting many, I found that there were very few that were real Renunciates. Most of them just escaped and lived by begging. In other words, they were beggars in ochre robes, and they called themselves Saddhus; in reality, they were escapists. Non-attachment is something totally different. The greatest Scriptures, for example, in the East were written by people who were very busy people, who were totally involved in the affairs of the world. Krishna, for example, was a King, a statesman, a strategist, yet he could dictate the Gita. Rama was a King, so was Buddha. King Janaka, one of the greatest philosophers of the East, ruled a vast Kingdom, a very busy man, totally in the world, and yet could take himself above it all, and compose some of the Upanishads. So, one could be totally devoted to an object or an ideal and yet be non-attached to it. In other words, it implies that one serves, for the sake of service, without wanting or expecting the fruits thereof. It is part of Karma Yoga where you work for the sake of work, and the rewards come by themselves. And whenever these rewards come, they are accepted for one’s needs, for one’s daily necessities. But when the work is done, it is done in a sense of offering, that everything I do is an offering to divinity. It could be washing pots in the kitchen, sweeping streets, mending shoes, or being a Professor at a University, or a Scientist, but every action is performed for the sake of action. SERVING WITHOUT EGO Performing any action, there is a certain amount of desire. Desire produces attachment, but there are kinds of desires. The one desire would be for gain, name, fame, power, and therefore one prods oneself to act in a certain manner, to achieve something, to have the ambition for achieving a certain goal. The other kind of desire is the desire to serve, which causes non-attachment. We do find people serving. We do find people joining various societies, homes for people with disabilities, or for blind people, and so on. It is not the act itself that is important, but the motivation behind it. I have known of people who want to serve humanity, but the motivation is their own personal ego, inflating their personal ego, that “I am this. People look up to me.” That is one thing that our teachers also have to be very wary about, that it does not inflate our egos in serving humanity. This kind of desire, which is entirely for service for the benefit of humanity, does not form attachment, and when it does not form attachment, it creates no impression in the mind, or it creates no samskaras, because that desire is without motivation. And all desires for service, if it is minus the ego, would not have any motivation whatsoever. So, behind the act is the motive, or motivation, that causes samskaras. One could be totally devoted to what one is doing and yet be non-attached to the action, for the action is performed for the sake of the action, and not for the sake of its reaction. The cause is activated, but that cause becomes a causeless cause, whereby it would not have an effect, and the effect that is had, and that is long-lasting, is the impressions, all the samskaras one creates in one’s mind or one’s subtle body. So, then the samskaras pile up. ALL DEPENDENCIES STEM FROM THE EGO In the name of devotion, many people perform acts, but devotion should be without need. I am devoted to my wife because I need my wife for certain purposes, be it physical, mental, or otherwise. That is not devotion. There is a little story in which a man says, “I love you so much, but tomorrow, God forbid, even if you should have an accident and be shrivelled and burnt, I will love you just as much.” So, that love is not of face value only, for the man’s beautiful wife, or handsome husband, it applies both ways; it is for the inner self of the person. In any case, when a man loves a woman, or a woman loves a man, do you know what comes in between? Love comes in between. That personalised form of God is activated so that one feels love underneath, underlying the need to love or be loved. Once the need is removed, the underlying factor of pure love shines through. So, although there is a desire to activate the highest form of love, it becomes non-binding; there is no attachment. But as soon as the need is added, needs are created by one’s ego. I know a person who came to see me with so many problems at home, but who needed his wife. He could not be away from her; it was a purely physical need. For he could never have any other woman except his wife, but it is a purely physical need. And you find people like that, it is a pathological case, perhaps, we know. But that is also a need. Then you find a person, loving another with an emotional need, an emotional dependency, where the man sees in the wife a mother figure, perhaps, or
Why Attend Courses? The Subtle Power of Spiritual Togetherness
WHY ATTEND COURSES? When people get together for a single purpose, their subtle bodies, or the emanations from their subtle bodies, merge. That is why, when you have group practices in a group like this, or when a group is gathered with oneness, then each one affects the other. Because of the oneness of goodness, everyone affects each other. They uplift each other, and there is a greater lightening of spirit. In the greater lightening of spirit, if there is a person who could exercise a lever, then the lightening of spirit is lightened even more quickly because an extra energy is added to what already exists. It is not necessary to tell you what can be seen and what cannot. If you could leave your body, to be out of your body, you would be very, very disappointed at looking at yourself. Seeing your gross body, you would feel very disappointed. It looks terrible, horrible! That flesh and blood and! The subtle body of man differs from man to man according to his samskaras. Whenever you find two people with very similar ideas or who have a strong attraction to each other, know that their subtle bodies are in intercommunication. If the mind also corresponds in that inter-communication, then that bond becomes stronger. And if the body can correspond to the man and wife’s relationship, then that bond becomes even stronger. But, in a varied group where people come from different parts of the country, or different parts of the world, if they are together for a one purposeness, then if the subtle body of one is suffering of a certain dullness because of his evolutionary status, he is reflected upon by those whose emanation of the subtle body is more stronger, more luminescent. That is, the duller subtle body feels the effect of those that are brighter. So, it is always advisable, wherever possible, to attend Courses, and I do not mean this course only. You do not need to attend our Courses if you do not want to. Nobody forces anyone. But I am making a general statement, and, of course, attending one of our Courses is the best of all, because we all do the same kinds of practices. At least, we are allied and related to each other through our connection to one guru. And that oneness of the guru extending to all the chelas forms that togetherness. So, great benefits are received by attending Courses. Other people, mixing in their groups, would find their strengths, togetherness, or joy very, very much dependent upon the guru they are with. Oh yes! A good guru can radiate an inexplicable substance or quality called love. He can emanate a certain light which could engulf all those around him. Therefore, when people attend the discourses of a real guru, they will normally leave the Satsang with a far lighter spirit than when they came in. They could come into the hall with a million worries on their heads, as if the whole world was collapsing around them. But the presence of the good guru would be so powerful that the burden would be lightened, even for that little moment only. It could be here in High Leigh or in Cape Town, South Africa. Wherever the guru is, all the chelas are with him. It could be in South America or Australia. A TRUE GURU NEVER PROMISES YOU ENLIGHTENMENT, HE ONLY SHOWS THE WAY I am trying to point out the universality of the spirit. There is one universal spirit. The hub in a wheel is that which keeps the whole wheel together, so if the hub of the wheel is in London or in New York or in Buenos Aires, it does not matter. The spokes from the hub extend throughout the whole Universe, and if it is connected to the hub, then the whole circumference would feel the power of the hub. The most important thing here is that the hub must be placed dead centre in the wheel, and the wheel must run smoothly. But if the hub is off-centre, then the wheel moves unevenly. So, therefore, it is so, so important, it is so, so important, not to join just any movement because of high-powered selling, or high-powered, high-faulting scientific charts, or any kind of device. No. We must always study and be aware of the hub and the wheel’s ability. If the hub of the wheel is not functioning smoothly, then neither the spokes nor the circumference can run smoothly. So, it is always important for a man to use his judgment and his discretion. – always. And if some people’s judgment and discretion are not powerful enough, then he has no choice but to use the method of trial and error. And through trial and error, he might come to the point of finding the right hub. That is why people move from guru to guru: they cannot centre themselves properly with any one guru. They cannot synchronise themselves. So, we must never be taken in by any form of promises. A real, true guru never promises anything. He never promises you enlightenment. He only shows you the way to find enlightenment. He only shows you the way to find inner harmony. He does not give you any guarantees. He wants you to find the guarantee yourself. Find the guarantee yourself: take this medicine, and by taking it, your body will cure itself. We know, as a fact, that when we are ill and go to a doctor, the doctor does not cure us. The body has the ability within itself to heal itself. What the doctor does with the medicine is just to help restore harmony in the body so it can heal itself. That is what a true teacher does: showing the way to create harmony within yourself. A GOOD TEACHER ALWAYS HAS THE WELFARE OF EVERY CHELA AT HIS HEART In a class, you have fifty pupils; if there
The Aim of Our Teaching: The Simplicity of Spiritual Realisation
Avatara, Belief, Bible, Buddha, Chela, Christ, Consciousness, Divine, Divinity, Enlightenment, Eternal, Evolution, Faith, Force, God, Heart, I am That I am, I and my Father are one, Incarnation, Karma, Kingdom of Heaven within, Krishna, Law of Nature, Laws, Love, Mind, Oneness, Philosophy, Purity, Reincarnation, Scriptures, Self-Realization, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Teacher, The Abstract, Universal, Universe, Wisdom
TRUTH IS ETERNAL, BUT PRESENTED ACCORDING TO TIMES AND CLIMES AND THE MIND OF MAN The teachings of many teachers may be alike, and in the likeness of these teachings, the same eternal truth is forever propagated. Truth being one, it cannot be altered; it can only be told in different ways, and it is being told in different ways for one purpose, and the purpose is to suit the time and the clime and the mind of man. During the time of Christ, when he preached to the peasant folk, it was very easy to say, believe. Today, if you tell someone to believe, they will not take your word for it. Today, you tell them to believe in such a way that would be pleasing to their minds. You will find a peasant mind more apt to believe. A peasant’s mind can sometimes be like a child’s mind. When you tell a child, with all its innocence, to believe in something, it will believe, and we all do that when we tell our children the story of Santa Claus. We all do that; when we tell our children these stories, they believe them. But if you tell a grown-up person with a more sophisticated mind that Santa Claus comes down the chimney at Christmas time, the sophisticated mind will not accept that story. But if you tell the sophisticated mind how the presents originate and where they come from, and who has to work for them, and who has to buy them, then the sophisticated mind will start believing. So, the difference in the message from those times to our times is just in this manner of presentation. So, every teacher that comes into this world teaches the same old truth, and the difference is in how it is to be presented and to whom and what for. The “what for” always remains the same. The “what for” is for the enlightenment of the human being, to lead the man towards becoming a God-man; and from the stage of God-manhood to Godhood, where, as Christ would say, “I am and my Father and One.” That is the whole purpose and the aim. AVATARS AND THE UNSPOKEN DIVINE IDENTITY An Avatar is a person who not only attains self-realisation in this life, but who has already achieved self-realisation. But he takes birth by choice. He is beyond the propulsion of natural laws, all the laws of evolution; he is beyond this propulsion. When an avatar or Incarnation takes birth, he does so with a special purpose: to enlighten man. He does not need to take birth, but because he has this mission to fulfil, he takes birth. And such people who have taken birth are Krishna, Buddha, and Christ. The choice is entirely his, but the Avatar, the Incarnation, is also controlled. His choice, although free, also has some form of control. The mechanics of that control work like this: in the world (we will use the word world for our present case), a certain tension and atmosphere build, so that the Avatar’s choice is drawn. Even the Avatar, although having free choice, is drawn or pulled down by this magnetism created by the atmosphere and conditions of the world. So, here is a need. The magnetism could be interpreted as a need. And the need, combined with the free will of the Incarnation, comes together to make a Krishna, a Buddha, or a Christ take on life on this planet Earth. You will always find that a Krishna, Buddha, or Christ will never say from his own lips that I am that; and if he should use those words, “I am that,” He will always use it in the third person, never referring to his own body, or his own little personality. He will speak from the angle of the Supreme being that is within himself. If the personality of the person of the Buddha or the Christ is found to be one with the universal spirit he represents, then that recognition must come from the people around him. He will never proclaim, Christ never proclaimed, Buddha never proclaimed, Krishna never proclaimed; Christ said, “I am the Son of God.” He never said, “I am God.” Yet to his closest disciples who understood him, he would say, “I and my Father are One,” equating the Son and the Father on the same level. Because, as we have discussed before, the abstract has to be concretised so that it can communicate. The impersonal has to be personalised so that it can communicate with another person. But the Impersonal God that is now personalised will never say that I am that Personal God. He will never say that. But when years pass, perhaps centuries pass, his words and acts and deeds will be judged by man, and then man will say, “Ah, there was an incarnation.” And they always say that too late. Always. They always say it too late. And we find it in the lives of these personages, of these incarnations. THE TRUE PURPOSE OF THE TEACHER If people had recognised Christ when he lived in his time, he would not have been crucified. He would not have been crucified. He could have proclaimed his Divinity; he could have proclaimed it in no uncertain terms, but he preferred to remain quiet. So, a real Teacher, his teaching, his one teaching only, is to make man realise, and not to tell them that this is your realisation. Krishna, Christ, or Buddha can only be appreciated if man realises for himself that I am now face to face with that eternal spirit, even if that eternal spirit is embodied. And all these teachings that teachers give are not the universal spirit, but about the universal spirit. He takes you on a merry-go-round and tells you everything about it. He tells you everything about the flower, the beautiful petals, its softness, its velvetiness, the green leaves, the sap, but he