TIME AND SPACE Relative existence is controlled by time, while the absolute existence is timeless. Only the conception of man’s mind could ever consider anything like time. So, time could be a reality for relative existence; time could be a reality within the framework of evolution, where an atom progresses from one point to the other. Whenever we consider time, space is also considered. If we take two minutes to reach from this room to that house over there, that two minutes taken is also measured in space. Therefore, time and space work hand in hand, while the concept of the Absolute is beyond time and space. It is of an entirely different dimension where time does not exist, and space does not exist, and that is why some great poets say that eternity is in the moment, and the moment is eternity. This is said to explain to us the timeless nature of actual reality, the Absolute. The mind and circumstances always measure time. Every housewife will know that when she watches the kettle boiling, it takes a longer time, it takes so much longer. It has taken the same time, but the anxiety of the mind in boiling the water quickly extends the time and makes it longer. There too, in reality, the time has not become longer, but the concept of our mind has become longer. So, time is governed by man’s mind. In this small example of boiling water, we have found that time expands and contracts. We have talked about the expansion and lengthening of time, but for example, if you are engrossed in an excellent book and absorbed in it, then two hours will pass, and you think it was only two minutes. So, to recapitulate, time expands or contracts according to man’s mind, and because of its expansion and contraction, it has no true reality of its own, but the reality is imposed upon it by our minds. The same thing applies to space; if you take a walk of two miles with an attractive friend and you are having a fascinating conversation, that two miles will seem very short, but if you have to take that walk alone and are feeling bored, then the two miles do not seem to end. WE ARE SUBJECTED TO THE LAWS OF NATURE So, time and space are but two sides of the same coin subject to contraction and expansion according to our concept, and our conceptions are nothing but conditionings of the mind. Through meditation, we discover one thing: the unreality of time, which has been experienced in some measure by everyone. I can go into meditation for two hours, and when I come out of meditation, it seems that only two minutes have passed. What has happened there is that I have transcended or gone beyond the boundaries of the mind, and when you go beyond limitations, you go to the boundless, and there is no time in that boundlessness. Being in the relative and having a body and subject to the laws of nature, we have to consider the time we know of. We must add practicality to time as we know it, and that practicality must be helpful and not useless. We spend one-third of our lives sleeping and one-third of our lives doing useless work. We call work useless because most of us lack interest in our work, and we only do the job to fill our stomachs. So, we are using our time, firstly in losing ourselves in sleep one third, and another third of the time in useless works to fill the stomach. WE HAVE TO WORK TO MAKE A LIVING We know many people that out of the eight hours left, they will spend two hours in the bar, two hours perhaps studying the race card, two hours or three hours with the television, and another few hours talking rubbish with their companions. Feeding the stomach is necessary, and living in this world, there are necessities of life. God has given us the air to breathe, but you have to pay for the air you breathe in taxes. Just to be able to walk on the Lord’s Earth, you pay for it also, in taxes. So, we have to pay for everything around us, and therefore we have to work. But work can be made interesting because there is nothing uninteresting in this world. If I find a dull person, I find something interesting there, too; I find interest in boredom. So, even if you are a shopkeeper or working behind a counter, many customers are walking into the shop. By observing the various kinds of people, so much interest can be found because every person is a unique person. By having the ability of deep perception created by meditation, you will find an exciting story in every face. If you can develop sympathy and empathy for the person, that same work of serving over the counter could become exciting. And the same principle applies to the carpenter, the bricklayer, or the professor at the university. We have one meditator in one country who is a typist. Typing can become tedious if you are just a copy-typist because no creative intelligence is involved, and you are operating like a machine. Still, whenever she has to press the key G, this typist’s thoughts flow in her mind of Guru, Gurushakti and God. And her typing has become very interesting to her. So, we have to work to provide a living for ourselves or our families, and whatever work we do can be made interesting, and every job in the world that provides us with an honest living is noble. When we are working for a boss, if we feel in our hearts that we are doing duty and being immersed in the task and the sense of responsibility, then the boredom too goes away because when we have a sense of duty, we find that we are walking
Meditation and the Journey Home: Awakening to Your Divine Nature
Attitude, Avatara, Awareness, Belief, Bible, Bliss, Buddha, Christ, Compassion, Conscious Mind, Consciousness, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Eternal, Evolve, Force, God, Harmony, Heart, I and my Father are one, Impressions, Incarnation, Integration, Joy, Karma, Kindness, Krishna, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mind, Oneness, Path, Purity, Relative World, Religion, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self, Self-Realization, Separation, Spirit, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Subconscious, Superconscious, Tranquillity, Unity, Universal, Universe, Wisdom, Yoga
EVERYONE WILL REACH HOME When a person is unkind, uncharitable, and intolerant, it is a sure sign that he only functions with a tiny part of his mind. At the same time, through meditation, one gradually starts to work in totality, body, mind and Spirit. Naturally, when you function in total, you would become the reverse of what you have been. If you are uncharitable, you will become charitable. If you are unkind, you become kind. If you are uncompassionate, you become more compassionate because you function in totality. So, there is no danger in meditation as far as the ego build-up goes because meditation rids one of the egoistic samskaras you have. Your ego is formed of samskaras, which, as you know, means the impressions and the experiences that you have had. That builds you into an individual being. Once you recognise yourself exclusively as an individual being, you become a personal ego, expressing all the impressions already implanted in your mind, while meditation does the reverse. Meditation takes you away from that exclusive individuality without discarding it, and it takes you away from that individual individuality, exclusive individuality into a universality. Therein lies the message of love. Because if you cannot feel that universalness of everything, then as I might have said before, you would not know the meaning of love. So, the process is to gain that awareness that all is one, and this process is simple. You do not lose individuality. You are still human, and there has been no perfect human being on this earth. They could only reach ninety-eight per cent perfection, including Krishna, Buddha, Christ and the lot. Because without the two per cent imperfection, you would never be able to maintain this body. You would become unaware of your physiological and biological functions and things like that. So, that bit of “I-ness”, the ego, will remain. That little bit of “me and mine” will remain, rather than “Thee and Thine.” For example, you take the word me, “ME”, and put a mirror under it, and the reflection would be we, “WE.” That is the sense we develop from that Me to We. One. That awareness does not only apply to human beings, but it also applies to everything where you identify yourself. Feel that oneness with the entire creation and existence, and when you can feel that oneness, all will be there in you. For example, if there is a flea in my bed, and travelling around the world, I change beds every few nights, I would not have the heart to kill the flea because it is life. I would pick up the flea and throw it out of the window. Let it go into the next-door people’s bedroom. You do develop that sense. THE MEANING OF “RESIST NOT EVIL” Everything is conscious; even a stone has consciousness, but in man, consciousness is more developed because it is more evolved than a stone, plant, or animal. But that consciousness could be misused, where you only become conscious of yourself. You feel that the entire universe revolves around you, that I am the most important person and to hell with the rest. That is where the expansion of consciousness or awareness lies. Awareness and consciousness are synonymous. The more conscious you become, the more aware you become. All the consciousness is there in you, and to use a word, for the lack of a better word, you reach the area of pure consciousness where the consciousness is such that no evil thought could ever enter your mind. That is how to live a positive life when no evil thought is allowed to enter your mind, and you do not block it off. You do not resist the evil idea. As the Scriptures would say, “Resist not evil.” This is what is meant. But at the stage of pure consciousness, that never happens; the evil thought never comes about, and another word for pure consciousness is total love. MEDITATION GIVES YOU THE STRENGTH TO FACE YOUR PROBLEMS All these things happen through meditation, and meditation can never cause any harm. In the beginning, stages, when a person starts, in that stillness of mind through meditation, you look at yourself squarely and discover your weakness. For example, if a doctor does not diagnose your problem correctly, he cannot give you the right medicine. So, this is self-diagnosis, where you find your weakness and try to correct your deficiency, which requires meditation and a certain measure of self-help. Many people are incapable of helping themselves for one reason only; they not have got the strength. Meditation leads you to greater integration, giving you the power to face your problems. Problems will always be there. But how we look at the problems is the critical issue. Through a more significant amount of awareness, we look at problems from a different perspective. For example, if someone passes away, say a close one to me, my children, my wife, my beloveds, I will not tear up. I will not. Not because I have no sympathy, love, or feelings, but because I have realised that the person has not passed away. He is alive, has thrown off his body, and will take on another body, but that eternal Spirit in him is active and there. It is a matter of how we look at things. It is a matter of perspective. So, you go crying and moping for weeks and weeks; what will it help? It is not going to help anyone. AT THE STEM, WE ARE ALL ONE Therefore, a more significant amount of awareness is needed by the people of this world. When they develop this awareness, many of the world’s individual and international problems will disappear. If the people of America feel that the Russians are non-separate from us, we all belong to one human race, and the Russians feel the same way that we are blood brothers. I am not talking of Adam and
The Mystery of Coma: Understanding Coma from a Spiritual Perspective
WHAT IS A COMA? When a person is in a coma, nothing happens to the Spirit, for to be is to be the Spirit. What else can you be? But something happens to the mind, and science will tell you that certain brain areas will send you off into a coma or a suspension because the brain cannot act in a particular manner. That suspension is a coma, whereby you cannot relate to the body, the mind and the Spirit, and you cannot become functional. That is a coma. A coma can be brought about by some kinds of chemical deficiencies in the system, and a coma can be brought about by a traumatic experience where the mind blocks off totally There is some similarity between the highest state of meditation, called Nivrikalpa samadhi and a coma. The difference is that in a coma, the mind becomes non-functional, while in samadhi, total stillness is gained in the mind, yet awareness remains. While in a coma, that stillness is there because it has become a vegetable at that moment or for the duration of the coma. But the awareness is lost. The ability to be aware is lost, but this does not mean that awareness is gone. As long as the Spirit is unaffected, awareness is always there, but the ability to cognize awareness is gone because of the non-functioning of the brain. HOW TO TREAT A COMA? Can this be remedied? I have heard of a case in America where a child was in a coma, and a decision had to be made whether the child had to be put away or left in that vegetable state. I do not know what happened in this case; I just read very briefly about it. But there are ways to bring the child back to awareness of himself. In other words, there are ways in which the person can be brought out of the coma without all the drugs that are used today. Medical science is still in its infancy. They have not touched the edge or dipped their toes in this vast ocean; the same applies to psychiatry. That is why when psychiatrists cannot do anything for their patients, they refer them to me. They say, “Guruji, we have done what we can as far as we have learned. Now you do.” There are practices where a person can be taken out of that coma. A spiritual force can be imparted whereby the Spirit within the person can be so enlivened that the energies within that Spirit can be so drawn out that the mind becomes activated and starts acting. I hope medical science one day will combine this ancient wisdom and knowledge in their practices. Because all these sciences operate as separate portions instead of treating a person holistically, I have had many experiences with people in comas and many other problems. At home, I get called to the hospital at least twice or thrice weekly to deal with a patient. For example, a cardiac patient who needs to be relaxed must have a better mind to make the operation successful. You know, greater acceptance of what is going to be and what is going to happen. Teaching them to relax through spiritual practices to bring forth that cheer and joy, to eliminate their fear, “Oh, I am going into major surgery.” If the person dies in the surgery, know one thing, it would be of two factors, and half would be fear. The other half could be the inability of the medical man or something that just cannot be done medically. Those are the two factors. The Spirit forever remains untouched – and the Spirit in the child or the man is eternal. As the Bhagavad Gita would put it, it cannot be burnt or wetted by water, and a sword cannot pierce it. It is immortal, and it cannot die. THERE IS STILL A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SPIRIT AND THE BODY When we talk of a coma, we also have to think, why did this person go into the coma? Why was this suffering necessary for this person? I can assure you that a person in a coma is not suffering. That person finds total peace. That person is at peace because the mind creates misery, and when the mind is non-functional, how could it feel despair? It feels neither pleasure nor pain. Rest assured of one thing, firstly, the person in the coma is not suffering, and secondly, the Spirit is not affected. This should be heartening to people who might have these problems so that the person does not feel pain or pleasure. One has to look at it from the karmic point of view. There is life left in the body, and I do not agree in most cases, and this is 99 percent of the time, to release that life through artificial means. They call it “Euthanasia.” I disagree with that. There is life in that body for a while, but there is still some opening. That mind might be dormant and asleep in that coma state, but there is still a connection between the Spirit to the body. The body becomes a vegetable. But a vegetable, too, has life. THE KARMIC VALUES HAVE TO BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION We have to study the karmic value of that person, and yogis, true yogis, can go back to find if that person should remain in the coma and have that rest or be brought back out of the coma. And if the yogi considers that a little push should be given to help without causing any detriment, he would just be too glad to remove the dormancy, the sleep of the mind, into awareness. In the subtle body, which I prefer to call it because no one could interpret what a mind is. After all, the mind composes the entire universe; some areas are found that could be activated to bring the person out
The End of Suffering: Releasing Suffering Through Meditation
IS SUFFERING NECESSARY? Man is not born to suffer. There is an innate Divinity in man, which would proclaim, over and over again, that “Thou art Divine,” By recognising the Divinity within us, all suffering would cease, or there would be no cognition of any form of suffering. Man is not born to suffer. But we find suffering in the world and our existence. The question would be, “Why should a man suffer?” For that, we will have to define karma’s law. Karma, basically and interpreted, would be the law of action. In other words, whatever you sow, that shall you reap. In our terms, when we talk of suffering, it is also a law of retribution, perhaps. If man is basically divine, what are the mechanics? What happens in man that causes him to suffer, and where is this suffering located? Because if the inner core of man is Divine and the nature of Divinity is bliss, then naturally, we could assume that the suffering does not take place in the inner core, which is bliss. So, we can exclude the Divinity in man from all suffering. The Divine in man does not suffer because its nature is bliss. The part of man that suffers would be mind and body. Doctors have discovered that most illnesses and over ninety per cent of hospital beds are psychosomatic. In other words, the diseases man suffers stem from the mind or the mental processes of man. THE MIND HAS TO BE REPATTERNED How can we alter those processes that go through the mind, and how can we repattern the mind so that the body does not suffer? Those are the questions. Firstly, the mind is conditioned. All our minds, as individual minds, if you wish to call them such, are necessarily prepared by our past actions, where we were born, in what family we were brought up, by our environment, and supposedly by the inflictions inflicted upon us by the environment. If the mind is patterned to receive outside inflictions or if the mind is conditioned to create these inflictions upon ourselves, then we could go through an immense amount of emotional turmoil and apart from an emotional crisis, we could go through a process of mental imbalance. Those are psychological diseases, psychosomatically speaking, those very imbalances in the mind can be interpreted through man’s organic self, which is man’s physical self. And this is the contention of most doctors’ argument that even those diseases we find to be organic would have a psychological origin. So, to find a healthier body, we have to tackle the root source, which is the mind. This is in the sphere of modern psychoanalysis, which psychologists practise, and it is also in the sphere of psychiatrists. But because psychology and psychiatry are still in the stage of infancy, most of the treatments are done in such a manner that does not always heal, and more failures are found than successes. And even in the achievements, we find that the successes are temporary because the whole mind, the conditioned mind has to be re-patterned. A conditioned mind means that the mind has been patterned not only by the happenings in this life but could go further back into past lives if you believe in past lives. If you believe in past lives, do take it for granted that what we are today is the total of all the words, thoughts and deeds that we have been through, that which we have thought in our minds and the actions we have performed in those lifetimes. All those things have created samskaras, a Sanskrit term that could be interpreted very loosely in the form of impressions. So, the human mind contains the images of many, many lifetimes of living. The extent of the human mind is to the extent of the universe. In other words, we have progressed through evolutionary processes, from the mineral kingdom to the plant, to the animal, and now we have reached the stage of man. Yet, man’s mind can contain all the impressions implanted in this memory box through all those varied existences. WE GO RIGHT TO THE SOURCE OF DIVINITY AND DRAW ON THOSE ENERGIES When we think of illnesses that stem primarily from the mind, there could have been specific imbalances caused by the happenings to us in those existences. Therefore, man suffers; man suffers because of inequalities. Psychologists and psychiatrists probe just to the extent of the knowledge they have of man’s mind, and as we know and as they would admit, we only know, or we are only conscious of ten per cent of the human mind. So, the treatment given by psychologists and psychiatrists is necessarily limited to ten per cent of the mind, while ninety per cent remains dormant. Therefore, the failures we find in these treatments are because the causes might lie in the ninety percent mind of which we know nothing. Human knowledge of that field is minimal. There are practices devised whereby the ten percent mind does not need to rationalise and does not need to cognise the ninety percent, which is dormant. Through meditational and spiritual practices, we have the method where we traverse the ninety percent, which is static. By crossing the ninety percent, that is dormant; we go right to the core of ourselves, which is commonly termed the Spiritual Self. The Spiritual Self could be equated with that Divinity we have spoken about earlier, that infinite capacity inherent in every man. So, to alleviate the suffering that we have brought upon ourselves because of the conditioning of our minds, we dive deep within ourselves through meditational practices whereby we draw from the inner core, from the reservoir, that divine energy, and bring it through to the ninety percent dormant mind and then further on through the ten percent mind that we know of and then from there to the body. Through spiritual practices, we have found that the body and
Pure Consciousness: The Power of a Clear Mind
THE REALITY OF PURE CONSCIOUSNESS Pure consciousness is the Manifestor, and when that pure consciousness assumes different forms through the interaction of its very nature, which is composed of all forms, they become grosser and grosser and grosser, right to the level of the mineral kingdom. When it reaches a grosser level, we consider it a manifestation of the Manifestor. So, the goal of man is to get back home, meaning going away from the grosser levels to which we have come, back to the purity of pure consciousness. Pure consciousness, though the absolute reality, could never be comprehended by the mind because the mind, having become gross, is away from the primal subtleness it battles on. Therefore because of its very grossness, it cannot recognise pure consciousness. You could say that if everything existent is pure consciousness; by the same token, you could say that pure consciousness has varying degrees, from the subtlest to the grossest. We refer to pure consciousness when we talk of the purity of man’s mind. WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS? Consciousness is the totalness of awareness. If you are totally aware of the universe around you then you can say you are swimming in pure consciousness. Pure consciousness cannot be qualified, and neither quantifies qualities, but its manifestation has qualities. The manifestations we see in all things existent around us have various names and forms, yet names and forms are the creations and projections of our limited minds. So, the greater the limitation of the mind created by ourselves, deviating from pure consciousness, we naturally would see differentiation. For example, people look at the flowers but fail to see the invisible sap that gives life, for the flower could never exist without that hidden, energising sap. A human being can never live without that pure consciousness or, in other words, life force. You can only observe the lights burning in this room, but you cannot see the electricity in its proper form, and many scientists have tried to define electricity, but they have not succeeded. And then the very same electricity attracts to itself a magnetic force, and we have the law of magnetism. Then that very electricity is the foundation stone of the law of gravity. So, as far as the field of electricity is concerned, all these various factors are combined in the electricity itself, so in like manner, pure consciousness combines in itself all its grosser counterparts which we know as manifestation. This brings us to the conclusion that manifestation is none other than the Manifestor. So, pure consciousness is the Manifestor, and once the pure consciousness assumes its grosser forms, it is still the manifestation of the Manifestor. Manifestation could never exist without the Manifestor. Such as heat could never live without fire, and fragrance could never exist without the flower. How are you going to differentiate the aroma from the flower? There is no differentiation at all. If you analyse it scientifically, every time you breathe fragrance, you will find that you are breathing particles of the flower, so you are imbibing and consuming it. So every action man performs through pure consciousness in its grosser forms. This realisation will remind us that we are not the doer. The Divinity is the doer, for Divinity is pure consciousness. WHAT IS PURITY? Purity is a factor which is uncompounded; it exists in its essence. So, when we reach the core of ourselves, we start realising that it is only the essence that matters. For example, there is a murderer, a thief, a rapist, or any of the acts we regard as immoral in our society, as it should be because, without these man-made laws, the man-made world can never function in a man-made way. But if we look deep within the murderer or the thief, the very essence that makes him do the things he does, is the same essence that makes the thing a Sage does for the benefit of humanity. It is the same essence. The one is going through rough waters and compounded by factors not commensurate or compatible with society. While the other, the Sage, who does good, is also using the same essence, the same energy, and is using it for all for the good of humanity. But who is going to judge the spiritual quality of the murderer, and who will judge the apparent good attributes of the excellent doer? We have many good-doers in the world doing good to satisfy their egos. Their doing good does not stem from deep within themselves – it does not. They escape their problems by doing good, but how much heart is there? Mr X donates fifty thousand pounds to some charitable work – does it come from his mind, his ego self? If it does, it is useless because he is just going for aggrandisement for his prestige. “Oh, the world will say I, Mr X am such a great man.” That is selfish. While the murderer might murder with a pure Heart, the trouble might have been just a sick mind. And the action he might have performed in his sickness might be even of more excellent value to his evolution than the do-gooder who is just doing it to inflate his ego. The inflation of the ego is something that takes you away from your essence, takes you away from Divinity. At the same time, the man in sincerity, whatever act he performs, could be evolutionary to him. It could be a path in his progress that he has to overcome. JUDGE YE NOT THAT YE BE NOT JUDGED Therefore, we do not condemn anyone. Thus, the Bible says, “Judge Ye not that Ye be not Judged.” For whom am I the judge of another person? I cannot. I can only judge with my little mind and what my mind thinks is right; only by that would I judge, and everybody does not measure with the same ruler. Some people’s rulers are eight inches, and
The Power of an Open Mind: Choosing Your Own Path to Truth
Belief, Compassion, Dharma, Divine, Divinity, Eternal, Faith, Force, God, Guru, Happiness, Harmony, Integration, Laws, Love, Meditation, Mind, Path, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Self, Self-integration, Spiritual Teacher
TO BE ABLE TO KNOW THE WHOLE TRUTH, ONE HAS TO STAND APART Everything can be explained in very high philosophical, metaphysical terms. But metaphysical and philosophical terms and philosophical language could just remain mental gymnastics. Therefore, we try to be as simple as possible. After taking the most profound philosophy into its most practical day-to-day value. I teach that all these various kinds of meditation and all these paths that there are, are like rivers coming from different directions, which ultimately become one in the same ocean. There have always been fights and disputes between various religions, whereby one claims that “My way is right,” and the other says, “My way is right,” and they fight. It is like a little story where four blind men came up into a forest, and there was an elephant in the woods. One blind man grabbed the trunk, the other one held the leg, the third one grabbed the tail, and the fourth grabbed the ear, and they started fighting. The one that grabbed the tail said, “Ah, I have found the truth; it is like a rope.” The other one that grabbed the leg said, “Ah, I have found the truth; it is like a pole,” They argued until a man with sight came along. He stood at a distance, and because he had sight and was standing a bit further away, he could see that these people only knew a fraction of the truth. They did not know the whole truth. To understand the whole truth, one has to stand apart. So, it was the man that could see the entire elephant that could say that this is the real elephant, and this has been the trouble with religions; they grab one section of a truth and claim it to be the entire truth. MAN MUST DECIDE FOR HIMSELF WHICH PATH TO TAKE I teach that whatever path you take, I am not interested. You might take a route from here to London with many traffic lights and traffic, which will delay your journey. It might take a long time to reach London, but there might be a very clear highway with no speed limits, and you can get to London much more quicker. So, man must decide for himself which path he wants to take. All ways are good. There is not a single path, nor a single worthwhile religion, that teaches you that you must not love, or you must not have charity, or you must not have compassion. All faiths and all teachings say this. So, the path a person teaches or the path a person practises, he practises because his temperament has a particular inclination towards that path. What I would like to see is the upliftment of humanity. I am not concerned about paths. If one practises a particular form of meditation and does it honestly and sincerely, and if there is any value in his form of meditation and if he finds progress in himself, I do not convert him to my way of thinking. That would be wrong. If the man progresses well, by all means, do that. But I would say that we should all have an open mind. We knew one road to London before that was filled with traffic, and it took us four hours to reach there. There might be another path, a smoother one, that could make us get there in one hour, perhaps. So, man must decide by himself, and to determine by himself, he should have an open mind. That is the primary quality. Because when the mind is closed, he becomes dogmatic. He becomes fanatical, and becoming dogmatic or fanatical could impede his progress. His car might get punctured. So, one must have an open mind. Each one teaching his method should be given all the opportunity and all the privilege to present his views, and it is us that must decide for ourselves, shall I take path number A or path number B or path number C or XYZ? That depends on us. But that also should come with a certain amount of rationality. Firstly, we rationalise, intellectualise, weigh the pros and cons, and base our judgements on experience. Because to find the Divinity within us, to make our lives smoother, the intellect only goes part of the way. The finite mind cannot comprehend that which is infinite. We know that. But the infinite can be experienced. If there is a direct road to the infinite that is within ourselves, by all means, we should at least try. We should try, which is why I always say that we do not condemn or condone any path. The whole idea should be to let humanity be uplifted, allow their minds and bodies to be more and more refined, and let all humans improve. Some teachers go up on a stage and say, “Everyone else is wrong; only I am right,” and perhaps he might be more wrong than others. The finding of a man and his salvation should always remain a very, very personal thing. If there are four thousand million people on earth, there should be four thousand million religions or ways of life. Each man must formulate his plan, his method, and his way to his salvation. Each man must do that, but of course, he can take the major religions as a guide, draw from them, and formulate his life for the more significant good. That is his dharma, the purpose of life, and how we reach the Maker. MEDITATION IS A PROVEN SCIENTIFIC PROCESS We might have people in the audience here who are not interested in religion, which is fine, and I do not think any man should have the right to shove Divinity down their throat. I have started to talk from the angle of Divinity because we have some people here whose faces I could see very, very clearly, that they are very devout. It is so
The Adventure of Death: Embracing the Journey Beyond
Attachment, Attitude, Belief, Bliss, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Enlightenment, Evolution, Evolve, Force, Freedom, God, Guru, Gurushakti, Happiness, Joy, Karma, Light, Love, Mantra, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Religion, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self, Soul, Spirit, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Subconscious, Superconscious
DEATH IS NOT TO BE FEARED You can only cope with death if you understand what death is about. To us poor mortals, death seems so frightening, and that is because you are frightened of the unknown, and that which is unknown is always fearful. Knowing the unknown is not difficult at all, and once you see a thing, you lose the fear of the item. We feel terrified if we have to go up a very steep hill. How are we ever going to climb that rock-faced mountain and feel afraid? But once we have some practice in climbing that rock face, the fear will go away. Therefore, how about trying to die while you are living? When you reach the highest height of meditation, you are dead and yet alive. After every meditation, you rise again from the ashes of death and find renewed life. So, when we finally leave this physical frame, there will not be any fear, for death is such a beautiful experience. It is passing from the shackles of this body and letting the mind go free. There are no heavens and no hells at all. Heavens and hells are always here in this body, and whichever thought we train our mind to, we shall find on the other side. WHATEVER WE THINK, WE ARE If you feel fearful of the red guy with horns and a tail, you are going to meet that. And if you think, believe, and experience that beautiful bliss during your spiritual practices, you will find that, too, when your mental body is in another plane of existence. So, while in your body, you create the conditions of your experiences or encounters on the other side. This means that the plane of existence beyond this body is a projection of our minds. If you believe in an older man sitting on a throne with a long beard, that is precisely what you will see. If you think you will find beautiful mansions and gardens filled with the most exquisite flowers up there, that is what you will encounter. You will discover this because the mental body, or the subtle body as we call it, goes beyond the physical body and is conditioned. Whatever conditions it makes for itself, it has to pass through those conditions. Remember that, like the physical body, the subtle body is also conditioned until the person is fully enlightened. So as the old saying goes, “Whatever we think, we are,” and that applies not only to the physical body but also to the subtle body. When a person is in the subtle body, there is no evolution, only evaluation. At the moment of death – and I have died a thousand times – your entire life flashes across your mind; every detail in a second, you will see the entirety of your whole life that you have lived on this earth. And then, the subtle body leaves the physical body, and we regard the person as dead. In the evaluation of the subtle body, you will see in front of you all the lifetimes you had lived since the time you were the primal atom that came about through the Big Bang, through that explosion when you, that tiny atom, shot forth, and that shooting forth, that journey itself is evolving. So, when that journey, that force behind that atom, going through various stages of existence, when it loses its momentum, settles back into its source. Evolution is nothing else but the primary momentum that you started with, but in this journey, you have encountered many things. And when one comes to that complete stillness, one has merged into the original energy that we have come from, called Nirvana, into that nothingness which is the everythingness of all existence. EVERYTHING IS ALREADY EXISTING WITHIN YOU A few books, such as “Life after Life” and “Life after Death,” have been written by doctors examining and questioning people on the verge of death, and then they sort of came back. I am sure many of you have read them, and the reports they got from people were that everyone seemed to go through a tunnel, and at the other end of the tunnel, a light came to them. That is the experience of people that the doctors have reported. But that is not true. There is no tunnel. What seems to be a tunnel is the sinking of your conscious mind into the subconscious mind and then the subconscious mind sinking into the Superconscious Mind. The deliberate sinking into the subconscious and then the subconscious and the conscious descent into the Superconscious, that sinking seems to be a tunnel. No light comes to you, and what you see is your inner Light at the finest level of the Superconscious Mind. Nothing comes to you because everything already exists within you. AFTER PASSING OVER, AN EVALUATION TAKES PLACE I said before that whatever you desire is precisely what you will see; if your desire before death is powerful to see Auntie Mary, you will see Auntie Mary. If you want to see husband John or wife Alice, you will see her. But it is not the honest John or the real Alice you knew on this earth. You will see the projection of your mind of John, Alice, or Auntie Mary. In other words, you are conjuring up Auntie Mary, John, and Alice. Because those souls of John or Alice might have been reborn again, or if not, they are so busy evaluating themselves to take the next birth because nothing happens but an evaluation in that plane of existence. And when that subtle body finalises itself or comes to terms with itself, it will only seek the right channel, according to its karma, the right track of parents to be born through. So, your parents do not choose you, but you choose your parents. While the other souls are so busy evaluating themselves, they got no
True Success: Finding Freedom and Peace in the Stillness Within
Acceptance, Awareness, Divinity, Effort, Force, Freedom, God, Guru, Heart, Joy, Karma, Kingdom of Heaven within, Law of opposites, Love, Love thy neighbour as thyself, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Non-Attachment, Path, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, Surrender, Unfoldment, Universal, Universe
TRUE SUCCESS LIES IN FINDING THE PEACE WITHIN What we regard to be polarities are no polarities at all. These polarities could never exist; it is all but just oneness. The polarities are created by man’s mind and his analysis using the brain’s left hemisphere. Surrender has its value, and activity has its value as well. Activity is striving for something you in your mind project to succeed. But what is a success, after all? Is it the acquisition of material possessions? Would you call that success? No, it could be a significant loss, a total loss. I have known many millionaires worldwide, and I travel about three-quarters of the year around the world lecturing. I still must meet a successful millionaire though they look successful with ten Rolls Royce, or seventy-one of them, or big mansions. Are they successful? They are not successful. The outsider who sees their immense wealth would think that they are successful, but they are not. Real success is the peace one finds within the Kingdom of God. Seek ye first that, and all else shall be added unto thee. You know that scriptural saying very well. True success in life is to find that beautiful peace within you, inherent in you, which is your birthright, and to reach your birthright, to reach that which is inherent within you, that constitutes success. ACT FOR THE SAKE OF ACTION, AND ALL THAT ARE NEEDED WILL COME TO YOU There are many paths to this; one is total acceptance of life. Because every millionaire that owns, say, ten million wants to have twenty million. If you have ten Rolls Royce, you want twenty Rolls Royce. Therefore, you are constantly striving, and that mightily striving is creating turmoil and conflicts within your mind, and then you start scheming how to acquire these things that are born of your desire. There is a difference here. I do not say be desireless. To have the desire and to crave are two different things altogether. You can desire something within your limitations. People try to demand things in life. They demand from their mothers, fathers, wives, and brothers. They demand from the guru, and when they fail, they require from God. But you do not get what you demand; you will only get what you need. That is what you will get: what you need, not what you demand. Because ordering is a mental projection, you request this, and you demand that, and if you examine your minds most of the time, you will start demanding the impossible. But the theory is that in the word “impossible”, put an apostrophe and say, “I’m possible.” Then striving disappears. You do not need to seek things, just act for the sake of action, and all required items will come to you. STRIVING AND ACCEPTANCE MUST WORK HAND IN HAND Eastern philosophers have different ideas. They become very fatalistic. They say, “Oh, God gives me this, or God gives me that, or if he does not give it is alright.” Through all my travels in the Himalayas, I met a family in India, and they had seven children like a stepladder. They were an impoverished family; they could hardly support the children. So, I said, “Why do you have so many children?” The man replied to me, “Oh, God gives. What can I do?” I said, “Do you sleep in separate bedrooms? So why blame it on God?” Here we have two polarities. One is striving, and one is total acceptance of things. Both are wrong, wrong in the sense that both can be reconciled. You have to seek your needs, and that is necessary. You need bread, butter, and sometimes a bit of jam. But that does not mean I will sit on my backside and expect that bread to fall on my lap. I must strive to get that bread, but I must also be satisfied at the same time that if it is a dry piece of bread, okay. If there is some butter or peanut butter on it, okay. Striving and acceptance must work hand in hand to make life prosperous and peaceful. For that is the only way you will find peace. To be totally in favour of whatever there be has brought India down to its poverty, famines, and hunger. Extreme poverty because they say, “Okay, God gives.” And yet thousands and thousands and thousands of square miles are lying barren. Go and till those fields and find your food instead of being in famine or hungry. While in the Western world, you keep on striving and striving for more excellent material gain. You are externalizing yourself all the time: just externality. You are just looking outwardly at things. Acquisition. Mrs Jones has a specific home, so Mrs Thomas will say, “Oh, Mrs Jones has this kind of home, so I must make my home better.” Then she will get into debt by getting a mortgage loan. To pay off that mortgage, she has to go through a lot of problems. Perhaps her husband loses his job; then the mortgage is not paid. The instalments are not paid, and the home is lost. Is it not a form of greed for trying to do better than the next-door neighbour? And if you try to do one better than your next-door neighbour, how can you love your neighbour? You cannot. You cannot love your neighbour because you are too self-centred. I must do better than Mrs Jones. That is the one wrong extreme. The other extreme of the East is also wrong, where they say, oh, karma rules my life, and things will fall in my lap. That is also wrong. But if a combination is formed between the two, effort and acceptance, it could very easily be reconciled, combined, consolidated, and then what happens is this: there is no polarity. FIND YOUR CENTRE, AND YOU WILL FIND THE STILLNESS WITHIN From opposite ends, you try to reach
Boundless Within Boundaries: Unveiling the Journey to Liberation
Bliss, Brahman, Chela, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Freedom, God, Guru, Heart, Joy, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Mind, Philosophy, Purity, Relationships, Relative World, Self, Self-Realization, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, The Absolute, Universal, Universe, Wisdom
YOUR REAL SELF IS FOREVER PLAYING IN FREEDOM Every person is a liberated person. Everyone on all planets throughout the universe is liberated, and we feel we are bound. Let us ask the question, who is bound? Am I really in bondage? Which part of me is in bondage, and what are the conditions that produce the bondage which I think to be bondage? And if I am bound, why am I bound? Which part of me is bound, and which part is free? In essence, in the spiritual self of man, everyone is a liberated being, for the spirit is beyond all kinds of bondage, and you are none else than the spirit itself. So, the whole idea of bondage is a fallacy. It is a fallacy because bondage is a superimposition upon liberation. This superimposition comes from what we call the mind. So, here we stand in the position to say that the mind is in bondage. The mind, which constitutes the ego self of man, is in bondage and forever will remain in bondage. You cannot free the mind from its boundaries because the mind has its peculiarities and limitations. A limited mind can never be limitless. So, we are just swimming on the surface of the ocean where all the waves are, and those waves are tossing the little self around here, there and everywhere. The ocean currents control your mind, and who has produced the currents in this ocean? The mind itself. So, whatever bondage you assume to be in is a creation of yourself, for your authentic self, your actual self is forever playing in freedom. THE SCIENTIST EXPERIMENTS, THE PHILOSOPHER USE LOGIC, THE MYSTIC EXPERIENCE There is only one problem: that this freedom, this liberation, cannot be communicated. It cannot be transmitted to another because the mind plays, and the communication would be from mind to mind. But it can be shown by communion. There is a difference between communication and communion. In communion, the heart speaks to the heart. If you could understand my heart, see my heart, and feel the communication with my heart, then your heart would feel what liberation is all about. In all these various philosophies of the world, they base all their philosophies on logic. The scientist experiments with things outside him and can only reach a certain point dealing with exterior substances. He wants to capture Divinity in a test tube, yet the very test tube is made of that subtle energy which is Divine. So, he is trying to capture Divinity with something Divine. For scientists, dealing only with external matter through experiments could never be done. The philosopher does not experiment; he uses logic systematically, from point A to point B to point C to point D; he wants to work it out logically, and his tool is only the mind. But for the mystic, he throws away logic, he throws away experiments, and he talks of experience. So, here you have an experiment, you have logic, and you have experience. The mind can never communicate expertise. You have something very nice to eat; you could never logically communicate what that niceness is all about. You can talk about it but not show what it is. So, we require communion to know what liberation is all about: the genuine guru-chela relationship that goes beyond the mind level. However, the mind is necessary for certain kinds of explanations, for the mind, too, wants to be pleased. But the actual effect is in communication, in that spark where heart meets heart. It is a love affair, and then the experience of this universal orgasm occurs. That is the experience of liberation. THE EXPERIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, BLISS AND EXISTENCE IS A MENTAL EXPERIENCE What is this experience of liberation? It is no experience. It is a process. But we can talk about the results of the process, where life is joyous, where you are divided into two. You live in the relative, yet you live in the Absolute. The Absolute provides the impetus. The Absolute provides the joy that is there, and yet, in self-realization or liberation, joy is just but a secondary, more grossified aspect. So, in the experience of liberation, which is no experience, no experience condenses itself through some form, where the mind is needed, and joy is experienced. Do you see the process that because of the superimposition of the mind, the no experience is somewhat glimpsed at as an experience, and that experience is joy and bliss? The Vedantist tries to qualify Brahman or Divinity as absolute existence, absolute bliss, and absolute knowledge, and I tell the Vedantists that this is a contradiction of terms. They have reached a far way. Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, has reached a specific limitation. They have not reached the limitless. By saying Divinity is absolute bliss, existence, and knowledge, we automatically qualify for it. IT: capital I, capital T. This qualification brings limitations, for limitless people cannot be qualified. Therefore, the experience of knowledge, bliss, and existence is still a mental experience at the finest level. TO EXPERIENCE LIBERATION, WE HAVE TO REACH THE SUPERCONSCIOUS STATE OF MIND Our teachings go beyond Vedanta, and here is precisely where we go beyond. Because bliss, knowledge, and existence are only expressions, they are only outward manifestations of the unmanifest, and when you merge into the unmanifest, all qualifications cease. How can you qualify or quantify that which is limitless? Yet the human mind can only reach that state of knowledge, bliss and existence. It is not just an ordinary cognition but a total assimilation, a total realization of that in its subtlest form, which is experienced by the mind, making life joyous. Although the mind is a superimposition and limited in its power, it still covers the entirety of Divinity, and therefore we call it manifestation. Consequently, we also call the mind limitless in that aspect. However, its very limitation lies in superimposition, and anything superimposed is inaccurate. So,
Transcending Inhibitions: A Spiritual Approach to Overcoming Inhibitions
Acceptance, Attachment, Attitude, Belief, Brahman, Buddha, Christ, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Evolution, Force, God, Happiness, Heart, Impressions, Integration, Joy, Kingdom of Heaven within, Krishna, Laws, Love, Mantra, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Omnipresent, Path, Peace, Religion, Samskaras, Self, Self-integration, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, Unfoldment, Universal
HOW TO GET RID OF INHIBITIONS? Inhibitions are generally caused by one’s method of thinking, one’s schooling, one’s childhood environment, in many cases, perhaps churches, and if you do believe in things, it could even go further into past lives. Inhibitions are patternings of the mind, and the human mind is forever patterned in one form or the other. You could have very positive patternings, and you could have negative patternings, and yet both remain within the realms of inhibitions. A few of the things that are closely allied to inhibitions are the sense of guilt and fear. These very fears and guilts cause those inhibitions, which become a stumbling block or an obstacle to your creativity. To get rid of inhibitions, you have to go through some processes. Be very careful in listening to this; one of the processes is a mental process, but not by dwelling upon inhibitions. There is the difference – not to dwell upon the inhibitions or that which becomes an obstacle to you – but to analyse the inhibition. In that analysis, you ask yourself, “Why do you feel inhibited?” YOU ARE THE SUM TOTALITY OF ALL YOUR IMPRESSIONS I have had many cases where people come to me with all inhibitions. A young man comes to me and tells me, “I love my girl very, very much, but when I am with her, I fail to make love to her,” and analysing his problem, we found that he had this fear in him that would not make him be able to make love to the woman he loved so much. That was a kind of inhibition. Inhibition is also associated with repression; they are blood brothers. You often go through a particular experience, and then instead of analysing the experience or shedding off that experience with analysis, you press it deeper and deeper and deeper within yourself. So, these inhibitions and repressions cause impressions. Those impressions are first on the conscious level of the mind. Still, as you dwell more upon it, they go deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind, which is nothing else but a whole extensive collection of all the impressions you had from millions of ages, from the time when you were the first sub, sub-atomic being, until you reach the stage of the amoeba and then through the laws of evolution, you progress through the various layers that evolution takes you through until you have become a human being. You are the sum totality of all those impressions you have gained; in Sanskrit, they call it Samskaras. The Samskaric mind, or the subconscious mind, to use the psychological terminology for it, is continually impressing itself or flowing through your conscious level of the mind, and that governs your actions. You are all grown-up people, so that I can speak very frankly; this young man that came to see me before he met his girlfriend had met some other girl, and this girl teased him in a manner telling him, “Oh, you are so small”, and this created a blockage in his mind, so when he met the girl he loved, he could not make love to her. THROUGH SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, YOU WILL OVERCOME INHIBITING THOUGHTS The mind is a very, very susceptible mind. A child’s mind is susceptible but innocent, while a grown-up’s mind is equally susceptible but not innocent. When some experience is gained, or something happens, immediately, the conscious mind sends an express telegram or a hotline to the subconscious mind. In the subconscious mind, the experience you are having now is being compared. Then in all the cubby holes of the subconscious mind, you draw out the file, and by drawing out that file, you are strengthening the negativity or inhibition of the present experience. In psychoanalysis, psychologists try to dig deep within your mind to find out the reason for that inhibition, and they dig and dig and dig until, through a psychoanalytical process, they try to find the cause of things. Then they try to eradicate the cause by explanations, making you see things from a different perspective. This has some value, but it is not a cure. As I have said many times before, it is a shifting of energies from one area of the brain to another area of the brain, and those very energies might erupt differently altogether. You are clearing yourself of one kind of inhibition, and then that energy shifted will create another type of inhibition. People suffer primarily because of a sense of guilt and fear which, as I said a moment ago, causes these inhibitions and repressions. Let us tell you went to apply for a job, went to 4 or 5 places, and was refused a job. Now you go to the sixth place, and with this fear in your mind, you say, “Five interviews I have had, and they refused me, so the sixth interview, I will also be rejected.” You go with that attitude. Naturally, you are emanating an opposing force from yourself by having that attitude. Everything emanates something. Everything is forever emanating; a flower stems fragrance, and fire emanates heat. Likewise, a human derives a specific energy from within himself, and if that energy is coupled with a thought that he will not get this job, he will not get it. So, the secret here would lie with meditation and spiritual practices where you neutralise your mind. By neutralising your mind through straightforward spiritual practices, you bring in the positive thought, and then that positive thought takes heed. When you go for that interview with this in your mind and heart, you feel that “I am going to get this job.” You look straight into the employer’s eyes and say, “I am getting this job; you are going to give me this job.” You do not tell him that aloud; he might kick you out, but you think it and feel that you will give me this bloody job. You