Janujee, Author at FISU Meditation

The Journey from Silence to Silence: Experiencing the Infinite Within the Finite

Attitude, Bliss, Brahman, Conscious Mind, Divine, Ego, Eternal, Eternity, Evolution, Force, God, Heart, Impressions, Joy, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mind, Omnipresent, One-pointedness, Oneness, Path, Relative World, Samskaras, Scriptures, Self, Spirit, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, The Absolute, The Three Gunas, Unity, Universal, Universe

FROM SILENCE TO SILENCE In the scriptures, it is said: “From silence we come and to silence we return.” We come from silence and end up in silence. Has it been a journey, or have we not travelled at all? That remains the question. If it has been a journey coming from silence and returning to silence, then who experiences this journey? Who is the experiencer of this journey if there has been a journey? We do know that the Spirit of man, or the Universal Spirit, is omnipresent. It has nowhere to go and nowhere from which to come – it just is. So, what journeys – what takes this trip or goes on this trip from silence to silence? What are the mechanics that produce the experience of this journeying? Is it an experience or an illusion, and, even if it is an illusion, how is illusion experienced? Because all illusion or delusion is just but a counterpart of reality. In the process of evolution, we experience that which is seemingly real yet unreal. What remains is reality. So where do you come from and to where are you going? I gave a talk in San Francisco where I said that you come from nowhere and you are going nowhere. “Nowhere” is “now here.” Look at the similarity in the spelling: NOWHERE – NOW HERE. You are now here, and that is the important factor to recognise in practical life. Nevertheless, the mind has a habit of inquiring. The mind is conditioned through the process of evolution of going through various stages whereby it gains these experiences, but who gains the experiences? The mind gains experiences. Having gained these experiences by the mind, of the mind, and from the mind, there is nothing outside the mind. The human mind is as vast as the entire universe, and if you individualise it, it only means that you are viewing one bubble in a vast pond. Yet, how can the bubble be separated from the pond? Man has the capacity within himself to experience the entirety of the universe with the mind, yet the Spirit remains aloof, for the Spirit cannot experience this journey. Therefore, we say, “From silence, we proceed, and we return to silence.” It means that the mind that has been manifested as the fragrance from a flower goes through this journey, be it illusion or not, and then finds itself at total at-one-ment with the Spirit. That is the journey. So, in reality, there has been no journey. What are the reasons why the mind should assume that this has been a journey? What are the grounds that the mind thinks that “I have travelled from here to there” when the Spirit, the reality behind everything, does not travel or go anywhere – it just is? THE MIND FINDS ITSELF TRAVELLING From the beginning of this cycle of the universe, for the universe operates in cycles, there is a creation, or rather a manifestation. And the powers in the manifestation are known as the three gunas in Sanskrit: Tamas, Rajas and Sattva. Tamas, the forces of darkness, and Sattva, the forces of light, and Rajas, the activating force that interacts between light and darkness; for wherever there is darkness, there has to be light; wherever there is light, there has to be darkness. In our concept of linear time and space, the entire mind, or the universe, is nothing else but propulsion that seemingly goes forth. In the third dimension that we exist in, we find this movement proceeding from A to B, while there is no space and no time beyond the mind. And Blake has said it well: “Eternity in an hour.” It is just a moment, instead. Blake was a bit wrong in his calculations. In the process of the mind, the mind feels itself travelling. Why does it feel itself travelling, or why does it feel mixed up in the process of evolution? The various atomic and molecular structures that compose matter have always to be in motion for it to exist; when it becomes motionless, it ceases to exist in its grosser form. And as it exists in the grosser form, enmeshed in this motion of contraction and expansion, it thinks it is moving. If you watch a wave in the ocean, you think the wave is coming from a distance and going to the shore. That is not so. It is an illusion that is created, for the wave does not move. There is a rhythm in the ocean created by currents where each wave is bobbing just up and down where it is and the next bobbing up and down, and the next, and the next, giving us the illusion that the one wave has moved from that end to the shore. Likewise, in this flux of the universe, in this motion, this perpetual motion that perpetuates itself, within itself, by itself, because its nature is motion. We are trying to find that which is silent behind all the motion, for that which is motion cannot be silent, and that which is silent could have no motion. Very simple. Because the mind can act and interact within its own components, it becomes more and more complex, and it is these very complexities that add to the motion of the mind. The mind creates the experience, and the mind itself is the experiencer, for the eternal Spirit within man is beyond all experience of motion or anything else. It just is. The sun does not create the heat, but heat rises from the sun, it is the nature of the sun to give off heat, and that is how that eternal energy, first in its very silent form, manifests itself as mind. IN THE PROCESS OF MANIFESTATION, THE DIVINE FORCE GROSSIFIES ITSELF When the mind assumes this motion, it also finds a direction, which is what we term as will. We can call it Divine will. There was will,

Maya and the Infinite: Living in Relativity While Seeking Unity

Awareness, Bible, Christ, Consciousness, Divine, Divinity, Duality, Free Will, God, I and my Father are one, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Mind, Oneness, Philosophy, Relative World, Self-Realization, Separation

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAYA Shankara says that the whole world is an illusion, and nothing is real; it is a dream. That is from the Advaita philosophy, Advaitism. In other words, monism regards everything as just an unreality, and only Divinity is the true reality. That is very well and very, very true, but from what angle is it true? It is true from the standpoint of Shankara, who had reached self-realisation and knowing infinity; to him, there was nothing finite. He has become one with infinity; there was nothing finite because he saw infinity even in the finiteness of life. Once you have such great beauty, the little beauties disappear because they disappear not in annihilation – little beauties are not annihilated, but they merge away into the greater beauty. ONLY WHEN WE TRANSCEND RELATIVITY WE CAN CALL RELATIVITY UNREAL When we talk of Shankara, we must know the meaning of discrimination to be able to discriminate between what is reality and what is unreality. Proper and complete discrimination only comes when we reach the stage of Shankara. I have said this before, that because of this philosophy of Maya, more harm has been done than good. To the one who has not reached a high stage of evolution, the belief of Maya can be very harmful. They become deterministic; they become fatalistic. I have seen very low-income families with 12 children; though they can hardly feed two, they have 12, that belief of Maya is so ingrained in them. Then I asked, “Why have 12 children when you cannot even feed two? Never mind two, you cannot even feed yourself.” Then they said, “It is the work of God.” I said, “the work of God? Did you sleep in separate bedrooms?” God works in mysterious ways, but you two have to work in less mysterious ways. “What had to happen had to happen; it was ordained; it was predetermined that I must have 12 children.” Their free will comes into play, and divine will, which we discussed many times before. It is very good as idealistic philosophy to acknowledge and to understand the principles of advaitism or monism where everything else, all existence is a dream and the only reality is the Lord, that is very true. But, if your wife and children are hungry at home, can we call that unreal? If you have a headache or a toe ache, can you call that unreal? It is only when we transcend or go beyond relativity that we can call relativity unreal. While we are dreaming, that dream is completely real to us; it is only when we wake up that we look back and say, “oh, what a lovely dream,” good or bad dream. Then only the realisation dawns that all these possessiveness that we had, all these me and mine, all these pettiness was only a dream. Why did I stick to that dream? How could I have been so foolish to have stuck to such a dream? But that comes when we become realised. NON-DUALISM IS THE EXTENSION OF DUALISM Shankara is not to be discouraged, Advaitism is not to be discarded, and Non-Advaitism or non-monism is not to be discarded either. While we are still enmeshed in relativity, we must look at all relativity to be real too and only when we transcend, only when we go beyond the relativity, will we realise that that was all just a dream. Now I know the essence because I am the essence, which is real, not the manifestation. The Manifestor is real and not the manifestation. When you become the fire, you do not worry about the heat, but until you have become the fire itself, you must be conscious and aware of the heat around you and not discard it as just Maya, just uselessness, just dreaming. This is not contradictory. Non-dualism and dualism are not contradictory as most people believe, as many teachers teach, but one is the extension of the other, that when one passes beyond dualism, then there is non-dualism, but it is not contradictory; it is a stage. We pass these stages from dualism to non-dualism, from separation to oneness. That is the stage we pass through, and that is the truth. We find this in the Bible; Christ said the same thing. Christ said to the flock, “Pray to thy Father in Heaven,” which is dualism. Father in Heaven and you here, separate dualism and then to his closest ones, he said, “I and my Father are one,” non-dualism. This is illustrated very well in the Bible as well and, of course, in various ancient philosophies. WHEN ENMESHED IN RELATIVITY, NON-DUALISM IS AN INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE So, while we are still enmeshed in relativity, we can accept the principle of non-dualism that everything is a dream and there is only one reality. We can accept that principle but remember that it is an intellectual principle; it is a principle which is analysed by the mind, the intellect will accept it, the intellect analyses it, that is intellectualising. But what we do practically in the world today until we reach that stage of realisation, we have to accept the separateness until we progress and go beyond the separation. WE WANT REALISATION, NOT INTELLECTUALISATION We have to accept the reality of relativity; I am trying to say that even relativity is real because we are enmeshed in it; we are part and parcel of the relativity. Intellectualising about the unrealness of the universe cannot get us anywhere; it is only intellectualising. We want realising, not intellectualising, but realising, because the mind too is so finite. That principle where everything becomes a dream, everything becomes Maya is when we have reached infinity and become one with the infinite. Until then, we are still finite, and we accept all that around us is finite. It is because of dualistic philosophies; it is because of this dualism that all these ethical and moral laws are

Living Divinity: The Universal Message of Spiritual Masters

Awareness, Belief, Bible, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Eternal, Evolve, Faith, God, Guru, Gurushakti, Heart, I and my Father are one, Joy, Krishna, Love, Love thy neighbour as thyself, Meditation, Oneness, Peace, Purity, Religion, Self, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, The Abstract, Unfoldment, Universal, Universe, Yoga

JESUS, THE ORDINARY MAN VERSUS CHRIST, THE CONSCIOUSNESS There is Shakti in everything, so you are having Gurushakti right now. If you believe in Jesus, believe in Jesus. Do not relinquish your belief in Jesus. You must not stop. The difference between a true Spiritual Master and Jesus or Krishna or Buddha is only of time and different bodies. The consciousness these men bring to the world is the same, for there is only one consciousness, but because Divinity is abstract, consciousness has to take a human form to impart the impulse to another human. Very few people know the real life of Jesus. The various Churches have devised the life of Jesus that you know about but have done this for their personal needs. The two most prosperous and wealthiest organisations are the Church and Insurance Companies. The Church promises heaven after you are dead, and the Insurance Company promises you a lot of money after you are dead. They tell you to build up a store for yourself in heaven. Do you know where heaven is? And if you do not know where heaven is, how are you going to build a store up there? If you do not know where Dublin is or understand how you will get there? How do I get there? You need a guide to show you, and everything in life is a Guru. Even when you drive and go into an unknown place, you use a map. That map is guiding you. Do not relinquish your belief in Jesus; remember, it is a belief. You have not experienced Jesus, so how can you have faith? And if you have not developed that faith, how can you become one with Him? Jesus was not as the interpretation of these church institutions says; he was an ordinary man. He never died on the Cross; he just went into a coma. Nicodemus was his patron and organised it so that Jesus did not have to stay too long on the Cross. Many people were crucified, and crucifixion was not only for Jesus, but that was the method they used in those times, as we have the electric chair or hanging today. It was not exclusive. There was a lot of politics involved in getting rid of Jesus. The Romans did not like him and feared he might gather all the people to overthrow the Roman rule within Israel. So, there were political reasons. Jesus was the most despised man of his time. His people did not like him. The Sanhedrin did not want him. The Zealots did not like him; they hated him. He was the most despised man, and there would have been no Christian religion at all if there were not his followers who wrote about him, and that happened forty, fifty years after he departed. The Christian Church only became formalised when all the Cardinals met at the First Council of Mycenae, 325 AD. I think it is. That is how it became formalised. The difference is that you can speak and converse with a living Master but cannot communicate with a dead Master unless you are highly spiritually developed. He cannot answer you back. How many of you could tell me that you have spoken to Jesus, and he gave you an answer? But you can ask me a question, and I will provide you with an answer. So, Jesus, Krishna, and Buddha were ordinary people, as I have said before, ordinary people who were very, very human. Jesus even had a child with Mary Magdalene. They were not married, but these things have been hidden away, and this was found in some later scrolls dug up in Egypt somewhere and translated. It was even published in the Observer Newspaper in England. So, Jesus was an ordinary man. But what I believe in is Christ, and Christ means consciousness, total consciousness. A TRUE MASTER WILL ALWAYS SHOW HIMSELF TO HUMANS AS A HUMAN Man in the world is very little conscious; his consciousness is minute. Compare that minuteness with the infinite consciousness that Christhood, Krishnahood, or Buddhahood could bring about. When Krishna and Christ said, “No one goes to the Father but by me,” it does not mean Jesus the man. It means that consciousness, which we can call Christ, is consciousness. When you evolve to a particular stage of reaching that consciousness, only you can become one with what we call Father, and we call it Father because there was not a single woman on those councils where the Bible was re-formulated. Speaking, that eternal energy, which we call Father, is neither man nor woman. It is an energy. You can have that energy in you in the form of a woman or the form of a man. You can call it Mother, and you can call it Father. It is the same because Divinity is sexless; it is neither He nor She. For example, last night, when I did the Communion Practice in which many of you had beautiful experiences, I was away from the entire Universe. I merged into that Divine energy, which is neither He nor She, and yet I would walk amongst you. When we meet outside or sit at dinner, I joke with you, laugh with you, and tease with you. I will even use a few cuss words to make you laugh, to demonstrate to you that I am like you as a man, a human. I will even use f’s and b’s; why not? You hear it on television daily, and in all those plays little children listen to. I do not need to use them, but I emphasise things to show you that I am very human. I will not mind using the word bastard, for example, in a private company. I will not mind, for I am one. My mother had an affair with a king. She used to work in the palace, which is how I was born. And

How to Find Answers to Questions: From Mind’s Questions to Heart’s Wisdom

Attitude, Buddha, Chela, Divinity, Ego, God, Guru, Heart, Joy, Law of opposites, Love, Meditation, Mind, Non-Attachment, Oneness, Path, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Unfoldment, Unity, Wisdom

TEACHING IN SILENCE To those that are regular meditators, the day will come in your lives that there will be no more questions left to ask. Buddha’s greatest teachings were given in total silence, where he would sit with his chelas around him and because they were very advanced in the spiritual field, they would think of the question, and their answer would be there. Certain problems within themselves would automatically be resolved by themselves, and when they left his presence, they were transformed; some change took place within them. That is the power, the spiritual force that a man like Buddha would emit from himself, but at the same time, the recipient has to be ready too. Vivekananda said this. The seed has to be good, and the ground also has to be fertile because seeds on barren ground would have no value at all; they will not grow. So there has to be a readiness in the chelas. Overall these years that I have been giving talks around the world, perhaps those that have attended many, many courses have found one thing that I have led you slowly, and stage by stage by stage, into deeper and deeper knowledge. Sometimes a question is repeated, yet at one stage, when I look around, I would answer it in a way that will make my mind enquire more. And as the mind enquires still deeper, fathoms still deeper goes deeper, I will take the same question and answer it on a deeper level. Therefore, I say that when you have reached total depth, I will sit here with you and say nothing. I LOVE YOU To all my children, to all my chelas, to all, I would say, “I love you,” that is all. But then we go beyond those words of “I love you” because really speaking those are the most misused words, that “love” has come between the “I” and the “you”. Why should it be so? It is a fallacy to say, “I love you” when the reality of love is to bring about a total oneness that knows of no “I” and neither “you”. When that stage is reached then you would say, “I am love. My guru is love. All that surrounds me is love,” for love is all and everything. When man’s mind becomes fully realised, no questions would be left at all. But it is good to ask a question that shows that one is on the path. The mind starts enquiring, enquiring, enquiring. It will enquire so much that you would start saying “Neti, Neti, Neti,” which is in Sanskrit for “not this, not this, not this.” ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS In true questioning, when a person asks a question, its answer must inspire half a dozen questions by the response. And when those half a dozen questions are resolved, a dozen will spring up until the stage is reached where you become the questionless questioner. The mind has to be appeased for questions that come from the mind and are naturally thought of as human beings. But when all questions cease, and the mind ceases functioning or revolving itself around questions or gets involved in questions, all that stops and then the Heart just knows. What I usually try to do is not only answer questions or understand some aspect of life. What happens is that through the words or the presence – through all the emanations, something is imparted that reaches your Heart and aids spiritual unfoldment. I used to be the greatest questioner. I used to be the greatest doubter, and thank God I was, for that very attitude of mind led me on until I could read no books anymore. I do read them but not to learn. I just read them to corroborate perhaps or know of the experiences of others, for if you, as you all will, gain the totality, you go beyond knowledge because the mind can only give you knowledge. And all knowledge is acquired knowledge that once you go beyond this, you reach the area of wisdom. There is a vast difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is of the mind which can always be added onto, for today you will believe in one thing and tomorrow another thing, and like that you go on and on and on. That is how all discoveries in the world are made, but when you reach wisdom, that means you have reached the totality. ONLY DIVINITY REMAINS I would say that in the love that is there, let the time come when the “I” and the “You” are not there anymore and only love remains. When only love remains, the realisation we will have is that only God remains, and “You” and “I” are gone. When I say “You” and “I” are gone, it does not mean you will lose your physical body or the ego-self or self-identity. That will be there, but underlying that is that total stability, that living and feeling of a beautiful oneness, that unity around which the diversity floats on. And that floating on will never affect the unity, the oneness that has been created within you. Then you become the real observer of the relative things of life of which we have spoken. You become non-attached to the world, and when you become non-attached, nothing can affect you. When nothing can affect you, neither pain nor pleasure, then you are in a land of joy, such beautiful joy that knows of no opposites and no contradictions. The second thing or the third thing I would say is to become non-attached so that within oneself, no more conflict remains and only the Divinity that is there, only that remains. Do you see, so non-attachment! … Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1983- 17

Overcoming Fear and Anger: Fearlessness and the Power of Understanding

Buddha, Christ, Evolution, Heart, Impressions, Kindness, Love, Meditation, Mind, Purity, Religion, Self, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Tranquillity

WHO IS ANGRY When we are angry, there could be many factors involved, a combination of factors, in producing the anger within us. We could ask the question, “who is angry”? Is the real I in me angry, or is the superficial I in me angry? When we can discriminate which part of us is angry, anger will disappear, because invariably you will find that it is your little self, the little conditioned mind, that becomes angry. The inner I, the big I, is forever still, tranquil, unmoved by anger or anything else. When we realise that it is the small I that is angry, and we affirm that to us, that “it is not me that is angry that it is some of the twitches happening in the mind that is angry”, then we ask a further question, and these things have to be probed. We ask a further question “what is the cause of the anger”? Or what has caused this reaction in us? A Chinese proverb says, rolls your tongue nine times in the mouth before you say an angry word. Invariably you will not say what you wanted to say. It means that give it some time and reflect upon it, and the anger would disappear with reflection. So, there is no question left of suppressing it or expressing it. Many human beings act very impulsively. Why are human beings impulsive? It is because they lack the essential tranquillity within themselves, and therefore they become impulsive. Consequently, they do not give the mind a chance to think. They act with a kind of built-in reflex action. They have been used to becoming angry over a long period. So, when circumstances happen, immediately the outside circumstances associate themselves with the conditioned mind, which is full of impressions, knows all the tricks of anger, and immediately the external circumstances associate itself with that which is inside the mind impulsively triggers off anger. ANALYSE ANGER FROM THE OUTSIDE TO THE INSIDE But if we can create the analytical process from the outside to the inside, that would require time, and that is where rolling the tongue nine times comes into play. The idea is not to turn the other cheek; the idea is not to suppress the anger. Turning the other cheek can come about in two ways: cowardice and absolute kindness and understanding. When we turn the other cheek, then we are not angry – anger has disappeared, because when anger has disappeared, the mind is given a chance to think, and when the mind thinks, then you will say, “what has called this about? Let us give the boy the other cheek. Let him have the pleasure of slapping me again; after all, who was hurt? This little body? Is that all that is hurt? And how important is this body? But I, my inner self, am I hurt?” The mind would probe these questions, and it becomes effortless to give the other cheek because the mind is now tranquil, and it is only the tranquil mind that can act sensibly. So, you can do it with absolute kindness and understanding because at that moment, the mind will start thinking, or the Heart will begin feeling the condition of the slapper, of the one that lifts his hand, and immediately we would feel that person’s Heart. Why has he raised his hand? What is impulsive in him lifting his hand? What is going through his mind? And when one can understand that, as the man who raises his hand, his hand will freeze in mid-air. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE This I tell you from a very personal experience. This does not apply only to a human being or their relations between one human to another. I was going once to Almorra, which is a station very high up in the Himalayan mountains. I was about eighteen nearly nineteen, and I had to go nearly sixty miles through a forest all alone in broad daylight, and while walking through this forest, I was confronted by a tiger. Someone would say that it is a ferocious tiger, but I found it a kind tiger when I looked at it. I had no fear of it because instinctively, intuitively, knowingly perhaps if you want to use that word, I felt that this poor little cat could not hurt me, why should it hurt me in the first place? If it requires this body of mine to feed itself, by all means, let it feed itself. Do I not feed myself upon other things? All the fruits, vegetables, and nuts I eat also have a specific form of life. I feed myself every day on life itself, so if this tiger wants to feed upon me, then why should I resist? And, in the flash of the moment when all this was clear to me, I looked at the tiger, straight in the face, and I could just see kindness in the eyes of the tiger. For me to see the kind nurse in the eyes of the tiger, I would have to have a certain measure of kindness myself. When that appeared, there was no fear. When an animal attacks, you always remember it is because it picks up instinctively the fear you have in you and the animal attacks you because of the fear in you: it also feels fear. When the animal starts fearing you, that is the time it will attack you. Here the animal instinctively found kindness, love. So, it looked at me for a little while and turned around, and off it went, just like that. FEAR AND ANGER Fear and anger are blood brothers. Anger comes about, and the basis of anger, the inner core of anger, usually is fear. We become angry because we fear something. A man becomes angry with his wife because he fears that the wife has done something wrong. What does that show? The cause of that fear is

From Periphery to Center: Embracing the Wholeness of Existence

Acceptance, Attitude, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Enlightenment, Eternal, Eternity, God, Guru, Gurushakti, I and my Father are one, Krishna, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Mind, Philosophy, Relative World, Samskaras, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Path, Spiritual Practices, Surrender, Universal

UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS “I am the way. I am the life. I am the truth.” Which “I” did Jesus speak about? Jesus never said that as Jesus the body, but he said that as Christ, for there is a difference between Jesus the embodied little being and Christ, the Universal Consciousness. To become one with the Father, one has to reach that level of consciousness, and that level assumes or becomes just as vast as God. Then truly can you say, “I and my Father are one.” For, there is no other way, there is no other way at all without achieving this consciousness. You could call it Christ Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness, it means the same; the emphasis is not on the name of the man. The emphasis is on consciousness, the totality of consciousness, pure consciousness, which embraces the entire universe. Those sayings are very true, and that is the only way, and the only way can only be the truth, and is everything not alive? There is no such thing as death. Nothing can die. It is only because of your conception that you say when I leave this body, “I am dead.” Which part of you says you are dead? You will not even know it. Someone else will say, “Oh, Guruji died.” No, they will never say that.” The day when I go say, “He passed over. There is only life, and life is that love and love are that God. LIVING IN THE CENTRE You see how the way, the truth and life are but different aspects of the same thing. He who can live life lives God. But we do not live life; we only exist, like anything else, like even a piece of stone that exists. But we think we live because we walk around, talk, think, do this, and do that. Is that life? If it was real life, then how come all the contradictions in our lives? Because life itself has no contradiction. How come all the conflicts come about if we live life. We have forgotten what life is. We only have the peripheral view of things and not of the centre. We live off-centred. If you have a cart, and the hub is not in the centre, the wheels will go – guff, guff, guff. They will not turn smoothly, would they? That is why our lives are not turning smoothly. Therefore, you go through this guff, guff, guff. Our spiritual practices are aimed at bringing us to our centre; the centre is life. Like a wheel, the periphery, with its spokes and the rim, should be controlled by the centre so that the wheel can run smoothly. Most people live in the peripheral world that we are so conversant with; only the true spiritual seeker will try to find the centre. You will find, and I made a very large study of this, that in the beginning, when ninety-eight percent of people join a spiritual organisation, they do not enter it because they want to find the centre or find Divinity; they join it because of all kinds of troubles they go through. That could be emotional problems, physical problems, domestic problems, job problems. That is why they start on the spiritual path, but they have started; that is important. By going nearer and nearer to the centre, these things would smooth themselves out. GURUSHAKTI BRINGS TRANSFORMATION I have been hearing of many of the experiences of our meditators in these past few days, and they just find this mercy, which we call Gurushakti, so miraculous that such transformations come. What are you transforming? Not the centre, the centre is perfect. You are transforming the spokes and the periphery and fitting it into the centre. That is the transformation of man, for the inner Self, the centre requires no transformation. Transformation means change, while the centre in man is changeless. As soon as Divinity starts changing, it would lose its Divineness, and yet the periphery we see, the unbalanced wheel, is an expression. EVEN THE PERIPHERY BECOMES PERFECT Let us look at this from a different angle, that if everything emanates from the centre, why is the rim buckled and does not run smooth. Goodness can only come from goodness. Manifestation comes from the Manifestor, and every Manifestor is Divine, then its manifestation must be Divine. From a rose, you will have a rose fragrance. From a Jasmine, you will have a jasmine fragrance. True or not, but then why this? Is there any reality at all in this? There is no reality in the world you see around you. We live primarily in an illusory world like Shankara would say in his Vedantic philosophy, that you go through a street in semi-darkness perhaps and see a piece of rope lying there, and you mistake it to be a snake. But on close examination, you find that it is not a snake; it is a piece of rope. When one approaches the centre of ourselves, what happens to the periphery that seems imperfect? That too becomes perfect. When you observe the perfection even in the manifestation, you would only say, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” for then you see everything to be Divine; even the buckled wheel is Divine. So why that, ”guff, guff, guff.” Because we bumped the cart through our samskaras and past lives, that is why we are experiencing that, and it is only the ego-self that is experiencing that, not the authentic Self in you. When we have eyes to see and ears to hear then, we will be looking at everything from the hub, the centre, and every imperfection which the ego-self conceives of; by not looking at it from the mind and ego centre, you will find that that too will seem perfect. Therefore, we say, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.” But which part of you is the beholder? Your centre or the

Be Still and Know: Experiencing Eternity in Every Moment

Ancient Sages, Awareness, Bible, Bliss, Christ, Compassion, Conscious Mind, Consciousness, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Effort, Ego, Eternal, Eternity, Evolution, Force, Freedom, God, Gurushakti, Harmony, Heart, I and my Father are one, Joy, Karma, Kindness, Law of opposites, Love, Love thy neighbour as thyself, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Peace, Philosophy, Purity, Relative World, Samskaras, Self, Self-Realization, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Subconscious, Unity, Universal, Universe, Yoga

EXPERIENCE INFINITY The finite mind could never understand the infinite because the finite mind, being a manifestation of the infinitude or of eternity, being a manifestation or a reflection, could never maintain its eternal value. The finite mind has no permanency at all because it is forever changing. That which is forever changing, how could it grasp that which is never changing? But without trying to understand, one can experience infinity through our meditations and spiritual practices. The experience is not through the mind, but the experience is of your Heart, and by Heart, we mean the core of your personality. When one reaches the core and experiences through our spiritual practices, we experience infinity. When I say we, it is not the mind experiencing it, it is not the ego-self experiencing it because they are all limitations, manifestations of reality. So, from where does the experience come? Infinity experiences itself, and therefore it is beyond verbalisation or thought processes. As you start your practices and are regular with the practices, you will discover a certain truth. After a while, you will say, “not this, not this”, which is a very good thing because by saying “not this”, you will progress further into that enquiry which we call Jnana Yoga. As we progress into the enquiry, we reach a point where we cannot go further beyond. AWAKENING AND UNDERSTANDING THROUGH SPIRITUAL PRACTICES Through spiritual practices, we awaken the brain cells more and more, and by awakening the cells more and more, the greater the mind filters through because the brain is not the mind. The mind is universal. There is only one mind, and the only reason the mind is individualised is that we have not given full scope to its potentiality. This is possible where the mind can appreciate the entire universe by getting it out of sleep to its fullest capacity. You just know, and in that knowingness, you start the experiential process. There are many ways of doing this – through extreme devotion, through analysis, through action and of course, as you would know, that action really strengthens the thought. Then those thoughts get planted deeper and deeper into the subconscious level of the mind and from there, it is transmitted back to the conscious level, and that is how you act. Those actions control the limitations of your mind. The actions of a certain person with a greater awareness would be far different from those who have a less aware mind. Spiritual practices bring us awareness. It brings us an understanding that is very true according to its limitations. But that is not what we want. We do not want to understand only, although it is necessary, but we want the peace that passeth all understanding, and that is infinity. That peace is infinite, beginless and because it is beginlessness, it will never end. It is a continual or a continuation of a process that goes on and on and on. INFINITY IS DIVINITY Universes are created, and at this very moment, there are so many galaxies and stars that are a million times, a billion times larger than our tiny planet Earth, exploding at this very moment. Exploding but to reform its atomic structures back again into another universe, and their growth begins and evolution begins because of the force of that explosion. How much does it help a man to find understanding when understanding has its particular limitations? For example, I have been told this by thousands of people that “Guruji, I have a tape that you did in a Satsang three years ago, and when I listen to it again today, I find different meanings in it.” Finding different meanings in it because their awareness has developed. You know there was this boy of fourteen, and he says, “My Father is so stupid, he knows nothing.” But when the boy turned twenty-five, he says, “Oh, my father knows a lot.” The father has the same knowledge, but the boy’s awareness developed a greater understanding and a greater awareness because of his growth from fourteen to twenty-five. To repeat, understanding has its value. Understanding can make us kinder, more loving, more compassionate, more sympathetic, but to know the value of infinity and what is infinity after all? Infinity is Divinity. Divinity and infinity are the same in their eternity. When this manifestation comes around, it is also infinite because as soon as infinity starts, it starts emanating. It is the nature of everything to emanate all the time, like flowers emanating fragrance. MAN’S CONSCIOUSNESS IS INFLUENCED BY VARIOUS FACTORS Everything is vibrations, and the manifestation is just a reflection of the Manifestor. If we should go deeper into these details, we will find that a reflection is an illusion. So, does your mind exist? That is the question. You are only relying on the sensory input into the lower level of the mind, and your whole life is guided by it. There are five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. To find reality, to make the manifestation merge again into the Manifestor, the experience is there of the Manifestor himself. In other words, you become Divine, and it can be achieved in this lifetime, or else it can take millions of lifetimes. I do not know where they got the numbers from, but Hindu theology, especially the Puranas, those are some Hindus’ scriptures, maintains that it took eight million four hundred thousand lifetimes to reach the stage of man. Because in everything we see around us, man has the highest consciousness. But his consciousness is influenced by various factors, his environment, the impressions that he has in his mind, and the subconscious level of the mind, and these bring about limitations. People sitting here might look at these beautiful flowers, but everyone will see them differently from their personal experiences. The realised man will see the flower in its totality. The unrealised man will only see the surface of the flower, this

Grace is Always Simple: The Power of Grace and Spiritual Practice

Awareness, Divine, Free Will, Grace, Happiness, Heart, Laws, Mind, Spiritual Practices, Unfoldment

DIVINE PLAN AND FREE WILL Most people in the world today, everything they do they have to do it with thought and deliberation. That is not necessary. That is living an unnatural life. Sometimes it is expedient by all means. But we have to bring our lives to such a stage where every action becomes spontaneously good, and that is how we alter the course of karma. Because of the happenings of our past lives, we get born into this life with certain tendencies. Those tendencies could be called “divine plan.” A divine plan is there that gives you certain tendencies. If you proceed through this road, you will reach San Francisco. That tendency is there. If you proceed through this road, you will reach Los Angeles. That tendency is there. But with that tendency, which is divine will, man also has free will. If we want to reach Los Angeles, for example, which is within the scope or framework of the pattern that we have set for ourselves, free will can tell us, “Shall I go there by motor car or by train or by bus or by donkey cart?” That is where free will comes into play. We can expedite this journey. We can reach home faster. We can reach the goal quicker by proper spiritual practices and right thought, and right action. Right thought and right action have to be cultivated. Most people are living in a rut. If you go to the backwoods of India, in those Indian villages, you have roads that are grooved. Those oxen carts going on the path over and over again form grooves. In those grooves, when a driver wants to go somewhere with his cart, he can fall asleep, and the cart will keep on going. The ox will keep taking it because of the grooves, and that is how our lives are. What we need is to put a little boulder or stone in the groove. So, when the cart comes along and the wheel bumps against the stone, the driver wakes up. That is what we need. Awakening. Awakening to these supreme factors of life and they are not impossible. GRACE IS ALWAYS SIMPLE To find happiness is the simplest thing in life. It is so simple to be happy but so difficult to be simple. When we bring upon ourselves this simplicity, and through spiritual practices, it just comes; the simplicity dawns and simplicity is another name for Grace. Grace is always simple. It is our cunning minds that make things complex. We make things complex. We add on complexities to a life that could be so beautiful, spontaneously simple. We make it complex. In everything we do, we always think of all the negative things that could happen to us next week or next month or next year. You might have a beautiful job today, but even while doing your job, you are thinking, “Oh, what shall I do if I get the sack next month?” Why? This little story which is quite amusing, tells of a woman that heard that the world was coming to an end in two million years, and she committed suicide. What has two million years hence to do with you now? People either live in the past, or they live in the future. But never in the moment, and if we live in the past, Grace closes her door to us. If we live in the future, Grace closes her door to us because the Law of Grace is not interested in the past or the future! The past is past, and the future is still to come. It might never come in this little lifetime. We do not know what is going to happen tomorrow. But if we think only of the present moment, then Grace just dawns upon us if we live in the present. Grace is supportive of the present. Tomorrow looks after itself – always. THE PRESENT IS SO BEAUTIFUL We linearly measure things from A to Z. In a linear fashion. A horizontal fashion. Never in the vertical fashion. At the crossroads of the horizontal and the vertical, at the cross where the two points meet, that is the present. When we are in the present, we can look up. When we are in the past, we can only look horizontally forward, and if we live in the future, we can only look horizontally backwards, and we miss the point of the present, and the present is so beautiful. It is all these little presents, all these little present moments that make up the entirety. Like for example, in a movie or film, it is made up of little frames. Because of the projector, the machine and the flywheel in this machine make it look like a continuous run on the screen, a continuous moment. But in reality, in the film, these are just all a series of squares, a series of frames. If we can live a frame at a time, continuity looks after itself, and that is what Grace demands of us. That beautiful girl, Grace, demands of us that we live in the present. THE TENDENCY CAN BE CHANGED As we have said before, the tendency we have brought with us can be changed, and man is not born to suffer. What brings suffering is our deeds, our actions, our thoughts. If we can consciously alter them, then there is always a silver lining behind every cloud. So, we try to see the glory and not the gloom, for Grace lies in the glory, and in the gloom lies the rat race. That is what happens. The Law of Grace is forever there like the air around us, and if we become receptive through the unfoldment of the Heart, expansion of the Heart, and greater expansion or awareness of the mind, then it is there. It is like going to a well. You go there with a thimble, you get a

Karma and Grace: How Right Living Attracts Divine Blessings

Acceptance, Attachment, Attitude, Bliss, Divine, Divinity, Effort, Enlightenment, Eternity, Force, Grace, Happiness, Joy, Karma, Laws, Love, Mind, Philosophy, Reincarnation, Relative World, Scriptures, Self, Self-integration, Self-Realization, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Spiritual Teacher, Strength, Universe

GRACE CAN BE EXPERIENCED ONLY Grace is an indefinable quality or an indefinable quantity that can only be approximated or inferred by the intellect. If you observe a flower growing, there are so many things that would make the flower grow. Firstly, the minerals would have to be right in the ground. It requires the proper amount of water- proper amount of fertiliser, the proper amount of air, and the proper sunlight. All these factors combine to make the flower grow. In the combination of the factors, we know that if there is too much water, it could kill the flower. If there is too much sunshine, it could also kill the plant. The indefinable factor balances out the minerals, the sunlight, the water, and the fertiliser. And it is because of this factor that combines and puts things into the proper proportion that the flower grows. That proportion is Grace. So, Grace is a factor that is beyond the human conception of the mind. It is a factor that cannot be analysed, but it can be experienced. The way to draw Grace to ourselves, we have to use the law of karma. Grace is forever there; Grace is existent as the air around us is existent. But we have to do the breathing as if we do not breathe; we do not benefit from the air around us. KARMA IS COMBINED TO THE THEORY OF REINCARNATION When it comes to karma, it is a law that does not stand alone. It is a law that is combined with the theory of reincarnation. Reincarnation is something that one cannot conclusively prove or find conclusive proof about. You do not need to believe in reincarnation. Still, in this eternity of existence, we know that in this vast continuum, right from the beginning of creation or from the Big Bang where atomic particles were sent forth, it would require millions and millions and billions of years for that force to expire. In our view, the only thing we see is this very small fraction of a lifetime of three score years and ten. It is a tiny fraction situated between the start and the end in this continuum. If we say start and end, that too would be contradictory. But we can use start and end in a relative sense because the world itself, or the Universe, is governed by cycles. One cycle ends and another cycle begins, and therefore, there are so many cycles in this continuum one after the other. As there are so many cycles so there are just as many opportunities for that primal atom or that primal sub-atomic matter to develop. As it develops, it can replicate itself, and in the replication and with the ability to combine itself to other elements in the Universe, various forms of life are produced. The basis of the atomic structure would naturally be mineral, but it does not remain mineral only. With the combination of other factors, the mineral evolves to plant. From the plant it evolves further to the animal stage, and from the animal stage, it evolves to the stage of man. In the development of all these various stages, the Law of Grace works automatically. The law of Grace works automatically, leading that primal atom through these various stages, and that is the work of the Law of Grace. The law of Grace is a guiding factor right from the highest evolved human being to the minutest sub-atomic particle. KARMA AND GRACE We measure life only with the seventy years that we live. As far as reincarnation is concerned, why should one person be born in happy circumstances, another in unhappy circumstances, one person born unhealthy while another person is born very healthy, one person born rich, another born poor. If we regard Divinity or the Law of Grace to be just, then why all this injustice? So, it is assumed and put forth by ancient philosophers that we are the total of the sum totality of all our previous existences. Whatever action we perform or have performed in past lives, we are the results of it. So, to improve the quality of life, we do, as we have said before, very consciously make an effort to live a better life. Spiritual practices do give us the strength for right thought and right action. When right thought and right action are combined, the quality of life improves, and as the quality of life improves, we become more receptive to what we call the Law of Grace. If you want to go from here to New York, the only thing you would do is buy a ticket, go to the airport, and sit on the plane. That is all you do. The plane flies you over. It is said in most scriptures that you take one step towards me, and I take ten steps towards you. That is Grace. That is the power. But we have to create the field, the magnetic field, to draw upon that Grace. When we live in misery, for example, or in sorrow, the first thing that one has to accept is this: that I am what I am because of myself. Nothing in this Universe has been unjust to me. My present position is what I have created. That is why people say that man is a master of his destiny. We are what we are today because of the various lifetimes we have lived, and the actions we performed and the thoughts we had thought had been the factor to bring about the totality of what we are today. 99.999% of the world’s population is unhappy. When a person can find total happiness, the only time one reaches Self-enlightenment is when one reaches that supreme Self-integration. Self-integration is Self-realisation. Self-realisation is God-realisation. It is only in that area where a person would find absolute bliss and become one with the Law of Grace. If we want to become happier, and

Nourishing Divinity: The Sacred Connection of Body, Mind, and Spirit

Ancient Sages, Attachment, Christ, Enlightenment, Eternal, Evolution, Force, Free Will, God, Grace, Happiness, Heart, I and my Father are one, Love, Manifestation, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, One-pointedness, Oneness, Path, Prana, Scriptures, Self, Soul, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, The Three Gunas, Unfoldment, Universe, Yoga

TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY When it comes to behaviour patterns, as far as the body is concerned, naturally, one must look after the body, for the body, as they say, is a temple of God. I say the body is also God, not only His temple, for the temple is God, and the essence of God in its finest form resides in this temple which is also God. You have the God in the grosser form and the subtler form, for they are one. For who could separate the body from the mind, or the mind from the Spirit, because it is one continuous whole. This body, too, is holy and godly. Here, to keep the body well, one has to use the mind. Unfortunately, we people attach too much importance to the body and its needs. This should be a happy balance. There should be a happy balance for people who live as householders. Yet you would find that people that have gone beyond the body, beyond the grosser manifestation of God, do not care for the body at all—like Ramana Maharshi had cancer and leukaemia. One of the greatest sages, Ramakrishna, had cancer of the throat. Jesus was a very sickly man, and very few of you know that. He had a very, very hard life. There were no motor cars at that time, and he had to walk from village to village, from town to town, going through deserts and forests and many times without food or water, to fulfil his mission. Thanks to God, about half a dozen women around that loved him so much could support him for his meagre wants and needs. At least he could have a cloak and something to wear, something to eat. That is how he lived. But he did not care so much for the body, or else he would not have offered it up to the cross. Because he knew that the Spirit within me is immortal; my Father and I are one, eternal, forever infinite. What is this body? All these great sages and I am more versed in the Eastern philosophies than the Western philosophies, although I have made a relatively comprehensive study of these things. And then, of course, I do not depend on what I have read in books; it is a long time already that I have burned up the books. Speaking figuratively, you do not need books. Because the books only prevail on the mind level, not on the Heart level, the level from which I function, from the Heart level. But books are necessary for people to learn. Let the mind be clarified, good reading is needed, and reading is also essential to see how others have presented the same truths that I present. Therefore, it is necessary for me too. When it comes to the body, only those enlightened souls could neglect their bodies and not worry about the body. But for us around here, the body has to be treated with care. What is the body? What composes the body? Food. You are nothing else as you are sitting there but food. You are food; that is all that you are. Because what makes your bones, what makes your blood, what makes your muscles? Nothing but food. The shell is nothing but food, and you are replenishing the life in you with food because that very food and water and the air you breathe contain the vital force called Prana. That keeps you alive. So, the quality of food that one consumes determines the body you have. DO NOT FORCE YOURSELF There is one question always asked of me, must I eat meat or give up meat? I say, look, do not let that bother you. Eat meat if you want to. Eat fish if you want to. It is okay. When your body reaches the state of perhaps greater refinement, that is not the right word, though; language is so limiting for me, I could never really express through language what I would like to say. Nevertheless, through spiritual practices, as the body becomes more and more refined through spiritual practices, the need for grosser foods becomes less and less because the body does not want to take them. But do not force yourself, and cut yourself off the everyday habits because it will have a bothersome effect upon your nervous system if you just cut it off. But one thing is sure if you would like to do something really practical about it if you eat meat foods three times a day, and I know people who do: bacon and eggs in the morning, hamburger for lunch, then in the evening stew or a roast, meat, meat, meat, meat. Some people eat meat seven times a week. So, I would suggest, and this is entirely up to you, to cut it down slowly if you wish. If you eat meat seven times a week, cut it down to six. Do meditational practices, then cut it down to five after a while, then to four, then to three. The time will come when you will not require grosser foods anymore, and there could come a time when you will not need food anymore. But that is if you live in the Himalayas. You cannot do it here, in this worldly life in this rat race and cat race that in which we are involved. The body needs that sustenance. Not many of them left today, but you would have some yogis that could live in the Himalayas and refuel themselves by just drawing in Prana, that life force, and keeping their bodies going – this is possible! THE MIND IS CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH THE BODY The other significant effect that food has upon a person is this, that the mind, as I said before, is closely connected with the body. You cannot separate the mind from the body, one exists in a grosser form, and one

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