LET GO AND SEE HOW MUCH HAPPIER YOU WILL BECOME It is hard to forget the mind. Thoughts emerge and shift like a merry-go-round. At one moment, you are thinking about supper, then a comment someone made, then the kids, and perhaps somewhere else. Nothing wrong—it is the nature of the mind. Let it happen, but remember you are not causing it. As a bystander, simply observe, letting go of attachment, and mental burdens will dissolve. There is nothing in the world you can truly hold onto: a dress is worn and gone, children grow up and leave, and even you must eventually part. Let go, and happiness follows. If someone throws words that hurt, let them keep their burden; by letting go, you become resilient. Letting go of identity and turbulent thoughts unveils stillness. When this stillness expands, nothing can disturb or harm you. THE WORLD IS GOVERNED BY NAME AND FORM I recently met someone upset about names. “My daughter dislikes this name, my son dislikes that name.” Why worry? A rose is a rose. The important thing is to give love. Names are irrelevant. The Self matters. Call me Gururaj or Joe; I am still me. The world is governed by name and form. A gold necklace, bracelet, or bangle—all are gold at their core. We focus on form and name, forgetting essence. Enjoy the pleasures of objects, but remember their true value. Melting them proves their worth is the same. Fixation on names and forms distracts from inner stillness, a quietness found in the heart. WHEN WE ARE MIXED UP IN TRIVIALITIES IT ROBS US OF THE STILNESS OF OURSELVES Most of our thinking dwells on trivialities—research shows that 90% lacks substance. This thought turbulence causes mental unrest. At least sleep offers an escape from the swirl of trivial thoughts.Examine yourself. How many times a day do you have an original thought or a creative thought? Most days, none; some days, some. Is it not a loss of valuable energy, and not only that, but mixed up in triviality, it robs us of the stillness of ourselves, and when we are robbed of the stillness of ourselves, our souls carry forth all those impressions to the deeper levels of the subconscious. People open their wardrobes and go through several outfits before choosing, wasting energy and creating confusion. Why not decide before opening the wardrobe? Just go for what you already chose. Avoid unnecessary choices and save mental energy. SHEDDING TRIVIALITIES FOR INNER STILLNESS These examples apply to daily life. What drives those decisions? Ego makes you believe you will look better in one suit than another. It is imagination. You doubt the choice, then someone compliments your suit. At the airport in Victoria, I met a beloved who said, “You look dapper in a western suit, charcoal grey with a reddish tie.” No. I am me. That is the realisation needed. Did Jesus or Buddha worry about loincloths? They were unconcerned with appearance. Outward looks are ego. The real self shines through, even in rags. We waste time on trivialities governed by the mind, losing our inherent stillness. Redirecting the mind toward creative, meaningful thoughts helps regain this stillness. When the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious merge, stillness is realised. There, you discover the essence. IF YOU CAN STAND APART IN THE STILLNESS, ALL DECISIONS WILL ALWAYS BE RIGHT It is good to be childlike, not childish. Like children, adults waste time picking and discarding items. Life could be more productive with originality and purposefulness. Most decisions are made by subconscious habits; conflict occurs when subconscious and conscious minds clash, even over simple choices. I know, since my very young days, I have always been involved in social work before I did my present work. Although being a director of twenty-eight companies, there was not a single day when I was not involved in social work, social upliftment. In meetings, a question comes up, and within two seconds I know what the solution should be, but in the meeting it would take two hours because everyone has to say something, and then after two hours of debate they would come back to the decision I made in those two seconds. And most of you who are involved in meetings and things know about that. What a waste of valuable time! And those two hours wasted there, I could have seen a few patients and helped a few people in trouble. But of course, that is how the world goes. Let the world go to hell, but you should not. You have come to this one decision and act upon it, and that does not mean to be impulsive, for the mind is only an impulse, nothing else. These thought formations in the mind create impulses, and you get overridden by them, but if you can stand apart in that stillness, those impulses will not affect your personality, your soul. And then all decisions would always be right. And this is one problem people always have: shall I take the high road or the low road? SPIRITUAL PRACTICES TRANSFORM THE PERSONALITY When one engages in Spiritual Practices, one subdues all the conflicts of the mind and reaches the heart, which goes beyond the personality to the realm of stillness. You see how simple it is. So simple to talk about, but it takes some effort to do; once you get into it, the effort becomes effortless. You start a new job, and at first there is so much effort to orient yourself to it, but afterwards it just becomes routine, natural, and the same goes for meditation. When you start meditating, you say “Oh, I have not got time and this and that and that and that”, which is absolutely false. If you have time to go to the toilet, you have time to meditate, and there is nothing wrong with meditating in the toilet. So that is a very lame excuse. With meditation, we quieten the
Rediscovering the Source Within: Awakening to the Spiritual Self
THE PURPOSE OF EVOLUTION IS TO REACH BACK TO STILLNESS There are no old souls, nor are there any young souls. Since the primordial Big Bang, all the particles that were shot forth have the same age. There is no old soul, and there is no young soul. The soul is not what was shot forth. A primal energy was shot forth, and the primal energy, becoming duplicated and replicated and mixing with other sub, sub, subatomic matter, assumed certain peculiarities which still exist in you today, and the purpose of this existence is to evolve not because of your so-called soul but because of the propulsion of that explosion. No wonder people explode so much nowadays. So, because of this primal explosion and its duplication, replication, and intermixing with various factors that accompany it, individualisation began, and each, because of its various combinations, assumed different characteristics. When they assume different characteristics, they naturally seem to separate from one another. Yet there is only one primal source, but because of the mental mechanisms of Manas, Chitta, Ahankara, and Buddhi, they feel themselves to be apart from everything else. Firstly, they came from a unified state, from that stillness, and the purpose of evolution is to return to that stillness; then one could say, “I am God, be still and know that you are God.” THE REAL STILLNESS COMES WHEN THE SAMSKARAS ARE TUCKED AWAY, AND THE EGO IS EXPANDED How does the mental mechanism affect the heart area? By heart, let us not confuse it with our emotions or feelings. The core of a person’s real self is the heart. That which is usually known as the heart is just emotion and feeling. I love you. From what level do I love you? I love you, or you love me, only because of an emotional feeling, or because you have found something attractive in me. He is the handsomest Guru in the World, and he talks a lot of sense, nonsense and common sense. So those feeling of your love for me stems not from your heart, the core of your personality. They stem from the emotions and feelings which are created by your mind, by the ego self within its own expectations, for the ego self can never remain without expectations. It is always expecting more and more and more, all the time. Because the ego self is being empowered with that Divine energy, it is really searching for the Divine energy, but instead of internalising itself and going deeper to the spiritual level, which is far deeper than the soul, being empowered by it, it is always expecting more and more, and those very expectations is the mother of disappointment. So, you have an appointment with Divinity, but you miss it out of disappointment. When you are disappointed at that level, you try to find it objectively, and you lose the stillness within you all the time. You can never exist without that stillness of the mind. Thank God you sleep; there is some stillness there. Although the subconscious is working all the time, it is churning, churning, churning, swirling, swirling, swirling in its own self. But the real stillness comes when the subconscious samskaras, or impressions, or the memory box, are tucked away,, and the ego is expanded, not sublimated. Remember, you can never sublimate the ego. The word sublimation is a fallacy. You can never sublimate anything. It is just a subliminal conjecture conjured up by the thinking level of the mind. WHEN THE MIND IS RELAXED THE HEART CONNECTS ITSELF TO THE MIND So how do we connect the mind with the heart? The mind cannot connect with the heart until the mind relaxes, and then the heart connects with the mind. The inner core of your personality overrides your emotional self, the feeling self, the thinking self, and the intellectual self, and the heart overpowers all the workings there, so turbulent. In other words, it also means that you do not go to God. You do not go to stillness, but that stillness and God come to you. If the mind is placid enough through the expansion of the ego, so that it becomes transparent, then God comes to you; the stillness comes to you, because it is forever there. It is a matter of realisation. You are still as you are; it is just the realisation, knowing that it is there. You start off by knowing the Chitta and the Manas and the ego I, you know or rather, you think you know. There again, knowing becomes a falsity and thinking becomes a falsity. It has its value in the beginning stages, but when realisation dawns, which is a total assimilation of the stillness, where the soul finds that quietude, then that Divinity dawns upon you automatically. WHEN A CLARITY IS BROUGHT ABOUT THROUGH OUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, YOU BECOME STILL What is this automatic mechanism? None. There are no mechanics involved in Divinity dawning upon you and finding that stillness and elevating the soul, which is nothing else but the mind empowered by that Divine energy. So, when clarity through our Spiritual Practices is brought about, you become still. I do not know if you have noticed me – you must watch me – I go into meditation before we start our Satsangs, and of course, there is work from four in the morning until late at night, and that naturally produces tension. When I go into meditation for a minute, look at my face, and you will notice that within a few seconds, all my facial muscles will relax. Because in those few seconds, I have touched the stillness, I have let go of the mind and the soul, and I am there within the spirit, and that is what speaks to you, not my little mind or the soul or the ego-self, the Ahankara, the Chitta is gone. Therefore, as I have told you before, if you ask me half
Switch On the Light: Upliftment Through Spiritual Awareness and Practice
HOW BHAKTI AND JNANA YOGA INTERTWINE Ramakrishna, the great master, has said that in this time and age, Bhakti yoga is more important because it implies total devotion not only to your guru but to everyone you are in contact with. The basis of bhakti yoga is to allow the heart to flow in total devotion, for if the devotion is lacking, there is no bhakti. To find true bhakti, in the first stages, requires an object of bhakti; that object can be anyone, even my picture. So, from abstraction, you bring life to concreteness. You try to love something abstract, and you cannot do it. It is only after you reach a higher stage of evolution that you can be devoted to abstraction, but with the abstraction, you find subtraction and bhakti disappears and when bhakti disappears, your mind starts functioning in contemplation where you could analyse the reserves of your bhakti and in that analysis you will find the full force of your devotion because your devotion or bhakti is governed by thought forces in your mind. How else will you recognise bhakti if jnana yoga or the thought processes are not recognised? So, Jnana yoga forms a part of your bhakti. As you progress in your contemplation and understanding of your bhakti, your feeling deepens, because bhakti consists of love. When that constitution is formed, bhakti and Jnana yoga, or contemplation, join hand in hand. So, you develop a feeling of love, supported by analysis of the mind, because Jnana yoga is about understanding the workings of bhakti, which is the heart. So, when this combination occurs, it is like mixing colours: you take yellow and blue, and it forms green. Look at the combination. Like oxygen and hydrogen, their combination forms water, which is different from either oxygen or hydrogen. It is a very scientific process. It is not mystical, as some people think; it is practical. BY BECOMING A MASTER OF YOURSELF, YOU MERGE INTO DIVINITY, PURE CONSCIOUSNESS To bring the practicality of bhakti and jnana, it must be externally expressed, and that expression comes through karma yoga. So, to repeat again, in practicality, it has to find its own physical expression, and the physical expression of karma yoga can only be through the actions of your lives. Action in life is not only physical, but the action of life originates in the thought processes of the mind, for the mind is also action; every thought you think is an action. The thought is of a subtle level, and the physical action is of a grosser level. If you can combine the subtle level with the grosser level, what a great difference it will make to your life. So, the conclusion is that bhakti yoga, jnana yoga and karma yoga have to be combined, and when this combination comes about, then you enter the realms of a raja yoga. Raja yoga means the royal path, and when you enter this royal path, you experience the reality of life, and what is the reality of life? Can anyone tell me? The reality of life is to exist in reality. And what is reality? Reality is to be yourself. I might have said in other lectures throughout the world, be yourself. I will never tell you to be like Krishna or Buddha or Christ; be yourself, and by being yourself, you will understand your reality, and by understanding your reality, you will have formed a perfect combination of bhakti, Jnana, and karma, and have Raj Yoga. Raja yoga, raja means the king or queen, the same thing, because a king cannot exist without his queen. So, when this combination is formed, you become a king or a queen unto yourself, and a king can command, and what do you want to command? You want to command that peace and joy in your life. So simple. So, once you become a master of yourself, you can take bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, karma yoga, and raja yoga, and then you can take out your handkerchief and blow it all away. Then you will not need the thousands and thousands of soldiers in your army, the army of your consciousness, because you can rise above petty consciousness and become pure consciousness. And by becoming pure consciousness, you have merged into this one Divinity because Divinity is nothing else but pure consciousness and that pure consciousness is within you all. It is just a bit folded, that is all. It just requires constant cognition and recognition. UPLIFTMENT THROUGH SPIRITUAL AWARENESS AND PRACTICE How many of you go through your day thinking of that purity within you? And that is why you suffer. You idiots. So, in every action, karma, always have a thought of Divinity in your mind and let that be the lighthouse, and the lighthouse is there because the rocks in the sea are all around, and because of the lighthouse, your ship of life does not bump against the rocks. The lighthouse has a light; switch it on so the light can burn, and your ship of life will not smash itself against the rocks. The lighthouse within you is the guiding light, so you can avoid all the rocks that could smash the ship of your life. So simple, switch on the light. People get into many problems and troubles. Because they do not switch on the light, which is done through your spiritual practices, your life will transform. As I look at you, I can read all your problems. Why must you suffer? Be joyful like me. That is why I am with you to tell the one secret of joy, and the secrets are not private; they are open secrets. A true master opens his heart, and by opening his heart, he lets out all the love to everyone. No one in this course can ever leave being the same person. They will always leave with some upliftment and joy; my travelling thousands of
How to Clarify the Mind? Meditation as the Key to Mental Clarity
Awareness, Force, God, Gurushakti, Heart, Internal, Joy, Karma, Learning, Love, Meditation, Mind, Purity, Samskaras, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Path
YOU ARE GOVERNED BY YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES
Thought, word, and action are totally interrelated, because the thought brings about speech, and the speech brings about action, and vice versa. Because action could guide your speech, and action could guide your thoughts as well.
Embracing the Universal Self: Transformation of the Ego Through Awareness and Grace
THE PHYSICAL BODY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT THE SUBTLE BODY You do not need to recognise the ego to go beyond it, because that would become a mental process, and the mind itself is ego, so the ego is trying to find the ego. It is like saying that you will see your own eyes. You cannot. You cannot see your own eyes; you need a mirror. So, to recognise the ego, one has to go beyond it to observe it. The ego is a bundle of experiences. It is not necessary to annihilate the ego, because it is impossible to annihilate the ego. When we talk of ego, in the sense we use it, we talk of ego as self-centred, so ego again qualifies egotism, a self-centred ego. In other words, it turns inward to itself and not beyond itself, and is caught up in the work of doing. It is like the silkworm spinning and spinning and spinning and gets caught up in the end, in its own silk and it cannot escape So, what is the solution? All these impressions gained in what is termed the ego are binding; they bind one to a certain pattern of action, because the mind is ego and the mind is patterned. We have to unpattern the mind, or unpattern the ego, without destroying the ego. If the ego is annihilated, as many Eastern philosophies propose, then you cannot exist. You would not be able to be part and parcel of the evolutionary process. Everything has an ego – everything does not have an ego, it is an ego. I am sitting here; you are sitting there. We are nothing but little egos. We are definitely all a bundle of impressions, created over so, so many lifetimes, and now we want to get rid of ourselves. That is what annihilation means; annihilation of the ego is committing suicide. Because once you get rid of all those impressions that you are made of, your entire body will disintegrate, because the body cannot exist without the mind, and the mind is a receptacle, the container of the impressions called the ego. So, by annihilating the ego, you are annihilating the subtle body, that is within yourself and the physical manifestation, the physical body, cannot exist without the subtle body. EXPANDING THE EGO TO BECOME ONE WITH THE UNIVERSAL SELF So, what has to be done within this ego self so that it could become conducive to our evolution? That is the question. What can be done? These impressions are there; they cannot be annihilated; they are eternal; they have to exist. I have said many times that every thought that is thought is eternal; it cannot be destroyed. The vibration set up by that thought goes on and on and on, through eternity. So, what one does is expand the ego. Our actions are contracting the ego; we are taking all those experiences of millions of years and compacting them, so that by the very act of compacting them, we are combining one impression with another, and a great number of permutations take place, where new impressions are created. That is how the ego assumes greater and greater importance, and we become more and more self-centred with all those skeletons in the cupboard, multiplying like rabbits. So the idea here will not be the annihilation of the ego, but its expansion, like stretching opaque rubber so it becomes transparent. That is the way to deal with the ego. When the ego is stretched and it becomes transparent, the inner light, the spiritual light, shines through. I have used this analogy many times: if the window is clean and a bright light comes through, you do not notice the glass, even though it still exists. The glass becomes one with the light. The glass, the barrier, is not perceived, because who is the perceiver, except the ego itself. The ego perceives; the ego experiences life’s varied experiences. But if that is expanded to such an extent that the pure light is shining through, all the shades and the shadows on that glass automatically disappear. All the skeletons disappear. One does not need to work through all those impressions gained through lifetimes. One does not need to shake hands with all those skeletons. They are automatically refined. Those very skeletons that have a grosser form become so subtle that they become totally transparent, and that is the way to handle the ego. It is easy to say, let us make the ego transparent, so the light shines through. To make that possible, we have to practice meditation and other spiritual practices, recognise our shortcomings, and address them constructively. Here, desire is valid, desire for betterment, although it has some binding effect, but that desire is of such a nature as choosing between the lesser evil and the larger evil. When we desire to better ourselves, we make or create the conditions within ourselves to draw upon that which is called Grace. And with the help of Grace, meditation, and wanting to better ourselves in positive action, that ego-self expands, it stretches to such an extent that it loses its individuality and assumes universality. This means that the extent of the expansion of the ego is as vast as the universe, so that, while maintaining the little ego self, one is also in atonement with the Universal Self. And when all those impressions are spread across the entire universe, what effect can they have? For having been extended to that vastness, where else could they be placed to put in more impressions, because you have covered the whole field with your little ego? So, the ego in its expansion knows the whole universe. The individual becomes universal. EXPANSION OF THE EGO IS EXPANSION OF AWARENESS When he becomes universal, that is the recognition of the personal God, that we spoke about, for the personal God, too, is a refined ego. So, we must not worry so
Path to Inner Peace: Transforming Negativity through Acceptance, Meditation, and Willpower
ACCEPTANCE IS THE FIRST STEP IN DEALING WITH NEGATIVITY If, subconsciously, the negativity within oneself comes to the fore and produces adverse circumstances, then one has to accept it because accepting it is dealing with it. In everyday life, we find that the expressions of our experiences and thoughts, whatever they may be, are so deeply ingrained in our subconscious that they cannot remain there. If all those thoughts had to remain in the subconscious, we would explode. So, the subconscious mind has to find release, and that release comes about through the conscious mind. When all those weeds from under the ground are pushed up to above the ground, which would mean that when those subconscious thoughts and negativities that we ourselves have put there in the first place – that must never be forgotten – are pushed up into the conscious level, the conscious mind, whereby those negativities become cognisable, then we feel utterly miserable and hopeless. We feel utterly miserable, hopeless and helpless to be able to accept the situation. By developing feelings of hopelessness and helplessness in us, we are not helping ourselves. We are actually watering the weeds and making them grow stronger in the conscious mind, and when they grow more in the conscious mind, they reach deeper into the subconscious. If you want to do gardening, do it the best way. That is the best way: you find its conscious expression more powerful, while at the same time letting the roots grow deeper into the subconscious mind. So, what to do? FROM ACCEPTANCE TO RESOLUTION When we talk of acceptance, we mean facing the problem. The roots are there in the subconscious. They have to express themselves. They have to rid themselves of these burdens. There is no escape. There is no escape from it. We have put them there. We have sown, and we must reap. But when they reach the conscious level, it is up to us whether we feed those weeds, and that is where the bulk of acceptance comes in. From the subconscious mind, a thought arises: “I am going to steal tonight.” Are we going to give vent to the idea of stealing with the conscious mind? Are we going to do that? Are we doing so? Are we doing so? Are we going deeper into the roots? Acceptance means not only the circumstances we are confronted with, but also accepting the fact that I tend to be a thief. That is a true acceptance. I have had a lot of dealings with alcoholics. Sometimes these various organisations call me in to give them talks, and the most important thing which I would have to make the alcoholic realise, is to admit to himself that he has alcoholism. Once he admits that sincerely to himself, I can wean him off his alcohol. So, acceptance means to admit the weakness that is now being pushed up from my subconscious mind. That is what acceptance means. When the alcoholic admits to himself that he has alcoholism, and number two, he does not have the power to deal with it myself, then I go for help. I go to an adviser for help planning my life. One kind of help. I go for another kind of help also, and that is in surrender, surrender to a power which is beyond me. So, firstly, I admit honestly to myself. The problem with alcoholics for example using this for an example is that they do not want to admit that they have alcoholism. That is the biggest problem which any social worker has, or those who deal with people afflicted with this disease called alcoholism. That is the biggest problem they have. So, it is to get the person to admit that I have this weakness, that I am an alcoholic. I have automatically accepted the idea, and when I have accepted the idea that I am an alcoholic, I will try to find ways and means whereby this weakness can be dealt with. And if outside counselling fails, I still have the greatest counsellor of all, and I do not need to find that counsellor in tangible form. No, I just surrender and say, “Thy will be done.” What greater acceptance is there than that? This applies to every problem in life: you just do not accept; you face the problem; acceptance comes on its own; and when acceptance comes, ways and means automatically follow. When one sincerely accepts that one is in trouble, one automatically finds the cause of the trouble, and once the cause is found, as a doctor would say, proper diagnosis is half the cure; one has reached halfway in solving the problem. And after reaching halfway, the other half can be achieved by the acceptance of the injunction “Thy will be done.” THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF MEDITATION See how devotion works? How systematic is it? The whole idea, the whole transformation of the human personality, depends upon one factor, and that factor is the ability to face ourselves squarely in the mirror. When we hide the problems away, like the alcoholic who does not want to admit that he has alcoholism, he can never solve his problems. As these weeds push up from the subconscious into the conscious mind, we know it can be very uncomfortable. Perhaps, most of the time, it could be uncomfortable. To set off this discourse. Meditation does two things simultaneously. One, it stirs you up and makes you face your problem, and secondly, it gives you the strength to solve it. And if that problem is faced face-to-face, pulled out of the subconscious to the conscious level of cognition, and we face it, then meditation also gives the strength to face problems. And if I face the problem squarely and combine strength with a bit of determination and devotion, then there is something higher than me that can eradicate this problem. All that initial knock, that initial disturbance, is lessened immeasurably.
A Human Journey: From Tangible Gods to Abstract Divinity
Ancient Sages, Attitude, Bible, Brahman, Buddha, Chela, Christ, Devotion, Divinity, Evolution, Evolve, Faith, Force, God, Guru, Heart, Krishna, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mind, Oneness, Path, Religion, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Path, The Absolute, The Abstract, Universal, Universe
MAN NEEDS SOMETHING TANGIBLE TO APPROACH THE ABSTRACT We know that the spiritual energy that exists in the universe is abstract. The human mind is so constructed that it could never conceive of anything abstract, because it is tangible in a very fine, subtle form of energy. In contrast, the abstract is an energy beyond all tangible energies. It is an intangible energy. So, for the human mind to have any little comprehension of the universal energy, the intangible, the abstract energy, what must he do? Ancient Sages have devised a means; this was not something devised by the Sages, but something revealed to them. By revelation, we mean that the human mind can be brought to such a fine level, and yet, going beyond that fine level of the human mind, one can be in absolute communion with the abstract. In other words, we are led very systematically to that abstract state, whereby the abstractness produced in us becomes one with the universal abstractness, which means that the inner self of man finds its oneness with the universal self of man. That is the abstract conception, and therefore, we say that Divinity is indefinable by man’s mind. But man has to have something tangible. So, how to find that tangibility? If we have an air conditioner in the room with the heat on, we do not see the heat, yet it is there, warming the room. Because the human mind is incapable of conceiving, seeing, feeling, or touching the abstract heat or the abstract Divinity in our sense, he has to have a way and means by which he can communicate. We know for sure that the tangible cannot communicate with the intangible. So, in this case, the intangible or the abstract has to concretise itself so that the human being or the human mind can have a conception of something which is beyond itself. Through analysis, he can find that there is something more to me than just me. Through feeling, he can extend this principle in actually experiencing that there is more to me than the apparent me. THE ABSTRACT MADE TANGIBLE THROUGH PERSONALISED DEITIES So, to find all these various deities, a formulation has been developed. For example, the Hindu people have so many gods, tangible gods, gods that lived householders’ lives. If you take the God Brahma, the Creator, he would have his Lakshmi, and Shiva would have his Parvati. So, those Gods, those conceptions were brought down to such a level that the ordinary man can identify himself with something tangible. A householder can definitely identify himself with another householder. By that, we mean that a husband and wife can identify with a being that also has a husband-and-wife relationship. So, personal Gods were formed. What has happened here is that the abstract God has become a personalised God. What is the personalised God? A personalised God necessarily has to be the son of man, and the son of man we regard to be a personalised God. In different times and in different climes, the same principle has been followed. Buddhists have their Buddha, the Hindus have their Krishna and their Rama, and Christians have their Christ, the Mohammedans have Mohammed. Human beings will find it a spiritual and psychological necessity to have a personalised form of God, and that is why we find in the Bible the phrase “Our Father which art in Heaven.” It has many abstract meanings, but the literal meaning is time and place: there is a place where the Father is in Heaven. Yet the abstract Father is beyond the Father that we conceive of sitting in Heaven with long robes and a big beard. MAN NEEDS A TANGIBLE IDEAL ON THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY For man to proceed on the spiritual path, and this is worth repeating, he needs a tangible form to which he can relate. The best way that man can relate is to a superman, and that is the origin of all these films, like James Bond. Because man within himself feels that he has a greater capacity, a greater capability, and he is forever trying to identify himself with that greater capability and capacity. Therefore, we have these James Bonds, where, while watching James Bond in action, the viewer identifies with that James Bond on the screen. And the reason is not only escapism or daydreaming, because even escapism and daydreaming must have a basis. The basis is that man inherently has far greater capacity within himself than what he displays without himself. So, we know, and all psychiatrists and psychologists will tell us that we use less than ten per cent of our potential. Ninety per cent is lying dormant. So, for man to awaken the ninety per cent dormantness within him, he has to personify an ideal, an ideal which is greater than himself, and that is the purpose of having personalised Gods where God is seen in person. A PERSONIFIED GOD IS A COMBINATION OF THE CONCRETE WITH THE ABSTRACT According to Vedic tradition, certain forms of meditation lead one to the supreme state. The first form is what they call Savikalpa Samadhi, which means to reach Samadhi, to reach a supreme state with form, Kalpa, Savikalpa with conceivable form. So, by having an ideal which is a super-human being, we lead all our attentions to that super-human being and by leading the attention to the super-human being, we try to, and we do identify ourselves with that super-human being, which is Krishna, Buddha, Christ. And when one reaches total identification with the ideal of the personified God, we go beyond that to find the abstract God. So, the conceptions of a personalised God or an abstract God are not contradictory. The one idea is an extension of the other. They are stages that man has to go through. We cannot find Divinity by solving mathematical problems. Divinity has to become very, very tangible. What is a personified God? A personified
The Path to Truth: Where Is Truth Truly to Be Found?
Eternal, Eternity, God, Guru, Heart, Joy, Light, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Mind, Path, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices
THE SPIRITUAL ARCHITECTURE OF TRUTH To be true to yourself means coming together with the essence of yourself, and that essence within yourself is truth in itself. But how does one discover that? Do you think you could discover that with your mind? Yes, but very partially, because what would seem true to you today might prove to be false tomorrow. Because of the mind’s ramifications and modifications, truth assumes different properties at different times. What is true today might be untrue tomorrow, and what is untrue tomorrow might, the following day, yield another truth. So, truth is a process of continual search, and you, seeking truth, are involved not in truth, but you are involved in the process of truth because truth is forever building up unto itself. A four-foot wall will seem quite tall today if you are small, and as you grow up, the wall gets smaller, so you have to add another two feet to it. And as you grow still taller, you need a still higher wall. And that is how truth is a process of building, and what do you build upon? You build upon the foundation of thought. When thought in the beginning has a firm foundation, that wall will not crumble, and it will not fall. So, if we could regulate, by coming to Courses, attending Satsangs, listening to tapes from this old guy here, whatever, you are building the foundation of true thought upon which truth is built. So, you are nothing but a builder. You build and build and build. But then you have to have that level, with the little thing in the centre, to see if the wall is straight. It is the level you use to build the wall. Where do you find that level? Only from a true Spiritual Master. A lot of gurus falling around over their own two left feet, but it is the true Spiritual Masters that give you the level, so in the thought processes to find the truth, your wall is built straight instead of wavy, wavy, wavy. To recap again on this point, you have a good level, and you start building your wall. The foundation must be on sincere and true thought, and then the wall will have the foundation of stability, and stability itself is truth. TO FIND YOUR TRUTH, YOUR FEET HAVE TO BE FIRMLY PLANTED TO THE GROUND It is only when people’s minds become unstable through their various mental processes that you will find the wall can waver, rumble, and fall. So how do we get to that stability? How do we become stable? How many of you, for example, really walk on the ground? Not very many. Some do; others just float across the road, unaware of the ground beneath them, on which their feet are firmly planted. And that is also the way you think. How many of your thoughts are firmly planted? Just try to examine this tomorrow, just observe your thoughts. They are floating and fleeting all the time. So, to get your true foundation, to find the truth, your thoughts have to be firmly planted on solid ground, and where is the solid ground? Here, in your heart. Not there in the mind. That is why the mind is always upstairs. The heart is downstairs. So why live upstairs all the time? I will get suffocated, I am sure. Come downstairs. And by coming downstairs, you are coming to the truth, to the ground. Your feet are firmly planted. That is how you find truth in life. Why become an airy-fairy? Come down to the dairy and suckle your mother’s breast. That is where your food has come from. That is what has made you grow, made you live, and that is why we call the mother, the foundation, the Holy Mother, for every mother is holy. TRUTH IS TO BE FOUND ONLY WITHIN YOURSELF To realise these things is the truth in itself. Truth does not come from anywhere else; it is within yourself all the time. You are born of truth, you are fed with truth, and you live truth all the time, unless you are twisted, and that is why you need a guru to untwist you. You get so knotted up, and if we cannot untie the knot, we get someone to do it for us. Everything in life, for example, is never all done by you. You always have someone doing something for you. Like food, you have a girlfriend, your wife, or whoever cooking for you. For example, Anu has been running up and down the stairs, taking notes from me for various meditators and sending them messages. I might have sat down to write a message on a piece of paper, but she did the running. There is always someone doing something for you, even in lovemaking. I would like to see you make love by yourself alone. That would be an aberration. So, we do take the assistance of something outside ourselves, and then with that assistance, you, the externality, you make it into internality. Do you see? Internality. How many thoughts do you think in a day that are original or creative? Very, very few. It is just the ramblings of the mind that turn to imagination, imaginary thoughts, not concrete thoughts, and the very concreteness of your thoughts is truth. Truth is to be found only within yourself. I will say this a million and a million and a billion times: be regular in your practices, for that is the level at which you build that wall. But then, after building the wall, remember you have to break it down. The building of the wall is the path. Breaking down the wall will take you to the end of the rainbow where the pot of gold lies. Life is like that rainbow; you see all those colours there. Can you reach it? Can you touch it? No, you cannot,
The True Nature of Wisdom: Superconscious Awareness and the Unexpressed Mind
THE PERSONAL GOD IS STILL A LIMITED DIVINITY WITH QUALIFICATIONS In meditation, you have Savikalpa Samadhi, which is meditation with form, and Nivrikalpa Samadhi, which is meditation without form. In Nivrikalpa samadhi, the totality of the mind is still not transcended, but you have reached the finest level of the mind, the finest level of the superconscious mind; therefore, you are still alert, and what else can give you this alertness if not the mind itself? So even in that state, which is the highest state man is capable of, you have still not transcended the mind, and yet you read thousands and thousands and thousands of books talking of going beyond the mind. Yes, you can go beyond the mind in a lunatic asylum. So, all these flaws are there, and many of these flaws are to be ignored. The underlying quality of that impersonal state is to be remembered—a constant remembrance of that in all actions, a constant remembrance of Divinity. For the personal God is not the final Divinity. It is still a limited Divinity with qualifications. So, by meditation and spiritual practices, which are so, so necessary, we can only reach the finest level of the mind, the superconscious mind, where we can experience. And that experience, to say again, is of joy and bliss and of knowledge, and this knowledge, this wisdom, is more important than the joy, than the bliss. It is because of this knowledge that all is one. THE MIND CANNOT BE CONTROLLED, BUT IT CAN BE GOVERNED Everything constitutes this vast feast. Finding the sameness in it all takes away the rough edges that we find in life, and we accept it. And with the acceptance of what just is, the acceptance of oneself, that is the most difficult part. People just do not accept themselves for what they are. That is the root of all trouble. That is the root of all the surface suffering that people go through, because they just do not accept themselves. And once they learn to accept themselves by reaching this higher layer or level of the mind, self-acceptance becomes easy. And with self-acceptance, all the things that happen on the relative conscious level are automatically accepted. Because I can accept myself, all anxieties in the mind cease, for it is only because of fearing the repercussions of things that anxiety is bred within a person. You only feel anxious if you have fear. If you have no fear, you do not feel anxious. Does she love me or not? You are fearing, and with fear there is doubt. Like that in every aspect of life. Will I be losing my business? Will I be losing my movement because of this, that or the other? Why fear? If it is to be lost, it is lost. So, who cares? And having that attitude, it develops further. Fear and anxiety are your greatest stumbling blocks in every aspect of life. You have to interview a big client tomorrow, and you have that fear: “Oh, will he sign the contract or not?” And you can be very sure that your very fear will stop him from signing the contract. But if you just do not care, I am going to do my blooming best, and that is all I can do. That is the attitude. If the man does not sign the contract after I have been doing my best, there is another place I can try, for he is not the only one who has that business, that hotel or that industrial establishment where I want to sign a catering contract. There are other establishments, other factories. So, I lose one. I will gain ten more. No anxiety. No fear. Then you enjoy. There is joy in everything. The very effort put into work is joyful because there is no expectation. And this can only be done if we touch upon the finer levels of the mind, the superconscious level. Ah, then only can it be done, and that automatically controls the conscious mind. When I say ‘automatic control,’ I mean governing. For the mind cannot be controlled, but it can be governed. So, automatic control means that the higher level of your mind is governing the lower level of your mind. Then we can truly stand apart and watch the workings of the world. For is the world not a projection of your own mind? So, the higher level of your mind is watching the workings of the lower level of your mind, and enjoying those children playing in the garden, in the park, on all the swings and roundabouts. Up and down and down the slide. Climbing up the ladder again, just to come down the slide again. Beautiful, is it not? That is wisdom, not acquired knowledge from books. THERE IS ONLY ONE MIND When a person, through meditation and spiritual practices, reaches the superconscious level of the mind, they experience inborn wisdom. For everything that was known, is known or is to be known, is existent there. If you say I am wiser than you, you are wrong. We have the same amount of wisdom. Mine is expressed and experienced. Yours is not. That is the only difference. That is how I can see the Divinity in you. That is how I can find myself at one with you, for it is the same mind. The same mind: because there is only one mind. The one pond and little bubbles here, there and everywhere, thinking they are so apart and individual. Yet, they are not. They have the same amount of air and the same amount of water. And this apartness of every bubble is only seen in our dimension; just dive a little deeper, and you will not see the bubbles. They are gone. One mass of water, just slightly below the surface. That is wisdom. THE IDEA IS TO REACH THE SUBTLER LAYER WHERE NOTHING CAN HURT The impersonal
The Journey Within the Mind: The Mind is Our Only Vehicle
DARKNESS IS PRODUCED BECAUSE OF THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT The conscious mind recognises itself within its own boundaries. The conscious mind feels all the pains and pleasures that surround it, empowered and brought forth from the subconscious, which is the repository of all the experiences that the entity has gained through this further process of evolution. All those experiences manifest through the conscious mind, and, through the association of one’s personal inner experience and environment, the conscious mind interprets them as pain or pleasure. The conscious mind recognizes itself within its own boundaries. The conscious mind feels all the pains and pleasures that surround it, empowered, brought forth from the subconscious, which is the repository of all the experiences that have been gained by that entity through this further process of evolution. All those experiences manifest through the conscious mind, and, through the association of one’s personal inner experience and environment, the conscious mind interprets them as pain or pleasure. Something could be very painful to one person, while to another it could be pleasurable, and we find this in daily life. If I have a backache, for example, I do not try to analyse where that backache came from. Why should I try to analyse where that backache came from? I accept the backache. It is a backache. So, it is a backache. If it is a headache, it is a headache. If it is another ache, it is another ache. I accept it. There could be no spiritual forces that could have prevented that backache, and it has nothing to do with karma. It is just a natural physical phenomenon. We blame everything on karma; that is one mistake we always make, and it is not always so. You go downstairs for lunch today, and it might not be as good as the one you had yesterday. Are you going to blame your karma for it? Life’s feast has so many varieties. There are sweet foods, there are sour foods, there are pungent foods, and all kinds of poppadums and condiments. It all constitutes life’s feast, and we do not accept the totality of life’s feast. Why? Is it through ignorance, or is it through the absence of knowledge? These, too, are different things. Is it through ignorance, or is it through the absence of knowledge? You need neither to enjoy life. What produces darkness? The absence of light. Darkness is there all the time. If a house is locked up for two hundred years and there is no light in there, and then you come along with a little candle, the darkness of two hundred years is not going to tell you that you must wait two hundred years for light to be there. Light is instantaneous, and in that instant, it banishes two hundred years of darkness. With this little realisation, all the karmic values of life assume a oneness. You can call it good, bad, pleasurable, or painful, but there will be instant illumination by lighting the candle that will banish hundreds of years of darkness that existed in this castle. Just that one little understanding to be able to accept all the workings of the mind by the mind. One does that by utilising the finer and subtler levels of the mind. THE REALM OF KARMA IS ON THE LEVEL OF THE MIND I know of a story where it was the son’s birthday. So that morning, the father thought, “What is the best deed I can do for my child’s birthday, which will bring blessings upon my child?” So, he got into his car and went around to various organisations. He went to the child welfare society and donated two hundred dollars. He went to the blind society and made a $200 donation there. He went to people with disabilities, people who are deaf or hard of hearing and the deaf institutes. He went to many places and donated $2,000. To bring blessings upon the child whose birthday it was that day was a real sacrifice on his part. When he reached home, he found that the child had had an accident and had passed away. He just ran out of the front gate, and a car came along and knocked him down. Dead on the spot. Now, this man started wondering, “This very morning I did all this totally unselfishly to bring blessings, because there is nothing greater than charity to bring blessings to a person, because it is a giving, an unselfish giving, and yet, when I came home, my child was dead. What kind of a law is this? What kind of a law has operated here?” He could not understand. But the answer was so simple: that, karmically and by a certain tendency, the child had to expire. So, the donations given for the child, or, according to this man’s thoughts, those things poured for this child of mine, had definitely benefited the child. Who knows that it might not have been a long-suffering death? A long period of illness. Perhaps that was averted? I explained to him that your child had to go. But is it not better to go this way, in a second, than to suffer for months and months and then go? So do not think your charity has been useless; look what great use it would be to you, too, because you have also accrued good karma. We always have to remember that the realm of karma is on the level of the mind. The mind screws itself up, and it has to unscrew itself. All these flaws are there and will be there. The only way is to reach the finest, subtlest level of the mind. This superconscious state is the primal manifestation of the Manifestor or the primal manifestation of the Unmanifest: the impersonal God that no man can reach while in a body. ONLY WHEN WE ARE ESTABLISHED IN THE SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND CAN WE REACH THE IMPERSONAL GOD All this