WHAT IS REAL LOVE? How can we cultivate and integrate that which is called love? How can we talk in tangible terms of that which is intangible? What people call love is not love. You will be surprised to hear this. Love, as most people know, is a need. Real love knows no need. Love, as most people know it, is a dependency. It could be a physical dependence, an emotional dependency, all kinds of dependencies, and that they call love. Then, what is real love? Love cannot be cultivated. Love is happening. Love is like the fragrance of the flower. The flower does not transmit the fragrance consciously. It is the nature of the flower to give the fragrance. That fragrance is love. It is the nature of fire to give off heat. The fire spontaneously gives off that heat; that is love. We do not cultivate love but cultivate qualities within us to make it conducive for love to come. In other words, everything is a preparation for love to come. When we plant the flower, we nurture it, use fertilisers, and use water. The sapling is well-tendered. We tie it to a stick because it is frail until it becomes strong when we throw it away. So, what are the things necessary in preparation for love? Things essential in the preparation for love are summed up in one word – Virtue. Virtue is practised with consciousness. Our conception of love is at such a level that it only touches the mind, and the mind is nothing but a patterned entity, and it functions in a specific pattern. We have to repeat the pattern, consciously exercising particular virtues. The same principle applies to the child learning to play the piano, or when an old lady is trying to cross the road, you do not have that love in you for that lovely old lady, but you go up and help her cross the street. You have not expressed love. Perhaps you have expressed a kind of pity. You pity the old. It might not even be compassion, for that person might not have heard of the word compassion. The only thing he knows about compassion is the passion. In this way, a conscious effort begins. Likewise, “Do Good, Be Good” is a sage maxim to follow in every sphere of life. If you cannot do anyone any good, do not harm anyone. DO GOOD, BE GOOD Doing good and being good sounds so simple but is so tricky. What do we mean by “doing good?” If we study moral philosophy, we will find so many different concepts in the mind of what constitutes Good. You can study it from the theological aspect and half a dozen other elements. But that still does not make you good. We use our scriptures and our great religions like Christianity as a guideline to what is good to help us decide, in any circumstance, what should be done. Thou shalt not covet, Thou shalt not this. Those do and do not have great value. MEDITATION TAKES AWAY MUCH OF THE WEIGHT OF THE EFFORT REQUIRED We want to learn to love, so we start not talking about love, but we start with the virtues surrounding love because we are not capable of learning love yet or experiencing it. The mind has some idea – Boy loves girl, as they say. Girl loves boy. They look into each other’s eyes and melt away, and how they wish they were made of wax – then they would melt away. It is not a question of looking into each other’s eyes but the eyes of both looking in the same direction. That brings about an understanding. Here, the keyword to learn to love is understanding. Knowledge of the moral principles as set out by the sages, Buddha, Krishna, and Christ – developing an understanding and, with effort, putting that understanding into practice. It requires some effort, and here, meditation comes to help again. It would make that understanding easier and take so much of the weight away from the effort. When all this preparation is done, you see a slight flicker of love, which is so encouraging. Need disappears. I do not need to love you. I love you because I love you. What does that mean? It means I do not love you. I love love. I love love, and you are the only object that enables me and gives me the privilege of loving love. You are the focal point. Need disappears – dependency disappears – for love is always independent. DEPENDENCY – INTERDEPENDENCY Dependency disappears, which means that weaknesses go away. A dependent love, be it emotional or physical, is not strength. It is a weakness. It is because we are so disintegrated and fragmented that we have this dependency. The need goes, dependencies go, and then, when dependency goes, there is a middle step: interdependency. Then, an interdependence develops between two people, neither dependent nor independent. Now they see a wholeness that there is no more you or I, but us – that interdependence. There is still one step further, where you go even beyond interdependence. But, as householders, living a householder’s life – with family and children – that interdependence is necessary. When there is that interdependence, conflicts cease. Recently, I was asked to say a few words at a wedding, so I said marriage is a union where you start a three-legged run. No more four legs, but two of the legs tied together. That interdependence. There are two forms of independence. In the lower form of autonomy, there is conflict. At first, when the independence of the lower level ceases, conflicts cease, and with the development of the inter part of it, they function as a unified whole. After going through that phase, which is necessary for daily living, one comes back to independence, but of a different sort – it is spiralling. One is at a
The Journey of No Journey: Returning to Stillness
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THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL There is no development; the soul is wholly developed; there is just an unfolding. In this path of unfoldment that goes from Silence to Silence, What is travelling? Have we travelled a path, or have we not travelled at all? If it has been a journey, who has experienced this journey? We know that the Spirit of the human being, or the Universal Spirit, is omnipresent. It has nowhere to go and nowhere from where to come. It just is. So, what journeys? Is it an experience, or is it an illusion? Even if it is an illusion, how is it experienced? All illusion or delusion is just a counterpart of reality, as its own “non-existence” exists within that “It” that we call reality. We come from nowhere and are going nowhere, but give a little space between the “w” and the “h”. You are “now here”, an essential factor to recognise in practical life. Nevertheless, the mind has a habit of inquiring. The mind is conditioned through evolution into various stages whereby it gains these experiences. Who gains the experiences? The mind gains experiences. A HUMAN BEING HAS THE CAPACITY TO EXPERIENCE THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE; THE SPIRIT CAN NOT The experiences gained by the mind, of the mind, and from the mind bring us to a simple idea: 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 an expansive pond. That bubble has no separate existence from the pond. A human being has the capacity within himself to experience, with the mind, the entirety of the universe, while the Spirit remains aloof, for the Spirit cannot experience this journey. Therefore, we say, “From Silence, we proceed and return to Silence.” It means that the mind that has been manifested, as fragrance is 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 there has been no journey. But the mind assumes that this is a journey, that there is a journey. What are the reasons for this? The Spirit is, while the mind thinks it travels from here to there. From the beginning of this universe’s present cycle, there is a manifestation, wrongly called creation, because creation requires a will behind it, while manifestation is just an emanation. It is the nature of the Manifestor to manifest like it is the nature of a flower to give off fragrance, but there is no will involved. The powers in the manifestation are known in Sanskrit as the three gunas: tamas, rajas and sattva. This interaction between darkness and light manifests in the universe’s manifestation, the Universal Mind. THE MIND CREATES EXPERIENCE The entire mind, or the universe, is nothing but propulsion that seemingly goes forth in our linear time and space concept. In the third dimension we exist in, we find this movement proceeding from A to B, while beyond the mind, there is no space and no time. Like Blake said, “Eternity in an hour”, we would rather say, in a moment. In this process put forth through manifestation in which the three gunas operate, the mind feels itself travelling. Why does it feel like it is travelling? Why does it feel mixed up in the process of evolution? In this process of contraction and expansion generated by the three gunas, matter and its various atomic structures are constantly in motion. The mind, enmeshed in this process of contraction and expansion, 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. This is not so. There is a rhythm in the sea created by currents where each wave is bobbing up and down where it is, then the next bobs up and down, and so forth, giving us the illusion that the wave is moving at that end to the shore. Likewise, there is the flux of the universe, the perpetual motion that perpetuates itself, within itself, by itself, because its nature is motion. We are trying to find which is silent behind all the activity because that which is motion cannot be silent, and that which is silent can have no motion. Very simple. Because the mind can act and interact within its components, it becomes increasingly complex, and this very complexity adds to the mind’s motion. The mind creates the experience, and the mind itself is the experience, for the eternal Spirit within humanity is beyond all experience of motion or anything else. It just is. Here, it is a question of superimposition. Heat rises from the sun. The sun does not intentionally create heat; it is the nature of the sun to give off heat. Similarly, in its very silent form, that eternal energy first manifests itself as mind.When the mind assumes this motion, it also finds a direction, which is what we term Divine Will. Because there was Divine Will, all this you observe, including our wills, has come about. This is very true from the theological point of view and the philosophical point of view. But from the mystical point of view, this truth assumes a different approach: In the manifestation of Divine Will, the will becomes the individual mind. Here, there is no differentiation between mind and will. Ordinarily, it is the directed activity of a particular mind, which is self-created and called will. IN THE PROCESS OF MANIFESTATION, THE DIVINE FORCE HAS TO GROSSIFY ITSELF When manifestation occurs, this Divine Force has to grossify itself in the form of matter or grosser energies in the process of manifestation. From the subtlest level of that silent energy, ever inaccessible like in limits in mathematics, this Divine Force assumes the form of activated energy. The more that energy is activated, the
Sacred Union: Transforming Sexuality into Spiritual Oneness
ANIMAL, MAN AND GODMAN We have to remember that we are householders, live a householder’s life, and have a family. Sexuality is only the outward expression of an inner welling up. I am not talking about lust, which is animalism. Every man contains three things within himself – the animal- because he has passed through that stage in evolution. In his memory, there are still implanted impressions of animal life. Man has within himself what man should really be, and thirdly, man has within himself the godman. Within every human being, there are three things: animal, man, and God. It depends upon us to which we give greater emphasis. Lust comes about because the greater focus is given to the animal side, which lives mostly by instinct and bodily needs. The only thing distinguishing man from animals is that man has thinking power. He has reached a stage higher in his evolution. Having the thinking power and the power of discrimination, he has also developed the power to subdue or overcome animal instincts and live as a man who should not have animal instincts. That very man stands in the middle between animals and God. Between animal and Divinity. Because of this power of thinking, he can lean either way because of this power of discrimination. He can be pulled to the animal side or the God side. But that does not make him cease to remain as a man. Man can stay on this earth and yet live as a godman. When man lives as a godman, the act of copulation can be sublimated into something extraordinary. I would never tell any householder to abstain from sex. If you are a householder, you are there to bring up your family, to procreate; it is the nature of man – that must not be stopped. CELIBACY? I had a couple coming to me in South Africa. Before they came to me, some swami had visited South Africa, and they went to the swami, and they went to his lectures and had a private interview; the swami, who was a monk, would think like a monk. He was an ascetic. He tells this couple that to find maximum spiritual growth, you have to become celibates, and by becoming celibate, you will find maximum spiritual growth and reach God. So, this couple took the word of the swami. Two weeks went by, three weeks, four weeks, and two months went by, and a terrible amount of irritation and irritability started developing between them, formerly loving each other. With the irritability, a lot of quarrels began. The wife was nearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown with the quarrels. So, they heard about me, came to listen to some of my talks, and made an appointment for a private interview. Then I started talking to them, and when you speak to someone, you like to find out the causes of things, so I asked them, “What have you been doing, and what has happened?” So, they told me that swami so and so came, and he said that we must become celibates, and we have become celibates. I was very wild. I said, “The two of you go to bed tonight in the same bedroom.” I saw them again a few weeks later, and they were back to their usual selves. The concept of celibacy is fine for an ascetic, for a yogi, who has reached a level where he can take the sexual energies and sublimate them into spiritual force. But that is not the dharma of a householder. When I say a householder must indulge in the relationship, I do not mean excesses. Of course, that is something else. But normal according to need. That is how a person lives every day. SEXUALITY When it comes to sexuality, in Victorian times or in olden times, the word could not even be spoken. It was a sin even to utter the word “sex.” But we have come a long way from that. We have come a long way from the inhibitions implanted in young children’s minds. But after coming a long way, we have gone to the other extreme, so instead of inhibitions, we have developed permissiveness, and anything when it comes to extremes is always wrong. We choose the middle road according to the station in our life. If we are householders, we do the things which householders do. If we are ascetics and live in Himalayan caves, we do what should be done in Himalayan caves. Sexuality is the togetherness between partners, and I emphasise partners, not just permissiveness. The togetherness, the copulation between partners, can itself become a meditation. Why do we get together? A force is involved, expressed in a physical act, but the physical act is not the force. There is an inner Force that wants them to merge into each other. You-ness and I-ness must cease. There should be us-ness. This inner force wants him or her to become one with their partner, which makes us indulge in the physical act. Although the physical act, too, has a specific power of its own, in actual copulation, which is not lust, it is the inner force of wanting to penetrate within the beloved’s soul where the two souls can join in union. THERE HAS TO BE A TOTAL NATURAL FLOW There is no differentiation at all; there is no duality. But being embodied and having a limited mind, we think my wife and I are separate. Yet, within, a force wants to bring us together. There is a mental togetherness. The mental togetherness arouses or demands a physical togetherness. All this is engendered because of the oneness of spirit between man and woman, who also would like to see and express that oneness through the mind and the body. That is why men and women copulate. That is apart from creating children. That is a different aspect of it. The very sexual act can be
Beyond Friend and Foe: The Oneness of True Love
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LOVE THINE ENEMIES You can love a friend just as much as a foe. Therefore, Jesus said, “Love thine enemies,” and he said this from experience, for wherever he went, he was opposed. Many people were his enemies – enemies of Jesus, but how could Christ ever know of enemies? “Love thy enemies” can only come from a deeper level, not from the mental and analytical level. For, in an enemy, we would find all the faults, and all the defects found in an enemy are nothing but the projection of our minds and faults. Because we are not strong enough to bear, recognise, or accept our faults, we project them onto others. And projecting those faults, they assume the form of enemies. Yet, no one is an enemy or a friend to anyone. These things are surface expressions. Not that we must not have friends; by all means, they could benefit you. They could be invaluable to you, and you could be beneficial to them on the surface level of life, and we cannot deny the surface level of life, for that, too, is necessary. But when the Oneness, the communication of the Spirit, occurs, there is no friend and no foe. There is neither acceptance nor non-acceptance. It is a recognition of what is, and that isness is the truth. WE WANT TO GO BEYOND THE OPPOSITES You have a friend, and you trust the friend. Tomorrow, something might happen, and he becomes a foe, so you have lost trust. The mental qualities are forever changing when we are looking for the eternal, when we are looking for that consciousness, that Christ Consciousness, in everything around us. For it is there, transcending trust, faith, and belief. Because there is no opposite in that consciousness – it is just there. Today, you believe in something, and something might happen that will produce disbelief in you. The opposite is there, and it could be something very trivial. It could be something that could not even exist to make the disbelief. It could be some interpretation of your mind. You disbelieve, so you are bringing about the opposite reaction. We want to go beyond the opposites, beyond belief and disbelief, and beyond the so-called worldly love and hate, for these are all but qualities. When I say to you that love must exist for the sake of love itself and not for the sake of the object, that love is a different kind of love. It means two so-called individual loves merge into that one love into that consciousness. The actual search is not for love. Love is still a secondary quality. It is a quality that has quantity. “I love him a little.” “I love him very much.” It is a secondary quality given to the personalised being, the personification or the manifestation of that consciousness. Truth is beyond all that, for truth is consciousness. As I have said many times, language is so inadequate to describe and explain what consciousness is all about. One could only say it is an is-ness that we never question, which is how this has also been misinterpreted wildly. You go to some of the ashrams in India; for example, you cannot question the guru. He can do what he likes. You are not allowed to question the guru. You must have faith in him; he can be a scoundrel. You must have faith – that is blind faith. I would never encourage that. I encourage total questioning according to your ability. I would allow you to interpret according to your ability. If your interpretation is wrong, that is also good. If it is correct, that is a bit better. But go beyond the wrong and the right. That is what we want. Then there is no separation; there is no question, doubt, faith, nothing because these are qualities only of the mind. THE MIND IS A MANIFESTATION If a man asks a woman, “Do you love me?” She says “yes”, and he asks, “Why do you love me?” For this reason or for that reason or another reason – then that is not love. That is a form of manifestation of love. A manifestation through the manifestation of the mind. For the mind is a manifestation. It is not the truth. It is a superimposition to look for qualities more conducive to their framework and frame of mind. Then, all the conditions come about. Where true love, real love, should be unconditional. These are the things that the disciples of Jesus failed to recognise at that time. They were constantly questioning. There was so much jealousy between themselves. In some scrolls that were found recently, there were prominent write-ups in reputable newspapers in England like the Observer. I remember reading those write-ups where many of the disciples felt jealous because Jesus held Mary Magdalene so close to him and kissed her passionately on the lips. There were jealousies. Things were conditional. That “why are we not paying that attention? Why is Mary paying that attention?” So, were they true disciples? No, they were not. They were not true disciples. They only became true disciples after Jesus left them, and in the process, the realisations dawned of not the man, the man that was given to passion, that was given to anger. When they saw beyond that, only the realisations dawned on what he represented and his reality. NEVER EXPECT ANYTHING In the mundane world, no guru or chela must live in expectations. Never expect anything. Even in your meditations, do not expect anything, and then the most extraordinary things occur. Because expectation is building a wall, in other words, your mind is biased already. You are expecting something. You want something. As long as they want it brought in, you get nothing. What is required is total innocence. Not faith. Not trust. That is not necessary. But just an acceptance. That is necessary. According to your ability. According to your measure. According
Blinded by the Light: Recognizing the Master Beyond the Form
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT When you are very close to a bright light, you get blinded, but those far away from where the light is not so close can still see. Therefore, a true prophet is never recognised in his own time or country. All of these sages, these great men, these great masters, go through this. It is only after, when the brightness of the light is not there, face to face. Then the blindness goes, and then the disciples could see. They could genuinely see with the inner eye that my God, I have been with God, and I did not know it. We go through this experience every day in ordinary things. In everyday things, we go through this experience. Every day, we fail to recognise. Even our teachers, when we were at school, none of us liked our teachers. We would say, “Oh, he is a so and so. He drives me too hard, or he spanked me or this or that.” Only later, when you grow up, you say, “Ah, you know what that man taught me was so great.” I remember when I was a schoolboy. The school ended at half-past two; I think it was at that time. A quarter past two, all books and pens were put away. He used to sit at his desk, put his legs on one of the benches before him, and then talk. He used to speak of various things that had nothing to do with schoolwork. He used to talk about astronomy. He used to talk about science. He used to talk about physics and the scriptures. He just kept talking about this, that, and the other, and most of us thought, why does he not let us go home instead of listening to all this nonsense? But afterwards, how much it helped me. It stimulated my curiosity to know more of those things that seemed so trivial, unimportant, and irrelevant then. TRUE TEACHING At the moment, we might not know the worth of the master, and that could be pretty natural. To know the value of the master, for the disciples to know Christ, they should be very closely developed. They should be very near the stage of Christhood. Then only would they recognise? But then what is the sense of Christ having people near him that are Christ themselves? It would serve no purpose. He has to have those who lack the understanding, and as they keep on understanding, as their awareness grows, they will be able to share the awareness that has grown in them. That is how teachings are propagated from age to age. Otherwise, it is just an ordinary job. Otherwise, it is just cleaning streets, making chairs and tables or doing the plumbing. It is just a job. Actual teaching always comes with sharing, sharing the awakening in us. That is true teaching. The disciples of Jesus never had that awakening. Only afterwards, when the awakening took place, they started sharing it. A lot of it is twisted, and a lot of it is lost, but that is how we know today, in some form or the other, what Christianity is and what consciousness is. But we make a mistake in paying more attention to Jesus than to Christ. That mistake we make today because of our lack of awareness. We, too, are the disciples of that Christhood, but we fail to recognise that consciousness, and we only see the man, the Jesus, the form. To become a true teacher, you share the awareness that develops in you, which takes time. When Jesus shed his body, then only was he recognised. He was the most despised man on earth. Everyone hated him: the rulers, his people, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Sanhedrins. – because everyone saw him from a different angle. The rulers thought that he was a rebel and that he was going to overthrow the Romans. The priests felt that he would destroy the church, and they would be out of their jobs, and they would lose all control over the people. People saw him according to their understanding. ONLY MARY MAGDALENE KNEW WHO JESUS WAS One person knew Jesus and was not talked about in a good light, and that was Mary Magdalene. She knew who Jesus was. She was the only person at that time who knew what Jesus was. He helped multitudes of people with all kinds of their problems. Yet they all deserted him. They all deserted him. People who had the most incredible experiences with him, the finest experiences, where were they when he was beset with all these problems of the temple and the emperor? Where were they then? Nowhere to be found, and when the rulers, because they were so uncertain of themselves, used the trick of whether he should be crucified or not, they voted for him to be crucified. The man who benefitted them so much. They said, “Yes, down with him.” And that “down with him,” that voice, that sound roared in the courtyards. People that he benefitted. TO UNFOLD AWARENESS That is how it works. For the good deeds are always forgotten. A man might do so much for you; your friend might do so much for you for many years. He sets you up in business, gets you settled down, or whatever the case. But one day, you quarrel with him or exchange hard words, and all the good things done so far are forgotten. The only thing that is remembered and breaks up the friendship is that little quarrel. That is a lack of awareness. For not being able to take the totality in at one glance, these things happen. And that is what we teach: to unfold. To unfold our inherent awareness so that there remains no foe and no friend. Because a friend can become a foe tomorrow, and a foe can become a friend. But there remains only this communication
When the Dust Blows Away: The Master-Chela Connection
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS Why was Gurushakti, or the power of Grace, not felt by the closest disciples of Christ when he was alive? That is a real anomaly because those closest to him saw all the great things done by Jesus. Things were told to his closest disciples, which he would not speak about in public, and they knew the power and the force. Yet when it came to an end, his closest ones denied him and ran away like cowards. So, how did this Gurushakti work? How did this power of Grace work? One would generally expect that those closest would know the master the best. Yet, having witnessed with their own physical eyes all the happenings of the time, they denied him when trouble came. You know the story of “before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” This man was so close to him; he watched all the miracles happening, yet such a god on earth was denied. THE LESSON OF DEPENDENCY Why would this be so? What was the plan behind it? This happened not only in the life of Jesus but also in Buddha’s life, where his closest disciple, Ananda, was denied illumination until after Buddha had left his body. When they started writing his biography, people asked Ananda, “You should be the one that should know Buddha the best and most intimately, and yet you are unrealised.” So, he had to explain that “I was unenlightened because I was most attached to Buddha.” This is a great lesson for everyone to learn: the lesson of dependency. Because of the total attachment of Ananda to Buddha, he never became enlightened. When Ananda became his chela, Ananda made specific requests, and one of the requests was this: “Anyone I make an appointment with to see you, you will have to see. One of my conditions is to be close to and look after you.” If a relationship is based on conditions, then how can enlightenment come? As a matter of fact, in any marriage relationship between husband and wife, if conditions are set, the flow in the relationship is automatically stopped. After all, what is enlightenment? Enlightenment is a total flow with one’s total being. The so-called other becomes a part of your totality from one’s totality to another. That is flow. But as soon as any conditions are set, this flow immediately stops. THEY SAW JESUS AND FAILED TO SEE THE CHRIST Jesus’s disciples were so close to him; they saw how he made the blind see, the deaf hear, the cripple walk and raise a man from the dead, things like that. Yet such a master was denied. Because with them, he was just an ordinary man. They just saw his ordinariness and failed; they just saw Jesus and failed to see Christ. Therefore, none of the disciples who were very close to him ever reached enlightenment. There is only one person in the lifetime of Jesus who was enlightened, and that was Lazarus. Lazarus was not physically raised from the dead. That he was awakened means that he was led from darkness to Light. That was enlightenment, and that was to “bring to life.” Most people in this world as of that time are the living dead, so-called living and yet dead, for if one does not function in one’s totality, then you are but dead. You are dead to the Spirit. The mind would function, and the body would work, but that is not life. When Jesus said, “I am the life,” he meant the awakening, the quickening of that consciousness, which is life. He had to say over and over again, “I am the Life,” not meaning the physical Jesus, but meaning that Consciousness and that life is the way. For that, life is the truth. Nothing else is worthy of possessing or having but the truth, and once one has the truth, one knows what life is. HE WAS THAT CONSCIOUSNESS Although the disciples were devoted to the man, they lacked devotion to the Spirit. They lacked devotion to the Consciousness. Therefore, at a later stage, after deep reflection, they found that that man that we were so close to was that Consciousness. They only recognised that after they went through greater crucifixions than Jesus did. Jesus did not suffer in being crucified. He accepted it. Being that Consciousness, he cared not for his body or his mind. Let it fall away. Let it pass away, for I and my Father are one, which dawned on him when his mind and body were put through that agony and that turmoil. Then, even in desperation, he said, “Why hast thou forsaken me.” Then through that heat, through that tapas, then all that “why has thou and me,” when that concept was burnt away in that heat of agony, only the truth was realised that “I and my Father are one.” So, there was no suffering in the crucifixion. HIS DISCIPLES SUFFERED THE MOST Those who suffered most were his disciples, for they all went through some form of crucifixion. That was great suffering. Theirs was more extraordinary because they were not enlightened; their suffering was more of mind and body, and in that suffering, it was revealed to themselves. They discovered that what we dealt with was not the man who used to frequent the houses of prostitution, the wine halls, the sinners’ inns, the Pharisees, or the money collectors. No, that was not the man that we should attach ourselves to. When it dawned upon them that we were so close to that Consciousness, that all-encompassing Consciousness, they only realised what Christ meant and what Consciousness really meant, and then they started working. You take the example of Saul, later known as Paul. He was anti-Christ until he had that vision on the road to Damascus. Through his extreme hate, he received enlightenment. This we find in other scriptures as well. Ravana hated Rama so much
Gurushakti: The Indefinable Force That Transforms From Within
DEFINING GURUSHAKTI Many times, I have been asked this question. Guruji, define Gurushakti. You have to experience it to know it. What is the reason for defining sugar or salt when you have not yet found the power to taste the sugar’s sweetness or saltiness? What sense is there? But I see what is on your mind. You are looking for instant miracles, instant coffee, instant pudding – that is what you are looking for. If you want the definition of Gurushakti in verbal, analytical terms, you will not find it because it is an indefinable form. It is a form of Grace imparted to you by the powers that represent itself through your beloved one, in our case, your Guru. It is a force and a power that has no mechanics at all. The beauty of it lies in the very factor of it being non-mechanically, without mechanics. It is an inner force imparted in the form of Grace. Grace has no definition; in all definitions, there is a beginning point and an ending, so you are defining. In defining, you are defining your mental processes to be able to understand them. If you cannot understand God, how can you know Grace, which is Gurushakti? But through the power that is, you can experience the depth, the Force, the power of Gurushakti. To find the actual value of Gurushakti comes slowly, gradually but surely, and you start experiencing it yourself. I want it to become permanent in your life, my beloved. Permanently, it must be there. … Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1987 – 20
Clarifying the Mind, Unfolding the Self: The Role of Meditation and Action
IMPROVING OUR MINDS Do not change your mind because you cannot change your mind despite how much you try. Because with what are you going to change your mind? What other tool have you got to change your mind besides your mind? Here, we will delve into the realm of self-analysis. If done constructively, self-analysis is very good, and rationalisation is excellent. Still, the only tragedy is that through rationalisation and self-analysis, people develop a more significant amount of guilt. Through self-analysis, they start diving deep within their minds, not their Spirit; they start diving deep within their minds and stir up all the contained dirt. Stirring up the dirt in the mind serves a helpful purpose, but all techniques are based on the mind only; I would not recommend them. Because, with the stirring up of the dirt in the clothing thrown in a washing machine, there has to be a solvent; there has to be the soap powder that will absorb the dirt. Anything stirred up in the mind must first have a background of the Spiritual Force that we can draw from. In the process, the spiritual force must be awakened through meditation and spiritual practices. At the same time, you could go into analysis so that whatever dirt the analytical mind draws up to the surface level would spontaneously and automatically be dissolved by the spiritual forces generated in you. These spiritual forces are activated through meditation, diving deep within, and analysis must also have an active base. When you analyse something and come to an inevitable conclusion, and if you do nothing about it, those thought processes become more deeply embedded in the mind, causing the samskaras, or the impressions, to become stronger. In that way, you are not helping the analysis. You must tackle all mental decisions, rationalisations and analysis in two ways: to draw forth the spiritual energies from within oneself, which could be equated with Gurushakti or Grace. Returning to your washing machine to dissolve the negativities in the mind also needs a release. The soap has removed all the dirt from the clothing, but the washing machine still needs a pipe to let out the water. In our case, we do our spiritual practices that dissolve the dirt, and the second step would be to release the energies built up in us. People who do certain forms of meditation for ten to twelve hours do not perform the necessary physical actions. By physical actions, I mean mental actions as well because that is also physical action. Thought processes are also physical but at a subtler level. So, one way to tackle the problem is through spiritual practices; the other is to put into action the analysis or results we have brought. Here, we are cleaning and dispensing; that is how the mind gets clarified. CLEANSING THE MIND You must have heard of the word ghee. Ghee is clarified butter. There is a straightforward way to make ghee. You take butter that you buy at the supermarket, put it in a pot and bring it to a boiling point; it has to boil, boil, boil, and, as it boils, all the substances in the butter that do not make it pure butter comes to the surface, and you skim it off. Then, you have pure clarified ghee and pure butter, which can last for months without refrigeration, while butter can never leave outside the fridge for longer than a few days. That is the process of cleansing the mind. The boiling process in the mind is critical. Sometimes, people go through many emotional turmoils and indecisions, thinking it is not good. They can make it bad if it is bad. They can make it worse if they want to, but in reality, it is something delicious; the emotional turmoil you go through is something delicious because if you shut up those emotions, repress them, and inhibit them, then you are soon on the way to the lunatic asylum. So, let the emotions come, let them tumble around, let them do what they want to, but having the strength of awakening the spirituality within, we can stand apart from the emotions, we can objectify those emotions so that it does not affect us as it is affecting a person today. When a person allows emotions to affect them, be they good or bad, they manifest themselves through the physical body. It could take various forms of organic diseases or psychosomatic diseases. For everything in life, from the minutest atom to man and even up to the stage of the godman, the living God, everything is forever trying to express. This expression means expansion, as the entire universe forever expands within itself. The universe is going through the same process you are going through, for you are a universe in miniature. As the saying goes, if you understand the workings of a grain of sand, you will understand the entire universe. The secret here is this: as the mind becomes more and more clarified by spiritual practices and right thinking and right action, then whatever emotions a person goes through, be it pain or pleasure, because man, being in an embodied state and having a mind, is ruled by the law of opposites. You are bound; that is the bondage that man goes through. Lately, scientists have discovered that in this polarity, this was said by ancient Vedic sages thousands and thousands of years ago. Still, scientists have also proven that if you touch one end or create any disturbance, good or bad, on one end of the stick, the other end will feel its effect and respond accordingly. Here is a process whereby positiveness on the one side will lead to positiveness on the other side, the other end of polarity. POSITIVE THINKING That is why you have teachers telling you about positive thinking. Positive thinking is not drowning or pressing down negative thoughts. You cannot do it; it is impossible. The
Mysticism vs. Science: Bridging or Dividing?
Awareness, Belief, Christ, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Eternal, Force, God, Happiness, Heart, Integration, Joy, Law of opposites, Love, Love thy neighbour as thyself, Meditation, Mind, Omnipresent, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Self, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Unfoldment, Universal, Universe
SCIENCE IS THE STUDY OF MOTION, WHILE MYSTICISM IS THE STUDY OF STILL Science and religion find a meeting point, but their approaches are wrong. The scientist tries to measure, while the mystic or the religionist tries to experience. Science has not been successful in measuring speed, for example. If a particle moves from one end to the other, it will not get its proper velocity because as soon as it goes through to that particular particle, it has moved somewhat away. In mysticism, you do not move away; you become still. We could say that science is motion and the study of motion, while mysticism is the study of still. Yet one could combine the two so well that you could experience motion and stillness. How can this be done? It can only be explained through an analogy. You take a top that the children play with, and if it is spun at a very high speed, it will seem to be standing still. Here, motion is found in that stillness, and stillness is found in the motion. SCIENTISTS LOOK AT THINGS PERIPHERALLY, WHILE THE MYSTIC LOOKS AT THE CENTRE We who live on this planet or in this universe are a product of motion, and there will always be motion. When there is motion, you become involved in emotion, where the problem begins. Through that motion of the various psychological factors that operate within you, emotions are created, and emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, are always conflicting. Where you have pain, you will experience pleasure; where you experience joy, you will experience pain because of a conflict between the two. As scientists call it, the law of polarity is like two ends of one stick. They say this is the left end, and that is the right end. But the mystic operates differently altogether. Although he knows both ends of the stick, he goes to the centre, but his entire focus is on the centre. So, scientists look at polarities, and they miss the centre. In other words, scientists would look at things peripherally while the mystic looks at the centre. If you take the analogy of a cartwheel, the axle is standing still all the time; only the wheel is turning. If the axle, the centre, were not there, there would be no way for the wheel to turn. But you need the spokes and the rim so the centre can be combined with the periphery, where you know the periphery and the centre. That is the secret of life, where your unfoldment occurs. Is the centre aware of the periphery or the movement of the wheel? It is aware of it because the wheel revolves around the centre. So, the centre must have a specific force, an energy that would be there. The trouble with people and all the emotional problems is that the wheels are buckled while they go through all the motions in life. The trouble with human beings is that the wheel is warped, so the cart does not run smoothly. What warped it was that the spokes were not well-balanced. It might have had a knock, which bent, giving less pressure to those warped spokes than the straight ones. So, we human beings are warped people. Of course, analysis alone is not good enough. What to do about it: as you all know, I have done over three thousand talks around the world and, as you know, those of you who have attended previous Satsangs, that all theory must be brought down to its practical level. Otherwise, all these philosophies, metaphysics, psychologies, humanities, and what you have are useless. THE BRAIN IS AN ORGAN, A VEHICLE FOR THE MIND What do we do when our wheel is warped? Where does the wheel reside? The wheel resides in the head. That is why everyone’s head is constantly whirling around; even if they are total teetotallers, their heads spin. So, science is of the head, but the axle is of the heart. So, join that axle to the wheel of the mind, and you bring out a balance, and then the mind can work at a far greater speed and efficiency. This brain is not the mind but only a vehicle for the mind. It is an organ, like other organs, such as hands, feet, etc., and they are organs. Because that mind is universal and because of our lack of development of the brain, our lack of bringing the universal mind to the conscious level, the mind is warped, and the external signs of the mind being warped are our daily actions, our feelings, our emotions, how we act and how we react to people, relationships, circumstances. Can anyone here say that their mind has been filled with positive thoughts for twenty-four hours of the day? No one can. Because as soon as you think of a positive thought, a negative thought arises. I hope my business will take in a thousand dollars today because I need to take it to the bank tomorrow morning. But at the same time, you think you will take those thousand dollars to the bank, or else the Bank Manager knows what to do to you. He will use his foot on the back side of your anatomy. WE BECOME BETTER HUMAN BEINGS BY COMBINING AWARENESS WITH THE UNFOLDMENT OF THE HEART So, we lack the balance between the heart and the brain box, the mind, and through our spiritual practices, we open up more and more of these billions of brain cells, and the mind can penetrate through more and more. And when more and more of the mind penetrates our conscious level of life, we develop a greater awareness. This very activation of the brain cells is the job of the mystic. But it can be scientifically combined. I work with a lot of scientists. I get called in as a consultant to various physicians and psychiatrists, and I get called in, especially to
Opening the Doors of Love: A Path to Joyful Living
Acceptance, Divinity, Eternal, Evolution, Force, God, Grace, Happiness, Heart, Joy, Karma, Laws, Light, Love, Mind, One-pointedness, Oneness, Purity, Religion, Samskaras, Soul, Spiritual Path, Spiritual Practices, Surrender, Unfoldment
EXPANSION OF THE HEART A human being’s heart is forever expanded. It does not require expansion. The core of the human personality, which we know as the heart, could be equated very well with the Spiritual Self of man, the pure entity that resides within man and can be called the heart. One aspect of that pure entity is the heart because its nature is to express, and what does it express? It expresses love. The heart is not the little physical organ but the core of the human personality, the individual soul if you wish to call it that; its very nature is to express love, and the heart is an indefinable quality or substance. Its expression, love, is also indescribable. Indefinable by the mind but experienceable by itself. When the heart is filled with love, it experiences its true nature.The heart does not experience its true nature because man’s actions and thoughts create so many blockages, which could be put into the package of samskaras. This package of samskaras, or these veils of our doings, the veils created by the seeds we have sewn, builds a wall around the heart, and it is this wall that prevents the heart from expressing itself. The only way the heart can express itself is through love. LOVE REQUIRES NO ANALYSIS We have spoken about love, combining it with other questions, and we have seen that love is a quality that requires no mental analysis. For as soon as one starts defining love, one is limiting love. The limitation occurs because we are defining with a limited instrument called the mind, and the mind, as far as we know it, or as far as we cognize it, or as far as we use it, is finite, while the quality of love is infinite. Because of the veils created around it, the heart cannot fully express love. Dante has said that the greater the man, the greater his love. So, stature, spiritual stature, or man’s evolutionary status can be judged by how much he loves. We are talking of real love, not that which is taken to be love, and what most people practice in the name of love is but a form of hypocrisy. Love knows no need. It exists by itself; it does not need support. Yet, to express itself, it has to find an object to which it could express itself, and in the expression of that love to an object, the heart expands more and more; and by “expansion”, we mean an unfoldment so that more and more love filters through. OPENING THE DOORS OF THE HEART That is the aim of our foundation, whereby the human being can reach the core of his personality, and by reaching the core of his personality, he starts opening the door. And in opening the door of the heart, more and more love filters through. It is like driving a car. The more you press the accelerator, the more the jets in the carburettor open and more and more petrol flows through, and the car goes faster. But if the carburettor is dirty, if the jets are not clean, no matter how much you press the accelerator, the petrol cannot flow through, and the car does not go smoothly. To make one’s life go smoothly like a car, we have to clean the carburettor. We clean the carburettor through our spiritual practices. Spiritual practices are effortless, but certain effects are created in their effortlessness, and the effects are sometimes a bit abrasive. It is only by rubbing, polishing, or scouring the pot or pan that it becomes clean. The finest iron or steel is always made in the hottest heat. In the beginning stages of our spiritual practices, we recognize the blockages and dirt in the carburettor and start cleaning it. If this cleaning is done without understanding, we could find it very challenging. Still, if proper knowledge is had or given, with the practices, then one’s attitude in the cleaning process changes, and then we start saying that this cleaning is a must. The car can never remain stationary. It is the vehicle’s nature or the car’s duty to be driven. It has to move, and without cleaning the carburettor, it is rusting away. When we do not accept these challenges, life starts stagnating, and whenever there is stagnation, it could rot and lead a person into greater and greater misery. When these challenges are brought to us, we could become so fortunate that all our faults and frailties are pictured before us when we look at ourselves squarely in the mirror through our spiritual practices. Then we ask, “Is this me?” And if this me is so incomplete and has so many faults and frailties, what will I do about me? And once we make that real decision, earnest, sincere decision, there has to be sincerity, because on the spiritual path, there is a lot of cleansing required, and it is only with sincerity that one can persevere. Sometimes, a person is seemingly happy. By seemingly, I mean that he bluffs himself, saying I am happy. He is in a state of euphoria. It happens many times, and it has been proven that if a person falls in the snow, say he breaks a leg, when the time of death approaches, he gets enveloped in such a lovely warmth that he does not want to get up. Like that, he passes away in this warmth. This false warmth. Many people who are unprepared to face their weaknesses live in this kind of false warmth. But if only this person who has fallen in the snow would get up and walk around a bit or crawl around and get the blood circulating, he would be alive. TO THE PERFECT, EVERYTHING IS PERFECT To recap, the nature of the inner core of man’s personality is love, and love is forever trying to find expression. No single man or woman in this