WHAT ARE YOUR NEEDS? GOD NEVER CONTROLS MAN’S MIND, YOU CONTROL GOD God never controls man’s mind because what you regard as God is a neutral bio-chemic energy. It could be definable in scientific terms, but at its subtlest level, it is indefinable. So, God never controls man’s mind. You own God by your perceptions of what you regard to be God. In some religions, you will find someone saying God has six arms, holding a lotus there and a bell there and something else on the other hand, and what have you. Other religions picture him differently. So, by your conception, you are conceptualising God according to your belief pattern. You are controlling your conceptions and conceptualisations. God is not. Whatever belief pattern your mind is fettered into, that belief pattern would be your reality. How accurate is your reality? You would believe Vishnu with six arms. You might think someone is hanging on the cross. You might think someone sits on a throne with a long beard and a dozen bookkeepers. “Ahh, Laura, you did this today. Doris, you did that today.” And then St. Peter, of course, up there would be admitting you at the gates. Your mind is working and functioning as a computer all the time. Your total metabolic rate, breathing rate, and everything happening to you is computerised by a mechanism. So, do you belong to yourself, or do you belong to the computer? The difference lies in the differentiation between what you are and what you are not, and when you discover what you are not, you find yourself knotted up, and these knots that you are involved in cause all the problems of your life. So, in this process of meditation and spiritual practices, we are only trying to unknot the knots. Have no knot and be not. When you believe yourself to be, you are not because your mind’s belief system is causing the knots! So, where are you when you are not there without the knots – K N O T S? You are somewhere far beyond your belief system. BE UNCONVENTIONAL WITHIN YOURSELF The more you believe in your belief system, the more knotted you are up because your belief system becomes dogmatic. Your belief system governs your life, and why should your life be governed? Everything around you, your entire environment, is governed, and you cease to exist. You have to pay these taxes. You have to pay the road bills. You have to pay for car licenses. You have to pay this, this, this and whatever. What independence do you have? No independence. You are dependent upon convention. Living in this world, we have to follow these conventions for the stability of society. But try something else. Be unconventional within yourself. To be unconventional within yourself, you are obeying the laws within yourself, the law which is you and yet not governed by you. That gives you a sense of independence. That gives you freedom. Freedom is a word very much allied to the kingdom. The king is free, and he has a kingdom. You are the king, and you have freedom from specific processes of dogmatism. You are free from it. When you are free from all these dogmas, you will find that you live, not just exist. When you start living, you will automatically and very spontaneously develop a feeling of life. Life is to be felt. When you feel like it, you will feel that dynamism. You become dynamic, and you can say, “I am Joe. I am Jack. I am Jean. I am Gina. I am this one and that. I am me! I am independent, and no power or force in this world will rob me of my independence!” Your fear of losing dependence is the only thing that robs you of your independence. You fear losing dependence because you are always reliant on others and those that are around you. You depend upon your wife, husband, children, friends, and whoever. And that very fear is a thing that gnaws at your Heart. Fear is nothing else but that cancerous complex within you that bites you, that kills you from the inside – fear that is killing you. That is destroying your independence. Yet, when you could develop the attitude that I am free – I am free – I am me. I am Gina. I am Laura. I am Jack, John, Dad. When you develop that feeling, you will be free of fear. LOVE FOR THE SAKE OF LOVING So, what is ruling your life at this moment? Not freedom, but fear. Every moment you step forward, you are fearing and fearing and fearing. “Oh, this will go wrong tomorrow. That will go wrong the next day. I come home, and my wife will have a nasty face because, you know, she burnt my toast in the morning, and I felt a bit angry, and I guess I will have to face up to that.” All kinds of things. Simple things. Simple things which contain no meaning at all! Your fear is meaningless because it could be discarded and dispensed quickly. I love Gina. I love Jerry. I love Doris. I love this sweetie pie here. OK. But within me, there will be a fear. Does Gina love me, or am I wasting my time? Or Jerry? Sweetie pie? Doris? Laura? So, mixed in that love that I have for them is the quality of fear, which breeds anxiety because fear and anxiety are blood relations. But if I should say to myself, I love Gina. I love Jerry. I know these beauty bums. I love Doris. I love her there and all of you. OK. I will say to myself that whether I am loved or not loved, I do not care, for I love for the sake of loving and not for the reward thereof. And when I have that thought in my mind, in my Heart, when
Raja Yoga: Modern Light on Ancient Truths
Ancient Sages, Awareness, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Divinity, Duality, Effort, Eternal, Force, Freedom, God, Grace, Guru, Harmony, Heart, I am That I am, I and my Father are one, Integration, Joy, Krishna, Love, Meditation, Mind, Oneness, Purity, Self, Self-Realization, Separation, Spirit, Spiritual, The Absolute, The Abstract, Unity, Universe, Yoga
RAJA YOGA PART 2 ASANAS: YOGA POSTURES You will find that Yama and Niyama encompass all the ethical and moral precepts of living a good life. In living a good life, one will see that automatically; one draws upon oneself that indefinable thing called Grace. In drawing Grace to us, our lives do become harmonious. We find a greater integration within ourselves. There are other principles involved in enhancing the good life. The body has to be looked after. So, we reach the third stage, or the third limb of Raja Yoga, which is called Asana. As you know, Asana is the basic thing related to Hatha Yoga. Why is Hatha Yoga necessary in a person’s life? For example, we might have a person who is deformed and cannot practice these practices. Then for that person there is no hope lost that he must undergo these various Yogic exercises. But in India then, when Patanjali started forcing his Raja Yoga, they started aspirants off from a very young age. When you were eight or ten, you went to the Ashram, where you underwent various exercises. Hatha Yoga, which comprises Asanas, gives the body a particular form of exercise. It is not only the body that one concentrates on so much. However, it benefits the body, but ancient Physiologists have found that the outer body manifests all the discrepancies in the inner body, the organic Self. So, where Hatha Yoga differs from ordinary gymnastics: in ordinary gymnastics, we exercise the body’s muscles, while in Asanas, we exercise the body’s internal organs. We exercise or massage or stimulate the liver, the digestive functions, and everything that has to do with that which is inside the skin of our body. Keeping the body trim helps in the meditation process. The purpose of Hatha Yoga, by keeping the body in trim, is to seek union with that which is even deeper within ourselves, the spiritual body. Meditation starts from inside you, and the internal Self is brought to the external Self, while in Hatha Yoga, you begin with the external and try to reach the internal. Many people practice Asanas just to keep fit. That helps keep a person fit, but that is not the sole purpose of Yogic Asanas. The sole purpose is to form a co-ordination between body, mind, and spirit. If a person does these Asanas mechanically, then his only benefit would be to the body and the organism, the organic Self of the body. But, while doing these various Asanas, if his mind is tuned totally in the Asanas, then coordination comes about between body and mind. You would find that all these Yogic Asanas are never really strenuous. They take you from very simple Asanas to more difficult ones. With practice, the difficult Asanas also become very simple. So, this becomes such a natural flow in the exercise of the body that the mind is tuned with the body, the mind is infused in the body, and every cell of the body awakens to the thought in the mind. When a person does Asanas and the mind is tuned to every cell of the body, the mind must contain good, uplifting thoughts. How does the mind have good, uplifting thoughts? Because the person has practiced Yama and Niyama by living a good life, his mind naturally tends toward the higher Self. So here, the mental forces now attuned to the higher Self infuse themselves with every cell of one’s physical body. When that attunement of mind and body occurs through these Yogic Asanas, it leaves the spirit free. It frees the spirit from the bondage of the mind and body, and when the spirit is free, it shines forth. So, a second infusion takes place. The mind is infused in the body, and now the spirit, being free, also fuses itself in the body, and here, while you are doing your round of Asanas, you are acting there with mind, body, and spirit as a totality. That is the purpose of Asanas, and not only for exercise or to lose weight. Asanas is a science on its own. Hatha Yoga is not only Asana itself but a total purification and cleansing of the body, which, at its highest limits, would not be suitable for our present society. There are specific exercises where, for example, a string is put up from one nostril and out the other nostril, and we have what is called “Noli” – cleansing. You are also taught to have an enema without using an enema, where you go into the river, and through the anus, you drop water into the system and clean your entire bowels. This comes in the higher form of Hatha Yoga. We do not need that. There are other exercises where the tongue is elongated, and this little piece of skin keeps the tongue to the floor of the mouth. Then, slowly, slowly, that little skin is cut away. That little skin is cut away so the tongue can be more and more elongated. It is a process that takes years. The purpose of doing this is to acquire the ability to roll up the tongue and block the entire throat with your tongue. And by taking in a breath, you preserve the subtle essence of the breath so that you can live without breathing. This is the secret behind what we hear some of the Yogis do. They get buried underground for forty days, and they come out alive. This is how it is done. PRANAYAMA: BREATHING TECHNIQUES We do not need these things for God-realisation. These things are there for people of certain kinds of temperament. So, Patanjali’s Yoga caters to every temperament; that is what I am trying to say. To do the third stage, one studies the fourth stage, which is Pranayama. Pranayama is to bring the body into a particular rhythm. Many of you do the basic Pranayama exercise, which has a rhythm, and ancient Yogis
Raja Yoga: The Royal Path to Divine Union
Acceptance, Attachment, Bible, Brahman, Buddha, Christ, Devotion, Divine, Divinity, Effort, Ego, Evolve, God, Incarnation, Joy, Karma, Krishna, Light, Love, Meditation, Mind, Non-Attachment, Oneness, Path, Peace, Purity, Relationships, Religion, Self, Self-Realization, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Surrender, The Abstract, Unity, Yoga
RAJA YOGA PART 1 RAJA YOGA: THE ROYAL PATH TO DIVINE UNION We are all mechanics. We are the mechanics of our lives. We can tighten screws and loosen them, and of course, the most essential screws to be tightened are somewhere up there. As you would know, Raja means royal, so Raja Yoga is the Royal Yoga, the Royal Path to Divine Union, where the individual self merges with the Universal Self, where man finds union with God. That is Yoga. In the world today, the word “Yoga” is misunderstood. It has only been understood in the term all those fancy poses, all the Asanas, as they are known. Although Asanas have great value, they do not constitute the entirety of Raja Yoga. It is a part of Raja Yoga, known as Hatha Yoga. Hatha means “To be very adamant on one particular aspect,” that is Hatha. So, that is a section of Raja Yoga. Many teachers teach Raja Yoga, but only a particular aspect they tell you about meditation. Now, there are various forms of meditation. Some teachers tell you to meditate for so many minutes in the morning and so many in the evening, and Bob’s my uncle. That is not true. If you meditate so many minutes in the morning and so many minutes at night and everything comes right, it is not true. It is a fallacy, a gimmick given to a susceptible, gullible public who wants everything instantly – instant coffee, pudding, and self-realization. The path of yoga is not as simple as it seems. As Vivekananda has said, yoga is the path of the heroes and warriors. There has to be determination. Krishna has said, “There are few types of people that want to reach me: the one that is in distress, the one that wants worldly gain, the one that is a seeker and, last but not least, the one that has real spiritual knowledge and wants to remain forever in touch with his Maker. He wants to be at home always and not stray away.” Raja Yoga, as we said, is the Royal Path to that union. Why is it called the Royal Path? Raja Yoga combines all the other yogas: Karma Yoga, which is about right action and correct thinking, and Jnana Yoga, which is about intellectual analysis and seeking answers. It combines Bhakti Yoga, devotion, surrender, and love yoga. Wherever one starts from, according to one’s temperament, they all finally merge into one, the royal or the Raja yoga. Some people say that there are eight steps in Raja Yoga. They are not to be regarded as steps, but they are limbs. Raja Yoga by Patanjali was called Astanga Yoga. Asta means eight; anga means limbs – the eight limbs of yoga. Let us examine the eight limbs of yoga as far as we can, as time allows. Meditation is fine, but if meditation is not backed up with the first two limbs, Yama and Niyama, then meditation can be of some value; it can give you some form of relaxation of mind and body, but it is not enough to lead you to enlightenment, or to the oneness that we all seek. YAMAS HAS FIVE ASPECTS TO IT – AHIMSA, SATYA, ASTAYA, BRAHMACHARYA & APARIGRAHA AHIMSA: NON-VIOLENCE Yama has five aspects; the first is Ahimsa, which means non-violence. How shall we define non-violence? We have spoken about non-killing, and we covered a bit of ground there. To be non-violent does not only mean avoiding the killing of living beings or animate things, but non-violence also means a non-aggression upon ourselves and those around us. Having an animal nature, we become aggressive, perhaps not in acts but in words and thoughts. So here, one has to make a very conscious effort to curb one’s aggressive thoughts and one’s aggressive words. A lovely Chinese proverb says that when you become angry and want to say some angry words, turn your tongue around in your mouth nine times. Beautiful psychology because by the time you have turned and twisted your tongue in your mouth nine times, your anger will have disappeared, and you will not utter those words. You will not be aggressive because you can kill with words, and we know how vitriolic some people can become by uttering words of an aggressive nature. We can do so much harm to a person’s entire life. If we are aggressive with a stick, that wound will heal in a few weeks or a month or two, but if we leave a scar on a person’s mind, that scar can remain for a lifetime. We find parents, for example, in the ill-treatment or not proper treatment, or not proper upbringing of the children, leave an indelible scar for which the child, when grown-up, suffers and suffers, and suffers. That is one of those in distress that wants to find a union. SATYA: TRUTHFULNESS After Ahimsa, that has to be practiced consciously, we have Satya. Satya means truthfulness. Truthfulness does not only imply uttering words of truth but acting truthfully. We know how fragmented the human being is. His mind will think of one thing, his mouth will say another, and he will do a third thing. That is being untruthful to oneself. To be untruthful to oneself means you say one thing, think another, and do yet another thing. So, you are pulled to pieces by yourself. If we can consciously combine words, thoughts, and deeds, then we are being truthful to ourselves, and when we are truthful to ourselves, we can be honest with others. One of the qualities of truthfulness is sincerity because a sincere person can never be untruthful. Because of that sincerity within him, every act of his, every word of his, every thought of his will always act with the flow of nature and never against nature. We become truthful and sincere when we act with nature’s flow, which we must consciously do. That is the
The Eternal Now: Finding Divinity in the Present Moment
THE ETERNAL NOW I only live in the moment. There is no past, and there is no future. People must realize this: there is only the present. Because most people live in the past, they project the past into the future, and they forget the present. What is more important to you? The past is gone, and the future might never come, but to live in the present. Where are you now? Ask yourself this question? You are in the present, and the present is the most critical moment to be considered. I am now in the presence of our family, and I am living here with my family and my Guru in our presence. This is the present. If you realize this fact, you will live in the presence. What is that presence that you live in? The presence of Divinity guides your present moment and makes you live in the present, which is an excellent present given to you by Divinity. Divinity is not in the past or the future, but the present is now, and Divinity is here now. And when that realization dawns on you, you will find yourself to be a much, much better person. That is for sure. THE PAST IS PAST, AND THE FUTURE IS UNKNOWN When you live in the past, you are involved in your worries: “Oh, I have done this, and I have done that, and I have done that.” You mull over it, and you lose the moment of the presence, and then after that, you project it into the future. “I am going to a party next week,” you tell yourself. The party is only next week on Saturday but from now on you are thinking about what kind of dress you should wear and you will wear this, and you will wear that, and you will go shopping to look so beautiful. But everyone is doing that, and you will be surprised there will be five women there, for example, who will have the same kind of dress. So where are you? Instead, be undressed and bare yourself totally to Divinity. When you bear yourself, your mind, heart, and soul, to Divinity, you are living life; otherwise, it is just stupidity. You are stupefied because you do not recognize the presence of life. This is the moment you are living in. Look around you. Look around the room. What have you noticed in the room? What is your awareness of that Divine essence? The essence is here and now within your hearts. So that is where you belong. Nowhere else, nowhere else. The past is past; the future is unknown. But this is here; you live in this present moment and enjoy this present moment, for that very enjoyment of the present moment is to recognize the Divine essence within you, so why beat around the bush and go from here to there, to there, turning around and round in the past and the future when you can just go to the garden and capture the present. OBSERVE THE THORNS OF LIFE, BUT LET YOUR ATTENTION BE ON THE BEAUTY OF THE ROSE A beautiful rose is growing in the garden, but you beat around the bush of life and ignore the beauty of that beautiful rose. Why can you not be one with that rose? Be one with the rose, and there will be thorns; accept it because that is life. But where is your concentration? Where is your mind on the thorns or on the beauty of that lovely rose? That is the idea of life. That is the actual living of life. Observe the thorns; why not? But the thorns will not prick me if my life is lived well. Because my attention will not be on the thorns, my attention will be on the beauty of the rose. Look at life in this way and observe the beauty of the rose and not the pricking of the thorns. There again, we come to the subject of mental attitude. Where is your attention? Think about that on the thorns or the rose. … Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang CAN 1987 – 04
Beyond the Mind: Embracing the Peace of the Heart
TRUE LOVE IS A GIVING When you say yearning for love, the whole perception is wrong. Love is not yearning because when you yearn for love, you seek a particular possession you want. Love is not wanting; love is giving, so yearning cannot exist. True love can never be associated with yearning, and when that concept disappears of yearning for love, then you will experience true love. True love does not want anything. True love is not wanting; true love is giving. So where is the yearning? Yearning is necessary primarily. Without yearning, these are the stages one passes through to find true love. You still have to yearn first before you can earn. Take the Y away. You yearn for true love, and then the yearning stops. That is the time you earn the actual value of love. To repeat, love is not wanting, never. Love is giving; you give to yourself because you cannot help it. You are giving, giving, giving. DIVINITY NEVER ANALYSES; IT IS JUST THERE IN BEING, GIVING, GIVING, GIVING My Pushpanee loves me not because she yearns but because she just gives of her heart to my heart in total purity. That is the secret; by that, you will pass and find peace beyond understanding. The mind creates understanding. But we do not want to interfere with the mind; it is shit. Love does not come from the mind at all. The mind is too analytical; we analyze things and say, “Ah, this is nice, and that is not nice, or this is fine and not fine and not fine.” But the heart does not analyze. The heart just gives. I love you all, but not with my mind; I love you all with a heart that does not analyze anything. You might be the greatest sinner in the world, but I do not care a damn; the only thing I know is that I love you without any analysis. That is the secret of becoming closer and closer to that Divinity. Divinity does not analyze. Divinity is just but an energy. What do we, as little humans, have to do? I do not belong to this planet; I am from somewhere else. Love knows no analysis. Divinity never analyses; it is just there in being. It is just there always, giving, giving, and giving. BE REGULAR IN YOUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND YOU WILL FIND THE PEACE THAT PASSETH ALL UNDERSTANDING WITHIN YOURSELF That is the way you find the peace that goes beyond all understanding. Understanding is a quality of the mind, but peace is a quality of the heart. The mind will never give you any peace because the mind is filled with all kinds of complexities and conflicts. But when you go inside, there is peace that surpasses all understanding. So, what do we mean by understanding? It is analytical. You understand this, or you know that, or you understand whatever. Peace does not need that. Peace needs no understanding. Therefore, to repeat, we say the peace that passeth all understanding and that peace is within you. It is there. You are born from peace; you must live in peace and leave this world in peace. Let me tell you another secret of life: that peace has nothing to do with understanding – nothing at all. As I said before, understanding is analytical; you try to analyze and work out your computerized mathematical problems, which is not essential. That peace is felt here within, and your Spiritual Practices gain it. Be regular, and you will find that peace. When you find that peace, you will feel so much at ease. That is what you need. PEACE IS GREATER THAN UNDERSTANDING What is understanding? You read Schopenhauer, Spencer, and Kant and all those bullshitters that try to analyze and analyze and analyze. But what peace have they found, nothing? I have studied their lives, and they were the most disturbed people in the world. I do not know if I told you that while traveling around, I might have talked about this in some lecture, but I cannot remember anything. For me, the moment is the moment, and nothing else is. Going through this village, I met this village potter. He was making clay pots, which are better than all your aluminum, and food cooked in those clay pots is far, far tastier; I can assure you that. I know I talk of experience. So, I saw this village Potter turning out his clay pots, and I sat down there watching him, feeling the beautiful serenity. He did not know at all, had no education, and was just an ordinary little Potter, but his very presence emanated that deep peace, although he had no understanding of all the Scriptures or anything. He was very poor, and we had one chapati together; chapati is an Indian bread, and I sat there for three days with him. He had a little hut to live in. I slept on the floor; I did not mind just being in his presence. I asked him to teach me something, and he replied, “I know nothing.” Yet he had everything, which was a peace that passed all understanding, and in that peace, I found so much knowledge in his peace. Because through the mercy of our Lord, I absorbed some of his peace, and you are absorbing my peace. So, what is more extraordinary, ask yourself? Peace is more significant than understanding. TO FIND PEACE, YOU HAVE TO GO BEYOND REASON Of course, we need proper understanding in today’s modern world because our minds have become very analytical, and we want to know the reason for everything. I will tell you something else that might be surprising: do not be reasonable; become non-reasonable, which means without reason, non-reasonable where all the different kinds of understandings gained are nullified and then going beyond the mind that keeps on reasoning and reasoning. Here, reasoning disappears, and then you reach
The Flow of Love: Awakening to the Living God
SPIRITUAL PRACTICES ARE AIMED AT BRINGING LOVE TO FLOW Can real love be blocked? If I love someone and that someone leaves the mortal frame or for any other thing, should I regard that flow within me to be blocked? That love can never be blocked if it is genuine and not just an emotional attachment. People do not seem to understand what love is all about because people are self-centered. They are forever thinking, what can I gain out of it? How much will they love me? Or how much will they not love me? That becomes the predominant thought in man’s mind. But the idea should be this, “How much do I love? And what is the quality of my love?” You could never ask what the quantity of my love is because love knows in no amount. But in the various facets of life and according to man’s evolution, man’s awareness of love categorizes itself into quantities as we perceive it. In reality, there is no quantity of love. Language is so limited, but for expression, we would say that love depends on our awareness. The greater the understanding we have attained through spiritual practices, the greater the love. What is the measurement of man? How do you measure the greatness of a man? How many million is he in the bank? Or by whatever possessions or external show, facade, that there is? That does not judge the greatness of man. Hitler achieved world fame, did he not? He had millions of followers. But was he a great man taking the lives of millions of people? Bloodshed was an expression of hatred and personal aggrandizement to achieve his ends. I tell you this: we are all Hitlers in miniature because we all want to achieve our ends! This comes about because of a lack of awareness, and spiritual practices aim to bring greater clarity and expansion to awareness so that that indefinable quality, called love, can flow through. Like the usual analogy, I use the carburetor in the motor car. The more you open the carburetor, the greater the amount of petrol will flow through. Similarly, when our awareness expands, a greater love flows through, and what does that flow through? What is that love? That love is none else but Divinity, and only our thought processes, self-centeredness, and attachments that color the love that is forever flowing through. It is like a crystal. You put a red flower behind a crystal, which will seem red. You put a blue flower behind the crystal, and the crystal will appear blue. So, our spiritual practices are a cleansing process of the mind so that real love can flow through, and by understanding the philosophy behind it, we also understand one thing: that unless I do something about myself, I block the love from flowing through – for love is forever there. Love is not only within but without. WE WANT LIVING GODS If I love you, what am I loving? I am not loving you as a person but loving the Divinity within you. So, if love is God, it can only communicate with God, and you are just the exterior frame. Therefore, love knows no difference. If someone does you wrong and you have the strength to love that person just as much, then you have some idea of love. Someone might besmirch you. Someone might do anything to you. As Christ would say, “Love thine enemies, even.” It is easy to love a friend. Learn to love thine enemy. That is the mark of greatness; that is the mark of truth. That is the mark of portraying and living the living God. We do not want dead gods. We want living gods. WHEN YOU TRULY LOVE, THE OBJECT OF YOUR LOVE IS LOVE When a person passes away or a person is away, what is away? Love is not away! Only the body is away. The outer frame is away. But love is forever there, and love knows no separation. If one’s dear one dies, it does not mean the dear one has perished. That Spirit within man is immortal, and if something is infinite, how can it pass away? It is there everywhere. So, when you love someone, you bring that Divinity within you to oneness with the Divinity within the object of your love. What is the object of your love? It is not the person. The object of your love is love! The object of God can only be God, and how can there be two Gods? Therefore, that within you is at one-ment with that within me. When you realize this, you become that love. There is a difference between understanding and realization. You can understand the mind, an intellectual concept. But a realization is assimilation. It permeates every pore, every cell of your body. So, when you realize this, you become that love. You do not need to love anymore; you have become that love. Then you are that love. Then, if anyone harms you with distortions, malice, or whatever, it does not hurt you, and you will keep on loving because that is your nature. You have become that. So, the hurt we suffer when we lose someone is the hurt not of love, but the hurt of the mind, for the mind is a patterned mind, a conditioned mind, an expecting mind, the mind that has expected so much or so little or whatever from the object, from the person. But if there is no expectation, love could never bring about suffering, for love itself is an offering. When you offer yourself your inner being, which is love, you have no right to expect any return! If you love, you love, or you do not love. Otherwise, you think you love. Many believe that they believe, and many people feel they love, which is not the spiritual path. THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING But
Duty as an Act of Love: The Path to Effortless Action
EVOLUTION AND ITS OPPOSITE INVOLUTION There is no difference between the individual ego and individuality because it is the individuality that creates the ego, which in turn creates individuality. One’s ego or individuality is unique because each soul or mind has undergone different experiences throughout evolution. However, one must know that there are specific laws involved in evolution. There is a path that one has to follow, but what one encounters on the path is unique to that person. One might have different kinds of experiences, while another could have different kinds of experiences, yet they are all on the same path, on the path of evolution or unfoldment. With evolution, there is one factor that is always forgotten, and that factor is involution. Evolution is on the relative level, so it has to have its opposite, involution. So, as a person evolves, there comes a time when he is involved, and that involution is the period of rest for the journeying soul. In that period, an excellent evaluation occurs whereby it starts growing again and becoming stronger and stronger, for evolution is always working in a spiral fashion. In his evolutionary process, a person sometimes reaches a plateau, and that plateau means that the person is now going through a period of involution. It is like the tree existing in an involved state in the form of the seed, and when the seed bursts, it is in the form of an evolved state; it is growing into a tree. Yet the entirety of the tree is existent in the seed. When the seed bursts into the ground, the planter can do nothing about it. The planter cannot make the seed burst in the ground to grow. An explosion occurs in that seed so that it might succeed. This very process of explosion in the involution state is necessary for you to evolve because there would be no evolution if there were no involution. So, the journey through the tree’s life is to become the seed again. That means that after evolving into the tree, it produces itself in seed form again, where the entire tree’s essence is self-contained in that seed and comes to a state of stillness. So, in the process of evolution, one tries to reach the seed that will never explode again. When the finality has been reached, when man has reached the totality of evolution, when man has become one with the universe, and the entire universe is encapsulated in that seed, then rebirth for evolution is not required. LET DUTY BECOME A LABOUR OF LOVE This applies so simply to the duties of life. What do we mean by duty? Firstly, is duty a chore that one has to do? A mother has to send off her children to school in the morning. She might feel like sleeping late, but she has to send her children to school, so she reluctantly makes an effort. And many mothers get up in the morning shouting, “Johnny, go brush your teeth, go wash your face. Go do this, go do that.” Because it is a duty, it becomes a stress; it becomes a strain upon the mother to do that, yet the mother loves the child. But she loves the child at her convenience, which is not love. But if the mother wakes up in the morning just because she loves the child and wants to send the child to school, not as a chore, then duty ceases. We do many things at the office or the factory, for example, as a duty to our boss. We do our best, but there is no love involved in that duty; it is just work, and that is why work is something people do not like. In the lives of many people who go to work, there is not a single day where they do not think, “Oh, when is the weekend coming so I do not have to work.” That is a performance of duty, but real duty is where one does a thing so spontaneously that work does not seem to work anymore. This has now been incorporated into modern education systems, which is a perfect thing. I am deeply interested in various educational methods where the teaching becomes a play for the child. Those of you who are teachers know about this. So the “irk” is taken out of “work.” And then what is left is the “w”, which stands for wonderful wonderment. For what is more significant than wonderment? You go outside and wonder how these beautiful flowers and plants grow the breeze, and all the beauties of life. And all the most incredible things in life are supposed to be free. In these modern times, nothing is free. You even pay for the air you breathe in taxes. DUTY AS AN ACT OF LOVE So, there are times when one has to be dutiful and force oneself to preserve stability in the home and society. But how do you take the boredom out of duty? We can only stop pushing ourselves to do the duty and do it spontaneously by merging ourselves in the act to be performed. This mergence occurs when an identification can come about between the actor and the action. When the actor joins himself in the action or becomes the action, no duty is left at all. For you are then acting for the sake of acting. For this mergence to take place, it requires spiritual stamina or the expression of the Spirit. The Spirit is contained within the action itself, and the same Spirit is within yourself. The only difference is that the Spirit within yourself manifests in the act. It finds expression in the act, which is one of humanity’s greatest gifts, for it is our nature forever to express ourselves in whatever way we are capable. Love is always trying to burst out. A person can never feel well if he cannot love, and a person
You Are the Trinity: The Oneness of Body, Mind, and Spirit
GRASP THE ESSENCE, THEN DIGEST, ASSIMILATE AND PRACTISE When you read good books, like the Holy Scriptures, you just need to understand the meaning, the essence of words and that very essence you formulate in your own words. In Sanskrit, we have three words meaning: listen, ponder and practise. That can only come about if you grasp the essence of what is said and interpret it according to your understanding of it, and that is how your understanding will grow. But just by using words and words and words, they could be parrot-like. Yet, we need those words for inspiration. It could inspire us. But of course, the main thing is to get the gist of the essence and digest the essence, and after digestion, the essence should be assimilated. Only when incorporated, could it become part and parcel of practical living. THE DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF MAN ARE BUT ONE CONTINUUM Eastern philosophies have divided things up, and people, philosophers especially, try to analyse and break things up into pieces. They have about five sheaths in the realm of occultism, which we in some way agree with and in some way we do not agree with. You will find this in theosophy and amongst the Rosicrucians, and it is unnecessary for man’s evolution. In our philosophy, this has been significantly simplified; we say that there are three aspects to man: the physical body, the subtle body, which is the mental body and the Spiritual Self. It is much easier than breaking it up into all these various things because they are of no help, and they do not explain anything. TO EVOLVE, WE NEED A PHYSICAL BODY The subtle body, or the mental body, is of a subtler substance than the physical body, so when we pass over, it goes back and exists in the subtle sphere, and there, it will not evolve at all. It evaluates its progress since its very beginning, since the primal sub-atomic particle, up to that stage it has reached, and that evaluation might take two years, five years, ten years, five hundred years, a thousand years. And when it finds the suitable medium, it will be born through that medium of two people. I have said that our parents do not choose us, but we prefer our parents. One could never evolve without having a physical body because Divinity is forever like a flower expressing itself, and it has to have a concrete vehicle like the body to evolve. Everything is but a continuum from the grosser to the subtle to the subtlest sphere, and that is what evolution is all about. In the process, one goes to finer and finer levels, and philosophers have divided these levels of the subtle body up in these various phrases, but it is not necessary. There is one significant danger: it verges on occultism, and you can be stuck at a certain level of the mental Self and remain there because too much emphasis is on it. YOU ARE THE TRINITY We use the words physical, mental and spiritual in the context of just explanation. Otherwise, there is no such thing as it is one wholeness. You do not own the physical Self; you are the physical Self. You do not own the mental body; you are the mental body. You do not own the Spiritual Self; you are the Spiritual Self. These three aspects are but one interpenetrating each other: the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are all there, you. They are not apart from you. They are you. They are not only a part of you, but it is the wholeness that is you, inseparable. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are but three aspects of the same. THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT IS BUT ONE When we speak of the Holy Spirit, we speak of it as eternal, as an excellent energy which is always there, and the Holy Spirit permeates the Father and is the Father. The Father permeates the Son and is the Son. There could be no separation between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. For the Father, too, is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and we had discussed before that the Father represents the entirety, and the Holy Spirit is one with Him, and the Son is one with the Father. And being one with the Father, the Son is automatically one with the Holy Spirit. So, these three aspects are but one, but we seem to divide it or compartmentalise it for definition. It is but one. The human mind cannot abstract the Holy Spirit, but the Son and the Father can be. This leads us to deeper devotion and more profound prayer, for all prayer can never go to the abstract. In meditation, you can, but prayer has to go to something concrete that can be visualised. For in sending forth your thoughts in prayer, there has to be an object to which it is transmitted. These things are essential. YOU ARE INFINITE, AND THE MIND CAN NOT COMPREHEND THE INFINITE Through meditation and spiritual practices, prayers, one starts realising that there is no separation. These boundaries that are created are created only by man. They say oh, that man’s mind, body, spirit, or whatever. These are boundaries created only by the thinking processes of the mind, and philosophers have the habit of trying to break up things to prove points rationally. And yet that which is beyond oneself, one’s authentic Self, is beyond all rationalisations. The finite mind could never comprehend the infinite, and you are infinite. How many people can say, “I understand myself,” for understanding requires a mental process? It requires thinking when your real Self is beyond thought. The fragrance does not analyse the flower, nor does the flower analyse the fragrance. DO NOT TAKE NOTICE OF PSYCHIC PHENOMENA It is said that people speak in many tongues. It has been
The Past and the Present: A Journey of Awareness
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HOW TO TREAT THE PAST? When we say let the past be the past, it contains a very great truth. It means forgetting because by remembering the past, you will be living the past in your mind, and by stirring up those old memories, you will only suffer in the present. The suffering would be in the present because you always remember the past. Some incidents have happened in your lifetime, and if you keep on thinking about it, that memory is sure to bring about guilt in your mind and the most significant disease in the world today is not heart disease and neither cancer but a sense of guilt. Why am I feeling guilty at the present moment because of something happening in the past when the past is not here anymore? To get rid of guilt while forgetting the past, not remembering the past, we analyse the sense of guilt. But as soon as you think of examining the guilt, the past reappears again on the screen of your mind. Remember the word “analyse” and not “live” in the past when we examine the past. The analysis is different than remembering the past, for you know well that the greatest gift God could give to a man is the ability to be able to forget. If we had to remember everything that has happened in the past, life would become miserable. So, we must discriminate between rearing and analysing the past. In analysis, you objectify the past, while in remembering, in the past, you subjectify it. You re-live the past. In analysis, you observe what has happened in the past, and you try to analyse what were the causes of it. Perhaps you are not to blame for your actions. You might have been in a particular mental turmoil. There might have been circumstances that surrounded you at that time that forced you to do the action you did. You know the lovely story by Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables,” where Jean Valjean was forced into the circumstances; seeing his children starving, he went to steal a loaf of bread for which he suffered a lot. Did the character in Victor Hugo’s book do something wrong? Which was the lesser or greater evil? Which was darkness, and which was light? Should he allow his children to die of starvation, or was it better for him to steal a loaf of bread for them and not for himself? THE SPIRIT WITHIN YOU IS FOREVER DIVINE AND FOREVER GOOD In life, one has to choose between two evils, and we choose the lesser evil. If that produces guilt in your mind, then you feel guilty: why did I do this? What caused me to do this? What was the mental chemistry then that forced me to do this? Because inwardly, every person has that goodness and underlying the goodness, there is also darkness. You know the old saying, “Nobody is so good that there is no little bad, and no one is so bad that he has no good in him.” So, remembering the past is not the answer. That leads to greater misery, and it leads to guilt. But analysis of the past means we are trying to understand the past. We try to understand the motivation that made us perform such an action, and if you find that you are forced into certain circumstances, which ninety-nine percent of all actions would prove, then you do not need to feel guilty about it. I was invited to one of the biggest prisons near Chicago to give a talk last year. We have a prison programme in America to rehabilitate prisoners – because a prison is not where you punish someone. A prison is a place where you rehabilitate someone. So, we introduced this program in this Chicago prison. I believe it to be one of the largest in America, and of course, from there, it is spreading to various other States. I had to give a talk there, so I told those prisoners there, “You are in prison, why are you in prison? You might have been a rapist. You might have murdered someone. You might have stolen. You might have done one of so many things. Why did you do it? It could have been due to many reasons. Firstly, the force of circumstance. Secondly, through an imbalanced mind, where at that time you could not discriminate between right and wrong, and all your actions were regarded to be anti-social because of the social norms society has put upon us. But does that make you a bad person? You are judged by society to be bad, but are you terrible? No. The Spirit within you is forever Divine and forever good. So do not think of the actions you have done in the past. A better thing to do is to repent, and repentance itself has analysis built into it, to try to find the cause, and when you find the cause, the guilt will disappear.” IN THE EYES OF DIVINITY, WE ARE ALL EQUAL Sometimes, it is a fallacy to say that we can learn from the past to build a future. Yes, you can. But it will become fallacious if you just remember the past. Then, you cannot build upon it. The secret is how to get out of the darkness and into the light of life; how does one reconcile this issue? Firstly, by analysis. Secondly, with the analysis, you come to the cause of things and then ask, “Was I forced into this? What was my mental condition?” I personally would love a rapist. I love a murderer. I love everyone. The saint or the sinner. For who is a sinner? You are not a sinner. You never have been a sinner. Only society brands you to be a sinner. But are you a sinner in the eyes of God? Do you think God’s Grace would fall equally upon those considered flawed and
Thoughts and Meditation: Observing Thoughts and Discovering the Self
Ancient Sages, Brahman, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Devotion, Eternal, Eternity, Evolution, Force, God, Harmony, Impressions, Joy, Kingdom of Heaven within, Krishna, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Mantra, Meditation, Mind, Peace, Purity, Relative World, Samskaras, Self, Separation, Soul, Spirit, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, Universal, Universe
THE IMPERSONAL VERSUS THE PERSONAL GOD The God we pray to is the Personal God, the entire manifestation or the emanation of the Universe, and beyond the Personal God, we have the Impersonal God, that energy. Everything radiates or emanates something; the flower emanates fragrance, and everything emanates something. You are emanating something all the time. A city will be emanating, a country will be emanating, the entire world, the whole Universe is emanating, and the totality of that emanation is what we call the Personal God with attributes. But the Impersonal God, the source of the Personal God, is attributeless. The Impersonal God is the finest of the finest energy, sub, sub, sub, sub, a million times sub-atomic energy and that Impersonal God has not created this world, but it was its very nature; it manifested the Personal God. Like the flower does not create fragrance, it is nature to give it. The sun does not produce heat; it is the nature of the sun to provide light and heat. That is how the Personal God, or the Universal Mind, was manifested from the Impersonal. I rather like to use the words the Manifestor and manifestation. So, the Impersonal God is the Manifestor, and the Personal God or the Universal Mind is the manifestation. So that was the primal universal mind which, through various factors, I could explain to you scientifically, diversified and many of those minute atoms joined together and multiplied, and they were replicated and duplicated. That is how the world and man as we know man today came about through a long process of evolution over millions of years. THE MEANING OF ETERNITY The world works in cycles, the Universe works in cycles, as the human being does, as the soul uses the body for a while and drops the body, but the soul within remains eternal to assume another body. From the point of the Big Bang of the incredible explosion, the next cycle began, and the evolution started, which again will be drawn into what we call the black hole. And yet there will be fine vibrations in the Black Hole, which will build up and up and up, a form of combustion that will explode and bring forth another universe. That is the meaning of eternity because it is an eternal process, and the totality of the process is the Personal God with attributes. ATMAN, THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL, IS BUT ONE WITH BRAHMAN, THE UNIVERSAL ENTITY We reach the finest relative, the superconscious level, through meditation and spiritual practices, and then we reach the Personal God. You feel Him, experience Him, and then you just melt away into the impersonal energy. So, who are we praising? We are praising the Personal God. We praise the Personal God because, being the primal manifestation, we are part and parcel of Him. There is something, and Christianity, for example, always teaches of love, peace and hope. Everyone will find that salvation, but that process can be expedited, and of course, when you pray to an object outside you, you lose consciousness of yourself and project it to something outside. In that way, you gradually become free from bondage. Everyone thinks that they are the centre of the world and the whole world revolves around them, which, of course, it does not. So, prayers are necessary in the proper systematic way. Meditation is essential, and the spiritual practices that lead you within are required. Once you can be within, that which is within and that which is outside becoming one becomes unified, and then you can say, “I am Thee.” “Thou art me.” “We art but one.” No separation. Separation stems from creating boundaries, and we are the ones who misuse the mind; we make the boundaries. We have got to go beyond that. Certain people at certain stages need that; ninety-nine-point nine percent of the world’s population needs a Personal God, who we can worship as Krishna or Buddha or Ishvara, Allah, Christ, whatever way. But it remains the same consciousness. So, by worshipping and having that devotion to the Personal God, we reach that stage of consciousness, which can be described as Christ Consciousness. And once we get to that stage, then after that, very automatically we go to the stage of Brahman, as the Sanskritists would put it, the Impersonal God, and then when you reach there, you realise that the Atman or the individual soul is but one with the Brahman, the universal entity. THOUGHTS ARE A NATURAL PART OF MEDITATION As you are embodied, the mind will always be related to the body, for there is no separation between body, mind and Spirit. It is just a matter of gradation from the grossest level of the physical body to the subtlest level of the Superconsciousness. In meditation, some schools of thought tell you your mind must become blank, but that is impossible unless you become unconscious. That is easy to do. You do not need to meditate; just ask your husband to bop you in the head with a hammer. We do not want to become unconscious, but through its transmission to the lower level, we want to appreciate the joy and ecstasy within us at the higher level of the mind. So, in meditation, the mind should not be blank; it is not meditation. It is not Dhyana. If you are on mantra meditation, you will find that as your mantra recedes away, a thought will come up, and a thought is like a story; it has a beginning, a middle and an end. And when it reaches the end, you very gently pick up your mantra again, and then you dive deep within with the mantra – and you cannot stay underwater all the time, you will drown – you cannot breathe, so you come to the surface level again. Meditation is a rhythmic procedure, thought, mantra, thought, mantra, thought, mantra. And every time you dive down, you bring