TO BE IS TRUE JOY
It is familiar and true that purity attracts purity; impurity attracts impurity.
Any impure thought from the mind is not destroyed but will be attracted to those that have made themselves conducive to its attraction. And any pure thought from your mind also goes to that area where it finds its brother: birds of a feather flock together. That is why it is permanently enjoined upon us to have thoughts of purity always in the mind.
That thought does not need to be good or bad; it is just a reminder that all is divine. I swim in this ocean of Divinity. I am that bit of salt thrown in the sea that does not make the water saltier, but I am absorbed in its saltiness—that remembrance of that Grace that allows you to merge into the Divine.
Also, let the mind say that I want to merge into Divinity. But how can you integrate when you have not ever been separated? Where have you come, friend? And where are you going, friend? Nowhere. If Divinity is omnipresent and present everywhere, where is there for you to go to or come from? You just are. And the secret of true joy is just to be, for you are here and now. You come from nowhere, and you go nowhere.
Look at the spelling of this word: nowhere. Nowhere. Just shift the w to the side of the no – now here. All that nowhereness, uncertainties, and insecurities that the mind puts you through take you nowhere because you are now here, forever in the presence, for you are the presence. How can you separate the bubble from the pond? Is the bubble not just an expression of the pond? The expression, the joy, the dance of the pond, and the currents in the pond, which are an integral part of the pond, create those bubbles, do they not? Is it not the dance, the play of the pond? You are the play. You are the player, the same water. And you are the playwright. So, from where are you coming, friend? And where are you going to? It remains no question.
PHILOSOPHY IS GOOD
Philosophy is good—excellent. It is suitable for philosophers and religions, of course. Different religions are not really different. They are all but the same; the essence, the basis, remains the same all the time.
Exercises of the mind. That is what we are doing, which is happening in this world, exercising in the mind. How you relate to the world and the world’s happenings depends a lot upon you.
What you do to yourself and how you relate to the world depends on you and not the world. You can be in the world and yet not of it and be non-attached to the world’s happenings where it will not affect you. Attachment and non-attachment are different things altogether. But there, too, the mind comes into play where some exercise is necessary. How we exercise our minds is essential, for joy is forever there. Joy is not something apart from you but a part of you.
You can interpret the most unpleasant scene with proper awareness into something beautiful. Therefore, we say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. It’s a simple saying, but it’s not understood. The man of true awareness will not be ruffled by the happening around him. What happens is part of a pattern you cannot entirely control. You can prevent the exercise to a certain degree. You can go on a diet and lose some weight, or eat more and put on weight. Certain things are within the cyclical framework of the mind, yet so many, the mind cannot control many things.
ARE YOUR FREE WILL TRULY FREE?
People pride themselves on having a free will. How accessible is your will? You think you are free because you have developed a certain amount of consciousness to think. Are you free? Where is free will? There is no free will. The will you think is free will is bondage will, a will bound by your experiences and impressions that you have gained over many, many ages, perhaps, and that has set a pattern for you. All happenings are but effects of the causes that you have brought into being, that your mind has brought into being, and all our actions are determined by the amount of awareness we have unfolded within us.
When we say, “The Lord is graceful,” what does it mean? He is not going to take the miseries away, just like that. But He allows you to remove those miseries. By properly using the mind, by lifting yourself from the grosser conscious level of the mind through the subconscious mind and then to the deeper layers of the Superconscious mind at its purest and subtlest level, you can change the pattern of your life. For what seemed miserable yesterday can be so joyous today.
For here, through meditation and spiritual practices, you are tapping that source of that pure level within yourself and bringing it out so that it, too, will find expression and make everything around you glorious and joyful. By doing that, you still have to go through the effects, the law of cause and effect, and the law of retribution: you shall reap what you have sown. You will have to go through that, but by the law of Grace that you have now invoked or expressed from the deeper levels of yourself, you can do it on the easy payment plan, as I always say—no cash on demand. Easy payment plan, so you do not suffer as much from it as you would have. The sting is taken out. The balm of Grace covers the wound.
Yet, it is not an anaesthetic that puts you away from consciousness. You are still conscious of all your surroundings, but it becomes beautiful. Your surface consciousness starts appreciating beauty, but we must become beautiful first. How do we do it? By tapping into that vastness within us in an organized, systematic way. Then you become beautiful. It is the nature of the flower to be attractive, but it also enhances the garden’s beauty. It makes the garden lovely, too. Is that not what man should do?
MAKING OURSELVES BEAUTIFUL
So, we start with ourselves first. We make ourselves beautiful through spiritual practices and meditation by becoming closer and closer to that which is within: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven within, and all else shall be added unto thee.” All else is there. No addition is even required; that is just expressed for the sake of language because language is so incomplete. How can it express the inexpressible?
If we want to improve our environment and the world, we must improve ourselves.
After all, have you ever thought what your world is? Talking of the average person, how many people do you know? You know half a dozen people very closely. If you belong to some organization, maybe 200 or 500 people will know you in acquaintanceship. This is Ms XYZED or Mr ABC. That is all. And are you to be so influenced by those few hundred people who know you by sight or those half a dozen who know you perhaps more intimately? They do not know you; they only see the exterior of you. If you do not know yourself, how can someone else know you?
For all that we change our life patterns to live a false life, pretend, and live up to the Joneses. Only the bank manager knows the truth. My car must be better than your vehicle. Yet the essence is that the car is made to take you from point A to point B. That is the meaning of a car. But you get transported into other realms of personal ego.
The world is what we make it. How many people do you know in China, India, Japan, the next state, or even the next road? I have heard many people living next to each other for years, and I do not even know their names.
JUST BE
So, just be. Just be honest and sincere to yourself, and automatically, that power emanates like a flower giving off fragrance, and it affects the environment. Your sincerity and love affect everything around you, and it rebounds to you. It is a very profitable business.
“Take one step towards me, and I will take ten steps towards you.” All the sages have said that. Divinity and the sages only echo what Divinity expresses: take one step towards me, and I will take ten steps towards you.
We have to decide what to do. At first, the mind is activated to make a decision. That decision could be wrong, but do not worry about it. The central point can be approached from any angle, but that decision must have one quality: I want to be what I am, and I am who I am. I am what I am. That is the starting point, and from there on, you would find that once that thought starts permeating the thinking mind and sinks lower and lower into the subconscious mind, you will draw from various experiences lodged in the subconscious mind to strengthen that resolve. We start with that, and as our awareness expands, we will think of beginning to meditate.
We will think about how to meditate. What spiritual practices to do? If I am ill, I will go to a physician to prescribe the medicines required. He will know what to prescribe. If the tap is leaking, I will go to a plumber. I will go to a roof repairer if something is wrong with the roof. For that, when we meditate, the start might come from thought, and then we find that thought does not provide all the answers. Thought produces questions to which answers come, and every answer will produce another half a dozen questions, and when you answer those half a dozen questions, another half a dozen questions will come from it. It is an unending process and takes us into this whirlpool.
So, start with a thought, but if you can find a physician who will show you how to go deep within yourself, bypassing the thought, how to become an observer of those thoughts very methodically and systematically so that those thoughts do not hurt you until those very thoughts that were hurtful could be turned into something joyful and how you could connect your conscious mind to the deeper levels within yourself. If you have such a doctor, it would be easy to get the proper prescription instead of using all medicines on trial-and-error.
As a teacher of meditation, I emphasize these things. For those who would like to learn to meditate, we have teachers worldwide. You have to contact them, and you will be shown something that will lead you to the inner depths of yourself, create more and more understanding, and lessen the confusion in the mind so that instead of confusion, you will have a profusion of that which is beautiful.
These things are so, so simple. Only we, with our thought processes, that compound things and make them complex. In reality, the essence within man, the essence within everything, is uncompounded, not complex, but so very simple. We know that simplicity is synonymous with innocence only when we reach simplicity. When we find within ourselves this beautiful innocence, it will be good.
Shall we end this Satsang with a prayer?
PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang 1981 – 16
