Girish's Blog

  In the Presence of a Satguru A self-realised, enlightened Satguru is a medium of universal consciousness. If ever you are fortunate enough to be in the presence of such a realised Master, just enjoy the experience, witness what your thoughts are, what you are feeling! These moments in the presence of such august beings are very rare and need to be absorbed to the fullest. After accepting Swamiji as Paramatma, my receiving capacity increased manifold. What I realised was in His presence the mind becomes blank, there are no thoughts, you only respond if you are asked something. In His presence, silence speaks more than words, the continuous flow of consciousness showers your being with cold energy filled with oodles of love. Remember, in whose presence you are and make a conscious effort to be present mentally too. Empty your mind of problems, else you will physically be present but mentally you could be in Delhi, in some circus, in your office, at home – thinking of all the ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest | Preaching on Battlefield Happiness in the Midst of Battle! The Bhagwad Gita was narrated in the midst of a battlefield – when Lord Krishna, cajoled, provoked, threatened, dictated, guided Arjuna to pick up his weapons and go and fight, whereas Arjuna was loathe to do so as the people on the other side were ‘friends and family’. And if you really see, life is nothing but a battlefield with each individual fighting his/her own individual battle. This entire narrative in 18 chapters is nothing but 18 different ways to find the ultimate Truth. This is perhaps the first scripture, the earliest of the ancient texts, which practically demonstrates the fact that there are many paths to The Truth – that there is no single path, but different paths to the same Truth. Some people are battling just to survive, some to try and rule the world and others to make something of their lives – a very few of them are looking beyond life’s battlefield to find the ultimate...

  Photo Credit: QuoteFancy | Osho Rajneesh Witnessing in Meditation As unaware human beings, we live our lives absorbing the sensations and sights from the material outer world into our inner being – in fact we are advised by scholars to reflect that which is on the outside within us! In reality what should really be happening is our inner world should reflect on the outside. The external world is full of chaos and to find peace in that chaos and make it reflect in our inner world is calling for the impossible to happen! On the contrary, if you have managed to find peace within through meditation then that inner peace is automatically reflected in the outer world through your energy body. Becoming a witness to everything in and around you has been advised by all spiritual masters, but when you ask fellow seekers very few have a true perspective on what that really means. Becoming the inner witness, a neutral observer of the mind is an important aspect of meditation. Unless one ...

  Photo Credit: Spiritual Soul Centre Soul is the Self Swamiji has run an entire series of daily messages on the ‘Soul’ – he has given many insights about the Soul and the Self. The object of this post is to see how there is actually no difference between the soul and the self – in fact the soul is the real self. Atman  or the Soul refers to the non-material self, which never changes. It is distinct from both the mind and the external body. This real self is beyond the temporary designations we normally ascribe to ourselves, in terms of race, gender, species and nationality. Ideas of reincarnation are natural extensions of this preliminary concept. Consciousness, wherever it is found, is considered a symptom of the soul, and without it the body has no awareness. This life-giving soul is considered spirit ( brahman ), differentiating it from inert matter. Belief in the soul is not just theoretical or the property of theologians, but is a worldview expressed by Hindus i...

  Photo Credit:QuoteFancy | Mechthild of Magdeburg Seeing God in Everything Swami Vivekananda gave a lecture series on Jnana Yoga in London in 1896 – in this he speaks about the obvious suffering of mankind and the evils which humans perpetrate to establish their superiority. Even today, 125 years later the world has not progressed much, in fact the suffering and man’s inhumanity to both man and nature has gone up manifold. The impact of both is clearly visible in terms of the degradation in both nature and man’s behaviour. The only solution to get out of the rut that mankind seems to be falling into is by trying to understand one’s Self and thereby trying to see God in everything and everywhere. For this to happen we need to awaken the humanity within us, we need to rise way above our religion and grasp and live with humanity as our religion. All religious scriptures have one basic lesson ‘love everybody and everything’ – so Love is at the root of humanity, because ‘to love’ i...

  Photo Credit: Steemit | Spiritual Life #5 Happiness and Sadness As children, we become happy at the simplest of things, our parent’s loving touch, a little gift, sound of music, nature’s beauty and so on. As we grow older and as our innocence dries up with the reality of life – ‘happiness’ starts coming from people and objects – here the mind starts defining the meaning of happiness. And along with happiness, sadness is not far behind – basically both these emotions are two sides of the same coin. Our happiness is now a function of our desires – it becomes an exercise in ‘ifs’ and ‘what ifs’ – ‘If I get a promotion’, ‘If I get a salary raise’, ‘If I can go on that holiday’ and so on and so forth; on the other hand – ‘What if I don’t get a promotion’, ‘What if I don’t get a salary raise’, ‘What if I can’t go on that holiday?’ Thus, our desires start defining our happy or sad state. The more intense our desire, the sadder we are, more disappointed we are if that desire is not f...

  Photo Credit: Chandra Easton | Living in Light Stoke the Fire Within In the centre of our chest is the little flame, akin to a candle light, this is nothing but our soul which guides us subconsciously 24 x 7. Most of us have lost touch with the soul because we are consumed by desires which are available in the modern world. But desires have been present throughout the ages only their form has changed – for example, 200 years ago you may have desire a horse and carriage, today you desire to have a car. Rarely has man crossed the threshold of desire and reached the stage where the little flame within has been stoked into a fire so huge that burnt everything within its all-consuming flame to light up the crown with the blinding light of Paramatma – this all-pervading light, very few on earth have crossed over so to speak from darkness into light, where nothing but joy, bliss and universal wisdom exists. The desires in the four primitive fountains which need to be burnt – food, s...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Sensations and Spiritual Progress Today, while meditating I felt that when we get cold vibrations and get various fragrances such as rose, sandalwood, jasmine, and so on – it just so happens that sub-consciously we start expecting these sensations. Whenever we attend Swamiji’s shibirs we always feel that the atmosphere of the Himalayas has descended at the venue of the shibir, regardless of the season when the shibir is held. During the anushthan period and on Mahashivratri the cold vibrations at the ashram are legendary – that is because the Master is in deep meditation and sending the vibrations across the Ashram and into the universe. We feel that, we experience it, as we are in that energy field and we are carried by Him in His energy and with His grace. This is nothing to do with our own state. So, my point is, do we get stuck at this level? Because, to my understanding the vibrations, cool sensations, fragrances are all part of a process and we have ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest | Pin by Teja Ravula on Osho Spirituality, Happiness and Innocence Swamiji keeps telling us to become as innocent as a child – a child tells it like it is, there is no hanky-panky, no motivated opinion, just pure innocent joy and fun. Man is not innocent because he is a slate on which nothing has been written so far, or because it has not been filled with karmic bondage but because he bears the divine imprint. He always has been and now too he is the very image of Paramatma. Happiness does not depend on the body, external comfort or external objects. True happiness lies in the mind – if we learn to quieten the mind, we will gain control over everything else. It is only spiritual knowledge acquired with the help of a Realised Master through meditation that teaches us to control the mind. In the past – say 5 – 6 generations ago we lived in joint families in the villages. There would be 40 – 50 people to a household but they all lived with unity, mutual a...

  Photo Credit: Jivatma Paramatma | Hari Parivar Paramatma Unites Us All Swamiji always talks about the power of collectivity and how he is connected with millions of souls and how millions of souls are connected to him. When we sit down for meditation and we connect with Swamiji’s subtle presence, then we too connect with the energy of those millions of souls – we feel that as vibrations embracing our being from the crown of our head through the rest of the body. The reason for this post is because there is a lot of negativity that is prevailing in society today all over the world – but specially in India, America, Europe and China. These countries and continents are key to the future of the economic prosperity of the rest of the world. It is not that we are confronted with outer difficulties such as pandemics, wildfires, hurricanes, floods or the economic distress and so on – this list goes on and on, but this has always been the case to a lesser or greater degree through the...

  Photo Credit: The Spirit Affinity From Darkness to Light We have all heard about the famous Upanishadic chant - ‘Lead us from non-being to being, lead us from darkness to light, lead us from death to immortality’ - which precedes the special verses that teach ‘ Aham Brahmasami ’. When it comes to the Samarpan Meditation values, the spiritual experiences that each one of us gets is based on the extent to which we surrender ourselves to the Satguru. With continuous meditation practice one reaches a stage where one stops seeing things – lights of various hues – golden, purple, white, blue green and so on, one also stops seeing images of deities or saints from our past lives who are deeply embedded in our subconscious. Whatever we ‘see’ in meditation is nothing but a manifestation of what we have retained in our subconscious – the churn that meditation commences deep within you causes all these to start appearing in your third eye – which makes you feel that you are ‘seeing’ the ...

  Photo Credit: Lisa A Romano | Spiritual Freedom Love is Freedom from ‘I’ Swamiji spoke about ‘love’ recently in his daily messages – there was a series on selfless love. In this post we will see how selfless love sets us free from the ego of ‘I’. Love it is said is the means to tune in the strings of the heart so that divine music is the result. The values of the heart represent all that is good, truthful and beautiful. Unfortunately, modern society all over the world has lost that tuning with its heart – the world today is heartless, cruel, selfish and always seeks the shortsighted easy way out of situations, even if that means hurting others! For strengthening the bonds of the heart, to tune the strings of the heart, love is required to recondition the heart into its original role – that from where music can arise. One can attain Paramatma through selfless love, prayer without any love is false and futile. Prayer expressed just in words have no value at all unless they are ...

  Photo Credit: SteemKR How to Remain Connected? In his discourses Swamiji says, “I play the music to the song you sing” – what he means to say is that you will receive to the level to which you surrender to him. So, if you are 100% then you will receive 100%, if you are 50% then you will receive 50% - basically you will feel his divinity only to the extent you are willing to give yourself up to him. I have been asked this question several times – how does one remain connected? In my experience, once the connection is established, we cannot break it, unless we do something really, really bad. Swamiji always holds our hand firmly, it is us who pull our hands in a way that he is forced to let you go. Just remember, He is your soul’s father, so if you disconnect in this birth, he will follow you in your next birth and still the next till you find liberation. Swamiji asks us to donate half an hour of our time to him every day and he will ensure that the remaining 23.5 hours pass ...

  Trip to Dandi after a Long Time Yesterday, ten of us – five newcomers and five other sadhaks/sadhikas had registered for Gurushaktidham darshan at Dandi Ashram for the 11 – 12 time-slot. I left home at 4.50 and picked up the first sadhika from Shivaji Park at 5, then the next mother-son duo at Jogeshwari at 5.20 and the final pickup-up of mother-daughter duo at Borivali at 5.30am. We reached Fountain at 5.45 which was the designated time for Deepak Tandon and my cousins and another sadhika to meet. We exchanged seats so that the mother-daughter duo shifted to the other car and the first sadhika’s sister joined us in our car. We reached incident-free with His grace at Dandi Ashram at 10.20 after a breakfast halt. The entry is now from behind the Ashram and the road comes up to the Yagyashala. We entered and showed our credentials and then the volunteers checked us in, hand sanitisers were being used at every stage. We went to the sahitya stall and I got a few things for my cou...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Eternal Source of Strength Whenever we travel abroad to a new country, forget abroad even when we travel to an unknown destination for the first time, even in our own country, we are beset by a sense of both trepidation and expectation as to what we may find! We feel slightly insecure about what to do if our travel plans go awry in spite of so many guideposts being in place; we feel anxiety, a feeling of uncertainty with so many of our support systems taken away from us as we try to settle down in the new place! If we have the faith then we can definitely rely on certain principles to help us find our bearings and to settle in. Despite changing and troublesome external conditions, there are eternal principles and spiritual laws which never change. When everything around us is changing, we can realign ourselves to those eternal truths so as to reorient our sense of direction, to ground ourselves and give ourselves a firm footing with which to confront life ...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest The Highest Faith In our day-to-day lives we come across various situations and life crises which tests our faith in God to the utmost. The most unexpected of things happen – both beneficial and bad. We take the beneficial in our stride and thank God for his benevolence but when things go against us, we don’t thank him for the hurdle which he has put in our life. To the contrary we complain and pray for the difficulty to pass by and to give us the strength to overcome the tragedy. Why does this happen? Why do we not accept the bad in the same spirit that we accept the good? Why is our faith put to the test in adverse circumstances? These are questions which keep cropping up. Acceptance is so easy when things are going in our favour, but the moment the tide turns acceptance becomes a challenge. Questions crop up in the mind – why is this happening to me? What have I done to deserve this? And so on and so forth! Life, its substance and purpose, is an e...

  Photo Credit: QuoteFancy | Osho What is True Freedom? Our understanding of freedom strives from ‘democratic’ values which are invariably enshrined in the constitution of various countries – these are the rights each one has by operation of law. Freedom to speak, freedom to marry, freedom to write and so on….. but each of these freedoms come with reasonable restraints – meaning you are free to do what you want as long as your freedom does not impinge on that of another or is against national security! We, who live in truly democratic countries know the meaning of freedom as we have experienced it, lived it – but what about those people who live in say Afghanistan, Libya, China and so on. Are they really free? We are now only talking about the role that freedom plays in day-to-day material life. Here, we talk about freedom to do this, freedom to do that. What we are looking for is active freedom and what we should really be seeking is inner freedom! Inner freedom can only com...