Girish's Blog

  Photo Credit: Zikoko Living in Bondage Man lives in bondage, and the bondage is not imposed by others, it is self-created. It is created because we are afraid of the insecure. In the name of security, we create a bondage around ourselves. Yes, it gives a feeling of cosiness, warmth, safety, but it is all false because sooner or later death will take it all away. Because of this we never explore, we never go beyond the boundaries of the familiar. The familiar is very small and we go on moving in the familiar, in circles. Our life knows no growth, because growth can only happen if we move not in circles but in a line. If we are linear then there is growth. If we go around in circles, we go on repeating the same thing again and again. Freedom is possible because we have made our own prison. We can get out of it any moment that we decide to. It is only a question of decision, of courage, of guts. Freedom is the ultimate value in life. Nothing is more important than that, becau...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Conscious Decision Religion is nothing but an effort toward conscious evolution, an effort how to use this freedom. Our volitional efforts are now significant. Whatsoever we are doing non-voluntarily is just part of the past. Our future depends on our volitional acts. A very simple act done with awareness, with volition, gives us a certain growth — even an ordinary act. We go on a fast, but not because we have no food. We have food; we can eat it. We have hunger; we can eat. We go on a fast: it is a volitional act — a conscious act. No animal can perform this. An animal will go on a fast sometimes when there is no hunger. An animal will have to fast when there is no food. But only man can fast when there is hunger and food both. This is a volitional act. We use your freedom. The hunger cannot goad us. The hunger cannot push us and the food cannot pull us. You are sitting: decide that, “Now I will not move my body for ten minutes.” You will be surpris...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest A Master is not Responsible for You No Master is responsible for anybody. A Master comes into our lives simply because we have a deep longing for our own spiritual evolvement. This does not mean that the Master takes on the responsibility for our spiritual growth. What the Master does is plant the seed of spirituality within us, after that it is our responsibility whether to water that seed and make it grow into a huge banyan tree or ignore it and let the seed go waste. In this world of illusion one can find a true Master only if one has accumulated good karma in the past and current birth – one needs to have attained that mass of goodness to reach the launching pad for liberation – and that can happen only when one meets a true self-realised Master. Spiritual Masters are free from attachment as they do not derive any value from worldly or material things. One can tell an indifferent individual from an enlightened fellow in that the former is insens...

  Photo Credit: Twitter || Eckhart Tolle Taking Responsibility From our very childhood we have been taught to be responsible to our parents, to our siblings, to our family, to our country, to all kinds of nonsense. But we have not been told to be responsible for ourselves, that there is nobody who is going to take our responsibility. No, on the contrary, our parents were taking our responsibility, our family was taking this responsibility. The priest was taking responsibility for our spiritual growth – we were just to follow all these people and do whatever they said when we were children. Now, we have grown up and are no longer children, a great fear arises as we now have to take responsibility for our lives and we have not been trained to do so. We do something, we feel guilty, we go to a priest to confess – and over time we realise that we are bound to the priest because he knows all our secrets. We are weighed down, because we feel our salvation lies through our confessio...

  Photo Credit: The Path of Self-Realisation Living Consciously Animals live in complete unconsciousness – they are neither aware of misery, nor bliss – humans are aware of both. Animals live in a state of deep sleep, whereas humans have woken up a bit, just a small part has become conscious; hence the split. In animals there is no split, they are one piece. Man is dual, the duality arises because the consciousness has arisen from the unconscious ocean. It is just the tip of the iceberg, a very small part, maybe one-tenth of the whole, but it has created a divide between the conscious and the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind goes on pulling us towards the animal because it remembers the joys now; it remembers the joys of being animal, of being total. When we were animals, we were not aware of them. It is as old people remember the beauties of childhood. Children are not aware. Only when they lose their childhood do they start remembering that which they had never felt bef...

  Photo Credit: QuotesGram Contentment “Get this, get that and I will be contented,’ – the mind keeps saying this. One gets those things, then it again asks for something else. And the game continues for the whole of one’s life from the cradle to the grave. It goes on asking for more. That is the nature of the mind. Diogenese, a Greek mystic, asked Alexander the Great, “I heard that you want to conquer the whole world, but have you thought about one question?” “What question?” asked Alexander. Diogenes said ‘A simple question, that you must consider before you embark on this enterprise remember there is only one world and if you conquer it then what will you do afterwards?’ The story is that just the idea made Alexander sad; just the idea that if he conquered the whole world of course the problem would arise of, now what? With just the idea - he had not yet conquered the world - his mind immediately became discontented and asked for another world, another toy. That’s the way...

  Photo Credit: QuoteFancy A Quantum Leap Man can come to know the ‘truth’ only through meditation. Truth is not something that the mind can know. Mind can theorise about it, but ‘about’ means around – and the mind goes about and about, around and around. It moves in a circle; it never reaches the centre. Its very nature is not to reach to the centre, it exists for the circumference. Mind is needed only to relate with others. It is a method of communication. Truth is our very being. It is not a question of relating to it. It happens only when we fall into deep silence, when we forget the whole world, when the other is completely forgotten as if the other does not exist at all. In those moments of solitude and aloneness truth is revealed. It is not a conclusion of the mind but a revelation of no-mind. Meditation simply means turning in. The mind is always focussed outward, the mind is basically an extroversion. Use the mind as a servant, use it as a beautiful mechanism, but do...

  Photo Credit: Quotefancy Implement the Teachings The very fact that we are on a journey,  to a new place which we haven’t seen and somebody, let’s say, who has seen the place before, has given us certain instructions – pack a few sweaters, have the bags ready, keep our shoes, so that we know what we have to carry with us. And we are also told how long it will take to walk and how difficult or easy it is, then only we can reach the new place. It is very important that it is not just told & heard and forgotten, but actually implemented. After Swamiji gives us the Guru-mantra, Rambhai gives us a list of things we need to do regularly for our spiritual practice; the critical part that happens is Swamiji instils his values in us in subtle form, which we notice over time, turns our life around 180 degrees. Once the values have been instilled and we start our spiritual practice, there are certain principles that we need to follow that are conducive for our spiritual pr...

  Photo Credit: Country Living Magazine Merry Christmas It is Christmas – perhaps it is time to bring the spirit of Jesus back into our hearts, as it appears that we have lost the essence of the incredible humanity that Jesus embodied. Let’s overlook the fact that Jesus lived more than 2000 years ago and contemplate on the possibility of Jesus or his spirit (soul) being present within every individual. Jesus was nothing but pure love and compassion and thus it is essential that every individual allow that aspect of Jesus to flower within them, because today in the name of religion, people are destroying each other. In our aspiration for the divine, we are losing our humanity. Humanity is the only religion of human beings and the fights taking place or which are likely to take place are power struggles over whose method of worship is better – mine or yours. These are all egoistic battles between the power of the church, Islam and other religions coming to the fore. All these rel...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest The Last Mile The aim of every realised Satguru is to ensure that the disciple becomes his/her own Guru. No true Guru tries to bind you down, on the contrary their objective is to set you free. We are extremely fortunate and can consider ourselves to be blessed to be under the wings of His Holiness Shivkrupanand Swamiji, who in my opinion is in the top quadrant of the pyramid amongst all the current Gurus. If we have observed a pyramid, it has a broad base and it goes on tapering till it becomes a point at the peak. After initiating us Swamiji has taken us on a high-speed corridor and has dropped us off on the highway exit nearest to our home. This home is nothing but our own inner abode, our nijdham . As we make our spiritual progress Swamiji will keep a silent watch on our progress, but he will now not interfere, his job is done, our job remains. This last mile connectivity is completely our responsibility. How we reach our inner abode from the hig...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest One is Never Alone There are times when one feels a sense of very deep loneliness that no friend, family member or lover can seem to satisfy.  That sense of loneliness can arise in life when one is not searching for the self. Once we embark on our search for the self, we realise that we are never alone. Someone is always with us, and that is Paramatma or the Self. Once that happens, we find that we are never alone. If we depend on anything or anybody outside us to be a companion, it is impossible to have that companion always with us. Even if another person wants to be with us always, he or she cannot. We come alone, and we go alone. Don’t depend on outside company. Even as we are coming and going, there is always another there—our own spirit, our own Self, or the Paramatma within us. Paramatma is in us, outside of us, in front of us and behind us, to the right, to the left, above and below. The moment we realise that we will never feel lonely. ...

  Photo Credit: Quora Bliss Knows no Bounds Bliss is unbounded, just like an ocean. It is so vast that one is completely in it. Just as a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the lake and becomes one with the lake, in the same way man has to slip out of the ego and become one with existence, only then is there bliss. Ego is misery, the source of misery, the only cause of misery; and egolessness is the source of bliss. Ego gives one boundaries, identities, it makes one a certain person. Swamiji teaches us yog, which is different from yogasanas (physical exercise) – yog is the simple way to reach a high state of meditation through a process of transference of the Master’s values into his disciples. This transfer takes place very subtly and the disciple progresses spiritually based on his/her commitment and dedication. This natural state of Sahaj Samadhi, which in truth is simply the realisation of our divine nature as Consciousness Itself, is the goal of all spiritual pursuits....

Photo Credit: Quotefancy   Pleasure is Forgetfulness Human consciousness can follow two ways. One way is that of water, flowing downwards; the other way is that of fire, moving upwards. These are symbols, water and fire, but very meaningful. When we flow downwards, we become more and more unconscious. When we flow upwards, we become more and more conscious. Upward is consciousness; downward is unconsciousness. All pleasure is downward. Wherever we seek pleasure, we go downwards, because pleasure means being unconscious. Pleasure means being in a certain state where we don’t know any anxiety — not that the anxieties have disappeared, but we are unconscious. The world remains the same; the anxieties are there waiting for us, increasing, not decreasing, because as time moves, they will increase. Our problems remain the same, even become more complicated. While we are unconscious, everything is growing: it doesn’t wait for our consciousness to be there. Pleasure is escape. That’s...

 s Photo Credit: Truth Ultimate Satyam Shivam Sundaram In the East God has been defined as Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram . Satyam means the truth, Shivam means the good/the auspicious  and Sundaram means the beautiful. These are the three approaches towards God, three doors to enter into the ultimate. Either one enters as a seeker of truth - that is the approach of the philosopher. And by philosophy we do not mean that which is taught in the universities. By philosophy we mean the original meaning of philosophy: love of wisdom. Lovers of wisdom enter from the door of truth. It is a different path, but they reach the same peak, the peak is the same. The person who enters through the door called good is the person who tries to live a life of simplicity, innocence, purity – this is the virtuous one. And by the virtuous we don’t mean the moralist. The moralist is an egoist. Such a person is cunning, calculative. This person’s morality is not much, his/her morality is just a polic...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest What to do with Leisure? It is a habit of the mind because it has been always living in misery, unhappiness, and always the ‘why?’ has been relevant. So, when clouds disappear for the first time and the sun shines in our life, the old question goes on persisting — ‘Why?’ Learn to accept happiness, learn to enjoy it without any questioning, learn to trust happiness, don’t doubt it, because the very doubt will poison us. Happiness rarely happens. Those moments are very few and far between. When they come, welcome them, open the door, receive them with a full heart, don’t withhold anything. Even a question will become a very, very strong wall between us and our happiness. Every day is a Sunday. It should be so. Every day is a holiday. It should be so. Because all days belong to Him. Each moment is holy. Once we understand it, we will stop asking questions. Don’t think that any particular day is needed for us to be happy - only a particular mind is require...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Creativity and Silence Creativity and silence are not antagonistic; real creativity comes only out of silence. The creativity that is against silence is nothing but the feverish activity of the mind. It is just the noise of the mind, it is not much, it has no value really. When something is born out of one’s silence then it has significance. And one has to live in silence before one can write or say something valuable, because only in silence does one gather, the juices of one’s being become integrated… and then one day we are capable of overflowing. That is creativity: overflow is creativity, overflowing energy is creativity. One can write, one can compose, one can sculpt, one can paint, just from the mind. Then they are therapeutic. It is good therapy, art is good therapy; it unburdens us, it makes us feel relaxed. Just understand – there is a creativity that comes out of relaxation – that is real creativity – and there is a relaxation which comes ou...

  Photo Credit: Pinterest Trust Trust is something that happens – it is not a decision on one’s part. Trust comes into play when we finish doubting; when we come to see doubt through and through and we are completely convinced about the futility of doubt. Trust is not contrary to doubt, trust is just the absence of doubt. Trust is not the opposite of doubt, just as darkness is not opposite to light. It appears opposite, but it is not – because light cannot be destroyed by bringing darkness in. There is no way to destroy light by throwing darkness on it. Darkness has never been able to destroy the small flame of a very small candle. The whole darkness of existence is impotent before a small candle. When light is, darkness is not. When we put a light on in our room, have we watched what happens? Darkness does not go out of the room; it is not that darkness escapes out of the room. It is found simply not to be there. It never was - it is pure negativity. Don’t repress doubt. ...