Living a Meaningful Life

 

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Living a Meaningful Life

Everything that we do is in some way contributing to someone’s life. If we can find how to make this a conscious process of contributing to everyone’s life through our work, then our life will be very different. Contributing does not mean that we will not make money in our business. If we constantly see how to give our best to everyone around us, then we will profit from it and also not have to worry about it.

Contributing is not about money or material – it is the basic volition of our life. If we make our life into a contribution, then our life will become truly meaningful and worthwhile because we are creating what we care for. If we are creating what we care for, then it will be a joy to go to work every day. With this, we will never die of stress, believe me. We may die of exhaustion, but we will not die of stress - and that is a very good thing.

The moment we see the way how to contribute, the moment there is a certain pleasantness of experience within us, our body and mind will function at their best. There is substantial scientific and medical evidence to prove this. If our body and mind are not functioning at their best, does one think that one will attain success? Success is a consequence of harnessing all that we have to the best possible result. If this has to happen, we must be in a pleasant state of experience. Then, the more we do, the better we should feel. This will only happen to us if we are always looking at how to make a contribution to everything around us.

At some point we have all wondered as to the purpose of our lives, haven’t we? If we were feeling really ecstatic, would we ask ourselves about the purpose of life? We ask this question because in some way, the experience of life is not good enough. Most human beings have become a bundle of thoughts, emotions, ideas, opinions and prejudices. That means our psychological drama is hijacking our life. Most of the time, we only think about life, not how to live it. We have come here to live life, not to think about it.

We should not try to invent all kinds of purposes for life. If we explore the nature of this life that we are, we will come to know that life does not need any purpose – life is too phenomenal by itself. If we experience this life in its fullness, we realise that life is a purpose unto itself.

Role of a Guru

 

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Role of a Guru

The person who seeks Moksha (salvation) or the one who desires the Lord’s darshan (sight) hasn’t even started his journey until his heart is overwhelmed with the hope of what he seeks. If in his heart there is intense longing for the Lord’s darshan, as a hungry man longs for food and a thirsty man longs for water, then there is no need to run around looking for a Guru.

It is not that the Guru is not there, he is. The person, whose heart has so much thirst for darshan of the Lord that he cries for not being able to behold the Lord, and offers to give up everything in order to get a glimpse of Him, for such a person a Guru will come on his own. God himself can come as a Guru. When the Lord comes, he stays near the seeker, never far off. It is the true disciples that are a scarcity.

How does one recognise one’s Guru? From his attire, rudraksh, from his long hair or by his long beard? All these are outward criteria that anyone can flaunt. It is not necessary for a Guru to have any particular paraphernalia. Remember what Swamiji has said many times – if there is longing, then a Guru is not far away. There are authentic Gurus. It is not that they do not exist but they do not advertise outwards. 

It is important to spend time in a Guru’s proximity to whatever extent possible to find out for ourselves whether he wants something from us or wants to give us something! If he is an authentic spiritual Guru, then all he will want from us is affection and one-pointedness. Nothing else. If we want to do service for him, then that is our call. A Guru will not tell us to serve him. This is the first thing. If we see someone with a fancy staged atmosphere, lights radiating from behind, long silk curtains, expensive clothes, one who dances while he talks – we look at all these attributes and, in two days, decide that he is our Guru. How is that possible?

We need to stay with the Guru and find out about his nature. If he is a true spiritual Guru, he will want nothing from us. This is the first criterion. Secondly, if there is enough thirst inside us to reach there, then a Guru will appear from somewhere. Even if a wrong Guru appears, it would be training and a learning experience.

Quality in Nothingness

 

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Quality in Nothingness

Nothingness can either be just emptiness or it can be a tremendous fullness. It can be negative - it can be positive. If it is negative, it is like death, darkness. Religions have called it hell. It is hell because there is no joy in it, no song in it, there is no heartbeat, no dance. Nothing flowers, nothing opens. One is simply empty.

This empty nothingness has created great fear in people. That’s why in the West particularly, God has never been called nothingness except by a few mystics like Eckhart and so on; but they are not the main line of Western thinking. The West has always conceived nothingness in negative terms; hence it has created a tremendous fear about it. And they go on saying to people that the empty mind is the Devil’s workshop.

The East has known its positive aspect too; it is one of the greatest contributions to human consciousness. Buddha would have laughed at this statement that emptiness is the Devil’s workshop. He would have said - Only in emptiness, only in nothingness, does godliness happen. But he is talking about the positive phenomenon.

For Eastern Masters nothingness has always meant no-thingness. All things have disappeared, and because things have disappeared there is pure consciousness left behind. The mirror is empty of any reflection, but the mirror is there. Consciousness is empty of content, but consciousness is there.

And when it was full of content, so many things were inside us that there is no way we could have known what it is. When the consciousness is full of contents, that’s what we call mind. When consciousness is empty of all contents, that’s what we call no-mind or meditation. To create nothingness within is the goal of meditation, but this nothingness has nothing to do with the negative idea. It is full, abundantly full. It is so full that it starts overflowing. Buddha has defined this nothingness as overflowing compassion. The word 'compassion' is beautiful. It is made out of the same word as 'passion.'

When passion is transformed, when the desire to seek and search for the other is no more there, when we are enough unto our own selves, when we don’t need anybody, when the very desire for the other has evaporated, when we are utterly happy, blissful, just being alone, then passion becomes compassion.

Love, the Only Light

 

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Love, the Only Light

Love is the only light there is in life. Love is the inner light. It needs no fuel; it is eternal. It is not caused by anything - hence it cannot be turned off.

Anything that can be switched on can be turned off. It is simply there; we cannot put it on, we cannot put it off. This light, this love, has not to be invented but only to be discovered or rediscovered.

And becoming a sadhak is nothing but an inquiry into this inner world of love and light. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon: when we look in, it is light; when we share it with others, it is love. When we are alone with it, it is light; when we communicate it to others, it is love.

Light communicated is love; love burning inside as an alone flame is light. And this is the whole quest of humanity, to discover it. Once we have discovered it all fear of death disappears, because then there is no death.

And all fear of darkness disappears because then there is no darkness either. The experience of the light is so tremendous that people have given it names: God, nirvana, enlightenment, moksha, liberation. It is so huge that no ordinary words can contain it; hence every language has invented words for it. God is not a person, neither is nirvana a place.

These are different names for that experience of light. When it explodes within us it is so much, uncontainable, inexpressible, inexhaustible, that one is simply drowned in it, one is simply drunk with it, and drunk forever. There is no coming back; once gone into it one is gone forever.

The light of a thousand suns shines within and then that is reflected in the outer being. The love energy encompasses the individual and both human and non-human beings feel that love energy and are comfortable in it.

The light at the end of the benign tunnel is close at hand, meditate regularly to cross the tunnel and become the light, to become pure love.

Free Will – Ego Concept?

 

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Free Will – Ego Concept?

There is nothing like free will. It is just an ego concept, there cannot be anything like that. Mind moves into opposites very easily. It creates dichotomies - either one is a free agent (free will), or one is a slave. Both are untrue, both are false concepts, because you are not, so you cannot be a slave, and one cannot be a free agent, because for both, you will be needed.

Life is a vast interdependence. We are just an organic part of the whole, we are not separate, so how can we be free. But one is not saying that one is not free, remember that, because how can you be not free, or free? One is not, one doesn’t exist at all. It is a vast interdependence, and this interdependence is the totality - God. But the ego goes on finding its ways.

Nobody is free. We are just puppets, and the threads are in some unknown hands, and whatsoever HE determines, happens. We are just slaves, nothing else.

Both parties are wrong. We are neither slaves nor free agents. This is a little difficult to understand - it is because You are not that you are part of the whole. But if you think yourself separate you will feel like a slave. If you understand yourself as part of the whole you become the master but you become master with the whole not against the whole. If you are against the whole, you become the slave. If you flow with the river, you become the master. You become the river! If you try to go upstream you become the slave.

Free will is not there, and neither is slavery. Dependence and independence are both false words. They should be dropped completely; they should not be used. It is interdependence. I exist in you; you exist in me. That is the way life is - we exist into each other. The breath that was in me just a moment before has now moved and has gone into you.

A few days we are here and then we disappear; and then again, we will be here – and disappear. Where do we come from? Where do we go again? Into the whole! We disappear to rest. Then again, we are here. Spring comes, and trees start blooming, and birds start singing – a new life; and then it has gone, and everything is restful.

Again, it will come. Many times, we have been here, many times we will be here; but once we understand that WE ARE NOT, that the whole goes on playing through us, once we understand – then there is no need to be thrown again and again back into the body, there is no need, we have become alert, conscious. Now there is no need for any manifestation; we rest in the whole – this we have called moksha nirvana. This we have called the ultimate freedom.

Freedom remains, not us; that is moksha. It is not that we become free, on the contrary we become free of yourself. There is no self. The Self simply disappears.

Are Lives Predestined?

 

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Are Lives Predestined?

Our lives are both predestined and they are not. Both yes and no. And both answers are true for all questions about life. In a way, everything is predetermined. Whatever is physical in us, material, whatever is mental, is predetermined. But something in us constantly remains undetermined, unpredictable. That something is our consciousness.

If we are identified with our body and our material existence, in the same proportion we are determined by cause and effect. Then we are like a machine. But if we are not identified with our material existence, with either body or mind – if we can feel ourselves as something separate, different, above and transcendent to body-mind – then that transcending consciousness is not predetermined. It is spontaneous, free. Consciousness means freedom; matter means slavery. So, it depends on how we define ourselves. If we say, “I am only the body,” then everything about us is completely determined.

A person who says that man is only the body cannot say that man is not predetermined. Ordinarily, persons who do not believe in such a thing as consciousness also do not believe in predetermination. Persons who are religious and believe in consciousness ordinarily believe in predetermination. This may appear contradictory, but such is the case.

A person who has known consciousness has known freedom. So, only a spiritual person can say there is no determination at all. That realisation comes only when we are completely unidentified with the body. If we feel that we are just a material existence, then no freedom is possible. With matter, no freedom is possible. Matter means that which cannot be free. It must flow in the chain of cause and effect.

Once someone has achieved consciousness, enlightenment, he is completely out of the realm of cause and effect. He becomes absolutely unpredictable. We cannot say anything about him. He begins to live each moment; his existence becomes atomic. Our existence is a river-like chain in which every step is determined by the past. Our future is not really the future; it is just a by-product of the past. It is only the past determining, shaping, formulating and conditioning our future. That is why our future is predictable.

The whole possibility of freedom depends on whether we emphasize our body consciousness or our soul consciousness. If we are just an outward flow of life, then everything is determined. Or are we something inner also? Do not give any preformulated answer. Do not say, “I am the soul.” If we feel there is nothing inside us, then be honest about it. This honesty will be the first step toward the inner freedom of consciousness.

If we go deeply inside, we will feel that everything is just part of the outside. Become aware of everything that comes from the outside and become non-identified with it. Then a moment will come when the outside falls completely. We will be in a vacuum. This vacuum is the passage between the outside and the inside, the door. We are so afraid of the vacuum, so afraid of being empty that we cling to the outside accumulation. One has to be courageous enough to disidentify with the accumulation and to remain in the vacuum.

But this moment of being in the vacuum is meditation. If we are courageous enough, if we can remain in this moment, soon our whole being will automatically turn inward. When there is nothing to be attached to from the outside, our being turns inward. This being is free; nothing can determine it. It is absolute freedom.

Effort - Effortlessness

 

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Effort - Effortlessness

The logical mind creates the problem between effort and effortlessness, because the mind says that these two things are contradictory. If we make an effort, we make effort; how can we make it effortlessly? If we become effortless, there is no effort; all effort disappears. So, the mind divides these two – effort and effortlessness. But try to understand this in a different way.

A child is playing and he is absolutely absorbed in his play – so much so that even if a neighbour’s building falls and collapses he may not even hear the sound. He is absorbed… maybe making sandcastles, but he is absolutely absorbed. There is effort, tremendous effort – the child is perspiring – and yet there is no effort because the child is simply playing; there is no motive. Or a painter is painting, a singer is singing, a dancer is dancing, a jeweller is creating something.

We are absolutely absorbed in whatever we are doing. Then effort is there and yet it is effortless. It is not a tension on us. It is not a duty that we have to do. We are delighted in doing it. A sculptor is creating a work of art. There is effort – he may start perspiring; but still there is no effort. The sculptor loves his creation – it comes from within effortlessly.

We enjoy it; we are absorbed in it. We are completely drowned in it. It is a play and there is no motivation in it. We are not doing it for any other reason; we are doing it for doing’s sake. Then there is tremendous joy in it. When we say effortless effort, we mean doing something with no other motive than the very pleasure of doing it.

Then suddenly we will see that the contradiction has disappeared. For example, two people are conversing. There is effort and there is no effort, because we are just talking for no other purpose, just a casual conversation. Talking is effort – but there is no effort because we love it, because we love each other. When Swamiji is rendering a discourse to a large gathering, he does not see anybody from the stage, he is completely lost in it. There is nobody standing behind him; he is talking to all of us effortlessly simply because of the love for us that flows through him.

When Swamiji is talking, he is just talking. The effort is there and yet there is no effort. The contradiction exists only for the logical mind, because the logical mind cannot understand play; it can understand only work. It can understand rest; it can understand work.

It cannot understand work which is rest too. So, whenever work becomes play the contradiction is gone. And when contradictions are not there a harmony arises in the opposites. We have something of the beyond penetrating us… a ray of light.

Knowing the Inner World

 

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Knowing the Inner World

If one is a mirror, if one is silent, if there is no turmoil within one, if there is no thought process and traffic of the mind inside one, the other is simply reflected.

If we go to the lake and there are no ripples and waves on the lake, we are reflected in the lake, the moon and the stars are reflected in the lake. The lake knows no art; anyway, it is not an art, it is a simple phenomenon. If a person is sitting silently, with no traffic of the mind. Another person comes in front of him, the mirror reflects that person. The lake of one consciousness reflects the other - he sees the other person, all and all, from one end to another end, in complete totality. But this knowing is not knowledge, this knowing is just mirroring. It is as simple as that.

A story explains this concept. Satish had gone camping in Yellowstone National Park. There were warning signs asking visitors not to feed the bears. A bear approaches Satish’s camper and he shouts, ‘bear, bear’ and goes out with a couple of sandwiches. His wife warns him saying that we are not supposed to feed the bears, But Satish says a sandwich is not going to hurt anybody and goes anyway. He gives one sandwich and the second, but the bear comes after him, he talks to the bear, saying he has given him all he had. But the bear starts chasing him and he rushes into the camper and slams the door shut. He tells his wife in a surprised tone, “The bear doesn’t understand English!”

There is no need to understand our language, there is no need to understand anything about us. There is no need to understand us at all - we are simply reflected. A bear is a bear. How do we know that a bear is a bear? How do we know that a rose is a rose? There is no analysis involved in it, no technique, no technology.

Things are very simple. We just have to be a mirror, and people reveal everything themselves. We need not even ask a single question. The way they walk, the way they sit, the way they look, the way they talk, reveals everything. It is not revealed to us, because we are not looking at them at all. We are so preoccupied in ourselves, we are so preoccupied with our thoughts, that we are surrounded by a fog.

Otherwise, everybody is revealing everything. Everybody is exposed. We just need to open eyes, a silent mind, and we will be surprised - nobody can hide anything from us, there is no way of hiding anything.

Nisarga (Nature)

 

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Nisarga (Nature)

Nisarga means to be natural, to be spontaneous, to be simple and poor. And blessed are the poor – only they shall inherit the kingdom of God. Only the poor are rich. This inner poverty is really an inner richness. When we simply move with nature, by and by we disappear. We are so poor that even we are not there – the poverty is total. When the poverty is total, there is nothing to possess and nobody to possess it.

That is why in the streets of big metro cities in India we see street urchins playing happily with not a care in the world. That is the life they know, and they make the best of it – they are happy and healthy with great naturally built immunity!

That’s what Jesus means when he says ‘poor in spirit’. A man can be poor but may not be poor in spirit. He may not have anything to claim as his own but at least he has his ego. He may not have possessions but he has the possessor. The inner poverty, the poor in spirit, means that even the possessor is gone – no possessions, no possessor. Then we cannot be against nature because there is nobody to be against. Then nature simply flows through us. We become like a cloud - wherever the winds take it, it goes. It has no idea of its own. It has no destiny, no private goal.

It has not planned any journey, so wherever it lands it is beautiful, because there is never any frustration. Frustration comes out of a private goal. Whenever we come across a man who is frustrated, it simply shows that he has a private goal against the universe. Naturally he is frustrated. When we move with the universe, there is no frustration; there is tremendous fulfilment. Each moment is joy because everything is going right. Nothing can go wrong because whatever is happening is the way it should happen.

That is the meaning of nisarga. It is one of the most beautiful terms in Sanskrit. And it would be great if we could disappear completely, to die completely. When someone who is one the spiritual path is bestowed the name – nisarga, then such a person is just on the brink of it, on the very edge. A slight push and he will be gone. That is the meaning of changing the name. Ordinarily names are meaningless.

They don’t have any relevance to our being because they are given to us by people who cannot read our inner being. Maybe they like the sound of the name, maybe they like the dictionary meaning of the name. Maybe the name was very popular. They heard it somewhere – some famous man also had the same name - some actor, some actress, some author, some musician, some singer, some poet. It was famous in the same way and so the parents give it to us.

But they cannot read our being. When a master gives us a name, it is not ordinary. It has tremendous significance. It is like a seed which will start sprouting. In the right season and in the right climate it will become a big tree. This is going to be that person’s path. The path is to be natural, to be simple. No struggle. 

A profound surrender – and out of that surrender our being will be born. And we can do it, we can do it very gracefully…. Swamiji is watching over all of us every moment.

Psychoanalysis and Spirituality

 

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Psychoanalysis and Spirituality

In science, analysis is an important tool to arrive at cognitive results. But when it comes to spirituality analytical methods are in a way incomplete. They help us only to a certain extent and then they leave us in a limbo. One feels that something has happened, but a lot is missing. Something seems to be incomplete, hanging, suspended. But that is natural because analysis is a very new process.

The inventor of any process or new study dies and then that process continues to evolve over a period of time, till it reaches completion, till it comes full circle. Sometimes it takes centuries for a certain method to become so complete that once we pass through it, we don’t have any feelings of incompletion or of missing something. And once that happens, that means that the process has become a circle. It gives us a smoothness, an ease, an at-homeness, a relaxation.

Psychoanalysis is just a diagnosis without a medicine. It makes us clearly aware of what is wrong, but then what to do? In fact, in understanding what is wrong, a few things are reconciled, but many more things bubble up from the unconscious. A few things are solved; many more things become questions.

So, the analytic process makes us a little aware but it makes us a little more anxious too, because now we know many more things of which we were never aware. It gives us a certain insight into our being, but the centre is not revealed through it – only layers of the mind – because Freud had no concept of the soul, so he thought that there are layers and layers of the mind – conscious, subconscious, unconscious – but nothing beyond that.

That means that there are only peripheries, concentric circles and no centre. A body cannot exist without a soul. If the body exists, the soul must exist, because the outside cannot exist without an inside. If the outside exists, we may not be able to penetrate the inside, but the inside must be there, because they go together – the outside and the inside. The body is nothing but the outside soul, and the soul is nothing but the inside body. 

Psychology is complete only when at its peak it becomes a religion, because that is the very culmination. A tree is complete only when it flowers. Otherwise, the tree can be there very green and everything good and beautiful, but still barren if the flowers are not there. Something tremendously beautiful will be missing.

In a way it looks complete – the tree is there, alive, green, its branches high in the sky – but something is missing. The tree has not yet been able to blossom, to overflow. The tree has not yet been able to produce colour and song and ecstasy. So, unless psychology becomes a religion, it remains like a tree without flowers.

So, psychology is just a foundation. When the temple is completed, it will become religion. We have tried this in India. It was psychology in the beginning; then by and by we failed. For centuries we felt that something was missing. Then a totally new thing arose out of it – and that is religion. This came from turning inwards, on becoming introversive.

Relationships Fail…

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Relationships Fail…

When one becomes too fed up with ordinary relationships with people, one starts imagining a relationship with God; that is the longing for the divine. Now God is a little better in the sense that we can never be disappointed because we will never meet him; for the simple reason that there is going to be no honeymoon, the honeymoon can never be over; for the simple reason that there is going to be no living together with God, we can go on hoping. Now we are alone - it is a monologue; it is not a dialogue.

All human relationships fail because the other is there and we start clashing with each other, we start dominating each other, we start being jealous of each other, we start being possessive of each other. We are afraid that we may lose the other. And then one day we see that there is nothing to lose – the other is as empty as we are. One dream is shattered, then another dream and so on. That is the beauty of the religious dream - we can go on dreaming; it can’t be shattered. The relationship with God can never be on the rocks – it is impossible because we are simply alone. When we are praying, what are we doing? Talking to ourselves! It is like whistling in the dark – there is nobody to listen.

God is not a person with whom we can have any relationship. God is not somebody in particular whom we can address, whom we can long for. But all our frustrations, all our relationships, which have failed, have not made us alert enough to the fact that it is better to drop the whole idea of desiring the other. Now we are trying to desire something which we are never going to get. One thing is good about it - we can go on hoping birth after birth. There is never going to be any end to it; the journey is unending. The other does not exist at all; now we are living in pure dreams.

First, we were living in dreams but the other was there, so between the two realities the dreams were bound to be crushed – and they were crushed. But now there is nobody else, one is alone. One can make one’s God the way one wants.

Ultimately, we do realise that God lies within us, we are a part of God, then all the illusions disappear and we just are. We become content with the God we have found within…..now there is silence and untold bliss.

Capacity to ‘See’

 

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Capacity to ‘See’

‘Darshan’ means the capacity to see. We don’t call it a love of thinking, as the word ‘philosophy’ means. We call it: the capacity to see.

In India becoming a witness has great importance – the capacity to see. The whole emphasis is not on the object; the emphasis is on the subject. Subjectivity is religion. Objectivity is science. To pay attention to the object is to be scientific. To pay attention to the subject is to be religious.

We look at a flower. If you pay attention to the flower, then it is scientific. If you pay attention to the witness of the flower, it becomes religious. A scientist and a religious person may be standing side by side, looking at the same flower – but they are not looking in the same way. The scientist is looking at the flower and has forgotten himself completely. The religious man is witnessing the flower, and remembering himself.

When we are listening to Swamiji’s discourse, we pay attention to what he is saying – then it is a scientific listening. Or we can be aware of the one who is listening to Swamiji within ourselves – then it becomes religious. The difference is very delicate and subtle. Try it right now. Listen to the discourse and forget yourself. Then it is scientific.

A scientist while working is absolutely concentrated. Science is concentration. Religion is meditation. And that is the difference between concentration and meditation. Concentration is not meditation. Meditation is not concentration. Concentration is focusing your eyes on the object; meditation is focusing ourselves on our own self. Meditation has no object in it; it is pure subjectivity.

When we listen to Swamiji, we forget ourselves. Then we do not know who we are - we are simply listeners. Then change the focus. It is a knack. It cannot be taught how to change it. We simply change it. We just become aware that we are listening. Awareness becomes more important than what we are listening to. Immediately, a deep change has happened in our being. In that moment we become religious.

If we go on paying too much attention to the object, we may come to know many secrets of nature, but we will never come across God on any of the paths that we will travel. It will never be a pilgrimage. You will wander and wander into the wilderness of the world and matter. That’s why science cannot think that God is – it is impossible.

God is not an object. Our very approach is such that God is excluded from it. God is not an object! God is our within-ness. It is not in the object of concentration. It is in the subjectivity of meditation. He is the self.

God is our subjectivity. He is there within. When we focus outside, there are objects. When we become unfocused and look within, without any focus, He is there – absolutely alive, throbbing, ticking.

Moments of Separation

 

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Moments of Separation

We all have to leave at some time or another – the only truth about birth and life is death. It cannot be denied – the causal body takes birth and dies – but there is something within that is permanent, indestructible! All of us mortals come to grief when someone near and dear passes away – but Osho, when he merged with universal consciousness told his disciples to rejoice and celebrate because on leaving the causal body, he will be with each and every one of them.

When we even leave any meditation camp in the proximity of the living Master, we feel sad, we feel that these days should never end, because we are in the presence of a powerful aura which radiates joy and bliss. But we need to remember that every parting is the beginning of something new. Parting is inherent in coming together again – they are the two sides of the same coin.

Although they appear to be different, they always go together. Because they show up separately and on different occasions, we are deluded into the false belief that they are not connected. But if we go a little deeper, we will find that meeting is itself a parting, that happiness is also grief and that even birth itself is death. Indeed, there is hardly any difference between coming and going – or rather, there is no difference at all. It is the same in life. We have hardly come when the process of going begins, and what appears to our minds to be staying on is merely a preparation for leaving.

Really, what is the distance between birth and death? The distance between them can be endless. In life, if this distance between birth and death, becomes a pursuit for self-realisation, this distance can have no end to it at all. If life becomes a sadhana, a journey to self-realisation, death can become moksha, liberation. While there is not much distance between birth and death, the span between moksha and death is infinite. That distance is as great as the one between body and soul, between a dream and the truth. That distance is much greater than all other distances put together. No two points are greater apart than moksha and death.

The illusion that “I am the body” is death; the realisation that “I am the soul” is liberation, salvation, moksha, nirvana. And our life is an opportunity for the realisation of truth. If this opportunity for the realisation of truth is used properly and not wasted in vain, the distance between birth and death becomes infinite.

After attending Swamiji’s shibir, some of us feel a tremendous change within us. This change needs to be made permanent through determination, commitment and meditation with complete, unconditional surrender, and soon the destination will be reached.

One Moment of Determination

 

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One Moment of Determination

A single moment of determination, of sankalpa, of complete determination is enough, whereas a whole life without it is nothing. Remember it is not time but determination that is the important thing. The achievements of the world are accomplished in the realm of time and those of truth in the realm of determination. Our determination, must live in our spiritual practice.

We have heard Swamiji as well as other Masters say that transformation happens in a single moment, one pure moment without desire and expectation filled with total and unconditional surrender! We attend spiritual programs for a couple of hours, one day, three days or eight days and still nothing happens. The happening is not dependent on what we are hearing, or the energy flowing through the medium of the Master’s words, this revolution or transformation can take place in a moment.

Just one moment of will, of complete determination is enough. A whole life without determination is nothing. Remember that determination and time are the important things. The achievements of the world are made in time; those of truth, in determination. It is the intensity of one’s sankalpa, of determination, that gives a fathomless depth and an infinite expanse to a moment. As a matter of fact, in the intensity of sankalpa time ceases to exist and only eternity remains.

Our determination is the door to liberate us from time and unite us with eternity. We should let our determination be deep and intense. Let it pervade our every breath. Let it be in our memory, asleep or awake. Only through it can a new birth take place, a birth which knows no death. This is real birth. There is a birth, the birth of the physical body, that inevitably ends in death but this is not considered real birth in the spiritual sphere.

How can something that ends in death be the beginning of life? But there is another birth that does not end in death. It is the real birth. Its fulfilment is in immortality. It is for this birth that we attend Swamiji’s live shibirs, and we are called to attend these live shibirs for taking this birth. We gather together for that very birth – Guru-purnima is round the corner – another opportunity for this birth. But merely coming together is of no value. If we become whole, if we become one and call from the thirst of our own being, then the determination of our entire being will take us into the presence of truth.

The truth is very near but we need determination, we need will to approach it. The thirst for truth is there in us but determination is necessary as well. This thirst becomes a sadhana only when it goes hand-in-hand with determination.

 

Own Effort is Important

 

Photo Credit: Quote.Pics

Own Effort is Important

Nobody can give anyone the ‘truth’. If anyone says he is capable of giving it, we can be certain that the person is lying. No one has the capacity to give the truth. This is no comment on the capacity of the giver, it only shows that truth is a living thing. It is not an inanimate object that can be given or taken away. It is a living experience one must obtain by oneself.

Whatever is achieved in the world of the Self is only achieved through self-effort. In the world of the soul, no debt, no borrowing, no depending on others is possible. Nobody can walk there on borrowed legs. There is no refuge there apart from one’s self. To attain to Truth, we must be our own refuge. This is the inescapable condition.

We listen to discourses of various Master, we absorb their teachings in the form of words, sometimes we also feel the energy in the words. When Swamiji is rendering his discourse, most of us fall asleep, or go into a trance, as His soothing voice nourishes our soul. Only words can be communicated, and words do not have any life – and the truth always remains behind the words, hidden! We have been listening to words over several births, and these words have kept forming layer upon layer of dust on our soul, birth after birth.

Words are dead things; they are not the truth. Nobody’s words are the truth – they can show you the path leading to the truth, but the words themselves are not the truth. We cannot carry the burden of these words and find the truth. We need to become empty, light, shed the weight of these words, if we have to realise the truth. Just as a climber must lay down his pack before scaling a mountain to seek the heights, one who has embarked on the journey to truth had better lay down the burden of words. Only a consciousness free of words is able to attain the lofty heights of truth.

Those who have known the truth do not open their mouths at all. Their lips are sealed. Not a word is to be heard from them. Aren’t they saying enough this way? Aren’t they suggesting that truth lies in silence, that silence itself is truth? But we are unable to understand their language.

We cannot understand anything without words. Our understanding is limited to words and so the Masters speak to us through the medium of words. They tell us in words about that which cannot be communicated in words. It is their compassion that leads them to attempt this impossible feat, and because of our ignorance we try to catch hold of their every word. Words coupled with ignorance form a sect – and once again we are deprived of truth and true religion is as distant from us as ever.

We must rise above words. Only then will we know what is behind the words. Words only fill our memories. Knowledge does not come from them. And please don’t mistake memory for knowledge. Know once and for all that memory is nothing more than a record of the past. It is learning, not knowledge.

Experience and the Experiencer

 

Photo Credit: Inner Spiritual Awakening

Experience and the Experiencer

The way I look at a rose and the way someone else looks at a rose may be different. If I am a student, I will have a scientific viewpoint, but a poet will look at the rose in a completely different way.

The experience does not depend on the object, the experience depends on the experiencer, on the quality of experiencing. When the scientist looks at the rose, he thinks of colours, chemistry, physics, atoms, electrons, neutrons and so on - except beauty. Beauty does not come into his vision, and that’s what the rose is.

To the poet, to the painter, the rose is a totally different experience - the rose is a manifestation of the unknown, of the transcendental, of the secret of life itself. It represents something of the divine, it brings into existence something of the sky, something of faraway stars. It grows on the earth, it is rooted in the earth, but it is not just part of the earth; it contains far more than that. It is not the sum total of its constituent parts. The scientist only comes to know it as a sum total of its constituent parts - there is nothing more to it - but the poet starts feeling something plus.

The moment we dissect the rose, the beauty disappears. The rose was only an opportunity for the beauty to descend, a receptivity of the earth to the sky, a receptivity of the gross to the subtle. The poet feels that; but it is a feeling, it is not a thought.

Looking at a flower, become the flower, dance around the flower, sing a song. The wind is cool and crisp, the sun is warm, and the flower is in its prime; the flower is dancing in the wind, rejoicing, singing a song. Participate with it! Drop indifference, objectivity, detachment. Drop all scientific attitudes. Become a little more fluid, more melting, more merging. Let the flower speak to the heart, let the flower enter the being.

This is the first step towards the mysterious, and the ultimate step is: if we can be a participant for a moment, we have known the key, the secret. Then become a participant in everything that we are doing. Walking, don’t just do it mechanically, don’t just go on watching it - be it. Dancing, don’t do it technically; technique is irrelevant We may be technically correct and yet we will miss the whole joy of it. Dissolve the self in the dance, become the dance, forget about the dancer.

When such deep unity starts happening in many, many, phases of our life; when all around we start having such tremendous experiences of disappearance, egoless-ness, nothingness; when the flower is there and we are not, the rainbow is there and we are not; when the clouds are roaming in the sky both within and without and we are not; when there is utter silence as far as we are concerned; when there is nobody in us, just a pure silence, a virgin silence, undistracted, undisturbed by logic, thought, emotion, feeling, that is the moment of meditation. Mind is gone, and when mind is gone mystery enters.

Meditation will take us into the mysterious, but there is still something more than that; that is inexpressible. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it, nothing will ever be said about it, but it has been experienced.