God is not for Sale

God can never be sold, but he can be purchased. That is the paradox!

In Hindu mythology there is a story of a fight between Brahma, the Creator of the world and Vishnu the Sustainer, as to who was greater. Siva, was sought to resolve this. Siva appeared as such a huge shaft of light, that his ends - his head and feet could not be seen. He said, ‘Who ever finds either of my ends is the greater.’

Brahma went up towards his head as a flying swan. Vishnu went down as a boar to find his feet. They searched for ages. Vishnu realized that he could not find what he sought, decided to surrender his ego, and told Siva to forgive his ego in trying to seek his feet. Siva blessed him for his honesty.

Brahma could not accept his failure. He saw a flower as he flew up and asked it where it was coming from. It said it had fallen from Siva’s ears. Brahma asked, ‘ How long have you been traveling?’ The flower said, ‘Four ages of Brahma!’ Brahma was shocked and realized he had no hopes of finding Siva’s head, but he did not want to accept his failure. He asked the flower, ‘Can you be the witness that I brought you down from Siva’s head?’ The flower agreed reluctantly.

Both went down and Brahma told Siva that he had seen his head and had brought the flower as witness. Siva was angry at the lie and punished him saying, ‘You will never be worshipped hereafter’, and told the flower, ‘You will never be used in my worship.’

Vishnu is the authority of wealth or desire. Brahma represents knowledge. This story shows that neither wealth nor knowledge can reveal God.

Desires will only make us go for more and more. We can never attain through it. Vishnu realizes this and surrenders. Trying to find God through knowledge is also futile as is the case with Brahma. We can never know God through the head.

Then how to purchase God? How to achieve Him? Only when you sell yourself, your ego, you can purchase Him.

Your ‘I’ and mine’ are your ego.

A devotee from USA came to our ashram in India. He said he wanted to buy land around the ashram and settle down there. I asked him, ‘Fool! Can you not enjoy anything without possession?’

Enjoy everything without trying to make it yours. The more ‘mine’, the less joy. When you give up ‘I’ and ‘mine’, the whole Universe becomes yours and God possesses you.

Be blissful!

If you don’t mind, mind Your Mind

Mother was trying on her new fur coat. It was very expensive.

Her young daughter watched her curiously and remarked: Imagine how much suffering the poor animal would have had to undergo for you to have this fur coat?

Mother turned to her daughter angrily: how dare you speak about your poor father like this. These days you young people have no respect for elders!

Our mind leads us its own way, sometimes strange ways, in the way it thinks and responds. Thoughts rise and fall chaotically within our mind; nothing is logical; they rise, live and fall. It is not thinking; it is just association. Association causes dilemmas. Fathers turn into poor animals.

When we bring your thinking process into consciousness our desires too become conscious. As of now they are mostly unconscious. You realize only after a while that what ever led into a problem is just association, not your desires.

We try to suppress desires or fulfill them. Suppression does not work. Fulfillment does not remove desires, it creates more desires. Bring your desires to consciousness from unconsciousness. If the desire is really worth fulfilling, the desire itself will have its energy for fulfillment. If not it will disappear. Either way you are in relaxation.

Energy is the source of desire. The same energy that converts food into muscles, blood circulate, moves your body. Between body and energy desires happen; they are closer to energy than body; they are more powerful than body. If you change your desires your whole body can change. Writing is the best way to raise desires to awareness.

Once a week give an appointment to yourself for 30 minutes and ask your Being what it wants. Just listen to your mind and note down. Whatever is necessary will stand, whatever is not will disappear. Many of our desires we never verbalize, we never bring to light; many are not our own deep desires; they are of others which are not relevant to us. We have life and energy to live only our own desires.

To Mind your Mind we need Contemplation, Concentration and Meditation. Guiding our mind is contemplation; centering on one subject is concentration; when mind disappears into that subject and no mind remains it is meditation. When you become aware of this table it is contemplation; when you center yourself on the wood it is concentration; when your mind become the wood it is meditation.

Meditation makes you aware of the reality. It liberates you.

Experience your inner space

We are all the time running after material objects of the external world. Most of us are not even aware that such a thing as inner space exists.

Deep within each of us, there is a silence. It is the source from which we came. We can never experience this silence by going behind the objects of the outer world. We can experience it only by going inward.

To go inward, we need to be aware of our mind and its workings. Mind is nothing but our thoughts. These thoughts by themselves are alright. But when you identify with these thoughts, it corrupts this inner space. Constantly by replaying the past and connecting independent incidents, your mind creates shafts, connections.

Supposing you have a pain in your shoulder, immediately the shaft of pain will come up. All the earlier pains that you have had will come up as a string of incidents. Be very clear: The pain you had 9 years ago is different from the pain you had 4 years ago and it is different from the pain you have now. All are unconnected, one-time, independent incidents and have no connection. It is your mind that makes the connection, which in reality does not exist. This series of connections is what I call a shaft.

You will see that these shafts create thought patterns, which are sets of thoughts that keep repeating themselves. For example, you may have a set of ideas about a person, a situation or a thing. Every time you interact with that person, these ideas surface and bias your decision-making. By judging in this manner, you simply miss the totality of that person or the situation and take wrong decisions about them.

Drop your ideas about everything and everybody. Just be friendly with everyone without having any past memories or ideas about them. Just behave the way you would when you meet the person the first time. Life will then be joyful. Your inner space will simply expand. You will be able to actualize your entire potential. Most often you are afraid to drop these shafts because these shafts give you your identity. Just understand that you are an un-clutched, independent being. Don’t try to clutch into these shafts.

Keep your inner space pure. Whenever thoughts arise, whatever they may be, just watch and be a witness to them. You will see that your awareness increases and slowly the number of thoughts in you decrease. You will become aware of the inner space within, which is pure bliss.

Be Blissful!

Chaos is Order

The cosmos, the universe, that vast space above and beyond has always fascinated, puzzled and inspired humans. We have sought to understand the functioning of the universe since the time of our creation; poets have sung about it, painters have tried capturing its mystique, and mystics have contemplated upon it.

The universe, the macrocosm or brahmanda as our ancient sages called it, operates with no understandable rules, with no visible ruler, and is apparent Chaos. Yet, it works, and has worked for billions of years. On the other hand the Individual body, the microcosm, or the pindanda, which scientists have dissected and analyzed to the last cell, is all in apparent order. We believe that we rule our body and mind.

Universe is energy and energy in nature is chaotic. Energy in each atom is chaotic. The mystery of sub atomic particles keeps getting unraveled only to present more riddles; are they particles, waves, quanta, strings or whatever, is a matter of continuous unfolding. However, in that confusion, in that chaos, there is order. Even if we do not always understand it, there is a cosmic rule that operates with Intelligence. The stars and planets move in order, with no apparent regulatory authority, though science is yet to find the source of this order. Our Universe is just not matter alone; it is also not just power; it is power with intelligence which is energy. This Cosmic Intelligence responds to our prayers.

Believing that Universe is just matter is what causes power struggles, terrorism and violence of all kind. When we realize that Universe is Intelligent Energy, that it is compassionate, and that it responds to us, seeds of peace are sown. World is divided into those who are spiritual who believe in its innate Intelligence and those who live for power and control over others believing themselves to be more intelligent than nature.

Cosmic energy continues to prove that it responds to us. In a book ‘Message from water’ Masaru Emoto describes the amazing results of his experiments with ordinary water. Emoto showed that water responded to his thoughts and words. Since water constitutes more than 80% of our body system, you can imagine the power of words, our own and those of others, upon our body system. The rest of the universal energy responds similarly to us.

Most of us believe in the power, the shakti, of the Cosmos; we believe in the power of what we term divine, to grant us our prayers, give us boons. However, we do not realize that Cosmos also has intelligence, buddhi.

Nitti Mudaliar goes into a restaurant and orders his fill. He eats with relish, with gusto. He then gets up to leave. As he is about to go out he is presented with a bill. Startled he says: I only ordered my food, I didn’t order the bill.

We specify to the divine what we want in explicit detail; when we get what we asked for we are often surprised unpleasantly. Like Nitti, we are happy to order, but reluctant to pay the bill.

For a change, just for a few days, let the universe decide for you; stop telling the universe what you want, and what you want it to do for you. Trust its intelligence the way you trust its power. You will be surprised at how much happier you are with what you receive. This is the power of prayer, when you give up the arrogance of what you believe to be your own orderliness and start surrendering to what you imagine is the chaos of the universe.