Mohanji Speaks – Zoom satsang, part 2 on 10 November 2019
Question 1: How can I get out from self-sabotage, fear, conformity and the paradigm of the impossible?
Well, that’s very simple. As I explained in the beginning, it has to start with accepting yourself. There is some element in you which is not accepting yourself fully. And you probably are depending on other people’s opinion about you for your acceptance of yourself. But please understand, nobody can understand you, sometimes even you cannot understand yourself. Because you are a full and complete being, if you really accept and understand that aspect of you, where you are full and complete, then you will spontaneously feel no kind of expectations, judgments, or criticisms about yourself in you. Only we can raise ourselves or pull ourselves down.
It is all our story. This is a unique story and we are the author of this story. Because of our authorship we have this life. This person or this book of life is written by us. What we call destiny is our script. So, if you really accept yourself, you will not sabotage yourself. Sabotaging also happens with expectations, which you probably derived from the society, somebody told you that you should do like this. We also have a lack of acceptance in us.
If you look at everyday life, we will feel that. There are so many factors which we don’t like. “Oh if only I was like that… If only I was like this.” We have a certain benchmark; we have certain expectations. They are all unnecessary. We are what we are, whether we take it or leave it. There’s nothing you can do about it. Because this is the script you made for this life right from your birth till death. The script is well written. All the people coming into your life who are giving you experiences and flavours are all connected to the script. You allowed them, you allowed these people, you allowed these situations, and all these happenings are your choice. If you look at it as a drama, the whole drama from birth to death, you allowed all these people who are walking in your life, you allowed all the experiences. So, all you have to do now is just witness, watch this drama and be happy. Because there’s nothing you can do now. If you want to have another script, you have to take another life.
Question 2: Is reciprocating the bond between a dog or any animal and its human expression, a type of bhakthi?
In any kind of bonding or any kind of relationship, don’t look at them as animals, people, etc. Then you won’t understand. Understand that every being coming to you is a soul in action. They are all souls in action. So, when they are coming close to you, think about why they are coming closer to you, because there is a connection. So, the cause is a connection, which is a continuation, and the duration depends on the intensity of the connection. The flavours or emotions that we share with them as well are connected to this connection.
If you look at the whole picture, so many beings have come to you and given you experiences, not just human beings. But we have a special kind of feeling towards human beings because we are of that species, not because we have something else to do with human beings. All relationships have their unique flavour and their relevance. We must accept all relationships as the same. What caused it? It doesn’t matter. How long it will last? It doesn’t matter. Right now, you have it; experience it. That’s all. Life has to be looked at that way. Right now, we have it. This is our time; this is our experience, that’s it. What will it be tomorrow? We do not know. What about yesterday? It has finished. So, we look at life like this.
We don’t know who all will be with us tomorrow. Whether it will be an animal body, bird body or a human body, it doesn’t matter. Who will live with you or walk with you, be with you forever in the future? We don’t know. And how long will we be with them, walk with them, talk with them? We don’t know because, we don’t know when we will die. There are so many things which we do not know. What you know is the reality. Right now, you are listening to me and I’m talking to you. This is a truth. This is a reality and that’s about it. Next hour, we don’t know. Basically, past is finished; future we don’t know. So, don’t worry about these two. Right now, we are here. You make the best out of it. That’s it.
Do not look at the body and underestimate the soul. The soul is the same and it has taken various bodies. In the story of Krishna, when the Avatar was happening; Krishna was taking birth and various beings decided to come as cows, calves etc. so that they could touch him, and they could be with him. Various beings decided to come even as grass where he walks so his feet would fall on them. Such things like that can happen. So, everything has its relevance. Do not underestimate the grass or even a falling leaf. Everything has its flavour. Everything touches you, if you look around, if you witness the light, witness the world. Everything will touch you from deep within, and it has its relevance.
Also understand, at the end of the day, life is equal to the experiences that you have. So, make your experiences beautiful. We must completely remove all the anger, hatred, jealousy etc. All those things are not needed. Just be plain and simple and accept the world as it comes. Accept the people as they come and accept the whole dimensions of life as they are, so that you have no conflict; you have no resistance; you are in total acceptance and then see how beautiful your life is.
Question 3: How do we know if we are in a purification mode or just suffering because of ignorance?
Suffering is always ignorance. There’s no other way. Suffering cannot be of something else. When you are fully aware, you won’t suffer. Ramana Maharishi had cancer. When somebody asked him if he has pain, he said, “I have pain, but I have no suffering.” Understand that suffering is a choice. Suffering is usually due to resistance. When total acceptance happens, there is no way you will be suffering. In total acceptance mode, there is zero suffering. Whenever there is resistance, we tend to suffer.
Purification is very simple. It’s an every-moment thing. You can always be on purification mode. How? Make sure all your thoughts, words, and actions are selfless. You have no enemies. You have no anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, etc., and you have no negative feelings about anybody on Earth. Everybody has done their part in your life. Some have given you good experiences. Some have given you bad experiences. They’re all experiences at the end of the day. You have lost nothing. Because you have abundance of experiences, you should be rich. The richness that you have, the scars on your face, should talk about your survival, not your pains and sufferings. It should be a life of strength, power and abundance. Abundance happens only through acceptance.
Generally, we resist so many things. We don’t even enter an experience because we are afraid. Then, that part is completely removed from life. Instead, we should focus on what is. This is what has been given to you; this is the time, this is the place, this is the situation, these are the people, these are the experiences. Use that hundred percent and enjoy that experience. Whatever the result is, it doesn’t matter. When you are in pain, go into the depth of the pain and come out victorious. When you have happiness, dive into the depth of happiness and come out victorious. When you have suffering, go deep into suffering and come out of it. Happiness or sorrow, you should dive deep into everything and come out of it. You will see that you are fully yourself. It will be a life well lived.
Whatever happens in life, always surrender at the feet of your Master if you have a Master (Guru), or at the feet of the Lord, if you have a Lord that you worship. Whatever religion you are, whatever method you follow, it doesn’t matter. If you do not believe in God, keep surrendering at the feet of the existence because, existence has provided all these. Whether your connection is with a Guru, a teacher, or a God that you imagine, or the supreme consciousness, pure brightness, whatever it is, keep surrendering everything and say, “Thank you, I’m feeling grateful.” Live every moment with gratefulness. Then you are rich. A life well lived.
Mohanji Speaks – Zoom satsang with Mohanji on 10th November 2019
Question 1: Can Mohanji give Shaktipat through various means – such as touch, words, sight, photo, etc.?
First of all, we need to understand what Shaktipat is. The word Shaktipat means activating the Shakti energy within us, which means, activating the Kundalini energy. Kundalini energy gets activated when you are in alignment. What is alignment? Alignment is basically the alignment of your body, mind, intellect, ego, and spirit together, which means you’re not scattered. When you are in total alignment to yourself, that’s when the Kundalini Shakti emerges and activates the whole channels and one attains enlightenment.
So, activation is possible whenever you are in certain states. It’s not necessarily through touch only. Sometimes people have attained enlightenment just by looking at a picture or through practices. There are numerous ways activation can happen. It’s not necessarily through touch only. Activation is certainly possible, provided you are ready to be aligned. First of all, the seeker should stop seeking things outside. It’s not about practices. It’s not about people. It’s not about places. It’s not about anything external. It’s about total alignment INSIDE for which you need to introspect, you need to come within and feel the inside, and be totally occupied with the consciousness within.
Let me explain it in a different way. We have distinct three states every day, which we know. In 24 hours, we go through a waking state – as in when we are awake. Then we go through a state of dreams – dreaming state, there also we are aware and that’s the state where it’s almost as real as the waking state except that it does not depend on anything outside of us. It’s sourced from inside us. Third is the deep sleep state where you are totally nullified. It’s almost like a death state. These three states are happening. At some point in time, you start witnessing the waking state, the dream state and the deep sleep state from an external point of view. You will probably be just a witness at a certain point in time as you practice. Then that witness-hood will give you a state where you are a total witness and you are not affected by any of these three states. That’s a state of total alignment.
When you come across or come in contact with a person who has already attained that state, and you spend sufficient time connecting to this consciousness or interacting, not even physically, by just thinking about him, by remembering him or looking at him as a kind of benchmark/ a guideline/ or a milestone, (in whichever way you’re consistently connecting to that particular individual who has already attained that state) then you also tend to come into that state faster. This is what I call integration.
When you integrate yourself into a particular person, who has attained a particular state, then you also attain that state faster. The point is that, if the wood is dry, a small spark is enough to catch fire. But the wood should be dry, this is the point. Otherwise, you can use lots of matchsticks, but the wood will not catch fire because the wood is wet. So, the whole point is, are we aligned? Are we completely in tune for that particular alignment?
When we don’t depend on anything external and we are trying to find Divinity inside us, this spark or the energy activates all the things. When we stop looking at us as a whole mechanism, instead we know very well that we are also connected to the whole universe, and when we come to terms with ourselves in that way, at that time, just a look, just a glance, just a touch, whatever it is, Shaktipat is possible.
A story
I’ll give you another example. The story of Papaji, I’m sure many of you know. Papaji was a great devotee, a bhakti yogi. He was chanting the name of the Lord all the time. He was fully occupied and fully immersed in that energy. He had a situation where he was in the very North of India at one time. That was the time when the British were ruling. He was asking a question to any saint or saintly people that he met, “Can you show me, God?” Everybody gave some answers, but he was not satisfied with the answers. One day a man came and asked for food. Papaji offered some food and asked him if he can show God. This man said, “I cannot show you God, but there is somebody in the South, in a place called Arunachala, and he can show you, God”.
Papaji was trying to find a way to reach the south and fortunately got a job in Madras constituency at that time in the military. He joined that job. As soon as possible, he went to Arunachala. When he went to Arunachala and saw that man, he saw the same person who came to his house. And he was so disappointed, thinking this guy was a propagandist who goes around telling people that he is God and he can show God etc. Papaji felt very disappointed and he was coming out of the place where Ramana Maharishi lived (the man whom Papaji thought was a propagandist).
Someone who saw him coming out asked, “Where are you going? You just came in.” Papaji replied, “Oh, this man came to my house up North and said, “Come here. I will show you, God.” I don’t like to work with anybody who’s a propagandist. He’s just trying to promote himself.” Then this man said, “My friend, this man has not left this place for the last 35 years. How do you say that he came to the North of India? Every day we are seeing him and for 35 years he is living here. Only then Papaji realised that this was a powerful Master who can be in any place, anywhere without the body – without actually physically moving.
Then Papaji came to Ramana Maharishi and said, “Oh, you told me you will show me God. Show me, God.” But Ramana Maharishi did not even look at him. Papaji was disappointed. He went back and continued chanting every day. One night, he could not chant anymore. He felt that all the chanting which he had been doing had completely dissolved and he was not remembering any of the mantras. He was so disillusioned that he wanted to have an answer. He went straight to Ramana Maharishi. It was early in the morning when Papaji reached there. That’s the time when Ramana Maharishi was going for a bath.
Papaji went running up to him. Ramana Maharishi just turned around and glanced at him. Just one look. Standing there, Papaji became enlightened. By that time the wood was dry, very dry, ready for the spark. And Ramana Maharishi’s one glance was enough to light the fire. There was no conversation. There was no discussion. Just a glance and the wood caught fire, just like that. If it’s dry wood, it doesn’t take any time to catch the fire.
So, Shaktipat, the activation of Shakti is possible if the person is ready. Otherwise, there’s nothing you can do. You can see in certain states where people shiver and the foam comes from the mouth, etc. They are all signs that the Kundalini energy is stuck somewhere or it’s not moving smoothly. Real experience would be a pleasurable experience, it will be like ecstasy. So, the answer to the question is that anything is possible, provided the person is ready for something like that.
Question 2: What is your opinion about in vitro fertilisation (IVF)? And what is the karmic impact of this? Should couples seek medical assistance when they cannot conceive naturally?
I don’t have any problem. I only have a problem with destroying the child or the baby in the womb (abortion), which I strongly object to. Otherwise, it is up to the individual. If they are supposed to have a baby, that will happen, definitely.
Question 3: How to be always present or be in awareness?
For that you need to start with self-acceptance. Whatever you are, whatever you are experiencing, whatever has come to you, or whatever state you’re in at any point in time, they all have synchronicity. There is a continuum. That means from your birth till your death, you’re going through various situations, various states, various relationships, various flavours of life. All flavours have value. We can’t really say something is right, something is wrong, something is good, something is bad, etc. Everything has a value in terms of experience. So, when you start understanding and accepting that, you are always in the present, because every moment the ‘present’ provides you with your set of experiences. An experience which has already happened has provided you all the flavours that can be taken from that experience. For example, a fruit that has already been sucked off all its juice will not give you any more. Even if you keep on chewing the balance, it will not give you any more. Like that, what happens right now, what you have at this point in time, that’s your reality. If you keep moving from reality to reality to reality all the time, if you are being in the present all the time, then you are in an absolute experience mode.
And that’s exactly where you come out of the basic inclinations which are the driving force. We have our set of inclinations, which is our flavour on Earth. This is exactly how we are operating on Earth. Remember, ACCEPTANCE is a real thing. In fact, if you accept yourself totally and completely, you are actually in an experience mode – every moment, at every point in time. “YOU ARE FINE.” That is exactly what perpetual meditation is. You are in the present all the time.
As I said earlier, we have three states. When we are a witness to all the 3 states – the waking state, the dream state and the deep sleep state, you reach the TURIYA state – a state of full witness-hood. That is a state of total alignment. Though the dream state and deep sleep state are not easy to witness, eventually when you closely witness the waking state without attachment, you will spontaneously raise it to the other 2 states – the dream state and deep sleep state as well. In the present you have to be a witness. Whatever is happening, for every action, for everything that is happening in life, understand that there is a reason for it. There is a history (past), there is a present and there will be a future as well. There is always continuity.
If you accept this continuity and keep flowing, then everything will start making sense to you. Otherwise, we will only see fragments and we will always complain, “Why is it happening?” There are so many complaints, so much of resistance, so many levels of resistance and all this add to pain and suffering. When there is an event and if you feel detached from the event – meaning you have no pleasure or pain, but you are just witnessing it; in that mode, you can transcend the whole life.
If you stop judging, criticizing, abusing, scandalising etc., you are free. These are the things which are binding you to Earth. Because when you move into that kind of a mode, you get sucked into it and it’s not easy to get out. Also, it takes a lot of time to get out. So, if you’re fine with yourself, you’re fine with your situation, if you are fine with the flow of life, then everything is flowing smoothly and you’re happy with it. Adding to it, when you’re in a witness mode and you are not complaining criticising, judging, etc., life then will give you the best fruits. Otherwise there will be a lot of resistance and pain. That’s exactly what we see in the world today.
Question 4: Is it possible to reach liberation only from the state of sattva or is it possible from the state of rajas as well?
Rajas is always a state of turbulence. This is a state where you are reasonably unsettled. In this action mode, we are like a pendulum, oscillating between the good and the bad. You need to sit down and stabilise yourself to reach enlightenment. Tamas is worse, it is procrastination. Rajas is action. People find a lot of happiness in movement, in action, and they feel that they’re doing a lot of things, but it can drag you into things. In the state of sattva, you can develop witness hood. You are in action, but you have no ownership. You are in a mode of selfless action. When you do more and more selfless actions, purification automatically happens, detachment happens, and it helps to transcend into levels where you are completely in an equanimous mode.
So, from rajas to move into enlightenment is not easy. But do not think that all actions are rajasic actions. Some Masters, after attaining enlightenment, move into hyper-action. But those actions have no ownership attached – they are not karmic actions. They are not for pleasure or for the experience. They are for the sake of dharma (righteous duty). The same thing happens with an Avatar (a divine incarnation) as well. An Avatar comes with a full purpose, the purpose of preserving dharma usually. They come, they deliver, and they leave. They are not here to experience the pleasures and pains of a worldly existence. They are here to bring people out from that ‘pleasure and pain’ situation. They bring people to an awareness that this pleasure and pain situation has happened over lifetimes.
We have gone through various lifetimes having the same kind of experiences, same patterns, same agonies, same ecstasies etc. Now it is time, we should come out of it. We should see the larger picture and see the whole story from a different perspective. These beings (Avatars) who come for the sake of preserving dharma, live their lives as normal/common people, just like Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. They lived a very natural life. They studied under a guru, they got married, and they did everything just like an ordinary person. They lived a very ordinary life, so that people can connect to them. If they came with a particular state, if Krishna showed his Vishwaroopa (Universal form or omnipresent form) which is full brightness, nobody would be able to see, nobody can actually look at it because it would be too bright. It’s important to understand that they all lived their lives as ordinary as possible, as normal as possible, so that people could connect to them. Otherwise, people will say, “Oh that was Krishna; that was Rama. How can we be like that? That is why they lived their lives like that. When you are completely in a mode of equanimity, when you reach a level of stability – that is sattva state – and then to reach a state of extreme action, while being in inaction, is possible. When I say inaction, it’s not a lack of action; it’s a lack of ‘attachment to action,’ which is possible. But in a rajasic mode, it is always action with ownership and it is very difficult to change action into inaction. That is not possible because it’s not easy.
In a rajasic mode, you always look for a result. You’re doing something because you have an expected result. You do a thing for the sake of something. Usually it is pleasure or some kind of gratification, and the result is either pleasure or pain. But you have no complete control over the result. You can only do a particular action with a particular intention, but you have no control over the result. So, in a rajasic mode, this is the issue.
In a sattvic mode, you don’t really worry about the result, but you continuously do action without ownership. It helps you to stabilise your mind. Without ownership, thoughts are less and the thrust of karma is less because you are in a kind of detached mode. Whatever happens, whatever result may happen, you do what is right for you. What is right for you may not be understandable to the whole world, because they only see things from their own viewpoint. They have their own set of concepts, prejudices, etc. Hence, they look at the world and they look at each person/situation through their own eyes. So, don’t expect that everybody will understand the activities of a Master, how they operate, why they operate, or why they do certain things.
A person who is fully occupied in a selfless mode may not be well understood by the society, but it doesn’t matter. We do our thing and we have to express our uniqueness into this world. And that’s what all these great Masters have done. And most of these Masters were not understood at their time. That is because the people only see as per their frequency, they can’t see the truth. This is the point. So, in a rajasic mode it is not easy to attain liberation, because desires are still present.
Question 5: is it possible to pick up energies and feelings from WhatsApp groups that we are part of?
Every communication is a transaction. Everything is an energy exchange. And today I think most of the time we are occupied with the gadgets, phones and various machines. An energy exchange is happening certainly. That is why we get so excited when there are so many likes for our post. Or we get disappointed when nobody likes our post etc. So, there is an emotion exchange. Emotion is energy in motion. There is an energy exchange happening. I would always say that if a material is negative, don’t even touch it. When someone is speaking ill about somebody, if it is gossip, and if it is not pertaining to your life or if that information will not give you a positive transformation, don’t touch it because you don’t need it. It makes your mind heavier and more unsettled.
Any information which enhances your energy, makes you brighter, activates you, brings you out of procrastination, is a good message. But anything which gives you dilemmas, confusion, anger, hatred, jealousy, or those kinds of emotions is not good because they add to nothing. In fact, they add to your fall in frequency. I would say that it is very important that we stay focused on positivity because it’s a consistent effort. It’s an every-moment effort. We have to stay focused on positivity so that we stay stable. Otherwise we have ups and downs. Usually the messages which contaminate are opinions. They are mostly and usually not truths. They are opinions and they immediately reduce your frequency through confusion. That’s why I always say, the evil enters your mind as a doubt. Once it enters your mind, then it stays in the mind and it operates through the mind. A doubt is enough to topple you; one doubt is enough.
This is what we sometimes see in the newspapers/media. There is a question mark, “Is he the culprit?” They put a question mark. The newspaper is not saying, “He is the culprit,” but they put a doubt in your mind. And you’re already prejudiced. Then you look at everything with that prejudice. Automatically, your opinions are flavoured because you have prejudice in the mind. These are the materials which you should completely avoid. When people talk about other people to me, I always tell one thing, “Thank you for the information. Keep it with you. This is precious for you but not for me. I do not need it. I know the person; I trust the person; even if that person is not good as you say, I have no problem, because my connection with that person is different.” So, it’s all individual relationships. It’s how we interact with people, and how we are with people.
A lot of these interactions are to do with us – about 70% with us and 30% with the world outside. Because how we are, that’s how we get a response. If we are completely love, we get showers of love and there’s no other way. That’s the seed we are sowing. But, if we have prejudices, if we have doubts, if we have many different complexes, that’s exactly what we get back. So, don’t look at the whole world as puritanical perfection, it’s not true. It’s not so.
And now, religions have created a lot of boundaries. Quite a lot of boundaries and the world is divided into lots of pieces. God knows how many pieces. And it’s mostly in the name of religions and languages. Actually, if you look at the whole world, you remove all these pieces and look at the world, all people, all birds, all animals, all insects, all creatures are only looking for peace of mind, just to be peaceful, just to exist in this world peacefully. That’s what we need. And all they need is the food of love, because the world’s nature has its structure, it has its proper structure, and all the beings in the nature have their duties/responsibilities. And within those boundaries, they are all perfect.
But we human beings/species have completely derailed the whole pattern, the whole planet. We have destroyed many species. We have polluted the earth, wind, air and water. We have done so much damage already. Now look at religions. Religions are for the sake of people. They are roadmaps. They are guidance for the people to attain God. But today, we look at people as religions. That’s completely the wrong way of looking at it. People are people and religions only exist during the waking state. In the dream state and deep sleep state, which religion are you? So, it’s a waking state thing. In the waking state, why do we segregate people, segregate the world with religious connotations? I fail to understand.
People can have religions as roadmaps, as guidance from great Masters, as methods, as patterns of worship, etc., which is okay. But do not have religions to control people, to own people, to segregate people or to divide people. That is not okay. That’s absolutely not acceptable. It is the same with languages. What language suits you, what is spontaneous to you, whatever is your mother tongue, probably that is exactly what you have to use. But you remove the languages and look at the people. The whole world has one language, the language of love. Everybody understands the language of love. Everybody understands the language of fear as well. But that’s a negative language. When you are in fear, you are not yourself. You are compelled or you are restricted into something. But if it’s love, you are expanded. You are fully in the world. You are beautiful. You are energised. This is exactly what is needed today.
So, the point I’m trying to say is that – we are all unique human beings, but we have one thing in common. We love to love and we love LOVE. This should be the message for the future. It’s time for unification based on love, based on kindness, based on compassion, based on selflessness. This unification is a must. The time for division ends here, it’s already ended. Now it’s time for unification. So, if all the people are trying to unify based on love, you will see the difference in the world. There will be no wars, no displacements, no bloodshed, no deprivation, no denial, nothing. Selfishness and other things will automatically eradicate themselves and die; they will die spontaneously because everybody is happy. We can create this. We have 7.5 billion people out there. All that people need is stability and love. And we must focus on that. Division by religions should end completely because religions are for people, not people for religions. This has to be understood.
This is Mohanji. We are together here to celebrate a very important and basic aspect of our existence: Silence.
Silence is our very nature. Silence is what integrates us, unites us with ourselves. As we all know, we are experiencing this earth and for that we are using our faculties such as body, mind, intellect, ego and all the senses associated with it. We experience this world through our senses. The senses are sensors – they search and find various aspects of the world. To process them and to experience them, we have the mind which processes emotions, the intellect which processes information, and the ego which processes materials connected to personality i.e. our positions and possessions and all such things.
So all the time when we are awake, we are in the pursuit of experiencing various aspects of life and all these aspects have their roots in Silence. Absolute Silence is like a huge unfathomable powerful ocean. It is huge and all the noises are like waves. They come, but they don’t exist – they go back to the ocean. Every noise has come out of Silence and all those noises go back into Silence.
Once we know that Silence is the base of our very existence, we start connecting to the very core of our being, which is Silence. Then there is no pressure for thinking – thoughts are very noisy. There is no pressure for expressions – for Silence is far more powerful than any expression. All expressions create various feelings and emotions in the world around us. Likewise we get affected by so many things of life. Each aspect of us is influencing so many things around us. If we are rooted in deep Silence, our expressions will be only on essential basis.
Here, we are trying to bring together the whole world with the remembrance that our very existence is always linked to Eternal Silence. The whole system, all the galaxies, everything operates in beautiful Silence and Silence makes us One. It integrates us, it unites us. And all the expressions that we experience, or have in our course of life, all have some kind of impermanence. They are all temporary and they have a limited existence. With the incidents that happen, their experience stays; sometimes they become memory and sometimes we don’t remember them. But when we get back to Silence out of which all this has come, we feel a deep permanence there – because the ocean is permanent, and the waves are temporary.
Now we are trying to bring everybody together, all of us are together for this one beautiful cause – the cause of being silent.
What is the advantage of being silent? You can see that the world is now divided by minds. Minds only connect to material things and boundaries or frames. We look at every individual through frames: we classify, we assess, we judge, we criticize. We are in a hurry to compartmentalize people, to put people in boundaries. And that creates a lot of differences and divisions. We have seen that happening in the name of religions, in the name of language, culture or orientations. We have divided the world. With all these divisions, all that we have experienced across time is the pressure of having no complete experience. Because we are all pressured as stories in this beautiful land, we have to be restricted to certain boundaries. But in fact, our whole system, or constitution is not made to be restricted by boundaries – we are born free.
We are free – but our freedom should not disturb the world outside. Our religion or our belief systems should not disturb anybody else. We believe in being one. All beings are one, not just human beings. All living beings on earth have their expressions. Most of the living beings on earth live as per the laws of Nature. As human beings, we have used intelligence and imagination to create our own laws, our own patterns, our own existence and structures. We do not really depend on Nature but instead we depend on our intelligence. It’s our responsibility as well, as we use our intelligence and our imagination to experience this earth. More than having rights, we have responsibility. It is time we recognize our responsibility and that responsibility should be rooted in extreme stillness – that means consistency, silence. That means awareness, wisdom.
The highest wisdom is the wisdom of the unification, unity – that’s what we are. Such a variety of beings, yet the one Soul operating through various beings. One spark, one vibration, with the same energy expressing itself through numerous beings. And that’s the variety and beauty of our existence. For that to be fully experienced, we should not only use our senses, we should also use our silence – that means, the inner eyes that see through these physical eyes, the ears that listen through the physical ears.
Everything that we collect from this earth is processed through the mind. Emotions are the food of the mind. Tons of information are processed in this internet age. And not all information is real information – most of it is opinions. Our opinions are related to what we are at that time, not exactly what we eternally are. Opinions that we experience are usually not permanent opinions – they all transform, they change. Whatever changes, is not fully real – it is not real reality, not the Eternal Reality.
Of the tons of information, what we process becomes knowledge. All information does not become knowledge, like all the food that we consume does not get put into the stream of body. So all the information that we collect, we don’t process. Most is discarded – some we don’t even get. Some is handled in an absentminded state, so it doesn’t belong to us. What is processed becomes our knowledge and that knowledge which we actually experience, becomes our wisdom. Wisdom is connected to experience – and only that experience when your faculties are fully present. That means if the mind is not present with your eyes, you don’t see. If the mind is not present with your ears, you don’t hear. This is exactly how we operate and this much limited is how we are. If we really understand how limited we are, we will sit back and witness this whole show. As you wake up in the morning, you get a world out there. When you sleep, the world is still there but the world doesn’t belong to you, or you do not have that world for experience. In the waking state, we experience the world within our capacity, within our constitution, within our moods, with so many factors. When we are very very well and healthy, we see the whole world as beautiful. When we are not so healthy, when we are a bit sick, then we feel that the world is not good enough. So everything has this relative existence. All our experiences are relative, not permanent.
So, what is the cause of Silence or the relevance of silence in us? That is where it all has started from. In the deep sleep state, when you do not have your mind at your disposal, when you have no intellect, no ego, you are not aware of the body – you are totally in a death-like state, when you are totally dissolved. That’s a time when only Silence exists. Our faculties are all immersed in silence and absolute stillness. In that silence and stillness, all the aspects which we considered as this incarnation (which is of course, having a duration and also changing as we evolve in time through childhood, youth and adulthood), everything dissolves. In the deep sleep state, we could be a small child or we could be an old person – it doesn’t matter since everything is dissolved. All these things are again reintegrated when we are awake. When we wake up, we bring everything forth and start looking at the world, and experience various aspects of earth like food, energies of various types, places, possessions, positions. Everything has relevance only when we are awake. Nothing has relevance when we are dead or in deep sleep – both are same. Actually in death state, nothing matters because we go empty-handed. We came empty-handed, we will leave empty-handed. But in deep sleep state also, at that point in time we have nothing – everything is left here. When we wake up, we come back or we repossess, reclaim all these things.
So in order to reconnect with ourselves, we definitely need that state of silence everyday in 24 hours, unconsciously mostly. But now, we are trying to consciously connect ourselves into deep silence.That silence unites us not only internally, it also unites us externally between all the hearts. When all the hearts in this world are united on one platform of silence, there are no divisions, there are no separations. There is only Love, because we see ourselves in everything. That is the beauty of it. We are everything. We do not feel it because we are too occupied or preoccupied with this incarnation of ours and its attributes.
But once you demolish all that and you look around, you see that every being is expressing or experiencing in its own capacity, within its boundaries, within its time and duration, space and aspirations. Human beings are operating based on the desires, pending desires which brought us here which seek fulfillment. There can be numerous requirements – a very large appetite of a million or billion desires or reasons for fulfillment. Then we all have our inclinations. We are inclination-driven, we are driven by inclinations. We are expressing our set of inclinations, this we see absolutely open in small children. As we grow older, we tend to hide them but then we do have inclinations. And likes and dislikes are connected to inclinations.
So on one one side, the set of desires, an ocean of desires, to navigate through which we have our inclinations which also is our boundary, our capacity. Then we also have time and space to fulfill that. This is life. This is all about life – and all that we are doing. So every being here whether it is human being or beings of any species – they all have the same need, same relevance, same requirement. Most of the other species live on instincts. The basic instinct is survival instinct, but human beings have chosen or we have got this grace, or gift of awareness. We can use our intelligence and we can use our imagination with which we have created this whole world.
So it’s time we go back to basics and integrate into ourselves based on silence. And that silence will unite us and through this silence, we bring peace. Silence and peace are synonymous. We bring peace and this peace will wipe away all differences, all the things which minds have created. When I say things, I mean the divisions – the divisions that the mind has created, the boundaries that we have created of class, culture, country, color, community. All these things will dissolve and we only see unity, only see Love, when we really, really see the aspect of Love. Love is just like a substratum; Love is the ocean. Every other emotion comes and goes. No anger stays forever, no hatred stays forever, no jealousy stays forever, they all come and go. Love stays.
So when all the noises are taken away, there is Silence. Likewise, all the emotions are taken away – there is Love. We will start seeing the truth all the time. Imagine, we live in that truth. It will be a beautiful life. We will only be loving the whole world, all the beings, every being. Our expressions will be Love, we will not be selfish. We will wake up in the morning, and feel only grateful that we are alive, and will only think one thing: “What else can I do for this world? What else can I give? What else can I share?” That makes you rich.
I invite you to this richness, and I congratulate the team who has put this together, this effort together. I am endorsing this and supporting this, with full gratitude to Existence for giving me this opportunity, and to all the people who invited me to talk to all of you.
I’m submitting this in the hands of eternity, this whole mission in the hands of eternity and I wish all of you immense peace, happiness, contentment and bliss.
Thank you!
I love you.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic Proofread by Geeta Iyer
It’s natural that we approach a Master with a lot of expectations, and usually or many times, we see that we only go to a temple, or a Samadhi, or a Master, only when we have some problem. We see that happening in life. If we are completely fine, we are perfect, and we are happy, we don’t go anywhere. We don’t even thank God or thank Gurus. But when we have a problem, that’s the time when we go to a Master, or go to a Samadhi, or go to a temple and ask for help. So, like Kunti Mata has said in the Mahabharata to Krishna, to always keep her unhappy, sad, so that she always remembers God. This is human nature. We remember God only when we are not happy. But that should not be the case; we should be connected to God all the time. Every day when you wake up, you should be thanking God.
The highest prayer is the prayer of thanks, gratitude. Gratitude is very, very powerful. That’s a very, very potentially powerful prayer. When you are deeply in distress; imagine you are in a kind of a distressed state, things are not happening well, things are falling apart, first and foremost, what you should do is to stop complaining. Because when you complain, when you are expecting too much and if you are complaining, you are actually increasing the pain. It’s almost like a thorn which has pierced your leg, and when you keep shaking the thorn, the pain will persist, and the wound will become bigger. Like that, when you keep on complaining, then the pain will be more. This is one point.
Second is a very important point, it is that we should be aware – there is a reason for every effect, there is a cause for every effect. No effect happens by itself, there is a reason. So what would be the usual reason for any effect in life? Something – a memory which is stored within, and which is actually accented because of repeated storage, or repeated thoughts about it. Like you can see some people whom you do not like in life, you remember them all the time. You know, those whom you remember all the time have actually influenced you in your life. Have you observed that? This you see in your life. Whom you are remembering all the time – maybe they are your enemies – but they are influencing your thoughts, they are influencing you. Like that, potential fears – fears about losses, fears about diseases, fears about not being appreciated in the society, not being accepted, and all these fears create those kinds of effects in life, which no Guru or God has anything to do with, which we are creating every moment. This awareness should be very clear in the mind, it’s very important.
If we are not aware of the patterns we are creating, because life is full of patterns; and patterns are a continuous process, we keep hopping from body to body, but the patterns will continue. When we hop from one body after death to another body, a new birth, we carry all these things. The patterns are in continuation, they continue. These patterns keep repeating, and the same kinds of effects are brought.
It also means a lack of acceptance. So the way you can overcome these patterns is through acceptance and surrender. Acceptance is very important. “Okay, this is happening now, let me take a deep breath, fine.” Not blaming immediately, criticizing, screaming, shouting and complaining. That won’t help you, because that will actually increase your pain. Instead, you are accepting them. Accepting doesn’t mean that you are like a doormat, where anybody can walk over you. Instead, you are accepting, and then at a certain point in time, you say, “Baba, this is happening, I’m sure this is happening because of my past patterns, maybe fears, maybe some kind of resistance, but I leave it to you.”
Acceptance and Surrender, they go hand in hand. They will release you a lot from the stress, and then you can see miracles happening. Usually, we do not surrender enough. We keep it to ourselves, we say, “Oh, this is happening. Why am I praying to Baba for all these years… Baba is not taking care of me…” This is the usual way people talk, but that’s not the truth. You are not allowing Baba to take care of you because you are not accepting it. Resistance means that you have not come to terms with your reality. Resistance is a clear sign you are not correlated or coming to terms with your own reality.
Acceptance means you have come to terms with your reality. From that point, you surrender to Baba. I would say you discuss with Baba like you discuss with a close friend, you talk to Baba. “Baba, look here, this is what’s happening. You know it very well and now let’s work it out together.” Something like that, just like a casual discussion, not even a prayer and say, “Baba, thank you for being with me, through happiness, through sorrows, thank you for being with me.” And you will see the effect much better, rather than complaining, criticising, judging, screaming, and shouting. This will only increase your agony, and also, that closes doors. And you are actually testing Baba that way, “Now, are you going to do something for me? Are you going to help me?” Baba is not your servant; Baba cannot be your servant. He is our ally, he is our support, and he is our friend. He is our closest possible friend, who has no discrimination. He never judges. He never discriminates anybody. There’s no poor or rich in his world. All are the same. Everybody can connect to him as the closest friend and the closest ally. Ownership creates pain. Surrender releases all the pain. This is the secret.
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When you own all your doings, “I am doing it, I’m doing it,” the ego, the mind-matter is getting involved, and that creates pain. But you can surrender, “You are doing it, I’m not doing it, it’s happening through you.” I don’t mean that you can do all sorts of crimes and say, “I’m not doing it.” That’s not the point, it should be pure stuff. The intention should be pure; the intention should be selfless. You can never, ever do things selfishly and say, “It’s Baba doing it.” That’s not good, because that’s got a huge price to pay. Maybe you may not be able to complete it over, let’s say, the next 10,000 lifetimes, that much a price! I always say, don’t do these things where you are using a Master’s name for your selfish reasons. And one thing is very clear – Baba, Babaji, or any of those great Masters will never ever ask anybody to harm anyone. NEVER. They will only say, if at all, “Detach from this place, detach from this person, don’t be there!” That’s all. He will never say, “You go and attack that person, insult that person, character assassinate that person.” Never! This is guaranteed. You can look at history. These Masters are pure Consciousness. They will never ever want to harm anybody. This is the truth.
If you are in deep sorrow, accept it first, then discuss with Baba, “I’m going through this process, you are watching, I leave it to you.” Then you keep quiet and let him do the work. You have surrendered, that’s about it. And gratitude – “Thank you for being with me.” Always be thankful, always be grateful.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan
Q: What is your recommendation about the emptiness one feels after a loss. Should one grieve or ignore, or how to deal with it?
M: I’ll tell you my experience. When I lost my daughter in a road accident, it was very serious pain. I thought it was the end; I was very close to her. But then, when people started coming to the house and seeing me, they were expecting me to be sad for a long period of time. I then realized that this was my personal sorrow and that in fact, none of these people had anything to do with it. Why should I be a victim of someone’s sympathy? It paralyzes you. I refused the sympathy, because it was a personal sorrow, it was a completely personal issue. Also I refused to indulge in self-pity. Both of them paralyze you. You are thinking and nurturing sorrows because you love to be in that state.
Instead what I did was, I moved into serving the world in her name, in my daughter’s name. It has been sixteen years since then now. In many countries, ACT Foundation and Ammucare are functioning. See, there is a T-shirt here, ACT Foundation. How many lives have we touched? It’s not my merit, it’s not my power. It’s the intention. The power of intention made it. I decided that I will not remain a victim and receive sympathy or nurture self- pity. Instead, I moved into the world; there was opposition, there were many obstacles. People tried various things to pull me down, and when I started this in 2003, some people, even authorities asked, “Do you have a lot of money?” I said, ”No“. “Do you have somebody with a lot of money with you?” I said “No“. “Then this will not run even for one year”, they said. Now, sixteen years later, I can definitely say, “It ran! It did touch many lives. It’s still touching many lives.” How much it has grown and who received benefit from it, I don’t know, I never counted it. Recently somebody asked me, “What is the success behind ACT Foundation?” I said, “I never owned it. I delivered it to the world. The world is running it. People of the world are running it“.
In 2003, when they asked me the question, “What is your investment?” I said, “Myself“. I don’t have anything else to invest. I have only myself to invest, and I invested myself. Until today, I have never called up anybody asking for money. I never told anyone, “You must do something in ACT Foundation.” Never! Money has come. Activities have happened. Life has happened this way. Today, my daughter still lives, in many countries, through many people.
You can convert every loss into something powerful and positive. This is up to you. This is your disposition. If you sit down and cry, drink alcohol, pity yourself, nobody gains anything out of it; in fact life is lost. One life is already lost, and your life will be also lost. This is my answer.
I would say never waste your life, because you are unique in this world. There is none like you. You are a unique creation. You are neither high nor low or equal, you are unique, and there is nobody like you. You must use your uniqueness in the right way, as best as possible and make a difference in the world. Why not? Why do we have to just live and die? Keep shining bright!
When I wake up in the morning each day, I say a prayer, “Thank you for using me.“ I do not take ownership. I really don’t have any extra powers as compared to any of you. But I refuse to lie down and die. It is not always easy, because sometimes people are very cruel toward us. Even if you are doing good things, they will come and say something very dirty and bad. They want you to slow down. You must get up and walk again. Because it is your life! Nobody else is responsible. It is our life. We have to walk. Keep walking. And don’t expect inspiration from those outside. You should have inspiration from within.
We have to be self-inspired, there is no choice. Don’t expect anything from outside, because many times when you expect that, you get the opposite. They try to pull you down. They try to tell you that you are not good; they try to tell the world that you are not good. They do all these things. This is part of life. You watch anyone who has done anything in this world; people have accused them, criticized, and even crucified them. This is the world. You have to live in this world. You have to live as yourself in this world.
What can you depend on? The purity of intention within you. Your intention should be always pure. You should always mean good for others. Whatever others do to you, don’t worry about that. Be good to people. Do your best. I always make sure that if somebody comes to me I do my best; whether they are eligible, not eligible, good, bad, ugly, I don’t look at. We don’t have time for that. We don’t have time to waste. Each breath that we take on earth is valuable. This platform is valuable; that is, the earth is valuable. We don’t know how long we will live here. So, what we can do? Do your best; forget about applauses, hatred or criticism. Let everything be. You do your best. Don’t expect that everybody will appreciate. That is a big problem. If you expect people to appreciate and if they don’t appreciate, you will stop doing things. That is not good.
Sometimes, when I almost decided it is a thankless world, I should not do anything, then she (referring to Devi) was saying, “Keep moving, move! “ So I said, ok. When some people criticize for what we do, I tell them, “Can you do something better than this, I will support you?” They vanish. I realized that many people who talk, do nothing. They just talk, they don’t have any initiative for doing anything; even taking this piece of paper from one place to another, they won’t do. But they criticize those who do. So I say,” You do it better than me, no problem, I will support you.” I would like to see positive activities happening in the world; it is not important who does it, let it happen. But it doesn’t happen. So, what should you do? Keep walking. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop.
One more thing you can be sure about. Those who connect to you with their mind will not stay long. They change their mind. Those who connect to you from their heart will never leave. You can trust them. These are the people who will walk with you, whatever happens, they will never leave you. These, you can trust. Keep walking. They will walk with you. Night or day, winter or sunshine, it doesn’t matter, they will walk with you.
That is why Buddha created his entire empire with five people. So many people came to see him. Five people stayed. So many people came to listen to Jesus, twelve people stayed. It is the same with everybody. All those who do something in the world, do not have many to support them. Many will come to see, but not to support; a few people will support, and they really will. That is enough to build the world. This is the long story, but it is important to understand, because I do not accept that you are weak, that something is impossible. These are things that I don’t understand. I always say, “There will be a way.“ Everything has a method. If you have the key, there is a lock; if you do not put the key in the right place you cannot open the lock. So, there is a right place, a right method to do things, find that thing. It will happen. I do not agree that something is impossible in life. If you ever feel weak, remember me, I will be with you. If nobody is with you, I will be with you. This is guaranteed.
Q: Do you enjoy being worshiped and feeling that you are special or above others?
M: I think she (referring to Devi) can truly reply to this question.
(Laughter in the audience)
Please understand one thing. There is nothing special in me. But if somebody feels that they get satisfaction by praying to me, worshipping me, loving me or hating me, I accept it as it is, because at the end of the day, it is about their satisfaction. I will never ask anyone to worship me, because it is of no interest to me. If somebody says,” I have to worship you,” I say, “Ok, do it,“ because it is for them.
Understand that different types of people meet me each day. Each person has his or her own favorite expression or style; who am I to deny it? But if I demand it, it is a different story. I never demand it. I never ask for it. I do not look at myself as special, to be really honest. I think that everybody is myself. Why do you worship another person? Worship yourself. This is what you should do. But somebody says, “You are amazing, I want to worship you, I become happy.” Then I say, “Please, go ahead“. Some people write poetry about me, they feel happy. Some people hate me, they get happy. I agree to everything, so that they are satisfied in their life in their own way. Do you understand?
It is not just me, anyone who is aligned or stabilized, even you, will become like a powerful magnet, whether you like it or not. And that is because of only one reason, you are aligned; your mind, intellect, body, ego, spirit, everything is together. When you look, everything looks, then every activity becomes powerful; you become attractive. It is not that you are doing something, you become like that. A magnet does not have to decide to become a magnet; it is a magnet. It attracts people; each person responds in different ways; as they are. We don’t interfere in this. People wrote the Aarati, I didn’t say anything. Some people wrote thousand names for me; everything is allowed. I have never depended on any of these things. If I depend on them, then I become addicted to somebody. Then if somebody does not do it, I would become sad. I am happy and I don’t want to compromise on my happiness.
I am sure that some of you definitely experienced in this lifetime, when you become totally aligned, you realize one thing: whatever you learned from the outside world, has no value. Secondly, the inside world is empty. When you have no outside world, and inside world, what are you? You are everything. You are all over. In that kind of a situation, the only thing you feel all the time is that you know nothing. You are totally empty and free. You are not bound by the emotions, or the devotion, or anybody.
Now, when you are like that, how will people respond to you, we don’t know and we cannot say, nor we can deny. People respond according to what they are. Some people feel a lot of love, some people love devotion, some people feel various things. Anyway, nothing will bind you. You are already free. You have chosen freedom. You are not dependent on someone’s emotion for your life. The remote control of your happiness is definitely not in the hands of someone else, it is in your hands. So you don’t change the channel often. If it is in someone else’s hand, they keep changing the channel; sometimes they are angry, upset, happy or sad; these will not affect you. But at a certain point in time, nothing affects you. The last point is you look at everybody as yourself; all are your relatives, all are your soulmates, there is no difference. Then, whether they worship or deny, hate or do whatever, how does it matter? When you love somebody, and they betray you, sometimes you feel the pain. Then you feel, “Ok, let them have their enjoyment at your cost. No problem.”
I will definitely recommend worshiping one person, in one lifetime, who is that? J YOU. Because you are a wonderful creation, understand that. Because you are an amazing creation, why not worship yourself? This includes self-acceptance, and love. So, instead of worshiping something outside of you, you must worship yourself and appreciate this creation called You in this lifetime, otherwise you will lose a lifetime. If you don’t worship me, I lose nothing. But if you don’t worship yourself, you will lose one lifetime.
Don’t feel that God is looking for your worship. God is busy. The whole Universe belongs to Him. Look at ourselves from the moon? We are like tiny ants here. We pray to God and God becomes happy? Understand the God in you and behave like God through love. Unconditional love. That makes you one with God. What you need to know is that you are the Supreme Consciousness in small bodies; from outer space we appear like tiny ants, ants walking around with big ego.
Q: How important it is to have living spiritual master?
M: Dangerous! How does it feel to live with a mad man? (Laughter)
It depends on you. If you are ready to break your ego into pieces, then there is nothing better than that. If you want to hold on your ego, but if you want to break the master to pieces… (laughter) Both ways it is a good idea. (Laughter) If Master breaks your ego into pieces, then you become free. If you break the Master into pieces, the world becomes free. (Laughter)
Is that clear? Good idea or bad idea? (Laughter)
It is very unpredictable to be with a living Master because his law is the law of dharma, not the social law. He lives as per what has to be done, not what he loves to do. What you have to do is his priority, not what you love to do. But, those who operate from the mind, their priority is what they love to do, not what they have to do. This is the main difference.
When you live with a Master, who only does what he has to do, because he can see through the destiny path, the karmic configuration, he will only do what he has to do, which might be shocking for you, because you have already boundaries, concepts, ideas, understandings and you decided that this is the way to go. He breaks the rules. It really tilts you. Sometimes, he shakes you. Sometimes you become scared. It is not as easy as you think; but if you are man enough to handle it and to allow your ego to be torn into pieces, then nothing better than that.
So now you know why she lives in Slovenia and I live in India. (Laughter) When you cannot tolerate each other this is the way to be together.
The conflict is that when you operate from your mind, you are security oriented; when your mind dissolves, you have no problem with security. If you are operating from your mind, insecurity is part of it and Master is secure. When Master is secure, he is very flexible; time, activities, everything is flexible. But, when you operate from your mind, you need patterns, you need structure. It is very difficult. It is a big clash. When you are with a living Master, there always will be this clash; you are approaching the master from the mind level, with insecurity and the Master is operating with the complete security and full flexibility; it doesn’t work well. So people run away. They get fascinated by the Master, how he looks, how he walks, how he smells, (laughter) they try to come but then run away, saying, “Oh no! This is not what I want!” They also say, “He is crazy!”
Q: At the beginning of each spiritual practice, I keep progressing. But at the certain level there seems to be veil or curtain that falls and disables me from growing further, no matter what I do or how much more I try. So is this to help me develop patience or is it a sign that this path is closed for me or that something else should be found?
M: The activity which gives you experience for a period of time, after a while the same activity cannot give you the same experience. This is natural. That is called the stagnation stage. That doesn’t mean that what you are doing is wrong. But the same activity cannot give you the same experience. It is as simple as that.
If you continue doing the same practice during the stage of stagnation, then you will reach the stage of vacuum; confusions such as are you are doing the right thing or wrong thing, Guru is good, Guru is bad, will happen. If you still do the same practice continuously, then you reach the stage of stable bliss, where you are always peaceful. These are hurdles that you have to cross to reach the stage of stable bliss. It is a test of your consistency. Be consistent and definitely you will reach your destination. The tortoise kept walking, it reached before the hare. (In the fable of the tortoise and the hare where they had a race to see who was faster.)
Q: I lost my child four times. What is the reason why I cannot maintain my pregnancy? What is the way to calm myself down and help my body accept the fetus and bring the child to this world?
M: That is an individual question, individualistic answer is needed. I would suggest you to talk to any of these Mai-Tri healers here. They will tell you.
Q: How do I know that I am on the right path and my life’s purpose?
M: Please understand, life purpose is not separated from your life. What you are experiencing each moment is your life’s purpose. It is continuous, right from birth till death. Life purpose is what we are experiencing each moment. Whatever you experience through the waking state, the dream state and your deep sleep state is your purpose of life. It is a mixture of all the things you have experienced so far in life.
How do you know you are on the right path? You will feel good. This is an internal thing. The right path, the right practice, the right Guru, the right destination, you will feel these because you have that capacity already. You will feel it is natural for you. Whatever is natural, whatever is not artificial is the right thing. So, life’s purpose is whatever you are experiencing at each point.
Higher purpose of life is to be aware of the consciousness that is driving or moving your life. Being aware of it, that this consciousness is active when you are awake, when you are dreaming, and when you are in a deep sleep; being aware of that consciousness, which is behind all these activities and your understanding, is the higher purpose of life. As a human being you can understand that. No other species can do that. As human beings, you already have that faculty in you which will help you to be aware that whatever is happening is energized by something else.
The highest purpose of life is to feel God within yourself, and in everything around you, you only see God. This means the energy, the vibrations and the essence, everywhere. That is the higher purpose.
Is that clear?
Q: If I can’t see any changes within myself or outside of myself, does it mean that I am progressing or not? And in certain situations, I specially wish for Mohanji to lead me. Is it enough to just to have that intention and wish?
M: Mohanji to leave you or to lead you? Laugh J
Well, when you connect with me, I am connected to you. There is no need for any formality, or any particular method of connection. When you think about me, you are connected to me. When your mind is with me, you are connected to me. Automatically there is an energy exchange going on. It is not only me, when you think about anybody, there is an energy exchange happening. Sometimes you become conscious about it, you become aware of it, sometimes you are not aware of it, because sometimes it is based on sensitivity at that time or our moods or our emotions. So, when you are thinking about me, you are connected to me.
What are you connected to? The Consciousness which is represented by this body. Don’t think that I keep ‘PABX’ to check the connection of everybody. I don’t have to do that, because the consciousness is available, and that way you are connected. There is no need to specifically lead you in any particular method. Because, as I told in the beginning: The journey is you, the traveler is you, the destination is also you. In this bargain, my job is to ensure that you are travelling alright. That is why I said, if nobody is with you, I am with you.I never change my mind because I have no mind to change! There is no need for any ceremony; there is no need for any kind of initiation. When you think about me, you are connected to me and you will feel that difference. You will feel that energy. Just connect. Just stay stable. There is no particular time frame or a method; there is no duration. We are eternally connected. Just like the electricity on the wall. It is there. If you switch it on, you will get light. If you switch it off, there is no light. It is as simple as that. Electricity continues to connect. It is always there. This is a continuous flow of energy, and that has united all of us. That is why I said at the beginning that we are all soulmates, otherwise why did we meet in this life? There is reason for the meeting, right? And there is a reason for connecting. And not all the flowers will become fruit. There are a lot of flowers on the tree; some of the flowers fall off. But some flowers will stay and become fruit. Even the tree does not know which flower will become fruit. As long as you keep a safe distance you will remain warm. If you come too close, it might be burning hot.
I tell these people who are with me “Do not waste my life with me.” Do something better, find a boyfriend, get married, have children and live your life. Don’t waste your time with me, because it is too hot, in the neighborhood. J
Q: Is celibacy required for someone’s spiritual awakening?
M: Can you handle it? The celibacy? It depends on whether you can handle it. Any kind of suppression, is not conducive for awakening. Anything you suppress is only a postponement. Whatever you suppress, you postpone it for another time. Whatever you have, all the pluses and the minuses, all the strengths and weaknesses, you have to experience, complete, and then evolve. That is the right way. After a while, you will have no thought of that kind. Otherwise, if you suppress something, your main thought will be those things that you have suppressed. It is not only with celibacy, anything you have suppressed in life, they keep reminding you that you have suppressed them. That will become a botheration. And it takes time to come out of that botheration.
Q: How to overcome unconscious mechanisms like ego and egoism?
M: Ego is the skeleton of your personality. It is part of you. It is kept so that you can be aware of your existence, or experience existence from the level of personality, that is, you as a personality. It has relevance. But when we become egoistic, that is ignorance. When we are expecting respect, expecting many things from the society, from other people, it is usually connected to not understanding. If you are very stable and you expect nothing, you are fine the way you are. Instead, if you want much from people, you want everybody to respect you or worship you, like you asked previously, these are weakness. These are wrong dimensions of ego. If you expect nothing, you are peaceful and settled nothing can affect you; you are stable. If our egoistic existence is the problem, how do you come around it or overcome it? By being aware of it. Just be aware that these things are happening and watch them. Don’t do anything. Don’t try to fight with it. Watch it. It will slowly dissolve.
If you sincerely want to dissolve your ego, help the helpless people or beings. When I was practicing on my own, I used to also practice insignificance, which means I am not important. Even now I practice it. I am not important; everybody else is important. That is the way I operate in this world. When you feel, ”Oh, I am amazing, great etc.”, I immediately remember, “ These are provided by them for a purpose, by the Masters or God, body is provided, awareness is provided, space and facilities are provided, listeners are provided, I have done nothing.” If you keep practicing insignificance and if you believe you are not all that important, there is no way ego can bother you.
Q: Can we transcend duality in this reality?
M: Absolutely. One word, awareness.
First, always remember – all that is happening is temporary; everything that is happening, it is momentary, temporary. Everything will move. Everything will pass. But you remain as a witness to this whole show. You are witnessing this only when you are awake. When you are sleeping, you cannot witness. That is first level.
Second point – always ask: Who is speaking through me? Who is seeing through me? Who is hearing through me? What is this thing which is in me, which is experiencing all these things? Keep asking these questions.
Third point – when you are responding, or when you are in this world, when you are moving around, you are responding to various situations, various people, various emotions, who is involved in all this? And how do you feel about it? Different emotions, different people, different situations,… something is happening within you; sometimes happiness, sometimes sorrow, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Who is experiencing all these, what is happening inside?
Then, fourth, the all-important question: Who am I?
Until you get the realization that “I am the Supreme Consciousness, I am the Consciousness, I am everywhere”, keep walking. And who is your Guru? LIFE. Life is your Guru. Every day brings you some lessons through experiences. Every day, every moment, you understand something whether you like it or not.
Nobody in this life can give you better lessons than life itself. So, you are important, your life is important, the lessons from life are important; this is why you are born. This is the purpose of your life. Whether we like somebody, dislike somebody, whether we like something, dislike something, it doesn’t matter; but you should like yourself because you cannot be changed. Don’t fall for hallucinations like, “I am something else, I am somebody else, and I am probably enlightened! “ These are concepts. Don’t worry about them. When you are enlightened, others will know. How will others know? You will not be affected by whatever it is happening outside, you will be peaceful. You will wake up in the morning and ask the question, “What else can I do for this world?” We will not be bound by the overwhelming feeling of, “Me and Mine“. We will be peaceful.
Now, if somebody does not understand you that is their problem, not your problem. Not everybody has to understand you and not everybody has to love you. Those who really love you will not expect anything from you. If someone expects something from you and loves you, they will not stay also.
Life is so simple. Don’t complicate. Philosophy is simple, right? What are we talking about then? J
Q: I had a dream about you. You gave me lots of money. Is it ok, what does it mean?
M: Isn’t it a good idea to have a dream and you get a lots of money? Dream state is a very powerful state; it is the same as waking state. Do you know what the difference between waking state and dream state is? When you are awake, you are sourcing from the world outside, when you are dreaming, you are sourcing from the world inside. But both have one thing in common – experience. It is called experience and experience has an element of satisfaction. Every experience has an element of satisfaction. When you get something from the world outside, you have satisfaction. But sometimes, it is temporary. We have satisfaction from dreams also, because while dreaming it’s real for you. Every desire craves for fulfillment. Every desire’s natural culmination is fulfillment. So, if there was a desire to receive large amounts of wealth, it probably gets translated through dreams and you have satisfaction in that mode. Dream state is a very important state, where you are actually releasing some of your desires, just like waking state.
Q: What is the best way of serving God in a daily life?
M: When you start seeing the God element in yourself; if you just accept yourself totally, you are serving God. There is one thing that you can never avoid in your lifetime and that is you. When you truly and completely start accepting yourself, your own existence, you are accepting God. When you start accepting yourself completely, you become very powerful. There are no enmities, there are no differences, and you only see your own vibration in the whole world. And that will give you Oneness. Oneness is the nature of God.
Story
One boy asked his father, “You keep talking about God to me, but I don’t understand God. What is God? “
The father explained, “For you to experience God, you have to experience yourself.“
“Why does God need us to be God?”
Father replied, “Bring me some fire, I will show you.“
He brought a lamp that had already been lit, with fire.
So the father said, “I told you to bring fire, why you have brought a lamp? It is a flame.“
Then he brought a burning charcoal.
The father said, “I told you to bring fire, why have you brought a charcoal?”
The son replied, “ I cannot bring a fire without a medium.“
To this the father countered, “God cannot manifest itself without a medium.“
If you understand that, you will respect yourself. You will understand yourself. You will accept yourself. That is the only acceptance you need in life, and everything becomes love, because you love yourself. When you look through the eyes of your mind, what you see is differences. If you look through the eyes of your heart, you will see Oneness. We are all related. We are all relatives. Because, what sits in all of us is one thing. The shells might be different; the forms are different; personalities are different. Because that is the nature of expression of Creation. But inside all of us is one thing. When that thing leaves us, we call it a dead body. So what is alive in us, in waking state, dream state, and deep sleep state is the God particle; the particle called God. That is the value we have. When it leaves, we bury the body, we have no value for that body. As long as it sits, we have value; the moment it leaves, value is gone.
Now, you tell me how do you serve God? Love yourself, and love everybody as yourself. Because all are you, everything is you.
Q: How to defend ourselves from negative people?
M: I think both positive and negative sits inside us. We have both in us. When we nurture more and more love inside, and we start expressing that love in the world outside, we become more immune from the negative things of life, negative energies. There is nothing that is only positive or only negative.
There is an old saying, “The devil uses the key of doubt. “ Doubt is the key that the devil uses to enter the mind. Once it enters, it uses the mind as its vehicle.
Doubt becomes the key for negativity to enter the mind. Once it enters the mind, you don’t know how to overcome it. One doubt will become two, three, and four and very soon, doubts will rule your mind. Say, you are progressing very well in positive vibrations and evolving higher into higher realms of awareness, someone could simply plant a single doubt in your mind saying , “Are you sure?“ and that is it! Everything goes down. It’s as if you made extremely good food, spent hours to make it and somebody put one drop of poison; nobody can eat that.
This is how the society works. They put doubts in your mind, and you are busy handling this doubt. By then you are already slipping down. Doubt is usually from those that you cannot avoid. This is also not only in spirituality; it is also in other relationships. People put doubts about somebody, and you start behaving differently to the other person. Have you experienced it? How many times have you liked or disliked somebody based on someone’s words? Do you understand what I am saying? We have to use our experience as our guide. Our own experience is our truth.
So, what is the other side? Faith. Faith in what? Faith in yourself. Trust in your own experience.If you have these two, nobody can touch you. No negativity can enter you. Guaranteed. Faith in yourself, trust in your own experiences, these are your protective sheaths. Have you seen? Those who have strong faith in themselves, none can defeat them. When a king or a ruler has full conviction and faith in him, and is leading an army, it is very difficult to destroy them even if the army is the half size of the opponent’s. If you stop trusting your own experience and believe in somebody else’s words, then nobody can protect you.
You must also remember, you are born powerful. All of you. Who makes you weak? Your own mind. You don’t need any protection from anybody because you are born powerful. You have your own immunity, your own protection around you. But your mind is sometimes telling you that you are weak, and if you believe it, you are weak. Otherwise, you are not weak.
Sometimes people come and tell me, “Mohanji, we cannot do that. It’s not possible. It is impossible.” I listen to it, because I respect their opinion, but I will still do it if I can. Even if I fail, I will try. Because if you did not even try, you do not know whether there is success or failure at the other end. So try, and have faith in yourself. If you fail, it is a good lesson. If you succeed, it is amazing, you proved the point. I would say, keep walking, trust yourself. Have faith in yourself. Trust in your experiences. You will eventually know that you are very strong.
Did I answer that question about negative beings? Negative beings or negative energies can come to you only if you permit them. Only if the windows are open, the mosquitoes enter. How do you prevent mosquitoes from entering? Fix a net. What is your net? Your own experience. Trust it. Don’t allow opinions to enter through. Let your experience lead you, guide you.
Q: How to overcome anger and aggression, when they happen within us? Is homosexuality something that can be overcome and is it morally sound to have children while in homosexual relationship?
M: What does anger have to do with homosexuality? If you did not like your girlfriend and became very angry, you became a homosexual? (laughter)J
Many of the emotions such as anger and hatred have their root cause in expectation. If you go deeper to find the root of anger, you will see an expectation that was not fulfilled. That leads to a situation of anger. Usually, an expectation unfulfilled becomes a disappointment. A disappointment then leads to anger and various other forms.
Understand one thing very clearly. All the human beings are driven by inclinations. We can see it even in children. They have certain inclinations, we all have them and they are unique. Inclinations are the driving force. If a person is inclined towards certain things of life, he will chase them. That gives you likes and dislikes. They are the root cause of most of the flavors of life; how we live, what we like, what we dislike, who we like to be with, who we don’t like to be with; all these things are caused or driven by inclinations. You may call them tendencies.
You can see these inclinations very distinctly in children; very clear inclinations. And usually, that is why they choose a certain path of education; because they are inclined towards it, unless parents influence them otherwise. If not, they choose their path and go further. I am talking about inclinations because if you look into yourself and find your inclinations, you will easily understand your patterns; it is easy to understand. Destiny is not easy to understand because destiny is as it unfolds.
So if you really look into yourself, behind every habit, behind every tendency, behind every like, behind every dislike, you see inclinations at work. Another example where you can see inclinations at work is how some people like devotion; they like to chant, they like to sing and they like to see or feel God through Bhakthi or devotional path.
Some people need answers, they have lots of questions and they need answers. If they don’t get answers, they don’t accept. That is the knowledge path. Like that, we have the path of service, path of Supreme Consciousness, and so many different paths. This tells clearly our tendency, our inclination. Thus, if you look into yourself and understand the patterns that you have, the habits that you have, all these point towards your inclination; and they are the cause for your daily experiences also, that is where I am coming to.
So, what causes anger, what causes hatred, and all such emotions? The primary cause is always an expectation, an unfulfilled expectation. If you understand your tendencies and just watch them; don’t do anything, just keep watching …“This is my tendency, these are my inclinations…“ If you keep watching, after a while you will see that your anger quotient has reduced, expectation reduces, disappointment reduces, anger reduces by itself.
People love gossips right? People make television series out of it, and also make a lot of money. What is the cause of gossips? Personal insecurities. If you are fully secure you will not talk about another person. It doesn’t matter. If you are insecure, then you will talk about other people to cover your insecurity. When you are secure, and when you are contented, you will permit life to go on, you will allow life to flow. You will not be worried about anything.
This is approximate picture of anger. I hope you understood where the anger comes from. Now you look within, and see what is causing that anger. When somebody is angry with you, what is the best way to handle it? Will you shout back? Smile. They are expressing their weakness, right? Let it be. Your presence should make them feel better, not worse. Mostly, when your ego is hurt, anger happens. It is a response or a reaction of the ego.
Sexuality and homosexuality
Now about homosexuality, what is the problem with that? All people have sexuality. Everybody. Not only human beings, but beings of every species. Why is it so? To continue the species. That’s exactly why the aspect of sexuality is connected to every being. But most beings, except the humans, keep sexuality to their body. What do we do? We keep sexuality in our mind, and we don’t know how to get rid out of it. That is why we have a huge porn industry. Why is it happening? Because we keep sexuality in the mind. If you show a porn to an animal, it wouldn’t want it to see it. The point that I am emphasizing is that everything in life has its place and it has its relevance. When these are migrated somewhere else, they change their forms. When anything is suppressed, or controlled or denied or disciplined, it creates different shapes; whatever is suppressed or denied, they create or change into different aspects, different forms. I would say, do not look at sexuality as a disease. It’s part of life, and it’s a part of the instinct which is God given, which is a part of Creation. It is connected to the basic instincts, it is the basic instinct. What is the basic instinct? Instinct for survival. Survival instinct is our basic instinct. One part is food, the other part is sexuality, connected to the survival instinct. We don’t have control over sexual orientation because it is connected to various factors. It could even be what we get to see in the world, such as certain phobias, fears or concepts, how we are brought up, or what is denied, so many factors… It is not just one thing; lots of things are connected to this. If you understand, this is it, we will not have much opinion about it. I don’t give opinion about any of the personal orientations. Because I am nobody to give an opinion. I have no right.
I only say two things: One is accept yourself as you are completely. The second is, do not be violent, by any means, in thoughts, words or actions. That means total acceptance and non-violence. There is peace on earth.
We are 7.5 billion people on earth now. If all people are heterosexual, it will double up in no time. I think nature is keeping some checks. We respect nature. But I never give an opinion. I don’t have an opinion nor do I ever say anybody’s non-violent expression is bad, because it’s not my job. Nor is it your right to judge another person. You have no right and that is because of one reason, we do not know another person. I do not know another person because I see another person only at a certain time, for a certain space in time, not beyond. Neither do you see another person; everybody sees each other only for a certain time, then how can we judge another person?
But we can accept everybody, just as we have to accept ourselves.
I hope that it is answered. I never explained sexuality in such detail.
Not a bad idea.
Q: When will I find a soulmate (a man)?
M: Look around, in the larger world (laughter). But before that, have you found your own soul? If you have found your own soul, and if you have accepted that soul, as the one real aspect of your existence, you will definitely find your soulmate. Instead of looking outside, look inside, and find your only truth, and then, when you look outside you will only see truth. Instead, if you are looking outside, to find a person, you will only see forms, and you don’t know which is your soulmate. You need to understand your soul, to find soulmates.
Q: I would like to know what is the easiest way of clearing the blockages that I have?
M: One word – ACCEPTANCE. All the blockages are connected to resistance. Watch yourself. Try to find out how many things in life you have resisted and are still resisting which are making you unhappy. Usually, unhappiness is connected to resisting something; fighting against something; when we are against something, our entire energy is occupied with it and then we do not have time to be happy. Instead, start accepting yourself. Say, “OK, this is happening in life, let it come, let it go. Everything comes and goes.” When you are fully occupied with yourself and you are accepting yourself, then there is no room for blockages. Nothing can block you. Nothing within or outside can block you.
Q: How to deal with those heavy people, the emotional vampires?
M: That is a very big question J. What do we do with them? The only way you can sustain different energies from the society is to increase your energy. There are methods: meditations, kriyas, chanting… You do a purification every day, for some time, at least a couple of hours, for two or three hours, internal purification, alignment. When you are fully aligned, nothing and nobody can take from you; you can give anything, but nobody cannot take away anything from you. So alignment consists of consistent activity, practice.
What practice is good for you? Practice which you can do effortlessly, without effort, one that you like to do, one you love to do, that is good for you.
Which teacher, master, Guru is good for you? The one with whom you can connect effortlessly.
Which religion is good for you? The religion, the road map through which you can travel effortlessly. You are feeling good.
What is the common factor for all of these? YOU.
Everything is connected to you. When you wake up in the morning, you have a world outside of you. When you sleep at night, your world shuts down. That’s the only world you have: the world when you wake up, and when you sleep. The space in between that waking and sleep is your only world. Before you were born this world existed, after your death this world will exist, but that world does not belong to us. We can use this world only when you wake up, and in between, until the time you sleep. It is very simple.
We are busy trying to conquer this world, and all that we want there. But what will you do with that? We are busy queuing to buy the new iphone 10. After a while, somebody says, “iphone 11 is coming,“ so this is useless. We are always chasing something new, and we get tired. Sometimes we get tired. That is exactly the point. The point is that everything is you. With or without the iPhone, you are still you.
So, what is our job? Recognize this truth – You are everything. Where is Mohanji sitting? Only when you are awake, sometimes outside. Is Mohanji relevant? Not as relevant as you are. Not only me, anything outside of you is only complementing your existence. But your existence is owned by you.
If you really understood what I am saying, if you really understood this point, you will never be disappointed in life. You will be happy with what you have, and you will not have unhappiness with what you don’t have. You will be happy with whatever you have right now. It does not mean that you become dull, you become contented, peaceful. This is good, isn’t it?
But to all the people who came to see me I am very happy (smiles) don’t think I am not happy. I am really happy you came to see me. I appreciate it.
But please understand, the whole spiritual journey and the material journey also, all types of journeys, the journey of life is you, is connected to you, you are the beginning, and you are the end. And never feel that somebody else is ruining your life, that somebody else is deciding your life, somebody else is trying to manipulate your life, that is not true. It is only as much as you allow, they can enter. Only as much as you open the door, air or light will enter. It’s not about other people, it’s about us. The story called life is about us. It’s our story. There will be many players, there will be many people participating, like in a drama. They are all complementing your story. They are not creating a new story. You are the main player. You are the main actor, the hero. And many people are playing the other roles, let them play, it’s nice. There will be romance, there will be horror, good, bad, ugly, everything. But that is the beauty of life. That is how life should be. It can’t be monotonous, right?
Thus, as a matter of interaction with the society, I always say this, let everything you do, let it be honest to yourself. Means, there should be honesty and purity in your thoughts, words, actions, so you are fine that way. If there is no honesty, then slowly you will start hating yourself; it’s not about people, it’s about us. It’s our story. We have to keep it pure and honest. Nice, beautiful, fragrant.
Q: There is a secret connection between India and Serbia. Do you agree?
M: I not only agree, I feel. That is why my wife is from Serbia; irreversible connection. Another thing is that like the language; there is a lot of resemblance, I would say, between Sanskrit which is the substratum for most of Indian languages and as well as the language here, I believe. I would rather look at the entire Balkans. It makes more sense because there is a lot in common. There is a lot of frequency connection with the larger Balkans. I don’t look at countries, I look at energies. So, when you look at the energies, there is a unity in the whole region. You can feel the same in India, in what we would call Bharat India, which means the spiritual India. The basic vibration is that of spirituality. There is a deeper link here. We are linked in some ways. There is a lot of connection, visible and invisible. Most importantly, we are all related, soul-wise. We are soulmates in that way.
Don’t worry, I love South Africa also, don’t be sad. J These sisters had a sad face (talking to the audience). America also, Sedona. J I really like Sedona. That is the Kailash of America. I love Sedona.
Q: I used to be afraid of authority and kind of ashamed. It’s no longer the case, but why do I react by shivering when I am getting in touch with any authorities and how do I defeat that, how to overcome that?
M: That’s connected to what is stored inside. All our responses, all our inclinations, all our styles and tendencies, they are all connected to what is inside of us. If you deeply look within, and start facing that particular situation or pattern, they will start vanishing. They start dissolving. Don’t think anything is permanent unless you keep it permanent. If you start looking at all your fears, straight into the eyes, they just vanish, they dissolve. Because everything has its duration, and its limitation. When you are really focused on all the fears, nothing will stay.
As a general thumb rule, all that you are experiencing is as per what you have stored. Because these are the impressions, which you have picked up from your experiences, and they got stored in our system. For example, you had tremendous problems with teachers in classes or with a teacher and your experience wasn’t so good, you may keep the tendency or a feeling that anybody of authority has to be feared, that they are probably not good for you, and you started responding that way. There are many trapped emotions, which are the reason for certain experiences we have in our lifetime.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan
Whenever we are going and growing towards the realms of subtlety, subtlety is something which is less and less tangible: the gross, the habitual gross, keep pulling us out. The gross means our habits, the materials we are used to, the places that we are used to, the people we are used to, all the positions, possessions and commitments of life, and all the attachments of life. They keep bothering us and pulling us back to them, while we are trying to detach and move towards the subtler and subtler aspects of us. The subtlest aspect of us is our soul.
When you demonstrate your devotion or your practice in the world, a lot of opinions will come your way. It can be positive opinions or negative opinions. Sometimes there are apprehensions, sometimes prejudices, sometimes the fears that people keep in their minds about things like spirituality. Sometimes it’s not considered as a positive thing, but we know very well that we have gone through all these emotions, all these things of life, and now we need absolute peace, or permanence in peace and that’s exactly why we are following spirituality. The benchmark, as I have already explained, is the silence inside. Whatever happens outside, you are always stable and still.
When I was practicing seriously, I was working as the country head of a multinational company, a very, very busy job. So I was finding my own time, my personal time, the time to connect to myself, between 3 am and 8 am. Even if I slept at 12 o’clock, after some party or some get-together, I would still wake up at 2:30 am. I used to have very short hair, and I used to take a bath, without taking a bath I never used to do anything. I’d take a full head bath, wipe myself clean, and then I’d just light a lamp. There was nothing else in the room except a lamp, a flame, and that flame was the only companion for my connection. I used to dissolve into that field of energy, into myself, and that was my practice.
Nobody knew I was practising, because in public life, in the real-time world, I was not practising anything. I was not visiting any temples, I was not visiting any Gurus, I wasn’t doing anything. But I was very happy with myself, I was practising with myself, and dimensions started shifting because of consistency. Whatever happened, I was always practising. This is one aspect I can tell you, you must have your time, the time with yourself, and as I explained, it’s all about you. The path is you, the destination is you, the journey is you, everything is you. Always remember, it’s about you. Connect to yourself as much as possible.
The time of the day which is quite suitable for this is between 3 am and 8 am, as far as I have experienced. You may have a different time, but that’s up to you, that’s an individually suitable time. I don’t want to say this is the only time possible; whichever time is good for you, that’s fine. But understand one thing – during that time between 3 and 8 am, usually the outside world is sleeping, it is silent with very little sounds outside. And inside, to get into silence, it’s much easier. There are no sounds, not too many vehicles and traffic sounds of various nature. Even the birds, animals, every being will be sleeping, more or less, and they all wake up after 5 am. By that time, you have already almost completed your connection with yourself, and you can conveniently come out of it at any point in time. But up to 8 am actually, in my experience, I hardly used to get any calls, nobody used to bother me. This is one. Secondly, the great Masters have given us various techniques and methods to connect to oneself, because we are a Universe.
The whole point, or the whole message of TAT TVAM ASI is – You are That, whatever you are looking for is – you, and this can be found through self-exploration and connecting to oneself. There is a method which is very popular – connecting to your heartbeat. When you connect to your heartbeat, there is a sound and a silence… a sound… and a silence. You are connecting to the sound and the silence, you are observing that sound and the silence. Then slowly, slowly, over time, you go between that sound and the silence. That means there is a sound… and the sound stops and the silence starts… and the silence stops and the sound starts. We try to feel that deeper and deeper, and as we go deeper and deeper into that space between the sound and the silence, we will start exploring higher levels of subtlety, the sukshma state.
Another method which the great Masters have gracefully given us is the space between the inhalation and exhalation – that idea, that thought of breathing in and breathing out. There is a small gap between the breathing in and breathing out, that is supposed to be the space of Heaven, that is what people say. That space is very momentary, but if you are aware of that space consistently, the space between your inhalation and exhalation, you will start experiencing various layers and layers of silence. You will start feeling that silence, a silence, a state where everything stops: the breath stops at some point, and then the breath starts. So between this stop and start, there is a space, and that space is a very pleasurable space, it’s very, very blissful. These are all methods you can practise.
I was particularly practising connecting to my spine. I feel the spine, I sit, and I feel the spine. When I’m walking, I feel the spine. When I’m sitting and talking sometimes, I spontaneously feel the spine. Any part of the spine, as per your orientation, you feel it, and spontaneously, you will start experiencing a vertical existence. Usually, we experience a horizontal experience as per the flow of karma. But here, when you are concentrating on the spine, you start experiencing a vertical existence, and that is a very beautiful state. When you are in that state, the past, present, and the future do not have much value, there is only the present.
The oscillation of the mind to the past or the future, the dwelling of the mind over matters of the past and the future will all reduce, it’ll all come to the present existence, present awareness. Awareness is bodh, and when you continuously connect to your spine for a long period of time, the bodh, the awareness, will start growing and flowing from you. You will become aware of everything around you, everything beyond you, and dimensions can shift rapidly. I do not want to tell you that this much time you have to do it etc, that’s all individual. Please understand spirituality is an individual journey, everything is individualistic. The more time you can spend with yourself without distractions, that much progress you can expect. So these are all guidelines I would like to give youngsters who are probably in a hostel with other people, etc. You don’t have to demonstrate any of this. Spend some time with yourself, be normal, be involved with all the work, whatever you have to do, you can do.
I was actually very busy when I was practising, I was heading the country and it was a very big job. Big job in a sense, it was a very active and a very stressful job. But at the same time, I never ever forsook my practise. Also, I was experiencing, just like now, I was not in one place long enough to have the comfort of one location. The comfort of one location is always an advantage. If you have a space for yourself to practice, that’s always an advantage, because the energy level of that place will complement your practise. But I didn’t have that luxury. Even now, I don’t have that luxury. I keep traveling. So you have to accept whichever way it happens.
Understand that your only exploration is yourself, and you are always with yourself, so you don’t have to really worry about the environment. If you really mean to succeed in reaching or becoming Shiva, the Supreme Consciousness, you have all the materials you need for that, because, by birth, you have it; nobody can take it away from you. If you are really keen on exploring yourself to the highest possibility, use any of the techniques. You can do what suits you spontaneously. We have bhakti yogis, who like to sing and chant, they are devotional people, they like devotion. There are jnana yogis who like to explore the truth of spirituality through knowledge. Then we have karma yogis who would like to live a selfless life. Through selflessness, they explore higher dimensions. Then we have raja yogis who are only established in awareness – bodh, and through bodh, through constant awareness, they reach the highest. There are so many different methods and practises which are suitable for everybody. And I feel that you will automatically reach there, once you decide to start walking. Nobody can stop you if you decide to walk. And nobody needs to give you any input. In my experience, whenever I needed guidance, somebody has given me guidance. I’ll give you an example.
I was practicing seriously like this for about four or five years. I was reaching a state of complete blankness, meaning I didn’t even know who I was, I didn’t even remember my name, my identity, etc. A completely blank state means I don’t exist. It’s almost like the deep sleep state in the night, where you are not aware you are sleeping, you are not aware of anything, you are totally lost, or completely gone. I was in that state, and I was the general manager of a company at that time, and I had to take care of the whole company and all the people. And at that point in time, I was experiencing these blank states. There were times let’s say, from a few hours to a few days of the blank state. It was very difficult to work during those days. I may forget how to sign. I’d forget my signature. There were occasions when I would ask my financial controller to bring all the papers I had signed earlier. He did not know that I didn’t know how to sign because I couldn’t tell him that I was going through this state. I used to tell him, ”Bring me all the papers I’d signed earlier.” He would bring those papers, and I learned to sign. Then I signed the chequebooks and other things. After a while, he thought that I didn’t trust him, and he almost resigned. He said, “Sir, if you don’t trust me, I don’t want to work with you.” So I said, “Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out, actually I am just correlating something, etc…” In a way, I lied. I told him, “See, I want to check the past records,” and things like that.
Anyway, one day I was so frustrated. I decided I can’t work like this, I had to leave. I almost sat down and wrote my resignation letter. In those days there was no WhatsApp, Facebook or all those things, this was in the early 2000s. There was Messenger. I hardly used Messenger because, I didn’t like to use it. When you open it, a lot of people will come to chat with you. It’s so annoying when you are busy, somebody is asking you things, with which you don’t really want to engage into. I was sitting there. I was fully confused, in fact, I was very frustrated. I was almost writing my resignation. Suddenly the Messenger opens up. I used to practise yoga with a teacher, almost six years before, and that yoga teacher and I had no connections afterward. I lost his number, he lost my number, and I even moved to another country, so we had no connection. But he came on chat. He said, “Mohanji, are you there?” I said, “Yes, I am here. Oh, it’s a real surprise! How come you found me here?” Then he said, “I was meditating in the morning, and my Guru came and told me to tell you that these blank states will end that month, it will be over, and you will not have to experience them again.”
First of all, this man and I had no connection for almost six years. Secondly, he had no way of knowing that I was going through this situation because I never ever told anybody. I was alone – I didn’t have a relationship, I had no girlfriend or wife, I was completely alone in those days, at that time. Nobody used to communicate with me on spiritual terms, on spiritual grounds. I was only involved with my job, my work, and then I used to withdraw to my house. So no way he would know. And I did not know his Master. Then I asked him, “Who is your Master?“ He said the Master had left the body a long time ago, at the age of 90. I was surprised and asked, ”How did you know?” Then he said, “Mohanji, I don’t know about any of these things, my job was to convey the message to you, that this is probably the answer you have been looking for, and I have conveyed it.” I was surprised, totally surprised, this was the accurate answer. Then I said, “Sir, can I have your phone number?” When I called him, he said, “I don’t know anything more, I have told you whatever I know.” So I said, “Okay.” Then in fact, I copy-pasted that message and saved it, because, in the future, even I may doubt whether it happened. I always tell people, “All your positive experiences you should write down and keep it with you.” Because when negativity attacks you, this is your only oxygen, escape way. As a reminder, these will come in handy. When negativity hits you – negativity hits in the most vulnerable time, in the most vulnerable way – if you have the bank balance of your positive experiences written down, you can definitely go through it and get out of it with this antidote. It is very difficult, because negativity sucks you out.
So I spoke to him and that was it, there was nothing more he knew. He also told me one thing: his Master appeared to him about a week or ten days before he spoke to me, and told him the same thing, to convey this message to me. He was searching for my number and my contact and he didn’t have it, then he dropped it. On the day when he contacted me, the Master appeared again, and apparently scolded him. He’d said, “What sort of a disciple are you? I told you something, you are not even doing that, and how come you call yourself my disciple? I am ashamed of you!” Then he found out my email ID, and he tried the email ID, found the Messenger, and that’s how he reached me.
The point I am saying is that when you really want an answer, one way or the other the answer will find you. That we must trust. This has been my experience, the couple of experiences I had are of this completely uncanny nature. Why I am explaining this is because you should not be frustrated about the presence of people, the absence of people, the appreciations or the distractions of life. It is not important. You decide to go deeper and deeper into the subtle levels, but at the same time, do not leave your dharma, do not run away, do not be an escapist. Don’t leave something deliberately because, if you leave something deliberately, that means you are postponing that thing. Whatever God has given you, whatever destiny has brought you, you must perform the dharmic side. When you are the child, you are responsible to take care of your parents, like parents take care of the children. So we have to do that dutifully, with reverence, with love. This has to be done. There is no escape. You cannot say, “Oh, now I am free, I am myself, and I don’t like to take care of my parents or children.” That’s not right. If you have a family, take care of the family. That’s part of the dharma, that dharma must be fulfilled. Every responsibility should be dutifully fulfilled; respectfully, with reverence, we should fulfill it. You can’t run away, I do not recommend any kind of escapism, because if you run away, you will have to come back and solve it later. That might be with interest – that means if it is only a hundred thousand now, it will become one million later. So might as well finish it as it comes – any promises or any part of dharma.
If you are living in a hostel, or you are living in an environment that is not conducive to practice, it doesn’t matter. This connection with yourself, you can always do. As I said, you can connect to your heartbeat, you can connect to your breath, you can connect to your spine, you can connect to your thought processes, you can connect to your interactions or simply, you can meditate all the time by just making sure that no words are uttered without your mind being present, and no actions are done without the mind being present. That means no absent-mindedness, ever. That itself is a sadhana, it’s a beautiful practice. If you practise like that, that itself will elevate you. So there is no excuse for not practising.
Now, if you are determined, fully determined to reach the highest level of subtlety, you should and you can reach there definitely, whoever you are. Even if you have a Guru, a path, a destination, or anything you defined, no problem, they will all come to you at the right time.
Another experience I’ll tell you in the same context.
I was working in the company, and one day I got an email from a woman whom I did not even know, her name was Linda. She wrote to me from California, and I had no connection with America at that time. This was the early 2000s and this also was well before the time of WhatsApp and Facebook. She contacted me and said, “Are you Mr. Mohan? An elevated Master wants to speak to you. Please call this number at this time.” I didn’t even reply, because there are so many fake mails, hoax mails coming your way. Even now it comes, that you won a lottery or you got an award and things like that, which I don’t pay attention to. I just discard them, I remove them as spam. And I did that, and again in a week’s time after that date, she sent another message. “I’m very serious, a Master is asking me to contact you, he wants to speak to you. He does not exist on Earth, he’s from another realm, but he wants to use me as a medium to talk to you.” I became curious: what is this Master talking about? Even if I lose some money for this experience, it’s okay. So I contacted her, and the first question I asked was, “What’s the price, what’s the cost?” Because everything is connected to money, so I asked how much I should pay. She said, “I never asked you for money. This is serious. This Master wants to speak to you. Please call on Sunday at 10 am” and a date was given, so I said, “I will call you.”
On Sunday, I prepared myself and called this number. She picked up the call, and she sounded very old. I asked her, “What’s your age?” She said, “I’m 82.” I said, “How did you reach me?” She said, “This Master gave me your contact email.” I asked her, “Do you know me?” She said, “No, I don’t know you, I don’t even know who you are, nor am I interested to know you.” So that was very clean and clear. Then she asked, “Do you have sufficient money in your phone if the conversation prolongs?” I said, “No problem, I pay every month.” She wanted to know whether it is prepaid so that the charge will not go after a while. So everything was set, and she said, “Are you ready?” I said, “Yes, I’m ready.”
Then she started speaking to me. Slowly, slowly her voice changed to a very deep male voice; a totally different voice from this feeble old woman voice to a very strong male voice. And that man, just to convince me, told me all the major incidents of my life, which nobody will know. Not just the death of my daughter, but various things connected to it, and also various details. That convinced me because nobody will know those details unless they are connected deeply. I think even my family do not know those details. So all those things were told and I was convinced that this is genuine. Then there was so much of guidance and so many things were going on, I don’t want to go into micro details. It was about a forty-five minutes call, and finally, he asked, “I’m done. Is there anything you want to ask me?” I said, “No. I’m happy that I could speak to you, and I realize that you are from a very high realm.” Then he said, “I am not from Earth, I’m from a different realm, where we guide people at random, as per the instructions from above.” So they also have a hierarchy. Then he asked me, “Is there anything you want from me?” I said, “I would like to continue to talk to Masters of your realm.” He said, “I’ll arrange that.” Then the call was disconnected. When I wrote to this lady once again, thanking her, she never replied.
So this is something which we must understand. All these connections are matter fact. There is no attachment, there is no emotion, there is no expectation in these relations. A true relationship with a Master will have no expectations, no conditions, no bindings, no boundaries. This is something that you should always remember when you are connecting to higher realms. Don’t think that everything is obligatory; it is not so. All they want to do is that they found fertile ground and they want to sow the seeds of Liberation there, that’s all. They have no other interest. They don’t expect any gratefulness, they don’t expect anything in return.
So this is exactly how the true spiritual world works, which was my practical experience. Later on, I met various Masters on the Earth realm also, and they were all the same: whether it is Vittal Babaji, Ganeshananda Giri Babaji, whether it is Vasudevan Swami of Vajreshwari, Devi Amma of Bangalore, Avadhoota Nadananda of Kurnool, Lamperi Babaji, Taradas Swami, and numerous Masters, even Swami Govindananda of Rishikesh, all those Masters – everbody was selfless. Whenever I discuss with any of those Masters, I feel free because there are no expectations connected to it. Such Masters will come your way when your eligibility increases.
As I said earlier, eligibility is inner silence. How much deeper into yourself you have gone, that much silent you have become. The thoughts per second reduce. If your mind is not oscillating to the past or the future, if you are not dwelling on guilt, or regrets, and those kinds of things connected to the past, or anxieties of the future, you will be more or less stable in the present. And do your best in the present. Also understand – in the karmic law, it’s not the same do’s and don’ts of the human law. Human law’s do’s and don’ts are connected to the security aspect. The security aspect is connected to survival instinct, it’s a by-product of the survival instinct. Human laws are the by-products of the survival instinct, which across the species is the same. When you look at everything through the human law, you may not understand the karmic law.
In karmic law, the fundamental truth is fulfilment. Karma is connected to pending desires, something which you need fulfilment for, and the natural culmination is fulfilment. The higher culmination is that you don’t need fulfilment, because you’re beyond it. Even though that feeling was there, you are not worried about it, you are not bound by the fulfillment aspect so that you overcome it and then you don’t need it. So we must understand the karmic law clearly. As you grow higher, many of the things which the Saints do, you may be very surprised, how come? In that context, we talk about Lord Krishna. He supposedly had 16,000 + wives… And people say He is the perfect Brahmachari. How is that possible? Krishna was fully Brahma, only occupied in Supreme Consciousness. Whatever activities he was doing on earth, he was definitely not attached to them. He was performing various roles on earth as per the demand of the time. Even as a small child, he was protecting himself. He killed his opponents, those who came to kill him, he murdered. And he also killed his uncle. He did all those things which are probably necessary to preserve dharma. He said, “My only purpose for existence is the preservation of dharma.” And they will continue to do that, they will always perform as per the expected law of dharma.
So there, the boundaries are different. He was engaging with a lot of people in different capacities, at the same time he was fully occupied with Brahma – the Supreme Consciousness. When one is fully occupied with the Supreme Consciousness, he is a Brahmachari. That is something which we must understand. I’ll tell you a story connected to it.
A story
The Brijwasis were going to meet Krishna, and they found that Krishna was sitting on the other side of the River Yamuna. But the Yamuna was overflowing and no boatman wanted to cross the river, because it was dangerous to cross the river at that time. So they were all disappointed. They had made lots of sweets and things out of cow’s milk and ghee etc. They had made everything possible which Krishna loved. But they couldn’t cross to the other side because of the overflowing river. They were disappointed and they all sat down and found that there was a Master meditating under a tree, just a short distance away. They all went towards him, and sat in front of the tree, looking at the Master. When the Master opened his eyes, he saw the people sitting there. He said, “Oh, you’re waiting here. What are you waiting here for? What can I do for you?” They said, “We were going to see Krishna, but the river is overflowing. We can’t cross, so we are all sitting here. We don’t know what to do.” Then he asked them, “What do you have in your bags? What are you carrying?” They said, “These are all sweets which Krishna likes, so we’ve made them. We expected to bring it to his palace so that he can also relish them with his people.” Then he said, “Can I see? Open this.” So they opened and showed him, and he started eating. He ate almost half of it. He was apparently very hungry, and they were getting embarrassed. They were thinking, “Now what will we tell Krishna if we can cross the river, that what we brought for you, somebody else ate?” They were a little worried. He said, “Don’t worry, pack it, come.
That saint was sage Vyasa. Vyasa took them to the edge of the River Yamuna which was swollen and overflowing because of the floods, and he commanded to the river, “If I have not eaten (consumed) anything, let the river part.” They had seen in front of their eyes that he had eaten. He’d eaten almost half the basket and he was telling that he had not eaten anything. They didn’t understand, but the river parted and all these people crossed the river. Sage Vyasa stood where he was, everybody crossed the river and they went to the other side safely. Then the river again merged, and the floods continued. They were really surprised ”How come this had happened?” They’d seen that he was eating, and he was saying, “If I have not eaten, let the river part.”
While they were walking, they reached a garden, and when they looked into the garden, Krishna was lying there under a tree on a bench, sleeping peacefully. So they waited there. They were very happy that they could meet Krishna. When Krishna woke up in about fifteen minutes or half an hour, he looked at them saying, “Oh, you are all sitting here. When did you come?” They said, “Oh, we just came.” “How did you come? The river is flooding, how did you reach?” They said, “A sage did this, and we came here.” He said, “Okay, what have you brought?” They were ashamed to say that half of it was already gone, but they opened the baskets and showed him one. “Oh, no, no, I can’t eat anything now, this same thing I ate about an hour ago, I can’t eat anything.” So, when Vyasa ate those things, he ate it without ownership. That means he surrendered to Lord Krishna and he ate, and Lord Krishna actually consumed. So even though it was going through the mouth of Vyasa, it was filling the belly of Krishna. This is something that we must understand clearly in the path of spirituality. The laws of karma are always related to the ownership of action. We lose ownership completely after a while. When you go deeper and deeper into levels of subtlety, there is no ownership possible. We can’t have ownership. We know very well we don’t own anything. We don’t own the sunrise or the sunset. We don’t own our waking or sleep state. We don’t own our birth or death. We don’t own our heartbeats, circulation, respiration, digestion, brain function, nothing. Then we understand, “Oh, this is a show, it’s going on.” Then our approach to the world will be totally different.
We will look at everybody, every being, as karmic beings. They have a duration, they have a reason, they have an expression, particular character trait, all those things. We will look at everything as our own expression. That will make us very, very stable. All this is possible by developing awareness. To develop awareness, first and foremost, we have to connect with ourselves, look at ourselves, feel ourselves, breathe ourselves, sleep ourselves, everything ourselves. And then we realize that there is no ownership connected.
But let me tell you, do not do violence and say, “I didn’t do that.” That’s a different story. That’s when the mind is cheating, or the mind is trying to delude. That’s not the thing. When you genuinely do not have ownership, your actions also will be pure. The purity of action is connected to lack of ownership of action; no doership, no ownership. That will make your actions pure. And especially if you surrender your actions to the Higher, you will only do pure actions, essential actions based on ahimsa or non-violence. These are all signs of pure action. Pure actions are always non-violent actions. It’s not about what you eat, or where you sleep, or what you drink, or whether you are married, this is not the point, the point is that you are settled inside. Whatever actions you are engaged into, you’re fully settled inside, you’re fully peaceful. You’re just being an expression of the Consciousness, and you are aware of that. So you are always liberated.
This does not need much practice; it needs presence. Practice is often a means to reach this presence. If you’re aware of this, that awareness will bring you the presence and the awareness to the present. So these are the things which you can definitely work on, and it doesn’t matter which environment you are in, or who is with you. If you keep discussing with other people, they can delude you. I never used to talk to anybody, I used to keep my practise to myself. Even if it is the wrong practise, even if it is not so good, it’s fine, no problem. It’s our personal issue, personal matter.
We don’t have to believe, or we don’t have to insist that whatever we do should be successful, because that gives stress, that gives ownership. So we try our best and we connect to ourselves, we start accepting and appreciating, and then we just exist. This is something which you can all practise, there is no problem. Also, always remember, whenever you practice something, the first and foremost is that you have an experience because of the practice. Even if you go to the gym, or you go for yoga, or any other activity, initially there will be experiences. After that, there will be stagnation. The same practice cannot give you the same experience – stagnation. At that point, many people go to different paths. They may go to a different Master, a different method, a different practice. They derail themselves. After that, if you still practise, after the stagnation state is the vacuum state. The vacuum state is that from the collected (collective sankalpas) memories, feelings and notions, you are detaching to a level of complete silence. So that transition time is a bigger time. Through practice, through your consistent practice, you may transcend into a state of vacuum. Vacuum is the ‘in between’ state, and that is a very delusional state. Sometimes, we may feel that we have lost everything, or we are stupid, or we don’t know what we’re doing, all sorts of things can happen to us. And we sometimes criticise the Master, criticise ourselves, criticise the path, criticise the practice. This is all possible at that time. After that the bliss state comes. If you cross over these three states, then it’s bliss state. That’s a permanent state, you can just be there, and that’s it.
So this is something you should always remember – initially there will be experiences, then there’ll be stagnation, then they’ll be vacuum, and then bliss. Always remember, initial experience will not probably stay long. It may come, it may go, but you need to continue. You need to have conviction, consistency; stick to one path, stick to one Guru, stick to one practice, and then you will reach the highest. This is for sure. When we keep shifting, we reach nowhere. The mind takes you for a ride, all over. This is very important to understand, and if you put yourself, surrender yourself to the practice, glory will be there.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan
When we talk about faith, most of us do not understand or express unconditional faith. Faith is primarily in ourselves. Faith is towards ourselves, and that needs a lot of conviction. We need to trust ourselves. We need to have conviction in ourselves, our destiny, our path, our existence, and this incarnation. We need to have deep faith in ourselves. When we have deep faith in ourselves, then we connect to a Master as powerful as Baba. A great Master whom as I told earlier, you can take your time to understand, assimilate and connect. That is not a problem. But then, faith should be unshakable. There will be tests. There are bound to be tests. Main tests are to break your concepts, break your mental frames, and also to break your notions or prejudices. So, all these have to be broken into pieces.
A Master is like a flowing river. How he flows, where he flows, nobody knows. Of course, we know that everybody, all of us, have to eventually reach the ocean and we will. Sooner or later, we will all arrive at the ocean, the ocean of existence, which is the Supreme Consciousness. A Master is like a flowing river, and you cannot predict that this is the way it flows. When you deeply connect to a Master, it should be with full conviction and full consistency. If we change faith with each fluctuating situation, the flow of grace will be affected. A Master is a flow of grace, he flows, he is flexible, and he is fluid. He is like flowing water, he is like a river. And grace is spontaneous. For grace to happen there should be consistency in connection. That is very, very essential. If the connection is not strong, the grace factor will also be affected that way.
Most of the people who connect to a Master are connecting with conditions. And that is why conditions, expectations, and fluctuations in faith, all lead to a state where the whole experience is affected. A true Master is an experience. For that experience to happen, you should nullify yourself as best as possible. Whenever I go to a Master, I always go as a disciple, as empty as possible. I don’t go as myself because there is no point in bringing a filled up glass to them. You go there with an empty glass.
Like in the story of a great Zen monk, who was an old man. A guy went to him and said, ”I have a few questions to ask you.” The Zen monk said, ”First, let’s have tea.” He gave a mug and a saucer. The Master was old and partially blind. As he was pouring the tea, the tea filled the mug, it started flowing into the saucer and then it fell to the ground. The man who came said, ”Master, the cup is overflowing. Don’t pour anymore.” The Master said, ”This is the problem. The cup is always full. How can I pour more?” So, when you go to a Master, go empty. Then the Master can fill up the cup. This is exactly how we must go.
Also, please trust the Guru (Master), when you are with the Master, even if you are not appreciating the various things they do. If you do not trust them, they can’t really take care of you. They are probably reducing your lifetimes, and the intensity of each life, each moment will be strong, sometimes painful. But that should not deter you, that should not make you run away. If you run away because you have pains, then the Master cannot actually take it out of you. He was probably trying to take things out of you, and remove it from your system. But if you do not stay there, if you do not give them time, and give them stability, or the stable presence, then it will not be removed at all. That means that you will have to take more and more lives to nullify whatever He is trying to remove, especially in the department of anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, all those things. It takes time for you to completely come out of it, because there are patterns. Patterns are repeated behaviour. When you repeat a behaviour, it becomes a pattern. Anger becomes a pattern, hatred becomes a pattern.
Also, complaining, criticizing, judging other people, they all become patterns. We try to blame somebody else for our faults, and we feel that we are fine and safe. It’s not so. You are actually adding to your karma. When you criticise somebody, judge somebody, when you’re speaking badly or gossiping, you’re actually adding to your karma – karmic weight. It takes ages to clean it up. So we should have nothing to do with it. If somebody is betraying you, if somebody is bad with you, let them go, because they will pay their price anyway. Every activity has a price to pay, because we are using the Earth and the time for that. When one person contaminates another, and that person, because of this contamination transfers further, the first person gets even more. Because the one who started the fire gets more karmic residue, they have to pay more.
We should always remember, we should have nothing to do with any of these things. I’ll give you an example. I was with Vasudevan Swami in Vajreshwari, and I normally sit with him and talk to him. Swami told me that some children threw stones at him in the night. He was partially blind. He can’t see, he was old and bent. I asked Swami, ”Did you complain to the police?” He said, “No, no, no, I will not complain to the police, because the police will ask questions, they will ask me to verify, or give a testimonial, or identify who did it. That impression will come into my mind, and I may have to take another birth to clean it off, so I don’t want to remember, and I didn’t look at who it was. Bhagwan Nityananda came and told me, ”No stones hit you, because I was hugging you, all the stones hit me.” Like that, we will be protected. We will be protected all the time. But as Swami said, when you energise negative things, when you accuse people, when you blame people, when you criticize people, you are adding a lot of weight, unnecessarily.
Our aim in the spiritual journey is extreme purification – purity in thoughts, words, and action. If somebody betrays you, or somebody does something bad to you, they will pay the price. You allow the karma to take its course. We should stay away from all these things, so that we remain pure. Like Vasudevan Swami said, he didn’t want to remember faces, because to clean those faces, it may take another life, or a few lives. He did not want to remember any of those faces, he did not want to remember anything. He remained pure, and he allowed karma to take its course. Karma will pay them. Karma never ever leaves anything unfulfilled. Karma keeps a tab of all things. In the path of spirituality, we must always remember that we should always remain pure, that’s the only thing you can focus on. As I said earlier, it’s a story which is about you. You are the main actor. Keep yourself clean, with purity in thoughts, words, actions and keep doing something good for the world. So that you pay back to Earth, the rent you pay.
Criticising a Master is very, very bad. Likewise, expecting something from Baba, and if you don’t get that expectation fulfilled, you blame Baba, or you go to another Master, this is also not good. This only shows insecurity, and a lack of stability in us. Some people keep shifting to various Masters, and they gain nothing, because nobody can do anything for them. Unless there is consistency, there is no delivery, one can’t deliver anything. If you hold a cup in one place, and before they pour into the cup, if you take the cup elsewhere, it is of no use. It’s very important that you are stable in one place, connecting to one Master, and because of your stability, because of your connection, because of your conviction, you will reach very high states of awareness. So this is exactly the point, that acceptance should be very high, and lack of criticism, don’t judge. Don’t go to Baba or any Master with expectations. Go to them to be aligned, because they are alignment. A true Master is alignment. As I said earlier, the body, mind, intellect, ego, and spirit are aligned. When you go to a Master, you go to him to be aligned. When you are connected to something or someone for a period of time, automatically the energy gets transferred. There will be an energy infusion.
This is very important to understand. When you are with the Master, just be with the Master. Very few people go to Baba asking him for liberation. Most of the people ask for material support, material benefits, social positioning, positions or possessions. This is what most people go for. That’s all karmically bound. You can’t be given something, which you’re not eligible for. Eligibility means you have to earn it. Earn it means you have to consistently work for it. So all you can do is to give your best, put in your best efforts, and leave the rest to Baba. Then grace will flow. The grace factor will happen, and things will evolve. But if you go there asking for something, don’t expect Baba to do a job on your behalf. You are supposed to do what you are supposed to do, and you should do it.
In the story of Baba Ganeshanandagiri, he asked for a big bungalow, a big house, a mansion. So Baba said, “Your body is your house.” He said, “I need lots of servants, lots of people to support me.” Baba said, “Both your hands, they are your servants.” He said, “I need a vehicle to take me around, a big vehicle.” Baba said, “Your legs are your vehicle.” Then he said, “I need lots of money to do so many things.” Baba said, “Your brain is your money.” The empowerment happens within. You’re already empowered, all of us are empowered, we have been given the time, the space, the skill. We have been given the knowledge, the experience, information, guidance, grace, everything. All we need is gratitude and surrender. Surrender means we dedicate ourselves to the world. If we increase our purpose, if we become more and more selfless, the grace factor will increase automatically. A lot of grace will flow. The more selfless you become, the more grace will flow. That grace will be the wind beneath your wings. You will be able to sail smoothly because of the grace factor. And for the grace factor, you will need to wipe out selfishness.
What can you get from this world? We have to leave behind everything when we die. All the things that we accumulate here, everything is temporary. So why do we waste our time for all these things? Instead, we can give more and more to this Earth, within our capacity, and grace will flow, and we will be happy and contented. A true life, a successful life, a happy life, is a life of contentment. For that, you need to have less desires, there is no other way. If we increase our desires more and more, and then we ask more and more from Masters, etc. we are always in poverty consciousness, we are in a begging mode. The more poverty consciousness we have, which means we keep saying we don’t have something, we lack something etc., we are expressing poverty. When we are in a poverty consciousness mode, the more poor we will become, actually poor. Eventually it will be. The expressions have to be very clear.
What we need to deliver is abundance. Abundance means we share what we have. It may be time, money, position, wealth, love or skill. Whatever you have in abundance, share it and be contented. So that we are bringing our own amount of light to this Earth, that’s all we can do. And if we consistently do that, we will be rich inside, and the richness will increase. Grace will flow. This is what, as a true Babas’ disciple, we must perform. Not ask for more, instead share more of whatever we have, and Baba will give more. He never ever leaves anyone empty handed. Today if Mohanji is sitting here and talking to you, it is only because of Baba. He created me, He empowered me to this extent. So I don’t ask for anything more. What will I ask? I am grateful, I am thankful, I say that I am happy to be used, thank you for using me in whichever capacity. All we can do in this lifetime is to be contented and grateful. The best thing to do is to be grateful and graceful. That’s the elegance which we can display in this world.
Imagine 7.5 billion people are graceful and grateful, look at how the world will be. You will not see a war here, you will not have dearth of anything, there will be a good distribution of materials and wealth. We will have lots of friendship and companionship, there will be no competition, there is nothing to compete for. All are unique, all are great personalities. There’s nothing to compete for. This kind of awareness will happen, and we will never blame anybody, we will not be cheating, stealing, or betraying people, or have bad management of materials. We will always be fully contented. This is a very powerful state to be in, we can all do that. It just needs an attitude shift. It does not need spirituality, it does not need any other thing, it just needs an attitude shift. Then you connect to a great Master like Baba, and grace will make you more and more powerful. That will reflect in life, in the world.
There is no point in blaming, criticising, or moving away from a Master. Just stay put, just be there, that’s what the Tradition says, ”Just be there, just be available.” The Masters take care, the Tradition of Liberation takes care of you. The sign that you are progressing is stability inside. Whatever happens outside, if you are not getting affected inside, you are stable. And finally, whatever is there inside, with your knowledge or without, the cache memory of all our interactions, they also stop bothering you, that means you are stable, you are still. This is a sign of progress in the path of Liberation. A clear sign of progress is inner silence. How deep is your silence, that much you have progressed, for which you need to give more, and take less. Also, we have to get out of greed, anger, hatred, jealousy, and revenge. Blaming somebody, criticising somebody, all these things are unnecessary.
If something is happening in our life, we created it. This fundamental truth we must understand. It is not about another person, or a situation, or a time, or space, it’s not about materials. Whatever we are experiencing in this life, we created it, consciously or unconsciously. When I say unconsciously, it’s the cache memory of all our interactions. Even watching a movie, watching something on television, or somebody telling their experience to us, all the memories that you have collected and stored through your senses, that is exactly the cache memory. That’s what is creating our realities in the future. Destiny is coming out of it. So, if anything is happening in our life, we created it. Patterns are repeated behaviour that we created. We are clinging on to them and we refuse to let them go, so they keep repeating.
Everything we do, everything we are, everything we experience, it’s all connected to us, only us. We should not blame a Master for that. We should not blame Baba, we should not blame Akkalkot Swami, we should not blame Babaji, we should not blame any Masters or God. Instead, just say, ”Thank you for this awareness.” Whether it is a good, bad, or ugly experience, just be grateful, and when you are completely surrendered at the feet of the Master, they will all go away, all the patterns will dissolve. Only when you resist, the patterns exist. If you do not resist, patterns dissolve. This is something which you can practice, and you can do.
Likewise, states of depression. Lots of people go through states of depression. Clearly, it’s a sign of lack of clarity of purpose. If you increase clarity of purpose, it is the antidote for depression. Clear purpose creates strong minds and strong determination, and that is totally the antidote for depression. Depression is a state where you do not know what to do, and there is no strength of action. Ichha shakti, the willpower is less; Kriya shakti, the power of action is less. It’s not necessarily lack of knowledge. So to enhance Kriya shakti (power of action), and to enhance willpower, clarity of purpose is very important. Focus on what else you can do to this world, what is your capacity, and what you can give this world. Look around and decide that you will do something for this Earth. Because we are walking this Earth, we will do whatever we can, within our capacity, for this Earth, all the time. Then you will not be depressed, there will always be something to do. You will never feel depressed.
Mohanji performing Aarati to Guru Parampara at Andrevlje, Fruska Gora Serbia in October 2019 at Acharya training, when all the masters were present.
When you are not acting, and you are only procrastinating and thinking, it is a sign of tamas, inertia. Inertia leads to depression. The second thing is expectations, unfulfilled expectations. They also lead to depression. Then lack of self-esteem, that is because of lack of purpose. All these are causes for depression. If your purpose is clear, if you clearly push your purpose forward, you will not be depressed. This is for sure. The antidote for depression is clarity of action, and a purposeful life. When you have a clear, purposeful existence, you will be very powerful. The whole purpose will give you power, and Kriya shakti (the power of action) will be there, because of clarity of purpose. So focus on selfless purpose, compassion, kindness, unconditional love, purity in thought, word, and action, and express this with all determination. Depression will go completely out of your system.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan
Q11: Is my spiritual path real, and should I dedicate myself to the gift that I have?
M: What is spiritual path? Every moment, what happens is spirituality, not doing something apart from that. We have a body and we all feel the body. Am I right? We have a body, we agree? We have a mind, do we? We agree or not, it’s there. How do you know you have a mind? If you have emotions, you have a mind. Then we also have intellect, the analytical part. How do we know? When we start analysing, are we judging, that is also coming from the intellect. If you do that, you do have it. We also have an ego. That is definite, right? How do you know you have an ego? If somebody abuses you, do you feel hurt? Or do you feel nice? If somebody tells you, you look like a donkey, do you feel good? If you feel good, you have no ego. If you don’t feel anything then you again have no ego. If you feel angry, then it is ego working. See, we call people fools, right? We call them, you are an idiot, you are a fool.” Whom do we call like that? (Audience – to ourselves). No, to somebody who is not an idiot or a fool. When a person is actually an idiot we will not even call like that, because there is nothing to call.
So we have a body, we have the mind, we have intellect, we have an ego. When do you feel all these? When you are awake. When you sleep, you don’t know its there. In a state of dreaming, you don’t know whether you have a body, mind, intellect, or ego, you don’t know. But when you wake up, you feel all these. You see everything happening. And in our 24 hours, we have a deep sleep state, where we don’t know whether we are a man or a woman, we are like the dead. Have you ever thought, who is running this show? There is some energy in us, which is managing all these. For 24 hours it is all happening: various experiences, various emotions, various feelings, so many things are happening in every 24 hours. And, somebody is running the show. Are you with me on this?
There is an energy which is activating all these: physical, emotional, intellectual, egotistical; something is activating all of these. That is how we are gaining experiences. What do you gain from this world? Experiences. It can be good experiences or bad experiences, forget about good or bad. What is it actually? Experience. These faculties are giving you experiences because of an energy which is operating through it. Otherwise, we have no experiences. Do you agree that we have something like that? We may not know the energy, right? But there is something which is waking us up, which is taking us to our dreams, which is making us deep sleep, experience all these. So, there is something going on. That awareness is spirituality. Very simple. Awareness of the spirit body, which is the energy body within us, within ourselves, which is activating our experiences, that awareness is spirituality. So, we are all spiritual.
Nobody has to give you spirituality. We have that inside of us already. We do have it. Nobody is giving you from outside. You are only becoming aware of your energy which is already inside in you, and that awareness is spirituality. The more and more you go inside and see this, the more spiritual you become.
How do you know when you deeply connect to that energy? How can you connect to the energy part of you? By being aware. Very simple. How do you know whether you are actually connecting? When you connect deeper and deeper into your own energy, what experience you will have? Less thoughts. More feelings, you will have more feelings of yourself. When you have less thoughts, there is more peacefulness. When your mind is more peaceful, you have a high level of clarity. When you look at something, you will see through that thing. Because you are fully focused.
Do you know why our experiences are sometimes not very fulfilling? We have experiences but we don’t feel contented. Do you know why? Because the mind is scattered. The mind is not fully there. Otherwise, when you are doing a job or doing something if your mind is fully focused on that, your experience will be very good. Good in the sense that whether it is positive or negative, you will have a complete experience. Sometimes it’s sorrow, sometimes it is happiness. But, when you are fully in that, that is fulfillment. That is completion.
True spirituality is your marriage to yourself. It’s a deep relationship with yourself. You don’t need any help for that.
When I used to practice, in the early 2000s, I used to wake up every day at 2.30 am, because I used to work for a company. I had a job to do from 8:30 to almost six o’clock. During that time I worked for money, but the night was mine. But because of the profession, sometimes travells, sometimes parties, all those things were there. But, every day, I get up early morning at 2:30; then take a bath. I had very short hair,so it was easy to take a bath; now it is not easy. Then I sit in a room, which I created for myself, just one lamp, nothing else, connecting to that and I used to connect to my own energy. Just like I said , I just tried to be inside, just to feel. My point of connection was my spine. Because we are always focused on the front: eyes, nose, everything is focused on the front. We hardly remember the spine unless we have a back pain. My whole meditation was: I connected to my spine, I feel the spine, and I sit like that for five hours, until 8 am. Everyday. After a while, the whole thing started changing. Awareness shifted. I was the head of the country. I sit in the office, I see myself doing my work. No anxiety, no fear, no stress, no ownership of action. And serious situations I faced. But I overcome all that. This is the experience you will get when you marry yourself. That marriage will last forever.
You wouldn’t even believe how powerful we become when our body, mind, intellect, and ego are all together. Because they are scattered, we don’t know. The mind is scattered on a lot of things, things of the past, many anxieties about the future. The mind is all over. Past and future, less in present. Intellect is busy analysing things. Am I progressing, is this ok, all those things. Ego – looking at the people if they are respecting me, accepting me, this is the problem. Everybody is busy with their world. We are all everywhere. When you look, you don’t see. Because your mind is not there. Eyes are looking, but the mind is not there, so we don’t see. When you bring everything together, when you look, mind, body, intellect, ego, and spirit, everything is looking. Imagine that power. It’s intense and powerful. Every experience becomes powerful. Then you don’t want a repetition. You will experience that 100%. Every point in time. Whether it is happiness or sorrow, 100%. Imagine a life like that. Every moment we are being 100%. Because body, mind, intellect, ego, and spirit – everything is together. Nothing is scattered. The past is finished. Future – whether it will happen, we will see. Right now, what we have, we do 100%.
If we live like that, every moment is powerful. Living in the moment. It happens by itself. We are not planning like that. We are not thinking like that. It happens.
Did you understand? We are all spiritual. We cannot be otherwise. The problem is that we compare, or we are thinking that religion is spirituality, that is not true. Spirituality is your connection with yourself. Religion is a road map to attain or to realise God. Religions are road maps to realise God. But spirituality is your relationship with yourself. These are two different things. If we continue between these two, we will not understand the story.
Q12: How to control emotions and our attitude?
M: How to control emotions – I would say do not try to control emotions. Be aware of them. Do you like somebody controlling you? Nobody likes it. What happens when somebody tries to control you? How do you feel? Suffocated, angry. The same things happen when you try to control your emotions. It becomes suffocated. When you suppress something, any emotion for that matter, when you push it down, its like a spring. When you take your hands off, what happens? It bounces back. It’s important that we accept those emotions as they are part of us. Anger, hatred, jealousy, all those things. If it is inside of us, we don’t know what is the reason, it doesn’t matter, whatever is the reason. If you have them, first and foremost, you need to accept them, ok they are all there. They are all my companions, partners in life. First is you accepted them, they are all sitting there. They are sitting with me, walking with me, sleeping with me, no problem.
Second level – why should I feel them? I didn’t ask them to come with me, but they are with me. After acceptance, you are not supporting them. So, what happens, when you become angry? You watch yourself becoming angry. You are becoming angry and enjoy that feeling. When you start accepting your anger as it is, it will come and it will vanish. But, when you have ownership of anger, when you actually become angry, you will know that you will become weaker. You become very weak. When you accept it, ok, this man is getting angry or this woman is getting angry or Mohanji is getting angry, I am seeing myself getting angry. But I know that I am not the anger. How would it feel? It will be very weak. Just like a mother telling a child, ”If you don’t eat medicine, I’ll punish you.” Mother is not angry with the child, but the mother is concerned. The root of that anger is love. When the foundation of your anger is love, it has purity. If it is anger out of disappointment, there is an expectation. Disappointment – anger. That is not pure, because there is an expectation. But if the expectation is not there, and it is love, in that case, that anger itself has purity. It is not sustained anger. It comes for that purpose, for intensity, and it goes. Just like a wave coming from the sea. It comes out, it goes back. It always comes like that.
The answer to all your questions is very simple – it’s YOU. If you have a lot of emotions, ask yourself, ”Have I accepted myself?” Don’t try to heal your emotions, let them come and go, no problem. But – acceptance, you have no choice. If you accept yourself 100% today as you are, freedom starts now, then you will start living a life. Otherwise, you are existing, with all the baggage. But if you accept yourself totally, with all your weaknesses and all your strengths right now, you will start experiencing freedom. You will start living, not existing.
What is the clear sign of accepting yourself? You will not compare yourself with anybody. There is nothing to compare. You will accept yourself as a complete creation. If you did not accept you will think,that guy is better than me, or I am not good enough. Complexes and all those things are because of non-acceptance.
Please understand, that you are incomparable. You can’t be compared with another person. All of us are unique. We have our own uniqueness. That is our signature.That is not comparable. If you really, really accept yourself, you don’t worry about any of the emotions coming and going, because they will all come and go, but the level of acceptance will be above everything. How do you manage your attitude? Some people have tremendous attitude. And that isolates them completely from the society. How do you manage that? Any idea, suggestion? Gratitude. Have gratitude for everything. Gratitude for being alive, gratitude for breathing, for digestion, shelter, cloths, be grateful without reason. Your ego and attitude will obey that behaviour. Gratitude is a very powerful thing, very, very powerful. It’s the opposite of ego and pride. Gratitude is very good medicine that you can eat every day. I believe that your spiritual progress will be very fast if you base it on gratitude.
When you go deeper and deeper into silence, you will start experiencing realities that you don’t normally experience. Sometimes you become very egoistic, ”I am better than the other people. I can see all these things. I have all these powers.” That is dangerous. That is the time when you start falling.
When I was going through these experiences, before something happened, I knew it will happen, and it happened. I decided, ok this is now not a good game. Because I may become very egoistic. And I will start falling. So what I was practicing was, one, gratitude and the second was insignificance, which means I am not important, not special, I am ordinary. It maintained my practices. It didn’t affect my practices. Third thing, I didn’t discuss my practice with other people nor I told what I was experiencing. So that nobody could inflate my ego or pull it down. I never spoke about it. I never discussed. When did I start speaking? Six or seven years later, after I settled down in my practices. Until then, I didn’t speak. I was not available to the world. So, everybody needs some time. We all need time to settle down. All of these things will happen. Because awareness changes, it shifts. You will have so many different experiences, and if you become too eager to tell people, everybody will shut it down.
Q13: Do you believe that you have crossed the border of suffering? Do you think you are one with God?
M: I think it depends on how you look at me. I was saying in a television interview, that I went through a series of tragedies at one time in life. In 2000 I lost my daughter, then I lost all the money I had which I invested in a property and that man ran with the money. All my materials got stolen. Whatever I had at one time, I didn’t have in another time. I was pretty much naked and totally alone in the world at a certain point in time. After having everything and reaching a certain level in my work, I was the head of the country. At that time, I had lots of friends. My position was good, money, social status, everything was good. Then everything went away. So at that time, when I used to call some friends, they wouldn’t pick up the call. So-called friends, people who were friends with me, they wouldn’t take my call, thinking I would need money or support from them. Then I stopped calling. But that was good. That is what I was saying in the TV interview, I didn’t complain. I understood one thing. At the end of the day, your only true friend is yourself. Other people come to you, when they need something. Mostly, not everybody. There are some people who really stand by you even in your worst times. There are people like that. And I try to be that person for everybody now. I stand by people when they are in their worst situation. Because I learned it that way. I experienced it. Then later on, I got a job and I became a CEO of the company, I got all these people back. They all came back. This is very interesting this was a case study for me. I understood life. In every situation, there is something to learn.
If you stop resisting and complaining, you can learn so many things from life. These are real lessons. I really believe it was, if you really want to become a great ornament, you have to go through fire. Gold is beaten, and put in fire, melted before it’s made into an ornament. Everybody has their parts. I decided one thing: I will never leave the hand of somebody when they are in a problem. If they are successful and they don’t need me, this is ok, I’ll leave them, I allow it. I don’t leave anybody. But in the weakest time, when you leave somebody, your integrity is a big question mark. I remain solid and stable, that is probably why a lot of people are coming to see me, wherever I go. I believe they see stability, they see consistency. I feel there are no fools in this world. There are no idiots. People have awareness, they have eyes to see. They see truth. Whatever you try to pretend, they will see the truth. I don’t pretend, I just present myself, and people connect naturally. This is what I like. I do not tell them I am close to God more than they are closed to God. Nor do I tell them I am a realised Master, I just say I am one of you. I am your friend, you can talk to me if you like to talk to me. I am always with you. This is my offering to this world. That is all I can do. I remain stable and that is the only thing I can do. There is a lot of hardship before you reach a certain level. Which level, we don’t know. What will happen tomorrow we don’t know. Today is our reality, we do the best today. That is all we can do.
How do you know the operating level of another? By their range of operation. For example, you have a night light, that can probably illuminate this room. But if you have a flat light, you can see something a mile away. A person becomes a power when he is fully aligned. His range of operation will spread all over, which nobody can deny. So, there is no need to ask somebody where they stand, look at the person and their level of operation, many people are operating from the mind level. Many people are operating from an intellect level, and so many people are operating from the ego level. When you cross over all these levels, then you become everybody and everywhere. That’s a sign you can depend on. Because I can say whatever I like, how do you know I am not lying? This is how you can understand somebody’s operating level so you are not fooled.
Q14: Did you cross the line of all forms?
M: Of course.
Q15: How to become peaceful within?
M: I answered that question. Self-acceptance. Accept yourself. Totally, with all your weakness and all your strengths.
Q16: How do I channel the creative energy from the second chakra? What to do when there is excess of this energy? How to transform it into spiritual energy?
M: You don’t need to transform any energy into another energy. When you engage yourself into activities of positive nature, when you deliver more to the world and to the earth etc. then that energy automatically gets channelised. Each chakra is a regulator. It regulates each aspect of you. For example, the second chakra regulates the water aspect in your system. So everything to do with water of your body, it has its role. And 80% of our body has water content. So it has a big role. When you channelise your activity for a selfless purpose, automatically the second chakra will align.
Q17: Why it is difficult for me to meditate, and how to start meditating?
M: If it is difficult for you to sit down and meditate, don’t do that. Instead, what you do is make sure all your activities happen with your mind being present. That is good meditation. In every activity you do, let the mind be there. No unconscious activity. That is a good way of meditating. Then you bring yourself to yourself.
Thank you!
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Shyama Jayaseelan
How are you doing today? Thanks to all of you who have come from a long distance, from various places. We have some kind of connection, that is why we met, and we are here again. I always feel grateful when people give me time. I try to give more each time to people, to all the people who took the effort to come and meet me, I try to give them much more. That is how I feel. Because I feel grateful that we are meeting in this lifetime, this time, this space. It’s not an ordinary thing. It’s a great thing that we are all meeting, sharing the space, sharing some aspects of life. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Q1: How to choose a life partner?
M: You know, many people have this question, that is why they choose not to have a partner. Instead, they choose puppies. It’s more consistency. Every meeting we have, there is an energy exchange. You think about every meeting in every day, we are meeting so many people. We interact with so many people. Everything has an energy exchange. Something is being exchanged. Something is shared. With some of them, we feel good. With some interactions, we don’t feel good. With some interactions, we want more. For some, we say, ”No, its enough.” This is natural. But, when we think, I must find a partner, or I must have a boyfriend or husband, we are looking at everybody as a potential candidate. But what are people? All people are a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. We all have strengths and weakness, nobody is apart from that. We usually see good things, something which we can relate to, some compatibility in a person. After that, when we are both familiar, what do we see? Only weaknesses. This is human nature. This is why you can see a lot of people married, but separated inside. They stay married probably because of children, or because of some others matters, but they are divorced inside. That is because when you are becoming too familiar with somebody, you only start seeing the weaknesses. But we also have a good quality: when people die, we forgive them. Then we are happy. All the weaknesses are forgiven. But when living, we have pain.
Now I will come to your question, this is the background. How can you find somebody who is compatible with you, and stable with you? This is the question, right? The secret of a successful relationship is – have nothing to do with the other. If you put freedom as the ingredient in a relationship, the relationship will have no problem. But if freedom is not given in the relationship, it hurts. If you are mature enough to keep your partner free, you will find your best partner; the best possible partner, because you will not be worried about his strengths and weaknesses. You will love companionship, you are meeting because of some reason, let it be any reason. But, if you put freedom as an ingredient in the relationship, not ownership, not possessiveness, only freedom, then you will have a great relationship. So, the secret of a successful relationship is giving freedom to the other. Just allowing them to be free, to be themselves. Then it will last forever.
Q2: Thank you in advance. Even though I earn sufficient money, I cannot keep that money. I always spend everything I earn.
M: Congratulations (laughs). What is the question? This is a statement actually. Well, the nature of money is movement. Money is energy. It is transactional, it moves, it has to move. If money is not moving, it is useless, right? I remember an example. Maybe this is not a very good example, but just to tell you about how we cling on to money.
Barbara and I were in Vietnam, in town Da Lat. A lady said, ”You must come to my house.” It was to see her mother, who was in her death bed, sick, but not dying. For six months she had been lying like that, she was not leaving. Everybody was waiting because she was not well. She was supposed to die, but she was not dying, she was waiting. I went there, I saw her, and she was holding a bunch of money in her hand and lying there. There were clear signs of death: her breath was going up all the way, and suddenly it holds. I could see that the soul really wanted to leave, but something was holding her back – this bunch of money in her hand.
I asked her daughter, ”What should I do, what do you want me to do?” She said, ”You bless her, so she has a smooth death.” I said, ”I cannot bless anybody to die. I don’t do that. I will probably release her from the bindings, but I cannot tell when she should die. That is up to the soul to leave a body, whenever it wants, I will not interfere.” I just took the money from her hand. Suddenly she looked at me. Until then, her eyes were up, but suddenly she looked at me, as something precious had gone. With the weak hand, she tried to come towards the money, but I didn’t allow it. I gave the money to her daughter, and I touched her third eye. That night she left the body.
We have no idea how many things around us don’t allow us to leave free. So the answer to the question or the statement is: You understand money is coming – thank you very much; you understand money is going – thank you very much. Just watch both as you are just an actor in this whole drama of flow. Then, when you are not thinking it is your own money, it is happening through you, you will start seeing that the right amount of money will always be stored. Did you understand this point? What is the difference here? When money comes, money doesn’t stay, money goes – its a pattern, which means that is the way you are. It is a pattern that is working without any control. You are not controlling anything. You just allow it to happen.
Patterns happen due to ownership. It’s my money – ownership is me and mine. Now, you look at it as it is happening, I am an actor, I am watching this show. Zero ownership. What will happen? The pattern will dissolve. A pattern means ownership. When you do not own it, the pattern dissolves. This is the same for everything in life. Anything which is coming, again and again, is a pattern. When you detach within, ok, it’s happening, then no problem. When a pattern is dissolved, things change. Have you seen any animal in nature insecure? You won’t see it. They are not worried about tomorrow’s food. No bird is worried about the next day’s food. They do not store anything, thinking tomorrow there will be no food. I am not talking about animals in the house, because they are as insecure as you are. In nature, you will see no insecurity. You will never see a bird or an animal betraying another one. These are all our possessions. As human beings, we have all these things. If you want to change any pattern, not only money pattern, you need to detach from that whole thing, me and mine, and look at it. This is happening, let it come, let it go, but it is not mine. I am not owning it. Ownership keeps patterns.
Q3: How to overcome fear and the need to control everything in life?
M: That is again connected to me and mine. Most of the things connected to life, which is blocking our progress, will be me and mine. Have you seen it? Most sorrows, most insecurities are connected to me and mine. Fear is a state where you have no faith. What is the medicine for fear? Faith. Faith in oneself, in yourself. If you decide that you will look into the eyes of your fears, all the fears will go. Because fears are like shadows. They need something else to depend on.
In the movie Rambo, with Silvester Stalone, a man says, ”You can’t defeat him (Rambo), because he is trained to survive.” We can train ourselves to be fearless. How? By increasing your awareness. What is awareness? Firstly – the awareness that everything that is born will die. If you are born, there is a certain death. While we are walking on this earth we are just on a tourist visa. We have a duration. Secondly – the world existed before us and the world will exist after our death. Third is that – only when we wake up in the morning we have a world outside, when we sleep, we do not have the world outside. Our world depends on whether we are awake to the world. There are a few more things, but most important is that everything that comes will go. In other words, nothing is permanent. Life means changes. We were very small sometime earlier, a few years ago, now we have become this size. Every time the body has changed, the mind has changed, everything has changed. All things have changed. We were B-shaped sometimes, now we are A-shaped. Everything changes. Why do we have to keep fears? If you look at fears in the eyes, they will vanish. They will all dissolve. There is no room for fear. And one way you can be sure fears don’t bind you is to lead a life of love, purity, and purpose.
When you wake up in the morning (I normally do this when I wake up in the morning), think, what else can I give this world? Even if I fail, I have no fear. I try my best. What else can you give this world? Instead when you wake up and say,”What will people give me?” Then you will have all the problems. Otherwise, we will not have problems. I said, ”What else we can give,” that means we should continue giving. But in the morning every day, think what more we can give so that we are always self-motivated. Even if you fall down, you get up and walk again. Otherwise, if we have a lot of expectations, there will be a lot of disappointments. And eventually life will be paralyzed, because of disappointments.
Q4: How to prevent negative emotions towards people with whom we have a conflict?
M: Emotions you can’t control. It happens, right? We don’t choose to have negative emotions, but it happens sometimes. My recipe is very simple, I increase my positivity. Of course, it’s not easy to control emotions, is it easy? When the emotion happens, it’s like a wave. It comes and takes over. You can’t do anything, and it is like a pendulum on the clock, its positive-negative, life goes like that. Each day goes that way. But, predominantly every day, if we have more positive activity; that is the way you can come out of these negative days. Of course, there are people who are heavy with negativity in our society, we can’t avoid them. That’s part of the society. But if you spend sufficient time with very positive people you can manage both. That is why in Sanskrit there is a beautiful saying, If you indulge in the company of good people, people of positive nature, you will learn to detach from negative things around you. When you start detaching from so many things around you, whether it is negative or positive, you are fine with the nice energy of good people. When you detach, then your desires also become weaker. When desires are more, you are never satisfied. When desires are less, you are contented. So, peacefulness and contentment happen inside. Just by your association with people of higher energy, positive nature. What happens when desires are lesser in the mind? The mind goes into silence. What is the sound of the mind? Thoughts. Where are thoughts coming from? Desires. When desires become lesser and lesser, the mind becomes calmer and quieter. When the mind is calmer, what happens? You become the master of your own life. What is the secret here? Connection, integration with positive energies. That’s why we love to be in the company of the people who are positive, right? Because naturally, we feel good. We feel nice, comfortable. But please understand, society is both, positive – lighter, and negative – dark and heavy. You can’t avoid it. We are all existing. You cannot say I only choose this, you have to choose everything. Try to maintain good relationships, good company with powerful and positive people. Even it is painful to maintain the company, sometimes it is not easy, but it is worth it. Because that is your antidote, your medicine.
Another point is to express compassion, practice compassion. Do something for your society all the time, whatever you can. Keep sharing. Keep giving. When you do that, automatically your energy levels will be higher. You can counter, or you can sustain or survive so many negative things.
Q5: Do all experiences that happened to us come from God so that we learn a lesson and become better people, or are they a result of our decisions?
M: I can answer it, but it depends on what we believe on. Everything depends on what we believe in. Our whole life is based on our beliefs. When I say what we believe in, if we believe in God with a form just like a human form, he is watching everything we do, and says, you have done good, or you have not done good, etc. and gives accordingly, this is ok. You are fine in that mode, you live with those rules. In some systems we have a God outside of us, who is looking at us and is saying this is ok, this is not ok etc.
In some systems we connect to ourselves and we go into the level of silence and we experience inside, there is something inside of us telling us, ”Don’t do this, you can do that.” This is all connected to beliefs; what we believe in, what our belief system is. As a general thumb rule, this is a natural phenomenon – when you do good things and when you do positive work, many positive things come to you. Life becomes positive.
In the Indian system, or in Buddism, we talk about karma. What is karma in simple terms? Let’s say, unfulfilled desires. Desires which need fulfillment. That causes birth. Where you were born, how you are born, what you have, what you don’t have, it’s all connected to karma. And your duration of life is also connected to it, time of birth, time of death, everything is like that. But how is karma created? Unfulfilled desires, as I said earlier, but karma is created by actions with ownership. If you feel that I am the doer, that ‘I’ creates karma. Imagine, we have no ownership, we have only an awareness, where we say, ”It is all happening through me,” I am not owning it, I am experiencing it every day. Then no ownership, no karma. That doesn’t mean you go and kill somebody and say, ”I did not do it, my hands did it,” it won’t work. That is not what I mean. When you understand, when you are not emotional about ownership, ‘this is mine, this is me,’ if that is not there, then desires become weak. What is the best way to lead a very simple life? First and foremost, you have to accept yourself completely with all your strengths and weakness. Total acceptance. Nothing else. Not half, but 100%. Accept yourself totally.
Second, do not own, do not have feelings of ownership. You may have so many possessions, so many relations, so many things, but do not have ownership – this is mine, and a kind of craving to keep everything for yourself, which really weakens you, makes you more and more insecure. If that happens, you will have whatever you have, but you will be free and you will be happy.
The third aspect is – remember that when you came here, you had nothing in your hands. When you go from here, you will still have nothing in your hands. Even this body, we have to leave here. If we remember that, we are free. That is why I always believe when we take flowers, give it to the people while they are alive, not going and putting it in the graveyard after death. Respect people, love people and do whatever you can for the people when they are alive so that they can enjoy it. After death, whatever we do, how will they know? Love today. Express love today. Care today. Everything today. Tomorrow we don’t know whether we will be alive to do all that.
Q6: When I will start to drive a car on my own?
M: It depends on your horoscope (laughs). If you believe in yourself, you can. It is about believing in yourself. If you really believe in yourself you can even drive a flight, or even a rocket.
Q7: What should a mother know who is raising her son on her own?
M: Being a mother is a very powerful experience. It is a big opportunity. Because you have a relationship with your child nine months more than society. So your responsibility is nine times more than that of society. Having said that, please remember, each child is an individual. They have a constitution, a character, they have their likes and dislikes, patterns, concepts, so many different things which they have brought. I believe that mothership should be like a friendship. There should be respect, not like a servant serving somebody, it’s like a friendship where you can discuss, you can understand each other. Discuss, talk and make powerful people.
If we are clear how responsible we should be, for every citizen of the world, it means every human being. Imagine 7.5 billion people on earth. Each person is responsible for others. The society is responsible for everybody, for every child. Why? Because every child learns and takes from society, just like every mother, every father, everybody. We are all interconnected. Our responsibility is for our species, across the species. It doesn’t matter which country, which nationality, which culture or color. We are all responsible for everybody. If we don’t take responsibility, nature will wipe us off. Like a virus. Nature has wiped off dinosaurs and mammoths, so many species have been wiped off. If we don’t take responsibility for our own species, our species can also become extinct. If this responsibility is executed form the level of motherhood, every child will be powerful. The world will have a good generation. How we can bring up a child? What is the right way? One word – respect. Love is part of respect. When you respect somebody you will definitely love.
I always say, today we see so many old age homes in the world. Why is that? Actually the parents should be in our houses, right? But we don’t have that. Instead, they are in old ages homes. Why? Because we are disconnected. We don’t feel connected. Either the parents are like the servants, or they dominate, both are not good. There should be a friendship, where everybody can be together. We must develop that culture of togetherness. We should cultivate a generation with respect, based on respect. So next year, the slogan for Mohanji Foundation globally is, ‘Self-respect through self-discipline.’ Self -discipline is more or less like no excess of anything, that means a healthy lifestyle.
Q8: Can we know what is good for our child?
M: Of course. It depends on the nature of the child. All children have their own nature. We all have our own nature. We like something, we don’t like something. If you understand the nature of the child, what he likes to do, just support him. Dragan is training Ena in tennis. She loves tennis. So, that is natural for her. Your strength is what you are natural about. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. What is natural for us means what is effortless for us. That is our strength. If we support that, we will become successful. But in the society, we look at our child with other children and think, our child should be like that child. Then we completely ignore the naturality of that child, that is where the conflicts happen. Every person has a nature which is yours, your own. If you understand that, that is your strength. For that, you need to connect to yourself and see that in your own children. Just watch and witness them. What is spontaneous for them, strengthen that, support that. And the child will be really, really solid and stable in society.
Q9: Does truth have a boundary?
M: Absolute truth has no boundaries. Relative truth has. What is relative truth? A truth that is different between us about something. If you see one thing, I see another thing, it is relative truth. What is absolute truth? We all see the same thing. Relative truth changes with time. Absolute truth never changes. One absolute truth is that whatever is born will die. It’s an absolute truth. What is the relative truth? Everybody dies at their time. This is individualistic.
Q10: How do I know I am on the right path?
M: You will be effortless about it. If you are on the right path, you will love to do that. If it is full of effort, and if it is difficult, then you think again. If you are on the right path, you will flow through it. It is so effortless. Even the right relationships. It is like that. It will be easy and effortless. Whatever needs a lot of effort to continue and be consistent is not the right path for you. When you are connecting with somebody or when you are practicing something, or even you go to a place or you meet a person, if you feel nice and if you feel natural that is the right thing. Because you have a nature, everybody has their nature, and every activity has its nature. If there is compatibility between all these, then that is the right thing for you. If it is not, walk away. Don’t be there.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan
Thus Spake Mohanji 