Guru Purnima Satsang 2020 – Part 2

Question: Is suffering so important to the soul, to undergo change, even if it harms? Another person, has a powerful Guru, can’t he remove all the suffering?

Mohanji: Suffering is connected to your waking state mind. Pain is connected to various factors such as injury, body, going through certain processes. Pain can happen, but suffering is your choice. Suffering happens when resistance happens to the pain. When we resist situations, when we resist emotions, when we resist people, places, time, we have suffered. But suffering is not a permanent thing. When you are experiencing pleasure, necessarily, you may not suffer. But sometimes even during pleasure, at the time of pleasure, we may suffer because we worry that this time also may end. So, we may fail to experience a situation because we are afraid of something finite, connected to that situation. In the time of sorrows, some people have great pleasure. They say sorrows are good because they remind them of their life. In the time of pleasures, they fear sorrows may come after the pleasure, like a pendulum, like two sides of the coin. So they fail to experience a pleasure. This is human nature. This is one of the patterns that we constantly entertain.

So there is no need to suffer. When you go beyond your mind-matter, there is no suffering. Your soul has no suffering. It’s witnessing your happiness and sorrows, and all the games of your life. Your consciousness which operates in three levels – waking state, dream state and deep sleep state is not suffering. It’s happy to witness what the mind-matter produces, churns out called experiences. We categorise these experiences as good or bad. Consciousness is just watching it. At any point in time, consciousness does not tell you “Don’t do it. Don’t experience it.” It never tells. It just witnesses. It just allows you to experience anything you like on Earth. Nothing is good; nothing is bad. You experience whatever you want. Who categorises situations as good and bad, who categorises high and low, who categorises do’s and don’ts? Mind – Mind-matter.

I always tell one thing, do not enter into the realms of violence. Do not entertain violence in thoughts, words and action, because it breeds more violence. It contracts you; it shrinks you. That’s not our original state. Our original state, as I explained earlier, is expansion, inner richness. This is our actual state, but we fail to see it because our mind entertains itself with anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, kind of silly things. And then it suffers because it’s like a person who smokes a lot and then suffers from lung issues. This is exactly similar to that. The person gets addicted to something spurious, and then health is affected. Who caused it? They themselves caused it. So we don’t have to suffer.

There is no suffering in life, except in our mind. Our mind has decided that there is suffering and then we suffer. The mind has decided, “This is okay; this is not okay.” And we suffer. The mind has decided. “This is right, this is wrong”, then we suffer. So, this is all minds’ game. I always believe that there are zero sufferings, even when people betray you or cheat you, etc., you don’t have to suffer because for doing that, they are paying a huge price. For them, it’s an experience. You have an experience of getting cheated, getting betrayed; like that the people who betray you, have an experience of betraying somebody. And when you ask for such an experience, you got a price to pay, a very high price to pay. Sometimes that price takes you to a level of debt, which lasts lifetimes.

That is why Mirabai says, “When you betray a guru, you carry the debt of that act of betrayal for about 80,000 lifetimes,” such a big, huge debt. So if somebody really wants to do that, they’re paying for it. You need not worry. They chose it. If I decide that I want to have a Rolls Royce car and choose to go ahead and buy it by taking a bank loan, I have to pay the bank until it’s over, as long as it takes. I cannot say that I will not pay any more, because they will catch me and will take the car away from me. So this debt is chosen. Our own anger, hatred, jealousy, selfishness puts us in debts. 

Why should we worry? If we are instrumental in creating it, we should worry. Otherwise, we need not worry. If somebody is cheating you, if somebody is betraying you, you are only at the receiving end. You are not spending on it. So if you develop that level of maturity and you start seeing the reality all the time, you will see this drama at work. You will see this whole drama of life. And this drama is very interesting. People play roles, and we enjoy those roles. They keep experiencing them time and again. Sometimes they come in different costumes, and they play the same role. You get surprised that this is the same guy who was doing this before. When in another costume, sometimes we don’t recognise them. But this is the reality.

Everything that is connected to our life has a reason. If we chase the reason, if we try to understand the why’s, we do not move forward. Just experience it as it comes and leave it, unhook from it, and let it go. Time changes everything. Time changes situations. Change is the only thing which is unchangeable. Change is the only thing which cannot be changed. Change happens in life. Everything changes, everything evolves, everything has to evolve into various forms and dimensions. So, if we flow with those changes, you will be experiencing a breeze like life. Life would be like a breeze. But all these factors have value. Some of them are lessons. Some of them are warnings. Some of them are experiences, good and bad, whatever you wish to call it. But when we boil it all down, we call it life. Life has everything. It’s important to understand that.

Question: How to recognise my future partner? Also, I want to open a vegetarian restaurant, but how to conquer the fear of failure and how to succeed?

Mohanji: Three questions – your future partner, vegetarian restaurant and fear of failure. I think all are interconnected. If your future partner is a disaster, you will experience failure. And if you open a vegetarian restaurant, maybe you will get food to eat. (laughter)

I do not understand the correlation between these two. But, understand that fear of failure has its root in inertia (Tamas) and most of us entertain it because we all have inertia. We always say that we must be appreciated, we must be accepted, and for all that we do, we should be rewarded or recognised. This is our wish, our desire. But life is not like that. There are failures in life. If you look at my life, I have failed enough and more times. At one point in time, I was an eternal failure. In everything I do, I was failing. What I understood from that is, all that gave me experiences. If you do not resist it, do not reject it, do not fight it, do not put it under the carpet, then that means it becomes lessons for you. Everything in life will not be successful. 

We cannot rehearse in life. We cannot rehearse something and do life. So, we have to just do it as it comes. We have to live it; we have to do things as it flows. I would say if you are fearless, you will have tremendous success because we do not know what is around the corner. So if you don’t take a walk, we will never see it. If there is a failure, you slip and fall, or you fell down, what do you do? Get up and walk. In fact, if you take your whole life, you are born alone, you will die alone. You neither took the permission of the society to take birth nor will you take the permission of the society to die. So what is the bottom line? Your EXISTENCE is the bottom line. You are YOURSELF. You are the EXPERIENCE. 

You are here to experience; you are here to express. EXPRESS. Don’t worry about failure. If it fails, you start again. Look at people who have succeeded in life. They have failed tremendously. I think Walt Disney; he went to about 20 or 25 banks for financing his project called the Disney cartoons. But nobody believed in him. They said, “You are making some cartoons, and you want money?” They were ridiculing him. And finally, one banker decided to give him a soft loan. Rest is history. He created Disney World, and it became a huge success. Likewise, this Spider-Man character – Stan Lee, I think; he offered Spider-Man story for print, and the publisher said, “Ridiculous, this story will not sell.” Look at how famous this Spider-Man character became. Now, all the countries, all the children know Spider-Man.

The ability to believe in your work, ability to believe in yourself, the conviction that you have on yourself, ability to invest (the investment) in yourself, is basically the faith and that will take you forward. So, if you focus on failure, like the options of failure, the possibilities of failure, what will four people think, society will think, you will never move forward. Instead, we take the step forward, let us fail. No problem. Let there be failure, and that failure will give us a lesson. The failure will guide us to success because we know if you walk this path, there will be a failure. So you might as well change the path, deviate, take a detour and achieve success.

Whether it is a vegetarian restaurant or a husband, it’s the same thing. You got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince, right? So you can never say that this is going to be the right man because we are talking about karmic beings. We are talking about bundles of patterns. We are talking about bundles of concepts. We are all baggage, huge baggage. So, how can you say that this is the right compatible person? If you are extremely tamasic, another extremely tamasic person might be compatible because you both can sleep all the time. If you are extremely tamasic and you get a person who is extremely saatvic, then you will have struggles at home as one person will sleep, and the other person cannot sleep. So this is how the combination works.

Don’t look at life too seriously. Flow with life just like water, like a river, keep flowing. Whenever you are looking at small things like relationships, (I’m not saying relationships are small, it means when you are occupied by relationships, etc.), you become short-sighted. Instead, you look for the larger life. Try to look at life in a much larger perspective. What are you trying to achieve from this life? What do you want out of this life? You should always dream big, think big, or have a larger vision. If you have a larger vision and take one step at a time each day, you will reach there. All the other things will fall in place. But if you do not have a larger picture, and if you are searching in a linear level in the market, to find a right man, like this guy looks okay, or that guy looks okay, this or that etc., this will always be confusing. That’s not the way. Instead, you walk your vision, and the right things will come to you. They join you because your frequency is set for something larger, something huge.

 I have created this Mohanji platform with that context, that all the people who are associated have the possibility to have great expressions in this platform. I created it in that mode because everybody has a need for actualisation, a need to be fully themselves and completely blossom. So, this ground has to be set in that way. I cannot set a ground where nobody gets actualisation, and all are like robots, not possible. So, this is created in that way which is why so many countries, so many dimensions, a variety of activities are happening. All this is created because of actualisation. Look at how many people are blossoming with this platform.

The point is, we should not think in a tubular way or within a frame. We are not bound by frames. We are not to be put in frames. We are like a flowing river, flowing as per time, as per various desires and our karmic patterns. But when we have a higher vision, when we are walking towards it and when we are bound by purpose, not people, (clear purpose, a purpose with clarity), it will open up the doors for you. Nothing can stop you, and everything will come together.

When you are talking about a restaurant, you look at the chain of restaurants; you have the vision for that. What do you really want to express in the world? You should have that picture in mind, and you should dream it, you should feel it every day. And you should feel it is alive, means you should actually see it in the world, in your mind, in your inner eye. Then it will happen eventually because you are energising that positive thought, a great image, a great plan inside you. That is how it will happen.

Question: How do I seek blessings and stay connected to Guru and the Guru Mandala?

Mohanji: Guru and Guru Mandala are the same. Guru is the representation of Guru Mandala, that means the world of elevated masters. There is no world of elevated masters apart from your master. It’s like a small transformer in your house that gives electricity to your house. Outside there is a huge transformer which is much more powerful. If you decide that my house needs the power from that transformer and you connect directly to that, your house will burn. So, what you need is a regulated energy flow where you can actually come in contact with it, and it can help in your transformation.

In the Datta tradition, the whole nature is your guru. If you are considering a person as a guru, in the tradition of Datta, everything is guru, life is guru, your SELF is the guru, and your INNERSELF is the real guru, personal guru. But if there is an external guru who has lived the freedom, walked freedom, expressed freedom, given freedom even from themselves (means no binding), that is the path. There is no binding on rituals, no binding on people, places, time, FREEDOM. That is the Datta tradition. So when we walk that path, how do you get connected? You have to connect to YOURSELF. You have to go within and connect to yourself, assimilate yourself and then through YOU; you can reach the whole world. After that, when you look outside, everything will become a reminder of who you are. And that’s how it should be. All the things happening in you, around you, they are all reminders of who you are. When you are deeply connected to that feeling of oneness or experiencing that feeling of oneness (It’s all experiences end of the day. If you cannot experience it is not real), you are unmistakably connected, unchangeably connected, permanently connected.

So, your connection with yourself is extremely important in our path and the path of liberation. Your connection with yourself is the truth. And that connection will take you to similar frequencies. As you raise your frequencies, you will come in contact with people of the same frequency. That is how you can actually grow and evolve. This is very important to understand. You are the final thing you need to connect. That is what we were talking earlier. You are the thing, you are the matter, you are the being, you are the person, and you are the personality. This is your connection. And this is exactly what we are trying to tell all the time. But then you look at somebody as stable as a rock, established in themselves, who’s not bound by the emotions of the world, not bound by time or space, not bound by any philosophies, totally free, then that becomes a reminder to you on how to walk the path, what will be the situation, how it can be. That is a reminder to you.

Now, you have a benchmark, you have a point of contact, or you have a destination which you can put into your GPS, so you know where you are going. And that’s exactly the whole point of the tradition. The tradition gives you these locations, these benchmarks, these pointers, the destination so that your journey is effortless. Also, you know where you are going, and that’s easy. So on this day of Guru Poornima, we must understand that connection is extremely important. When you stay connected, remember one thing very clearly, doubts are the detrimental factors. Doubting yourself always alienates you, separates you. Doubting the master separates you. Doubting the time, doubting the practice, doubting the environment; doubting separates you. Don’t take doubts lightly. Take doubts seriously. And don’t ask why this is happening? It is. So when you stop asking WHY all the time, you save a lot of time because acceptance takes ‘why’ away from our system. “Okay, this is happening. There must be a reason for it. Whatever the reasons are, if I’m supposed to know, I will know. Otherwise, I don’t have to know.” Every time you think like this, you are free. Each time you stop asking why, and you start connecting deeper and deeper into yourself and assimilating the experience that has come out of that situation; it means you are actually experiencing that situation fully within, each time. That experience becomes a validation of your life. That itself is your final and gives you stability, gives you freedom, complete freedom. So this is exactly what you should do. 

Stop doubting; stop asking ‘why?’ and stop asking, ‘Am I progressing? Am I regressing?’ All these are unnecessary questions. Keep doing the same thing. Keep repeating, keep assimilating and keep investing into yourself. Then what comes out will be something brilliant. It may take time because you have no idea how many baggages of patterns you are carrying, how much is removed, how much has to be removed. So, when we don’t know the whole drama of life and when we can only see two dimensions, we are completely controlled and bound by mind-matter (mind, ego and intellect). Hence stop asking why, stop doubting and just keep practising. And whatever you practice, you should believe in, otherwise don’t practice. Whether it is Kriya, Meditation, Contemplation, if you do not believe in it, there is no point in practising. It is a waste of time. And don’t practice for the sake of a Master. Master has nothing to do with you. A master’s job is to show a clear mirror to you so that you can look at the mirror and you can see yourself, where you stand. That’s the job of the master. Master’s job is NOT to TAKE you to yourself. His job is to show you that you are everything or tell you that you are everything or GUIDE you to yourself. But you have to walk. You have to find yourself and go within. If you doubt yourself, if you doubt the master, if you doubt the practice, if you doubt the time and space if you have excuses all through, where will you go? That brings a waste of time. That takes a lot of our time away, and it is a waste of life. This is the problem. It wastes lifetimes. We have wasted lifetimes already. Now let us use this lifetime to find ourselves and settle down.

The inner space is the only space which is yours. All the outer spaces are not yours; they are temporary. End of the day, all you need is only six foot of ground. If you are very tall, maybe eight foot of ground. That’s about it. You don’t need any more ground to keep your body, that’s it. We are chasing so many things of life, and finally, we are tired. We are still unhappy because we want more. And that is a waste of time. You should have something which gives you a good shelter, food to eat, peaceful life so that you can spread your energy and light into this world outside. When you assimilate yourself into yourself, you become brightness, and that brightness will reach the society and make the society brighter. That is your biggest contribution to society, not your teachings, not your noises.

The society has plenty of noises. It does not need any more noises. What the society needs is silence – a pregnant and deep silence, where silence talks much more than words. This is what society needs today. And what you need to give to this society is yourself. This is the only thing you can give. The only authentic thing you can deliver to this society is yourself, nothing else. You give your flavour. That’s the only thing which is expected. You cannot give any other flavour because you are already yourself. You cannot do anything else about it. So you give the society, your own flavour and that’s good enough. That means you are giving the society your unique flavour. And when you do that, don’t expect anything back. Don’t compare, don’t criticize, don’t judge, don’t character assassinate. Don’t betray, don’t cheat. So your conscience will be clean and bright. When your conscience is clean and bright, you are only giving pure stuff. You cannot give contaminated stuff. So this is important. What you need to give to this world is yourself and that you give as clean as possible, conscience clean, and deliver it with your full conviction without expectation. 

On this day of Guru Poornima, this is the message I wanted to give you. Please remember – you are unique, you are important, you are significant, and nobody else is like you. Don’t underestimate yourself. Don’t criticize and judge yourself. Don’t compare yourself with anybody. And please don’t blame others because whatever you do, will have an effect on you. Your own activity, whether it’s done now or done in the past, it will create its own effect. Any action and every action will have a result. So do not blame others saying that because of him, I am suffering. That is not true. It’s all because of our own actions.

We must understand that whatever we do, whatever we perform, whatever we say, speak, think, everything creates vibrations, frequencies, and that will create results. So, understand this clearly, and assimilate and be together, support each other, help each other. We got to have a whole world – one world, one family. One world and one family is the truth – Vasudeva Kudumbakam – that is the truth. We are all together; no caste, creed, country, culture, colour, language, religion, nothing, just people, one species FOR ALL species. This is what we should be. Then we are living purity. We are walking, talking, eating purity, everything pure. That is the highest you can give to this world. And it’s not a small thing.

I hope I have given you the message. Thank you for coming together, and we will stay in touch. Wish you a great Guru Poornima and wish you a great life ahead. I’m always with you, and I love you.

Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth

Proofread by Rekha Murali

Declutter your mind

Welcome to Mohanji Speaks. Hello friends, hope you are doing well.

Today, I want to share with you a couple of thoughts. I’ll come to the point straight away without much ado. Before I start, a story that came to my mind. I read this when I was in my teens, but it stayed with me. This is from the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m sure most of you would have read most of his work. Here we have the super-intelligent Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson who is always fascinated by the intelligence of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes has the ability to see what others don’t see usually, which helps in solving mysteries effortlessly. This always fascinated. Dr. Watson.

One day in that story Watson is asking Sherlock Holmes, “How do you have this clarity, this intelligence? How do you manage this?” Sherlock Holmes answered quite matter-of-factly. He said to Watson, “My mind is uncluttered. What information I need, that’s the only one that I store. In other words, I only store information that I can use, that I need. I do not store anything random in my mind, so I can retrieve it effortlessly.”

Sherlock Holmes

Now you consider your mind – how much of information have you collected and stored in your mind, which is pretty much useless, or pretty much irrelevant when time passes by. The information that I have in my mind is always fresh and usable. We have so many different information entering our system, entering our minds every day. Politics, sports, various things of life we are interested in, and we collect that information, and we store them without our knowledge. While the information that is essential for us to remember gets mixed up with the information that we have collected and stored unconsciously, or spontaneously. What happens eventually, everything gets mixed up and to retrieve something at the right time becomes impossible, you don’t remember. The lack of memory in most cases is because of the clutter in our minds. It’s because we have stored too much. Just like Sherlock Holmes said, if you store only what you really need in your life, what is essential in your life, you can prevent memory loss. Memory loss is usually connected to an over-burdened mind, too much data, too much information that causes clutter.

This was the thought which came to me this morning, which I thought I’ll share with you, and it continued to another dimension. This is a thought about the wastage of time. How much time do we waste in life, chasing rainbows, illusions, and illusory things? Quite a lot. If we can avoid chasing rainbows and stay with the reality of everyday existence, life will be uncluttered.

We get fascinated by others’ stories, opinions, concepts, temptations. We chase them, and we deviate, taking detours to chase them, to find them, or to experience them. And often we don’t get there because they don’t exist. Rainbows are beautiful from a distance. But you try going towards it, when you reach closer it’s just water vapour, pretty much invisible. Many things that you see from a distance do not have value when you come closer to it. Like when we do not have something, we attach a lot of value to that thing. But when you really get it, it loses value. This is our life. This is how we live every moment.

This understanding might help you to reposition yourself to choose what is relevant and what is not so relevant in life. If we choose what is relevant in life, based on practical, realistic criteria, we can ignore the irrelevant things spontaneously. We are what occupies our mind. What occupies our mind holds us, molds us. So, we are what occupies our mind. This is our choice. We can occupy our mind with high elevated thoughts, thoughts of grandeur, thoughts of higher elevation, thoughts of super-conscious states connected to a Master, thoughts of the Masters. We can occupy our minds with great things, but there will be struggles, struggles because of our desires, our native laziness, our tendencies, and inclinations. They will all try to pull left and right, up and down. We have got to tackle them because they are living with us. They are like family members who have an interest in you, who believe that this is what you’re born for. Or these tendencies are a part of your system and you can’t avoid them.

What occupies your mind makes you. If this understanding is clear, you can choose to fill your mind with the right thoughts. In fact, you don’t have control over thoughts, thoughts just happen spontaneously with time. But we can choose to occupy our mind, engage to apply our mind on the positive, regenerative, and rejuvenating matter. Such information will enhance you and enhance the world around you; so that the world reciprocates that back to you. What you give to the world, you get from the world. When you give yourself to the world, the world gives itself to you. This control is in everybody, you can all choose to do this. You can control these factors. It’s an attitude. So we can definitely choose to be different, to be ourselves. Connect to our highest possibilities and express that to the world. Our value always is what we give to the world.
Today I would like to tell you about one aspect of our life. Just throw some light on it, so that you could ponder on it.

We have so many people around us who love us unconditionally, who care for us, who respect us, those who have value for us, or we have value for them, and those to whom we have a value, they value us. Often, we ignore those people in life, and we try to impress or chase people who do not really care about us, who are indifferent towards us. I’m sure all of you have experienced that. There are people, who really love you, care for you, but they’re insignificant in your life, or you don’t care, you’re indifferent towards them. And there are people who really don’t care about you, they don’t love you, but you really want their affection and you do everything possible so that they love you, they accept you, which won’t happen. And the result is a disappointment. Usually or sometimes, it so happens that we’ve hurt the people who love us because our mind is occupied on what we do not have. We totally ignore what we have. This is one of the tragedies of existence.

All of us have some people who really care for us. And all of us have people whom we love and want them to care for us. But due to whatever reason, they are indifferent towards us. What should you do, ideally, what is the right thing to do? Ignore those who are indifferent, even if you love them. If you would like them to love you, or like them to be affectionate towards you, but if they are indifferent towards you, ignore them completely. Respect them, love them, but ignore them. And ignore their impact in your life so that you won’t get hurt by their indifference, which will help your self-esteem. Meanwhile, focus on those who really love you, care for you, and give them back, reciprocate the same. If we live our lives in this manner, that means, love those who love us. That means you reciprocate love and we ignore those who do not love us or those who are indifferent towards us. And don’t analyze the reason; it could be simply unmatched frequency. Frequency is not matching, that’s why they can’t communicate with you. That’s probably why they don’t understand your love, care, or your need for their attention. So, ignore them. Accept, respect, and deeply love those who really care for you. Do not hurt them ever so that your life will be stable, you will have a better balance in life, and you will feel good because you are reciprocating evenly, the emotions that you receive. Imagine you are getting love from somebody, but you are giving back hatred – that is already an imbalance. If you get love, give love, reciprocate evenly, and that will stabilize you.

I leave you with these thoughts, how to unclutter your mind, how to prioritize, and how to balance yourself in society. Think it over. Share it if you liked it. And we’ll meet again later.

This is Mohanji for you.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

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Practical Steps for Challenging Times – part 2

Satsang with Mohanji  
16th August 2020

Question: We have multiple tasks being done at the same time; managing the home, children, etc and there is no time for spiritual practice. This is causing irritation. I would like to understand how I can make it more efficient.

Mohanji: We have a feeling that we have many tasks. We do have various responsibilities; home, office and a variety of responsibilities. Why don’t you take these as Sadhana or practice? It is possible. Do everything as an offering. Your work itself is worship! Everything can be worship. Breath is worship, thoughts are worship, actions are worship; everything can be an offering. Imagine like that – then it is perpetual meditation; all the time you are meditating. Don’t try to compartmentalise your life. It is one life, in which you are playing various roles; you are playing the role of a wife or a mother or a child or a father or uncle or any other role. You are playing these roles every day and it is part of your responsibility. YOU MUST! But there is a YOU in the middle. There is YOU who is playing these roles; connect to that you, who is no role, but the actor. Not the role you play, but the actor. Connect to this actor, the real you and meditate on that actor. Not the role; roles will change, even in a day it changes many times; let it change, play all the roles. But at the same time, connect to yourself, the actor. And you feel how it is. You will start feeling very peaceful and meditative.  The actor is not changing, roles are changing. You are everything. But you are NOT anything. You will understand that experientially. You will understand and experience that.

That will make a difference in your life.

Question: What is the significance of special occasions, like certain times for deities?

Mohanji: Every time has its significance, just like day or night. Similarly, there is significance to seasons, certain planetary configurations which shift the energy frequency, and we perform certain rituals at that time, all of them have significance. Each of these, as you connect to it, is transformative, even if temporarily. When you participate in a festival, you feel excited. You forget your sorrows, wear new clothes, eat good food, and you feel great! The purpose is to rejuvenate you, to press the restart button! So what happens is you look forward to these holidays, those experiences. Whether it is spiritually significant or not, what happens inside is the real story. Are you happy? If you are happy, it is worth it! What is life for? Happiness. We want to experience what is happiness on earth. We want to experience ecstasy, bliss, love, great things in life which makes us feel good. All these festivals that society has created are for that purpose. If you really understand that you will start appreciating all these things.

If you look at festivals connected to Lord Krishna, all joy and dance and singing, etc. Why is it so? Because life should be a celebration ! Life means celebration. Janmashtami happened a few days back. Everybody celebrated the birth of Lord Krishna. Krishna was born about 5000 years ago. But we celebrated as if He was born now!  What happened in the minds of people?

A rebirth happened! Reborn, Rejuvenated, in a way, Reinvented!

This is the beauty of festivals. We must celebrate, Datta Jayanthi , Sai Baba’s Samadhi day, and so on. We celebrate everything and it is worth it. We sing, we chant, we connect, we rejuvenate and then we reinvent and we restart ourselves.

Question: A person who has always helped others, and never harm others still suffers greatly. How can this happen, is it karma?

 Mohanji: Life is a flow. We must flow with life. Two things life is a flow through bodies life flows. That means through rebirths life flows. So, we do not understand the flow completely. What has happened in the past lives? What did we do in the past lives, what is happening in this life, is a reflection of what happened, or what we did in our past lives. And so, we only experience this life right now. You will not understand the cause. That is why this question, why is something like this happening?

In fact, imagine somebody did all sorts of atrocities in another life; anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, betrayal. He did everything possible in that lifetime. Then he produced a new lifetime based on the karmic wealth, he accumulated in that lifetime.

He took another birth. So he came in this life but he can’t remember what happened in the previous births, which caused this life.

Probably in his previous life, at the end of his life, he regretted doing all those things. He died with regret and he took a wow, “ I will never do these bad things anymore.” And he took a new life, a good life. This life is good, doing all the good things, but the karmic bank balance keeps following him.

In a Mirabai bhajan it says, if you betray a master, a spiritual master, it takes you about 80,000 lifetimes to come back to where you have been before. That means betrayal, criticizing, scandalizing, gossiping all these have a price to pay. Don’t think that,” Oh I can gossip about somebody and it doesn’t matter”. It matters.

Appreciation and honoring, expressing gratitude – these are good, because then you have reward. But if you gossip, talk bad, character assassinate, betray, all these things have huge price; you may end up paying that over lifetimes, many lives.  Because it’s as if you took a huge bank loan, gambled and lost everything. So you end up paying your entire life. It’s almost like that but in the case of betrayals and character assassination, and such issues, the price goes through many, many lifetimes. I always tell people do not engage in any gossip. If you don’t know, just forget it. Don’t talk bad about anybody; even if somebody has done something bad to you, leave that person to his karma; karma will take care of it. Don’t worry. You should not keep thinking about it and creating your own future.

There are people who will come to you as problems, because you might have been a problem for them in another life. As I said, life is a flow, it is a continuous flow. Bodies are temporary and to each body. They have experienced something, then this body is gone, another body, they experience many different things. This goes away, then,  another body; like this, we have taken many bodies.

We will take more if you don’t dissolve into the Supreme Consciousness in this life, we will take further bodies.

This is why you need a very powerful master to connect to, where you dissolve into him, and you don’t have to take any more bodies, unless you want to.

That’s the difference, birth by choice. Birth for the sake of Dharma is different from birth for the sake of karma. They are  two different things. So we may not understand why we are experiencing certain things but we can assume that if we are experiencing bad things in this life, we might have committed something bad in another life. So it’s come back to us. This life, if you’re done good things, the merits of it will go to another life. Probably you’ll be born in such a family in the next life where you get only the merits of it. This happens. So, what you do today will have its payment later. Means you do your work now and you get paid later. Like that whatever you are doing now, you will have the results later.

But please remember, there is no escape from karma.

If you have done something, if you’re committed something you must pay for it, especially death, destruction, betrayal, character assassination, gossip, the negative aspects. Also, please remember we watch these programs in the television and movies and different forms of entertainment; the soap operas where it’s about bad relationships, criticism, judgment, betrayal, and such in the stories and we occupy ourselves with these; we imbibe those emotions within; we can probably have a similar future, or   a similar experience in the future. This is possible. So please be aware! That this is why all the great Masters insisted on satsang – good company, good company.

satsangatve  nisangatva

nissangtve nirmohatva

nirmohatve nischallatatva

nischalatatve jivanmukti

That is exactly what great masters have said. That means with good company you learn to detach from the wears and tears of life, from the fluctuations of life. When you are in a kind of detached state your desires are reduce, desires becomes fewer. When desires become lesser, mind becomes still. What is causing the mind to be restless? Numerous desires.

That is why I always say let’s get it fulfilled, let’s do it and finish it off,  so that the mind is still.  The mind must be still. When the mind is consistently still, liberation happens to you. Moksha happens; mukti happens. We must understand that we are the source of our own destiny. We are creating it every moment; every day; every moment, whatever we are doing there is a reason, result.

So there’s a past for everything; there’s a present for everything and there’s a future for everything. You should understand this. And when you’re very involved and have a clutter of thoughts; you can’t see the truth. And we start looking at the world through our ears; through other people’s words. That’s the worst thing. We should not see through our ears. Ears are to hear but then other people’s opinion, should not be our spectacles to see the world; which means, we should look at the world ourselves as we are and experience it; and detach from criticizing, blaming, and talking bad about anything, including yourself. Do not criticize others; do not criticize yourself. Do not judge others; do not judge yourself. Like that if you respect everything, life will be better, for sure.

Question: This question came in relating to acceptance. Yeah. So how can we accept, even the bad aspects of ourselves? Why is self-acceptance so difficult?

Mohanji: Why is self-acceptance so difficult? It’s because we always worry about the bad aspects in ours ourselves. We all have it, 7.5 billion people, have good and bad in them; positive and negative in them. Don’t think that you are the only one who has all the negatives in you; it’s not true. All people have it, so we must understand that this is how creation works.  In every human being, there is positive and negative; and we must really understand that we have to focus, on only positive and ignore the negative. We have to ignore the negative. We have to focus on the positive, and that’s the way we can accept ourselves better. Let the negative be there with us, and don’t look at anybody in the world as only positive; it’s not possible. It is just not possible. There will be some negative in everybody, and don’t focus on the negative; because then we are missing the whole thing.  Focus on the positive; let’s strengthen the positive; we unite together; work together; be together like one family, and then it will be glory for everybody. We have that power!

Question:   Is there a way to dissolve past karma, and also what’s the consequences of any parent’s actions on the child destiny?

Mohanji: Past karma – We’ve taken this life to exhaust past karma; it means pending desires and our, our driving force, or our inclinations are our vasanas. Vasanas are our driving force, tendencies, and inclinations. And we are going ahead with experiencing our pending desires at each point in time in life, right from childhood till death. This is what we are doing. Part of it is lineage karma, that’s coming from the lineage, from our father and mothers’ side, coming together; that merges with us.  Each individual has personal karma, pending desires of personal nature, and also pending desires of the lineage nature; they are coming together. They come together, and we are experiencing that in life.

So, how do you exhaust them? Automatically, without your knowledge you’re exhausting it. Whatever you’re experiencing each day that’s exhaustion; every experience amounts to that karma. If you block it, it stays postponed. If you experience it and move on, then it’s done. So the best way to come out of all these karmas are, by being good and doing good; so that when you express your best in everything, whatever you can, as per your capacity ; and be kind; be compassionate; be generous, and then this karma gets dissipated. So the more good things you do; by good things I mean because of your existence, you help all the beings of the nature; then automatically your karmic configuration starts changing; and improvement happens, and you reach a level where there is no ownership of action.

When you have ownership of action, you have karma. If you, if you surrender everything to the Almighty, then there is no karmic binding. When you get up in the morning itself have the right attitude towards life; surrender attitude and connect to one master; seriously and consistently, whatever happens let it not change. Again as I said before, the Master and the man should be different, considered different; a person has his needs and requirements, but a Master is the settled aspect of that person; so connect to the Master aspect. You don’t have to connect to the person, so that you can avoid an illusion. That is why I said so. So, connect to the Master in that way, as settled consciousness; after you have sufficient proof for yourself for that sake. Don’t just look at the picture or somebody words and follow somebody; it won’t work, because if you look at just the picture and the words of opinions of somebody it may not be suitable to you, but you need to know whether this person is stable within. If it is not, don’t follow.

Once you start following; don’t leave. This is your integrity. This is how it should be. Then somebody else says at some point in time;” Oh! He’s not good or this is that. Don’t change your mind!” Your experience is true to you; your experience is most important for you and you follow that whatever happens in the world; then you will have progress. So this is an individualistic journey; it’s an individual journey. You are the traveler; you are the journey; you are the destination. You are the experience of the journey; everything is you.

So if you understand that clearly, you will not have lot of distractions, or distortions. This is the truth.

Question: How can we be liberated in this life, is it possible, with nothing pending that needs to be taken forward?

Liberation is possible right now, right here! How it is possible? It is possible firstly, by keeping that as your priority. Your top priority should be liberation. And then second is increase your awareness; increasing awareness is very simple. It means just be aware of your thoughts, words, actions; be aware and slowly start detaching from them, by just being aware. I am not the thought; thoughts are happening through me. I am not the doer; actions are happening correspondingly through me, so there’s no ownership. I’m not the action; actions are also happening through me. I’m not the doer, but it doesn’t mean that you go and kill somebody and say, “I didn’t kill, it happened through me.” Not like that. You should be responsible as well. You have to have responsibility. So, everything you do, you’re responsible; so only good actions, good thoughts, good words, and then no, no negative feelings or expressions or any of those kind of things. And then you have clarity that everything that is born will die. Everything has a duration. Whatever is born, will die. And all things are interconnected, you cannot exist alone. Everything is connected in the world; the plants, the trees, the birds, the animals, human beings; we are all interconnected; we all have something to give and take; so that kind of a total acceptance is essential. And liberation is a state which you experience right now, where you do not have binding on something, or something does not bind you. We do not have binding out of place, a person or situation or emotion or experience. We are not bound by anything. Our desire level is very low, very less.

Once you understand that and accept that and when you are in that kind of a mode; automatically you will start feeling detachment from the world outside. That doesn’t mean that you hate anything; there’s no hatred here, it’s just that, you don’t want it. You don’t want it; which means you have no need for it. When you have no need for something; you are free from it. When you have such freedom, you are liberated while living; and that means you’re not collecting more and more desires anymore. So, what happens? No desires, no reincarnations! Simple, so liberation is possible, just by investing in awareness. Investing in awareness – that is the secret. Invest in your awareness; be aware of who you are, what you are, where you are, why you are; of all those be aware.  Also understand all the things around you during waking state do not exist when you’re sleeping or it doesn’t exist for you when you’re sleeping. When you wake up, they are there. So, what is there? That your experience is connected to you! You can have experience or no experience based on your moods, your situations,  your emotion at that time. Everything is like that. So, this is very simple, it’s easy to understand. When you really know that you are everything; and you don’t need much, then you are liberated. So liberation is a state of mind; it’s an attitude, which you can easily cultivate, just by awareness. Awareness is the fire.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt and Padmini Ravi Kumar
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

How to enhance your awareness?

Awareness is always available to you like your shadow; awareness is not outside of you. Awareness in some degree is always present in us or in any degree, it is available to us. But what we choose to use is what is actually our reality. Although we are able to tap into our own awareness (a huge reservoir of awareness is available), we choose to use only a tiny bit of it. That is why we are conditioned because our mind always uses only a fraction of what is available; the mind does not have the capacity. You have to go beyond the mind to reach the actual level of awareness; for example, the transformer outside has high capacity, but that electricity cannot be used by this house. It needs to be toned down to the level through smaller transformers before it can actually light a lamp or operate a washing machine; like that, awareness is huge, and it’s available to you. But we choose to use a very small part of it.

So, to increase the awareness, you need to go beyond the mind, beyond your ego, beyond your intellect and beyond the whole setup which you use normally  in the waking state. On a usual day what you use, you have to change the pattern. And the best way is to watch. Watch your thoughts. Watch your words. Watch your actions. It’s not that you stop doing things and watch; while doing things, watch it, observe it, be objective about it. Do not criticize, do not censor, do not suppress, then what happens? Spontaneity happens; you are moving through situations in a spontaneous way. And the further and further you move through the situation spontaneously, there will be no happiness or sorrow. There are only effects, its particular experience, whether it be good or bad, or a particular expression.

That means every being is a unique constitution. Seven billion people on Earth have seven billion constitutions, uniqueness! There are no two people alike; the same way. So, once we know that we are unique beings and why we are here, we can express ourselves in the most unique way. We cannot be stereotyped, we cannot be somebody else; somebody else is somebody else. They cannot be us. So, our expressions are unique and this is exactly what we are here for. Once we understand that and when there are no big ups and downs in our mind; we are relatively stable and we are relatively detached from the daily activity. While we are doing it, we are detached from it. It means we are not indifferent, we are enjoying it, but that is not like a craving or a front-footed affair like we are always in a kind of pressured mode. Then awareness cannot survive because the mind is taking over. And when the mind takes over; many things are possible, many negative things are possible, such as wrong decisions, pressured decisions, pushing into thought, word and action; you are pushed into activity.  Also, the mind distorts reality. There is probably a reason for an action to take place in a particular location, the mind inflates it, connects it to our past. You know, sometimes it mixes our past events into an event of the current time and inflates the whole situation, at least in the mind. It makes you feel, “Oh, this is a big deal, it’s a great thing, or this is bad, it shouldn’t have happened.” Actually, there was no problem, probably it was a very normal situation but our mind creates it. Like we watch a film, some people really get affected by the feature film; some people say, “Ok, it’s a good movie, a good story, nice.” So, why is there a difference? The same thing has a difference in different people. It’s because the mind operates in different ways; our constitution is different. Likewise, awareness is available 24/7 in the most expanded form. But what you choose to use is what is your reality and your understanding. Your understanding level will depend on what level of awareness you’re using. So, the higher the awareness, the more is the enjoyment; the higher the awareness, your visibility is higher, you can see things with clarity, You can see things much more distinctly, clear, based on necessity, so that you will not be interested in so many things. You will be objective, you will do what you have to do, and you will be very clear about your functions as well irrespective of who’s around you, and what the situations are.

Often, we are encouraged or discouraged by the people around us, or the situations around us, or even our upbringing; my parents did not do well, or they did not do good to me, so I am angry. So, we have somebody to blame. All this will change because awareness will take you higher, and say that these are all situational, that situation is over.  We are moving forward and time is taking us forward whether we like it or not. When time takes you forward and then you are absolutely existing in the time as it moves; that means not the time of the past which is dead nor the time in the future, which is not here as yet. You are existing in the Now. This is the only reality. Let me be here now. That is perfect awareness. That is perfection in awareness. That means your operational level has shifted to the now; energy loss will not be there, because maximum energy is lost when you are moving towards the past, entertaining guilt or moving towards the future, entertaining anxiety. These two suck you away, insecurity sucks your energy away, and you feel drained. Why should there be insecurity at all? If you’re eating food today, tomorrow there should be food. There’s an old saying if God has given you the mouth, He will provide the food as well. Trust that God, whichever God you like, but this is the truth of existence. God has provided for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. This is the difference.

So, when you are in higher awareness, there’ll be no greed, you will perpetually be operating, more or less, in the plane of the Almighty. Because you cannot be self-centred or narrow-minded, with a higher awareness; both cannot sit together; both will not sit together. And what is the nature of God, the highest entity – Unconditional love, nothing else. The operating level itself is unconditional love. You and I are one, there’s no duality. This is a higher awareness. This is understanding.

So, higher awareness is available. It can be easily achieved if you’re able to objectively observe your thoughts, your words, your actions. At that time, I do not exist, a situation exists and a situation has been brought by my inherent karma; it brought this time, space and myself into it. So be it. It’s fine. That awareness will help you to move on in life, or float through life without many upheavals, even if there is calamity around, we will be fine. If society is filled with people who are fine, society will be a better place. Calamities, murders, rapes all those things will not happen because suppression brings forth reactions. The more you suppress, the more is the tendency to burst the wall and come out, eruption happens.

So, higher understanding, higher awareness always brings you into a perfect balance. It gives you equanimity in existence and equanimity leads to liberation.

Transcribed by Padmini Ravikumar

Proofread by Rekha Murali

 

 

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Q&A Unconditional Love Part 2

Mohanji: Welcome to Mohanji Speaks. These are answers to questions from listeners. Thank you for sending them. Keep sending them. I will try to answer them as best as I can.

Speaker: This is part two of the podcast series of a question from a listener on unconditional love.

Mohanji: Unconditional love is something which you’ve got to feel, where you are able to love everybody, everything, like a mother to the child, mother of any species to its children. How deep is the bonding, how much love, with no expectations? And if you look at the animal kingdom. Their love is far more unconditional than the human kingdom. A mother nurtures a child, just to empower the child to lead an independent life. After a while, the child goes away.

You look at the birds, the mother brings food, nurtures the birds. As soon as its wings become powerful to take the flight, the bird goes away when it doesn’t know the mother or father, it becomes independent. So, the animal kingdom, the birds, the animals, all those beings in nature, they just nurture and empower the children and leave them, then probably there’s no connection even.

But in the human kingdom, we put a lot of expectations, which makes a relationship ugly – ownerships, controls, expectations, suffocation, disappointment. Then anger, hatred, jealousy, all sorts of things. This makes human life miserable. We don’t have to be miserable. We can be free.

Speaker: Here, Mohanji makes a really good point about freedom.

Mohanji: If our expectations are less in the world we are free. Fewer expectations, less disappointment; that is freedom. If you really want to know the freedom, you got to experience freedom from the mind and the senses, not the freedom of the mind and senses. It’s freedom FROM the mind and senses. It means, you’re happy with everything, but you’re not craving for anything. Freedom. So, this is what I would like to talk about; unconditional love. We can discuss much more about unconditional love in various aspects. But I think this is something which you got to experience not theoretically, practically.

Speaker: But to add on to that, and going a bit further, people are interested in how does a master’s love operate?

Mohanji: A Master, Master means what? Mastery. Mastery over what? Mastery over life. Life is a conglomeration of various things, inclinations and desires primarily. And this gives the flavour of existence, everybody’s existence. A tiger’s life, a lion’s life, a human life, take every life; it has its specific flavour of existence; specific method, specific way, inclinations tendencies, desires. They all have distinctions, so each species has it, and in human beings, we see everything, all sorts of desires, all sorts of inclinations. So, a master is somebody who has mastered this pull and push of desires, inclinations and tendencies. He has taken steps, well beyond the mind, well beyond senses, well beyond likes and dislikes, karmic bindings.

So, such a person is pretty tranquil, equanimous. He looks at everything with equanimity. He loves unconditionally. He lives for the world. He has not much personal interest. Of course, he would like to eat food and sleep and do whatever. But that’s not the driving force. The major driving force of his existence is to serve the world unconditionally, without expecting. Mastery is mastery over your mind, intellect and the ego. You’re going beyond these things, their craving is quenched; craving of mind – emotions, craving of intellect – information, craving of ego – ownerships. These three things are in control. Ownership or no ownership – it’s fine, me and mine – no value, likes and dislikes – quiet. Such a person is a master, then what kind of love can he give forth – only as himself. He looks at everybody as himself. He sees only the world as himself.
We all see the world as ourselves, but we put our flavour to the world, we see the world as we are. Master sees the world as it is. That’s the difference.

When you put your flavour, your own likes and dislikes, karmic combination, constitution onto the world; it’s like wearing a glass, which has colour. Wearing a glass which is yellow, would make everything look yellow. If it’s red, everything is red because you’re wearing such a glass. That’s how our life is. A karmic being lives like that. When you have gone beyond the control of your senses and mind, when I say mind it also includes intellect and ego, then there’s no colour. When you cross over there’s no colour. You’re looking at the world as it is. So, you’re only seeing the truth and you will not judge, you will not criticize, you will not manipulate, analyze, you just accept as it is, everything is as it is. Everything is as it is always.

So, you’re pretty free. You are very free. When you experience freedom and that is exactly what you see in the world. You won’t sit down and judge people, you won’t criticize, character assassinate, gossip, you will do nothing, you just accept everything as it is. When you start accepting life as it is, the world as it is, inside as it is, yourself as it is, there are no conflicts. There is total freedom.

So, a Master looks at the world with total freedom, because he is walking freedom. That’s why many times, a conditioned society cannot understand a Master, why he behaves in a certain way, why he has certain opinions because society has kept itself or society functions itself conditionally in two dimensions. There’s a bigger third dimension, which is very difficult to see, the karmic dimension of every individual, which is from the time of birth, till the time of death that runs the show. Time-space situations are provided for experiences to happen. Who controls this? The karmic flow, sitting on linear time manifests it, we experience it, we keep the memory, and we kind of get involved in it, the role plays of life, the involvement in activities of life, which makes us feel that we are the doer. That’s an illusion. Actually, things are happening. And we are participating. Instead, we feel we are doing it, the ownership of action. It is a grand illusion. And if you dive into the depth of it, you will be surprised how much of an illusion we are holding every moment, how much we are struggling to maintain our name, fame and position in the world. We will be surprised to see; we need to contemplate. We need to understand. When we go deeper and deeper and deeper, and we realize, “Oh, this is the world where I’ve been foolishly chasing something external by ignoring what actually I am, what is internal.” That’s the time when you realize, “Oh My God, I wasted a lot of time on paltry pleasures, patterns, and they were running the life, they were running the show.” Patterns were running the show repeatedly, and we were pretty much endorsing it. We will realize all that. We pretty much endorse our patterns. If some pattern is disturbed, we become very disturbed. But that’s the very thing, which chains us, we start loving. That’s the irony of existence. The basic thing that chains us are our patterns, our inclinations tendencies, that’s what we entertain. We fight to keep it. We don’t allow it to be broken. And that’s exactly what should go to connect yourself, you are not your patterns. You’re not your patterns, you’re not your inclinations and tendencies. You’re not your desires, they all come and go. They don’t stay. So, once you understand that, just imagine your freedom. When a master has understood this, that is what is mastery. He has understood life, he has understood the patterns, he has understood the likes and dislikes, inclinations, all those things. When he has become freedom – when you become something, how do you look at the world? As you are, right. So, he has recognized what is real freedom. He sees the world as freedom. Acceptance happens. So, he accepts everybody as they are, not as he wants them to be. That is their job. If a person wants to evolve beyond their mind, a Master is available, as a benchmark. But Master never says “Become me.” What will a Master say? I’m available, like a mirror, you can look at me and find yourself.

Speaker: This concludes part two of the three-part podcast series on unconditional love, which is based on a question from a listener. Do keep your suggestions for topics coming in, send them to podcast@mohanji.org. And we hope you enjoyed this. And the next and final episode of the three-part series will be coming out very soon. Have a good day.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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Are you an angel or a vulture?

Hello, my dear friends. Welcome to Mohanji Speaks.

Today we are going to talk about the goodness factor. What is the goodness factor? Goodness factor is our ability to be kind and compassionate and prioritizing it at all times. So, how is it important for us? We shall see.

One gentleman, a photographer, saw a small child totally drained of energy, lean and weak from dehydration and malnutrition, crawling to a center where they were distributing food in Sudan. And very next to this child, a vulture was sitting, waiting for the child to die so that it could eat its body. This picture is very famous; it’s available on the internet too. This photographer took the picture and left the place. What happened to the child? Nobody knows. And this picture won many a prize, many awards as a very sensitive picture. A child about to die and a vulture waiting for its death, an extremely sad picture!

In one of the programs where this picture was displayed, a reporter asked the photographer, “What did you do about this child? Did you take the child to the shelter or did you just leave her there?” He said, “I didn’t have time; I had to catch a bus, so I rushed right after the picture. I don’t know what happened to the child.” So, the reporter said, “There was not just one vulture waiting for the death of the child. In fact, there were two; one was behind the camera; he took the picture, but did not help the child!” This literally shook the photographer; it hit his conscience. It did so to such an extent that the photographer, later on, committed suicide.

Today, you can see many such vultures. All they need is a good picture. They don’t stop to help the victims and we can see that in the media, right? You can see so many cameras on eerie images; people suffering, animals suffering, birds suffering, they are all pictures of suffering. There are people behind those cameras. But do they turn around and help the victims? We don’t know. In many circumstances, probably help is not possible because of various regulations, such as government regulations, or authorities not permitting any assistance or things of that kind. That is ok; it is understandable that we can’t do anything. But there are many circumstances in which help can be offered. This ability to give a helping hand makes us a good human being.

You take the picture to show to the world that such events are happening; that’s fine. But after that, you need to stop to help the helpless. That’s where humanity comes, that’s where a person becomes a good human being. That’s where the goodness factor is displayed.

So, what we need to think about today is, “Am I a vulture or an angel?” We can all become angels; we can definitely help the helpless if we make that our priority. For that, you should get out of your houses or get out of your comfort zones and do the impossible. That will take your self-esteem to a totally different level. You will have great self-esteem; you will have great inner richness. You would have a lot of gratitude to the universe, for giving you the ability to be helpful. You will become great human beings. You will set trends; you will become a game-changer.

This is my message today. This is my food for thought for today. Are you an angel, or are you a vulture? Think it over. Look at your own past. Think about the various life situations, you have faced and ponder over how you responded.

“The world is a dangerous place not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” This is a quote by Albert Einstein. This says it all.

All of us have the potential to be angels. We are angels. Sometimes mind does not allow us to experience it, then we become vultures. I wish you the state of being an angel, always.

Lots of love. This is Mohanji for you.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

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Real Freedom

Hello, my friends. Welcome to Mohanji Speaks.

We have discussed about the unrest and the anger that spilled over into the streets of America. We’ve talked about racism, we talked about discrimination, and we talked about masters and slaves. This podcast is to discuss about who the real master is and who the real slaves are. We have always discussed about freedom at various levels, various dimensions. Time and again, various people have spoken about the need for freedom. We have fought for freedom. We have waged wars for freedom. And when freedom of movements is restricted, we have become violent.

But what exactly is freedom? Have we thought? We believe that freedom means freedom of senses, freedom of mind, and freedom of body. This is what we understand. That means, we do have the freedom to do what we like to do. But real freedom is freedom from the senses, freedom from the mind, and freedom from the body. This is your food for thought today. Real freedom is freedom from all the aspects that we consider as ourselves, such as the body, mind, intellect, ego, and the senses. When we are bound by them, we don’t have freedom. The freedom that we have fought for is that freedom where our movements are restricted. Body, mind, intellect, senses are all restricted and ego is affected. That’s the freedom that we fought for. That’s the freedom that we waged wars for. So, if we really, really have to experience freedom, we have to experience freedom from our senses, mind, and the body. That’s real freedom. The senses, the mind, and the body would like to roam on sensory objects in the outside world, fulfilling desires at every point in time. They seek fulfillment. The body seeks fulfillment, the mind seeks fulfillment, the intellect seeks fulfillment, and the ego seeks fulfillment. Senses help that. This is the freedom that we have been talking about. And we thought this is the freedom that we need. But is that so?  Think!

When we are away from desires, when we are away from the need for sensory satisfaction all the time, when we are contented inside, when we are away from the compulsions of the body, mind, intellect, and the ego, when we are fully settled and satisfied – that is freedom, beauty and peace of our soul. We do not need any external objects; we do not need any external factors, such as relationships, time, space, conveniences. We don’t need any of those, because we are fully settled inside.

So, real freedom is freedom from the mind. When we do not have to chase sensory objects, we are free. The ability to do something or be somewhere is not exactly freedom. But because we are connected to the body, because we believe we are this personality, we believe that experience, but that’s not it. This is an important thought. So, who are the masters? There is only one master – yourself. Who are the slaves? We become slaves when we are slaves to the wrong masters, such as the mind, body, intellect, and ego. Spirit is always free. Spirit has nothing to do with our completions and fulfillments. The spirit is free. The soul is free. The soul has nothing to do with us. It’s always stable, peaceful, settled inside. And when we settle inside along with the soul, we become the soul. We are also peaceful. There is nothing outside of us. Or there are many things outside of us, but they do not interest us anymore. But if you are fully settled inside, just like the soul who does not interfere in your satisfactions and completions, you will also be disconnected and detached from all these things outside. But you will be there in everything, detached and unaffected. Just like your soul. You can do anything you like but the soul is detached and disconnected. We will be like that. That’s real freedom.

So, if you really want to be a master, you’ve got to be yourself. You cannot be your mind, intellect, ego, and body, and still say you are free because that’s not freedom. If you really understand this freedom, you have understood the truth of existence. This is the truth.

I leave you with this thought today. Ponder on it. Think it over. Discuss this matter. And as you discuss more, you will get more and more awareness.

I wish you happiness, fulfillment, and settlement inside yourself.

Lots of love, this is Mohanji.

 

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

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Depth of illusion

Hello, my dear friends! This is Mohanji.

Welcome to another podcast. Today, we will discuss the subject – illusion. What is illusion? I’ll tell you a story. Probably, you can figure out some aspect of illusion. In Sanskrit, it is called Maya. Maya is a relative truth. Relative truth, it is a truth, but its relative. Relative truth means it has existence, only on a relative level; it doesn’t have existence on the absolute plane.

So, relative truth is what we experience most of the time when we are awake. When we are awake like the sun rises, the mind rises; when we wake up, the mind rises, and then we start perceiving the world around us. And when we sleep, the mind sets. Nothing around us is of importance. So what rises, and what sets, is the relative mind. The mind, which is connected to relative things. But we still have an element of satisfaction, an element of happiness, even in sleep.

So, we are not dependent on any items or any things around us. Our happiness is not dependent on people, places, time, situations, experiences of external nature; we are not that, they are all outside. We are only completely inside when we are sleeping. But we are happy, we are happy with that sleep. There is a satisfaction that is happiness. When we wake up, if somebody asks, “Did you sleep well?” “Yeah, it was a beautiful sleep. It was enjoyable. I was happy.” What is enjoyable in that sleep? This is something which we must perceive so that we will somewhat understand the relative truth.

What we have outside is not always experience. We see so many things outside. Eyes see ears listen. So many things, so many factors we go through every day. But everything is not experienced, imagine there are so many people around. We are not experiencing everybody’s relationship.

I’ll tell you the story, and then I’ll talk further. There was one guy; he was meditating in Ganga, in freezing water for a long time, just to find out the truth of Maya, the illusion, or the relative truth. And finally, one day, God appeared and said, “Why are you meditating on something which is insignificant which you are experiencing and it may not be possible for your intellect to understand it. Why do you want to know?” Then he said, “I would like to know the depth of Maya, illusion.” God said, “In time, you will understand, let time, teach you this lesson.” God disappeared. He was disappointed because he thought that God will give him clarity, but he did not get it. So, while he was sitting there, his children came, he left for his home, and the children took care of him. He was living with his children, but at the same time, he had a deep urge to know the truth of Maya, illusion.

One day, when he was sitting outside on the porch of the house, he heard one beggar singing a song and walking outside on the road. And he had a glimpse of the beggar, he was in tatters. He had no clothes or very little clothes, fully dark and kind of shabby, not at all clean. And he felt a lot of disgust. And also, he felt this is very bad or something like that in his mind, and soon afterwards he died. So, his predominant thought at that time was disgust.

When he was reborn, he was born again, as a beggar. And he had no memory of his past life, and he was walking around, singing songs, just like he had a glimpse in the previous life. He went on like that, he married a woman, but she didn’t live for long. And meanwhile, she had a few children, children also died.

So, he was very sad, he was disoriented and he was wandering all the time. And one day, it so happened that he was wandering through one city and that King of that city had died, and they were trying to find a new king. So, the astrologers or the wise men told that the new king should be chosen by an elephant, by the Royal Palace elephant, a trained one, as it has the power to see who is divine. It was given a garland and the elephant was wandering through the streets, looking for the right person to be the next king. Then he put the garland around the neck of this beggar. Everybody was surprised, but they said this is the decision of God. Then they took this guy, they bathed him and they gave him fresh clothes and they coronated him, he became the king. And he married again, he had a few wives and he had children and all those things.

And he was ruling the country. He had some kind of inclination for a good rule, means without selfishness. He was a good king and he was having a good way to assess the good and the bad and make good decisions. So, everybody liked him. Eight or nine years went on like that. Meanwhile, one day he was walking in the garden outside his palace, and he heard a beggar singing, same like he used to do outside on the road. He immediately called the beggar, and he sat with him and he also started singing. All the palace people, the ministers and the people in the court, they saw this, and they were a bit disappointed. And they were saying, “oh, we did not know the past of this King, we must know.’ They went around their search and they found out that he was born in a beggar’s colony, and he was a beggar himself. This was his story. So, they were very disappointed. A couple of queens committed suicide knowing this. Some ministers also went away and there were so many calamities. This also made him very sad, so he also decided to jump into the fire and die. He jumped into the fire and died.

Suddenly the man who was meditating, or doing penance in the river got up. He realized the illusion, he realized what is untruth. The whole story, that means he’s still alive, but at the same time he saw him dying, him taking birth, him becoming a king; all this happened in about a minute. He realized it was a parallel reality, it was not true. It was a reality. So, God wanted to tell him what is reality and what is illusion.

Was this a reality? While he experienced, everything was real. He had sorrows, he had happiness, and he had everything. But now he realized that he’s not even dead, he’s still there. His sons have not picked him up. So, he was pretty much confused, he did not know what is real, what is untrue, what is not the truth. He was contemplating on it. And then he decided, “Okay, let me do penance again. Let me ask this question to the deity,” whom he was worshipping. And he started doing penance.

And while he was about to do that, one wandering man came to the place where he was sitting. Then he asked, “Who are you, where have you come from?” So, the wandering man said, “I was living in a city, there was a king who was a beggar, but we did not know he was a beggar. So, we coronated him as a king. He was ruling the country well, but later on, we realized that his background was not good, then we had a lot of problems in the country. Because of those problems, I decided to go wandering, because I had no other way to do.”

Then he realized, “This is my story, this is a story which I saw, but I saw all this in one minute. While this man is telling that this really happened. So what is reality? Whether my story is right, whether what I saw is real, or how did I perceive this? It is about me he is talking about, but I have not gone anywhere. I’m sitting here, and I’m experiencing this from another person’s mouth.” Then he decided, “I must get this answer.” He did penance, and the deity came, and the deity said, “Look here, your mind cannot comprehend Maya. It’s not possible. What your intellect, your logic is trying to understand, only some reality is connected to what the brain can understand, but there is much, much more. There are much deeper dimensions to everything, you will not be able to understand’.”

Ramana Maharishi

Just like that, somebody asked Ramana Maharshi, if a person dies, will he come back in two years into another body? And Ramana Maharshi said, “Yes, he can come back in two years in another body, and he can also come back into a body tomorrow. At the same time, he would have probably already lived for 75 years.” That means he can come back into a body in two years from this death to new birth. At the same time, and parallelly, he could have probably lived about 75 years.

So, this is exactly what is the depth of illusion, or the relative truth. We have so many parallel existences, which we may not even know. And some of these existences could be creating an interconnecting effect on each life.

So, I leave you with this thought about illusion. Don’t be confused. If you’re confused, it only means that this is something which creates confusion. So, just look at it that way, and we can explore it later. But it’s not really something which you can comprehend with the normal, available intellect. Don’t worry; all the people who heard this story, even the masters are confused about this.

So, the depth of creation and the depth of illusion in the creation, parallel realities and all these things, they are all real. But we have nothing to do with it. For us, what is experienced, that’s what we are. Experience, as I said in the beginning, we are experiencing everything, as we are. Outside, there are so many things that can only be perception; everything will not become our experience. We meet a person, we get a thing, materials, places, time, and they all may not give us experiences. But we are the experience. That experience also remains with us, when we are sleeping, when the mind is set, still, we have experience. And that’s what we are.

So, that experience when everything sets, mind, senses, all the aspects of the waking state sleeps, that’s exactly what we are. That’s worth exploring. What are we?

So, this is a good question. I leave you with this question. It’s a bit longer today, but to tell the whole story, it took some time.

I leave this thought on your plate. Contemplate on it, and then we’ll talk further.

Lots of love.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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Ahimsa is Fundamental to a Spiritual Diet

By Mohanji

There are three types of food that we consume: one is the food for the body, second is the food for the mind, and the third is food for the intellect. Then, of course, the food for the ego is appreciation, reward, recognition, and so on. These help the ego. But mainly, we consume food for the body. When we have high levels of insecurities, we consume a lot, we eat unconsciously, and that leads to obesity, which in turn leads to various other problems. But as we increase our energy level by connecting to ourselves, through deep integration into ourselves, our energy level increases. As our energy level increases, our food consumption decreases, and it can even decrease to a level where one meal a day is good enough.

But if you deny food, then you will be thinking about food, and it will be causing agony of some kind. I never recommend suppression. Suppression is the worst thing you can do. Denial and suppression maintain certain desires in you, which, over time, increase their intensity, and eventually they become compelling. So I would always recommend a moderate execution of all desires, with awareness. If you are fully aware that you have this desire, and it keeps repeating within, it means that you have blocked it at some point in time. If a recurring thought happens about something, it’s a clear sign that you have been suppressing or denying that at some point in time, and hence it is coming back every time. My suggestion is always, fulfillment, at a level where you are fully aware of all the desires, or the thoughts associated with desires and thus it is peaceful, calm, and at a moderate level. When you are fully aware, and you’re executing it in moderation, it should be alright. It will come, it will manifest and it will go away. If you suppress or deny, it will probably stay dormant for some time and later the experience will be somewhat like an avalanche, an intense desire which you can’t avoid.

So my suggestion about consumption is, in moderation- go for it, have it, whatever it is and then with awareness, you can go over it. As you evolve more and more into deeper levels of subtlety, or the sukshma state, automatically you will not be able to consume any food which is of tamasic or rajasic nature. Tamasic and rajasic are foods that aggravate, they have intense flavours. Tamasic means something that makes you dull, any food that makes you dull. So the food that makes you energetic is the raw food, the food which have seen the sun, which has been under the sun, that God has given, like from trees and plants; and mostly in these foods, there is no violence; because a tree which produces a mango is happy that you are consuming the mango because the aim of the fruit is to spread its species around. That means the seed is thrown around, and another tree will come. Likewise, tomato or any fruit or vegetable that sees the sun has been created so that the seeds are dispersed and more and more such plants grow. Basically, it is the manner in which the species continues and hence the plants are happy when the fruit or vegetable is consumed. If you notice, when the birds eat, they spread some seeds around with their beaks, they spill them around. What they eat is for their sustenance, and what they throw around is for the future generation of the same species of the plant. So all the beings, all the animals and birds help in dispersing the seed and producing more of it’s kind. That is an ideal food, the food which has seen the sun is good for our system.

Eating habits also from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm is usually the right time, that means sunrise to sunset. But in various countries, sunrise and sunset are at different times. I usually follow between 6 am and 6 pm so that there is some boundary. When the sun is up, that’s when the body wakes up for digestion and even circulation. We are deeply connected to the Sun. Whatever you consume between sunrise and sunset gets digested; it doesn’t get stored. Whatever you consume after sunset tends to get stored in the system, which will cause obesity and further complications in the future. So I do not recommend eating after sunset. But in a country where the sunset is close to midnight, I would say you can stop eating at 6:00 pm. So it’s 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, its 12 hours. Within 12 hours you consume what you want to consume, and after that, for 12 hours, you give the body some rest.

In our body, we largely have supporting organs, except for the heart, but again, a heart has four valves. Likewise, we have two kidneys and two nostrils, when one nostril is active, the other is silent; every 60 minutes it changes. So one is active, and the other is silent, always. One kidney functions when the second one is silent, sleeping, the second one functions when the other is resting. Like that, we have a sort of resting time for all the systems in the body.

In the morning hours, from 3:00 am to 6:00 am usually, both the nostrils function together. That’s why that time is very important. They say that if you chant during that time when you are centred; when both the nostrils are functioning together, the intensity increases, the energy level is much higher.

The consumption of food between sunrise and sunset is good. In India, you can clearly do it, because by and large the sun rises around 6 to 6.30 am and it sets around 6 to 6.30 pm. Thus it is possible to maintain a routine. But in any country you are in, you can use the 6 am to 6 pm timing or from sunrise to 12 hours later. It doesn’t matter at what time the sun sets, but after 12 hours, stop consuming. It is a good idea and also one should consume foods that have seen the sun, food that has no violence or murder; avoid meat products – the meat of animals or birds or beings that are killed. The animals had a lot of anxiety in them when they died. No animal dies happily. They are murdered by force, so they create a lot of pain and fear inside. They feel like a victim, so the meat, the entire body responds to that feeling of fear; the feeling also goes into your system when you consume that.

Likewise, the lobsters and fishes, some of them are boiled alive etc., it’s all tremendous violence and cruelty. Any food which has cruelty or murder behind it is not good for the system of a seeker. The usual consumption is based on habits. We are used to a certain food, and so we tend to consume the same. We have to be aware that some of the food has a lot of violence behind it. Animals that are transported are aware that they will be killed. They are helpless, there is no choice given. They are bound, they are controlled, and they are killed. The victimhood, the pain, the agony that’s connected to it, it goes into the system of the people who consume it. Today’s, milk products also are not safe because most of the cows never see their calves. As soon as the calf is born, the calf is killed. For the dairy industry, every calf is a waste product. They throw away the calf or sell the calf as veal, and the mother is in agony all the time. The average lifespan of a cow is 20 years, in the dairy industry it’s 5 years, by the time the cow is spent, it is slaughtered. Even pregnant cows are slaughtered. All of this is extreme violence. Such vibrations entering this world create a battlefield.

Millions of animals are killed each day. Spontaneously, habitually, without giving it a thought, we consume burgers and food with meat in it, and it has violence behind it. Supply is as per demand. If there is more demand, supply is also more. It’s for the sake of cheap meat that farming is happening and hence injections and other medicinal interventions are happening. So eventually the products that you are consuming are completely adulterated. We must be very careful with our consumption; we do not need these. We can have a plant-based beautiful diet, which will help our system. What you consume is very important. The more you consume live products, that is, raw products, which have been in the sun and which are grown under the sun, it will help us to stabilize and it helps with meditations and other such activities too. When you consume food that has been fully under the sun, it always gives you good energy, ‘Prana’, the right energy, the right energy flow within. Suppose you were meditating in a noisy place you won’t be able to meditate because the sounds disturb you. Likewise, when the whole atmosphere (within) is that of agony and pain, there is violence, even though it’s invisible; every abattoir is like a war-field; so much death happens there, it is murder, it’s sheer murder! Where many beings are killed, the vibrations spill into the air and their agony, that victimhood fills the air and affects everybody.

We must be really conscious not to have more violence in the atmosphere. Likewise, human species is just one species, but because we have intelligence and imagination, we have dominated most of the earth; we have dominated the air, the water, and the earth. Domination also is a responsibility. We have the responsibility to maintain and protect the environment, which we have not done. Many species are extinct now and it is because of human intervention. We must understand that it is our job to preserve the earth that we have been entrusted with, it’s our duty.

Look at various deities of the Hindu tradition; there are 330 million deities in our tradition, which are 330 million dimensions of ONE deity, the Supreme Consciousness, which is formless. Great Masters understood that there are numerous varieties possible of the Supreme Consciousness, which is pure brightness, brighter than a million suns. That’s pure intelligence, pure brightness, out of which the great Masters derived 330 million options. To each option, they gave a form, an identity, a name, a frequency, a mantra. Mantras are all frequencies and a circuit, a Yantra and also a system, a Vidhi, a system of maintaining them, and also a duration. That it’s almost like a clear definition, a clearly distinct aspect of the Supreme Consciousness. And thus every idol or form which has been created has an ideal behind it. It’s based on an ideal. Every Idol which is created has an ideal behind it.  All the deities that we see, they all have a supporting animal or a bird as a vehicle. That amounts to preservation. That animal or a bird is suitable to the character or the intensity of the deity that they support. So each animal and bird are thus respected, honoured, and preserved because of their association with that deity. This system was beautiful. We had various deities and they all had their associated animals supporting them. So we respected cows and calves, we respected bulls, we respected a rat, a peacock, a swan, and many different animals. They all were supported, and that preservation was spontaneous because we respected them. Why were they associated with a deity? Because unless you respect, you don’t preserve. Thus the need to respect was added into the system. When we don’t respect other species or animals, we tend to ignore them, we become insensitive, and we may also kill. That is what we see in the world today. We are the one species which is behaving like a virus today, destroying all other species. That’s only humankind; no other species does that, they all mind their business. All the animals are telling humans, “Just leave us alone, don’t disturb us, and don’t interfere in our lives.”

We have done so much harm; different experiments happening in the laboratories of the world, torturing and killing hundreds of beings, and their agony which goes into the air, is disturbing the Earth. And when such things happen continuously, the frequency of the Earth also changes. A lot of victimhood is happening in the world, as we talk. It’s creating a difference in the entire environment.  Even though we have advanced in technology, we have not advanced in awareness. We have seen the very sign of all the wars of the world, the competition and discord that we see in society – all of these are connected to our lack of awareness. Hence, our consumption has a lot of value; our awareness, our consumption, this has value, it’s important, and our awareness is connected to our consumption.

Coming to the point, consumption through the body is vital. I would say consume something which has no violence connected to it, and which is suitable for spiritual evolution.

As regards, the emotions that we consume, emotions that are devotional in nature are always positive, but emotions such as anger, hatred, jealousy, the soap opera kind of emotions, they are not so good, because they lead to similar emotions. In karmic law, whatever you experience through the body, through the mind, through the intellect, through the ego, are all considered as experience, and the residue goes into the system like cache memory.

Whatever you consume as emotion, even if you watch a feature film, or listen to someone’s experience, that memory also leaves an impression inside, and that leaves a cache memory. It’s almost as if the subconscious believes that you had the experience. The subconscious does not understand that you only listened to it, that it was not your experience. But when you nurture any kind of emotion for a longer period of time, it enters your system and it reproduces. That is why various traumas, fears, and phobias, though all these things have their root in its external input, these are actually like poison; the poison we collect from inside, enter our system and contaminate us. That is why we always say, “Satsangatve, Nissangatvam,'” You need to have good company, company of good people, company of people who expand your awareness, company of people who give good input; input which is regenerative by nature, rejuvenating by nature, that is good information, good input. If you consistently have good input, you will be peaceful, you will be light, you will be benevolent, and that’s good.

You need to have good company, company of people who are positive. They give you positive vibrations, optimism, regenerative talk, and then it leads you to a kind of detachment. This means that you will be happy. Detachment is not denial. They are two different things. Detachment means you can have something, but you don’t really need it, and you have the ability to share what you have. This is detachment. Detachment means you’re easily sharing without any remorse or regret. Likewise, you can have things in abundance, but you will only use them as per your need. There is a story of a Swami (renunciate) who was carrying water from the Ganga (river) in the shell of a coconut. People said, “Why are you just taking that much water, there is plenty of water in the river, why don’t you take more?” So the saint said, “No, you are not supposed to misuse anything, even though it is in abundance. You only take whatever you need “. That means even though there are resources in abundance, we don’t disturb them, we don’t destroy them, we allow nature to flow. We only take what we need, what we really need. Such a level of awareness leads to detachment. Detachment means that you have everything, you are grateful, but you don’t need more than what you can consume. When you consistently are in a state of detachment, then you do not have that many desires also. Your desires are all limited because you are happy, you are contented with what is available, and you are happy to have it, you’re grateful. Thus desires also reduce. When desires are less, your mind is still. The mind is disturbed because of too many desires. Thus your mind becomes very still; the mind is peaceful. So, fewer desires lead to more peace. If the mind is peaceful for a long period of time, then you are liberated in birth, and you will be liberated at death. This is the path to liberation.

 You consume and it could be emotions, knowledge or information. Information – I have explained in detail. We are in an age where there is a flurry of information. Most information is toxic in nature and it creates violence within. Any information that you process, which creates violence and agitation inside, should be totally avoided, that’s also consumption. So when you know that a certain type of information is creating anger towards somebody, or it is creating jealousy or hatred, it should not be taken in at all, because our inner space should always remain clean and pure. Whenever somebody talks ill about another, I never buy it, I always say, “This is precious information, which you have spent a lot of time in collecting, keep it with you, don’t give it to me.” We are all karmic beings. Whoever is walking on this earth is karmic being. How can we blame somebody? How can we judge somebody? We don’t have the right. Because whatever any person performs on earth is within the boundaries of karma, within the karmic allowance. If we clearly understand that, we will not blame people, we will not judge people, we will not criticise people. How can we do that when we don’t know the karma of another? Anything happening in the life of anybody is within the karmic allowance. If we understand this one point, we will be peaceful. We know, okay, this is supposed to happen in their life. Whether it is good, bad, or ugly, it is not our prerogative. We can’t do anything about it. If something is supposed to happen in somebody’s life, it will happen, because he chose it before he took birth. This was part of the agenda of his birth. So how do we say he’s good, he is bad, he’s ugly? Nobody is good, or nobody is bad and nobody is only ugly.

Everybody is a mixture. We are all imperfect in a way. We are all a mixture. When we try to pretend that we are perfect, that’s when the problem begins. We then try to hide certain things, and that becomes a problem because whatever you hide becomes your weight, your burden. So we will not judge, we will not criticize, and we will not contaminate our inner space. What type of information would you like to process? Only that which will make you light. Information on higher awareness is good and only such information which you can process should be consumed, just like food. The food you eat should be sufficient for your existence; it should not be a huge quantity. Even if food is in abundance, you eat only what you can easily digest.

 Ayurveda says, one-third of your stomach, that’s all you need, at each meal, so three meals mean three times one-third of your stomach, and that also only within the sunrise and sunset; this way you will remain healthy. All these various consumptions that we have, and emotions also, the ideal is that you must feel because you are a human being, but you should not sit down and cry. You should do what you can do. Like you see sadness around you, if somebody is not happy they are sad, you sit with them, sort them out, do what you can for them, and move on. But again don’t expect anything back, so your action is always pure.

When you do not expect anything back from anybody, you’re always operating on pure action mode. This is very important to understand. Whenever we do something with an expectation, it already became an impure action. That expectation makes things impure. Also, our documentation, by which I mean the memory of activity, can also increase our ego. When we say to ourselves for example, “I am better than another,” or “I’m able to do these things, so I am better off”, such thoughts give us weight, and reduce our purity level. We can always remain pure. It’s our choice. All actions can be pure. We do the best possible action within our capacity, every time. But don’t expect anything back from that person, that way, we remain extremely pure.

Regarding, consumption of information – consume only that which is regenerative and good. Various opinions of people about various people – don’t buy them, because they don’t understand. Most of what people talk today in the world are merely opinions, their understanding. We tell others what we have understood as per our awareness; so everything is relative. When you work with relative awareness, there is always separation from the truth.

The truth is one. Truth is always one, but nobody can see the truth fully because we have flavours. We look at life through our eyes, through our level of awareness, through our notions, concepts, prejudices, and many different things we have within us. We look through those spectacles and we see life based on that, and that is what we are conveying to other people. It cannot be 100% truth. It is always a flavoured truth or a relative truth. This is the truth which we are processing, what other people tell you are mostly their opinions, or what they have understood. And if we base our life on those opinions, we miss the truth further. We separate ourselves from the real truth. It’s important that we always are objective and we look at life with a fresh perspective. When you wake up in the morning, you look at life fully fresh, and then you will not miss anything.

So each time, you remember that you are purity, and you should remain purity for your own sake. That keeps you healthy. Consumption should be in a moderate way, only as much as you need; but give more importance to giving forth. If you have taken ten, give forth twenty. Give forth means what you give to the world, that’s your net worth. Whatever you are giving to the world is your net worth. It can be your skill, it can be time, it can be love, it can be money… you share whatever you have in abundance. Your net worth is what you share and that is exactly what we must remember.

We don’t have to believe ourselves to be perfect. Perfection is a relative thing. We remain pure always and make sure there is non-violence; if you determine non-violence to be the benchmark, life is much easier. You can do what it takes, but you will not entertain violence. Criticism and gossip amount to the violence of the mind. Violence in thoughts, words and actions; you should refrain from violence on these three levels. That is how you remain always pure, always calm, and always peaceful. That allows you a very light existence and permits no blockages in the system. Whenever we engage in violence – be it in thoughts, words, expressions, or actions, it leaves behind residual blockages.

Understand that we are consuming many things through the day from the time you are awake till you sleep. In other words, you consume through the mind, the intellect, and the body and these can cause certain imbalances in the system. So, be aware of what you are consuming.

This awareness in itself will keep you alert. Alert awareness, at the moment, in this time is important. When you are constantly in the present time, you are in a perpetual meditative mode; there are no excesses. In that meditative mode, you are centred. When you are centred, you are aligned and when you are aligned, you are truly spiritual.  This is what I believe in and it is what I practise. I travel a lot, so I’m in different time zones, different energies; besides, I meet many people.

Sometimes it’s not easy to feel the body when you are in perfect alignment. So you have to bring yourself to the body to communicate and convey because you tend to expand. After a while, you will all experience that when you are fully within when you are fully aligned, you tend to expand beyond. You may sometimes not feel the bodily boundaries that one normally has. You may feel you’re much larger than you are, size-wise, energy-wise. So to bring yourself back to the body, to communicate, sometimes it becomes a bit difficult, but these are states you go into, as we practise many things. You accept everything. I always say “Don’t stop for experiences”. Experiences will come and go, always stay neutral. Allow all the experiences to come and go, for a long period of time. Then, you become the experience. There is nothing to experience anymore. It settles down. Then YOU are the experience. There is nothing to experience. The faculty which is asking for experience, the mind-matter, will dissolve, and then you become the experience all the time. That’s a perpetual blissful state. At some point in time, we will all arrive there. For that, you must be very aware of what you consume. It is not what you love to consume, it’s what you have to consume. What you have to do and what you love to do, they’re two different things. But again, please recall what I said at the very beginning – no denial. Also, be aware that every being on this earth which is walking, crawling or flying, deserves this earth equally, like us. We do not have supremacy over anything. We must accept that. We must look at the entire life structure of the world, with all its living beings, including seeds, plants, the environment and everything else, with respect. We always love and respect. We don’t waste anything. Whatever we consume, we respect.

Whatever you consume, consume in moderation and remain grateful for that food, so that when you consume, it really melts into you. Also, understand that all these beings are complementing another. Whatever nature has created has a reason. Nature’s children, including us, have our positions; all of us have our relevance. Everything is interconnected. We must be aware of it and we must respect it. Just like we should respect our body, we should respect everybody. We must know that all have relevance. All have their right (to live) on earth, just like us. We have no right to kill indiscriminately. We have no right to torture, use or abuse. We have no right, we just accept. Whatever is consensual is okay. For example, a cow and a calf are in our homes and we look after them like our family members. We do not kill them. We look after them. We give them all the rights of existence, and that means they are living freely. If there is a bit of milk which we consume from them, after the calf has had sufficient milk, and the calf is healthy and happy, and we share like a family member, that’s okay. That’s what we were doing earlier. Every household had cows in them, and each cow was respected.

I remember, at my mother’s aunt’s place, they still live like that. No cow is ever slaughtered, the cows and the calves all live together. After a while, when the cow cannot produce milk, it is treated well even then. It is given the same food, the same medical support and such, like any other family member. And they die a natural death. That’s quite good because then, we are actually in harmony with nature. We are happy. We respect that every existence of nature has the same value. We accept and respect, we behave accordingly and that creates a lot of stability on Earth.

 All beings of Earth have the right to live and we have no right over other species. I believe that the beings who gulp water are herbivorous. We as humans like to gulp, not lick water. The carnivorous animals that I have seen lick water with their tongues. I am not a scientist, so I may be incorrect. But the point I am making is that by nature, I believe a human being is a herbivorous being, and our consumption should be connected to our elevation.

We have the potential for understanding consciousness. Most other beings do not have it. They have instinct, and intelligence connected to instinct. They don’t have the potential for experiencing higher awareness or working towards it. We have. Since we have it, we have that power and potential for knowing the higher. We should also be very clear about what we do on this Earth – our responsibility is larger. To sum up, since our intelligence is higher, our responsibility is also larger.

 We must know that there is no difference between animal rights and human rights. It’s just BEING RIGHT. We should always remember, it’s BEING RIGHT. Always we have to BE RIGHT.

We cannot differentiate between species, and say, “Ok I allow so much as rights to these animals or birds…” That is nonsensical! We have no right to do that. We are a species. We have imprisoned the human species itself, and there were zoos in the past, in some countries, where we imprisoned various beings of our own species! I have seen pictures of such zoos. We have been blind to many such things. We have many divisions and subdivisions based on feelings of internal supremacy due to colour, caste or community. These are aberrations and based on ignorance. They should not exist.

Talking about deities that we worship, say, for example, Lord Shiva, another name for Shiva is Neelakantha, the one with a blue neck. His neck is blue because the poison that He drank from the outside world accumulated on the neck. This signifies that we consume a lot of poison from the outside world. The poison is the dirt which our mind creates over a period of time. Anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, gossip, criticism, contempt over many different things, feeling of injustice and so on, are some examples of dirt. Shiva, as the Supreme Consciousness, consumed it. But it stayed in the neck. If it went into the stomach, it would poison the body and if it was spat out, the world would be contaminated. So as Supreme Consciousness, what Shiva did was, He held the poison in the neck. He did not digest it, it did not go into His system, and he also did not spit it out. Thus the Supreme Consciousness remained pure and the world also remained pure.

This is symbolic. If we consume gossip, criticism, prejudices, jealousy and other such negative emotions, which are connected to the world outside, to people, places and time, we should not allow them to go inside because it will upset our entire system. The body we talk about is the spiritual body, the body which is light by nature. When you consume all this negative stuff, it makes us heavy; our state of lightness reduces. So we should not consume them. Even if it is entering our system, keep it in the neck. And if you spit it out, which means, when you talk bad about people, you defame somebody, you character assassinate somebody, or you propagate violence, and you spit it all out, it will create even more negative vibes in the society. So even if you have all those consumptions, let it be in the neck, so that it’s neither out, nor in.

Shiva has various snakes around Him; He has all the important, powerful and poisonous snakes Shiva has around His neck – Anantha, Vasuki, Takshaka, Karkotaka, Shankha, Gulicka, Padma, and so on. They are all-powerful snakes, they are extremely poisonous too. So Shiva as the Supreme Consciousness kept them around his neck, as a garland so that society remains pure. We have all sorts of snakes in the society, various types of people who are spitting venom, that is, contamination. We’ve seen that. It has caused many wars, separations and displacements. We have experienced various types of agonies in the world, even now we do. As we talk, some people are dying; we see that in Syria, Yemen and various countries. We have seen wars and destruction such as the First World War, the Second World War, wars in the Balkans, the death and destruction during Stalin’s regime, during the time of Pol Pot and so on… countless deaths and destruction. Even now we see various types of calamities in the world. People are suffering, many are suffering because of a lack of harmony in the minds. We think that we can conquer and capture many things from the earth, but we do not understand that we carry nothing from here.

All the supremacy we talk about by owning things, by having lots of possessions, positions, and lots of things from the earth, all the beautiful things we have made and all the beautiful things that are on earth, exist for everyone, we can’t own it. We think that by paying money and having a document in our name, we own it. How long will we own the same? We only own something on a temporary basis, because we are here on a temporary basis. We have not remained stable in one form, from birth till death. We are changing; our body is changing, the mind is changing, everything is changing. We can’t really own anything on Earth. This awareness we should have. We should have the innate ability to share, to love, to express gratitude all the time.

 When you step on earth, it should be with the feeling of gratitude. That is why we start the day chanting, “Karagre Vasate Lakshmi, Kara Mule Saraswathi, Kara Madhye Tu Govindah, Prabate Kara Darshanam”. We look at our hands and say – On the tip of our fingers exists Goddess of wealth, at the root of our hands exists knowledge, the wisdom, and in the middle exists the God of maintenance, somebody who maintains the entire life, earth, the whole Universe.

We look at the hands and say, “Let these hands be doing good in this world.” We also say, “Samudra Vasane Devi, Parvata-Stana-MaNdale, Vishnu Patni NamasTubhyam, Paada Sparsham Kshamasva Me”. We worship the Goddess of wealth. Wealth means any creation which has happened in the universe. We consider that as connected to Shakti or power. Shiva is Supreme Consciousness and from Shiva, the action part is Shakti or power; the power of creation, power of will, power of action, all put together have created the Universe. So we say, O Goddess who is spread over the Oceans and the Mountains, I am stepping on you. Please forgive me.” So with that kind of gratitude, if you step on Earth, we will not own the Earth. Nobody can own the Earth. This body has come out of Earth. Everything has come out of Earth. When we clearly understand that, we will be in moderation. We will not consume indiscriminately. We will not conquer, capture, destroy, kill, murder, we will not do anything of that nature. And that expression is what we see in the Gods and Goddesses of our system. They exist as ideals of a certain kind, and as a representation of the ideals in a form which suits that ideal. Each of them has as an animal or a bird supporting them, so that is amounting to the preservation, preservation of a species. It’s our duty! Preservation of our body and preservation of all the species on Earth. It’s our responsibility because we have higher awareness. 

Please understand this whole picture; if you clearly understand that this human existence is a great existence, an existence with awareness, we must also remember it’s not just RIGHTS, it’s RESPONSIBILITIES which are even more important. Great Masters like Sai Baba, Bhagwan Nithyananda, Babaji, and Mahavatar Babaji; all the great Masters the world has seen, they all have propagated the same thing – Do not kill, Do not murder.

‘Ahimsa Paramo Dharmaha’ -that means Ahimsa- Non-violence is the highest form of dharma, righteous duty. Our righteous duty is to be non-violent. So if we clearly spread this, it is not about religion, not about ideology, it’s about us. Religions are made out of teachings of great Masters who have seen the Truth and they are for humans, it’s not that humans are for religions. Religions are all for human beings. They are roadmaps for higher awareness, for going into higher awareness. Paths that lead to liberation, not the paths to bind. So whenever anything binds you, understand that there’s something wrong there. Nothing can bind you.

You’re free by nature. You’re free by birth. You are born free and you will die free. Nobody can stop it. Even if you are connected to a great Master, you will still die. Even if you are connected to a religion, or a particular method, or a practice, you will still die. Everybody, everything that’s born will die; it has its natural time span. We should not ever think that by connecting to something we become immortal, or by acquiring more, by capturing more, we will become immortal. In the life story of Alexander the Great, it is said that when he left his body, when he died, he wanted his hands to be shown outside of the coffin so that people could see that he carried nothing from here. He was a world conqueror. He conquered lots of countries, but he carried nothing. The conquests were actually for emotional satisfaction. It was only to fulfil his emotion, the wild appetite, the feeling that he controlled something, that he conquered.

Many people have it. We have a wild appetite for possessions. We think we need many things. That was the only problem with Ravana. Ravana was a wise man. He had lots of knowledge, he had skills, he had many good qualities but he had this wild appetite for possessions. He wanted everything good in his place. So he did everything non-dharmic for that sake. That is when the war happened and in the war with Ram, he had to die. But Ravana was a great personality. He was a very skilled personality. He was good in warfare, he was good in many things. One quality which pulled him down was this great appetite for possessions, and that really made him weak. When we ever think that we can own more and we can accumulate more, always remember, for how long, that is very important. We must understand that nothing actually belongs to us, including the body.

Whatever we have received from here, we leave behind. If that is clear then we will be very peaceful all the time.

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

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This question is a game-changer

Hello, my dear friends. Welcome to my podcast channel. This is Mohanji.

Today, I would like to offer food for thought, which is of great relevance to all the people of the world, everybody. Everybody at some point in time, would have asked this question, “Who am I? What am I doing here? What am I here for?” These questions would have come to everybody’s mind at some point in time, in their whole life. Sometimes this question comes at the most desperate moments when despair is so high, so overwhelming. That’s probably the time when this question comes, but for many people, it spontaneously happens, hence it is a very relevant question. Self-discovery! Self-discovery is a very important discovery which only human beings are capable of. And this discovery is worth it. That’s one of the greatness of human birth, that we are able to find ourselves.

There are numerous things outside. There are so many materials, so many relations, so many spaces, so much of variety. They are all adding value to our life. And sometimes with all those, we feel discontented. We are not happy with all these things. We have everything but we are not happy. Why is it so? One simple reason; we haven’t found ourselves. That’s the only reason. We haven’t found ourselves.

 

So self-discovery is an important discovery, which every person should undertake sooner or later. But in daily life, in the daily chores, we pitch into situations and then we think this is more important. So we get carried away with life and it’s various aspects. But at some point in time, we decide, “Oh, this is not really giving me satisfaction. Situations are not giving me satisfaction, money is not giving me satisfaction. Nothing is giving me satisfaction.”

That’s the time when we really start digging deeper into ourselves. To find out who we actually are. There, the game changes. That question is a game-changer. Life changes. That time we will realize nothing else is worth it, except finding ourselves. Then no distractions of the outside world, nothing of the outside world touches us because we have found a purpose; a real purpose, which we can find only in human existence. That purpose overwhelms us, makes us powerful, makes us integrated.

There, the hand of the Master comes, who has already found himself. A Master is somebody who has found himself. His hand comes and holds you. “Come, my child. I’ll take you there”. Take you where? Take you to yourself. That’s the job of the master. To take you to yourself. And there, once you settle down in yourself, you become a master. MASTERY OVER YOURSELF. In that mode, you’re super powerful. You are everything, you are every being, you are every situation. You are total and complete. There, you and the Master are one. That’s the journey. That’s the real journey. That’s the potential that we have; human life has, human existence has. If that’s not understood, we have wasted life. We will look everywhere but we will not find the real thing. We will go to all places but we will not be happy. We will taste everything in life, all aspects of life. Everything is okay, everything is good, but we will still be unhappy; we will still be dissatisfied, discontented. Contentment happens only when we find ourselves.

I leave this thought on your plate today. Find yourself. Think about it, contemplate on it. This is a very, very important subject. This is possible only in human life. We are all lucky that we are human beings and we can find ourselves. There is an ability deep within, which helps us to find ourselves. Don’t miss this chance. That’s the only thing which is really worth it. No money, no other things are as important as finding ourselves. I leave you with this thought on your plate. Digest it well, and let’s talk about it. I would like to have your opinions. I would like to have your suggestions and ways we can improve. I’d be happy to do that.

I wish you a great day and a great week ahead.

Lots of love.

 

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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