Make a difference this Onam

Namaste to all my friends.

The Onam season has started in Kerala. And on this occasion, I was giving a message to all the people who are celebrating Onam, the festival season. This is a very peculiar time. The Corona situation, the COVID situation has reduced our mobility; the social distancing and all those things are happening. We are not able to move or do things as we like to do. So, I was suggesting to people today that we must look at others or people who are not able to have a daily meal because in so many places the lockdown situation has affected the economy very badly. The economy is affected globally, adversely. The economy is very low. So, that has induced many job losses. Many people have lost their jobs.

There are many families in your neighbourhood who do not have food to eat. If with the grace of divinity, if we have food to eat; it’s our responsibility also to share the food with people who do not have it in our neighbourhood. There are so many situations now, helpless situations which we see in society. I was told that there are a lot of monks and wandering saints starving in Banaras (in Varanasi), in Rishikesh, in Haridwar, in Uttarkashi, all these places, were usually the saints conglomerate to do practices and observe silence etc. But because of the food supply, with the food distribution network affected, many of these people are starving, they don’t have food to eat. So, I had suggested, I had recommended that, if possible, let us all unite and if we have some money or food to share, let us get them some sustenance, some food.

PC: Google Images

I’m telling this now so that you can think in your own location, how many people are affected. I’m sure that we are not able to help all the people, even probably governments are not able to help. At least we can make people in a few houses happy, a few houses better. That will be a big blessing during this time. And the situation is unprecedented. We don’t know when it is going to end. And it’s a cycle. When we think it’s over, then it’s again appearing. We have no clue when this will actually be over. We need to take care of ourselves and we need to take care of the people as much as possible in our neighbourhood. Not only people, we can make sure that we give food to the birds and the animals; all the beings who are closely associated with our houses; we take care of them also in whatever level, we can share. Let us make the environment happy. This is something which we can do, and we must do. This is part of our existence; part of our responsibility to make our neighbourhood happy.

PC: Google images

In this context, when there is a lot of fear of death, I would like to tell you one thing; there is a lot of recovery happening as well. We have not noticed that, as much as we have noticed death because we are afraid of death. When we are born, there is a time destined to die fixed. So, birth and death are pretty much like two pillars and in the middle is what we call life. In this whole journey, we go through the whole situation spontaneously, automatically or just like a river flowing; we are flowing to the end. So, we should not be worrying too much. Instead, let us be happy with what we have, let us be happy with any situation, let us be flexible. Let us be like a flowing river. This way, you can make a big difference in the world around you just because of your positivity.

Our attitude really matters at this time. If we choose to be positive, optimistic, and if we deliver that positivity in the world, I think we can remove a lot of gloom from the Earth. We can’t avoid the situation. We have no control over that. Situations are happening and we are all going through the situations almost helplessly. But we can help with some things to maintain an attitude of positivity, maintain an attitude of gratitude; the attitude of gratitude has a lot of power. If we are grateful for all that we have, we will automatically not think about what we don’t have. It means that gratitude will eclipse the fear of something, or fear of what we don’t have or the feeling that we don’t have something. We can choose to accept and appreciate what we have and not think about what we don’t have.

We all have that capacity. So it’s a choice. It’s an individual choice that we can tune in to the positive side of ours; the strengths of ours. We know very well that we are quite lucky to be alive today. Tomorrow we have not seen, so, be happy today. Through positivity, through good thinking, good processes, through compassion and kindness, through selflessness, we can make a big transformation in this world. This is the right time for it because we have time to think, we have time to assimilate. We have time to do things within our capacity. When we all have been given our own unique capacities: spend time, share skills, share love, share money, share food; it’s up to you.

So, I would like to leave you with these thoughts and probably we can unite and work together for these causes. Look at the clusters of people who have nothing to eat, who are stuck because there is no income. Please remember, in many cases, the ones who have lost their jobs will not tell us that they need help. They are used to helping themselves, they are used to an income (salary); they’ve lost their jobs and they are in a situation where they are totally helpless. They may not come and tell you, “Look here, I need some help.” It’s for us to find out and share what we have. So, this is something which we have to consider; this is unique for this time. And if you help people, if you assist people, share what you have, you will have a great inner richness and this money can’t buy. You know, this feeling of richness, feeling of being useful, feeling of self-worth, self-esteem, money cannot buy. So, it’s a very important time for you to act. Not react; act. Act with empathy, not sympathy. Act empathetically and act well.

So, we will meet again. I’m happy to talk to you. Wish you great health, an auspicious life and also, wish you a lot of strength to do the impossible. What your mind says is impossible, this is definitely possible. So, don’t believe your mind. You believe in yourself and you do your best; you have that power, you have that capacity. And we are all one family; we are united. We should help each other; we should be considerate to each other, and we should behave and feel like a family and support each other. If you have a problem, do tell someone. We can work together to remove that issue or to at least lessen the burden. Please understand in the karmic pattern, nobody can take the karma away as it is. From birth till death, we have a pattern of karma which is taking place at its time, at its right time and we can’t do much about it. But if we are united, if we are together, we will be strengthened, or we will have the strength to overcome all these obstacles. When we are alone, we feel weak. We are not alone, we should be together. Remember that we are one family – ‘One World, One Family’.

Lots of love.

This is Mohanji.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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

Practical Steps for Challenging Times – part 1

Satsang with Mohanji  
16th August 2020

 

Question: How to dissolve the barriers of physical identity and see all gurus and masters as one?

Mohanji: The usual mind is filled with so many factors, so many different flavours of life; which means that we have been living all these years and we have had various lifetimes. What we have collected over a period of time has made the whole mind murky; our mind is filled with so many things, especially things connected to likes and dislikes, prejudices, concepts and knowledge of various kinds. All these things are mixed in our mind. Our awareness is very much like muddy river water. So, unless that mud settles down in the mind and the water becomes clear, we cannot see the truth.

 

 

 

That is why masters have insisted that we must spend enough time, to give clarity to our own mind through stillness; by practicing stillness – through contemplation, meditation, etc. When we do contemplation, when we do meditation consistently and consciously, it means we do nothing, that is, be still or keep the mind still. Mind by habit keeps moving. It has many prejudices, likes and dislikes, flavours, and emotions like anger, hatred and jealousy are also a part of our existence. We must understand that to have clarity, you need to settle down; be still. Else, you may connect to one master, who you have recognized through your own experience. Do not go with others’ words, it won’t work. People can give you opinions; it will not work. But through your own experience, if you have understood that this person has stabilized his mind, he has settled down properly in himself and he’s just like a mirror, then you connect to that person.

Where you park your mind, where you are connected to and what you are connected to, you start becoming that. That becomes you or you become that. This is very important to understand. You need to connect to masters who are stabilized. (You connect to) One master or one person, but not many masters. Many masters are all illusory. Only in a confused state of mind, you connect to various people; otherwise it’s just one connection, steady connection, stable connection which gives you stability. Those who keep wandering, they do not stabilize anywhere and it is not easy to stabilize too. This is important to understand.

Confusions arise in the mind, because mind is murky, mind is not able to see. Once you are very settled inside, then you are fully into yourself. The right place to settle down is inside you. We are settling down inside us every night. Do you know during deep sleep state, we are fully settled inside? We are settling down inside fully. So, we do have that experience every night, when we are in deep sleep, where we are fully settled inside. When we wake up in the morning, we get scattered, the mind is scattered. Then we bring that mind back into ourselves and sleep. When you do this with awareness in the morning – meaning your mind is completely inside you, in that state, you will fully be stabilized. This is very important. But I would tell you one thing –  you can do it yourself; you have that ability, because you have that example of the night, the sleep time, where you are fully into you.

The mind which is going out normally comes inside and settles down inside and then you are fully into yourself. From that point, if you understand and shift with awareness; in other words, you are aware that you are inside, that is a state of meditation. You can come inside and you can settle down. None of the external factors will make much difference to you. The emotions, the places, the people or the situations will not make any difference in your mind because you are stable and still. This is your birth right. This is what you are essentially.

If you look at a master like Shirdi Sai Baba, he used to be just like a mirror. During much of our life, we are projecting what we are to the world outside. Whatever is inside us, we are projecting it to the world outside and we get the reflection of our projection, or the reciprocal/ reflection of our projection. So, if you are projecting anger into the world, you also get anger from other people. People become angry with you for no reason. If you are projecting hatred to the world, you do get hatred back. If you are projecting love into the world, you get love back. So, when you do selfless service and altruistic activities in the world, you get that back as well. When you dedicate yourself to the world, the world gives itself to you. That is how life works. So, what you are is very important. That is exactly how you will experience life – AS YOU ARE. You can’t experience life as something else. You cannot experience life even as how things are. It’s not easy.

Hence we must understand that we are the cause for all our experiences. There is nothing right or wrong with whatever is happening. Don’t try to categorize them into, “This is okay”, “This is not okay”, “This is right”, “This is wrong”. There’s nothing like it. Everything is good for you. Because you are asking for whatever you are missing. Otherwise you won’t miss it. If you are not missing it, you won’t ask for it. So, whatever you are missing, you are asking and that is a potential for another existence. You may need another body, you may need another time; you may need another situation to experience that thing. Nothing is right or wrong that way.

Everything that you are missing, you are asking for it and you must have it because that calls for or asks for fulfilment. This understanding is very crucial, as to why certain things are happening. First of all, there is no ‘WHY’. Everything IS – AS IT IS.

Because there is a deficiency in you and you are asking for that reality. Sometimes we may feel that we never asked for anger, but do you have anger suppressed inside you? Do you have rejection suppressed inside you? Do you have feelings of injustice inside you? All these things will definitely create that asking and will ask for fulfilment. So, when you have consistent rejection, you will ask for appreciation and acceptance. So, when the world is not accepting you, you will feel unhappy, you feel angry. This is how life works. In a broad spectrum, life is all about – whatever you are missing, you are asking for and chasing. And that’s exactly what gives happiness also. If you get it, you are happy. If you don’t get it, you are sad.

Question: In times of trials and tribulations like we’re in now, what is the best way to calm our restless mind?

Mohanji: Currently we are in a particular time situation where none of our plans are working. Everything has changed. We made plans last year for this year but because of the Corona situation, everything has changed. It is not in our control. The best method to manoeuvre in such a situation is flexibility. Be very flexible, absolutely flexible. That means you flow like a river. Be like water and keep moving and be very flexible.

If you really flexible, then you do not have that feeling of loss and feeling, “Oh! Everything is lost and all my projects are finished”. That kind of pessimism comes from not being able to execute your desires or your plans. It happens to people, right? Sometimes we make great plans and we can’t execute it and we feel that everything is lost. But that’s normal. That’s natural, because we are human beings and as human beings, we tend to have expectations. So, the right method to handle such situation is absolute flexibility.

Keep flowing like water. Just flow like water. Be like water. Be flexible. Tell yourself, “Okay, this is not happening then there will be another thing” and be happy with what you have. Have Gratefulness. Have Gratitude. That’s very important at this time. You should really be grateful for all that you have; even your connection to your father, mother, Guru and God. In that process, all those people are adding value to your life. We must remember this and be grateful because this a good time, because you have time with yourself.

You can remember what built you up? What made you what you are today? First and foremost is mother – you have a relationship with your mother, nine months more than the society. So, the first and foremost is mother. Then father, the protector and the guide, the guiding factor who helped us to be ourselves. Next is the guru who gave you clarity about existence.  One guru – whichever guru you connect to, be consistent with one, otherwise, nobody can give you anything. You can appreciate, accept, respect all masters and you must. But remember your guru, your tutor, your teacher; your guru should be one; because inconsistent connection means no receptivity. You can’t receive. So, be very constant with that connection. You can you take your time to be connected to the guru. But you should not get fascinated. It should not be out of hallucinations or imagination or expectations. It should be with reality. You should know that this man whom you are connected to is stabilized in himself. If you are not sure, do not connect. If you connect to any master with expectations you will have disappointment because the master and the person are different.

The aspect of mastery is different from the man or the woman. Let me tell you a real story. One man took a lot of pain and struggle and finally he reached his guru. When he came close to his guru and started living with him, he understood that the guru also eats food, drinks water, sleeps, goes to toilet etc. Then this guy got disillusioned. He had all the wrong thoughts in his mind. He said, “Oh, no! This Guru is an ordinary man just like me. I do the same”. So, these kinds of illusions can come in. Doubts can come in when you know that this person in the body is just another human being. So, you must segregate the human aspect and the spiritual aspect and just go with the teachings.

In Sai Baba’s case, Baba used to smoke chillum and somebody thinks, “Oh, Sai Baba is smoking so I also can smoke”. That means you will only become a smoker you will not become Sai Baba. So, we must understand that what Sai Baba said, we must follow– Shraddha (Faith) and Saburi (Patience). Saburi is extremely important. Very clearly, COVID is teaching us Saburi now. It’s a very important lesson that the COVID has given us – Saburi.

So, to come to the point, we must respect all beings. We should take time and respect. When it comes to God, you have to respect the god inside you. The God Particle inside you is the most stable particle inside you – which is your soul.

With zero interests in your likes and dislikes, your life, your death- it has no interests. It is just accompanying you as totally neutral. Just like electricity comes and gives light in your house. It helps washing machine, it helps refrigerator to function. Electricity has no needs, it has no requirement. The electricity board needs money, but the electricity does not need money. Those who produce electricity may need money, but the electricity itself does not need anything. But electricity is essential for the lights to happen, the fan, the air conditioner, the refrigerator, the washing machine. Electricity is always neutral. If it goes into washing machine  it operates in that way. If  it goes into air conditioner, it operates in that way. If it comes into a light bulb, it operates in a different way. Just like that, the soul is the same. It operates through different machines. In the body of an elephant it operates like an elephant. In the body of a human being, it operates as a human being. So as simple as that. All are same. Once we connect to that aspect inside you, you have  found God. That is how you find God. We  call it  the self -realization. Realization of something which is already sitting in you and operating you. It is giving multiple dimensions, such as waking state, dream state, deep sleep state. Each dimension we have  different experiences. This is what we are. This is how we are. This is something which we have  to always  remember.

We are universal. We are the soul, not the body. Body has duration, it has some time on earth, birth till death. And also we are changing with age. What we liked  with the age of 20, we may not like it at the age of 40. Like that, every time the flavour changes, everything changes. This we should always remember. During covid time we can connect to ourselves , be ourselves completely. Its worth it. I hope I clarified this point.

Q: Why we are facing  so many disasters and natural calamities? Including suicides this year.

Mohanji: Why we are facing so many calamities is becasue of our insensitive lifestyle. Earth has its rhythm,  its balance. All the beings of the earth are  supposed to live within the boundaries and balance of earth. But human beings are different. All being are controlled or run by instinct. What is instinct? The basic instinct is survival -to be alive, to stay alive. That is a basic instinct. If you look at all the beings in the nature, they are all struggling to stay alive. They are always looking forward to being alive. Human beings also have the same thing. But then because we are highly intelligent,we have intelligence separated from the instinct. We created  lot of things on earth for our comfort, for our protection, but basically survival instinct; extended survival instinct. That is the reason.

We created a lot of of things on earth. But we have become slaves to that. Now, even if we don’t get food, we are ok, but when you wake up in the morning , if the internet is not working, some people might commit suicide. They can’t think of a world without internet, without communication. Imagine,  something hapens and the internet goes away. What will happen to the world? But, that’s the reality!

We have changed our taste for gadgets and various things. We even lost eye contact, as a species; we don’t even see eye to eye; we don’t have eye contact. We suppress so many desires. And what happens? We have perversions; we have aberrations in life. This is because of suppression. Many explosive behaviours; anger, hatred, jelaousy; these are all connected to suppression. But we never had that problem earlier. Animals do not have a problem with suppression. They are spontaeous. They express and they finish; they forget, so that they are at the moment all the time. We also should be in the moment all the time.

So what has happened? We, as one species, behaved like viruses and destroyed most of the species on earth. Including flora and fauna. That means ecology. So we made a disaster on earth. We created disaster on earth, so earth is giving us back. If our previous generations had thought,“ We got a world with us, we should give a better world to the next generation“,  things would be different. But they never thought like that. Even we are not thinking like that. We are talking about religion, caste, country, culture, color, and we are dividing  people more and more, based on religion, culture, language..all those things. What is happening in the bargain? We are getting isolated; we all became like islands, separated from each other.

We don’t love, we only expect. We do not give, but we expect. We do not share, we expect more from others. So we have become greedy, selfish and a little insensitive. That is why all these disasters are coming forth.

Imagine a Unified Consciousness, where everybody, we are all one family.

Our slogan in Mohanji Universe is,“ One World, One Family – one family, beyond species“. We are all here to experience earth. We are not here to accumulate anything.

See, you came empty handed, when you were born. Nothing was in your hands. You will go empty handed when you die. You carry nothing, not even a pebble. So what is life? Experiences of each moment and we must experience. That is why we are born. We have to experience. Every flavour of life we must experience. That, we deny. We say, “Oh, this is not ok, that is not ok“. Mind divided things and we separated them. Then what happens?  All those desires are suppressed. Then we ask for more births. We need another birth to fulfill them. Like that, we have become unaware. If you live with awareness, you understand that we must coexist with all the beings of the world; every being that has taken a body on earth must have it’s set of experiences  and we cannot deny it.

If we consider ourselves as more refined than other species, we must behave so.

We must be considerate.

We cannot conquire, capture and kill.

We cannot do that. We should support all forms of life.

We should coexist.

There should be forests; there should be every aspect of the Existence of nature shoudl exist as is. Then,  we will have balance. The we can have better health, better life. Otherwise, all these disasters are signs of human insensitivity over time, over a period of time.

How much of pollution we have made in the world? How much destruction have we created in the world? World wars, religious wars, based on religion, killing based on religion, the pollution in the air, in the water, on earth..Look at everything! No being is safe on earth. This is a human world. In the human world, no other being is safe on earth. I have seen a picture of one man. He has killed 5,000 elephants in Africa, a hunter- he hunted 5000 elephants!  Just imagine the number of beings being he killed?! We are paying for all this. Humankind is paying for all these kinds of aberrations and perversions.

We have no right to kill any being. We have no right.

Instead, if we call ourselves refined, we have the responsibility to provide for other beings. We should make sure they are  all fine.

Sarve bhavantu sukhinaha – Let all the beings be peaceful!

That  is exactly how it should be. Everybody should be peaceful and happy. Everybody should be blissful. This is our path. This is how it should be.

Q: How can I know my purpose in life?  

Mohanji: Your purpose in life is what you are experiencing every moment. Because your birth is connected to the bundle of desires you have carried. From birth till death you have a duration of time. Within this time, you are supposed to experience whatever you came to experience. It doesn’t matter. As I said earlier, no right or wrong here. Whatever you are supposed to experience, you will experience within this time. That is the real purpose of each birth. Each birth is the fulfillment of the pending desires. This is exactly what you are born for.

Now, what is the possibility of a higher purpose? A human existence has this great possibility. From total unawareness to Supreme Consciousness. You can connect to Shiva. Be Shiva, which means Supreme Consciousness, stillness. You have that possibility. Shiva or Vishnu, its all same – Supreme Consciousness. You have that capacity in one lifetime. If your focus is on something larger, higher, you will reach there. It doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a women, it doesn’t matter which caste, country, culture, color- you can reach there. Everybody are same in the eyes of the Supreme .

So we have all these great potentials. You need to sit down and decide. What do you really want to achieve with  this life? And work towards it. Then nature will configure itself for that purpose. But most people do not have that kind of a purpose. What they do is, they just want to make some money, or get some positions, or some possessions, and then they think,“Now, I will be happy“.  And  eventually, what happens ?No happiness. Because, they want more. When you get 100 you want 1000. When you get 1000 you want 10, 000. When you get 10,000 you need 100,000. Like that, desires multiply. There is no point in saying that if I get this, I will be happy. If you can’t be happy right now, you can’t be happy ever. It is not connected to something outside. It is not connected to your relationships; it is not connected to your possessions; it is not connected to your position. It is connected to YOU. You can be satisfied as much as you are connected to yourself. You can have contentment.

If you deeply appreciate yourself, if you really really love yourself, if you really respect yourself, Life will change its flavour.

Instead, we are busy loving somebody outside. We are busy looking for something outside. We are looking for situations, places, and time outside. In the bargain, we are not happy.

Instead, spend some time with yourself. What a beautiful creation YOU are! Have you ever thought about it? Feel yourself. Feel, see and  experience how beautiful you are! How handsome you are! And what a kind of miracle you are!

All the organs inside are functioning like a great orchestra and giving you what is called life. Isn’t it great? We must think like that. We must remember that.

We are wonderful beings, but we forget it. Instead of that, we are looking  outside, we see and think that there is something outside that we must appreciate. It’s not true.

First you appreciate inside. You. This whole package called you.

Appreciate it! How beautiful! What a wonderful creation! Then you start connecting to yourself, appreciating yourself. Accept yourself with all your weaknesses. Everybody has  weaknesses. Nobody is only strength in the world. Don’t worry about your weaknesses. Instead, invest in your strenghts. Let the weaknesses stay with you. It’s ok. No problem. Why should we be perfect? We don’t have to be perfect. Let us have those weaknesses. We are born with this, or they have come to us. But we focus on our strengths. So what happens? There is no energy wastage. We don’t waste energy fighting weaknesses. Instead, when you strenghten your strenghts, when you invest in your strengths, when your strengths become stronger, the weaknesses  become eclipsed. They become ignorable. You can ingnore them. That is the right way. Don’t waste your energy fighting something, resisting something. Instead, use your energy promoting something good in you; the best in you. That will make you very powerful.

And then you see a big difference in the world around you because people will start liking your aura, liking your presence, and say,“Hey, I love you! I love to be with you“ and you will know that it is worth it. The secret is accepting yourself, connecting to yourself, respecting yourself. If you don’t respect yourself, nobody will respect you. The secret why society cannot respect a person is because the person does not have self-repect. Why  the scoiety cannot accept a person is becaue the person does not have self acceptance, self love. It is not selfishness, it is admiring and appreciating your existence. Selfishness is very bad. Our relevance in the world will depend on these two boundaries, selfishness and selflessness. The extent to which you are towards selflessness, that is how much you are appreciated by the world. Glory is connected to this aspect. The more selfless you are, the more glory you will get. This has to be clearly understood. That way you can transform the world by your own existence. You have that power! You have that in you! And this must be very clearly understood. Don’t think that somebody has to come and give it to you. Nobody has to give anything. You already have it. And you are immensely powerful. Why don’t you feel it? Because mind doesn’t allow you to feel. Mind gives you boundaries; “Hey, you are only this much! You are not great.“ And then you compare with other people – „ Hey look! This person is more beautiful than me, is smarter than me; is more talented than me.“ But remember one thing – he cannot be you or she cannot be you! Neither can you be that person! That person is already taken. But you are available to you. You are not taken. You have yourself. And that is your strength; your own strength is being you.  ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IN THIS LIFE IS BE YOU 100%! Don’t try to be somebody else. And respect yourself, respect the world, respect the society.

 

Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth and Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

Be Committed to One Master and Path

Mohanji is a Spiritual Master whose awakening was graced by Sai Baba of Shirdi. He guides many on the path and works tirelessly to spread His teachings. Mohanji speaks about the necessity of being committed to one Master on the spiritual path.

This whole concept about many Masters is one of the highest illusions. We need to look into ourselves. We need to connect with ourselves. We need to concentrate on the reduction of thoughts. That is only possible through acceptance – self-acceptance. When we constantly work on connecting with ourselves, we raise our frequency. We increase our frequency, or automatically the frequency increases. Then we get in contact with such Masters.

The whole idea of this Guru, that Guru, my Guru, another Guru etc. are all external factors. They are all illusions. In fact, there is only ONE GURU, which is the Supreme Consciousness. And THAT does not need Forms. Anything that has a Form has come for a purpose and for a duration. That is something we must understand. None of the Masters is dependent on you. The real Masters will be the most unassuming of the whole lot. They would not even care if someone follows them, respects them, or criticises them. As in Shirdi Sai Baba’s case – when somebody threw a stone at Him, it hit His head and blood started coming out. When people asked Him, “Is it hurting?” He replied, “The injury is here, but the pain is there.” (The pain is with the Tradition.) It is as simple as that. That means Masters live in a very unassuming way, fully surrendered, and with zero ownership.

If you wish to connect to such Masters, you must develop that kind of eligibility. Eligibility is simply a lesser number of thoughts and more emptiness inside. For more emptiness to happen, there must be fewer desires. So one definitely needs a lot of:

– Self-acceptance

– Contentment (being happy with what you are given; with what is available)

– Doing your utmost in any given circumstances and;

– Acting with surrender – without ownership and without expectations.

These will help inner purification and emptiness. Inner purification is selfless action and emptiness is connected to acceptance – which means no resistance. No resistance means no postponement; no residual memories. Everything is accepted. As they come, they go. Everything that is born will die. Then, you are connecting to a Master only as a complementing frequency.

The Master delivers what He is, or as per your eligibility, the Master’s energy liberates you. Also, do not look at various Masters; it is only one Master in various Forms. You connect to the Master who has appeared in front of you. There could be a better Master, bigger Master, higher Master and a more reputed Master elsewhere. But he is not near you. You do not have to worry about that.

Always remember: the one who has come to you is the one for you. The one whom you are connecting to is the one for you. It is not about the Master, it is all about you.

How deeply will you connect?

How consistent will you remain?

How much conviction do you have?

These are the benchmarks. Then, the Master’s presence is complementary.

The Masters at the level of Sai Baba (who is a perfect Avadhoota), are not worried about anything. The great Masters will never try to prove something to the world. That is not important for them. This whole idea of having to prove something is from the mind level and they have crossed the mind. They are not worried about whether people accept or reject them, whether people appreciate or criticise them.

We are the same society that took Jesus to the Cross and took Baba to the Court. The society is the same and is full of variety. People look at others in different ways. When Baba was alive and living in Shirdi, many tried to harm Him, ridicule Him, criticise Him, or gossip about Him. This is how life is. You cannot change it. People are of various types.

However, what we need to do is, maintain purity through selflessness – CONSISTENT selflessness. We need to connect to ourselves and increase our emptiness within. Also, ensure you do not have expectations and do not have too many desires. The usual things like food, clothing, and shelter are fine. But apart from that, the greed factor (that I must have many houses, many relationships, and many other things, Kama, Krodha, Lobha, Moha, Mada, Matsarya, kind of things), anger, hatred, possessiveness, positions, possessions, jealousy etc. are all binding factors.  Have nothing to do with any of them. Accept everybody as they are, and understand that nothing happens in life without a purpose. 

If there is an incident that occurs in life, there is a reason for it. For every EFFECT, there is a CAUSE. For every CAUSE, there WILL be an EFFECT. Therefore, it is collective, and there is no point in blaming anybody.

People go to a Master with various expectations. It is a very nonsensical thing. It is foolish to go to a Master thinking that you will never die. You will die. There have been various people connected to various Masters. If you look at history, you can see that they have all died. When something is born, it will die. Everything that is born will die at some point in time. Even the Master cannot stay in the body forever. We should understand these fundamentals.

“Oh, I am connected to a Master, but then I am not well.” That is because you have collected all these residual things over a period of time and it is affecting your health. What has the Master got to do with it? When you are deeply connected to the Master; when you are not resisting too much; when you increase your acceptance with the energy of the Master; most of the diseases and blockages drop off. That helps to heal. Otherwise, you need to be consistently serving the society selflessly and increasing your eligibility/ frequency, so that Masters can connect to you, and transfer whatever is possible to you. And, that should come without asking. I have always maintained this. This is one of the benchmarks that I had when I was practising.

Firstly, I never thought that I would come out and speak in public. I always thought that I would work in an organisation; I would work for a living so that I would never be dependent on anybody and I would do my Sadhana (practices) without telling anybody and without anybody knowing about it. This was my idea. I was happy and contented. But later on, it so happened – Yoga, the appointed Duty; I started talking to people, people started coming to me, I started operating in public, and my public life began. But one of the benchmarks I have always kept is :

 My PRESENCE should be more powerful than my teachings.

Therefore, the intensity that I was looking for, or I was trying to collect and assimilate, was THAT FREQUENCY, which will be TRANSFORMATIVE.

Transformation is equal to inner silence – more silence, more stability, more stillness, more peace. That was the idea. Likewise, I never went to any Guru or asked something from them. I have visited various Masters, but I have never asked them for anything. I never asked them for a title. I never asked them for any Siddhis (spiritual powers). I never asked them for any favours. All of them helped and supported me, to the extent I was eligible. I was very much contented with it. So, when you are approaching a Master, go there just for the sake of blessing, just to connect to that energy and that is all; just as you go for a pilgrimage, or to a place of power.

A place of power is of a particular frequency. Therefore, when you go to a place of power, it helps your alignment. It helps you to align yourself. Align yourself means the Mind, Body, Intellect, Ego and Spirit come together. Thus, when you go to a Master who is already aligned, it helps your alignment.

When you sit in the smoker’s room for five minutes, everybody will think that you smoked because your entire body will smell of smoke.

Like that, when you are connected to a great Master, you will automatically start assimilating yourself and start integrating yourself more. That way it’s fine, but otherwise do not look at various Masters and keep wandering, believing that you will get more from everybody. It is quite the opposite. Nobody will take responsibility for you. Always understand that it is our insecurity or the display of insecurity that is visible when you wander. Our insecurity takes us to various Masters, thinking that everybody will bless us and life will be better. In fact, you will be more insecure, because you will have a lot more insecurities by visiting Masters with expectations and that will affect you more.

Please understand that the great Masters were the most unassuming Masters. The greatest of them all looked like nothing. “The glitter and the show are all for the sake of the stomach”, as Adi Shankara said. However, the great Avadhootas wander like madmen, sometimes in rags, sometimes in clothes that people don’t really appreciate, or sometimes not wearing any clothes. This is exactly how a true Master looks. They all look like ordinary people, one of the crowd, or probably not even connected. Because they only have the inner world, they do not have the outside world. That is why when you give them food, they may not even touch it. Because what will they do with the food? Now if you put it in their mouth, they may eat it.

Neem Karoli Baba

Like the famous story of Neem Karoli Baba. Many times when Neem Karoli Baba was wandering, he was hardly aware of his body. When he was wandering, somebody asked him, “Babaji would you like to have some food?” He asked his companion, “Did I have food?” The companion replied, “No, you didn’t eat food.” He then said, “Yes, I am hungry, I want food,” and then he ate food. Five or ten minutes later, he was in another place, where another person asked him, “Would you like to have food?” He again asked his companion, “Did I eat food?” Then the companion got curious and thought, “If I say ‘No’, then what he will do?” So he said, “No, Babaji, you didn’t eat food.”

Actually, he had eaten, but this companion was testing him. So, Babaji again ate food. It happened seven times in one or two hours. Then the companion understood that Babaji does not have body consciousness and he is actually reflecting other people and just following.

Many of the Masters do not have body consciousness, because they are already in a state of bliss and their external world is just a drama going on, the play of the Divine. They are fully occupied with themselves, in a state of deep Samadhi.

With a person in this kind of state, people may not even connect, because people connect with those who can predict the future or materialise something, miracles, or similar things. But that’s just the shallow part of this whole thing.

True spirituality is not about show; it is about TRANSFORMATION. Transformation means you connect to yourself more and more so that, because of your present incarnation, you do not take more incarnations. That is true spirituality.

True spirituality is that you integrate into yourself all the way, fully, so that you do not have to take any more lives. That means you come in compromise with all your patterns, emotions, feelings, notions, prejudices, etc. Then, everything dissolves and finally, there is nothing. Then the whole desire factor itself dissolves, so the mind-matter dissolves. Then you only exist in Consciousness. In that mode, when you die, you only expand. You do not die. You do not leave. The body is there, and in the body, you are already a unit. Not scattered, because the mind-matter has dissolved. Then when you finally leave the body (your Mahasamadhi), you are not leaving the body, you are expanding from the body. That is why the place where the body of such a Master is kept becomes a shrine. Because they have not left, they have just expanded, their unit is still remaining. And it will live for thousands of years. It depends on the intensity of the Master.

As we see in Sai Baba’s case, a hundred years after His Mahasamadhi, we are discussing Him; we are experiencing Him; we are seeing various temples in His name, coming up in various places. All this is connected to the intensity of the Master, at the time of His existence. Do not connect only to the behaviour of the Master; such as what He was doing, how He was, etc. Baba used to smoke chillum. Probably He was smoking just to feel His body. He may not even be aware that He has a body. At the same time, He had to interact/ talk to so many people who came to Him. For that, he had the need to probably bring Himself to Himself, bring awareness to His body unit and talk to people.

There are so many such occasions, where you need something else to feel your presence, your body; because you do not feel the body.

When your practice becomes deeper, when you start assimilating, you will all experience that state; a state where you are not aware that you have a body. It is not an unconscious state; it is with full awareness.

You have a full awareness state, but you are not bound by the body. Your boundaries are different; your boundaries are beyond your body. That state happens. The point I am emphasizing is, we do not know how the Master operates. We should never judge, we should never criticise, because when you judge or criticise using your limited awareness, the Guru principle in us dies, or its frequency reduces. Then the ability to connect to subtlety also reduces.

Instead, you should develop greater acceptance.

“Okay, if there is a cause, there is an effect. If there is an effect, there is a cause. There will be some reason. Maybe we do not understand the reason. No problem! But because there is an effect, there would be a cause”.

Also, you should leave all those things to Karma. If something wrong is happening, Karma will equalise it. If something right is happening, Karma will reward it. So allow Karma to have its course. We are nobody to interfere. In case it is society, the law and order will take care of things. You don’t have to worry about it. We have a man-made law and order system to maintain discipline in society. We trust it and we leave it at that. Then we have the elected members of the Board, an elected Parliament, etc. We trust them; we give them the full authority to look after us. We should not interfere in any of these things. Also, we should not judge, criticise, gossip, talk ill, etc. because it immediately reduces our frequency. To gain frequency, it takes time. It takes a lot of effort, consistency, and conviction. To reduce in frequency it takes no time, it happens just like that; you will drop like you do when on a slide. Then it takes a lot of effort to climb up.

While practising, such instances will happen. First of all, your connection with the Master (is important). Then you may start judging. There are various Masters who are/ were very aggressive in their behaviour. Even Shirdi Sai Baba used to shout and scream at people sometimes. He would even beat up people. There are many such stories. As for Bhagwan Nithyananda of Ganeshpuri, people used to be frightened to go near him. They used to be afraid because sometimes He was very aggressive. However, that was to remove, to ward off many things sitting in us.

Bhagwan Nityananda

We have collected many things over time. We have no idea what have we collected. Just like the viruses and the germs in the air, we do not know what enters our system through our nose, mouth, ears etc. Like this, many things are coming into our system. The Masters will see what is in you, and they may try to completely flush these out. If you are afraid or if you are scared, and if you hold on to what they are trying to remove, you lose. They do not lose.

I always believe a reliable benchmark for spiritual awakening is, “What have we lost by connecting to a Master?”

Have we lost our Anger Quotient – the amount of anger in us?

 Have we lost our jealousies, pride and ego?

Have we lost whatever we were clinging on to, as part of our personality?

Has it all been diluted?

Then the connection with the Master has worked. It is not how much he taught you, or what you gained.

The gain in spirituality is in losing. The gain is in the loss.

In spirituality, what you give up is your gain. In spiritual terms, whatever your share and whatever you give to the world, that’s your gain, because you have earned grace with that, an abundance of grace. A great amount of grace happens when you share what you have.

Share skills, share love, share time, share money – whatever you have, you can share. That will bring more and more grace. This grace will not only help you in this life, but it will also help the ancestors, the lineage karma.

I have explained about lineage karma, it is called the ‘Dhananjaya Prana’, which enters the system when the sperm meets the egg. That means before everything else, when even the body is not formed, before that, the lineage karma enters. And it leaves only after every other Prana has left. So, the Dhananjaya Prana leaves much later, after all the other Pranas have gone. That is why during cremation, when the body is put on fire, this Prana leaves immediately. Therefore, when you burn the body, at that time this prana immediately leaves, because the body is burnt to ashes.

In case of a burial, this Prana is the last to leave. When there is a body, this Prana stays. Until the body completely disintegrates, it stays. This is something we must understand. Lineage Karma is very vital. So when you share what you have, when you do plenty of it, such as feeding birds, feeding animals etc., it has a great effect. I always like Annadaan – giving food, serving food. When I say fishes and birds, I am talking about all animals in nature; feeding birds, feeding animals, feeding fishes, which are in nature. That will give a tremendous amount of grace to you, and in turn, it helps the lineage karma. Thus, the weight is reduced by serving (Annadaan). Similarly, taking care of the sick and the old, abandoned children, abandoned women, etc. also helps. All these acts will help in the reduction of lineage karma.

That is why I always say that if you want to do something for me, take care of these people. I always call all the species as ‘people’, because every being has a personality, every creation has a personality, so every creation is a person. Therefore, I call them ‘people’ – people of various species. They all have their distinction. They all have their personality. They all have their purpose. Coming back to the point, taking care of the people is one way we can probably reduce the whole impact.

The interest of the Masters is always to elevate you to the highest point and not just to give you some gift or some entertainment. Also, whenever we keep on asking, indirectly we are demonstrating our “Poverty Consciousness”. When you keep on saying, “Please give me this, please give me that”, it means we are telling the world, or the substratum, that we don’t have it, we lack something. When we constantly say we lack something, it means we are expressing a state of ‘not having something’, that means Poverty Consciousness. Such an expression will bring more of that state. This has to be very clearly understood.

Abundance cannot happen when you are expressing poverty consciousness. For abundance to happen, the best prayer is the prayer of gratitude. Say “Thank you!

Thank you for whatever you have given me. Thank you for my life. Thank you for my breath. Thank you for oxygen. Thank you for the system (bodily system) that is function well like circulation, respiration, digestion, functions of the brain, the senses that are working well”. Be grateful and express gratitude, and keep thanking, so that, that richness will remain all the time. By sharing what you have, your inner richness will be maintained. That ensures more abundance. Also, nurture positivity by talking good – only talking good, even if somebody betrayed you or somebody did not behave well with you, etc. You leave it to Karma to take care of them and you concentrate on positivity.

We should not gossip, talk bad, or convey things, which are negative, like character assassination, shaming, defaming etc. All these things are very bad and will come back to you. Whatever arrows you shoot, it will leave a backward residue. Whatever you produce from your desk, will come back to you. Therefore, we should not have anything to do with any of these things. We should only look at the positive side, and only think about what we can do for others (to add value to people around us). Even if there are enemies, you bless them. They are enemies because of their ignorance. If somebody is really aware, they will have no enmity towards anything. Because we are talking only about karmic beings on earth, how can you be an enemy with another karmic being? It is impossible.

If you really are a spiritual person, if you have clear awareness, you can’t have enemies. You will accept everybody.

Each person is expressing his character. People are of all types: good, bad, ugly, etc. All people have their mixture and nobody is perfect, nobody needs to be perfect. God and the Guru are well aware of it. Everybody is aware of it. All beings are aware of it. They are not looking at your perfection. They are looking at your disposition, your attitude. Your attitude should be that of Purity. The pure message, pure expressions. If you are really spiritual, you can never have an enemy. You will never defame anybody. You will never talk ill about anybody. Forget about Masters, even about your neighbours, your friends, your family, you will not discuss, gossip or talk ill about anybody, because they are all leaving more and more dirty, negative residue in your system. We don’t want them because you must cleanse everything you have before you leave.

On one side, you should be fully focused on purification like acts of kindness, acts of compassion, acts of love, etc. and on the other side, you are always thinking, “Ok, I am alive, I am here, what can I do for this earth? What can we do here? And so on. “That is why I have always believed in being practical. I do not consider myself as a Bhakti Yogi. I would rather be more of a Karma Yogi, somebody who is practical and out there in the world. Instead of sitting and chanting, I usually like to serve. I like to give people some kind of transformation in their own way, in their own capacity. I tell my people – the people who love me or like to connect to me – if your heart is beating, let it be for the world, we live for the world. And the best you can give to this world is yourself – as pure expression.

In old times, in Bharat (ancient India), before all these locomotives, before the invasions of foreign people in Bharat; in every village, it was a kind of an unwritten rule, that if you are born in the Sanathana tradition, every individual must go to Kashi (Varanasi / Benares) once in their lifetime.

Sanathana tradition/ Sanathana Dharma is the dharmic tradition based on the actual ground rules of existence, based on dharma, righteousness.

The usual practice was that people in their Brahmacharya stage (youth time), learn skills. They learn various skills as per their disposition, as per their orientation. They learn their relevant skills from the mouth of a Master who is experienced. Then the next stage, the Grihastha (householder) stage, is where they execute their skills. They do their job, they earn their income, they make a family, they probably will have children, houses etc.

Then comes the next stage (Vanaprastha or retired life), after everything is done and the children are settled, they are also probably married and have their own children. In such stage, they decide, “Ok, now we should go and visit Benares” because once in a lifetime, one must go there; that is an unwritten rule. When they leave, sometimes a few of them from the village will also go together because you have to walk a lot or use bullock carts at times. I am talking of a time, many centuries ago, when the land was covered with jungles and there was no conveyance. In those days, there was no public transport system. For many miles, there would be nothing available to eat. There would be no shelter, no food.

Sometimes the kings used to build some highway inns, like a shelter where such travellers would take rest and sleep. The wandering people also used such places. The people in the village would give them some rice, wheat, flour, sometimes a bullock cart, a bull, sometimes a cow with a calf etc. These people would take all of them and continue on their journey. It would take months for them to reach Benares. Finally, they would have darshan of Lord Shiva in Benares – Kashi Vishwanath. By this time, they have already detached from their family. It is almost as if they will not come back, because it takes a long time to reach there, especially from the Southern part of India. Then, they stay there in Kashi and often leave their body in Kashi too.

Look at this whole journey. First, they had a childhood, a meaningful childhood where they were taught the skills for an existence. These skills are usually useful for the village, for the society, such as cobblers, carpenters, doctors, physicians, etc. Whatever the society needs for a healthy lifestyle, those were the skills that were taught. After a while, they had their families. Because of their skills, they had their money/ income. The money sometimes would not just be physical cash; it would be materials to survive, so they got food to eat and other necessary things as well. The people in the village share all these things, so there was a big harmonious existence.

In those days, the temple of the village was the main meeting point. Everybody surrendered everything to the Deity and the distribution to everybody also happened from the temple. So the temple and the temple system made sure that nobody slept hungrily. Even the wandering monks staying in the temple would get food and shelter. It was not just a place of worship; it was a place of distribution. Temples used to have lots of land and local villagers farmed these lands. All the produce came to the temple and they (the people who manage the temple) would take what was necessary and distributed rest to the people. That was a beautiful system. Temples were involved in training people, in distribution and plus of course, religious/ spiritual ceremonies. The temple was of great significance then.

The Deity of the village played a big role, like the Mayor of a town. It was all justified because no one would want to cheat the Deity, for they all loved and respected the Deity. We never had the concept of ‘fearing God’. God-fearing is not our path. Our path is about loving God, being one with God, being connected to the frequency and energy (of god). That was our path. That has always been our path. So, we never feared God. We respected God, loved God, and hence we never did anything against God. This was the structure.

So, when they left after their healthy existence as a Grihastha (family person), or a state where they executed their skills and earned their money, they walked away. Each step they took amounts to detachment. Each step was a detachment from all of what they had earned – their families, their relations, their possessions – they were going away from it. Each step they took, they realised inside, “Now this is over”. It’s learning in detachment. Whatever you have earned and collected – all the possessions and positions – you are leaving behind and you are not sad about it because any way you have to leave it behind. You must go and meet Kashi Vishwanath, once in your lifetime.

They were like the Muslim brothers who go to Mecca today. Like that, they used to go to Benares. It takes time to reach there. By the time they reach Benares, they are already detached from the whole past. Finally, they settle down and only connect to God – Kashi Vishwanath. They chant, pray and stay there. Then, they leave the body there and their body was burnt on the Ghats. It was a very powerful system then. Even now, the first Abhishek or the offering, to Kashi Vishwanath, is the ash from the funeral pyre.

They were totally objective in this whole thing. When they learnt the skills, they knew that the skills had to be executed in a justifiable manner. Not for competing or cheating somebody or trying to make more money. Everybody has had a good existence. In addition, they had a deep connection with Deity of the temple, the presiding Deity of the village and that Deity is like the Lord of the village, the Mayor or the President of the village. They had that level of connection and simplicity, judicious behaviour, good behaviour, a balanced life. Once it was all done, they were going to the next space, where they were detaching from all that they had earned. Everything was distributed and given back. Whatever they had picked up from the village was given back. Every villager supported them, so all these people were participating in the journey. Then they went to Kashi, and by the time they reached there, it might be over two months. By this time, they learnt detachment & were very detached. This is called Vanaprastha (going into the jungle). Actually, you are not going into any jungle, you are actually detaching. Then, the last stage is Sanyasa.

Sanyasa means to be occupied only with God, connecting only to God.

Kashi Vishwanath

Varanasi is the place where they arrive, and connect to Kashi Vishwanath, and only thinking about Kashi Vishwanath, they leave the body. By the time they leave the body, they are totally purified of desires, of everything. There is no junk inside. They are completely empty and purified. That ash of the funeral pyre is sacred enough for doing the Abhishek to Lord Shiva. That level of purification was achieved. Look at our system; it was so grand and so profound. We had a great system in our country and most of us still do not know this. I would suggest that we revive that kind of system. Today, we have access to go to Kailash. In those days, Kailash was very, very far away and one in a million could go there; because it was very tough to go to Kailash, in Tibet. Therefore, Kashi was the place where people went. However, very few actually ventured into Kailash and those people were almost treated like Shiva. If you reached the abode of Shiva, if you had the vision, the Darshan of Kailash, that was a huge purification. This was the structure.

This is exactly what Gurus say about the structure of our existence – the dharmic existence, the dharmic structure – there was depth in it. That is why I say, “Don’t search for Gurus, Gurus will come to you”. However, if you search for Gurus, it is just for your mental satisfaction. If you keep wandering from one Guru to the other, it only shows your insecurity.

PC: Google images

If you are deeply connected with yourself, you will not have to wander. The right connections will come, the right energy will come, the right transformation will happen. Have patience. Baba says, “SABURI”. You need to be stable and steady, and that needs patience.

Always be stable. Always be steady. When you are chasing something all the time, there is a big chance that you are always distracted and never satisfied. Satisfaction happens when you are fully occupied with yourself and fully contented. Be happy with what you have. Appreciate everything. Do not criticise, judge, throw stones or do such things. Because when you throw stones, more stones are coming your way. Always remember, Karma retaliates. Karma gives back the same thing. When you say something is bad, somebody is bad etc., you are actually creating that thing in you. You are actually nurturing that pattern in you. Unless you are supposed to experience something, it will not come to you.

There is a cause for anything and everything that has happened in your life. Maybe there is a pattern, which you have maintained. Even with betrayal, jealousy, hatred etc., you have kept the pattern. Revenge is a very dangerous thing. Because when you take revenge on somebody, you almost die. A part of you dies. When you are attacking somebody, a part of you is dying. The goodness factor is seriously messed up. We need to maintain the goodness factor; allow Karma to take care of all the things that we don’t agree with. We should only focus on purity. That is why I insist that our group of followers practise positivity.

Let that be your benchmark – practice positivity at all times, and forget about negativity. Whenever there is positivity, there is negativity. Whenever there is light, there is a shadow. You cannot do anything about it, and you should not worry about it. When you are consistently focusing on positivity, you are automatically being purified. That is all you need and that will bring all the right frequencies into you. Remain PURE. Remain LOVE.

 

Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

 

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Mohanji’s Message on Corona Virus Pandemic – 17th March 2020

Hello there.

As of today, there are about 80,000 people completely recovered from the effect of the virus and 7100 persons died. That’s the reported death and about 80,000 people recovered. So, what we should focus on is that 80,000 people recovered. That means, recovery rates are very good. How many people have been affected as per the records; 180 something, that means about 200,000 people out of 7.5 billion people. Please understand, out of 7.5 billion people, about 200,000 people are reportedly affected. Out of that, about 80,000 people have recovered and about 7000 people have died. They have not died because of this virus, this virus just lifted the immunity away and they had other complications. Those complications started working and that’s how they died. This is what I understand, if you’re reasonably healthy, you can definitely survive even if you are affected. If there are other complications already, that means there is definite ill health, and then recovery could be a problem. That is exactly why prevention is very important. I was watching the television: one more thing that I see is that the amount of emission has reduced considerably in the world. Air is much cleaner and there is much less emission from vehicles. From every aspect, there is less pollution. So pollution levels in the world, especially in places like China, have reduced a lot.  In many countries there is a reduction in emission and also pollution. So, this is one positive sign. I’m just talking about the positive things and how we can look at this whole thing.

Secondly, we are heading towards a recession. This is what I feel; that there is a crash in economy or the meltdown is happening. Already, various countries are now redefining their budgets; they have to because a lot of businesses are on standstill. They have all stopped. Transportation industry, tourism industry, various industries are suffering. They all are affected. That’s a real sign that we have to constantly be flexible with our economy. This is the time to remain flexible.

We have been unconsciously spending – income was happening, spending was happening. We were not really worried about all this. But now with this virus situation, each country has become an island – non-communicative, not reachable and they are all segregated from each other. Each country is trying to take care of their citizens and they are isolating others. So, the whole equation has changed, even though the world has many more borders than 100 years ago; there are many more new countries and we have many more borders than before. But now, all the countries are forced to be isolated from each other. That also means economically, there is no support. There is no purchase, there are no imports and exports, and there is no travel. There is stagnation of economy. So, countries and their political leaders have to redefine their economy and they have to use this money to lift their countries – once this epidemic situation is over -lift their countries back to the state which it was before at least. To recover completely takes a long time, it will take a long time. But at least to bring it back to the old state; this will take time. This is what I feel.

That is exactly why we need to spread the positivity, hope and higher awareness in this world today using your own platform. That’s what I have been saying in the last two days. Everybody who is connected to Mohanji and the Foundation, I would like all of you to reach out to any number of people you can and make a difference in their lives. Bring positivity to them, bring positivity in their lives, bring happiness in their lives, bring hope in their lives, and that way, at least to tell that we are all together, we are here to help you. That’s why I had asked if any of our people are stranded in any country. Please do let us know.  We will do whatever we can to help them. But don’t panic. Help is at hand.

So, I’m just summing up the situation as I understood today. These things are bound to happen. I consider this as a third world war situation, not that a third world war happened. But it is a similar situation. What will happen if there was a third world war? There will be prohibition on flying. There’ll be prohibition in cargo transportation. There’ll be prohibition in movement, traffic, tourism, all those things. Same thing has happened with this virus. And it is definitely a good time to think because we have a lot of time at home. Just switch off the television, switch off mobile phones, switch off everything and start connecting to oneself and redefine oneself. This is very important at this time. This is the right time for doing that. Because there is a forced isolation, you know, forced into seclusion. This is the time to redefine ourselves.

We can correct a lot of things. First of all, we can correct our insensitivity; automatic, spontaneous, unconscious insensitivity towards all the things on the earth. We have taken a lot of things for granted. We took food for granted; now that’s why we see the panic buying. Even if you buy more, can you store more? Can you eat more? You can’t. So, it is important that just like the birds or animals – look at them – they will tell you how to handle food. They will only consume what they can and they leave behind whatever they can’t. And they will know that there will be food; if you have a mouth, there’ll be food. So, it’s important; nature tells you what to do. If you look into the nature, nature has all the answers.  Today, I would like to say that you should connect to the nature.

If you disconnect, continue to disconnect, we will all be in an unconscious mode, running after profits, selling our time for money. This is what we have been doing. Now, it is time where you can’t sell your time for money because there is no money to sell for. So, this is one thing happening today and we have been forced to isolate from each other.

So, we know our relationships with people, dependencies, everything has to be redefined today. Eventually, we will all understand that we are born alone, we will die alone. And we will always have this understanding. We are owned by nothing, and nothing we can own. These are the things which we should really understand. And as I said yesterday, the fear of death is one of the most powerful emotions that everybody has including animals, birds, everybody, but you look at what we have done to this animal kingdom. We literally wiped out various species insensitively, unconsciously, without any remorse, without any guilt, or any kind of feeling. Now, it is time we think, they also wanted to live. They had fear of death just like us. We are facing it now, with this virus, a lot of people have real mortal fears about their dying, about this virus affecting them. We are experiencing that today.

So, this is something which we have to now think and we need to make people aware that – look here – the same fears that we entertain today, because this is the nature given chance for experiencing the fear of death, maybe all the beings that we have killed over these years have experienced. They had tremendous fears for dying. Tremendous fears when we were killing them, murdering them, for the sake of meat, for the sake of pleasure, for the sake of our skin, we were putting them in laboratories and inflicting pain, inflicting torture, torture through mutilation, all those things they might have felt, right? All those beings in the laboratories, in the circuses, in the zoos, in the abattoirs, in dairy industry, farms, in hatcheries; they would have experienced or they’re probably experiencing the same kind of fears, because fear of death is connected to our basic instinct, instinct of survival. We all have the basic instinct which is the instinct for survival. Fear of death is connected to it. And that way, death is an enemy. But death is an inevitability, you cannot change death. You cannot avoid death. You have to die one day. If you are born, you will die. So, this awareness is very, very important at this stage.

We own nothing on Earth, we can own nothing. We can’t say that we have an eternal state or eternity in us. We have eternity, if you’re considering the soul factor. But we don’t consider that usually, we look at this incarnation and we are trying to preserve this body, preserve this life. That is where the fear of death happens. But it is time to redefine. Every time when such crisis happens, there is a point of redefining. But this generation, I would say is very lucky. Because in an unpolluted atmosphere, when you are at home, when you are in forced isolation, when you are in a meditative state where you have nothing much to do and when things are not in abundance anymore because the production is affected, everything is affected, you are forced to consume what is necessary, not consume emotionally.

Also, when you have a lot of time to think and do, use your time well. First, use that time to connect to yourself and have certain understandings that you are walking this earth. Earth doesn’t belong to you, you belong to the earth and the earth will consume you sooner or later. So, in this context, you position yourself well: with kindness, with compassion, with gratitude, immense gratitude, with awareness and with selflessness, and consume what you want to consume, share what you have in abundance, and make sure that all the people around you are better, feeling better, have more hope, and more balance and stability because of you.

I wish you great happiness and great health. I’m always with you.

I love you.

Mohanji