Guru Purnima Satsang 2020 – Part 1

Question: What is the real purpose of a disciple to do worship of a guru on this auspicious day?

Mohanji: Where does the Guru sit? This is the first question we must ask ourselves. Look at our whole life. We are only looking at a life which has happened from our birth so far, until our death in this life. This is what we consider as life.

All the masters, all the great traditions have said time and again that you are the thing you are looking for. I have mentioned that in my Guru Purnima message also, that you are the very thing or the very subject you are looking for. That means you have got to find yourself inside you. That means you got to do manana (contemplation). When you contemplate more and more, you will start finding your dimensions first. Eventually, you will come to a level where you will see yourself as a beacon of light and the rays spreading as dimensions; that means you have become one with your source, the one that is inside you. When you start connecting to the source that is inside you, you will start feeling the various possibilities beyond birth, beyond death. It means the possibility of the atma tatwa or the soul factor, which has no birth or death.

Once you understand that, you will see all your lives of the past and all the lives that are going to be in one spectrum, in one canvas. What happens then? That means you can see the whole role-play; various lifetimes you have played certain roles, and there is a continuation in between, like a stage in the drama. You go out, you change your dress, and you come back. It’s almost like that, very simple. That means you are almost going out and coming back. There is no birth, no death; just changing over, transitioning. So, once you understand that, the principle of Guru and the principle called YOU become very clear to you.

So, where is this Guru sitting? Inside! Then why do we worship a guru outside? That Guru is a reminder of what is sitting inside: just a reminder, nothing else.

So, when you respect (not only the Guru), the Guru in everything, which is the soul factor of all things, of all beings of nature, you will keep seeing the Guru. This is the main factor, the unchangeable factor. One who has actually recognised that soul factor and decided to settle into the soul factor; one who has found that soul factor from the physical factor, an emotional factor, consciousness factor and still further the witness factor, ( once you have settled down in the witness factor), you will see everything in the form of witness hood. You see everything as a witness. In that state, there is no caste, country, culture, colour, religion, language, nothing, just witnessing the whole thing.

When you start witnessing the whole thing, then you realise what exactly is awakening. That awakening only simply means you are a total witness of everything. You see the whole tapestry, not just the scenes of the drama, not the emotions, not the situations, not even the people acting; you see the whole picture. This is the journey that can only be achieved through our inner journey; you got to go within. You got to go inside, within. 

When you are worshipping a master or when you are coming in contact with a master, who has already settled down within and he is fully established, your worship, (forget about physical worship), even thinking, even remembering, even your meeting, connecting, all that amounts to one thing. What is it? This is the state I’m looking for. Give me that state of yours. The state makes a master. The state where the Master rests makes that person a master. If the person is resting on emotions of life, that’s not mastery. The mind is dragging us like a slave.

When our awareness rests in the body, we are in waking state. When our awareness rests in our mind matter, we are in dream state. When our awareness rests in deep sleep state, we are in a state like death; we are detached. We are only in consciousness. When our awareness merges with consciousness, we start witnessing the state of the soul. That’s the only time we really witness what the soul is experiencing. That is the journey.

So, if you worship a guru, do you think the Guru needs worship? Guru needs nothing. Why does the guru need worship? Guru is not dependent on things outside of him, because he’s fully established in the witness hood, peaceful, stable and happy. He or she doesn’t matter. When you go within, and you start connecting to your own soul as I explained just now, you don’t need any worship. You are happy; you are settled. You are not dependent on the world outside for your pleasures of senses. Instead, senses are existing, but the senses are not demanding. Senses are relaxed, the mind is relaxed; there is no thrust of desires, no push of desires; tranquillity, peace. This is the real state.

If somebody is resting in that state, what would he feel and what would he say? Just be. JUST BE. The highest is achieved through that state of being YOU, being YOURSELF. BEING; only being. That’s the beauty.

When somebody says you have to worship me, that person only displays insecurity. That person is insecure. Why is he insecure? It is because he’s still dependent on the world outside. For a person who is stable within, whether somebody respects, somebody worships or not, it doesn’t make a difference. But if you want to experience that feeling of connecting in your way, as you are, you can do that. You can do whatever and for the Master, it doesn’t matter.

Sai Baba displayed that all the time. As the disciple came, Baba allowed them to perform their chosen ritual. Baba just allowed it to happen. He never said, “I don’t like it”, because there’s no like or dislike; just being.

Question: I want to know, for somebody like me when I’ve not met you in person, how could I understand that you are helping me and uplifting in spirituality? How do I know that I am growing in spirituality?

Mohanji: Do we actually need any help? This is the fundamental question. What help do we need?

In fact, a true master always remains as a mirror, undistorted image. That’s what he gives us. So, he always remains like a mirror, stable and still, and when you look into the mirror, you see your own true reflection. You see yourself in your true form, as you are. And that itself is a big deal because, in the outside world, you are only getting opinions of people. Some opinions are good, some opinions are bad, some are criticism, and some are praises. But between this, there is a reality. You never get that reality from the world outside. When you come to a master, the mirror is so fresh, perfect and clean; you get the real picture. That’s the biggest thing a master gives us your true picture.

So how does a master help? It is by giving your true picture; you realise this is where I stand; this is what I am. The moment you understand what you are, correction is easy. Diagnosis is difficult; the cure is easier. Similarly, when you come in contact with a pure mirror, an undistorted image happens. You automatically know where you stand and where you should be. The Master becomes a road sign with his own life.

What is the main thing happening here? Amidst all the varied dimensions of existence, emotions, changes; HE remains unchangeable, still. So, when you look at that Master, and you see a zero change, unchangeable, steady, then you realise this is the state of happiness; not pleasures, which are changing every now and then. Pleasures keep changing. For some time they remain, then again, you need more. But here, happiness is a state where you are always happy, stable and happy. And that state is what you are looking for. That’s when you realise, this is the state. So a true master’s life itself is the lesson, message and path. And when you come in contact, how do you know that you are being helped? Are you attaining silence in the mind? Or are you continuing to be restless and affected by things around us around you?

If you are always affected by things around you; that means you are only expressing your inherent patterns. It means, patterns or habits have formed, and it’s like a cycle going on and on and on. But a master shows you, that there is a possibility of being still, being out of the patterns, overcoming them by accepting those patterns and not resisting them. By holding the hands of the Master, (as long as it takes, maybe it takes lifetimes we never know), you come out of your patterns of life, including habits, likes, dislikes, opinions, prejudices, etc. and you become free. When you become free; fewer thoughts, less desire, less wear and tear from life will be the result. If this is happening, that means this relationship is working.

Relationship with a master does not have boundaries when I say boundaries, not bound by time. It is a continuous process. What brings you to a master is eligibility, YOUR WILL to experience the higher aspects of existence such as happiness; this brings you to a master. (And again as I said, it is not pleasures of life. We have many pleasures in life. It keeps coming and going, and we are not happy. Because one time it comes and goes, you crave for more, desire for more, and this is a continuous process.)Then you are in a tranquil state, and you are happy by nature and contented. So the contentment factor is the connection factor; you can actually assess your connection with your level of contentment.

Question: If people take advantage of unconditional love, how do you handle such situations? Is there a boundary to draw when you give unconditional love?

Mohanji: We are unconditional love by nature. That is our nature. We are love by nature, and we expand with love. We contract with hatred, revenge, anger; it makes us shrink. But with love, we expand, and that’s our nature; our nature is to expand. So love is our natural process. Love is our nature. But the world outside, of seven billion-plus people, is of every dimension. They are of different dimensions. It is not easy to say or categorise them at all.

Everybody is a mixture of various types of people. So, in this whole mixture, how people respond is completely based on time, space, their moods or the fluctuations of mind as per that time, because of various reasons. So, we cannot predict. We can only generalise a person based on the most predominant attitude. We can never say, “This person is always like this”. Each day could be different, moods could be changing, and everything could be changing. So, we must never judge anybody and say that he/ she is always like this. So, we have to understand that the world operates in such a way where the gunas; the Sattva, Rajas, Tamas gunas are fluctuating, flowing. 

That changes time and again based on various aspects of existence, and that causes swings in moods. Sometimes Sattva is very high; people are tranquil and peaceful, then Rajas becomes high, they become very active, very explicit, and when Tamas becomes high, they procrastinate. So, this keeps going up and down, and according to that, a person will respond. Sometimes when the person is filled with Tamas, they may respond illogically, procrastinate. Procrastination brings forth anger, hatred, various types of feelings: feeling of separation, feeling of lack of love, etc. When that happens, maybe a disconnection happens between the person who loves them fully and the person who takes advantage of them.

Sometimes people think that the people who take advantage are good people because they fail to see the truth. At the same time, a thought may come that the people who love them unconditionally, but pretty rigid in their attitude are bad guys. In such cases, they hate the people who are truthful, and they follow the people who are manipulative. We have seen that in life. Sometimes people go after people who are manipulative, and they realise it much later. By the time too much of water would have flown under the bridge. That means time would have changed, and it would have probably become irreversible. Then betrayals happen, revenge happens, so much of bad blood happens. At the same time, the estrangement takes root; it means separation takes root, so this might become a trauma. But a master you are connected to, the Master will remain unconditional.

In the story of Victor Hugo, the Bishop gave food and accommodation to an ex-convict. When nobody wanted him, the society rejected him and did not want anything to do with him; at that time, the Bishop invited him to the church, gave him warm food and accommodation. But the convict in him could not accept it. The convict in him accepted himself as a bad guy, and decided, “This is not possible. Nobody can love me”. Because the inherent feeling or the concept or the state that he was in, rejected the kindness which the Bishop showed unconditionally.

What did he do? He stole the silver candle holders and ran away in the night. The police caught him, brought him back to the church because he had those candle holders which had the mark of the church on it. The police asked the Bishop, “Did this man steal something from the church?” and showed him the candleholders and few other things. The Bishop said, “No, I gave it to him”. Thus, he saved him again. That transformed the man.

So I always believe CONSISTENT KINDNESS transforms minds. So all you have to do is, not to have any expectation if you are brimming with unconditional love. If you expect people to appreciate, people to accept you as unconditional etc., there could be disappointments. Whenever there is an expectation, there is a potential for disappointment. So, express unconditional love consistently and be kind again and again and again, and you raise yourself in stature, not status. Stature is your ability to be unconditional love all the time. Then what happens in society? Society cannot ignore you anymore. Society will come around you, respect you and glorify you and make you a legend or legend hood comes to you because you have been consistent. 

Consistency is a big deal. Many people do not have it. It is because they pitch expectation into an activity, and suffer sorrows and disappointment. So, this is something which we must remember. Be unconditional, but have the maturity to have no expectations. So you keep giving. Examples are Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi; we can find so many examples. They did not do things for the sake of earning glory, and because of that, glory came to them. Nelson Mandela, for example, He was behind bars in one cell for about 30 + years, that is, for most of his life. But when he came out, he was not affected. He created the platform for a peaceful society.

How can that happen? There was no revenge in his mind. Likewise, various great masters whom we have respected over time, they have been kind consistently, been compassionate, and been selfless consistently, and expecting nothing and that made them legends. Being unconditional is a beautiful thing. But it should have one more ingredient added into it. That is, zero expectation, and that will give you glory. 

Question: How can we be sure that we are doing Consciousness Kriya correctly? And how do we know we’re making progress?

Mohanji: Well, any practice for that matter, say a normal physical practice, how do you know whether you are making progress? In simple terms, your proficiency increases. But in spiritual practice, the idea of spiritual practice is to give you a certain level of stability. So one of the criteria if you are doing a thing right, with the full application, full commitment, with conviction, faith, and consistency; if you are doing it properly, the result would be stability. Automatically, you will be very stable, and you will not be affected by the things around you too much. Things will be happening around you as it would, but it will not affect you as much as it usually would. So that’s the real sign that you are actually in the right track; we can extend it to say with fewer thoughts, less desires, etc.

End of the day, when you are practising it right, when you are consistent about it, and you believe in it, (if you don’t believe in it, if you are testing it, it may not work that much.) then you will realise that there is a kind of stability happening inside you. You are not fluctuated by the fluctuations of the outside world. The outside world will remain outside; the inside world will strengthen. When the inside world strengthens, the outside world cannot affect you anymore. 

This phenomenon, you can see if you are getting more and more stable inside that means the external world will not affect you as much as it normally would. So, this is a clear sign of knowing you are doing it right. Sometimes, you know the method very well, but the effect is not happening because you do not trust it. Secondly, when we go to a guru with expectations and the guru gives you certain guidelines, but then we neither trust the guru nor the guidelines, we fail in the whole thing. It is because of one reason; we have not connected, we have not accepted. So, it’s important to accept wholeheartedly, experiment it, keep trying it, and after a while, it will start working. Maybe initially it may not work, it starts working as you go further and further.

There should be some kind of consistency in your practice; this is very important. If that’s not happening, the results may not happen. We become busy with our thought processes, so we do not have consistency sometimes. Then, that affects us, and we feel dejected, depressed because we are not progressing. Progress means less thoughts. Less thoughts means less desires. Less desires mean more detachment and more freedom.

Less thought = Less desires =Less needs = More detachment = More freedom.

That’s a benchmark which you can actually look for. But for that, you need to connect to your inside world more than the outside world. When we are running behind the pleasures of existence, entertaining the senses, entertaining the mind, etc., it may not work easily. On one side we are chasing things outside, but on the other side, we are trying to come inside, this struggle will continue.

So you must spend enough time with yourself. And I have always done that between 3 am to 8 am, early morning. That is because that time, the world is relatively free from you or you are free from the world. After that, you got to give yourself to the world. Maybe you are working, you are doing things, and then you are probably busy with your life outside. And that will take its toll. It’s okay, that’s part of life. But we got to spend time with ourselves, a personal time. That’s the time you should practise consistently with faith, faith in yourself, faith in the activity and also be clear that you are not keeping expectations ahead of you.

What are you doing? – Just practising. Just doing what it takes. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad. Just by focusing on the activity with full surrender, the results will start happening because you are starting to connect with yourself. End of the day, whether you are a Bhakti Yogi, following the path of devotion, or Jnyana Yogi, following the path of knowledge, or Karma yogi, following the path of service, or Raja Yogi, following the path of consciousness, it doesn’t matter. Everything leads you to yourself. Eventually, you will have to come back to yourself, and that’s the whole path. That’s the whole tradition. So this will happen anyway. This has to happen. So it doesn’t matter whether this practice is right or wrong, etc. I would say wrong practice means you need to put pressure to do it. Right practice is a pleasure. You are happy to do it. This is very simple.

Question: What would strengthen and help the awakening of consciousness?

Mohanji: Consistency strengthens our purpose. When we are consistent, what is our priority? We must ask this question some point in time. Imagine you came in contact with a very powerful master. But you contacted him for some personal gain or personal benefits, such as a job or a marriage or a relationship or some money or a position in the world, something like that. That’s very shallow. It may happen anyway.

But why did you associate with a very powerful Master? What brought you to him? It is your eligibility. What kind of eligibility brought you to a master of that kind? It is the eligibility for liberating yourself from the mundane existence of likes and dislikes, happiness and sorrow; this kind of duality. It was time for you to come out of it. That is how you came in contact with the master. Now, imagine you are still expressing your patterns, expectations leading to disappointments, ownerships, anger, hatred, jealousy, etc. What happens? You stand still! Your patterns are more powerful than your association with something really powerful (the master). That means your patterns become a wall in front of you, which disconnects you from that master.

Then that connection is wasted. You cannot use it because there is a wall in front of you. Your own patterns, concepts, prejudices make a wall, and the wall grows, because your ego enters. Ego sometimes manipulates you. Ego tells you, “Hey, look here! This is not how it should be; he should come forward to you, not you go to him” etc., all those things and it takes you away from reality and detaches you from reality and what happens is that the whole connection is wasted. So, when you come in contact with a master, you should have the priorities set right. And you should have extreme flexibility, flow like a river, and flow like water. Extreme flexibility helps you to progress in drastic speed. 

As I told in the beginning, imagine you have a lot of lifetimes, let’s say 200 lifetimes. As you come closer to your soul, you can see these 200 lifetimes in one frame, like in the zoom, we can see all the people on one frame, all the people who are connected to us are all in one frame, and they are all in these frames. Like that, we can see our various lifetimes in one frame and then we will know that we have been expressing almost similar patterns. Maybe, we have been a man or a woman or a child or anything in each life, that doesn’t matter. But in every life, we have been expressing similar patterns, insecurities, prejudices, all the things which you are experiencing now have been the same in all those lives and the coming lives as well.

So what you are really doing is that with each death, you are just going out, changing clothes and coming back into a new life. So it’s like a new scene in the drama. We are acting scene by scene by scene. If you take a drama, in that kind of boundary/frame, you are enacting a role. And you keep coming back in a new costume, and you play the role. In between, you are coming in contact with a master who says, “I will take you out of this. You had enough of roles in life, you have played a lot of roles, and I’ll take you out of it”. But then again, you have been used to certain patterns all these lifetimes, similar patterns. So what will you say? “Okay, I would like you to take me out of it. But you know what, I have something more to settle because I have left some things on another screen, another time so that I want to go back to complete that. That man cheated me. So I must go back and cheat him. He betrayed me. So I must betray him.” Like that, we have scores to settle.

We have things to complete, which provokes further lives. So in this whole bargain, in various lifetimes we have come in contact with people who have come out of this drama; they have finished their acting, they have already settled within themselves, they’ve understood there’s no need for this drama. They’ve experienced everything connected to this whole life, and they don’t want it anymore. They know it very well, and they have come out of it. These people still hang on to guide others to come out of it. But then our patterns are so strong, that we may even blame the people who are already detached from it, saying, “No, no, this guy doesn’t understand, I have to take care of this thing. This is more important for me.” ‘I’ am important. I factor. ‘I’ is the association with the role not with the actor. This is the problem. We associate ourselves with the role.

If Mohanji associates himself as a guru, then Mohanji has a problem. I’m not a guru all the time. When I play with Mila, I’m not a guru. I’m her father. Like that in every scene, I play a different role. And the sum total of it is what is called this incarnation. So, that acceptance should happen. With extreme flexibility, when you play the role, you play it well, good enough for an Oscar. You play it supremely well, and when you come out of it, you have nothing to do with it. That is the detachment we talk about. We have that experience every day.

Remember, when we go to bed, we shut off from this external world. We are completely detached. We shut the screen; there is nothing on the screen, no world outside. Then we connect to the internal world, and we see the drama of life as dreams. We get tired; we shut that also. Then we go into a deep sleep where you shut off everything, body, mind-matter, everything is shut off. You are totally sitting in consciousness with consciousness. You are sleeping with consciousness. Then you come back again to the waking state, where you and the world come alive. Again you wear the costume of this incarnation as per your projection, and the world recognises you as you are known in this incarnation. But is that you? Ask this question – Am I this? This role play is important in this act for sure, because you play that role, but is that you?

Why do you set boundaries? Why do we have boundaries? This question will happen, and that time we will start understanding the role play. So, everybody’s life is just acting, or role plays and patterns are guiding. The inclinations, tendencies push them to express what they are into this world. That means we are projecting what we are into this world. That means we are seeing or experiencing this world as WE are; we cannot experience the world as it is. We are not experiencing the world as the world is. Instead, we are experiencing the world as we are. What do you see around? What do you get from this world? – Opinions, concepts, prejudices, and so many factors of that kind. Think about it.

The world is full of opinions; it may not be the truth. Somebody says, “This person is not good.” That is his perspective. That person thinks that the other person is not as good as per his criterion. But another person may say, “This guy is very good.” So who’s telling the truth? Nobody is good. Nobody is bad. It’s our perspective; it is the way we see it. We see a person, and if our frequency is not matching with something, we call it not good – For whom? – For us. So, when we tell another person, “That person is not good, stay away”, are we missing heavily here? Definitely. We are missing a lot because we fail to see the truth. Our opportunity to see the truth or our opportunity to be neutral and have clarity is taken away because we see the world through our ears, not through our eyes. Eyes are given to see the world, to see the truth, but eyes cannot see the truth because ears work more.

We experience that in life. So this has to be clearly understood. The world is as it is, but we see the world as we are. And then if you see this whole 100, 200 lifetimes of our existence, you can see the same pattern at work. But because we are getting involved in the drama, we cannot really come out, because each person changes the costume and comes back and we must be there. We are addicted to this play, and we keep coming back: the same people, different costumes, and different order. They all come back, and they all provide similar emotions because they’re all coming with patterns; similar emotions. We enter into the drama, and we really suffer from that drama, sometimes happy sometimes sorrow, but do we see this drama? We must. The moment you start seeing the drama, and then you realise, “Oh, this is the story.”

Do you know why we have assassinated most of the people who spoke the truth? The people, whom we assassinated like Jesus and Socrates, were great masters who saw the truth and told the truth – undistorted truth, but we killed them. We character assassinated them. Why did we do that? Because we do not see, we can’t see. We are blind to reality. We only see what WE are, what is our pattern through the eyes of the pattern. We only see through the eyes of the pattern, through the eyes of our prejudices and concepts. Through the spectacles of what we have carried forward and what we have collected, we are watching this world. We are witnessing this world, and we don’t see the truth. We do not even accept the truth. All these people are like that. That is why racism, speciesism is all because we are eating concepts right from our breakfast till we sleep.

Somebody says, “It’s okay to kill an animal and eat” and we eat. We do not think that they have a life. They have a right to live as much as we have. The right is the same for every species which we don’t see. Likewise RACE. Each person is born in a certain community, and that’s about it. Nobody is higher or lower. Nobody can be higher or lower. Experience wise, everybody has the same right; the same kind of experience. If you touch fire, your hand will burn. The same happens with every race, everybody.

If we start seeing beyond all these seeming boundaries that we have created for ourselves and we fail to see the truth, then we realise, ”Oh, so there is a pattern”, but when do we get to see it? Even when somebody who has seen it tells you, we may not accept it. We may ask mundane questions. What will happen to me in the future? Does that mean you are asking what is the script? Or ask what will happen after my death? You will come back in the same way. It doesn’t matter. What you can do right now is your only reality. Try to connect yourself and try to see the truth now. That can change your future. Not that the future can change by sitting doing nothing, or entertaining the patterns now. Future will not change like that. Future will be future, patterns will continue, and patterns are ruling us. Our inclinations and tendencies are ruling us, which we don’t know. Even if it is told, we do not accept, nor do we understand. We do not allow changes because we are too bound by the patterns. We don’t even see. I have to sleep; I have to eat; I have to do this. I have to do that. You are completely preoccupied and bound by patterns, where your freedom is lost. As I have explained in today’s message, freedom is freedom from the senses and mind, not of the senses and mind. But unfortunately, what we have always been told and what we tell others is that I have freedom because I can go out and do whatever I like. That means being a slave is freedom. When you say, “I have the freedom to go out and do things that I like”, you are saying, “I can exercise my patterns and I call that my freedom”.

That is not freedom. Freedom is a state where you are free from your own senses and mind. Senses are pretty much sensors; they cannot operate on their own, the mind provokes them. So when you are free from your mind-matter such as intellect, ego and mind, then the senses are in control. If they are not bothering you, if the mind is not bothering you and if you are detached from your mind, and in the state of witness hood and mind is not really provoking the senses to go out, that’s the only time you experience freedom. Otherwise, you don’t. Whatever we say as freedom: freedom of choices, freedom of doing things; that is not freedom. That is just another word for living your own patterns.

Freedom is when you need nothing from Earth. Freedom is when you are free from your mind. If you understand that clearly, you have understood the whole tapestry. You have understood the whole thing. So when you are coming in contact, or when you are fully in contact with your own soul factor, then you see life in the whole picture, the whole frame, every life, and all the lifetimes together. That time you realise, if I miss the chance to get out of this drama, I’m stuck again. That’s the time when we realise this connection which you have received in the path of spirituality is worth millions, or it’s totally priceless. That’s the only real thing in Life.

Forget about the patterns and other things. You want to get married; you want to have children, a house, etc., all these are patterns. But look at the reality now. Look at the truth which you have come in contact with. The truth of being you, the truth to be you, connect to you, accept you, understand you, assimilate you, align you, be you and realise you. We call it self-realisation, and that is priceless. You cannot put a frame or a price to it. And the role of a master is to bring you to this awareness, not to force you into this awareness. No master will force you, why should they force you?

A true master will show you a mirror, “Look here, this is where you stand”. “Then where should I go?” – Into yourself. Which way? You connect to yourself through contemplation, understand yourself, and accept yourself. Acceptance is very important. You have to accept yourself with all your weaknesses and strengths. You have to feel yourself as you are and be yourself. This life is a golden chance. Do not chase the rainbows now because we have been chasing it always, in all the lifetimes. Now, we have got an opportunity to be aware that reality is at hands reach. We have come in contact with reality. And this is worth anything. That should be the first priority.

Destruction of patterns should be your first priority. But you can’t destroy something and stay empty. You got to catch something higher. How do you catch it? What will you catch? TRUTH. The Truth inside you; the truth is what you are catching. That truth is inside you. That’s the real you; the witness who needs nothing from Earth, nothing from anywhere. Beyond relationships, beyond time, space, beyond matters, materials, possessions, positions, this is you. You start connecting to that; you will see immense power happening inside you, overwhelming power.

Because you are free, you feel the power of freedom. It is great freedom to feel that power. That power is not to display to somebody, not to show off. The power is big, the power of beingness, the power of being you, you have nothing to prove on Earth. There’s nothing to prove; there is nothing to ask for or nothing to gain from Earth. Instead, you are giving the Earth all your brightness. Imagine, this is the truth of liberation. This is a liberated existence. If we understand that, we have understood everything. This is within you; it is not something which is kind of unreachable. It’s not a tall order. It’s within you. It’s you, connecting to you, assimilating you, aligning you and being you.

The connection with the master is to bring that spark, to light that fire. Then the fire catches, burns you and reduces you to yourself. All other things go away; all the patterns, concepts, everything burns into ashes. Then you become you. If this is really understood, you have understood everything. This opportunity is right at hand, and you have it. This Guru Poornima is the right day to think about it. Sage Vyasa, Vashishta, Saptarishis; everybody came to tell you this story, that human birth is extremely important. And in human birth, you have this opportunity to recognise, understand and assimilate your true self, the truth.

It’s not a linear existence. Life goes linear from birth till death, but that is only for the sake of experience. However, truth does not go linear. The truth remains vertical, always vertical. All the time, the truth remains the same. When you are a child, the truth is the same. When you are an adult, the truth is the same. In your old age, the truth is the same. Truth never changes. But in linear time, experiences changes, perception changes, body changes, mind changes, intellect changes, everything changes. And we confuse ourselves by thinking, “I am changing.” However, nothing is changing. You are the same, you cannot change, and truth cannot change.

So, if you’ve really understood this, you will start recognising the truth every moment. What you get out of it? – Immense stability, peace, tranquility, freedom. You will experience the real meaning of freedom only when you reach that state, where you are connected to the truth yesterday, today, tomorrow, and the day after. It doesn’t matter what your moods are, what your surroundings are, what your emotions are. Not a problem. Nothing matters. You could be anger, hatred, jealousy, lust, anything. Not a problem. It is a state of freedom. That’s exactly how great masters existed -consistent, stable, integrity, unchangeable because you are connecting to the unchangeable.

Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth

Proofread by Rekha Murali

How to feel Baba’s presence within

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 Baba’s teachings. Mohanji talks about feeling Baba’s presence within oneself and emphasizes on our ultimate aim of self-realization. 

If you have taken a life, concentrate on one thing – make sure that you do not come back. You are totally dissolved – body, mind, intellect, ego, spirit – all the memories, all the desires, all the things which probably bind you to earth – dissolve. Total dissolution happens. You become totally still and stable. Then you are Baba. You are connected to Baba. You are Baba. You have nothing to tell the world because when you are totally still and contented, there is nothing to tell the world.

I will tell you about my experience. In my sadhana, when I was practising, I used to practice very intensely and I never used to tell my practice to the world. As I said in one of the earlier videos, my practice was connecting to myself. So, basically, for all of us, we have to explore ourselves. One point – “Tat Tvam Asi” – You Are That. In that point, first, you contemplate – ‘manana’ – contemplate within, deep within, and find yourself in every aspect. You will find yourself in a thousand, or ten thousand aspects, or a million aspects. Find all that and understand they are all different aspects of one Consciousness. Then you assimilate them. It took about 5 – 6 years for me.

Every day from 3 am to 8 am, I used to sit and connect to myself. I used to connect to my spine. I used to assimilate myself. Eventually, I could go deep and deep into the world of noises, the core of noises, which is silence. We are in a world of noises, and we are contributing to the world of noises every moment. But there is a source for all these noises. Where have these noises come from? – Absolute silence. So you need to get back to the original source, the core, and that’s silence. 

When you go deeper and deeper into the core of noises, you will finally reach the world of silence, where there are no noises. All the noises like waves come out of it, and they go back to it and you are stillness. It took time for me to settle down, and so many things broke up at that time: physically, emotionally, intellectually, all the concepts broke, so many things broke. At that time it’s not very comfortable, because actually, we are a bundle of sounds, noises, a bundle of concepts, bundle of desires, a bundle of phobias and fears, bundle of so many things… But we have to completely accept them, leave them alone, and then they go away, and finally, you’re settled in silence. After a while, when you are settled in silence and you are fully in that mode, you feel oneness with every Master. 

Then there is no Sai Baba separate from you. We are one with him. I’m not saying, “I am Sai Baba.” Sai Baba is an incarnation whom we call Sai Baba. We don’t even know his name. We don’t know where he came from, and it doesn’t matter. Because, as far as a Saint, a powerful Avadhoota or Avatar is concerned, his delivery, what he delivered to this world and what he is delivering to this world, is the only value. That’s about it. Because where he was born, who were his parents, who were his brother/sister, has no value, because that’s all connected to an incarnation. It’s not the incarnation we are talking about. It’s the contribution we are talking about.

So the contribution has value. The contribution is what we see today. Why we are talking today is because of his contribution. He unified all of us. He made a Sai Baba family. That’s more important. That’s the most relevant thing in Sai Baba’s contribution. That means he united all the people, all of us, beyond caste, creed, country, culture, and colour. That is the value. That exactly is the value. That is his contribution. That’s what we connect to. 

When you are in total stillness, total silence, you connect to that aspect of Baba, where the only purpose of his incarnation is representing the Supreme Consciousness on Earth. That is the purpose of his incarnation, and you connect to that.

When you connect to that, everything else becomes insignificant – where he was living, where he was born, where he left his body… it’s all insignificant. Shirdi becomes a point of contact, a connecting point. The body of Baba, the film, the image that we connect to, that becomes a kind of the point of contact, a reference point, where you only see Consciousness – pure brightness, brighter than a million suns. That is brightness, and that becomes you. You become that.

In this whole drama of life, we have to be in that stillness aspect. When you see all these noises, when you experience all these noises, you need to go into the core, that stillness, from which all these have come. That’s where you find Baba. That’s the only place where you really, really find Baba.

Not in places, not in images, not in any aspect which is seemingly visual. It’s not that. You have to feel the energy, you have to feel within, and then you realise that you and Baba are one. One person asked me in an interview, he asked me a question “If you are dying tonight, what will be the last thing you would do?” I said, “I’ll sleep”. That’s all you can do. Actually, the whole idea that we have to do so many things itself is a mirage. It’s an illusion.

It’s happening through us. When you’re totally surrendered to Baba, whatever is happening through us, that’s the reality. Just surrender. Just do what you have to do in this world, without expecting anything. Expectations are the reason for disappointments. When we have too many expectations, we will have too many disappointments.

So, expectations have to be put in its place, and we do our job with pure intention, with clarity, with surrender. And then we know that we are one with this Consciousness called Sai Baba. And that’s powerful, unfathomable, tangible, and real. Then when you go to Shirdi you may not even have to enter the Dvarkamai or enter Samadhi, but you will feel Baba right there.

Even if you don’t go to Shirdi, if you think about Shirdi, or think about Sai Baba, you will get the same stillness inside, which is Baba – who needed nothing from Earth, who needed nothing from anybody. Whatever he collected, he gave away the same day. That means He always remained empty. Even a thought comes in, goes out. That means the mind is empty. No information stays, intellect is empty. No ownership, the ego is empty. Your whole unit is empty.

That’s power, and that’s exactly what is SAI BABA.

Know more about Mohanji at Mohanji.org

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopal

Faith in your inner Guru – on healing the Earth

Questioner: Who is a Guru? I’ve heard a guru is like a GPS. Can we progress without a Guru?

Mohanji: Thank you very much for inviting me and thank you very much for this opportunity. My gratitude to the Healing Our Earth team and all of you.

About the question about guru – I follow the tradition of Lord Dattatreya who had 24 gurus. When somebody asked Dattatreya, “Who are you?”, he said, “I am just a worshipper of nature”. So, the fundamental is that anything and everything around us is teaching us something. And the greatest and the highest Guru is life itself – life gives you lessons.

And if you consider 24 hours, we have three distinct dimensions that we go through without any choice:

1) One is the waking state where we interact with the world outside. We gather experiences and we project ourselves into the world (and as per our projection we get experiences).

2) Then we enter into a state of the dreams, the dream state where we completely shut off the world outside, close the eyes and then go within the world inside. Then what we process here is from what we have collected and stored.

3) Then that is also shut down when we enter into a deep sleep state where we completely nullify all the experiences.

So when awareness is connected to the physical level, we have the waking state.

When awareness is connected to mind-matter (which is mind, intellect, and ego where mind processes emotions, intellect processes information and ego processes things connected to ownership), when we connect to that mind-matter and become fully immersed in that, then what comes alive is what is stored by these faculties inside.

And then we connect to the consciousness aspect when we have deep sleep, and we don’t know whether we are a man or a woman. We don’t know the time or space, we are completely not accessible to this world, and we don’t have the world to access.

We take a rebirth again every morning – we come back. So we go through this process, almost like a pattern. And then we decide that we are this personality that we have projected in the world.  We are also trying to figure out what we are in this world, based on our positions and possessions.

So at some point in time, we realize that this is not really giving us the whole satisfaction – we are actually roaming around for pleasures.

At some point in time we realize there is something permanent and perpetual. That’s a time when we start associating – that the first level of physical, second level of mind-matter and then the third level of consciousness : that it has got these three states, we start thinking about it. It is called manana, not dhyana (meditation), it’s contemplation. That is why various masters have time and again repeated that it is important to contemplate, not meditate. Meditation will happen spontaneously but contemplation is very, very important. The more you contemplate, the more you realize that there is somebody witnessing the whole show. And then it is a quest for knowing who is the permanent, unshakable witnessing this whole show and is always unattached. So this question happens inside. And then we start going within. And it’s an inner journey, it’s definitely not an outside journey.

So as far as the tradition that I follow is concerned, you’ve got to find yourself, and that’s the whole thing. When the student asked the teacher, “I can’t really understand all these scriptures – Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Shrutis, Smritis, and 33 crore Gods! I can’t really go through all this. I can’t understand. Tell me in one word what this whole story is”.

The teacher said,  “YOU! You are the whole story. Tat Tvam Asi”. (You are that)

Then the quest is to find this You, who is actually making all this experience possible.  That’s the way the connection happens.

So the Dattatreya tradition has great masters like Sai Baba who everybody knows.  He lived as a fakir and a Sufi saint. And though he was living in one place, his energy and power radiated in several places. As a perfect avadhoota, he had fully turned inward the faculties like mind, intellect and ego, and started  finding himself. And then he finally found the soul aspect, the atma tattva, stabilized there and settled down. Then what you see outside is your own reflection everywhere. So all the leaves, plants, trees, people, animals, birds, everything gives you a lesson. Because you see yourself in everything. And then you become one with the whole universe. So this is the guru principle that we are talking about.

Guru is definitely not just a human being. Of course we talk about Lord Krishna, as jagath (world) guru. Definitely because he lived the detachment. What he lived for is valid even now, because he was in everything and he was in nothing. Perfect detachment. So like that, there have been masters who time and again came and displayed the possibility of existing without boundaries and full freedom.

Freedom means freedom from the senses and mind, not freedom of the senses. We have misunderstood this concept too much. When we talk about freedom, we talk about freedom to do anything we like to do or to say whatever we like, that in society we can be ourselves as we are. That is not freedom. That is just an expression of patterns. What freedom is, is the freedom from senses and mind where we do not have any kind of binding to anything around. So this is exactly the freedom which the masters have lived, and expressed.

Now when you talk about guru principle, the job of the guru was to live it and the job of the disciple was to connect to that principle of freedom and walk towards it, inside. Go within and find yourself. So this takes time. In my earlier days, I used to go to the Himalayas quite often when I was working in a company as well. And I was trying to find out this me and it took a long time. I did not have a personal guru at that time, but I connected to my spine – being aware of the spine when I’m walking, when I’m doing things, I’m still aware of the spine. And then automatically things started shifting, awareness started shifting, it took me many years. But the point I’m trying to tell is that if you really want to find your guru, you have to find yourself. If you have found yourself, you found the guru. Then everything around is your guru.  All the gurus brighten up when you brighten up. So this is already sitting inside. So that is why Tat Tvam Asi has a lot of value. That means, this is the fundamental principle of all the scriptures. If everything were put together and crushed and a juice made out of it all, you get one thing called You. That is the final thing you can get.

When we walk this path, don’t think it will be easy – because our patterns have become too strong. We have been used to so many things, we have been literally entertaining ourselves and our patterns for a long period of time. And we have forgotten that we are bound by patterns, bound by concepts, bound by prejudices. When we look at a person we decide that we don’t like him, or we like him. This is all connected to how we see the world. Basically, there are no enemies, there are no friends, it’s just as it is, and the world is as it is. We all have our space, we all have our relevance, our activity, we have to do something here and all that we are doing is projecting ourselves to the world and getting it back. That is what we are doing. But once you start assimilating yourself, once you find yourself, then you stop projecting, as there’s nothing to project. Instead you start reflecting like a mirror, you will be like a mirror. When somebody comes in front, you reflect that without prejudices, without expectations, without any kind of flavors – as it is. So that makes you a perfect master, total reflection. That is why great masters like Haidakhan Baba said, “When you come to me with anger, I become anger. When you come to me with love, I become love”. That means that you do not have flavors to project, instead you are being a reflection of the whole world, and that is a very sincere reflection, there’s no flavor. And that is consistent, no change. So when you become like that, you become like a huge magnet because you have no flavors. You become every flavor, you are everybody, you’re everything! There is no discrimination, you see the atma tattva in everything, the soul particle, the soul aspect factor which is in all things, and you connect to that – no barrier. So this is exactly what the soul principle is. And that is exactly what the guru principle is.

On Guru Purnima day, all I would like to tell you that whatever you are searching for is already within. And when you realize that, it is called self-realization. The realization is only of what you already have and what you realize at some point in time is that you have it. So that’s very simple, and all you need to do to achieve that is to spend time with yourself, not in books, not in rituals, not in activities, not with people. You’ve got to find time for yourself, assimilate yourself. For all that you need to accept yourself. Most of us have a big problem accepting ourselves. We judge ourselves, criticize ourselves, we doubt ourselves. And that creates the distance between ourselves and us. We find it difficult to come within because our acceptance is conditional for ourselves. And then the same thing gets reflected in society – you don’t accept everybody, then we don’t accept situations either. And then we sometimes have a lot of opinions. The world is full of opinions, but we have to go beyond opinions and realize the truth. Opinions are flavored because they are situational, and they are a play of duality. But reality is totally detached from opinions. So we got to really cut out all this, these kind of fringes. And then you come inside. And then you feel okay : ‘I’m complete as it is, I’m unique. I’m neither higher, nor lower or equal to anybody. I’m unique, and this is exactly what I’m supposed to express in this world, nothing more’. And then you start connecting to yourself.

So total acceptance is the first step, and complete liberation is the result. Thank you very much.

Questioner: My god, that was so enlightening. My eyes were glued on your eyes, trying to focus on this message.  My question for others. Freedom from senses and mind is one of the most difficult things to go through. How would you recommend this for individuals to go through?

Mohanji: Thanks very much. The first step is always acceptance, self-acceptance, self-respect, self-love. See, the most criticized person in our life is ourselves by ourselves! We judge ourselves, we compare ourselves, and we criticize ourselves when we try to compete with other people, and then we dilute our uniqueness in that way, and that’s the detrimental factor. We say – I am not good enough because of X number of reasons – this is not true.

We are good enough, we are unique. Nobody is like us. Our thumb impression is unique to ourselves and our retina is unique to ourselves, and we are unique creations. This has to be accepted, the first and primary step. And that is the moment we start accepting ourselves, we stop competing and stop comparing. Then we start connecting with ourselves with wonder, like a child. Like you know, when a small child is given a toy. The child will be playing, touching the toy and feeling the toy and literally  enjoying the toy for a long time. And then it really is fully occupied, full concentration Like that, we have to accept ourselves as a unique creation and start experiencing ourselves with wonder, not as somebody in the society (that is only when we are awake).

There are two things to understand: one is pratheethi and the other is anubhoothi.

Pratheethi means we open our eyes and we see things outside and we connect to those things, and we have an experience.

Anubhoothi means even if you close your eyes, you have that experience inside, you don’t need an object. For example, when you wake up in the morning and you say, ‘Oh, I’m happy, I slept well’, there was no material, there was no person, there was no interaction, but still you’re happy. So we realize that for happiness, you don’t really have to interact with the world. So that kind of awareness takes you to yourself and you start exploring that aspect of yourself. This is all simple awareness that we should have. Awareness.  Bodh!

Awareness is the key, when you are aware of yourself and you accept : the 2 A’s (acceptance, awareness.) You do that all the time – when you’re working, when you’re traveling, when you’re sitting in one place, when you’re interacting, just be aware of how you are, what you are, and be fascinated by yourself. So then after a while, you will be fully connected to yourself, and you will be very much linked and happy with yourself. See, all our frustrations, anxieties, insecurities everything is connected to the world outside – all of them will have no value anymore, because we have a lot to see and a lot to feel inside.

And that’s the way we come inside. There are techniques defined by various traditions such as concentrating on the heartbeat, concentrating on the breath, and also assimilating, you are controlling, the pranayama kind of stuff. All those things are there. Anything which is suitable for you is good for you. That’s no problem. But fundamentally, everything should start with acceptance. And there you go, and then be aware. When you’re angry, be aware of the anger, when you’re jealous, be aware of the jealousy. Always be aware but do nothing about it. When you’re constantly being aware, already your witness. You’re taking a step backwards and seeing it. When you are seeing it, that thing loses its intensity. When you are experiencing anger and you’re witnessing the anger, the anger will happen, but you are not angry. This is the difference. So when you take one step backwards and start looking at it, you know that you are actually powerful, you’re not a victim of all these emotions. Instead, you are experiencing all these emotions and you’re still the same, you are completely a witness. This is possible. It takes time, but the first foremost step is acceptance. That is why I keep insisting on acceptance because if we don’t accept yourself; society will not accept us. So this is as simple as that. When you look at the whole society, so many people love you so many people hate you – so you have an element of non-acceptance, which is getting reflected. Whatever you get from society is your own projections. And when that projection ends, then you become a reflection, then the society loves you because they only see themselves in you, they don’t see you. So, there you become lovable. You’re one with the world. You’re part of the world, part of the universe in fact. Everybody enjoys your presence because you are Brightness. You’re like a mirror!!

Questioner: That was a very strong answer! Something I picked up from there was self-recognition, self-appreciation, self-approval. It is so vital to do that, to actually recognize yourself that you are the person you are. That’s awesome. Now it’s interesting, this philosophy, this concept is amazing. I will read the message. I will take home this message. However, to live this message on a day-to-day basis : how strongly do you feel the power of association is? Because if you engage with like-minded people who think this philosophy, live this philosophy, breathe this philosophy, it’s that much easier to be with them in order to think that. Now, can you reflect your message on a day-to-day basis?  What to do, how can we make this a part of our life, our breath?

Mohanji: There are two parts to this question; one I feel that we should not detach from anything that comes our way, we must accept. Because when we detach, there are two things happening: one is suppression, other is escapism, and these two are equal to postponement. We should not postpone – we are postponing to some other time. When fears happen, we look into the eyes of fears. When situations happen, accept them. Some situations may not be very easy to accept. If you don’t accept, they hang on, they stay, they persist. So whatever we resist, persists. So I always recommend acceptance in everything: ‘Come, come, we look into the eyes. Bring it on.’ And that makes you free, liberated, because you’re not hiding from anything. You’re not avoiding things, you’re not escaping nor are you trying to manipulate things. It is as it is. We are taking it, as it is.

And secondly, often we can’t avoid many situations in life. For example, workplace situations – one can’t change them. So, being yourself there is the right answer. And always one thing in every situation, we do not have to respond. There are two ways you can interact with a situation. One is to react emotionally, which we usually do – egotistically, emotionally. And the result is usually regret or guilt. Or the other way is to respond using the intellect and just take it easy, take a foot back and look at it and then respond with awareness, and with intellect so that it will not create emotions. These are the two major ways we can interact with society. I always recommend responding, not reacting. Reacting always leaves some bad residue, which is not good. So if you constantly respond, and you have your time, your space and you respond, then you are always light and free. And then you do not have to handle so much of the hangover of regrets or guilt. So that itself saves a lot of time, because we have to handle a lot of all these kinds of things.

So in this society, whatever happens, let it happen. We are not trying to change it. We can’t change it. So we interact in our social life, in our family life, in business life – it’s all one life, but in all the situations we are playing different roles. And in those roles, just be ourselves, keep responding. And our equilibrium, our inner stability, our peace quotient is very vital for us. The peace quotient, and that’s inside us, we already have it. Peace is a state of the soul. Soul is always peaceful whatever emotions we go through. In turbulences, and similar situations, the soul is not affected. So we are coming in contact with our inner core all the time. Or just be reminded that there is a situation inside, which is completely unaffected and try to imitate it. And then we respond and not react. And this is also connected to ownership a lot. Means we own our actions that” I do this , I do this” , this I factor is sometimes very painful. So instead, like what Krishna said, in the Gita,

Yadaa yadaa hi dharmasya
glaanir bhavati bhaarata
abhyutthaanam adharmasya
tadatmaanam srjaamyaham

That is what He said: “I happen”.  He did not say, “I take birth”. “I happen”, He says.

Life is about happening. Happening means you are actually happening, or life is as it takes place; not that we have created it. There is of course a history for everything, something has produced a situation and something will happen to the situation; there will be a result, but at the same time everything is sprouting. So we understand that. And we assimilate that, and we accept that. We are not the owner of the action. Ownership of action creates pain, disappointments and also karma. If there’s no ownership, the karmic structure is different. When you do not own it and you are surrendered, (like kaayena vaaccha manasendriyairvaa). And there you are detached from your action, and you’re flowing through.  When you are flowing through, you are always free.

And that is what Vyasa said when he ate all the sweets, which the Brajvaasis (residents of Braja) had brought. The Yamuna River was overflowing and Krishna was on the other side. The Brajvaasis said, “We want to cross to the other side but can’t go as no boatman will take us, because the river is overflowing”. Vyasa asked, “What did you bring for Krishna?” They showed him all the sweets and he started eating them. They were embarrassed to tell him not to eat because he was Vyasa. And then Vyasa said, ”Come with me”, and when they reached the shore, he said, “If I have not eaten anything, let the river part”. And the river parted. The Brajwasis went to the other side but were surprised as they knew Vyasa had eaten all the sweets in front of them. Finally they found Krishna sleeping on a bench in the garden, and they waited. And Krishna got up and asked them, “What did you bring?” So they said all these things. Krishna said, “Sorry I can’t eat them because my stomach is full after eating the same things a little while ago”. That means when Vyasa was consuming it, he was offering it to Krishna,   and though it was going into the mouth of Vyasa, it was going into the stomach of Krishna. So this is exactly the point.

The point is that if you are absolutely, completely surrendered to existence, then karma cannot take place. The other side I’m saying is that, when we know that everything is happening in life, and you are completely floating through it, like you’re cruising, there will be turbulences, but it doesn’t matter – the ownership and the pain connected will not be present.

Questioner: This was an amazing tip that you’ve given, and this is why they say that we need a guru who can guide us properly so these are some amazing tips that you should share, thank you very much for sharing !!

Transcribed by Padmini Ravikumar

Proofread by Geetha Iyer

The Consequences of Disobeying Sai Baba

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 reminds us that Sai Baba’s words are the pure expression of Supreme Consciousness, and talks about the consequences of disobeying Him.

A Master who operate from Pure Consciousness (when I say ‘Master’, that means a person who has already dissolved his mind or somebody who has gone beyond the nirvichaar samaadhi – that means the no-thought state), when such a Master  gives a command or when he suggests something, it’s from pure Consciousness, because there is no vested interest, there’s no agenda. And we have so many examples of that in Sai Satcharita. Various devotees have written separately as well about Baba telling something, and when they did not follow that, dire consequences happened. This is for sure, because Baba is talking from Pure Consciousness: “Yes, do it” ,”No, don’t do it.” That’s coming from clear, clear Consciousness, so the words are with absolute clarity. It’s not from the mind. Mind can give distorted views. That’s what we see in the world today, the things which we read are all opinions.

Most of the things given in the newspaper and in the media – they are all opinions – and they don’t have lasting value. But those that come from clear Consciousness have lasting value, they have permanence. So when a Master like Sai Baba instructs something and it is not followed, the loss is to ourselves. If we don’t follow, it’s our loss. Several times I have observed that various Masters have given absolute clarity to people, that have even been reasons to avert wars and bloodshed and so many different things, even things which will affect a society or a country. But what happens is that the human mind comes into play, we start analysing – “Oh, the Master said this! Why did He say that? What is the reason?“

Analysis has no value here. What comes from Pure Consciousness cannot be analysed, and when we analyse, we do not even understand!  That is why when a person had an upset stomach, Baba gave him peanuts. Peanuts are not good for that state, but he got cured. That’s exactly coming from the Consciousness. And the command, the intention, the purity of intention, the strength of intention – that brings forth a change in the person, at a physical level, emotional level, intellectual level, spiritual level, any level, there is a change.

So if we have really understood Baba, we should assimilate what He has been telling. And there are so many examples in our life; when we open the Satcharita and read, we can get some information. Sometimes, or mostly, Baba shows the page to read. If you just open the page, the right page will come. And when you read it, then you get an answer. And that answer should be executed with faith.

Here, there are two things. One – the analysis often takes the faith away. If you have deep faith, that automatically opens or clears the blockages. Many times, we have severe blockages inside. We do not trust well. We do not trust ourselves, we do not trust the Master, and sometimes we do not trust the suggestions also. Then the Master is not responsible. His job is done. He told you what to do. And if you did not do it, the Master is not responsible anymore. It’s like a physician prescribing a medicine for a cure. And if you did not trust the physician, nor the medicine, nor yourself, you may not consume it,  and the disease stays, the ailment stays.

Just like that, in our life we should first and foremost, have faith in ourselves. Clear faith in ourselves. So that your awareness opens up, and with that opened awareness, you connect to a Master. And when you assimilate the information, you will always be guided well – the path will be clear, destination will be clear, journey will be clear. This is how it works.

Why then are we connecting to a Master, to Sai Baba ? The very, very basic reason is  our opportunity for an increased awareness, which takes suffering away.

Suffering is a misunderstanding, suffering means we are resisting something in life. Suffering is that we did not understand, or we did not accept an event or an experience. But pain will be there, because we have a body. The body will have all its ups and downs, its ageing and all the factors connected to any body. But suffering – suffering is our choice, it’s our state.

Pain without suffering is a state, it is a sign of a state of higher elevation. Baba had pain. Once somebody threw a stone at Baba. He had an injury, blood was coming. Then people said, “Oh, Baba, you’re injured!” He said, “Injury is here, pain is not here, pain is there!” (pointing to God)  That means He did not even connect to His body – somebody threw a stone, and they will pay the price for it.

So if somebody abuses us, we don’t have to worry – they will pay the price. The people who abuse us will pay the price. Somebody praises us, again, it is their pleasure. We don’t have anything to do with it. So we will reach a level of equilibrium where nothing can touch us. We are stable, in a way.

If people come to see you, you’re happy. If people do not come to see you, you’re still happy. That means our dependency level in this world becomes so low and so reduced, that our stability can never be affected. Otherwise our dependency, our expectation, our need and desire, all these things will pile up and then we become a burden to ourselves. Like we may walk, very tired and there’ll be no lightness.

So a Master of the calibre of Sai Baba is brimming lightness, brimming light, brightness. That is because He had nothing to do with this world. He came as an expression of Supreme Consciousness and lived, and He lives on as an expression of Supreme Consciousness. This understanding should be very clear for every devotee of Baba, so that your connection with Baba will be your highest experience of this existence. Because you will know that this is your opportunity to reach the highest in this existence.

And please understand – nobody else is Sai Baba. Sai Baba is Sai Baba. Everybody is their own incarnation. Every person who is born will also die. So don’t compare one with the other, there cannot be a comparison possible. You cannot compare yourself with another, nor another with another. These are all separate incarnations.

You can connect to everybody. You should connect to everybody, equally. Never criticise, judge, or compare, for the mind will become contaminated. Instead, purify the mind through good actions, good thoughts, good words, good expressions, and then life will be a life blessed by Baba.

 

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic

Proofread by Geetha Iyer

 

 

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ASK THE MASTERS

Shlloka: We are kick starting, Ask The Masters. It was a long time coming. And it is such a privilege to have all of you here. I am Shlloka, your host and with a lot of pleasure, I introduce my co-host, Dr. Nidhi Kumar.

Dr. Nidhi Kumar is the lead anchor for Doordarshan. She’s a rubicon of journalism, very iconic and she has been championing various social causes and spiritual emancipation at many levels. And this is one such initiative. I would also like to mention our co-host “Mystics of India”. Mystics of India is a platform which endorses spirituality. And it talks about the tales of mystics through their platform. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge our partners for this episode – Mohanji Foundation. It’s truly a blessing to have you associated with us through this medium and with our first episode. So thank you to all of you for joining…

Dr. Nidhi Kumar: Thank you, Shlloka. And before we introduce Mohanji, it’s time to greet all our viewers here. Namaste, Sairam and welcome, as we kick start the first episode of ‘Ask The Masters’ and go inwards.

By the way, a few questions. Did you know?

• 70% of the content online is pornographic
• India is the hub of student suicide in the world.
• You know what is trending on Google these days? How to cope with anxiety, depression and stress!

These rates are off the roofs. The initiative is to challenge the strength. We can do better and we will do better. The intention is to shift people from ill-being to well-being at the touch of a button. And hopefully, by the end of the series, you would have the solutions that you need to have, to have a happier, healthier life. I now request Shlloka to introduce Mohanji.

Shlloka: So who is Mohanji? This is my first time hosting any event, so I was reading a little bit about him on his website. The core of who he is, is that he is a renowned humanitarian who is focusing on positive human values that we can add in this world and without expectation, through our existence.

But what struck me the most was that Mohanji does not exist. This really caught me because the description that I read was him being an everyday man. So what is it about Mohanji that makes so many people gravitate towards him? It is the fact that he does not exist! And whenever anything does not exist, it doesn’t have a frame, it doesn’t have dimensions, it doesn’t have personalities, it doesn’t have qualities. It is empty, there is nothingness. And because of this emptiness, Mohanji becomes a doorway for something bigger and larger to happen through him.

Mohanji, it is such a pleasure and privilege for a seeker to be associated with you and be in your midst. So thank you for gracing the occasion.

Mohanji: Thank you so much.

Shlloka: We have people joining in from all across the globe. And the first thing that I would like to ask you is about your spiritual journey. What led you to this? What got you started, can you talk a little bit about that?

Mohanji: Well, after going through all phases of life – the different phases, physical, emotional, intellectual, the many phases that we go through, right from childhood, (and mostly unconsciously, because we don’t know we have shifted to various levels), at some point in time, this question comes to you. What exactly are you looking for? Since I had been working in the shipping industry earlier, I could taste whatever money could buy. But it wasn’t happiness. So I was literally searching for happiness for a long period of time. I used to go to the Himalayas often. Whenever I used to get leave, I flew to the Himalayas. But the problem was that when I went back, I couldn’t carry the Himalayas with me!

So at one point in time, I started asking myself, “Is this really what you want to do?” When you have time you’re going to a place and that place has peace. But you’re not carrying that peace with you. So you need to find peace amongst all activities or amidst everything. So that’s when I literally started focusing on myself. And it continued for a long time, about five or six years of deep penetration. My path was very simple. I didn’t have a guru. So I was literally connecting to my spine and just switching off from the front-orientedness.

We are generally front-oriented, because all our sensors are in the front and we tend to go to the front and hence everything is front-oriented. That is how we are made. Usually we don’t even think about our spine in our daily life because we don’t have to, unless there is back pain. I simply tried to connect to my spine, started feeling my spine and that literally took me inside – meaning I used to connect to my spine and breathe through the spine, etc.

Even if you just remember your spine, you will know that your connection has gone to your third eye. This was my practice and it took some time. From the world of sounds which I was totally involved in, like everybody else, I started going into the core of sounds which is silence. Like the ocean, from where the waves are coming out and going back to the ocean, all noises come out of silence and they go back to silence. So I could go down deeper and deeper after a lot of effort. Don’t think it’s easy, because it takes time, and because we are used to sounds. We are used to noises. And we think it’s natural for us to be in the noises. I was one of the noises in the world of noises.

But then 3 am to 8 am was my time. The rest of the time I had sold for money because I was working. So from 3am to 8am, I used to focus on myself, on the spine, and then go deeper. Silence used to be in the form of less thoughts initially, and no thoughts eventually. Once I touched silence, I realised I didn’t need to go anywhere. So in the midst of activity, I could penetrate to the world of silence. Then later I came back to the world of noises as silence. That was the difference. That’s why Shlloka said a little bit earlier that I don’t exist, because I don’t exist as a noise. I exist as silence which is probably not so visible. You have got to have the ‘eyes’ to really see that, but that was fine with me. Everybody need not connect because many people connect to the world of noises easily but silence is very difficult. From the world of noises to the world of silence was the transition for me. And that created Mohanji.

Shlloka: The iconic Mohanji as we say.

Nidhi: Absolutely! We resonate with your views. Because the purpose of ‘Ask the Masters’ is to go inwards and introspect, especially in these quarantined times/ lockdown times. However a lot of people are very stressed because of the current situation and there’s a lot of anxiety in their minds.

In the present times people are suffering both on macro and micro levels. On the macro level, people are losing their jobs. They are starving. And on the mental level, some of them are going through a lot of hell. There’s a lot of mental abuse happening as we speak and the statistics are quite alarming. Then there is domestic violence also on a different front. On a micro level, people are stressed, angered and their relationships are actually getting strained. How do we tackle this suffering?

Mohanji: I would say don’t try to tackle situations, instead tackle yourself. That’s the right thing to tackle. Because externally, we do not have control over various things since we are only participants. However, internally we can control everything. This is a God-given time, to be ourselves; to really penetrate within and understand this thing called ‘us’.

You have got to really take time and look at your structure and try to segregate yourself and say, “Okay, this anger, agitation, confusion, insecurity etc. is not me.” You can take various aspects like, “I’m not the anger, I’m not the hatred. I’m not the comparison” etc. and start detaching yourself from all that you are not. All these emotions are connected to the world outside.

In actuality, the world for us is only after we wake up. There is no world for us when we sleep. So the world that we are talking about i.e the people, materials, time, space etc. is only when we are awake. When we are sleeping or when we are dreaming, we don’t have that world. Hence we should understand “What are WE amongst or amidst this world?” We should then try to understand yourselves in that context. The moment you start recognising who you are, you will start witnessing yourself in the whole situation. You will not be JUST a participant, you will be a reliable or a relevant participant – meaning, you will actually tend to add value to the situation.

Many times I feel we don’t have to speak. Silence is a good idea. We don’t have to react, speak or get involved every time, but we do it habitually. It’s our habit. If somebody calls us by a bad name or bad thing, we react immediately. But we don’t have to. We can just watch that person venting the anger and becoming calm after that. So in many places, we don’t need interference. If we are able to see that in ourselves, and we look at the world, like a mirror, I think most of these things can be sorted out.

Second point, we should try not to analyse situations. In general, we have a deep wish to know why something happened. We always try to put the blame on somebody or blame the situation. And it costs us a lot of time, stress and also spoils our mind. But as human beings we do have our (limited) life – if we live 80 years, it’s only 29,200 days, it’s not a lot of days. By the time we realise we have lived, we are (almost) dead. So in this lifetime, we have the right to be happy and content. We can’t and we should not give that possibility or that key to somebody. WE should keep that key.

That’s why I say, “Any situations in life are only a reminder that they exist and that’s an experience.” So apart from the experience point of view, we should not interfere. I’m not saying that you need to be an escapist. You be there. But be there as stillness or an icon of peace, where you do not have to react. You say, “Okay, this is the situation. We’ll talk about it, let’s sort it out”. Then, we try to help them come out of it. Just as we clear a roadblock. This is possible for us. We can all be policemen sometime, but non-interfering policemen.

Dr. Nidhi Kumar: Yes, like you said we need to handle these kinds of situations with a lot more equanimity.

Question: How to be positive, healthy, stable, peaceful and relaxed in such challenging times like the one currently? What is going to be the duration of this situation? How long do we need to stay stressed and why are we stressed? How do we be positive?

Mohanji: Being stressed is our choice, but being observant and being calm in any situation is our right. We can be very easy and non-stressed. But have we observed what brings this stress? Number one is expectation. We have a lot of expectations everyday – from the time we wake up in the morning.

Today I heard something – the time between when you wake up and when you get out of the bed is your amount of success; that means if you wake up and still lie down without getting up, it means you have earned laziness – meaning your success rate is affected. So this is something to think about. I would say, “Be purposeful”.

Also understand that situations are probably not engineered by us. A situation happened – it was given to us. What can we do in this peripheral? We have time, space, certain awareness, certain intelligence and certain people involved. In this context, we have to act. You can actually imagine that you are an actor playing a role. You can really play the role very well. So, this is your option.

In the current condition, Nature has told you: “You have no control”. An invisible particle has created a lot of havoc amongst us (the visible particle, for we are visible in this world). An invisible thing (we don’t even know what a virus looks like) has actually created a scare in the whole world. And it put everybody indoors. In this context, we need to spend time to understand and assimilate ourselves. It’s a very good time for us to know how we react to situations. Because this kind of thing has not happened in the last 200 years as far as I know, or probably ever since mankind started. We have a God-given opportunity.

There is a lot of stress connected to finances, stress connected to activity, stress connected to choices, we can’t travel (movement) etc. All the stresses have come together. And secondly, we may have to live together with people we really do not like, for example: our relatives and friends etc. in one space and being forced to see them. So this is something which is giving added stress.

Now you have every chance to re-wind yourself, recycle yourself, reset yourself. This chance should be well used. This is what I feel. And then there are so many methods and practices which great masters have given us including pranayama, the hyper-ventilations, connecting to yourself through certain meditations etc. But contemplation (manana) is very good. Manana makes a Maanav – this means that one who is able to think and contemplate, is a human being (man).

So we have a lot of opportunities to penetrate and contemplate: “Is that me?” Like Adi Shankara said….

Mano buddhi ahankara chittani naaham

Na cha shrotra jihve na cha ghraana netre

Na cha vyoma bhumir na tejo na vaayuhu

Chidananda rupah shivo’ham shivo’ham

But the point is that you can actually think, “Am I the body? Am I the intellect? Am I the ego? Am I the Spirit? What are we?”

So this will really make you fully collected and composed. And the moment you start realising you are very powerful, that you’re completely the universe, you will stop looking at the whole world through a keyhole. You will realise that you have the opportunity to see the whole universe. The moment you understand this, there ends the story. Then there is no stress for you anymore. There is no confusion, there is no agony, anxiety, anger, etc. It will all leave because you very well know that we are the universe and that nothing outside can touch us actually. Unless we are only external, then we get beaten up. In other words, we give the remote control of our happiness in somebody else’s hands, like neighbours or friends or relatives. Keep the remote control with you and use it wisely.

Question: I get scared very easily. I am scared of death basically or scared of what could happen to me.

Mohanji: Faith is the antidote for fear. Whenever we have fear, we understand that faith is lacking. So firstly, it should be the faith in ourselves; faith, not on something outside because your own personal Guru is inside. When you connect to yourself and assimilate yourself; when you understand that body, mind, intellect, ego, spirit, it is all within and that our body is just a case (shell), we start connecting to ourselves. Then we will feel peaceful.

As I said, first you have to have faith in yourself. You are born and you have a space here, you have relevance here. So in this relevance and space, you do what you can, within your given capacity. You don’t have to compare, you don’t have to compete. There is nothing to compete or to compare with. You are being yourself and that is exactly your contribution to this world. So whenever you feel fear, understand that fear has no basis. Fear is like a shadow where light exists. So connect to the light, which is you. Then you can connect to any guru, any master, any god which you like to follow.

But essentially, it’s all about you. The whole spirituality is about you. “Tat Tvam Asi – You Are That”. That is exactly what the great masters have said. Over a period of time, you have been trying to find yourself. This is the only point here. If we understand this, there is no confusion. But if you are chasing something and if you don’t get it, there is disappointment. Please remember that when we have found ourselves, there is nothing anymore to find. This finding ourselves needs time, and we have to accept ourselves. Acceptance is very important. Most of the time, we don’t accept ourselves even if others accept us. That’s where the problem lies. If somebody has an opinion about us, we buy it and think it is real, and that it is true, then we have stopped accepting ourselves.

We all have weaknesses, we all have strengths. We all have everything. We are a mixture. Nobody is higher or lower, not even equal. We are all unique. We should remember that we are a unique creation and this uniqueness is what we are giving to this world. The world may accept it or reject it. That is not our problem. We are existing today. This is the real celebration – that we are alive. This life is the celebration and this presence is the celebration. When you remember this, there will be no fear. Fear cannot exist together with light. Darkness cannot exist together with light. Fear cannot exist together with faith.

Dr. Nidhi Kumar: As you said, I’d like to reiterate the same thing….O Light of Exceptional Glory, enlighten the darkness of our minds, for dark is the path and you hold this light. The next question is..

“I am a stay at home mom and I wish to work again. I do not know what career to choose and do not know how to figure it out. My mind is in a quandary.”

When we were speaking yesterday, you told me that you’re getting so many calls from the US where people are losing jobs. It’s the same kind of apprehension.

Mohanji: I feel that the job loss situation will be all over the world because of the economic meltdown. But my answer to that is – let us not focus on the negatives. If you focus on negatives, there are plenty. Let us focus on the positives. First and foremost, how do we know what’s good for us? It’s very simple. It depends on our nature. What is our nature? We all have our unique nature. Some people have a nature for being a doctor. Some people like that profession, because their nature suits that kind of profession. Some people like to be a lawyer. Some people like to be in the sports field. Hence all these are connected to one’s individual nature. If your nature is not suiting that profession, you won’t be successful there.

So first and foremost, sit down and understand which profession suits you. That’s the first right step. Then you go towards the profession with full confidence. I would first say, “If you really want to be successful, you have to really apply yourself”. There’s no other way. Working smart is accepting yourself and applying yourself fully and doing only what you have to do. You don’t have to do the whole variety of things. Don’t try to multi-task and spoil your entire career. Instead focus on something which really suits you and dig deeper and deeper until you finally see water.

What suits you is what you can do effortlessly. That means if you like something and if you’re effortless about it, that shows that the profession/work suits you very well. That’s a sign of it. It is very easy to understand. If you are feeling stressed to even get up in the morning and if it is a pain or pressure to go towards your work, implies that you are doing something which you do not like to do or doing something which does not suit you. It’s like wearing a shirt which is not your size.

Even in spirituality, what suits you is your path. Some people like devotion. They like to sing, chant, praise etc. Some people like intellectual stuff. They would like to listen, analyse, understand and only then they accept. Some people like Karma Yoga. They go out and they serve the world. Some people are a mixture of all this, but there will be some predominance and that is your path. Whatever is predominant in us; that’s exactly what we are. That’s our path.

Dr. Nidhi Kumar: That answers our question. I would like to add a little thing to it that it’s good to be rooted to your values. Let us move on to our next question.

Shloka: In extension to the career question, there are many individuals who talk about or who write about being compelled to be on a career path because of certain constraints. The constraints could be like financial constraints or it is too late in life to change career, or have a family to take care etc. So how would you advise those people to go through a career and the profession effortlessly?

Mohanji: The Upanishad says, “The food that came to you today is the medicine for you, even if that’s the food you never chose.” This means the food was delivered to you. Sometimes you are compelled to do something just for survival. In that situation, I would suggest you to always do the work with full dedication, but at the same time, have a hobby on the side, which you would like to do. So it compensates. For example, a person likes to be a photographer, but instead he is working as a government servant. So be a government servant fully for the sake of earning but at the same time practice photography as a hobby, so you don’t really miss it. And that gives equilibrium.

Sometimes life provides us with things which we may not have vocally asked for (but probably we may have been ‘eligible’ for that, we don’t know). If such a thing lands on your lap, accept it, then deliver your best. When you get something, you should do justice to it. Otherwise it’s not worth it. By rejecting or by resisting, it stays further. But by accepting it and by fully involving in it, maybe you will start liking it. Actually, the dislike starts with resistance. We keep pushing it away to an extent that it becomes painful. Then, we suffer. We don’t have to really suffer. Through acceptance, we can remove the suffering. We do not really have to cope with it – instead we dive into it and say, “Okay, what best can I do about it?” Plus, we take up a hobby which develops our other side, which blooms us through doing our chosen activity.

Question: How do we effectively use our time during this period amidst the stress and fear?

Mohanji: Go online…(laughter). Very simple. We can’t go outside the house, right?

Question: How do we motivate ourselves in this situation to begin and continue daily meditation and practices, especially early in the morning despite our busy schedule with family and work?

Mohanji: We have an Early Birds Club now. That’s the reason why I started this club recently. We have to start early in the morning at 4 am. Then have a pattern of activity until 6 am. By the time you reach the usual waking time, you have actually covered a lot of distance. It’s not easy to just start the day early and do nothing, because then the usual habits pull us back to bed. So we have started the Early Birds Club for that purpose. And this is really creating a difference in people’s lives. Now people have actually written back saying that they now have a lot of time and there is a lot of peace, contentment, etc.

To start early, you need a bit of effort initially, but eventually it becomes a pleasure. You will feel quite good because you’re not just wasting time sleeping, procrastinating and then being lazy and feeling wasted. Instead you wake up early then do something. Some people have started writing their own stories. People say that it looks like another life or feels like another life. You can do so many things in this time; you can be very creative. As said in the beginning, there are so many domestic issues going on. I would like everybody to inspire people. It’s not the prerogative of spiritual teachers alone to do that.

All of us have our stories, have our history. We have a lot of wealth inside. We are not short or small. We can always share some insights with people, with the world outside and give some kind of a consolation or solace to people outside. It need not always be the teachers and the masters. Sometimes people get bored with these spiritual people (laughs) Normal people in the world can also talk. I always inspire people to share their experiences. You share your story, it might resonate with some because some people have actually survived total hardships like displacements, wars, etc. Many people who follow me around the world have gone through wars, they have been displaced, lost their houses, family members, etc. So I tell them to share it, even if it is painful to remember. Maybe it will be purgatory sometimes, and you may get purified through it. And that happens. People can be natural and be themselves in this time because you cannot go anywhere. You can use the online facility and communicate, which will help people. I feel that we all have a great potential. All we have to do is accept ourselves, and then we’ll realise that we can do a lot in this world.

Dr. Nidhi Kumar: Absolutely. Now we take the viewers to the next segment, which is on emotion. One of the greatest forms of suffering is to deal with death. So we have a lot of questions on this. How does one deal with death because it becomes an overwhelming and imaginable sense of grief, to deal with death.

Question: How to overcome the anxiety and the debilitating feeling that happens after some loved one passes away. How do you deal with that?

Mohanji: This is a traditional fear – the fear of death. For all the 7.5 billion people in the world, the biggest of fears is the fear of death. And the next fear is usually the fear of failure and society, fear of failure etc. But the fear of death is a part of us.

The driving factor of all species is instinct – that’s the driving factor. While for human beings, the driving factor is usually the inclination or vasanas, and of course desires. But the instinct part which is common across all species is the main instinct for survival. So this fear of death is connected to survival instinct, because we like to survive. Every being likes to survive, and the other side of survival is death. So we fear something which we do not want to happen, but it’s true and inevitable that we will die.

As human beings, we have the capacity to understand and assimilate the idea that we are deathless. That is only for us because we have that capacity to connect to something which is permanent. So we have that thing inbuilt in us, we have that capacity. So what is the antidote to fear of the inevitable death? The death that we are walking towards every day, even at this point in time when we are speaking, after our conversation, we are closer to death. It goes like that, right? Every moment we are taking one more step towards death that is supposed to happen.

So how do we come to terms with it, with the inevitability? It’s very simple – we must understand that we have something within us which is deathless. And that’s the reality. The shell that we carry, the form that we carry, the name, the position and the positions that we have, are all temporary; while there is something which is bright and brilliant, which is real and that’s hiding behind this whole paraphernalia or this structure. So we start looking at it and we say, “Oh, this guy doesn’t want anything. He has no interest in life. He has no interest in death. He is deathless. He is a time rider. For him, time is like a horse. He rides time.” Because time doesn’t ride him, time only rides the body, the body, the mind, intellect, ego. But the thing which is bright within us, it’s beyond time. So, the moment you start connecting to that, then death is just a phase.

In fact, every day we are dying for a few hours. That is the deep sleep state, where we do not know whether we are a man or a woman, time or space, whether we are a guru or a disciple, we know nothing. Then when we wake up again, we realise that this is the garb which we have been born in. We are born in this life and we come to know and then we start behaving like this particular role, this personality. So every day we are experiencing that and every day we are coming back to life in the morning. That’s why it’s a new life every day. So what happens in actual death is that we come back in another body, or we don’t come back at all – we dissolve. So this is the option. When we have awareness, awareness is the antidote – it is the antidote to the fear of death. This is the way it is.

Nidhi: How do we free ourselves from the bondages of emotions and become mentally strong? How to overcome negative emotions like fear and negative energy?

Mohanji: We have three processors in our system which are mind (processing emotions), intellect (processing, information), ego (processing personality matters like positions and possessions, role in society etc.). So this together is what we call as mind-matter. Actually it’s one material or one processor, but we segregate them so we can understand. The body has three processors and these three processors need food. The food of mind is emotion, but when we have so many emotions to handle, the mind has obesity. When we have so much information to handle, intellect has obesity. When we have so many positions, possessions and ego stuff to handle, then ego has obesity. If you eat a lot of food, the body has obesity. So obesity is part of our existence and the 7.5 billion people around the world have some obesity in some way.

So what do we need to do? How do we handle these emotions etc.? Emotions are coming in all the time. But we need to understand – like our stomach for example, we need to know how much we should eat, what we should eat, and what quantity etc., so that we are in control of our food consumption. Like that, we should be in control of our emotions, and emotional consumption as well. Emotions are available outside; this is all coming from outside. We need to control what comes inside and don’t just get involved in emotions habitually, because that’s what we do normally. And the same with information, so much information is coming that is mostly negative in nature – like 200,000 people died, so many people are in quarantine, this country closed the doors, that country closed the doors; so many people lost their jobs. This is what we hear from television.

What we need to do – we need to have an antidote. We go and search for something positive and read that, basically the life of great masters. In India we have a great tradition with the tradition of liberation – moksha. If you look at the whole world, the purushartha (dharma, artha, kama, moksha), these four aspects out of which moksha is defined only in this country, and that’s well-defined. And out of this many religions came out like Sikhism, Buddhism, all these came out of one aspect called moksha. So we have that big, huge tradition and depth of wealth. So if we read or assimilate materials or things connected to moksha, the highest potential, we can superimpose that moksha on mind, intellect, ego everywhere. And with the benchmark of conscience – our own conscience, which is like a guard, like a firewall, which protects us from all the impacts. So we do not compromise our conscience, and we use the potential for liberation for all of us. We all have it as the benchmark. And if we don’t get involved in things which we don’t want to get involved in, we will always be safe.

Suffering is in the mind. It’s only a waking state thing. Pain can be in the body. Like what Ramana Maharshi said when somebody asked him, when he had cancer, “Swami, do you have pain?” He said, “I have pain, but I have no suffering. I choose not to suffer.” Suffering is always connected to resistance. We try to say, “Oh, why did this happen to me? Why am I such a good man? Why are bad things happening?” All these confusions leave us with a lot of junk and suffering. So this we can definitely avoid – self-pity, sympathy all these things should be plucked out and thrown away. Life is happening. Take life as it comes. And when emotions are coming, which you don’t want….. like when we go to vendors or vendors coming home (when there is no Corona situation). When they come home to sell things, what do we buy? We buy only what we need in the house. We don’t buy everything. When we go to the supermarket, what do we buy? We only buy what we like to consume, otherwise we don’t buy. So this is what we should do all of our life. Whenever we are awake, we should be controlling our consumption. We should not indiscriminately consume, because if you do that – obesity happens. And this is a continuous thing, and sometimes we are so helplessly involved in it, and that’s a big trauma for us.

So as a general answer, I can say to control your consumption: physical consumption, emotional consumption, intellectual consumption, and also ego things like pride. Don’t try to consume everything that you get.

And also, you do not have to prove anything in life. Because people who love you will accept you; people who do not love you will not accept you. That’s how the world is. Not everybody will accept you. Those who have eyes to see will see you; those who do not have eyes to see, can’t see you. That’s fine, because that’s the way creation has happened. So let us be realistic. And let us say that we don’t have to prove to anybody. We are living our life without violating or without violence. We are not trying to harm anybody so that we are on safe ground. We contribute what we can contribute. And we always ask the question, “Can I do something for you?” so that our purity is always maintained. If you focus on what you can deliver and not what you consume, you will feel peaceful. This is the right time for understanding that.

Nidhi: To add a little bit to that question, there is societal judgement that comes in, you know. You say to live in the moment, but sometimes society kind of judges you on a lot of things, and a lot of you (viewers) have been writing to us: “My mother-in-law or my so-and-so..” You have to get over that judgement somehow by realising that it’s your life and you can live it whichever way you want to, because God ultimately wants you to be happy. So what may be a sin in say, the eyes of society or your friend circle, may not be a sin in your own eyes.

Mohanji: Well, the minds of the other people are in their own bodies or their own systems. We do not have much control over it. But I would say that if we have not been affected at all for a period of time, then the impact becomes less. If we’re reacting to everything, it will be increasing because then there is a pleasure on the other side. Like if somebody is abusing us, or judging us, criticising us, which I have experienced many times. I don’t respond, and say to myself: “okay, this is their opinion, my reality is totally different.”

So we must have trust in ourselves, faith in ourselves. We don’t buy things which we don’t agree with. Because we can’t change people, change other people’s minds. We interact with many types of people every day, right? And we don’t have many choices for it, because society has a variety of different types of people. We have to interact with them consistently. We don’t have any choice. So while we’re doing it, make sure that we remain clean and unaffected. Unaffected means – let them say whatever they want. If they have pleasure, it’s okay. I believe in that. If somebody abuses me, I think: “okay, maybe because of me, he has that pleasure.” So this is okay. He has the right to have pleasure, like everybody. So even if he is abusing me, it’s fine. As long as I don’t buy it, it stays with him. You know, I normally say this to people: when people try to gossip about others to me, I say, “You must have done a lot of hard work to get this information. This is precious for you. Keep it with you. Don’t give it to me.” So they don’t tell me again.

Q: Can you kindly share with us at what stage of your sadhana (with regard to the number of months or years) you first started experiencing the state of blissful existence? As someone who has recently started to meditate, I would like to know more about it so that I can be not immediately bothered about such expectations hindering the entire process.

Mohanji: Yes, I would say that, first of all, we should not keep any expectation. This is the first point. Second is that the experience is usually individualistic, because we all have our own constitution. We can’t say that another person had this experience, so I should have it. It may not happen that way. Third is that for me personally, I did not know what I was looking for. Because as I told you, I was working in a company and I was practising.

So one thing I would always say is that you have the same place for meditation or practice every day. Don’t change locations. Because what happens is the mind gets occupied with it. So I used to keep one room and I had covered the whole room – I made it like a cave, so that there was no light entering from anywhere. And I only had one lamp, no pictures, nothing in that room, so that the distraction level was less. Initially there’ll be a lot of distraction because we have habitual thoughts coming in, and things like the pleasures, which we like to indulge in. That comes like, “I need to have coffee or tea”, or, “it is time to check the mail”, things like that. But for that I used to start at 3 am every day, but I don’t recommend that because that was my own style. I used to have my time, my own personal time and that was 3 am to 8 am every day. That is when I was practising – means I was actually trying to explore myself. I’m not asking you to replicate anything – I’m just telling you in a broad spectrum, one space, always. One space, one kind of environment and one lamp (with flame) or one thing to connect to. Plus one practice – same practice. Sometimes it’s so boring but you still do the same practice. If it’s a mantra, chant the same mantra again and again and again. So what happens is the mind finally breaks up. Mind can’t hold it anymore. Mind likes variety. The repetition kills the mind, and that moment when it breaks is when your whole identity is broken.

So for me, it was consistently about six months before there was a slight change in the whole thing – where I could assess the difference by not getting affected with the world outside. That means whether a thing is there or not, I’m not affected. Earlier, I used to have certain requirements every day. If I get up in the morning, I take a bath and once I’m done, then I do my prayers. But then after that, I need to have a coffee or something. But all those needs became optional. So that was the first step. So like that, eventually, tremendous detachment happened with the world outside. When you start touching the silence deeper, at that time, the world of noises is somewhere far away. You can hear the noises, but that’s not yours – so far away. Then you feel totally separated from it. If you want to go to the noises you can go. But again, you are not affected. It’s like with some people who smoke a lot, who can’t handle being without cigarettes. Then after the moment they decide to stop smoking, after a long period of time, even if somebody smokes, it doesn’t matter, because they have overcome that – like that. The world of noises is probably a temptation for some time, and then the temptation also goes. So, I would say it took six months before I could actually start connecting to myself by crossing over the tendency for searching for noises, because that was my world like everybody else’s. This is the world of noises. We are used to it and we think that’s natural for us, but it’s not. We think it’s natural.

Nidhi: There was a question regarding the sadhana, is it traataka by any chance?

Mohanji: So, one technique as I said, I was looking at the lamp but I was not looking – my eyes were open and connecting to the lamp but I was connecting to my spine. I didn’t practice traataka.

Nidhi: Shlloka, let’s take the next question and then move on to the next segment liberation.

Shlloka: The next question, as you’ve touched upon it earlier in your segment as well. You know, it’s a very natural tendency for people to want to tide over suffering and reach a state of pleasantness, pleasure, enjoyment, whatever you may want to call it. You have stressed upon awareness as being that seat of pleasantness and enjoyment. You’ve also spoken about how presence is the highest practice. So if you can tell our viewers who are watching you for the first time as to what is the importance of awareness and why so much stress on it?

Mohanji: Yes, awareness starts with very small things like for example, we are talking. Just be aware of every word you utter. That means no absent-mindness, first of all. Then we are moving our hand or we are doing something – be aware. In other words, let the mind be present with everything, every word, every action so that your mind is right here in the present. This is the number one thing. Then you can go deeper and deeper in awareness and eventually you are aware of your heartbeat, you are aware of your breath, you are aware of your aura; you can be aware of everything. You know, it’s very interesting if you start connecting to yourself and start assimilating and you will know that the heart has a particular frequency; that the liver has a particular frequency, that every aspect of you has a different frequency. And it’s like an orchestra inside. You know, every organ is playing in the orchestra, that’s a synchronisation – it’s like a huge beautiful melody. So you start connecting to yourself and then you realise, “Oh my God, I’m a big universe, what I was looking at outside is nothing compared to what I am or what I can see inside”. So awareness takes us there. Awareness is so important. Now, in daily life, what happens is that we get so involved that we lose that awareness a little bit – because we forget that we are the actor. We forget that we are not the role. We are the actors but we forget that thing. So, what happens is – we get involved with the role and we believe that we are the role, not the actor at that point in time. We get affected and that’s where suffering happens. Because the role has suffering, you also have suffering. Otherwise, if we always remember: “I’m an actor and this is just a role I’m playing and this is temporary”, then there is no suffering. So, suffering is connected to our deep involvement – then we tend to blame the other actors. We are in these role plays every morning till evening.

Nidhi: I am reminded of Shakespeare’s saying, Mohanji. He said that famous line, “Today, we have our exits and our entrances. So each of us is a player and it will be curtains down soon for everybody. That’s what he said.

Mohanji: Yeah. So this awareness is that, but consciousness is different; awareness and consciousness are different. Consciousness is our driving mechanism which has three distinct aspects every day: the waking state, the dream state and the deep sleep state. So the same consciousness operates in three dimensions each day in 24 hours. But awareness is that we stay over all that’s happening to us – like a view from above. So you can see all the role plays, but at the same time you remember you are always the actor. So that gives you that immunity as well as power. That makes you powerful.

Shlloka: So we have a question from someone – you just spoke a while back about sadhana. And you mentioned that there is so much resistance. As a spiritual practitioner myself, I experience that as well – how every day, one doesn’t want to get up and do sadhana – there’s so many things to do, don’t do it. There is so much resistance and one sometimes succumbs to the mind. So the question is being asked:

How does one conquer the fear of limitations in the way of one’s sadhana?

Mohanji : That’s only in the initial stages. In fact, after a while you will not even feel anything if you avoid expectations, if you avoid agenda. For example: “My friend who was doing sadhana achieved a level of silence. So I should also do that.” Don’t do that. You just be yourself, don’t compare, don’t compete and just follow. I never used to tell anybody what I used to practice – that’s a very good idea. Because if you try to share with people, then they would all have opinions and sometimes they derail us. So I would say that keep your own practice close to you, do it as quietly and consistently as you can, and after a while, this becomes a usual thing.

See, the subconscious mind reproduces what you do repeatedly – like for example, if you do 21 days or 41 days. That is the point of the Early Birds Club that I spoke about earlier. That means people wake up at a certain time and do a particular sadhana. After a few days, they automatically wake up because they can’t sleep. Then that becomes enjoyable. And if you’re not competing and comparing, you will have no sorrows connected to it. So I would always say that you must consider that you are not the mind, you are not the intellect, you’re not the ego and don’t analyze and don’t keep on digging the seed out to see if the roots have formed. The root will happen at its own time – everything has its time. But I always believe that everyone has the clear potential, like everyone else, to touch the highest consciousness or to touch the state which is consciousness. So, all of us have that power and we are never higher or lower than anybody.

Shlloka: Mohanji, in connection with this, can talk about the importance of sadhana, what are the benefits of sadhana or yoga for that matter? You know, there’s so many people who are non-practitioners who have written to ask :

Why should one be pursuing the path of sadhana? Are there any other ways to achieve the ultimate, or is sadhana the only way? If it is the only way, what is the benefit?

Mohanji: Well, sadhana is nothing but a systematic practice. That means something which you’re committing to. And anything you are committing to, you should have conviction about it, you should believe in it. Not because somebody else said or is doing or not doing. We should check whether it suits our nature, whether it is natural for us or whether it is suitable for us, and then we follow that. For example, a person who’s devotional by nature cannot follow a guru or path of knowledge or jnana yoga. This person can only follow bhakti, and that’s what suits a person of that type. So this is the first point – that when you practice something, make sure it suits you. Don’t just follow like a cow; a cow’s tendency is that if a cow goes in one direction, every cow goes in that direction too. So we should not do that because we are human beings. We should not have herd instinct. Instead, we should look at what suits us and choose. If something doesn’t suit us, we should be happy to say that’s not our cup of tea. That is the first thing about sadhana.

Secondly, consistency as I said earlier. Then the question about why one should have sadhana – it’s very simple, otherwise you miss a great personality!! Instead you will be immersed in the world outside, a world of noises with so many things, varieties, colours etc. And it is never ending because you will always have more and more desires. And finally get tired because all this while you’ve been running after so many things and materials, you got so many things but are not still happy.

So, how do we find happiness instead of going for various pleasures? We come to ourselves and then we realise, “Oh my God, I never needed anything, I am happy otherwise.” So, for understanding this you need to have practice. I always say two D’s — one is Discipline and the second is Determination. The other side is distraction. So to overcome distraction, you need to have discipline and determination. Determination is to connect to yourself. As I said earlier, the whole spiritual path can be crushed and the essence of it can be said as — “You are that. You are what you’re looking for.” So this ‘You’ is a great story. We know that we only connect to ourselves as incidents based on what we have experienced. That’s not us. We have so many other things, other faculties and factors. We are a conglomeration of all that. So if you do not connect to yourself, you miss that great opportunity.

Nidhi: Mohanji, we are completely out of time now. I’m just going to take two more questions. One person said that she’s been praying to Sai Baba and she’s been seeing your face. There are many more questions like that. Another one is:

Why is Sai not answering my prayers? What should I do? It’s been a decade. What would you like to say to such people who’ve been asking plenty of such questions?

Mohanji: How can I say why Sai is not answering? But I would say that Sai always answers. We have living Masters and we have had great Masters who have lived here as beacons of light and power. And they always respond, I believe so. Because the thing is that we are probably asking for something which can’t be delivered, something personal or selfish. They don’t cater to it.

Or secondly, they would have delivered something which we fail to see because we are focusing on something else. This happens many times. What we got, we may not see. But what we don’t have or what we thought we should have, we will see. It is the same with the gurus, you know. The tradition says or the scriptures say, “The one who has appeared in front of you is your Guru. Connect to him completely.” But then we have probably an image of Babaji, an image of Sai Baba and we say, “Oh, that form did not come to me. So I don’t accept it.” So you miss it. This happens in our life.

I would say that no master ever denies anybody. This is my experience. All true masters are here to serve. They’re not here to earn or eat and eat more etc. They are here to serve. If you stop asking, maybe you get much more, maybe you are supposed to get a Mercedes but you asked only for a Maruti!

Nidhi: How lovely! How beautifully you summed it all up, Mohanji. And I think we’re going to have many more sessions with you. It’s almost time now to wrap up. It’s truly been a very insightful, incredible journey packed with so much wisdom and this intersection with you has been wonderful to begin with. We have many, many more questions, which will not go unanswered I’m sure. To wrap up, I’d like to give special thanks to you, Mohanji for gracing us, to my team Union, for producing and marketing this show headed by our volunteer Ajay. Thank you so much. Thank you to the Mohanji Foundation. We thank you for making it see the beautiful light of day. Now, I leave it to Shlloka to end this session for today.

Mohanji: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to all of you.

Shlloka: It’s been a pleasure. And you know, the viewers have flooded us with questions.

Nidhi: I think even ten sessions with you will not be enough. There were hundreds of questions, and you have thousands and millions of followers. So we have to have this again very soon. That’s a promise to our viewers.

Shlloka: Mohanji, people have written to us, of course with their questions, but you know, it’s also just amazing to see the kind of profound gratitude that they have for you. For example, we have an individual who talks about and thanks you for your protection and for your grace – and many more messages.

We wish to have Mohanji back once again, so please keep your questions coming, viewers. And in the meantime, we would urge you if you have more questions, you can always visit Mohanji’s website, Mohanji’s Facebook page, it’s flashing on the screens. You can always stay connected and be answered to the best possible way, until we meet again. Thank you Mohanji once again, see you in the next one.

Shlloka and Nidhi: (To the viewers) We hope you would take all the answers and implement them in your life and we do hope you’ve liked Ask the Masters.

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic and Rakshitha Ananth

Proofread by Geetha Iyer

Real Experiences of Sai Baba Transform You

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 talks about Sai Baba being the Supreme Consciousness and how a real experience of Baba will transform you.

You will reach a level of awareness, where you are everything, and there is nothing beyond you, all of us will reach there sooner or later, at one point in time. First and foremost, we start a journey, we try to seek something and this seeking process sometimes takes a long time. This is the usual journey of an average seeker. We are trying to seek for something, we don’t know what we are looking for, and this process happens, in the scriptures, it is defined: Tat Tvam Asi (you are that, what you are seeking for, is you). So basically, what they are saying is that it is a journey from outside to inside. You are scattered all over outside because your mind is occupied with many things outside. You are addicted and connected to various things outside including places, people, situations, positions, possessions. From there you detach and finally, you come inside, and then you realise you are not even the body. You are the state or the Consciousness that operates the body. At a certain point in time you come there, you arrive, that’s when you settle down there. Then you really understand that all your relations, positions, and possessions have no value, and they are all temporary, they are only active when you are awake, they are not active when you are sleeping. So whatever is active when you are awake and when you are sleeping, that’s the real you. That you can only find inside you, you can’t find it outside. This realisation brings you inside.

So then, there are two aspects: One is the aspect of existence, as you as an incarnation. Sai Baba said, “In that mode, I am the servant of the servant of God.” I am the servant of the servant of God means, “I put myself in the humblest possible way, I am here to serve the servants of God, I am here to serve the seekers who are seeking for truth.” That is what Baba said. But when you look inside, like Hanumanji told Ram, “I choose to be your servant, and this is the role of my life, this life. I choose to be your servant, your wish is my command, but Consciousness-wise, you and I are one. You are playing the role of Ram, I am playing the role of Hanuman, but we are the same.” Likewise, Baba said, “In this life, in my disposition, my position, I position myself as the servant of the seeker, guiding the seeker to the Lord. But the Lord and I are one, you and the Lord are also one.” The moment you realise that you are one with the Supreme Consciousness, or what is inside you – 33% of you, the soul element is exactly what you are finding everywhere – that is, the microcosm and macrocosm are one. But because of functional roles, they seem separate. They seem separate, they are not separate. So when you stop seeking for anything outside, everything reveals itself inside. In that revelation, what you understand is that we are one with the entire cosmos. The created universe and the non-created universe, the known, tangible universe and the unknowable, infinite universe, we are the same, we are one with that. Then it is a question of us dissolving and disappearing. We become one with the whole ocean; the ocean becomes us.

Baba, in that mode, has said, “I am everything.” That is the place where all of us will reach sooner or later. And as we travel inside more and more, we start understanding the silence factor inside us, completely free, totally free, non-intrusive. Actually, based on no desires, no desires for anything outside, no desires for anything inside, even for realisation. So everything settles down to complete stillness. We become stillness, total stillness, and in that stillness, there is no world outside. Whatever you see outside is yourself in various forms – a tree, a plant, an animal, a bird… anything you see, it’s you. There is nothing, nothing else. So in that mode, all you see is yourself, and you are interacting only with yourself. In that mode, you are one Consciousness with the Supreme. So Baba, when he says he is a servant of the servant of God, He is the servant of the seeker; His role is to guide people to complete liberation. And please understand, this is a collaboration. When you are walking this path, when you are established in this particular mode, various oceans, various rivers come into you and you become a larger ocean.

That is what happened when Akkalkot Swami attained Mahasamadhi. A part of his soul merged with the tree under which he was sitting, and a part of his soul merged with Sai Baba. When some of his followers were coming to Akkalkot to meet him, He came in a dream and said, “Come to Shirdi, I am sitting there.” And when they came to Shirdi and saw Baba, they saw Swami – unity of Consciousness. And also, Masters who are here with a similar purpose – they conglomerate, they unite, and they deliver together. This I have felt myself when I interacted with Ganeshananda Giri Babaji, Vitthal Babaji, Avadhoota Nadananda, and Devi Amma. Devi Amma lives in Bangalore. Vasudevan Swami is one of them in Vajreshwari. What I found in him is that he was old and he was bent, he can’t stand up properly and all he does is, he prays, “O Lord Krishna, I have not seen you for a long time, I am old, I can’t see well, when will I see you?” And Krishna appears, not just appears, the residue of his presence would be on the wall. This means it was not an illusion; it was a presence. Various people say they had these appearances: Jesus appeared, Krishna appeared, Buddha appeared, etc. But many of them are mental projections. How do we differentiate between a mental projection and a real apparition?

When a Master of that frequency, like Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, or Avatars of that frequency appears, you don’t remain the same anymore. Your frequency has to shift, your frequency changes to receive their frequency. That means, there will be a different level of elevation, and only then you can communicate. This communication happens only through that elevation of awareness. But if it is just a mental projection, there will be no change, you will be the same. You will still have all your anxieties, fears, anger, hatred, jealousy… all those things. But if a real apparition, if a real encounter happens, with the energy as powerful as Sai Baba or Krishna, then you will not be the same again, it will not be the same, you will not remain the same. So this can be considered as a real sign that you are actually having communion, and the result, almost always, would be silence. You will not have any initiative to tell people, “Look here, I am speaking to Krishna, I am speaking to Sai Baba,” you may not even feel like telling, because the more you interact with any being of a higher frequency, the result is inherent silence inside. And no urge to prove to anybody, there is nothing to prove to anybody. What will you prove?

Your state is not provable. In what state you are operating, you can’t tell. Your behaviour is not possible to convey anything. Many people considered the behaviour of Baba as inconsistent, some people even thought he was mad. But he was a great Master. His operating level was different. He was discussing things with subtle beings, and sometimes he used to shout, scream, beat, he used to throw tantrums. All these were communications to various frequencies, various dimensions. So, it is not easy for a normal human being to recognise and understand a Master. What will you convey? When you are established in yourself, you will lose all desires to convey something to this world outside, not only a spiritual message but as what you are, who you are, whom you are discussing with – all these are irrelevant, there is no relevance, there is nothing to convey. You will be very settled and peaceful and whether the outside world accepts you or rejects you, it doesn’t mean anything to you. Because this is a world of minds, this is a world of concepts. I always tell people, if people who are ‘minds’, accept you or reject you, don’t worry about it, let it happen. But if Masters of great stature, if they reject you, then you have something to change within, most probably the ego factor.

 

Great Masters will not reject a person of a certain level definitely, because whoever is eligible to climb up, they hold hands indiscriminately, without any agenda. They will not ask anything. Real Masters need nothing from you, they are not looking at your wallet or pocket. But as somebody said, “When I give to Baba, I am sure it reaches thousands more; when I keep it in my pocket, it may not even be useful for my people at some point in time.” So, what you give, you get more, as spiritual grace.

Grace is the money, what you spend for a Master, or for annadaan. I always recommend annadaan as a cleanser, purifier. Annadaan is Mahadaan, there is nothing better than feeding the poor. When I say poor, anybody who is hungry, it doesn’t matter if it is a human being or any being who is hungry, their need is food. If their need is food, feed them, give them whatever you have, share what you have. That makes you rich, and that’s a very noble thing to do.

Because all beings respond to love, they respond to hunger. They are all instinctual things.

In instinct, the primary instinct, the basic instinct, is survival. The basic instinct of survival manifests itself in the need for food. Most of the animals and birds travel miles in search of food because that’s basic for their survival. And seasonally, sexuality is there for the species to survive. Human beings also have it, but because human beings use intelligence and imagination more than instinct, they manipulate all these things.

We tend to manipulate. That is why we have so many Do’s and so many Don’ts etc. while most of the other species don’t have it. They don’t have it, they live more a less a plain life, and they are not in opposition or resistance at all with life. We are. And that is causing lots of agonies and pains, even wars. So a great Master, in the relevance of Baba, he came here for creating harmony between religions, between communities. He’s not a Muslim, nor a Hindu, nor a Christian, nor a Buddhist. He is just a human being. He lived a normal life as a human being, but with a high level of awareness, which could transform millions even after leaving the body.

 

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic

Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

 

 

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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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For more information about Mohanji, please visit Mohanji.org

 

Who is Sai Baba?

 

I have heard of this confusion: “Who is Baba? Who is Sai Baba? Is he a God? Is he a Guru? Is he an Avadhoota? Is he a Master of a certain path or segment like the Nath Tradition or the Avadhoota Tradition?” Various questions of this nature come up. It has come to me as well. I have heard that. I have read that.

I always think about one thing – Does it really matter? The lifespan of a human being in the Kali Yuga is about 100 years. Out of these 100 years, the effective years are the times when you are available to the world, when you are serving the world, when you are giving something to the world. That’s the only effective years.  Out of 7.5 billion people on Earth, many people do not have any effective years. They live their whole life for themselves – eating, drinking, sleeping, entertaining themselves, some pleasures of the mind, and things like that. But if you look at the life of Baba, almost 100 percent of his existence, as we know – in Dwarkamai and beyond – has been for the world. So, his life has been totally effective, almost 99 percent, we say. We don’t know about the time when he was not in Dwarkamai, or before that. Who is Baba is what he has delivered.

We only know certain things from certain literature, but I am 100 percent sure, and we all know, that he has done much more. As you know, he is doing a lot today for thousands of people across the world. You can see his presence in all the continents. A person who lived in a small dilapidated place in Shirdi has reached every corner of the Earth, many years after his physical existence. Isn’t that a miracle? It’s a huge miracle! So who has the power to create that miracle? That is him.

Whether he is an Avadhoota, whether he is a Siddha, whether he is a Guru, whether he is God, it does not matter. As far as his presence is concerned, he is pure Consciousness. If there are boundaries, like we have boundaries – physical boundary, emotional boundary, and intellectual boundary – we have all these boundaries, various boundaries, various frames, and we are those frames and we can’t go beyond those frames, because we do not allow ourselves to cross those frames and boundaries. This is our usual life.

But Baba never had a boundary. What does that mean? He is pure Consciousness. Then what is his body? Just a representation. Without that representation, you can’t connect to the pure Consciousness. He brought himself as a representation for the sake of humanity, and he took a suitable form. He is neither a Hindu, nor a Muslim, nor a Christian, nor a Buddhist… He is everything – as a form which is suitable for everybody to connect to the pure Consciousness.

So whether he is a Guru… If somebody looks at him as a Guru, he is a Guru. If somebody looks at him as God, he is God. If somebody looks at him as an Avadhoota, he is an Avadhoota. If somebody looks at him as a Nath, he is a Nath. This is a round object. He is everything.  Pure Consciousness is everything. Pure Consciousness is you and I. Pure Consciousness pervades the whole Universe – not only the Earth, but well beyond. Representation of that pure Consciousness in a body which can be related to, conceived a body which can be connected to, and that is what he is. We define him as per our capacity, as per our boundaries, that’s all we do. But is Baba that? For you, yes! As per your boundary, you have understood him as per whatever you think he is. That’s about it. So we must understand that great, great Masters are never born, they will never die, as Baba is proving every moment. They are all-pervading, and through every idol of his, he talks, he communicates, he gets people to connect to him.

So pure Consciousness without boundaries – that’s him. And whichever form that goes in, that form is the pure Consciousness. That does not limit the pure Consciousness, that’s what we should understand. No limitation. We have a limitation, we discriminate people, we look at people – “Oh, he is this form.” We only understand based on forms. That is why we have confusion between Gurus. What is the role of a real Guru? To connect you to the Supreme Consciousness, or to remind you that you are the Supreme Consciousness, which you are searching for. This is the role of every Guru. But we look at a Guru as a problem-solver, or somebody who will tell you your future. If you want to know your future, you are a bundle of insecurities. Only when we have lots of insecurities, we will want to know what will happen tomorrow. If we are completely surrendered, and if we are fully merged with the Supreme Consciousness, we wouldn’t want to know what will happen tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. Or something like, “Okay, if I am born, I will die.” That’s about it, in between what happens doesn’t matter.

So like that, when you are deeply connected to a Master as powerful and as glorious as Baba, we will only feel ourselves in him, what we are in him. That’s exactly why thousands of people are coming to Shirdi today. They all see themselves in Baba. They get their problem mirrored or reciprocated from Baba and that gets solved, most of them get solved. How does it get solved? It is as good as how much you surrender. Say, “It doesn’t belong to me, I leave it to you. My life is not mine; this physical form has no value, I leave it to you.” That brings you more and more peace, more and more stability. So, who is Baba? The fundamental question. Baba is YOU. How you are, that’s how you see Baba.

But is Baba one thing? He cannot be. If he is one thing, all these people in the world cannot connect to that. A flat object – only a few people will connect. Not everybody can connect. For everybody to connect, that object or that person should have a round character. He’s not bound. Whatever is bound needs liberation. Whatever is unbound needs no liberation, because they are liberation already.  This is Baba. So if ever you have that question as to, “Who is Baba?” ask yourself, “Who am I?” And then you will find the answer.

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

 

 

 

Have You Truly Surrendered to Sai Baba?

 

 

It’s natural that we approach a Master with a lot of expectations, and usually or many times, we see that we only go to a temple, or a Samadhi, or a Master, only when we have some problem. We see that happening in life. If we are completely fine, we are perfect, and we are happy, we don’t go anywhere. We don’t even thank God or thank Gurus. But when we have a problem, that’s the time when we go to a Master, or go to a Samadhi, or go to a temple and ask for help. So, like Kunti Mata has said in the Mahabharata to Krishna, to always keep her unhappy, sad, so that she always remembers God. This is human nature. We remember God only when we are not happy. But that should not be the case; we should be connected to God all the time. Every day when you wake up, you should be thanking God.

The highest prayer is the prayer of thanks, gratitude. Gratitude is very, very powerful. That’s a very, very potentially powerful prayer. When you are deeply in distress; imagine you are in a kind of a distressed state, things are not happening well, things are falling apart, first and foremost, what you should do is to stop complaining. Because when you complain, when you are expecting too much and if you are complaining, you are actually increasing the pain. It’s almost like a thorn which has pierced your leg, and when you keep shaking the thorn, the pain will persist, and the wound will become bigger. Like that, when you keep on complaining, then the pain will be more. This is one point.

Second is a very important point, it is that we should be aware – there is a reason for every effect, there is a cause for every effect. No effect happens by itself, there is a reason. So what would be the usual reason for any effect in life? Something – a memory which is stored within, and which is actually accented because of repeated storage, or repeated thoughts about it. Like you can see some people whom you do not like in life, you remember them all the time. You know, those whom you remember all the time have actually influenced you in your life. Have you observed that? This you see in your life. Whom you are remembering all the time – maybe they are your enemies – but they are influencing your thoughts, they are influencing you. Like that, potential fears – fears about losses, fears about diseases, fears about not being appreciated in the society, not being accepted, and all these fears create those kinds of effects in life, which no Guru or God has anything to do with, which we are creating every moment. This awareness should be very clear in the mind, it’s very important.

If we are not aware of the patterns we are creating, because life is full of patterns; and patterns are a continuous process, we keep hopping from body to body, but the patterns will continue. When we hop from one body after death to another body, a new birth, we carry all these things. The patterns are in continuation, they continue. These patterns keep repeating, and the same kinds of effects are brought.

It also means a lack of acceptance. So the way you can overcome these patterns is through acceptance and surrender. Acceptance is very important. “Okay, this is happening now, let me take a deep breath, fine.” Not blaming immediately, criticizing, screaming, shouting and complaining. That won’t help you, because that will actually increase your pain. Instead, you are accepting them. Accepting doesn’t mean that you are like a doormat, where anybody can walk over you. Instead, you are accepting, and then at a certain point in time, you say, “Baba, this is happening, I’m sure this is happening because of my past patterns, maybe fears, maybe some kind of resistance, but I leave it to you.”

Acceptance and Surrender, they go hand in hand. They will release you a lot from the stress, and then you can see miracles happening. Usually, we do not surrender enough. We keep it to ourselves, we say, “Oh, this is happening. Why am I praying to Baba for all these years… Baba is not taking care of me…” This is the usual way people talk, but that’s not the truth. You are not allowing Baba to take care of you because you are not accepting it. Resistance means that you have not come to terms with your reality. Resistance is a clear sign you are not correlated or coming to terms with your own reality.

Acceptance means you have come to terms with your reality. From that point, you surrender to Baba. I would say you discuss with Baba like you discuss with a close friend, you talk to Baba. “Baba, look here, this is what’s happening. You know it very well and now let’s work it out together.” Something like that, just like a casual discussion, not even a prayer and say, “Baba, thank you for being with me, through happiness, through sorrows, thank you for being with me.” And you will see the effect much better, rather than complaining, criticising, judging, screaming, and shouting. This will only increase your agony, and also, that closes doors. And you are actually testing Baba that way, “Now, are you going to do something for me? Are you going to help me?” Baba is not your servant; Baba cannot be your servant. He is our ally, he is our support, and he is our friend. He is our closest possible friend, who has no discrimination. He never judges. He never discriminates anybody. There’s no poor or rich in his world. All are the same. Everybody can connect to him as the closest friend and the closest ally. Ownership creates pain. Surrender releases all the pain. This is the secret.

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When you own all your doings, “I am doing it, I’m doing it,” the ego, the mind-matter is getting involved, and that creates pain. But you can surrender, “You are doing it, I’m not doing it, it’s happening through you.” I don’t mean that you can do all sorts of crimes and say, “I’m not doing it.” That’s not the point, it should be pure stuff.  The intention should be pure; the intention should be selfless. You can never, ever do things selfishly and say, “It’s Baba doing it.” That’s not good, because that’s got a huge price to pay. Maybe you may not be able to complete it over, let’s say, the next 10,000 lifetimes, that much a price! I always say, don’t do these things where you are using a Master’s name for your selfish reasons. And one thing is very clear – Baba, Babaji, or any of those great Masters will never ever ask anybody to harm anyone. NEVER. They will only say, if at all, “Detach from this place, detach from this person, don’t be there!” That’s all. He will never say, “You go and attack that person, insult that person, character assassinate that person.” Never! This is guaranteed. You can look at history. These Masters are pure Consciousness. They will never ever want to harm anybody. This is the truth.

If you are in deep sorrow, accept it first, then discuss with Baba, “I’m going through this process, you are watching, I leave it to you.” Then you keep quiet and let him do the work. You have surrendered, that’s about it. And gratitude – “Thank you for being with me.” Always be thankful, always be grateful.

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan

How Sai Baba Can Give You Darshan In Any Form

 

To a person who is existing as a unit (this means, he is fully occupied within),  the world outside is only an extension, he is fully aware. For all of us too it’s the same. Our world is how we are; it is not how the world appears to be because we don’t see the real world, the true world.  We don’t see the truth one hundred percent, we only see relative truth. We see the truth as we are, as our flavour is. We have already discussed this. We have seen great Masters like Sai Baba, who attend to the call of all the devotees. None of these Masters, especially Sai Baba,  ever leaves anybody unfulfilled. They always fill them up; they always leave their hands full. Nobody connects to Baba and goes back empty-handed. This is clear.

Some people invite Baba, “Please come home or have food”, or “Please attend the wedding in our house”, or “Please attend a ceremony.” Baba will fulfill it, if the prayer is very honest and sincere, and  with full surrender, Baba will say, “I will come”, and He will come. Probably not as Baba in the form we know. He will come in any form. It could be a bird, a dog, a cat, a cow, a monkey, it could be a person like a beggar, or a wandering monk, or some such form. Often we expect Baba in His known form, and we miss Him.. And Baba has said, “I came to your house, but you beat me”. This means a dog came at the time that  He was supposed to come. He came in the form of a dog.

We must understand that there are two options – one is that you create a form; the Master can create a form for the sake of presence. This  means the energetic presence is conglomerated into a suitable form for that particular event, that particular activity, and then it is dissolved. This is possible. Otherwise they work through a form that already exists. The dog is already there. The Master’s energy enters into that form, for that purpose, and goes to that place. The entire  responsibility of that body is that of the Master; and then He goes to that place to fulfil the promise. But if we don’t see the truth,  if we misbehave or if we don’t respond properly, we miss the chance. It has happened many times.

This is also why it is important that we should not take any being for granted. We must consider all beings as an expression of pure consciousness, and treat them accordingly, so that we don’t miss Baba or the Masters. Whenever I go to places of worship, I  like to feed the poor people, the birds and animals there. I derive  more satisfaction doing that, than in entering the sanctum sanctorum. Of course, you go in and pay respects; but the most satisfaction happens,  grace happens, when you are  making all the beings happy. There is no more happiness than in delivering food, annadaan.

Annadaan is serving food that makes someone  fulfilled, and when they are fulfilled, great Grace comes into you. That’s why they say Annadaan is Mahadaan. Serving food is the greatest of sharing, serving. It’s very important that we should see Baba in every being. Baba can definitely come in any form. It could be a human being, in the form of a beggar. So look at everybody as a potential Baba and serve them.  Just ask them, “Are you hungry?” I always do that. “Are you hungry?” If they are hungry, give them good food, good quality food.

I’ll narrate an experience I had in this context. On the New Year’s Eve of 2014 or 2013, I was in Mookambika with a few others. The temple of Mookambika, is in Kollur, Karnataka, in the south of India. It is an  amazing temple;  most of the great Masters have spent some time there with the Mother Goddess. It’s a  very powerful temple. Mother is really sitting there or Mother’s presence is felt there. So I wanted to spend the New Year there. As I was coming out of the temple,  I saw  a man, decently dressed, but it was obvious  he was asking for money or food. When I saw him, he extended his hand, as if  he was asking for something. I asked him “Are you hungry?” because I was going for breakfast. He said, “Yes, I am hungry.” I said, “Come with me.” So we went to the restaurant, and he occupied a  table, my companions and I sat at another table. I told the waiter, “Whatever he wants, give it to him.  Let him consume, and give the bill to me.” He did not eat much, he only ate moderately.  Once he was done, he came to me and said, “I am satisfied.” So I asked him, “What about your lunch? Do you want to take a parcel from here?” He said, “No, don’t worry, I am ok.” I asked him, “Do you have water?” He replied, “No I don’t have water.” So I bought him a bottle of water.

Mohanji in Shirdi 2016

Mohanji in Shirdi 2016

He then left  and we continued our food and left. Next day, in the morning, the same incident happened. When I came out, I saw the same man, and he was standing at the same place. I asked him, “Are you hungry?” He said, “Yes“.And then the same thing happened. .

That day I was planning to go to the river in the area to take a dip. It’s  a very sacred river.  However my companion and I lost our  way and  went to a different road.  We turned around and reached a temple,  the temple  was not in our  original plan. We were only planning to go to the river. When we came to that place, there was a verandah, a kind of a platform, where I saw  the man who had breakfast.  He was lying down. When he saw me, he came towards me, and  explained a little bit about the temple. Many pictures were taken at that time   but in none of the pictures this man was seen. Then we went to the temple, and by the time I came out, he had disappeared. I never saw him again. Obviously he was not a human being. He was probably a Master or  someone else, I don’t know. Probably his mission was to bring me there, and of course, he did not lead me like a guide; he was already there when I reached. But in all the pictures taken there, he was not there, his space was blank.

I am giving this story to you, just to tell you that at various times, the person  in front of you, the one  coming to you,  may not be an ordinary person.  If we fail to see them,  throw them out, ask  them to go away, or abuse them, we miss a lot. We should never abuse anybody; we should never talk badly about anybody. We should always have the attitude of serving. We share what we have. They don’t expect more than your capacity, ever. Share what you have, within your capacity, and don’t look at whether they are in human form, or in the form of an animal or a bird. That is why we have this custom in our system, that we serve every being. We do that in our place also; before I eat food I will ensure that food is distributed around our house: food is kept outside at  specific places  for the birds,  insects,  and animals such as  squirrels. They come and eat, and only after that I consume. Thus  we first give food to the beings outside the house and then  we eat,  so that the food that we consume is blessed food,  consecrated food. By giving to various beings, we are consecrating our food, then we consume. It can be anybody who is consuming.  I keep some food under the tree, birds will come; animals or other beings will come and eat. They will be satisfied, and then we consume – that’s pure food, blessed food, it will be completely non-toxic.

Mohanji feeling the Saligram stone gifted by Sai Baba to Nanasaheb Dengle

Also always, when you serve, serve good food, not food that you don’t want, not bad (spoilt) food. Even if you are giving it to a dog,  a cat, or any other being  in nature, always ensure that you are giving food, which you will consume.  Similarly with  clothes; we must only give clothes to others that we will use, which is comfortable for us; not that we give something that we don’t want.

Whenever we do things with the right attitude, it enhances our energy, it opens us up, it removes blockages. We must always remember, this is  the path of Baba. When you say you are a devotee of Baba, it  should be the lifestyle; an attitude of service all the time, an attitude of gratitude all the time.

It is not  that you go to Shirdi often, for something. That’s not the way to serve Baba. When you really respect Baba, when you love Baba, when you think you are connected to Baba, these will be the signs of that connection. That means you are here to serve; you will not compete with people, you will not talk bad, you will not criticise, judge, gossip, defame, shame somebody. You will not do any of these,  you will respect everybody. Everything is part of a karmic agenda, everything has a karmic allowance to it, so we respect that. If you don’t want to participate, you can very well not be there, that is fine; but standing there and abusing, criticising, judging, defaming, shaming, these are  not good, because then it is huge contamination entering your system.

You should always remain pure, like a young  child, like  a newborn, always remain pure. Then when you leave the body, you are leaving a pure body to earth, not a contaminated body.  So serving has a lot of value in the system. It’s very important. Always remember this.

Transcribed by Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan