Practical Steps for Challenging Times – part 2

Satsang with Mohanji  
16th August 2020

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

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

That will make a difference in your life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But please remember, there is no escape from karma.

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

satsangatve  nisangatva

nissangtve nirmohatva

nirmohatve nischallatatva

nischalatatve jivanmukti

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do I motivate my children?

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

This question comes with the title motivation of children.
Q: How to motivate my children to get over tamasic tendencies and put their minds to useful productive work like doing chores, study time, being responsible people within the society? Smartphones, gadgets distract them completely. And even taking them away doesn’t do much to help. So, what can I do to help them so that they do not waste their time and their lives? Or is it that the predestined behave in such a manner?

Mohanji: We should not consider anything as destiny and procrastinate over it. I believe that if we have the right attitude, we can change anything to something positive. How do you bring up your children to powerful personalities? We have spoken about this earlier, but I will give you another dimension. The world has the highest possibilities of human existence and the lowest possibilities of human existence. The highest is existence in compassion, kindness, selflessness, unconditional love; the highest of human qualities. The lowest is just being sense oriented, chasing pleasures, comparing, criticizing, judging, revenging; these kinds of things.

We have this huge variety. Now, where do we position ourselves? This is very important. And that’s exactly where the children will position, looking at us. If we are always insecure, if we are complaining, if we are criticizing judging, if we are positioning ourselves as completely confused in society; children will do the same because they are looking at us as role models at least in the initial days. What do we need to do? We need to bring the stories of powerful personalities who survived all sorts of tribulations, all sorts of tests and express themselves in the most successful way as trendsetters, game-changers. This is in everybody. You got to believe in yourself to do that.

First and foremost, bring awareness of the child in such a way that they believe in themselves. First and foremost is self-respect, belief, faith in themselves, towards themselves, for which we have to respect ourselves. We have to respect other people. We have to respect people, we have to respect ourselves. We have to cultivate respect for everything we do. We have to accept our self; self-acceptance. Respect our self, self-respect.

And we should not ever position ourselves in a position of insecurity or low self-esteem, or things like that. When we have a situation where we are a bit low, we should be able to address it positively. We can go high or we can go low. That’s how human life works, but we should address it positively. Yes, I have a situation where I’m feeling a bit low, that’s fine. That’s okay. And then, the child will learn that everything is okay. If we accept it, it doesn’t hurt too much. If you resist it, it hurts.

This is how it is, and then failures. We do not allow a child to fail because we think failures means the end of life. Absolutely not. Failures lead to success. When you accept failures gracefully, we have found success. Success is in acceptance and non-resistance. This we can lead by example, we should lead by example. Another aspect is that we should not push a child to be perfect. Perfection is a relative thing and it’s a constant thing. Perfection means you got to keep improving. What was perfect yesterday may not be perfect today. We have seen systems, people, situations, materials, constantly getting upgraded. So, a new thing totally eclipses a thing of the past, because it gets upgraded. We must understand that perfection is a relative thing. We should not push the child to be really, really perfect, and some of the backbenchers become very successful because they did not have peer pressure. Just for the sake of perfection, if we put the child into pressure, they collapse completely, eventually.

Many people who are probably successful in life, in terms of money, are not successful in life in terms of contentment. Many people have many diseases, because of this mad rush for something materialistic and thinking that is what is a success. It’s very, very important that we must understand that a child is a unique creation like we are a unique creation. We are all unique. We must leave the child free to be themselves with gentle guidance; with great stories of people who could have had anything, they could have had anything in life but wanted nothing. That means that they were contented inside, and they performed very well and then transformed the society with their existence. Bring the stories of that kind, so that the mind as the child grows will orient to activities which are good to create legends. Don’t try to say the society is not good or things are not good, a sign of times and stuff like that. Society is as it is; it will keep changing. There’ll be differences each day, let’s not worry about that. Let’s see what we can do in this society at this time, in this situation. We must accept ourselves, then the child will accept themselves.

Do discuss this with your friends, contemplate on it, and increase your awareness, step by step. Wish you great success in life.

Lots of love. This is Mohanji.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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Clarity of Purpose Gives Will-Power, Part 2

Mohanji Speaks Zoom Satsang, part 2

24th March, 2019

Sensitive but not emotionally reactive

Q: How can one practice being sensitive and compassionate towards others without being emotionally reactive?

Mohanji: I think I explained this matter in the first discussion. It is about being controlled by the three faculties  I spoke about. The mind controls us. The mind is the seat of emotions. It is also the seat of expectations. Intellect controls us when we analyze too much. We try to position ourselves in the society or with people. Sometimes it becomes escapism too. As an escapist, you say “Oh! This is not my cup of tea. I don’t want to be here”.  Then our ego or personality controls us, with thoughts such as, “Am I being respected? What do people think about me?” and so on.

When I was doing my Sadhana, I would never tell others what I was  practising  I was connecting to my spine, I was doing vertical breathing,  but I never discussed this with anyone  because this is not a subject we need to discuss. Sadhana is something that suits you, so you practise it alone, in silence, spend more time with yourself, stabilize yourself and let the practices stabilize you from within  more and more, settling your doubts. This is how it should be.

In any case, whenever you say “I am emotional”, “How can I not get involved with this?”, etc. always remember, there is an expectation connected to it. This is fundamental. If you have no expectations you will deliver and you will be completely detached. And if you are expecting applause, award, appreciation, there’s always a binding. We end up doing our activity only for that sake of the appreciation. If you have given up that aspect, you do everything you can do at your maximum capacity. But at the same time, you are free, you are not bound by other people’s opinions or appreciation or rejection. Be sensitive enough, to the extent it motivates you. The right amount of sensitivity can be a motivation. Instead if the sensitivity is overwhelming, it does not help you in any way. Sometimes, we may stop doing good things and good work because of other people. That is actually our loss.

Please understand that whether you do something or don’t, in about 80 or 90 years you are history. Hence it‘s not worth it to think too much and not do. I believe in POSITIVE ACTION, not just any action. And my beliefs about the do’s and don’ts are based on non-violence. If something is violent in nature it is a complete ‘no’ for me. Secondly, being sensitive is a good idea but at the same time, it should not hinder our activity.

You FEEL, but don’t blame other people, as they have nothing to do with it. They’re only expressing you, as to what you are to yourself because you need to know what YOU are at some point in time. If you are lazy, you can’t expect other people to be fully active as they will reflect your laziness. Likewise, everything in life is connected to how and what we are. And our experiences are also connected to what we are.

This is the entire structure; what you need to do is forget about everything and focus on your action. Within your capacity, keep doing more. That way, you will increase your capacity and keep delivering. Once you keep delivering it in this mode, you will not worry about being appreciated. You may not even look at how many people are looking at you or whether they are looking at you with kindness, they may not. I have experienced that even after doing so many things, some people criticize you very bitterly. They may talk poorly. What you need to do is, stop worrying about it. Just focus on what you have to do and keep delivering. Those who have eyes to see you will see. Those who cannot see you will not see. They should not see either, I say that because it’s not their time yet,  to connect to you, to recognize you or appreciate you. You should never be looking at people for appreciation.

Also, I’ve seen that most of the connections are based on convenience. “If it is convenient to me I connect, else I don’t connect.” So that is purely a mind based connection. Those kinds of connections will happen in life too. Sometimes they connect and then at some points in time, they are just not there – selective or convenience based connection. These are part of life and we should not really pay much attention to it. Those who are supposed to be with you will be with you. Those who are supposed to see you, will see you. Those who are supposed to appreciate you, will appreciate you. Nobody can shake them because their integrity will be steadfast, uncanny and very powerful.  And they are the ones who will walk with you. That is why Buddha made his entire empire with 5 people. Jesus had 12 people with him. They created their empire with a few people, with those who stood steady, despite any situation, without criticism or doubts and without judgment.

In everyone’s case, all of us are walking this earth and doing many things. When you do things, do not expect something. If you don’t do anything, there is no criticism, but then there is no existence either! If we are doing anything, there will be opinions and that is alright. Let opinions happen. We have to accept it and do what we have to do and what we can do.

Overcoming a sense of isolation

Q: Mohanji, I’m surrounded by people, but I’m lacking a sense of belonging. What can be done to overcome this isolation?

Mohanji: The first part of the sentence is equal to expectation. You are surrounded by people and you do not know you are still in isolation. That means you are becoming more and more mind and you are not even looking at people. They are almost like walls or stones. You don’t see them. Then how do you connect? You don’t recognize them because you don’t recognize yourself.

Here, the fundamental question is about self-acceptance. How much have you accepted yourself? If you have accepted yourself with all your weaknesses, all your strengths, then automatically you will connect to the world with ease. This is because you see only perfection in every being. You will not see many people; you only see your own reflection in many forms. So, the first and the last step should be self-acceptance. You have to start with self-acceptance. At the same time, spend time with yourself and try to feel yourself and understand yourself without judgment, criticism or comparison. There has to be complete acceptance with all your negativity and positivity. All of us have strengths and weaknesses.  No one has only strength or only weakness.

So start looking at yourself fully, completely. Look at yourself as a complete being with every quality. In that mode, when you start looking at the outside world, you will have no expectations. If you have no expectation with your own self, why would there be an expectation about other people? If you don’t have any rejection about yourself, you won’t reject anybody else. If you accept yourself completely, you will accept everybody. This is the fundamental truth. This is exactly how life should be. It’s not a rocket science. It’s about how much have you accepted yourself. That’s where everything begins, everything starts.

Dilute ownership, change your destiny

Q: Can FAITH overcome prarabda?

Mohanji: Faith is important. Faith is like oxygen. Faith helps survival. Also when your focus is on a master or a God or a deity, then many of the calamities which are happening around you will not be so strong or so detrimental because your level of ownership will be less. Pain is connected to OWNERSHIP.

If you have more pain in life, it’s connected to more ownership in life. When you have ownership of people, relationships, possessions, positions, materials, etc. it causes pain. Possessiveness causes pain. Now, if you are connected to a master and operating in “surrender” mode all the time, the ownership will be very low. And so is your pain. What is happening in your life now is a creation from the past. The “Prarabda” or the destiny is a creation of the past. Something you did in the past created this existence. All that you are experiencing now is connected to something of the past. So that will have to happen and nobody can change it. Every experience as it happened is what you are meant to experience. But when you surrender, the impact becomes less because ownership is diluted. With diluted ownership, you are freer, prarabda weakens or the impact will be less. That is a beautiful thing.

Those who are connected to masters or certain deities, those that practise a certain type of worship  consistently, with integrity and conviction, have survived various tests. This is  because when there is no ownership, the event that is meant to happen might not even happen. Sometimes it does happen but it will have a much lower impact than what it was originally meant to be. Thus it’s all connected to ownership. Faith is very important, it is wonderful, and it makes your life better. You can breathe well if there is a good amount of oxygen in the room. Similarly, Grace is the very oxygen in our daily life.   When you have surrendered, the grace factor is high. But when you have ownership, grace factor is low. So the factor of grace is very important.

Gratitude also helps. Even if it is a small thing, be very grateful. You have to be very, very grateful for everything;  grateful that you are alive;  grateful that you are breathing. Be grateful that you have all these possessions and positions. Be grateful that you have food to eat. Be grateful that you have shelter, a roof over your head. Be grateful for your awareness. Be grateful for your relationships. Be grateful for everything. Just be grateful. Being grateful brings grace, lots of grace. And your expression of gratitude  in this world should be kindness and compassion. Be kind and be compassionate. Don’t judge, don’t criticize and don’t talk bad. These are all very negative and you are actually attracting more poison by being that way.

A story

As the story goes, there was  a saint who was  looking at a tree.  A passerby asked, “What are you looking?” The saint said, “There are three people sitting in the tree. All three are people without bodies, which means,  they are dead. They are souls of non-bodied beings”. This passerby next asked, “What are they doing on the tree?” The saint said, “They are waiting to enter somewhere, maybe for their next birth or so.” Then they both saw a person coming from the village road, far away, fully drunk. He was completely unconscious of the world. He was tottering, falling down, picking himself up and still kept walking. He was coming that way. The saint said, “Just hold on. Just wait and see.” So this guy came and he didn’t even look at these beings on the tree, he simply walked past. When he walked past, they also went behind him.

This guy who was watching asked the saint, “Where is he going?” The saint replied, “In the same street around the corner, there is a brothel and he is going there.” He also added, “ Not just he, four people all together, have gone to the brothel, and that includes him.”   This means that the three souls who were sitting  on the tree entered him and went with him. They didn’t have a body of  their own and hence needed a body for the experience. So they all went together to the brothel.

It is very important to understand  that when your energies are of anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge and similar negativities, such energies will enter you and  aggravate it even more. We should always remember that walking the path of purity is very important. We shall not criticize. We shall not judge. We shall not complain. We will never be involved in any kind of polluting or negative emotions, because when you are in the grip of such emotions, when you are in such a mode, various energies of similar nature enter you, because they are all looking for a body for expression.

Some of them do not have the power to create a new body. So, they enter a body which is already in  that mode, means “birds of the same feather” kind of situation. They enter this body and work in a negative way. That is why I always insist not to sponsor, not to nurture or subscribe to negative emotions, criticism, judgment, revenge, etc. If you do encourage such negative emotions and thoughts, the energies around you which are of bad nature, will enter you and aggravate your situation. So you need to remain connected to higher consciousness, remain connected to a master who is connected to higher consciousness or worship a god or a deity you like to connect to. In some way, you should purify yourself. Please remember, this is YOUR journey, YOUR body, YOUR path, YOUR destination, YOUR destiny. So, YOU need to nurture it well. Nobody else can do it for you.

What best I can do is  show you the light and guide you. But I cannot walk for you.  It doesn’t  work that way. You have to walk. If you fall, it’s my responsibility, I’ll hold you. But YOU have to walk. Always remember, what brought you here is your prarabda. Your destiny brought you here, to this state. Losing this state is very easy. All you have to do is to enter into bad company, talk poorly, and engage in bad activities. Then more such energies will join you and pull you down.

If you have already managed to reach this level, all you need to do now is,  take one vow, one decision, a firm decision – that you will not take one step backward, because it is not worth it. One step backward means “Punarapi Jananam, Punarapi Maranam”, which translates to, again you are taking birth, again you are dying, again the stage of being in the womb of a mother … Like this, we have existed. So we MUST be very clear about this now.

We will not take a step backward. We are only going forward to the path of dissolution. We are only going in the path of becoming one with pure consciousness, which  has nothing to do with anything, so that we are very clear and focused and this is exactly how we should lead our life hereafter. That is the biggest gift you can give yourself. Even if somebody says something, even if you have many lures around you, even if all the people in the neighbourhood are negative, you don’t have to be. You can still stick with your integrity, stick with your experience, stick with your conviction and stick with your determination to remain pure in thoughts, words, and actions. This is all you need to do and this will automatically elevate you to very high levels of awareness.

Maintaining equilibrium

Q: As I continue with my Sadhana and my awareness increases, I find it very difficult to handle the conflicts and insensitivities of the corporate world. How can I maintain the equilibrium?

Mohanji: Everything has a price. Every state has a price. Nothing comes easy. The challenges of the outside world will always be there, whether it is our relationships or the place of work or our own notions and concepts, those  sitting inside and the ones sitting outside, both of them may fight you. But you need to be very firm if liberation is your priority. Liberation means not running away from everything. Liberation means, having everything but you are not attached to anything. Attachment causes ownership, ownership causes pain. So, we need to be aware that we are the whole story. The whole story is us. We make our lives, we break our life and everything is us. Let things flow. Anything can go wrong. In my case, when I was doing my practices, I went through a series of problems including the death of my daughter, Ammu. All my possessions were stolen. My investments went away when the property dealer ran away. I lost my job. I contracted a disease. All these events happened within a short span of time (5-6 years). So I lost everything that I had ever had and this was challenging. Then there were corporate challenges on the other side such as targets, performance and the related activities.

But I never left my path. I never ever discussed my practices with people. I was alone and practising on my own. And it was purely the Vedic path, connecting to my spine and connecting to my breath. This is the only thing I did, but with consistency, conviction and focus. I never sought  results. Basically you are only giving time to yourself, connecting to yourself, being with yourself.

Later on, when I started my public life, I realized that many people  who come are not coming with kindness. Some people will come, abuse your connection in some way and then walk away. Also, they  contaminate the minds of other people. So I decided that I will have nothing to do with it, let it all happen. But we need to be very firm and very stable. And that’s what I deliver.

Hence your stillness, your stability is your choice. What happens outside is definitely not in your control; you can’t control it. That will happen based on  what our prarabda, what our destiny gives us. Your workplace, where you live, what you have, etc. are all connected to destiny. We have no control over them  because they are predetermined. But you can definitely make sure that you will stick to your tradition and path in this life. Nobody can challenge it. Even if somebody challenges it, if you reinforce your conviction then you can’t be defeated. You are very powerful. Actually, you will know that you are very powerful when you decide that “Nothing else matters, only liberation matters.”  If everything matters to you, then you are scattered. If only liberation matters, if you are fully focused on yourself and your liberation, then it doesn’t matter what your environment is, what concepts or fears you have or what is outside. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters at all. You are focusing only on the path of liberation.

That requires two things: no ownership of action, no ownership of the result of the action. These are absolutely essential to be in the path of liberation. And if you just focus on lack of ownership, that will be fine;  then clarity of purpose as I mentioned in the beginning, and also gratitude, deep gratitude. Always be grateful, don’t allow negativity; rather don’t buy things which you don’t need, especially those that are negative in nature; talking about people, talking about situations, concepts, and so on. You don’t need any of them. In fact, just focus on clarity of purpose, which is, liberation.

As I said, there are two sticks you can hold while you are trekking – no ownership on the action, no ownership on the results of action. Keep walking.

Wish all of you great success and deep love. All the best. Thank you! Love you!

 

Transcribed by Rakshitha and Ananth Sankaran
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

Read Clarity of Purpose Gives Will-Power, Part 1