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

Practical Steps for Challenging Times – part 1

Satsang with Mohanji  
16th August 2020

 

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must be considerate.

We cannot conquire, capture and kill.

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

We should coexist.

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

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

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

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

Sarve bhavantu sukhinaha – Let all the beings be peaceful!

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

Q: How can I know my purpose in life?  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth and Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

Change your life, change your attitude, be powerful.

Hello, my friends, we spoke about domestic violence, psychological disorders. Attention Deficit syndromes, all those kinds of things. Where are all these things coming from? We discussed that in the last episode. I decided to take this to one more episode because this is very important. It’s about our stability. If we are stable at home, a house where there is a lot of love, there’s a lot of stability; the society sees that happening as well because these people bring that stability to the society. We need a lot of stable people. We need stability, within us, in our household and in society. We must, while we can.

So, I was talking about how I was experiencing life. Many times, in childhood, in youth, and also during my work life, I have faced failures, in fact, tremendous failures. And each time I faced failures, I realized that there is hardly any company! People don’t appreciate you when you fail, rather they don’t appreciate those who fail. They only want winners. The criteria used to assess winning is money or richness in materials that are visible; even something like a good pen or a car. But how they earned it, we don’t know. Sometimes, some people have compromised their conscience to earn, but people do not have a problem with that.

I have experienced trusted people either cheating or otherwise betraying me. And society sometimes supports them. I am so surprised that society has no problem, even if they do something wrong, such as putting someone down, betraying, cheating or stealing. Society has no problem if they bribe and get their way through.

So, we are looking at a corrupt society with aberrations. We can’t look at society and decide how we should be, because that’s probably not the right benchmark. What we should be is what helps our conscience. Do we feel good? Are we stable in our conscience?This is a good benchmark to talk about because if our conscience is clear, I think we have a good existence.

When we are violent in the house when we abuse our family members, we are angry and fighting with them or maybe ignoring them, disrespecting them, we don’t feel good; our conscience is affected. And we must understand why it’s happening. Sometimes we need external help or counselling. We must get it. We must go for it.

Every time domestic violence is happening, we should not just blame the person; we should look at the psychology of the person. Probably, that person has gone through many sorrows, many disappointments, many betrayals or many rejections. This frustration is boiling within and domestic violence could be the expression of the same.

Beginning from school days we must counsel children. We must reward them for small things; recognize them for their talents, appreciate them and bring them up with confidence, where their own talents are what they need to give to society, not what the society wants. You know, it’s not about the marks in school; It’s not about the grades, not even about succeeding exams, it’s about their own talents, how well they can own it. They will then be peaceful and settled from within. If such little appreciation does not happen early on, then even large appreciations, later on in life will not have value. Every small thing should be appreciated.

I’ve experienced different difficulties. One is the workplace competition, discrimination. I even had a situation where there was a hardship allowance, which is granted when you have to work in countries that are fragile and have difficult conditions. At that time, it was Iraq. Iraq was a very difficult place and they decided to give me a set of hardship allowances and a different set to my colleague who was a British person. When I asked why there was a difference, they gave me some lame excuse, which did not hold water. I had to tell them, “See, this is not good because everybody’s life is the same. All of us value our lives equally. And this is not good; having two different sets of hardship allowances in the same office is discrimination!”

Such things happen. I was not feeling good about it at that time but still, I did my job. I decided, “Okay, forget about all that. A job needs to be done and it should be done”. I don’t believe in protesting and ignoring my job, so I did it well and that earned the company money. I believe that we should not ignore our work and we should do what we have to. I continued despite workplace difficulties.

The point I’m trying to make is, we can do a lot in the world, in OUR world, to bring balance in people’s lives. We can easily implement in our life, qualities such as equality and equanimity, where nobody’s higher or lower; where everybody is appreciated for their good work. You know we appreciate, we respect, we reward, we recognize; all these things can help stabilize.

And society brands you very easily. When I lost my daughter in 2000, I also lost many other things of life in the following years. The best of friends were not available then. They were busy with their own lives and did not really want to spend time with a loser of society. I experienced all this and was wondering how deep is our love? How deep is our friendship, commitment, conviction? How deep is our companionship? How deep is our ability to love, unconditionally or against all odds? All these questions were happening, and I decided, they are not worth a thought. What you can do is work on what should stabilize you; your expression; that’s your stability. I was completely focusing on myself. I ignored the world around me and that stabilized me.

The questions that came are connected to domestic violence. I will not deviate from that, I will talk about it and conclude. Suppose you have no appreciation from home; what would you do? You have to love yourself. You have to accept yourself; you have to really consider and respect yourself as a great personality. It has nothing to do with other people’s appreciation or rejection. So, if you really believe in yourself, if you really appreciate, even small aspects of yourself, such as your heartbeat, your breathing, that you are eating, you are sleeping and you have so many good things happening in your life, such as shelter; you have a roof over your head, you have food to eat. All those things can be considered as merits. Just count on what you have. Or even the Mohanji platform; the platform gives you a lot of opportunities, connections, visibility, and so many other good things.

If you are looking at what you don’t have, you will always be sad. Instead, look at what you have and start walking; that’s the only place from where you can start walking. This is what I did. When adverse situations were pulling me down all the time, I got up and started walking again. Many times, I got knocked down but I got up again and walked. And that’s exactly why you have Mohanji today. It wasn’t easy. Because many whom I trusted the most, betrayed me and decided to go against me. Yet, I continued to walk. I didn’t ask them why. I didn’t even discuss with them. “If that is the experience you want with me, go ahead, have it”, I thought. I can’t change whether one chooses to love or hate me and I will have nothing to do with it.

If somebody hates you, abuses you, have nothing to do with it. Instead, you can be kindness. Your answer to this world should be your kindness, your consistency, your compassion and your conviction in what you do. If you answer in this way, eventually, the world will look at you with the same effect. This means that all that you express, will come back to you. My suggestion is, do not believe, ”I can’t do these things because my family does not approve, etc.” You can still communicate. If you have a laptop, if you’re talking, if you’re using your phone to communicate, communicate, If you can’t do it at home, because the people at home don’t approve of your meditations and other activities, you still have a phone, you have an internet connection, you have your laptop. Talk about it, connect to people, network, and communicate. Now today, you can’t really go to a place and meditate because of the COVID-19 situation. So, we have to use our internet facilities, our Skype and all these portals where you talk to various people through the internet through the laptop. We have to keep looking at what we have, not at whether the other person approves or not; then fight, get frustrated and then depressed; that’s not the way to live. We have to just keep flowing like water, like a river; we should keep flowing, and this is our ability, we have to really keep flowing.

When I felt discrimination in my office, I did not stop working. I did not protest, I just told them, “It’s unfair!” Then I left it because I expressed my thought to the concerned person. And then I left it because then it’s up to them. But I did not stop working. I worked hard and proved myself. I did my best. Similarly, in every situation, you can prove yourself. You can actually make a difference in your own environment, by expressing conviction consistently, with a lot of determination.

 So, we can change anything. I think there is nothing we can’t change. Change your attitude. If you change your attitude, you can change anything. If we don’t change our attitude, then we will just sit and complain. I believe that there’s no room for complaints. God has given us so many facilities. We must appreciate them. What we don’t have, leave it. If it comes, it does, if it doesn’t come, no problem. But what we have we must appreciate, and we must really use it well. We have that capacity.

 You have friendships, great friendships in the Mohanji platform also. So this you can use very well. And then, collectively, you can create great things. There is the Early Birds Club and through these, you add value to the lives of many people. Your life too will have more value; you will feel that reciprocation, rather it will be reciprocated. This means that when you deliver, you also get a lot of rewards. So, if your family cannot see you as a great personality, society will see you; that is compensation.

I leave this thought on your plate. Contemplate on it. Improve your life, change your attitude. Be powerful. 

Lots of love! This is Mohanji.

 

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopal

Subscribe to Mohanji Speaks daily podcast

 

 

Health

Hello, my friends! This is Mohanji.

Hope you’re enjoying the podcast. I am glad you are liking them and you are sharing your thoughts about the podcast with us. You’re also sharing it with your friends. Thank you very much. Now, recently I did a podcast on the subject of health or living consciously. We will talk more about living consciously later, but the same subject, focusing on health, I would like to discuss today.

What is health? Health is a kind of stability. Health is alignment; health is feeling good where everything is fine, our systems are fine. This is more or less easy in our youth (when we are young) in our 20s and 30s. When we move further in life, it becomes a struggle. If we have taken care of our body well during our younger days, then the older days also will be fine, because the foundation will be good. If the foundation is good, the building is good. So, that’s where we start.

Health is not only the health of our body. It is physical health, mental health, emotional health, intellectual health; and health of the environment, the health of nature, the health of everything around us. This means everything around us should be healthy for us to be healthy. If the air is not healthy, we will be sick. If water is not healthy, we will have a problem. If the environment is unhealthy, we will fall sick.

Ayurveda says this very clearly. For having a great youthfulness, you must go to bed at 9 o’clock (9 pm). 9 pm to midnight if you sleep well, you will remain youthful. The body likes it. Then if you wake up at 4 am or after 3 am; 3 to 6 is the Brahma Muhurtha, the purest time; if you are able to wake up or get up and start your day after 3 am anytime (earlier the better) then you will have stable mental health; it means nothing can affect you. So if you sleep early, which is at 9 and if you wake up early which is at 4 or before, you will be stable, physically and mentally. This is what the Ayurveda, the science of being stable and healthy says. This is a good thought to start with.

Then we have various situations where we have late nights and parties and stuff, but always remember, our body works almost like the sun. Let’s say at 6 o’clock the sun rises and the sun sets at 6 o’clock. Usually, it is like that in tropical countries, but in the north and the south it’s slightly different, but if you make a balance – 6 am to 6 pm, then your body will be very happy because you are not eating indiscriminately; you’re not eating at odd hours. And if you look, even the animals, they don’t eat after sunset; we can see that. Birds retire, rest after a full day of roaming around for food etc. They know very well that their whole body constitution is aligned to the sun. This is another thing.

Now, about psychological health; the mental health. We must stay away from negative stuff to be stable. It means some people are always negative, tamasic, lazy, indulging in materials of intoxication, and stuff like that. These are the things which totally imbalances our system, it really, imbalances us. So, what we have to do is we need to avoid them. We need to stay away from them. Then we start working on ourselves, as I said, sleep at 9, go to bed at 9 o’clock, and you wake up at 3 am. The Early Birds Club is made with that system in mind. The very basics of the Early Birds Club are for people to wake up and become quality, powerful, purposeful citizens of the world; that’s the idea. Then there’s a saying that if somebody wakes up early and starts their day at 4 am, they can never be defeated on Earth because their mind would be very strong. But you got to do it repeatedly and with the determination. That means, not some days, all days, all the time, every time, and every day. This is very important.

 

Once you start having a stable day, that’s where you begin. This is applicable for every age group, not small children, but it doesn’t have to be only after a certain age; it is good for everybody. This is something which you can start and also control food habits. Then, drink a lot of water. When you have a lot of water, like water therapy we talk about; early in the morning when you wake up, if you have a litre of water, it really flushes the system clean. This is very good. Likewise, every time after you sleep when you get up, you should have water because the body would be dehydrated; so water will help. After every bath, you should have water, water will help. Taking bath is very important, at least twice a day, when you get up in the morning and then it is better after you brush your teeth to wash your body, even if you cannot wash your head.

Ayurveda system says that you should take a bath of the body first before you pour water on the head. So, a shower concept of pouring the water directly on the head is not so healthy. So, if you first bathe your body, neck and down, and then the face, then the head, that is the right way to take a bath. Then you can dry first the head, then the body, that’s the way to go. So, that it really balances the body; doesn’t create an imbalance. The water to be used for taking baths should be of the temperature of the place that is what they say, the same temperature, room temperature. That is healthy water if possible, but sometimes it’s very cold and then you can’t take bath in that water; so it’s okay to warm it up to suit your body, that’s fine. So, that’s about bathing. And immediately after taking a bath, you should drink water as well to avoid dehydration. So, water has a lot of value. Our every cell is connected to water; our body needs a lot of water. And if you drink a lot of water, your system will remain clean.

Then avoid all the food, which is of violence in nature, because that energetically affects the body. When you eat food, which is connected to spilt blood; if that food had a painful death, it may affect your body. So, avoid food, which had violence behind it, or agony behind it. That will help you.

If you wake up early and if you drink a lot of water; if you take baths twice a day and if you follow pranayamas and yoga exercises, and you have a healthy lifestyle with no intoxications; with a lot of awareness about the environment, means we should care for the environment; environmental health is important, then I think we will have physical, mental and environmental health.

So with this thought, I will leave you now. This is just some aspects of health; we’ll talk more about it, whenever possible. This could probably leave some thoughts about the right methods for you. The other side is our own laziness, so we should be aware of it. And it is said that the distance between success and failure is the time when you wake up and you get up. That’s what they say. That means, as soon as you wake up, if you’re ready to get up, you’re a successful person. If you wake up, and then you take a long time to get up, that means there is a room for failure in life. Failure means disappointments and depressions in life. So, always be ready to get up when you wake up. Don’t lie on the bed thinking what else to do now. So, this is exactly what makes you successful.

I wish you great success in life. We’ll walk together. And may you shine bright like the sun because the world needs the light.

Lots of love, this is Mohanji.

 

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

Subscribe to Mohanji Speaks daily podcast

Which are you? Fixed or flexible mindset?

Hello friends. This is Mohanji.

Hope you’re doing well and hope you’re digesting the subjects that we had chosen in the last few podcasts and hope they are helpful to you. Today, I was thinking of taking up a subject which you can use as food for thought.

The subject is a mindset. Mindset is not an easy subject, because it’s not easy to put the mind structure into compartments. But it’s important because that is the advantage of understanding ourselves more so that we can remove all the clutter and we can bring clarity. This is the advantage. The more clarity we have, life will be cleaner; life will be better. Otherwise, confusions and clutter can take over.

So, what are the major mindsets that we see in this world? Let’s categorize them into two. One is a fixed mindset, and the other is a flexible mindset or a growth mindset.

The fixed mindset, they usually avoid challenges, they don’t like challenges. Then they hate changes, they like fixed routines. If any change happens, even if it’s a change in material like food on the table, they become unhappy, they become upset; their life pattern changes. So, they can’t leave patterns. They are very, very bound to patterns. They hate changes. They also think they can do very little to change the situation. Then, they do not like criticism, they don’t accept criticism. If somebody comes and tells them, “Look here, why don’t you make a difference in your life? Why don’t you try this? Why don’t you try something new?”, they can’t accept it. Because they are sure what they’re doing is the right thing. And they won’t look at a person or any friendship or any connection favourably if they are starting to interfere in their life. For example, if somebody tries to correct them or makes a change in their life for the better, even that will not be accepted because they don’t like an intervention. They want to stay in their own comfort zones, they are very, very afraid to leave that comfort zone, to leave their pattern. They only see obstacles. They see obstacles all the time because for them, “Oh, this is a problem, that’s a problem”; they always discuss problems. And they try to tell people that people are not right, the situation is not right, problems are happening, like that they will always think about problems. Then they also feel that putting efforts are useless because life happens anyway. Why do you put a lot of effort? This is a fixed mindset. A lot of people are like that in the world. They just live and die. Anonymous, we won’t even see them, because they have a fixed mindset, and they are kind of like how the animals live; the routine life. That’s it. If anything just happened in their life, they are upset. They don’t like changes.

Now we look at the flexible mindset. They welcome challenges. “Bring it on”, you know, that attitude. And they embrace changes. When changes happen, they just melt into the changes. Then they think everything is possible. There is nothing impossible in life, they think impossibility is an illusion, we can do it. If somebody can do it, we can do it. If there’s a thought, we can make it happen. If there is a firm wish or a desire, it can be accomplished. They treasure feedback and would learn eagerly; they like to have feedback. They ask, “What do you think about this?” or “Can we improve on it?” and they use everything, or every faculty, or every connection so that they can improve in some way. So, every day, they think about what else can we do? How we can improve this? How we can make the standards better? It’s not maintenance anymore. They are builders, they can build. They don’t worry about what’s already happened. But in their mind, they’re always thinking, “What else we can do, what else can happen?” So, they are always on a mode of improvement, or they try to upgrade everything. So, they like feedback, and they want to change things in a positive way. They love exploring new things and they look at results. Their focus is, “This is my aim, I want to reach there,” and they reach there. Obstacles on the way, it doesn’t matter. There will be obstacles, there will be detours in life. No problem. They keep moving. And every failure for them is a lesson.

So, this is approximately how a person with a flexible mindset thinks. It’s a good thought for us so that we understand where we stand, you know. So, there are a few things which we can check to see where we are in these two categories. Are we from the category of a fixed mindset, or are we from the category of a flexible mindset? So, a few things you can look at is; are we lazy? How do you measure that?

The time when you wake up, and the time when you get up. So when you wake up, if you’re lying in the bed thinking about “Oh my God! It’s morning again.” That’s a lazy attitude, means purpose is not very clear. There’s no clarity of purpose. This is one of the signs you can look at. That’s why we started the Early Birds Club with definite clarity. When you wake up, you are sharp, you have a fixed schedule so you can wake up and you can go through the process so that laziness, the tamas part can be slowly taken away. Please don’t underestimate tamas. Tamas is a very, very dangerous thing. It’s like cancer, we wouldn’t even know that it’s existing inside until and unless we become completely paralyzed. That’s why the Early Birds Club I’m stressing on and I’m telling people to try that because you know, that way you can change your mode from a lazy or a fixed mindset to a flexible mindset, and also attain a lot of success in life. Our aim is to create successful people; positive people. For positivity, you need to have a positive lifestyle.

So, are we lazy? Secondly, are we restless and distracted all the time? That means we do not have a stable mindset, stability is affected. If you are restless and if you are distracted all the time, the mind is like a monkey jumping from one branch to the other. We are disappointed with so many things; we are distracted in various ways. Then it is time we get to something which inspires us from within; concentrate on it. This is important.

So, what can we do about it? We can try to find something which is self-enhancing; self-rejuvenation, self-inspiration, this kind of thing, which would be a thing connected to your nature, and your own inherent constitution, how you are made. It is based on your inclination, your tendencies. That’s what’s suitable for you. Cultivate that thing, then you can improve on it, but it should be something positive. Not something negative, which is draining or which costs a lot of money or efforts and stuff like that. Whatever is natural will be effortless for you. So that’s the right thing to do. Usually, if you are preoccupied with unimportant things, for example, some people are just addicted to WhatsApp or Facebook; they waste the whole day like that. Some people are addicted to games on the computer. Some people have other material addictions and all kinds of things.

So, our waking hours, how best are we using? If we are preoccupied with the not so important things that detach us and deviates us from the actual purpose of life, then we must correct it. Because, what are you here for, what is your actual purpose? Let’s say, if your purpose is liberating yourself completely so that you are fine with life, you’re not in conflict with life, you’re very stable with life, you’re enjoying life, you’re accepting life, you’re respecting life, and then, respecting all the people connected to you. You’re not discriminating, you’re not criticizing, you’re not trying to push people away, you’re accepting everybody, you’re kind of walking with them and you’re in a mode of liberation. Let’s say, a mode of liberation means a lifestyle of liberation. In that case, don’t wander on insignificant things. We must understand that they are not helping us to progress.

But recreation is fine once in a while, we can watch a feature film, we can have a good dinner outside. I’m not saying that we avoid all our happiness, all our enjoyments. We should look at, are we spending a lot of time on unimportant things?

Another thing is, is our energy flow proper? How does energy flow become proper? First of all, if you indulge in positive things, positive thoughts, positive words, positive action, energy flow will be good. Secondly, if you are involved in activities which you love to do, energy flow will be good. But what you love to do should adhere to your goal of life. This is very important. What you love to do, should not be something which wastes your energy, like indulgences and addictions. Many people spend a lot of time on addictions, even though energy flow might be good, but it’s not positive.

Then another point is, your thought process, you have no control. Where are the thoughts coming from? Thoughts are coming from inherent inclinations, so be aware of that. And if you’re able to regulate and guide them to the goal all the time; or as we mentioned earlier, our goal is liberation. If our thoughts are all going towards that goal, you’re on the right track because you have set a goal, you’ve set your destination right. So, if you’re travelling in that mode, and your energy flow is in that mode, your thoughts are in that mode, you are absolutely on the right track. This is all you need to do.

Now, I would sum up so that it becomes food for thought. All these ingredients we have to cook together and make a nice, tasty curry. So, first of all, analyze, where you stand. Do you have a fixed mindset or a flexible mindset? Secondly, how do you know where you stand? We have explained, various options for it. We can explain more later but this I don’t want to elaborate too much. And thirdly, this understanding will help you to correct yourself to the right track.

So, there are more things, we will talk about next time. I leave you with this thought at this point in time. Let’s understand, and let’s assimilate, and let’s improve ourselves in the right way. I leave you with these thoughts. Be happy, and be bright, the world needs light.

Lots of love.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

Subscribe to Mohanji Speaks daily podcast

 

Mental health and stability

March 26, 2020

 

Hello friends,

We are all on quarantine in our own houses. I think it’s the same all over the world, especially in India; we are all in a kind of house arrest. But this is inevitable. This is the real drastic step our global governments have taken to contain an epidemic and we must comply with it. We must support it. We must do everything possible to help our governments to stabilize the situation. This is very important. I understand there are a lot of inconveniences because many people have already told me about their suffocation because of forced isolation, about deteriorating mental levels, uneasy psychological states, feeling terrible, self-esteem affected; all these things are expected, I have spoken about these possibilities a long time ago when I said almost the entire global population might be affected emotionally and psychologically.

When we are in confinement for more than a reasonable time, this is bound to happen. And this is not about any external factor. This is actually something internal because it’s about a situation that we are used to versus a situation that we are forced into. So, we are used to a situation where we were in our extreme freedom, where we could go anywhere, do what we liked, we could buy anything, and we could eat anything, we could go to places; we could have entertainments at various levels. This was our reality before, but right now, that’s not our reality. It’s all confinement. And we have certain restrictions in food as well. This is very uncomfortable for many people.

I’m responding to a few questions which came to me, in fact, some people have told me that they are going through this tough internal process. I’m not surprised. That’s why I’m giving this message.

In a situation where there is forced isolation, we are bound to have inconveniences, suffocation. This is what people feel in prisons. That’s exactly what the animals feel in the factory farms. That’s what the animals feel in zoos. So, wherever there is confinement, there is suffocation and there is a lot of emotional distraction. Then we start blaming every external factor like governments, like the enforcement bodies for our state of suffering. It’s not true. It’s actually the sign of times. The situation is not created by our governments, global governments. They have not done this. This has happened due to whatever reasons; I don’t even go into who created it because that’s already created. Let’s look at the effect; we will not look at the source because there’s no need to know the source right now as it will not help us. It will only probably accent our level of distraction, accelerate our suffocation, discomfort or our discontentment.

So, I would rather, you focus on your inner state. And some people ask me, how did you attain this state of calmness? My answer is through self-imposed isolation. My question is that are you ready to have that answer? I’m not underestimating you. I’m not saying that you are not up there. It’s not the point. The point is that in every situation, we have the ability to remain calm, not blaming any other bodies, any other external factors, people, places, time, various situations, and just count on our gains and merits. We have a place to sleep. Number one, that is a shelter. Second, we have food to eat. Maybe that’s not the food you like to eat, but we have something to eat, we can satisfy our hunger. We have something to eat, we have a place to sleep and we have clothes, some kind of protection from the environment. So, this is exactly the basics that we look for, any existence looks for; any human being, any sentient being looks for. So we have all that. And I think this is very important to remember, understand and acknowledge at this point in time.

When emotions are running high and we start fighting with people, in the families, we start blaming them for past events and reasons and stuff like that; we are creating hell in our own homes. And I think that we should never do that because now, God or nature has kept us together in our homes, our families together, and that should be counted as a blessing, not as a curse. We should always look at our blessings. If you have to reach higher levels of awareness, you need to have a lot of deeper levels of acceptance, a very high level of acceptance. So acceptance is very important; acceptance of oneself, acceptance of the situations, acceptance of the people around you. Even if some people in your household are angry, upset and they’re blaming everything, it is up to you to pacify them, console them, give them the reasons and the awareness. You should tell them; look here, all that you talk has no value in this situation which is not created by us. It has befallen on us. You know, it’s like you are out there in the streets without an umbrella, then the rain starts and there is no shade, you will be drenched. That’s not because you did anything wrong or somebody did something wrong to you that it happened that way. The situation created it and you are experiencing that effect.

Now, there are places in the city where people said the police are literally attacking or beating people when they come to get some resources etc. Well, I would like to say that this is part of the enforcement bodies’ job. They have been instructed not to have people coming together in some places because then the virus gets transferred. One person can infect a 1000 people, or maybe more, if he goes into public places. So, we need to understand that these enforcement bodies have their job to do for our sake. Maybe they are doing it aggressively because they don’t want to take any chances. So there’s no point in blaming. I think we should just take care of ourselves, and we should follow orders and we should trust the governments now, whichever country you are in, we should trust the governments to do their best. As I had said earlier, no government was equipped to handle something of this nature and size. They never expected a situation of this kind, where there is a total embargo.  You can’t move anywhere, you can’t go anywhere, all the borders are closed and situations are out of control. So, they will definitely do whatever it takes or whichever way they can, to create the effect where the disease does not spread further.

So, we need to comply; we need to accept. Now lastly, what I would like to say is that this is a great chance for you to develop your highest level of awareness. First, stop blaming anybody. That’s the first step. Nobody is responsible for this, maybe we can say collective consciousness created this effect. If the collective consciousness of our unconscious lifestyle was not responsible, we will not be in confinement. It is collective consciousness; collective consciousness born out of insensitivity, collective consciousness derived out of unconscious lifestyles, and the collective consciousness of taking the nature for granted, or the collective consciousness that took our nature for granted. We have encroached into every territory, we have captured, tormented, tortured and killed various species; we have done much harm to our own brotherhood; our own nature, our own fellow species, the species that are coexisting with us. We have harmed them and we have thought that they are all for us to enjoy, or do whatever it takes. And then just like we had slavery in the past where we used to buy and sell people; use people as we liked and kill people if we didn’t like; the same thing we are doing with animals and birds today. So this mindset has to change and nature is giving us a chance to do that. Nature is giving us a chance to be humans again.

You know, we are used to certain habits; habits are broken. Addictions – we are used to certain addictions, some people are addicted to cigarettes and some people are addicted to alcohol, or drugs and so many things, and that’s not easily available now. So, the addicts go through tremendous stress. And if there are such people in your house, they will be displaying various levels of irritation, violence or aggression. We have to handle them wisely. There’s no other way. We need to have enough stability to handle everything in our houses. And maybe, you won’t get much medical support for them at this point in time because all the doctors and the clinics are busy taking care of the coronavirus situation. You may not get much assistance to access the de-addiction facilities. So, that has to be understood. And some people are going into the level of suicide as their withdrawal symptoms are really wild and violent. I understand that too because that’s part of it. And that was supposed to happen in this kind of forced isolation.

So, every situation you look at are all chances for you to change for the better. Be stable, calm and handle situations as it comes. The first step is acceptance, non-resistance. Second step is accepting the society or accepting the environment as it is. And please understand; now the governments have said that only the family members and close family members should stay together, the rest of the people should be staying in their own facilities which prevents us from having guests at home. This is not a punishment. This is because they want to isolate and monitor. This I understand, I spoke to somebody from this enforcement authority earlier and they said, they don’t want to punish anybody. They want to keep people sufficiently apart so that they can monitor them easily. They want to make sure that the people who are not part of the family stay outside the family so that the families are properly taken care of as well; this way, individually or in one group, they can contain the possibility of the virus spreading. So, I think that we need to just obey and follow what the government says, just because they have a definite plan.

So, we are not supposed to keep any non-family members in our houses and we are not supposed to go to other houses while in isolation, but at the same time we must take care of our people. So if you have anybody isolated and they don’t have access to assistance; our people are isolated and don’t have access to medical support or shelter or food, do let us know. We will try to do something but no guarantee what we can do because we also do not have mobility.

Do not blame God. Do not blame situations. Do not blame Gurus. Do not blame your father and mother. Do not blame your doctors; do not blame your government. This blame game is going to really sap your energy and that’s not going to give you any kind of strength. Secondly, fear is absolutely not required, if you have taken the precaution, if you’re staying away from the public, if you’re following the instructions of the government, the public authority, the hospitals, you don’t have to worry. If you engage in activities that are not recommended, then you are responsible, not them. So, we must understand the situation clearly; we must obey accordingly; we must follow accordingly.

So, again, coming back to this question, please take care of yourself, please take care of your family and accommodate everybody who is at home peacefully and with love. People of your own family may have various demands, disagreements, and disappointments because of this forced togetherness. So, we as a family should try to contain it. We should not blame each other and fight with each other and make it miserable inside the house where it is miserable to exist together. So, don’t make that situation. If that situation happens because of other family members, diffuse it. Pacify everybody, talk to everybody, and make sure everybody understands.

Take your time. Maintain silence, if possible. If you have enough inner strength and if you have gained strength through good associations, talk to the world and give them some confidence. If you have strength, if you have stability, share it. That’s the highest thing you can do at this time because even though the world is closed, social media is active; you have all those spaces to convey your message through and use it properly and convey your strength and your stability effectively. If you are unstable, then you have to maintain silence. You’re to do more of pranayama – breathing, meditate, connect to yourself and look at yourself as an outsider. Introspect. Contemplate. What exactly is annoying you? What is making you angry? And don’t blame outside entities, outside beings, spaces, time and people. They not important. That’s escapism. Instead, go within and see what is hurting you inside. If you’re very steady in your connection with the supreme consciousness, God or guru, nothing will destabilize you. This is for sure. That’s the only connection you really need at this point in time. Faith is medicine when fear is the disease.

So, you need to see what is destabilizing you, what is annoying you, what is making you irritated? Those are the things which you probably need to pluck out of your system. And that’s a good thing, write them down and understand – “this particular thing is irritating me”. Not having a cigarette is irritating me. Not having coffee is irritating me. Anxiety for not having the food which I want to eat is irritating me. So this is good for your introspection, you can understand where you stand. Write them down on a piece of paper and burn them. As the paper becomes ash, those feelings also should become ash in your mind.

I leave you with these thoughts and please think about it and try to understand and transform yourself; try to assimilate yourself and stop blaming the governments, the systems and the enforcement authorities. Don’t blame your family members or each other for past events, incidents or past actions and never make people’s life miserable in your house. Instead, try to love, try to forgive everything and forget the past for good. Try to love and give lots of love to people unconditionally. Renew friendships with your family members and try to understand them and their feelings better hereafter. People really need love and probably we have failed to give love to our own people for a long time since we have been very busy; this is the right time to do that. So, give love, share love, protect people and tell people – I love you – wholeheartedly within the family.  If you have not told them for a long time, tell them now and display that and make it extremely sincere.  This is the right time to do that because you have all your family members available within your house. So do that and convey love to your friends that you care, through phone, social media, etc. Always understand that together we are strong; divided or separated, we are weak. So, let us remain together as one family, one global family and let us support each other as one global family. All the people are in the same situation like us. So, don’t try to do portray yourself as a victim. We are all victims in that mode. So don’t worry about it too much as all are in the same boat.

This is the time as I said yesterday to press the reset button and completely cleanse yourself and make yourself stronger and stable. And then your world will be better for you. This is the right chance for that. And I’m always with you. I’m walking with you.

I will always be with you. Just be happy and do your best. Lots of love.

Mohanji

Transcribed and proofread by

Rekha Murali

 

Read or watch other Mohanji’s messages on Corona virus here.

How to add subtitles:
On a mobile:
Click the three dots at the top right corner, choose Captions – English (or other available language)
On a computer:
Click on a setting icon at the bottom right corner, choose Captions – English (or other available language)

Mohanji’s Message on Corona Virus Pandemic – 20th March 2020

Hello friends, this is Mohanji again.

Yesterday, I was talking about introspection; the reason for our current state, the state where everything is on standstill. Spaces are closed, malls are closed, airports are closed; every space which we would like to be in are closed. So, we are in a forced confinement – one species, the human species. We had discussed yesterday the reason for this. The reason is for us to be aware, to understand, to introspect, and to make changes in our own life.

Sometimes we may think what we have got to do with all these results that we talked about – the pollutions, the emissions and the conditions. We have. We as one species is responsible for all the destructions and devastations of Earth today, apart from natural calamities, which was not many or not too many.

Even if you look at individual countries, the activity of a citizen is the responsibility of the country. Country should have certain laws, certain structures, to make sure that the activities are in line with the right ethics, dharma – righteousness.

Likewise, it is the responsibility of every religion to take care, to make sure that every person who is following that religion follows ethics. They should not harm any other religion, any society, any country or the species as a whole. It is our responsibility. It is each family’s responsibility to ensure that its own people are doing well.

There should be laws, which makes sure that synchronicity, continuity and compassion is always maintained. So, there is a collective responsibility for the species to make sure that there is no harm happening in this world, on this earth because of the existence of this species. Animal kingdom follows it. They do not harm without a reason. A tiger does not hunt if it’s not hungry, a deer or any other beings; they all follow certain ethics and rule. They do not exceed it, we do, and we as a species do. We have an active mind, active imagination, active intelligence, intellect and we do everything to just feel a certain level of false contentment. We need more and more and more each day. We are not satisfied. Our levels of satisfaction keep changing. Contentment factor never happens. And we think that the more is merrier. Absolutely not. The more means more responsibility. What is merrier is a state where you want nothing from Earth. That’s a very happy state, state of great masters. They wanted nothing from Earth. They wanted nobody to follow them. They wanted no materials, no spaces, no time. They were happy and contented the way they were. We have that history. We have that rich history where people wanted nothing. They were happy. Even now, there are such people, great masters, who want nothing from the world, but give everything they have to the world unconditionally, without expectations.

So, we have a collective responsibility. The entire race, the entire species have a collective responsibility. We are just one species. Beyond caste, creed, country, culture, religion, colour, beyond everything, we are one species. And there is a responsibility for this species, for the ethical life of this species; we can’t run away from it.

If you want to be successful in your pursuit, to ensure stability and contentment on Earth, you should first of all believe in it. And secondly, surrender to it. You cannot be partially accepting, partially rejecting something; it never works. You got to accept it, surrender to it, believe in it and act on it. There will be success. If you believe in something totally, there’ll be power of action. Belief, faith in yourself and your belief system is essential for your success. If you do not believe in something, whatever you do will be very weak. Success will not be there, success will be difficult. So, at this point of time when nature is actually playing a practical joke, where it confined all the people of the species to four walls; it’s time for us to contemplate, introspect and correct. We must take the responsibility. Every country is responsible for its citizens. Every religion is responsible for its followers. Every master, every society, every space, every unit is responsible for its people. And as a whole, the species is responsible for its people. This responsibility cannot be underestimated, cannot be denied, nor can be rejected. This is the truth. This is truth, and we must fulfil it. Please think about it. These are foods for thought.

I’m with you and I love you. We’ll talk again later.

Transcribed and proofread by
Rekha Murali

Watch other Mohanji’s messages on Corona virus here.

Effective Personality, part 2

Zoom Satsang 7 July 2019, part 1

Question:  Can people who do Kriya regularly, but are not an active participant in the Foundation or have the need to be in close physical proximity to you, still evolve spiritually?

Mohanji: Physical proximity is an illusion. By sitting next to me you probably may not gain a lot. If your mind is connected to me wherever you are, if your mind is connected to me, you are with me. There are a lot of people who might be around me physically, but their mind is elsewhere, those people are not with me. So the connection is always the connection of the mind. When we see our parents, our grandparents, our relatives, when our mind is with them, we are with them. When the mind is elsewhere, we are not there.  Many people live together but they are not close, and you always see that in life.

When we really love somebody, we will whisper, when we do not like somebody we shout. See the tone of our voice. It’s mostly connected to the depth of our affection. You can almost take it as a benchmark.  When you are shouting, screaming etc. means you’re already separated. When you’re really close to somebody you’ll be whispering, that expression will be there.

Kriya is a tool. It’s a method to stabilize and align yourself. A child who is born is already aligned. There’s no alignment needed. What are you aligning? The mind, intellect, and ego called mind matter. Mind matter is the faculty of perception. That is how we see the world. There are millions of things in this world. To experience them we have the mind, intellect and ego. Of course, through the senses eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin, we experience life around us. And to actually feel it, we have the mind, which is the emotions, intellect, analysis, ego, and the personality through which we experience life. We feel life, we relish or we taste life.

In this mode, what you actually are, that lack of alignment is when it’s all spread out. Body is already aligned, spirit, the energy which operates the body is aligned. Mind, intellect and ego are all over, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future, and hardly in the present. So we are bringing this mind, intellect and ego together. Body, mind, intellect, ego and spirit together, you become one unit. At that point in time, when you look, the whole faculty looks. Otherwise, your eyes will be looking and if the mind is elsewhere, you don’t see. If your eyes are looking and your mind is also looking through your eyes, you experience reality. When you’re eating food, you’re consuming something, when the food is in your mouth and your mind is with your tongue, then you actually feel the taste of the food. Otherwise when you’re eating, and your mind is on the TV,  you’re fully occupied, eyes are on the TV and the mind is on the TV,  you don’t even know how much you ate.

Your life depends on where you’re focusing. Where your mind is. Kriya and all the meditations and the numerous methods are all to align yourself to a level where you are fully there, right now, right here, all the time. This is in waking-up time. In the dream state you have an active state but you don’t have any control over that state. In the dream state, the data which you are using is the stored data, what you’ve collected, or what is stored inside. They have all come from experiences. Experiences become a memory, the memory becomes an impression, the impression gets stored, and they manifest in the screen of dreams or in the screen of waking state. Deep sleep state is the same as the death state, you don’t even know whether you’re a man or a woman, you don’t know the time or space. You’re completely dead, then you wake up in the morning, again you are a personality and that personality is maintained by the ego. I’m so and so and this is my existence. I’m connected to all my positions and possessions and relations. All these things come when you wake up. When you’re dreaming, that’s all different. Probably you are the president of America in your dream. So the boundaries change, things change. Everything changes in the dream state and the dream state sources from what is stored inside. The waking state is connected to the world outside, usually.

That is why at that point in time, meditation is very important. That means while in the waking state and being awake, you’re turning the mind, intellect, and ego, within. When all these faculties are turned inside, that means the senses are closed, there is no world outside, while awake with awareness. When you are focused inside, all you see is what you have stored over a period of time, from your experiences. Experiences have their connection to actions, thoughts, and words, the chronology of life.

To cut across all this, to think vertically, you’re connecting to the higher awareness through a Kriya or meditation and all these things. If you are doing that, it is for you. Now your connection with me, it is called integration. That means you identified Mohanji as a person who’s stable or who’s aligned, this is probably what brings you to me. If you are aware of that, and you’re thinking about me, remembering me, or connecting to me with your mind, intellect, and ego, whichever faculty or mind matter, then you are with me. You don’t have to be physically with me, and by physically being with me, there’s no guarantee that you are actually with me.

Also, I am not insisting that you should work within this Foundation, I only say be good and do good in your society and how much brightness you can bring to your society, in your neighborhood. That’s all you need to do. You don’t have to do through the Foundation, through anybody. You can perform the way you can. That’s why I said to feed the birds; feed the animals, people, the sick and the old. Do whatever you can in your society to enhance the lives of people and the beings around you. I call everybody people. There are people of every species. Every species has a personality. A cat has its personality, a dog has its personality. All beings have their personality. When a being has a personality, it’s a person. A person has a personality. So by being available and being useful to this society, you are being with me, you’re connecting to me, that’s the activity which I’m asking you to do. I’m not asking you to be in the Foundation or to operate only through the Foundation, but it will be helpful because in the Foundation people inspire each other, they all support each other, and you will understand, okay, this is what we’re doing in the world.

As I said, this year, the main theme is practicing positivity. That is because so many things are negative. You open the newspaper or on the TV, and all you see is negative news. People killing people, people on the verge of war, people not agreeing with each other, they are shouting and screaming and making life miserable. This is what we see in this world. So how do you stay positive – through acts of positivity, through positive thoughts, positive words, and positive actions. That’s why I said this year the main practice is practicing positivity during waking hours. So that your self-esteem grows and your value in this world increases. And in that mode, you are being very effective in this life.

As I said earlier, the effective years are very important. Effective moments are important. Effective time is important. Effective time is when you are actually available for this world outside and you’re delivering. Not when you’re eating, drinking, sleeping and you’re just immersed in your own activities. See, that’s very comfortable. Today, the world has shrunk to a tablet or a mobile phone. Our world is a mobile phone. We don’t even need eye contact. You don’t have to look at people and you are very happy to be emotional with somebody by sending some emoticons. We just send the sign of love and we tell people we love you. If you hate somebody, you unfriend them from Facebook.  We have actually made our boundaries so small, we have become more and more introverted. And this has actually made an insensitive world. Today’s world has become very insensitive.

When I was growing up, there was no tablet or mobile phone so we had some time together with other children.  We played and we had some time outside. Whether it was extremely effective or not effective, there was a public relation, there was an interaction. But today, this is where it is. Our focus is on this phone. And we are happy to fall in love through the phone, divorce through the phone, talk and not talk, convey our anger, hatred, and jealousy, through the phone. Everything is all virtual. In reality, we don’t even look into the eyes of people. We are afraid to look into the eyes of people. We don’t know what we will see and rather not look. Technology is amazing, because of technology we are seeing each other. I’m sure you’re all sitting in various parts of the world. And you are listening to me, we are talking because of technology. So that’s a good side. But then we also have the same technology that has actually controlled us and taken over our lives.  We must understand this also.

This is why aligning with oneself is the best you can do in this lifetime. Mind, body, intellect, ego, and spirit together as one unit inside. That means you have become a total unit, you are not in the past or the future, you are right here right now. Then automatically expansion happens, the consciousness expands. The unit spontaneously becomes the universe, that is God-consciousness. Then it actualizes, that’s the state of samadhi we talk about. It transcends the waking state, transcends the dream state,  transcends the deep sleep state and it enters into the zone of turiya, the fourth state where you are witnessing all the other three states. Then you transcend further to the turiyatita state, where you’re witnessing even the turiya state.

As per your witness-hood rises, your expansion happens spontaneously. Then you are not expanding the situation, your position, or what you are, it spontaneously grows, it expands. So the point is, if your connection with me is firm, then no question. You’re thinking about me. You’re remembering me, you’re connecting to me. You don’t have to do anything else to connect to me. When you’re plugged into the socket, you will have electricity, like that. You think about me, remember me, you’re connected to me. Activities are all for your sake. No God or Guru says that you should do this or do that. No God is waiting in a temple so that you can come and see him, nor the idol in any place of worship for that matter. No God or Guru is dependent on anybody. When you talk about a Guru, that only means an aligned personality. When you talk about a God-man, he is somebody who has expanded himself and he only sees his reflection in the world. That means he only sees the energetic plane, not the physical plane. When they look at another person, there’s no other person, only their expressions. And they always feel that.

Karl Marx said the same thing, your personality overflows from yourself and merges with the personality of the society, you see your own reflection in everybody’s eyes. It’s the same philosophy, here energetically we are connecting to all the people. We see everybody, as expressions of the same consciousness, we are all one. Then we feel that it’s myself in another body.  Each personality has a relevance,  a purpose,  and also time and duration. Understand that you are expressing the state of God, where God never interferes, just like your soul. The soul is like the petrol in your car. It never cares about the destination, but it aids your journey. If there’s no petrol, you can’t drive a car. If there’s no soul, we call it a dead body.  God or the soul has no interest in your life. But it helps your life. Electricity has no interest in your refrigerator or washing machine, but it’s essential to make them perform.

Just like that, when you are always connected to me, and you have always been connected to me over lifetimes, you might be connected to me in the future lives also. I as a person have duration, this body will also die, I may die someday in the future. But that doesn’t stop the story, the story will continue, the energy will continue, the presence will continue. And that’s exactly how it is. How do you make sure the presence will continue? Stop existing for yourself and start existing for the universe, your immortality begins there. The journey or the path of immortality starts there. The less you’re living for yourself, the more you’re living for the world. The more and more you live for the world, you become the world and the world becomes you. Otherwise, it’s a very unit existence, small scale, where you look at a picture and think you know this person, but you have no idea who they are. A picture only tells us about a form. But there is an energy, there is a purpose, there’s a reason, and there’s a duration, we don’t see that.

When you are connecting to somebody, try to connect to the energy of that person and you will see yourself. There’s no difference. Everybody is the same. All the people are the same. Nobody’s higher, nobody’s lower. I am not special. I’m the same as you are. But the thing is that I decided that if I am breathing, my heart is beating, it will be for the world. I do not live for myself. That’s the only decision I’ve taken. I chose not to have material richness only for myself, I decided that I will share my riches so that everybody becomes rich. When you are connected to me, your practices will help you align yourself more. All your practices are for aligning yourself. Be aligned, become a unit and spontaneously you will become the universe, there’s no effort for that. The effort is to bring your scattered mind into you. Bring your mind away from all your anxieties, fears, skills, phobias, all those things and come inside.

But please understand, the compulsive habitual memories, which you have collected over the past will definitely try to drag you outside more and more. When you go to a restaurant, you taste the food, the food is great.  The next time we feel again, oh, I would like to go to the restaurant. Because memory compels you for that action. This will be there until and unless after a while you lose interest in all those things.  If the food is there, it’s fine, if it’s not there, it’s okay. You are not occupied by a place, a time or a relationship, anything. Everything is fine. But at the same time, you’re always remaining unbound, you’re not bound by anything. At that time, freedom starts.

Freedom happens only when you are unbound. If you can’t detach from anything, all your relationships are real, all your possessions and positions are real, then everything is real.  Your connection with all that is real, it has to be. But at a certain point in time, that connection changes, the flavor changes. And you say okay, I’m fine,  Fine as myself in this incarnation, and all the external factors are only complementing this existence. That awareness will come,  that awareness will grow, and then you realize, I am Mohanji, and Mohanji is not separate from me. When you feel yourself as awareness, you will know that you are connected to me.

When you feel yourself as your mind, you may connect, disconnect, connect and disconnect. When you look at me through your mind you will never understand me. But look at me through your awareness, your own awareness, you will see me there. That’s why I said my place is within you, not outside of you. If you see me outside, you’re not connecting, you’re connecting to a man, a person, a personality and that’s temporary. Because, I may also die someday, sometime soon. So this is not the right connection. The connection is that connection to the consciousness, the energy, where you see me inside you, just like you’re not a picture on your wall. And then what you see inside is the real you. That means I live inside your heart. I stay there. And then you see that there is no Mohanji outside. There is no Mohanji, it’s me, and it’s all us. It’s all one consciousness in many, many bodies. Many dimensions, even a tree, a plant, a bird, an animal, you see your own reflection in everything. So everything is you, that is the truth.

That integrates you. That will make you stable. That will completely stabilize you. Then we have no separation. If you connect with me with your mind, you will compare, you will analyze, you will judge and then you will separate,  it’s a matter of time. If you’re connecting to me with your heart, we will have no separation. Those people who love from within, never separate. People who connect with the mind, then it’s an option. If you connect with the mind, mind changes, relationship changes, that is not permanent at all. Connect to me with your heart. And don’t change your mind or let the mind change. Don’t be affected by the mind. Let the mind do whatever it takes. You don’t have to worry about it. But your connection is real, connection with me is real. Whenever you look at me as an option just understand it’s a matter of time before you leave. Because it’s an option.

Also, when you look at me in terms of an expectation – expectation and option are same – if the expectation does not happen, something was not delivered as per your expectation, or the delivery did not happen as per your expectation, understand that delivery always happens as per the eligibility, not as per expectation. And if you think of something, I want this to happen through Mohanji and it didn’t happen, then you will separate. Because expectation came in the way. Expectation leads to disappointment. Disappointment leads to estrangement. Estrangement leads to confusion, confusion leads to a lack of self-esteem. Delusions, anger, hatred, jealousy, and revenge can all happen. We can slip as if going down the slide all the way, to an utter despair situation. Check your expectation, okay, I have surrendered it. That’s what Lord Krishna said. You have the rights of only your action, not on the results of your actions. Because the result is not in your hands, that’s as per your eligibility. Results happen as per your eligibility.

You have control of your actions. Control means you can act or not to act, yes or no. When you act, do your positive action, give your best, and leave the rest, then everything will happen. So, your connection with me if it is from the heart, guaranteed, there’s no separation. We will not separate. Imagine your connection with me is from your mind, then it’s just a matter of time because all the comparisons, expectations, disappointments, anger or hatred, anything can happen. Always understand, when you’re judging somebody you have not connected with that person. This is one benchmark you can look for. Have you judged people, have you criticized people, have you compared people? These are all from the mind, you’re not connected from the heart. If you really connected with somebody from the heart, you will not judge them. You will not criticize them, you will not even think of them as separate, you will accept them. There will be perfect acceptance.

For connection with the heart, the benchmark or the sign of connection is total acceptance. If the connection is from the mind, you will have all these things. Look at which faculty you are operating through. It’s important and interesting to see. You might be thinking, oh, I love this person, I really like him. All those things you will say, but then ask yourself, How am I connecting? If you’re connecting from your mind, understand there will be separation sooner or later. And the mind is never stable. The mind is a monkey mind. It keeps changing. Based on which, your relationships changes, the flavor changes, life changes, opinions, all these things change. Based on this, your relationships also get affected.

Remember this very clearly, if you’re connecting with your heart, it’s total acceptance. When you accept somebody, you must first and foremost accept the weaknesses of the person, not the strengths. We all love to portray our strengths. And also, we all love to accept somebody’s strengths. But it’s the weaknesses that we must accept. Everybody has weaknesses, everybody has strengths, and we are all a mixture. Don’t go for perfection. Perfection is a completely hypothetical thing. It’s individualistic, based on capacity. Everybody may not have the capacity to do everything as per everybody else’s expectation. It is impossible.

Each person delivers into this world as per their own inherent capacity. And that’s the only thing you can deliver, only based on capacity. Imagine I can lift 100 kilos of weight. I tell you please lift 100 kilos and your capacity is 20 kilos. How will you lift 100 kilos? So, based on what you are, your orientation, whatever is your capacity, you’re delivering to this earth, and that should be accepted as it is.  Don’t say oh he’s very poor, he can’t lift 100 kilos. That’s our notion, our comparison. That’s totally not the right way to make these connections. If you really like somebody, connect to them from the heart and don’t judge, don’t criticize. Accept them as they are with all the good and the bad. Good, bad, ugly, everything. Let it all be there because that’s a personality, that’s their orientation, The personality of what they are. Take them as they are. Then everything will be stable.

Wish you all a great Guru Poornima. Keep shining bright, the world needs light. Lots of love. Thank you.

Transcribed by Kishore Mundanat
Proofread by Shyama Jeyaseelan