Human refinement

Welcome to Mohanji Speaks, my dear friends. 

Today, I would like to discuss with you the philosophy that I have followed for a long time. Just like many of you, I have been a rebel, and I was quite passionate about various situations in society; and I had the will and the need to express it as an activist. I did not participate in many activist activities, but I had strong opinions; I still hold some of them. I do have a strong opinion about any kind of bloodshed.

I do not endorse bloodshed. I do not endorse wars. I do not like canned hunting or hunting of any kind. I strongly object to the killing of beings. I do not approve of corruption. I do not approve any kind of negativity in thoughts, words, or actions. These are a few of the things which I do not endorse at all. There are some more.

But the point that I would like to tell you is that we have two ways to approach life or live a good life. One is through acceptance that there are varieties in the world; so many different things, people, diversity. Each person, or each community, or similar activity can bind people together. Each community has its own expression. Each person has his own expression; societies have their expressions.

We are living in a world of great variety; our languages are different, our food habits are different. Our likes and dislikes are also oriented to our upbringing. There are different religions, and that’s mostly connected to what we are used to. And we conglomerate, we become clans, we come together because we like it or we are used to it. Mostly, it is not what we like; but what we are used to, which is comfortable. We are used to a certain diet, and that’s comfortable for us. We are used to a certain language, which is comfortable for us, and so on. It’s not a question of whether this is the right or wrong thing happening in our lives; it is as it is. 

Our language, mother tongue is beautiful for us; another person will feel the same for his mother tongue. Life thus goes on. We have two options here, acceptance and resistance. What happens with acceptance? When acceptance happens, the mind is stable. Acceptance does not mean that you accept everything like a doormat. I’ll explain that further. 

When acceptance happens, transformation happens because we start accepting everything around us. For that, we have to start with accepting ourselves, and we should appreciate that there is a variety of things around us. If these are harmless to society, harmless to the world, we can accept them. Thus acceptance automatically brings a kind of approval. We agree with so many things, and that leads us to have greater stability in mind. The mind is stable and peaceful.

Resistance, activism leads to violence; disapproval is predominant because of what we disapprove in society. We are against it; we are fighting it, our mind is fully occupied with the disagreements. We have the right to approve and disapprove. We don’t have to approve everything in life. We can approve what suits us, or what stabilizes us. 

I always approve of what is nonviolent. I’m a very strong advocate of nonviolence in thoughts, words, and actions. 

I normally approve, or I agree with anything, which has no violence involved in it. No violence, no manipulation, no corruption, etc.; I easily approve them. Where there is discrimination, there is violence; there is division; all those things that separate people, I do not approve of them; I disagree with them. So we have the right to disagree. 

But how can we approach it? I like to bring the awareness of people, to the level of their highest potential refinement. We are a refined species because our existence is connected to our intelligence. With most of the other species, their existence is connected to how they are made or their physical mettle. 

Our strength is our intelligence. How do we express the higher refinement in social life, in daily life? It is very simple: express the highest level of compassion, kindness, selflessness, and unconditional love; total acceptance of the society, through acceptance, through love, goodness factor, kindness factor, righteousness factor; by binging all these into our lives, we transform society.

By fighting against it, or by being an activist, there are dimensions where it could be very inconvenient. The system may attack us, victimize us being an activist; we have seen that happening. Various activists could not survive the course of time because they had been victimized, by the established system. 

We have to understand these methods. One is through acceptance, being a pro-life, and through resistance, being against something, a life of conflicts; will that happen, or not in the world? It is happening; it will happen because people are a variety. What we would like to do is to bring awareness to the level where corruption completely dissolves, violence totally dissolves; no wars, no bloodshed, no displacement, no hunting, no killing; no bloodshed of any kind. And a life where beings of all species can live their whole life peacefully, without any fear of any predator. By saying this, I do not mean that there are no lions, or there are no tigers, or there are no crocodiles. All beings exist, all the creations have their dharma, their method of life, and they will follow it. The reason for this is because of ecology, or the balance of the beings in nature. So that will happen. And we have to allow nature to be natural.

That apart, I’m only talking about the human intervention side. We should stay away; we should keep our hands off nature and leave nature to itself. It will beautifully work its way. We have to be in the system to change the system. What we can change in the system is the greed factor, the manipulative mind factor, manipulating for the sake of dominance, or we can guide people to be humans, towards positivity – this is the point here, always positive. This way, we can bring the awareness of the people to the idea that love, kindness, mercy, and good things, or good feelings can really transform the world. Imagine generations coming together on the platform of love, acceptance and companionship, care and share. They can’t create anything adverse to it, because their minds are all focused on the higher refinement of human existence; being totally human. The goodness factor, righteousness factor, kindness, unconditional love, mercy, compassion, righteousness, and the conscious maintenance of conscience; these should come together. I have explained earlier that conscience is the bridge between our conscious state and our soul. So this conscience should be well maintained; if the bridge is well maintained, we can cross over easily to the soul particle or the soul aspect/principle.

The maintenance should be very well organized; we should maintain our conscience; we should not do anything beyond or against our conscience. If we nurture it as a person, a group of people, a society, a community, a country, we can bring forth huge changes in the world. For example, we have been given good, non-polluting powers for our sustenance such as sun rays, wind, water; they all have power, and this power can be well used so that we can have a very good life, without polluting the Earth.

We do not need fossil fuel. We can make a big difference in the world. This COVID situation has brought forth great possibilities of having a pollution-free existence, a pollution-free environment. COVID taught us that this is possible. But why have we not been thinking about this before? Habitual, native existence. Natural existence, which is, we thought, “Okay, pollution is fine! We have to live in pollution.” We thought so even though we have been talking about global warming, climate change, the forest fires; all of which are very destructive and not conducive to human existence. We created hell on Earth because of our greed factor, and we know this very well! Do you think we could fight it and solve it? I doubt it! It’s like jumping into the fire and burning ourselves completely. Instead, through awareness, through life itself, through our own life, through our own thought process, through our own conviction, we can transform the world. And this is very important to understand because by being against, by resisting, by fighting against, we are burning ourselves. And another point is that activists will definitely get a lot of support because of the noise and the movement; birds of the same feather (flock together). I’m not against activism. I know it exists and that it has to because there are people who would like to make noise; otherwise, people wouldn’t know.

But what is the right way to do it; without harming people, without harming the environment, without harming the mind, without harming our conscience? We can bring the right, elected people to represent us and make a difference in society through the right laws, right actions, and right methods which would be progressive, rejuvenating, and proactive towards a better life; a better world, a world, which is peaceful, unpolluted, uncontaminated, where everybody is living a peaceful existence. 

While saying this, am I accepting all the bad things happening, by bad I mean those activities that are harmful to the world? Absolutely not! I do not endorse 5G. I do not endorse the frequencies which are harming lives on Earth. I’ve been told by scientists; I have read that 5G is not suitable for any kind of being on Earth. All these frequencies can create a different frequency which affects our brains. Beings will behave in strange ways because their brains are affected. Water pollution, air pollution, earth pollution, plus all these barriers have created caste, country, culture, colour, religions; so many barriers that we see, a lot of walls; and we have 190- 200 countries in the world. 

What is human refinement? One world, One family is human refinement. 

We should be together. We should love each other, and through love and through nurturing, we bring forth a better world. This world is possible, and this is our responsibility. I would like to reiterate that our method, especially as Yogis, those who walk the path of Yogis, is to lead a life and lead by example that through positive thinking, positive actions, and by giving forth positivity, we can transform the minds of people, towards the highest human refinement. 

What is the problem with activism? Activism, there is no problem. This is a group of people coming together for a purpose, that’s fine. But please remember, they could be victimized by the system, that is number one. And there could be divisions happening – pro or against. We have to choose between being pro or against. It’s not that. We can choose a different thing. We do not have to be pro or against anything. Instead, we can bring forth our life, with deep conviction in compassion; real adherence to our conscience, and being human. We can make a difference, and through our literature, etc., instead of fighting something, we can bring awareness to the minds of people. 

If there is no demand, there won’t be any supply. Our demand or the demand that we create is creating the requirement for all these unnatural inventions. If we cultivate generations based on love, compassion, kindness, and no corruption, no greed, no jealousy, no anger, hatred, if we can bring that awareness into the lives of people of Earth, generations will be happy. When the greed factor is removed, there won’t be manipulations. There is no need to manipulate minds. When the profit factor, predominantly controlling the markets, are taken away, or diluted, we will be more ethical. To have an ethical existence, we must cultivate higher awareness. There’s no other way. We have to lead by example; we have to live it. 

We can easily endorse fighting against something. Fighting brings in some elements of violence in our minds; it could be any kind of fight or disagreement. We should avoid violence in mind. We should avoid violence in expressions and actions because violence breeds more violence.

We can bring great frequencies on Earth through compassion and kindness, through lack of selfishness, by being selfless we can bring great vibrations on Earth, in our society, in our country, in the world. There is great potential, we can actually dissolve the territories and boundaries and walls, just by dissolving our greed factor. There is sustenance for everybody’s need in the world, but not for everybody’s greed because there’s no boundary for greed. But there is sustenance, there is food, there are materials for a good life; we have them; if we share and if we are considerate about everybody around us, we’ll have a good life; the society will be better. We have the right, and we have the responsibility for it.

To conclude this, I would like to say that our path is that of compassion and kindness. Through disciplined determination, through adherence to our conscience, in all our actions, we build up a world that is pure, uncorrupted, unpolluted, and unmanipulated. We live together as a kind community/society, as a good generation that will set precedents for the generations to come. We strongly adhere to righteousness, goodness, and we can make laws and rewards based on the goodness factor, the goodness quotient in us. And let the world be oriented on this matter. It will happen if you believe in it; if you have the conviction. 

Once again, the adverse side of activism is that it is mostly selective towards something, or against something. And that may retaliate, and they may destroy. But we can change the vibration, the frequency of the world to goodness and happiness; choose goodness over everything; choose kindness and compassion, beyond everything. We accept our life, accept ourselves without judging or criticizing, and we accept the world and guide the world to better awareness, to a higher awareness that we are a great, intelligent being, walking on Earth, experiencing Earth. We can make this place much better. 

I leave this thought on your plate now. Please do discuss it, share this, and also talk to people about it, and make a difference in their mindset. 

Again, as I mentioned earlier, I am not endorsing any violence, any war, any kind of bloodshed. I am not endorsing anything which is not suitable for human existence, including certain foods, certain medicines, certain vaccinations, or any of those kinds. I’m not endorsing. Do not think that I’m supporting them, and I’m saying that let them all exist. No, I don’t do that. 

I’m saying that through higher awareness, we should transform the mindset of the world, and that takes effort, consistent effort. We have to believe in it; we have to have conviction in it. And we should live it. This is the way we can transform this world, now and forever.

Lots of love. This is Mohanji for you.

Listen to an excerpt of the podcast here

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan and Rekha Murali

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In memory of Ammu – Loss transformed into something positive

Today is August 23, 2020. 20 years ago, on August 23rd, 2000, Ammu passed away. Many people ask me about the memories of that time. I always maintained, “This is my personal sorrow and I don’t want to talk about it because this sorrow is not relevant for the whole world.” The loss of Ammu affected us as a family. It affected me, especially, because I was deeply connected to her. I used to talk to her as a friend. Even though she was only four years and 10 months old, I always interacted with her as a friend, not as a father. She somehow made me connect to myself, connect to that aspect of love, which I was missing, or one that I had never experienced in life. And I respected her, for her individuality. 

I always tried to provide the best I could, within my means, at that time. We were living in Dubai and it was quite expensive there. Most of my salary; about 40% of it used to go for rent. So it was not that easy for me to provide many things, because I didn’t have a lot of money. Still, whenever I used to go to buy grocery etc., she used to come with me and would pick up some toys or other small playthings. She was usually happy about it. I came to India for holidays towards the end of July for almost a month. I planned to spend some time in Kerala, with Ammu, my ex-wife, her mother and my parents, and then to go to Pune to look at some land which I had bought at that time and then further to Rishikesh to feel the Himalayas; and then come to Delhi and then fly to Dubai. That was the plan. 

On the 23rd of August was my flight from Kochi to Pune. So I decided to leave on 22nd afternoon. I had an appointment in Kochi that day, so I decided to honour that, and then proceed further to Pune.

On 22nd, post-lunch, as I was preparing to leave; a taxi had already come; almost suddenly Ammu started crying. She was used to my travels; she was used to my absence. So this was unusual, and she asked me to lift her, to hold her in my arm. I lifted her up; I held her and with her right hand, she was kind of soothing my chest. She said, “Papa, please don’t go”. She was crying. I kissed her and said, “We will meet in a few days; after 10 days we’ll be meeting in Dubai, Papa has to go.” And she was still crying; my mother, my father, and all of us tried to pacify her. Then I kept her on my lap, and I sat on the chair for a little bit. She was still soothing my chest with her right hand and she was still crying, ”Please don’t go”. And I said, “I have to go, but I will meet you soon.”

Then I got ready to leave; I sat in the car – the backseat of the taxi, on the right side; the glass was down, and through the window, she kissed my cheek – my right cheek. It was wet with tears. My father was holding her, and she was leaning in through the window, and she kissed me on my cheek. My cheek was wet for some time. The taxi left for Kochi. I never saw Ammu alive again. 

On 23rd early morning, I left for Pune. I reached Pune. I came out of the airport; while I was in the car, I heard the news of Ammu’s accident. They didn’t tell me that she died. They told me that there was a major accident and that Ammu was in the hospital. Intuitively, I knew that she was no more. This was August 23rd. I did not visit the land; I tried to find a way to reach Kerala, but there were no flights from Pune to Kochi. I had to go to Mumbai. Somehow, we managed a taxi. And I had to find some money to pay for the additional flight because I had already booked to fly from Pune to Delhi etc. Everything had to be cancelled. I reached Bombay (Mumbai); got a night flight, and by morning 6 am on August 24th, I reached Kochi. I went directly to my ex-wife’s house where Ammu’s body was kept. It was the end of a part of my life, rather, Mohan, died that day; died with Ammu.

Ammu was with my mother and father on 22nd. And on 22nd, there were preparations for Sri Krishna Janmashtami which was on 23rd that year, and Ammu insisted on going to the temple to see the decoration of Krishna.

She kept insisting, and there was rain. So my father said, “It’s raining, so let’s not go”. But Ammu said, “No, we should go!”. They took her to the temple. She went straight up to the Sanctum Sanctorum, as much as she was allowed to go. She stood there watching the beautiful Krishna, and she prayed for a long time.

My mother and father were watching her from behind; they kept calling her, but she did not look and kept praying to Lord Krishna for a long time, quite unusual for a four-year-old child. Then, while coming back, my mother asked why you were praying so much. “What were you praying for?” She said, “No, I’m playing with him. I’m playing with Krishna. I play with Krishna”. My mother said, “We are human beings, we can’t see Krishna. We can only see the idol, we can’t see the real Krishna”. She said, “Of course, I can see Krishna. I see him. I play with him!” Then she said that you cannot see because you are not praying enough. You are not surrendering enough!” A four and a half-year-old child is saying this to her grandmother!

So, on the 24th, we cremated Ammu. We gave her body to the fire. And 10 days I had to spend there, even though it was very painful to talk to people and to communicate when I wanted isolation. A lot of people were coming. There was a huge crowd, on the day of her cremation, unusually large for a four and a half-year-old child, and at that time I was not known as Mohanji; this crowd was unusual. 

And then, as I said, one phase of my life ended. I came back to Palakkad, after all the ceremonies. When I opened my briefcase, which I had packed to take to Dubai, three unusual things were there in the bag, which I had not packed. One was a ‘Pears’ soap; a soap with the brand “P-e-a-r-s”, a transparent soap; the second was a small bouncing rubber ball; the other one was a bangle. The bangle and the ball belonged to Ammu that was the last gift, which she had wanted and we bought for her, just a few days ago and she had kept it in my bag; she had returned it. And the bangle, I don’t remember when we bought it for her, but she had kept it also there, in the bag, to give it to me.

As for the ‘Pears’ soap, there is a brief history. When I came from Dubai, in July, I came home around 5 am, it was a night flight, and I wanted to take a bath. So I told my ex-wife,” I’d like to have a soap”, and she gave me the soap which Ammu uses. Ammu said, “ No, I want this soap, don’t give it to anybody. Don’t give it to Papa”. So my ex-wife gave me another soap. And I used it for my bath. 

Probably out of guilt, she had kept the same soap; Ammu used to love Pears soap and she always wanted to use that soap. She kept that soap, a fresh one, in my bag as compensation, because she didn’t give me hers. Later on, my ex-mother-in-law said they had bought and kept a few soapboxes and one box was empty. She had taken the soap; Ammu had taken that soap. So, she was returning something, and that thing was in the bag; she kept it! Looking back, the whole event was extremely painful!

And when I came back to Dubai after all this, my company told me that they were reducing staff and that I would have to look for another job. After 2000, one by one, everything that I had built up crashed. I separated from my wife. I lost my belongings; it was stolen; I had kept it in the house in Kerala and it was stolen. I had invested in a house, in a flat and the builder ran away. Later we all assembled, and I could sell it, and pay back the loans. Then I lost my job; it was a crazy existence, literally. So many turbulence in life. Everything was falling. The sand beneath my feet was slipping. The agony which I experienced at the death of Ammu, the only closest connection I had in this whole world was lost; plus all the other materials. Later on in life, I have experienced betrayals, stabbing from behind, etc. But they seemed like nothing, compared to the loss of Ammu.

So, these are some of my memories of that time. I am talking about it because some people asked me to recount it; not for any sympathy; I never accept sympathy at that time and even now; nor do I have self-pity. 

What the world should know is what I made out of that experience of sorrow. That’s probably important for the world. Ammucare happened. ACT foundation happened. Ammu’s energy touched many lives; transformed many lives; gave solace to many lives. What happened after this incident has more value than the incident.

There are so many children dying in the world; so many people are dying; because we don’t know them, it doesn’t touch us. We need a world where we should care; we should be sincere. We should be sensitive. And death will be there; diseases will be there; old age will be there. It’s all part of existence. But how we can transform that to something positive, this is what makes us. 

Thank you very much.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Vidya Rajagopal

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These podcasts are to transform you

Hello, my dear friends. This is Mohanji.

Welcome to the podcast.

Today I would like to answer a question which somebody had posed to me. This is about the podcast itself. He asked the question, “Why don’t you add more matter to your talks? Even if it’s a bit longer, it’s fine.”

So my answer is, I have started this podcast not to give you answers, but to give you questions, to give you food for thought. There is a very important concept in the world of knowledge. A good teacher should show a student where to look but not what to see. If I tell you what to see, then there is no creativity for you. Your creativity is stunted. So my job is to just give you certain thoughts, certain questions, which should mature in your own mind through discussions, through sharing, through talking about it, so that it transforms you. This is my intention, not to give you so many ideas. We have done so many videos to give you answers of that kind. The reason for this podcast is not to teach you anything, I have nothing to teach you. Instead, I have some thoughts to give you, which can probably grow and mature in your own mind. So if you use this well; if you use this for your own thought processes, or you contemplate on it, you share with others and discuss it, and formulate certain ideas; that is the kind of maturing which I expect out of this podcast.

So, it’s not just to listen and forget; it’s not to get answers; instead, it is to think. The very reason for these podcasts are to convey this idea that we are all unique, we all have our thought processes, we have our inclinations, we have our tendencies, we have complete uniqueness. What can you do out of this uniqueness? Create a unique understanding; create unique expressions. So this is exactly what I want out of this podcast.

I would like you to mature these thoughts are in your mind and let the seed become a tree. And also, I’m making sure that all these thoughts are positive. We’re not trying to discuss negative thoughts. We are not trying to bring talks about people. We’re not talking about concepts and prejudices; anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge; this is not our subject. We talk about love, we talk about gratefulness, we talk about various aspects which nurtures you, enriches you, empowers you. This is what we would like to discuss. So, your thoughts are welcome.

I got a question, “Why don’t you talk about love?” So I said, I have spoken about love a lot of times. When we talk about love – we talk about love which is our very nature, it is unchangeable. It’s the same every time. There is no change at all. When we talk about love between human beings, love for materials, love for positions; that’s all temporary. That’s all waking state affairs. Let’s not confuse between the real love and the waking state expressions of love. When all other emotions end, what remains is love, just like our self. When we talk about self-realization, it’s only a realization of what is already sitting inside you. Like that, love is sitting inside you. Love and self are the same, love and God are the same, love and guru are the same. So, don’t equate that love with the transactional love in a man-woman relationship or love for materials, wealth, possessions, positions; that’s all very small and short – abbreviated form of real love.

So, let me reiterate, the reason for these podcasts is not to educate. It is to give you food for thoughts. I would like you to digest them as much as you can. Ask me questions, we discuss so that eventually we will see ourselves transforming without our knowledge; as we are growing without our knowledge, as we are evolving without our knowledge. There is no time limit for this, there’s no age limit for this. So all we need to have is just that fire inside; that fire to understand, to assimilate, to align, the fire to transform. If you have that fire inside, that kind of attitude, then these foods for thoughts will grow very, very rapidly within. And it will definitely help you to see the world differently, see your life differently. So this is something which I would like you to understand.

And then people ask, “Is there an age limit?” What age limit? Until you die, you can grow, you can evolve. And also there is a concept that at 50, a person attains his death, and from 50 onwards, it’s a new life. So 50 onwards, we are to start from one. It’s an interesting concept because, by the time you’re 50, you’ve completed one set of your life, that means half a century, then you’re starting again. So if we are in that mode, we understand and sometimes you can see in life that at 50, you transformed, you changed, something changed inside. This is also possible to see, there is no age limit. There is no age at all. Age is just a concept. Age is not at all a reality that way. You know, when you say age, it’s about physical age we’re talking about, but that’s not important. What is important is your attitude, the attitude to transform; your attitude to destroy your comfort zones and evolve. This is important.

So I would like to leave you with these thoughts anyway. I hope you understood the idea behind this podcast. It’s not to educate, but it is to inspire you to think.

Lots of love.

Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt

Proofread by Rekha Murali

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