The Divine has given you all the small pleasures in the world, but has kept the bliss to Himself. To get the highest bliss you have to go to Him and Him alone. Don’t be too smart with the Divine and try to fool Him. Most of your prayers and rituals are just attempts to trick the Divine. You try to give the least and get the maximum out of the Divine and He knows. He’s an astute businessman; He will trick you even more. If you go underneath the carpet, He will go underneath the floor.

 

 

Be sincere in your attempts. Do not try to outsmart the Divine. Once you get the bliss, then everything else is joyful. Without the bliss, joy in anything in the world will not stay. What type of time do you give the Divine? Usually you give the time that is leftover, when you have nothing else to do, when no guests are coming, there are no parties to go to, no nice movies to watch, no weddings to attend.

 

This is not quality time. Give quality time to the Divine. It will be rewarded. If your prayers are not answered it is because you have never given quality time. Give Satsang and meditation your highest priority. Give prime time to the Divine. You definitely will be rewarded.

 

Suppose you go to God, get a boon, and walk away. When your intention is to get a boon, then you are in a hurry. Another person who knows he owns God is not in a hurry for anything. Infinite patience comes up in him. When you know you own God, you are not in a hurry to get something out of God. Your hurry to get something throws you off balance and makes you small.

 

Have ‘eternal wait’, infinite patience. Then you will realise God belongs to you. Either through awareness or through practice you reach the same spot. The Divinity belongs to you. It’s not like shopping at the supermarket in a hurry and rushing back home. When you see the whole store is at home, you are not in a hurry to shop. You are at ease. To develop patience just observe the thoughts and feelings and don’t regret it.

 

When you know you are part of the divine plan, you stop demanding. Then you know everything is being done for you. You are taken care of. Usually we do it the other way: we hurry the mind and are slow in our action. Impatience means hurrying the mind; lethargy means slowness in action. Patience in the mind and dynamism in action is the right formula.

 

The Divine does not test you. Testing is part of ignorance. Who will test? One who does not know will test, isn’t it? God knows your capacity, so why does he have to test you? Then, why the misery? It is to bring out thithiksha, or forbearance, in you. And forbearance could be increased by prayerful surrender or vigorous challenge for patience!

 

Strange are the ways of karma. The more you understand it, the more amazed you become. It brings people together and separates them. It causes some to be weak and some to be strong. It makes some rich and some poor. All the struggle in the world, whatever it may be, is the bondage of karma. It cuts across all logic and reasoning. This understanding will lift you from getting stuck to the events or personalities and help you in your journey to the Self.

 

You may think that a thief can say it is my karma to steal? Then the police have the karma to catch him too! Only human life has the ability to be free from karma. And only a few thousands aim to be free from it. Only through Grace can the bondage of karma be burnt. Performing actions cannot eliminate karma.

 

Some karma can be changed and some cannot. When you prepare halwa, if the sugar or the ghee used is less than required, or if the water is more or less than is needed, it can all be adjusted, repaired. But once soji is cooked, it cannot be reversed. If the buttermilk is sour, milk can be added, salt can be added to make it drinkable. But it can never be reversed back to milk.

 

Prarabdha karma cannot be changed. Sanchitha karma can be changed by spiritual practices. Satsang burns the seed of all negative karma. When you praise someone, you take on their good karma. When you blame someone you take on their bad karma. Know this and surrender both good and bad karma to the Divine and be free.

 

Attachments cause feverish breath and feverish breath takes away peace of mind. Then you are in pieces and fall prey to misery. Before you get scattered too much, gather yourself and rid your breath of the feverishness through surrender and sadhana. Unfortunately, most people do not notice this until it is too late.

 

When someone is drowning in the ocean of attachments, surrender is the life jacket they can put on and wait for the rescue team. Without fighting the attachments, observe the feverish breath and go to the cool place of silence within. Your first step in this direction is directing your attachment to the Knowledge, to the Divine. Your non-attachment to the mundane is your charm. Your attachment to the Divine is your beauty.

 

There are three things: the Self, the senses, and the object, or the world. And there are three words: sukha, pleasure; dukha, sorrow; and sakha, companion. These have one thing in common: kha, which means ‘senses’.

The Self through the senses experiences the world. When the senses are with the Self, that is pleasure (sukha), because the Self is the source of all joy or pleasure. When the senses are away from the Self (dukha) in the mud, lost in the object that is misery.

 

Self is the nature of joy. In any pleasant experience, you close your eyes; you smell a nice flower, or you taste or touch something. So sukha is that which takes you to the Self. Dukha is that which takes you away from the Self. Sorrow simply means that you are caught up in the object, which goes on changing, instead of focussing on the Self.

 

All the sense objects are just a diving board to take you back to the Self. Sa-kha, companion, means: ‘‘He is the senses’’. Sakha is one who has become your senses, who is your senses. If you are my senses, it means I get knowledge through you; you are my sixth sense. As I trust my mind, so I trust you. A friend could be just an object of the senses, but a sakha has become the very senses. The sakha is the companion who is there in both the experiences of the dukha and of sukha. It means one who leads you back to the Self. If you are stuck in an object, that wisdom which pulls you back to the Self is sakha.

 

Knowledge is your companion and your companion is Knowledge. And the Master is nothing but the embodiment of Knowledge. So sakha means, ‘‘He is my senses, I see the world through that wisdom, through Him.’’

 

Knowledge has an end. Knowledge completes. So also does discipleship. For the disciple is aimed at acquiring Knowledge. Once you cross the water, however nice the boat is, you get off the boat. After twelve years, the disciple completes his studies. The master does a ceremony called Samavartha, where he tells the disciple that he is ending the discipleship and asking him to behave at par with him, and let the Brahman dynamically manifest.

 

Sakha is a companion in life and death; it never ends. In the path of love there is neither beginning nor end. Sakha only wants the beloved. He doesn’t care about the Knowledge or liberation. Love is incomplete because of longing. And so it is infinite, for infinity can never be complete. Arjuna was a sakha to Krishna and although Krishna was the perfect Master he was a sakha, too. If your sense is the Divine, then you see the whole world through the Divinity.

 

Your head will be in the mud in a few years; Don’t put mud in your head while you are still alive. If you follow fun, misery follows you; If you follow knowledge, fun follows you!

What is God?

 

What is not God? What is the definition of God, if there is one? The moment you define by a word you already have a concept about it. What do you think is God? You describe it as that which is everywhere; which is all-powerful; which is responsible for this creation, for its maintenance, and for its dissolution; which is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient.

 

You say ‘‘I want to see God’’ and when you want to see God as something, as an object, then it’s not everywhere. The moment you see God, there is a distance between you and God; then you are not God. You want to see God, and this wanting to see God as separate from you is again an illusion; and if you are seeing God, then God is not omnipresent!

 

Like love is felt in the heart, so is God’s presence. You cannot see air, but you simply feel the air. You cannot see heat or cold, but you just feel it. So in the same way God cannot be seen. If you see God, then He is outside there; He is away from you and isolated. God is never an object of isolation. God is the sum total. When you dissolve, God remains. When you are there, there is no God. Either you can be there, or God can be there, not both. So when you meditate, you become one with God. You are God. That is why, it is said, ‘Tatvamasi’, meaning, ‘‘Thou art that’’.

 

So, God is to be felt in the depth of your heart. In deep meditation when your mind is still, calm, hollow and empty, you suddenly feel, ‘‘I am not there. There is only one big existence.’’ So, don’t worry about God. First know yourself then you also know what is God, almost simultaneously.

 

Who are you? Do you know about yourself? Just find out about yourself first. If you think you are just the body, it is not possible, because body has its limitations. If you think you are the mind, that’s also not possible because mind has its limitation, it’s another layer. If you know that you are Silence or you are Space, then it is possible; God is also Space. Space is God. Can you see space separately? There are three types of space:

 

Bhootha Aakash — Outer space in which all this universe is hanging. Chitta Aakash — In your mind, there is a world with impressions, thoughts, dreams; you live in that world, all the visions come in your mind. Chida Aakash — It’s the sky of consciousness that is all permeating; the consciousness, the basis of all creation, that is Divine, that all knows.

 

Lord Rama himself had asked a question once. He was curious to see so much love, devotion and dedication in Hanuman that he wondered and asked Hanuman what it felt like being Hanuman? Hanuman told Rama — ‘‘When I am in body Consciousness, I am your servant; when I think I am an individual — I am in Soul Consciousness, I am a part of you; and when I am in my being Consciousness, when I am in my self then I am you; there is no difference between me and you.’’ It’s the same when somebody blames your child; you take the blame don’t you? There is so much oneness; in fact, there is really nothing other than God. God is that which is present everywhere, all the time.

 

Don’t worry too much about philosophy or descriptions of Atma (self) — Paramatma (God). Let’s forget about God and observe this moment; this moment has a mind of its own. The whole existence has a mind of its own. Like you have a mind and it has such intelligence, that’s why it keeps everything orderly. Similarly, this moment is seen by this mind.

 

This mind you can call it Atma or God and that is what you are. Yesterday is not here right now, tomorrow is not here but the present is here, now! Respect this moment, adore this moment. See, this moment is not flat; it’s very deep. When you accept from the head, you can have the horizontal idea; from the heart you experience the depth; and both together bring true wisdom and knowledge.

 

What is God and what is Self? The one beyond Self is God; first reach till the Self at least. The difference between Self and God is just like the Wave and the Ocean. Can there be a wave without the ocean? Space is everywhere; everything is in space. You take all things out from a box, empty it yet something remains still; the space remains as space, can anything touch the space? Can anything destroy space?

 

You cannot make God an object of your sight. If you make it then it is no more God. You can live God, can be God, but you cannot see or perceive God as an object which gives you the path. As you move into the spiritual dimension of your life, you will come to know your true nature. In ancient India they said, ‘Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram’.

 

Satyam (Truth)

 

When you feel the truth strongly, energy arises. Suppose someone accuses you of stealing a car. You become upset and say, ‘‘No! I have not stolen anything!’’ What is happening to you? A huge force of energy is coming up. When You say, ‘‘How dare you say that?’ truth is coming up to confront a lie. Only when a lie confronts you, does truth come up so strongly. When you see that everything is changing, something inside you stands up and says, ‘‘No! I am not changing.’’ That force within you is truth; it’s always there.

 

Shivam (Infinity; that which is comforting)

 

Comfort comes from consciousness and is experienced by consciousness. When the consciousness relaxes itself to some degree that is called comfort. If you have worked all day until you are very tired and you lay down in bed and take a deep breath, there is a sense of your whole consciousness expanding in some manner. Energy moving in a particular way creates comfort. In the spiritual dimension one’s perception and expression of life changes. The small ‘I’ and ‘mine’ disappear. You see life as a phenomenon. You are here and you are part of the river, the trees, the mountains, and the whole of nature. Such a soothing comfort comes with this knowledge.

 

Sundaram (Beauty)

 

God is ever youthful, ever young. To me, God is very naughty; God loves fun! That is why he has created so much fun around, including all the worry and everything else. All the rat race that goes on, that is also fun. Life is fun! Recognising beauty, loving beauty, surrendering to beauty; life can never be dull. As you move into the spiritual dimension of your life, you come to know your true nature — Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram

 

 

Head understands head and heart understands heart. Nose can only smell; eye can only see; ears can only hear, ears cannot see. So, heart can feel, isn’t it? We try to put the heart in the head and the head in the heart and it doesn’t seem to work. Your heart feels something is beautiful, head says it is beautiful. We cling on to the word in the mind, we don’t feel it. We repeat the word ‘beautiful’ and it doesn’t seem beautiful.

 

The same thing goes for love. You talk too much about love, you get stuck in the head and it doesn’t rise in the heart. In silence love emits, radiates. We are not separate. We are all one. I know you all and when you go deep inside you, you know me also. We are not strangers.

 

When we start listening to our heart then we know that all is one and all is God. GOD stands for Generator, Operator and Destroyer. The present moment has generated; the present moment is operating; and the present moment destroyed the past. So, you are in God and, God is in you…

The big ‘C’ of corruption can be countered by five more ‘C’s! The first, I would say, is the sense of ‘Connectedness’. A lack of connectedness or sense of belongingness breeds corruption in society. That is why, often, you see people looking for connections, in order to avoid corruption! A sense of belongingness among people, among the community, can root out corruption. That is why corruption is lowest at the village level; but when it comes to urban areas, cities, it’s much more because there is no community sense there — no belongingness.

 

The second ‘C’ is ‘Courage’. A lack of self-esteem or confidence in one’s own ability is one of the causes of corruption. It is fear, or insecurity in a person that makes one become more corrupt. He then tries to find his security only through money, which doesn’t really happen.

 

The more money he acquires, the insecurity doesn’t disappear. In fact, he becomes more afraid and more fearful because the money is not earned in a right manner. So the second ‘C’ that we will have to focus on is to create that courage in a person — courage and confidence in one’s ability and in the laws of nature.

 

Third is an understanding of ‘Cosmology’ — looking at one’s own life in the context of extended space and time. Just take a look at our own life. How long is it? Only 80-100 years! See life in the context of the huge dimension of time. Billions of years have passed since the creation. Our creation, as scientists say, is 50 billion years old. And everything in this creation is recycled. The air we breathe is old, every cell in our body, every atom is old, the oxygen and hydrogen is old!

 

And this will continue. Seeing life from a different perspective of space and time is what will deepen one’s vision about one’s life. Being corrupt, one amasses a lot of money and puts it in the bank. One can’t spend all that money and then one dies. One’s children inherit the property and then they fight over the inheritance! Seeing life in the context of this huge universe and unfathomable time can broaden one’s vision, can broaden one’s mind and can enrich one’s heart.

 

The fourth ‘C’, I would say, is ‘Care’ and ‘Compassion’. Care and compassion in society can bring dedication. It is the lack of dedication that causes corruption. The Kumbha Mela in India was attended by a total of 30 million people — nearly 3 million people each day, and there was not a single incidence of violence, theft or robbery!

 

One night, we were distributing blankets to the poor as it was very cold and I came across a youth, who refused to take a blanket, saying that probably someone else there needed it more! That sense of care and compassion: ‘It doesn’t matter even if I don’t have, somebody needs this more. We have to care for them’. That care and compassion can root out corruption.

 

The last one I would like to emphasise is a sense of ‘Commitment’ — commitment to contribution. When a person has a goal, a commitment to a higher cause in life, it brings a shift from gaining to giving. In society, if everyone keeps thinking, ‘What can I gain?’ rather than ‘What can I contribute?’ or ‘How can I be useful to the people around me?’, then corruption cannot be rooted out. In society, we need to have this shift in our attitude, from ‘What can I gain?’ to ‘What can I contribute?’

 

But all this cannot be possible without individual upliftment. Spiritual upliftment. A sense of belongingness with the whole world. Today the globe has become a village. We have globalised everything other than wisdom. And that is one of the causes of terrorism and unrest in the world today. We accept food from every part of the world, we accept music from every part of the world, but when it comes to wisdom, people seem to shy away.

 

If every child in the world learns a little bit about all cultures, a little bit about all values, the whole scenario will be different. Then one will not think, ‘Only I will go to heaven. Everyone else will go to hell’. This wrong education or lack of education has caused so many problems in the world. A sense of belongingness with the whole world — it doesn’t matter what colour or race you are — is that shared value that we are talking about today.

 

Even if one pocket in the world remains ignorant of these shared values, common values, the world will not be a safe place. So we need to address these issues with a lot of patience. It is not a job that we can do overnight, but through education and creating that sense of community, through inspiration and example.

 

Make a subtle distinction between spirituality and religion. Religion is like the banana skin and spirituality is the banana. Spirituality or the common values are the same, in every religion. The differences are only on the surface. and they are good! It’s good to have differences. Nurture the differences and at the same time enliven spiritual values. Then we all get together and make a change. Make a better society.