Sex is not a sin

 

Sex is a manifestation of kama or desire. ‘Sex is the original sin,’ this is what people have been made to believe in the past. Sex is not a sin. It is the basis of all life on the planet. There are two basic instincts in human beings, and these have been with you in all your lifetimes — food and sex. These have been with you in all your lives, even when you were an animal and now as a human being. You are born out of food and sex. 

It is so beautiful that in India we connect both of these to divinity. In the Upanishads, it is said ‘Food is God.’ When you consider food as God, you will not overeat. You won’t simply stuff yourself with food, but you will eat with honour. No festival in India is celebrated without delicacies, associated with that festival, being prepared in every household. When you go to a temple, the first thing the priest gives you is some prasad. Prasad is just a little bit of food that is given to the devotees. Without prasad, there is no pilgrimage and no festival. Food and God are connected. 

Similarly, sex and God are also connected. One often tends to keep sex separate from God. Sex is often thought of as part of material life. But here in India, the ancient people linked sex to God so that no aspect in us, even an instinct as basic as sex, remained away from God. When you honour sex and consider it as part of the divinity, then your obsession disappears, lust disappears and sacredness dawns. Also, the basic instinct of lust transforms into love. This is the ancient thought. 

Go beyond yourself, to find God

 

Who is God? You and me and all that is. The totality. Love is God and everything is love. The whole creation is filled with love. Now the question that is rising in your mind is, "Are hatred, anger and negativity also love? I would say yes. 

If you are angry, go to the root of your anger. Why are you angry? Because you love someone in some way. That anger is a by-product of love. Do you see that? Hatred is a byproduct of love. Love is what you are made up of. The consciousness in you is love. 

Love is not just an emotion. It is the very state of your being. It is the pulse in you. You may call it God. You may call it pure consciousness. You may call it the supreme or unseen power which nobody knows. It is the basis of creation.

A scientist may call it the vacuum state of matter or existence. A person who practices yoga says it is that which is beyond the mind, beyond the self. The word God in India is Paramatman. Atman means the self, the I. Para means beyond. Whatever is beyond the I, is God. 

So how do you go beyond the I? When you become love. You dissolve. You go beyond.

Getting to see God

 

People were told in ancient days "God is your mother, God is your father, and thirdly, God is your teacher". See God as your mother, as your father and as your master. 

Don't divide and say, "This is different, that is different, God is somewhere else". Then you will experience disconnection. Though you are not disconnected, you will experience disconnection.

You can never be disconnected, but you can be in illusion, you can be in ignorance, believing that you are not connected. That is painful. Pain is the feeling of disconnectedness when it is not so.

I met a very beautiful Catholic nun who happened to come into one of the courses. She said, "If you don't see Christ in the first person you meet, you are never going to see Him". If you are able to see divinity in everyone, then all your relationships are relationships with God. You can't be related to anything else, because whatever you related to, you will see God in it.

If you have a brother, you will see God in the brother. If you have a sister, you will see God in the sister. If you have a husband, you will see God in the husband. You have parents, you see God in your parents. You have friends, you see God in your friends. In every relation you will see only God. God is coming to you in the form of an enemy.

God is making you stronger somewhere, pulling out all your weak points, contributing to your life. This is my understanding. With this understanding, the bliss, the joy remains eternal, unshakable.

Know that you've nothing, then you'll have everything

 

Give up everything and have everything. Even the sense of giving up something is thinking you have something. You don’t have anything. What do you have to give up? The struggle is that you think that you have, and then that you have to give it up. 

In the light of this knowledge you wake up and ask what is it that is yours. You don’t exist. ‘Yours’ doesn’t exist. What is yours? If something is there, it is there. If something is not there, it is not there. So what? If you trying to give something up, you are holding on to it more. Wake up and see nothing is yours or everything is yours. 

It becomes so easy. Yours needs will be met. Relax. When you have relaxed so completely, not possessing anything in the head or wanting to possess anything in the head, you will see the substance comes before the need for it arises. Fear arises with the thought, I may require something and then who will give it to me? This is a strain.

When the need is there, what is needed will come. This body belongs to the world. The world will take care of this body. You belong to God and God will take care of you.

Your innocence is your own experience

 

There is a value of innocence in life. Remember those moments as a child when you were very happy? Then you were innocent.

In those moments when you were in deep love, you were innocent. In those moments when you felt very good, relaxed, you were innocent. It is a quality in you.

Love, beauty, truth are all beyond proof. Nobody can prove them. Nobody can prove God is. If someone tries to prove that God is, they are doing something disastrous.

Whatever you can prove, you can disprove also. God is beyond our proof and disproof. God is an experience. Your God only you can know. Your beauty only you can see.

Can anyone else have your experience of beauty? Impossible. It is the same with innocence. Your innocence is your innate experience.

Exploring the nature of our connection to God

 

The existence of God is beyond time. To indicate that, you can use the word always. God is always. But when you say you are always God, you make yourself separate from God.

That is why I say language is inadequate to express God. If you subtract one portion of a circle, the circle is not complete. If you subtract one thing from God, God no longer remains. The completeness comes because it is total, it is full. But the nature of your mind is to dissect, bisect, cut things, and divide. The moment you divide, duality happens.

A word appears. Two appear. And the two becomes many. In many, you are lost. In Sanskrit fear means two. How does fear come? Because of some division. Because of some recognition and separateness. Division means taking one thing in and separating something out. Accepting and rejecting.

Your rejecting, your separateness causes fear, and fear is unbearable to life. Separation does not exist. You cannot separate. It is an illusion in the mind. In recognizing the oneness, fear vanishes.

Either you are part of God or you are God - these are your two options. You may feel you are part of God, part of the master, part of existence, but if you feel you are existence, you are God, you are the master, then laughter, dance, smiles, and joy dawns in life. But for a long, long time you have taken the first option feeling that you are separate, you are somebody.

This is a hypnotism that you have undergone, thinking that you are separate from the whole existence. So you have to de-hypnotize yourself and know that you are part of the truth. You are part of this whole. Have you sat on a rock and thought, “I’m a part of this earth?” 

This body has come out of the substance of this earth. What is this body? Proteins, amino acids, carbohydrates, minerals, salt. It is all part of this earth. And this body is going to go back into this earth one day. And this earth is as lively as you think you are.

You know you are alive because you are lively. You act, you react to situations and people. The trees are also alive. You do not see that they react, but they are as much alive as you are. Plants are alive. For some time people haven’t known that there is life in plants, that they also feel emotions. Many people don’t know that trees can have emotions.

But recently botanists have discovered that trees express fear and are sensitive, although the degree of their expression is less than yours. The earth also has its life. This earth holds millions of bacteria. Billions of different species' “me, me” transforms into a big I or no.

There's always, God

 

The color of wall depends on the wall. In the same manner, the existence of creatures depends on the love of God. Separate the color from the wall and the color would cease to be. So all creation would cease to exist if separated from the love that God is. 

Words are inadequate to express truth. Language is always found to be limited. Whenever one has to talk about God. This limitation of words and language becomes very evident. Truth cannot be captured by words. The words you use to indicate a connection to God also indicate a separation from God.

If you say you are always connected to God, it indicates in some way that you have been separate, independent, outside God. This is not so. The moment a fish comes out of the water, life also comes out of the water. Simultaneously life leaves the ocean as well as the fish. A corpse of a fish comes out of the water. A shell of a life you call fish comes out of the water, not the fish itself. The life of the fish is synonymous with the ocean. The life of a fish cannot exist outside of the ocean. In other words, the ocean is the fish.

The ocean itself, manifesting in a particular shell in a particular moment, you call fish. It is strange, but very true. For a fish life is inseparable from the ocean. Life is the ocean. The ocean is life. The fish cannot exist outside the ocean, away from the ocean, as waves cannot exist apart from the ocean. Waves are part of the ocean. You can think of a fish as a solidified wave of the ocean, an expression of the ocean.

Water is not a dead thing. Water is alive. Water is life, in fact. 90% of your body is water. If the water from your body is drained out, you will collapse that very moment. Life is synonymous with water. If some is undergoing dehydration, nothing in them functions. The pulse goes and they die. 

The water in you is the same as that in the ocean. It has the same % of saline. It has the same contents. You are an encapsulated ocean living outside the ocean. You could be a sweeter ocean and the sweetness in you blossoms when you realise that you are part of the whole, a part of existence.

You may say “always connected to God”, but the two words always and connected do not go together. Connected implies that two things were once not connected. This was separate.

Now they are connected. If you say “always” and then “connected”, the word connected loses its meaning. You are always God. Wherever you are, whatever you are, you are in God. A fish may sometimes go up in the water, go down in the water, turn upside down, wag its tail, eat or Sleep. Still it remains within the ocean.

Whenever Buddha was asked to speak about God, he kept silent. It was not that he didn’t know. Many people thought that Buddha was an atheist because he never spoke of God. He was not an atheist. He Knew the profundity of truth and the inadequacy of words. 

The existence of God is beyond time. To indicate that, you can use the word always. God is always. But when you say you are always God, you make yourself separate from God. That is why I say language is inadequate to express God.

Sacredness of certain symbolism

 

In all cultures throughout the ages, certain places, times of the year, persons and symbols have been considered sacred. Native Americans and other tribal people consider the earth, sun, moon and all the directions to be sacred. In the ancient tradition of India, the rishis considered all the rivers, mountains and even animals, trees and herbs to be sacred. 

And what of people? They are definitely sacred. Various cultures honor certain people and consider them to be sacred. 

For Christians, the cross, Jerusalem, Christmas and the Pope are sacred. For Muslims, the crescent moon, Mecca and the month of Ramadan are sacred. The Hindus consider the river Ganges, the Himalayas and the Swamis to be sacred. 

When you consider a place, time, person, symbol, or act sacred, your attention is undivided and whole. When things are ordinary and the same, you tend to slip into unawareness and inertia. The moment you consider something sacred, your inertia disappears and you become more alive.

There is nothing as fulfilling as a sacred act. You put your heart and soul into a sacred act. When every action of yours becomes sacred, you have become one with the Divine. Then every minute of your life is sacred, every place you go to becomes sacred, every act of yours is sacred and every person you meet is only your reflection. 

An act when performed repeatedly loses its sacredness. This happens when your memory overpowers your consciousness and you lose your sensitivity. For example, people living in Benares do not feel that it is a sacred place. It is too familiar; that sensitivity is just not there. 

How can we preserve that feeling of sacredness in our acts? Through living in the present moment and through sadhana (spiritual practice). Your sadhana will not allow your memory to overpower consciousness. Then repetition is not a hindrance. 

It is good to feel that some places, times, people and symbols are sacred so that you can be awake and alive. But eventually you need to transcend and feel that the entire creation and your whole life are sacred. 

For the person of God, the whole world, with all its symbols, places and people are sacred at all times. Be a person of God!

Don't try to shorten "longing"

 

Longing itself is Divine. 

Longing for worldly things makes you inert. 

Longing for infinity fills you with life.

When longing dies, inertia sets in. But longing also brings a sense of pain. To avoid the pain, you try to push away the longing. The skill is to bear the pain of longing and move on. Do not try to find a shortcut to overcome longing. Do not make the longing short – that’s why it is called loooonging. 

True longing in itself brings up moments of bliss. That is why in ancient days longing was kept alive by singing and listening to kathas, or stories. 

When longing transcends relationships, then judgments, jealousy and all negative feelings drop. It is only with wisdom and self-knowledge that one can transcend relationships.

People often think wisdom is devoid of longing. No! Such wisdom is dry. The longing that comes with true wisdom makes life juicier. The Divine is certainly juicy! 

Longing gives you the power to bless. Bless the entire creation for the longing in you is God.

Denying God - a primer

It was thought that saying “I am God” is blasphemy. I tell you, to say “I am not God” is blasphemy. When you say “I am not God,” you deny God His omnipresence. 

You are made up of love. If you say “I am not God,” you are denying that God is love. If you are love and you say “I am not God,” you are saying God is not love, and that is blasphemy. 

“I am” is your consciousness. If you say “I am not God,” you deny that God is aware, alert and awake. You exist. When you say “I am not God,” you deny God a portion of existence and that is blasphemy. You are denying the scriptures that say “God made man in His own image.” If you say “I am not God,” you are denying God. 

Now if God is omnipresent, why is there hatred and suffering in this world? Just as in a movie, when light passes through the film, it does not matter to the light what the film portrays, in the Absolute there are no opposites. 

Tragedy or comedy, hero or villain, the light is always there. All opposites are part of relative existence. Relative existence is not the complete picture. Good and bad, right and wrong, everything is relative. Milk is good, but too much milk can kill you. A drop of poison can save a life, but most medicines are poisonous if taken in the wrong dose. These are neither absolutely good nor bad; they just are. 

Truth transcends duality, and God is the absolute and only truth. In the same way, no matter what is happening in your mind, you are God.

Are you God?

I up a pistachio nut and asked, “What is this?” Everybody said, “A pistachio.” 

I held up a pistachio nut without the shell and asked, “What is this?” Everybody said, “A pistachio.” 

I then held up the shell and asked, “What is this?” Everybody said, “A shell.” 

As the nut with or without the shell is pistachio, similarly, spirit with or without the body is God. But just as the shell without the nut is not a pistachio, the body without spirit is not God. 

Spirit is certainly God because it is present everywhere. The body is certainly not God because it is not present everywhere. God is within the body and God embodies the whole universe. 

Those who have eyes will see. When asked, “Are you God?” to whom is the question addressed? As it is only the spirit that answers, one has no choice but to say, “Yes!”

A lady one told me, “I want an honest and humble man in my life.” Now, I am neither honest nor humble! I cannot tell everyone that I am God, as not everyone will understand. So I am not honest. I am not humble – how can God be humble? If I am humble, I am not honest. If I am honest, I cannot be humble.

Was Buddha an atheist?

 

A pure atheist is impossible to find. An atheist is one who believes only in the concrete and tangible, but life is not all concrete and tangible, nor is this universe. 

Whether it is business, science or art, all involve a certain amount of guesswork, assumptions, imagination and intuition. All of them have some aspects that are abstract in nature and are not tangible. The moment an atheist accepts, even remotely, something that is unexplainable, he ceases to be an atheist. 

An intelligent person cannot rule out all the mysteries in life and the universe, and hence cannot honestly be an atheist. So-called atheists are perhaps only denouncing certain concepts of God. 

Was Buddha an atheist? No, in one sense, because he professed emptiness, which is very hard for an atheist to accept, and yes in another sense because he did not profess concepts of God. An atheist believes only what he can see, but Buddha said all that you see is not real. If only all present-day atheists could be Buddhas!

Understanding an atheist - II

 

An atheist does not believe in either values or in the abstract. When an atheist comes to the guru, what happens? He starts experiencing his own form and discovers that he is indeed formless, hollow and empty, and this abstract non-form becomes more and more concrete. 

A guru makes the abstract more real, and what you thought was solid appears more unreal. Sensitivity and subtlety dawn. Perception of love – not as an emotion, but as the substratum of existence – becomes evident. The formless spirit shines through every form in creation and the mystery of life deepens, shattering atheism. Then the journey begins; it is a journey with four stages. 

The first stage is saarupya – to see the formless in the form – seeing God in all forms. Often, one feels more comfortable seeing God as formless rather than having a form, because with a form, one feels a distance, a duality, a fear of rejection and other limitations. Other than in deep sleep or in samadhi, all of our interactions in life are with a form. If you do not see God as having a form, then the waking part of life remains devoid of the Divine. 

All those who accept God to be formless use symbols and perhaps love the symbols more than God Himself. If God comes to a Christian and tells him to leave the cross, or if God tells a Muslim to drop the crescent, he may not do it. Initially, loving the formless is possible only through forms. 

The second stage is saamipya – closeness – feeling absolutely close to the form you have chosen and reaching out to the formless. This leads to a sense of intimacy with all of creation. In this stage, one overcomes the fear of rejection and other fears, but this stage remains bound by time and space. 

The third stage is saanidhya – feeling the presence of the Divine by which you transcend the limitations of time and space. 

The final stage is saayujya – when you are firmly entrenched in the Divine. It is then you realize you are one with the Divine. There is a total merging with the Beloved and all duality disappears. This is that and that is this. 

A believer also goes through these four stages.

Understanding an atheist - I

 

It is difficult to see God as formless and it is difficult to see God as having a form. The formless is so abstract and God in a form appears to be too limited so some people prefer to be atheists. Atheism is not a reality; it is just a matter of convenience. 

When you have a spirit of inquiry or when you search for truth, atheism falls apart. With a spirit of inquiry, you cannot deny something that you cannot disprove. An atheist denies God without first disproving God’s existence. In order to disprove God, you must have enormous knowledge and when you have enormous knowledge, you cannot disprove it. 

To say that something does not exist, you must know about the whole universe. So you can never be one hundred percent atheistic. An atheist is only a believer who is sleeping. For a person to say, “I don’t believe in anything,” means he must believe in himself. So he believes in a self that he does not even know. 

An atheist can never be sincere because sincerity needs depth and an atheist refuses to go to his depth. The deeper he goes, he finds a void, a field of all possibilities, and he has to accept that there are many secrets he does not know. He would then need to acknowledge his ignorance – which he refuses to do – because the moment he is sincere, he seriously starts doubting his atheism. 

A doubt-free atheist is nearly impossible. An atheist can never be sincere and doubt-free. When an atheist realizes his ignorance, what does he do? Where does he go? Does he go to a guru? What does a guru do to him?

Understanding "samadhi"

 

Deep rest is bliss, and bliss is the understanding that only God exists. Knowing that only God exists is the deepest rest possible. 

This conviction or experience that “only God exists” is samadhi. Samadhi is the mother of all talents, strengths and virtues. Samadhi is needed even for the most materialistic person because a materialistic person seeks to gain strength and virtues. To be in samadhi, you do not need any effort or talents, strengths or virtues. 

Withdrawing from all types of physical and mental activity is rest. That is built into our system as sleep, and sleep is the best friend of activity. 

Samadhi is conscious rest. Samadhi is the best friend of life. To be alive in your full potential, samadhi is indispensable. Restlessness obstructs samadhi.

This Christmas, you be a Christmas tree!

A Christmas tree only gives, it does not take anything for itself. It just gives.

Come summer or winter or fall, it never falls, never springs. All through the year it’s green and in winter it gives presents.

I want to see everyone smiling and happy. Just create waves of happiness, everything else is irrelevant. In the world things happen, some pleasant, some unpleasant. Some things happen the way you want it, some things don’t happen the way you want. Bundle it all and put it aside. Nothing can really take away your happiness.

When you have had a good meditation, and when the prana is high, what do you feel? Nothing matters! Right? Nothing really matters! This is what we need to know.

Happiness is our very nature. What overshadows this happiness is, ‘I want this’, or, ‘I want that’. ‘I want something’, this is what puts away happiness. When you say nothing whatsoever matters, immediately freedom is there. Just keep this in mind, that’s all. Nothing, what so ever will matter.

In the world there is always some imperfection, some pleasant things, some unpleasant things. Some things happen the way you want it to happen, some things the way you don’t want it to happen; it’s part of creation. When nothing matters to you then things happen the way you want. 90% things would automatically happen, or whatever is happening that is what you would want.

In this whole drama, in this whole universe of multitude, of diversity, this complex game of life and society is inevitable. Things come and fleet away, and everything that comes and goes has a purpose. A thorn and a soft rose petal, they both have their purpose. It boils down to our first point, opposite values are complimentary.

Don’t worry about anything. No need to be scared or worried about anything. You’ll say, ‘I don’t worry about the world but I worry about my connection to the path, to the knowledge, to God and all that’. I tell you, it can never go! That will not go. You don’t worry about it at all. Do you get it? Your connection with the Divine can never go.

Though Jesus says in his last moment, ‘God, why have you forsaken me?’ He immediately realized that no, he has not forsaken me. But that pain sometimes brings that question, ‘Oh God, why have you forsaken me?’

 

Even if you get disturbed, never mind! It’s okay. ‘Okay, I got disturbed, so what?’ Move on. I think it gradually happens. Sometimes you don’t even notice it that you’ve suddenly become unconditionally happy!

Dissolving into one Divinity

 

When a river meets the ocean, the river no longer remains a river. It becomes the ocean. A drop of the ocean is part of the ocean. 

In the same way, the moment a devotee meets or surrenders to the Divine, the devotee becomes God. When the river meets the ocean, it recognizes that it is the ocean from the beginning to the end. Similarly, the individual “I... I...” dissolves into one Divinity. 

Now some of you may ask, what about backwaters? Sometimes the ocean goes into the river to greet it. Sometimes it seems that the ocean is pushing back the river. Similarly, the Divine puts questions and doubts in the mind or provides an amazing experience to bring you back home.

Understanding "sacrifice" and the paradox of it

 

All the scriptures of the world glorify sacrifice. But what is sacrifice?

It is giving up something you value. You can only sacrifice something that you would like to keep for yourself, something that gives you pleasure and joy. You cannot sacrifice something that you dislike or disown. 

Sacrifice is always related to a higher cause for a greater good. At the same time, when your love for the greater good is so strong, nothing else assumes any value. Sacrifice here becomes irrelevant, because love alone is your strongest driving force. When there is so much love, there cannot be sacrifice and when there is no love, there is no sacrifice. 

If a mother has made plans to see a movie and she realizes that her child is sick, she does not say that she sacrificed the movie to care for her child because she simply did not want to go. Nothing else charms the mother besides being with her child. 

You do not sacrifice something for someone you love. Sacrifice indicates that your pleasure has more value than the cause for which you are sacrificing. When love is lukewarm, then sacrifice assumes meaning. Yet sacrifice purifies the human mind and reins in selfish tendencies. It can also bring pride, arrogance, self-pity and sometimes even depression. 

You can sacrifice only that which you value. For a wise man nothing is more valuable than truth, values and the Divine, and he will never sacrifice those. 

God is the greatest, and if someone values the greatest, how can he sacrifice God? This is the paradox of sacrifice.

There will be no contentment through pleasure

 

God created humanity and the whole world with so many different varieties, so many good things. God made so many types of vegetables and fragrances, flowers and thorns, dragons and horrors, to please humans and to keep them entertained. But humanity became more and more depressed. 

Then God acted tough and humans had to start pleasing Him. So humans kept themselves busy pleasing God and they became happier since they had no time to get worried or depressed. When you have someone to please, it keeps you on your toes and you are happier. But if your goal is just to please yourself, depression is sure to follow. 

Pleasure simply brings more craving but the problem is that we try to get contentment through pleasure. True contentment can only come through service.

Learning the path to yourself

 

Become God to each other. Do not look for God somewhere in the sky, but see God in every pair of eyes, in the mountains, in water, in trees and in animals. How? Only when you see God in yourself will this happen. Only God can worship God. 

To recognize Divinity, there are three dimensions – time, space and mind. For seekers, it is necessary to honor time and space so they can experience sacredness in their minds. When you honor time and space, your mind becomes alert. But for the one who has transcended the mind, either sacredness has no meaning or all times, every place and every mood is sacred. 

Precious moments are few in life. Catch them and treasure them. Place, time and the mood of your mind are factors that influence celebration. Snatch every opportunity to celebrate. Then you will feel great and full. Then celebration infiltrates your mind in all moods and space, and celebration is inevitable. 

Celebration reminds you of the fullness of the moment. The moments spent in the company of knowledge – the master – are the most precious moments in your life. Treasure them. Treasuring them, you transcend the mind, time and space. That is true celebration.