Anything that uplifts your spirit is spirituality

Bangalore, 3 February 2012


Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Inaugural Address at the International Women’s Conference 2012:

Wow! Surrounded by powerful women on the stage and in the audience! It is very difficult to speak. It is said that it is wise to keep quiet when women are in power.
Trade, technology, truth and traditions need revival again and again. If trade fallacies are not attended to again and again, if it is not revived or revisited and if we continue with the old trade policies, then trade can never progress. Many business women here will understand what I am saying. It is the same with technology.

Today, in the age of mobile phones you cannot still hang on to the phones with the cords; the land-line phones. The present generation does not even know how difficult it was to make a phone call thirty to forty years ago. We had to book a call and wait for the operator to call us back and connect us. One could possibly go to that place and even come back by the time the operator called back! It could be a city fifty kilometers away but we had to wait for two hours to get a connection.

However, technology has improved today. We now have mobile phones. At the tip of our fingers, we can connect to anywhere in the world. As one of our speakers just said, we are advancing in technology because we are updating it every day. Technology needs to be updated. Similarly, the truth about ourselves and our lives need to be updated. We need to revisit them and ask ourselves these questions again and again, ‘What do I want?’ ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ ‘Am I happy?’

Read more at What Sri Sri Said Today

 © The Art of Living Foundation

When we violate the laws of nature then we suffer

Bangalore, 1 February 2012
Q: What is the significance of Arghya (offering water to the sun)?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Water is symbol of love. In fact, in Sanskrit, it is synonymous to love.
‘Apa’ means water and it also means love. That is why, someone very close to you, what do you call them? Apta – means very dear. Apa and Apta are very close.
So, giving water is not important, feeling the connection with the sun is important.
What people used to do was they used to hold water in their hands and let the water leak out of the hand slowly, and for that much time they used to do sun gazing. You look at the sun, gaze and allow the water to seep down. So you need to know timings - It will take a couple of minutes, maybe two or three minutes for the water to leak out. Till that time, you gaze at the sun and let the water leak out and you will see that your body gets energized.
That was the technique behind it. Not just giving water to the sun like that, it will not work.
Q: Guruji, you had said that this universe was created by the union of Prakriti (nature) and Paramatma (Supreme Being/God). So going back to the Paramatma, who is Poorna Anand (supreme and absolute bliss) how did this sankalpa (thought/intention) arise in Him?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes, it is there in the Upanishads that earlier there was only Paramatma and He felt that He was alone, and He wanted to become many, so He became many. The intention happened on its own ‘ekoham bahusyama’.
Sankalpa is not a deviation. It is not considered as a deviation. When a seeker (sadhak) transcends from the small mind to the Big Mind, then he considers sankalpa as a hindrance. But from the point of view of the Big Mind, it is a step to go further. So if you think why did sankalpa arise in the Paramatma, He should remain unwavering (nirvikalpa) – this is not so. Sankalpa is also Paramatma, nirvikalpa is also Him and vikalpa is also Him. Like in an ocean, waves arise on their own, in Paramatma, a thought arose to become many, so He became many. Different types of nature, different types of people and different types of intelligence were created.
Day before yesterday, I was watching a National Geographic documentary on the creation of Earth. It said that about 400 billion years ago, there was only gas. Gas started spinning and fire erupted. Then from fire, water arose and then the Earth was formed.
I suddenly realized, ‘Oh this has been said in the Vedas! What new have they said?
In our Vedic knowledge, it is said in the form of shloka - In the space, first there was air, from the air fire arose, from fire water, and from water earth was created. The idea behind giving water to fire is that we go back to ourselves. From water to fire, fire to air and then, we do pranayama after giving arghya to the sun - we go to the air element. From the air we go to the space and then sit in meditation.
All these are different types of stories; examining them more deeply reveals something new.


Read more at What Sri Sri Said Today

© The Art of Living Foundation