26th December 2009
Q. Thank you very much for all I have received from you till today. Even I
know you are available on an emergency basis, twenty four hours. I am ashamed to
ask you a help. When someone of your family passed and relationship between you
and this person was not clear, what can you do to help the process to help
that person live peacefully and also to be peaceful yourself? Thank you Guruji.
Sri Sri: Whenever you have to console a bereaved family, keep silent! Too
many words does not make any sense there or have any meaning. Someone is in
grief,
you just be with them, with peace in your heart. They will absorb the peace,
they will bask in your peace. They will absorb your peace - they will feel
comfortable, happy.
So when you are peaceful, you radiate it. They will absorb the peace and they
would feel that inner calm, inner peace. So don't have to say, ‘Oh poor thing!
This thing has happened with you. Oh, it shouldn't have happened.’ Talking all
that type of pity or sympathy is not going to help either you or them. So just
be with them and say, ‘God will give you strength’. Just give that to overcome
this situation. This is the only thing that you should do. ‘God will give you
strength’ or the person who departed, take their name and say, ‘That person will
give you strength to go over this tough time, this difficult time.’ These
one or two words are good enough. Don't talk too much but just be with them. Few
minutes- you being with them will help them. OK?
Q. Dear Guruji, how can we teach the world that there is abundance of food,
love for everyone? We don't need to fear lack, and therefore be greedy?
Sri Sri: We have to spread spirituality. We have to make people realize
the importance of spirituality. They will have to meditate. Only through
meditation
would they ever feel the inner richness, inner abundance. Whatever you feel
inside, that’s what you project outside. If you have fear inside, you will
project it outside. You feel lack inside, and you will feel lack everywhere. So,
that abundance has to arise from within. For that, one has to do meditation
course like this, no?
Q. Dear Guruji, despite being on the path for almost six years now, we didn't
worry about what the results would be later. You know, when we started, so many
people ridiculed us and we didn’t mind any of those humiliations. None of those
humiliations stopped us from working and reaching out to people. We keep
doing it, because we know what we are doing is good and it’s not for our sake
that we are doing it, we are doing it for the simple fact that it brings
benefit to people. If not today, tomorrow they will understand, recognize it.
Right? So you need not be a football of others’ opinion. As long as we know
that we need to continue doing this and it helps people, it makes our life worth
living. So we continue doing this.
Q. Dear Guruji, what can you do when you doubt the Master? How to overcome the
doubt? How to prevent it from happening?
Sri Sri: You know, your doubt is always about something that is good. You only
doubt the honest, you never doubt the dishonest. You doubt happiness, you
never doubt depression. If you are depressed and someone asks you, ‘Are you
depressed?’ Then you are very sure, you don't say, ‘Well, I am not very sure!’
With happiness you say that, ‘Well, I am not sure whether I am happy or not.’ So
we doubt love. Someone says, ‘I love you so much’, you say, ‘Really?’ If
someone says, ‘I hate you’, you never ask, ‘Really?’ You doubt! So our doubt is
always about something that is positive.
And doubts - they come and they go. Doubt more. I won’t say, don't doubt. Doubt
as much as you can. See I tell you, it will fall away by itself. It cannot
stand. So doubt more. A Master only encourages the student to doubt more. He
will not clear the doubts. In fact, the job of the master is to create more
doubt so that you can bake well and become really solid. Because if not today,
ten year later you may get the doubt, better get the doubt right away! Get as
much as you can. Once they come, they don't come back again. Same doubts don't
arise twice. Different doubts keep coming and when they come, don’t push them
under the carpet. Don’t shelve it under, go with it. And a time comes when you
become solid. It only makes you stronger, powerful, focused and responsible.
I would say, good! Doubts have come about the Master, let them come. Hmm? Cook
with them. They are fuel by which the mind can really cook. Hmm! And you will
see that you are much stronger than your doubt! Your faith, your love, your
beauty, your truth is a hundred times more powerful than the doubt. The faith is
like the sun, the doubt is like a cloud. No amount of clouds can cover the sun
for long. They just come and they disappear. Yes, there are some cloudy days
and it can be there, let it be. The sun will eventually shine.
Q. Beloved Guruji, I have a new job that gives me economic and social stability,
it’s good. On the other side, it is based on lies and on taking advantage of
peoples' faith. The environment is polluted and colleagues poison me with
depression and dishonesty. Still I work hundred percent and I give a good
example.
But I feel this situation is not good for me. What do you suggest me to do?
Sri Sri: In a situation like that consider yourself like an oasis in the
dessert. Just imagine even the oasis disappears from the dessert, how will
people
survive? So, your being there has a good influence on the people and keep
influencing and see if you can create even one two, three or four people like
you
in the same work environment. It can change. You have the power to change your
situation. On request from people like you who are in the corporate business
environment, we tailored our course and changed its jargon, its processes to fit
to the corporate world. We call this the APEX course. Today the World Bank
and many other institutions are taking it and they are benefiting greatly by
this. Yes? So, do it!
Q. Dear Guruji, I feel that my coming to you now has become an ego issue. I come
to you to see what you will say to me or to get attention from you and not
because I feel deep love and gratitude. I would like to feel the true deep love
and gratitude like I have been before. I want to serve out of love and not
out of feeling that this is what I am expected to do.
Sri Sri: You know, feelings are like clouds. They are like the waves on the
surface of the ocean. They arise, they come and they go. They change. We
shouldn’t be bent too much by our feelings.
Do you see what I am saying? Life moves with commitment, not just feelings. And
love is a gift. You can't force anyone to feel love. Your wanting to feel
love becomes a hindrance to feel love. Just relax. I have spoken about this in
the Bhakti sutras. When you want love, that want itself is turning or delaying
love from manifesting.
So all that you need to do is to let go and relax. You will see your nature is
love. Love is always there. It will manifest when it should. Like the sun is
always there but it comes at its own time. Yes?
The sun doesn’t come up all the time though it is there twenty four hours. But
it is in different places. In the same way, all the beautiful feelings in your
life are there with you all the time. You can’t forcefully manifest them. They
will manifest at different times in life. And that’s why be more relaxed and
take them as they come. Yes?
Q. Sometimes I get very angry. It is like something gets inside me. How can I
get rid of this inner demon?
Sri Sri: I tell you, there is no demon inside. No! If anybody tells you, don’t
listen to them. Just walk away. There is no demon inside you. Got it? You are
pure light. You are born of light. You are light. All that you need to do is
wake up, little more silence, little more meditation and observe the sensations.
Start observing the sensations in the body, in the mind. Yes? And such an
outburst of anger comes and then subsides. It will take little time so that it
doesn't arise at all. The more we are in the state of dispassion or
centeredness, lesser is the anger. Behind the anger is a desire for perfection.
Wanting
perfection makes you angry. Want brings anger in us. So when you keep observing,
the want dissolves. You loosen up from inside. You start blossoming from
inside. You will see, you will get very few opportunities where you have to get
upset. It is ok to get upset once in a while, doesn't matter.
Q. I want to become a therapist but since I have become spiritual, I have come
to realize that western psychology is not everything. How can I combine
western and eastern psychology?
Sri Sri: Yes, sure! You must! Western psychology gives certain ideas about
behavioral patterns, certain impressions and effects of certain chemicals in the
mind. Whereas eastern psychology studies the nature of consciousness, studies
consciousness itself! So it will be very useful that you would like to combine
the both. You study eastern and then you study western so that you can explain
to the west what the east says. Because the eastern psychology or knowledge of
consciousness is time tested, it’s age old. Ten thousand years, this has been
practiced. Hmmm? And it should be interesting.
If you take one aspect, say suppose love and examine how love is viewed in both
eastern and western psychology. It’s very interesting. Hmmmm?
Q. Dear Guruji, how old are the Vedas? Do we have all the Vedas now? I hear we
may have lost some knowledge?
Sri Sri: You are correct! There are four main Vedas. Vedas means a collection of
poems- verses heard by Rishis, sages when they went deep in meditation. When
someone went deep in meditation, they heard something and whatever they heard,
they started telling their students, disciples. So these were truths which
were derived or heard and downloaded from the cosmic consciousness. They had a
way to download it in those days. The downloading is - close your eyes,
meditate and what you notice, what you see - you click and then you download it.
Surfing! Surfing around and downloading. So Vedas were downloaded like
that.
More than one thousand sages or those who are called Rishis - Rishi means the
one who saw or one who heard. They saw it, they heard it and they wrote them.
They didn't write themselves, they recited and told their students and they
recited and so for a long time it was just passed on from one to another -
verbally, vocally. That’s why they are called Shrutis.
Originally these Vedas were divided into four. Originally the Rigveda had so
many- twenty one different branches but today only three are available.
Similarly, Yajurveda has some two hundred and eleven branches, but today only
few - five or six - are available. Similarly, Samveda – thousand different
Samvedic hymns, branches were there. Today only three branches are there. Rest
is all lost. During the medieval times in India, when there was so much
repeated aggression, those Vedas were all lost.
Q. Which Veda has medical knowledge?
Sri Sri: It is called the Ayurveda. It is the subordinate Veda of the main four
Vedas. So both, the Atharvaveda and Rigveda - the first and last Vedas have a
connection to Ayurveda. So all the Ayurveda stories are so very, very beautiful.
It’s said that one thousand Rishis were sitting and meditating. And a Rishi
named Bharadwaja told them, ‘You keep awake. We are going into deep trance,
meditation and we are going to say just what we see. But there should be
somebody
to note down, write everything down’. They told once person, ‘You don't
meditate. You sit, watch and note down everything’.
And that is how Maharshi Bharadwaja noted down, wrote down in a forest when
thousands of the Rishis meditated together and they were downloading it and then
they were saying it. Bharadwaja went from one to another, to each person and
started noting them down and that is how the Ayurveda books were written. So
even today, after so many thousands of years, it holds good. It is a Materia
Medica - which herb is for which part of the body and what functions, what are
the combinations, what one should do and what one
should not. Everything about health is written.
When the British ruled India and the man who was in charge of India, the British
gentleman, wrote to Queen Victoria of England saying, ‘You know, people
should come and learn plastic surgery over here. How people can fix your nose,
your skin, your legs,’ he said. It’s amazing that when knowledge was zero or
nothing in England, it was so advanced in India. Lord Macaulay said in the
parliament, that if you want to rule this country (India), first you must
destroy
the spirituality. Much has been written about Lord Macaulay's statement. He
said, ‘I traveled the length and breadth of India and I did not see one beggar,
one poor man. And people know science and medical things so well. 88000 medical
institutions were there only in the south of India.’
He said, if you want to rule this country, you must stop this. So they
systematically closed down the medical institutions, Sanskrit colleges so that
people
could no longer read the books. You know, when all your books are in Sanskrit
and they shut down all the Sanskrit schools by rule, your next generation gets
no access to the knowledge and that is what exactly happened in India. There is
a whole presentation about Lord Macaulay's vision that they could rule India
only by doing this. Anyway, that is all history.
What I am saying is that Ayurveda is still very potent knowledge- it’s a science
even today. Hmmm? But many books are missing. Many were burnt down. India
had a very crazy king at one point of time, he was called Aurangzeb. He came to
power by putting his own father in jail who was the king then. And then he
burnt big libraries in India like Nalanda. History says that the books in
Nalanda library burned for six months. He called all the scholars and he told
them,
‘What is in your library?’ They said, ‘A lot of knowledge.’ He was very fanatic.
He took the Quran and asked, ‘Do you agree that this book has all the
knowledge that is there in the library?’ They said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Then what
is the use of having a library and so many books? Burn them down.
Then one of them said, ‘No. There is other knowledge that is not in this book.’
Then Aurangzeb said, ‘Then they shouldn't exist. Anything which is not in
this book shouldn't exist anywhere, it is not correct. It is not God’s! Burn
them down. Thousands of years ago, philosophy of the Buddhists, Hindus, Jains,
Sikh were available; medical, archeology, astronomy, metallurgy, engineering,
science - all these books - were available. They were all burnt down. So
whatever people could take overnight and memorize it, those things remained and
it continued. So these are all past histories.
Q. In Muslim countries we have some resistance even with some new teachers. One
of them read on the internet that the translation of the word Sohum is ‘I am
god.’ It is not ok with Islam. Can you explain what it is meant and what is the
intention by Sohum?
Sri Sri: Sohum is the natural sound of breath. When you breath out the hum is
there. Sohum is the natural sound. If you read it the other way round, it is
Humsa. Humsa is that which uplifts, that which floats, that which discriminates.
That consciousness which discriminates right from wrong, from the permanent
to impermanent, from the beautiful to ugly - discrimination.
Sohum does not mean ‘I am God’, it is ‘I am that’. What is the ‘that’? ‘That’
could be love, ‘that’ is truth, ‘that’ is love, ‘that’ is the beautiful space,
‘that’ is what I really am! First I think I am just the thoughts, the emotions,
the mind, but the true realization, I am not the thought, I am not the body,
but I am that! What is that? It is the experience that is beyond words! That
truth which is beyond comprehension! That beauty which is beyond any
imagination. That reality which you cannot totally catch. That love is what I
am! And if love is God or God is love and I am love then I am God too!
Jesus said love is God! And said, I am love! I am that, I am. This is there in
the Bible also. I am that I am. Thou art that! All this is there. But it is
not the meaning that is important. What is important is the vibration of the
sound. The sound Sohum, has some definite vibrations in the cosmos and that
helps our spirits to blossom and that is what is most important.
Q. Dearest Guruji, I sit here with you and after all that happened in my life in
the past, today I know it was worth going through it to live and experience
what I feel today. Fullness, love, gratitude, excitement and inspiration. All
because of what you have given to this world. Eternally yours!
Q. Does the strength of the Guru lie in the fact that he represents a symbolic
father who helps to heal the wounds from the real father?
Sri Sri: The wounds need to be healed, that is more important. Whatever relation
you put, whatever attachment you put, it is secondary. See the world from a
fresh eye, from a fresh look. Anybody who has inflicted pain to you, know that
they have done it because they have no knowledge. They were deprived of this
spiritual knowledge. That is why they were behaving that way. They were
handcuffed, they were blindfolded, they were dumbfounded and they acted the way
they
acted. They are victims themselves. See them from this angle, you will feel
compassion for them and you will feel grateful for what you have got in your
life, ya?
Q. Please explain to me how we are responsible for how we feel? For example when
we see a beautiful girl, a thought appears and then pleasure comes to me.
But yesterday in the video, I understood it is the opposite. Why the desire
appears only with beautiful girls? How do we choose that?
Sri Sri: I think you forgot how you felt when you were five year old. When you
were five, six, seven or eight- year-old, it was not a beautiful girl who
attracted you it was beautiful food that attracted you!
I will tell you a story. There were people of three generation- father, son and
grandfather. They all went out for a holiday- vacation. So the youngest of
the family, the grand child was so excited, he got good food.
And the adult, the father, was so attracted with the beautiful girls at the
camp. He said, ‘What a beautiful day! I saw so many beautiful girls here. I had
great time!’ Now the grandfather's turn had come. The grandfather said, ‘It was
such a relief here. So nice. We came out to this holiday camp. I had such
good bowel movement! I never had like that before! What a relief!’ He said, ‘You
both talk childishly. He talks about food, you talk about girls but in my
age you will understand what the really happiness is’. So when someone is so old
if they have a good bowel movement, that is great relief for them. They get
good sleep, that is heaven for them. So, wait for some more time and you will
see what is more beautiful in life!
Q. Dearest Guruji, I had a question in my mind when we were speaking about
energy centers today, in the knowledge tape. I feel constant energy in my second
chakra but I don’t have any desires to do sex because I know it leaves me tired
and dull. On the other hand my creative energy has not manifested itself. I
would like to use my creativity and write, sing, dance, etc. How will it come to
this point? Please show me a way. Give me ability to make my creative energy
alive.
Sri Sri: Ya! Continue your meditation. If a particular chakra has been used a
lot then automatically energy goes there quite a bit. But it will keep moving,
definitely moving. You focus more on navel center and then dance, sing. Singing
and dancing, that is all part of our practices. You know, it uplifts you in
more than one way.
Q. Dear Guruji, I can’t forget this guy. He is not good for me but still I am in
love with him. Even though I haven't seen him in ten months and I hardly
know him. Can you explain?
Sri Sri: Wait till you find somebody else. Then you will forget all about that
guy. Our mind is very strange. You know, the greatest, real stranger to us is
not somebody else but our own mind.
Q. Dear Guruji, only today I have fallen in love with nine people. One cute
Serbian, one beautiful Croatian, one irresistible Bulgarian, one very nice
German, two gorgeous Italians, and two delightful Russians and one really hot
Indian. Clearly I can't make up my mind. Can you please help me?
Sri Sri: I tell you the choice is too little for you. Go for more! Only nine? We
have one ninety four countries in the planet! Don't be in a hurry to choose
right away. Go slow. You know? Good!
We have come to rise in love and on the way, it doesn't surprise me if you keep
falling in love here and there. But don't be in a hurry to choose. Hundred
and ninety two countries in the United Nations, Right?
“That which you cannot express is Love.
That which you cannot reject/renounce is Beauty.
That which you cannot avoid is the Truth.”~ Sri Sri Ravishankar
© The Art of Living Foundation
For Global Spirituality
