Guru Purnima Satsang
Bangalore, 16th July 2019
Part 3
Question: When we give the ancestral offerings and perform the ceremonies properly, that is, the rituals that are done in Sanathana Dharma for the ancestors who have passed away, I understand that there is a lot of blessings that come along. But what do we do to ensure that this continues even after us? How will I know if I am being affected because someone (say about 16 generations before me) have not done something right and they have not taken care of such rituals/ ceremonies. And we so called “being modern” have not done the Pitru Kaaryas (offerings/ceremonies to ancestors) properly. How do we ensure such offerings, if pending, do not affect us? Also, I also understand that pitrus (ancestors) come again and again, in our clan, so how do we make sure such pending ceremonies do not affect our future generations?
Mohanji: Well, how can you ensure it will continue? No assurance. It all depends on individuals of the family. See, every family has all types of people; out of which very few actually connect to the higher aspects of life. Many people only connect to the material aspect because they are fine with it. They’re probably successful in material life. Therefore, they decide this is good enough. Very few people connect to the higher aspects and they evolve. But when you come in contact with a master who’s totally aligned, a very powerful master, usually calamities increase because you start moving into a fast forward mode. Imagine something was supposed to happen over 10 lifetimes; it may get crushed into one lifetime so that you finish it off. Thus you are free of 10 lifetimes. Masters compress it and people save their lifetimes that way.
Hence in the path of liberation, the right method is “total acceptance”. Okay, this is happening, and then you surrender to the master. So, then the master gives you a helping hand. When you are really connected to a proper Master, the sign is what you lose. You may lose a lot of things. First of all, you may lose impatience. Instead of thinking, “why things are not happening”, you will say, “have patience, it will happen”. That’s a sign of connection. Maybe you lose anger, jealousy, hatred, revenge, etc. Like this, you can count on your losses, depending on how deeply you are connected to the master. So the connection to a true master should be counted with your losses, not the loss of money or wealth. They are all secondary anyway. All that which is connected to your constitution based on your body, mind, intellect, ego and what you have earned from outside, are all temporary. So they come and they go but we try to cling to them.
As I said earlier, we have overwhelming instinct just like any other species. If you look at any species of the world, they have overwhelming instinct – survival instinct. Their food and sexuality are all connected to that survival instinct. For human beings, it is more imagination and intelligence. What we do, what we think, have certain set patterns. When a child is born, we are busy educating the child. After the child is reasonably educated, we have to get him into a job. Once he gets a job, immediately we are looking for a girl or a boy for marriage. As soon as he/she is married, you say, “When is a child coming?” Once the child has come, then we worry about the child. So, the cycle continues. Have you thought about what it is actually?
It’s only the instinct at work. It has no imagination or intelligence. As human beings, have we ever lived like human beings? You should always ask this question. If you have lived like human beings, lived compassion, lived kindness, lived selflessness, the highest qualities of human existence, like purity in thoughts, words, action, then you will automatically elevate from these sorrows and expectations. Otherwise, we are bound by expectations, disappointments, anger, hatred, revenge, etc. We are in that cycle and we are not crossing over. It is expectations that are ruling us all the time. We expect many things and if they don’t happen, we get disappointed. Then we change the guru because we cannot change ourselves. This is the easiest thing to do (laughter). We see this happening in the world all the time, don’t we? Now, when things are not happening well, we change the guru.
Secondly, we go to many gurus thinking somebody will help us. Eventually nobody can help you; because you are not staying long enough to be helped. It happens this way in life.
There is no consistency in us, but we expect consistency in everything else. Look at look at the irony. We have no consistency, but we expect everything else to be consistent. If we understand that clearly, then we understand the whole story. Ask yourself one question “how consistent am I?” and “how committed am I?” If you are really committed to yourself, you don’t have to really commit to a guru. Guru has no role in that. Guru is your expression of your highest possibility. So you leave guru alone. And don’t worry about the guru. He will take care of himself. (laughter) But you should be committed to yourself.
As I said earlier, “tatwam asi” – you are that. That is your ultimate truth. The ultimate truth is that you are everything. You are the beginning, you are the life and you are the end, death. All is you. You need to invest in yourself, in understanding and aligning yourself. You then look at the guru as a benchmark, as an aligned state. Instead, when we go to a person with insecurities and you meet a person with insecurity to support you, he could manipulate you. Then you will say, “This guy manipulated. He looked like a guru, but he manipulated”. Why did you go to him in the first place and what are you going to him with? – Insecurities.
Understand, most of the times people go to temples to beg. Very rich people coming in Mercedes cars go to temples and beg. You see beggars sitting outside of the temple and beggars inside the temple begging. Look around the whole world, always asking for something, entertaining poverty consciousness, always begging. When you entertain poverty consciousness all the time, poverty will be your reality. What is poverty consciousness? You are always telling the world you don’t have something – “Please give me this; please give me that”; never satisfied with what we have.
The feeling of contentment is the actual richness. With just one meal a day, if you are contented, you are very rich. Richness is your prerogative, your birth-right. You can be rich with what you have. Accept how things are happening and connect to one master, one path, one practice and one tradition, you will find success. Dig in one place long enough, you will find water. But we don’t do that today. We dig in lots of places and finally there is no water. But the effort was there, isn’t it? This is the reality today. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Paramahamsa or Brahmarishi or a Maharishi. You are not going to buy them and take them home, isn’t it? So, it doesn’t matter really. You will only connect with the ones you are eligible to connect with and those with whom you connect are the only ones you will be able to understand, feel and accept. Else you cannot connect. If you go as per somebody else’s wish, when the other person changes their mind, then you will also go away.
We see that happening many times. Somebody comes through because of somebody. If that person goes, this person also goes. Like one cow following the other blindly. We have herd instinct. One person goes, everybody goes. One person says, “Well, he is a bad person”. Everybody says, “Oh, he is a bad person”. One fox loses its tail, it tells the other foxes, “it’s amazing to have no tail”. Then all the foxes try to cut their tails. Herd instinct – we all have that. This is the true situation. No Guru is dependent on any disciple. No disciple should be dependent on any Guru. Because Guru is a benchmark, a road sign and a sign of alignment, sign of your highest aspiration, sign of stability.
Question: How to see our progress?
Mohanji: By looking inside. You can’t look outside and see your progress. Clear sign of progress is less thoughts, more silence, stability and fearlessness. You will be stable, you will be purpose bound. Your activity will have clarity; you will know what to do in life. That increased clarity is a sign of connectivity. You will know what to do when you wake up in the morning. There will be no problem. You will be eager to wake up. It is not like, “Oh my God, I’ve woken up. What will I do now?” Many people are like that. They do not know what to do when they wake up.
Question: I heard we make progress by learning lessons in life.
Mohanji: Who said lessons in life? I never said that. I feel that you have no lesson to learn. Because what you are experiencing each moment, is your reality. What will you learn out of it? It’s only experience. We call it good experience, bad experience. That’s just how we see it. But at the end of the day everything is experience. I don’t think we have any lesson to learn and can we learn lessons at all? We have too much of ego to learn anything. Our ego will not permit us to learn anything, will it? It’s all experiences. Look at everything that is happening to you as an experience, so that your connection with it will be very less. Everything is experience, everything comes and everything goes. Whatever is born will die.
It’s a short life. In this life, be happy with what you have, and don’t harm or hurt anybody. That’s why I said “Ahimsa” (non-violence) is my religion. I always say, “I don’t have a particular religion. If you want to do something for me, then go out and serve the people, the sick and the old birds and animals.” Because then you will experience purification, you will experience inner richness.
How do you feel richness? When you share what you have. When you are always greedy for more, you will never be rich. There are many rich people in the world; they only have money and nothing else. They are in fact very, very poor. Poor rich people! You can see the poverty. When you talk to them, they will always complain, “Oh, I got more taxes, I got this, I got that…” Come on, you have the money, pay the taxes.
Devi Amma Speaks:
There’s a story… Once it seems Lord Vishnu came to meet people. The people complained that they had many problems and that Shri Vishnu should solve them. Vishnu addressed two groups, one group of millionaires and the other group with very poor people and said “On this specific day, make a bundle of all your problems and come to me, I will solve them.” On the destined day, all the poor people came with a small bundle and sat on one side; the rich people also came and sat on the other side, but with empty hands. These poor people talking among themselves said, “How happy the rich are. They do not have any problem. We are all carrying a bundle. However they are so rich and they don’t have any”. One of the poor asked the rich, “how come you don’t have any problems?” to which the rich said, “Your problems are so small that you can carry them with your hands; we cannot carry them, and they are coming in the lorry.” (laughter)
Mohanji: Being yourself is the best gift you can give yourself. Accept your reality and always remember that you are the most wonderful creation you have ever seen. All of us are indeed wonderful creations. There is nobody higher or lower. The real realisation is that we have value in this society and that is not to eat, drink and sleep. We can do something in this world as per our capacity. We can always deliver something. I do not believe in good and bad. I believe whatever enhances you is good for you. Whatever diminishes you makes you feel sad or makes you less, is bad for you.
So anger, hatred, jealousy and revenge are bad for you because they shrink you. But acts of kindness, compassion, unconditional love, selflessness and such are good for you. Because they expand you, make you rich. It’s very simple. You don’t have to really complicate it. Also, in every situation, only ask one thing, “Does this this activity expand me or reduce me?” If it is expanding you, go for it. If it is shrinking you, don’t do it.
Even talking about people; sometimes close friends are talking about other people. You should decide whether you should participate in it. Don’t listen because they are talking. What it creates inside you is your benchmark. If somebody tells you bad things about people, if you feel shrunk, if you feel less or drained, don’t listen to them. Just say, “I don’t have interest in it”. I always say that. “It doesn’t suit me. Whatever you’re discussing about another person or people is not my cup of tea”. We have to say that so that, as much as possible, we are always being clean and pure. That is all we can do.
Question: How to experience liberation at the time of death?
Mohanji: Be consistent and we’ll work on it. Liberation is something which you should experience right now and not just at the time of death. If something cannot be experienced now, there’s no guarantee it will be experienced in the future. So, when the seed is sown now for liberation, and if you really cling on to it, it has to happen. When the concentration, conviction, commitment happens on one thing, it has to happen. It must happen. Then the grace will support you. You take the steps and I will support you.
Question: In life many people whom we come across say, “You are the creator of your own destiny”. Sometimes they also say, “There is a mystical power and nothing is in your hands”. Some say, “Whatever was supposed to happen, happened”. So what is real in this? How do we correlate this? How do I know what I created and what is not in my hands?
Mohanji: I’ll clarify in simple terms, try to assimilate it, catch it while you can. First of all, Subash (the name of the person who asked the question) was born. You have a time of birth and a time of death defined. This is set. You are born at some time; you will die at some time. Now in between this birth and death, is life which has various aspects to it. One is that you are not stable. Your size changes, your body changes, mind changes, everything changes. Thus there are waves of change that come and go and changes are constant. Change is a must. This is number one.
In this whole journey, what faculty have you actually controlled? You thought you controlled it but you have controlled nothing. That means a force was driving it. This force is called destiny.
How is it laid out? It is laid out based on unfulfilled and pending desires – . We don’t know what it is because we cannot see our past life. Now of course through regression therapy, etc. people are going to past life, that’s a different story. But normally, we cannot see past life. So the flow of life has happened; and is still happening; and you have no clue as to what will happen the next year, or the year after. You have no clue on what will be your thought process, what sort of situations you will be in, the financial conditions, engagements, relationships, etc. You do not know anything, do you? So where is the control over it?
Question: Can’t someone extend life and postpone the time of their death? There’s anti-aging, medicaments…
Mohanji: Try. Everybody would buy. There are many rich people.
Know that there are so many people very, very rich people and they have had everything in life, which money can buy except the time duration or the extension of death. Some people have pumped themselves with machines and have been in the hospital. That is not called life. I am not saying extending the life is not possible. Extending the life is possible provided you have nothing to do with the body. In certain states of Samadhi, it is possible. But that’s a different story, first you need to reach that state and then you should have nothing to do with the normal worldly activities. There are certain ways of prolonging the body for any number of years, hundreds of years. That’s a different story. I’m talking only about the terrestrial life, the usual way.
There are various masters who have defied deaths, which is definitely possible. And there are certain methods of holding the breath in certain areas and controlling, these are all there. However, this is not the platform for discussing it. Right now, the question is coming from the mind level, from an average person – using mind matter (mind, intellect, and ego) like, “why can’t I do that?” Of course, you can do that. But how?
If it were easily possible, medical science would have done it. Or rich people would have definitely chosen that. Also if they had a clear definition, to transfer whatever they earned in this life to next life, they would have done that. Every Arab oil baron would have done that. It is not possible that way. The thumb rule is when you are born, you will die. Whatever is born will die; whatever has birth, has death; whatever is created is uncreated. This is the rule of nature. Because everything has come out of energy, everything has to return to energy. When you have already become energy, you maintain a form; that form, existing in the form, doesn’t matter.
Question: If I let go of everything, who creates karma then?
Mohanji: Are you letting go of anything? You are the one that is creating. That’s why I said earlier, what creates your karma, what creates your destiny – emotions with thought, word, action creates destiny, isn’t it? Who creates it? You. Nobody else has anything to do with it. And also emotions with thoughts, words, actions happen only during waking hours. Now, if you surrender all this, then Krishna said, “You surrender everything to me, I release you from its karma”. There are numerous higher powers, there are great masters, there are beings in energetic plane, so many different faculties, there are billions of creations and all of them have their frequencies, they have their existence. So definitely all these exist, but how much do you connect to them? You can’t connect to them with the mind matter. You have to connect to them with an increased frequency, which is beyond the mind matter. You have to reach a certain state to connect to them. Otherwise, you do not even know that they exist.
And we don’t believe it. We don’t believe it. We only know the transactional side – like and dislike, why I should connect; why not I connect; and so on. These are from the mental plane, mind plane. You have to grow beyond the mind plane to actually connect to frequencies, which are of higher nature. There are frequencies that are non-interfering. There are also frequencies that are interfering. Like the “controlling beings”, the beings that control you when you are tuned into their frequency. For example, if you have anger, similar beings of that nature possess you and they control you. If somebody has jealousy, beings or the energies, which are jealous by nature, can get attracted to you. These are all definitely there.
But you can also very well connect to higher sphere, higher frequencies; just like there are many channels or frequencies in the air and according to the capacity of the television, channels are picked up and shown on the screen. Otherwise, you won’t get some of the channels on the screen, even if you have the gadget. You need to have that facility and the faculty to tune in to higher, and you will definitely experience it. This is for sure. But the flow of life is controlled by destiny. That is why you are experiencing certain things only at a certain point in time, not before, not after. What you are supposed to experience tomorrow, cannot be experienced today. That is because it’s laid out over time.
Situation, place, person, possibility, everything is laid out on time. Every moment is like that. That is what Srinivasan Ramanujam talked about – “The time-space-junction point”. Everything happens at a particular time at a particular space to a particular set of people. If that is changed, the outcome will change.
That is why I said, “This is fully laid out”. Where do we have grip over it? We think that we are controlling it. It’s not true. Certain patterns are happening in life. Like, we wake up in the same bed if possible every day. Every morning when we wake up, it’s the same place. That is possible. However, that’s a pattern. That’s something which destiny has provided. See, I never sleep in one bed for more than 10 days. I’m in a different place. So I don’t have the luxury of sleeping in one place for long. This is also part of destiny. Everything is created by destiny.
The best thing you can do is accept it saying, “Okay, this is what’s happening”. Therefore, when you connect to the situation with full acceptance, you overcome it. That is the only way to overcome. Resisting or thinking you can change it, won’t work.
You can change things, provided the awareness shifts. The same awareness that created a problem cannot create a solution. It has to be different awareness. You have to look from a different angle. That is why when you are in a deep problem, people say, “Go for a drive or go for a walk, come back and solve it”. That is because you are changing the whole structure so that you can address the problem in a different way.
Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan