Ganesh Chaturthi – Satsang | Mohanji
Relevance of astrology in our life and traps
Question: How important is the role of astrology in our lives?
Mohanji: It’s up to you. Maybe one per cent or maybe 100%. It depends on what you want out of it. Astrology is a roadmap of your life, the path of destiny, based on planetary positions. It’s science; it’s maths, right? If somebody knows this very well, they can tell you how your destiny is laid out in this life. If somebody is really brilliant, they can also talk about past lives and future lives. But why do you want to know? What makes you feel, “I should know my future?” Inherent insecurity.
If you are in full acceptance and full surrender to your favourite deity or guru or God, everything is okay. That’s what Shirdi Sai Baba asked: “Would you accept everything I give you?” Most people say ‘“No.’’ Meaning “I accept only what I like, what suits me.” Your likes mean your mind! What do you use to like something? Your waking-state mind.
The mind likes things – if you don’t have to work, you are happy. If somebody gives you money every day, it’s much better. Somebody prepares food and puts it on the table; it’s better. No work is better. The mind likes the tamasic side. Tamas is very easy. Tamas means inertia – laziness. That’s very, very easy. So, what we say we like are the comforts. But in comfort zones, no grass grows. Nothing grows there. There’s no transformation. There’s only stagnation. In comfort zones, there’s only stagnation.
When there’s a crisis in your comfort zone, you’re completely routed. When a crisis happens, when you’re oriented and occupied by comfort zones, you don’t know what to do. You’re totally routed. So, comfort zones are not a great thing.
It’s the comfort zones that you’ve created – your business, your house, your cow, your calf, your dog, and your wife. Everything you’ve created around yourself, and now you say, “I’m comfortable.” It’s just like a prisoner saying, ‘’My prison cell is beautiful.” It’s exactly like that!! Like a prisoner in a prison cell, saying, “I’m really proud of my prison cell.” That means we are proud of our cage!
If Baba asked: “If I give you what’s good for you, will you take it? Maybe it’s a bitter pill.” What’ll people say? “No, thank you”. So, this is where sometimes we aren’t able to take the next step. We aren’t able to evolve to the next level.
If you have perfect acceptance, there’s no problem. Let the stars be there; let them do their job. Every time there’s a change, and each change is making us reach higher, that’s one more step up the ladder if you keep your awareness intact and insecurities away. Insecurities are connected to existence because that’s normal and connected to instinct.
What’s the basic instinct of humans or all beings? Survival. Insecurities are connected to death. Death is connected to survival. That’s why all people have insecurity. Every being has it – every bird, every animal. Every being has insecurity because that’s helping it to flee – to run away and save itself.
Whether it’s fight or flight depends on how insecure they are. Like a lion chasing a deer – for the lion, it’s a meal; it’s food. For the deer, it’s life. If the deer believes in its own life, it’ll run away. If the lion decides he must eat, and the deer doesn’t have that kind of will to survive, the lion will kill the deer. Life is like that always.
Astrology is a roadmap – it helps you to understand where you stand. But at the same time, if you are fully confident and able to handle life as it comes, and if you are stable (“let it all come and even this’ll pass on”), then everything moves away. Happiness goes; sorrows go; everything goes. This is how life is. If you’re not too insecure, you don’t have anything to do with it.
Otherwise, everyday morning there are people who call their astrologer asking, “What’s the right time to go to the toilet today?” They check everything with astrologers because they are so insecure. It’s up to you. You can have one per cent use or 100% use. These are all only individualistic. I’ll never ever comment on it because I don’t want to interfere with your free will.
I have great respect for astrology, for that matter. My mother’s father was a great astrologer, though he was not doing it professionally. It was a hobby for him; he never did it for money. He knew the exact time of his death. Before that, he visited all the relatives he wanted to see, came back, and died elegantly. That’s because he knew the exact time of his death.
If you are not insecure, it really is a good idea to know: “okay, this is it”.But if you’re too insecure, somebody can take you for a ride. There’s the usual format to trap you; they might say, “Oh, you’re amazing. You look like Mahalakshmi, or you look like Shiva or Krishna!” So, you’re very pleased.
“I thought I looked like a monkey, but now somebody is saying that I look like Shiva! It’s amazing.” So, your attention is caught, right? Then they say, “By the way, I see some problems coming in the future.” Finished! You’re trapped.
The second point is that trap. Then you’re asking, “What’s the problem? What’s in the future?” They’ll say, “Oh, it’s okay. I can sort it out for you. Just a puja for 50,000 rupees will do this for you. See your planets – your Saturn is here etc., and because of this, you’ve to expect some kind of issue. But don’t worry. I’ll do this for you.” Then you pay the money, and if nothing happens, that’s your destiny too! (audience laughing) It’s really funny.
Don’t get trapped; that’s the only point. Your insecurity could be a recipe for somebody to trap you. All that glitters is not gold; please remember. That’s why you have been given the intelligence to understand. Don’t expect too much from another; you use your power. A bird sits on a branch on top of the tree. The branch is very fragile. But why does the bird choose to sit there? Because it trusts its wings. Not because it trusts the branch, isn’t it? The bird is sitting on a small branch, maybe even a dry branch. It can fall at any time. But the bird sits there. It’s trusting its wings, not the branch.
Trust yourself
We should trust our life. We trust ourselves, not another. The branch can be fragile. What we depend on might be fragile. We can’t trust it. But we can trust ourselves, can’t we? If you develop self-respect, self-esteem, and self-love, then nobody can touch you. You’ll become invincible; you’ll become powerful.
But in life, you cannot guarantee that you’ll not fall. You can fall many times – everybody has fallen many times. There could be many mistakes. What’s the problem with mistakes? Let there be mistakes. Every mistake is a lesson. We don’t have to decide, “I’ll never make a mistake.” Make mistakes so that you learn. That strengthens you if you have that courage if you trust yourself. The only trust you need in life is self-trust. Trust yourself.
You don’t have to trust the entire world because when are you seeing whatever you see outside only when you’re looking at them or when they are available for you, but you are available all the time for yourself. So, who should you trust? You. You should trust yourself.
If you trust somebody else and follow somebody else’s guidance, and if it doesn’t suit you, it becomes the wrong guidance. Who is to be blamed? Not the person who guided you, isn’t it? We’ve to trust ourselves; we’ve to be stable ourselves. There’s no other way.
If you have that, nobody can defeat you. Even if you fall down, get up. Falling down is not a failure; not getting up is a failure. If you fall down, it’s fine. That’s how life is. Sometimes you make wrong choices or make mistakes, but if you don’t get up – that’s a mistake. Keep walking until death.
Sripada Srivallabha’s and Ganesha’s birthday meaning
Question: Can you speak more about the link between Sripada Srivallabha’s birthday and Ganesha’s birthday, as it is the same day?
Mohanji: Sripada Srivallabha is considered to be the reincarnation of Lord Dattatreya. What’s the significance of Lord Dattatreya, the Supreme Master, Supreme Guru? He represented supreme consciousness. That’s exactly what makes him different. Just as all of us have our own flavours, there are paths as well – Bhakti yoga (path of devotion), Jnana Yoga (path of knowledge), Karma Yoga (path of selfless service), Raja Yoga (path of consciousness); all these are there.
When Lord Datta was asked the question: “Who are you?” He replied, “I am just nature. I am nature.” They asked him: “Where can we find you?” He replied, “In nature. Look into nature – what you see is me.” That’s very, very difficult. Lord Datta, Himself, had twenty-four gurus, and most of them were from nature. His whole idea or his existence is guiding us towards connecting to nature, receiving from nature, and evolving our awareness to that of supreme consciousness.
We are what we are projecting
We all have our nature; each of us has an individual nature. That’s what people connect us with. People connect to each other by recognizing the frequency which is provided by our nature. That’s how we are. What we are is what we are projecting. Our nature is projected as our expression or our frequency. We are all transmitting our own frequencies in the world.
So, what is Datta projecting? What frequency is He operating from? Supreme consciousness – the father of all. The pure brightness that is inside every atom. Supreme consciousness is the life inside every atom, every creation, everything visible, and everything invisible.
How can you find Datta? Where is Datta? In everything – in every being, every atom, every cell, every plant, every tree, every bird, every animal, and every human. That’s why Datta said: “Look around. You will see me.” In other words: “All that you see is me.” It’s very difficult.
To connect to something finite is very easy. Connecting to movie stars or rock stars is very easy. They become famous because they portray a character, and the character is liked and loved by people, and they like the actor because he played the character. “I like this character. So, I follow him” – that’s easy. But Datta says: “I am everything. I am everybody. You look around – all you see is me. “It’s very difficult (to connect).
There have been incarnations time and again to bring you to that awareness that everything is supreme consciousness. The only message that is conveyed is that all is me. People who operate from that frequency of supreme consciousness are considered Datta avatars or avadhootas.
Basically, avadhootas are those who are completely dissolved – no mind, no personality, nothing. They are empty outside and empty inside, completely filled with consciousness – Mast – joyous, fully happy, blissful. Those beings are considered avatars of Datta.
Shirdi Sai Baba is considered a Datta Avatar. Sripada Shrivallabha lived for a very short time, but I think Siddha Mangala Stotra (hymn) is a kind of synopsis of his life. But his importance is not just that he was born on a day when a person became a deity (what was created as a person or a personality by Ma Parvati was adopted and made into a deity by Lord Shiva). That day of Ganesha Chaturthi, when Sripada Srivallabha was born, means that he’s also representing the same supreme consciousness or pure brightness.
This brightness is indivisible, unknowable, unfathomable. It’s pure, and it’s complete.
Om poornamadah, poornamidam… (Vedic hymn) which means everything is complete. When completion is taken from completion, all that remains is completion. That’s it.
A woman becomes a mother. The child is born. The woman loses nothing – she remains the same woman she had been before the child was born. The woman was complete, and after the child was born, she was still complete. The completion, when it’s taken out of the completion – everything is still complete. That person is complete; this one is complete.
If a lamp is lit from a flame, or a thousand lamps are lit from this flame, the first lamp never loses its brightness. This is exactly how it is. The very reason for the existence of all these masters is to light lamps in the hearts of people – lamps of awareness, awareness of consciousness. But all this has to be experienced.
The path to consciousness is awareness. What’s the first level of awareness? Being aware of who you are, what you are, and why you are. The next level of awareness is the total acceptance of who you are. It doesn’t matter whether you accept me. It doesn’t matter whether you accept another; you should accept yourself. That’s the only way you can raise your awareness.
This lifetime is important. With every lifetime, destiny gives you a chance to connect to consciousness, to connect to God. But during every lifetime, you also have patterns, unfulfilled desires, ego, pride – all those things. We follow those things more because they are more terrestrial and more gravitational. We follow that, and we miss the levitational – the higher.
One thing is very important here. First level – awareness of consciousness. All you need to know is that there’s energy; there’s a power which is running your show. When that power leaves you, we call it a dead body. That’s enough. You don’t need to know much about it. You just have to know that this is just a shell. There’s something sitting in the shell which is actually projecting a personality called me. That awareness is simple, right? That’s enough.
Now, you start connecting to that thing which is actually projecting your personality. Start thinking about that. This is called manana or contemplation. What’s projecting me? What’s projecting this personality, my likes and dislikes, my various states like waking state, dream state, and deep sleep state? What’s running the show? What’s not sleeping when I am sleeping? The body is sleeping, but this is not sleeping. This is enough.
Second level: you start accepting that completely. Don’t ever compare yourself with another. That’s a big mistake. It’s a big mistake to compare yourself with another. Why? The other is you. The same electricity runs in the other too. Then what are you comparing? The essence that sits in another person – the same essence is inside you too. There’s no difference.
There’s no guru or disciple in that context. It’s all you – in different bodies, different forms. That which is inside an elephant’s body, that which moves the elephant, is the same as what is in an ant’s body, isn’t it? So, how do you compare an elephant and an ant? You can understand that there are various toys. But the same battery works in everything – that you can understand. That understanding is enough.
Then you can start contemplating on that energy which is running the show. When you start contemplating that energy, your awareness automatically rises. Automatically – you’re not doing anything here. Contemplation brings you concentration; you are focused. The focus will lead to meditation automatically. Meditation will lead to “being that”. Being that means being what is inside you, being the truth. That doesn’t need effort; that’s the state of samadhi. When you are fully occupied in what’s inside you, you are in a state of samadhi.
When the samadhi state stabilizes, you’re in the state of an avadhoota. This is the constant consciousness, and it’ll be blissful. That means you’re not trying to be something else or feeling like, “Now, I’m not in samadhi”, and later, “I’m always in a samadhi”. It’s always a permanent state. It’s a permanent state in which there’s no coming or going. You are there, always. It’s like graduation. You’re a graduate, and tomorrow morning if you decide you’re not a graduate, your certificate will tell you you’re a graduate, isn’t it? You’re not going back to tenth class anymore. This is exactly how it is.
So, first and fundamental is a thought or an understanding of who you are or what’s running your show. Then through self-acceptance, you stabilize – acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. But the most difficult thing to accept is our weaknesses because we judge ourselves a lot. We start looking at ourselves: “Oh, that person is better than me.” This is terrible – coming out of ignorance, complete ignorance. How can I compare myself with another? There’s no need.
All people have relevance on earth. Everybody has relevance on earth. Nobody is higher; nobody is lower. In society, there could be rulers, and there could be followers. That’s all part of the drama. But in reality, you are your own ruler. The real ruler sits in you, isn’t it? That being that runs your show is the ruler.
Our orientation and ownership
Question: Do different people connect to different masters and follow different paths?
Mohanji: Correct. Yes, we are all frequencies. Because we are of a certain frequency, we took birth on earth. But the earth is not the only plane where we can take birth. Of course, our interests and desires and unfulfilled desires are all connected to the earth, so we come back here. Otherwise, there are so many planes where we can take birth. There are so many lokas. Every loka or every world has a different frequency.
Earth is particularly important because it has multiple frequencies and terrains, and also, the earth has the potential for finite life, like, say, 80 years or 100 years. It also offers emotional drama from all the play of frequencies. Every level in this place has its importance because the bodies are made out of elements.
On many other planes, there’s no elemental body made of elements. There the bodies are such that reproduction happens at will, which means multiplying yourself at will. So, there are so many frequencies around the universe and in the galaxies.
Here on earth, we are expressing ourselves in particular. You can only express what you are. You cannot express what I am, right? You are honestly expressing yourself. All eight billion people are expressing themselves. But with whom will you connect – who will you be friends with? With people of your frequency, people who understand you, love you and connect to you. Otherwise, you don’t want to connect to people who are of a different frequency. This is exactly how the birds of the same feather come together. Frequency unites them.
Everything is frequency. Sometimes we don’t like somebody because we can’t connect to that frequency. Not everybody will like you because they don’t understand your frequency. For example, somebody is talking to you in Chinese. You’ll not understand unless, of course, you know Chinese. But if you don’t know Chinese, even if that person were scolding you or abusing you, you would be smiling because you don’t understand anything.
This is exactly how it is with frequency. Some frequencies we just cannot connect to, and that’s fine. Not everybody will like us, nor will everybody dislike us either. This is all part of the drama. We love this drama, so we keep coming back!
One of the fundamental mistakes or fundamental dimensions of ignorance is ownership. “I own this person; I own that person; I own property, a house, a car”. Then we die. Who do we own at that time? One of the fundamental non-understandings of life is ownership.The moment you’ve reduced ownership, you’ll start experiencing freedom.
First of all, insecurity is the binding factor in ownership. If someone is insecure, they hold on to a husband/wife/children, and then the people they hold on to get suffocated and run away. You see so many separations because of ownership. Ownership is one dimension of ignorance.
The freedom that you give in a relationship makes the relationship very strong. When you trust a person and give them complete freedom to be themselves, that relationship will be permanent – stable. But we don’t. We become possessive; we own people. You can see that in society with children.
Why are there so many old-age homes? Children are fed up with their parents, right? As soon as children can stand on their feet, the first thing they do is to put the parents in an old age home because all the time, the parents had been suffocating them with ownership: “Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” We see these things in society. That’s how it is. We are all frequencies. We can’t be anything else.
Truth and perception
Question: Sometimes, we don’t get along with somebody; we don’t agree, and yet we talk about oneness. So not liking somebody and oneness?
Mohanji: Not liking somebody – that’s only on the mind level. But oneness is the truth, right? See, there’s the truth, and there’s your perception – truth and perception. You look at the world as per your perception, based on what you see or what you feel, or what you are. But the truth is something else. What’s inside that person and what’s inside you is true. That’s oneness.
What’s inside a washing machine and what’s inside of a refrigerator is the same electricity. That awareness is oneness. But the perception is, “Oh, I like this person; that one I don’t like.” That’s how you project. When you just look at some people, you may say: “I don’t like this person”. You may not even have spoken to that person, or you don’t even know them. But you already decided with prejudice that you don’t like this person. This is all our projection, our perception.
The entire world – your world, our world, is our projection, our perception. You don’t see the truth in the world. The real truth of the world we don’t get to know at all. Why? Because we are busy projecting. We are busy perceiving. That’s why we don’t get to see the real world. But we’ll get to see that through acceptance – I accept myself, “I accept myself; I accept myself.” After a while, you accept everything because everything is “myself”. Every person is me in a different body, but I am operating there.
That’s why in the Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna says, ”Only I exist”, or “I am in everything”, Krishna is supreme consciousness, not Krishna, the charioteer. When Krishna was delivering the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna, He was talking of Himself as supreme consciousness.
The Vishvaroopa (universal form) darshan He showed in chapter 11 (of the Bhagavad Gita) was the embodiment of supreme consciousness. Everything is coming out of it, and everything is dissolving in it – all the past, present, and future are happening simultaneously.
While we are talking now, there are earths being formed in some place in the universe. New beings are created; new beings are formed. There are a lot of spaces for great artists to do their job, like the prajapatis, who created various beings on earth. They have many options, many new lokas, with elements too (water, air, fire) in different locations.
They can work with those frequencies, and they are excellent sculptors and excellent painters. We can see the variety on earth itself. Though we killed a lot of them, we can see whatever is remaining. We, as human beings, are good at one thing – destruction because with our level of consciousness, we kill, destroy, and demolish.
When awareness speaks, one of the signs is that you’ll never harm or hurt because it’s almost like another person is like your own hand or your own leg – your own body. All that you see is your own expression, your own projection. Then you can’t hurt.
I always have this thing about flowers. I like to see flowers on the plants. When you’ve to pluck all the flowers on the plants for the sake of something, I feel a bit embarrassed to look at nature. You just imagine all the flowers in nature and what beauty that is. We’ve got to remain romantic as human beings. This is one of the greatest things – romance. Romance is not about one man and a woman. That’s the silliest possible romance. But romance means that by nature, you are romantic – you see beauty in everything.
Look at nature, and you see all the flowers and the beautiful rivers, lakes, and flowers – this you should enjoy. Automatically, you’ll feel great to be born here. You feel great to be alive. This is very important. Then there’ll be no way you can have depression – why should we have depression? We can see beauty everywhere.
Actually, we have the right to be eternally romantic. That’s the representation of Krishna. It’s not about the gopis and gopas. We can’t understand romance apart from a man and a woman. This is our problem. Romance is not that. Romance is that you are romantic by nature. You love to love.
When we pluck all the flowers and make the earth barren with nothing, then we put all the flowers in our homes. I sometimes feel really embarrassed to look at nature.
Audience: But flowers grow back?
Mohanji: They do. Everything grows back, but nature has its recycling thing, right? Nature has it. You can take whatever minimal is required for the offerings for deities etc., but I mean here the entire beautification of flowers etc.
Like Krishna said, ”If you offer me a leaf or a flower, I receive it. But please remember that it belongs to me anyway.” He is nature. “Everything is mine. Now you’re plucking and giving it to me. I’ll receive it. I’ll take what is mine.” Tera tujhko arpan (in Hindi, meaning, I offer to you that which is yours in reality).
They grow back. But from our side, when we take something from nature believing that it’s ours (even if we pay for it), we should think twice. It’s not the money. It’s the attitude. Similarly, you must not kill anything in this world. Taking a life is a big and serious problem. When we have no problem shedding blood, then there’ll be wars. Discrimination and comparisons – all these things are aberrations here. They are all opposite of liberation. That’s the point.
Read part 1 and part 3. You can watch the full satsang here.
Transcribed by Nada Raković
Proofread by Geeta Iyer