Mohanji Birthday – Satsang | Mohanji
A life well-lived
Question: Jai Mohanji! A very happy birthday to you. Thank you so much. Actually, I am so grateful and overwhelmed to be here. I think I should stop with how grateful I am. My question to you is: What’s a life well lived? How would you define that?
Mohanji: Life well lived for me is an authentic existence. It has no imitation, no competition, and no comparison. A well-lived life means a contented life. Contentment has to be associated with what you are, where you are, and how you are. Not that “I’ll be happy with something else.” That’s an illusion we always carry. My happiness is connected to something else. So, if I become that, I’ll be happy. That’s not true.
You are made this way. What brought you here? Unfulfilled desires brought you here. You’re born here to complete all this. Fulfilment is the main thing. Fulfilment can happen only over time in life because we have a body. Past, present, and future are important. So, being in the present is number one. Accepting things that have happened to you is the second part. The third is to focus on contentment within your capacity with what you have and also in the order that comes – in the way it comes, in the method it comes.
There’s no way you can reject anything or anybody. No way you can resist situations that come. But you can choose how much involvement you can have. Some of the things are – if you think that you are being a doormat, you can walk away. Self-respect is our right. Self-love is a very important thing because if you don’t love yourself, you cannot progress. Self-acceptance is even more important. Only when you accept yourself you’ll have a transformation or the possibility of transformation.
If you don’t accept yourself, if you always resist, judge, criticise, or fight, it’s very difficult to transform because you’ll always be in victim mode. Never be that. Clear? Contentment! Remember one word, and of course, acceptance.
Happiness, Karma and Dharma
Question: Since you understand what is happiness and you have a better understanding of contentment, how do you rate yourself on a scale of ten? If ten is the best, then you are in the ecstasy of contentment. Where are you?
Mohanji: That’s not an easy question to answer. I’ll tell you why. Personally, I would prefer silence and isolation. There’s a deep urge for me to withdraw. That was my state when I met Devi. In 2007 I was in deep, deep silence and had a lack of interest in being with the world. But I was then told to go and speak to the world. This was very painful at that time.
Now I always feel that I’ve done my part. What next? Whatever I’ve done so far shows in the world. But then there’s something evolving all the time. It’s almost like I am watching the show. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything these days.
This is not just now. For more than the past two or three years, I’ve been feeling this way. I keep telling her, “This is enough. Now it’s time to pull the plug.” You know that constantly, “Okay, this is it, this is it. I’m done” – but that’s not the thing. One thing is that when karma shifts to dharma, there’s no more ‘you’ anymore.
Karma means you’re on an unfulfilled desire – fulfilment mode. Dharma means you are just an instrument of some flow of tradition – public property. You don’t belong to yourself. Then there’s no beginning and no end. I don’t know whether my contentment matters in this particular order because I’m just being the flow. I am the flow.
At this time, since you asked that question, actually, that question is relevant today. During this Covid time, I actually went through Covid in November. I was away from people for 15 days. This hasn’t happened to me in a long time. For 15 days, there were no meetings or interactions. I still did online programs. No physical interactions – I didn’t go anywhere. Nobody came to me.
This gave me time to introspect. I realised one thing is that I should be less in public and more in a source mode, which means activating things – not physically publicly involved in things because that’s not helping. Since there’s a physical body, I need to travel to places.
Just before Covid, 3 hours before I was flying to London. They had invited me as the guest of honour at the British Parliament. The bags were packed, and I was about to go. I then got a message that a lockdown was declared. This was in March 2020. I felt a bit of relief. No, it’s not that I didn’t want to go. I just thought, “This is good; no travel.”
The thing is that many times, it’s that, ”Should I be present physically, or the source works?” An answer comes that the source will work, which is happening. As we said, so many countries and so many activities are happening simultaneously. It’s not because I am that powerful.
It’s just that Iccha Shakti (willpower) is transferred as the source, and it’s happening. So, Dharma – when you’re in dharmic mode and not karmic mode, your boundaries are different. Contentment factors are also different. Individual contentment as a unit is different. You, as a much larger platform, are different.
Here the contentment factor is that “Okay, 100 people had food.” I feel very contented. They were showing 50,000 trees were planted. You feel contented. These trees will grow and will provide fruit to somebody. The fruits that we are eating now are from trees that were planted by somebody in the past. We are also contributing to the future. This is contentment.
When I look at it all, “Okay, all this is happening”, I am contented. I can sleep peacefully. If I personally get a gift or personally, somebody brings me something, I don’t feel anything that way. Likewise, now, we are occupied with Whatsapp. So, people say that I love you and you feel happy. They say I hate you; we feel unhappy. That factor is also not there because both are part of the game.
Today they say that I love you, then tomorrow, they say that I hate you. Between this, we play. So many things change. I think that’s part of evolution. As we evolve, this is what works. I’m contented that way. Look at the number of volunteers in the world now, and I don’t think I’ve had any special capacity to motivate all these people. They are getting motivated in my presence which is very good. It’s like when a person has become a kind of presence. When our purpose is clear, we become a presence. This is how I think it works.
Purpose of life
Question: If everyone has a purpose in life, what does it take to reveal and fulfil one?
Mohanji: Everyone has a purpose, and that’s why they are born. The purpose in life for a normal karmic birth is to have that fulfilment of desires which they go through helplessly or unconsciously from birth until death. All have a purpose. The purpose is given as a birth, a body. It’s given as a place of birth, as a particular set of parents, education, our environment, or we shift environments. All are connected to the purpose of life. That’s basically the destiny path. This is there in karmic life.
However, you can always have the option of looking at higher stuff. That’s the higher purpose that we can reach. That’s the only option while experiencing those things that destiny takes you through is that your awareness can be different.
Simply put, a person looking through a window from the first floor and the same person climbs up to the 20th floor and looks down. The view is totally different. The outside is the same, but the view is different. Likewise, we can look at life much differently and be less impacted by the situations of life. This is possible in a lifetime.
If you’re oriented on a particular purpose which is of higher nature, and you are connecting to that in that angle, your evolution will be much higher in awareness. That’s possible in a lifetime. I think this will be the best thing you can do in a lifetime. This means a lot of introspection and a lot of acceptance. When you start accepting realities, not resisting, “Okay, this is what’s happening now. I watch it; this is coming, and this is going.” Like a movie, you are watching the show of your own life with minimal involvement and minimal impact.
If you proceed on that level, it’s not escapism, not indifference. It’s just on a witness level watching the show. You then focus on something higher. In this human existence, higher always means compassion, kindness, selflessness, unconditional love, and ahimsa (non-violence). These are all higher aspects of human existence. If you start operating from that deliberately, your whole perspective starts changing. Life starts evolving. ‘Me and mine’ start reducing. What you then witness in your own life is tremendous transformation.
You may have possessions, positions, and relations. We’ve been entertaining these three things all our lives. There’ll be a slight shift from there. Start looking at life in a much deeper, much more harmonious way, and that’s one of the best things you can do in a lifetime amidst all the chaos. It helps to get out of addictions – so many things. I hope this is clear.
Acceptance and self-respect
Question: How does one explain friction in a relationship? Is that connected to the level of frequencies?
Mohanji: Yes, it’s connected to the level of frequencies, but it’s more connected to the ego factor. When you have disagreements, it simply means that you are not able to understand the other or not able to sometimes have a discussion. Most of the time, there’s no communication, which causes misinterpretations, or you are guessing or assuming. You are judging. These kinds of things do not help relationships.
The moment you start judging, you start separating. The moment you start accepting, you start resolving things. Usually, people who are mature discuss things. People who are a bit immature and egoistic etc., start arguing. When arguments happen, there’s a chance of parting as well.
Question: Being yourself can be very confronting, unpleasant, or unwanted for others. How should we go about that? Should it limit us in any way?
Mohanji: No. Self-respect. You should be wherever you are. It’s not that we need approval from anybody. Society can only have two things: they either love or hate. They accept, or they reject. Both are fine because it’s as per their constitution, as per how they are. Sometimes we look through the eyes of prejudices only. We look at a person only through the eyes of prejudice and say, “I don’t like him.” You don’t even know the person, but you’ve already decided that you are not going to like him.
The opposite also happens when we look at a person, “I like him.” These are all connected to our character, our constitution – what we are made up of etc. I believe that self-respect is that you have the power to walk away from where you are unwanted. We have that power. We shouldn’t be in a place where we are not wanted, appreciated, or accepted. Why do we do that? If you are helplessly connected to a place where you can’t leave, that’s a different story. Otherwise, if you have the power to walk away, walk away. Keep your self-esteem.
Spirituality for profit
Question: You had a professional life before you became a Swamiji. In the first few years when you were a Swamiji, your thinking was to achieve something in spirituality, or the meaning of life and all of that. Now, after ten years, being the tenth year, you’ve established yourself with various activities, foundations and other things.
Have you ever felt that you’ve deviated from what you started with because of these organisations? I’ve seen many of these people coming to Oman, where I was for a long time. I would go to meet them, but I’ve seen spirituality business being done instead of spirituality. You know that was a disappointment for me in many cases. So how do you tackle this?
Mohanji: That’s a very brilliant point. In fact, I think many people do not address that thing. The first point I’ll answer you. When I started, my original thinking was I’ll be working, which meant I didn’t want to fully plunge into spirituality.
I was thinking that the expertise and experience would help with consulting as well. I thought I’d work, and the rest of the time, when I have free time, I’ll teach or give lectures. But it wasn’t possible. The number of people started increasing. At one point in time, I couldn’t work anymore, so then I deviated. One of the things which I decided then (and even now I follow) is that I decided I’ll never sell God.
It’s not like a problem-solving spirituality. There are so many things that are like an astrologer’s job. “What will happen in the future? What’s my destiny?” Then, “Okay, I have a solution for you.” These kinds of things attract people because everybody has a problem, and it’s manipulative stuff. So, I decided that I’ll have nothing to do with it, which I still maintain.
The size of my activity – I had no clue; I had no idea. I didn’t imagine that I would be in many countries and all this would happen. The introversion was there at that time also because when I was practising, it took a lot of time for me to withdraw from the world of noises to the state of silence. It took six or seven years because it’s not easy.
While working, I was practising. This was a bit difficult. Eventually, when that state happened, I didn’t want to leave it. Whatever happens outside, I said, “What I found is good enough, and I don’t want to leave.”
People started coming to me and said, “We would like to be with you.” I used to interact with them, but there was no preaching, no teaching, just interaction. After a while, this started growing. That’s the time when I was forced to talk to the world. Then the meditations came, the kriya came; all those things happened.
At that time, I thought that we’d probably have a space and we’ll sit there, and some people would come. That was it – kind of an ashram. That’s not the size now. Activities have increased.
Each platform which you saw on the screen evolved automatically. I didn’t make any plans. Even now, I don’t have a plan. The women’s festival – the Festival of Womanhood which is upcoming, happened quite recently. It’s happening in Croatia right now, on an island – women for women.
Likewise, the World Consciousness Alliance happened over a television programme. I was speaking on South African television about crime, etc., that’s happening there, and the Bishop was also there.
I was talking to the Bishop and asked, “What are we doing talking on television about bloodshed, etc., which is already happening on the streets?” That’s when the World Consciousness Alliance came into existence. Artists and entertainers came together for the sake of evolving. One led to the other. Something created something else.
What I decided is that I’m not dependent on any of this. It’s all kind of ‘auto-run.’ A group of people, and everything is transparent. This was told to me a long time ago when I started Ammucare in 2003.
Two or three years later, when I was talking to the Commissioner of Income Tax, he told me, “You are now going to handle public money, so there could be questions and problems. There are four things that you should keep.
One is that whatever money you get, there should be a receipt. That money should be put into the bank, so there’s a statement corresponding to this receipt. Whatever you spend should have an invoice – all the money that’s spent, and there’s a picture. These four things you should keep.”
That’s exactly what we are doing in the entire 21 countries now. Everything is transparent. I decided that I didn’t still want to live on asking money from people. Whatever comes, it comes. All my travels are based on invitations. People call me, so they invite me. I never ask people to invite me. Certain standards and certain principles I keep. Apart from that, I’m not controlling growth or expansion. I’m not even planning in that way. One leads to the other, and it’s happening.
What I understood is that when the world needs something, the world creates it or makes it happen, and somebody becomes an instrument. Apart from that, that’s why I mentioned my birthday. I don’t feel great excitement to celebrate my birthday because I feel that I’m an instrument that the world is using for something. Even the end thing – I don’t know what’ll finally happen. I don’t know, and I don’t really care about that. This is the flow which is happening.
Have I deviated from my original plan? I’ve definitely not because what I’m telling people is to be ‘you’. Don’t try to be me. The path is that of Avadhootha – pure consciousness, the Raja Yoga path. Even now, that’s what I’m exactly teaching, but there are many platforms.
This is to connect to various frequencies. Like some of the scientists we conglomerated recently – scientists who want to do something for the world, not the people who associate with making money. These people tried to conglomerate to make that kind of group. Similarly, there are various situations and various things. That’s how it is going on. I hope I’ve answered your question.
Read part 1 here. You can watch the full satsang here.
Transcribed by Shamim Gany and Geetha
Proofread by Geetha Suryanarayanan