Cultivate Change, part 1

Mohanji Speaks Zoom satsang
on 09th June 2019

Q:  What is more important in spirituality – faith or being objective?

Mohanji: Being practical. This is very important in spirituality. Spirituality is not apart from you. Spirituality is your connection with the spirit aspect of you, which is the consciousness aspect. It has three dimensions, the waking state, the deep sleep state and the dream state. In these three states, you are experiencing this incarnation, your life on earth, through three states, every day, 24 hours. So while you are awake, it is very important to be practical. For example, many have come to me and asked, what is the right path? You can’t generalize the right path, because it is individualistic;  because it is as you are. Some people love to experience devotion, bhakti, because their orientation is bhakti. Some people like the path of knowledge, the questions and the answers, because they operate from their intellect. You cannot deny that. That is the way they are, so when somebody is operating from their intellect, they need answers and that is the gyana marg –  the path of knowledge. Then there is path of service. They are very kind at heart. They want to serve the world. They love everybody. They have lot of compassion. The kindness overwhelms them. All these are signs of a Karma yogi, somebody who is there for the world. So it is very important to recognize our orientation and based on our orientation, we should choose our path.  Hence, no generalization is possible.  That is why I said practicality is very important. Objectivity is not as important as practicality. Even if a guru or spiritual master gives you something that you can’t use, guides you to a method that is not suitable to you, you should be very practical about it. You should say that this doesn’t suit me and instead choose something which suits you, because the entire spiritual journey is about you. This is similar to a situation where someone gives you an outfit that you can’t wear; you don’t try to somehow fit into the outfit. You can have a million questions, but the answer is you. Everything starts with you and everything ends with you. When you wake up, your world wakes up. When you sleep, your world sleeps. The world exists, but the existing world has no value for you, unless and until you wake up. If you don’t wake up, you don’t see the world. It is as simple as that. So we have to be practical. If you are not practical, you miss life because we are based on concepts – concepts and opinions of others. They are others. They are as per what they are, not as per what you are. You need to have a life as per what you are. This is very important. Only then, it becomes realistic. If a life time goes without full conformation, to your nature, to yourself, then it is a wasted life. You were trying to become something, you were trying to compare or you were trying to position yourselves your whole life. It does not work that way.

We are born with a particular frequency and that frequency can be changed only with change in awareness.

Change in awareness is completely dependent on how much you accept yourself.

Awareness will not shift, if you don’t accept yourself.

So accepting yourself has a big value here.

Accepting yourself – this is very important. It does not matter whether you accept the many things around you; because when you sleep they don’t exist for you. You exist as a dreamer, as a person who is in deep sleep. You exist as a person who is awake. So “You” have a lot of value.

You should definitely attend to yourself. If you don’t attend to yourself, you miss a lifetime.

So my opinion is that being practical should be first, before trying to be spiritual. You are spiritual anyway, whether you like it or not. Because being spiritual means your connection with this awareness or connection with the awareness that the spirit in you is running the show. This whole show is run by the consciousness, the energy behind it.

Consciousness operates and it has three distinct bhaavs (forms), which are waking, deep sleep and dream.

Once your awareness is above these three states of existence, it shifts to the fourth. It’s called Turiya – the fourth state.

Turiya is like witness hood. It is objective witnesshood of these three states. So this is all part of you. And everything starts with you.

If you do not recognize and don’t conform to what you are, then the journey is affected. Please understand this very clearly – spirituality is not activity. It is not about activity. It is not about doing so many things. It is not about meeting many masters or going to places. They all help you, but everything is you.  Spirituality is about transforming you to higher awareness, to the level of awareness where you only see consciousness in operation, nothing else. Nothing else matters. It is consciousness at work, through plants, trees, animals, birds, everything – consciousness is working. And that becomes your experience. Your experience becomes consciousness at work.

Then you start understanding yourself, “Oh this is the show! This is the drama, which is being played out. I am an actor; I am playing various roles, just like any actor who would play different roles in a feature film.” We play various roles – role of a father, a child, a husband, a wife, maybe the role of a pedestrian, a shopper or a shopkeeper, whatever you are. You are playing all these multiple roles and you play them well.

Even situations, such as a situation of confusion, where your clarity is very low, be that situation of confusion 100% at that point in time. Because that is your reality at that time. Otherwise in some situations you are excited and happy, very happy. Be happiness at that time. Be happiness. Not the situation, the essence of the situation is happiness. A situation has provided that state, or the opportunity to be there, become that. Sometime we are in deep despair and sorrow, be sorrow at that time. Be the essence of that. Each point in time as per what is provided to you, be that. That is the height of fulfillment you can have in a life time. Each moment fulfillment. No resistance. No comparisons. No criticism. Don’t judge. In the path of liberation, judging yourself and judging another are equal. Because when you start looking at yourself as a karmic being, when you take a step backwards and look at yourself, you will see that you are also another actor in this whole world, another player, another object, with duration; we have a certain time on earth. So you don’t see much difference between other people and you. All are actors. All are going around in this world doing their act, and in that point in time you will know that criticizing yourself, judging yourself, blaming yourself, having guilt, all these things are same, as if you have it for other people. There are no other people. It’s all expressions. Numerous expressions. It’s all time bound. 100 years later, we will not be here. So everyone is just a player and an actor. There should be complete harmony in this operation, the entire place, all its people should be in harmony. A person includes other species too. All beings  in all species are people, because they have personalities. Whatever has a personality is a person. So that way we will see this whole Maya – the role play. When I say Maya, it is something that gets transformed, which changes. When I say Mata, it is something truthful and unchangeable. “Maya” – we see the operation in this world, with complete Maya, beautiful drama being played out each moment and you will know that you are witnessing. This is the objectivity. It happens to you. You are not creating it.

When you create it, you are involving your mind. When you involve your mind, you have ownership. When you have ownership, you have Karma. Ownership is the main ingredient for Karma. When you have ownership, possessiveness over the possessions or positions, that creates Karma. That creates emotions. Emotion is the glue which attaches the thought or word or an action to your subconscious which eventually becomes your habit or need, desire or pattern. This has to be very clear. So being objective is important, but being practical is ultimately important and also please understand, don’t connect to a master or a path or an exercise thinking, “Oh this is now going to change me.” You are changing, not the thing. Anything outside of you is but a guide, a mirror, a road map. How you benefit from it depends on how well you use it. If you don’t use it, it remains as it is, not a problem. But if you use it well, it will transform you. So your transformation is the ultimate aim. Nothing else. Nothing else can be the aim. Your transformation is your sign of spiritual stability. Being spiritual should be transformative.

­­­Q: Anything bad that happens in the world is attributed to Karma. This includes the atrocities that happen like raping young children, killing people in holy places etc. Are we using the excuse of Karma as a way of escapism from our Dharma towards the society?  Why weren’t the souls protected by the Supreme?

Mohanji: I think it is an incorrect way of looking at the issue. I do not think our judiciary system ever talks about Karma, at least I haven’t heard of it. It is we who are talking. Judiciary is taking care of various things of the society with law and I think that’s the way it should go. There are certain reasons for creating certain effects, one of them is collective consciousness. Collective Consciousness is the awareness of a group of people. Again it boils down to each individual. Your world is how you are; your world is a reflection of yourself. Now to answer why some people have certain perversions, certain psychological disorders, usually in a generic manner you can say it’s suppression – suppression of something. Human beings and all other species are driven by instincts.

Instinct is the basic driving force of creation. What is the major instinct? Survival instinct. Survival instinct has major two aspects, the first is our need for food to sustain the body and the second aspect is the need for sexuality to sustain the species. These are two important aspects. Besides these,  there are numerous other aspects. If you are able to look at the larger picture, you see that every animal, every bird, every reptile, in fact, every being has the survival instinct and they also hunt for food. The survival instinct depends on their orientation and species. They have clans and boundaries. They keep all these for the sake of survival; human beings too. But with human beings, there is a difference. They operate also on intelligence and imagination. This is the difference between human beings and other species. All the developments you see in this world are connected to intelligence and imagination where instinct is sometimes considered inferior. It is considered lack of refinement. Then what happens is suppression. Suppression causes disorder. You can see that young children do not have such problems. That is because they are very natural. As you become more natural, you also become more relaxed and in tune with nature.

Dharmic law– what is the Dharmic law? Dharmic law is based on naturality. Everything is natural. Being natural. Being one with the nature. One frequency.  Frequency means there can be various frequencies rooted in one frequency. Dharma is the large substratum, based on which Karma is the operating table. Karmic law means desires which need fulfillment; it causes birth, events, experiences and death. This is Karma based on Dharma. Dharma is the substratum, the ground. Karma is our operating pattern or our road map for existence. Third is the human law. Human law is connected to social well-being and again it is all connected to survival. If you look at all the human laws, they are based on peaceful survival. Now in this society, there are various types of people, 7.5 billion people. They are all universe of their own. They are all in their own world or they are a world of their own, in their own right. So in this world we can’t have uniformity because they have been created by Karma, unfulfilled desires.

Now if there is a suppression of some nature, their predominant interest will be to fulfill that. So whenever we suppress, deny, avoid or make it sinful, associate guilt with it, etc. that will definitely stay within and become something else. When you continuously and consistently suppress something, that will become your predominant emotion, need or desire for fulfillment. That is the way it is. Because in your own life you see, if somebody says, “Hey you can’t have that!”, that would be your only thought. The main point is we will always think about  that which has been denied, even if it is not significant in life, it. That is human nature.

Thus with this kind of structure, creation has made us like this. Certain things when suppressed over time, for example, an abuse happened in childhood, that person grows up with the fear of a potential abuse. Some people have the fear of a theft in the house and they attract that. They attract that effect. So whenever you fear something, you suppress something. When you think about something as unhealthy or not good, (I am not talking about healthy food or unhealthy food), something which is not good, a taboo, that is what we are trying to move towards. You remember that. We always remember and we try to get that. This is human nature. Hence with this nature, the only solution is  the right awareness. The needs and desires are unending, but you can bring your awareness to the level where the highest human potential can be experienced in a lifetime, which is compassion, kindness, unconditional love, selflessness, companionship without comparisons, togetherness. This, we can nurture.

Also I believe very strongly that from childhood, at the school level, you should have more counselors – people who talk to children. Many times we don’t talk to children. We are busy making them bricks on the wall just as we want and that is causing a lot of calamity in them. They are not natural because they are chasing something. They are always running after something and that’s what we train them to do. We train them to be more and more result oriented, not fulfillment oriented. Fulfillment does not happen in this manner. While going through education, everybody is learning how to earn money. They also are later trying to earn money. But what is this money for? They believe that when they have a lot of money they can have great life. That is not true. There is no guarantee. You can have lot of money and you can be completely unsettled. We can see many like that. Insecurity can grow with money too. But we do not train children to be content. Hence we are not attending to the mind factor.

Till date, we are busy attending to the physical ailment part. What causes physical ailment most of the time? An unsettled mind causes a physical ailment. An unsettled mind, insecurities, suppression, depression, all these kinds of things are connected to mind.

We have three faculties to experience the Earth – mind, intellect and ego. Mind is the seat of emotions. Intellect is the seat of knowledge or it needs answers. Ego is the seat of personality. These three factors are vital for us. When someone respects you, honours you, appreciates you, applauds, your ego is happy, ego feels settled. When you get answers, intellect is happy. Intellect asks for answers. And sometimes intellect will need answers that it will accept, which means, the answer is not the truth, but one that suits it. That is based on the stored data, what you are. Likewise emotions, romance, love, various emotions of life – these are food for the mind. So in this mode if you don’t attend to the mind matter, which is mind, intellect and ego, we miss life. That is the reason for calamities such as wars, displacements, bloodshed, the expressions of anger, hatred and insecurities; you see a tremendous amount of insecurity. If you are not insecure, you will not criticize another. This is the simple truth. If at all we are looking at someone else as bad, it means we have that insecurity in us. We are eager to prove ourselves. Who wants to prove to other people? Those who are not settled inside. If you are settled inside, you don’t have to prove. People will recognize you as stability, stillness. If you are unsettled, you are insecure, you feel the need to prove. We keep proving and ultimately become tired of it too. We become more and more tired and unstable because of that. So it is very important to understand, the entire society has come out of us and also every child is the responsibility of the society, not just the parents. Every child is being groomed by the society. Society grooms each child, not just the parents or the teachers, it is society. So it is the responsibility of the society to bring children to the right path.

Now you had asked a question about what god is doing. God is doing exactly what your soul is doing – not interfering, but aiding your life. Once the soul leaves, you call it a dead body, which means this body, this constitution has no value. God is the larger soul, the whole universe is inspired and energized by this large soul, called supreme consciousness. And God does not interfere in your micro matters. He does not script your life. It does not even write a script for the world. What he does is that all scripts are accepted, which will have a hero, a villain, a comedian and every role there is. All these roles are perfectly accepted. As long as the drama goes on, the entertainment goes on. And that’s about it.

Nothing has permanent value here. Every creation has duration. Everything has it’s time, space, situation, relevance and death. This includes galaxies and planets; the sun, the moon, the stars, everything has a duration. Thus god has nothing to do with it. God is the supreme consciousness, out of which all this manifested universe has happened and into which the manifested universe will dissolve at the end of the day. And we are like small ants in the whole system; maybe not even an ant, something tinier than that! Our ego makes us feel great, but otherwise we do not have much importance. Thus God does not get involved. But every child, every baby born in this world is the responsibility of the society, not just of the parents. And society has to groom them. Society has to behave well. In a world of corruption, in a world of competition, in a world of comparison, how do you expect each child to be individual and free? It is very difficult. That is what we are feeding the child with! The child is fed with the thoughts of comparisons, thoughts of competition, thoughts of success and success means failure is unacceptable. All these things have created the child in a mode which emphasizes – “Go and kill and win”. This is what we are teaching children.

As I said earlier about our nursery rhymes, “Humpty dumpty fell down and broke the crown…” That was a disaster and nobody could fix it. Hence we are telling a child, “You can’t fix the life, it’s not easy to fix life.” But that’s not true. You are life. Life is about what you see and what you express and everybody is fine. Nobody is higher or lower, nobody is a master, nobody is a disciple, nobody is a Guru, nobody is a shishya (spiritual teacher). Everyone has a role to play in this world and that has duration. I call it effective years. Effective years is the time period you are actually delivering to this world. Rest of the time, the world does not care, neither is it good for you;  the time you used for accumulating wealth. We accumulate, accumulate and accumulate and finally die, leaving everything behind. So what was this whole show about. Usually, the people who chase money, wealth, fame, etc.  don’t realize it is short lived. It has duration.

Also don’t expect everybody to appreciate you. Forget about appreciation, many people won’t even recognize you. Many will criticize you, because you don’t fit into their frame of mind. This is all part of existence. How do we care or what can we do about it? We should do nothing about it. All these things happen mainly because of insensitivity. We are not looking at this whole world as heaven. We can create heaven here. Just be harmonious, just accept, just love. We all have weaknesses, every being has weaknesses and strength. Every being who has walked this earth has experienced success and failure, these are part of life and we cannot say only success or only failure. It’s not so. Only strength or only weakness, this is not so. Everyone has everything – success, failure, strengths and weaknesses. We have to accept them all. Instead if we try to prove to the world, we hide our weaknesses, it is a big disaster and that is what is causing all these events we spoke about.

When we suppress a lot, when we hide our weaknesses, over a period of time, it will bubble up. That will push for a realization. Then what will happen? It will cause calamity in life, be it personal life or in the society. So whatever you suppress for a long period of time, it expresses itself with violence or sometimes in an uncontrollable manner, compared to how it would have, had it been channeled out.

All of us experience excessive anger today, insecurity connected to anger. Why does anger happen? Again it is suppressed expectations. When expectations are not met, disappointments happen. Disappointment causes anger. And this is how it is. There is no other way. We have a tremendous amount of suppressed emotions. We have many expectations about ourselves and other people. We have expectations from the society. We always talk about rights, we never talk about responsibilities. All these things are creating a society which is on an explosive mode. Also ideas such as “my god is better than your god, my guru is better than your guru” are of no value. Each guru, each god, each religion, everything is valuable to somebody, respect it. We need to learn to respect everybody. A person who appreciates his Guru, will feel good about his Guru, that’s why he appreciates it. But that does not mean everybody else is bad. All people have their relevance; like you – you have relevance on earth just like everybody else. We all have relevance. We have our time and our space for relevance. This has to be respected.

I have suggested in many forums that we need to have many more counselors in schools, just to understand children, be with them. Teachers and parents are busy. Sometimes they are not able to complete even their work. So there should be a system of counseling. Just ask questions like, “Are you alright? How are you doing today? Is there anything you want to talk to me about? “I visited Mohanji Kā Aangan in Delhi only two times. I went there on my birthday February 23^rd and I was with all the children. One girl came up to me and asked, “Do you remember my name?” This is because the previous time I had asked her name.  I said, “I remember your name.” She did not expect it. When I uttered her name, she was very happy. Then I asked her, “Are you happy?” She said, “No”. I did not get enough time to talk to her and understand what she was going through. So I called somebody and told them they should go there and talk to all children individually, understand what they were experiencing, ideally it should be a lady. What I mean to say is that we don’t understand what the children of the society are experiencing. We assume that everything is ok, everything should be ideal; these are assumptions. Assumptions may not be the reality. We must face the reality. We must look into the eyes of the situation. Then you can understand. And if you try to strengthen the children of today, society will be much better tomorrow. It’s our responsibility, everybody’s responsibility, not one person’s responsibility. And there is no magic wand to change the whole thing. We cannot change in one day, what we created over time. You need to cultivate change and that will happen over time.

Transcribed by Kishore Mundanat
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan

Read Cultivate Change, part 2