Every-Moment Practice

What is the right practice for practical life? Every-moment practice – everything you do, every person you meet, every emotion you handle, that is your practice.

Satsang in Maryland, The USA – Part 2

26th August 2018

Q: I’ve seen that all the great Masters, which includes you, have done intense spiritual sadhana (practice) to realise the state you are in, to be one with this world. But nowadays what’s happening is, people are given these techniques such as Kriya yoga and such and asked to do it for a few minutes. But I don’t see the intensity in people, including myself, to experience that wholeness. So without that intensity, by just doing some practices for a few minutes a day, is it possible for people to become one with the consciousness? Even the techniques you recommend such as contemplate, look around and spread the compassion, etc. are not gelling with me, especially when people including you have struggled so hard. I have read some part of your history and know you have practised for 5-6 hours a day. Without that kind of intensity, can we achieve our purpose? Are we giving false promises to people? I’m sorry for this question.

Mohanji:  No, I like this question. This is a very good question. In a state of calamity, can you meditate? Is it a good idea to tell someone, “Sit down and meditate for 5 hours”? It wouldn’t work. So, what is the right practice for practical life? When we are away from all troubles and in isolation, it’s a different story. But in this society, being with your family and your work, how can you practise? Every-moment practice – everything you do, every person you meet, every emotion you handle, that is your practice. It’s not sitting down and meditating. See, most of these kriyas or meditations are reminders. Even a guru is a reminder. What is he reminding you of? He reminds one of a human possibility of a state. All the masters are reminders. All of them represent a certain state which all of you can access. There is no way a guru is always a guru. When he eats food, he is a hungry man.

Audience: (laughter)

Mohanji: When he walks along the street, he is a pedestrian. It is a state that you are connecting to and call that person a Master. Fundamentally, “mastery” is mastery of the mind and there are stages to reach there which have been defined. I am not going into these stages. If there is a deeper need for any of you to know the stages, I can explain. But every moment, whatever you do, in everything you do, having that awareness is the real meditation. Imagine you are getting angry, you are finding, seeing yourself get angry. Imagine you are in a mode of agitation. Sometimes, when you meet someone, you feel very awkward or uncomfortable. On the contrary, when we meet some others, we feel nice and would like to be with them more often.

There is a reason, something within us which is responding, and you are not controlling these responses, you are not deciding it beforehand i.e. before you interact. It’s happening spontaneously. This getting to know yourself more and more, deeper and deeper and accepting yourself at every level, this is the real practice of a normal human being. This is what you need to practise.

We have certain notions about us such as: we need to meditate for a long time. If I meditated, there was a passion connected to it. There was a pleasure aspect to it. In spiritual practice what is right for you is what is effortless for you.

Anything which needs effort is not your cup of tea. It can be a great practice given by a great master, no problem, but something which leads you to a state of being under pressure is not yours. That is actually going to take you away from this whole idea of being one with yourself.

As I said earlier, all practices, be it karma yoga (activity path), bhakti (devotion path), jnana (knowledge path) or liberation path, are meant to make you into one unit; completely one unit. Then from unit to the universe is a spontaneous journey. Once you establish yourself as a total unit where body, mind, intellect, ego or personality and spirit are aligned, you automatically become the universe. Then the growth is horizontal. First you become vertical, then the growth is horizontal, then you become one with the whole universe. As I said earlier, when you become a God human, you experience a state where “everything is me”.

Thus from a seed you become a full tree. All these practices are only boats to take you from one shore to the other.  They are given by various great masters over time, to tell you that these practices can be useful, not that you must do everything. Some of them may be useful, but some of them may not be suitable to you, for your constitution. It doesn’t mean that it will not be suitable for another constitution. So all these masters are needed. From the time when human beings started asking the question, “What is the purpose of my existence?” Masters have come forward and guided people.

Therefore, all these practices are necessary. Everyone has expressed themselves and there is nothing great or low about it. I don’t consider myself as a great Master or anything like that. My relevance today is that I’m talking, tomorrow someone else may talk. Everybody is playing a role. You are also playing your role in this world, expressing what you have come for, expressing your unique constitution. Coming to terms with your unique constitution is the real spirituality and settling into it with full acceptance, makes it complete. That needs time with yourself. That’s why I said that if you want to read one book in this life, read yourself.

Audience: (Laughter)

Mohanji: It is very important; it is the greatest book you can read in a lifetime. All other books are guides. All the gurus are guides. When you look at a person whom you consider a Master, it could be a benchmark for you, “Ok, that’s the state I want to reach!” A state where the Master has stabilised, is what is good for your aspiration. You want to reach there, and that is exactly what you are looking at. In that sense, every Master has value; not every Master suits everybody because that is not everyone’s aspiration. The highest aspiration is probably not important for some people because their life plan is not to reach there. That’s why I said it takes 5000 human births to become a human human.

Then it takes another 70 births or if you consider it extended, 700 births, to become a saint human. After that it is 70 or 80 more lifetimes to become a God human. This is the journey and each time there is a different level of awareness. So, what happens when you are deeply connected to a person who is established in one state? You immediately connect to that state because we are like a sponge, we absorb.

That is why proximity of a Master is always recommended, because when you constantly connect to that person, who operates from a level or a state (of the Supreme consciousness), you also constantly connect and you become that, probably not in this life, but you will, sooner or later.

In a new book I wrote called “Silence of Shiva”, a person (a fictional character), was connected to a Master and asked nothing from him. He never asked a question and the Master never told him anything too. They just moved together; he was one with the consciousness. Earlier someone told him, “Connect to the sky. Be the sky.” He was looking at the sky and when he constantly looked at the sky as an object or as an aspiration, he expanded. Because when you constantly connect to some object, you attain the quality of the object.

That was his practice. There was nothing else. And that Master did not sit down and teach him anything. He was walking by, and said “Be the sky” and walked away. Initiation already happened! As the follower kept looking at the sky for a long time, he expanded to a certain level.

Then the Master Atmananda walked by, looked at him and just signalled with his eyes “Come with me.” He just moved his eyes, that’s all. He did not even speak. The follower also got up and followed him. There was no communication like, “Now what am I supposed to do? What do you want from me?” Nothing! No communication, no questions, no answers. When Atmananda left the body, whatever remnant of karma this follower had, he took away. Atmananda liberated him before he left.

So the whole process was EMPTYING. Empty, empty, empty… you become nothing, then it’s all filled in. Empty state is not a permanent state. It’s like the lounge at the airport. You have to catch the next flight, otherwise they’ll throw you out! Empty state is a state where you are preparing yourself to be filled in and the filling in happens. Then you are complete. This is the journey.

Therefore all the things you talked about, the practices, kriyas, etc. are all boats to cross the river. However you don’t carry the boat on your head all the time. That means the approach is tamasic. It means we are ritual bound. If you have a feeling that this ritual is important for me, otherwise I am incomplete, think: who says this? Mind, for the mind to survive, not for you. Mind likes to survive and says, “This is amazing, you are doing an excellent job, continue so that I can stay alive”, while the whole journey is about emptying the mind. That’s the difference, the true path is a path where you are one with the universe. You become the unit, which becomes the universe. First and foremost you have to become a unit to align the mind with the constitution.

Q: Traditions have given one pattern for each symptom for a person. I found there is one mantra for each type of problem. There are lots of books on mantras for different types of problems. So if a person has multiple problems, then how many mantras are we to chant, what is the solution to this?

Mohanji: Thank you. Mantras are frequencies, codified to create a certain effect. So each mantra has a different reason and a purpose. Each mantra, especially the seed mantras which we call “Beeja mantras”, activate certain aspects in you. That is why there are mantras in that frequency. Mantras are conglomerations of words, to create a certain frequency within you. One medicine will not suit every disease, right? Like that, one mantra may not suit everything. What are the mantras for? For alignment. To stabilise in frequency.

You chant the mantra which suits you or which the guru has given you. That is individualistic. That’s the only thing which suits you, just as a physician tells you, “Take this medicine for your problem or disease.” That is exactly what you should take. If you say, “This medicine doesn’t look good. I’ll change it”, then it will be for another disease. A guru or a person who can understand, gives you something for your particular situation. And that’s exactly what suits you.

Now, where does a “problem” come from? It’s always mind. They are all actually situations. Mind says, ”This is a problem you have to deal with.” Why? So that the mind stays important. Always, everything is a situation and no situation lasts forever. Situations keep shifting. One leads to the other and then another. That’s why I said the two possibilities of human existence are happiness and sorrow. Nothing stays forever. Neither of them stays forever. Mind always hooks on something and says, “Hey, look here, this is a problem.” Problem comes out of expectations. Mind expects happiness all the time, rejects pain all the time. So what stays?

Whatever you reject, stays. That which you accept, comes and goes and merges with you. Whenever you look at life, look at how much you are rejecting or what you are afraid of. That is what stays. What you love is your state. If you are happy, you will not even know that it stays. It will stay, but silently. However, we tend to resist things for a long period of time. We especially do not agree with any of our weaknesses. Name one person in the world who does not have weaknesses. It’s not that we have only strengths. We have strengths and we have weaknesses. And we should have, all of us, 7.5 billion people of the world have strengths and weaknesses and that’s the way it is.

Now when we say, “I have no weakness” – we are lying. Isn’t it? We try our best to cover up all our weaknesses and show the strengths. Then we have to wear masks. We are being hypocrites. This is exactly what is creating situations or “problems”. If you are natural, if you are spontaneous, if you are yourself, nothing stays as a problem. There will be situations, but you will easily flow through all the situations because you are not bound by its results. You are accepting it, “Situations are happening, I’m responding.” Whenever you resist, there is a friction, there is a conflict. There is a violence connected to it. When there is violence, there is pain. It could be just a thought, or a word or an action. When there is negativity or resistance, there is always pain connected to it. But if you are love and look at everybody as yourself, you see yourself.

Actually, there is nothing apart from you in this world. All the people you come across or all the situations you handle a day, are your reflections. When you have tremendous fear about something, it comes to you, because you are attracting it. The same applies to love.

When you love something, especially when you love yourself and accept yourself, you attract all the goodness of the world. When we store more and we are very, very reluctant to share, we are expressing poverty. Then what do you get from the world – poverty (a state of being poor). This is how it works. Look at life from a very large perspective. You understand that everything is your reflection. You created the whole thing. Then there’s no good or bad here, no dos or don’ts.

I always say that there is only one thing that I don’t like in this world, which I don’t recommend to any of those who follow me. It is violence in thoughts, words and actions. Otherwise, everything is okay. I say violence is not good, because it creates that kind of effect. When you’re angry with somebody, you are actually angry with yourself.

Where does anger come from? Some disappointment, and disappointment is rooted in expectations. If I do not expect anything from you, I can love you without a reason. It’s beautiful. You can love somebody without a reason. It’s amazing. However, if I expect something from you, then I’m already thinking, calculating, planning, judging. All those things happen. We contaminate the whole system.

First and foremost, understand that there are no problems anywhere, except in the mind. Even that is only when you are awake. When you are dreaming the same problem doesn’t exist. When you are in deep sleep, no such problem exists. When you wake up, you bring back that problem. Everything is a situation which you must handle because you brought it, you brought them to reality, not necessarily consciously, maybe even unconsciously. You watch something on television and get deeply involved in it. You then attract that emotion into you. That will probably reflect in your life.

You may not have experienced it yourself per se, but whatever happened on television, you thought it was yours. You captured that feeling inside. It can happen. We are like a sponge. Therefore, living kindness and living compassion has a great, deep value. And it has got a lot of power. That will change collective consciousness. The vibrations change. Frequencies change. With your life, that’s the best message. Life is your biggest guru. Life. Life is the greatest teacher. Nobody can give you better lessons than life. Accept life, embrace life. Love yourself. That’s a practice which we must follow. And always believe that God is inside.

We are talking to a God outside, attributing that something else will come and give you something, but that’s not the truth. You get what you are. You receive everything from earth as you are. Exactly as you are. Destiny is as you are, not what you demand or what you aspire for. Everything comes to you – if you are peaceful, peace comes to you, if you accept yourself, acceptance comes to you, if you love yourself, love comes to you. When you love yourself, you can’t judge anybody because you only see yourself around. When you judge yourself, you judge others.

When you criticise yourself, you will start criticising others and you’ll see problems everywhere. “No one else is good, only I am good!”

Audience: (Laughter)

Mohanji: Is that possible? It’s all reflections. You have every right to be absolute love. Every right. Nobody can take it away from you, even if you are in the worst of situations. I always love to quote one example. There was a huge tsunami which hit Japan a few years ago. It was found that the young children about four to five years old at school, were carrying a little food and a bottle of water when salt water came into the city. There was no water to drink. These children shared their fresh water with others without anybody telling them. That’s exactly what we are. The children know it. Why can’t we know it? When did we stop knowing all these small but important things? When?

When we decided that we are adults. Are we? It is again an illusion, right? We are all children of Mother Earth. It doesn’t matter what your age is! Age is just a factor connected to a body. You are ageless. You are eternal. Body has a particular age. That is because we have a prescribed duration, a boundary, that’s it, but that’s nothing. What is age? We are all children. Actually we are children of earth and when we behave like that, we share – then there are no problems on earth. No problems.

Thank you.

 Transcribed by Biljana Vozarevic                        Proof Read by Vidya Rajagopalan