Guru Purnima Satsang 2019, part 1

Guru Purnima Satsang,
Bangalore, 16th July 2019

It’s a real honour to have Amma here with us.

You know, we have a deep heart to heart connection, probably a connection of the tradition, more than heart to heart. It is silent, hence it’s not visible. Such connections are not visible, you have to feel them. Thank you Amma for physically coming here.

Earlier, I gave you an introduction to what I said today. God, soul and Guru are the same, and I have explained how that is. God is pure consciousness, brightness; brighter than a million suns. Your soul is brightness, formless. A Guru, who is connected to the Supreme Consciousness, is the same. Whatever you are connected to, you become that.

How do you know that you are actually connected to the consciousness?

There are certain signs that you can trust. When you are deeply connected to the energy within you, whether you call it Soul, God or guru, the sign is silence. When you are getting connected to the consciousness, there will be deep silence inside.

What are the usual noises from inside?

They are from all that you have you stored inside, the stored data. You have stored various emotions, so many impressions, so many anxieties, fears etc. inside. Where are they coming from? All these have some root in the outside world, we have picked it up from there.

Actually speaking, what is the outside world for you?

Only when you are waking up and when you are awake, a world outside exists. But can you use that world when you are sleeping or when you are dreaming? There is no outside world for you when you are dreaming and in deep sleep. But when you are awake, there is a world outside and that’s the world you are connecting to.

Why do we connect to the world?

In order to have some experiences. That is our entire life. We are connecting to certain things of life; it could be possessions, it could be positions, it could be relations, etc. But we are constantly connecting to this outside world and we gather impressions from this outside world, which we store. That is what we see in our hard drive (inside). These stored impressions have a link to the outside world. But when silence happens, the dependence on the outside world reduces. That is when freedom begins for your soul, in your life. Until then there is no freedom; we do not even know what freedom is.

Freedom is less dependence on the world outside. Actual freedom means your positions, possessions, relations cannot create any kind of deep impact inside (within). You will reach a stage; a state of Samadhi; a state of Samadhi where you are occupied inside. That is the first step. Your dependence on the outside world reduces and you start looking inside.

What do you see when you look inside? You see all the stored materials through thousands of years. But because your dependence on the outside is less, you will start having less dependence on these things. You may have emotions, but they have no expressions. They don’t need an expression. They don’t need gratification. So automatically, we start detaching. That is when you actually stabilise in freedom. You start being freedom. Then it goes into various stages of liberation. This is the sum total of what I have said today, as a Guru Purnima message.

It is all you, you and you. You are the path; you are the journey and you are the destination. “Tat Twam Asi (You are that). This is the whole story. That’s why we talked about semantic religions where we discussed two boundaries, heaven and hell. Based on your activity, you can go to heaven or you can go to hell. In fact, you go nowhere. It’s here, right here and these are states. When you are not at all dependent on the world outside it is heaven. When you are fully bound and completely restless, chasing things, always insufficient, always in “something is not right” kind of an attitude etc., you are in hell; because you are not peaceful. Your peace quotient brings heaven or hell into your life. It is all RIGHT HERE. It is all happening RIGHT NOW. There is no future about it.

That is why if you make a mess here but believe that you will go to heaven, it never happens; it cannot happen that way because you get the results of what you do. If you love, you get love, if you hate, you get hate. Contaminations such as anger, hatred, jealousy and revenge have their root in insecurity. Insecurity is connected to an instinct called ‘survival instinct’. All of us have it. All animals and birds, every being has this one instinct, which is predominant – the instinct for survival. Human beings also possess this instinct, but in an aberrated way; human species possess great intelligence and capacity for imagination along with this instinct for survival.

When you are focused on imagination and intelligence, you feel that instinct is something mediocre, not real; but survival instinct is very real. We see its manifestation as intelligence and imagination. Therefore, this is real. We cannot say something is unreal. If you are experiencing something, it is real for you. All that we experience is real. But how deeply are you connecting to it; that makes your life different. If you see every situation passing by, everything is going on but you are detached, then you are free. If you are affected by everything; if you are affected by each movement of the outside world, then you are bound. It is as simple as that. Do not go for complicated spirituality. There is nothing complicated about it. You are the path; you are the journey and you are the destination. Everything is connected to how you are.

It is simple. Your world is how you are. If you are very happy, your world is happy. When you wake up, your world wakes up. When you sleep, your world sleeps. That’s all you have. Your world means only so much. What you see between your waking state (when you are awake), and when you are in deep sleep state (when you’re sleeping), that’s your world. Nothing else is your world.

Question: You said God, Guru and soul are the same. If God decides everything, then what do we decide? Why don’t humans have control? It is so confusing. What should we do as human beings?

Mohanji: Firstly, God is not deciding. Is your soul deciding any emotions? Importantly, do you know that the soul exists in your body? When do we really know that the soul existed in our body? Only when the soul leaves the body. But that’s too late. Then we call it a dead body, isn’t it? So, God is very much the same. God is similar to the petrol of your car. It helps your journey, but it has nothing to do with your destination. Your soul also is non-interfering and silent, in fact quite silent, but it gives life. Hence, God is not deciding anything, but God provides the platform. Consider this, this hall (in which we are seated) neither decided who will come here, nor did it decide what discussion will happen here. The hall is called Agastya (name of a sage), but Agastya has nothing to do with it.

Similarly, your soul, God, and Guru have nothing to do with you. They are all factors of existence.

So, what is driving your life? Unfulfilled desires.

Where have unfulfilled desires come from? Memories & impressions.

Memories of what? Activities or experiences.

So, the clock goes like this.

Unfulfilled desires à Inclinations à Thoughts à Words à Actions à Experience à Memory à Impression.

You have unfulfilled desires, which creates inclinations. Inclinations create thoughts. Thoughts create expressions or words, which then creates action. Action creates experience. Experience creates the residue, that is, memory. That memory gets stored as impression in some part of you. It can be in your physical sheath – Anna Maya Kosha, it can be in your mental sheath –

Mano Maya Kosha or any Koshas. We have various sheaths around us. Depending on the activity and the experience, each impression gets stored there.

When it is stored, it asks for more of that thing, that experience. That is why when you become angry, you sometimes do not know why you get angry. But the truth is that you are getting angry. There is a cause. Every effect has a cause, into which the soul is not interfering. Soul is watching, witnessing. The same hold true for God. God does not interfere. God is also witnessing. And this is a drama, nothing stays. Understand that all this is happening clearly between the times you wake up and before you fall back into sleep. This whole drama happens in that 24 hours of time. You have this drama only during the hours that you are awake. Then, there is more drama in the dream state.

Dream state is not connected immediately to the waking state nor to the outside world. Dream state cannot depend on the world outside as well. So, what does dream state depend on? Whatever you have stored inside; that creates dreams. Hence the dream state is equally valid. It has relevance because, what you do not express during waking state, can be expressed during the dream state. In the waking state you are in Bangalore, but in dream state, you could be in America. At the physical level, if you want to go to America, firstly, you need a visa, then you need to book the flight etc. But in a dream, you are in America in a moment. Because it gives you an experience, dream state has validity.

Then you have deep sleep state. In deep sleep state you’re totally dead. You don’t know where you’re a man or a woman. You don’t know the time or place. You know nothing. In deep sleep, you’re dead. Every night we are dying for three and a half hours; then, we come back. Actually, the insomnia affects only that time. Even if dream state is lost, there’s no problem. But three and half hours if you could not sleep well, then your body gets affected. The sleeplessness we talk about, is connected to the deep sleep state. Dream state has no problem even if is fluctuating. After a while when you are deeply connected with yourself even the dream state dies. That is, when the stored data reduces, dream state also vanishes.

So, this is the story… activity, experience, memory, impression, desire, thought, word, action, again experience… our life goes on like this.

In this, God is neutral, Soul is neutral and Guru is neutral. Guru is only showing you the light. What is the guru’s role? He is just like a mirror. When you look at the mirror, what do you see? What you see is what you are. How you are, at that point in time, that is what you see. True gurus are like that. They need nothing from you. What can you give them? Understand – The only thing you can actually surrender to the guru, God or soul is YOURSELF. Everything else that you surrender is from the outside. They are not yours; you are holding them temporarily and we have a false feeling that we own it. But what do you truly own on Earth? We may have houses, cars, people, relations, positions, possessions, but we own nothing. What happens to all of them when we die? It’s gone. So that’s exactly how it works. There is no confusion here. God is providing the platform, otherwise you cannot perform this drama. Soul is your energy, which helps you to perform. Guru is your mirror, which tells you who you are. If you look at all these three aspects, all three are neutral.

So, God is not making any plans. We are creating the drama. We are enjoying in some way. All the pains, pleasures etc. are our own production. And please understand the mind factor, the mind matter. Mind matter means mind, intellect and ego, the three aspects of this mind. Mind is the seat of emotions, intellect is the seat of analysis and ego is the seat of personality, it is the skeleton of personality. Ego is not so bad. Just as a skeleton gives a structure to your body, ego gives a structure to your personality and that’s okay. So, mind, intellect and ego are the three faculties with which we experience this world. Through mind we experience emotions; through intellect, we analyse all the things; and through ego, we express our personality, which is usually a powerful expression. That is the expression with which people recognise you.

When people say “Mohanji”, they will have some idea of Mohanji; such as what he wears, how he walks or talks, how nonsensical he was (chuckles), etc. They are all connected to ego projection. That is how we are alive. Nothing in this world is by accident. Every bird, every plant, every leaf, every tree, every human, every being, each of them is relevant; there is relevance; there is the power of creation behind it all. So, when you really understand that, you know why they are all here and that we have no ownership over them.

For karma, the source is ownership. If an activity with ownership happens, that causes karma. If an activity with surrender happens, there is no karma. That is why Lord Krishna said, “You surrender your actions and the results of actions to ME; I release you from its karma.” The standard vow is, “You have no ownership, then you have no karma”. Thus, it’s as simple as that. God is giving you all the options without interfering.

Question: Does it mean that we should know our desires?

You won’t know desires, because not all desires are tangible. Also, desires move as per time. Desires you had at the age of 10 will have no validity when you are 20. The same desires will be useless at the age of 30. So, every desire has its time and space. They happen only at that time. Sometimes when you see the children playing, eager for new toys, you wonder, “What’s the big deal?” because you have overcome that situation. We overcome such situations every day. Every morning when we wake up, it’s a new life. So, we would have transformed without our knowledge every day. In this mode, we are continuously flowing. Hence, no desires can be called as permanent. Some desires though could be permanent – those that you reject, resist or postpone; they stay longer. That is what we call as addictions.

Whatever you suppress for a longer period of time, will become your predominant agenda in the future. In some people, you may notice addictions; for example, as soon as they are able to spend money and buy alcohol, they start drinking. We might be surprised as to why these people are drinking so much; it’s a clear sign of a suppressed desire in a previous life/ previous existence. They would have suppressed it far too much and far too long, and it comes back as a very compelling desire. Also, what you are, at the time of death has lot of value. That is why we used to name our children as Rama, Krishna, etc. because then we keep calling that name and that name becomes a chant. The Lord’s name has vibration and every name has a frequency. That is one aspect. But otherwise, calling the name all the time is also chanting.

There is a story of Sage Valmiki; how he turned around from being a hunter to becoming a sage, just by chanting the name “Rama”. When he, as a hunter said, “I cannot chant Rama”, the sage Narada said, “don’t chant Rama, chant Mara”. Mara in Sanskrit means ‘tree’. When you continuously chant Mara Mara Mara, it became Rama, Rama, Rama. Like this, everything has its value.

You cannot control desires and don’t try to control anything, but watch it. Be aware. That is why awareness (Bodh) has a lot of value. Just be aware of everything; don’t do anything unconsciously. Whatever happens in life, be aware; whatever you’re speaking, be aware; for everything, just be aware. When you are being aware all the time, one day that awareness will stabilise and all the desires will become, “Yes, things will happen in life, it will all happen, let it happen, because they are all related to past life”.

Please understand one thing. The lineage Karma, the karma coming from the father and mother, lineage of parents, they are the first one to enter as soon as soon as the sperm and egg meets. It is called Dhananjeya. Dhananjeya means the prana that enters the system. That means you get linked to the father and mother. Thus, lineage karma is the first of karmas, then comes prarabdha, that is, what you brought forward from another life. It comes after the lineage karma. So, as soon as you are born in a family, the family has taken you over. Dhananjeya has taken over, even before you are born, the moment you desire to take birth, before your body is formed. It is also the last parameter to leave after death. It leaves after everything is demolished.

So, lineage, karma has a lot of impact in us. That is why we observe abstinence for certain days, where we stay away (from husband/ wife) after a death in the family. That’s because we are technically connected to all these people in the lineage. Prarabdha comes much later. Prarabdha comes when the soul enters the body, or when the body is formed. Otherwise, we are only lineage. We are in a compulsive way, representing the lineage or the weight of the parents’ side. So, when you do constant actions of kindness, goodness, compassion, the whole lineage gets purified. That’s why all the scriptures say, “Acts of kindness – karma yoga is really essential. Keep doing good work; keep helping people; keep doing the right things”. Such acts clean the lineage continuously and all the people of the lineage get benefitted. For instance, there is a feast in your house, everybody gets all the food you cook, isn’t it? Like that, whatever you do helps not only all the people in the lineage, but also the generations to come. And when you go to the next life, you carry some part of the merit. It is similar to having a positive bank balance for your next life. Overall, it is positive.

This is a time of information. Internet is giving tonnes of information. But until you assimilate information, it does not become knowledge, it will remain as information, like raw food. Until you cook it, it’s not edible. You have to contemplate on the information, then it becomes knowledge. When you experience that knowledge, it becomes wisdom. Until then, it’s not wisdom, it’s just knowledge.

Question:  If we choose to experience that, will that ensure grace?

If you choose to experience, grace will be there. As long as you are not acting on selfishness grace will come. Grace is like sunshine, it’s always there. You have to open your windows and curtains, then you get sunshine. Grace is always there. The easiest thing to obtain is Bhagawan’s blessing or grace. But we don’t strive for it. We don’t work for it. Because we don’t believe in it. Firstly, when people say that there is a thing called grace factor, they would say, “Oh, you’re joking”. When we don’t believe in something, we don’t get it. Earning grace means, consistent acts of kindness, compassion, then we earn it.

Transcribed by Rakshitha Ananth
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan