By Mohanji
There are three types of food that we consume: one is the food for the body, second is the food for the mind, and the third is food for the intellect. Then, of course, the food for the ego is appreciation, reward, recognition, and so on. These help the ego. But mainly, we consume food for the body. When we have high levels of insecurities, we consume a lot, we eat unconsciously, and that leads to obesity, which in turn leads to various other problems. But as we increase our energy level by connecting to ourselves, through deep integration into ourselves, our energy level increases. As our energy level increases, our food consumption decreases, and it can even decrease to a level where one meal a day is good enough.
But if you deny food, then you will be thinking about food, and it will be causing agony of some kind. I never recommend suppression. Suppression is the worst thing you can do. Denial and suppression maintain certain desires in you, which, over time, increase their intensity, and eventually they become compelling. So I would always recommend a moderate execution of all desires, with awareness. If you are fully aware that you have this desire, and it keeps repeating within, it means that you have blocked it at some point in time. If a recurring thought happens about something, it’s a clear sign that you have been suppressing or denying that at some point in time, and hence it is coming back every time. My suggestion is always, fulfillment, at a level where you are fully aware of all the desires, or the thoughts associated with desires and thus it is peaceful, calm, and at a moderate level. When you are fully aware, and you’re executing it in moderation, it should be alright. It will come, it will manifest and it will go away. If you suppress or deny, it will probably stay dormant for some time and later the experience will be somewhat like an avalanche, an intense desire which you can’t avoid.
So my suggestion about consumption is, in moderation- go for it, have it, whatever it is and then with awareness, you can go over it. As you evolve more and more into deeper levels of subtlety, or the sukshma state, automatically you will not be able to consume any food which is of tamasic or rajasic nature. Tamasic and rajasic are foods that aggravate, they have intense flavours. Tamasic means something that makes you dull, any food that makes you dull. So the food that makes you energetic is the raw food, the food which have seen the sun, which has been under the sun, that God has given, like from trees and plants; and mostly in these foods, there is no violence; because a tree which produces a mango is happy that you are consuming the mango because the aim of the fruit is to spread its species around. That means the seed is thrown around, and another tree will come. Likewise, tomato or any fruit or vegetable that sees the sun has been created so that the seeds are dispersed and more and more such plants grow. Basically, it is the manner in which the species continues and hence the plants are happy when the fruit or vegetable is consumed. If you notice, when the birds eat, they spread some seeds around with their beaks, they spill them around. What they eat is for their sustenance, and what they throw around is for the future generation of the same species of the plant. So all the beings, all the animals and birds help in dispersing the seed and producing more of it’s kind. That is an ideal food, the food which has seen the sun is good for our system.
Eating habits also from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm is usually the right time, that means sunrise to sunset. But in various countries, sunrise and sunset are at different times. I usually follow between 6 am and 6 pm so that there is some boundary. When the sun is up, that’s when the body wakes up for digestion and even circulation. We are deeply connected to the Sun. Whatever you consume between sunrise and sunset gets digested; it doesn’t get stored. Whatever you consume after sunset tends to get stored in the system, which will cause obesity and further complications in the future. So I do not recommend eating after sunset. But in a country where the sunset is close to midnight, I would say you can stop eating at 6:00 pm. So it’s 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, its 12 hours. Within 12 hours you consume what you want to consume, and after that, for 12 hours, you give the body some rest.
In our body, we largely have supporting organs, except for the heart, but again, a heart has four valves. Likewise, we have two kidneys and two nostrils, when one nostril is active, the other is silent; every 60 minutes it changes. So one is active, and the other is silent, always. One kidney functions when the second one is silent, sleeping, the second one functions when the other is resting. Like that, we have a sort of resting time for all the systems in the body.
In the morning hours, from 3:00 am to 6:00 am usually, both the nostrils function together. That’s why that time is very important. They say that if you chant during that time when you are centred; when both the nostrils are functioning together, the intensity increases, the energy level is much higher.
The consumption of food between sunrise and sunset is good. In India, you can clearly do it, because by and large the sun rises around 6 to 6.30 am and it sets around 6 to 6.30 pm. Thus it is possible to maintain a routine. But in any country you are in, you can use the 6 am to 6 pm timing or from sunrise to 12 hours later. It doesn’t matter at what time the sun sets, but after 12 hours, stop consuming. It is a good idea and also one should consume foods that have seen the sun, food that has no violence or murder; avoid meat products – the meat of animals or birds or beings that are killed. The animals had a lot of anxiety in them when they died. No animal dies happily. They are murdered by force, so they create a lot of pain and fear inside. They feel like a victim, so the meat, the entire body responds to that feeling of fear; the feeling also goes into your system when you consume that.
Likewise, the lobsters and fishes, some of them are boiled alive etc., it’s all tremendous violence and cruelty. Any food which has cruelty or murder behind it is not good for the system of a seeker. The usual consumption is based on habits. We are used to a certain food, and so we tend to consume the same. We have to be aware that some of the food has a lot of violence behind it. Animals that are transported are aware that they will be killed. They are helpless, there is no choice given. They are bound, they are controlled, and they are killed. The victimhood, the pain, the agony that’s connected to it, it goes into the system of the people who consume it. Today’s, milk products also are not safe because most of the cows never see their calves. As soon as the calf is born, the calf is killed. For the dairy industry, every calf is a waste product. They throw away the calf or sell the calf as veal, and the mother is in agony all the time. The average lifespan of a cow is 20 years, in the dairy industry it’s 5 years, by the time the cow is spent, it is slaughtered. Even pregnant cows are slaughtered. All of this is extreme violence. Such vibrations entering this world create a battlefield.
Millions of animals are killed each day. Spontaneously, habitually, without giving it a thought, we consume burgers and food with meat in it, and it has violence behind it. Supply is as per demand. If there is more demand, supply is also more. It’s for the sake of cheap meat that farming is happening and hence injections and other medicinal interventions are happening. So eventually the products that you are consuming are completely adulterated. We must be very careful with our consumption; we do not need these. We can have a plant-based beautiful diet, which will help our system. What you consume is very important. The more you consume live products, that is, raw products, which have been in the sun and which are grown under the sun, it will help us to stabilize and it helps with meditations and other such activities too. When you consume food that has been fully under the sun, it always gives you good energy, ‘Prana’, the right energy, the right energy flow within. Suppose you were meditating in a noisy place you won’t be able to meditate because the sounds disturb you. Likewise, when the whole atmosphere (within) is that of agony and pain, there is violence, even though it’s invisible; every abattoir is like a war-field; so much death happens there, it is murder, it’s sheer murder! Where many beings are killed, the vibrations spill into the air and their agony, that victimhood fills the air and affects everybody.
We must be really conscious not to have more violence in the atmosphere. Likewise, human species is just one species, but because we have intelligence and imagination, we have dominated most of the earth; we have dominated the air, the water, and the earth. Domination also is a responsibility. We have the responsibility to maintain and protect the environment, which we have not done. Many species are extinct now and it is because of human intervention. We must understand that it is our job to preserve the earth that we have been entrusted with, it’s our duty.
Look at various deities of the Hindu tradition; there are 330 million deities in our tradition, which are 330 million dimensions of ONE deity, the Supreme Consciousness, which is formless. Great Masters understood that there are numerous varieties possible of the Supreme Consciousness, which is pure brightness, brighter than a million suns. That’s pure intelligence, pure brightness, out of which the great Masters derived 330 million options. To each option, they gave a form, an identity, a name, a frequency, a mantra. Mantras are all frequencies and a circuit, a Yantra and also a system, a Vidhi, a system of maintaining them, and also a duration. That it’s almost like a clear definition, a clearly distinct aspect of the Supreme Consciousness. And thus every idol or form which has been created has an ideal behind it. It’s based on an ideal. Every Idol which is created has an ideal behind it. All the deities that we see, they all have a supporting animal or a bird as a vehicle. That amounts to preservation. That animal or a bird is suitable to the character or the intensity of the deity that they support. So each animal and bird are thus respected, honoured, and preserved because of their association with that deity. This system was beautiful. We had various deities and they all had their associated animals supporting them. So we respected cows and calves, we respected bulls, we respected a rat, a peacock, a swan, and many different animals. They all were supported, and that preservation was spontaneous because we respected them. Why were they associated with a deity? Because unless you respect, you don’t preserve. Thus the need to respect was added into the system. When we don’t respect other species or animals, we tend to ignore them, we become insensitive, and we may also kill. That is what we see in the world today. We are the one species which is behaving like a virus today, destroying all other species. That’s only humankind; no other species does that, they all mind their business. All the animals are telling humans, “Just leave us alone, don’t disturb us, and don’t interfere in our lives.”
We have done so much harm; different experiments happening in the laboratories of the world, torturing and killing hundreds of beings, and their agony which goes into the air, is disturbing the Earth. And when such things happen continuously, the frequency of the Earth also changes. A lot of victimhood is happening in the world, as we talk. It’s creating a difference in the entire environment. Even though we have advanced in technology, we have not advanced in awareness. We have seen the very sign of all the wars of the world, the competition and discord that we see in society – all of these are connected to our lack of awareness. Hence, our consumption has a lot of value; our awareness, our consumption, this has value, it’s important, and our awareness is connected to our consumption.
Coming to the point, consumption through the body is vital. I would say consume something which has no violence connected to it, and which is suitable for spiritual evolution.
As regards, the emotions that we consume, emotions that are devotional in nature are always positive, but emotions such as anger, hatred, jealousy, the soap opera kind of emotions, they are not so good, because they lead to similar emotions. In karmic law, whatever you experience through the body, through the mind, through the intellect, through the ego, are all considered as experience, and the residue goes into the system like cache memory.
Whatever you consume as emotion, even if you watch a feature film, or listen to someone’s experience, that memory also leaves an impression inside, and that leaves a cache memory. It’s almost as if the subconscious believes that you had the experience. The subconscious does not understand that you only listened to it, that it was not your experience. But when you nurture any kind of emotion for a longer period of time, it enters your system and it reproduces. That is why various traumas, fears, and phobias, though all these things have their root in its external input, these are actually like poison; the poison we collect from inside, enter our system and contaminate us. That is why we always say, “Satsangatve, Nissangatvam,'” You need to have good company, company of good people, company of people who expand your awareness, company of people who give good input; input which is regenerative by nature, rejuvenating by nature, that is good information, good input. If you consistently have good input, you will be peaceful, you will be light, you will be benevolent, and that’s good.
You need to have good company, company of people who are positive. They give you positive vibrations, optimism, regenerative talk, and then it leads you to a kind of detachment. This means that you will be happy. Detachment is not denial. They are two different things. Detachment means you can have something, but you don’t really need it, and you have the ability to share what you have. This is detachment. Detachment means you’re easily sharing without any remorse or regret. Likewise, you can have things in abundance, but you will only use them as per your need. There is a story of a Swami (renunciate) who was carrying water from the Ganga (river) in the shell of a coconut. People said, “Why are you just taking that much water, there is plenty of water in the river, why don’t you take more?” So the saint said, “No, you are not supposed to misuse anything, even though it is in abundance. You only take whatever you need “. That means even though there are resources in abundance, we don’t disturb them, we don’t destroy them, we allow nature to flow. We only take what we need, what we really need. Such a level of awareness leads to detachment. Detachment means that you have everything, you are grateful, but you don’t need more than what you can consume. When you consistently are in a state of detachment, then you do not have that many desires also. Your desires are all limited because you are happy, you are contented with what is available, and you are happy to have it, you’re grateful. Thus desires also reduce. When desires are less, your mind is still. The mind is disturbed because of too many desires. Thus your mind becomes very still; the mind is peaceful. So, fewer desires lead to more peace. If the mind is peaceful for a long period of time, then you are liberated in birth, and you will be liberated at death. This is the path to liberation.
You consume and it could be emotions, knowledge or information. Information – I have explained in detail. We are in an age where there is a flurry of information. Most information is toxic in nature and it creates violence within. Any information that you process, which creates violence and agitation inside, should be totally avoided, that’s also consumption. So when you know that a certain type of information is creating anger towards somebody, or it is creating jealousy or hatred, it should not be taken in at all, because our inner space should always remain clean and pure. Whenever somebody talks ill about another, I never buy it, I always say, “This is precious information, which you have spent a lot of time in collecting, keep it with you, don’t give it to me.” We are all karmic beings. Whoever is walking on this earth is karmic being. How can we blame somebody? How can we judge somebody? We don’t have the right. Because whatever any person performs on earth is within the boundaries of karma, within the karmic allowance. If we clearly understand that, we will not blame people, we will not judge people, we will not criticise people. How can we do that when we don’t know the karma of another? Anything happening in the life of anybody is within the karmic allowance. If we understand this one point, we will be peaceful. We know, okay, this is supposed to happen in their life. Whether it is good, bad, or ugly, it is not our prerogative. We can’t do anything about it. If something is supposed to happen in somebody’s life, it will happen, because he chose it before he took birth. This was part of the agenda of his birth. So how do we say he’s good, he is bad, he’s ugly? Nobody is good, or nobody is bad and nobody is only ugly.
Everybody is a mixture. We are all imperfect in a way. We are all a mixture. When we try to pretend that we are perfect, that’s when the problem begins. We then try to hide certain things, and that becomes a problem because whatever you hide becomes your weight, your burden. So we will not judge, we will not criticize, and we will not contaminate our inner space. What type of information would you like to process? Only that which will make you light. Information on higher awareness is good and only such information which you can process should be consumed, just like food. The food you eat should be sufficient for your existence; it should not be a huge quantity. Even if food is in abundance, you eat only what you can easily digest.
Ayurveda says, one-third of your stomach, that’s all you need, at each meal, so three meals mean three times one-third of your stomach, and that also only within the sunrise and sunset; this way you will remain healthy. All these various consumptions that we have, and emotions also, the ideal is that you must feel because you are a human being, but you should not sit down and cry. You should do what you can do. Like you see sadness around you, if somebody is not happy they are sad, you sit with them, sort them out, do what you can for them, and move on. But again don’t expect anything back, so your action is always pure.
When you do not expect anything back from anybody, you’re always operating on pure action mode. This is very important to understand. Whenever we do something with an expectation, it already became an impure action. That expectation makes things impure. Also, our documentation, by which I mean the memory of activity, can also increase our ego. When we say to ourselves for example, “I am better than another,” or “I’m able to do these things, so I am better off”, such thoughts give us weight, and reduce our purity level. We can always remain pure. It’s our choice. All actions can be pure. We do the best possible action within our capacity, every time. But don’t expect anything back from that person, that way, we remain extremely pure.
Regarding, consumption of information – consume only that which is regenerative and good. Various opinions of people about various people – don’t buy them, because they don’t understand. Most of what people talk today in the world are merely opinions, their understanding. We tell others what we have understood as per our awareness; so everything is relative. When you work with relative awareness, there is always separation from the truth.
The truth is one. Truth is always one, but nobody can see the truth fully because we have flavours. We look at life through our eyes, through our level of awareness, through our notions, concepts, prejudices, and many different things we have within us. We look through those spectacles and we see life based on that, and that is what we are conveying to other people. It cannot be 100% truth. It is always a flavoured truth or a relative truth. This is the truth which we are processing, what other people tell you are mostly their opinions, or what they have understood. And if we base our life on those opinions, we miss the truth further. We separate ourselves from the real truth. It’s important that we always are objective and we look at life with a fresh perspective. When you wake up in the morning, you look at life fully fresh, and then you will not miss anything.
So each time, you remember that you are purity, and you should remain purity for your own sake. That keeps you healthy. Consumption should be in a moderate way, only as much as you need; but give more importance to giving forth. If you have taken ten, give forth twenty. Give forth means what you give to the world, that’s your net worth. Whatever you are giving to the world is your net worth. It can be your skill, it can be time, it can be love, it can be money… you share whatever you have in abundance. Your net worth is what you share and that is exactly what we must remember.
We don’t have to believe ourselves to be perfect. Perfection is a relative thing. We remain pure always and make sure there is non-violence; if you determine non-violence to be the benchmark, life is much easier. You can do what it takes, but you will not entertain violence. Criticism and gossip amount to the violence of the mind. Violence in thoughts, words and actions; you should refrain from violence on these three levels. That is how you remain always pure, always calm, and always peaceful. That allows you a very light existence and permits no blockages in the system. Whenever we engage in violence – be it in thoughts, words, expressions, or actions, it leaves behind residual blockages.
Understand that we are consuming many things through the day from the time you are awake till you sleep. In other words, you consume through the mind, the intellect, and the body and these can cause certain imbalances in the system. So, be aware of what you are consuming.
This awareness in itself will keep you alert. Alert awareness, at the moment, in this time is important. When you are constantly in the present time, you are in a perpetual meditative mode; there are no excesses. In that meditative mode, you are centred. When you are centred, you are aligned and when you are aligned, you are truly spiritual. This is what I believe in and it is what I practise. I travel a lot, so I’m in different time zones, different energies; besides, I meet many people.
Sometimes it’s not easy to feel the body when you are in perfect alignment. So you have to bring yourself to the body to communicate and convey because you tend to expand. After a while, you will all experience that when you are fully within when you are fully aligned, you tend to expand beyond. You may sometimes not feel the bodily boundaries that one normally has. You may feel you’re much larger than you are, size-wise, energy-wise. So to bring yourself back to the body, to communicate, sometimes it becomes a bit difficult, but these are states you go into, as we practise many things. You accept everything. I always say “Don’t stop for experiences”. Experiences will come and go, always stay neutral. Allow all the experiences to come and go, for a long period of time. Then, you become the experience. There is nothing to experience anymore. It settles down. Then YOU are the experience. There is nothing to experience. The faculty which is asking for experience, the mind-matter, will dissolve, and then you become the experience all the time. That’s a perpetual blissful state. At some point in time, we will all arrive there. For that, you must be very aware of what you consume. It is not what you love to consume, it’s what you have to consume. What you have to do and what you love to do, they’re two different things. But again, please recall what I said at the very beginning – no denial. Also, be aware that every being on this earth which is walking, crawling or flying, deserves this earth equally, like us. We do not have supremacy over anything. We must accept that. We must look at the entire life structure of the world, with all its living beings, including seeds, plants, the environment and everything else, with respect. We always love and respect. We don’t waste anything. Whatever we consume, we respect.
Whatever you consume, consume in moderation and remain grateful for that food, so that when you consume, it really melts into you. Also, understand that all these beings are complementing another. Whatever nature has created has a reason. Nature’s children, including us, have our positions; all of us have our relevance. Everything is interconnected. We must be aware of it and we must respect it. Just like we should respect our body, we should respect everybody. We must know that all have relevance. All have their right (to live) on earth, just like us. We have no right to kill indiscriminately. We have no right to torture, use or abuse. We have no right, we just accept. Whatever is consensual is okay. For example, a cow and a calf are in our homes and we look after them like our family members. We do not kill them. We look after them. We give them all the rights of existence, and that means they are living freely. If there is a bit of milk which we consume from them, after the calf has had sufficient milk, and the calf is healthy and happy, and we share like a family member, that’s okay. That’s what we were doing earlier. Every household had cows in them, and each cow was respected.
I remember, at my mother’s aunt’s place, they still live like that. No cow is ever slaughtered, the cows and the calves all live together. After a while, when the cow cannot produce milk, it is treated well even then. It is given the same food, the same medical support and such, like any other family member. And they die a natural death. That’s quite good because then, we are actually in harmony with nature. We are happy. We respect that every existence of nature has the same value. We accept and respect, we behave accordingly and that creates a lot of stability on Earth.
All beings of Earth have the right to live and we have no right over other species. I believe that the beings who gulp water are herbivorous. We as humans like to gulp, not lick water. The carnivorous animals that I have seen lick water with their tongues. I am not a scientist, so I may be incorrect. But the point I am making is that by nature, I believe a human being is a herbivorous being, and our consumption should be connected to our elevation.
We have the potential for understanding consciousness. Most other beings do not have it. They have instinct, and intelligence connected to instinct. They don’t have the potential for experiencing higher awareness or working towards it. We have. Since we have it, we have that power and potential for knowing the higher. We should also be very clear about what we do on this Earth – our responsibility is larger. To sum up, since our intelligence is higher, our responsibility is also larger.
We must know that there is no difference between animal rights and human rights. It’s just BEING RIGHT. We should always remember, it’s BEING RIGHT. Always we have to BE RIGHT.
We cannot differentiate between species, and say, “Ok I allow so much as rights to these animals or birds…” That is nonsensical! We have no right to do that. We are a species. We have imprisoned the human species itself, and there were zoos in the past, in some countries, where we imprisoned various beings of our own species! I have seen pictures of such zoos. We have been blind to many such things. We have many divisions and subdivisions based on feelings of internal supremacy due to colour, caste or community. These are aberrations and based on ignorance. They should not exist.
Talking about deities that we worship, say, for example, Lord Shiva, another name for Shiva is Neelakantha, the one with a blue neck. His neck is blue because the poison that He drank from the outside world accumulated on the neck. This signifies that we consume a lot of poison from the outside world. The poison is the dirt which our mind creates over a period of time. Anger, hatred, jealousy, revenge, gossip, criticism, contempt over many different things, feeling of injustice and so on, are some examples of dirt. Shiva, as the Supreme Consciousness, consumed it. But it stayed in the neck. If it went into the stomach, it would poison the body and if it was spat out, the world would be contaminated. So as Supreme Consciousness, what Shiva did was, He held the poison in the neck. He did not digest it, it did not go into His system, and he also did not spit it out. Thus the Supreme Consciousness remained pure and the world also remained pure.
This is symbolic. If we consume gossip, criticism, prejudices, jealousy and other such negative emotions, which are connected to the world outside, to people, places and time, we should not allow them to go inside because it will upset our entire system. The body we talk about is the spiritual body, the body which is light by nature. When you consume all this negative stuff, it makes us heavy; our state of lightness reduces. So we should not consume them. Even if it is entering our system, keep it in the neck. And if you spit it out, which means, when you talk bad about people, you defame somebody, you character assassinate somebody, or you propagate violence, and you spit it all out, it will create even more negative vibes in the society. So even if you have all those consumptions, let it be in the neck, so that it’s neither out, nor in.
Shiva has various snakes around Him; He has all the important, powerful and poisonous snakes Shiva has around His neck – Anantha, Vasuki, Takshaka, Karkotaka, Shankha, Gulicka, Padma, and so on. They are all-powerful snakes, they are extremely poisonous too. So Shiva as the Supreme Consciousness kept them around his neck, as a garland so that society remains pure. We have all sorts of snakes in the society, various types of people who are spitting venom, that is, contamination. We’ve seen that. It has caused many wars, separations and displacements. We have experienced various types of agonies in the world, even now we do. As we talk, some people are dying; we see that in Syria, Yemen and various countries. We have seen wars and destruction such as the First World War, the Second World War, wars in the Balkans, the death and destruction during Stalin’s regime, during the time of Pol Pot and so on… countless deaths and destruction. Even now we see various types of calamities in the world. People are suffering, many are suffering because of a lack of harmony in the minds. We think that we can conquer and capture many things from the earth, but we do not understand that we carry nothing from here.
All the supremacy we talk about by owning things, by having lots of possessions, positions, and lots of things from the earth, all the beautiful things we have made and all the beautiful things that are on earth, exist for everyone, we can’t own it. We think that by paying money and having a document in our name, we own it. How long will we own the same? We only own something on a temporary basis, because we are here on a temporary basis. We have not remained stable in one form, from birth till death. We are changing; our body is changing, the mind is changing, everything is changing. We can’t really own anything on Earth. This awareness we should have. We should have the innate ability to share, to love, to express gratitude all the time.
When you step on earth, it should be with the feeling of gratitude. That is why we start the day chanting, “Karagre Vasate Lakshmi, Kara Mule Saraswathi, Kara Madhye Tu Govindah, Prabate Kara Darshanam”. We look at our hands and say – On the tip of our fingers exists Goddess of wealth, at the root of our hands exists knowledge, the wisdom, and in the middle exists the God of maintenance, somebody who maintains the entire life, earth, the whole Universe.
We look at the hands and say, “Let these hands be doing good in this world.” We also say, “Samudra Vasane Devi, Parvata-Stana-MaNdale, Vishnu Patni NamasTubhyam, Paada Sparsham Kshamasva Me”. We worship the Goddess of wealth. Wealth means any creation which has happened in the universe. We consider that as connected to Shakti or power. Shiva is Supreme Consciousness and from Shiva, the action part is Shakti or power; the power of creation, power of will, power of action, all put together have created the Universe. So we say, O Goddess who is spread over the Oceans and the Mountains, I am stepping on you. Please forgive me.” So with that kind of gratitude, if you step on Earth, we will not own the Earth. Nobody can own the Earth. This body has come out of Earth. Everything has come out of Earth. When we clearly understand that, we will be in moderation. We will not consume indiscriminately. We will not conquer, capture, destroy, kill, murder, we will not do anything of that nature. And that expression is what we see in the Gods and Goddesses of our system. They exist as ideals of a certain kind, and as a representation of the ideals in a form which suits that ideal. Each of them has as an animal or a bird supporting them, so that is amounting to the preservation, preservation of a species. It’s our duty! Preservation of our body and preservation of all the species on Earth. It’s our responsibility because we have higher awareness.
Please understand this whole picture; if you clearly understand that this human existence is a great existence, an existence with awareness, we must also remember it’s not just RIGHTS, it’s RESPONSIBILITIES which are even more important. Great Masters like Sai Baba, Bhagwan Nithyananda, Babaji, and Mahavatar Babaji; all the great Masters the world has seen, they all have propagated the same thing – Do not kill, Do not murder.
‘Ahimsa Paramo Dharmaha’ -that means Ahimsa- Non-violence is the highest form of dharma, righteous duty. Our righteous duty is to be non-violent. So if we clearly spread this, it is not about religion, not about ideology, it’s about us. Religions are made out of teachings of great Masters who have seen the Truth and they are for humans, it’s not that humans are for religions. Religions are all for human beings. They are roadmaps for higher awareness, for going into higher awareness. Paths that lead to liberation, not the paths to bind. So whenever anything binds you, understand that there’s something wrong there. Nothing can bind you.
You’re free by nature. You’re free by birth. You are born free and you will die free. Nobody can stop it. Even if you are connected to a great Master, you will still die. Even if you are connected to a religion, or a particular method, or a practice, you will still die. Everybody, everything that’s born will die; it has its natural time span. We should not ever think that by connecting to something we become immortal, or by acquiring more, by capturing more, we will become immortal. In the life story of Alexander the Great, it is said that when he left his body, when he died, he wanted his hands to be shown outside of the coffin so that people could see that he carried nothing from here. He was a world conqueror. He conquered lots of countries, but he carried nothing. The conquests were actually for emotional satisfaction. It was only to fulfil his emotion, the wild appetite, the feeling that he controlled something, that he conquered.
Many people have it. We have a wild appetite for possessions. We think we need many things. That was the only problem with Ravana. Ravana was a wise man. He had lots of knowledge, he had skills, he had many good qualities but he had this wild appetite for possessions. He wanted everything good in his place. So he did everything non-dharmic for that sake. That is when the war happened and in the war with Ram, he had to die. But Ravana was a great personality. He was a very skilled personality. He was good in warfare, he was good in many things. One quality which pulled him down was this great appetite for possessions, and that really made him weak. When we ever think that we can own more and we can accumulate more, always remember, for how long, that is very important. We must understand that nothing actually belongs to us, including the body.
Whatever we have received from here, we leave behind. If that is clear then we will be very peaceful all the time.
Transcribed by Nada Rakovic
Proofread by Vidya Rajagopalan
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