Jai Gurudeva Datta!
Happy Datta Jayanti. I wish you all a great birthday.
Dattatreya is the supreme guru, the incarnation of Supreme Consciousness, we are also the incarnation of supreme consciousness, but we do not understand that. We are divine incarnations. We need somebody to tell us that we are divine.
Like the child asks the father, “I don’t feel divine, I feel that I am a bundle of emotions. I feel that I’m like a dry leaf in the wind, swaying with various emotions. How can I feel divine? How can you say that I’m divine?” The father said, “Bring me some fire; I’ll tell you.” So, the boy brought a lamp, a lit lamp. The father said, “I told you to bring fire, not the lamp. Then he thought, “Okay then it’s something else.” He then brought burning charcoal. The father said, “I told you to bring fire; why did you bring charcoal?”
What the father said is exactly what I’m telling you.
Fire needs something to manifest. Your soul, the Supreme Consciousness needs your body to manifest.
This awakening, this understanding, this awareness, is very important in human existence. And this is exactly the understanding that we must have all the time.
Expressions of Datta
Now, you look at the aspects of existence: Srishti, Sthiti, Samhara. It means birth, sustenance, and dissolution. All these three aspects are a part of us, and the visible expression is Datta. He’s Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; three faces. Actually, he has only one face. We all have one face, but we have three aspects sitting in this one face. This is one aspect.
Then the 24 gurus of Dattatreya, what does that mean?
Everything, almost everything around us is a Master, is a guide, it’s guiding us to ourselves. When we start seeing the essence of everything around us, we see the Supreme Consciousness at work; the eternal at work. We are eternal, and the eternal is at work around us in every aspect, in every being. When we start having the eyes to see the truth, we start realizing Datta.
Datta is a walking example of Supreme Consciousness, come here or took birth or is born here to guide us to the truth. Actually speaking, none of these masters needs to come here. They are already settled within themselves; Datta says the whole thing is to connect to ourselves and settle within.
Settle where?
In our own soul, the only truth within us.
Why do they take the trouble of taking birth and going through the life and dissolving?
Because, if they do not come, we will remain ignorant. This is to bring light into our ignorance, to bring light into the darkness of our ignorance. That’s exactly why they have come. Datta is living freedom; we have that freedom within us. We are free by birth.
What binds us then?
What binds us are our unending desires and the corresponding inclinations. Inclinations are like a vehicle, in which the desires travel.
Detachment
We have a particular set of inclinations and corresponding desires, and we live our lives chasing it always. And then we can’t really experience freedom; we think that fulfilment of these desires is freedom. Absolutely not! They bring forth more desires.
Actually speaking, to know the freedom, you need to know detachment. Detachment means you may have everything, but you’re not attached to anything. It means you’re happy that all these things exist, but you’re not really depending on them. The dependency level is different.
Datta is Freedom
Dattatreya is a walking example of independence; freedom. He is an avadhoota, a perfect avadhoota. An avadhoota is somebody who is beyond all emotions. He has no emotions; that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have empathy. He has empathy, that’s why he took birth. But we need to know one thing. He came for us, not that he’s dependent on us. There’s a difference here. There’s no dependency here, no true Master is dependent on any disciple, any material, or any emotion; they’re beyond it. This is very, very important to understand.
We are free by nature, and Datta is a living expression of that freedom. All the Datta Masters, you look at any Datta Masters, Sai Baba, for example, he was living freedom. Completely unattached, he was in everything, just like the oxygen we have in the air. Oxygen is free, but it works, it functions because, without oxygen, we cannot breathe, or we cannot live. This is exactly what freedom is all about.
We don’t even know freedom, because we think that fulfilling our desires is freedom, which it is not because more desires are coming. We are bound by desires, bound by inclinations, bound by relations, bound by possessions and positions. So, in this whole thing, we do not understand Datta. To know Datta, you have to be Datta. For you to know Datta, you have to be Datta, to live that life; a great Master beyond the dimensions, par comparisons, no comparison.
You can see Datta’s reflection in many masters – total detachment, totally free, totally unbound, and totally powerful. When you are unbound, you are powerful. When you are bound, you are not. For example, if you have an expectation from somebody, you have limitations also; expectations bring limitations.
Datta is without limitations
Datta does not have limitations because he has no expectation. We do not have expectations originally, but we created it, with our desires, with our inclinations, tendencies, everything. With our need for glory, need for name and fame, everything binds us. Everything has a price. Everything binds us.
When we understand Datta, we will understand that all the things that we considered as very important in our existence are probably not so; they’re not. They have given us pleasures time and again, but these pleasures are also temporary. They are temporary pleasures. They come, and they go, and we need more. It means it’s repetition; it’s a cycle which we can’t come out of.
During this time, that’s why I wish you a good birthday, great birthday because it’s your birthday, not Datta’s.
Datta is everywhere. Datta is nature. Datta is the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the bed you sleep on. This is all Datta. Datta is every aspect of our existence.
I wish you a great birthday because this is a new birth. A birthday is a resurrection, a new beginning, a new day, a new beginning.
Datta Awareness
Let us have the Datta awareness today, the awareness that we are the universe; we are the nature; we are not separated from anything. We are together; we are one. We have no separation. And let us not judge each other, based on their personalities or mannerisms, everybody has it because that’s our expression; that’s our unique expression. We will not bind anybody; we will not control our thoughts or be biased or prejudiced because of people’s personalities. We should be beyond personalities.
We should be beyond everything and just love – only love, accept and love. Accept, accept, accept. Love, love, love. This is it. When we accept completely, it’s only love. When we compare, criticize, judge, we have separation. When we keep expectations in a friend, in every relationship, we have a wall between us, so there’s no connection then. An expectation is like a wall, like an ego. It’s a wall between you and God. The expectation is a wall between people.
So, remove the expectation; there’s no wall, then we can embrace each other. Accept each other. Acceptance and embracing are the same; when you embrace, you are accepting. This is exactly what Datta is about.
I wish you a great Datta Jayanti.
Realisation of self
Have a great awareness today and always spread that love in this world. Our job is to be bright in this world, to give light to the society around us. Because today, we are going through a crisis situation, an invisible virus has kind of quarantined all the people of our species.
We have to grow beyond this, the seeming confinement, to a full realization of who we are. When we look with those eyes, we see the wonder around the whole thing. We will see our limitations as well as our unlimited state. We are both. Limitations are only with the body and the mind and the intellect or ego. An unlimited state is our true consciousness.
Datta is true consciousness. If you are able to see that, you see Datta; you are Datta.
I wish you a great Datta Jayanti, have a great day and year ahead.
Lots of love.
Jai Gurudeva Datta
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Ulla Bernholdt and Rekha Murali