Guru Principle

Satsangs from Serbian Retreat with Mohanji, 9-14th May, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q: Could you please explain the guru principle to us?

THE STORY OF NARADA

A: There was a great sage called Narada in Hindu mythology, who worshipped Mahavishnu, the Maintainer. Narada went to Mahavishnu and asked, “I have been praying to you since time began. Why am I not achieving the highest grace? What is the blocking factor? I am not able to achieve the perpetual bliss state where I am always happy and blissful for no reasons. Why isn’t it happening?”

Mahavishnu replied, “That is very simple. You don’t have a guru, that’s why.”
Then Narada said, “Oh, if that’s so, then please guide me to find my guru.”
Maha Vishnu said, “Tomorrow, early in the morning during Brahma Muhurta, the subtlest time between 3am and 6am, the softest and subtlest possible time, you walk on the banks of the river Ganga – you’ll find your guru there.”

So Narada went to the river and started walking. He walked and walked and there was nobody. He continued walking. After a long time, he spotted one boatman in a boat who was there to help people cross the river. Narada was disappointed. 

He thought that Mahavishnu had made fun of him. So he went back to Mahavishnu and asked, “Why did you make fun of me? I couldn’t find a guru, I walked all the way, miles and miles, but there was no one. Just a boat and a boatman.”

Mahavishnu appeared very angry and said, “You could not find your guru. And you discriminated. So now I curse you to take one thousand births and only after that will you find your guru.” Narada was devastated. He was sure there had been a mistake. Mahavishnu had told Narada to take the first man he met as guru. 

And that had been the boatman. But what could a boatman teach – that had been Narada‘s thought. How could a great sage like him take a boatman as his guru? But Mahavishnu was angry because he had not followed the instructions completely.

So Narada went to his father Brahma and said, “This has happened and I’m very, very devastated, what should I do?” Brahma had a solution. He said, “Go back to Mahavishnu and and ask him to write the scripts or horoscopes of the thousand lives – what you would do in the thousand lives.” 

Narada went back to Mahavishnu and asked him, “Would you be kind enough to find out my destiny for the next thousand lives?” So Mahavishnu replied, “That’s not a problem.” Being god, he wrote the whole thousand lives’ horoscope and gave it to Narada who then took it to Brahma. 

Brahma said, “Ok, lie down on the floor. Spread it. Roll on it from one side to the other.” He rolled and Mahavishnu said, “Ok, I relieve you from this problem, now go back and walk on the banks of Ganga again to find your guru.’’ So all three were happy now.

Narada went for a walk on the banks of Ganga again. This time too he found only the same boatman. But he had already learned his lesson and so he didn’t want to take a risk. He went to the boatman, and requested him to accept him as his disciple. Narada then realised this was Lord Shiva.

So, Narada’s problem was a concept in his mind, ”A guru should look like this”, etc. Nobody can attain any guru as great as Lord Shiva. He is the yogi god, or the highest of yogis. All yogis aspire to be like him. And Shiva is not exactly an entity (though in this story it’s an entity) but Shiva is a state. 

The state of Shiva is a perpetual bliss state: Sat-Chit-Ananda. ‘Sat’ means the essence of the universe, essence of creation, of everything, of the creator. ‘Chit’ is our substratum which is the unitised form aspiring to merge with and be the essence of the creator. 

When the ‘Sat’ and the ‘Chit’ merge, it’s pure bliss, absolute joy, ecstasy, that is Satchitananda, the state of Shiva. This is what every being aspires for. This is what all spirituality is about. Don’t think that Shiva has an image with the snake on the neck. It’s a state that every being wants to achieve  – consistent never-ending absolute bliss and ecstasy without any reason.

All the pleasures that human beings know of, are temporary. If certain things happen, we are happy, if certain things are absent, we are unhappy. We are like a pendulum going from happiness to sorrow. What we are looking for is perpetual happiness, the state where we are absolutely happy with or without a thing, a person, situation or time. 

In that state, whatever, wherever, or whoever you look at, you only see the vibration. You only see the brightness, whether it is an animal, a bird or a plant, a tree, fruit or a human being, we cannot differentiate. We will only see the brightness, the love, and the unity. The consciousness gets united, and this is absolute freedom, 100% freedom because there is no duality. There is no you and I, there is only oneness.

Q: If we are ill or have a bad period in our life, how to recognise whether this is a situation requiring action,  or if this is cleansing and I should do nothing about it?

A: Any pain or illness is acquired and collected, because of suppressed emotions. It’s all related to the mind. Disease is enhanced and decreased by the mind. Even if the healer heals you, it is temporary, because with the same mindset, it will reproduce. 

Many people say, “I don’t like this, I like this. Or, I don’t do this, I do this…’’ This is a clear sign of having a very controlling mind. We should actually flow like a river, because what life gives you should be enjoyed whether it is good or bad.

If we are neutral, there’s no suffering. Otherwise, the mind makes us suffer: “this is not what I want’’. And therefore, acceptance is zero, resistance is high, suffering is absolute. I’ll give you a simple example. When do we eat food? When the clock says it’s time. Not when the stomach says it’s time. Fundamental problem. 

Because the mind is in control. Mind says it’s 1pm, go and eat. Stomach doesn’t even want the food. But we pump it in. This is number one. Likewise, if you listen to the body, it always speaks the truth. But we listen to the mind instead. Then what happens? Suffering and diseases happen.

Some people told me yesterday that when they are with me here, there’s no hunger, there’s very high energy. So I asked, ”What is it like when you are in the city in your normal life?” They said, ”We eat a lot.” In a different environment, when the mind is absolutely still, the energy is absolute. Otherwise mind takes most of the energy away. 

Between our senses, it is our eyes that consume most of the energy yet they cannot unless the mind is there. In our everyday life too, mind takes more energy because of its oscillation between the past and future: guilt over the past or anxiety over the future. By the evening you are tired. And if you consider – all this time, you have not listened to the body.

The simple remedy for most of the illnesses is listening to the body. Not after the diseases happen, but on a daily basis, even if you are very healthy. There are certain advanced kriyas which need master’s guidance – you can’t do them yourself, but the master guides you. 

The first level is breath which is easier to catch and once you catch the breath then you start going inside. You will drop the breath and you will become the breath particles or the prana which flows through the meridians. We shift from the breath to the prana. After you connect to the particles of prana, which go through the meridians into your system or parts of the body through 72,000 meridians, the next step is you get connected to the sound (nada). 

And once you go to the nada, the first ever nada that is caught is the heartbeat, the loudest of the sounds. Then we go to the vibrations of the nada, from the heartbeat to the reverberations. That is the first sound and the reverberations, like ripples of the water. Once you reach the reverberations, you are entering into every cell of the body, each organ of the body. 

Each organ has a different sound, a different vibratory level and different kind of flavour, flavour in the sense like nature. Each organ is distinct in our system. Not only in our system, it is true for animals too. Once you connect to that, you will understand, each organ talks, it responds and it has a different style or character. 

What you call a human body is consolidation of all these characters. We fail to see it, that is why we are asking a question about how to heal ourselves. Every yoga posture that has ever been created or taught, is in tune with these vibrations of the organs. Each posture caters to or corresponds to the vibrations of each organ. 

This is specific, distinct and relevant. Every microcosm has a distinctive character. And every macrocosm is a collection of microcosms. Various characters mixed together is a macrocosm. That is the visible side of it. But the microcosm which is the invisible side of it, will still have the character. 

Like if you take one drop of water from the ocean, it has its own character. It definitely tells where it has come from, it will have its taste and feel, but it has a consciousness of its own.

Q: Why does the unconscious mind attract negative thoughts much more easily than positive thoughts?

A: If you have land, you don’t have to cultivate weeds. They grow by themselves, but to have beautiful plants, you need to plant and nurture them. Likewise, negativity grows by itself. If you don’t want it, your neighbour will give you. But you have to nurture positivity almost like a soldier. 

Because negativities like hatred, fear, anxiety, insecurity are of lower vibration are easy to access. While kindness, love, compassion are of more subtle nature. You have to tune into them. So, if you have to stay in these subtle higher vibrations, you have to make some effort for them. But the other ones come to you.

For example, if you drop a ball it will bounce a few times, settle down and stay there. The moment your mind settles down on the lower, such as watching soap operas, or gossiping – you will stay there. You cannot evolve higher because all that the mind is capturing, storing, churning, and contributing to the world, will be of lower nature. 

When you start expressing your higher nature, you need some effort, and there will be much opposition. Place the seven billion people on the planet inside a pyramid. At least 40% are physical people – they only understand physical gratifications such as alcohol, food, sexuality etc. Their gratification level stays there. You can easily see these people. They will be happy only with physical gratifications.

The next level is about 30%. They are of emotional nature. These are the people who watch soap operas. These people thrive on emotions. They feel better than the physical people, because they might be writing poetry, or drama, etc, but at the same time they cannot handle life, they are operating in the emotional plane. 

You can operate in the world in many ways, but there two main ways: one is respond to the world, second is react to the world. Reaction is from emotions. Response is from the intellect. Some people are reacting all the time. The more you react, the more you fight, resist and complain.

Then, the third level is intellectual people. They are the scientists, creators, the architects, they feel better off than the physical and emotional people because they use their intelligence, but they stay there. The intelligence itself is such that it’s a harder ball to crack. 

It’s an artificial comfort, ”Oh, I’m aware of all this, I know about atomic theories, or astrophysics.’’ So you feel much better off than a normal man. But again, they cannot handle even a small occurrence in their life.

Either it is physical, emotional or intellectual, there is always a deficiency factor. The deficiency factor is the strength of spirituality. And there is always an element of ego in all these three layers. The next 15% are the spiritual people. They feel better off than everybody else because they are in the spiritual path.

 But again, they are dogmatically connected to spirituality, like an obsession. Most of these people are still searching. They haven’t found what they are looking for but they realise there is something beyond the physical, emotional and intellectual and there is a spiritual plane which is much more reasonable and valuable, or relevant in one’s existence. 

You can see many such people in places such as Himalayas. They think they can find what they are searching for there and they get stuck with various fake gurus, exercises and different activities and then they try to brainwash themselves. 

They try to tell themselves that they have found it. But they are searching and they may not even understand. They delude themselves by saying that they’ve achieved it or they’ve found it. But the criteria of real spirituality is inner silence. If this question is asked, they will have no answer.

And the 1% of the people grow beyond the spiritual, into real realms of spirituality, which is complete nullification. They attain the true spirituality, complete emptiness inside, complete purity, no mind, absolute stillness and perfection, always in the bliss state. There is no duality, no you and I. There is only oneness. 

This is the absolute state of spirituality. This is attained by very few. Because most people don’t know what they are looking for, so they go for sensations, like, ”Oh, I had a great experience in the meditation today. I spoke to Jesus.” Then I asked, ”Ok, what did Jesus say?” ”He said so many things, you are a great man and all that.” 

Usually, if you have connected and spoken to an entity as powerful as Jesus, you will not even talk later. You would have attained absolute silence. The whole idea of spirituality in whatever path you follow, is to attain stillness of mind and absolute silence of mind. 

If this is not achieved, we are moving from one sensation to another sensation. It’s like going to a different café or a restaurant each day. You can taste various food and you can have some sensations then you go home and later on you are hungry again. So even a spiritual path is often like that. This is why in one lifetime if you can catch the highest, you have done with your life. 

You have done a great job in your life. Otherwise sensation after sensation…with the mind stuck at every level. Body is moving forward, while the mind is stuck in various places. This is agony.

When this communion started, when I was talking to various entities, at one point in time, my urge to be silent and my urge to be away from people was increasing. In fact I was working at that time. But the inner withdrawal was happening and as the silence was increasing, the peace was overflowing. 

I can tell for certain that if we are able to communicate with any entity, even an entity on the level of angels or guiding patrons, whatever you call it, you become almost silent inside. 

The mind will become still. This is for sure. And the mind projects reflections, like you are craving to speak to higher entity like Jesus or baba or Babaji, after some time mind will project, you may get a feeling, oh I had a great experience, I spoke to him, but again, coming back to your daily life, if you are still turbulent, if your mind is still restless, this is an absolute sign that this was a projection. Nothing has happened. 

So we should make sure that we are not deluded at any point in time. This is very important to know in the path of spirituality. We should always remain clean and pure. Otherwise what happens is delusion after delusion and we get stuck with delusions and we even become egoistic about it. 

We tell people, “Look here, I’m always in touch with the higher entities, I’m talking to Jesus, I’m talking to Shiva…’’ But people will not take you seriously because they know how restless you are.

If you really, really want to pursue spirituality with 100% conviction, and 100% will power, determination, remember three things.

1. Detach from people’s opinions about spirituality. Detach from such people and all concepts. And understand yourself.

2. Number two, if you get a chance to connect to anybody who’s operating on a higher, subtle plane, never leave that person. Out of seven billion people, there are hardly 5% who are connected to the source. So if you get such a person, connect to them like a leech. Because such opportunity doesn’t come twice in one lifetime.

3. The master who came to you is the one sent to you. Don’t go searching for the master from your imagination. He may not fit your will or imagination. You may have imagined a master in a particular form, whom you have seen in a picture or your imagination. But that doesn’t matter. One who came to your class is the one who will take you to the next level.

If you clearly understand these three principles of true spirituality, digest it, practise it, 100% guaranteed, you will touch the highest. Because all these years, you have been only searching for yourself. But you have been searching outside of yourself. That is why you couldn’t find yourself. Remember these principles.

Recorded and transcribed by Biljana Vozarevic
Edited by Aviral Srivastava