Reach the Substance Beyond Form

Rituals

Dattatreya

I would call Dattatreya as The Supreme Father, The Para Brahma; Because Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the sustainer and Shiva is the dissolver. Those are three aspects of our life. That means we are born, we sustain our life, and then we die; three aspects of our existence are united into one saint, called Dattatreya, so that means He is The Supreme. But, Dattatreya also represents nature; because if people ask Him “Who are You?” 

He would say, “I am a worshiper of Nature.” So, Nature is the Guru for Him; He learned everything from the Nature. His Father is Atri Maharishi, and Mother is Anusuya. They were some of the most powerful saints who ever walked on Earth. 

So, Datta then incarnated into many bodies, later on – Shreebada Srivallabha, Narasimha Saraswati, Sai Nath Shirdi Sai Baba, Akkalkot Maharaj, Manik Prabhu, so many avatars he took, and each avatar is distinct. There are no two avatars in the same way. Each avatar came in a particular time, for a particular purpose – that means the body was taken for a particular duration. 

But each avatar has always been unique and distinct. Datta Tradition is a continuation; it’s also interlinked with Nath Tradition, because Dattatreya formulated the Nath Tradition. 

Nath tradition is when you are fully in control of each and every vibration of yourself. The tradition is in such a way that you occupy the whole body on a cellular level, and your consciousness is interlinked. It is actually interlinked but we do not have conscious control, because the mind manipulates.

Beyond the mind we go to the whole consciousness and in total control; you can be everywhere and you can be nowhere. Every possibility is in your hand. And there is always a natural shine on the way. Any Nath Guru you take – there is a shine, because actually they recycle the energy within all the time. Nothing is dissipated. 

Thoughts take energy, and then words and actions take energy away. This is all controlled in this tradition. It’s interlinked and Datta actually formulated the tradition. Also, Datta has many aspects, like He is a healer; there is a mantra particularly for the power of healing. Datta tradition is a particular tradition where the whole idea is to have a balanced life. 

It’s not just spirituality. See, you can be highly spiritual and very poor materialistically, it wouldn’t work. You need to be balanced in the material plane and balanced in the spiritual plane. Otherwise, what happens – there will be huge imbalance in existence. 

So in the tradition of Datta it never happens. There is always a balance in both ends – the material balance, and spiritual balance. Like Shirdi Sai Baba used to bless people with money, with health. 

But one thing you must understand – what you do, what you need for living, for comfortable existence, is rightfully yours. What is the excess should be used for higher purpose. If people start holding, the grace will go. 

So, you’re getting a million but your expense is a hundred thousand, you should use the rest for the welfare of the world. This is the understanding. But what happens is when money comes, then possessions come, materials come, people hold it, then they beat it. 

Then the downfall starts. So, many people do not understand that when they are with a Datta Guru, they get material benefits: salary gets increased, money comes, bonus comes, and all these things come, “Oh, I was waiting to buy a new car.” 

There’s no need for a new car, but they buy; likewise, a new house and expansion of property. They get immersed in material wealth. Then it’s a deviation from the spiritual. But the Guru will never object. The Guru cannot object. This is your free will. But your life depends on your free will anyway.

Why is it so rare to “know” Krishna?

Q: “Krishna said that of a million people one will look for Me. And of those one in a million, one will find me. Why is it so rare?”

A: Because of the Karma, the maya. See, delusion always stays, right? Right from out childhood until we die we think we are something, we feel we are something. All the time it’s relative truth. We are not actually catching the real truth. Krishna is the real truth. 

So, very few even get to know that there is a real truth apart from this relative truth. Very few people even get that thought, or emotion, that there could be something beyond all this, there could be something beyond what is in front of the eyes; there could be something which is extraordinary. 

We are so stuck with the ordinary. We are so stuck with our fears, phobias, conditionings, concepts. Beyond that, there is something much larger, but we don’t get that thought because we are so stuck with our routine, habitual stuff. Very very few people are able to go deeper and get it. 

Those people are very rare, and for them the thrust of karma will be less. So they’re not pushed into thinking, pushed into talking, pushed into action. Then they think, ”What else is there? What am I looking for?” or “Who am I?” this kind of stuff. Very few people have the notion and even if you have the notion it takes time to find the truth. 

First you have the thought: “Okay, there could be something else,” then you have the thought, “Oh, what is it? What is that thing which I’m looking for?” In spirituality they have already given the answer: Tat Tvam Asi, You are That. But it takes a lot of time to understand what you are. 

For an average seeker the main barrier is the form of the Guru, because he connects to the form first. Probably he is guided to the form with a few teachings, but when he reaches the form he gets stuck with the form. And then it takes a long time to go beyond the form to the truth. 

What is visual, what is audible, what is the fragrance, all these things are the first lures of our existence. You are to cross everything. And then you reach the substance which causes all this. So once the action goes to the cause of the action then you are transcended. Then from the cause you reach the super cause – the manifested cause to the unmanifested cause. 

Like that you transcend. It takes time. So when Krishna says, “Very few find me,” it’s 100% true. What are we like when we were in Vrindavan? Full of romance. We were seeing the romantic side of Krishna, the youth of Krishna, the dancing, the gopis, the singing, Radha. Radha is His consort. It fascinates, it gives a lot of joy, it gives bubbliness. 

But finally, they reach Krishna, the real Krishna, the one who has the capacity to deliver Bhagavad Gita. It’s not easy to deliver Bhagavad Gita. To analyze various aspects of existence in terms of the truth is not easy. We can only talk about relative truths all the time. Look at another aspect: 

you look at all seven billion people of the world – most are physical, they are only physical gratifications, extraordinarily physical gratifications. You can definitely say that their level of evolution is on that range; that can be good or bad in them. Good in the sense they are good in nature, bad is that they are pretty harmful in nature, so this is this way. 

Then you can see something slightly higher- an emotional growth. They operate in the emotional plane. So the largest is the physical then the emotional plane. And then you see a group who are on the intellectual plane. So it’s like a pyramid: physical, emotional, intellectual. 

Then again, from the intellectual people cross over to spiritual. By the time it will become a smaller triangle: the bottom is bigger, then the next, then the next, then the smaller triangle – spiritual is there. 

Then you cross over the pyramid. That is maybe one. Out of a million. Or ten out of a million, if you can be very optimistic. You understood how it works? So usually you are to cross over from physical, to emotional, to intellectual, to spiritual. When I say spiritual I mean real spiritual. 

In all these physical, emotional, intellectual there will be an element of spirituality, but what is that spirituality? Ritualistic, or given by somebody, or herd-following – one cow goes, every cow goes, or it can be out of fear, God-fearing. God is never to be feared, first of all. But, the herd of God-fearing is all from the lower level. 

Then there are “bookish knowledge”, they have quite a lot of knowledge and they say,“I have a lot of knowledge about spirituality,” this is somebody’s knowledge handed or taken over or acquired. And then they feed us. 

In emotional it’s bhakti – a lot of people chanting, they are emotional by nature so they like to chant, they like to pray, they like to visit temples, ring the bells-make a lot of noise, thinking God is happy. At all these three levels mostly people think that God is outside of you, God is away from you, and you are to make that God happy. 

They never think that God could be within us. For that you are to even cross over intellect, to really feel that God is inside. Whatever rituals we are doing is to awaken the God inside. That thought does not come in the physical, emotional, intellectual level. 

It comes only in the spiritual, also only in the higher levels of the spiritual, means you are to still evolve higher. There could be a bit of trial and error. If from intellectual you reach, like from Vedas to the Upanishads, like that you reach slightly higher. 

And then you start feeling, “All these deities are signifying various aspects of me.” The energy aspect can be considered as the mother, the yogi – the fully withdrawn and fully connected in the omnipresent aspect can be connected to Shiva. 

Like that we worship various deities because they represent various parts of our constitution. We are actually awakening that aspect in us. So when we are praying to a particular deity, when we are doing something for that, or chanting the mantras, that aspect is awakened in us. 

That awareness happens much later. It takes time to know that. And once you are there, you are settled within, by the time you are inside – all settled. Because by the time you see everything inside, all the expressions on the outside you see as your own reflection. 

Then you are omnipresent, already expanded. If you are realized well, you will understand that this is how it goes. There is nothing to achieve outside. All the gods, all the goddesses are happy as long as you are happy. They are the reflection of you. 

By going and paying money to a temple no god is going to be happy. What will god do with the money? Priests will take it home, or the owner will take it home. No way the god is going to say, “Thank you for giving me a million, I’ll give you two million.”

Q: …“I will give you enlightenment. Haha… “

A: Are you asking for enlightenment? What is enlightenment at all? It’s just a word with a dictionary meaning for many people. People do not understand enlightenment. They think it is something which is: 

“OK, everybody is talking about it, you read books of Paramahansa Yogananda, books of Vivekananda, so it must be something great, let me also have it. I already had my Marutis, I already had my Mercedes-Benz, so now let me have enlightenment, that’s about it, that much. 

But I don’t want to leave my judging, censoring, criticizing mind.” Then how will you evolve? Mind is such a big trash can. All the trash is in the mind. You have to empty the mind and then throw the mind out. 

First of all you have to remove all the trash out from the mind, then throw the mind out. If you don’t have trash – you don’t need a trash can. Maybe you will have some trash in the future? Forget about it, you don’t have it. If you don’t have trash this week, you won’t have trash next week. Cause you will learn not to have trash. 

Once you learn to have no trash you don’t need the mind, mind will dissolve. You will not need a thing which is useless in your life. As simple as that. Truth is as simple as that. But we are actually going round and round and beating around the bush, unfortunately not knowing what we are looking for. And when you find it you don’t recognize it. 

You find your Guru but you don’t recognize Him because the image is not suiting the guru’s frame. It’s a tragedy. Why? Because you are mind-oriented. You are operating only from the mind. “I want my Guru to be a celibate, but I want to get married,” or, “Because the guru is married he should be a little less than the other gurus who are unmarried.” 

How do you know? Don’t judge another person from your perspective. That’s the biggest mistake you are doing in the spiritual path. You are to accept everything as it comes. If the teaching is good enough take it, if the teaching is not good enough – leave it. 

Nobody’s judging you, nobody’s criticizing you. It’s your journey, it’s your path. Nobody has the right to judge you, nor criticize you, nor control you.

 

Transcribed by Barbara Dizdarevic