Removing Concepts

Satsang with Mohanji
Novi Sad, Serbia, 26th Feb 2015

Even though Mohanji is on a private visit to Serbia to be with his daughter Mila and wife Biba in Novi Sad, we had a sudden unexpected satsang with him in a room where we usually have Power of Purity meditation. So far, Mohanji has not been attending any public programs or meditations. 

Hence,not surprisingly though, the number of people attended his satsang doubled or even tripled and you can imagine half of the people sitting on the chairs and another half sitting on the blankets and yoga mats on the floor, squeezing in between, and eagerly waiting. Some people could not enter the hall and had to leave disappointed.  

After re-shuffling the people and moving them back and forth, he asked “Are you comfortable now?” He added in a joking manner an established truth – “One part of our tradition of spirituality is destroying the age old comfort zones, while another is to destroy expectations”
The whole group burst into a laughter…

After the satsang we did an inverted pyramid technique meditation. One meditant said after the meditation and saktipat from Mohanji, ”It was wonderful tonight, each chakra was vibrating like water on a heated cooker ring, especially sahasrara!”

Q: When you felt that you have a different path from the current one, how to go on? Do I have to look for some signs, people, or what to do? I have the need for a different way of life, how to move forward?

 

A: This is a very good question, applicable to everybody. Whenever we travel any path, whether it is education, whether it is life, spirituality or anything, whatever that is effortless and gives you pleasure, is not good for you. And whatever makes you free is good for you. Every step should be one more step towards freedom. I’ll give an example.

Five people went to see “The Titanic”. One person thoughts, “Oh, this is a beautiful love story, but the ending is bad, they could not be together. Life is like that, nothing really works, so he felt depressed.” Another person thought, “This is a beautiful love story, if only I had a girlfriend like this! 

What a great feeling it is to be in love! Even if it is a short span in life, it is worth it.” and he felt inspired to be in love. The third person thought, “The greatest creation of man could not survive the nature. So what is the purpose of creating anything?” So he became demotivated. The fourth person thought, “Oh, this creation could not survive. 

The mankind should make something which could survive any weather!” So he felt inspired as a creator. The fifth person was very skeptical and said, “This is all fake, this is not real.” So he never felt either inspired or bad. He was skeptical by nature and he never agreed with the film or the story.

Five people had five different feelings about the same film. This is how the world operates. The world is how we see it. What is right for us may not be right for another person. What you feel good may not be good for another person. In the path of spirituality, you should absorb or follow what is good for you. It doesn’t matter what the other person feels. 

Is it suiting me? You are wearing this particular dress because it suits you. That is why you are wearing it. What we should look at is whether something we are taking or accepting every day, is it good for us? Is it compatible to us? Are we enjoying it? And this is an internal inquiry. Ask yourself. Nobody else should tell you this. 

If I tell you this is good for you, it may not be really good for you because this is just my opinion. But you should take what is good for you. And this is a feeling. Go to the inner feeling, “Yes, this is right.” This should not be based on your past concepts, concepts from the society, from the parents, from the religion, from anything. 

It should be something which suits you. And another thing is it should be beyond emotions. It should not be, “Emotionally I like it.” Then sometimes if the emotion changes, you will not like it any more. I have recently written on facebook, “There are no people, there are only walking and talking concepts.” 

Everybody is talking concepts, that is why we do not agree with each other. The moment we start going beyond concepts, we are free. Why we don’t feel free is because of the weight of concepts. And the concepts are not ours mostly, 80% of the concepts are borrowed. 

We have borrowed it from the society, people, religion, education, parents, lineage, country etc etc. These are not ours or what we have brought at birth.

Q: It is not easy to get rid of the concepts.

 

A: I’ll explain. Before coming to Serbia I was involved in film making. It is about a saint. She left her body in 1981. She was an amazing mother, very, very powerful. But not many people knew about her. Because she said, “No publicity.” 

They are now making a documentary, I’m encouraging them to make it because I want the world to know the real masters, not the masters you see outside. The world should see the ones whom probably not many has seen but are extremely powerful. 

In that context, I went to the place where her body is kept, her tomb. Her disciple, a man aged 82, is still there. Since Mother died, he has been staying there, at the same place and he does not communicate with people, but he met a few of us on that day. He is a great personality, I’ll tell you how he handles the concepts.

So one group is making a film about her life. i am offering my voice, I’m just doing the narration as my offering at the feet of this great mother. I’m not doing the scripting. I’m just narrating. We wanted a permission from a true disciple. He is in isolation and he doesn’t meet people. We were waiting to see how we can meet him and one day he said to his attendant Swamiji, “I’ll meet them.” 

So we went. He met about fifteen of us. It was an amazing experience for me because it was a completely different dimension which I saw in him. Main thing I experienced was – irresistible laughter! laughing and laughing. He is 82, many teeth had fallen out, but he laughs in such a way that i thought he was crying.

 Tears were coming and he was laughing full of joy, happiness without any reason. There’s no weight of any concept, impression… nothing. He had stopped taking impressions from life in 1981, when Mother left. After Mother left her body, he stopped meeting people. He is not in the news, he is completely isolated. 

All of us cannot do it, but what I’m saying is just for understanding how he handles the concepts. He looked at my watch. He said, “You see, you are wearing a watch. Now if I have a desire to have a watch, I may have to take another life to wear a watch!” You know, how he is thinking! He also said, “I love children. 

There are no children, no women in this area, because if I hear the sound of children, I may want to hug them and then I may feel, “Oh, I should have children too, for which I should get married…”. That’s how desires multiply. And then he said, “I respect women a lot, they are mothers, but if I get the sound of them, what if I had a feeling that i should get married?” He is thinking in those terms.

The root of everything is an impression. If I tell you, “a monkey”, you suddenly have in mind an image of a monkey, and the characteristics of a monkey. Where does it come from? You feel it automatically, right? Where does it come from? You already have such impressions stored inside. 

They are being re-produced. When I say “monkey” you already have a picture of a monkey. Like that we have hundreds and thousands and millions of impressions inside us and these impressions create concepts. They create expectations. They create all the walking spaces, dos and dont’s etc. All those kind of things are created by these impressions. 

And if you do not address those impressions, you cannot change your life. We do not allow a different result because of our concepts, because of our stored impressions. Like a child, we can be fresh every day, but we do not allow it because we have stored concepts inside. All the impressions which are stored become concepts and become our life. 

This is why we do not enjoy our allotted happiness just because we expect the same result each time. We do not allow a different result. If a different result happen, we say it’s not possible. Like that, the education, religion, the system, the society, everything is giving us more and more concepts. What happens is we become completely paralyzed and fail to experience life.

So this man was laughing and laughing. I saw he was totally empty, no thoughts, nothing. Can you believe this kind of situation? He has not stored anything, he has nothing inside and he is absolutely free.

Where does true happiness exist? In the space between your inhalation and exhalation as well as exhalation and inhalation. The small gap. The all important small gap. This small gap can actually deliver you the heaven. This short space of stillness is the space through which enlightenment happens.

I asked him a few questions about how it was with Mother while she was in her body, so he explained one thing. Various masters in subtle form used to come and speak to her without physical body. And he can hear her talking to them, but he could not hear their talking to her because they do not speak with mouth. After they leave, they prostrate. 

Mother used to sit on a cot, and the cot was placed on the sand in the hut. It used to be a small thatched hut. She used to sit in the hut and he used to be next to her. He would hear Mother talking, explaining so many things, but he could not hear their questions or responses. When they leave, they prostrate at the feet of Mother. He could see the impressions of their bodies on the sand. Amazing!

They prostrate at the feet of Mother as they leave after thanking her, as an expression of gratitude. He would ask mother, “Who came?” Mother would say, “That particular saint was here, I was talking to him, and he left.” 

He asked Mother, “Why can’t I see anything? It’s so frustrating that I cant see what you see.” She said, “You will not develop the eyes to see in this life, but you will take another birth, but that birth will be a birth of subtlety where you can see the subtler realities much more.

I’ll tell a couple of stories about this Mother, not what the saint told me, just to give you awareness about Mother.

STORY OF MOTHER – Fishermen and the sea

 

She was living about 5 km from the coast in the central Kerala. The fishermen of that area came to her. They said, “Mother, we are fighting with the sea to catch fish and we somehow manage our living but the sea takes our houses away. Because the sea comes to the shore and destroys us so we have nothing. Every time we are poor. Everything we earn goes back to the sea. Please help!”

Mother said, “Don’t worry, I’ll come there.” A week later, Mother went there. She said, “Give me flower, give me things which you usually use for worshiping. Give it all in a plate. Create a wall, nobody should move until I come back.” And all the fishermen stood on both sides like a wall holding hands. Mother took the plate with materials of worship and went into the sea. 

She was inside the sea for about 8-9 hours. After eight or nine hours, she came back and she said, “Don’t worry, the sea will not touch you ever again”. In 2004, tsunami happened. Two kilometers on the left side and two kilometres on the right side, it was affected. But this place… nothing. These people who saw it, these fishermen, are still alive. They are still there.

 

STORY OF MOTHER – Having Tea

One day she stopped eating food. She was not eating or drinking. She would just wash her feet frequently. And she was wearing only the sack made of jute on the body. She would not take a bath or brush her teeth. She would just sit there. When she sometimes want to change the sack, she would wear another sack on top, not that she would change one and wear another. 

After some time there would be a lot of materials on her body. What do you usually feel when you go near a person who hasn’t taken a bath at all for a long time? A bad smell, right? But if anybody went near her, they could feel the fragrance of celestial flowers.

Q: Is that usual for saints?

A: Once you cross over the human dimensions, yes.

A great master, Swami Chinmayananda who is not in the body now, went to see her. He asked, “Mother, in the ashram, won’t you serve tea?” Mother asked, “Do you want tea?” “Yes, I’d like a tea.”Ok, I’ll get you tea.” 

She asked for the tea to be brought and they gave them the tea. I don’t know whether he knew that Mother does not eat or drink, but he asked, “Only I am having tea, what about you?” She said, “Do you want me to have tea, too?” He said, “Yes, I do.” So she said, “Get me a tea.” 

In those days, the tea was served in glasses, not cups. They brought the tea and she put one finger in it and gently touched her forehead and wiped. So Chinmayananda surprisingly asked, “What? Is that it?” Mother asked, “Are you not happy the way I drink tea? 

Who told you that you need the mouth to drink anything” She said, “Ok, I can consume through any part of the body, it’s all the same.”

She destroyed one concept there, with her life. That is exactly the point. We eat through mouth, through emotion, through mind and through intellect. We eat all the time on these three levels, through body, through mind and through intellect. She didn’t have to do anything with her mouth, except talking. 

All true masters constantly destroy the concepts and expectations of their disciples. This helps them to move ahead into inner silence.

DREAMS

 

Q: What is the meaning of a dream and how to look at them, and what is the connection between dreams and reality?

 

A: There are various types of dreams. It depends on when you are dreaming, and in what context, too. I would say, whatever uses energy is real. Dream uses energy. Dreaming is an activity, while dreaming, we are actually watching a film inside, so we are active. And activity consumes energy. Hence dream state is equal to waking state except in awareness.

First, there are certain dreams which come out of impressions of the past or what you have already stored inside. They are just reminders of what you have stored inside. 

It is always related to a past incident, maybe not from this life, but from any other previous incarnations. These dreams do not have much value, except for the fact that there is data inside. They are a reminder of what you have stored in your hard drive.

Second aspect is that there is a certain desire, for example, if you have a desire to be a Hollywood movie star, that gets manifested in a dream. You may feel that you actually became a star and actually live that life. This is a projection. It means what your deep desire which cannot be fulfilled physically, gets manifested in a dream so it’s gratified. 

While dreaming that experience is real and clear. Yet, it is illusory. But, a karma gets sorted out then and there.

Third is you are actually tapping into the future. That happens when your mind is completely still, your impressions are also still, there is no movement there and your consciousness connects to the mindless state where past, present and future are together. 

That state is a vertical state. When you connect to that state, you are able to move forward and backward in time and that also you may feel as a dream, but it is not a dream. It is actually that you move to a different zone and you see what will happen or what can happen.

Fourth aspect is that you are actually completely still. Body is still, mind is still, there is no projection happening, and everything is peaceful. That time a part of the soul exits and goes to the astral plane and interacts with people of the past or present and also share the information and collect the information.

 Sometimes it’s visual, which means you can see, or sometimes it’s a feeling. It operates both ways, then it comes back, then if you remember, when you wake up you may feel like you were dreaming.

What you can interpret from a dream, of course if it is past life, it is just information. It’s a dream from the past. Something happened in the past, its impression is stored inside, and you are manifesting that as a dream now. 

That is basically information. If you can use that information, then it’s good. But normally it is not easy to interpret, it’s not always black and white, it is much more complex.

 

Q: Because I had some situations where I had a dream and later it happened.

A: That’s probably not a dream. That’s a state where you are tapping into the zone where the past, present and future are one. We live a horizontal life. We live from one o’clock, to two o’clock, to three o’clock… going horizontally. 

In vertical plane everything is simultaneous, there’s no past, present or future. That is why we talk about our spine a lot, so that you operate in a vertical plane. Vertical plane does not happen in daily life because we move with time, horizontally. Vertical is very important. 

When your conscious mind is sleeping, you go vertically, then you can catch what is going to happen. It is not difficult, you can train yourself to do that by connecting to your spine consciously. At the time of leaving the body, you need to be connected to a real master. This is the best thing. 

Because if you practice it on your own, your body is empty and you are not available… like if a house is open, somebody else will stay. That should not happen. Your body should be occupied, it should be kept clean and when somebody is watching it over, at that time you can go and come back. 

You will know only what you need to know. It’s not like our daily life, you go to the supermarket, following an ad that you buy two and get one free. Even if you don’t want it, you will buy it, because it’s tempting. 

In the real world it’s not like that. What you need to know, only that will be saved in the system or you will remember. What you don’t need will be immediately trashed. You will not remember when you come back.

SURRENDER

Q: Could you tell us about surrender, I know you talked about it a lot, but in everyday life, how to surrender to the guidance of the higher force?

A: In daily life, do not focus on surrender. Focus on raising your awareness. I’ll tell you one example. We think we are big, we have a big ego or a strong notion that we are very important. The Milky Way, the Sun and the planets around itself is small. The Earth is much smaller than the Saturn. 

Likewise there is a huge universe out there. The stars that we see are millions of miles away. When you look at the whole universe, the Earth is like an atom. Inside this planet, inside this atom, we have about seven billion people, and a few billion other beings, a lot of water an a little bit of land. 

How small we are in the whole system, but our ego is bigger than the universe! We do not understand that everything is changing, we are visiting here for some time, let’s say fifty, sixty, eighty hundred years… Everything is so important, like, “I’m a very important person, if do not exist, everybody else will be sad.“ It is not true, maybe they will be happy! HA, HA. 

This is the awareness we have to develop. When humility happens, because we are aware that we are a small thing after all, and the only thing to do on the Earth is: be good, do good. Nothing else. Don’t do anything else. Just be good and do good, surrender automatically happens. 

We are clear about our insignificance, a small life and a small being, looking from outside we are tinier than even an ant, and we are walking around with all this ego, concepts, trapped emotions, insecurities, fears and hatreds. When you are clear about it, then you feel very mild, very nice. 

We don’t have much burden. Weight will disappear from your shoulders. Then the whole dimension changes. And you can do much more than what you could do when you think you are doing it. There is a big difference between “I do” and “It’s happening”. 

There is a clear non-understanding when you think you are doing it. You think you are doing it. But you are not doing your heartbeat, digestion, circulation or brain activity. We have no control of what thought will happen. What are we actually doing?

And we always say that we love, we are kind, we do charity so on and so forth. Do we know what love is? We always love with conditions. If you do this to me, I love you. If you give me a million dollars, I love you, otherwise I don’t love you. If you behave in a particular way, I will love you, otherwise, I do not love you. 

We put forth thousands of conditions every day for us to love the beings around us. Whole world transaction is like that. Nobody loves another person because they just like to love. These are all fundamental sheaths possible which alienates you from the truth. You don’t need to be spiritual to recognize that. 

You can just love for the sake of loving. Just smile for the sake of smiling. Others may look at you like, “Are you crazy?“ but it’s ok, “I’m happy and I’m expressing my happiness because I have every right to do that. You are happy because of no reason. Not because of another person, a situation, a time, a place, not because of that. 

You’re happy by yourself. You’re happy by nature. Immediately the world around will change. As I said in the story of “Titanic“, the world depends on you. What you see in the world depends on you. What you see in the world is what you are, not that what the world is. 

You do not see what the world is, the world is far too big. The world is multidimensional. We see the world as per our conditioning. You see the world as per you. So what exactly you are – matters a lot, then the world that you see also changes.

 

A STORY – King and liberation

There was a great king, who reigned a huge kingdom in which everything was ok. All were happy. This king had a deep desire to know about karma. Some great masters, great saints came to him, he honored them, respected them and he gave them food, treated them well, and made them comfortable, then he said, “I want to ask you a question. 

Can you please explain what karma is?“ Like in a Tom&Jerry cartoon, as one of the cartoon character often disappears; Like that, all the saints disappeared without answering the question,

HA, HA. When the question was asked, nobody was there. They ran away. The king was disappointed because they didn’t answer his question.
Later on, another set of saints came, Navanath Sadhus. He treated them well, gave them good food, made them comfortable, then he asked them,” If I ask you a question, will you run away?” They said, ”No, we won’t run away.” 

The king asked, ”What is karma?” They said, ”We cannot answer this question, because one lifetime is not enough to explain karma. It is a very complex subject and it takes lifetimes to explain. But we will teach you kriya. Kriya are techniques of partially visualization and partially breath. Breath is actually the only thing which you can regulate. 

You cannot regulate heartbeat, digestion, circulation, nothing else you can regulate in the system, only breath. So breath plus visualization, joined together in a particular mode, cuts across karma and liberates you.“ And they taught the king Kriya. In short, why a particular thing happens, we cannot say. 

We can of course find the root of everything if you dig deeper, but it’s a waste of time. Everything has a reason. Everything has a root. No tree is up there without the root. The root cannot be seen but it’s there. Like that, everything happening in our life, including what we are talking now, including your meeting me today, has a reason. 

And sometimes there is a very deep reason. We may have spoken in many lifetimes before, too. We might have met many times before but in this body we do not understand that. But at some point in time it will click, “Hey, come on! I know this connection.“ Then everything falls in place, but only if it has to.

What I mean to say is that all of us are related, one way or the other, but we do not see it. We do not feel it sometimes. Likewise, we are connected to the entire universe, one way or the other. The scriptures say there is a cycle. There are four eras i.e. yugas, after the four yugas again the cycle starts. 

Maybe the souls can come back and take birth and experience a different cycle. Each cycle of birth and death has carried impressions. If you are born thousand times before, a micro aspect of these thousand incarnations are sitting in the current system. There is nothing coincidental. 

There is life which is linked by various masters, various systems. What we need to do is that how fast we can connect to that consciousness. Lower frequency is very easy, i.e. anger, hatred, jealousy, anxiety, fear, insecurity, very easy. This is in the lower because it is operating in the lower frequency. 

But when we are connecting to the higher frequency, then you see what you normally see in that frequency, like you are on the 20th floor, you can see much more of the city from there then from the 1st floor. It’s similar… Value this moment. Value this hour. Be happy. Be grateful. Automatically surrender happens.

Recorded and transcribed by Biljana Vozarevic