Time with Mohanji, Part 2

Interview with Jolita Kelias

AMMUCARE

J: When we talk about selfless service, you created a beautiful organisation called “Ammucare Charitable Trust (ACT)”, per your daughter Ammu who died in 2000, at the age of almost 5. Now it is spreading worldwide where you are encouraging people to do selfless service. You give blanket distributions, you give food… I know you do a lot in India.

M: Ammucare was founded in 2003. That time, my idea was to have a charity organisation where there are no compulsory payments, and no membership fees. So when I conveyed this message to a few people who mattered, who could possibly put these together, they did not want to support me. They asked, “Where would you get the money? Who will pay you? How will you make the money?” I said, “I have an idea.” We could do charity events and programmes in various cities.” I also suggested that , as there are so many dying performing art forms, many people do not know they exist, they do not care, even the government could not help much. What I said was, “Why don’t we rejuvenate them, take them to various countries, perform them, support the people who are involved i.e. the artists, document it for the sake of universities, at the same time create money for charity? Let’s showcase them, let’s take them out into the open… or probable fusion programmes with other similar art forms.” First of all it would help preserve a dying art form, it will also document it on CDs, DVDs, etc. At the same time we will raise the awareness to charity at all these places and we tell people what we do here, in this town. It is not that we do something far away, collect money and then disappear. It will not work. This was my idea, and I said we would do it this way. Then people came to me and asked, “Do we have a team to do this? Do you know which art forms are dying?” I said I had some idea, but I needed a team. For this kind of things you need a good team to perform, to organise and get this up there. Finally, after a lot of debate from 2001 to 2003, Ammucare started in 2003. We communicated through the internet, we had a group called “Mohan’s Friends”, discussing some nonsense all the time through the group. We set up an organisation and I said we would do meaningful charity. This is the platform, if you want to do meaningful charity, you can come on board and perform. It will be transparent, it will be audited and filed with government. So that you can check everything till the root. At first there was a child aged 5, who had a whole in the heart, and her parents didn’t have the money to pay the surgery. So we arranged that surgery.

J: Was it in India?
M: Yes, in India, in Delhi. This was the first event. Then one day while I was reading a newspaper, I came to know that there were so many people dying, especially elderly people, in the north parts of India in winter. I investigated why it was happening so. Then I realised that they were all sleeping outside in the open and it was freezing winter. That is why they do not survive. So we decided to distribute the blankets. We started blanket distribution event in India. A lot of things happened like that, and then we founded ACT Foundation in Dubai with a group of people who are working but they have charity in mind. They did a lot of work through that as well. Likewise charity activities are spreading. Now when I started conducting meditations and seva this is also service for me, I tell people if you do want to do something for me, take care of the poor people, take care of the birds, the animals, then you are serving the world. When you serve the world, I am served, because this is what I am trying to do. This is how Ammucare evolved and our meditations evolved. People who are coming together to me or to our meditations, are the people with an ambition to do something for the world, and also to evolve themselves higher through increased awareness.

J: Evolvement is shedding the skin and getting a new one?
M: Evolvement is basically like growing from 1st standard to 2nd standard, 3rd standard… to 10th standard… like that.

J: Is there any end to that?
M: It is not related only to this life. We have been continuously evolving now and again. Even in psychology and psychiatry they do past life regression so there are proofs that we had many lives and we will probably have lives in the future. One link which connects all these lives is increase in awareness that never gets diminished. When new body is taken, new shape, form, name, education, etc. happen. But awareness remains the same, that is why we see distinct people in distinct societies. People have distinct character, children have distinct character. Even if they are born to particular parents, they express a completely different trait from their parents. So not each parent of Buddha is enlightened, are they? 🙂 But the son got enlightened. His eligibility or his level of evolution was different from that of the parents.

INCARNATION

J: But you know, Mohanji, there are still many many people who do not believe in incarnation. They would argue it, they would debate it, or they would say it is nonsense, even I know a person who, whenever I talk about spirituality or mention incarnation, we immediately stop communicating because he just can’t handle that subject. Now when you are talking about reincarnation, there are a lot of people who agree with that and are familiar with it, but there would be also people who would say, “Prove it!”
M: That is exactly why I said there are regression therapies now which prove your past lives. How can you prove that you have a brain? I do not see it. But you do have a brain which operates, right? Like that, there are so many things which we cannot see, which we cannot perceive.
I’ll tell you another thing. The dogs and cats can hear the sounds which we cannot hear. But we cannot hear it, we need certain equipment to prove it. Likewise, how does distinct character happen in people? If there is only one birth and one death, where did you come from? Where are you going to? There are all the answers given by various saints in the past. But depending on your level of awareness, depending on your level of understanding, we may take it or we may leave it.

J: Is there an end to incarnation?
M: Yes. Complete dissolution. You have no more desires, nothing to come back for.

J: And you don’t come back?
M: Absolutely.

J: Where do we go then?
M: It depends. Once you finish your work on earth, which means there is nothing more to achieve from this earth, you dissolve yourself into another dimension. Like, we call life on earth a karmic life. There is definite duration between birth and death, and there is a definite agenda which we fulfill with this birth, new desires, new things to fulfill, and then we evolve further and then we reach a stage where everything is done. There’s nothing more to do. Then the shift happens from karma to dharma. Dharma is a kind of duty, or things done for a higher purpose, like the sun. The sun rises, the sun gives nourishment, and the sun sets, doesn’t it? It does not wait for anybody. If you consider the sun which nourishes the Earth, it flows. Just like that your life will flow. So you would probably exist in another zone without a physical body and doing another purpose, which you wanted to do or which you are asked to do from a higher entity, or you just dissolve into the supreme consciousness which you can call Father, Allah or Parabrahma.

SURRENDER

J: When you are talking about all the flow, are you talking about full surrender?
M: Surrender is a spontaneous thing when you have deep faith, you automatically surrender, but the word meaning does not signify the effect of it. We can say ‘surrender’, but according to me, when you surrender your desire at the feet of your guru or God, it should leave you. It should not stay inside again. If a desire stays within and you say ‘I surrender’, it has not gone. You have not surrendered it. Actual surrender should be an eradication. Because you are trusting the desire with somebody else, with an entity outside of you, or your existence, or you can call it any god. If it has not come out of you, nothing has happened, you are still the same, so it is just a word. When you really surrender a desire or a pain at the feet of the masters, or at the feet of god, if it goes away from you, excellent. Then you have done the job.

J: So with surrender, another thing happens, effortless living?
M: Yes.

J: You call it spontaneous living.
M: Yes. Because we are not the doer. Things are happening through us. If we are the doer, doing everything, who is beating our heart? Who is making the cells grow and die and replace them? How is everything happening in the most synchronised way?

J: So it’s like being fully present in every second of your life.
M: Yes, being aware of it.

J: It is not an easy task, not everybody can do it. If we can do it then not for long, maybe a minute, five, ten… Maybe in a certain environment we can do it for a day or two, but once you go back into your normal life, you can make a living, go back to your family, have food and all kinds of thing, you somehow slip into the world of material world of living.
M: This is a constant struggle. Everybody goes through it. But understand one thing. Whichever plane you are operating in… Like I operate in many planes. I operate in commercial world, I operate as a husband, father, I operate as a spiritual person, I operate in the charity field, but if you look at the whole perspective of all the operation that I do, it’s continuous, there is no any barrier, or any kind of shifting stances, you do not shift stances, perpetual awareness has to be cultivated, it’s over a period of time. For example, you think about or you have hundreds of thoughts coming in your mind. They are rushing, rushing, trying to enter the space at the same time and you are in a kind of stress because of the thought process. Just for a moment, stay back and watch your thought process. Let it happen. Just like a loving mother watches her children playing, without interfering, without censoring, without criticising, without judging, without appreciating, just watch. Then, what happens when you watch somebody for a long time? They become conscious, don’t they? Then the number of thoughts starts decreasing. The thoughts will start having space between them. This space is very important in our life. Because we are usually afraid of that space. Human beings are like that. That is why we try to fill it with the internet or something. This is exactly the space which we try to avoid all the time.

J: The space within, the space of being alone?
M: Yes. We are afraid to be alone so we are trying to get into a relationship and we sometimes make a mess out of it. Otherwise we try to fill that space with alcohol, with activity, so that we are always occupied. When you watch, observe, then the gap slowly, slowly increases. As the gap increases, you start falling in love with the gap. This is a continuous process, don’t expect that to happen in one day. It may take a year or two, have patience. We need to have patience and just keep observing, go through the process and let there be a gap. Once you go deeply within this gap, the push of the thoughts increases to a great extent. As the gap increases, you will be operating perfectly well in this world. But you are not pushed by the thoughts. You are not pushed by the senses, you are not pushed by the mind. What does this gap replace? Mental activity. Lack of thoughts is a lack of mental activity. When you are not dependent on mental activity, when you are not dependent on mind a lot, what happens is you have a space which is beautiful and it’s your own. It’s a clean space. And you start falling in love with that clean space. That space is your equilibrium, your power, your strength. Then your subtlety starts growing. You start feeling subtler and subtler. Because you are not filled with thoughts just like waves. You will be the deep ocean where you feel fully tranquil and you feel good. But at the same time you are not avoiding any of the daily activities. You are operating but you are not pressed for anything. You do not take ownership for things i.e. “Things are happening through me,” this is fine. Also, you will not harbour guilt, fear or anxiety. Because, you don’t know whether you will be alive the next day. This is your day.

J: Does it mean that desire cannot live?
M: Desire cannot happen. When you work objectively you do not create any further desires. You tackle the existing desires without creating further ones. Then it makes you lighter and lighter, and it helps your liberation.

J: Can you do it in one life?
M: Yes, you can. You need application. You need to try. Keep trying. Don’t give up halfway. The power of mind is very strong. When you progress a little further, mind will give you something else to play on. So you take a detour. From a detour it’s difficult to come back. Likewise, after a few detours, you will drop it. Because you will say, “This is not working. It’s not going to work for me. Maybe it is working for Mohanji.” Like that, you start blaming a system, blaming a person…or blaming yourself.

J: Is it better to do on our own or to have a guru or a master?
M: Your primary guru is your own soul and soul is silence. The soul is like petrol of your car. It will never tell you which destination it prefers. It’s never told you where to go but it has always been aiding to your journey. The soul has always been your companion, your primary guru. The moment you start embracing silence, you start knowing the vibrations of your soul.

J: When the student is ready, teacher appears.
M: Yes. Only when the student is ready, the teacher is useful 🙂 Imagine you are sitting in the third class. If the teacher who teaches in the tenth class appears, how can a third class student use him? Only when the student is eligible. You can’t jump, because you created that agenda for yourself. There are experiences from the third one to the tenth one. Different experiences, different flavours that you chose to enjoy, and you cannot escape them. Escaping them means only postponing them. In case you try to escape them and make a jump, what are you doing? Only postponing it to another date. That is not going out of your system, is it? So better to go through the system, enjoy it, finish it and move further. I always recommend, complete something and move further. Do not leave lose ends.

J: Though it may be painful, challenging…?
M: Pain is in the mind, only in the conscious mind. The same pain does not exist in the deep sleep. Understand that you are one third of an entity in your waking conscious mind. You have another state, dream state. A part of you is highly operational at that state. Third, there is a deep sleep state which is like death. You lose all your identities, you don’t know whether you are a man or a woman, you don’t know time or space, you care about nothing, you sleep. Only when you wake up you realise, “Oh, I slept.” So if you consider yourself only in the waking state you only consider your one third state. What about the other two thirds? If you do not consider the other two thirds as well, then deficiency happens. You have to accept or understand yourself in the three states. That is why the awareness in 360 degrees is important. Not in meditations, but in real life. 360 degrees is an important factor, because that is what you are, and we consider only one third, so there is deficiency all the time, and with that deficiency we try to move on and compare with another person. Isn’t it foolishness? If we compare one person’s 360 degrees with another person’s 360 degrees, it’s a good idea, because you are total, comparing totality with totality and you cannot see any difference. But when we compare one third of a person with one third of another person, we see with deficiency, and with such deficiency we judge people. Where is the deficiency? In our judgement, in our mind.

EGO

J: In other words, when we judge somebody, we automatically try to impose our values and our opinions on another person?
M: We consider ourselves as the perfect being in the world. We like to justify our mistakes, and we say we are the perfect person in the world, everybody else is wrong. This is what we are, that is why there are conflicts in the world. The difference in opinion is good because it provokes thoughts. But when it becomes an ego war, it only breeds negativity. It is anti-creation. When arguments are happening, they do not become creative every time. They sometimes demoralise the whole event. Likewise, everybody has two opinions of everything.

J: But ego can be very strong.
M: Ego can be the biggest wall. Ego is the biggest wall between you and god. The highest wall between you and god is ego, because man minus ego is god.

J: How is ego being created? What makes ego?
M: Ego is created for the sake of identification for a limited existence e.g. Jolita. You need to have an identity. If they ask you, “Who are you?” If you say, “I’m not sure who I am,” then there is a problem. So you say, “My name is …” This ego element is created to give you that identification.” But when it grows, it explodes, ha, ha. What happens? People stay away from you. When everything is in the right quantity, it has value. But if things go overboard, it’s a nuisance, it’s a problem.

J: How do you handle a person with a huge ego?
M: If I don’t have to handle that person, I’ll avoid them, ha, ha. It’s very simple. A person who has a bloated ego, is a problem in the whole society. It’s not only for me. But if I have to interact with them, the best way to handle a person with a bloated ego is to allow him to have a bloated ego. Better not to touch it.

J: Don’t you try to scold a person?
M: Why should I? What is my problem in that? The person likes or has chosen to be that way. Do you know what the antidote for ego is? Helplessness. It’s a hard push. When the ego gets too bloated, something happens in life which makes you completely and totally helpless. Then the balloon gets burst. Because ego gets nullified. Helplessness and ego cannot sit together. When helplessness happens, ego gets nullified. This is exactly what happens to people who have a bloated ego. They have severe problems in life, helplessness takes place, ego gets nullified.

J: But there are people who know that we have huge egos, we want to eliminate it, we want to minimize it, but we don’t know how.
M: Only way to handle ego, anger, all sorts of emotions is by watching, observing as an outsider, as a witness. When you start observing ego or anger as a witness, it starts reducing, just like it happens with the thoughts I talked about. Like a loving mother, watch yourself becoming egoistic. Watch yourself, but don’t identify yourself with that. If you identify yourself with that, you fuel it, you influence it to grow. Be egoistic, but watch. Also when you are angry. Be angry, when you watch yourself becoming angry, it doesn’t hurt you. That moment when you start detaching from each point, you become neutral, you become detached. There is a deep peace within. You’ll be expressing anger for the sake of expressing anger to convey a message to somebody, but you will not be influenced by it. You will not be bound by it. The moment you are free from it, fine, relaxed. Nothing is absolutely good or nothing is absolutely bad, it depends on what you choose.

J: The more I look at myself, the more I observe myself, sometimes I think how I am going to clear it, to replace it with white space. I see habits could be changed or replaced, patterns eliminated, new ones created and sometimes when I see so much I get disappointed, thinking, “Where should I start now?” Sometimes you could get angry with yourself to get to such a love, or you just don’t know how to change yourself.
M: It is not complicated. How do you ever feel that YOU are changing things? Who is this ‘you’ who will change things?
First ask yourself this question. Then say, “Ok, I am like this. I have a lot of pluses, I have a lot of minuses, this is fine. Everybody else is like that. I cannot be different from the whole world. I have my weaknesses, I have my strengths, I accept myself like this.” First war is won.
Second thing is non-resistance. The food that came to you today is the medicine for you. Just understand, “This situation has been created by me. I created it. Ok, no problem.”

J: Like you are taking the full responsibility of your actions in your life?
M: That’s right. Acceptance is important, non-resistance is important. Accept yourself as you are, accept everything as normal, as you created it.

Third, while you are at it, be objective. Do not participate. Never think, “I have to change something.” Can you change something? Consciously you cannot. Because unless you know the root of the cause, you cannot change it. It may disappear for some time, but unless the root is removed from the causal layer, it can sprout any time. What is the best way? Watch yourself. Do not give it nourishment. When nourishment is given, it fades off. What is the nourishment? Thought, word, action. Energy is the nourishment. Energy is released towards a particular thing. When you are more and more objective, when you are more and more in a witness mood, you are more and more liberated. So stop thinking, “I have to change, I have to do this, maybe I am an inch lesser than the other people or maybe I am one inch more than the other people, forget about all this. I am what I am. I am fine.” This is not just faking your mind. This is the truth. Do not try to cheat your mind. You cannot cheat yourself. You have to accept yourself as you are. And some of the thoughts are dirty in a moral context, “Who cares? These are my thoughts.”

J: Can we own thoughts?
M: We cannot own thoughts that way because thoughts appear without your permission. Only after they come, you know they came. But you can watch them. Watch them even if they are dirty or they do not suit your moral standards, because morality is induced on you, but in real life, in karmic life, where is morality? It’s all about experiences. I am not saying kill somebody because there is no morality, that is not the point here. The point is accept yourself as you are and accept the thoughts as well. To work on those thoughts or if you want to make them further into an action mode, it’s up to you. And while the thought is being created, you cannot control it. But you can control corresponding word. And of course, you can control an action. So decide to express love instead. If anger is the thought, you say, ok, anger is my thought, I understand that but I prefer to express love and situation changes.

Turned into blog by Biljana Vozarevic