Satsang with Mohanji in Skopje, Macedonia, May 2014
ALONENESS VS. LONELINESS
Q: I have a big problem. I love to be alone and feel very blessed when I am alone. And I don’t know how I will continue…
A: I understood your question before you spoke. When I was in the first or second class, teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, and I said, ”I want to be alone.”
Then the teacher called my mother and told her, ”This child cannot sit in this class, because other children wrote they wanted to be a doctor, engineer, whatever, but this guy wants to be alone! He is a retarded boy. He may need a special care.”
My mother was confused because the teacher wanted to change my school. Then she spoke to my grandfather. He said, ”Just leave him alone, he will be fine.” You can ask Biba how difficult it is to come in front of people and talk. I’ll avoid it as much as possible. I always prefer being alone.
But there is a big difference between being alone and being lonely. Being lonely is a state of the mind. Being alone and wanting to be alone is a state of elevation. Being happy within yourself means you are moving into the mood of silence inside. You are enjoying the silence inside. At that time it is difficult to bring back the sound.
Q: I am sometimes tired of that silence.
A: The element which becomes tired of silence is the mind. Because silence means death of mind. When you say, ”I am tired,” it is not you, but the mind which is tired of silence. Mind is telling, ”Activity, please!” So if your mind is very active, your mind is much in control, you will go back into an activity.
But if the mind is not in control, your determination for silence is very high, you will destroy the mind further. It means if activity is not given to the mind, mind has no role.
Being alone is a good idea. Because the highest of achievements one can have in one lifetime is silence of mind. Absolute stillness, no desires, no movement of mind.
That is a very high achievement in your lifetime. That means you are in control of your life, you operate without excesses, on absolute clarity. But being lonely will lead you to depression. That is a different thing.
Q: But I am very happy 🙂 When I am alone and when I am with people, I have the same feelings.
A: Be happy in every location and every place. That is exactly the perpetual happiness I am talking about, ”Whatever the situation is, I am fine.” This is a power, this is a good idea.
WHERE TO FIND THE MEANING OF LIFE?
Q: But how to continue? Where to find the meaning of life?
A: Meaning of life? This is exactly the meaning of life. What you are experiencing is the top meaning. Your NOT being victim of your mind is the highest meaning you can have.
We are confusing between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is usually related to senses, eyes, nose, tongue, skin. Happiness is related to constitution. We always have pleasure.
Every sense is after pleasure. Mind is after pleasure. E.g. ”I have an ice-cream now, I am happy.” One day later you would like to have another ice-cream, which means from one object to another, from one place to another and happiness depends on other people.
Then it is even more problematic, if they are unhappy, you will be unhappy. Pleasure is always a momentary thing. This is how life goes. If pleasures are all finished, you will become empty, then mind will say, ”Activity again!”
Who is forced into thinking, forced into talking, forced into action by the mind is called a victim. If that is a situation, you are a slave of the mind. Most of the people have given the remote control of their happiness into other people’s hands.
Then our happiness depends on other people. What do they do? They keep changing channels. What do you get out of it? Frustration. Understand the difference between these two. If pleasure is pushing you, making you feel, ”I am missing something,” mind is trying to get back to its seat.
And mind always tells you to compare, ”Look at the other guy, you are being a fool sitting in this place.” So comparison is one of the strategies of the mind to make you unsettled.
The mind can settle in fears, saying, ”You sit like this, you see everybody is progressing, your friend has bought another car, a house, got married or has children, why are you sitting like this?” So the fears come. Then fears start working on you and you become very restless. This is the second aspect of the mind.
Please understand, if you are on periphery of happiness which is static state, don’t leave the place. You took a lot of time to climb up there. Don’t come back to small pleasure. It is like post-graduation, don’t go back to the tenth class.
Q: But I don’t know where to take the next step in life.
A: There is no next step to make. Stay there. That is the point I am telling, ha, ha. Next step is from the mind. Most people work hard to earn money thinking, ”I’ll enjoy this tomorrow.”
So every time we are postponing our happiness for ‘tomorrow’ and ‘tomorrow’ never comes.
Other people are happy because there is an income anyway. They enjoy. Some people struggle, fight, and build up the life, other people will enjoy it. So enjoyment is today. Enjoyment is now. Right now, here. There is no way you can plant something for tomorrow, and imagine you will have happiness then. No guarantee.
There is a phrase Sukh Prapti, which means ‘attainment of happiness’ never happens. It’s imagination. Be here, now, enjoy now. If tomorrow happens, enjoy tomorrow, too. As the happiness is your birthright, nobody has the right to question it. Enjoy every moment.
Q: But I feel I have to change this experience with other people and I can’t change it because they are in confusion.
A: People are very intelligent, don’t underestimate people. They know what they are looking at. We can never fake. It is actually a big misunderstanding that we can cheat on people.
It doesn’t happen. My concept is that nobody is a fool. They may pretend to be for some reason, that is their problem, but nobody is a fool. If you have transformed inside, they will come to you. That is the only time you have to speak, you don’t have any other responsibility.
Q: That means you have to enjoy?
A: You have to live what you are.
Q:… to enjoy this moment.
A: Yes, that is why we are here for, but you have to LIVE what you are. You will become like a magnet and they will come and ask you, ”How are you so peaceful in all these calamities?
I’m restless. How are you peaceful?” That is the only time you need to talk. If people don’t come to you, you have to live your life. They have to find you. It’s like this. This is how the world is configured. People have the eyes to see, and they will see.
Q: I feel most of the people ignore me, I think they fear of my peace, ha, ha.
A: It’s good, they fear of my peace, they are afraid to come to me as they do not like the stillness of the mind.
They want action, and in reality I am much more active than them! But they are afraid of stillness of the mind. The mind asks for new things. If they do not cater to the mind, they are afraid.
Q: Most of them ask, ”What is happening with him?”
A: That is a good question. I would recommend two things for you. One is, live your truth, whatever other people say.
Second is whenever other people criticise, you just deliver your truth, without expectation. People can say anything they like, but they are not paying your bills. So it is worth living the truth at every point in time. And kindness may be considered as weakness by somebody. This is definitely not our problem. Still be kind. This is worth it.
THE WEIGHT OF THE ANCESTORS
Q: When I meditate, when I try to do something really pure which comes through me, many times it gives totally the opposite, if I have the pure intention, it’s like evil, I don’t know why, I know mind is playing tricks, why should I be evil? Of course I could not do that.
A: I’ll tell you. Most of us carry burden from the past, from the ancestors. We not only inherited the property, we also inherited the emotions. Many times the weight on our shoulders was not created by ourselves, but is inherited from the ancestors, from the lineage, from the country, from the tradition…
We have carried a lot of weight. The weight is always negative, lightness is positive. Whenever we are heavy, we carry unnecessary burden. But unfortunately we don’t know. We can call it donkey’s business, a donkey carries a lot of weight, but it doesn’t understand what it carries.
So we are human beings, but we carry a lot of weight which is inherited, collected and eventually, we do not have our identity, we do not know who we are. This is exactly a blocking factor. It is not your mind which is blocking. It is the concepts and inherited property that you have that is blocking.
I’ll tell you one example. The weight which the ancestors give, all my fathers, brothers and sisters are well educated. They were saying, ”We don’t understand what Mohan does. We don’t understand what he speaks. This will not be of any value to the society.”
This was told to me fifteen years ago. Do you know what they were doing to me? They were selling their concept to me. They were trying to tell me to come back, get involved in studies and get a job… of course I was working, but they were saying that serving the public was not a good idea.
Get a job, earn money, get a house, have family and then die. This is what they were telling me. But today when I see the smile on thousands of people when they see me, I’ve done my job. I’m happy. I am happy that I did not buy anything from them.
My point is, when you go to the supermarket or hypermarket, you can buy only things which you can consume, right? Why do we buy things which we do not need? Ok, we bought it, why do we store it? Distribute, finish it off, move on… you need to be light all the time. It is your birthright. That’s the point.
If you take a decision right now, ”I will not accept junk,“ life changes. I am telling you, make one decision, ”Garbage is not my business, I do not need it.“
So many friends who keep giving you garbage may disappear. We do not understand, we love them, so we keep them, and they keep giving you trash and you sometimes collect it. They will go away because, ”This guy has changed!”
Then some people will criticise you, saying you are insensitive. What is their requirement? To listen to all their crap. Some people may say that you have become completely business-like, or not good to deal with. This is very good, that means you are changing 🙂
CONQUEST OF THE MIND
Do you know what the possible height of success in one human life is? Conquest of the mind. Because this is exact path of raja yoga, the king of yogas, the highest success means zero mind. Empty. Then you are completely in life. Otherwise you are completely in relative life. Yoga chitta vrtti nirodha.
This is the statement which starts Patanjali’s book. Yoga chitta means the substratum, or you can also call it mind, vrtti means ”activity”, nirodha means ”demolishing”. That means if you perform meditation, if you do yoga, activities of the mind will be demolished, destroyed, removed, so the mind becomes still. Mind will refuse to die. Mind will give you all sorts of reasons to stay alive.
Imagine while you are walking along the street, some dogs start following you. If you run, they will run more. Just turn around and look at the dogs, they stop. Mind is like that. The moment you decide to face the mind head on, if you look at the mind into the eyes, mind shivers, you win then. So face your fears. Say, ”Come, I’ll handle you.”
They will come one by one, look at them, do not participate, do not energise. Never be afraid, there is nothing to fear in this world. Fear is a completely useless emotion which is coming out of ignorance. As Jesus said, ”You and your father are already one.“ What is the dividing factor? The mind.
So the decision should be, ”I inherited from my lineage, parents, family, I have collected from the society, I have brought some of my karmas with me.” This is fine. Accept it. There is no difference between you and me. We have the same kind of body that we took at one point in time, and we will give it back at some point in time.
The only difference is in consciousness, that is why I am sitting here and you are sitting there. Understand it is the same consciousness. Small gap is the gap of the mind. There is nothing I can give you which you do not already have. What I am giving you, I am showing you the light.
With the light you can see things better and spirituality is individual journey, nobody can carry you on their shoulder. Never be weak, it is not worth it. We should roar our truth. It is very, very important. Never miss the life. It doesn’t matter which religion, guru or path you follow, all are the same, everything is good.
Just accept what is good for you. Some people feel if we change the track we can be faster, but remember the saying, ”When you change the lanes, that will usually be the slowest.” 🙂
Those who were very restless, understand that mind is playing really, really well. All the restlessness sits in the mind. I saw people shifting, being restless, thinking about food, thinking about wife, girlfriend, a lot of thoughts were coming while meditation was on. 40 minutes of meditation the mind could not stay still!
There is work to do. Don’t be a slave of your mind. Mind belongs to you, you should not belong to the mind. The moment you belong to the mind, the mind will take you on a tour full-time.
Some of you went very, very well deeply inside. I am very happy to see that. They are not victims of the mind. This meditation is particularly important because it is about unhooking. Mind is hooked on various things, time, space, people, since we were born till now, mind has been scattered on many places, and that gives us pain.
When mind is scattered, you are not yourself.
Imagine the materials of your house being in many places. How can you manage your life? Just like that, if mind is not within you, and useful to you, it is totally useless. Peace is your nature. Your nature is happiness. If there is no peace, if there is restlessness, you are not with your nature.
Happiness is your nature, if you do not have happiness, that means you are not with your nature. No person, no situation, no place can guarantee happiness. One thing can guarantee happiness. When mind is still, you are happy.
Mind will give you all sorts of things, when meditation is on, this left leg is aching, this right leg is aching, and it’s itching… mind will give all sorts of things because it doesn’t want to be still. In 24 hours, you will want to go to the toilet exactly at the time of meditation.
Where is the problem? Mind is the problem. Please understand there is work to do and you can win over the mind. This is within your control. Your age, qualification, constitution do not matter. The moment you take a decision, ”I will not surrender to the mind, the mind will surrender to you.“
Don’t be serious, let us joke a little bit 🙂 Because in life you should never be serious. Whether you are serious or not, life goes on. I always look at life as a big joke, because we become very serious about nothing and things change…
Recorded by Zoran Stefanovski
Turned into blog by Biljana Vozarevic