<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: I would like to ask you about spiritual maturity and the importance of staying present within ourselves and realising how important it is to obtain spiritual fidelity.<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the Indian tradition, time is split into four parts and these four eras (yugs) are put together as one group. And the group repeats itself in time. Everybody is in the aspect of God all the time. So they have all the powers that you can have as a master of yourself, mind is absent, the duration is as you like, when you want to take a birth or leave it\u2019s up to you. Complete flexibility, complete freedom. <\/p>\n It is the time when you are not worried about past, present or the future, you are always in perpetual consciousness. And the operating platform is unconditional love. <\/p>\n There is no expectation, just love for the sake of love. In this one era, as one point of the whole structure, there is very low population. And there will be perfect harmony. There is no evil at all. This is one aspect. So we are going there now.<\/p>\n The second era is Treta yug<\/strong>, 1.4 million years. It is the time when Lord Rama, Hanumanji, all those people lived. This is the time when duality appeared. Good and evil were in different locations. A lot of powers were achieved, the life span was 10,000 years (our life span is 100 years, theirs was 10,000). <\/p>\n Each person had the potential to connect to God directly, or had that state, but they also had the potential to be in the negative. The negative means greed i.e. \u201cI want to possess everything. I want to own.\u201c The other side was,\u201cEverything is mine, I don\u2019t want anything.\u201c That was the level of difference.<\/p>\n The third era is Dwapara yug<\/strong>, 800,000 years. It is the time of Lord Krishna. There you could see good and evil in the same family. <\/p>\n So in the first era i.e. Golden age, all people were in the consciousness of Shiva. They knew everything. They were completely settled. There was no evil, there was no negativity, they were all revelling in the consciousness of Shiva. Shiva is not a man, it\u2019s consciousness.<\/p>\n Then in the next era, many saints were meditating and they did not know the complete picture. What it is like to be in the consciousness of Shiva. In this era, there is a student and the master. Earlier, there was neither a student, nor a master. <\/p>\n All were masters. When a student and a master happened, the student had to achieve the state of the master or the state of Shiva<\/a>. So they were meditating, they were connecting, they were doing various things, but they were not getting the final.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n At that time, in the Himalayas, appeared one man who was completely naked, with matted hair, who held a spear in his hand and was dancing away. He was not sitting and meditating, but just singing and dancing. Many people said he was mad. He was not doing anything. But a few people realised he could be powerful. Some people approached him to see who he was. He drove them away,\u201cGo away, don\u2019t come near me!\u201c Many people ran away because they didn\u2019t want to be with a mad man. But a few people decided,\u201c How can this man be happy like this?\u201c Because we are all only happy conditionally. We cannot be perpetually happy. <\/p>\n So somebody who was perpetually happy meant there was something in him.<\/strong> And one thing was that he never stayed in the one place. While most people are happy in one place with some people, some situation or time, this man was not worried about place, people, situations or time. <\/p>\n He was completely free. This total freedom was very difficult to understand. They still followed him wherever he went. He would sometimes say,\u201cCome on, sit down. Connect to your spine,\u201c then he would go away. He was not there to teach them all the time. Then it went on for some time, but these people who followed started becoming powerful. <\/p>\n They started transcending because they started imitating him (looked up to him as a model example). How did they achieve the awareness? Just because their mind was focused on him. They were thinking about him, they were following him. It didn\u2019t matter what happened outside. Their mind was completely occupied with that power, so it started going through them.<\/p>\n See, all of you are sitting here looking at me. But the minds of some of you are elsewhere. So are you with me or are you elsewhere? (Laughter) On the other hand, some people are in other countries, but their mind is still with me. So are they with me or are they elsewhere? This was the equation. <\/p>\n The mind of these people who followed him was totally occupied with him, so they also started having the same experiences e.g. they were not attached to a space, a person, a time. They became free eternally. They started calling him Shiva. It means liberation.<\/strong> <\/p>\n They started calling him Shiva, Shiva is liberation, so they started feeling liberated by connecting to that. What did this person actually deliver to the world? <\/p>\n The biggest gift any guru can give to any disciple \u2013 freedom. This is the biggest gift any master can give to any disciple and that is freedom even from himself i.e. freedom from people, freedom from time, freedom from space, freedom from every concept. This is freedom.<\/strong><\/p>\n So this master became Shiva in the minds of people, and that is the picture that we see as Shiva, Kailas and other things. Can anybody fall in love with that man? Who is not in one place, who is not wearing any garments, who is not presentable in that way, and completely unpredictable, like the wind. But it happened. (Laughter) Why? <\/p>\n Because it was too difficult for people to understand him, unless a person is of that nature, level of evolution can connect to only that person who is the embodiment of freedom. Otherwise we talk about freedom, but we do not know what freedom is. But a person who is actually operating only in freedom is not easy to understand. <\/p>\n So there has to be somebody in the middle. Many of the saints approached or meditated on the god of love to make this man\u2019s heart melt. Environment has a lot of value. For example, if you are in the middle of the desert, you do not feel love for anything. There is a hot sun, we would probably think of water. <\/p>\n On the contrary if it is a beautiful garden, fragrance, so many things are favourable, then love blossoms in you. So they created that kind of atmosphere around the place where he was meditating. This person had no mind outside of him. Everything was inside. He was not aware of anything that happened outside. <\/p>\n He was not even aware of his body, nor was he interested to know what was going on around. In that state, the compelling call from outside by the fragrance, music, sound, brought him out. He didn\u2019t have to open his eyes to see what was going on outside. He could see everything from his third eye. Whatever was around became ash. <\/p>\n Because it was too powerful. It was like a burning fire inside. When third eye was open, the whole fire came out and destroyed everything like an atomic bomb. Including the god of love. Finished. (Laughter) What happened then? It was a worse situation than before. <\/p>\n The saints wanted this person to deliver knowledge to the people in the world but eventually what happened? Even the god of love was destroyed. They concluded one could not play with him. How do you get at somebody? Everybody has some weakness, right? They decided to find the weakness of this person. <\/p>\n But he did not seem to have any weakness. This was the problem. \u201cSome people have many weaknesses, some people seem to have no weaknesses. There should be something.\u201c So they tried to understand what his weakness was. Then they found out: his weakness was devotion. If somebody became too devoted to him, the bhakti, devotion melted him. He became helpless.<\/p>\n One woman decided to do that. She sat on the Dolma Pass, and meditated on Shiva, for centuries on. Shiva ignored her because it could have been infatuation. Somebody said,\u201cOk, he is a great master,\u201c and she may have thought,\u201cOk, let me try him.\u201c Shiva wanted to be very sure that this woman was clear in what she wanted. <\/p>\n What does a person usually get attracted to? Good looks, good money, good materials, nice life. These are the things people usually get attracted to. Shiva had nothing. First of all he was naked, and had a snake around him, a poisonous snake. He had ash on his body. <\/p>\n The ash has two meanings: one is complete renunciation i.e. you are actually renunciating everything. The other meaning is when everything burns down it becomes ash. Another aspect of ash is no insect will bite you \ud83d\ude42 And he didn\u2019t take bath very often (laughter) so naturally, he didn\u2019t brush his teeth either, so how could somebody fall in love with him? Shiva tested her. <\/p>\n He came in disguise to her as a saint. He asked a question,\u201cWhy are you meditating on him? I know him quite well, I have seen him many times. He does not even have a nice smell around him. He has neither money nor house. He has nothing which is probably attractive to any woman as beautiful as you are.<\/p>\n \u201c But she became very angry,\u201cIf one more time you talk badly about my object of worship, I\u2019ll become violent. Get out of this place!\u201c Then Shiva appeared and said,\u201cWhat can I do for you?\u201c She said,\u201cI want you.\u201c He melted, right? It was not possible to create an environment around him and trap him. <\/p>\n But with pure devotion and 100% conviction, he melted. Job done. (Laughter) He agreed to marry, and she said,\u201cOne condition. We should have a proper marriage. When you come for marriage, you should be really handsome.\u201c He agreed. He came for the wedding, but he had a large army with him. <\/p>\n Normally Shiva has a huge army and they are not very good looking. His vehicle is a bull. Of course Shiva came looking handsome and everybody was dazzled by his beauty. But the people behind him were very scary (laughter). There were all sorts of people. <\/p>\n That was his team, his army. They got married and his vehicle, the bull, was not actually a bull, but he chose the form of a bull so that nobody would fall in love with him. He did not want any deviation in his worship of Shiva. This is why. He said that nothing ever should distract him. He and Shiva. This connection should never be distracted. <\/p>\n That is why he chose the form of a bull. The plan of the saints worked. The marriage happened. From then onwards, all the knowledge, most of the knowledge which is guiding people today is conversation between Shiva and his wife.<\/p>\n If you understand this story well, you see how the tradition began. The tradition began from complete pathlessness. There is no path you can latch onto. What happens then? You\u2019ll be totally liberated. 100% freedom.<\/strong> <\/p>\n Then Shiva gave various methods to reach that 100% freedom. There are various stories, Shiva sutras, Ishvara yoga, even Kashmir sutras, Guru Gita … all these things are Shiva talking to his wife and this is all coming to the world. <\/p>\n I gave the whole picture. If you know how this derived, you will understand it better. If you understood the whole message, what is the core of the whole teaching?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Be natural. Be you. This is what Shiva tells people. Be yourself. Don\u2019t try to be somebody else. Then you\u2019ll have to put on a mask. You are not other people. You are not another person. If you choose to be yourself, you are very powerful.<\/strong> <\/p>\n I guarantee you 90% of the time you will say,\u201cI am not natural.\u201c Otherwise you will fake it. This is number one. Number two, do you accept yourself<\/strong>? 90% of the time we don\u2019t accept ourselves. Third is, do we resist the situation around us?<\/strong> 90% of the time we resist everything around us including our clothes. We just adjust to the things. <\/p>\n This is creating conflict. Where is this conflict sitting? Why is this happening? Why? Mind is the answer. We decide we should be like this. We decide this is how it should be. We ignore what we are when we start thinking like that. Because we take the external information or stimuli and say,\u201cI want to be like that\u201c or \u201cI want to be there,\u201c then it\u2019s a conflict. It\u2019s a struggle between what you are and what you want to be.<\/p>\n Another thing is nature is natural. Nature is spontaneous. When you are spontaneous, you are one with nature. We are growing older each day. We are not growing younger. It is nature. <\/p>\n We do not have a choice. If you understand yourself, you understand the whole of creation. This is what Shiva represented. The whole consciousness represented inside. You are the whole consciousness<\/a>. <\/p>\n![\"Blessing](\"https:\/\/mohanji.org\/blogs\/satsangs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/mohanji-blessing-a-child.jpg\")
<\/a>
A: How many of you have heard of Shiva? I\u2019ll explain the concept of Shiva.<\/p>\nTHE CONCEPT OF SHIVA<\/h4>\n
The first era of the group is the Golden age<\/strong>, 1.7 billion years. At that time there is no confusion, all people are great masters. There is neither a disciple nor a master. <\/p>\n
The fourth is Kali yug<\/strong>, 400,000 years. It is our time. Good and evil are in the same person. The evil is inertia, passivity, not caring, not doing enough for other people, selfishness, this is what everybody carries.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/figure>\n
Do you want more stories? Story time \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n