LIKE THE FLOWER
There is no separation in this entire universe. Here we are talking of our universe, for there are millions and billions of universes. Every atom is connected to each other. You splash around here on this shore, and the effect of that will be felt on the other shore. Everything is totally connected.
When man betters himself through meditational practices, he is not only benefitting himself, but he is also benefitting all that which is connected to him. It is like the flower I always talk about. It is the nature of the flower to be beautiful, but that is not the only thing the flower does as it also enhances the beauty of the garden. That is the purpose of life. That is the service we perform for mankind: by improving ourselves, by becoming more integrated beings, for only when we are integrated could we function in totality, could we function holistically, could we function as human beings.
HUMANNESS
I do not teach of any religion. If you are a Christian, I would like you to become a better Christian. If you are a Hindu, become a better Hindu. If you are a Buddhist, become a better Buddhist. Theology has nothing to do with it.
What I am teaching is humanness is how to be a human. We think we are human – we are not human, not totally human. For all the lusts and greed that are awake within us is not the characteristics of humanity. From animal to man to godman, that is the path; although we use these words for the sake of explanation, for all three aspects are one. In everything, the trinity is there.
When we really become human, then how do we judge if we are human or not – really human. How do we judge that? There are specific criteria: firstly, how integrated we feel; secondly, how smooth and harmonious our lives are; and thirdly and most importantly, how much we can love.
As Dante has said, “The greater the man, the greater his love.”
Do not judge. It is better to see, rather than judge. Observe how much a man or a woman can love. How deeply, how selflessly he can love without any dependency, without any need to love, but just to love for the sake of love. For in that experience of loving for the sake of loving, you are living the living God; for that very love, selflessly poured out from you, expressed from you, like the flower expressing its fragrance, is none else but Divinity.
LOVE IS DIVINE
Love is Divine. Love is Divinity itself. For that Divinity, that neutral force is so abstract that the human mind, or the soul, could never conceive of it. It is abstract. So, we need something concrete, and in the very concreteness of daily life, we see the abstract, we perceive the abstract.
With every morsel of food that you put in your mouth, you know that it is the Divinity in it that is nourishing you. With every breath, you breathe, you know it is Divinity, through the forces of prana, that is giving you life force. For there is only life, there is no death. There is only life. For if the Manifestor is eternal, then its manifestation is eternal too. And that which is eternal is deathless. It is beginless and endless. So, you see the capacity man has?
Within the depths of ourselves resides this Force and this Force does not only reside in our depths, but it resides also in a grosser form in the body and in the soul, but it is in a grosser form. So, if we allow ourselves to penetrate ourselves, to dive within ourselves and bring forth greater, subtler, finer energies to ourselves, and allow it to permeate the mind and the body, then the mind finds greater peace, quietude, rest.
Then the mind is not needed anymore. The mind is not needed for survival. The soul is not needed for survival. It just is. For you are now beyond the mind. You are beyond the mind. You use the mind as an instrument, and when you use the mind as an instrument, you are the master of the mind, master of the soul and not a slave of it. To achieve this mastery, the easiest and the simplest way is meditation and spiritual practices that are designed for individual needs, for no two people are alike. Each and every one of us is unique. Each and everyone is at a different stage of evolution. The guru would have to prescribe, like a doctor would, the proper medicine for the particular kind of illness.
We are all sick. We all require healing, and healing is wholeness and we have to incorporate that Divinity in our daily actions, at first with effort and then it becomes spontaneous. Like when a child learns to play the piano, it will play with one finger: ping, ping, ping. Afterwards when it has mastered the keyboard it will just play any symphony that it has mastered without even attaching its full concentration or consciousness to it. Because its fingers and the keyboard form part and parcel of the one consciousness, so no effort is required. It becomes a spontaneous, creative, automatic process. That is the use of the soul. If the window is dirtied, we clean the window and allow the Light to shine through.
Everything is a trinity. Within the soul itself, which is the mind, there are three aspects. You have the conscious mind, you have the subconscious mind, and then you have the superconscious mind. This can also be termed with another set of three: tamas, rajas, and sattva. Tamas is inertia; rajas is the activating Force; and sattva is the purity, the Light.
RELEASE IMPRESSIONS
Within the various layers of the subconscious mind lies all the impressions that you have gained through all these lifetimes. They require to be expressed, and without expressing them, they would remain there and would express themselves in some way or the other. It could manifest in so many types of organic diseases, perhaps, or mental derangement, depending on the power of the impressions that are there.
Dreams release a lot of those impressions. Do you have nightmares? Have more, and get rid of the negative, hurtful impressions. If you had to live that dream state of the nightmare in the waking state, life would become a hell. Man has been built with all these release valves. But this will take time to get rid of these millions of experiences. You don’t want to wait another two million years to become happy.
We want that happiness, we want that joy, in this lifetime. That is why meditation and the power of Grace dissolves all those impressions in the mind, in the soul. All the cluttering are dissolved and when they are dissolved, the more scope you give for that spiritual Self, that spiritual Light to shine through. It is so forceful, so powerful that it overrides, overcomes, dissolves, all those impressions.
This is so well portrayed in so many mythologies. For example, we could use the Hindu mythology of Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the preserver and Shiva, the dissolver. It is all there in the mind – all there in the soul. Where you have created, by your thoughts and actions, those impressions. It has its life span, and it could live for a very, very long time. It is preserved. Then Shiva, the dissolver, comes along, that spiritual force inside comes along and wipes away the dirt, dissolves the dirt.
That is the only way where society can be improved. Not collectively, but individually, for every individual is a unit and a collection of units forms society. That is how the standard of life and living, the value of life, could assume a different proportion. That is how life can really be experienced in its true real form, in its true Divine form and not in the form of that little knotted up ego.
Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1980 – 21