THE TRUE GURU
THE NATURE OF THOUGHTS
No one could ever create a thought. Like the old saying, there is nothing new under the sun. For example, when a poet composes a poem, he is just attuning his mind to a higher level where others have thought these thoughts. Then the poet synthesizes thoughts that have been thought over millions of years, and he creates a poem. The impulse of a thought does not come from the time when you are born. It precedes it by millions of lifetimes. They are always there, and the more one can dive deeper within oneself, the subtler the thoughts one will capture.
The grosser mind is controlled by the sensory inputs, which is the conscious mind. That would combine itself with that which we call memory, and with the combination of the input and the memory, we think that we are thinking. But, really speaking, we are not thinking. You say, “I have grown this flower.” You have not grown the flower. You have only planted the seed, the input. That is all! The seed of the flower drew to itself the various minerals, water, air, sunshine towards itself. Then only did the flower grow. But, what happened to the seed? That is the question. The seed has to die. For the seed to be able to sprout, it has to explode in the ground. That explosion occurs in your mind, and as a bubble from a pond it rises to the surface level, and you consciously recognize it to be a thought.
Meanwhile, that thought could also be distorted. It might arise at a very pure level, but going through the various sublayers of the subconscious mind, the Chitta, it might assume a different form altogether. The subconscious mind does not create the impulse, for the subconscious mind with all its samskaras has all the impulses of the whole universe in it, in its memory box.
To connect itself to all of the thoughts floating around in the universe, this memory box has to go through the same channel from the subconscious to the superconscious level which is connected to everything in the universe because the universe is nothing else but a thought. If there is anything solid in the universe, it is created by a thought because a thought has form.
A person with deep insight can see a thought and that is the principle on which mental telepathy works. You are thinking of a friend and then a minute or so later you hear a knock on the door and the friend is there. Or, you think of a friend, and here the phone rings and that very person says, “Oh, I was just thinking about you.” Therefore, there is a connection, and this connection is there because there is only one mind. It is connected. You are connected to the furthest star in the heavens, so to say. You are connected to everything because this universe is nothing but matter, at places existing in a grosser form, at places existing in a subtler form. Yet, whether it is subtle or gross, it is filled with life force, and life is all pervading.
LIFE KNOWS OF NO DEATH
Life knows of no death. Even a stone has life in it. It has a form of consciousness. A certain consciousness, not in the sense of the human consciousness, but it has the potentiality of the entirety of consciousness. Keep a stone outside for a while or even inside and you will find it changing. It is not only the outer atmosphere that makes the stone change, but the more significant change comes to it because of its molecular construction. For in that stone you will have millions and billions of molecules swirling around. It is a universe on its own, and wherever there is motion, there is life, and all life, to repeat, is connected.
THE MANIFESTATION IS NOTHING BUT AN IMPULSE
To get one’s mind to the level of higher thoughts, one naturally goes to the deeper layers of one’s mind to pick up finer thoughts. All the symphonies of Bach or Beethoven, Mozart, you name them, they never created the symphonies. All the greatest poetry of Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Byron, depends on which poet you like the best; they never created those poems. You cannot create with your mind. The creation is forever there, all the time.
To recap on this, you are only synthesizing, bringing a few parts together, to make it seem like a new creation. We are talking about a bowl of soup. You never created the carrots. You never created the peas. You never created the spices. You never created whatever you have thrown in. Five women can be given the same ingredients to make the same kind of soup, and each soup will taste different! I am sure the ladies know it. The same ingredients, the same quantities, the same thing. But they will taste different because of the personality of the person that makes the soup. For example, if I eat a meal, and if it is not cooked with great love, then I get winds in the stomach. I get gaseous. If the food is created with love, I do not get those gases in the stomach. This is to show you how connected you are in your capacity with everything, even with the soup that you are making, and that gives it a different flavour, a different taste. Likewise, everything is connected in the universe, and that connection is in impulse form. It is an impulse, one single impulse with various facets! And man has the ability to tap into any facet he likes.
Todd is a technician of computers. His tendency, his mind, is built that way. The deeper he can go into his mind, he will pick up and capture the thoughts of other people who might have thought similar thoughts. Those people that might have thought those thoughts might not have brought it to completion, but through Todd’s determination, he can take those very thoughts and bring it to completion. Then we say Sir John Todd has created the greatest computer in the world, the most advanced. Like that. Thought has no impulse and thought creates no impulse. The impulse of everything is always there. In love making the impulse of sex is there within you. You just be in the right circumstances with the right frame of mind with the right person perhaps or whatever, and the impulse is brought into its physical action. But the impulse was there already. You never created the impulse. You have only brought it to its natural climax. The impulse is there, and the universe is nothing but an impulse.
That divine energy which we call the impersonal God condensed itself or rather manifested its energy, not in totality, into what we call the personal God. And within that energy of the personal God lies all the impulses possible; therefore, we call God almighty! Therefore, we call Him omnipresent or omniscient. Everywhere existent. To repeat, all the impulses are there.
Why can one person create something great, and some in the same field create something mediocre, and some create something poorly? It depends not upon your intellectual capacity, and that is the greatest fallacy of modern psychotherapists and psychiatrists. The intellect, or the buddhi as we would call it, is only a vehicle that evaluates things. It is still coming from the personal God, the Atman or the Brahman as you would like to call it. So, the intellect starts weighing.
Here lies the creation, or rather manifestation, of that impulse. You know that the Bible says the world was created in seven days, but I disagree with it. It was created in a flash of a moment, in that one impulse. Then it took millions of years to formulate itself. Like this earth breaking off from the sun and then taking millions of years to cool down, and then after it cooled down sufficiently, vegetation grew and blah, blah, blah.
MANIFESTING THE IMPULSE
When the superconscious level of the mind finds clarity, and clarity means connecting the conscious level of the mind to the superconscious level, then the conscious level of the mind, the functioning, worldly functioning mind forms that connection, so there is a direct line from that superconscious level to the conscious level bypassing all the dirt and the rubbish in the subconscious. That impulse is picked up by the superconscious level of the mind and taking it through buddhi or intellect, however much it is developed and transmits itself to the conscious mind which we call the brain.
These impulses that always are there and which are non-created transmits itself through the various cells of the brain, and I believe that according to scientists, there are twelve billion cells. I do not know which scientist counted them individually, but that is what they say. The more the brain cells are opened, the more of that mind could filter through in thought formation. Impulses are eternal. They are there. They are never created, but they are manifested from the impersonal energy. For that impersonal energy itself is an impulse and by grossification, it becomes the personal God which is connected or is at one with the superconscious level of the mind. Then it transmits it to the conscious mind through the intellect, depending on its development and capacity or IQ or whatever you want to call it.
Then the conscious mind feels it again but sends it back to the subconscious level of the mind to make comparisons. You take a teaspoon of sugar, and you say it is sweet. How do you know it is sweet? You think it is sweet. Because you are comparing it with other sweetness’s, you have had. If a hypnotist put you under hypnosis, in other words, he blocks out your conscious level, the analytical side of your mind, the left hemisphere; then he will give you suggestions and will provide you with a potato and say, “You are eating a most delicious, beautiful apple.” The hypnotist puts that suggestion in your mind and makes you taste that potato as a very sweet apple without using your consciousness; because if you were using your consciousness, then it would taste like a potato. The contact is made by suggestion to the subconscious mind where all the patternings are, and the subconscious mind knows these patternings because it has some knowledge of an apple.
Anyone can learn to hypnotize. It is something very simple. Actually, it is rubbish.
When a thought comes to the conscious level, because of its patternings, your subconscious mind can convert the thought into something different. Like the very, very favourite saying of mine which I have repeated a million times over, but I love it so much:
“Two men behind prison bars; one saw mud, the other saw stars.” Both in the same circumstances, but one sees gloom because of his mental patterning, and the other sees glory because of his mental patterning.
By doing our meditational practices, we are getting rid of the samskaras or unwanted patternings which are a significant obstacle to our ability to clear thinking.
BEING IN CONTROL OF THE IMPULSE
Impulses can be converted through these various layers that I have mentioned into emotions, feelings, compulsions, obsessions, etc., etc. Yet the source of the impulse is one. None different. How do you want to channel it? You have no choice. The more you choose to control that impulse which is coming through in thought form, you will make that thought form stronger. If it is something obsessive, you have an obsession, then that obsession becomes deeper and deeper until you become either a psychotic or a neurotic or – but not exotic. So, that is how impulses work.
Man, with the tools in hand, with his little thinking mind, can traverse through this vast field and capture the universe in the palm of his hand. The poet, William Blake, says “capture infinity in an hour.” I say no, nonsense, capture infinity in a second. That is how you hold the entirety of the universe in the palm of your hand! Because you are in control of the impulses.
By control, I mean that the various channels that the impulses have to go through have been clarified. Samskaras have been eradicated. The mind’s mental thinking, brain patternings, have been repatterned. More than 90% of the ways of life is just habits. From habit, we go to the opposite. We become unhabitual.
Impulse is always there. There is one universal impulse which you can realize within yourself, experience it within yourself, but which you could never verbalize. Like electricity, for example. The light is burning here giving light to this lovely room, but can you explain to me what electricity is? No one can. No scientist has up until now succeeded in explaining it. You can explain it if you touch two open wires and get a shock. You would say, “Hey, I was shocked by electricity!” But yet you don’t know what was the impulse behind the wires that created the shock.
We live through life in a shocked state. We are neither going, and we are neither coming, and neither do we know where we are. And that causes all the frustrations in life, that causes all the miseries, all the anxieties, all these tensions, all the stresses, all the strains.
There are two ways of tackling this problem. Either you clarify the various levels of your mind through spiritual practices which are simple and easy. Spiritual practices bring that clarity to the conscious and subconscious mind until you reach the superconscious level of the mind. Or otherwise, you say all this can go to hell! And just surrender. If I am in trouble, if I am in difficulties, I would say to myself, or everyone should say to themselves, that these difficulties and things were created by me. Seeing that I have not got the strength to overcome them, I put them at your feet, my Lord. You look after them because you were the primal impulse. You were the primal energy that created me or manifested me, that gave me this superconscious level of the mind and this subconscious mind and the conscious mind and this ugly face and all that! You are responsible, damn it! So, I surrender it to you! I wash my hands!” And you see that feeling of comfort that comes to you.
THE TRUE GURU
That is why a true guru always attracts to himself, sincere people. Always. Because divinity being abstract, they cannot conceive of it because it is abstract, and we can only think in concrete terms. Therefore, the chelas we have around the world are sincere, symbolizing this little frail body and understanding, knowing, feeling and realizing that it is that divine force that is flowing through the Guru to me. That does not mean worshipping, but it does imply love and devotion. It works both ways. If a guru has no love for his chela, he cannot expect the chela to love him. If he has no devotion for the chela, he cannot expect devotion from the chela; otherwise, he is just nothing but a fake! We symbolize by his teachings, by what he has to say, by what power he imparts through the grace of God because as I said, I am just like a piece of reed, a hollow piece of wood. He blows the music, and the world enjoys it. Do you think I am speaking to you here, now? I am not; I am not speaking to you. I, that little I, that little ego, I that has to do all the biological functions that you have to do, eat, dress, go to the bathroom, all that? That little I? No. It is He that is speaking, not me.
Anything I say, I always talk from personal experience and never from books. For example, I do not know what question you are going to ask. You can ask any question you like because I do not speak from the conscious mind. Immediately in that one minute of meditation, I connect myself to that superconscious layer where all knowledge is, all the impulses for thoughts, thoughts are expressions, perhaps not verbal, maybe not in symbol, but they are in a form, expressions. That is why any question can be answered. Because you are connected to the source of impulses, and that source cannot be explained in words.
When I talk to you, there are two things that are happening. I am explaining to you specific facts of life, showing you different aspects, new perspectives of any given idea, but at the same time, connecting myself to the superconscious layer, I am also pouring out that spiritual energy to you.
Two things are happening, and most of you that have been on various courses will bear me out, that after the course you feel that you are floating on air.
Everyone within themselves is divine. But all these veils that we have built upon that divinity is causing the darkness, is not allowing the full light of that bulb to shine through. Spiritual practices are the easiest way, and of course, the Guru, because of his total oneness with divinity, helps to give a push. Not the Guru. But that big Guru up there. That Granddaddy. He gives the push through His channels. To bring the impulse into reality would be like electricity in water. You call it hydroelectric power. You cannot bring it directly from the water to the bulb burning here. You need a generator that captures that hydroelectric power and sends it off to all the millions of lights in this town.
That is all a guru does. He does not generate the power although he is called a generator! He only captures the power and sends it off, sends off the impulse in the form of spiritual force and in the form of thought which, in its final analysis, is nothing else but that one impulse!
What is speaking through me is that impulse, that one impulse that is many-faceted. That impulse is like a diamond, and a diamond could never sparkle if all its facets are not well polished. Then it sparkles in its proper glory.
BE YOURSELF
People say, be like Christ, be like Buddha, be like Gururaj, be like anything. I say, be yourself, and to be yourself you have got to know how to be here and now. Here and now! And here and now means that if the entire universe is just one impulse, one flash, then my sixty or seventy years or however long I am going to live is also but one flash. But, having captured that universal force or having some cognition of it in your conscious mind, you live for the moment. When I sit and eat, I become one with the food. The food and I are one. There is no difference.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1984 – 45