TO BE IS TRUE JOY

 

It is a common thing and so true that purity attracts purity, impurity attracts impurity.

Any impure thought going from the mind is not destroyed but will be attracted to those that have made themselves conducive to its attraction. And any pure thought issuing from your mind also goes to that area where it finds its brother: birds of a feather flock together. That is why it is always enjoined upon us to have thoughts of purity always in the mind.

That thought does not need to be good and neither bad, just a remembrance that all is Divine. I swim in this ocean of Divinity. I am that bit of salt thrown in the ocean that does not make the water saltier, but I am absorbed in its saltiness—that remembrance of that Grace that allows you to merge into the Divine.

Also, let the mind say that I want to merge into Divinity. But how can you merge when you have not ever been separated? Where have you come, friend? And where are you going, friend? Nowhere. If Divinity is omnipresent and present everywhere, where is there for you to go to or come from? You just are. And the secret of true joy is just to be, for you are here and now. You come from nowhere, and you go nowhere.

Look at the spelling of this word: nowhere. Nowhere. Just shift the w to the side of the no – now here. All that nowhereness and all the uncertainties and all the insecurities that the mind puts you through takes you nowhere because you are now here, forever in the presence, for you are the presence. How can you separate the bubble from the pond? Is the bubble not just an expression of the pond? The expression, the joy, the dance of the pond, the currents in the pond which are an integral part of the pond creates those bubbles, do they not? Is it not the dance, the play of the pond? You are the play. You are the player, the same water. And you are the playwright. So, from where are you coming, friend? And where are you going to? It remains no question.

Philosophy is good. Very good. They are good for philosophers, and for religions, of course, different religions are not really different. They are all but the same; the essence, the basis, still remains the same all the time.

Exercises of the mind. That is what we are doing, and that is what is happening in this world, this exercising in the mind. How you relate to the world and the world’s happenings depends a lot upon you.

What you do to yourself and how you relate to the world depends upon you and not to the world. You can be in the world and yet not of it and be non-attached to the happenings of the world where it will not affect you. Attachment and non-attachment are a different thing altogether. But there, too, the mind comes into play where some kind of exercise is necessary. How we exercise our minds, that is important, for joy is forever there. Joy is not something apart from you, but joy is a part of you.

The most so-called unpleasant scene can be interpreted by you with proper awareness into something of real beauty. Therefore, we say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Simple saying, but not understood. The man of true awareness will not be ruffled at all by the happening around him. For what is happening is part of a pattern which you cannot entirely control. You can control the exercise to a certain degree. You can go on a diet and lose some weight or eat more and put on weight. Certain things are within the cyclical framework of the mind, yet so many, the mind cannot control many things.

ARE YOUR FREE WILL REALLY FREE?

People pride themselves on having a free will. How free is your will? Because you have developed a certain amount of consciousness to be able to think, you think you are free. Are you free? Where is free will? There is no free will. The will which you think is free will is bondage will, a will that is bound by your experiences, impressions that you have gained over many, many ages perhaps, and that has set a pattern for you. All happenings are but effects of the causes that you have brought into being, that your mind has brought into being, and all our actions are determined by the amount of awareness we have unfolded within us.

When we say, “The Lord is graceful,” what does it mean? He is not going to take the miseries away, just like that. But He gives you the opportunity of removing those miseries. By properly using the mind, by lifting yourself from the grosser conscious level of the mind through the subconscious mind and then to the deeper layers of the Superconscious mind at its purest and subtlest level, you can change the pattern of your life. For what seemed miserable yesterday can be so joyous today. For here, through meditation and spiritual practices, you are tapping that source of that pure level within yourself and bringing it out so that it, too, will find expression and make everything around you glorious and joyful. And by doing that you still have to go through the effects, the law of cause and effect, the law of retribution: you shall reap what you have sown. You will have to go through that, but by the law of Grace that you have now invoked or expressed from the deeper levels of yourself, you can do it on the easy payment plan, as I always say—no cash on demand. Easy payment plan, so that you do not suffer so much by it as you would have suffered. The sting is taken out. The balm of Grace covers the wound.

Yet it is not an anaesthetic that puts you away from consciousness. You are still conscious of all your surroundings, but it becomes beautiful. Your surface consciousness starts appreciating the beauty, but we have to become beautiful ourselves first. How do we do it? By tapping into, in a methodical, systematic way, that vastness that is within us. Then you become beautiful. It is the nature of the flower to be beautiful, but it also enhances the beauty of the garden. It makes the garden beautiful, too. Is that not what man should do?

MAKING OURSELVES BEAUTIFUL

So, we start with ourselves first. We make ourselves beautiful through spiritual practices and meditation by becoming closer and closer to that which is within: “seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven within, and all else shall be added unto thee.” All else is there. No addition is even required, that is just expressed for the sake of language because language is so incomplete. How can it express the inexpressible?

If we want our environment to improve, if we want the world around us to improve, we have to make ourselves better.

After all, have you ever thought what your world is? Talking of the average person, how many people do you know? You know half a dozen people very closely. If you belong to some organization, then maybe 200 people or 500 people know you in acquaintanceship. This is Ms XYZED, or Mr ABC. That is all. And are you to be so influenced by those few hundred people that just know you by sight or those half a dozen people that know you perhaps more intimately? Really speaking, they do not know you; they only know the exterior of you. If you do not know yourself, how is someone else to know you in reality?

For all that we change our patterns of life to live a false life, to pretend, to live up to the Joneses. Only the bank manager knows the truth. My car must be better than your vehicle. Yet the essence is that the car is made to take you from point A to point B. That is the meaning of a car. But you get transported into other realms of personal ego.

The world is what we make it. How many people do you know in China or in India or in Japan or even in the next state or even in the next road? I have heard many people living next to each other for years and not even knowing their names.

JUST BE

So, just be. Just be honest and sincere to yourself, and automatically that power emanates like the flower giving off fragrance and it affects the environment. Your sincerity, your love, affects everything around you, and it rebounds back to you. It is a very profitable business.

“Take one step towards me and I take 10 steps towards you.” All the sages have said that. Divinity and the sages are only echoing that which Divinity expresses; take one step towards me and I take ten steps towards you.

We have to decide what do we do. At first, the mind is activated into making a decision. That decision could be wrong but do not worry about that. For the central point can be approached from any angle, but that decision must have one quality: I want to be what I am, and I am that I am. I am what I am. That is the starting point, and from there on you would find once that thought starts permeating the thinking mind and sinks lower and lower into the subconscious mind, you will draw from various experiences lodged in the subconscious mind to strengthen that resolve. We start with that, and as our awareness expands, we will think of beginning to meditate.

We will think how to meditate? What spiritual practices to do? If I am ill, I will go to a physician to prescribe the medicines required for me. He will know what to prescribe. If the tap is leaking, I will go to a plumber. If there is something wrong with the roof, I will go to a roof repairer. Like that, when we decide to meditate, the start might come from thought, and then we find that thought does not provide all the answers. Thought produces questions to which answers come, and every answer will produce another half a dozen questions, and when you answer those half a dozen questions, another half a dozen questions will come from it. It is an unending process and takes us into this whirlpool.

So, start with thought, but if you can find the physician that will show you how to go deep within yourself, bypassing the thought, how to become an observer of those thoughts very methodically and systematically so that those thoughts don’t hurt you, until those very thoughts that were hurtful could be turned into something joyful and how you could connect your conscious mind to the deeper levels within yourself. If you have such a doctor, it would be an easy way to get the proper prescription instead of trying to use all different kinds of medicines on a trial and error basis.

Being a teacher of meditation, I emphasize these things. Those who would like to learn to meditate, we have teachers around the world. You just have to contact them, and you will be shown something that will lead you to the inner depths of yourself and also create more and more understanding and also lessen the confusion in the mind, so that instead of confusion you will have a profusion of that which is beautiful. ‘

These things are so, so simple. It is only we with our thought processes that compound things and make them complex. In reality, the essence within man, the essence within everything, is uncompounded, not complex, but so very simple. It is only when we reach the simplicity that we would know, for simplicity is synonymous with innocence. When we find within ourselves this beautiful innocence, it will be good.

Shall we end up this Satsang with a prayer?

PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang 1981 – 16