Knowledge sheet no. 5

Subject: 'When we are joyous with ourselves, then nothing from outside can seem boring to us'

The contrast between the ups and downs in life is greater. On a white cloth, even a small dust particle is clearly seen. Similarly, when the mind becomes more pure, even small jealousy or anger is an irritant. It is unbearable and you have to get rid of it quickly. This is but quite natural.
At the same time, you get the inner strength to endure situations.

Subject: 'When we are joyous with ourselves, then nothing from outside can seem boring to us'

Q. Why is it difficult to get focused on things that I don’t like to do?

Sri Sri: If you don’t like something, then your focus is all the more on it. If you like something, then you focus on it. When you’re neutral about something, when there is no aversion, then there is no focus.

Studying the nature of mind is itself is an amazing phenomena. You will be thrilled knowing and learning more and more about your own mind. When I say mind, I don’t mean just mind. I would rather say the consciousness because the mind is one function of the consciousness. The perception is what we call the mind. The perceptible aspect of the consciousness is called mind. The judgmental aspect, the intellect.

The study of consciousness is the most difficult. And with time and maturity, everybody gets it.

Q. Can we aspire for something higher like enlightenment at the age of twenty one?

Sri Sri: Definitely. You should aspire for enlightenment and enlightenment is unconditional happiness, unconditional love and a life in which you are in the driver’s seat. You must aspire for enlightenment. Right from when you recognize to aspire anything in life. Go to the highest first and all the good things will come along, you don’t have to make an effort for it.

When I say you don’t have to make an effort, I mean you don’t have to sit and worry about it. When you aspire for the highest, your action will be spontaneous and in the spontaneity you will see things have started falling into place.

Q. What is a self referral attitude?

Sri Sri: Being in touch with your very center. When you worry there is a tendency to lose that focus or centredness. It is the same when you are tired or too busy. Self referral means coming back to yourself, to your center again and again. The core value within you.

Q. Are there any plus points of doing a job other than earning money

Sri Sri: Money and experience. That’s all and some discipline. If you have to do a job you have to discipline your life in a certain fashion.

Q. Is there a gene for knowledge, any nadi (channel for energy flow) that has to be opened for creativity?

Sri Sri: Definitely and you all have it. And it opens whenever you listen to knowledge.

Q. How does it feel to be God?

Sri Sri: Absolutely natural.

Q. We are not supposed to marry in our own gotra (family tree). Scientifically, what does a gotra mean?

Sri Sri: Gotra is a family tree, like you know if you marry your own siblings, or cousins, they say the genes will not develop properly, children will not develop. The family trees go back to some rishis in the past. And they say that gotra means we belong to this (a particular) family. Today what the scientists say about blood groups was known to people thousands of years ago. Yet people from the same gotra have spread. If you marry in the same gotra the children will not be too healthy. That is the main thing. It’s better to avoid.

But those were the thoughts from some thousands of years ago but now since we have gone so far away and the population has spread so much, it has become so vast. I don’t know how relevant it is. But (marriage within) gotra is better to avoid.

Q. Many times parents out of over attachment, prejudiced opinions and being football of the relatives opinions stop us from doing seva. Can we make seva our career?

Sri Sri: Yes.

Q. What is beauty and how to enhance it within and around us?

Sri Sri: First of all you should know you have a beautiful mind. The mind is free, it is loving, beautiful, satisfied and not feverish. So when the spirit is centred or your mind is centred, that beauty shines through.

Q. Could you speak a little bit about Sanskrit and its greatness? I would like to take it as one of my Ph.d topics.

Sri Sri: Yes, do it. Sanskrit is the mother of all languages. Whether it is English, Russian, German or Italian, there is a lot of Sanskrit in it. Of course, Sanskrit is the base of all Indian languages.

Q. Every day, in different corners of the world, people ask you the same questions. Don’t you get bored? I am very inspired by your patience.

Sri Sri: My consciousness is nitnutan (new every moment). First we get bored with ourselves and then bore others or get bored from others. When we are joyous with ourself, then nothing from outside can seem boring to us.

Q. How do we gear up for enlightenment?

Sri Sri: Wanting it, itself is half done. The rest is a little discipline and you should know that you will get it. It will be given to you. That’s why you have the path, the guru. You will just get it. Shama jali hai tere liye, tujhko kuch nahi karna hai (The candle is lit for you, you don’t have to do anything). You don’t have to do anything just be hollow and empty from inside.

Q. I have a habit of recalling the pleasant memories of life again and again, as it gives a glimpse of the same pleasure as I felt in the past. Is it something to be cautious of, can it hinder my growth?

Sri Sri: It’s alright, don’t make an effort to sit and go on remembering the past. I think you have too much free time. Get busy and start working. There are so many things to do in the world. Where is the time to live in the past, recollect all the past. Right? The world is new every moment. Go with it. Don’t turn back and keep looking back. Move forward.

Q. Why does everyone not aspire to serve the society, in their youth?

Sri Sri: It must be there. There is no heart that does not get affected at the sight of misery. This we assume. At one time, everyone should desire to do seva. This we cannot say.

Q. What is the essence and secret of life?

Sri Sri: Essence and secret! It will be whispered into your ears when you go into meditation. Do (Sudarshan) Kriya and meditation.

Q. Why is that we are unable to understand the mind- which is the most powerful thing in the world?

Sri Sri Have you begun to understand it? (reply: No) then start from somewhere and then we will see whether it is fully understandable or not.

Jai Gurudev!

Knowledge sheet no. 4: Humor and Humiliation

How to free yourself from the grip of storms? This is the only basic problem in this universe. The first thing is to become aware of it and stop regretting it. Like waves come and go, storms in your life too will subside. No one storm can be there for ever. One storm comes and subsides, another comes and subsides and it goes on. As the storm subsides, you experience that inner cool, soft, delicate aspect of yourself. In that space of calm, all the anxiety, fear, feverishness lose their grip on you and you become yourself again. Love dawns.

Humor is the buffer that saves you from humiliation. If you have a good sense of humor you can never be humiliated. And if you refuse to be humiliated you become invincible. Humor brings everyone together, while humiliation tears them apart. In a society torn with humiliation and insult, humor is like a breath of fresh air.

Jai Gurudev!

Knowledge sheet no. 3: Letting GO!

Enjoy the world, without getting attached to it. You have to take a deep breath in. But you can’t hold onto it. You have to let go (of the breath) to enjoy the fresh air. In life, it is the same thing. Letting go is important.

People who are free, regret that they don't have discipline. They keep promising that they will become disciplined.
People who are disciplined look for the end. (Discipline is not an end in itself, it is a means.)

Look at the people who have no discipline; they are miserable. Freedom without discipline is absolute misery.
Discipline without freedom is suffocating.

Orderliness is monotonous and chaos is stressful. We have to make the discipline free and the freedom disciplined.

People who are in company all the time, they look for the comforts of solitude. People who are in solitude,
feel so lonely and want to be in company.

People who are in a cold place want to be in a warm place. People who are in a warm place love something cool.

This is the dilemma of life: Everyone is looking for perfect balance. Perfect balance is like a razor's edge.
It can only be found in the self.

There is no road to this town and there are no steps to this house.

How do you get in? Figure it all out.


Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Jai Gurudev!

Yoga and The GURU

By Swami Vivekananda

Every soul is destined to be perfect, and every being, in the end, will attain to that state. Whatever we are now is the result of whatever we have been or thought in the past, and whatever we shall be in the future will be the result of what we do or think now. But this does not preclude our receiving help from outside. The possibilities of the soul are always quickened by some help from the outside. In studying books, sometimes we are deluded into thinking that we are being spiritually helped. But if we analyse ourselves we shall find that only our intellect has been helped and not the spirit.

This is the reason why almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual subjects, but when the time of action comes, we find ourselves woefully deficient. It is because books cannot give us that impulse from the outside. To quicken the spirit, that impulse must come from another soul.

That soul from which the impulse comes is called the guru, the teacher, and the soul to which the impulse is conveyed is called the disciple, the student. In order to convey this impulse in the first place the soul from which it comes must possess the power of transmitting it, as it where, to another. And in the second place, the object to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it. The seed must be a living seed, the field must be ready ploughed, and when both these conditions are fulfilled, a wonderful growth of religion takes place. the speaker of religion must be wonderful, so must the hearer be, then alone will splendid spiritual growth come, and not otherwise. These are real teachers, and these are real students.

How are we to know a teacher? In the first place, the sun requires no torch to make it visible. We do light a candle to the sun. When the sun rises we instinctively become aware of its rising, and when a teacher of men comes to help us, the soul will instinctively know that it has found the truth. Truth stands on its own evidence. It does require any other testimony to attest it. It penetrates into the inmost recesses of our nature, and the whole universe stands up and says, “This is Truth.”

These are the very great teachers, but we can get help from the lesser ones also. And as we ourselves are not sufficiently intuitive to be certain of our judgment of the man from whom we receive, there ought to be certain tests. There are certain conditions necessary in the taught and also in the teacher. In the teacher, we must know that he knows the secrets of the scriptures. The whole world reads scriptures – Bible, Koran, Vedas and others – but they are only words, external arrangement, syntax and the dry bones of religion. Those who deal too much in words and let the mind run always in the force of words lose the spirit. So the teacher must be able to know the spirit of the scriptures.

The second condition necessary is that he must be sinless. If a man wants to teach anything of dynamics or chemistry or any other physical science, he may have a gigantic intellectual strength without the least development of his soul. But in the spiritual sciences it is impossible from first to last that there can be any spiritual light in that soul which is impure. What can such a soul teach? “Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. In that one sentence is the gist of all religions.

The third condition is motive. We should see that he does not teach with any ulterior motive – for name or fame or anything else – but simply for love, pure love for you. When spiritual forces are transmitted to the taught, they can only be conveyed through the medium of love. There is no other medium can convey them. Therefore all must be done through love.

One who has known God can alone be a teacher. When you see in the teacher that these conditions are fulfilled, you are safe. If they are not fulfilled, it is unwise to accept that person as a guru. You may go and knock your head against the four corners of the world, but spirituality will not come until you find a teacher. Find the teacher, serve him as a child, open your heart to his influence, see in him God manifested.”

JAI GURUDEV!

Knowledge sheet: 'I am nobody' is a shift in identity'

Q. What does 'I am nothing' mean ? Are we negating our own existence?

Sri Sri: You know everything else can be explained but emptiness cannot be explained. You are asking me to explain the emptiness. A substance can be explained but lack of all substance cannot be explained. Similarly, 'I am nobody' is an experience. It is a shift from being somebody, from being a limited identity to unlimited identity.

Q. How to be rid of jealousy while still being competitive?
Sri Sri: It is better to compare yourself with your own self. How you were ten years or five years ago and what you can be yet tomorrow, compare with yourself. Second thing is you know, create a sense of belongingness with all those who are making progress.

Q. What is Kevala Kumbhaka ?
Sri Sri: Kevala kumbhaka is when there is almost no breath and that your mind is in a very happy state. It happens without your effort.

His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

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MAHA SATSANG and Dinner on Guruji's Birthday

Date: 13th May 2010

Time: 4pm onwards

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Jai GuruDev!