There is a place you can come to where everything is beautiful. Tourists go from place to place looking for beauty. They try to take beauty from that place. They only get tired and tanned. Yet the most beautiful spot anywhere is right here! When you come here, you find that wherever you are, everything is so beautiful. Where is this place? Don’t look here and there. It’s within you! When you come here, then any place is beautiful. And wherever you go, you add beauty there.
If you are unhappy, you feel that even the moon is irritating you. Sweet things are nauseating, music is disturbing. When you are calm and centred inside, noise is musical, clouds are magical, rain is liquid sunshine. Book yourself on a trip to this most beautiful place in the universe. Then you find that every day is a vacation and a celebration.
Buddha is not on the peak, rather the peak is beneath Buddha. One who goes to the peak comes down, but the peak seeks the one who is stationed in the inner space. Shiva is called Chandrasekhara which means that mind which is in the Shiva (transcendence) and is always above the peak. Often people are running after parties and celebrations, but for the one who is not running after them, parties and celebrations follow him.
If you are running after parties, loneliness comes to you, but if you are in the solitude of the self, parties surround you! 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 disciplined free and the free 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 a perfect balance. Perfect balance is like a razor’s edge. It can only be found in the self.
Ten people were going from one village to another. On the way they had to cross a river. After crossing they wanted to be sure all were there. Each one started to count but counted only nine. They were very distraught and began to cry for the loss of the tenth. A wise man came along and asked them, ‘‘Oh my dear friends, why are you crying?’’. ‘‘We were ten but now we are only nine,’’ they replied.
The wise man saw they were ten, so he asked them to count. Each counted nine but left himself out. Then the wise man made them stand and count, and he said to the last person, ‘‘You are the tenth!’’, and they all rejoiced for having regained the tenth. Similarly the five senses and the four inner faculties (mind, intellect, memory, ego) all lament when they lose sight of the self. Then the Master comes and shows you that you are the tenth! Count, but never stop until you find the tenth. The joy is in finding the ever present.
With the knowledge of the self, everything is truly joyful.
Wisdom that doesn’t give rise to feeling is incomplete.
Feeling that doesn’t translate into action is incomplete.
Action that doesn’t give rise to fulfillment is incomplete.
For, fulfillment is returning to the Self.
Often people think of the Self as the mind-body complex. This is an erroneous notion. Neither the body nor the mind is the Self. All the yoga you do is for the body. All the meditation you do is for the mind.
Whether calm or disturbed, your mind remains mind.
Whether sick or well, your body remains body.
Self is all-encompassing.
Service without attitude,
Love without reason,
Knowledge without intellect,
Life beyond time and events,
Is what you are.
Among all planets in the solar system, the earth is privileged to host life in its many forms, and among all the species, humans are most privileged for they can host knowledge. Again and again you remember that you are peace, you are love, you are joy and that you are hosting the creator. If you do not realise that you are the host, you live like a ghost! The under-privileged are those who do not realise that they are privileged, and so they also host, but they host all the negativities.
The only purpose for this body to exist is to make you aware of how beautiful you are, and to make you aware that it is possible to live all the values you cherish and create a world of divinity around you. Like the birds returning to their nests, again and again come back to your source; only there can you realise that you host the creator.
When a part of the body is stimulated, pleasure arises. When your soul is stimulated, love arises. Love has no end but pleasure ends. Often people think pleasure is love. Distinction between pleasure and love has to be understood, only the luckiest one will understand. Like you eat sugar and stimulate the tongue, music stimulates the ears and sight stimulates the eyes. And what stimulates the soul? Sadhana and Satsang is what stimulates the soul!
All that one wants is the stimulation of the soul. Even a faint idea of it keeps life going. Every other stimulus is on the surface. The stimulus of the soul energises and the stimulus of the body brings tiredness. Every stimulus should lead you to the self so that when you listen to music, you transcend the music, and when you listen to knowledge it takes you to silence.
Desire, awareness of the Self and action all are manifestation of the same energy that is you. Among these three, one of them dominates at a time. When you have lots of desires, you are not aware of the Self. When desire dominates, awarness of the self will be at its lowest, and that’s why all the philosophers around the world have always advocated renunciation and dropping of desires. When the awareness is dominant, then happiness dawns. When desire dominates, stress and sorrow result.
When actions dominate, restlessness and disease is the result. When your actions and desires are sincerely directed to the Divine or to the welfare of society, then the consciousness is automatically elevated, and knowledge of the Self is sure to be attained. When you love something, you have a sense of belongingness with it. You can only love something, because it belongs to you. If it is not yours, you cannot love it. Love is the shadow of the Self. The bigger the Self, the bigger the shadow, and the bigger the love.
When love is cast over the entire creation, then you are the Big Self. That is the Lordship. When the Lordship dawns on the Self, there is perennial celebration. As no sanchita karma (past impressions) is left in an embodied guru, self shines through, which becomes very obvious in the presence of the guru. But all those qualities that you appreciate in a guru are also in your very nature.
Being with the guru is like being with one’s higher self. Guru, God and one’s own self are synonymous. Often one recognises wisdom but sees a gap between wisdom and one’s own life. The purpose of becoming a disciple is to bridge that gap. Being with a guru means spontaneous integration of life and wisdom. Respecting the guru simply means honouring your innermost nature.
Among the seekers of truth, there is a practise of greeting each other saying, ‘jaigurudev’. Do you know what that really means? You may think that it means ‘victory to the Master’ or ‘Hail the master’. You do not say that as he has won already!
You know there is a Big Mind and a Small Mind. Sometimes the Big Mind wins over the Small Mind and sometimes it is the other way around. When the Small Mind wins over, it is misery and when the Big Mind wins, it is joy. Small Mind promises joy and leaves your hand empty. Big Mind may bring resistance in the beginning but fills you with joy.
The word Guru means great. Jaya means victory. Deva means one who is fun-loving, playful, light. One who is playful is often not dignified and when one is dignified, he is often not playful. Jai Guru Dev is victory to the Big Mind in you that is both dignified and playful. That is what Jai Guru Dev means: ‘‘Victory to the Greatness in you’’.
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