The right Answer and the holy Tradition of India

This is an ancient observation true even today – that most people spend their childhood in pranks and play, their youth in sports, pleasure and pastime, middle age in plans and schemes to pile up a fortune, and old age in hospitals trying to bolster failing health through failing wealth. Earning and spending, one fills their time with work and worry.

People are busy with a number of attempts to earn happiness, but success is little and short-lived.

The only panacea for all ills, the effort that will result in total victory is the control of the mind, which is the master of the senses.

Every sense organ is an outlet for energy that binds one to the objective world. The senses are induced by the mind to move out and attach themselves to objects.

You must make the mind submit to wisdom, which discriminates between right and wrong. Then the mind, instead of harming, will help you.

Baba (thought for the day)

I was with Sai Baba in the mountains and meditated after Darshan. He came back and I didn’t notice it. When I opened the eyes I was surprised to see him standing just in front of us, but there was also a group of the boy all dressed the same way and above all was the thought of ‘I am that’. What does that mean?

I somehow was in meditation, as you know well, we just take the mantra and go back to it when thoughts come. It was not a place to think or to reflect. I didn’t think, I meditated and thought it was all right and therefore, it took time to realize that it was about identification and that it was Darshan, sight of truth and he was identified with everything.

It was difficult to understand, because it didn’t make sense to me that we could be identified with everything, even if he said always that he is everything. I was still used to see everything separate.

Afterwards our group had three interviews in that same week, he made sure I couldn't forget it and I had to remember it inside, even if it was not at all realized outside. And it felt real good for months until his birthday, after it changed and the work began and I had no idea in what I went into.

I had to get a new visa and went to Singapore and when I came back we had interview again and he often asked me to translate.

He asked the lady I translated for, ‘who is that girl’? I translated. Do you realize how strange that was?

He asked her three times, ‘who I was’. After he asked, to whom I belonged and I translated. No answer, just questions and after he asked, ‘what is your relationship’?

I had seen that ‘I am that’ in the air and was not even really aware of it, I just knew I should get aware of it, but it was much too difficult to be understood.

That is how Sai Baba works.

Do you know the story of Bharat?
He was a monk who wanted to live in the forest, but he was not ready for that detachment.
His heart got attached to a deer. As he was alone, he loved that deer very much.

One day the deer didn’t come back and he got worried, he went on search for it. The deer had died and Bharat couldn’t find it, and death came to him during that search for the deer.

When he died in his last breath he saw that deer shedding tears.

It was in his mind only, but it means he took the body of a deer.
Atman reacts, reflects and resounds.

Do you realize what happened?
The 'I am that' principle and attachment made him feel he belonged in that very last moment to a deer. The intellect was no more functioning, it was only feeling and only heart. The reflection in consciousness was a 'deer', not a human body and not divinity.

He lived near a wise eremite, who knew that the deer was Bharat. He kept him close to give him the opportunity to be reborn in a human body again, so that he didn’t get lost completely for lives in the jungle of the mind.

In his next life Bharat remembered what had happened and he wanted to make sure it couldn’t happen to him again.
He lived as a naked beggar monk to get liberated. That is the story of Bharat.  

And that is how Sai Baba made me get aware of it.

The ‘I am that’ is the higher self and how it gets attached in situations which afterwards take over our life and condition it. It is the reflection what made it, Atman reflects, that is a divine law. Whatever the reflection, we will become. It is truth and it manifests and becomes our reality.

And it is the story of Bharat, the realization of ‘who am I’?

'I am that’ on that universal level consciously realized as being ‘that’ is an enlightened state of mind.
But there is the question to whom do we belong?

Bharat’s insight was the deer in that very last moment of his breath.

What was his relationship? It is reflected as a deer.

He looked after the deer and in his thoughts the deer shed tears for him. The deer replaced his family; in his mind in that last breath he belonged to the deer, because he was not ready to live alone and that answers the question, who he was. He belonged to the body of a deer by that inner law of attachment, that means he was a deer, the reflection was the deer.

That is how Sai Baba made me aware of it and not only on a theoretical level, but experienced.
Do you realize how difficult it was to get the right answer?

It is a difference if we read about it or if we get the experience.

At that time I didn’t even realize the importance of the ‘I am that’ yet.

After that interview I began to ask others about it. I knew I had to get an answer, but of course, nobody knew, because I was in the midst of Westerners.

Who knows the story of Bharat in the West?

My ex just seized the opportunity and said that I belonged to him. But it was no level to get answers.
I knew the story of Bharat as I had been connected to the Hare Krishnas before, but that was a long time ago and TM didn’t talk of Bharat, therefore, it was uprooted, not our tradition, not our culture and I woke up in a jungle and had to find answers.

It was the result of meditation to be able to get that reflection in the Darshan, but the difficulty was to remember and to get the right connection.

Every sense organ is an outlet for energy that binds one to the objective world. The senses are induced by the mind to move out and attach themselves to objects.

That is the problem, the senses are induced by the mind to move out and attach themselves to objects and the result of that attachment is that we get inside to the conclusion ‘I am that’, it is in the reflection.

The inner self gets projected on the attached object and identified with it instead of being aware of the reflections. Whatever the reflection we will be, we are what we think we are.

It is therefore possible to get attached to pets, dogs and all other animals. They are an object of attachment as well and we have no control of the senses and that attachment can result in a reflection as dog as 'I am that'. Therefore, we have to be careful to not waste our life. 

We have to make sure for our own sake that we get attached to the right thing, therefore, charity and taking care of children in need to give them a better start would be such an activity which is rewarding and takes care that we don’t get attached and lost in the jungle of the mind.

Doing his work is making sure we get attached to him only.
It makes it possible for us to realize the universal level of self-realization. We should see it as an opportunity to get self-realization; it is a gift, not a burden!
If we live that level, the reflection will be 'that'. It is the law of Karma and we have to do it that it can reflect.
It will not reflect as Atman and divinity, if we are lost in the mind and take the mind for divinity, what will be reflected as - ignorance and what it 'really' is, that is a divine law.
Atman reacts, reflects and resounds.

People are busy with a number of attempts to earn happiness, but success is little and short-lived. The only panacea for all ills, the effort that will result in total victory is the control of the mind, which is the master of the senses.

In fact, it is not possible to realize the universal being if we are not somehow practicing his work on that higher level of universality.

We have to be it and become it, to be able to realize it!
The answer is in the reflection.
It can only reflect if we practice, if we do it.
It is the law of Karma.

This time I know it is the right answer and it is no more a question. 
That is why Baba had asked those questions in the interview room, it is the story and culture of the higher self and Bharatiya, it is the story of India ..., the beautiful holy tradition of India.