Om Tat Sat - and our life

God is not found separately in a temple or in an ashram. Truth is God. Love is God. Dharma is God. When you worship God by following these principles, He will manifest Himself then and there. Do not doubt this. Love God wholeheartedly. Pray to God and make friends with Him. You can achieve anything if you have God as your friend. Learn today to fill your heart with love and adorn your hand with the ornament of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the jewel for the hands. Truth is the necklace one should wear. You must develop the habit of adorning these jewels. Develop divine love and foster peace in the country. Pray with a broad feeling: Loka samastha sukhino bhavantu (May the whole world be happy)! Start every day with this prayer. Then, you will lead a blissful and peaceful life which is full of enthusiasm. Love God and make friendship with Him, and you are bound to be successful in all your endeavors.

Baba

God is not found separately in a temple or in an ashram.

The first sentence in that thought for the day I didn't mention really. If we don't find it in a temple or in an ashram, were do we find him? In our own heart, it is the temple of God. 

And what he is telling us if we worship God and believe in him wherever we are, he will be then and there. That was for me the higher self in the dream. It had the nature of God and it felt also like that. The nature of God is as Baba said not long ago, existence, luminescence, attractiveness (asthi, bhathi, priyam).

I heard that before and I read about it and I thought it over because of the priyam in it trying to understand it and what connection it has to my name, but I didn't get it yet the way I do now. This time he mentioned this three attributes as the nature of God. After I had that beautiful white light in the dream and it felt that attractive that I knew it was all what I wanted and there nothing but love, I wondered where to look for it, because it was just there, inside and I looked outside and wondered, what now? Where to go if it is inside, what to do if it is inside and I didn't know. I had been waiting for I don't know how long time already at that age and I was glad when I could quit the job and leave and that was in the dream and when it was there, I quite because I knew that nothing around me was 'that', it was somehow in everything and also not, I had to change the environment to get closer and nearer to it. But where to go if it is just here in us and where ever we are, doesn't matter, there is nowhere to go. More I was thinking it over, less I knew what to do, it was beyond doing.

After I had the higher self in the dream, I quit the job. I had to, because I had been just waiting and now I had to begin new again. Before I was just waiting and watching and it was about the observer, but time changed it, after a while it was not anymore great and good, it became heavy and enduring.

When I began to observe I was full of enthusiasm and I had it from a book that if we watch, we shouldn't change anything until it comes from the inside. So I decided to not change anything until it would be changed from the inside out of my own self. It means with other words, if I didn't like anymore my job, I had to stay where I was and make the best out of it and the same with the people around me until the solution would come out of the higher self and it had to be somewhere. It had to do with the higher self and there was no other way but waiting, there was no use to search for it and if we don't go anywhere, it must be present at a certain time. But we couldn't see it with the senses, it is beyond the senses. So I went on waiting and watching.

After a while it began to feel less great and I got aware that I had to stay and I couldn't get out of it, whatever that was, I had set an ideal and the ideal was a kind of commitment to myself, but nevertheless a commitment.  That is how it became heavy and also scary; I didn't know where it went. I hoped there would be the higher self and what if not? I couldn't answer it and it didn't feel good. And there was also the feeling of love and in the people around and mostly in my boss, but it didn't feel okay also, because he was married and he had kids and anyhow I was just watching. I knew afterwards I would have to be able to let go again.

It was an interesting experience, because the life around be got more intense. Before I had been with a great guy and he went to Italy and I didn't follow him because I didn't know and I had to know to whom I belonged. I didn't know why I didn't know and that is how I began to wait and watch and he went to Italy himself and I staid back, but I regretted it also. I was flying around with him in an airplane and because I didn't know, I wanted to fly.

So time went by, the circumstances were given, the job was given and I couldn't get out of it and the higher self was like nowhere to be seen. As I had decided during that job to stay where I was until the higher self would be there, even if I could have looked for another and better job, it began to load and it was not that easy anymore, it began to get scary and long it lasted more I got scared. I had set an ideal and now I had to go for it if I liked it or not and nobody could tell me if that higher self was real and to be experienced and on a certain point it felt heavy, terribly heavy and by that I began to see it also in the environment. I began to see moods and if it was light or if it was dark or better too light or too dark. That was in the beginning very confusing. If it was light it was good and if it was dark was it bad? I didn't know. If there were dark thoughts, it was a dark light.

And one day there was a very dark thought and it was in two layers above the eyes of a rather young manager and he was talking with my best friend and she looked like an angel so light and I watched and was not aware of it, I probably was staring at them and I only got aware that I was kind of shock what I saw, when he turned around and his eyes met mind and in mine was the expression of horror. I didn't know why it was there, I became the witness of something standing in front of me and that scary I rather would not have want to know about. But like that the contact was there and one night it was again present, but now in the dream, there was a fear and it felt like a wall coming up and I felt in shock like paralyzed, I could hardly breath, it was that terrifying like looking in the open mouth of a dangerous snake. The wall of fear left and I could move and breathe again, but it came back and this time it was about suicide, I could see it and the question was how to commit suicide and after the wall of fear left again. I was actually surprised that I found anyhow some sleep, but next morning it was still present in the back of my own consciousness and there was that impression or feeling that I knew exactly what to do … and all that had to do with the boss, that morning he went under the train and I went to work and a few hours later we got the sad news at work.

It was a shock, because I knew it was him and because we were at the same workplace we had been somehow inside connected and that is also how I realized that we are all somehow connected and that nobody is really living alone. It felt totally confusing and it scared me to death. The lady who had been my friend and he had been talking with when that double darkness was above his eyes, she also died in the summer after, her ex got married again and she didn't come back. One had been too light, the other too dark and I was that scared, I couldn't just wait anymore, I had to do something and I applied for another job at the same place. But it was in Geneva and actually not my profession and anyhow it was more to do something what could be done from my side. And in the night before they told me that someone else got the job, the higher self was in my dream and I knew, that is what I was looking for and that is what I wanted and not the job and because it was also a terrible experience with the peoples death I had known, I had to quit and leave.

I had to start new again. Afterwards I got a job in a bank and in the insight it said it was a new birth and that is when I realized I had to find a spiritual master helping me to get to the right insights. I was scared and committed to that ideal which was even stronger now. It was about the higher self.

After about ten years I came to Baba and on a certain time I didn't like it anymore. I didn't get any answers and I still didn't know to whom I belonged and I had lost all touch with the guy I had known before and later I began with TM, also a way to fly, only it was yogic flying and that is how I came to Baba. It added up more and more experiences, but no answers.

And I was waiting again in Baba's presence and I was scared of it because time went by and I got older and no answers. I began to listen to him after he left the body. He said, 'use my words' and he was holding up a book and that is how I began to write again and I began to take the thought for the day and in thinking it over and seeing it in my own life, it began to make sense. Even if I had in my thought always looked for truth, I didn't listen enough to be aware that he tells us to listen, think it over and absorb. And like that on an everyday basis all that past stuff came up and he began to give the answers.

In listening to him I began to understand it or to get a feeling for it and it was no more that scary and not normal, it had to do with life and reality, but truth is not that easy to take. Also I made the experience of shock, when we are not able to move and think and talk and that was not such a great experience. Because it was shock I couldn't explain it to others and also not why it was like that, I had to get the background knowledge first to understand it.

I tried to talk with my mother about it, but she listened and answered that maybe I was guilty, because after that suicide I noticed I felt guilty as I had known it in the dream, even if I could have done nothing about it. It was another level of guilt, I had to decide what side to take and if I wanted to go in direction of darkness or light and that is how I began with meditation to transform action into good action. There was now that difference between self-realization and self-destruction. That is exactly what Baba said to us not long ago that we all have to learn to transform work into beneficial work.

With that new discrimination in direction of not only truth but also right action after I met the Hare Krishnas I went there hoping to get more knowledge and because it felt like right action. And that is how we went on.

After coming back from Baba nothing seemed to make sense anymore, that was difficult and I went back to him as fast as I could. Waiting was more and more a problem because it seemed to never end. The answers I hoped to get when I began I didn't get at all or only now and that is about forty years later.

Listening to Baba thinking over the thought for the day is better because we have to do it regularly and constantly and if it is too much text we cannot think it over, in listening to it and looking at whatever came up in my mind by doing that I also read that he said actually, we should go on no matter what obstacles are there. So we went on doing it and by doing it we began to get aware of the meaning in it and it began to make sense and that felt great. He said, first discrimination what had been there since it was about self-realization and not self-destruction, more or less imposed by life that discrimination began to grow on us and we have to see it in our own life, there was always something coming up like it does now when thinking it over and we have to go on no matter what obstacles are there.

Not long ago Baba described the nature of God and he mentioned the qualities, existence – luminescence – attractiveness, asthi, bhathi, priyam. I got the name in 2004 during a meditation and of course it related me to his words, but it is the first time that it is like … wow – that's it.

It is also the nature of the higher self. That is what I was looking for since 40 years, great isn't it. How does it feel? Kind of unbelievable. When he is telling us it does make sense, when I tried to get answers it didn't work. So what did happen today to make all that come up in my mind?

My boss called and said that I will get the job certificate next week and I said, what? I don't need a job certificate, because I am not looking for another job. But he said that they told him that I had asked for it even more than once. How strange. I said to him that it must have been a mistake, but I will get it now anyhow, he sent it away already. I am already in pension, I don't know how long I am going on working, but a working certificate I don't need any more after being in pension, not really, because we don't look for another job. And if I would, as I am in a pension age, nobody would look at it.

So he called me and he thought that I am maybe in troubles and I had been but not with work yesterday, but it had to do with center and I felt that tired afterwards, that I had to just relax and stay at home and not think about it anymore. We only work here for some months more and we know it already and he worries that he has to find someone at my place for only a few months what would be very difficult. End of year that job here ends anyhow. So I was thinking about job and that is what came up in my mind and that is how I am seeing it in my own life. So that working certificate I will get next week and I didn't ask for it, has made come up all that. Today I see the death in that firm a bit different, there are two levels, mind and body, that were the two level of darkness above his eyes and also the two levels of fear coming up during the night, the first one had to do with the mind and it ended in being scared to lose the mind and the other had to do with the body and it ended in being scared to die. He died really and that was self-destruction and because it was negative, I had to change something to turn it into activity and work which is beneficial to all.

When you perform an activity (kriya) as an offering to the Lord, your own good, what is good for others, and the highest good (swartha, parartha, and paramaartha) all merge! First, you and I become we. Next we and He becomes One. The individual soul, the 'I' (jiva) should accomplish identity first with the creation (prakriti) and then with the Supreme Divine (Paramatma). This indeed is the significance of the mantra Om Tat Sat (which connects the identity of the individual with the Universal Brahman). 'He' and 'I' are always there; the spiritual practice (sadhana) is always there too. Just as the sun is inseparable and is never apart from its rays, under no circumstances should any aspirant part with one's sadhana. It is only then they can be said to be one with Om. (Prema Vahini)  

That thought for the day was also this week. If it is an offering to God and our own good, what is good for others and the highest good, all merge.

If we do it for him as offering and it is to our own good, like writing or meditation, it is for our own good we get aware of the insights and we get the wisdom and it is our own good and what is good for others, the highest good we merge.

First, you and I become we.

That was the experiences when he said 'engaged', you and I became we. Next I went to Prasanthi Nilayam and we sat in Bhajans and during that time 'we and he became One'.

We and He, he was present in the form of another devotee and the 'I am that' was above her in the air like Darshan and that is Baba's presence in us, because it was the same for us and that made us 'We' and then in her and it was again the same, so it is all done by him only and he is also the reason why I am actually writing and that is He that is how We and He became one, it is for all the same. It expanded to all and there the nature of the higher self, what is existence, luminescence and attractiveness, that nature is the nature of God, because all are in it. God is the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and the higher self looks like the parts, but in fact it is all the same and therefore, there is only One.

There is no difference between Baba and us, we are all the same.

The individual soul, the 'I' (jiva) should accomplish identity first with the creation (prakriti) and then with the Supreme Divine (Paramatma).

How was it first, he 'engaged' us and that is the identity with creation, prakriti, nature, you and I become we and it felt like marriage and it reflects the same way as a marriage does and that is the identity with creation and why he always asked, where is your husband?  And from the We and then with the Supreme Divine, the Paramatma.

Next we and He becomes One.

That when I was sitting in the hall and we were singing Bhajans, we are 'We' and in that light it expanded to all and that means we become one with all, all are the same.  And that is no more on the level of creation and prakriti, but it is one with the Supreme Divine.

So when he tells us that is the nature of God, it is also the nature of the higher self, but to get aware of it that we are all one, we have to go by it. We have to accept the truth of it. First you and I became We and next we and He became one and that is the same process happening here, we just have to realize it and to think it over again and again until it does make sense.

The first step when he made us 'we' was when he said 'engaged' and the second step was when he was about the leave the body and he said, if I don't go I will miss it. I had to get to the reality of 'We and He becomes One'.

This indeed is the significance of the mantra Om Tat Sat (which connects the identity of the individual with the Universal Brahman).

(anything that we do for the welfare of our own self as well as that of others, for the fulfilment of our spiritual aspirations, all come under Sat, or immense goodness.

Actually, the terms 'Tat' and 'Sat' signify the transcendent aspect of Brahman and the immanent aspect of Brahman, both of which are blended together in a universalized connotation, or denotation, as we may call it, which is Om. The Supreme Being is called Om because of the inclusiveness of the Supreme Being.)

I just tried to get some more details about Om Tat Sat, Sat we know it is all what is positive and true and not negative. It is truth.

Tat is that, it is present in everybody as love or pure consciousness, just 'that' and Om is always related to divinity. If we want to call divinity, we have to deal the number OM. It is everything, it is the highest, it is the 'I am that', it is the mantra Soham.

So Om is divine, Tat is pure being, pure love and Sat it goodness, truth, never changing, eternal being.

What he is doing is also thinking it over and seeing it in the light of his life and understanding.

It is our relationship with the divine OM and what is alone real, 'that' and the realization of it, 'I am that' and the transcendental reality of 'sat'.

Our focus is on those three levels, Om and divinity, what we have to realize that we are 'that' as well, no difference and 'sat' is the transcendental reality is realized by meditation.

Like we see by existence, luminescence and attractiveness as nature of God, we find in the existence sat (being-awareness-bliss or sat-chit-ananda) and in the radiance we have tat, the realization of it and in Om we have the divine.   

This indeed is the significance of the mantra Om Tat Sat (which connects the identity of the individual with the Universal Brahman). 'He' and 'I' are always there; the spiritual practice (sadhana) is always there too. Just as the sun is inseparable and is never apart from its rays, under no circumstances should any aspirant part with one's sadhana. It is only then they can be said to be one with Om. (Prema Vahini)  

How can we see it as connection between the individual with the universal Brahman?

Om is universal truth, that is the individual aspect of 'I am that' and sat it the goodness or transcendental awareness that is equally present in all. We began with two 'I am that' and they became 'we are that' and we went to Prasanthi and we and He because he is the universal Brahman, we and he become one.

He is always there, because he is universal truth, the divine, he never dies and I is always there, because it is the first awakening in the heart and it is in every living being and if we don't do spiritual practice or sadhana, we are in the mind. Even more so we have to Sadhana if we understand it, because we have to merge with the others and that never stops. If we stop, we are back to body and mind only.

He is the sun and we are the rays and therefore, we should never part with one's sadhana, spiritual path, it can get transformed, but we have to live the message. If we stop our sadhana the sun stops to shine for us and we get back into the night of the mind. Om is always the light and if we don't shine, it is like eternal night is taking over. The mind is what goes into the senses and darkness, Sadhana brings us out of the senses and the mind in going direction upwards towards the light.

We cannot stop Sadhana, we can think that Baba as Avatar was in his 'Sadhana' for the world, enlightening the world, it is spiritual practice or work, but we don't call it like that for a realized being, because it is telling us also that we have to do Sadhana to get to self-realization.

It is only then they can be said to be one with Om.

On that level of Om Tat Sat is no more difference between him and us, we are all the same Oneness and nothing but that. If we live it we are him, if we don't we are just human beings in the mind.