Sacred Food

Study of books alone will not enhance your capability; they will merely provide you with superficial or bookish knowledge. This obviously is not enough. Real capability and strength come by tapping the Inner Power latent in you. All that is outside is artificial. Real truth and power are both inside, in your heart. It is the heart that must be strengthened, but, unaware of this fact; people become furiously active in the external world, only to get lost there. There are many types of food catering to the needs of the gross body but what about food for the heart? That food can be obtained only when you turn your head toward God. You must understand the subtle linkages here – food, head, and God. Thus, along with the acquisition of worldly knowledge, you must also give importance to culture and refinement.

In my meditation I was enjoying remembering some sutras, we did it years ago and it is a special food for the soul and it seems just today I got aware of it how nourishing it can be and an amazing feeling after such a long time, there was a time it was only present as cut off, and I didn’t know from what I had been cut off, but it was not possible to access to it. But it does feel good; it feels like accessible again and great, just great. And it has to do with the now and a present experience and knowing what we are doing now and what had been that disturbed in the past. Now it felt the same as it had been years ago, it felt just the same and it was something that had been not there for such a long time, it was like looking through a window in the past of the soul and seeing it in details and how it had been time ago, it had changed because of someone, that it can be present again that seems the biggest miracle sometimes, that energy in it, that power or that flow, it was all not present and gone and it never felt right again and we didn’t know how, but the real disturbance we didn’t know. Now we get aware that it is the same and that there is no difference, but that it had been disturbed and it didn’t go on because of that reason and something was not quite right.

Sutras are good qualities, the wisdom is based on Patanjali and we learnt it with mediation and practiced for years twice a day repeating them, but the whole experience was based on ‘pure love’ and that on a path that had only to do with the intellect, so I went on but it didn’t take a long time the whole thing broke in pieces and as it seems it has to do with that ‘love’ story we have with our own higher self. But I began with thinking the sutras because of health reasons; it felt good to watch from the inside as the body is different if we see it from the inside. Usually if we are thinking sutras, we were just repeating it but as it felt good, I saw them always in the light of the higher self, it was not just repetition, it is all based on the way we feel, if it gets a routine it is just mechanically repeated, if we see it in the light of the higher self there is love only. As I saw them in the light of the higher self or whatever I did I used as a means getting closer to the higher self, it was insight and it was the highest and Swami said in the dream that he is the insight and the following step.

It makes a difference if we see the body from the inside, at the outside is always changing, but not so at the inside, it was the same, it was not different, even if the body has changed, it feels like a different relationship to the body, a different feeling if we look at it out of that light of the sutras and we had practiced quite a while, it is not new, it is old. After all that time the inside relationship to the body was still the same, even if the body has changed.

Study of books alone will not enhance your capability; they will merely provide you with superficial or bookish knowledge. This obviously is not enough. Real capability and strength come by tapping the Inner Power latent in you.

It felt good, getting aware of it and feeling it from the inside, the reason we went on with meditation years ago in the hope getting closer to the potential of strength we have in our mind and which seems hardly used.

And I loved it that inner power in the idea that it was possible to use more of it and that with mediation we would be able to use more of the mental potential, even if we never know how much more.

Remembering the sutras there was a difference in the inner awareness and by doing the energy and the strength is build up, it is powerful and we can feel it, but we not really aware of it anymore, it was cut off and gone, the love story was disturbed really. Now it feels better, it feels great and in tune with the ideal or again in tune with it, for some time we had not been in tune and cut off. It is a difference between experience and just thinking about it.

The experience was disturbed or like not existing, not really what had cut it off like, but what else could it be but a relationship?  With people just pretending to go the path of right action and in reality they are just actors and thinking about their own fame and name. It had been there until I went the first time to Swami and when coming back it was gone. I just wanted to get out of it, nothing else actually, but get out of that relationship I had been in at that time, I just wanted to end it and I didn’t know how.  Swami was the opening of a door and I went out of it like that, I went to Swami and it was ended and that was good. Only I didn’t feel okay when coming back, in the inside it felt ‘cut off’. It was just like the window closed or the door was closed and when coming back it was all gone. It was gone and lost and not just gone, it was totally lost as it seems, but the state we found ourselves in was kind of not pleasant always getting the information from the inside, cut off, but we didn’t know how to change it and Swami said in the interview, ‘follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game’. It was lost and it was gone, somewhere between going to him and coming back, there was nothing anymore as it had been before.

It was not at the inside and it was not at the outside as well, it was nowhere to be found.

It was an awful state and it felt like nowhere land and it seemed impossible getting back into it again, maybe the Shamans would have said that a part of the soul was lost somewhere and it had to be found again. And we went on think it over and it was not only enlivening the present, but also the past. Remembering a sutra, and it was because of health reason, I remembered also that magic moment when I went first to Swami, as he had been present as the divine and he was in the heart, that was his temple and it was amazing to go to him knowing who he was in the heart only I didn’t think that it would be that different coming back. I knew I was thinking the mantra and the sutras in the light of the higher self and I was not used to it that it began to reflect and that I began to have insights and there was no answer to it not at all with meditation, there was really no answer to insights and pictures in the dream with a mechanical technique and just mantra repetition it was more likely that by repetition of the mantra every possible insight was just not seen and we just went back to the mantra routine and in it everything got lost. When I went first to Swami I thought that everything was fine and I had no idea that the mechanical repletion of the mantra and the routine and the damage it did still by ignoring everything what was present as insight could be that much troubles.  

All that is outside is artificial. Real truth and power are both inside, in your heart.

What we lived at the inside was real and more real than what we lived at the outside and now the outside had changed and it looked as empty and senseless and strange as the inside was because we didn’t go on in that mental routine of just doing mantra repetition thinking it was all done.

The outside was kind of good as we did the right thing or we were sure we did it, there was truth and it had to do with the fact that we cannot get to peace but from the inside and it had to do with right action and that was the reason why we were initiating people into mediation.

On the outside level everything has changed.  It is not the same, but if I remember the sutras, there is still that power or it is again in it now and we hope to get more of it, we remember it, it feels good and great and it is nourishing the soul.

It is the heart that must be strengthened, but, unaware of this fact, people become furiously active in the external world, only to get lost there.

Swami is telling us that we can get lost in a furiously active external world, as we are unaware of how important it is to strengthen the heart. If there is a feeling of being lost it can have to do with the imbalance between heart and outer activity, that is certainly a reason, but it didn’t make sense in our case as it had more to do with the routine of mechanically thinking a mantra than we anything else and the question was more if that was outgoing enough to create the same effect of getting lost.

The attention was in that routine not on the heart level, but it got on the heart level with Swami and when we visited his ashram, it was great to know that it was possible to see him, but coming back was something else,  the world had another face and it had changed and it seemed hardly recognizable anymore. Now we didn’t know exactly what had been present with the higher self and why it felt that good to think the sutras, we would think that others didn’t have such a good experience with the sutras and it was probably more mechanical, because for me it was not as it was related to the higher self.

If we get furiously active in the external world, we can get lost there, it is good to know that there is another reason why we can get lost and not only due to the absence of a master.

If there is a feeling of being lost, there must be one or another reason if not both reasons are present, but how will we know, our insights will tell us if we follow the inner master and think over his words, he is the reflection of the insights and we find that reflection in his words. Atman reflects, resounds and reacts, the reflection in his words is in that sense really important to us if we would like to understand the meaning or our insights.  

There are many types of food catering to the needs of the gross body but what about food for the heart? That food can be obtained only when you turn your head toward God.

We should turn our attention inside and towards God and that was done, I did it with meditation and I went on with mediation and it was anyhow gone and there was no answer to it why it felt that different.  

And how do we understand that subtle linkages here – food, head and God?

It was easy to find the food for the body and we were vegetarians, but it was not the same about the environment and the heart. Somehow my normal life was out of balance, we all know how to nourish the body, but what about the head, we also know how to get worldly knowledge and we had learnt all spiritual instructions about meditation in a scientific way what made it look like worldly knowledge and that was not true. There was love, but it was not the focus of the meditation, the focus was to get a lot of people into big groups in mediation together to purify consciousness.

On the outside and on the body level we know what food we have to eat usually, for the head we have the acquisition of worldly knowledge and science is part of it and for the heart we have to focus on culture and refinement and that will lead to God and the higher self and I was still focused on that level, but what we had learnt had all to do with science and that was confusing it put the spiritual level what was about heart and divinity back in the mind.  

If we see it on these three levels as body, head and divinity and nourishment for those three levels, we actually know that on the body level we need food, on the head level it is knowledge and on the heart level it is refinement, culture and therefore it gets into feeling.  

You must understand the subtle linkages here – food, head, and God. Thus, along with the acquisition of worldly knowledge, you must also give importance to culture and refinement.

Every insight is important and not long ago it was about ‘pure love’ and that was upside down or disturbed by the attitude of those people and that is why in my insight they all turned into enemies. It was not about the heart for them and it was only science and that was not the heart level, but it was the head and food for the head and not the heart and I went to Swami because with him we get food for the heart and it was amazing getting there, but coming back was less good it was like everything had gone what had been my life before and there was nobody able to tell us why it was all gone, it was just emptiness left and nothing else, therefore, I went back to him as soon as I could and I thought it was normal and I was like that because I had been with him, but there was another reason and it had to do with the higher self and the ‘pure love’ which had been there already with the yogi, it was part of the higher self and not with the movement, they were just teaching a mediation technique and that had nothing to do with love after all, but it had been easy and comfortable and that was still in our mind, we thought it would go on like that.

We just sat down and went into silence, there were no problems, there were no conflicts and no fights and we just sat down in meditation and that was it and we ate together and had fun being together, there were never any discussion and arguments and emotions, it was all perfectly under control by meditation and if we didn’t feel right we just sat down and meditated and that didn’t work anymore now we had to do it differently. We have to make the experience of it and as we experienced his presence and he told us that the real friend is uplifting our life and it is cleansing the ideal and the emotions and we know that yogis are our friends and there was the feeling of friendship behind it, but we got only aware of it when it was present as enemies, but how did all those people turn into enemies and that was just present today when the sutras were again that insight they had been before in thinking the sutras, but not as a mechanical repetition, but in the light of the higher self and that is love, it was confirmed by the yogi and when we became teachers, there was ‘pure love’ in the air, but it was not like Darshan, it was more like the reflection of truth, right action, peace and if those three things are present, it is possible to have an experience of pure love. That is how the sutras had been in the insight experienced on the level of ‘pure love’ and not just as mechanical repetition and that was gone after I left, it was no more possible to feel it, it was disturbed, because they all had turned into enemies.  That was difficult, but I thought that the enemies were the reflection of the other side and it should be friends actually, but I didn’t like it that they were present as enemies and not as friends. It felt that complicated and all upside down really. But when I left the yogi said to me that it is the same and I thought, how can it be the same it is all different and not the same, what is there the same? But in the mean time we had to get the experience of it and if it is uplifting life it is the same, even if we do it a totally different way and it is cleansing the ideals and the emotions, it is the same and there is no difference if we do it with meditation or we do organize a speech or we do some charity or we organize a singing, it is the same experience and that sameness it the key to it and we find it in Veda, it was kind of difficult to get aware that there are so many ways to get to the same experience because with meditation we learnt that there was only that way and no other way was possible and that was not true.

We sat down all together in big groups and meditated and it was all in silence and we thought that was the only way and it was that comfortable and easy, nothing to do really and everything was done already, we just had to relax, besides that we worked seven days a week for that movement and to initiate people.

We didn’t know what experience we made and that it was charming and what we liked and what not, only when it was disturbed, it was actually not easy anymore and charming and it had turned into the opposite. We thought it had to be like that. I always had problems with people arguing and how easily they went into problems and how emotional the whole thing was there was no way to stop them, until Baba said in the inner view that I should use his words.

In using his words we get aware that he always has the right answer and when I took over the study circle it was more or less only a sharing experience and they didn’t really seemed to study his words and when we use his words, we actually get aware that he gave the answer and people were okay with that, because it was his presence in it and that is all what they want. We are used to Darshan and there are three things as he was telling us it was uplifting our life and it was cleansing our ideal and our emotions. What we talked about in the study circle was mostly about the ideal and if we get to truth and that we find in Baba’s words, it is automatically cleansing the ideal and if the ideal is cleansed, it also cleanses emotions and it is uplifting our life.

That is why they meet in a circle to make the experience of the divine, nothing else and it is not about sitting together and sharing experiences or to discuss matters.

I preferred to meditate and be in silence and hope that one day it would be there, no matter what and it is all about Veda and in what way we uplift our life and cleanse the ideal and emotions, but it has to be uplifting and cleansing, that is the main issue if we sit together and mediate or we sing together or we do some service together, the aim is always the same, it is that precious presence of the divine what feels uplifting to our life. We have to make the experience, it has to be experience. It is not possible to understand it if we didn’t make the experience. If we don’t make an effort to get the experience, we will never experience it. If we know it is about cleansing the ideal and we get aware of it if we listen to his words, he is telling us, but only if we live it and think it over and see it in our own life we get the reflection in his words. He is telling us that it is all the same, there is only that experience and we experienced it as Darshan, sight of truth.

If we don’t listen to his words, we will never understand it, we just do it. If we know what we are doing and why we do it, we are aware of it and in reality we were not aware of it at all, we functioned in habits and we repeated a mantra a mechanical way.  Now the sutras are also uplifting our life, they are as well cleansing the ideal and our emotions, but it is totally different if we repeat the sutras or we sing together and as he explained to us it is still the same.  We get that sameness only if we get the oneness behind it, there is only one and it is therefore always the same, but we did it a totally different way and only when we see the sameness and oneness, we understand why it is the same.

When I went to Swami and after I had my first interview, I asked him about it and I told him about the friend and he was in New Delhi and he asked, who is the friend, is the friend with the Maharishi or is the Maharishi your friend and I just didn’t know the answer. Swami said that it was very difficult to understand and I had no idea what he was talking about, but today I think I have an idea of it, because if we don’t have the experience on one side and listen to his words on the other side, we don’t get it.

It means we have to listen to his words and we have to make the experience, both together and then we have to reflect in the insight and get aware that it is the same actually.

Swami explained in the text we have for the study circle that it means going near to the Lord and that all activities are in fact only having that aim, going near to the Lord and that is the focus in the activity, we get aware that we serve him and by that we develop that awareness of oneness and get near to the Lord, my it be singing, doing service or if we look in the circle at a text together, what matters is that the circle is the whole and more than the sum of its parts.

We have to find the source to know what we are doing and the source is Veda, the same and it is uplifting our life and it is cleansing the ideal and the emotions and what we experience as Darshan is the same we aim at in a mediation, only there we had to keep silence, otherwise, it is not uplifting.

Swami’s words are always true, he is established in truth, he is the embodiment of truth.

We had learnt it by heart, it was part of the training, with Swami we have to get that training in following the inner master and listening to his words, but it we use Swami’s words, it is always right and we cannot go wrong, it is seen as surrendering the ego (it is different and our safety his presence and everybody is happy and it is the experience of the divine and that is definitely feeling good). If he does it, he is the doer and if he is our words,  it is just right, we are instruments, if we would try to explain with our words, we just don’t get anywhere. It is just based on right action to use his words, it is based on truth that he is always true and right and our focus on him is about the divine we would like to realize.

He is the insights and he is the following step.

It is about cleansing the ideal and that will always be the same and the purpose of all activities we organize to feel uplifted in our life and cleansing our ideal and emotions.  

It is the purpose of the Satsang we have at the weekend or the next one, it is the purpose of every gathering and activity we do, it is always about cleansing the ideal and the emotions, he is telling us if we listen to him, he is telling it in his words and we just need to listen, but it seems that difficult that people really listen and don’t just read his words and without listening, we are not able to absorb, we have to listen, we have to think it over and in doing that we get to the right conclusion.