Giving up the little 'I' is Renunciation

Giving up the little 'I' is the true meaning of renunciation (Tyaga). Tyaga does not mean running away from the hearth and home into the jungle. It means sublimating every thought, word and deed as an offering to God and saturating all acts with Divine intent. This is the best spiritual practice to cultivate selfless love. Love gives for ever, it never asks another to give. Shower it, and you will be showered in return. Selfless love thrives on renunciation, they are inseparable. The essential reality of a human being rejects the ego as a blemish. When you sincerely investigate into the question, "Who am I", you will find that everyone is included in 'I', and your love will expand limitlessly. Ego should not be allowed to express itself freely, as it smothers the spring of love. God is love, so all things created by God are filled with love.

How do we give up the little I? Swami tells us here that giving up the little 'I' is the true meaning of renunciation. This is information, we know the little 'I' is the ego. It is as well body consciousness and in that sense natural, we get it without that we have to do something about it.

Swami corrects the meaning that we have to run away to the jungle to renounce. 

He gives the answer in the third sentence, it means sublimating every thought, word and deed as an offering to the divine and all acts with divine intent and it is about cultivating selfless love. 

Giving up the little 'I' is the true meaning of renunciation (Tyaga). Tyaga does not mean running away from the hearth and home into the jungle. It means sublimating every thought, word and deed as an offering to God and saturating all acts with Divine intent. This is the best spiritual practice to cultivate selfless love. 

If that is the basic truth of Swami's teaching, why some I know are going every year to the ashram for more than a month if he is not practicing it? Why there is no selfless love? At the outside it looks all different, but the man coming in our dreams to awaken said, that he took only advantage of it and for me it was a real challenge to know what it means to take only advantage of it.

The ideal is love and it gives ever and never asks another to give, that is the ideal, but it also means we have people taking advantage of it and it is not about love and ever giving at all, it is the opposite, it is only about taking. 

And we see it not only in the individual as we see everything as Swami, that someone could take advantage of it, but even on the movement level. And then he is telling us, we first have to feel love, what is not right, first duty, love comes by practicing and it is anyhow only an excuse, every year he goes to Prashanti Nilayam for a cheap vacation and he knows people as we had been living there, but the excuse by waiting to feel love, is based on Rajas, passion and not sathva, purity. It feel like an excuse only. 

Love gives for ever, it never asks another to give. Shower it, and you will be showered in return. 

To shower love, we have to be in a state of love first, but we have to do something, we have to practice. I know him since years and just got the answer, when he will feel love later maybe, he is postponing it and later will never happen. 

Selfless love thrives on renunciation, they are inseparable. The essential reality of a human being rejects the ego as a blemish. 

There is no rejection of the ego as a blemish, there is living of the ego, self-centered, going to the ashram and love will be there later maybe. 

There is no investigation into the question, 'Who am I' and if it is, it is just claiming, he tells, 'I am God', I believe it, but it is understood on the ego level. He tells us that he believes it, but he the ego only and not God. 

Last year we had troubles with a hotel room, we got from him the answer that he asked Swami and now he looks at it as a Swami Lila and he is the instrument of Swami and we should pray he would for sure give us a good price.

It means he was playing instrument and in charge and we should pray and anything happening will be Swami's will and he has to do nothing, it is no more his business, but Swami's. That is what he meant when he said that he gave it to Swami, that was already there years ago when we had met. His sister tried to talk him into common sense, as it was about his daughter coming over she told him to organize a proper accommodation, but that was not Swami. When it is in his advantage it is Swami and when not, it is not the divine and he doesn't even think of it that it could also be the divine challenge and he didn't do it. As it would have cost him some money, it was not at all the divine will that he should live in the spirit of self-sacrifice.

Swami is using often the example of the mansion of self-realization, the floor is self-confidence, the walls are self-satisfaction and the roof is self-sacrifice. We met at the ashram and had been together and when we left he was standing in a ruin, that ruin had the floor with holes only and the walls were crumbled and there was no roof. No roof is no self-sacrifice, that means he didn't get another room for us to make sure we would be okay as he would have to pay some money for it and that was reflected in the dream by the man coming in our dreams to awaken, but we have to listen to Swami's words to be able to understand it and in thinking over his words and remembering it, we get the insights.

Swami was in the dream as the man coming in our dreams to awaken and there were two Swami, one was the insight and the other the following step. Therefore in thinking it over, it makes only sense that there is no roof if we have the direct perception of it what is meant with other words, the direct experience and that direct experience of it we got only now when we went for a visit and that is how we got the experience. We didn't expect it to be different as we had made the experience of it already before and we knew there was a reason why there was a ruin, why there was no roof only we were not yet really aware of it and lucky Swami got us out of that situation before we knew it, because know we know it, at that time we didn't know it yet and we just knew that something was totally wrong. 

There is another example of people taking advantage of it. We got a vido about some sacrilege done by those people who claim that Sai Baba appears in the light body, they started with a whole ashram and in the Internet we find everything and there was a video message warning us, they were holding up the door to an imaginary light body of Swami and all people fall to his feet and adore that invisible form as Baba.

There is no selflessness. There is no renunciation and there is for sure no ego rejected as a blemish. 

But they earn a living with it and live like kings, in the shadow of Swami's message, do good, be good, see good.

It is easy to take advantage of idealists, we always knew it, but going to Swami and being subjected to it anyhow, that was upsetting and disturbing. Before we left Portland the man coming in our dreams to awaken was present in the face of Swami, one had vampire teeth and the other a very long nose. At that time it didn't make any sense, but it was a warning. 

Without the experience of it we would probably not have the right discrimination. I had mentioned it once to a devotee and we noticed that she was like taken aback, how can anyone take advantage of it? That had never been in her mind, not even the idea of it and that seems to be the same in all those people going for the light body to that other ashram thinking it is Sai Baba in a light body, being fooled by those guys, who take only advantage of it and that is the long nose demon in the dream. 

That is just why they can do it, because people are naive and don't realize it is the opposite of Swami's message. 

He tells us, 'I am God', you are God as well, just make the experience of it. 

That is Swami. It is not about adoring the form, it is about self-realization. 

But we are able to go to those crooks and watch that play of opening the door of the car letting an invisible Swami get out of it, have interview with the invisible Swami and he is the one who is giving even rings and presents materialized by a an invisible Swami and we don't realize that we give the power away? Only that guy has the power and we don't have it, what about all being the same?

We don't realize that we believe those guy and they are fooling us and they alone have the power as they claim they can see it and we are not able to see it? We go and think it could be right, but it is all fake and he is able with that blind believe to create such a big ashram as he has already now? 

It is an example of the mind state of people and how they want to believe in miracles and not in common sense. So the ashram comes and tells us today, Swami is a belief in common sense and not that foolish theater performance of a frustrated devotee who realized with Swami is it possible to make a living and if we have a good performance, we are able to damage Swami's reputation and get our ego bloated and we are growing bigger in the shade of his divine name. 

And the ashram has now the problem of dealing with it and that people have not enough discrimination, as they never listened to Swami, that is the result of it and those guys really in that sense noticed that this would happen as people are confused and too much attached to the form. 

That is the same taking advantage of it. The guy I mentioned is using Swami to excuse the inability of taking care of it himself or he doesn't want to take care of it as it could be an effort in time, money, energy, not matter what it is too much asked from him. That is why the vampire, the dream is the confirmation of it, it is about energy. The vampire is an energy demon. He lives of the blood of others what is symbolic for energy, money, time. 

That is how we take advantage of Swami, instead of living his message. In his family was right reaction, they asked him to take care of it and to do something about it, but he didn't. If he would have, it would have been all different. And the long nose has to do with fooling people, like those people who are telling that he is in a light body, it is just another way and form, but still a form, if we listen to truth and think it over, truth transcends the form.  

We have to reach the level of oneness with the divine, if it is with meditation or with repeating the divine name, we have to be one with him if we think a sutra and expect to fly, we cannot fly without first meditating and going into the state of Samyama and Swami said, Samyama, that is the state we have to be in to use the Patanjali sutras, it is concentration, meditation and Samadhi, even intellect all three together in one, an advanced meditation state. Swami said that Samyama can conquer the God of death, it means it is also a way to get liberation.

When you sincerely investigate into the question, "Who am I", you will find that everyone is included in 'I', and your love will expand limitlessly. Ego should not be allowed to express itself freely, as it smothers the spring of love. God is love, so all things created by God are filled with love.

He is telling only that it is Swami when it is in his advantage and that is why he said, he took only advantage of it. It means in the ruin is no roof and not self-sacrifice. What we usually live for with a family, with other words the insight shows that he ruined it.