Thanksgiving, Baba's Birthday and the Security Guard

All that I seek from you is that you love your fellowmen, share their sufferings, and engage yourselves in serving them.

Rich people and those in power have plentiful servants. But the distressed, the poverty-stricken, and those who suffer have no one to serve them. Go to such people and be their friends, their kith and kin, and their closest well-wishers. Let them welcome you as such.

If you pour spirituality into the ears of those who are tortured by hunger, it will not be assimilated. First satiate the hunger. Give them God in the form of food and in the form of clothes.

Give God in the form of peace to those who are afflicted with anxiety and in the form of medicine to those who are suffering from ill health.

Give God in a form that will assuage fear, pain and sorrow. It is only when this is done that spirituality can soak into their hearts.

Baba (thought for the day)

 

Today America celebrates Thanksgiving and in India Baba's birthday celebration already began, no wonder I have all day the feeling it is Sunday and a Holiday.

Today the joy of that Lila took over and it feels like a different level. We had to remember to put things right and into sathva to be able get back to our own self.

Fortune, Misfortune and Action

Your fortune or misfortune depends on your actions. Without realizing this truth, you are indulging in evil deeds. 

You feel sorry when the consequences of your sins haunt you. What is the use? 

You have to be careful right from beginning not to commit sin. 

Truth is the ornament for your neck (Sathyam kantasya bhushanam), Charity is the true ornament of the hand (Hasthasya bhushanam daanam). Your hands are useless if they do not perform acts of charity. 

You have to sanctify each limb of your body by engaging in sacred activities. 

Let your eyes ever look only at sacred things. 

These teachings are simple to practice in your daily life. But do not take them lightly. Though they appear to be simple, they lead you to liberation. You may not be able to see the results of your meritorious deeds. But they confer on you all the happiness and comforts in due course of time.

Baba (thought for the day)

It feels like we should be happy always and why not? 



How sweet

It is amazing to be in family and afterwards to realize, that it feels great the time it lasts.
It was probably that part which made my mother fight for it, they have had such a strong family feeling for each other, my mother's family. My fathers was the opposite. And she was fighting for her family, but that was not good, it turned into the opposite, Tamas. It is not a level of fight, it is a level of understanding, being and sharing, human values.   

Concept of Reflection, Reaction and Resound

One might concede the concept of reflection, reaction and resound in cases where the person is not directly involved.

A man sees a snake swallowing a frog; he is upset and angry with the snake. Where is the question of reflection etc., in this case?

To understand that, let us suppose that this man is an astronomer and discovers that one galaxy is swallowing another - galaxies are known to do this occasionally. This astronomer is happy that he has made a discovery and even publishes a paper on it.

In both instances, one entity is annihilating another but in one case the man/observer is angry, whereas in the other he is happy.

Where did this anger and happiness come from? Did, for example, the gobbling galaxy part with a bit of its joy, (that is, if it did feel some joy)?

In both cases, the person or the observer was reacting based on what was within him.

As Swami often says, As is the thought, so is the feeling.

In the world of computers, there is a phrase: What you see is what you get - WYSIWYG.

In spirituality the rule is: "What you see is what you want to see!"

 

Sai Baba Articles

 

I am actually fascinated by mathematics and I know it is possible to prove the existence of the irrational transcendental reality, but I don't know it enough to be able to calculate it myself.

In this text of Baba articles are two examples showing the relationship of our inner reaction to different situations and in question is reflection ...

Upside Down, the Pig and the Mud Hole

But, Indra, in the form of the pig, replied, "Narada, why are you coming in the way of my happiness? The joy that I am getting in this dirty water I will not be able to get anywhere else. The wonderful life that I am enjoying here with my wife and children in this mud hole I cannot even get in heaven. Why have you come here to meddle with my life and get in the way of my joy? Please go your way and leave me be."

Indra, who was under the spell of the illusion of attachment, did not realize his pitiful condition.

Narada had to summon Indra's own weapon, the celestial thunderbolt, to render that pig body asunder and free a much-relieved Indra from his prison of attachment and body-consciousness.

When you are under the spell of attachment; you will be completely deluded. This delusion is due to the irresistible power of maya, which veils your truth and keeps it hidden from you.

If you want to destroy this power of illusion, you must develop your knowledge of the true self.

Therefore, Krishna took it upon himself to start out his teachings by instructing Arjuna in self-knowledge. It is only after you have the direct experience of your eternal self, that you can truly do your work and discharge your duties properly. Without this knowledge you will not understand even the mundane daily activities relating to the world.

Baba

Sai Baba Gita

I don't like that Baba Lila and how it looked in the past. But it is not really about liking I guess, but about realization and we have to know the difference. 
The problem began when the TM leader, who felt like a friend, made the yogi appear as the opposite. It was all upside down and Tamas, but somehow it didn't seem to make sense that the master was overshadowed by it.

Heaven and Hell

Real love is when you are constantly watching the progress of the soul. 

As soon as you cater to someone's physical desires and bad habits you are not loving that soul anymore.

You are just pleasing that person to avoid ill will.

No matter how unpleasant it is to tell a friend that he is wrong, if you say it with love in your heart and stand firm on it, sometimes that person will respect you if you are right.

If you are wrong, even then he will know that you did it with sincerity, out of love.

P. Yogananda

 

Coming back from Paris I went on a TM course.

It was called invincibility, but it was not invincible.

During the course it broke in pieces, only we didn't know what 'it' was.

Purusha and Mother Divine

The first step to love all and serve all is to expand love in your own homes. You must revere and please your parents who gave you this chance to live and learn.

If you ill-treat them or inflict grief on their minds, how can you ever gladden others by service and understanding?

You know that when a balloon is blown, it bursts and the air inside it merges with the vast limitless expanse outside. Similarly your love must fill your home, then the society you live, and finally burst open to spread in the Universe.

A drop of water held in the palm is soon evaporated; but drop it into the sea and it survives as a part of the sea. It assumes the name and the taste, the majesty and might of the sea! Cultivate Love; sow the seeds of love in all hearts, everywhere around you.

That is My Wish, My Mission!

Baba (thought for the day)

 

That's it the reason why it doesn't work if we don't care about others and if we don't expand love in our homes. If we inflict grief on the parents' minds, how can we ever gladden others by service and understanding? Because we don't know what we are doing if we inflict grief on the parents' minds, we can also not be of service to others.

Mission and Love my Uncertainty

Your mission has begun. Those are My words to you, My devotees. Each of you has a unique and valuable part to play in this lifetime. Only those whom I have called can serve Me.
My Mission has now reached that point in time when each of you now has work to do.
This planet has a purpose in the great galaxy in which it it held. That purpose is now unfolding before our eyes.
I call upon you to radiate the Bhakti (devotion) within you so that its unseen power will envelop all who come into your orbit. To successfully perform your part, always remain centred upon Me.
Baba 

Saib Baba - Your Mission 

It is all wrong to think we know. It is wrong to think of the end, it is a Lila and that needs trust.

Transient Things results in Disappointment

All worldly pleasures are transient and temporary. Very often they result in sorrow and disappointment. You often experience loss, depression and confusion and have no contentment. Know that lack of contentment is the real loss (Asantrupto nijo nashtah). There is no limit to desires.

One feels hungry, another is thirsty. If the thirsty man is offered water, he is not satisfied, he wants a cool drink. When he is given a cool drink, next he wants ice cream, and so on. He is not satisfied with anything. Realize that there is no end to desires for material things in the world. To get rid of these desires, one must turn their mind towards God. The purpose of human birth is to realise the inherent Divinity. That is the way to achieve contentment and lasting bliss. God alone is the source of enduring bliss.

Baba (thought for the day)

Because worldly pleasures are transient and temporary they result in sorrow and disappointment.

Development of Wisdom and inner Inquiry

But, there is a practice even superior to meditation.
The ultimate spiritual practice is the development of wisdom.
Wisdom emerges from inner inquiry. It is the spiritual practice of looking deep into the essential nature of everything. If you faithfully pursue this inquiry, you will gradually reach the supreme state of peace and bliss.
This is the unique goal of human life, a goal which all mankind will one day achieve.

Inner Inquiry - the Path of Wisdom
Sai Baba Gita pfd

I guess that is where this leads, I just don't understand what it has to do with a job, but maybe there is nothing to understand and it just has to do with feeling and worries in the mind we have to get aware of it and it is just part of that inner inquiry.

The Three Stages on the Wisdom Path

To reach the state of abiding inner peace, you begin by inquiring into the very heart of everything. This is the process of inner inquiry, the first stage on the wisdom path. Then you must make use of the deep insights you have gained by applying the spiritual teachings to every detail of your daily life. This is the second stage.  

If you continue with this practice unfailingly, then, in time, you will reach the goal of God-realization and enjoy unending bliss. This is the third and final stage on the wisdom path. (Baba Gita)

Equanimity and Joy

True joy comes from equanimity.
Do not be carried away by or attach any importance to worldly things. Use your time and effort to control the vagaries of the mind and develop mental steadiness. Equal-mindedness; means that you remain unaffected by victory or defeat, by profit or loss, by joy or sorrow.

Accept whatever happens, whatever comes your way, as the gift of God, to be enjoyed with great satisfaction, regarding it as a gift of love given to you for your own good. When your heart is not swayed by worldly things, when you treat all people and all things with equal-mindedness, then you will experience true joy.
Then your heart will be filled with feelings of love and satisfaction, and you will know the true joy of devotion.

Baba Gita

 

It feels kind of amazing, it is always about joy. Without joy there is no love. 

Tapas, coordination of Thought, Word and Deed

Your heart is the ceremonial altar; your body is the fire place; your hair is the holy grass, darbha; wishes are the fuel-sticks with which the fire is fed; desire is the ghee that is poured into the fire to make it burst into flame; anger is the sacrificial animal; the fire is the tapas you accomplish. People sometimes interpret tapas as ascetic practices like standing on one leg, and so on. No, tapas is not physical contortion. It is the complete and correct coordination of thought, word and deed.
When all words emanating from you are sweet, your breath becomes Rig Veda. When you restrict what you listen to and prefer only sweet speech, all that you hear becomes Saama gaana.
When you do only sweet deeds, all that you do is Yajur homa. Thus, you will be performing every day the Vedhapurusha Yajna, the yajna which propitiates the Supreme Vedic Being.
Baba (thought for the day)

To integrate holiness in our daily life is a skill. I don’t feel like skilled at all. It began when I was twenty being focused on the higher self and my life is conditioned by it. It means whatever I can do to get more freedom I have to do, because it feels heavy.

Water and Soap to Clean the Heart

Cleanse the heart with the water of love and the detergents of prayer and contrition, so that the stains of desire will be removed. Then God will pour His Grace into it. If you yearn for God, you should give up attachment to the external world and to the body (Loka bhranthi and Deha bhranthi). There is no use trying to put one foot in one boat and another in a different boat.

You may have been a spiritual aspirant for 20 or 25 years, but if you worry more about physical needs and comforts than meditation and spiritual progress, then the years of practice is of no value, as there has been no progress. The waving of the camphor flame (aarti) at the end of the prayer or bhajan session is to remind you that your sensual cravings must be burnt away without leaving any trace behind. You must offer yourself completely to God, to be merged in His Glory.

Baba (thought for the day)

If we see the heart as vessel, we have to take care that it is clean and we put in the water love and in the detergent prayers to remove the stains of desire, then God will pour his Grace into it.

That means we have to clean the heart.

Face the Devil, get aware of the Lesson

The first step in spiritual life is to have compassion.
A person who is kind and loving never needs to go searching for God.
God rushes toward any heart that beats with compassion-it is God's favorite place.
Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi)

 

If we make one step towards God, he rushes towards us. One step and he makes a thousand towards us, but we have to make the first step.  

But if we take the mind for God, we don't make that step and he will not rush towards us and if we live in arrangements with the mind and just think it is love, but it is not, how can that work out?
It is not compassion and not love. If we keep bad habits and do not meditate to establish better habits, he will not rush towards us too.
There is an effort needed, we have to make the first step to know the difference between God and mind and if we don’t do it, we stay deluded in a mind state and it can go on forever.
We think it is God, but it is only the mind. And when it is about fame, we want to convince the other about ego values and are not open to learn.

If it is ego arrangement going on thinking he will give, he will not give, because the step we make is not in direction of God, but in direction of the ego and we don’t get aware of the mistake in our thoughts, we are stupid.

Are You Enlightened?

Man is endowed with the special instrument of discrimination, of judgment, of analysis and synthesis, which among all animals, he alone possesses.

He has to develop this and utilize it to the best purpose. Through this instrument, he can realize the Immanent Divinity.

Upanishad Vahini

It is not difficult, it is easy. If we are the same, isn’t it easy? What do we need to know about being the same?

The insight is not easy. Why not? Because is it not direct seeing on the level of our eyes and sense perception, it is insight in consciousness. Time, effort, work are needed to get to the result of understanding it, meditation, waiting, observing, discrimination.

And can we even understand it?

What is behind that incredible knowledge?

Get rid of Bonds and Karma by Discrimination and Detachment

While entangled in the Five Elements, man is attracted, distracted or disappointed by them; all this causes distress.
Wealth, possessions - vehicles, buildings - all these are transmutations of the elements.
Man craves for them; when he loses them or fails to get them, he spurns them.

Upanishad Vahini

Transmutation of elements of our mind mirrored in our possessions and that is in the Upanishads. With my parent's house I decided to go for the opposite, but I was scared of it. 

Upanishads and Relationship

The Atma is ever pure, ever free from attachment, for there is no second to get attached to.

The Mundakopanishad (III-i) mantra says: Two birds, ever together, with significant and subtle wings, are perched on a tree. (The tree is the body and the twin birds are Jivatma and Paramatma). One bird is engaged in tasting the fruits, (The Jivatma experiences joy and grief from the deeds it engages itself in). The other just watches. (The Paramatma is subtler than the subtlest and is just a Witness). (Baba)

Upanishad Vahini

What is the relationship between those two birds, the Paramatma and the Jivatma, the experiencer and the experience?

The Experiencer has to be Properly Attuned

What is this experienced world?

It is the world of material objects, emotions and thoughts. The scientists, economists and politicians are continuously striving to improve the scheme of things in the external world so that the experienced becomes better and better.

But this is only fifty per cent of the whole situation. We must also take care of the other side, the experiencer.

Even if the total scheme of things in the external world could be made ideal, but the experiencer is not properly attuned, his life will be miserable.

Thus the yogic seers of yore found that unless the experiencer is evolved and properly developed, no happiness can be assured in this world. So they started concentrating on this particular work of evolving and developing the experiencer.

Now who is this experiencer? It is one's own self, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual components which together make up the total personality of each human being.

Yogamag

That is the answer I was looking for in the past years. It is about the relationship between the experiencer and the experience.

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.

Lost in a Jungle where real Values have no Meaning

Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning.
Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.
Baba

We know why negative emotions have no use, because they come out of the identification of that jungle where real values have no meaning.

But as we are lost in that jungle, conclusion, there can only be negative emotions and we have to find others to get out of it.

It means it has to be the spiritual path, because everything else is negative and a jungle.

It is a desperate wandering in the jungle, it is a scream to find the way out of it and it creates fear to realize that we are lost.

Being a Princess - as opposed to ...

Earning wealth is one of the legitimate objectives of human endeavour, without a doubt. It is one of the four objectives (purusharthaas) of every human life, the four being - righteousness, earning wealth, desire and liberation. The order they are mentioned in, has a purpose too. Righteousness has to direct and control the process of earning wealth and liberation has to be the regulating factor for one’s desires.

All wealth accruing through unrighteous means is to be treated with contempt as unworthy.

All desires that do not subserve the one supreme need for liberation are to be given up as beneath one’s dignity. So the spiritual basis of righteousness and liberation must be the root of both the pursuit of wealth and fulfillment of other desires.

Baba (thought for the day)

Somehow it seems the question is how to be able to live that good conduct without ‘arguing’, but anyhow asking the questions we have to ask and follow the inner master.
Your good conduct is your true wealth. - Baba
I guess the answer is, we have to realize it. Righteousness is the right way of thought and understanding to be able to live in peace and to help others to reach that goal too.
Liberation directs our senses and one’s desire that is serves everybody and not only the ego.

All desires that do not subserve the one supreme need for liberation are to be given up as beneath one’s dignity. So the spiritual basis of righteousness and liberation must be the root of both the pursuit of wealth and fulfillment of other desires.

Back to the Beginning

Earning wealth is one of the legitimate objectives of human endeavour, without a doubt. It is one of the four objectives (purusharthaas) of every human life, the four being - righteousness, earning wealth, desire and liberation.
The order they are mentioned in, has a purpose too. Righteousness has to direct and control the process of earning wealth and liberation has to be the regulating factor for one’s desires.

All wealth accruing through unrighteous means is to be treated with contempt as unworthy.

All desires that do not subserve the one supreme need for liberation are to be given up as beneath one’s dignity. So the spiritual basis of righteousness and liberation must be the root of both the pursuit of wealth and fulfillment of other desires.

Baba (thought for the day)

If Soham meditation turns into Hamsa, the experience is different even if the outcome seems the same. With Soham we inhale So and exhale Ham, Soham is first light and we exhale darkness, or inhale cool and exhale warm air.

The Hamsa is the swan and it feels like plunging into the depth of water with its long goose neck and finding there the light and discrimination. Dark is first and therefore, Ham and only after Sa, light and discrimination, and that seems kind of natural.