Gurudev Uvacha

Wisdom is the assimilated knowledge in us, gained from an intelligent estimation and close study of our own direct and indirect experience in the world.

"If you can drink nitric acid, you have done no better than a straw. If you can chew iron nails and glass pieces, you have done nothing. This has nothing to do with Yoga. Conquer the mind. Then you have done everything."

Life is short and we cannot afford to go after one action and another without using our intellect carefully. Many of us first act and then think or speak. We need to first think and then act. It becomes very difficult for us when we do not check our actions and change them

Think of God and soon attachments will gradually drop from you. If you wait till all desires disappear to start your devotion and prayer.  you will have to wait a very, very long time indeed.

Prema is the rope by which you can tether God, as it were. Whenever you want to see Him you have merely to pull the rope. Whenever you call Him, He will appear before you.

In order to achieve successes we have stopped caring for the inner being (the soul) and relationships. That has meant and means stress, pain, anxiety, family break ups, personal and relational disintegrations, the destruction of the environment and planetary and climatic imbalances. As a consequence, we feel empty. Although we achieve the applause, the income and other successes, the soul is malnourished and has the sensation that it is lacking something. If we want to redirect our personal and collective lives toward true wellbeing and wholeness, we have to re-evaluate and redefine our beliefs and factors that lead to success and failure.

Anything that helps to unite all and develop pure divine love and universal brotherhood, is Dharma. Anything that creates discord, split and disharmony and foments hatred, is Adharma. Dharma is the cementer and sustainer of social life. The rules of Dharma have been laid down for regulating the worldly affairs of men. Dharma brings as its consequence happiness, both in this world and in the next. Dharma is the means of preserving one’s self. If you transgress it, it will kill you. If you protect it, it will protect you. It is your sole companion after death. It is the sole refuge of humanity.

God is your light. He is your guide. Remember Him at all times, whether it be in pleasure or in pain. He will cheer you up. He will come and save you from all trials and difficulties as He saved His devotees. He will give you light, love and wisdom. He is waiting with open arms to receive you and grant you peace.

In the beginning of spiritual life one goes by a roundabout way. One has to suffer a great deal. But the path becomes very easy when ecstatic love is awakened in the heart. It is like going over the paddy-field after the harvest is over. You may then walk in any direction. Before the harvest you had to go along the winding balk, but now you can walk in any direction. There may be stubble in the field, but you will not be hurt by it if you walk with your shoes on. Just so, an aspirant does not suffer if he has discrimination, dispassion, and faith in the guru's words. 

If it is thus said that this world is a mere play of thoughts, why, even when the mind is quiet, does the world-scene, like a dream, suddenly appear in front of us? That is due to the stored momentum of past imaginations! Just as the spider emits the thread [of its web] out from its own mouth and again withdraws it back, so the mind projects the world out from itself and again absorbs it back within.

What is best for another person may not be best for us and vice versa. Each one of us is in our own individual journey. All of us have traversed different paths and have different lessons to learn. It is following our own inner voice that will ultimately lead us to internal peace and harmony because then we will be doing what is in tune with our Essence - our soul!  

If the wick within the lamp is small, the light will also be small. If the wick is big, the light also will be powerful. Similarly if the Jiva (individual soul) is pure, if he practises meditation, the manifestation or expression of the Self will be powerful. He will radiate a big light. If he is unregenerate and impure, he will be like a burnt-up charcoal. The bigger the wick, the greater the light. Likewise, the purer the soul, the greater the expression.

How does one see a fault in the other? The appearance of the other is taken to be true, which itself is an error. Added to that, one sees a fault in him. That is, one already knows what a fault is, which means the mistake is born only in the one who cognizes. One then shifts it to the other on the back of spurious proofs based on one's valid or invalid reasoning. Who is corrupt now? Who is at fault now? Who is the culprit now? So, turn every outward movement inwards. Be the Silence, your true Self, every moment. Now, where is the room for any divisions  

Sakti alone is the root of the universe. That Primal Energy has two aspects: vidya and avidya. Avidya deludes. Avidya conjures up 'woman and gold', which casts the spell. Vidya begets devotion, kindness, wisdom, and love, which lead one to God. This avidya must be propitiated, and that is the purpose of the rites of Sakti worship.

When an act is done in pure and total love, the very act has a rewarding satisfaction. When we love the Lord and act in His name there can be no selfishness or egoism in our movements. To learn to eliminate the ego is to move close to the experiences of the spiritual realms within us. The spirit of dedication gives to any individual a handle to lift himself in his own life.

A daily dose of new and different spiritual knowledge at the start of the day does the work of newness and helps us rise above the monotony. Newness in our thoughts then flows into our feelings, beliefs, attitudes, personalities, perceptions, actions, interactions, relationships, etc. bringing newness in all of them and removing the stagnancy of the regular routine. Also feeding spiritual knowledge to the mind benefits silence or meditation immensely, because meditation, which is not just a process of reducing the mind to a nil stage but the creation of positive, constructive thoughts to take the mind to a positive experience of peace and bliss, can then become an interesting, new and creative exercise each time one practices it.

Face is the index of the mind. Eyes are the windows of the soul. A mind is the result of the past thinking. Mind is a power of God. There is bondage when the mind desires for something. Good and bad, friend and enemy, pleasure and pain, virtue and sin are in the mind only. Fast the mind. Give up mundane desires. Detach the mind from objects. Avidya inheres in the mind, not in Atma. Sincere devotion controls the mind and senses. You are not this perishable body or finite mind.

"Sadhana is only to get rid of the bodily and other illusions which are in the way of the self standing up as Self. This delusion arises only by thinking that this bodily world is real, instead of looking at the Self, which is real. Sadhana is only to get rid of this illusion. Otherwise, why should there be sadhana for the Self to attain its own Self? He who has realised his own Self does not recognize anything else.”

According to the Puranas, the bhakta and the Bhagavan are two separate entities. 'I' am one and 'You' are another. The body is a plate, as it were, containing the water of mind, intelligence, and ego. Brahman is like the sun. It is reflected in the water. Therefore the devotee sees the divine form.  

A "problem"  becomes a problem only when we know not the solution to the problem. Thus ‘life’ is a problem when we know not how to meet the life’s challenges rising around us. The stimuli coming from the external  "world",  as they touch the objective "mind", creates therein a problem, to solve which, it needs the guidance of the rational capacities of the "intellect" - the subjective mind. When the individual is split within, his mental personality, divorced from the intellect, cannot easily come to any decision. The egoistic self-evaluation and ego-created intense "anxieties" for the fruits of "action" stands, as it were, between the mind and intellect, separating them and creating between them an almost unbridgeable gulf.  

All of us live our life meeting constantly a variety of "experiences", and at each incident, we perceive, react with the perceived and act in the outer field. In this process we come to hoard in ourselves more and more of the dirt of new "impressions". The subjective "mind" in each of us gets more and more granulated by the overlapping signatures of our own past moments. These granulations make the subjective mind dull and opaque, and form, as it were, an impregnable wall between ourselves and the spiritual Divinity that shines as pure Consciousness in all of us, deep within the core of our "personality".

Sin begets its own result. This is God's law. Won't you burn our tongue if you chew a chilli? In his youth Mathur led a rather fast life; so he suffered from various diseases before his death. One may not realize this in youth. I have looked into the hearth in the kitchen of the Kali temple when logs are being burnt. At first the wet wood burns rather well. It doesn't seem then that it contains much moisture. But when the wood is sufficiently burnt, all the moisture runs back to one end. At last water squirts from the fuel and puts out the fire. So one should be careful about anger, passion, and greed. Take, for instance, the case of Hanuman. In a fit of anger he burnt Ceylon. At last he remembered that Sita was living in the asoka grove. Then he began to tremble lest the fire should injure her.

This life, an illusion based upon [our] likes and dislikes,  is an empty dream, which appears, as if real,  during the sleep [of ignorance], but which is found to  be false when one wakes up [into Self-Knowledge].

Do not wait for invitation. Volunteer yourself for the Guru’s service. Serve your Guru humbly, willingly, unquestioningly, unassumingly, ungrudgingly, untiringly and lovingly. The more your energy you spend in serving your Guru, the more the divine energy will flow into you. He who serves the Guru serves the whole world. Serve the Guru without selfish ends. Scrutinise your inner motives while doing service to the Guru. Service must be done to the Guru without expectation of name, fame, power, wealth, etc.

You allow the negative emotion to control you, and therefore you lose control. Most times situations will not be as you want them to be and neither will people behave as you want them to. Therefore, you can decide now if you want to continue allowing the other to dictate your reactions according to how they behave, which results in the loss of your rule, control and personal power, or you can decide that no matter how the other behaves, you rule over your responses; you decide what you want to think and feel.