“I welcome you all with love and respects.”

I welcome you all with love and respects. Today' s subject is 'Love to Survive'. Many of us think love is a choice . Experience of love and expression of love is a choice. If you want , you can have it. If you don't want, you can leave it. It is always experiencing love first , then expressing it; unless you experience love, you cannot express it. So, experiencing love and then expressing it is thought to be a choice. No ! it is not a choice as we think. It is a basic necessity to be alive. If you can express love, if you can experience love, I think that is the only way of being alive. If you don't experience and express love, you may inhale and exhale , but you can't say you are alive. There are so many animals which are breathing in and breathing out, so many other lives, which are there on the planet earth. You can't say all of them are living- even to feel that you are living, love is a basic necessity. Let us look a little deeply into the meaning of the word, 'love'. The word love is too contaminated or too loaded by so many different meanings, interpretations, commentaries. Leave out the idea of selfless , great , spiritual love. We don't even have to bother about that. Let us first consider the normal , simple love with all its possessiveness, jealousy and whatever other side effects it causes. Even that love does a lot for your body and mind. After that we will see the selfless spiritual love or mature love. First let us analyse love or the feeling that we share in our normal day to day life which has got so many side effects and after effects. Possessiveness, jealousy and anger - all these are the after effects of ordinary love. Even this love does a lot for your body, does a lot for your mind. The other day I was reading a magazine. There was a survey report. I was amazed to see the report. The title itself says , 'Live Forever'. It gives eleven techniques , eleven important instructions to extend your life, by atleast 20 years , supported by standard statistics and survey reports. All the eleven are related to love. They say even caring for a pet animal releases a hormone which allows you to live at ease with your body. If caring for your pet animal does so much , surely caring for your husband or for your wife will do a lot more ! ( Laughs). Another thing is how people die early if they are single or are widowers and how life is extended , how there is a low chance of cancer and depression if you are caring for or being cared for , by somebody . Even what we call ordinary love, simple infatuation, can do miracles for your body and mind. It gives you a deep feeling of healing , of well - being. A small analysis from the Tantra - the Tantra says that five types of restlessness happens to you which can be healed by ordinary love - ordinary, simple, human love - the feeling of caring for each other ; I am not speaking of high spiritual love, what we call ' Bhakti' or devotion , selfless love - seeing the whole world as God - this comes later. Let us first talk of simple practical love which you share for some reason- either because that person supports you socially or he/she will stand for you when you face difficult times, or because you feel that that person supports you mentally or psychologically or maybe you want a good certificate or name from him / her. For any of these reasons you may show love.Even love given with a reason heals you from five kinds of restlessness. The first kind of restlessness happens due to the place. Sometimes in a particular place or situation you feel restless. If you move from that place or situation, you feel more settled. Even in such places or such situations, an expression of love - even the body language of love, can make things better, can heal. Next comes physical restlessness: Physical restlessness is a tension in your body - any tension in your body, any uneasiness, can be released when you express love to somebody. You may ask, how can love take away physical restlessness ? You can see in your own life- a mother who has a child to look after - she feels continuously rejuvenated; otherwise taking care of children is not an easy job ! This rejuvenation happens because of the love and care the mother feels for the child. Feeling of tension or restlessness in your body is taken away when you care for somebody, when you smile at someone, when you express love in your body language. Many times you see this in your day to day life. You may be lying down depressed or sick , but if some of your friends visit you, when somebody you love comes, you sit up and spend some time with them . This makes you feel rejuvenated. You feel fresh. When you really love somebody, you express your energy. There are four things you need to understand. Love, intelligence, energy and bliss. All these four are four sides of the same pillar. When you express through your head, it is intelligence. When you express through your heart, it is love. When you express through your being , your naval chakra (?) it is energy . When your being just relaxes without knowing ( ? ) , it is bliss. All the four are the same phenomena, expressed by four different names. So, whenever you express love , you express energy also. Love is concentrated, caring energy. So naturally , whenever you express love you become a channel for energy. When you are a channel for energy, you not only help but you are also helped. Any mental restlessness can be just healed by love. The article says that when you care for pets or play with kids you can avoid heart attacks, can postpone any fatal disease. Next comes the restlessness of emotion . Mental restlessness is different-that is intellectual.Emotional restlessness means the restlessness which cannot be controlled by a few words , just by consoling yourself . This can be healed only when you express love .When you start radiating love it floods your being with energy . Your being can be opened to the higher energies .This can heal your emotional restlessness. Ultimately we come to spiritual restlessness.Your love for the teacher or the master can heal your spiritual restlessness. Many people come and tell me , ' Swamiji, just the presence of any enlightened person makes us meditate . Whenever we meet swamis and saints we are able to meditate in front of them - why are we not able to do so at home ?' . Whenever you meet great people, sants, swamis and saints , you start relating , you start expressing your love towards them. This totally heals your spiritual restlessness. Begin to understand these words, ' spiritual restlessness'- they mean that you can't sit with yourself . I see so many people- they can sit with others, with the TV, with the newspapers but they can't sit with themselves. This is what I call spiritual restlessness. They can give appointment to everybody but they cannot give an appointment to themselves (laughs) . Many times if you observe, when I speak , I give long gaps between words. That is actually to bring down your spiritual restlessness. People who are not spiritually interested, people who are not matured enough to listen to these great ideas, they can never sit and listen to spiritual discourses , atleast with me. This is because, your mind continuously needs food - it is constantly jumping from thought to thought. When I give a gap, it gives a feeling of boredom and your mind says halfway, "let us go away " - only a man who can sit with himself can listen to these great words. If he can't even sit with himself , how can he be helped even if he listens to my words ? Many people ask me why I give so many gaps between words- even when I speak in my mother tongue, especially in public discourses, I give a lot of gaps ( sometimes I stop suddenly in the middle of a sentence and give a gap of 30 to 40 seconds ..) -the mind is such , it continuously asks, waits for the next word . Why are you so comfortable in front of the TV or cinema ? Because material is just pushed inside your being. So much of stuff, so many ideas are sent inside your being. Your restlessness is supported and increased and so you feel very comfortable. Your mind is aggravated.Why do you enjoy food that is spicy ? Again too much is sent inside - the itching sensation is the same. When you scratch you feel comfortable. Spicy food is nothing but scratching the tongue. It is a sort of comfort when information is flooding your mind. But when too much is being pushed into your mind, your intellect is pushed aside. There is one thing you should understand about watching movies. When you go on the road at 30 kph, you can read all the sign- boards ,see all trees and the scenery around you clearly. If you go at 130 kph , you won't be able to see clearly ; why ? because the frames per second are too many . If the no. of frames is less than 6 per second, you can clearly read and understand- if it is more than 6, your consciousness cannot relate through your eyes. In TV and movies , it is 12 to 16 frames per second. So naturally your consciousness is just pushed aside when so much information is fed into your system. Because of this, you totally merge with the scene. You know for sure that the actor is alive but if you see a scene where he or she dies, you believe in it. You are an educated, logical , intellectual person- you know it is just acting but you laugh with the scene , you cry with the scene and your moods change with the scene. In this way scratching, spicy food and movies are all things which are flooding information or sensation into your system . Naturally it creates a deep restlessness as a side effect. If you have this deep restlessness, you cannot sit and listen to these ideas ; and I make sure that people with restlessness do not sit here because they not only don't undertstand but they also misunderstand. And misunderstanding these great truths is very dangerous; half - truth is worse than a lie. So if you have the patience to sit and listen to these words, your spiritual restlessness comes down and your mind asking for the next thought also comes down. You become so passive that these thoughts not only touch your head, but directly touch your heart. If you are totally passive, your being at the emotional level opens. If you are totally relaxed, at ease with yourself, without too many crowded thoughts, you will see that your being just takes it all inside. In the Vedanta we call , ' Shravana, Manana and Nivignyasana ' -listening, meditating and practising - if your mind is calm, there is no need to meditate afterwards separately. The very listening can create the experience, can become the experience; 'Shravana' can lead to experience. According to me, if your ' Shravana' is not proper, even ' Manana' cannot help, contemplating on it cannot help. J.Krishnamurthi says, 'Listening is God ' - deep , total listening without restlessness is divine. That itself is God . If you look deeply into your being, the very presence of a master heals the spiritual restlessness. Love towards the master heals spiritual restlessness. So your love , even if it is simple , normal love, heals all the five restlessnesses. Now let us look into the higher type of love- the love that was experienced by Meera, by Chaitanya, by Ramakrishna, by Ramana Maharishi - all these great saints. Ramakrishna says ,' My love for the Divine is a totality of three major kinds of love - a miser's love for his money , a chaste wife's love for her husband and a mother's love for her child - all these three put together and something more, is my love for the divine' . Of course, we will not be able to understand by these three definitions. Love for the Divine is almost like a feeling of being one with the other - falling in tune with the other person- it is an ecstatic , highest expression of your being. Just by the utterance of the word 'Krishna', Meera was put into ecstasy. In the ...sutras, it says , " If tears roll down if you listen to God's name, be sure that it is your last ' janma' ". Ramakrishna also says the same in his "Gospel of Ramakrishna ". If you listen to the ' kirtanas' of Annamacharya on Lord Balaji, he feels that the Divine is present - it is an actual experience for him. In some of the verses Ramana Maharishi laments before Arunachala - he says, ' You are my house- owner, my husband- how can you stand by and watch while thieves come in and take me away , O Arunachala ? ' - beautiful verse ! The five senses are referred to as the thieves who come into the house and take away the being and Arunachala is the Atman . When somebody asked, ' Bhagavan, how can you say all these things to God ? '. Bhagavan replies, ' For you, God is only a faith, just a belief; for me He is a living Being '. A small story -a devotee was praying to Vishnu for ten years but never got a darshan of Him. So he decided to stop worshipping Vishnu and to pray to Shiva instead. He set Vishnu's statue aside and placed one of Shiva before him and started worshipping it. He lit the incense sticks and the smoke rises towards Vishnu . He caught hold of Vishnu's nose as he did not want Vishnu to smell the perfume- he was angry with Him for not having granted him a darshan even after so many years of worship. Suddenly he felt that he was actually pressing somebody's nose. He opened his eyes to see Vishnu in front of him - Vishnu was giving him a darshan ! He removed his hand from the nose and exclaimed, ' O Lord ! for so many years you did not grant me darshan and now when I am denying you the perfume of the incense sticks, why do you give me your darshan ? ' . Vishnu said, ' When you prayed to me all these years , you did not feel that I was alive in that statue ; only now when you punished me , you had the intensity of feeling that I was actually there in the statue . When you have such a deep feeling, I had to come down and give you a darshan !' There are so many strange instances, incidences, which express the power of love. Love can do miracles in your being- not only in the mental level but even at the physical level. Ramakrishna used to say sometimes after Puja he would get a suspicion whether Mother was alive in the Vigraha or whether he was wasting his time worshipping a stone. So he used to keep a small thread in front of the Devi's nose to check whether she was breathing or not. He says that the thread always used to move with the flow of air. Another strange thing that you can see if you go to Kolkota.There is a tradition in Kolkota , the Devi is decorated with conch bangles ( conch shells cut and made into bangles ). Kali has four hands - two in 'Abhaya' and ' Varadha' - the third has a skull and the fourth has a sword. The first two hands are empty and the bangles can be directly inserted. The sword can be removed and the bangles inserted on the fourth hand. But the bangles cannot be inserted on the hand which holds the skull because the skull is too big . One day the assistant pujari's of Ramakrishna noticed that the Mother had bangles on her third hand too. They went close and examined it to see if it was broken , but the stone vigraha has a full unbroken conch bangle on the third hand ! There was no scientific or logical explanation to what they were seeing. They were shocked and surprised at this impossibility . They rushed to Ramakrishna to ask him about it. They were not only surprised but also suspicious of Ramakrishna - whether he had broken the skull to insert the bangles. Ramakrishna was considered to be slightly mad on account of his unique way of doing Puja. Before offering ' Neyvedhya' , he would eat a little bit of the food to see that it tasted alright and only then offer it. He would do all sorts of wierd things which the sastras do not accept. But his love was such that Mother accepted everything. When questioned about it, Ramakrishna replied, ' What is so surprising ? I just asked Mother to keep the skull down so that I could insert the bangles and she dropped the kapala. I inserted the bangle and I gave the skull back for her to hold ! ' Sounds almost like a story, but you will be surprised, even stone can react , can respond to love , to real ' Bhakti' or devotion. If you go to Kolkata, you can see the original conch bangle still on the hands of Mother inserted by Ramakrishna 100 years ago. Because it is there, we have to believe- I also tried my best to disbelieve- they allow sanyasis to go and touch the vigraha. The first thing I did as I entered was to test the bangle but to my astonishment , it was a whole bangle, just as the story said. When you deeply express your love, you will find that existence relates or responds to you . Love not only makes you alive but it can make even stone alive. You can give life to it. You can give life to whole of existence by love. With just this sentiment, it is possible to make the whole world come alive. Whatever you see, feel, experience , becomes a joyful thing. One more small incident which illustrates what love can do . There is a story in the life of Sadashiva Brahmendral ,one of the great saints of South Bharat. He always went around naked and never used clothes. He lived just like a child . One day he was walking in deep ecstasy when the Nawab of that territory went riding by. The saint was in such deep ecstasy that he did not notice or pay respect to the Nawab. The incensed Nawab cut off the saint's hand with his sword. Sadashiva Brahmendral continued to walk , hardly noticing the absence of his hand. But one of his devotees started weeping , ' O Master you have lost your hand for not showing courtesy to the Nawab '. The saint was surprised and asked her to bring the severed hand. He then put it back on and it became whole again. The devotee was dumbstruck when she saw this. The saint explained, ' The Nawab's hatred destroyed my hand ; your love healed it !' Love has a deep power of healing. Ramana Maharishi always used to say, ' It is the love of the devotees which keeps me in the body ' - any master comes down and lives in his body just for the sake of the love of the devotees. Masters as such have no karma- they have nothing to achieve, nothing to gain. They don't have anything to enjoy. Then why should they be in the body ? It is only for the love of the devotees. When you express normal love with all its expectations, it heals five different kinds of restlessness.But love without expectation does miracles in your life. Ordinary love gives life to yourself , selfless love give life to even the stone that you worship. Even stone can become God, even ordinary man can become a Guru. One more small incident - a man was searching for an enlightened master. No matter how much he searched he could not find one. Finally he went to a forest and decided that the first person he saw would be his guru. After a long wait a man came running towards him.He jumped up and caught hold of this man's feet and said,' O Master, you are my Guru, my God .. please guide me '.The running man was actually a thief. He had just stolen from the palace and was trying to escape . The man confessed that he was thief and that he was in a desperate hurry to get away from the police chasing him. No matter how much he explained, the first man insisted that the latter was his Guru and wanted guidance to attain enlightenment. Finally the thief said, ' As you have taken me as your Guru, do as I tell you ; close your eyes and sit down , don't open them till I tell you to '. Immediately the man obeys and the thief disappears. He continues to sit and his mind tells him that the running man was only a thief after all, that he should look for another Guru. But his conviction and faith said that once he had accepted one as a Guru, he had to do as bidden. So he sits in meditation , determined to see it to the end. Because of his faith and deep love for the master, after a few days, his 'tapas' reached Kailash. So Shiva had to come down to bless him - of course, this may be a mythological story but what is expressed in this story is a great truth. Love gives life even to stone . Selfish love when expressed heals your five restlessnesses and gives life to you. Selfless love gives life to everything around you . When you express selfless love , it gives life to other ' jeevas' . So love to survive and to give life. Whether it is selfish or selfless, start expressing love. Let that become your body language. Let that become your lifestyle. Let that become your very life itself. Let you feel and experience eternal bliss, Nithyananda .Thank you. Q: Swamiji, can you please explain what part divinity plays in a miracle ? You say miracles happen. Does divinity make them happen ? What are you referring to as divinity ? A: Normally you understand three things- the person who does, second is the act and the third thing that is done ;the Doer, the act and the result. All these three things can be understood as three separate things only logically, that is, in the this normal plane. In the ultimate plane of reality there are no three different things. Here you are asking what part divinity plays in miracle. The very miracle itself is a divinity. When you ask this question, you are asking for cause , effect and the act- whether divinity is the cause, the act or the effect. In the language of divinity, these three different things do not exist. Normally if I have to raise my hand, first the brain has to give the order, the order has to be carried to the hand and the hand has to act. In the language of normal human beings, there three things have to exist- head, hand and command . But in divinity all the three are one and the same and do not exist separately. So the very divinity is a miracle. Many people come and ask me who created the world. There is no creator. Please be very clear- Existence itself created. The universe is a self - created thing. The very creation itself is a creator. It is an Intelligence, continually being created. It is a little difficult to understand. It is just the "Creating" , the process is continuously going on because of its own intelligence. There are no three things - creator, creation and created. There is just creating- a self - expression of intelligence. So in any miracle , the miracle itself if divine. The cause for miracle is divinity, the happening is divinity and the result is also divinity. Q: If a person does not even have a quest , to seek, for a Guru, is there anything wrong with that person ? A: Something seriously wrong ! When you know that you do not know, you atleast know that you do not know. When you don't know that you don't know, you don't even know that you don't know ! When we don't know that we don't know, we don't search for a master. When we know that we don't know, we can start to know. A small incident that happened in the life of P.D. Ouspensky . Yesterday I was talking about Albest Einstein. He became enlightened because of physics. Ouspensky became enlightened because of logic and mathematics. If you go deeply into any subject, you can become enlightened, because all paths lead to the same goal. There is no need to do only puja or meditation. Even if you do scientific research deeply to the very end, you can reach enlightenment. I always say ,' If you are logically logical, you go beyond logic ' . Ouspensky met his master George Gurdjieff in a casual way. At that time, Ouspensky was a mathematician of world repute and Gurdjieff was just a simple man. Some energy in Gurdjieff prompted Ouspensky to go upto him and say , " I feel that you know something that I do not know - can you teach me ? " . Gurdjieff replies, " You are the author of the wonderful book Pentium Orgon - what can I teach you ? " But Ouspensky maintained that Gurdjieff had something that he could teach him. So Gurdjieff asks him to go to the next room and make a list of all the things he knew and did not know, so that he , Gurdjieff, could teach him the things he did not know. With pen in hand Ouspensky tried to make a list of the things he knew but could not make the list no matter how long or how much he tried. He then realised that all his knowledge was only superficial and that he needed to search for a master. As long as you have the illusion that things are going well, inspite of their not going well, naturally you are in great danger. That is the reason you do not search for a master or spiritual teachings. If a man does not have a quest for even spiritual teachings, you can be sure that he does not even know that he does not know. That shows that he is in deep darkness without even knowing that he is in darkness. If you have had a glimpse of light atleast once, then you will know that you are in darkness. If you have not had even this glimpse, you will not even know that you are in darkness. A small story . A man who was born blind went to a doctor and asked him if he could have vision . The doctor examines him and says he would do an operation to give him vision and that he would be able to walk without his stick. The blind man replies ," Doctor, I understand two things - you will do an operation,I understand. I will be able to see, I understand . But how will I walk without a stick ?! " ( laughs ) . For all his life he had been walking with a stick - so he thought that the stick was related to his walking itself and therefore could not understand how he could walk without a stick. The doctor says, " When you get your vision, you will understand ". Similarly, only when you get a glimpse of light will you understand what type of darkness you are in. You will then start searching for a master or spiritual teachings. Q. When all the great masters are Divine manifestations , why is it that you get attracted to a particular Master ? A. Ramakrishna gives a beautiful example . The mother cooks the same fish in ten different ways for ten children . One she makes into a sweet , another is hot and spicy , yet another is fried . She cooks it in ten different ways to satisfy the taste and expectations of all her children .Actually we each have our own mental set-up , our own expectations . T he Divine fulfills you in the way you want it . For the person who is well read , the intellectual,Shankara will suit .But Meera and Chaitanya will not suit him because they are always singing and dancing. He will think that that is foolish .Similarly , the man who is attracted to the ecstatic love of Meera and Chaithanya think that it is foolish to sit and analyse all the time !The person who is head oriented will get attracted towards intellectual stuff , the person who is heart oriented will get attracted towards devotional things and the one who is being oriented will get attracted towards meditation . There are so many paths and so many masters . Each person is centered on a different energy . The person who constantly thinks is on the path of Gyana yoga . The person who is centered on emotions is a Bhakthi yogi . The person who is being oriented , who is silent and introverted , for him meditation is the path . So a person is attracted to the philosophy and the guru or master based on their individual energy or mental set-up.When you find the right Master something will suddenly happen between you and Him - a synchronicity .almost like falling in love .It is not even falling in love ,it is rising in love ! (laughter ) With ordinary people it is falling in love , with Master it can only be rising in love ! You will find that He is expressing what you think , what you always wanted to hear . You will find that your heart falls in tune with Him . Till that happens continue the search . That is the right way of seeking . Q. [Question about qualification for Divine Grace ] A. Ramana Maharishi answers this question . Are you alive ? [Yes] That itself is the qualification !(laughter) That is the qualification because life itself has been bestowed on you by the Divine . So that is more than enough to recieve Divine Grace . Nothing more is required , the rest will be taken care of by the Divine . Q. A. Here is a question mentioning the names of two Masters in Bharat . What is the difference between them and what is the similarity ? Our mind is such that we always analyse . But Masters are beyond your mind .When you try to analyse them , you always fail and fall . You can compare two objects . You can see what are the similarities and the differences between these two vases , for example . that is because you can see the size , shape , front view , back view , everything about them . But in the case of Masters , they are infinity ! Can you see what are the similarities and differences between two infinities ?The similarities and differences between two infinities is the same as that between two Masters , that's all ! Q. Yesterday you said that the difference between a dead guru and a live guru was that a live guru can point you upwards . But nowadays there are so many gurus with such a large following that you can hardly have any contact with them . But a dead guru may be able to guide you through dreams . Could you talk about this . A. Yes , that is a major problem that modern day seekers face . Before I answer , I have to confess . Here atleast you get a chance to question me . You can find out from devotees in Bharat how many people attend my programmes there -forty or fifty thousand ! I am myself not able to give them the opportunity to pose questions or even to come close ! So , let me explain it to you this way . On the one hand, people are not able to ask their questions or to get their doubts cleared individually. On the other hand , with live masters , people find that whatever thought or doubt they had in their mind is cleared by the master or is addressed by the the master .Whenever the question is sincere , whenever it is a quest , you will find that the living master answers it .The living master will guide you . This is more of a possibility with a living master than with a dead master . Not that it is not possible with a dead master . It is possible . But you have forgotten the language in which they speak .Their language is too subtle . You need to drop your inner chattering totally in order to hear them . With a live master , I have a loudspeaker . So even if you have inner chatter , I can be louder than that !But old masters become very silent , very subtle . Be very clear , they continue to speak , to communicate with you . You can even call it communion .The problem is that it has become one-sided . You have forgotten how to listen to them , you have forgotten the language in which they speak . They speak in the language of silence .And you do not know that language . You may know many other languages -English , Hindi , Tamil , Telugu , but not the language of silence . Even when I say the word silence , you refer to the Oxford dictionary . The meaning given there is soundlessness . But that is not the meaning I want to convey .What I mean is a vibrant , alive energy !But you are not able to relate in that language .With a living master , you can understand what they have to say because they use the language that you know . So the possibility of a live master being able to guide you is more than an old master . Another problem is , with old masters you can always project your own ego and satisfy youself . With a living master this is not possible as he continuosly knocks on you ego . Q. A. Telepathy , ' I get the command ' --all these are an expression of our ego most of the time .Our own ego plays a double role . You speak for yourself and for Him also ! You stand in front of the statue and pray to God -O God , give me Your blessings ! And then you stand behind the statue and say -My son , I bless you ! Most of the time your intellect plays both the roles . Sometimes , when you are too intense you can even become schizophrenic! In Bharat , this is what happens when some people start acting like God .They even start showing some special powers . They fall into a hysteric state and start predicting the future . Intuition tells them these things .It seems as though God has descended on them and they are worshipped . If God descends you will see only joy and bliss on their face .But these intuition tellers are always in tension , are always suffering .They are restless , agitated and are shouting , creating strange noises . That can never be God . When the Divine descends , it is so beautiful , so ecstatic and blissful , because God is filled with love and energy . He radiates this love and energy . He radiates compassion , never restlessness . So , many times we play both roles . Don't cheat yourself , that is the only warning . Otherwise you can continue in any path that you choose . Thank you !