Sai Ram

Today I will make a few general statements which apply to everybody and then explain briefly.

From Form to Formlessness

Point one: Spirituality begins with name and form and ends with a nameless formless state. Say for instance they think that Rama is God, who has the name Rama and the form they visualized. Similarly they visualized the form of Krishna and have the name of Krishna with them. The same is true with Shiva also. Therefore we find this kind of worship of God’s name and form a beginning. It is not an end. Over a period of time during an intense sadhana they go to the next stage with is nameless and formless.

Why and how will this happen? When you see or focus on a form you like or love you will be able to concentrate. By continuously reciting a name of God your mind will be in tune with it. In other words the name and form are meant to help concentration and contemplation.

Later when you consider every form and living creature Divine you cannot say that God has a specific form because all forms are His. So God in His essence is formless, not that He has no form but all forms are His.

My friends the spiritual path is a journey from name and forms to nameless and formlessness. This is how we can see the spiritual progress, advancement, growth or evolution. We begin our spiritual journey with a name and a form and later when our knowledge and awareness gets deeper and wider we move on to the formless.

If you are able to experience God wherever you go in whoever you meet then that is spiritual progress into the name and formless state

From Attribute to Attributlessness.

Point two: We pray to God, tell Him He is merciful, compassionate and kind. We ask God: please bless me, be kind and compassionate to me. These are the qualities, attributes and characteristics we believe and look up to God upon. In one state we begin worshiping God’s attributes. This means we believe that God has Gunas or attributes. This is also a beginning state.

If we believe God is kind we also believe he is unkind. If we believe he is love we also believe he is hatred. If there is day there must be night, if there is success there must also be failure. These are all dualities and they exist together. You can only hate a person you love.

Another example, I love to drink coffee and I take two cups and why not a third one. After some time it becomes the source of dislike. When our relationship is good I say you are perfect, when there is some misunderstanding between us I say you are no good any longer. Good and bad depends on the time.  There is nothing that is totally good and nothing that is totally bad either. It is the way you are looking at it. Some say that you are beautiful and some others say you are less beautiful. Tell me what beauty is and what is not beauty, it is only the eyes, the feelings, the emotions in time that divide qualities and attributes in time.

A Muslim king in India killed thousands of Hindu Indians and converted Hindus into Muslims. They destroyed the Temples. To Hindus this is bad but to Muslims this is good. The only difference is how we look at it in time.

So my friends in the Final state of awareness nothing is positive and nothing is negative. Everything is neutral, like a mirror. The mirror is the same whoever is in front of it. This neutrality, non duality is the attributlessness and the awareness of the Divinity.

My understanding is that the western mind likes to experiment, explain and explore therefore spirituality needs to be explained within the background of experimental, experiencing, rationality and logic. We cannot go through hypothesis or fiction, that is why modern philosophizers present philosophy in a scientific and logical way; So it can be acceptable to a western mind. The eastern mind is mystical and accepts and goes by inborn tradition and culture. That is why I use concrete stories to explain what I want to say. Please give me your opinion if I am right or not and also if it is clear and understandable what I am saying.

We are on an endless continuous eternal spiritual journey. People who say they have reached or have attained do not know there is nothing to attain or nowhere to reach. Where do you reach and what do you attain?

Spirituality is a Continuous flow like a river

Third point: Spirituality is like an infinite ocean of fathomless depth. It is so vast like a sky with no beginning and no end. If I still say I know the limits of the sky and the ocean I am still in ignorance. My friends it is an endless journey. It is only our inner pride and ego which makes us say that we have to reach or attain something.

Upanishads say the one who says I know, does not know anything and the one who says I do not know may know something. The tragedy is that I do not know that I do not know.

When you experience the non-dual state, it takes you to a state of surrender and acceptance. Once you understand that things are not dual they are neutral, you don’t choose, you don’t prefer; you accept. As long as we haven’t developed the spiritual quality of acceptance we still have a long way to go. So long as we do not realize that surrender is necessary we still have a long way to go.

Happiness, Bliss and Contentment

Fourth point is this; happiness, laughter, jumping, dancing and music that is religion. The inner joy and serenity that reflects on the outside as happiness that is also religion. Serious faces, depression, negativity and tension are not religion; it is a sickness. Relaxation, ecstasy and joy are religion. No need for any special happenings to be happy and joyful it is just an inner state of awareness.

Q: If there is no end to the spiritual path as you said, what about all these Jeevan Mukthis. The souls we understand to be liberated?

The liberated ones have certain qualities; certain inner and outer qualities. What is a Jeevan Mukthi?  One who is liberated while in life, while being alive. The question is how does he live, how does he carry on his spiritual process? First; he doesn’t identify himself with the name and the form. He is not sensitive or responds to ups and downs in life. Furthermore he has no preferences or desires; his life is something like the wind which lets go from moment to moment in total freedom. He is not bound by the body, not limited by his thinking, mind or psychology. He has no limitation by the framework of the intellect. He is completely free, like a bird that is let out of the cage.

If this was the end it should have a beginning. We are free when we are born and we are to be free again. In between we are in bondage by the body, mind, intellect, family life, property, possessions and almost everything thing in life. If that has an end it has to have a beginning. The birth and the death is after all infinite, in between all life situations happens that is all.

Q: Are there any people amongst Swami who has the ability to liberate whilst alive?

Spiritual attainments are totally individual. The one who seems to have been liberated may not be liberated and others may appear very ordinary but totally detached and liberated. There is nothing like a yard stick to determine others Spiritual advancement. We are all a witness to our own self.

Liberation is a state of wholeness, of being “at one” and therefore at peace; at one with life in its manifested aspect as well as with your deepest self un-manifested. Liberation is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, it also ends the unnecessary thinking.

Religion belongs to a group or organization while spirituality belongs to the individual. Spiritual awareness is totally individual.

Q: Is surrendering possible only by the Grace of God?

Surrender is always total, it can never be partial, it is always complete. God’s Grace is always there; our job is to be aware of His Grace. Knock on the door and it shall be opened, ask and help shall be given. When the light is all over, my job is to open my window to let it in.

Surrendering is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to, rather than opposing the flow of life. To surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It doesn’t mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or taking positive action.

When there is water, good land, the flowers bloom automatically, you do not have to work for it. Therefore when there is the water of Love and the land of faith and devotion the flowers of surrendering happens automatically. We have to take it as a process that happens not as a process that is done by us. The garden will not announce when it is going to flower, it will simply flower when the time and circumstances are right. Devotion, faith and land, the heart being the land there will be flowering of surrendering on its own as a happening, consequence and as a result.

Q: Do we have to accept our own shadow in order to be able to transcend it?

If you have lived long enough, you will know that things “go wrong” quite often. It is at these times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life.

Whether you accept it or not, there is duality. Day and night exist without our acceptance. Inner shadows can be transcended if we accept everything that is happening as a will of God, accept that everything in our life is happening for our own good, for our own enlightenment, and for our own advancement. The good and bad in life are only sequences leading to that. Suffering may bring people to this place. Suffering as it appeared to be looks as it is bad but it ended with that you landed here by the feet of Baba which is good. So in the end, the suffering that you experienced is for your own good. If we accept with awareness and use wisdom in all situations in life we will understand all is Gods will and happens for our own good.

Through surrendering, spiritual energy comes in to the world. It creates no suffering for you, or for others.

Q: Why do we greet each other with SaiRam and not SaiBaba?

If you like to greet others with SaiBaba you are free to do so. Ram means the same as Sai. Sai and Ram are mother as well as father. You praise the Lord in the way you feel comfortable to do so. In Prasanthi Nilayam we say SaiRam. Allah in the Muslim religion is the same as SaiRam.

There are thousands of bulbs but the current comes from the same place which you do not see. All the bulbs and the lights you can see but the electricity inside you cannot see. Bulb is the motherly nature, creation that you see and the electricity which we do not see is the creator the father.

Q: Way has Baba changed the evening prayer?

It happened yesterday and it is a little history behind it. Swami was talking to the students inside the Mandir and some of them felt there are three lokas, worlds. Heaven, this world we are living in and the underworld; the higher which is heaven, the middle which is human and the lower world which is hell. Other mythology speaks about fourteen worlds. Swami said why should you wish well for only one world.  You should think good for all the three worlds or fourteen worlds or whatever number of worlds you believe in. Loka samastha, sukhino bhavantu. You say, let this world be happy and prosper but when you say samastha loka sukhino bhavantu means let all three worlds be happy and prosper.

Q: Can you please tell us about any different world which has a beginning and an end?

The most important we do is to live here and now. Life is not the past or the future, life is here and now. If we follow Swami´s teaching and the three points I spoke about in the beginning, going from the form to the formless, from attribute to attributlessness, and always continue our spiritual journey no matter what we experience, Grace peace and happiness will result. This is the job of a sincere spiritual seeker.

Q: I understand that to accept and to have faith is one and the same. In order to experience love towards all beings, is it necessary to accept situations that may cause me pain?

In this subject it will be a help to us if we make a little bit of enquiry. When we go deep into the problems we will understand that worldly pleasure is an experience between two pains. Good and bad are equally inimitable. When we will understand that nothing will stay and that everything is like passing clouds it would help for reconciliations. Nothing is permanent.

Non-surrendering hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. The unconscious compulsion to destroy others through judgment arises, as well as the need to compete and dominate.

The sign that you have truly surrendered, accept and have faith is if you suddenly feel very light, clear and deeply at peace. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, and unbelievable sense of peace. And there is the sacred innermost core which cannot be named.

Thank you for inviting me; I am equally benefited by these Satsang as you are. This is my sadhana. Please go on with your request, go deeper and deeper in to the quest. There in the depth you will find diamond and pearls. Nothing will be found in any superficial search, happening, person as you already know.

God Bless You All