Here and Now

A Talk by Guruji H.H.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Let me tell you a story. Once two villagers were sitting under a tree and watching the sunset. They were very close friends. After sitting quietly for some time, one asked the other, “What are you thinking? I am planning to buy five acres of land, a garden.” The other friend immediately said, “Don´t buy the garden!”

The first one was surprised. He asked “why”? The second one replied, “I am planning to buy a buffalo. Then, my buffalo will enter your garden and we will fight, have misunderstandings and lose our friendship. I do not want to lose our friendship.”

The first one said, “Then, you cancel your plan of buying a buffalo. I am going to buy my garden.” The second one said, “No, no, no. I have already decided to buy a buffalo.” The first one said, “How will your buffalo enter my garden? I will fence it thoroughly.”

The second one said, “No, you see, it can just enter; a buffalo is a buffalo. Who can stop it? It can do anything.”

Then the fight went to such an extent that they broke their limbs! Neither has bought buffalo nor any land. Nothing has happened. Just the mind´s race andboth of them broke their limbs over it! Our fears are also like that. The future has not yet come. But you just sit there and think, “Oh! What will happen? What will happen?” Finally you will die! This is what is going to happen! So much anxiety about the future! In this run, the mind gets into such a mess. It is unable to see the presence that is all around it.

The mind totally forgets the divine. “Me, mine, what about tomorrow, the day after and the day after that, next year, ten years later?” You people plan in this way even up to the next birth! When people are newly married they say,”We will be husband and wife for many life-times to come! This one birth is not enough. We will be man and wife for the next seven births!” In reality, they may be fed up of each other in this birth itself, but they talk of the next seven births!

We should experience the divine´s presence, the divine´s light around us.You should have a desire in your mind to experience this. Have we ever desired the divine light? Has such a desire ever risen in you, that you want the highest peace? Has it arisen from deep inside you? The divine light, whatever that is, you do not know what it is. It is something by which the whole world is running. Have you ever really wanted it? When you sing or pray there  should be total involvement. You don´t involve yourself totally. If the mind is preoccupied elsewhere then that is no prayer at all. There should be total involvement. When there is pain there is more involvement.

You are like a free bird. You are fully open. Feel that you are flying like a bird. Learn to fly. This is some thing which you have to experience within yourself. There is nothing else. If you consider yourself as bonded, you will remain bound here. Experience freedom. When will you experience freedom? After you die? Become free right now. Sit down and become contented. That thing in you which says, “I have to do. I have to do. I have to achieve”; that is wrong. Sit down in peace, thinking: “I have nothing to do now.”

You are afraid of opening your fists. What is there with you that you have to hold your fists? You have nothing with you. Open your fists. The whole sky will be in your hands. Be natural. Be with love. Do service. Celebrate all your life.

Desire, fear and anxiety are all the same!!

We were asking Guruji about the difference between a desire and an expectation…He said, Desires are always for something nice or good, but an expectation can be for something bad… Like you may expect the share market to crash, i dont think many will desire that!

Then He went on to say that there is really no difference between desire, fear and anxiety!!

He said that the mind (or that aspect of yourself that manifests stuff into the physical realm) cannot distinguish between a desire, some fear or an anxiety … so for example, if you are riding a bicycle, and are thinking, oh i should not bang into the pavement, i should not bang into the pavement, i should not bang. The mind incorrectly assumes that that’s exactly what you want and manifests that! and so you bang!

This little byte of Knowledge, this insight can explain every single happening in our life! The mind CANNOT differentiate between a desire, a fear or an anxiety, and will merrily manifest whatever it is that you are feeling and thinking strongly about.

We have the utsav in Bangalore in an open air place, and off late there have been a few clouds and some rumblings of thunder… Rashmin was listening to me while i was talking about what Guruji had said and remarked oh i hope there will be no rain… and i said thats it! if you think that, there is going to be rain!

and he said, oh this is complicated… what do i think!?… Think about clear skies! is what i told him…

We are all so used to thinking “negatively”… hoping, wishing for things NOT to happen… and exactly that manifests into our lives!

Reprogram yourself to wishing and hoping for certain things to happen!! and then let go of the desire, ‘coz feverishness for the desire will make you go for certain into “what ifing” … and soon the thoughts and feeling about it not happening become strong.

Guruji once had remarked, whenever you wish for something, always wish, “Let me have this or better!” You may wish for a million dollars and the Universe actually wanted to give you a 100 million, but since your
wish is for just a million, thats all you get.

Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu!!! …or better!!!!!

GK

the power in you

An Article by H.H.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

You have the power in you.

We all have three shaktis (energies) in us. They are ‘ichcha shakti’ (the energy of will), ‘kriya shakti’ (the energy of action) and ‘jnaana shakti’ (the energy of knowledge). We have disturbances or ups and downs in our lives because of imbalances in these three energies.

The jnaana shakti in you brings ichcha shakti, the will or desire in you. For example, you have a desire to eat rasagolla. You already know what rasagolla is. You have already savoured it. The knowledge of rasagolla brought the energy of desire in you. So you develop a desire to eat rasagolla. Once you have known what rasagolla is, after you get to know where it can be obtained, after the desire to eat rasagolla arose in you, will you sit idly? No! The kriya shakti or the energy of action follows you. You will go and buy it and eat it. In case you do not know where to get it, then you will make an effort to find out where you can get it. Then you will have lot of kriya shakti in you.

When there is kriya shakti and ichcha shakti, they lead you towards jnaana shakti, the energy of knowledge. You have curiosity. You do not know what exists inside the moon. You want to know what exists in the planet Jupiter. What is there in this creation? Most of our such desires are those about which we know almost nothing about. So you take a telescope and go to a planetarium and begin your research. All research depends upon ichcha shakti and kriya shakti. In order to acquire jnaana shakti or the energy of knowledge, research takes place.

In the same way, whereever there is jnaana shakti, ichcha shakti and kriya shakti follow. Jnaana shakti or the energy of knowledge is symbolised as Saraswathi, ichcha shakti and the energy of desire as Paravathi or Uma and kriya shakti as Goddess Lakshmi.

Brahma is the creator. What does the creator need? He needs knowledge. So jnaana shakti or Saraswathi is the consort of Brahma. Vishnu is the protector of all. What does the protector need? He needs Lakshmi, isn’t it? If you need to run an establishment, if you need to run your house, you need money. Money is Lakshmi. You need Lakshmi for sustenance. Ichcha shakti is Umakumari who symbolises change. You need to have a desire in life to change, to obtain liberation. For that Shiva principle to be auspicious, desire should be created in you. That ichcha shakti is Parvathi, also known as Eashwari.

Therefore, the whole world runs because of the presence of these three shaktis. Whichever energy is more in a place or in a person, that energy gets exhibited. When there is right knowledge, then the right desire arises in us. When there is right knowledge and right desire in us, then right action follows naturally. In that case, all activities that happen through us will lead to completion. Completion in activity will lead to completion in knowledge.

There should be a completion in desire too. If you desire something which does not exist, for instance, if you desire to see the horns of a rabbit, which does not exist in the first place, then what is the use? You had a desire, but there was a lacuna in the energy of knowledge. Now, if anybody decides to see or search for the horns of a rabbit, they are bound to get distressed.

People have ichcha shakti, the desire in them. Due to the wrong desire, usually one undergoes lot of misery. People would have become engineers and will be working as engineers. But if they keep regretting, thinking that they should have been a doctor instead, can they start studying for medicine now?

Many people desire wrong. They obtain a postgraduate degree from the University and then begin to study some other course. The moment they get a new desire they begin again. They never have contentment. They begin one job, quit it and move to another job and then again they move on to another job. They keep searching for contentment. What is this? There is ichcha shakti and jnaana shakti here.

Some have do not have kriya shakti and sit where ever they are and dream and think ‘‘Oh! That should happen to me. It would have been wonderful if I had become a minister’’ or some other dreams to live happily. What happens to all such dreamers? They just sit and dream and dream. Kriya shakti is absent here. They sit in one place and calculate all the profits too. They sit idle and keep planning and talking too much. If you look at those people who talk too much, you can see that they would not have done much work. They do not plan even a single thing properly. They just keep advising everybody to do things that way or this way or keep claiming that they could have got many things done. They keep criticising people. If you tell them, ‘‘Okay, you do at least something of it’’ then they say ‘‘no’’ and just slip away and vanish! What happens in such people? They have lot of jnaana shakti, but zero kriya shakti. If kriya shakti disappears from a person, then that person is good as finished for life. Such people keep repeating their mistakes.

It is a very rare opportunity to see the combination of all the three shaktis. When all the three shaktis combine, then they say that the person has attained ‘siddhi’. We should bring about a balance of ichcha shakti, jnaana shakti and kriya shakti in us.