Awaken the Spirit of Helping.....

Christ said “ The least you do to my brothers, you are doing it unto me.” The little you do to someone who really is in need, you are doing it to the Lord. In return, He is giving you much more. In return He is filling your heart with lots of Love.

If you want to experience the Love of God, help, do charity. This will open the heart, because when you do charity, you don’t think of yourself, you think of serving. You see, when you start to think of others, God will give you the most important thing. Some people will say “Yeah, but many people help.” Yes, there are many people who help, but the help doesn’t come from the heart. Help doesn’t mean that you have to go to a house like this or help these kinds of people. Help means anything and everything! You can go into nature and do something simple, help planting a tree where it is needed or if you see some trash on the way you pick it up. Something like this is also help, a help to nature. 

He will teach you to love – love without condition.....

In the Vishnupurana....it says, “Manav seva – Madhav seva.” This means, service to mankind is service to Lord Narayana. So try to see this Divine aspect in everybody. If you only look towards the outside, you will always come to a judgement point of the mind.

The mind has duality: You love – you don’t love; you are like this – or you are like that. You have to reach the point of non-duality, when you see only with the heart. This is the most beautiful thing. Years come, years go, it doesn’t bring anybody higher if the heart is not open. When you really give your best, you will open up your heart. How many saints started small, by helping a few people, and then they became selflessly devoted to the people, to the helping of others. Because in their mind they did not think that they were doing it for Jesus. They just did it because they loved to do it.

This reminds me of a saint, St. Sabbas of Egypt. You know, in the Christian tradition, whenever you go to a hermit, or to a monk, they welcome you by washing your hands and your feet. Even the Benedictines used to do it. They do not do it anymore. So, once a man came to visit St. Sabbas in his cave while St. Sabbas was meditating. When he noticed the visitor, he became very happy. He washed the hands of this man and he washed his feet, and he was so much in love and he was crying so much. When he looked up, it was Jesus sitting there. He started crying and said, “Oh, my Lord, You are here!” At that moment, the visitor disappeared.

So, God will not come to you in a beautiful form. He will always come, even as your own enemy. He will come, because this is how He will teach you to love – love without condition. 

The seven flowers.....

When we love, we love and forget. We don’t expect anything when we love somebody. Well, there are two different kinds of love. There is a love on the outside, where you only expect something, but there is another kind of love. There is a love where you will do anything for this person. Just to please this person you will do anything. Even that kind of love is divided in two. Whatever is done unconditionally will always make you happy, but whatever is done with a condition will always make you unhappy. To awaken this Love, to make this Love greater and greater is not that difficult. I always say, you just need to want it. I’ll tell you a small story. Once there was a Sage, a great Saint who went to a town. He was so famous that people were very excited when he was coming, so they started preparing four weeks before, busily preparing a lot of things. Then someone said “I heard that this Swami likes to use seven flowers when he performs his prayer.” That’s a lot of flowers – a big confusion started happening. They wondered “What  flower shall we take to give to this Swami?” They didn’t know what  flower to take. So they ran to the Saint and said “Reverend Sir, we heard that while praying you use seven flowers, but there is such a variety of flowers that we don’t know what  flowers to use.” The Saint looked at them and started laughing like mad. He said “Yes, I use seven flowers to pray and I want that each one of you gives these seven flowers to me. The seven flowers are: truthfulness, love, service to people, prayer, devotion, loyalty and control of the senses. These are the seven flowers. He said “If somebody gives these to God, gives them to one’s Self, God will be pleased with that. There is no greater thing than that. This reminds me of Krishna who said in the Bhagavad Gita “When somebody offers to me just a small leaf with Love from the heart, I shall accept it.” People offer a lot of things to please God – big, big things on the outside, but everything is from Him. It is He who gives; we are just taking what is given by Him and offering it back to Him. This Love that we have inside is also Him, but it is up to us to develop it or not. It is up to us how we handle it. We can go and do service on the outside like many organisations that just buy a lot of things and give them to the poor countries. Does this mean that this is service? You can always put a hundred euros aside every month, put it into an account of some organisation somewhere and say “That’s service”. The moment the money is gone you don’t even know what is happening with it, but when you yourself go; when you yourself participate in it, it creates another joy. It is this joy that God wants you to develop. People say “Yes, but I don’t have time to go and serve”, because in the mind they think that when you talk about that kind of service you have to run to India or to Africa. Your neighbour is dying, your neighbour is hungry by your side and you are thinking of India and of Africa, but God is thinking about them. Service starts near, around you. Stop seeing the difference, clear your mind of differences and see the same Lord everywhere. Offer the flowers that I just mentioned from deep within your heart. Offer them to Him. In this way you don’t even need to sit to pray, because He will be always with you. Open up your heart and serve whenever you can. Help whenever you can.

A beautiful story about how service brings union of the mind, the heart, the spirit and makes you whole.....

In the life of Sri Ramakrishna there was a doctor in a certain village. Whenever Ramakrishna would see the

doctor, the doctor was always with a heavy face, sad. Ramakrishna said to him “Why are you sad, doctor?” He said “I don’t know. I come to you. Give me a solution to be happy. Give me a way that I can feel the Love of God and be happy.” Ramakrishna said “Look, doctor, I know every day you have hundreds of people, you charge them lots of money, but even that doesn’t make you happy. So do one thing: one day a week, give service for free.” After some time, the doctor came to Dakshineshwar again and Ramakrishna saw him; he was very joyful and very happy, radiating so much joy and happiness. Ramakrishna said “Doctor, you look different today. What is the secret of it?” Then he said to him “Well, I took your advice and I started to give one day a week, free of charge, service to everybody. The more I do it, the more I feel to do it more and more, because this brings me great joy inside and this great joy doesn’t finish.” Like that, there are many examples that can be given about how service brings the union of the mind, the heart and the spirit and makes you whole. Don’t be scared to serve, in whatever way you can, however you can, whenever you can, because you don’t know when God can come to you and in what form He can come to you. Feel blessed and feel the Love of God!

How will you really find God in each person?

Help whoever comes to you. Help without even thinking of helping. If possible, once a week, go on the streets. If you live in a town, for sure there are so many people who live on the streets. You can go and talk to and be with them. It is not a big thing. Listen, for sure, when you approach these people, they will feel that, “Oh, this one wants to make fun of me” or whatever. They will refuse you. But keep trying! This is how you will really find God in each person. Realise that you are doing it for Jesus, you are doing it for God. Remind yourself that he said, “What you do to the least of my brothers, you are doing it unto me.” The same subject is found in the Vishnupurana. It says, “Manav seva – Madhav seva.” This means, service to mankind is service to Lord Narayana. So try to see this Divine aspect in everybody. If you only look towards the outside, you will always come to a judgement point of the mind. The mind has duality: You love – you don’t love; you are like this – or you are like that. You have to reach the point of non-duality, when you see only with the heart. This is the most beautiful thing. Years come, years go, it doesn’t bring anybody higher if the heart is not open. When you really give your best, you will open up your heart. How many saints started small, by helping a few people, and then they became selflessly devoted to the people, to the helping of others. Because in their mind they did not think that they were doing it for Jesus. They just did it because they loved to do it.

Sri Swami Vishwananda talks about service on the spiritual path...........

Through charity, through service, through love......

God will not only come to you in a beautiful form. He will always come, even as your own enemy. He will come, because this is how He will teach you to love – love without condition. Once there was a lady in Switzerland. She was walking down the street, and a beggar asked her to give him something. Her only reaction was to just take some money and give it to him. The moment the money reached the hand of the beggar, he disappeared. When she looked in the eyes of this man, he was just light, and he disappeared on the spot. Very often she talked about this story. Maybe you have heard it from someone.

So like that, I can tell you many stories, many facts that many people have told. Through charity, through service, through love they have experienced so much. And if you really want to experience the same thing – open up your heart and let Jesus work through you, let Krishna work through you, let God work through you. Through that you will realise His love, realise that He is always with you, and realise how much He loves you, and how much you can love. Even the mind cannot comprehend this; even the word love is too small for that what you can give. You have to want to give it, only then it can flow.

One could say that Krishna is God, so why does He need power?

When we talk about Radha, we always put Her first, and then Krishna. We say “Radhe Krishna, Radhe Shyam, because She is the Shakti of Krishna. She is the One who gives power to Krishna. One could say that Krishna is God, so why does He need power? But Love - which is Krishna, which is God - is useless without devotion. So in this form, in the form of Radha, He manifests Himself as Bhakti, which is pure devotion. What is this pure devotion? We all have devotion: we pray, we do our work every day and this is, also, called devotion, but pure devotion is complete surrender. This pure devotion, which Radha had for Krishna, even though She was separated from Krishna, even though She was separated from the Oneness – it was just to teach us what it is to surrender. Actually, Radha represents all of us: the creation, the manifestation. She symbolizes the Love, the example. She symbolizes the Bhav, the complete surrender to the Will of God. It’s not about her own will, but the Will of God, the Will of Krishna. That’s why it is said that She is the only true Devotee and we all have to become like Her. The manifestation of the Lord Himself into Radharani is to show us how to love unconditionally, how to have such faith that even a storm will not uproot you. Nowadays we talk about faith. But the moment something happens and doesn’t turn out the way people want, what happens? They are uprooted already. Faith is like this: you have to become like a huge tree. When a storm comes, the branches will blow, but the roots are so anchored into the earth, the tree does not come out. That’s how faith has to be. That is what Radharani teaches to us. In Her Life there were not only joyful times, but She transcended the joy and the pain. We all want bliss, don’t we? We all want to attain the Divine, but yet we hang onto things. We want to love and we want to do God’s will, but in our mind we always say “Yes, I want to do God’s will, but I want to always be happy”, because in our minds, we think that happiness is bliss. But the transcendental happiness that is real bliss is beyond the happiness like when you say with a big smile “I am happy”, because when one is in bliss, one doesn’t know happiness or sadness. It is difficult to understand it with the mind, because your brain can only understand whether you are happy or sad, or you are happy-sad, but transcending these two is Ananda. And that’s what our soul is longing for. There is one bhajan that I always sing, that says “For love, one can do anything.” Isn’t it like this? But Love is sacrifice, you know, isn’t it? Are you ready to sacrifice completely for that? How many of you are ready to sacrifice everything, completely? So, that’s what faith is: complete surrender. If you are completely surrendered to the Will of God and you remember the Divine–wherever you are, whatever you do, even in the smallest things–then you will transcend. Always people ask for something and, of course, God will always give. But there will come a point where there will be no need to ask the Divine for anything, because it will be given to you before you ask. The more you are surrendering to the Will of God, to the Divine–not surrendering only in your mind, but also surrendering here, in your heart – the more there will be no difference between you and Him. That’s what Radharani transcends, the difference between She and Krishna, to show that there is no difference between we humans and the Divine. The only difference is that we are limited with our mind. We see the difference, we see the duality, but in the higher realms they don’t see the same way we see. They have a hierarchy where they have their own jobs, their own duties to do, their dharma to do, but there is no judgement like we always have.

Words of Sri Swami Vishwananda......

Only when each one is doing its own

function, its own duty or dharma,

then there is perfect unity.

Your heart is opening bigger and bigger.....

When you dedicate yourself to the Lord, every day is a new day. Every day you learn new things and every day you will see that there is great learning happening and that you are advancing nearer and nearer to Him. Your heart is opening bigger and bigger and it is filling with so much Love. What you have to attain is the grace of God. Attain the Love, so that it can fill you up fully. You can achieve really the purpose of your life, the purpose of your incarnation here. Start, firstly by praying and chanting the name of God wherever you are. What is chanting? You see, the more you chant the Divine Names, the more you will receive this love and understanding. Of course, with the mind you will never understand Him, Maha Jwala Narasimha. When you look at Him like that even among you, you say “Oh, my goodness, this is a bit scary, eh?” You have to see that God is not only beautiful. That is the mistake that one always makes. You picture God in the mind saying, “God is the only perfect One”, but He can’t be perfect if He doesn’t have any imperfections inside of Him. That is what makes Him whole, the imperfection and the perfection. Train your mind, which is full with ignorance. Purify it and transform it, so that when you reach your heart, your spiritual heart, it’s fully blossoming so that you can offer the flower to Him. How would you offer the flower to Him? Offering the flower is not just by taking it from here and putting it there, not by taking it and putting it here saying “swaha”. It’s not like that, you know. It’s through service that you offer the flower to Him, when you help people who are in need. This is how the more you help, the more you will have satisfaction in life. When you help somebody sincerely, it’s a greater joy inside that you feel satisfied with what you have done, but then what happens? You don’t hang onto it. You forget very quickly. That’s how it has to be in life. Once you have attained the grace of God, once you have opened your heart really sincerely, His grace will just flow, because it’s a great fountain inside of you, which is everlasting. The more you take, the more it shall flow. So practice and attain His grace.

Love is a Great Teacher.....

There are four kinds of yoga – Bhakti yoga, Jnana yoga, Karma yoga and Raja yoga. Any of these four kinds of yoga, can lead someone towards Self-realisation. What is karma yoga? Selfless service – some will also say working. But that is just the karma not the yoga. Karma yoga is selfless service, selfless help. What is this selfless service? People do a lot of service, but selfless service is very rare. There is this part in the bible, where Christ said “When your right hand gives, your left hand should not know”– it is better you cut your left hand and throw it away. Selfless service means, that when you render service, you have to forget about it, the moment you have rendered this service. Does the mind forget about it? Very rarely. You see, when one does service, there is always an expectation. Even the expectation of “thank you,” or “thanks.” When one doesn’t get a “thank you” he becomes very upset, thinking “I have helped that person, but yet he didn’t even thank me for that!” But selfless service is not like that – when you render service, forget about everything. Deep inside of you, you are rendering service to the Divine, but you don’t expect the pride of knowing that you are rendering service to the Divine, to rise. So erase completely the expectations of the mind – and that is selfless service.

The next yoga is Bhakti yoga, which is considered one of the easiest yoga. In bhakti, the first step you make but in that form of yoga, the first step that you make, the Lord makes ten steps towards you. You know your goal in life. In karma yoga, you have to walk towards that goal, you have to climb to the peak of that mountain. In Bhakti yoga, you are flying towards that mountain with a helicopter. Then, the third yoga is Raja yoga. Raja yoga is divided into many forms of yoga. That’s where your spiritual exercises come, like Atma Kriya, Hatha yoga; all these yoga fall into the Raja yoga. In Rajayoga you come to the point where you go into Samadhi. If you do your sadhana sincerely, when you do your spiritual practice sincerely, you come to the point of the samadhi state. What is the state of Samadhi? I said there is a mountain; in the first one you have to walk up there, in the second one you fly there and the third one, you don’t even need to carry your body. By will, you are there. Many great saints or sages have reached that point, where they could be in many places at once with this will. Like Christ – a man wanted Him to heal his servants and he said “Lord come to me, to my house, You shall heal my servant.” Christ said “Go home, your servant is healed.” This is the state, where you have touched the cosmic consciousness; you realise the infinite of your true Self. The last yoga is Jnana yoga. I will ask you; what is Jnana yoga? – tell me please – (someone: knowledge, knowing who you are). Yes, knowledge. The knowledge of the Self. But real Jnana yoga; very often people think that Jnana yoga can be found in books or one may find it or by practising, but real Jnana yoga is to have the wisdom, not just to know it, but to have the wisdom, that what you are looking for is that the beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning. With these four forms of yoga, anyone can attain Self-realisation or God-realisation. Each one is free to follow whichever path of yoga one wants to.

The main aim is to awaken this Divine Love, because without Love, you will not do anything. The key of all of these four kinds of yoga, is just the Love, the core of the heart. A love which consumes everything, a Love which will liberate you.

A teacher is not here just to give you good things, he has to teach you.

Work for this reality.....

Where is the Divinity? This great energy that makes the body work, that makes the body act, is the Spirit and it’s who you really are. If you were the body, would you still be alive even after death? Whereas being the Spirit, you continuously live till you become completely one with the Divine. Work for this reality. Work and love God. Whatever you do, every action, every thought, focus your mind on doing it for God. Love God in everybody and everything around you. And when you love, love one hundred percent. Try to not doubt this Love because when you doubt it, even a little bit of doubt, it stops your advancement.

The Self is everlasting giving!

One aspect that Jesus really taught when He was… He still is with us… is love!

Wherever you look, he never talked about anything else. He talked about love and faith. In Hinduism, we call it bhakti: faith, devotion and love. In love, you don’t have expectations. You do not want anything from anybody. You are just here to give. Jesus never expected anything from anybody. Did he expect something from somebody? No, he was just here to give. He was always giving. You cannot say his life was a charitable one, but he gave it freely. He gave without any expectation, without even thinking or talking about it. He even taught to be quiet about whatever happens.

In one of the parables he said, when your right hand gives, your left hand should not know about it. That means, give and forget about it. In the same way, sometimes when you receive something, you are very happy about it for some time, but after some time you forget about it, isn’t it? So the same way you should also give and forget it. And when you give – give with love. Give it joyfully without any egoistic thinking, “Oh, I have done this.” So many times people do lots of good things and talk a lot about it. But this is not how it should be. You have to give and forget. Then it is not you who gave, it’s the Self. The Self is everlasting giving!

Keep reminding yourself of why you are here. All this that is around will pass and go. New things will come. But the Self can’t get old. The Self can’t die, so it will be eternal. It is better you realise it now, that you are eternal, rather than at the end when the time of departure comes and you say, “Oops, this was easy. I could have realised that a long time ago, but now it’s too late.” Therefore, you have already messed up the whole life in searching for things. It is here, right now with you! So try to make this the ultimate goal – of realising the Self. You know it in the mind. For sure it will not be quick and easy, that you will just think about it, and then here it is!

Keep practicing it. Every day say to yourself, “I am the Spirit, I’m the Christ”, and let it reflect outside. When you say, “I am a child of God. I’m part of the creator, I’m part of the Father”, and you do not reflect it to the outside, it does not help. What I mean by the reflection towards the outside is to let this vibrate within you at first.

Secondly, as much as possible, help! Help whoever comes to you. Help without even thinking of helping. If possible, once a week, go on the streets. If you live in a town, for sure there are so many people who live on the streets. You can go and talk to and be with them. It is not a big thing.

Listen, for sure, when you approach these people, they will feel that, “Oh, this one wants to make fun of me” or whatever. They will refuse you. But keep trying! This is how you will really find God in each person. Realise that you are doing it for Jesus, you are doing it for God. Remind yourself that he said, “What you do to the least of my brothers, you are doing it unto me.”

The same subject is found in the Vishnupurana. It says, “Manav seva – Madhav seva.” This means, service to mankind is service to Lord Narayana. So try to see this Divine aspect in everybody. If you only look towards the outside, you will always come to a judgement point of the mind.

Sri Swami Vishwananda tells us today.....

When we do something with our heart, the simple things that we do will give us joy. So, be always simple and loving.

Surrender to the Guru´s feet!

Surrender to the Guru’s feet! As it is said “When one meets one’s Guru, the world becomes the feet of the master.” And the Guru’s feet are everything. That is why, in the Hindu tradition, we worship Vishnu Padam. Why do we worship the Feet of Maha Vishnu? When we say ‘feet’, it is not the upper part, rather it is the down part. That is why when the Guru places the feet he does not put the upper part. He puts the down part of it, because under the soles of the Feet of the Master is the Vishnu Padam. Beneath the feet is all: They are the Feet of Maha Vishnu Himself. That is why in the Gita it is said: Guru Govinda. Krishna manifests Himself as the Guru and the Guru is Govinda, is Krishna. Service to the Feet of the Master is equal to thousands of pilgrimage places. So, do your service to the Feet of the Master and surrender. Adi Shankaracharya said “I received everything only by surrendering to the Feet of my Master”.

Words of Sri Swami Vishwananda.....

God accepts,forgetting that He is God and becomes the servant of His devotee. And such Love one has to cultivate; such Love, such devotion, such calling one has to have inside the heart. And when you have Him, you will have everything. Aisi prīti badihī vrindāvana gopina nāca nacāī. Krishna demonstrated such Love, such humility, in Vrindavan, where He would dance with the gopis, He would dance with the shepherd, He would dance with the cow. He showed such Love that He didn’t limit Himself for Himself, but He limited Himself for His devotees. He limited Himself for everybody to enjoy Him. Only by Love one will reach Him. Only when one has selfless Love, will one Realise Him. Only when one has selfless Love, that one will become One with Him. Develop such Love and He is always with you.

Sri Swami Vishwananda talks about........

Once there was a doctor who took his job very seriously. And he was very satisfied whenever people came to him to get healed, he was very happy about it. But his happiness had always only a short duration, so he was always wondering “Why I can be happy, but yet, it lasts a very short while. You know about this kind of happiness, no? Then the doctor went to Ramakrishna, an Indian Saint who lived in the last century, and told him “Ramakrishnaji, tell me how you love. I feel this love, but it doesn’t last for long.” Ramakrishna answered to him “My dear doctor, I know that you help people, and that you feel this love, but know one thing: your love is based on how much you get as payment. So, go and help people. It’s not that you should not take money, take it, but once a week give free consultation. You will see that this love inside of you will grow more and more.” And, of course, the doctor practised what Ramakrishna told him. After a few months, he came back to Sri Ramakrishna and fell down at his feet, saying “My Lord, I have done what you have told me and I’m the most happy person. Now, I don’t do this selfless service only one time a week, but I do it two or three times a week!” That’s what I said: Love always sounds selfish. Firstly, you give to yourself then you always give it to the others. Then it becomes selfless, unconditional. Because as long as there is expectation in it, as long as there is want in it, there will always be limitation in it. So find this Love inside of you. Feel inside of you this Divine Love. Feel it in the plant kingdom and feel it in the animals. Then you will see that there is perfect unity, there is unity and that you can make, also, unity. But, firstly, you have to push yourself.

Sri Swami Vishwananda talks about........

Keep reminding yourself of why you are here. All this that is around will pass and go. New things will come. But the Self can’t get old. The Self can’t die, so it will be eternal. It is better you realise it now, that you are eternal, rather than at the end when the time of departure comes and you say, “Oops, this was easy. I could have realised that a long time ago, but now it’s too late.” Therefore, you have already messed up the whole life in searching for things. It is here, right now with you! So try to make this the ultimate goal – of realising the Self. You know it in the mind. For sure it will not be quick and easy, that you will just think about it, and then here it is!

Keep practicing it. Every day say to yourself, “I am the

Spirit, I’m the Christ”, and let it reflect outside. When you say, “I am a child of God. I’m part of the creator, I’m part of the Father”, and you do not reflect it to the outside, it does not help. What I mean by the reflection towards the outside is to let this vibrate within you at first.

Secondly, as much as possible, help! Help whoever comes to you. Help without even thinking of helping. If possible, once a week, go on the streets. If you live in a town, for sure there are so many people who live on the streets. You can go and talk to and be with them. It is not a big thing.

Listen, for sure, when you approach these people, they will feel that, “Oh, this one wants to make fun of me” or whatever. They will refuse you. But keep trying! This is how you will really find God in each person. Realise that you are doing it for Jesus, you are doing it for God. Remind yourself that he said, “What you do to the least of my brothers, you are doing it unto me.”

The same subject is found in the Vishnupurana. It says, “Manav seva – Madhav seva.” This means, service to mankind is service to Lord Narayana. So try to see this Divine aspect in everybody. If you only look towards the outside, you will always come to a judgement point of the mind.

The mind has duality: You love – you don’t love; you are like this – or you are like that. You have to reach the point of non-duality, when you see only with the heart. This is the most beautiful thing. Years come, years go, it doesn’t bring anybody higher if the heart is not open. When you really give your best, you will open up your heart. How many saints started small, by helping a few people, and then they became selflessly devoted to the people, to the helping of others. Because in their mind they did not think that they were doing it for Jesus. They just did it because they loved to do it.

This reminds me of a saint, St. Sabbas of Egypt. You know, in the Christian tradition, whenever you go to a hermit, or to a monk, they welcome you by washing your hands and your feet. Even the Benedictines used to do it. They do not do it anymore. So, once a man came to visit St. Sabbas in his cave while St. Sabbas was meditating. When he noticed the visitor, he became very happy. He washed the hands of this man and he washed his feet, and he was so much in love and he was crying so much. When he looked up, it was Jesus sitting there. He started crying and said, “Oh, my Lord, You are here!” At that moment, the visitor disappeared.

So, God will not come to you in a beautiful form. He will always come, even as your own enemy. He will come, because this is how He will teach you to love – love without condition.

Giving up your own interests

"True joy lies in giving up your own interests to make others happy"

-Sri Swami Vishwananda-