We will find Him when our heart is completely open...

In the Shivapurana, is said that Shakti always resides with Shiva. The upper part is Shiva and the lower part is Shakti, referring to the kundalini together with shesha, the snake. It is the perfect combination of the two aspects which are in each one of us, the male and the female. It’s also the day and the night. This reminds us that we are not just the body. We are the consciousness of God, whom we will find by surrendering completely to Him. We will find Him when our heart is completely open, without any doubt, without any “buts”. So many times, you say, “Okay God, I will make a deal with You! If you give me that, then I will do something.” Or you say, “I love God very much. I surrender to Him wholeheartedly. But, you know, there is a problem…”You don’t want to let go of the world. You don’t want to let go of the material things, because you are insecure about your Self. So, surrender everything and be assured that God is always with you! If He has put you here on earth, He will not let you go just like that! A beggar on the road will always have his food, because God will always provide him with what he needs. For sure he doesn’t need much. We are children of God. Jesus has taught us, “Don’t beg, but ask. Ask our Father. Ask, and you will receive.”But the point is: we do our prayers in quantity by burning lots of candles and lots of lights and saying to God, “Here, this is my prayer to You, God!” But what God really wants is the quality of your prayer. God wants our prayers to come from the heart without any doubt or negativity. Sure you will receive it – whether you think it’s good or bad, He will give it to you. You will receive whatever you want. If it is good you will enjoy it, if it is not good you will also enjoy it – in a not nice way – because you asked for it. So don’t complain about it! So I will ask you, surrender completely to the Lord.

When you give yourself completely to God, God will also give Himself completely to you....

If you want permanent happiness, it is possible only when you surrender completely to God. When your body, mind and soul have become one and are offered to the altar of the Lord, He will happily give everything to you. He will give Himself to you. The king surrendered to the priest, who had understood that real teaching is within us, not in books. When you give yourself completely to God, God will also give Himself completely to you. But if you give Him only half, don’t expect Him to give Himself one hundred percent to you. So, call upon the Lord from your heart. When your heart calls Him fully, when your mind is completely centred on Him, you will see that He will also completely surrender to you. Then you will be in
this bliss, in this Love, continuously. You will be continuously in love with God. You will be continuously in love with everybody and everything around you. This Love, you can’t understand it with your mind. It surpasses all the love that this world can say about love. You can attain this Divine Love, this Divine Ecstasy only when you surrender. Real happiness lies deep inside your heart. So surrender your mind, which is so proud and so egoistic, and don’t let it flatter you, so you are thinking that you know a lot of things, when actually you don’t know anything. As long as you haven’t come to a point of God- Realisation, you can’t call yourself Realised or think that you know. But keep trying and never lose hope. Know that He is always with
you.

Expectation limits the Divine.....

One day you will surrender completely, saying, “Open my heart. Here I am. I surrender to You – body, mind and soul is Yours! Do whatever you want to do.” For sure you will be guided. Do it. Very often people start to do it, but then doubt arises in the mind. You see, doubt arises because you expect limits. People think that when they become spiritual they have to see something; they have to see maybe some light, or some miracles, or anything that the physical eyes can see. But expectation limits the Divine. Do you think God can be limited when you say, “God I love You, I really want to feel You, I really want to know You”? And then you’re questioning about the light when He is the Light of all lights, and the Light that these eyes can’t even look at! Actually, it’s just that the inner eyes can see it. All of you have this light. All of you have these eyes. But open them! Don’t have fear to open them, no matter what you will see – focus your attention on the Divine! Focus your attention on God – on this light and love that you have inside you. And like a child, let yourself be guided. You will feel that – whatever you want to do, if it is not right – you will not go in that way. But for that you have to be sincere to yourself. You have to be sincere to the feeling that you are feeling inside. It’s not that your heart feels something and you say, “Oh no, it’s not that, it’s my own creation... it’s all just illusions of my mind.” Look at Mirabai, one of the devotees of Krishna. Do you know her story? Some of you might know it, and some of you don’t. She was a queen, and her love for Krishna was so great, it was beyond everything. When she got married, she said to her husband, “My love for Krishna is beyond all your love, that you can understand. I see Him in you and in all of you who are around.” Whenever she used to sing Krishna’s name or sing a bhajan, he was present there. Such was her love that the Divine manifested Himself there. Whenever you call from deep within your heart, whenever you call any aspect of the Divine, the Divine will take that aspect and come to you. Mirabai’s love was so great that at the end of her life they blamed her for so many things – but she was fixed and steady on her Krishna. There was a lot of jealousy around her. But this is normal. You see, when you have a power point, all the souls around want the same thing. But to get it, they don’t want to do anything. They just want to sit and be given it on a silver plate. You will receive it on a silver plate, yes, but first you have to make the effort. Otherwise the Divine will give you the silver plate, but your hand will be like this… it will fall down! That’s why I’m talking about opening the heart of man, opening your heart to love. Because you can love, you can love beyond what your mind is thinking about love. In the depth of this love you’ll be one with the Divine. Beyond all the duality that the mind creates is only the Self, and that’s what each one is here for. And no matter which path you are following, at the end, each path will reach that point. All paths are right but you have to be disciplined in them. When I say disciplined I don’t mean forcing or pressing. This is spirituality. Something that has to emerge from the heart of man, is like a flower that opens without any force. Let it open, and let it shine with beauty.

“Swamiji you always say to pray to God, always, but I’m working on the outside. How will I attain the Divine?” ....

A few days ago, somebody asked me “Swamiji you always say to pray to God, always, but I’m working  on the outside. How will I attain the Divine?” I think many of you ask this question. The answer is simple. There is one sentence in the Gita about doing one’s duty. One can’t neglect one’s duty. In the Gita it said that the dharma, one has to do. No matter what, dharma is very important, but how one has to do it, that is the most important thing. There is one form of doing one’s duty, which is nishkama karma, which means to do one’s duty without expecting anything, to do one’s duty in rendering service to others without even thinking of the result. That is what the Gita said “Whatever one does, if one is attached to the fruit of the action, one will suffer.” It’s true, because when we expect certain things, when we do certain things, there is always certain expectation and when the expectation is not met, what happens? You get sad, no? You feel upset. Where does this come from? You created it. You make yourself sad.So when one does one’s duty without even expecting something that means that the mind is already surrendering to the Divine. In another way, the mind, when it has the sattvic quality, the mind doesn’t have any power into it. This is where whatever one does is a complete surrender to the Divine, but whereas when one gets a little mixture of rajasic quality with   sattvic quality, then one, always, says “I will do good to the world.” In that state we’ll see that the I is very big. Whenever the mind pictures the I, it doesn’t mean the I of the Self; it means, always, the I of the ego “I can do this; I can do that.” As long as you have not Realised your Self, the I of the ego is always big. That’s why it is said in the Scripture: Remove this I. Put Him, you know, the Lord, because as long as one has not realised anything, one has to remind oneself continuously that All is Him.Even what you perceive that you are doing yourself, actually, it is Him which is acting through you. That’s why the great Sages, when they have realised themselves, they always praise the Lord by saying “Lord, I am the vehicle, but you are the one who  is driving it. I am the chariot, but you are the charioteer. I am the wick of the lamp, but you are the light. I am the house, but you are the dweller of that house.” So in that state one has fully transcended the human nature seeing only the Divine working in everything. In that state, one sees the world in a different angle, not the same as with the egoistic mind point of view. Often people come, they say “Oh, Swamiji, I have seen this vision and that vision.” No, no, because people always want to think that they are special in whatever they do. Very often, without judgment, you see them very proudly “Oh, I have seen that. I have seen this.”, but what is that if it is not just pride? Because when one comes face to face with the Divine and really experiences something from the Divine, one doesn’t talk about it. One treasures it as the most precious treasure inside one’s heart.   In that state, the mere mention of the Divine Name will make one cry out of joy knowing that this experience that one has received from the Divine,  is real. And this is all due to the nishkama karma. Wherever your dharma is, wherever God has put you, no matter what kind of work he has lead you to, there’s a reason for that. Whenever you do your duty, it doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter what you do if you do it with a mind surrendered to the Divine, if you do it with your heart completely full of Love, even there God will come to you.

As Sri Krishna said in the Gita, “If you want to attain me, surrender yourself to your Guru and you will attain me.....”

Which type of people do we want to be? We are searching. We want to attain His Grace. We want to attain His Love, but we are so much stuck in our mind. We want to attain Him, yet how many among us will really surrender everything to Him? How many among us will surrender ourselves completely to Him, will say “Lord, here I am. Take me.”? We say yes, we want to do God’s will, isn’t it?  On the spiritual path we always want to do God’s Will. Yet in our ego self, we want to do our will also a little bit, but we say “It’s the Will of God.” As long as it makes us happy, as long as “I am happy” that’s it, it’s the Will of God, but when it’s not turning towards “What makes me happy”, it’s wrong. What do we do then? We start criticising, we start judging. Does God’s will have judgment into it? Whatever the Divine does is  always for the people. Whatever a Master does is always for raising the spirituality in the disciple.As I said in the beginning, you have to want Him. Then He will come to you. When you say “I want to realise God”, it’s not just superficial, you know? You have to really mean it. When you say “Really, I want Him,” there will be such Love inside of you, such great peace and calmness inside of you, that you will feel Him. Whatever He gives you, if you surrender into Him, if you are surrendered and you really trust that He, His will be done, then you have to remove your desire. You have to remove what makes you happy, but what makes Him happy, that’s the most important thing. Tat is called complete surrender. Such was the life of Madhava Puri. Madhava Puri was a 17th century Saint, who lived in Vrindavan. He used to go begging for his food, but it came to a point that the Love for God was so strong inside of him, that he stopped begging. He said “Whatever God gives me, I will eat.” For days and days he would go without food. On one occasion, he was around Govardhan, the holy mountain, which Krishna lifted with His little finger; he was there for four days. He didn’t eat anything, he sat there. One day, after four days of not eating, a boy, a small boy came to him with a pot of milk and gave him this milk and said “Madhava, drink this.” He looked at the boy and said “Who are you?” The boy,smiling, looked at him and said “Well, I heard some women talking about you not having eaten, so I brought you this milk. I provide for the one who doesn’t beg for anything. I provide for the one who is surrendered to the Lord.” Madhava Puri took the milk and he asked again the boy “Who are you?” He said “Don’t worry about who I am. You drink the milk. I will come later on to get the pot.” Madhava Puri drank the milk. It was like nectar. It was like milk he had never drunk before in his life. He was wondering who this boy was, and inside of him he said “Milk can’t taste like nectar. Milk can’t taste so sweet like that.”  As he was thinking and waiting for the boy to come back to get the pot, he had a dream. In the dream he saw Sri Krishna standing – the same face as the boy. He said “Madhava you didn’t recognise me. It was me who came to you. As I told you, I feed the one who doesn’t beg and who is surrendered to the Lord.” In the dream Krishna said to him “I’m guiding you to a well. Go there, deep inside this well, I am lying for some years. Take me out and do my service.”Early in the morning when he woke up, he was so much in Divine ecstasy. He was feeling so much great joy inside of him, he went around and started calling everybody “Come, let’s go to the well and remove Krishna.” Just as directed in the dream, he went and really they found the well. They removed the beautiful statue of Krishna out from the well and then he took Him out and made a nice temple for Him.They started doing lots of prayers and service to the Vigraha, to the Deity. One day Krishna came again in his dream and said “Madhava Puri, you know I was so long in this well, my body has so much heat from the sun. I need to get sandalwood paste from Puri (which is about 2,500 km up north from Vrindavan). I need to get this sandalwood paste so that I can cool down.”Without thinking, Madhava Puri rushed, left everything, gave the duty to one of his disciples to look after the Krishna. He rushed quickly on the way to Puri, walking. Without thinking  how he would go, without asking for the direction, anything. He just let himself be guided.At that time India was ruled by different kings. Each time you passed a kingdom, you would have to pay something to enter the kingdom, then they would let you in and go on. He didn’t even bother about it. His trust in the Lord was so great that he just walked. On the way, there was a famous temple of Gopinath. As he was passing by, he remembered having heard that in this temple their offering was so great that they would offer twelve pots of buttermilk to Krishna every day, and the buttermilk tastes like, really, like Amrit, like nectar. So he sat down there in the temple and he looked how they were doing their service to the Deity, and he said to himself “I will also do the same.”As he was looking how they did the offering to the Deity, he wanted to taste the buttermilk. Inside of him he had this great desire, but he didn’t dare to go and ask the priest “Give me some.” He was so scared that at night, when the priest had closed the temple, Krishna came in the dream of the priest and said to the priest “My dear priest, there is one of my devotees, one of my disciples, outside in the market. He is singing. I have a credit towards him. You have to take one pot of buttermilk. Go and give it to him. This is his.” The priest did according to what Krishna had told him in the dream. He woke up, took a shower and then took the buttermilk, and as the Lord had said that Madhava Puri was in the market place, he reached there and he saw Madhava Puri singing in ecstasy. He called to Madhava Puri “The Lord has sent this buttermilk for you. Here, take it.”When he heard that this was sent from the temple, from Sri Krishna Himself, he just drank it all. He was so happy that he started to eat even the pot afterwards. When he could not eat more of the pot, because the pot was  made of earth, he kept some. He said later on he would eat it. Of course news don’t stay in one place. They start spreading. So before the news spread, he left the place going towards Puri. As he reached Puri, of course, the news had already reached there. Nobody knew who the person was. The moment he entered the temple of Jagannath, the moment he was in front of the Deity, the Jagannath, he started dancing in Divine ecstasy. So much was his Love for God that there was no consciousness of the outside. The people knew it was Madhava Puri about whom they had heard the story. Of course, news travels faster than one walks, you know.For four months he stayed in Puri, and the devotees, the people there, enjoyed his presence very much. After four months, Krishna said to him in a dream “You forgot about me. I sent you to Puri to get me sandalwood paste.  Bring it to me. I am still waiting for you.” So after four months he went, he got his sandalwood. Big, big, lots of sandalwood he took on his back.He started walking back. Again, he passed by the temple of Gopinath. He stayed there for a few days and at night the Lord appeared in his dream and said to him “My sweet Madhava Puri, you have fulflled everything that I have asked you without even thinking. You have shown the greatest Love, the devotion you have inside of you. I am so pleased with it. You don’t need to bring the sandalwood to Vrindavan. Give it in the temple of Gopinath. I am, myself, there. Tell the priest to make it into powder and apply it on me.”This story shows how much one can surrender, if one wants to. Especially when we say we want to do God’s Will, we have really to do His Will, not our will. To know how the Will of God is, this will be the question, you know? When you pray there is always a feeling that awakens. If you are praying sincerely, and you are sincerely chanting the Name of God, there is this great longing and the great peace and calm that awakens. When this awakens inside of you, there is also the inner voice that will start awakening. When you hear this inner voice, it is even greater than what you have in the mind, because even if you want to do what your mind wants you to do, this one will be greater. You will know that. Your heart will pull you towards that voice.When you chant the Name of God, it’s not just mere chanting when you recite the sweet Name. It’s not just chanting it like that, but what it creates inside of you, what it awakens inside of you, because you see, it is said that the Name of God, and God, are one. There is no difference between the Name of God and God. So when you chant the Name, He is next to you.It is said that when you chant, first your Guru has to be in your mind. From the Master, the Lord will show Himself. So always, when you chant, always place the Master first. In that way, it will be like what Sri Krishna said in the Gita, “If you want to attain me, surrender yourself to your Guru and you will attain me.” To sing the name of the Guru is so easy. There are so many names. Everybody feels close with certain names, but in this age, as it is said, the sweet name of Sri Hari is the most important one. Chant always, and as you chant, let your mind be focused on the Divine. Don’t just do it mechanically, but do it and feel that the Lord is with you, and is standing next to you. 

How many of you are ready to sacrifice everything, completely? .......

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. Through our sadhana, through our spiritual practice, what do we do? We transcend this duality. We focus our mind, so that we can stop thinking and start acting in the divine way. Still, when we say Divine Will, we mean always whatever is good, whatever is creative, but the more we are

surrendered, the more this duality will disappear. And we will see that all is alike.