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.

Do we have a free will ? ....

All spiritual sadhana, why do we do it? It’s because we know that there is something greater that our soul wants. We want something, but yet, with the mind we don’t understand it too much. We try to understand. We always look at it with the mind and we always want it to be how we want it to be, our way. But what is our way, actually? It is His Will. We always think that we have a free will. Once somebody asked a saint “Do we have a free will?” The saint said “Well, you have a will, but it’s not free.” It’s like a cow: the cow is tied with a rope and is given only a certain radius to turn around. The cow is free, but it is free only in a certain radius. And such is so, also, with the will of man. And the rest is His will only. But in this little radius with things which seem so big, we like to make ourselves feel greater than anybody else, don´t we? We like to make ourselves even greater than the Lord Himself. This reminds me of Narad Muni, the messenger of God, who was cursed by Maha Vishnu, who had said to him “Narad Muni, go to Hell! You are doomed! Go away.” Narad Muni became very quiet and said “My dear Lord, as you have told me to go to Hell, can You please tell me where it is?” Maha Vishnu said “OK.” With His Shakti, He manifested a chalk and He started to draw. He said “Here is Heaven” and then He drew Heaven “And here is Hell” and He drew Hell. Seeing that, Narad Muni became very happy. He approached the drawing, jumped into the drawing and started to roll in the place where Hell was. Maha Vishnu was very amused and said “Narad, what are you doing?” Narad Muni answered to Him “Well, You told me to go to Hell, didn´t You? Here I am. I’m rolling myself in Hell.” Then Narad Muni continued, saying “You are the Lord of everything. When you say ‘This is Heaven’, of course, it becomes Heaven. When you say ‘This is Hell’, of course, it course it becomes Hell. When you sent me there, I went there. Even if it is just a drawing, it is Hell for me, I can feel it.” Maha Vishnu was very pleased with him and He blessed him. This shows us, also, the limitation of ourselves, the limitation that our mind creates. We could be free, but our mind doesn’t let us be free. We can see the Lord everywhere, but our pride always stops us. We can love Him, but our expectation is always there, too. When one lets go of these three things, one will be really, fully into Him. Above all, He is the manifestation of Love. He is the manifestation of who we are, all of us. In Him Love is manifested in the outside, in everything that He expresses, in every action of Him. 

When your right hand gives, your left hand should not know about it...

Jesus 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!