Prabhaker

The world will be beautiful when people have forgotten about beauty, because then there will be no ugliness. The world will be moral when people have completely forgotten the word ”moral,” because then there will be no immorality. The world will be in order when there is nobody to enforce it , nobody who is trying to create order. All those who try to create order are the mischief-makers – they create disorder. But it is difficult to understand. It is difficult because our whole mind has been trained, trained by these schizophrenic thinkers. They say: Choose God and reject the devil; be good, don’t be bad. And the more you try to be good the more you feel your badness inside. Have you ever observed that saints who are trying to be absolutely virtuous are too conscious of their sins? Then read Augustine’s confessions. A whole life trying to be a saint, then there arises the recognition of sin. The more you try to be a saint the more you will feel you are encircled by sins. Try to be good and you will feel how bad you are. Try to be loving and you will come across hatred, anger, jealousy, possessiveness. Try to be beautiful and you will become more and more aware of how ugly you are. Drop the dichotomy. Drop the schizophrenic attitude. Be simple. And when you are simple you don’t know who you are – beautiful or ugly. You always choose: you choose to be beautiful and ugliness becomes your shadow; you choose to be religious and irreligiousness becomes your shadow; you choose to be a saint and sin becomes your shadow. Choose – and you will be in difficulty, because the very choice has divided life. Don’t choose, be choiceless, let life flow. Sometimes it looks like God, sometimes it looks like the devil – both are beautiful. You don’t choose. Don’t try to be a saint; otherwise your saintliness will not be real saintliness – a pride in it will make everything ugly. So I say that many times sinners have reached the divine and saints have missed. Because sinners are always humble; thinking themselves sinners, they cannot claim.

No, for most of the people even 10-20 years are not enough.

God is everything, emptiness/nothingness is the door. You cannot conceive of the whole except by way of emptiness. Donald Trump will born again in a body of bones and flesh, Ramana Maharshi will not. Hindus believe in God and the soul. Jainas don't believe in God at all but only in the soul. And Buddhists don't believe in the soul or God either. But about reincarnation all three agree — even Buddhists agree, who don't believe in the soul. A very strange thing…then who reincarnates? Even they could not deny the phenomenon of reincarnation, although they could deny the existence of the soul; they say the soul does not exist but reincarnation exists. And it was very difficult for them to prove reincarnation without the soul; it seems almost impossible. But they found a way — of course it is very subtle and very difficult to comprehend, but they seem to be closer, the closest to the truth. It is easy to understand that there is a soul and when you die the body is left on the earth and the soul enters into another body, into another womb; it is a simple, logical, mathematical thing. But Buddha says there is no soul but only a continuum. It is like when you kindle a candle in the evening and in the morning when you are blowing it out a question can be asked of you: Are you blowing out the same light that you started in the evening? No, it is not the same light, and yet a continuity is there. Buddha says that just as the candle flame is not the same — it is changing constantly, although in another sense it is the same because it is the same continuum — exactly like that, there is no soul entity in you like a thing but one like a flame. It is continuously changing, it is a river. Nirvana means to extinguish this illusory flame of life.

It is a focusing exercise, it is not meditation, I mentioned it just for an example. Focusing can be practiced, meditation can't be practiced, it is a knack.

It has been found by all the great meditators of the world that just forty-eight minutes, exactly forty-eight minutes, are enough to make you enlightened. But to meditate for forty-eight minutes is a difficult thing . You can try it to check. Just put a small watch in front of you with a second hand, and start looking at the second hand the moment it moves from twelve. Just keep watching the second hand and see how long you can manage watching it. At the most, somewhere between ten to twelve seconds you will have missed, you will have gone somewhere else. And by the time you come back, a few seconds are lost, the hand has moved. To attain those forty-eight minutes may take years, it can happen in this life. It all depends on your intensity. It all depends how much you are ready, willing, open, receptive, vulnerable.

Words of Osho and Krishanmurti are communion between them and their disciples. They have not written anything. "Once a great mystic, Eckehart, was asked, 'Why don’t you write your biography? Your autobiography will be very, very helpful to people.' "He said, 'Difficult, impossible – because if I write my autobiography it will be the autobiography of the whole, because everything is related. And that will be too much…and how can one write the autobiography of the whole?' "That’s why those who have known have always resisted; they have never written autobiographies – except this man Paramahansa Yogananda, who has written An Autobiography of a Yogi. He is not a yogi at all. Otherwise a yogi cannot write the autobiography – it is impossible, simply impossible, because when somebody has attained to nirvichara samadhi then he is a yogi, and then, the sheer vastness…. Now he has become all. If you really want to write the autobiography, it will be the autobiography of the whole from the beginning – and there is no beginning; to the end – and there is no end. Yogananda has done something which is not possible. He has done something which a politician can do, but not a yogi.

@Emerald Wilkins met with Teal Swan in person, she can tell about Teal Swan authentically.

Everybody is afraid of death for the simple reason that we have not tasted of life yet. The man who knows what life is, is never afraid of death; he welcomes death. Whenever death comes he hugs death, he embraces death, he welcomes death, he receives death as a guest. To the man who has not known what life is, death is an enemy; and to the man who knows what life is, death is the ultimate crescendo of life. Death becomes the ultimate celebration if your life is a celebration. Let me tell you in this way: whatsoever your life is, death reveals only that. If you have been miserable in life, death reveals misery. Death is a great revealer. If you have been happy in your life, death reveals happiness. If you have lived only a life of physical comfort and physical pleasure, then of course death is going to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant because the body has to be left.

We would not have known anything of Socrates if Plato had not written notes, nor of Buddha, nor Bodhidharma. Jesus too is known through his disciples notes. There is not a single case known where an enlightened person has written anything himself.

At the most it can be relative. For example, we can say something about light to a blind man knowing well that it is impossible to communicate anything about light because he has no experience of it. But something can be said about light – theories about light can be created. Even a blind man can become an expert about the theories of light; about the whole science of light he can become an expert – there is no problem in it – but he will not understand what light is. He will understand what light consists of. He will understand the physics of light, the chemistry of light, he will understand the poetry of light, but he will not understand the facticity of light, what light is. The experience of light he will not understand. So all that is said to a blind man about light is only relative: it is something about light, not light itself. Light cannot be communicated. Something can be said about God, but God cannot be said; something can be said about love, but love cannot be said; that ”something” remains relative. It remains relative to the listener, his understanding, his intellectual grip, his training, his desire to understand. It depends on, it is relative to, the Master: his way of expressing, his devices to communicate. It remains relative – relative to many things – but it can never become the absolute experience. This is the first reason that truth cannot be expressed. The second reason that truth cannot be expressed is because it is an experience. No experience can be communicated... leave truth aside. If you have never known love, when somebody says something about love, you will hear the word but you will miss the meaning. The word is in the dictionary. Even if you don’t understand you can look in the dictionary and you will know what it means. But the meaning is in you. Meaning comes through experience. If you have loved someone then you know the meaning of the word ”love.” The literal meaning is in the dictionary, in the language, in the grammar. But the experiential meaning, the existential meaning is in you. If you have known the experience, immediately the word ”love” is no more empty; it contains something. If I say something, it is empty unless you bring your experience to it. When your experience comes to it, it becomes significant; otherwise it remains empty – words and words and words. How can truth be expressed when you have not experienced it? Even in ordinary life an unexperienced thing cannot be told. Only words will be conveyed. The container will reach you but the content will be lost. An empty word will travel towards you; you will hear it and you will think you understand it because you know the literal meaning of it, but you will miss. The real, authentic meaning comes through existential experience. You have to know it, there is no other way. There is no shortcut. Truth cannot be transferred. You cannot steal it, you cannot borrow it, you cannot purchase it, you cannot rob it, you cannot beg it – there is no way. Unless you have it, you cannot have it. So what can be done? The only way – and I emphasize it – the only way is to live with someone who has attained to the experience. Just being in the presence of someone who has attained to the experience, something mysterious will be transferred to you... not by words – it is a jump of energy. Just as a flame can jump from a lit lamp to an unlit lamp – you bring the unlit lamp closer to the lit lamp, and the flame can jump – the same thing happens between a Master and a disciple: a transmission beyond scriptures – a transmission of energy not of message, a transmission of life not of words.

For ninety years Lao Tzu lived – in fact he did nothing except live. He lived totally. Many times his disciples asked him to write, but he would always say: The Tao that can be told is not the real Tao, the truth that can be told becomes untrue immediately. So he would not say anything; he would not write anything. Then what were the disciples doing with him? They were only being with him. They lived with him, they moved with him, they simply imbibed his being. Being near him they tried to be open to him; being near him they tried not to think about anything; being near him they became more and more silent. In that silence he would reach them, he would come to them and he would knock at their doors. At the age of ninety he took leave of his disciples. He said goodbye to them, and he said, ”Now I am moving towards the hills, towards the Himalayas. I am going there to get ready to die. It is good to live with people, it is good to be in the world while you are living, but when one is getting nearer to death it is good to move into total aloneness, so that you move towards the original source in your absolute purity and loneliness, uncontaminated by the world.” The disciples felt very, very sad, but what could they do? They followed him for a few hundred miles, but by and by Lao Tzu persuaded them to go back. Then alone he was crossing the border, and the guard on the border imprisoned him. The guard was also a disciple. And the guard said: ”Unless you write a book, I am not going to allow you to move beyond the border. This much you must do for humanity. Write a book. That is the debt you have to pay, otherwise I won’t allow you to cross.” So for three days Lao Tzu was imprisoned by his own disciple. It is beautiful. It is very loving. He was forced – and that’s how this small book, the book of Lao Tzu, TAO DE CHING, was born. He had to write it, because the disciple wouldn’t allow him to cross. And he was the guard and he had the authority, he could create trouble, so Lao Tzu had to write the book. In three days he finished it.

Pranayama English | Baba Ramdev Yoga

Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious. Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious. So consciousness is part and parcel of the mind, and mind, as such, is the source of all duality, of all divisions – whether they are between subject and object, activity or inactivity, consciousness or unconsciousness. Every type of duality is mental. Awareness is nondual, so awareness means the state of no mind. In awareness you lose the witness and only witnessing remains: you lose the doer, you lose the subjectivity, you lose the egocentric consciousness. Then consciousness remains, without the ego. The circumference remains without the center. This circumference without the center is awareness.

The only thing that can be of real help is meditation, but it is hard, it is costly. You will have to put much energy and effort into it. As meditation ripens, celibacy comes to fruit by itself.

The miracle is that the moment the unconscious mind has released all its contents, it loses darkness, it is no longer unconscious. Then you have a great energy which is conscious.

You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and meditating, it becomes a problem. Every fiber of the body begins to move inside; every vein, every muscle, begins to move. You will begin to feel a subtle trembling; you will be aware of many points in the body of which you have never been aware before. And the more you try to just sit, the more movement you will feel inside you. So sitting can be used only if you have done other things first. You can just walk, that is easier. You can just dance, that is even easier. And after you have been doing other things that are easier, then you can sit.

Contemplation is not meditation. Contemplation means thinking. Thinking can be of two types. One is zigzag, in jumps from one object to another, a little crazy; that is ordinary thinking. Anything leads to anything. A dog starts barking and you start thinking about your girlfriend. There seems to be no relationship, but maybe your girl had said once, "I go on barking at you and you don't listen!" Suddenly the dog reminds you. Or maybe she also has a dog who barks at you whenever you go to see her. And then from one thing to another... you will not stay with anything long. The girlfriend reminds you of her mother, and so on, so forth. Nobody knows where you are going to end. When you will look retrospectively you will be surprised: just the dog barking in the neighborhood started the whole process of thought. Contemplation means remaining concerned with one object, thinking about it and only about it. Thinking has a consistency. If you are thinking about love, then you are thinking about love and all its aspects. You don't jump from one thing to another. Yes, you have a little rope just so that you can move around the subject of love, but you keep moving around it, around and around. You forget the whole world -- love becomes your world for the moment. Meditation is not contemplation either because it is not thinking at all -- consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts -- trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

Christ’s message is rejoice and be merry. But that is not the message of Christianity. Christianity’s message is: be sad, long faces, look miserable; the more miserable you look, the more saintly you are. Sometimes I really feel for poor Jesus. He has fallen in such wrong company, and I wonder how he is managing in paradise with all these Christian saints, so sad, so dull. He was not a dull man, he was not a sad man — he could not be. The word ‘christ’ is exactly synonymous with buddha. He was an enlightened person. He rejoiced in life, in the small things of life. He rejoiced in eating, drinking, friendship. He loved companionship, he loved the whole life. But Christians down the ages have painted him as very sad. They have painted him always on the cross, as if for thirty-three years he was always on the cross.

Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound, the art of hearing the music of silence. When you are utterly silent, not a single thought passes your mind, there is not even a ripple of any feeling in your heart, then you start, for the first time, hearing silence. Silence has a music of its own. It is not dead; it is tremendously alive. In fact, nothing is more alive than silence. Whenever any art is perfect it ends in meditation — it has to end in meditation. If it is not leading you towards meditation then something has gone wrong. That’s why much of modern art is not art. Much modern music is not music; it simply makes you sexually excited. It is just the opposite of real music. Real music helps you to transcend your biology, your physiology, your psychology. Real music takes you to the world of the beyond. Listening to great music you suddenly become silent — with no effort. Falling in tune with the music you lose your ego with no effort. You become relaxed, you fall into a deep rest. You are alert, awake, and yet in a subtle way drunk.

No, first you grow into a meditator , it will be the only contribution you can do to make this world a loving place, it will help in raising human consciousness. Poverty is not the only problem, there are thousand problems, solution is one, become more aware, more silent, more sane.

After great scientific discoveries why poverty exists at first place ? Humans have lower consciousness. The Catholic idea is relief for the poor. The idea of the Buddha will be: there is no need for any poverty in the world. Poverty is man-created, and it is in our hands to destroy poverty. It exists because there are a few people who are greedy. A small section of society goes on accumulating, while the greater proportion of society remains poor. And man has lived for centuries under such unbalanced odds. This exploitation can be completely stopped by changing of the perspective. Poverty is a by-product of greed. First, eradicate the greed of the rich. Make them more loving, compassionate, and sensitive to humanity at large. Greed is a cancer growing within them and it has to be treated. The treatment is meditation, emotional fulfillment. It’s their inferiority complex that wants to look powerful in the eyes of others.

Unless you know how to help others, how can you help others ? Unless you have a silent mind, how can you help others to reach state of silent mind ?

If you want to be happy you will have to help others who surround you to be happy. You can help others only when you have helped yourself, not before it. In fact, people who really need to help themselves always become interested in helping others. That becomes an occupation, and they can forget themselves.

All the mahatmas like Shivananda in India have big bellies and they are teaching people, "Don't eat with taste." And they themselves… , "Where does this belly come from? Stand up! Show your belly to the whole people. You are eating too much and the country is hungry. And I know that because of this belly you cannot make love to a woman. So now you are teaching everybody not to make love to any woman. It is because of this belly, not because of your religion. Everything is out of proportion: a big belly, big fat hands, the legs elephant legs, and this person is teaching the whole world, "You are not the body, you are the soul." And who are these monsters? Just bodies, with no soul at all. I can't see any space in them; they are so filled up with junk that I don't think they can have a soul also.

It's strange !!! I live in India and I always wished to live in a more civilized country, where people are less cunning and less greedy.