As you begin listening to your higher self in quiet and contemplative moments, you begin relaxing and taking the pressure off. You stop the false thinking that everyone in your life needs to be dominated or controlled by you or that others must live up to your expectations for you to be happy.
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If you identify with this kind of inner dialogue, rest assured that ego has temporarily separated you from your sacred self. In its ongoing program to convince you of your separateness, it needs to separate you from oneness with the center of your being. Then it can keep you in that state of trying to dominate and control others and take you away from inner balance and bliss. If you are separated from the awareness of your higher self you cannot achieve the state of inner balance and bliss.
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To become more tolerant and less controlled by your false self, start practising being satisfied with what is. Your ego is never quite content. If you choose one thing, your ego will persuade you to consider something else. If someone you love acts meekly toward you, your ego wants that person to be more assertive; if that person is assertive, your ego decides to dislike assertiveness. You eat too much, you start thinking about how nice it would be to be thinner; go on a diet, and all of your thoughts will be about food. If you stay at home for a long period, your ego start telling you how nice it is to travel; go on the road, and you start thinking about how nice it would be to stay home. You're in a relationship and begin to imagine it would be nicer to be uninvolved; you're not in a relationship, and you start wanting to be in one. Your children are running around the house and you start thinking about escaping; you aren't at home and think of nothing but your children.
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To move towards tolerance that your higher self encourages and away from your ego-driven need to control and judge, you will have to examine the qualities that sustain a tolerant approach to life. With tolerance you become more in tune with your higher self as you forsake the stubborn demands of ego. To develop tolerant attitude you require a keen observation of the working of your mind, and awareness of the subtle operation of the ego. You have to bring a change in the habitual ego responses to different life situations.
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The ego centered behaviour stands for dominance rather than tolerance as our style of interacting with others. Making the change from dominance to tolerance requires disciplining ego and listening to your sacred self. The transition from dominance to tolerance is specially difficult because the desire for ego satisfaction is very strong. Ego centered personality does not want to give up dominance over other. Your higher self will gently take over when you no longer control others. You will begin experiencing unconditional love, and in the process you will finally find the peace that you crave.
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It is human nature that he wants to dominate others. He accuses others for his misfortunes. The lack of tolerance among human beings has created lot of human problems. Inspite of the fact that man wants to live in peace. He is always in state of turmoil. One individual wants to dominate others, one race is fighting with others. The nations are on war. All the human problems and world crisis that we see around us is in fact the reflection of the ego and vanity among the human beings.
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It is written in the Mahabharata that once Yudhisthira asked the elder statesman Bhishma, “How can one get peace?” Bhishma replied with this example: Once a king made his elephant drink a lot of wine, then went on it for a ride. On the way, the intoxicated elephant threw the king off. He was terrified and ran for his life. He fell into a well and was caught up in the roots of a fig tree. After a short while, the elephant reached there, trumpeting. Meanwhile, the king noticed that one black and one white mouse were eating away the root which was holding him up. He looked down and saw many snakes and scorpions waiting to bite him. On the other hand, the mad elephant was waiting outside the well to kill him. However, the king saw a beehive. He opened his mouth hoping to drink some honey. He forgot everything except how sweet the honey was.
The king represents the individual, the mind is the elephant, attachment is the wine. With these a person comes to see the world. Here the mind has thrown the individual into the well of rebirth. He is being supported by a very thin root which is his life-span and which is being cut shorter by the mice of day and night. As soon as his allotted time comes to an end he will go back into the well of rebirth where he will have to suffer various kinds of miseries arising from lust, anger, greed, attachment and ego. The poor creature hopes that he will get happiness some day, but he doesn’t get it. Thus, his life comes to an end. Beings can get rid of these vicious elements which make life a misery only during the human lifetime. You can only hurt yourself in the dark. Birds and animals cannot remove darkness. Only man lives in light. He uses electricity or a lamp to remove the darkness.
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In rural areas, a millstone is used for grinding grain, while large mills produce varieties of flour to cope with the demands of the cities. A poor man eats simple food and excretes. A rich man eats sumptuous meals and excretes. So regard the poor man as a millstone and a wealthy man as a flour mill!
A large silkworm produces more silk than a small silkworm. So we can call the poor man a small excreta-worm and the rich man a large excreta-worm! “Life is decreasing with every second. It does not increase by even a single second. It comes to an end in no time.”
We celebrate birthdays. People think that they are growing in years whereas actually their lives are getting shorter! Childhood is followed by youth, which is passed in merry-making. But youth soon fades into old age.
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Devotion can be practised and understood by everyone, regardless of caste or education. Mira Bai says, “You may or may not get a human birth again.” But most people don’t understand the value of human life. They think that it is meant only for enjoying material pleasures. This is not entirely their fault, because when they go abroad and see huge skyscrapers, wide streets and large factories, etc., they measure a country’s progress by these things. But they do not think that all these things will have to be left behind once we die. As a fallen leaf cannot be joined to a tree again, so the human body is not available again once it dies.
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You can't get oranges, apples, or sugarcane just by reading about them in books. Similarly, scriptures describe the Knowledge of the Soul but they don't contain that Knowledge. You cannot get Knowledge by reading them, just as you can't get an orange by reading about it in a book.
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People say that there are various ways to reach God. They say, "Follow any path and you will realise God." But they don't understand. There is only one path. All human beings see with their eyes; there is only one way to see. There is only one way to hear; all of us hear through our ears. There is only one way to eat; all of us eat through our mouths. And there is one feeling common to all of us - that we are unhappy and don't get happiness in this world. Then how can there be different paths to reach God? All these things prove that there is only one way to know God, to reach God.
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What is the religion that we should not leave? People come and go; every day we see people coming into this world and leaving it. So what is real religion? ? What is real Knowledge? What is the true religion which is within, which we must know and not leave? The real knowledge is within. Guru Nanak said, "The Holy Name is with you while you are sleeping, it is with you while you are sitting, while you are standing." That is the real Name which we must know and meditate on. That alone is real, and other things are our own creation, and they are unreal, non-existent.
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Human beings come into this world, so the Lord or a saint also comes in human form just to guide them, but they lose their chance to get Knowledge because they don't recognise him. St. Kabir said that everyone in this world knows that they have to leave it, but no one knows where he has to go. Do we know where we must go after we die? Nobody knows and that is why saints come into the world. Kabir said that when a spiritual Master gives this Knowledge to a person, then he sees pure, shining light within, shining all the time. He then realises the Holy Name and sees the Divine Light, and that comes from continuous devotion. Krishna said the same thing when he told Arjuna, "I am not experienced or realised by religious rituals or by giving alms, by reading scriptures or by worshipping idols. I am only realised through the continuous devotion of a devotee."
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Knowledge of God cannot be obtained by cleverness or money. You cannot get it by earning a lot of money or by intellectual exercises. You can only get this Knowledge with the help of a saint and only when you ask with a pure and guileless heart, without any ego, with an open heart, just like the pure open heart of a child. When you come and ask for this Knowledge with purity, honesty and sincerity, without any arguments and with your questions or doubts removed, then alone can you receive it.
People think that they can know the Truth, the Spiritual Knowledge, by travelling all over the world, or learning many languages and cultures. But the saints have said that the Knowledge of the Truth is beyond our mind and intellect. So how can one know this Knowledge through mind or intellect? This path is very subtle and it is the path of love. But what kind of love? Not the love of a mother for her child or a child for its father or a husband for his wife, for this worldly love one day dies or is destroyed. But love for God, love for that Power, is permanent and everlasting; it never dies, it is never destroyed.
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We run after Maya and we build up mountains of attachment for material things. But a saint called Kabir said, "Listen, my friends! Ultimately nothing stays in your grasp. You will lose everything, even what you have." If you construct a palace of attachment and desire for worldly things, then you will never get anything. Nothing will stay in your hands. You will even lose whatever capital you have, never mind about increasing the capital or getting interest on it. You will even lose your original capital, which is this human life. It is so valuable. It has been given to you by the grace of God.
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There is a plant from which we get a very soft cotton. When the flower is closed, birds don't know that there is cotton inside. They think that there is something good to eat inside that flower, but when they put their beaks inside they get only cotton, nothing valuable. The cotton flies away and the birds don't get anything. They regret having stuck their beaks inside those flowers and wish they had done something else. In the same way, we think that there is something very beautiful and worthwhile in this world, that there is happiness in this world, but when we put our beaks into it we find that the world is as insubstantial as that cotton, and it flies away from us. There is no happiness, there is no peace, in this world. The world is just like the flower of that plant, just like the cotton that flies away; in it there is no reality. And just like that bird, we will regret it later.
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Every religion has two aspects. The first is its external forms i.e. its theology, ceremonies, rituals, traditions, mythology etc. This is the social or collective aspect, which is the source and sustenance of the culture and civilization of a nation, and from which springs its literature and arts. It endows the entire community or nation with a collective consciousness and provides a harmony and balance in social life. It also provides lifestyle, ideology and beliefs.
Even so, this is the secondary aspect of religion-its by-product. When someone is ignorant of the inner Knowledge, and has no practical spiritual realization, he doesn’t know how to control his mind and instincts, so some kind of code of ethical and righteous behaviour must be imposed to control external eruptions of the individual’s ego and desires, and to keep him within the bounds of morality. This aspect of religion is external, not internal; collective, not personal. Although not too inspirational, it does serve the purpose of keeping individuals in check and societies regulated.
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Religion in the form of dogma and belief is never absent from society, nor are rituals and traditions. They become just another aspect of our social life. Pandits, priests and mullahas keep them going and even modify them. However, when spirituality disappears from religion, a spiritual master appears on earth to elevate us beyond the level of ritual and external forms of worship lead us towards true spiritual awareness. Such Teachers reveal the perfect and pure Reality behind religion, which is timeless and universal, and one and the same for all mankind. It is his original and natural religion. This ‘core religion’ is at the heart of all religions, it is the common factor in them all, and knowing it makes one truly religious. That is why all saints and masters opposed the external practices of the religions of their day and proved to their contemporaries how false the current superstitions were. They turned dogma into Knowledge, ceremonial worship into meditation, materialism into spiritual consciousness, and enmity into love.
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Modern man lives such an artificial, unnatural life that he has forgotten what he really is. He has lost touch with his own consciousness, existing as nothing more than a lump of flesh and bones. He is content to limit himself to material things. People nowadays have become so materialistic and their consciousness is so degraded, that they are actually amazed when they hear about spiritual things. The idea that the soul exists confuses them. They pooh-pooh such ideas, calling them pie-in-the-sky and mere figments of the imagination. They believe the untrue to be true and consider untrue the living Truth, which is unchanging, eternal and existence itself. There is only one kind of enlightenment, but there are many kinds of ignorance. A totally materialistic person is virtually insentient. There is hardly any awareness left in him. Such a person regards only material things as being real.
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Suicide doesn’t just mean killing the body. Its real meaning is losing oneself in indulgence and preferring insignificant material possessions to spiritual treasures. St. Tulsidas said, “You may be the richest man in the world, and your dominion may stretch from sunrise to sunset, but what is it worth if you can’t take it with you anyway?”
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Nothing in this world can give us the experience of total freedom or total joy. The world itself, together with its joys and sorrows, is a fleeting phenomenon. Gaining sovereignty over the whole world is actually a misfortune if it is at the cost of one’s own soul. Christ said, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he lose his own soul?”
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Generally a person surrounds himself with desires and wastes his life fulfilling them. He offers his life-breath as an oblation to the fire of desires and in the same way as burning wood consumes itself, he too destroys himself. That same life-energy, on the other hand, can be the means to reach God, the Light of lights, but most people don’t allow themselves to be drawn in that direction. They neglect the infinite life-current flowing within themselves for the sake of sensual indulgence. This is exchanging nectar for poison. Worldly indulgence degrades and traps a person. Even the mightiest emperor is ensnared by his empire. He invests his life in it, and his life is the price he has to pay. Is a rich man free? Is he happy? His fortune weighs heavily on his head. Every breath he takes is caught up in his money.
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Dharm comes from the Sanskrit word ‘dhri’ which means to uphold or sustain. Realizing the Force which maintains the entire Creation is the real purpose of Dharma. It also refers to the natural state or original nature of a thing, so to realize the true or innate nature of the soul is actually Dharma. It means plugging into the eternal flow of infinite Beingness within oneself.
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Einstein once said, “The more I investigate this universe, the more I am convinced that there is a mysterious energy activating and sustaining it.” Einstein was a scientist, but he spoke like the sages of old, because they also declared that an omnipresent Power sustains and actually gives rise to the entire universe:
“This life force gives rise to everything and keeps it going.”
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Religious life is directly related with living. It is the living with deep understanding of the inner and outer movement of life. Thought creates the false ego called Me which is the root of all violence and conflict in man’s life. Chasing the thought is chasing the illusion which gives no peace to man. Emptying the mind of the vicious pattern and process of thought brings the stillness and calmness of the mind which is called meditation. Such a mind becomes religious mind. Such a life becomes a religious life which is not segmented and separated but holistic and unified.
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Religion is to step out of the set pattern which the thought has created. The thought is the only bondage which creates a false Me and You which is nothing but a bundle of memory, tradition and the knowledge of a thousand yesterdays. So only with the ending of sorrow, for sorrow is the result of thought, can you step out of the world of war, hate, envy and violence. This act of stepping out is the religious life. This religious life has no belief whatsoever, for it has no tomorrow.
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The religious life is not on the other side of the river, it is on this side--the side of the whole travail of man. It is this that we have to understand, and the action of understanding is the religious act--not putting on ashes, wearing a loin cloth or a mire, sitting in the seat of the mighty or being carried on an elephant.
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