Happy New Year

Every year when the calendar changes, we all wish each other a Happy New Year. Let's see what these words really mean.

Happiness changes with the perspective of the Person. A baby sees a glowing fire as attractive and thinks that touching and playing with it is happiness for her. But her mother knows the real nature of the fire and the consequences of touching it and quickly pulls the baby away from the fire. The mother is now happy that the baby is safe, but the baby is unhappy that her wish was not fulfilled. But if the baby's wish was really fulfilled will she remain happy? We all know that it would have led to immense sorrow.

Just like the baby, we only see the outer attractiveness of things and long for them thinking that they make us happy. But, like the mother, God knows the true nature of the things and withholds them from being presented to us. This may make us sorry temporarily, but He knows that it is for our own safety.

On my birthday last month, on one hand I was spending my whole day receiving and replying to wishes from friends, family and colleagues and on the other hand I was running between hospital and lab to get my Covid related tests done. By the end of the day I was into isolation. Was I happy about the birthday and the wishes? Yes. Was I happy about the Covid tests being positive? In a way, yes. I was happy that I took the right decision of getting tested and isolated in the very early stage itself instead of spreading the virus to others. Our real happiness lies in accepting whatever comes our way as a present from God. 

The happiness, in the pursuit of which we spend our lives, is all temporary and relative. Only God experiences permanent happiness and He is always eager to bestow it upon us.

Coming to the word new, what we call new is always transient. On January second the year becomes old. If you wear new clothes, by the evening they become old. If you buy a new bike for, say ₹50,000, by the time it comes out of the showroom it becomes old. If you take it back saying I don't like it, they will only party you like ₹30,000 saying it is a second hand bike now. So, the newness of the worldly things just lasts for a moment. Only God is permanently new as he is changeless.

Now let's see year. What we call a year is just one day for the people living near the poles, as for them the Son rises and sets only once per our year. Similarity all the worldly concepts that we believe as ultimate truths are relative and bound by time and place. We learn that the Son rising in the East and setting in the West  is a permanent truth. But, if you go to the north pole, the Sun both rises and sets in the South only. There is no other direction than South there. If you go to the outer space, there is no concept of the four directions as we know.

Year is just a measure of time. Our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj used to say, "Only the time you spend in God's service or in His thoughts or for Him is counted as permanent time. Rest all is transient and wasted."

So, a real Happy New Year is the one which we spend completely for our own spiritual advancement and in finding and following a path to reach God.

A Guru's Protection

In the summer of 2016 our family had the great opportunity of participating in the USA tour along with Sri Mathaji and several ardent devotees of Sri Babuji Maharaj. The tour started after a 3 day Satsang in St.Louis and we covered many prominent tourist places in the USA and the Bahamas. Sri Mathaji has instructed all the devotees to continuously chant the sacred name of the Gurudev starting 41 days before the tour started. Wherever we went, we were blessed with the regular darshan of the Divine Mother and have the teertham from her hands every morning.

During the 4 days of Bahamas cruise trip, we used to have the full evening prayer on the deck of the ship and many foreigners also used to accompany us. One day we were travelling by bus from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The above picture was taken just before boarding that bus. Sri Mathaji waved off to us when the bus started and we left happily. It was a long journey of 8 hours by road. As the whole tour went hectic, this was the only occasion when we got some free time and the devotees in the bus started narrating their experiences with Sri Babuji Maharaj.

Each one of us narrated his/her own experiences with Sri Gurudev, both spiritual as well as worldly. Although each one went through a different situation or had a different experience, the common theme was their closeness with Sri Gurudev as if he was their closest relative and his love belonged exclusively to them. Even though the other person was narrating his personal story, we could relate with it at a personal level. As this narration was going on, there was a sudden jerk and the bus swerved violently and went off the road. Everyone started chanting aloud the sacred name. Once the situation calmed down, the driver explained that a car suddenly came into our lane and it was a miracle that a dangerous accident was averted.

Within Minutes we got a call from Sri Mathaji inquiring about our safety. When explained about what happened, she said it was with Sri Gurudev's benevolence that we were saved. Later, a devotee who was riding in the car with Sri Mathaji narrated an interesting thing to us. As Sri Mathaji waved off to our bus in Los Angeles and as the bus moved on, she kept looking in the direction of the bus for a long time and then boarded the car. Then this devotee asked her, out of curiosity, why she was looking at the bus for a such a long time even after it left. She replied, "I felt as if Sri Babuji Maharaj has taken the bus into his hands and that was why I kept looking." That was the protection of Sri Gurudev that all of the devotees have been experienced every moment of their lives. 

Just a few days after our tour ended, a bus travelling with some Chinese tourists on the same highway met with a similar accident and burned completely killing all the passengers. We also heard news about fire accidents or evacuations in some of the airports we passed through in our tour. And in the next summer the Bahamas was devastated due to a severe hurricane. All these incidents reminded us the constant protection we were receiving from Sri Gurudev, whether we were realizing at that particular moment or not.

Collective Karma

We all believe in Karma and understand that each one of our actions has consequences either in near or distant future, and that our current happiness or suffering is a result of our past actions. This is understandable in most of the cases but sometimes we get confused when group of people meet the same fate as a bus or train accident or a natural calamity and wonder how they all performed same action in the past to beget the same result together. This cannot be explained by the individual karma. There must be a collective karma that belonged to the entire group.

If we take a classroom in a school for example, we see that individual students score marks in an exam based on the level of effort they put in and their intellectual abilities. But the class, as a whole, will also get affected by the ability of the teacher and also external factors beyond their individual control. Same way, when a country or a state goes through elections, the new government is usually formed by whoever gets a majority of votes, which could be only 30-40% of the population. But the consequences of it need to be borne by the whole country or state. Nobody can escape by saying I did not vote for this government. That is collective karma.

Moreover, not all our sufferings need to be a result of karma. This body is just a machine and routinely undergoes wear and tear. We should accept this inevitability and move on, instead of treating is as a suffering and pestering God with questions like “Why me? What have I done to beget this?”. And the interesting part is, people always ask these questions while suffering and almost never ask the same during the times of prosperity and happiness.

Once a devotee asked our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj the same questions, “Most of the humans are getting vision and hearing problems, losing teeth and hair, or graying of hair etc. How is it possible that all of them did same karma in previous lives to beget these common problems?” In reply he gave an excellent explanation - “When it’s time for the school, they ring three bells with an interval of five minutes. Some students reach school even before the first bell rings. Some hurry to the school hearing the first bell, some on the second or third and some don’t even care and always go to school late and unprepared. These ailments are the bells that God rings to let you know your time is running out and you better prepare well, at least now, in order to reach Him before it’s too late. Some people realize this on the first sign and improve upon their spiritual practice to reach Him peacefully. Some realize it on the second or third sign and others don’t even realize and will be pushed to hell to suffer or to a rebirth into a species of a lower intellect where it takes much longer to realize the Self.”

While we may never know the real reasons behind our happiness or sufferings, it is prudent to forget about the past and look at what we can do to become strong enough to be unaffected by these. The solution for that is to treat both happiness and suffering as a graceful grant of God and take them with an equal mind. And also always remember that both of them are temporary and will not last long. As long as there is ignorance of the self, we tend to recognize this duality and enjoy or suffer. Once we attain the knowledge of the self, this duality goes away and only thing that remains is the ultimate bliss.

When devotees asked questions like, “If I am God, when did this ignorance start in me that I am not able to realize my true self?” and Sri Babuji used to reply with a question, “While walking on the road if you accidentally step on someone’s feces, do you just go and wash your feet? Or do you scrutinize it to find out whom did it belonged to and from what kind of food it formed?” When a devote asked this question once Sri Babuji asked, “Do you know Nuclear Physics?” and the devotee replied, “No Sir.” And Sri Babuji asked, “Since when you didn’t know it?” to which the devotee got perplexed and replied, “How can there be a starting point for not knowing? I never knew it.” Sri Babuji explained, “Same is the case with ignorance. It’s always been there and will be there as long as you don’t light the matchstick of knowledge of the self. There is no point in trying to find out the origins of ignorance and you can instead spend that effort in lighting the fire of knowledge.”

Warranty

Whenever we buy something valuable, we check for the warranty. Some products may come with a few years of warranty and others only a few months. Very few products come with lifetime warranty. But even those products, once damaged, will be replaced only once and if the second product also gets damaged, you will not get a replacement. Now think about how valuable our life is. Did we ever check who gives warranty to this life and for how many replacements? Our life is a result of the balance of good and bad karma we did in our earlier lives. And based on the balance karma left over after this life, we get a new body suitable for experiencing the results of that karma.

Our parents and other family members might have protected and nurtured us in this life. But what about the earlier and later lives? Do we know our families from those lives? Do we even know which species we were born into? All our relations and friendships end in one life. This was clearly shown to Arjuna by Lord Krishna when the former was in great grief due to the loss of his son Abhimanyu. Lord Krishna summons the soul of Abhimanyu from heaven and when Arjuna expresses his love for the son, he simply questions him, "Who are you? You are my father? From which life? I have gone through many lives and don't remember any of the relations from those lives."

But there is only one person that maintains his relationship with us throughout the cycle of our numerous lives and leads us in the path of liberation form this cycle. That is Guru. Only he can give us the warranty to be with us, protect us, and lead us until we attain the eternal state of bliss and merge into Him. Our Gurudev Sri Babuji Maharaj used to narrate a story - Sage Narada once goes to Lord Vishnu and requests him to explain the power of Satsang. In order to show the power through experience, Lord Vishnu tells Narada to go to an insect born in a pile of cow dung on earth and ask the same question. When Narada asks the insect the question, the insect dies instantly. The disappointed Narada goes back to Lord Vishnu and let's him know about the sad incident. The lord asks him now to go to a newborn calf and ask the same question. When Narada approaches the calf and asks the same question, the calf also dies instantly. The shocked Narada goes back to the lord in dismay.

Lord Vishnu now asks Narada to go to the palace of the king of Kashi and ask the newborn son of the king the same question. Having seen the deaths of two creatures upon asking the question, Narada was reluctant now to try it on a human infant. But left with no choice, he goes to Kashi and hesitantly asks the newborn prince the question. To his surprise, the new born bows to Narada and starts speaking. He humbly says, "Oh Mahatma! I was first born as an insect in cow dung and had the great blessing of coming in contact to a great guru like you. I immediately left that life and was reborn into the life of a sacred cow. It was my great fortune to have your darshan again in that life and now I was born as a human prince. But as a Guru, you were not going to leave me in any life and so now I again got the darshan of you and am freed from the cycle of rebirth. What else can be a practical example of the power of satsang or the warranty a Guru gives you through the cycle of rebirths?"

In the Gita, when Krishna says "I imparted this knowledge to the Sun, who in turn passed it on to Manu, and Manu to Ikshwaku and so on" Arujna asks "You and me are of same age. How can you say you imparted this knowledge to the Sun long back?" Krishna replies "You and I had several lives till now. You know nothing of them, but I remember everything. I have always been with you in all of your lives." When Dhruva had the darshan of Lord Vishnu at a very tender age, all the aged rishis get jealous and ask sage Narada how such a young boy can have darshan whereas they had been doing spiritual practice throughout their long lives without getting a result. Narada takes them through different forests and hills showing them five different skeletons hanging from trees and cliffs telling them that these were the earlier births of Dhruva in which he was bestowed with Guru upadesa and continued his spiritual practice, which has ripened in this life at a tender age, again with the guru's blessings.

Let me conclude this with my own personal experience. At the age of five Sri Gurudev was initiating me into the worldly education by performing "Aksharabhyasam". Then he asked me "I gave you a mantra in your previous life. Do you remember it?" When I nodded my head indicating no, he said, "OK, I am giving it to you again. Always remember and recite it" and he bestowed me with the mantra. That's the warranty a guru gives us no matter how many lives we go through.

Root cause of sins

In order to find out the root cause of sins, first let's see what is a sin? Our ancient philosophy defined sins as of two types - Paapam and Paathakam. One commits a Paapam when he doesn't properly discharge his prescribed daily duties. These duties include the daily worship, being kind to all the living beings, special worships on the festival days, meditation, contemplation etc. And one commits Paathakam when he performs any prohibited acts such as, stealing other's possessions, murder, adultery, etc. These two are commonly known in English as omission and commission mistakes.

Now let's see why most of us commit these mistakes, and why the Mahatmas, or enlightened souls, don't commit these sins. When it comes to omitting our prescribed duties, the most frequent excuse we give is lack of time or some kind of illness or discomfort of the body. But when you look at the lives of the mahatmas, they never miss their duties no matter how sick they are, or how busy they are. So what is the thing that is holding us back from performing our duties, which is not affecting the mahatmas? If you think deeper, it's the "identification of ourselves with our bodies." Because we think we are the physical body, we give higher importance to its illness and discomfort. Also, most of our day goes in nurturing the body and all other bodies related to it viz. our family members, relatives, friends and coworkers. That's the reason we say we are too busy to perform our prescribed spiritual duties. But when it comes to mahatmas, they don't identify themselves with their bodies. They instead experience their true existence as the soul, or Aatma. Thus, they always perform their spiritual duties irrespective of whether they are busy with their worldly duties or seriously ill.

And coming to the commission mistakes, or Paathakams, it's again the "identifying oneself with the body," which is the root cause. people do the prohibited acts like stealing and killing because they identify themselves with the body and will do anything to protect and nurture it. And any thing or person outside of that body is "the other" and their feelings/difficulties/joys are not ours! But the mahatmas, as they identify themselves with the all-pervading soul, see everything else in this universe as themselves and feel their pains and joys, and thus never even think of hurting any other living or non-living being. There is no "other" for them as the whole universe is "self".

Every spiritual seeker agrees that identifying oneself with their body is a weakness and tries to overcome it, but when you tell them that it's the root cause of all sins, they may not agree. But now we know from the above analysis that it's the root cause of all sins and thus needs to be overcome as soon as possible. While we enlighten ourselves to identifying with the soul, there is a simple remedy prescribed to overcome the consequences of the sins we already committed because of this ignorance.

Yatkrutyam Tannakrutam, Yadakrutyam Krutyavat Tadaacharitam,

Ubhayoh Praayaschittam Shiva Tava Naamaakshara Dvayochcharitam. Shiva Shiveti Shiveti Shietimat, Bhava Bhaveti Bhaveti Bhavetimat, Hara Hareti Hareti Haretimat, Bhaja Namasshivameva Nirantaram.

"I ignore my prescribed duties and also commit the prohibited acts as if they were my ultimate duties. Oh Lord Shiva! the penance for both these sins is the continuous recitation of the two syllable words that represent your names like Shiva, Bhava, Hara, etc."

Our Gurudev, Sri Babuji Maharaj, used to tell that identifying oneself with the body is like a tenant claiming ownership of his rented house. In physical world, when a tenant claims ownership of the house, he will be immediately evicted from the house forcefully. But in the spiritual world claiming ownership of this rented house, which is our body, seems to extend the tenancy! As long as one doesn't overcome this ignorance and enlighten oneself to the identification with the soul, he will be forced to get reborn into multiple rented bodies and continue to suffer the vicious cycle of rebirth. That's why they say "Paapi chirayu", a sinner gets the longest life.

The struggle for liberation

Once there was an innocent person living in a village. one night he was walking outside the village and he saw a well there. He looked down the well to see if there is any water and to his utter shock he found the Moon there, drowned in the well. He thought, "how can the villagers live without the Moon?" and decided to rescue the Moon at any cost. So, he gathered a rope and a bucket and started drawing the water out of the well. 

He continued this for hours and suddenly the rope broke and the man fell flat on his back. Lo! there he saw the Moon in the sky. He was overwhelmed with joy that he was finally able to rescue the Moon from the well and thus saved the lives of all the villagers.

This story may look silly at the outset, but if we think deeper it resembles our struggle for liberation. The Moon is the Omnipresent Brahman. The well is our gross-body and the water in it is the subtle-body. as long as the subtle-body is present, we see a reflection of the Brahman in it as Atman and believe that the Atman is bound by the body and needs to be liberated. The rope with a bucket at the end of it is the spiritual practice we do in order to liberate the Atman. as long as we strive to clear the mind out, we suffer from the grief of that bondage. 

But, as soon as the rope breaks and we start looking up instead of looking down into the well, we realize that the Atman was just a reflection of the Brahman and was never bound by the body or any other worldly things. There is nothing in this creation that can bind the Brahman. So, we have always been in a state of liberation, but we don't realize that as we keep looking into the well(the body) and identify ourselves with the Moon's reflection there. As soon as we turn this worldly outlook towards the divine, we realize our state of liberty.

So, does that mean we need not do any spiritual practice, or Sadhana? No, it doesn't mean that. We should keep doing the Sadhana, but the purpose of it should be to change our outlook, rather than to liberate ourselves. The mere thought of bondage in itself is a bondage that obstructs our vision from realizing our true state of liberation. As the great Gurus say, the mind is the key. As you can see daily at your home, the same key when turned in one direction, locks the door and when turned the other way unlocks it. In the same sense, when the mind is turned towards the world, it leads to the illusion of bondage. But when the same mind is turned towards the almighty, it leads to the realization of our liberated state.

Four learnings from the Char Dham Yatra

Sri Guru Maharaj recently granted me the great opportunity to participate in the Char Dham Yatra along with Pujya Sri Mathaji and other devotees. Since it's yatra of four holy places, wanted to share four things I learned/observed during the yatra.

As we went through the Himalayas we observed that many mountains were converted into farm lands through the process of step farming. We all know that it's the nature of water to always reach the lowest altitude. So all the rain that falls on a mountain directly follows down to the valley. To retain the water on the mountain, the farmer flattens a small portion of the slope and constructs a retaining wall. This will retain the water and make the soil ready for cultivation. He then flattens the next part of the slope and constructs another retaining wall so that any overflow of water can be retained in the next step. Like this the whole slope of the mountain is converted into several steps and used for farming.

If we imagine the mountain as God and the rain water as our mind, when we try to concentrate our mind on God, it keeps sliding down to the worldly things. The mind never likes to stay in place and always has the lust to wander, shop etc. So a Sadguru constructs retaining walls like yatra, deeksha, puja, japa, homa, etc to still retain the mind on God while we do our favorite things like travel and shopping.

The second thing we witnessed was the origins or holy rivers like Ganga and Yamuna. A river is formed with rain water from a mountain which in turn was the evaporated water from the ocean. Once a river forms, it starts it's journey to go back and merge with it's origin, the ocean. At the starting of a river there are huge rocks and big boulders washed off from the mountains by the mighty force of the river. The river also flows very actively with gushing sound. But as the river advances, the rocks keep colliding with each other and turn into small stones and finally sand and dirt. At the stage the river turns calm and serene. Finally when the river merges with the ocean it leaves behind that dirt too.

In the same way when we start our spiritual journey to reach our origin, the God, we are filled with the big rocks of our good and bad qualities, or Gunas. They keep colliding with each other throughout the journey reminiscent of the epic battle of Mahabharata. As we progress in the journey these Gunas diminish into insignificant proportions and we attain Sthitaprajnatva. Finally we leave out all these Gunas when we merge with God.

The third thing we observed was the ghat road. In plains the roads are straight and we don't see anything twice on the road. But the roads on the mountains go back and forth on the same side of the mountain and we see the same scenes again and again. One may think why are we going on the same road again and again, but we should understand that with each iteration we are attaining new heights. Same way, in a wordly curriculum there is no repetition. Punarukti, or repeating same words is even called a dosham. But in spiritual curriculum, we keep listening to the same concepts in the discourses and one may wonder why am I listening to the same things again or doing same yatra or puja every time. But we should realize that with each repetition we are attaining new spiritual heights.

The fourth thing we observed was that there are two kinds of mountains, those made of hard rock and those made of soft soil and small rocks. The rocky mountains are tightly packed and hardly have any tall trees, unlike the soily mountains that are loosely held together and host a lot of tall trees. It's very hard to construct roads on the rocky mountains but once constructed, the road is safe and free from risks of roadblocks by mudslides and trees falling. On the other hand it's easy to construct roads on the soft mountains but you always have the risk of the above mentioned roadblocks.

Great Gurus like Sri Babuji Maharaj went through the hardest of Adhyatmik Sadhana at a very tender age and through their hard work constructed the safest road for our spiritual journey. On the other hand those who give discourses by simply reading some books and memorizing, lead us on a road full of risks.