Let’s Live Every Moment So We Die Well, Too

Sadhguru

Spiritual longing comes to you not because you think of God. If people think of God, they will not become spiritual, they will only think of how to acquire more. If God comes and blesses them, they will want more money, property, health, everything. Only when you think about death, these questions come up: What is this about, where will i go, what will happen to me? This wanting to know will come naturally. Yoga is not just about life; when we talk about living well, we are also talking about dying well. Dying gracefully, joyfully, is important. It is the final thing you get to do; but most people are doing it horribly. When we say a spiritual possibility, a space, there is also room to die. Spirituality is a means to live; it is also a means to die because living and dying are not different. Right now i can say you are living, or i can say you are dying. The process of dying is on; one day it will be complete. It is just that so much negativity is attached to the word “death”. But death is a part of life. One who does not know how to die, or is unwilling to die, cannot live. If you are afraid of death, you will only avoid life, you cannot avoid death. Every day of your life you need to be aware that you are mortal. In Shoonya meditation everything that you consider as “myself ” will become nothing; it is as if you die. Again, when you open your eyes, it is all there. If you practise this consciously, twice a day, when the time to die comes, it will no more be a big issue. The process you refer to as life is something that can be constantly improved upon. Not everybody is living with the same quality, level of understanding and grace. Even if you live a thousand years and do everything that you wish to do, still something better could be done. This is the way of life. But death is perfect and absolute when it happens; death does not need anybody’s assistance. You don’t have to think about it; you don’t have to reflect upon it. But the limited nature of life needs to be reflected upon. So always the first training for a spiritual aspirant is to go and sit in the cremation ground. You are just like a miracle happening and one day you are gone. Busy in between, but you are like a bubble: when the bubble is on, it is so real; one prick — gone! Look at this life right now: inhalation, exhalation. If the next inhalation does not happen, that’s it... That is how fragile this life is. People always think death is something that happens to somebody else; it’s not so, it will happen to you and me. If you remind yourself every day that you will also die, you will move towards knowing higher perception. If you are aware of the mortal nature of your life, is there time to get angry with somebody, to quarrel or do anything stupid? Once you are conscious that you will die, you will want to make every moment of your life as beautiful as possible. Those who are constantly aware of the fragile nature of existence, they don’t want to miss a single moment; they will naturally be aware. They can’t take anything for granted; they will live purposefully, becoming aware.

Remove All The Pressure That Builds Up Within You

Sensei Sandeep Desai

The secret behind T’ai Chi’s popularity is its ability to improve the lives of people of many different ages and occupations. It can progressively increase the potential inherent in most of us and reduce the harm caused by living a stressed-out life. T’ai Chi can be practised to improve health, reduce stress and experience being alive. Its martial arts aspects appeal mostly to the young. Many people operate under a tight set of deadlines and put in excessively long hours at work. In doing so, they often go without adequate rest or sleep, which depletes them for their tasks. It then requires them to put in yet more hours at work in order to make up for the deficits. Short T’ai Chi breaks can relax your system sufficiently and help you attend to your work in a more functional and healthy way. How does T’ai Chi manage this? The neurological overload caused by lack of rest slows down your ability to think creatively or make accurate observations. Your capacity to send correct signals to your subconscious mind gets diminished. Your subconscious mind is like a slave. It will obey any order you give it. That is the thought behind hypnotism. Therefore, it is important to refrain from telling our subconscious mind anything that will impede our progress. T’ai Chi, by relaxing your nerves, regenerates your subconscious mind, restoring its ability to function at normal speed. Changing the internal environment brings about space in your mind that often acts as a precursor to sudden problem-solving insights. We often find ourselves in a situation where we work hard on a complex problem all day and can’t quite figure out what to do about it. After a good night’s sleep, however, the solution seems to appear out of nowhere. Artists and writers often practise T’ai Chi to uplift their creative mood or to spruce up their body and mind. T’ai Chi provides a thorough stretch to the muscles of the neck, back and shoulders, melting strains and pains that you acquire during work. Nagging pain in these areas increases your susceptibility to anger, frustration, and depression, which impedes your thinking and ability to relate positively with your colleagues. By increasing oxygen delivery to the body, T’ai Chi increases blood and energy circulation to and from the brain. When the brain doesn’t receive sufficient blood, you experience difficulty while making decisions. When enough blood gets to the brain, you can easily bring in new ideas, energies and plans necessary to achieve your objective. People in the 30 to 50-year age group constitute the largest section of the workforce. This midlife phase is the toughest but also the most productive phase of life. You feel you have the experience and energy to face life’s challenges. During midlife, the pressure is on! Your working, social and family responsibilities mount year after year. If you allow all this to drop, you will not be able to realise your potential. What we often forget is that we all possess latent powers like energy, skill, sound judgment, creative ideas and even physical strength and endurance, in greater measure than we realise. Through stillness and movement, T’ai Chi taps into these powers, giving you the much-needed confidence to endure ever-increasing pressures with a smiling face.

Progress Towards Parama Purusha

Shrii Shrii Anandamurti

Every movement in this world is characterised by speed and pause, pause and speed, like the earthworm’s movement. We tend to determine human development by observing external progress. But if we are stuck at the same place where we initially started our journey, that is not progress. By building a road you do not progress. You will have to move along the road. So, too, we must progress in the psychic realm. In the process of movement, we will reach a stage when the mind becomes non-existent. Unless the mind reaches that supreme point, we will remain imperfect. This path of movement is divided into four stages: yatamana, vyatireka, ekendriya and vashiikara. Yatamana is the stage when the spiritual practitioner makes sincere efforts. Time passes and you might say, “I am trying”, but if your effort lasts for three, four, five or 25 lives it may lead to regress. So to say, “I am trying”, is not enough. Yet, the benefit of the first stage is that at least we make constructive efforts. This is yatamana. In vyatireka the feeling is “I must succeed”. Firm determination is the precondition for success. When the Buddha practised sadhana for long but still did not attain the final goal, he sat down the second time and resolved: “Unless I attain the supreme height of enlightenment, I won’t move an inch from this posture, even if my body withers, and my bones, flesh and skin are destroyed”. This is the stage of vyatireka. You gain a degree of temporary control over some psychic propensities (vrttis). It is often noticed that many saints and monks who give up hearth and home have a weakness for food. They are pleased with anyone who offers them delicious food and drink. Others, however, who have overcome their weakness for food, get angry if their visitors don’t pay obeisance to them. These are all weaknesses of the mind. This is vyatireka. The third stage, ekendriya, means gaining full control over a particular vrtti (psychic propensity). Once controlled, it will never return, will never cause further degeneration. For example, if a person gains full control over the vak indriya, the organ of speech, whatever he says will come true. This is vak siddhi. In the final stage, vashiikara, all the psychic vrttis are brought well within control. Suppose someone wants to know what happened 20,000 years ago. The moment the desire to know arises, his mind will return to the distant past and will see what really happened then. Or if someone wants to know what is written on a particular page of a book printed in a certain country; he sends the mind to that page and comes to know the contents. This is absolute vashiikara siddhi. About the man with vashikar, people may think that he is a very well-read person, but actually he comes to know things from his vashiikara siddhi. He can project his mind anywhere to know anything. At that stage everything comes within his perfect control and he attains a kind of godhood. But if he fails to surrender himself to Parama Purusha, after acquiring various occult powers, he will develop ego. He will curse those he hates and thus, unknowingly, will gradually degenerate. So after attaining vashiikara siddhi, you should surrender your unit soul to Paramatma. Then you will become one with Parama Purusha, you will become Parama Purusha.

We Are An Endless Source Of Divine Amusement

Kishore Asthana

My God is a happy God. He laughs with amusement at our deeds and with indulgence at our conceits. Sometimes, perhaps, He is mildly surprised at what we can do both above and below His expectation. But He is never angry. He has no call to be. By our misdeeds we do not threaten Him, we threaten ourselves and probably make Him chuckle at our sense of self-importance and pomposity, as we may chuckle if a toy created by us acted peculiarly. My God is perhaps amused that we mistake our state of mind for His, transfer our emotions to Him and even assign Him a gender and, often, a form. We give Him myriad names and treat these names, thought up by us, as being special. He is amused that we act scared when we risk his anger in our imagination. He is perhaps also amused when we jump to defend Him, when nothing any of us can do can harm Him even one little bit. Some might think that they speak for my God. Don’t they know that they do not speak for my God? Many of them purport to do so either for personal gain in this world or in the hope of gain in the other one. Or, they are sincerely deluded into thinking that they are God’s chosen ones, and so they assume that they are authorised to speak on His behalf to their fellow human beings. These people are no less harmful or pointless than those who are knowingly hypocritical. Being saved from God’s socalled anger is less urgent than being saved from the selfrighteous wrath of those who assume that they have the authority to speak on behalf of God. That they make such an assumption, usually, has more to do with their chosen path than with their averred destination. My God has no reason to be angry, sarcastic or jealous. To Him, we are like infants and no one except the impatient or immature would inflict these sentiments on infants. And God is certainly neither. My God expects me to view His Creation with an open and questioning mind and live in it with lightness of spirit and vibrancy of feeling. Goodwill and tolerance are a part of His expectation. He views my progress towards Him with the measure of how One i feel with all that sprang from Him. This Oneness eventually leads to its source, God. Those who touch even the edge of this Oneness, realise that humankind has no word in any language that can do it justice. All our concepts of heaven fall severely short, incomparable to its infinite nature. There are few women and men who speak of God as He would want us to speak of Him. These rare ones have tasted this Oneness in full measure. They shine like stars in the constellation and are distinguished by the unity of their thought and the benign nature of their deeds. Though religions and rituals may have formed around them, these Masters are beyond religion and rituals. The smile of God is reflected in their own smile. When we are in tune with them, we can feel some of their great joy inside ourselves. And, if this is what happens to us when we get only a second-hand glimpse of God, imagine how happy He must be. Yes, my God is a happy God. With the power to do whatever He wants. How can He be otherwise? So i do not fear the wrath of God. I fear only the wrath of my own conscience. For, ultimately, it is not God who will critically judge my actions. It is my own Self