Dear Initiates and Friends,
As we turn the page to the next year, I have beenexamining where our spiritual journey is taking us. And what are therocks, pebbles and thorns that our feet encounter. The goal of ourjourney is clear, nothing short of liberation and enlightenment. Itis the little pebbles and thorns that we have the most difficultyavoiding. The smaller the thorn, the more difficult it is to tweez itout.
What are these thorns? By now you must be tired ofhearing my answer over and over, these are our negative emotions, ourhabit of not choosing the positive pictures available. Our personalrelations suffer from our inability to discern and choose thepositive and the beautiful. The nations suffer because many of thenational and international policies spring out of the personalemotional make-up of the individual leaders. The same is true oforganisations, including our Centres and meditationgroups.
I experience a deep ache in my heart as I see thatso many of the interactions even among spiritual seekers stem fromthe personal frustrations in their own lives. We stay away from eachother, we suspect each other of selfish planning and plotting, and wesubject the entire family, friendly circles and groups, to adisruption thinking that we are making a contribution.
The test of spiritual progress is whether wemanage to serve as glue to join many people together, or we excludeand separate.
May I urge that we devote our coming year to avery practical application of the principle of positive emotions.Within a family, within a circle of friends, within the Centres andmeditation groups, those who have been excluded should again beincluded; those who have excluded themselves should rush back with aneasy smile, so that receiving arms may open.
In every situation two interpretations arepossible, a positive one and a negative one. We should learn to erron the side of the positive one. Perhaps the person who seemed toinsult us, meant something entirely different from what we haveunderstood. We have misunderstood this person, because of our angerand frustration about our own situation in some other relationship,past or present. Do not examine the motives of others; examine thecontents of your mind, which make you respond in a certainway.
This year I would like to give you guidelines onemotional purification. For teachers I am holding a special two weektraining that includes this theme, from June 19-July 2 in Calgary,Canada. For others I would like to send a series of communications,or maybe a booklet with some brief guidance, on which you will needto develop your own dialogue with your mind. Do talk to your mind.You have a problem with someone? Do not argue with him or her; talkto your mind as to why your mind has chosen to respond in thisparticular way. This alone is the way to create harmony and to bringyour family, Centre or mediation group, or your Country and Nation,to be able to realise the goal of peace with creativity.
One more suggestion if I may. When you are indisagreement with someone, postpone all discussion and argument.Simply join them in a mediation group and meditate with them. Whenyou come to the group, greet each other with palms joined before theheart and when you finish, do the same again--give a smile, still nodiscussion, and go home. Keep doing that irrespective of whether theproblems resolve themselves or not.
I have written this because so many of you reachme with your problems, which are identical and arise from the exactsame causes from within the mind. The principles are simple, buttheir application is complex. They are easy to memorise, difficult toremember.
I wish for you this year the capacity ofremembrance and awareness.
Yours with Deepest Love
In Service of Gurudev
Swami VedaBharati
Rishikesh, at the end of the page number1998.
Dear Co-celebrants:
Cosmic God's one exhalation andinhalation
is a single cycle of creation anddissolution.
A Galactic God's one breath
is an aeon.
A Solar Deity's in-breath andout-breath,
one winter and one summer.
The Lunar Beauty's respiration,
dark and a bright fortnight.
The Mother Earth's single sigh and then an intakeof breath
is Her one pilgrimage around the Sun.
Your own 7,777,000 breaths make, from 1/1 to 31stof 12th,
a mortal's year.
In God's single breath, then, how manyaeons,
O how many seasons, months, fortnights, nights anddays--
then how many in your breath that mirrors God'srespiratory cycle?
As the light-laden, ample gifted person-treebreathes--
breathes the chimes of I-time, Thou-time,It-time,
They-time, Us-time, He- and She-time;
How many Christmases, Hanukkahs, New Yearspass?
How many times do we orbit around God's own TimeSun?
In stillness and silence of the Breathing Mind'svast inter-cosmic spaces,
come, let us celebrate each candescentChristmas
and refulgent year with 7-lucis menorahs kindled,7,777,000 times,
and that again a hundred times over in oneluminescent life.
I wish you the subtlest celebrations of that manytranscendences,
lucent with enlightenments deserved bydisciples
into whom breathe the Incarnations of allnations,
prophets of all Jerusalems and Christs of allcreations.
I wish you 7,777,000 Christmases, Hanukkahs, NewYears,
filled with joys of snow-white purity of thesoul,
as you share out gifts of the spirit
in every breath through this life-time.
Love and Blessings of Light.
SVB 1998
We celebrate the transition into the next century,with the eagerness of a fledgling who cannot wait to begin flyingwith the first flap of his wings;
With the devotion of the novice initiate who longsto reach the day when he may be granted the high status of theBodhisattva of Compassion.
Why not celebrate it earlier than the rest of theworld? The old century, both by the solar and the lunar astronomicalcalculations, ends on Wednesday 17th March 1999, and the next centurybegins, five minutes after midnight. We complete 5100 years of theKali-yuga, 5136 years since Krishna taught the Bhagavad-gita toArjuna in the battlefield of Kurukshetra.
A year starts and ends with one certainastronomical conjunction. Let your celebration be a conjoining of thesoul to Soul, and when the next century flies in (on 18th March 1999according to the Gregorian Calendar) like the dove of gentleness,bringing in its beak the tiny twig of time, bearing the berries ofthe sun and the moon. May this dove's one wing fan the breezes oflove and the other one flap the gushes of soul-rinsingpeace.
Do plan to celebrate the next century with specialsilence and meditation.
Blessings,
Swami VedaBharati
In the Holy City of Rishikesh on January 1,1999
Previous Messages for Swami VedaBharati
Dear Siblings in Spirit,
Wishing you first a new year filled with beautifulthoughts. May all beautiful thoughts attend to you during this comingyear. I'll share the thoughts that have been running through my mindfor some weeks and months. A human being remains dissatisfied if hedoes not sense progress, more so in the intangibles and less in thetangibles. All our dissatisfactions arise from our sense of a lack ofdevelopment in the intangibles of life. The intangibles are only theexterior manifestation. And yet we have somewhere lost touch with theart of enjoying the intangibles and that is what meditation is allabout, learning to enjoy the less tangible, the subtle, the fine, theone closer to the home of our spirit. I know that for this yearyou're expecting me to set some kind of a theme as we have done inpast years. I played with a number of ideas, a number of thoughts onwhich direction we should be taking. I'm doing two or three differentthings this year in different areas and one of them is because of myclose involvement with the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust here.There are constant questions that demand an answer to the questionwhat exactly is the role of spirituality in a modern organization, inmanagement, in administration? But then, subtler than that is whatAnanta has been doing with the students, the five pillars of sadhana.And then there is one more that has puzzled me.
In this life of meeting with people, thousands ofpeople in different countries, different cultures, I've had quite afew moments of shock. The first shock came at the age of 28 when Icame across someone who was not looking for God. I did not know thatthere were such people. Lately, the experience of seeing peopledisturbed has puzzled me, not for lack of empathy but for lack of myown understanding. People are so dependent on their surroundings. Ifanything is disturbed in the surroundings, they feel disturbed. Wetalk constantly about the idea that I am other than my surroundings,that I need not take the disturbances from the surroundings into me.We speak of our independence but we never quite manage to achieve it.Some new member of the staff here sees me sitting with the eyesclosed, "Swamiji, shall I shut off the light? Shall I shut the door?Shall I draw the curtain?" "Whatever for?" "Oh, so nobody disturbsyou." This idea that in order to meditate, the surroundings have tobe undisturbed, is a very strange one, that in order for me to be atpeace, everything around me has to be peaceful, is a puzzle, becauseif I am at peace within myself, then everything around me willautomatically and naturally become pacified.
So it is the disturbances within ourselves thatgenerate the waves of disturbances around us. People cannot standcrowds. If there are too many people in a room, it is verydisturbing. Why is that? Because where you are sitting, as I've saidmany times before, no one else is sitting. The space that your bodyis occupying, no one else is occupying. People say here, as well asthere, "We are not getting enough time to meditate. We are so busy."Sometimes someone has to wait in a car for a few minutes and I tellthem, "Now, sit down. Use this time." I come out and ask, "How manyjapa did you do?" "Oh, we're not you, Swamiji. We can't sit in a carand do meditation. Too many thoughts, too many sounds, too manynoises, peoples who want to enter conversations with us." On my part,what I'm saying might seem to be a lack of understanding of people'ssituations. Some people who do not know me here in India come intothe ashram and I do what I do and give this kind of advice and thenthey say, "Well, Swamiji, it's all right for you to be sitting in aquiet ashram and give us this advice. We have to live out there inthe world. What do you know about that?" And when I tell them I'vedone half my sadhana sitting at American and Canadian airports, theydo not believe it!
What I'm saying here is that I'd like to suggestthat it be a year of a very difficult sadhana, a sadhana that youmight consider difficult, and that is a sadhana of meditation inaction. Let us get adventurous and do something we've triedoccasionally before but not with full awareness. Meditation whilewaking alone is easy. One can keep on doing one's mantra. But in acrowd, in an office, waiting outside in a hall, sitting in the car,even with the eyes open, try to practice meditation in action. Letthis year be a year when by the time Christmas comes and you goChristmas shopping, in the middle of a crowded mall, you findyourself in absolute solitude. I want you to meditate with your TVon, with your Walkman on. I want you to meditate while in the arms ofyour spouse. I want you to meditate with your baby crying in yourarms. I want you to meditate waking up, taking a shower, cooking ameal. There is not enough time to set aside. "When will our sadhanabe completed? When will we reach our goal?" Let there be thislonging, the way you feel when you begin to fall in love and morningand night, no matter where you are, a certain image of the belovedkeeps floating before you, the wine of love gets you drunk as OmarKhayyam has said.
If you do it as a chore, as an assignment, as apractice, you will not manage it very well. Rather, at this time, asyou are listening to me, listen as there arises in your heart alonging, an intense longing for that unseen, subtle force by whosevery will you are able to hear, whose will is driving my will tospeak to you, that is uniting us across this apparently vast distancein a common longing that makes us sit together at this time to listento these words and to hear these words. At this very time let thatlonging rise in your heart and when we are finished with this littlesession, let that longing not cease. Let it continue at the sameintensity, the longing for interior silence. While having aconversation, go into that part of your mind which is ever in silenceand your voice will change and those around you will begin toexperience that silence. At this very moment I speak, the wordscontinue, the mind goes into silence. Sometimes for a time peoplewill think you're being artificial. Gradually they will accept,gradually they will come to you for guidance. It is along with thispractice of meditation in action that you will look into thepossibilities according to your capacity of practicing the fivepillars of which I have now prepared a little printed booklet whichwill be coming your way in a while.
When you, in this way, seek the life of meditationof action, many things that you do in life as part of yourprofession, your work, your family life, will become part of yourspiritual sadhana. For example, at work, many times you have to keepconfidences. You have to keep confidential information. Now, keepingconfidential information as part of the practice of silence. So yousay "Well, I practiced keeping this information confidential so I'm agreat sadhaka." It becomes sadhana only with the intent, not withoutthe intent. When in your mind you establish the intent that from nowon when I have to keep information confidential, I shall do itunderstanding it as part of my spiritual sadhana of silence. Then itwill become a sadhana. But if you do it only as part of your jobcontract, then it ceases to be a sadhana. It is the intent that makesit into a sadhana. We have begun some training sessions here at theHimalayan Institute of Medical Sciences for the leaders in which I'mtaking these different principles of sadhana and showing them howthey apply to their regular, daily management practices. So you can,in the same way as I have re-interpreted the confidentiality of acorporation as part of the practice of silence, take all thedifferent things that you have to do in your business life, and findwhere the intangible principle is. Of what sadhana principle, mightthey be a development? If politeness is merely a business policy,then it is not sadhana. A receptionist speaks politely. Let thereceptionist then at the same time earn the merit of sadhana bymaking it into an exercise in egolessness. You say, "Well, we cannotbe polite without egolessness, without reducing our ego" but theintent is what makes it a sadhana. If it is only a part of yourtraining in communication, then it is not a sadhana. But if yourtraining in gentle communication becomes part of your intent topractice ahimsa, then it becomes a sadhana.
So take any of the principles that you have to usein your business, in your family life, in the contractual theory ofsocial connections and try and examine where they fit as part of thespiritual life and that way, you will enhance your practice ofmeditation in action. If you have a doubt as to how to make yourregular daily business practices into a sadhana, if you have a doubtabout any one of those and you're not sure where it connects withyour spiritual life, I don't mind receiving a brief e-mail from youand I'll try and answer it to the best of my ability.
For now just begin. Begin to look at all thethings you have to do that are right business practices and see towhich principles of yamas and niyamas, karma and so on they'rerelated and shift your intent. Henceforth, consciously, withawareness shift your intent that this is connected to such and suchintangible principle, and you will not find a conflict between yourdaily life and your spiritual life. And one of the things that willhappen is that it will give you a sense of satisfaction that you'venot experienced before and along with that sense of satisfaction anda certain peace of mind, you will find that your meditation, itself,develops at the same time as your exterior, worldly life is becomingsuccessful. Along with that, with this aspect of meditation inaction, try and see by reading the perennial philosophy of theBhagavad Gita how not to be affected by your surroundings. Trypracticing meditation in crowded, noisy places. many of you have beenpracticing it for 20 years by now. You should be able to manage fiveminutes with the TV blaring full volume. Gradually you will developthe ability to calm the minds of those who become agitated in thepresence of such causes of agitation.
I have here at the moment in the ashram a youngman. I had not thought of the continent of Africa in connection withthe teaching of yoga. Through this young man I found out that inpractically every country of Africa right now, yoga is being taughtand it has reached there from different sources, from differentroots. In the Franco-phile country, it has come through the Frenchpractitioners of yoga, for example. This young man has hundreds ofstudents in Burkina Faso. He told me how he worked with the mentallyhandicapped, told me of a boy who can neither hear nor speak nor seeand has taught him meditation. I said "How did you do that?" "Oh, Isee that his breath is coming just from the throat. I touch histhroat to make him realize that I am referring to his breathing. ThenI gently bring my hand down to his stomach and diaphragm, give it avery gentle push and release and he begins to feel it and he says 'Iquiet my mind.' And then I speak into his mind and he understands.Now if he does not see me every week, he insists that mother bringhim to me because he enjoys the experience so much." A boy who cannothear, who cannot speak, who cannot see, has been taught meditation.We who do not know how fortunate we are, lose thisopportunity.
Life is passing day by day, month by month, yearby year and when will that complete peace dawn into our mind, engulfour spirit and our whole being for which we have such longing? Letthe longing become intense in your heart and then in everything youwill do you'll find a connection with the principles of sadhana. Ifyou only try to cut down on your food intake, to lose weight, you aregoing to keep coming back to that food, because you have not foundthe interior satisfaction. but when you make it into a part of thesadhana of fasting for spiritual reasons, they you will succeed. Andso with all of your pursuits, establish these connections. Don't dothings only for their exterior utilitarian value. The wholecivilization will change. The whole texture of business relationswill change and nonviolence will become a part of our contractualtheory, that is to say, where it was merely a contract not to hurteach other, it will become a sadhana, that is we shall proceed intomaking ourselves the kind of saintly beings on whose one side of thelap the tiger rests his head and on the other side a fawn rests hishead and both are being caressed equally. Well, before we graduate tothe tiger and the fawn, let us start with the neighbor, with thespouse, with the quarreling siblings. I think I've told you manytimes what I do. Okay, two persons are quarreling, fighting on thestreet. The policeman comes and does it as part of his duty becausehe has to keep law and order. I pass by. I'm not a law officer. Ijust look one of those quarreling persons in the eyes and I smile andhe smiles back. The whole mood changes. Then I do the same thing withthe other party and then walk off because to me, the sadhana part ismore effective than trying to keep law and order. It becomes apractice of nonviolence, of ahimsa.
So learn to re-interpret, reconnect things thathave become disconnected from spiritual principles but are very muchthere, reconnect and you will not have a conflict between daily lifeand spirituality. Let his be a year of integration. I wish yousuccess in this year. I'll be around, most probably not in Canadathis time except briefly in Montreal. I'll be in California from the20th of May. I'll be 40 days in Minneapolis from the 1st of June toGuru Purnima, I'll be in a few other cities, and then move on toother places. I look forward to hearing that you have resolved theconflict between life and spirituality. God bless you.
Let your intent become a strong sentiment that nowfills your heart. Look into your heart at this time and you find asurge of lovingness arising for the whole creation. Through thatsurge of lovingness all barriers vanish and soon this surge will giveway to an interior silence. I'll sit with you in silence for a fewmoments. Sit as long as you wish and when you open your eyes, letyour sadhana for this year immediately begin. God bless you. I sendyou my love.
Serving at the Master's Seat,
Spring, 1998
Dear Sibling in Spirit,
For some reason or purpose not known to us, at aplane of time concealed from us, there arises a surge in the bosom ofBrahman to elucidate, to make lucid a wave of truth, knowledge,silence, and to send it forth. The wave en-minded and enfleshed walksamong us and we recognize not the true nature of this being, for sucha being is a Master while we, arisen from the same source, aresmaller ripples in the wake of such a one's spiritualsurge.
Such a one walked among us, and some of usrecognize him only now that the en-mindedness seems to have beenveiled, and the enfleshment has ceased. It is redundant to call himSwami Rama of the Himalayas because I always thought of him as thewalking Himalaya, for he embodied the spirit of the Himalayas andwas, among humans, as tall as the Himalayas are among the mounds ofthe earth.
A year has passed and it is not enough to say thatwe miss him. Some of us cry out for the guidance and love that havebeen, not withdrawn, but which have become too subtle for us totangibly experience. What can we do to feel that elevating presenceagain? Well, go into the depths of the subtler worlds within and thePresence is all there. How do we accomplish that? Well...
Many knew Swami Rama of the Himalayas as one ofthese: scientist, lecturer, poet, master architect, musician,painter, dog-trainer, bee-keeper, physician and healer, organizer,management expert, counsellor, writer, story-teller, founder ofinstitutions such that where there were only farmers' fields, withinfour years he had created a medical city. But I knew him, only in mycapacity of a disciple, as a Meditation Master par excellence. Thatis all I learnt and I commemorate him by sharing around the particlesof gems that were dropped in my otherwise poor sack.
When we brother disciples talk and compare notes,we find that no one person was given all of his knowledge; we wereeach given only little bits and pieces, some in writing, some inclasses, some in the course of personal instructions. Such depth,such height, such totally unselfish philanthropy (love of humanbeings) is seen once in many centuries. Many with power came to him,and were made to sit by the side of the most humble. He could do thatto teach us to burn our ego to ashes. What I miss most is the processof having my ego burnt, on the cinders, for the sheen is yetdull.
He left his body on 13th November 1997. But thatis a date by the Julian calendar which is not the most scientificcontribution of the West. By the astronomical almanac, the date thisyear is 3rd November. At his favorite Himalayan shrine ofTarakeshwar, my brother disciple Swami Hariharanand Bharati willbegin the memorial services on 24th October and complete them on 3rdNovember. Vedic texts will be recited with fire offerings andthousands will be worshipping with food offerings, culminating in thefinal service at the shrine. I have suggested to our RishikeshAshram, Swamiji's personal spiritual Seat, and to the Swami RamaCentre at the Himalayan Hospital, to begin the memorial meditationson 2nd or 3rd November and complete them on the 13th. There will belong sessions morning and evening, and then three days of akhandajapa, non-stop meditation and prayer--day and night--by relays ofcelebrants. Honesdale is observing the occasion with three days ofakhanda japa from 13th to 16th November.
I have advised the Meditation Center inMinneapolis to start on 2nd November. There are no fixed rules; youdecide as you are moved. It is not a commemoration of the past but anentry into a future of embellishment of the mind and lucidity of thespirit.
May the Divine Lucia of all the saints of theTraditions make you radiant as you enter the knowledge of subtletruths.
Serving at the Master's Seat,
Fall, 1997
Copyright 1999 Museum of European Art
FOR A FREE CATALOG of lectures on audio tapesby Swami Veda Bharati on all aspects of yoga science and philosphy,write to: John Zavrel, West-Art Publishers, 10545 Main Street,Clarence, NY 14031 (USA).