Importance of Sathwic Food

The material making up your thoughts is extremely subtle; it arises from the food you eat. On the other hand, if you take in food that is not sanctified, dark feelings, dark actions and dark thoughts will flourish. Not only this, but because of unwholesome food you will weaken the body and lose the power of digestion, and suffer all sorts of bodily discomforts. Therefore, if you consume food that has been sanctified you will get only sacred thoughts.

When a person is filled with sacred thoughts all his actions will be sacred. His words will also be sacred. Thoughts and the thought process constitute the very form of the mind. Immediately transform any dark thoughts into sacred ones. In the same way, see to it that you undertake only good actions, and take every opportunity to transform these actions into worship by consecrating them to the Lord. By transforming all thoughts into noble thoughts and all work into worship, you will naturally progress on the sacred path.

-Sai Baba

Irritation

One of the greatest causes for disease is irritation.

Happiness.

''A happy person repels irritation. Irritation cannot build its nest in a happy man. That is why one must not only be joyful, but also happy. People have difficulty discriminating between these two. Joy is the state of the human soul who is not identified with the personality. Happiness is a state of the soul who is identified with the personality. Happy people and happy surroundings help one to not fall into the trap of irritation''.

-Torkom Saraydarian

Postponing spiritual discipline to old age is wrong decision

Postponing spiritual discipline to old age is wrong decision. Earn the precious reward, while you are young and fresh. It is never too soon to begin. The tongue, the eye, the ear, the hand and mind should all be trained from boyhood upwards to avoid evil. If these are kept clean and sacrosanct, the Grace of God is won.

The human heart when young is very soft; it responds to grief and pain in fellow men. It is the example of elders, the lessons they receive from parents and the company they get into, the training they get in school and society that harden these hearts into stone.

-Sai Baba

Dispassion

Dispassion doesn't mean to separate oneself from people but to understand that this world is not real. Dispassion is attachment to God.

When a yogi gets dispassion, he sometimes gets the thought to leave the body. But to leave the body by being in the body is real dispassion.

Dispassion is a state of mind in which one can live in desires without desire.

-Baba Hari Dass

Happiness is in giving love

"...Happiness is in giving love; and happier is the one who loves rather than the one who is loved. When this truth is realized, all happiness will materialize. Therefore, learn how to love, become accustomed to love everything beautiful, and develop active compassion toward everything that is not yet perfect. Be kind and polite to your subordinates, as such is the privilege and beauty of a lord of spirit!"

-Letters Of Helena Roerich I, 21 August 1931

The right conditions for meditation

We now come to the practical aspects of meditation. In the beginning, it is best to find a suitable room that is dedicated solely to meditation. If you were a carpenter, you would get a shop for that purpose. You have a room for eating, a room for sleeping. Now you need a separate room just for the purpose of meditation. When you find it, wash the walls and ceiling, wash the windows. Prepare a small altar if you like, bringing together the elements of earth, air, fire and water. Establish a time for your meditations and meet those times strictly. There will be days when you just don't feel like meditating. Good. Those are often the best days, the times when we make strong inner strides. The finest times to meditate are six in the morning, twelve noon, six in the evening, and twelve midnight. All four of these times could be used, or just choose one. The period of meditation should be from ten minutes to one-half hour to begin with.

By sitting up straight, with the spine erect, we transmute the energies of the physical body. Posture is important, especially as meditation deepens and lengthens. With the spine erect and the head balanced at the top of the spine, the life force is quickened and intensified as energies flood freely through the nerve system. In a position such as this, we cannot become worried, fretful, depressed or sleepy during our meditation. But if we slump the shoulders forward, we short-circuit the life energies. In a position such as this, it is easy to become depressed, to have mental arguments with oneself or another, or to experience unhappiness. So, learn to sit dynamically, relaxed and yet poised. The full-lotus position, with the right foot resting on the left thigh and the left foot above, resting on the right thigh, is the most stable posture to assume, hands resting in the lap, right hand on top, with both thumbs touching.

The first observation you may have when thus seated for meditation is that thoughts are racing through the mind substance. You may become aware of many, many thoughts. Also the breath may be irregular. Therefore, the next step is to transmute the energies from the intellectual area of the mind through proper breathing, in just the same way that proper attitude, preparation and posture transmuted the physical-instinctive energies. Through regulation of the breath, thoughts are stilled and awareness moves into an area of the mind which does not think, but conceives and intuits.

There are vast and powerful systems of breathing that can stimulate the mind, sometimes to excess. Deep meditation requires only that the breath be systematically slowed or lengthened. This happens naturally as we go within, but can be encouraged by a method of breathing called kalibasa in Shum, my language of meditation. During kalibasa, the breath is counted, nine counts as we inhale, hold one count, nine counts as we exhale, hold one count. The length of the beats, or the rhythm of the breath, will slow as the meditation is sustained, until we are counting to the beat of the heart, hridaya spanda pranayama. This exercise allows awareness to flow into an area of the mind that is intensely alive, peaceful, blissful and conceives the totality of a concept rather than thinking out the various parts.

-Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/study/mc/daily_lesson_html/lesson_96.shtml

The riddle of the world

You yourself have made your life complex. You have entangled yourself in this quagmire. You have multiplied your wants and desires. Every day you are forging new links in the chain of bondage. Simplicity has vanished. Luxurious habits are daily developed. People are dying of starvation; there is depression and unrest everywhere. There is devastation by earthquake. The divorce courts are increasing. One nation is afraid of another nation. Life has become a matter of uncertainty. It has become a mass of confusion and bewilderment; it has become stormy and boisterous.

You can escape from these troubles and difficulties if you lead a life of dispassion, self-­restraint, purity and selfless service, if you develop cosmic love, if you make a habit of developing the right point of view, right thinking, right feeling, right action, with the right mental attitude and if you practice meditation and devotion.

If you have no sustained vairagya (dispassion) you will find no improvement or progress in spirituality. Vows, energy, austerities and meditation will leak out like water from a cracked pot. You have spent eight hours in sleep and the rest in idle gossiping, telling lies and deceiving others. How can you expect spiritual good or immortality if you do not spend even half an hour in the service of God, in singing his name and in divine contemplation?

Is there pain or pleasure in this world? If there is pleasure, then why do young educated men retire into the forests? If there is pain, why do young men run after wealth, position and women? Mysterious is maya (illusion)! Mysterious is moha (delusion)! Try to understand the riddle of life and the riddle of the universe. Acquire viveka (wisdom). Have satsanga (holy company). Enquire into the nature of the Atman. Study the Yoga Vasishta and the Upanishads. Then you will have a comprehensive understanding of the problems of life. There is not one iota of happiness in this world. - Real freedom is from birth and death. Real freedom is freedom from the trammels of flesh and mind. Real freedom ­- is freedom from the bonds of karma. Real freedom is freedom from attachment to the body, etc. Real freedom is freedom from desires and from egoism.

-Swami Sivananda

Reduce the luggage

Reduce the luggage you carry about when on the journey of life. Remember, all that is not "you" is luggage. You are not the body, so the body is an item of luggage. The mind, the senses, the intelligence, the imagination, the desires, the plans, the prejudices, the discontent, the distress, etc. are all items of luggage. Jettison them soon, so as to make your travel lighter, safer and more comfortable.

-Sai Baba
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 7.

Learn to share only your positive states with those around you

When you feel out of sorts, irritable or sad, you should stay at home and work with the light, pray, meditate, sing, listen to music. Or else go out and take a walk in nature, breathe deeply, and make contact with the earth, the trees and the sky.

Only visit your friends and relations when you feel free and clear, when you are able to bring them something constructive and luminous. Observe yourself, and you will find that you often do just the opposite. When things are going badly, you rush to see people and share your worries and sorrows with them, and when things are going well you have nothing to say.

Yes, it is extraordinary: when everything is going well, people have nothing to talk about! Don't you agree there is something here that needs to be put right, that you should learn to share only your positive states with those around you?

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Going against your true nature becomes tougher

To you, one devotee may appear
More superior than another.
But to Me, all are equal, all are God.
The difference only lies
In the level of realizing the self.

All knowledge lays within you.
The more the devotion,
The more the self starts to reveal itself.
Rights and wrongs
Automatically become very obvious.
Going against your true nature becomes tougher,
As you become closer to God.

When the curtain of falsehood is lifted,
You become tainted in believing the delusion,
And ignoring your reality.
But, for the reality to reveal,
You must fight the delusion,
You must control the reign of your senses,
You must burn all desires.
The mind must be devoid of all thoughts,
But that of God.

Your faith in finding yourself must be strong.
All that comes along the way,
Must be tolerated with patience.
Then only will the concept of duality be destroyed.


From : 'Sai Darshan' - Part III
(Divine Messages received and recorded by Mrs Seema M Dewan)
http://saidivineinspirations.blogspot.com/2009/09/pt-iii-message-42.html

We should not be patient with those who...

The Master Peter Deunov used to say, 'If someone climbs onto your back, be patient; if they hurl swarms of flies and mosquitoes at you, you must also be patient. But if they place their hands over your eyes as you start off on your path, you must not accept it.' What does this mean?

In our daily life, we must strive to carry the burdens others place on our back, and we must also be patient if they complicate our life and treat us unfairly. The only thing we must not accept is if they prevent us from seeing the right path and following it. We should not be patient with those who, through their words or behaviour, try to destroy the temple of God within us, to extinguish our light and cut our ties with the Creator. We should resist such people with all our force.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Give up non-vegetarian food

On November 23 1994, Swami gave a very compelling discourse. Excerpt from that discourse follows

"Today, let it be anyone, whether one deems himself a devotee or not, he should give up meat eating. Why? Meat eating promotes only animal qualities and demonic tendencies. It has been well said that the food one consumes determines one's thoughts. By eating the flesh of various animals, the qualities of these animals are imbibed. Hence those who genuinely seek to become devotees of God have to give up non-vegetarian food. Calling themselves Sai devotees or devotees of Rama and Krishna, they fatten themselves on chickens. How can they be deemed Sai devotees? Therefore, whether they are devotees in India or outside, they should give up from this instant meat eating. Those who aspire to become true devotees of God have to give up meat, liquor, smoking and gambling".

-Sai Baba

Cremation or burial of the dead

People occasionally ask me, in connection with family members or for themselves for the future, whether it is better to bury a dead person or have them cremated. It is difficult to reply categorically to such a question.

For most humans, burial is certainly preferable, because their soul needs a great deal of time to leave the physical body: they were so attached to material possessions and earthly pleasures that their soul remains there, restlessly drifting around their body. Some won't even have believed in life after death, so now they don't understand where they are. They need entities from the invisible world to enlighten and guide them. So, if their body is burnt after their death, they are left disoriented by the brutal separation of their body and soul.

On the other hand, very spiritual beings, who have learnt all their life to detach themselves from matter, can be cremated: fire helps them to cut all links with their physical body more quickly. But those who conduct such a cremation must possess a certain spiritual knowledge, so as to be conscious of what they are doing. The body of a human being, even when dead, must not be burnt as though it were a piece of old furniture.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

How to Keep Prosperity in Flow

Money is creative energy. It helps the creative forces of Nature to bring us more beauty; it is only in increasing beauty that man will have unending prosperity and abundance. When you observe their rules, which are the result of millennia of experience, you will find the way to prosperity. You may have less income than many others, but you will enjoy every bit of it and not lose it through sickness, accidents or natural calamities.

Thus, abundance can only be enjoyed if one has
-a healthy body
-a pure heart, an open heart
-positive emotions
-a well-cultivated mind
-right motives
-right plan
-honest living
-generosity
-harmonious relationships

When one lives in abundance with pure conscience, he eventually discovers a very important secret. He realises that nothing belongs to him. Everything is given to him for right distribution and usage. Then he will realise two things. First, he will realise that he belongs to nobody. It is after such a realization that the fever of ownership, or to own things, will reveal itself with all its tragedy and comedy. He will see that the only thing he must have is the sense of responsibility and wisdom to live a righteous life, a life of beauty, goodness and simplicity. Second, he will realise that the Source of abundance is within him. The higher treasures of life – love, light, beauty, simplicity, gratitude, honesty, nobility, solemnity, and grandeur – radiate out from the Source within.

All abundance is the result of our increasing light, wisdom, love compassion, and our right need… Be a treasure, a source of abundance for yourself and for the world.


-Torkom Saraydarian
The Spring of Prosperity

It is the Principle which fulfills

Love others
because Light is in them
not because of the person.
Otherwise
one day you'll miss them
you'll lose them.

Love others
because Light is within them.
That's the Principle.
Then you'll never miss them
even if they die
because the Principle
is still existent.

Embodied or disembodied
it's the Principle
which fulfills.

- Swami Amar Jyoti

Gifts from luminous beings

You will have seen artists who were greatly admired but were living debauched and perverted lives, with their circle of family and friends wondering how they could express heaven in the way they did when their lives were hell. They themselves didn't know either. They were unaware that their gifts originated from luminous beings in the invisible world, who had come to manifest within them in the hope of saving them.

Yes, the mysterious talent revealed in certain people is a sort of bridge which spiritual entities establish between these people and heaven. The entities write, paint, compose, sing and play through the people they inhabit, making enormous sacrifices to lead them out of hell. If they persevere on their path of destruction, the entities one day end up leaving them; they do so with sadness, but they have no alternative.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

"If you too come to know of things that are known to Me, your reaction will also be different"

You may think that it is a marvellous phenomenon that the Supreme Being should come down to earth in human form. But if you are in My position, you will not be so wonder-struck. I am fully aware of the past, the present and the future of everyone of you. That is why I do not get overwhelmed with pity. Not that I do not have compassion and love. My heart is certainly not made of stone. But if you shut the door of your heart, how can the waves of My sweet love penetrate beyond?

You shed tears and say, "Swami, I am blind. I yearn to see Your divine form. Doesn't my distress melt Your heart?" When you see a blind person's misery, you hearts are moved. Does not my heart too feel pity? But as I know the entire background including the distressed person's earlier lives, My response is naturally different. If you too come to know of things that are known to Me, your reaction to that person's agony will also be different. What one reaps in this life is but the fruits of the seeds that he himself had sowed in previous lives. So, I allow him to undergo what he derived from his earlier evil deeds. Of course, performance of extenuatingly good deeds will mitigate the suffering to some extent.

I am not the cause of either your happiness or misery. You have yourself fashioned these two manacles that weigh you down.

-Sai Baba

Ideal democracy

Letters Of Helena Roerich I, 10 October 1934. Of course, such a democracy as you describe, "a democracy, vital and transformed, based on the realization of the responsibility of the individual toward his duties, on which responsibility his rights depend, a democracy consisting of the cooperation of all, together with the maximum of personal initiative for the sake of the General Good" - such a democracy, perhaps, we shall see toward the end of the seventh race (provided our planet will not have been exploded by that time). But now, being merely in the fifth race bordering on the sixth, we can only envision such a democracy in our best dreams.

Thus the great Plato dreamed, and perhaps he is now actualizing it upon some higher planet. However, even such an ideal democracy would have to be led by someone; and such a leader would certainly need to possess spiritual synthesis. But the modern democracy that affirms the leadership which issues from the crowds fails all tests. Is it possible to expect that the consciousness of the majority will regenerate so quickly that everybody will understand at least his social responsibility and give elementary cooperation, to say nothing of the higher aspects of responsibility?

One harmless way to make someone love you

Money, presents, violence, spells and magic - none of these methods can force someone to love you. The soul and spirit are the daughter and son of God, and nothing and no one has the power to force them.

Let's suppose that a man or woman, whose love you have tried to win through magic, finally succumbs. It's not really this person's soul that wants you. Your magic has attracted other creatures, who have entered this man or woman to love you through him or her. But be careful, for the creatures you have attracted are not luminous entities (luminous entities do not give in to these kinds of practice) but larvae or elementals. So they will love you perhaps, but their love will devour and drain you to such an extent you will later pay very dearly for the semblance of love you acquired in this way.

There is only one harmless way to make someone love you: never think anything bad about them, and send them only luminous, pure thoughts. Even if you are rebuffed, be patient, endure everything, and do everything you can to help them. If you really are attached to them, you will touch their soul sooner or later, and they will love you.

-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Difference of opinion

Difference of opinion must be like the two eyes, each giving a different picture of the same object; both of which, when coordinated give a complete rounded picture. It is no use indulging in arguments and disputations; he who clamors aloud has not grasped the Truth, believe Me. Silence is the only language of the realized.

Those who know will not speak; those who speak do not know, can not know. It is the ignorant man who argues loudly and angrily and talks cynically. The wise man will pause before judging; he will see all sides of the problem, relate it to his own experience and hesitate to accept it or condemn it. He will hear less and taste more.

-Sai Baba