The Way of Grace : : Teachings


Relationships

Q1:	Bhagavan, there have been many...what do you mean when you say life is relationships, could you please throw more light on this?

A:	What else is life, if not relationships? Could you conceive of yourself without any relationship whatsoever. You arise in relationship with your father, mother, brother, child, husband, education, nation, gender, home. In fact you are relationships. If you remove all these relationships, where are you. Think about it and find out if you exist or not.

Q2:	Bhagavan, world over there is apprehension of the growing violence and ever increasing wars. The reasons have always been political, religious and likewise. What would we as individuals do to stop these calamities?

A:	Why do wars and calamities happen, they happen because human beings are violent. We are not talking of individual human beings, we are talking about humanity as a whole. What is the amount of violence each of you has. Each one of you is a divided house, there is conflict in you, there is violence in you, there is hatred in you. It is this that erupts as wars, communal conflict, drought, flood or any kind of calamity. You could even destroy the earth if you wanted to from you violence. The external world merely reflects your inner world. That is why we tell you to improve your relationships. If there is love and peace within you, very naturally the environment would also change. The atrocities you come across would cease to exist. If people change, the world would change. Otherwise you would destroy yourselves. It is your conflict that is erupting, through a terrorist or tyrant. Just like water flowing through a weak pipe, would burst out somewhere - so as the collective violence of humanity would emerge through an individual or a group. There is only one mind and each of you is a part and parcel of this one mind, do not blame someone else, you are responsible, if you would discover this, the world would certainly be a better place.

Q3:	Bhagavan, you give such importance to relationships. No amount of trying to understand seems to help. People are as far away from each other as ever, even in their most intimate relationships, would you please educate us on the right course of action?
A:	You suffer because you try to understand. Trying to understand and finding fault would never help. It is like peeling an onion, you could keep on peeling and arrive nowhere. If you were to read psychology or philosophy to try to explain understand the other, there is no hope for you. You judge bx you do not feel connected to the other. If only you would have learnt the art of experiencing the other, whether your spouse, parent or child - you would be in joy. I often give an example of a strange couple I met. He was a dean of a medical college, she was a vegetable vendor. He was handsome, well-read, cultured and prosperous. And she was the opposite. There marriage was strange because they got into an agreement before marriage that neither would ask the other to change. He experiences her wild and rustic ways, while she experiences his dignity and calmness. Neither trying to change the other. It is one of the most successful marriages I have ever seen. 25 yrs of marriage, they still have life in their relationship. If you could experience your wife as she nags, screams or yells at you, that would be most beautiful Similarly as your husband bothers, troubles you or is indifferent, if you could experience him without trying to change him, you would experience joy. This is the only way you could set right your relationships bx relationships then become a source of joy. If you know this art of experiencing your spouse, you are then not only happy with your spouse, you are happy with everything in life. You would then experience a cup of coffee, the banana you eat, and your everyday morning walk - you would know you are walking in heaven - it might look difficult to you, well it is not!

Q4:	Bhagavan the accerated change, which is the characteristic of modern civilization is having a telling impact on human relationships, families are breaking apart. The worst hit is the children and youth. What can they do to help their parents.
A:	As you start relating to your parents with greater love and concern, strangely you would find that they would start relating between themselves in a better way. So children could bring about a better relationship among parents by improving their own relationship to the parents. It is not given to you to condemn them or judge them. If you would love them and respect them, you would find things automatically working out for you. Parents want you to be their children. You should not try to advise, argue or dictate to them - if you experience your mother or father dominating you, without resisting it, it would give you great joy, that itself would transform your parents, in the course of time you would see your own parents coming together. This has happened any number of times among the youth.

Q5:	Bhagavan what factors dictate a human life. What should one do to receive to abundant grace?
A:	Human life is basically controlled by 4 factors, past life vasanas (negative patterns), the 4 stages of birth, the decisions you have taken in childhood decisions and later day conditioning. If you are not able to receive grace or succeed in life, any one of these factors could be responsible. It is possible to be liberated from the negative effects of these factors. I and Amma can do this for you, but the key factor to receive grace, is to set right your relationship with your parents. In this case, I and Amma will be very very powerful in you. We would guide you and help you wherever and whenever necessary.

Q6:	Bhagavan all of us would like you to do miracles in our life. Could you please tell us what we should do to make this happen?
A:	I am helping you all of the time. You do not know the any number of times you have been saved. If you could somehow manage to see the hand of grace, you would immediately start loving me because isn't it natural to love someone who helps you. The moment you start loving me, I would start giving you more grace. As below, so above. When you see someone loving you, don't you start loving them. Same thing here also, initially my grace flows into your life as strange coincidences, I use that word because it is mild. The more you recognize grace and coincidences, you love would increase. There would be a flood of grace leading to miracles. "I love you much more than you love yourselves"

Q7:	Bhagavan would you please clarify to us the meaning of the word oneness?
A:	There are several degrees of oneness. Let us first look at oneness within ourselves. Right now, you are not an individual, you are divided within. You are a crowd inside. You are the son or daughter of so and so, the father, husband or friend of so and so, you are the employer or employee of so and so - there are so many beings inside you that are all the time talking - and again there is the conscious and the unconscious self, your authentic and inauthentic self - all having a dialogue all the time. You are that dialogue. When the dialogue shuts down, you become all one inside. Alone means all one. There is no division. At the next level you would find oneness with all human beings, at the third level, you would discover you are one with the earth, tree, water, sky. When you are one with nature, you would discover you and the universe are one. Ultimately you would discover you are one with god, you would discover you are God. I intend to take you step by step to the final oneness.

Q8:	Bhagavan every culture of the world, has produced its own varieties of sages and saints, there is widespread confusion among seekers - as to what is enlightenment and whether enlightenment is one single state of consciousness or are there different states of consciousness.
A:	There are various ways to talk about oneness or enlightenment. If you are a neuroscientist, you would say it is the shutting down of the parietal lobes, if you a psychologist, you would say it is the loss of the sense of self, if you are a philosopher, you would say the sense of separation is gone, a mystic would say I am experiencing reality as it is, a spiritual person would say I am experiencing unity consciousness. With regards to the next part of the question, as to whether there is one state of consciousness common to mankind. It is not so. There are different states for different people. For some people it is like a noisy generator that comes to a halt, there is an immense silence, a silence that is not the opposite of noise, such a person would say" I am silence", yet another would be a total witness, a witness to thought and life at large. Others would land in a state of such love and compassion that there is no separation whatsoever.Another person would experience causeless love and limitless joy. Yet another would experience cosmic consciousness. Whatever the experience, the common demoinator of personal suffering - problems would still be there but it would not affect you anymore because there is no person there cannot be personal suffering - you would nevertheless sense the suffering of the world but remember all this is talk which is not much use, you have to get there and I would get you there.

Q9:	Bhagavan most people think that the pursuit of truth or enlightenment is a luxury for the contented or an escape from suffering from their lives. Could you please explain to us the need for enlightenment.
A:	Unless you are enlightened and your heart is flowered, you are not living. Only a person who is established in oneness and who's heart is flowered in love is truly living, otherwise you are living the life of the mind which is nothing but craving and fear. The greatest tragedy of the human existence is that you are not even conscious of your present condition, you could be the president of the most powerful country or the richest man on the planet, you would still be suffering because so long as you are living the life of the mind, your so-called happiness is merely pleasure which will soon turn into fear and pain. I am not critisizing you, I am merely awakening you to joy and love which are possible when the heart has flowered. You could be poorest man and nobody in this vast world but with love in your heart, you are in heaven, an unenlightened being though he have spiritual, economic or political power would still be in hell.

Q10:	Bhagavan what is the omniscient statement. Who is the experiencer behind every experience?
A:	The greatest contribution of India is that the exeriencer, the experienced and the experiencing are one and the same. It is an illusion to see the division of the experiencer and as separate as the object being experienced and the act of experiencing. Once you are enlightened, you would see that it is the mind which is creating this strife, you would see that the observer, the observed and the process of observing is one and the same. There is no one observing the tree, what is there is merely the experience of the tree. There is nobody looking at the tree, you are inseperable from the the experience of the tree, that is why we say " Thou art that" However that does not belong to the realm of the mind, that has to be experienced.

Q11:	Bhagavan who is god? Is God one or many?
A:	God is both the manifest and the unmanifest. The unmanifest God is unknown. The manifest God is known, as presence as light or as a form. God also manifests in places and icons, God also manifests through miracles, God manifests as the antaryamin, God also manifests in human beings as avatars. These are the expressions of God.

Q12:	Bhagavan seekers of time and again have saught the meaning of the meaning of the moola mantra. Please explain.
A:	The ultimate thing of the universe is what you call Bhraman which has 3 qualities, sat - chit - ananda. Its sense of existence is what is called sat, its conscious intelligence is chit, and its nature is ananda which is bliss. That is why it is normally qualified as sat chit ananda parabhrama. God or Ishvara is imminent in Brahman. God is power, compassion and love. That is why they refer to God as satchitananda parabhramha. God relates to humans as though God were a human. Hence you call God, purushotamma, as God also manifests in the individual as the antaryamin or the higher sacred self, since the antaryamin is in everyone, it is called the paramatma. The paramatma manifests as Bhagavatee and Bhagavan, through Amma and myself.