16th January 2005
Depths of Calm
Only a healthy bud can blossom. In the same way, only a healthy being can succeed. So
what’s being healthy? If you are feeling rough inside, then you are not healthy; if the mind is
stiff and not calm, you are not mentally healthy. When the emotions are rough, you are
emotionally not healthy. To attain a perfect state of health, one has to be mentally calm,
steady and emotionally soft.
The state of healthiness has to flow from the innermost of your being to the outermost, and
vice versa. That state is called Swasthya in Sanskrit. Swasthya means health. It also means
being in one’s Self. Swasthya or health is not just confined to the body and the mind; it has
come to you as a gift from the cosmic mind or the ‘Indra’.
Have you noticed this? When you enter a place where a very disturbed and stressed person
has spent some time, you start feeling disturbed for no reasons even if the stressed person is not around any longer. The same feelings, same thoughts, same emotions come to you.
Similarly, when there is a harmonious vibration like at a place where a Satsang is happening,
you feel good. You don’t know why. So feelings are not isolated in one’s body, they are all
around. So is the breath. Ditto for the mind, it is in the whole environment because the mind is
subtler than the five elements — the earth, water, fire, air and ether. Like if there is a fire
somewhere the heat is not just in fire, it is also radiating throughout the place. Subtler than that
is air, which is all over.
So if you are unhappy or depressed, you are not the only one who is feeling it; you are
spreading it to the whole environment. A time may come in the future when people will be
fined for being depressed because they are creating emotional pollution!
But how can we control this? That is the key question and the answer lies in meditation. The
main purpose of meditation, Pranayam and related practices, is that they increase prana or
the subtle life energy. Prana is subtler than emotions. When you attend to the subtlest, the
gross becomes all right. You handle the breath and the body gains good health.
In the ancient days, the prayer has been that let this collective consciousness, the Indra,
always bring health and put me back to my Self. Let it always keep me centred, joyful and
happy. Let everyone whom I meet bring me back to the Self. This is important because the
words that you hear from people around you affect your state of mind. They either give you
peace and joy, or create disturbance.
Usually what happens is that, when people say something that creates jealousy, anger,
frustration or sadness in us, we think they are responsible. No, we are responsible because we
are contributing to the process. We are affected because the mind is not its Self; it is not
centred.
How can we gain that peace which is unshakeable? Being individually happy is not enough.
Our wish should be that whomever we meet be happy and radiate happiness. A frustrated
man will create frustration; a jealous person will create jealousy and so on.
You can turn every situation into your advantage. Have you ever thought of this? There are
stories in the Puranas of how a saint turned an arrow which was going to hurt someone, into a
garland. If somebody is shooting an arrow at you, insulting you, realise that they are doing it
because they are miserable. Once you are blossomed from within, you can take any insult
and turn it into your advantage.
Realise that they are simply pouring out their stress, tension and anxiety. When people shout or
burst out at you, you can only feel good that all that was building up inside them is coming
out. I am not saying that we should encourage this tendency or justify it. But when it happens,
do not regret it. What do we normally do? We go on regretting and with regret, we commit
the same mistake again.
Even when someone commits a mistake, he or she is not the culprit; the stress inside is causing
him or her to make that mistake. Once we get rid of the stress inside us, there is no culprit; no
one to be forgiven. Then we begin to realise that the whole thing is just a game in which there
is no winners or losers. It’s just a play, and fun.
The objective is to have that fun in life and make sure that the knowledge that we gain in life
permeates inside us. With this, Upanishad happens and the learning process begins. As we
learn more about life, the mystery of the whole creation unfolds. Then the question in the mind
is, what is the meaning of life and what’s its purpose. What is this world, what is love, what is
knowledge and so on.
Once these questions arise in you, know that you are very fortunate. These questions need to
be understood; you cannot find the answers in books. You have to live through them and
witness the transformation. That is perfect health; you are transformed from within. And the
bud becomes a totally blossomed flower.
Jai Gurudev!!!
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