Q: How can I get more happiness and joy from everywhere?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: This race of more and more is killing us. More and more and more – How can I get more? Relax my dear. We don’t even have enough time to enjoy what we have. We should think how can I be more useful to the society, how can I serve more? One who is always thinking of getting something is like a beggar. Everything comes to the one who thinks how she/he can contribute more to the society. There won’t be any lack for such a person.
NOTE: Do YOU have any questions? Now you can get your Spiritual Quest quenched from where ever you are by sending the queries to askguruji@srisripublications.
Do not think that you are weak.Stand up and reach all that you wanted to.You can do anything and everything.Believe in yourself. All power is within you.You’ve it all that is required to change the world around you.
Have you noticed what keeps happening in the mind at every moment of time?
The mind keeps wondering what is going to happen next. Knowledge is being aware of this phenomenon of the mind; of what is happening right now in the mind. All other information and education can be acquired by reading books. You can open a book on any subject, be it birth, death or dietary habits; there are volumes of books available on countless topics. But awareness of our own mind cannot be learnt by reading a book.
What does our mind do? It vacillates between the past and the future. Every moment, it is either angry about the past or anxious about the future. There is another tendency of the mind – clinging to the negative. If ten positive instances or events are followed by one negative event, we cling to that one negative thing. We simply forget all the ten positives.
To bring about a change in these two tendencies of the mind is the greatest help you can render to yourself. Becoming aware of these two tendencies in the mind will make you very natural, very simple. These are very precious values and will enable you to blossom from within. We are actually born with this innocence in us; but as we become more and more mature and intelligent, we tend to lose this innocence and end up becoming stiff. Drop the stiffness, and then see how much more rewarding, more enjoyable, more interesting life becomes. This is knowledge. And this is also worship. As child, you had no problems; you fought one day and made up the next day. But as you grow, you get tangled, entangled. You get into a mess, the whole society gets into
a mess. Then you need the comb of knowledge. When you have an effective comb, it helps keeps your hair tangle-free and orderly. The same thing happens in the society.
Without knowledge and wisdom, we get entangled with each other; our minds are filed with hatred, aversions and cravings. Look into anybody’s mind; there is feverishness about somebody, a craving for the future or an aversion for the past. With the comb of wisdom and knowledge, we can promote order in the society.
We have to study our own mind, our own Self. We spent so much time in learning all
things for life but very little about our life itself. The first thing we did when we came to the world was to take a deep breath in and the last thing we will be doing in the world is breathing out. In between the first inhalation and the last exhalation is what we call life. We have never attended to our breath. Breath is the connection between the body and mind and through it you can really bring the mind to the present moment.
Service or seva is another tool to attend to the mind. When you make service the sole purpose of your life, it eliminates fear, brings focus in your mind, purposefulness in action and everlasting joy.
If everybody in the society lives in the present moment and if we are able to accept people as they are, there will be no problems, no strife. We have to have wisdom and knowledge; we have to have awareness. It is very essential.
The mind keeps wondering what is going to happen next. Knowledge is being aware of this phenomenon of the mind; of what is happening right now in the mind. All other information and education can be acquired by reading books. You can open a book on any subject, be it birth, death or dietary habits; there are volumes of books available on countless topics. But awareness of our own mind cannot be learnt by reading a book.
What does our mind do? It vacillates between the past and the future. Every moment, it is either angry about the past or anxious about the future. There is another tendency of the mind – clinging to the negative. If ten positive instances or events are followed by one negative event, we cling to that one negative thing. We simply forget all the ten positives.
To bring about a change in these two tendencies of the mind is the greatest help you can render to yourself. Becoming aware of these two tendencies in the mind will make you very natural, very simple. These are very precious values and will enable you to blossom from within. We are actually born with this innocence in us; but as we become more and more mature and intelligent, we tend to lose this innocence and end up becoming stiff. Drop the stiffness, and then see how much more rewarding, more enjoyable, more interesting life becomes. This is knowledge. And this is also worship. As child, you had no problems; you fought one day and made up the next day. But as you grow, you get tangled, entangled. You get into a mess, the whole society gets into
a mess. Then you need the comb of knowledge. When you have an effective comb, it helps keeps your hair tangle-free and orderly. The same thing happens in the society.
Without knowledge and wisdom, we get entangled with each other; our minds are filed with hatred, aversions and cravings. Look into anybody’s mind; there is feverishness about somebody, a craving for the future or an aversion for the past. With the comb of wisdom and knowledge, we can promote order in the society.
We have to study our own mind, our own Self. We spent so much time in learning all
things for life but very little about our life itself. The first thing we did when we came to the world was to take a deep breath in and the last thing we will be doing in the world is breathing out. In between the first inhalation and the last exhalation is what we call life. We have never attended to our breath. Breath is the connection between the body and mind and through it you can really bring the mind to the present moment.
Service or seva is another tool to attend to the mind. When you make service the sole purpose of your life, it eliminates fear, brings focus in your mind, purposefulness in action and everlasting joy.
If everybody in the society lives in the present moment and if we are able to accept people as they are, there will be no problems, no strife. We have to have wisdom and knowledge; we have to have awareness. It is very essential.
Past is Experience! Present is Experiment! Future is Expectation!
Use your Experience in ur Experiment to achieve ur Expectations!
Use your Experience in ur Experiment to achieve ur Expectations!
There is a story of Mullah Nasurudin. His wife was pregnant and the time of delivery had come. But the baby was not coming out. When doctor told this to Mullah Nasurudin, he ran to the market, bought a toy, and kept that toy in front of her wife. He said, “After all this is my child, so he will surely come out with greed”. Whole our life we keep on running behind things with the hope of getting something. We keep on looking for some kind of profit. How would such person experience happiness? Neither does a greedy person get happiness nor does a person who is bombarded with too many desires. The one who relaxes in his consciousness is happy. One, who is centered, experiences the true happiness. I am not saying there is no happiness in the outer world, but the happiness you get when you go within is incomparable.
-- Sri Sri Ravishankar
Science and spirituality are two sides of the same coin. Science is the question —how, what, why? Spirituality, on the other had, is wonder — just wow! Deepening the mystery of creation is science and deepening the mystery of the Self is spirituality. Every scientific discovery leads to the realm of spirituality. If neither science nor spirituality can create wonder and devotion in you, then you are in deep slumber. In this part of the world, there has never been a conflict between science and spirituality. Unlike in the West, not even a single scientist was prosecuted. In the Occidental way of thinking, belief comes first, and then experience follows. The Oriental philosophy and science have the same parameter. They both say experience first, and then believe. You have the knowledge first, and then the faith follows. For example, the knowledge that pesticides and chemical fertilisers are good for plants came through science and people developed faith in it and all over the world, people started using them. Then the knowledge that they are not healthy came, and the faith shifted to organic farming. Knowledge brings faith and when knowledge changes, faith also shifts. Science and spirituality are like two ways of looking at the creation. Science regards life as matter and spirituality regards even matter as life. Spirituality elevates matter to the level of life, level of divinity and adds a sense of honour. While science brings us material and physical comfort, spirituality gives comfort to our souls. Science cultivates logic and spirituality develops intuition, another faculty of enquiry. Ancient rishis (sages) recognised this interplay between science and spirituality and said true fulfilment in life can come only through gyana (spirituality) and vigyana (science). There is a saying in the Upanishads that reads "padarth, gyanaat, moksha". It means that if one understands even one particle in the creation thoroughly, he or she will be liberated. One doesn't even need to believe in God's existence. Ancient rishis knew that the entire creation is reflected in each particle as consciousness. Today scientists are saying the same thing. The DNA of all the creatures can be created from one human DNA chain. It's further said that whatever is there in the universe is present in the body of human existence. The entire creation is one organism - there is life in every particle of this universe. Divinity, one consciousness, permeates the entire creation. God is present in every single atom of this planet and universe. This establishes that science and spirituality are two ways of looking at the same truth — the objective and the subjective. Through spirituality, India knew from ages that the Earth and other planets are moving round the Sun. Ages before Galileo discovered that the earth is round, India had the concept of the Earth being spherical. Here, the earth was always considered spherical. Likewise, even 15,000 years ago, people knew that Jupiter has got 12 moons. From the times of Vedic age itself, people understood the arrangement of the sun and the planets in the solar system. So India was never ignorant about science; instead it was very advanced from ancient time. Science is the systematic understanding of what this is. Spirituality is systematic understanding of who am I. We are all made up of spirit and matter. The body is made up of amino acids, proteins, minerals, etc. The spirit is made up of beauty, love, joy, enthusiasm and comfort, all that values that enhance life. These values come only through spirit and as we live the values of the spirit, life attains its richest form. Without them, life becomes very shallow and we are dependent and unhappy. The spiritual dimension of life in the truest form promotes scientific temper. It smashes the narrow boundaries of caste, creed, religion and nationality and gives one a broader awareness of life present everywhere. When the mind relaxes, the intellect becomes sharp. When the mind is loaded with small things such as ambition, feverishness and desire, then the intellect loses its keenness. And when intellect and observation are not sharp, life does not express itself fully. Ideas don't flow properly and abilities diminish day by day. The possibilities of scientific enquiry get clouded. To nurture the spirit of scientific enquiry, it is very important for us to probe into the source of thought. Often we are called great thinkers, but what is a thought? Where does it originate? Is there any way that we can improve the thought process? What are the mechanics to make people creative? Thought is nothing but an impulse of energy and intelligence. For that impulse of energy and intelligence to arise and a correct thought to come, you need 16 impulses to meet at a point in the cerebral cortex at the speed of 10 to the power of minus 30 cycles per second. In that short interval of time, all the 16 impulses in the cerebral cortex, when they meet, is what we call a correct thought. What do we do about it? We need to train our brain, our mind. And that's the purpose of spiritual practices. Spiritual life enhances imagination, which is the basis of many scientific discoveries. When an imagination comes up, the person will not think whether it is real or not. What appears to be unreal and a pure imagination can bring creativity. Thomas Edison, once upon a time, dreamt of how to create light. It was purely an imagination. Many inventions happened through certain imagination and through linking that imagination to the ground reality. If you are thinking only of the ground reality, then no creativity will come. And also if you based yourself purely on imagination, then there is no creativity. A balance between your intellect and your heart is needed. Listening to your heart is spirituality and developing that sharp and intuitive intellect is science. People may say that spiritualism begins where science ends, but I do not agree with that. Science and spirituality are not separate, they go together. And there can be no dispute about it after the theory of relativity which proved the interconnection between matter and energy. Life is like a tree, its branches and leaves are science and the roots are spirituality. A scientific spirituality and a spiritual scientist is the need of the day.
Q: I was wondering what exactly the mind is. Is it a little space in our brain or is it universal? And yes, I want to tell you that you rock.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Mind is energy which is all over the body. See, every cell in your body is emitting some energy and the totality of all that energy around you is what you call the mind. Mind is not present at some point in the brain, but mind is all over the body. There is so much deep knowledge about consciousness; we should sometime go much deeper into it. We will understand more. The more you understand, the more wonder-struck you are. Wow!
You know, people have phantom hand, that means they really don’t have a hand, but they feel they have a hand and they feel sensations like itching or paining in that hand. People who have lost their hand or leg in a war or accident, later sometimes, they feel they have a phantom hand or a leg. Though, they don’t have it physically. That explains or gives a clue that the mind is not just in one spot, it is all around the body. The aura of body is mind. We think that mind is inside the body, it is the other way around - Body is inside the mind. Body is like the wick of the candle and mind is like the glow all around.
Ask yourself what is it that you want from your real friend. You will find there is really nothing. You just want the friendship
At the End of Day, It doesn't matter who's stronger, smarter, prettier or richer. The only thing matter is you are happy or Not ?
A true Friend is one who can see your dreams and Goals and take it as his/her commitment to help you until you reach to your destination.
A Real Friend is one whose company uplifts us; an untrue friend is one whose company bring us down.
When you go to a friend with a problem and if you walk away from them feeling lighter, then they are a good friend.
Ask yourself what is it that you want from your real friend. You will find there is really nothing. You just want the friendship.
Tell you friends, I am here for you I don't want anything from you other than friendship. That will make your friendship long-lasting.
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