October 2017, Kanha Shanti Vanam
Tuesday, 24 October, evening after dinner
After dinner, Daaji met abhyasis from Germany, Austria and Switzerland for an informal Q'A session. He said, “I would like you to go back with a good understanding of these maxims, and at least not be confused about them.”
Q: You spoke about souls being divisible. Can it also work the other way that somehow souls unite?
Daaji: The one soul that divides will ultimately unite. There must be some vibrational compatibility. Soul mates, or twin souls, do not have to make any efforts to resonate with each other. It just happens to them. Whereas a person who was born at one period of descent and a soul who appeared a thousand years later will have a different vibrational pattern. That’s why they say ‘old soul’ and ‘new soul’. Some individuals have such characteristics that we say, “He’s such an old soul, he’s full of wisdom,” but it also means someone who is very close to the Centre, to the Source.
So if one soul divides and manifests in multiple places at the same time, it will also have an opportunity of merging once again. But if we expect souls at different levels to merge, tremendous effort is required to rise to that energy potential. That’s what evolution is all about – jumping ladder by ladder by ladder, back to what it was. There is no actual difference except the difference of potential.
Q: Do younger souls have to go through the same process of coming down and going back again that old souls go through, because the world has evolved?
Daaji: You see, it is not about space and time. To our human mind, time is there and space is there to compare. Once during a group meditation Master Chariji gave on 30 April 1987 at 9 a.m. in Jaipur (I still remember as that sitting was so profound for me), suddenly the thought arose from inside, it was bubbling: how would it be to jump on the first wave of creation and ride with it? I chased it, I sat on it, and then I was gone – zoop – like in Star Trek, where you are gone through billions of light years in an instant.
I think that the knowledge doesn’t come to us – everything closes when we attempt to access such dimensions.
About the Goddess Kali I described this morning, if you ask a villager he will say, “She is my mother.” Master Chariji used to ask us to think: “Imagine if she came to you at night, with her tongue hanging out, dark and frightening!” That is what she represents; fear, the original fear. Remember the sitting Babuji gave at ‘Gayathri’ some time in the late 70s, where he said that he would give the experience of the moment of creation. Then Babuji asked Chariji, “What was your experience? What did you feel?” Chariji described terror and fear.
I am more and more fascinated after reading a few sentences of Lalaji about creation, where he says, “What was there in the beginning? There was indescribable and indefinable darkness surrounded by darkness.” And there was fear associated with the creation. The depiction of Mother Kali as the Goddess, that symbolism, reflects the original creation.
Q: If darkness is there, why do we give the name Brighter World to the higher dimension?
Daaji: Darkness was there before the creation. Now, we are looking for something else; that’s our adventure. It’s for our understanding, compared to where we are. It gives the idea that the Brighter World is a better world, full of knowledge. The ignorance that prevails here is not there. Otherwise, there is no light or brightness there, and there is no space either. Which space would you look for while searching for this Brighter World? It is always in the heart.
Q: I was puzzled when you said that the movement of creation is expansion, and our goal is to go back inwards. So why did God do the creation?
Daaji: That I don’t know [laughter]. I really mean it. Such questions were asked of Babuji Maharaj, and we remain witness to his humorous answers. In one episode, someone asked Babuji, “Why did God create this universe?” He answered, “If you had been there, he would have taken your permission.” There is another experience someone shared with me, where Babuji said, “God felt lonely. He wanted company so He ended up creating.” In the third one, he gave an example from physics, that if energy is not utilised it starts to develop entropy and it is lost, so He decided to create.
A more interesting thing comes to my curiosity. We are born, and a time will come when we return back, either individually or when that final moment comes of universal dissolution. What will happen to all these souls at that moment? It is said that they will all merge and become one, but there is another aspect – that identity remains. Then what happens when the new creation takes place after this episode of mahapralaya or the final dissolution? Will the same souls that were there before take part in the next level of creation?
During dissolution, do all individual drops become one ocean, losing identity? Or do they remain as they are for the next creation? This is all just speculation, but I like to think that, depending upon our evolution in this creation, we return back with some potency that becomes the ground level for the next creation.
Say we have potency X at the time of creation, millions of years back, and as we evolve our potency becomes 25X, and another person’s will be 1000X. When we manifest in the next creation, we should continue with the potency we had earlier. But then this defies the logic of the point of the dissolution if it is not an equaliser! These are speculations – I am sorry I don’t have answers.
Q: How do we become simpler to merge with Nature? Material demands make my life so complicated. Do you have any advice on how to navigate the material world yet still bring more simplicity into life?
Daaji: I don’t see a problem with working or doing business. The problem comes when we dissociate ourselves from the main purpose. Let’s compare the difference between one chef and another chef. An excellent chef will remain inwardly conscious of spirituality or his main purpose. The other chef is doing the work just because it is a labour for him, or he wants to earn money. There is nothing wrong in earning money, but when you work with a different motive, a different purpose, it changes everything.
There is a description in the Gita that clarifies a lot of things. There is the general category of actions known as karma, where you perform activities like any ordinary human being – go to work, come home, etc. Then there is the category where people are passionate about their work, love their work. Many doctors are like that, and nurses are like that. So when you add passion and love to your work, it becomes better. The third type is the highest category, where action with love is so automatic that you forget about the work and forget about love. It becomes your nature to do work all the time with love, even though you are not cognizant of it. The best example is that of a mother. When she has to breastfeed her baby at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., she does the task.
If it were left to me, I would grumble and write in my diary, “This nuisance woke me up at 2 a.m.!” I might even remind him when he becomes a teenager, throwing tantrums, “Remember I gave you milk!” Mothers don’t do that – they forget everything. So when love truly reaches its climax, it manifests in a natural way. But unfortunately this love remains for ‘my own’, so we have to expand that. So no matter what we do – whether serving and looking after our children, or working with a colleague in a factory, a shop or in the corporate world – this application should be there. Then the effect or the impressions of the work will not be there.
In meditation it is a similar problem that we face: “Oh no! Why am I meditating?” Then we think, “It’s a discipline, I must meditate,” “If I don’t meditate I will acquire grossness,” “If I don’t meditate my cleaning will become difficult,” “If I don’t do cleaning I will not be able to go deeper in meditation,” and “If I don’t do all these things I won’t reach the Cosmic Region,” “I may not get liberation.” Then we do it with a lot of inconvenience. Forget about liberation. If the practice itself becomes a burden, that is a tragedy. Similarly, with anything that we do in life, if there is no joy it becomes a total burden, a hell. When love is there everything just flows. When love is there, you need no explanations!
So work with a lot of passion and a lot of love in your actions, and then there is nothing to worry about. You might get hurt, yet don’t close your heart. Keep it open. And always remember that the most loved ones will betray you. No enemy can betray you. Who hurts us the most? Ask a mother – her children, no?
Q: When we are sensitive, and things other people say hurt very much, how to cope with that?
Daaji: That is not sensitivity it is immaturity. Why should it hurt you? It has nothing to do with sensitivity. It has everything to do with the level of understanding and maturity. If you can understand why a person is saying something, it won’t hurt you because you are able to see the true picture. So it is ignorance that creates all this pain.
Q: You said that Maxim 4 is not about the outer nature, yet we plant trees and we do all this sustainable work at Kanha, so what’s the deal with the outer nature?
Daaji: To recognise the Divine Nature.
We have to look after this nature outside for our sake and for their sakes. If we don’t look after trees we cannot exist on this planet. If our health is not good, how will we meditate? So these are the fundamental, most needed things on this planet: good quality trees, water, air, etc. They are essential. So we have to look after them.
These trees will be here for a few hundred years even after we are gone. They will carry our signature. They will carry our vibrations. They will carry our love. They will carry our care. They will retain it, and it will spread. They are our vibration banks. They also teach us a lot of things in life, but the main thing is our identicality with our Divine Nature.
Q: In the corporate world, companies have a vision and mission statement. The vision has certain elements, like customers, striving, integrity, people, respect, but they never talk about wisdom. Why?
Daaji: I don’t know. It is true that they don’t talk about wisdom, but they expect you to have it. So let us talk about wisdom.
To be continued …
