Namaste, Vanakam.
You know, in the Vedas
and the Bible it said that God created man in His image and likeness, and we
understand that as in form – this form is God’s creation. The way you look is God’s
creation. So if somebody is born with one leg missing, is that the likeliness
of God? How can we say, ‘in His image …’? That means we must look exactly like
God. Actually, what it means is ‘in His energy’ because we are a single unit of
pure consciousness, and that consciousness is God. If we understand it like
that then we don’t have to worry about disability, inability, and debility. You
should not worry about these things because they won’t affect you if you are in
His image. So that means when God sent us down here He sent us for 2 things: to
experience this life again; and to work out the karmic consequences of your
other lifetimes. And what are the karmic consequences of your other lifetimes?
What are my karmic consequence of my other lifetimes? You. All of you are my
karmic consequences from other lifetimes, be it good or bad. Because I am your
karmic consequence from another lifetime too, whether you want to accept it or
not. And because of that we are here. When you are born again in another
lifetime (which all of you will from all of the karma you’ve accumulated in
this life) you’re not going to escape the cycle of birth and death for a long
time, in many cases it’ll be 33 000 years before you lose it all. You’ll come
back here in another lifetime with the karmic consequences of this lifetime
becoming the agama karma.
There are 4 kinds of karma: sanchita, prarabdha, agama and kriyamana karma – and somewhere,
sometime in our daily lives one of those are in action, whether you’re doing
good or bad. For example, we have teachers here. The teaching of students
is their karmic consequences. They complain to me every day but in my mind I say
‘live your karma whether you like it or not’. So you might be thinking that you
don’t remember your last karma. Do you have to remember it to suffer in this
life? Whether you remember or not, you are suffering. Understand it like that.
Many people wonder what the point of it is? We don’t know our last karmas but
we’re suffering them. For example, Warren’s biggest karma, literally, is Sundrie,
whether he likes it or not.
Every one of us is living our karma on this
journey. You might be in any one of the 4 karmic divisions – any one of them is
active at any time. To overcome that, the great masters, the ancient masters
and teachers have given us a method called ajapa japa. It is a meditation
technique that was given by the masters and came down to where we are now in a
traditional way. By practicing ajapa japa you can overcome the consequences of
this karmic action – when I say
‘overcome’ don’t think it’ll be reduced – you’ll
go through it without even knowing it.
Okay, to overcome your karmic consequences you need to
devise a technique, and ajapa japa is the easiest technique. Paramahansa
Yogananda taught it to every devotee he met. But, unfortunately for you, all of
you are not as dedicated, devoted, or disciplined as those who Paramahansa
taught. It’s all lost – you don’t have it. We have to literally cry to the
people to please come to service. Service is yoga and sadhana. Eating, sleeping,
loving, walking, seeing is yoga. Everything that you do is yoga whether you
know it or not. So you can’t say you don’t know anything about yoga. Talking is
yoga too. You’re exercising some part of your body. Understand? But gossiping
is not yoga because then you’ll say you weren’t gossiping you were doing yoga.
So, in His image we were created to be a beautiful being in
which He resides, not anybody else. He says, ‘I am a single unit of pure
consciousness, in you I am fire, in you I am water, in you I am the wall, the
body, everything. In you I can’t be destroyed’. When they say 'ashes to ashes' it’s
not 'me' at all, it is the physical body referred to because you never die. That is how you’re
living your karmic consequences of your other lifetimes because you won’t die.
Your body will die but you won’t die. How can we understand this? It’s very
simple. Today you know me as Guru. You all call me Guru. If tomorrow morning
they call you and say that Guru died, at my funeral none of you will ask, 'When is Guru coming?' You’ll ask, when the body is coming because the ‘you’, the guru that you know is
gone with the atma – that single unit of pure consciousness. When you die the
atma within you, in the body, is no more there. It is only a useless body worth
nothing, to be thrown in the ocean (the fishes will die), to be be cremated. If you’re a drug addict it can be planted and six months later we’ll get
plants. The body is absolutely nothing. It is just here to function, to work
out your karmic consequences.
The body is called annamaya kosha, meaning ‘food’.
What does it require to live? Food. Annamayakosha, pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha, vijnanamaya kosha, anandamaya kosha, are our 5 koshas (sheaths). All of us
should strive on this journey to live in the anandamaya kosha. The
vijnanamaya kosha is the intellectual state; manomaya kosha is the breath
state; the annamaya kosha is the body. We should not satisfy it. We should
satisfy all the others. We should transcend the annamaya kosha through the
others, to anandamaya kosha. If you transcend to that state you’ll become a
living Caitanya Mahaprabhu – nothing else. You will have everything you want in
life, spiritually and materially. Bliss will be all over you. Just to see you,
people will find bliss – by just looking at you. You will glow with the
intensity of God and God alone. People will see you and be attracted because
the God in you has come out. And all of that stems from just one thing: a
single unit of pure consciousness. And as long as you are a single unit of pure
consciousness and being, in that state you are equal to God in every aspect.
But you have one factor: mind. The most dangerous aspect of a living entity is
the mind.
So the question is: how do you control the mind? Everybody
asks that question. To control the mind you should not be against the mind. You
should be with the mind. I’ll tell you a short story. There was a king and he
had 4 beautiful horses, but nobody could ride them because they were wild. So
he put a challenge out to everybody. Whoever could tame the horses and ride
them could have whatever they wanted from the kingdom. Hundreds came and went, some
died, broke their backs or their legs –everyone left either as a body or with
injuries. He decided that nobody could train the horses. One day a young man
arrived and told the king that he would like to try and tame the horses. The
king told the young man that professional horsemen had tried and not succeeded. How could a young man do it? The young man begged for
a chance on condition that he was granted 12 months to try. By the13 month the
king thought the young man had died. Then one day he came back riding one horse
with the other 3 following behind. The king said, "Before I give you what I
promised, can you tell me how you did it?" The young man replied: "I became a
horse. If the horse slept then I slept,
if it ate, then I ate, When it ran I ran. Eventually the horses thought I was
one of them and they became my friend. One day I touched one of the horses slowly
until I could hold it around the neck, and then I could ride it". And that is
what we need to do with the mind. What we are doing to the mind is pushing it
away. We are not running with it. You cannot control the mind by pushing it
away. You know that. To control your children you give them sweets, toys, play
with them. You can only control the mind if you become the mind and act exactly
as the mind is acting. So the manomaya kosha is that mind. And if you overcome
that, the vijnanamaya and anandamaya koshas are really nothing, they are easy to
transcend. But the beginning, the starting point to this is called ajapa japa.
Go and look it up you’ll find it on the internet.
Hari Om. God Bless you.
