New Year’s Message 2008
The Day of Enlightenment

The last night of the year 2007 has just passed and when we opened our eyes our vision landed in 1st January, 2008. So, there is a great excitement at heart and inspiration in our minds. And the cosmic love floods our hearts to wish everyone, who is my Self, a Pure, Free, Forever, Happy New Year. Thank you.

People are coming to their seats and as long as activity is there, it is the dawn of the New Year. Why were we waiting for this moment in the year 2008? What was that expectation that was not fulfilled? It was that everybody wanted to have a moment of Enlightenment, which begins and remains eternally.

A human being is witnessing night and day, darkness and light. Darkness of the night or darkness in terms of the ignorance of the mind, he does not like. But the day, the light of the sun, and the light of knowledge, he wants to retain and love them, because he thinks darkness takes place, however great the light of the sun is. However great the activity of the mind is, Enlightenment does not take place, though activity goes on in daytime and, these days, in night-time too. If this type of activity, which we have been doing in the world, continues, then the darkness will not turn into light.

Therefore, what is that we do not want to have? And what do we want to have? We want to have that which does not become night, we want that life that does not become death, and we want that awareness that does not become unawareness, ignorance or its opposite. We do not want that which is a sense in the mind. The opposite of ignorance will fall in the category of knowledge. So, if we want to also have that, then we have to see that ignorance and knowledge are twins. Whenever ignorance is there, knowledge is not. And when knowledge is there, ignorance is not. It means that they cancel each other out.

So we want to get into the field of awareness that will enlighten us, this day especially. We have done so much work, so much activity, so much study, so much concentration, contemplation, meditation, yet we were waiting to have a sense of happiness. If there was not happiness last year, or the one before that, or the millennium before, we were right to hope to have Enlightenment. So this day, 1st January, 2008, is the day of Enlightenment.

This talk will open the door of knowledge and you will enter this era, which is before you, call it 2008 or call it 2000-anything, it has nothing to do with time. This time last year, I also wished happiness, but why is it we were still deprived of that happiness that we want? Why should we wish for it and yet it gets disturbed the whole year?

All of you have reached that state of mind that is timelessness, which is beyond the capacity and power of the senses, where Enlightenment is. It is not that we can use the word “Enlightenment” and Enlightenment should come; we can use the word “life” and death should not come. Or we can say we are unborn, so death will not come. Or that we can say “deathlessness”, so birth will not come. These are simply words, and the meanings have been devised for communicating to children and grown-up children.

Without language we have not known anything. And our mother is our symbol of teaching us that language. So without mother there is no Enlightenment. And we are lucky enough that we all had mothers. If mothers are the symbols of Enlightenment, then whatever they have taught us, we are this. But there is one more Mother, who is not like the mother of your body. That Mother is the enlightened space of the Mother, the knowledge Mother. And she is not an ordinary human being, who has the knowledge of birth and death.

That mother has come to know the awareness of no birth and no death - that is Pure Existence, Pure Consciousness, and that is our mother. Shuddh Chaytan, Shuddh Satta, Shuddh Aanand – Pure Consciousness, Pure Existence, Pure Bliss, and that is our mother, and that is Enlightenment, without time and without place, or countries, or bodies.

So this is a deeper side of understanding that you have reached this year - after devoting your time and energy, working hard day and night, studying, and working to maintain your health. You have reached this point, and you are listening to the one who is the enlightened Mother, Enlightenment, or the light of knowledge. That light of knowledge is abstract for you. Even this daylight you cannot catch hold of with your hands, so it also very subtle, very fine.

But that light of knowledge has freedom: you cannot catch it; you cannot see it; you cannot hear it; you cannot taste it; you cannot smell it. That means we should come to know, at this time, that the enlightened state will never come if you continue to use your senses. Because senses have not been given the power to know the source of the senses. All the senses have knowledge, but that knowledge is meant only to be connected to things, names, activities, feelings and emotions, the sense of love and hate, the sense of life and killing.

This is what human beings are doing. All of you know what this world is for, with all the joys we know in it and all the turmoil we know in it. If the world is joyful, why all the turmoil? And if the world is full of turmoil, why do we hope to have joy? And, thus, you became the pure being of thinking and from here we begin.

I’ll say only a few words, then you can start observing the celebration of the New Year, according to custom and tradition. But this is something beyond the observation of custom or tradition, and the conditions of a human being. That is why all of you are established in that enquiry that is so unique and totally different from that which an ordinary human being thinks.

An ordinary human being was living up to this year with money, food and drink, with travelling, getting married and having children, and all sorts of activities just for more and more increase. Thinking it will be the more the merrier, the more the merrier, the more the merrier. This has been the trait of the world consciousness, of the mind as a whole.

Now, you are hearing from me something that will help you forever. It is not a talk, it is the day or moment of listening to that which is good forever, that which is helpful forever, which is the knowledge that will stay forever. And that is the Space beyond the capacity of the senses. If I talk taking the senses into consideration, and the things belonging to them, you will not rise up because you will stay all the time in the field of the senses.

In the waking state, you will say, “What is deep sleep?” In the waking state, you will always enquire about what happened to the dream state. In the waking state, you will enquire about what happened to your ancestors, who are not here now. In the waking state, you will be concerned about what this world is. In the waking state, you will be concerned about what is happening to you – that you had always been thinking you should be happy, healthy, in harmony and love with everyone, and wanted to have togetherness with your friends and loved ones. But why could we not be together?

So you begin to think. If you think, you will come to know immediately that all that which exists is present. And you will start thinking that all that which presents itself will change and will one day not be there. Therefore, in this state, you will have fear and concern: what will happen to me in the future? And, immediately, your attention will go to death, destruction, and diseases. With this thinking you will become a human being.

So, now, I want to give you the formula of how to practise that which will remove your human thinking and add that type of thinking that is divine thinking. Divine thinking means finer than this. And the finest thinking is that you are birthless and you are deathless. You are That. As opposed to your thinking, which up to the last night of 2007, was that your body is born and your body will die. But your view, your right view, was that, “I do not want to die.”

However, you ignored one thing: if you thought, “I do not want to die,” then why were you thinking that “I am born”? So, your thinking has been overhauled and become clear thinking. Fresh thinking came: if you, in reality, do not want to suffer, have pain and fear, disharmony, fights, quarrels, all kinds of vices, what do you need to do? Think opposite to it. And that thinking belongs to whom? To the person who is knowledgeable, who is the Knower. And this thinking that all human beings have, it belongs to their mind, to the ego, to their intellect, to their senses, to their body as a whole.

The human body as whole is a human body. To look at it, it is very good. To see its abilities, talents, and possibilities to have knowledge, it is very good. But it is filled with that type of thinking that thinks of birth and death, and in-between. And, at the same, it wants to keep this body permanently, but knows it is not possible and that it is not within the ego’s thinking or the mind’s thinking.

Therefore, in the year 2008, you have to bring in a new thinking. And new thinking is in terms of Enlightenment. Enlightenment will be the knowledge of that great, original Mother, who has always been there and will always be there. And what is that? Unchanging. And what is this thinking that belongs to every thing and form? It is changing thinking. Thinking belonging to the changes, changes, changes.

And that is avidya, or ignorance, which means that which is not permanently vidyamaan, which is not permanently present. What is that which is not permanently present? All your bodies. All the bodies of the past. All the bodies of the future. They are such that they will not be ever-present. They may be mountains, they may be oceans, may be the sun or moon, they may be anything on earth that is before us and in our minds, but it will all be changing. If you are a human being and you have been thinking up to this time only in terms of things and forms, persons and relations, thinking they will be permanent, it was incorrect thinking.

This darkness of your incorrect thinking passed last night. And new thinking came. New light came. New love came. New birth of the light came. New relations of light came. New being came in the heart of that light. And that is vidya. That is Knower. That is knowledge. It is purity. Knowledge of what? That our existence as bodies and the world are changing, but our real Seer of the existence is unchanging.

Unchanging you have come to know. And Swamiji has said that Unchanging is your reality, Unchanging is your source. Unchanging is Pure, because there is no change in it. Unchanging is Free, because there is no bondage and no death or destruction in it. Unchanging is Forever, because time or death cannot kill it, and it cannot be burnt or cut or blown by the wind. That is Pure, Free, Forever, and that is the enlightened state. So I wish you, this year, 2008, that Enlightenment that is Pure, Free, Forever. Thank you.