You Want To Return Back To Your Self

… Love is only known when the forms of flowers or leaves appear in the trees. Here, the apricot flowers have come [he holds up a branch with pink apricot buds and flowers]. The flowers were not there a couple of days before, so someone must have brought this, thinking that Swamiji will come to know spring has started. Now, this is the same twig which you knew, but seeing it, there had been no appearance at heart, no sense of liking these flowers, or even liking the twig. The twig was a twig, and we ignored it. It was just a twig.

But when these flowers came, what came? The sap, which is unseen, or ras, which is unseen and invisible. So that which is invisible yet existed, we don’t love. Thus, a human being is described as not loving that which is the real truth, sap, essence, ras, or Existence. But how can I use my mind or heart to have a sense unfolded so that I love it?

Unless flowers arise, your heart and mind do not have a sense of love. But that does not mean that love does not exist. In the twig, there is a love. In your heart, there is a love. But there is no connection. So the connection takes place by the appearance of something that you know and that you like. This became raag for these flowers. But if someone comes and makes a mess of them, I’ll hate him—I may not be hating the flowers, but I’ll say, “Why did he do it!” So that sense in me, my desire, my feelings for the flowers, which were giving me a sense of joy—because I knew they were flowers and they were permanent—will be undone by someone smashing them. I’ll immediately have dwaysh.

Thus, raag and dwaysh is not the love which is the Substance or Essence, hidden from the sight of the eyes. A human being is of the senses and functions on the level of the senses. His whole life is geared through the activity of the senses. So when the senses become active, we think that love has come. When only seeing this twig, my eyesight was not having that functioning, rather, only my eyes were seeing. But in that functioning something extraordinary appeared, which is near the Life. So the Life is unseen, invisible—and that is love. If one knows that, then he is always full of love. Whether there is a twig, whether there is a flower, whether somebody came or somebody didn’t come, it is love.

But wherever the senses move and a human being feels happy on the level of the senses, he has raag and not love, he has liking and not love. If that love is disturbed, if the functioning of his senses is interrupted, then the senses do not like it. So man is a man of the senses, man is a man of the mind, man has not yet become a man of the Self. The Self is love—for which we are loving this, loving that, for which we are doing anything, any activity. We are loving for the sake of the Self. If the Self arises, one knows it. Then, the Self is perfect love, total love. The awareness of that love is the love of a human being—and not that which appears because things are there and they are useful for you and so you are liking them. Only then is it love.

So love is misinterpreted by a human being and is replaced by his liking, by his desire—when it is fulfilled, then it is called raag, and when it is not fulfilled, then the same is dwaysh. So a human being is just a mind. If a man thinks he is the mind, he is a human being . Yet man is himself carrying the Self in his own awareness of the mind. But the moment the awareness of the mind arises, then the flowers arise, and the same twig will say, “These flowers are other than me.” So whenever the mind arises, a human being thinks, “Now, I am. Now, I’m lively. Now, I’m in the waking state. Now, my journey will begin for my senses to get satisfaction.”

The very mind has the Self as its source. So when the Self arises as a flower, then the Self becomes the mind. Now the sap of the twig has become a flower, or the mind: this is tadyaatma. Sap is the Self, but the Self, when seeing this flower, became tadyaatma, for the flower became Aatma [the Self]. This is a human being.

But Guru says, you are only sap, you are only Essence, and Essence is that which permeates all the twigs, flowers and fragrance. That is why you love everything. But you love everything not being informed that all the things are in time and space, so they are changing, they are dying. Yet you have to love them, because that is the mechanism—for you have no sense other than the mind, intellect, ego and senses. So a human being with senses will always like to have his attention on things, which are appearance. Appearance means flowers, flowers are manifestation. So manifestation is immediately loved. …

Shaarda: Swamiji, can I ask something more? You had explained so beautifully that the Self is just pure love, which is of the sap and invisible…

Swamiji: We do not have to worry about attributing love to Pure. Pure is Pure. Pure has nothing to do with love. Pure is I. Unless the sense arises that “I am the body,” Pure does not love—because Pure has to become the mind and the mind’s functioning, which sees the body as separate, and only then it loves. So Pure is not called pure love. … They say God is love, love is God. That is the wrong attribute for God. God is God, that’s all, Pure. God is not love—because you never know love without liking something, and liking is only for a form, and forms belong to your senses. … So it’s a form world, and the form world is wanting to know that which is Pure. But he doesn’t find it anywhere. Therefore, he has to work for that. Yes.

Shaarda: So once the form world starts and the mind and field of raag and dwaysh starts, how is it that when there is something that the senses and the mind like, you had said that the cause of that liking is fear?

Swamiji: Because when there is the thing and form which you like, in you it immediately appears that this form will not be there: you will lose it, so there is fear. You have seen practical examples of this, of those who have lost the form they like. … Although God gives you the chance that you should dismantle raag, but no, a human being keeps it in his mind. Outside, it’s not there. Someone’s husband has died. This is a very clear example. Now, whom to attribute this, that she has become just the same girl that she was before getting married? Yet she cannot reach there, that she was without a husband.

This mechanism exists. It’s called agyan [ignorance of the Self]. So the mind is agyan. But a human being interprets that he is knowing things and hearing sounds, therefore his mind is working, and so it is true. A human being thinks this is knowledge, whereas it is agyan, un-knowledge, totally opposite. A human being thinks that the mind is knowledge. Without mind, a man is just a tree. Therefore, a human being’s understanding has unfolded, or sap came into existence, or light came into the mind, only to become agyan. If agyan were not there, human beings could not be this which they are. Everything that is being done is agyan. All that which a human being does is agyan, which means it is not the awareness of the Self.

Yet there are some persons among them. There are millions and billions of people, yet hardly one of them asks, “What is it that I want freedom? From what do I want freedom?” You want freedom from your own mistake that you have made by accepting the form mind, which you have made. It is your own creation, you have made your own mind, and the mind became something dear, and you, the Creator, has been lost. This is what you want, you want to return back to your Self.

Now, there are no words for this. So we use all the examples of friendship and then raag and dwaysh, because a human being can understand them. Without raag and dwaysh, you cannot understand anything. You like no noise, you like no worry. You like peace: you like it, you may not have it, but you like it. This means, you know peace. Why do you know peace? Because peace is not to be known, you are peace.

But such words do not go to your head, that you are peace. Unless war takes place, you do not know what peace is. Unless struggle takes place, you do not know what easiness is. Unless pain and suffering are felt, you don’t know what happiness, easiness, or no pain is. This is what a human being is. So only that human being is considered deserving of knowledge who wants to come out of this sense of raag and dwaysh, birth and death. Every human being only knows that he is born and will die, so fear is already there. It’s marvellous that he doesn’t care for death and does his things. He says, “Death will come, we’ll see it”—yet, fear is there. So he blows on his tea and then he drinks it, because it’s hot. Anything which is too hot or cold, he doesn’t like. What does he like? The balanced state. …

It’s just a little thought that “I want happiness,” which creates the whole problem and brings death before you. So we say, be free from raag and dwaysh. They call it liking and not liking, but everything depends on liking, and you avoid everything that you don’t like. You know that you don’t like certain things and they will end in a disaster, yet you do the very same thing. … So, you know that love exists nowhere. That is why we do not speak of the story of love, mostly we talk of knowledge. Because knowledge is pure free forever—from love. [Laughter.]  …

Those human beings who have the sense of the permanence of the body, and bodies, things, forms, houses, people and relations, for them it comes that life becomes miserable when they lose these things, when they lose contact with them, when they lose the material things and persons which they had thought belonged to their senses. So a human being who is developed and has developed himself as a man of the senses and of the things and forms belonging to them, becomes unhappy, sad or sorry when these things and persons are gone—whether they are alive or dead, but they are not with this person who has made himself a body and a being of the senses. This is not a mistake. The Self himself has created this. But it was with the purpose that “I should not forget myself as Pure Free Forever.” Yet the moment he created himself as an atom of energy and made the substance of a body, when he is born, then he forgets. …

If a human being has to communicate, he has to use the words “I” and “you.” The sense of I creates the sense of otherness or hatred, the loss of oneness of the Self that is I—whenever he says “I am the body.” Then, there is the body with its senses, and the senses like certain things and do not like other things. And this I, which you have made, became one with the things, forms, senses and ideas. This became a dualistic human being, who has the sense of love for himself and no love for others.

In this way, bodies are understood as the point of interaction, subjects and objects, and a human being has been living this life for many years. And he cannot be free from this state of acceptance that “I am this body.” So for him, a lot of knowledge has been prescribed—sometimes religious knowledge, sometimes helping others, sometimes physical knowledge. But then real knowledge is to be described, which is only now, after you have closed your eyes, when knowledge is in its proper frame of existence.

Now, there is no name and no form. Since form and name have disappeared and this has no name and no form, why will this have appeared? It has not come, been born, or appeared. You have closed your eyes, you have not used the senses for knowing this. So no use of the senses is your meditation. It is the use of the light of your Being,  which is eternally in existence. That is pure, as the space is. All human beings can identify that space exists, but they mistake it by attributing blueness to it. So they are still not learning this knowledge of Space, of the Self, because it is such a space that it is neither of any colour, nor will it be colourless after getting colour. It is Pure Free Forever.

To human beings we generally say, “It is love, it is knowledge, it is the Self, it is the source, it is pure vision.” But it is Oneness. So we say the Self, this Space, is Oneness. If you have to know the meaning of the Self, then it is Oneness. This is with birds and animals when they close their eyes, with human beings when they close their eyes. But only a human being can understand, “I have just closed my eyes. I have not invited this Space, I have not sent a letter to it.” This Space is there, so I say that it came, but it is not the right language that it came—only you closed your eyes, that’s all. You closed the mind, it’s there. You closed your intellect for some time, it is there. You closed your senses, it is there. You closed your body, it may sleep, it is there. So Space is forever there.

All human beings do not want to have a sense of sadness, feeling sorry, or grief. Do you agree? OK. So, how does grief come? Whenever a human being wakes up, and he thinks of anything that was in the past and then he thinks that it is not with him now, there is grief. He also thinks that the present things are there, but they will not always be. Then too, grief comes. But one can develop a sense of sam [evenness], which is here and now, ever-present. This is possible in a human being, in his head, for which he is born—to attain that which is ever the same. It has never changed and will never change. Thank you very much. God bless you. [Applause.]