Add One Thing!

Triloki Nath: As a professional father or child-care giver, I would say seeing God in the children in my care is my constant vigilance. When I forget to see God in every being, my life becomes dualistic and confused, and I create pain. What else can I add to my knowledge? I would like to know from you, as that aware, experienced Realized Being.

Swami-ji: Add one thing. You are not looking after the children. You are not looking after yourself. It is God who is doing, and that you should not forget. See God as the basis of all the manifestations that come before your eyes and your understanding. 
    You should remember my words that it is God who is doing, God who is planning, God who is manifesting, God who has given you to be the director of the family, God who is managing the children to fight or smile. 
    God gave you the power to say that those are your children, and God also gave you the power to forget that they are God’s children. God gave you the mixed-up consciousness to know these are your children and those are Swami-ji’s children or somebody else’s children. It is all one God who is doing.
    You are coming from Newfoundland, the country of God, where your culture is such that you can understand that when the sun shines, it is God shining. If you know that the sun is shining, it is God who is knowing. 
    Never lose sight of the ultimate reality, God. Then, in every situation, you will be one with God and God will be one with you. God is already one with you, but he never tells you. But when you know, "God is one with me," then Me cannot be away from God. That is Yog. That is Unity. That is Knowledge. That is Bhakti.
    Whether we call you God or a devotee or a professional or a father, you are always That. Then confusion will never come in any situation or any happening.

This human life is most precious. It was always God’s. I don’t separate you from God or God from you, but when someone listens to me when I say, "God is doing," he thinks, "Then where am I? Why should I do anything? Why should earn anything?" A human being has been given a nervous system with such a thought (sankalp) that each one identifies the Pure Space with the body.
    Don’t become rigid and forget your pliability, the Lord Consciousness who is all-permeating. He is all that there is—alive or not alive—visible or not visible. 
    Through all your duties and the work you are given, you have to reach that state of consciousness. When you forget, then remember my words of what to do this day, this moment. Tell others that you are looking after your children, but inside know that God is doing it. Don’t tell people, "God. God. God," all the time. They will not understand. Something that is divine is hidden and we want to unfold it and that is only done by removing ignorance.
    Ignorance creeps in every moment and that is due to identification with nature. Purush and prakriti—nature— is mobile, kriya, and with the existence of God it moves. The moment it begins to move, man, in the form of a human being, thinks , "I am moving." It is complicated. It cannot be understood easily, but for those who understand, some effect has happened to the their heads and hearts. They will know that God is doing. God came in your form, but we will not say you are God, because God will be crucified.

At one time we completely forgot the truth. Whatever knowledge we could muster, we started educating our children without being conscious of what we were doing, and we made them ignorant of the reality. Now the time has come. The Lord Himself wants to know that it is all God doing. Keep it at heart, but don’t tell your wife. Don’t tell your neighbours and friends. Say that you are a father and that is your duty. Don’t worry about the children. Take care of the present. When the children grow up, make one child an artist, another a computer engineer, and another a doctor. Then pay good-bye. It will be paid good-bye to anyway.
    As long as you are alive, know with whose behest you are doing. Then you will not be ego ridden and unconscious in relation to your children when they make mistakes or complain. At heart know that God is doing. Then you are God’s devotee and God and devotee are one. For a bhakta [devotee], it is God alone who is doing everything. He doesn’t sway from that thought that God is doing everything. He is not doing anything. Then he remains blessed, because God takes care of his actions, duties, wealth, and living. Then you are surrendered. You are totally one with God.

As a God Conscious Being, you came to know that this tool belongs to God and God is within you. The tool is changing. God is unchanging. Therefore, the tool is surrendered to the children who get the benefit from you, and you are getting the benefit that you are severed—freed—from such a consciousness that you are the doer. That is enough.
    This knowledge sometimes gets lost, and that is why you have to remain in contact with the Knower.

'You have the power to make yourself free"

Girja: As much as possible, I keep my attention on the knowledge that God is doing and I am the vehicle. But there is such an effort to get me back here. I wonder if I am forcing the river rather than allowing it to flow.

Swami-ji: You are becoming the fittest tool of the Lord Himself, who you don’t know this tool is. This sense of Yog, the desire to be united, is because you have the sense of separation. The sense of separation makes everybody separate from the Lord Himself. We use the word God or Lord for something which is not grasped or understood, yet it works. Many people are not rich, but when they hear that Bill Gates is rich and are told that if they make efforts they will be better than Bill Gates, then something happens and they get united to that sense of richness.
    You are describing a human being. The name of that human being is ‘I’ and this ‘I’ is aware of the space which is peaceful and free. With this I, you are aware that wherever your body is, there are a lot of distractions, thoughts, and pressures for the body. There, everything in your intellect is important and you have to attend all of it. The body is a tool that can be used to bring about peace and Oneness. But over there, your body is engaged in different situations and you view it, and you have an intense awareness to plan to come here.

You want to be free. Then use your discrimination and know who has bound you. It is you. You are free to bind yourself. 
    I remind you that you have the same power to make yourself free from binding. If I could, I would say once, "Open Sesame!" and the whole world would be freed. But it is not like that. Your system is very useful. You are not able to listen to me unless you gain the ability. I say that you are forever free, but these words don’t create any impact on you because you already made a 'fixity' that you are bound. Unless you relax that, nobody can help you. Yet you think that help will come form others or perhaps help will come from Swami-ji.
    I am an informer. I have full sympathy with you and your ability and your intense desire to come here. You have your program well set. I don’t want to change anybody’s program. People say, "Swami-ji, whatever you say, I will do." But I know that they will not understand what I tell them. I will say, "Be free." But they say, "No. Give me some program. Should I make a bridge? Should I start some profession? Should I get married and have children?" 
    I have not made people slaves. I don’t tell them to do this or do that. I don’t say change your house or open your door. I know that you have only one door to be opened.
    You have not come because you are a slave to anybody. You came because of the Almighty and I came inspired by my boss [laughter]. Everyone knows what will make him easy. I can give you so many words, but in your body, the Lord Himself is living. He will utilize the body the way He chooses. If it is His will, then Thy will is done. 

Chandra Shaykhar: I read a book in which it said that life progresses like a film. You are born and whatever happens in your life has been prepared; you cannot change it because the way you lived life before will form the life you are getting into. 
    I must assume this is true. Then, wherever there is any free will in life, that is like a film for you. Is such a film the equivalent to when we say, "You are a non-doer," because it just happens? Is there any free will? Can you go into these little details?

Swami-ji: With your matured power of understanding you have pinpointed the problem to ascertain an answer. The first part is life. Life you are not. Life is nature that has come into manifestation such as your body, which is lively, which is active and full of energy. 
    You became the seed of life because of the association with life, believing that you are life, and forgetting that you are never life. You are always free, the space. You are always the Being, the nature of which can be equated only to knowingness. Knowingness is your true nature. That we call Self. 

Sometimes, when people are ego ridden, proud, and become the victim of all of the emotions, thinking that they are doing, we say, "You are not doing. God does." But because they don’t understand what God is, so that answer is also not fit. Then the question of doership and non-doership comes.
    A tree moves because of the air. A twig moves because of air. If the air doesn’t blow, the twig doesn’t move. Human life is mobile because of the light of ‘You’ who is not bound by the twig or the birth of a human being. The collectivity of human beings doesn't know that:

That which I am is totally independent of this life; I am never bound in it, although the whole life is built because of my presence; I am the light with which the existence, (prakriti), nature becomes mobile.

    So nature is body. But you are not body-nature because the body perishes, the body changes. You have no will. The body is moved by the will. Will is only power. Will is only God or You. When will was given to you, it is as if God parted Himself and became you, Shaykhar. Now Shaykhar immediately grabbed Shaykharhood with the body. Shaykhar is Shaykhar, Shiv is Shiv, blessed. 

The moment Shaykhar ejected a spark out of itself, the spark is Shaykhar totality, the spark is light, but because it was ejected, the spark began to think that it is that on which it fell. It fell in the womb of a mother and at that moment developed as a body, as nature, with the sense that, "I am going to be a body." You were never the body. Even now you are not the body. Body changed and grew. It was not thankful to you. It didn’t remain as a child. It kept growing and decaying, decaying, decaying.
    The body says, "You should not identify with me because I am not actually you. Nothing matches with you. You are forever free. I am bound. But you are not me. Therefore, you don’t do anything." Doing belongs to the body, to the tree. 
    The tree is alive because of the essence. But the essence says, "At every step, at the point of the twig and the leaves, I am the tree." That became mixed-up, sanyog, the mixture of the one who, I say, is forever free Shaykhar. 
    But Shaykhar says, "No. I am really a boy. I grew and became this and that." 

Check. You never became anything. The body was given a name. The body became that and grew, but you mistakenly identified with the body so that when the body is hot, you are hot; when the body is cold or exhausted, you are cold or exhausted. This mixture is the main cause that doesn’t allow a human being to be easy, because he is never body.
    You are dwelling within the body. The space dwells within a jug. The space is not the jug. Jug becomes hot or cold and the space says that it becomes hot or cold. But the nature of the space is not the nature of the jug. The nature of you is never the body. 
    But you are mixed with the body and are giving light, life, and praanik energy to the body and you began to say, "I look after this body. I am the body. I am eating, drinking. If it is not my will to eat, then the body will die." 
    You mistakenly became identified with the body as a man who travels from Halifax to Vancouver becomes fixed in the car and says that he is the car and cannot get out of it. 
    In this way God started saying, "I am Shaykhar," and then, "I am Swiss," and then, "I am retired." You were never bound. 
    You were retired. You are the one who is free, who never did anything.
    How does this body do? The body does by order. If you don’t move your foot, it is sitting still. That order to move is not the body.
    God, law, will are not the body, but the bodies are made to move by the order of the sun. As soon as the sun rises, the body starts to move and become active. 
    Man says, "I am the intellect. I am mind. I am eyes." He is so fixed that even when he is dead, he still says, "My body is dead, but I want to keep it," because he is so mixed internally that he is the body. 
    That mistake hasn’t been abolished. Guru’s job is to tell you that you have never been a body. You have never been nature. You have never been earth or water. You are never light, eyesight, audition. You are just the Being who is free, to whom this I , who says, "I am the body," has to identify with again and again and know: I am free, I am God, I am Self.

My sympathy is with those who think that they are going to die. My sympathy, my path, is that which you are. You are never the nature of change. Things change, forms change, but you never change. 
    You have the ability to know what I have come to know. Are you not what you were when you were four years old or fifteen years old? Your legs and hands became big, but you never say that you are not your legs because they grew big. Why? You are the permanent I. That I is the permanent reality which is unchangeable. Therefore, you have a free will.
    Free will is just a slogan. The body has no free will. It is being ordered by the law of nature and nature gradually takes it to the end. Thus, nature has no free will. Who has free will? You, who never needs free will because you are forever free!

    You are forever free from life. 
    You are forever free from death. 
    That is your true nature. 
    What is deathlessness? Not the body. Knowing this you will not identify with the body that is changing. When you meditate, you will come to know that space is no body, no light, no consciousness, no good, no bad. 
    It is all you.

Tree has no free will. Life has no free will. You are not a tree. You are not life. 
    You are that pure sky which has no name, so we say Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum. This intellect has the power to identify with it.
    You have to practice it. Keep working. The highest work is to make people aware of their true nature. Then you serve the people, you serve God, and serve yourself. 
    That is what the truth is all about.

2 December 1999