Swami-ji's Amaram Day, 2005

We celebrated Swamiji’s eighty-first birthday by first offering him beautiful garlands and bouquets of flowers, for which he gave us just the same in return. We then enjoyed a wonderful lunch together, followed by songs and speeches of appreciation for our Guru. Swamiji also spoke at several occasions, we meditated, and in the end he stood with us for a group photo. We met again, later in the evening, for several hours of songs, satsang, meditation, aarti (the offering of light to Guru) and, of course, prasaad.

Morning Excerpts

… God has given everyone his own form with the message that this birth is not only meant for remembering him, but for being with him and becoming one with him. So a birthday is actually a message for you to gain freedom and knowledge and to bring about love and affection in your heart. But what happens that a human being forgets this? That forgetfulness keeps him rounding and rounding in the wheel of his thinking mind, which thinks in varieties of ways just to become happy. And God is already there within you, Aanand [Indivisibility, Bliss], the Self, is already there within you.

Whoever is celebrating this day and sharing this moment with one another is fortunate enough to know that being born as a human being is so precious that it can spread joy. As soon as a child is born, there is always the message of joy and delight. And it should continue, because that is the message that God has given us. His information to the world is that the human incarnation is itself a message. Not only can we write a letter of blessings, our very form is the blessings of God. It is the symbol of love, joy, and happiness. When you get into a human form and begin to celebrate something such as the birth of a human form, you get overwhelmed that such a wonderful, wonderful, most valuable incarnation has been given to human being. Yet he still has to start by remembering God and being with him.

I can understand your sentiments when I hear you saying, "I am overwhelmed, I am overwhelmed." That is what the overwhelming moment is which I am feeling now, that all of you have been there for the last thirty-five years with your knowledge of Oneness, and not for a single day have you thought that you were separate. So the incarnation of a human being is the message of Oneness, especially of one who offers you only Liberation. Whatever a human being does, he does everything for his bondage. So all the means in the world are for creating bondage in him. Guru is the one who gets you liberated from the bound sense of the mind, intellect, and ego. That is why today is the day of Amaram, the day of Liberation, because that which is Amaram is Liberation and Peace.

I thank you all wholeheartedly that you are aware. You are all here from different countries. But you are on earth. Earth is not a country. It doesn’t divide. You are under the sun, under the sky that is not a country. It is indivisible Reality. We have appeared under the sky and on earth, and we are indivisible Reality. That is what we say: Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum. We will observe a few minutes of silence. Why? Because it’s a joy which you can’t contain. It appears to be that your heart and mind are full. I can feel it, because my mind and heart are also full. …

We are from There. Now, after having our garlands, nice saris and clothes, and all such things, we are released from the side of the mind, and then we are that which is Freedom. We can experience that Freedom. It is meditation. You will always feel free whenever you close your eyes and meditate on God, Freedom, the Self. That is what our subject is. It has become so without duality that it is all Oneness. In meditation, we remain absorbed in that Space which brings about peace, harmony, and happiness. Then we know that all these material forms are God. All our forms are God. You begin to see that way. With these human eyes, you only see the garlands, flowers, and all those things which are in front of you. You have to care of them, for they are meant for you to take care of them. But the moment you close your eyes, you are in that Peace.

That Peace is your True Nature. Aanand is your True Nature. That is your Swabhaav—it is by itself. Then we will not mind doing things in our lives, being with people, being with relations, being with the world, being with celebrations, being with the observation of birthdays. You will come to know that there is no appearance and no disappearance. It is one Reality in appearance as well as in disappearance. But we are reminded of that Reality by coming in contact with Guru, who knows that the Knower, the Pure Consciousness, the Pure Existence, the Self, is permeating all. Human beings have forgotten this. Therefore, by these celebrations we have to remind them that "My dear friends, you have taken birth only to continue living to realize the Self." I appreciate your coming together and conventionally observing the day of the presence of the one who knows that you and I are One. …

It appears that the flowers have been offered from someone else to someone else. But if you consider and meditate deeply, you will find that there is one knowledgeable Being, or Knower Being, whose forms you are. He himself is playing on both the sides, on all the sides. He has offered to himself and he has received by himself. But when some ego comes, some form comes, and a human being begins to think, "I am separate from the Sky, I am separate from God, I am separate from the Self, I am separate from my Self and my body is separate from my Self," then this ego, this intellectual sense of mind, creates division. After division, we become human beings. Then we have to behave like human beings, and then we follow the age old tradition of mine and thine, this and that, up and down. …

A human being is born only to see that he has not come on earth to suffer, to become diseased and sick, to get tension and agitation, to have the constant fear of death, of the death of this, the death of that. But a human being could not understand the fact that he is born to prepare himself to receive the knowledge which can be applied to him so that he can become forever happy, easy, and peaceful. For that, I have talked to people. For that, I have asked them to add meditation to their lives. …

Evening Excerpts

I was telling you that everybody’s birthday is meant to carry the information given by God to you that this birth of yours is meant to fulfil the purpose of your getting Liberation. So this human life is not meant for bondage, not for death and destruction, not for disease and sickness. A birthday brings about joy with the knowledge and information that it is meant for living in Freedom. For God has spoken to you that God is free and you are from him, therefore your life is godly and free. Now it is for you not to forget. But we know that we forget our elder’s advice. So we treat it that "God is no more around us, therefore let us do anything which binds us." [Laughter.] So today we are celebrating the information of Liberation, Freedom, Purity, and Eternity. Today is to sing and experience the delight of the poetry, songs, music, and fun and frolic. [Laughter and applause.]

Alka: … In one of your songs, you wrote that you have manifested on earth with the message for humanity of Immortality. On behalf of everyone, we wish you a very happy Amaram Day. [Applause.]

Swamiji: My response and blessings to all of you, full of thanks worth eighty-one years. [Laughter. Alka and her group sing Swamiji’s new song Sunooⁿ Sunooⁿ.] …. The meaning of this song is regarding our meditation. It’s a sort of mantra, that when you are meditating, when you are closing your eyes and you are aware, when you are not even speaking Amaram Madhuram, still you are listening—being aware. … There, there is no apparatus to listen with, other than your own body. But it leads you to experience and perceive it, because wherever your breath nearly stops, you are able to listen to that Space. There is no movement there. That is Awareness, Consciousness movement, which can only be perceived in a human being. So those who have never meditated will find it pretty hard to perceive this.

I wrote this—Sunooⁿ sunooⁿ maiⁿ sunooⁿ sunooⁿ, Sunooⁿ sunooⁿ maiⁿ sunooⁿ sunooⁿ, Amaram dhwani ko sunooⁿ sunooⁿ, Madhuram dhwani ko sunooⁿ sunooⁿ. [I am the one who is the Knower, who knows and listens. That which is not even sound and which is forever, I listen to and I know.] When I say Amaram Hum Madhuram Hum … [He repeats this several times, getting quieter and quieter, and then silent] the out loud sound is not there, but when I speak, you are able to hear it. [He is silent for some time.] And it appears that you are listening to me, but it’s not. You are listening to that Me which is always with everyone—with me also, with you also. So Sunooⁿ sunooⁿ maiⁿ sunooⁿ sunooⁿ, Sunooⁿ sunooⁿ maiⁿ sunooⁿ sunooⁿ, Amaram dhwani ko sunooⁿ sunooⁿ, Madhuram dhwani ko sunooⁿ sunooⁿ—That I am. Naturally, the immortal and blissful state permeates your listener. Because the listener was listening to jazz music, but now it began to listen to Is music [laughter], that music of Isness.

… [He then goes on to translate each line of the song]: We have been speaking the sound of Amaram Madhuram for so long, that it is so loving, so beloved to me, that I like to listen to it again and again. It is like a romantic person who writes poetry and makes an image of his beloved, who is coming flying in the sky on an airplane of clouds [laughter]; he closes his eyes and watches that. So just by listening to Amaram Madhuram, the mind and heart get full. There remains no room in them to clutter, or to do anything. No movement. Amaram Madhuram has nothing to do with a bird or person speaking it. It is God himself who is speaking it. God means that Awareness which is unborn, so it is immortal, which is unborn, so it is unchanging, which is unborn, so it is undying. That Awareness is called God. That is the current which is Awareness. Because I am one with it and God is one with me, it is the river, the flow of Awareness, which is going on and on. But because of the body and senses which are functioning all the time, I have no way to listen to it. So when we meditate and drop every functioning of the senses, then Awareness listens to Awareness. That is the meaning of the song. …

Nobody knows how many millions of rhythms there are, but they are all sitting in that Absolute. We do not know from where the world of existing forms appears. In the same way, from where does sound appear? Here we know that sound is coming from these instruments. We also know that sound is coming from the singers. But when there was only one egg of a peacock, where was the sound that the peacock speaks? Where was the whole body form of the peacock, with all the colours in it? And where were the habits or characteristics of the peacock? Such a beautiful bird, but it eats snakes. [Laughter.] It hunts for them. Snakes are very much afraid of peacocks. They will not go in that field where they are there. So what is it?

It is a great dilemma for human beings to know from where these forms and sounds appear. In a dream, which is that egg from where so many scenes are visible to the dreamer? From where does the dreamer appear, and from where do the dream sounds appear? When it appears, what has happened to the peacock that it never knows that there was an egg or its yellow yolk? It certainly does not know where the original bird was which laid the egg. In this way, it’s a great surprise when you hear these sounds, rhythms, and melodies after melodies.

This leads us to our form of the birth of these forms, the appearance of these forms, which are the only means for the forms to delight after seeing and hearing each other. The delight becomes Absolute when there is no division. If there is no division in the head, then it is like all of you, who are enjoying and experiencing the sounds without division. Any kind of song and its meaning appears, but you relish it. Why? It became the indivisible state, and that is where neither sound nor form are separate. What is that field? That is what we have always been seeking, that there must be something which should be the Originality of the sounds and forms. If it is original, then sound will not be, form will not be. As I gave the example of a peacock, if its egg is there, then the form, feathers, beak, speech, and colours are not there. So the multiplicity is only when you forget the oneness of the egg, or that Brahmaand, the universal Self, the Source. Out of That, all this division appeared. Half of the egg has gone up, and half of it has gone down. One became aakaash [sky, space], one became earth. …

A human being is from the Self, but his consciousness is such that he should forget the Self and start on the journey of consciousness. Today is a beautiful time, space, and energy. With your awareness, all of you are established in that state of Oneness, the name of which is not. If your form is not, and you forget that your form is born, then there is nothing with which to think about it. Therefore form is very essential—as a human being—just to know the Originality, where sound was not heard and form was not visible. But it was always there.

As you have seen, in space, sound appears. Whenever the bird flies, sound appears in it; it is there. In the same way, you see the ocean water, and clouds appear out of it. From where does that much heat come in water? That means water and heat are one, just as your body, consciousness, and thoughts are one and the same reality. But Consciousness, or the Space that permeates the whole body, is not visible. That is where the drawback is in a human being, that by himself he is unable to know where that Amaram Madhuram is and where that Vision is which is not open. When it was opened, and the being himself saw God Infinite, what happened all of a sudden to him, only he knows. There is no explanation. Whatever happened, happened. What can you say? …

Your inner desire is "I should be free." Whose desire is this? It is the desire of I. But you think "It is my mind’s desire." The mind’s desire will only be for things—then you can know that "This is the mind." The mind’s desire will only be for those things which will die, which will not be there, which will change. But this I desires only Freedom. It doesn’t need anything else. It just wants to know itself as free. So when someone tells you about it, you are open to that. How you get it, is your imagination. Through imagination you can make this, and this, and this. The same imagination can be used to know that "All this which I imagine is changing. But now I stop making my imagination of the changing. I don’t have to imagine. I am." That is Eternal Reality. Thank you very much. It has been wonderful. My blessings to you all.