Dearest Gurudev Chitrabhanu you are so loved and you respond by filling our hearts and souls with Light and unconditional Love. We cherish your example and teachings.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
The photo below is from a visit to New York City on June 4, 2016 to visit Gurudev and Pramoda at their home. The beautiful woman with them is Asha Sheth. Photo by Sohum Tana Dean.
Following is a message from Gurudev for his birthday…
Love in the Flow of Life
FORM AND FORMLESS can be viewed as the world of conception and the world of perception. CONCEPTION is an outer world while PERCEPTION is an inner one and REALITY is found between these two.
When we live in the world of concepts, we deal only with outside forms. But when we have inner perception – when we throw the inner light on all the forms – the forms become meaningful. Without this light of perception the same forms become obstacles to our journey.
The main thing to learn from a teacher, a religion, or from meditation is to answer this question: “Am I throwing inner light on all the forms or am I being governed by them?” If you are only governed by them, life will hold nothing but pain and suffering, torture and conflict. The forms will appear to be in chaos and confusion, but we can see harmony in the forms only when we use our inner uniting force, the sense of perception.
This body is a form, a container. But we don’t see that which is contained. What is that? We know that our hand is here and we want to lift it to there. Who gives the order to move this hand? It is the life force, the energy that gives animation to the hand. This is unseen. We have forgotten the REALITY WHICH IS FORMLESS because, in our ignorance, we have attributed REALITY to the symbols.
What is symbol? This body is a symbol. What is reality? The soul is a reality. Because we have not seen the soul, most people believe that the body is reality and the soul is fable. But when we go deep, we realize it is this body, which is the fable. It is here today, and gone tomorrow. But the soul continues, it only changes form.
The Enemy Inside
If we don’t have inner perception, we create divisions, which separate us and cause unhappiness. In reality there is no unhappiness. The mental agony people suffer is from the fire of jealousy, of ego, of anger. It burns them inside; it is their colored thoughts!
Whenever you are angry, jealous, egotistical or depressed, don’t run away from it. Stay with it. There is no need to take any temporary means, such as pills, drugs, cigarettes or alcohol to calm down or to run from it. Stay and watch. Ask “Why am I jealous? Who is making me jealous?” Nobody can compel you to be jealous. You are your own enemy. No outside enemy can punish you as severely as you do to yourself. Think of the damage you do to your brain, to your thinking, to your body, to your peace when you are in anger. If anyone else ever did such damage to you, you could sue him or her. But when you damage yourself, whom do you sue?In the same way, don’t be angry with another person because he doesn’t know himself. Why should we be angry with a person who is slumbering? That person deserves our compassion. When we have inner perception, we see that this ego, this small ego of body or name, which is made of mental air, is our barrier. It comes between us. What have we to prove and to whom? Why give in to the ego? Perception opens the door to a new awareness.
A swan was paddling serenely across a pond when a crow approached and asked, “How many styles have you for walking and flying?”
“I have only one style,” the swan replied.
“You have only one style! I have a hundred styles,” said the crow mockingly.
“You can have a hundred styles, but you still remain a crow,” the swan said as it gently glided away.
Different styles can’t change a crow into something else. He cannot become a swan just because he knows different ways of walking and flying. It is better to have your own style, like the swan: to be yourself with your own ways of doing things.
Life is a flow. But if we live only in the ego’s exterior world of styles, we don’t live a natural life. We lose touch with the natural flow of life. We then try to live outside because our ego can’t exist without creating styles. It is always comparing and competing and so we get no peace.
Flow of Peace and Love
In this world, we are here to evolve fully in peace. This human birth can be so peaceful and so full of blessings when we make the best of our days and nights. Meditation touches the core of our heart and helps free us from these tendencies of projected expectations from outside forms. Become natural and live in the flow of life. That is our meditation: Using our inner uniting force, the sense of inner perception, we get in touch with the REALITY which gives animation to all forms and lets us experience this wonderful flow of peace and love. In this light of awareness, we perceive REALITY as it is and live harmoniously in relation with both form and formless, without creating projected expectations.
Inner Reverence
I want to tell you: in each one of us, in each one of you, I see God. I do not see God just in temples, just in synagogues, just in statues, but also in each living being, representing the Divine Presence. You are human: you speak, you think, you work, you love, you share, you feel, you cry, you laugh, and you are everything. You are seeing in each person the presence of God, which we call Namaste. It is a Sanskrit word and “NAMAS” means”I salute” and “TE” means “you”. You the personification of light! You the personification of love! You the personification of creativity! You, the personification of divinity! You – I bow to you! It is the most gracious salutation ever to be found. Namaste. We bow not to form, but to the spark, which is trying to come up. This Namaste, this meditation, releases an opening in our consciousness to that which we call our business of life, our purpose of life. If we are influenced with this, we don’t see just a frame, but a living flame inside each person. So, just look into the eyes of any living being and you will see that flame inside, as there is in you. Here, life meets life! This is Namaste!
Blessings,
Chitrabhanuji
June 1991
Lighthouse Center, Inc.