IRC-Galleria

Constant reflection and meditation on the Self until your last breath will liberate you from the samsara forever. After liberation, you will have the firm conviction that the "I am", the personal self, is an illusion and that the samsara is also an illusion. All is your own projection, a trick of the mind. You will remain quiet in your eternal, blissful Self and you will never return to the samsara again. Self is here and now. Have this firm conviction at all times: "I am eternal Self, I am eternal Reality." Your long journey back home ends here, in satsang, in association with Truth, beauty, love and existence. Fall in love with the unchanging, permanent nectar of Self. Do it now and today!

~ Sri H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji)

The open secret of real success

When it is morning, it is morning. When it is evening, it is evening. There is no question of choice. Drop the choice and you are free everywhere--freedom can be only in choicelessness. So when you are young, it is beautiful; when you are a child, it is beautiful; when you are old, it is beautiful; when you are dying, it is beautiful--because you are never separate from the total, you are just a wave in the ocean.

The wave in the ocean can start thinking of itself as an individual--then there will be trouble. The wave in the ocean never thinks of itself as separate, so wherever the ocean is taking her, she is willingly, joyously, dancingly moving in that direction.

A song from the mystic Kabir:
I talk to my inner lover and I say, why such rush? We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves birds and animals and the ants--perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother's womb. Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now? The truth is, you turned away yourself, and decided to go into the dark alone. Now you are tangled up in others and have forgotten what you once knew, and that is why everything you do has some weird failure in it.

Things happen when they are needed to happen; things are bound to happen when they are needed to happen. All goes well--just trust. Remember the difference. The theologian will say, "Believe in the concept of God." The mystic says there is no need to believe in the concept of God, just sense the harmony in existence. It is not a concept, it is not a belief--you can sense it, it is everywhere.

It is almost tangible. The moment you think you are one with the whole, there is relaxation; a sudden let-go happens. You need not keep hold of yourself, you can relax. There is no need to remain tense, because there is no private goal to be attained by you. You flow with God. God's goal is your goal, his destiny is your destiny.

You don't have a private destiny--the private destiny brings problems. Have you not watched it in your own life? All that you do goes on failing. You still don't see the point--you think that you didn't do it as it should have been done, that's why it has failed. So you try another project and you fail again. Then you think that your skill is not enough, so you learn the skill and then you fail again. Then you think "The whole world is against me" or "Fate is against me" or "I am a victim of people's jealousies." You go on finding explanations for why you fail, but you never strike the real ground of your failure.

Kabir says: Failure means you-minus-God. That's Kabir's understanding. Failure is equal to you-minus-God, and success is equal to you-plus-God. Success is within God and with God. And remember, by 'God' I don't mean a person sitting somewhere in heaven, but the cosmic spirit. Sense the cosmic spirit, the Tao, the law that permeates the whole existence--out of which you are born, and to which one day you will return.

Love is your Self. It is your real name and the name of every living being. But, you will not truly know and be this Self-love until you are willing to exchange your identity for Truth.

~ Mooji

When you desire something, your joy depends on that something. If it is taken away, you are miserable; if it is given to you, you are happy. But only for the moment! That too has to be understood. Whenever your desire is fulfilled it is only for the moment that you feel joy. It is fleeting, because once you have got it, again the mind starts desiring for more, for something else.

Mind exists in desiring; hence mind can never leave you without desire. If you are without desire, mind dies immediately. That's the whole secret of meditation.

A beggar knocks on the door of an emperor; it is early morning. The emperor was coming out for a morning walk in his beautiful garden; otherwise it would have been difficult for the beggar to have an appointment with him. But there was no mediator to prevent him.

The emperor said, "What do you want?" The beggar said, "Before you ask that, think twice!" The emperor has never seen such a lion of a man; he has fought wars, has won victories, has made it clear that nobody is more powerful than him, but suddenly this beggar says to him, "Think twice of what you are saying, because you may not be able to fulfill it!"

The king said, "Don't be worried, that is my concern; you ask what you want, it will be done!"

The beggar said, "You see my begging bowl? I want it to be filled! It does not matter with what, the only condition is that it should be filled, it should be full. You can still say no, but if you say yes, then you are taking a risk."

The emperor laughed. Just a beggar's bowl... and he is being given a warning? He told his premier to fill the beggar's bowl with diamonds, so that this beggar would know who he was asking.

The beggar again said, "Think twice." And soon it became apparent that the beggar was right, because the moment the diamonds were poured into his begging bowl they simply disappeared!

The word began to spread like wildfire in the capital; thousands of people arrived to watch. When the precious stones were finished the king said, "Bring out all the gold and silver, everything! My whole kingdom, my whole integrity is being challenged." But by the evening everything had disappeared and there were only two beggars left--one used to be the emperor.

The emperor said, "Before I ask your forgiveness for not listening to your warning, please tell me the secret of this begging bowl."

The beggar said, "There is no secret. I have polished it, made it look like a bowl, but it is a human skull. You go on pouring anything into it and it disappears."

The story is tremendously meaningful. Have you ever thought about your own begging bowl? Everything disappears--power, prestige, respectability, riches--everything disappears and your begging bowl goes on opening its mouth for more. And the "more" takes you away from this. The desire, the longing for something else takes you away from this moment.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: the majority are running after shadows; their begging bowls will remain with them till they enter their graves. And a very small minority, one in a million, stops running, drops all desires, asks for nothing--and suddenly he finds everything within himself.