On Enlightenment
Question: “Baba, How do we become enlightened?”
Maharajji: “Love people, Serve People and Remember God.”
On Compassion
Realization has no value until it’s lived. I would travel to the ends of the earth for one person who is suffering. The desperate, the hopeless, are unenlightened cells of my own body. It’s my own body I’m talking about–the body of the world is my body. Would I let myself drown in water that doesn’t exist? Would I let myself die in an imagined torture chamber? My God, I think, there’s someone out there who really believes there’s a problem. I remember when I used to think there was a problem. How can I say no when that person asks for help? That would be saying no to myself. So I say yes and I go, if I can. It’s a privilege. It’s more than that: it’s self-love.
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
On the Heart
Like the planets revolve around the sun your life revolves around your Heart.You are unaware of your Heart because it is obstructed by stressful thoughts and emotions. This is your suffering. Remove the obstructions and realize the eternal light of the Self. This is the highest accomplishment.
Ram Giri
On Practice
Nothing can trouble you but your own reactions. People and situations do not cause you pain. Your thoughts and emotions about them do. You can change those reactions. This is the key to freedom.
Feelings arise like clouds in the sky. Let them pass through. Focus your mind on the sun.
Ram Giri
On Evolution
Today we are not involved in biological evolution any longer but in the evolution of consciousness. That changes the rules. Now it is no longer about the survival of the fittest. The time of violence based on fear, of the instinctual survival based on fight or flight is over. Now it is the wisest who will survive. Wisdom is the new criteria for survival. The wisest is the fittest. We have to educate our brains to that.
Wisdom is the knowledge that nurtures relationship–relationship between individuals, communities, races, nations and religions. We are part of a web of existence and how we, each one of us, supports this system determines our survivability.
Empathy, caring and non-violence are the new determinants for survival. We need to leave behind our fear and our violence, our competition and selfishness. We have to learn that happiness will be found not in fighting but in cooperation. And the first level of cooperation is to find harmony within ourselves. Without that all our attempts to get along with each other are bound to fail.
What endangers us is the absence of consciousness and the inability to feel with and for each other. To overcome that danger and to survive and thrive we need to be present, not lost in the stream of stressful thoughts; we need to live with an open Heart and not continue to fall for our unconscious negative emotions. Our reality is created by our state of consciousness. The consciousness of wholeness is the Heart.
Ram Giri
On Thinking
I work with four-and five-year-old children who suffer from believing the same concepts that adults believe. These concepts are sacred religions; we’re completely devoted to them. “People should come,” “People should go,” “People should understand me,”
“I’m too this,” “I’m too that,” “My wife shouldn’t lie,” “My children should appreciate me,” “My husband doesn’t love me,” “My mother would be much happier if she saw things the way I do.” Whatever story we’re attached to, that’s where our devotion is. There’s no room for God in it.
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
Do you really want to know the truth?
I once worked with a woman in Jerusalem. Her religion was “I should have thin thighs”; she thought that’s what would give her what she wanted in life. She was the cutest! And she wasn’t willing to do The Work; she couldn’t go inside for an honest answer, because she was terrified that if she answered honestly she’d end up with fat thighs. She thought she needed fear as a motivation to exercise and eat right. It was obvious that she preferred thin thighs to freedom. She wouldn’t take the risk of letting go of control and going deep into herself to see what her truth was. For her, the sacred concept was thin thighs; for someone else it’s more money, for others it’s a relationship. I love being with these people. They say they want freedom more than anything else in the world, and they cry and beg for help. And as soon as I get anywhere near their sacred concept, these spiritual seekers, who have been on the path for thirty or forty years, have no interest in freedom. Their true religion has been threatened and they rush to the ramparts to defend it. I ask her, “Can you absolutely know that it’s true that right now your thighs should be thinner than they are? And you’d be amazed at how fast this woman dodged away. She didn’t stop to really ask herself the question, not for an instant. “Yes, I can.” She said. Slam! The gate shuts, the drawbridge goes up, the I-know mind retreats behind its castle walls, ready to defend itself against the whole world. That’s why I ask someone who sits with me, “Do you really want to know the truth?”
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
On Love
It’s unanimous where I come from.
Everyone agrees on one thing:
It’s no fun
When God is not near.
We are all hunters.
The wise man learns the Friend’s weaknesses
And sets a clever trap.
Listen,
The Beloved has agreed to play a game
Called
Love.
…
The wise man learns what draws God
Near.
It is the beauty of compassion
In your heart.
The Gift; Poems by Hafiz; tr: Daniel Ladisky
On Peace
When you understand that you are one with reality, you don’t seek, because you realize that what you have is what you want.
Byron Katie: A Thousand Names for Joy.
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