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RETURN TO SELF - a series of discourses –

ACHARYA SHIV MUNI

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Title of the Book : Reutrn to Self: a series of discourses

Author : Acharya Dr Shiv Muni Ji Maharaj

Assistance Mantri Shri Shirish Muni Ji Maharaj

and

Sadhak Shri Shailesh Kumar

Translation: : Dr Dharam Singh

Edition : 2005

Copies :

Typesetting :

Printers: :

Publisher: :

Price :

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DEDICATED

To

The greatest personality of the Sraman Sangh,

Acharya Samrat Shri Atma Ram Ji Maharaj,

Whose footsteps provided inspitation

For

Return to the Self;

To his

Lotus-feet is dedicated

This booklet

With

Deep faith and hope.

- Acharya Shiv Muni

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PUBLISHER‟S NOTE

The book in hand, Return to Self, is a collection of discourses delivered on

differerent occasions by Acharya Dr Shiv Muni Ji Maharaj. In this series of seven

discourses, Acharya Shiv Muni has successfully brought before modern man several

issues for him to reflect upon. A point that needs to be stressed here is that all the seven

issues discussed in these discourses are intimately related to human life and its

development. The Acharya who has been able to fully comprehend and fathom the

depths of human mind has in these discourses made a subtle analysis of human psyche.

Apart from this, he has also suggested some remedies for easing off tension and stress

and for removing various other maladies that man is suffering from in modern-day

world. How can man make right and balanced development? How can he overcome the

hindrances on this way and keep on moving farther ahead? The enlightened Acharya has

discussed all such issues in a simple and easily comprehensible idiom.

The revered Acharya‟s able disciple, Shri Shirish Muni Ji Maharaj, and his

follower Shri Shailesh Kumar Ji first put these discourses to pen and then soon gave the

manuscript book form for the benefit of the common reader. We are rather happy to

publish these discourses in the present book form and we hope that the blessings of the

benevolent Acharya will ever be bestowed on us.

Pragya Prakashan

Mumbai

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SPONSORS FOR THE HINDI EDITION

Shri Ramesh Bhai Shah has been a very devoted and religious-minded person. His

life has been an embodiment of justice, benevolence, simplicity and devotion. A soft-

spoken person as Shri Ramesh Bhai Shah is, decency and affection are the other

characteristics of his nature.

He has been ever ready to participate and cooperate in any constructive ventures

that the society might wish to take up. He willingly and smilingly donates money for any

philanthropic work being taken up: he always cooperates in this ventures. In fact,

service unto others and cooperation in altruistic works is what he considers his true

property.

Shri Ramesh Bhai Shah has been a native resident of Dhorji in Saurashtra.

However, he has been engaged in business in the capital town of India, New Delhi. He

has been the son of respected Shri Prabhulal Bhai and Dhankunwar Ben.

He got married to Malati Ben, the daugher of Shri Prabhudas Bhai of Mumbai.

Mrs Malati Ben was a very devoted and religious-minded person. She had deep faith in

religion, in the spiritual preceptors (Gurus) and the gods. She was ever willing to serve

the saintly and the faithfuls. She was a very simple and affectionate lady. Unfortunately,

she met with a untimely death.

The couple had three children - two sons (Shri Ketan Kumar Jain and Shri

Nimesh Kumar Jain) and one daughter (Kavita Jain). Mrs Sonal Jain and Mrs Namita

Jain are their daughters-in-law. Among their grandchildren are Purvit, Darsit and Stuti.

The entire family follows the foot-steps of their father, Shri Ramesh Bhai Shah, and

imbibes all the Jain values and teachings.

The entire family has deep faith in the revered Acharya, Dr Shiv Muni Ji Maharaj.

They fully sponsored the Hindi edition of the book. The publishers express their sense

of gratitude to the family for all that they have done.

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AUTHOR‟S NOTE

Man today has been living in utter restlessness. Man was tense and restless even

in the past, but in comparison with the modern man he was less so. In the days gone by,

man had very little material comforts. Most of his life was dependent on nature. Since

man then lived his life in close proximity to nature, he was less tense and restless.

Whatever he got from nature, whether good or bad, sufficient or insufficient, he received

that as nature‟s blessing or curse.

It has been only a few centuries back that man began challenging the world of

nature. The development of science is the result of this human tendency. With the

strength he acquired as a result of scientific advancement, he earned a lot of money,

acquired innumerable material comforts and realized in concrete what once seemed only

a dream. He did everything but even after doing all this he could not acquire for the

acquisition of which he had done that. The object to realize which he did all this is still a

subject of sweet dream for him.

What is the object of human life that man wants to achieve? The object is peace,

ecstasy, inner equipoise. Man today flies in the skies but he is still dissatisfied and

discontented. He lies down to sleep on the cushions soft like flowers, but he is still

restless. Obviously, peace and ecstasy cannot be found in the soft cushions. Flights in

the sky cannot provide man stisfaction. Then where can man find peace and satisfaction?

There can be thousands of answers to this question in the material context. However,

there is only one resolution to this in the domain of spirituality. The resolution is: peace

and satisfaction is hidden within man. In the material world, man may build up the

highest of mansions, but he will still feel unsafe and dissatisfied. He will realize peace

and satisfaction and security only after he enters the domain of inner satisfaction and

pleasure.

Man must enjoy peace, comfort and constant joy, but to achieve all this he must

free himself from the material delusions and go back to his inner self. He should return

to the inner solace, he should walk within his own self and he must develop his inner self.

He will find the shadow of peace and solace even at the first step in this direction: he will

taste the presence of solution right there.

In the following pages of the book, we have discoursed on the different ways and

means of going back to one‟s inner self. I have tried to put into words what I had myself

experienced. The writing and publication of the book will be successful if it is able to

awaken in you the desire to return to self. This is myconviction.

I delivered these discourses and my devoted disciple, Shri Shirish Muni Ji, and

the devout, Shri Shailesh Kumar, put these ideas on the paper and edited them to give

them the shape of a book. Their presentation has ever been constructive. I bless them

and wish that both of them may continue their sojourn on the path to spirituality.

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Shri Vinod Sharma also helped in the editing and making press-coopy of the

Hindi version of the book. He is a business and was gracious enough to see through its

publication. I appreciate his devotion and commitment.

The printing and publishing of the book in Hindi was sponsored by Shri Ramesh

Bhai Shah. Shri Ramesh Bhai is a person especially blessed by the goddess of wealth.

But he is ever ready to extend his help and cooperation towards any altruistic venture.

He willingly helps any cause for the common weal. My blessing to him.

Shri Subhash Jain also deserves our blessings as he very kindly made

arrangements for providing paper for the publication of the Hindi edition of the book.

My good wishes and blessing to all those persons who directly or indirectly

helped in helping us see through the publication of the book. I hope the book, in its

present form, will help you realize your real home. And, therein also lies the success of

the book.

I bestow my blessings on Dr Dharam Singh of Punjabi University, Patiala, who

kindly made time to render the Hindi version into English.

Acharya Shiv Kumar

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CONTENTS

I Principles of Child Development 9

II Beginning of the Right Education 23

III Dreaming of a Golden Old Age 40

IV Return to Self 52

V Meditation for Freedom from Tension 66

VI Balanced Planning of Time 81

VII Soothing Shadow of Solution 93

VIII Appendices 104

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Chapter I

PRINCIPLES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Our theme in this chapter is the development of the child. Just imagine a little

kid, beautiful eyes, innocent and flawless face, smile playing on his lips, and a simple

heart. If you have such a lovely kid sitting before you, what would you like to teach him?

Think a little over this. What can you possibly teach to a such a lovely kid whose eyes

reflect innocence and whose heart is saturated with love and simplicity.

If you reflect on this, you will find that it is not necessary to teach anything to

such a child. In fact, we all should become what he is. Do you not think we lack the kind

of face he has? We do not have the innocence that he possesses. Then what could be the

meaning of this training for the development of the child? What would it mean if we say

that we should teach the samskaras to the child. The innocence and simplicity that the

child has is inherent to his nature. Every human being is equally innocent and simple

when he is born. However, as he gradually grows up, he loses his simplicity and

innocence. As he grows up in years and as he undergoes intellectual development, his

heart does not remain as simple and innocent as it was. It is at this stage that the

responsibility, role and the samskaras of the parents and teachers and spiritual gurus

come into picture.

There was once a lady. She went to a psychiatrist. That psychiatrist was a very

experienced and wise practitioner. He lived his life like a saint. The lady told him that

she wanted to give her child some teaching, to sow in him the seeds of a great person of a

beautiful life. She wanted to know from him as to what she should do for this.

The psychiatrist asked for the age of the child, and the lady told that he was five

years old. The psychiatrist told her that it was too late. He further told her that by this

time about eighty per cent of his life has already been moulded. The lady again requested

wanting to know the point of time from where she should make lkthe beginning.

In this chapter also we shall also try to understand as to from what point of time

we should make the beginning. It is obvious that when you need to go to a doctor for

check up or medicine, you always make sure before going whether that doctor is good or

not. You want to know whether he is an M.B.B.S. or and M.D. You make all these

enquiries first and only thereafter you go to that doctor for consultation and checkup. In

the same way, when you have to engage an arthitect to draw a plan for the house you

want to build, you always try and make sure how qualified and how proficient in job a

particular architect is. Similarly, when you have to engage a lawyer, you always try to

assess his experience and efficiency. How long does it take for one to become a doctor?

Of course, several years. Then how many years does it take for one to become an

architect? The answer again obviously is several years. And, if you are asked as to how

long does it take for one to become a lawyer, you always know that one has to study a lot

and it always takes many years to become an experienced and proficient lawyer.

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However, we have never thought that we must have some sort of training before

becoming parents. As it is, neither a father gives any training to his son before the latter

himself becomes the father nor a mother gives any such training to her daughter.

We must always remember one thing that it is very, very important for a woman

to become mother. Becomes a mother is even greater than becoming guru. In the Indian

culture, mother is the first who is paid homage. Then, the homage is paid to the father.

Thereafter comes the guru. Obviously, the holy men – the rishis and munis - in India

have given the highest place to mother. Whenever we remember Lord Mahavira, we

always remember him as the son of Trishla, Trishlanandan. Thus, the name of

Mahavira‟s mother, Trishla, comes before his name.

We must also keep this in mind that one does not become a mother just by giving

birth to children. A woman does not become mother by just giving birth to a child. That

is perhaps why in the Indian cultural ethos we have two words - janani or who gives

birth and ma or mother. The former only gives birth but the latter gives life. Lord

Krishna was born to Devaki, but Yashodha was his mother. Becoming mother is a great

penance. It is a sadhna or meditation. It is a special kind of institution. Mother is the

one who is great like earth. Mother possesses an emotionally warm personality and our

eyes go downcast looking at her and we pay our reverence to her. However, today we

find the mother daily visiting hotels and clubs. Then how can a son develop the feelings

of respect for her?

About the training of the child, the foremost thing is that a mother should become

mother in the real sense of the word; similarly, a father should become father in the real

sense of the word. Only then can the parents become capable of teaching something to

the children. As it is, you can teach the child only what you yourself are. You cannot

teach what you yourself are not. For example, I can teach you how to meditate only if I

know how to meditate and only if I practise it. Otherwise, I cannot teach you this. And

even if I try to teach you without myself knowing the art of meditation, it will lead to

nothing.

Mother is a beautiful personality, an affectionate personality. It is essential to

undergo a training to become mother. Is this training really essential? What sort of

training is it? What is it which she must learn?

Mother and father are two fundamental bases of Indian civilization. They together

constitute the cradle of civilization. Society is a combination of some families put

together, and a family begins with mother and father. In fact, even father comes later.

Mother comes the first of all.

Once a mother took his son to Prophet Mohammad. Her son was not well, and

the main reason for his ailment was his excessive intake of jaggery. The mother tried her

best to dissuade her son from taking jaggery, but he did not give up his habit of eating a

lot of jaggery. It was at that time that she took him to Prophet Mohammad. The mother

had thought that Prophet Mohammad was a pious and holy person and that her son would

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give up his habit of eating jaggery with the blessings of such a personage. The mother

went over to him and told him her problem.

Prophet Mohammad said to her, “Sister, you come over to me with your son after

a fortnight. She went back. After fifteen days she again came to Prophet Mohammad

with her young son. Prophet Mohammad put his hand on the child‟s head and said, „see

my child, do not each jaggery now.‟”

Listening to the words of Prophet Mohammad, the child agreed that he would not

eat any more jaggery.

The woman, his mother, was in a reflective mood and said, “O Prophet! If you

had to say only this much, you might have said so a fortnight earlier. Why did you take

this long to say only this much?”

Prophet Mohammad replied that he could have said these very words a fortnight

back. But at that time these words would have no effect on the child because at that time

he himself was fond of jaggery and used to eat it. He further told her, “During this past

fortnight I have not taken jaggery at all and I am fully convinced that it is quite easy to

give up the habit of eating jaggery. Now whatever I have said to the child will be

effective and it will produce result. Your son will not eat jaggery now.”

And, the child really gave up eating jaggery thereafter.

This is essential for a mother as well as a father. They must practice themselves

whatever they want to teach to their children. In case, they themelves do not practice,

their words will have no positive effect on the children.

You might have experienced it daily that the children would wish to do the things

you generally stop them from doing in your daily lecturess to them. Why? Because you

commit the same mistake. You yourself smoke, and still you wish that your children

should not smoke. It will not be. Even if you smoke in secret, your children are sure to

learn of this. They would also do the same in hiding, just as you have been doing.

Whatever you dop is sure to get reflected in your as well as your children‟s life. This is

bound to happen. This is in a way law of nature.

You tell lies before your children and still hope that they should speak the truth.

When you find your son telling a lie, you prefer to give him a slap, put him to fear and

otherwise overawe him. But this attitude of yours is negative, and this is bound to fail to

change the habit of your child. The fact is that the children spontaneously follow the

truth. They follow you, they follow your traits which are part of your personality and

which are reflected in your behaviour. If you tell a lie, they learn it from you; in case you

speak the truth, they follow the habit of speaking the truth from you. Whatever you do is

instantly taken over by the child. He listens to your words later on, but the meaning of

your actions and gestures reaches him quick.

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In one of the Jain sutras, we have word for son - angaj. The word angaj is

synonymous with son. It implies that the son is your own ang or part of the body. It is

just like a hand is an ang or part of my body, a foot is a part of my body, an ear is part of

my body. Similarly, the son is also part of your body, a part of your being. That is why,

he has been called angaj.

Take the example of a person who smokes tobacoo. This habit of his is bound to

have effect on his entire body. It is not that it will have effect on the tongue only. It will

sure effect the whole body. Similarly, whatsoever you do in your life is sure to have deep

effect on the life of your child because the latter is only a part of your body.

The foremost principle of child-training is that your must first of all learn yourself

whatever you want to teach your child. You begin the practice at least two months prior

to that. Then you will find that whatever you will say to your child will have sure effect

on your inner being, on his whole personality. This is a hard fact. You can test it by

putting it to practice. You might not believe what is being said and you might not get

convinced with what is lectured, but you can certainly get convinced by the results when

you test this by putting it to practice.

Of course, there are certain things which you cannot do. Still there is a way of

putting them across. There is a manner, there is an idiom of saying when you can bare

your heart to the listener. Things conveyed through such a way can also be inculcated by

your child. Let me explain how.

I narrate what happened in my own life. When I got initiated in the Jain monastic

order, one day I said to my Guru, “Guru Ji! Vivekanand had asked Ramakrishna

Paramhans that in case he knew of God, he might let him also gave a glimpse of that

God, and in case he did not know of God, then he might tell me so. Guru Ji, I also ask

you an almost similar question: „if you know about self-realization, then show me path to

and state of self-realization.‟

At that time Guru Ji had replied, “See, my son, neither you are Vivekanand nor

am I Paramhans.”

This honesty, this truthfulness of the Guru touched my inner being, my heart. The

mother as well as the father should also have the same kind of truthfulness and honesy

vis-à-vis their children. They must be honest with their children. They must never cheat

them. Do you think the children are small beings and they do not understand many

things? It is not so. They understand everything. So much so that a child of just one

year of age can also understand when his parents tell a lie to him. However, if you find

yourself a victim of some habit and you wish that your child should not become a victim

of that habit like you, you must tell him with all honest that you are in the habit of doing

this or that but doing so is rather painful for you. You must make it clear to him that

since you love the child a lot, you wish that he does not follow that habit. In case you try

to teach your child in this way, you will find that the effect of your saying will be deep,

will be on his inner being.

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However, what you usually do? You are accustomed to rebuke or chide your

child. All right, he will not do before your eyes what you have asked him not to do, but

he will sure do it behind your back.

The second principle of child-development is: be honest with your children.

Parents must be honest towards their children. A single word of falsehood coming from

your lips is sure to create a strong conviction in the mind of the child. Today you might

think that it is a small thing, a little falsehood, but with the passage of time the little

falsehood takes a monster shape.

Let us try to understand it with the help of an example. There is a small event in

the family and the child does not want to go to school. You tell him that it is all right if

he does not go to school and that you would write an application for his teacher saying

that he has not been feeling well. And you do this.

This happens quite often. You think that this is a small, insignificant thing. But

you have taught your child that a statement of falsehood can get favourable results and

that true statement might have earned rebuke or some other punishment. What he has

been today doing with the teacher, he might behave the same way with you tomorrow. In

fact, he will do the same with everybody. And, then you say that the child tells a lie and

that you do not know who taught him that.You have been responsible for teaching him

that a false statement can work for him. You taught him, and now you bear the

consequences.

Second, be forthright and clear with the child. He is sure to listen to you and then

follow what you say. This will inculcate a feeling of reverence for you in his heart. If

you do something and hide it from you, he will somehow come to know of it, but this will

lessen the respect he has for you in his heart.

When the infant begins to grow up, we find that many things he says or does are

quite natural and spontaneous. For example, a child learns a song quite soon. There is

another child who learns to speak soon. And, there might be another child who learns to

study sooner than others. How and why does this happen differently with with different

childlren. For this kind of learning of the child, India has developed a science which in

Hindi language is called garbh samskar or the learning the child acquires while still in

mother‟s womb. This training begins when the child is still in his mother‟s womb. You

might have heard that Mother Trishla had had fourteen dreams when Lord Mahavira was

conceived.

You must remember that every woman cannot possibly conceive who might be

destined to become a great man. A special kind of preparation is required to create a

personage. In India, we have another science for that. In Indian civilization, there are

said to have been sixty-four arts which a woman must imbibe to become perfect. One of

these sixty-four arts is the art of learning how to become a mother and how to invite a

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great soul. Obviously, becoming mother implies bringing a new person into this world.

In case, this new arrival today becomes noble personality, he will ameliorate the

sufferings of the world tomorrow. On the other hand, if this new arrival is of satanic

inclinations, he might cause death and destruction in the world. A woman might give

birth to a Hitler or to a Vivekananda. But whom do you invite? This depends on you.

How could you invite a noble, divine soul?

There has been an ancient, classic work entitled Panchtantra. It has within its

pages a sloka or couplet which means that if a woman gets pragnant when she is in heat,

she will sure give birth to a devilish child. On the contrary, when the woman is pure at

the time she conceives, she will give birth to a child who might become a great person.

Persons like Vivekananda are not born by pure accident. Personages like Mahatma

Buddha are also not born accidentally. The character of the parents and their prayers are

of vital significance.

Once a precept of a scientist became quite popular, and it said that there are

certain characteristics in humankind which are common to all humans. For example, one

such characteristic is anger. Everybody falls victim to anger some time or the other.

And second such characteristic is lust. Everybody falls victim to lust and indulges in

lustful activity some time or the other.

Research in the field of sex has led the scientists and psychologists to the

conclusion that man indulges in sex because he has been the product of sex. However,

Indian civilization does not accept this research. It holds that prayer is of great

importance if you want thant the new born might become a great person. Thus, the child

should be the product of prayer. And, it is possible. When the parents are saturated with

the prayerful feelings for God, the child conceived at that moment will sure become a

noble and great person.

Thereafter begins the journey ahead. This is the journey of the infant within the

womb of his mother. The infant in that state will do only what his mother does. He

cannot even breathe of his own. When the mother breathes in, the same breath is taken in

by the infant. When the mother exales out the breath, the infant also breathes out.

Whatever the mother thinks, the same thoughts go to the mind of the infant. Whatever

the mother eats, the same food goes to the infant also. What the mother sees, the infant

also sees the same. Whatever little activities the mother indulges herself in, the infant

also happens to indulge in all those activities.

At that time how should a mother make her life perfect and pious so that the

infant to be born should also become a noble and pious person. For this she will have to

undergo a specific kind of routine. You might have heard of the Kalapsutra. Therein

occurs a reference to Mother Trishla. In case you have studied that text carefully, you

might have found that when Lord Mahavira entered his mother‟s womb, she had had

fourteen dreams. Then her sleep was disturbed. Both her mind and body were full of

joy. She got up from her bed, went out of her bed-room, reached the room of her

husband, Siddharath, and narrated to him the dreams she had had.

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This narration makes it clear that at that point of time Mother Trishala was

following celibacy. This is also a principle of our Indian civilization that when a woman

gets pragnant, she must remain celibate thereafter. In case this rule is violated, then you

cannot expect that the child to be born in your family will be a noble, great being.

That is why I had said in the very beginning of my discourse that becoming a

mother is a meditation, a penance. It is no ordinary happening. It is a great happening. If

you expect a noble, great offspring, you yourself must bear all this. The growth of a tree

depends on the kind of soil it has been sown. The fruit will always be in keeping with the

kind of seed sown earlier.

We must remember a common principle of Indian civilization. The parents of the

child must follow the principle of celibacy from the day the child is conceived through

the period when it is in the womb of his mother till the mother continues to breast-feed

the child.

During the period of her pragnancy, the woman must concentrate her mind at least

for fifteen minutes daily on a great, pious personage. If she does so, the greatness and

piety of that person will enter, in the form of a samskar, the infant still placed in the

womb. During the period of pragnancy, the feelings, ideas and persons who influence the

mother are sure to influence the infant also in the same proportion.

In this context, I would wish to give two examples.

A woman was once pragnant. During that period she had in her room a

photograph of an African child. She would look at that photograph daily. As it was, she

liked that photograph a lot. The consequence of that acting and liking of the mother was

that when she gave birth to a child, the complexion and features of the child resembled

the child in the photograph.

The second example. It is a memoir. Once a woman participated in a ten-day

meditation camp. She was pragrant during that period. During the camp, her seat

happened to be by the side of a Britisher (white) woman. The latter remained before her

eyes continuously for ten days. The result was that the baby girl born to her resembled

that Britisher woman quite a lot.

The reason why I have narrated these examples to you is that the scene which the

pragnant woman looks at with feelings of depth, that scene gets reflected on the infant

growing in her womb. That is why I have said that the mother must concentrate herself

on a great person if she wants to give birth to a really great soul. That is the only way the

greatness of the person reflected upon enters the infant growing in his mother‟s womb.

Apart from this, the pragnant woman must recite daily any stotra or other mantra

or any such hymn.

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Some people come to me saying that the meaning of the stotras or mantra they

read or recite is not known to them. Even if you do not understand the meaning, the

waves of the words will sure affect the body and mind. The modern-day science also

says that the development of our personality depends on the kind of genes we have, and

that these genes can never be altered. However, the great rishis of India say that the

genes can possibly be altered. And the way to alter them is through mantras and stotras.

In case you recite these mantras/stotras with complete concentration and in a truly

prescribed manner, their waves can certain reach the genes within and through them

these genes continue changing. Therefore, the second very important principle which a

pragnant woman must follow is that she must recite, at least for fifteen minutes daily

with a mind at complete ease, a stotra/mantra: that is the only way she can give birth to a

great, noble person.

The third principle in this behalf is that a pragnant woman must practise to make

her body inert for a while everyday. This posture is called yognidra or shavasan. Why is

it recommended? Just give a look at our social and family life about twenty years back.

The children were then delivered in a normal way, but today normal delivery is quite

rare. Today about seventy to seventy-five per cent of the children are born in hospitals.

Why so? What could be reason behind this? The simple reason is that the human beings

today are not as peaceful as they were just fifteen years ago. Our minds and bodies are

full of tension. When the time comes to deliver the child, the mother is full of tension,

restlessness. When the body contracts and the infant wants to come out, it causes a lot of

pain, the labour pain as we call it. The operation becomes a must. The scientists have

made experiments in America. We Indians do not understand it today, but the same

Indian method has been taken out by the foreigners. They made experiments on pragnant

women. They made them practise yognidra and shavasan daily in the proper prescribed

method. They taught them daily for an hour ow to relax their bodies. The result after

nine months was the natural, painless delivery of the infant. The newly born infant also

wept very little. The child remained ever happy and at peace. Therefore, it is very

necessary for the woman who has to deliver a child to take out at least one hour for

herself and practise the yognidra and shavasana.

Many of my brothers and sisters will think that their children are now quite grown

up and that they need no such instruction now. However, I tell all this to you because we

never think on these issues.

When the children are fifteen or twenty years old, you come to me and ask that I

should teach them something. But what can be taught at that late stage? We must remain

conscious from the very beginning in regard to the development of the child. If we make

a good beginning, the final outcome will also be equally good. Everybody must try and

understand this. Only then can we give birth to a new civilization. Otherwise, we shall

remain stuck where we are.

These are the golden rules for the mother - meditation daily for fifteen minutes,

recitation of the stotra and practice of shavasan.

17

Another still very important principle is healthy, vegetarian food. If the food is

healthy and vegetarian, the mother will remain healthy and in due course will deliver a

healthy baby. In case these mothers daily eat spicy things, we can well understand what

will be the future of the coming generation.

These have been the issues relating to the state of the infant still in his mother‟s

womb. Now we shall reflect on the issues relating to the life thereafter. The child is

delivered after remaining in the mother‟s womb for full nine months. There is a well

established tradition amongst us Indians that the child must weep immediately after he is

delivered. In case, the child does not weep as soon as it is delivered, the members of the

family begin to weep. The doctor makes an effort to make the child weep, and when the

child begins to weep, all others become happy and laugh.

People in France began to think why should a child begin his life by weeping?

Can he not get born while still laughing? They discovered as to why does the child weep.

What for does he weep? The first reason they discovered was that the child weeps

because he is ill-treated immediately after he is delivered. He is instantly separated from

his mother. His umblical cord is cut off, and he is biologically cut off from his mother.

The child had remained within the womb of his mother for nine months and during these

nine months he had begun to think that he is the mother and mother is he. He never

thought himself separate from his mother. He has been considering himself one with his

mother, but suddenly he is separated. This will certainly hurt him. He feels shocked, and

he wonders as to where he has come. What is that place where he now finds himself?

Whose are the hands which now hold him?

The research of the French doctors resulted in a new process of delivering the

child. They put the child on the mother‟s belly as soon the child is delivered. This makes

both the child and his mother feel good.

Why does the child weep? He weeps because of the cough that had gathered in

the lungs of the child. This cough clears out as he weeps, and thus he begins his own

process of breathing. The French doctors put the child on mother‟s belly and gave lhim

some time. The child then began breathing slowly. When he began to breathe with ease,

he was quietly separated from his mother and was kept in a tub of warm water. This was

done because so long as the child was in the mother‟s womb, he was there in a swimming

posture. There he keeps floating in a fluid. That is why he is put in warm water. The

water was heated up only to the extent of human body‟s temperature. The child likes all

this a lot. In this situation, the child began his life laughing.

Cannot every child be delivered in this fashion? This is a possibility. But to

make this possibility a reality, we need a bit of understanding.

Several research works have come out in French with regard to the delivery of the

child. I shall also share with you the results of their another research. About fifteen or

twenty years back the need for numbered spectacles for the children was very rare, but

we know that this need has multiplied in recent years. Why? We often say that this is

18

because the children watch a lot of television. No doubt, this is one of the reasons, but

there is still one more reason.

Earlier, when a child was delivered, the delivery took place in a dark room where

a lamp of ghee used to provide the only light. But these days the delivery usually takes

place in hospitals, and in the hospital delivery rooms we find high voltage electric lights

burning. Just think of someone who might have spent full nine months in darkness and

then suddenly make him stand up before the flash lights. What will be his plight? It is

natural that his eyes will

You might imagine the situation if you are kept for a week in a fully dark room

and thereafter made to stand before the sun in hot noon. Your eyes will not feel

comfortable. Your eyes will not be able to bear that strong light for quite for some time.

This will certainly leave bad effect on lyour eyes.

This bad effect can be seen today on the eyes of the small child. He opens his eyes

for the first time in a very sharp light. He has to bear throughout his life the ill effect of

this light.

In India it was customary to keep the child in that dark room lit only by a ghee-

lamp for full one month. Thereafter he was gradually taken out in the light. It was done

to avoid dazzling the child in the bright sun light.

This is the science of birth.

After the birth, there begins a process of growth of the child. All the parents wish

that their child learns to speak soon, he should speak sweetly, his pronunciation should be

clear and so on. For all this, we in India followed a simple procedure. As soon as a child

was born and before he was given anything to drink, the word oankar was written on his

tongue either with a thin rod of silver or a soft twig of a tree. Today you might think

what difference does it make? But it did make the difference. By doing so, speech or

knowledge began to grow quickly in the child. We have seen that the children on whose

tongue was written oankar would learn to speak sooner than the children who did not

pass through this ceremony.

The child grows gradually. He learns to walk gradually. As he learns to walk, the

distance between him and his mother begins to increase. Uptil now he was always in the

lap of his mother, but now he makes an effort to go away from the lap. He begins to

establish relationships with a new world. What is this new world? This new world is the

world of toys. He starts playing with these toys.

How should the child play with the toys? This is a question of vital importance.

The child has inherent inclination for playing. He grows as he plays. The first thing that

the parents should keep in mind is that we should encourage the child to play. If we stop

him from playing or discourage him to do so, his growth will not be normal. His body

and personality will not reach its potentials. They will remain incomplete and imperfect.

19

Now the question arises as to which or what kind of toys a child should play with.

I was also a child, say forty or fifty years from today. Those days the children did not

have much choice with the toys. The children would then consider the earth as their toy

and play with it. Modern era is the era of toys. Every child has a lot many toys as his

possession. What kind of toys we should provide to the child to let him play with? This

is a good test of our thinking and rationality. The kind of toys a child will play with, this

will affect his later mental make-up, and this mental make-up will get reflected in his

overall character.

One day I was on my evening walk. I was close by a park. There I saw two

children playing. These two kids were brother and sister. The brother stood on the wall

of the park. He loudly called his sister asking her to come to him. The sister replied that

she would not come. The kid boy repeated his call to his sister twice or thrice. But every

time the sister refused to go to him. This made the brother angry. He threatened that if

she did not come, he will shoot her dead. So saying, he signalled the pistol-toy in his

hand towards his sister.

We often see children behaving this way or speaking such words in such a tone.

We easily ignore this as a minor thing. But if you reflect on it a little deeply, you will find

that this is not a minor thing to be so easily ignored. The culture of pistol is becoming his

culture. Today he holds a plastic pistol-toy in his hand, but tomorrow a real gun can

reach his hands. The possession of a mere pastic pisol-toy has given him the thought to

kill someone. Tomorrow as he grows up, there is every possibility of his taking to

violence or murder.

The toys which you give to the child leave a deep impact on the child‟s mind.

Therefore, the parents should be very conscious while buying toys for their children. We

must never provide child the kind of toys which are likely to create in him feelings of

violence, hatred and discrimination.

The toys should be the kind to which a child takes naturally. Earlier, our children

used to play with earth. I still believe that earth is the best toy for the child. The kind of

life-force that can be found in earth is not found in any other thing or any other toy. If a

child plays with the earth, it adds to his life-force.

This is also a fact of life today that not sufficient earth is available where the

children can play and thus develop their life force. The urbanization of society has

swallowed the pure earth and open environment. Today pure earth has simply

disappeared. The kuccha paths have been replaced by pucca, metalled roads, and this

latter provides no life force. On the contrary, it takes away some life force.

The child should be allowed play with earth if that is available. The child should

be kept away from the kind of toys with inculcate in him bad feelings. The toys are toys

for the grown ups, and for the children they are alive objects. They consider the toys as

20

their own part. Therefore, never give to the child a toy which can create a feeling of

violence in him.

When the child is four or five years old, the parents send him to a school. At what

age should the child be sent to school? This question deserves our special consideration.

The issue for us to understand is that ever since the day the child was born in this world,

the power of acquisition in the child has been decreasing by the day. With each passing

day, he comes in contact with newer and newer object of this world.What could be taught

to the child when he is young is much more difficult to be taught as he grows up.

How should be child be taught? The educationists and psychologiest have made a

minute study of the subject. According to them, for example, we want to tell the child

that it is a tree. For the child to understand this, they will place before him for a second a

painting of the tree and then the word „tree‟. The painting will be before him for a

moment only and then it will be taken away to be replaced by some other such painting.

Then there will be word for the next painting. In this way, they keep before him not more

than ten words. And, daily they take away one of the paintings. For instance, if they had

shown ten paintings today, they will take away one of them and add a new one to them.

They continue doing so for one year. The results achieved through this method of

teaching are wonderful, and the child becomes capable of reading a newspaper at the age

of just three.

What I narrate here are not imaginary stories. This has happened and has been

happening. For this we need a training centre. Such training centres have been set up

and have flourished in Florida. In India we lack such centres, but we can certainly set up

such centres here as well. Whatever you teach a child when he is quite young, he

acquires/learns quite easily and quickly. They have realized that if you place before the

child a hundred dots on one paper and ninty-nine dots on the other, he will find out the

difference that these are the hundred and these ninty-nine. The child has such a sharp

brain.

We must keep in mind that the job of teaching can not be left to the teacher alone.

A mother can do better. A father father can also do equally well. No one else can do

that. When a teacher teaches the child, he teaches the child mere words. But it is

necessary that the teacher should become one with the taught if he wants to teach

something to the latter. Both of them should become one. So long as the teacher does

not become one with the child, so long as the child does not realize that the person

teaching him is just like him, the child will not be prepared to learn.

When a teacher teaches the child, he remains a teacher and the child remains a

student. They fail to establish between themselves the kind of relationship that is

required. They fail to establish the relationship of oneness. Thus, the child does not put

his mind in learning. For this, it is essential that the teacher must establish with the child

a relationship of equality, of oneness.

21

What sort of behaviour should be adopted towards the children? This is also a

question of vital importance. We should ever keep in mind that our attitude towards

children should be respectful. We must never use harsh or humiliating words for the

child. The children use the kind of language we use in conversation with them. What

happens in real life is that you teach the child to be respectful, but you behave with him

in a way that is not respectful. Since the child very quickly follows the behaviour, he

learns easily from your behaviour but does not learn the lesson that you have been trying

to teach him. Whatever he learns from your lessons remains a mere formality in his mind,

but the reflection of your behaviour gets permanently stuck in his mind. You must treat

the child with respect so that he could learn that this is not a mere lesson to be learnt but a

feeling to be part of his being.

We should also keep in mind that the child learns from whatever you do. Your

language becomes the language of the child. Your conduct becomes the conduct of the

child. Whatever you are will sure get echoed in your child. That is why he is said to be

your angaj, part of your body. Therefore, it is necessary that the parents themselves must

learn whatever they want to teach the child. If you try just to teach them with words, the

message will remain mere words with them. This learning will never become part of

their conduct and behaviour.

Parents should adopt a friendly attitude towards their children. They must listen

to attentively whatever the child says. This helps in the right growth of the child‟s

personality. In case you do not listen to the child with care, he feels hurt and this hinders

the proper growth of his personality.

One day a small child-girl came to me. She was quite sad. I asked her the reason

for her sadness. She replied, “Guru Ji! Today I am verysad.” I asked her again as to

what made her so sad. She replied that she had got her examination result that day. I

asked her if she had not got good marks. She told me that she had got very good marks:

she had got 85 per cent marks. I asked her why she was sad even after getting so good a

result. She told me that she went to her father to show her result card to him and he

rebuked her saying that he did not then have the time.

I could well understand the sadness of the child. You might think it to be an

insignificant issue. But it is a very significant issue to me. When you rebuke your child

without any reason, you are doing injustice to him, you are closing the doors for the

growth of his personality. Your words hurt him. The result of such an attitude on the

part of parents is always negative. If you do not listen to the child today, he will not

listen to you tomorrow.

At the end, I would wish to say that you must share your meals with your

children. I know life is quite busy these days. If you cannot do this everyday, you must

do so at least once or twice a week. This will add to the feeling of affection, of proximity

between you all.

22

I have placed before you these little issues. These are not the things to be merely

said or just listened to. You must put them into practice. It is only the practice on which

depends the result. I hope you will certainly put these small precepts into practice. In

case you start doing so, you will sure find your house transformed into a heaven.

23

Chapter II

BEGINNING OF THE RIGHT EDUCATION

The issue of discussion with us today is the beginning of right education. To

understand this, let us first understand a statement by J. Krishnamurthy, a very well

known thinker and philosopher. He has said that life is like a game of cards. In the game

of cards, you cannot decide who will be your partner in the game. Even the number of

players is also not in your hands. You never know the kind of cards you will get as you

begin the game. Then what is in your hands? The only thing in your hands is the way

you want to play the game. If the player is proficient, he can win the game even if the

card in his share are not that good. On the other hand, if the player is not proficient, he

will lose the game even if he has got to his share very good cards.

Similar is our life. What kind of situations you will have to face in life, what kind

of family one might take birth, who will be one‟s parents and simblings, in which society

and social circumstances one will be born, where one will grow up is beyond man: none

of this is in his hands. All these things are determined by your birth. The child is born

and he gets his parents. He is born and he gets the society where he has to grow and live.

The child is born and he gets the country. The child is born and he gets his family. But

how will one live his life in such circumstances, whether with joy or grudge or with smile

or tears in eyes, is in one‟s own hands And here begins the right educaion.

I have entitled this chapter of the book „Right Education‟: is this title correct? If

we look into the words closely, we shall see that the meaning „right‟ is inherent in the

word „education‟. How can we call it education if it is not the right one? Yes, if it is not

right, it cannot be called education.

Once a son asked his mother if she had true love for him.

It is a universal question which is generally asked. You might have also put the

same question to many people in your own life. You might have got different responses.

But, to my mind, this question has only one answer. And that answer is: love is only

what is true. Love is ever true. There is no place for falsehood in it. Falsehood has no

place in the sphere of love. When falsehood enter, love disappears. There can be

attachment, but not love becaue attachment is always false: it is always momentary. On

the other hand, love is true and everlasting.

Similarly, whatever is right is education: whatever is not right, that cannot be

called education. The right education teaches us the art to live life meaningfully. What is

right education? What should be called the right education?

We know that in Hindu language a word has more than one meaning. In Hindi,

the word „siksha‟, generally translated into English as education, also has two meanings.

One, it implies reading, writing, teaching, etc. Two, it also means punishment.

Generally, the word siksha in Hindi is also used for conveying the meaning of

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punishment: for example, the children sometimes say that they have not done their home-

work, and consequently they might receive siksha or punishment from the teacher.

Now we have to consider the question whether the siksha that we give to the

children is education (reading, writing, etc.) or punishment. What do we actually provide

to the children? The correct answer to this question can only be given by the children

themselves. You may ask your children which months of the year they like the most.

Their answer invariably will be the two months of summer vacation.

Holidays from the school is the most the children love. Why? Why do they do

so? Its only clear-cut answer could be that children consider education a burden on them.

They dislike the studies. But why do they dislike their studies? The answer is: because

our education system is such that the children get the tension. For education, we have

prescribed some ideals, but these ideals are so materialistic that they cannot be the

subject-matter of pleasure. The child is generally unfamiliar with such ideals but we

prescribe education keeping mind only these ideals.

What is the objective of modern-day education?

Once I am in Ahmadnagar. A child came to me. I said to him, “What do you do,

my son?” He replied that he studied in the eighth standard. I again asked him what he

would do in the coming years. He again replied in the same tone, “I shall work quite hard

and get a very good score in the matriculation examination.”

“What will you do, then?” I again asked him.

“Then I shall seek and get admission in a reputed college,” was his reply.

“What will you do thereafter?”

“I shall become and engineer.”

“Then?”

“Then I shall earn a lot of money.”

“What thereafter?”

“Then I shall build for myself a beautiful mansion.”

“Then?”

“Then I shall relax and rest.”

25

Then I asked him if it was at all necessary to do all this to get some rest and

relaxation. Is the sole object of this long-drawn laborious life only rest and relaxlation?

If so, then one need not put oneself to all this trouble of working hard.

I told the child, “Look my son! Look at that dog sitting on the farther corner of the

street. It is an perfect peace and rest. You are doing such hard work in search of that rest

but the dog has got it without doing anything. The only difference is that after such a

hard labour you will put on some good quality robes whereas the dog does not need any

dress. You will get some delicious dishes for your food whereas the dog will have

simple, coarse food. You will have cushioned bed to sleep in whereas it will sleep on the

bare ground. This different is not too much. Then why put yourself to such hard work?

Just think for a while if the objective of education in modern-day world has not

been confined to just earning more and more money? Surely, we have lost the real

objective of education. We should become capable of earning handsomely, getting good

food to eat, getting a fine house to live in and acquiring costly robes to wear on have been

taken as the only objective of our education. The education could also be related to and

also used for the spiritual uplift of man. But we have simply forgotten this.

The sole aim of modern-day education is to get good food, dress and house.

Today all parents hold the view that if they are able to make their children stand on their

feet, they have taught them all, and nothing else remains for them to learn. Does this

much fulfils the objective of education?

I do not say that money has no worth in human life. Of course, money has its

own worth and utility. Without it the material needs of man can never be got fulfilled.

But does this much complete our education? If we have a look at the modern-day

education, we shall find that this is the be-all and end-all of our education today.

Obviously, today all kthe students have only one object in their mind - to get through

the examination with a maximum number of marks. Therefore, the first eight months of

the academic year a student may or may not study his books, the last about two months

are fully devoted to studies because of the approaching examinations. As the

examinations approach, all the students begin burning midnight‟s oil. The phobia of

examination forces them to study and study harder. Although the heart is not in the

study, but the fear of examination makes everyone work hard.

These days studies have become a burden for the students. It has become a cause

of stress and tension. Each of the students is under stress and tension. That is why

students feel relaxed as the examinations come to an end. They feel a sort of peace

descending over them. During the examination period the studens live is dire stress.

Some of them even cannot eat or sleep properly. They often mumble during their sleep.

So much of stress and tension overtakes them that some of the students have to resort to

taking pills before going to take the examination. The parents often accompany their

wards up to the examination centre so that their wards do not feel further stressed and

tense at the moment of the examination. This is just like a patient being taken to the

hospital for surgical operation when the guardians taking him along are not sure whether

26

the patient will or will not survive the operation. When the students have to appear for

the tenth standard examinations, the parents themselves are under a lot of stress and

tension. They are heard advising their wards to “be patient and careful. We are with you.

We wait for you just outside the examination centre. Take your examination with all your

attention and care….”

In a way, the parents are under more stress and tension than their wards.

Once a mother came to me and said, “Maharaj! I cannot come to attend to the

discourse.” I asked her the reason for it. She replied, “My child has to take his

examinations.” I asked her if the examinations of her child are being conducted by the

board or by the school itself.” She again replied that her child was to appear in the fifth

standard examinations, but examinations are after all examinations, you know.

The parents are under as much stress because of the examinations as their ward.

In case the examinations only add to the stress and tension, then what is the use of such

an education? What is the use of education if it fails to produce a person who is at peace

with himself and who is happy at heart.

The fact of the matter is that the education being given in India today, the studies

the students go through is not our own. We have imported it from the Britishers. The

English are gone, but they did leave behind their books as well as their dresses. These

days our robes are not our own. The kind of trousers we wear today is surely not ours.

This has been left behind by the Britishers. The Indian native dress was shirt and dhoti or

loose piece of cloth tied around the waist. This shirt is not Indian. This is also something

left behind by the English. We Indian never tied a neck-tie. This is also a gift left behind

by the English. Similarly, the syllabus that we study today has also been left behind by

the same Britishers. Not to speak of the education and syllabus, the constitution which

governs the Indian democratic system is also not India. We have adopted this also from

the British. We have got independence, but only in name. We are still living in the same

conditions.

How should we make the beginning today? It is not possible for us to change the

entire education system in a single day. Education will remain the same. It will change

only when the entire society, the entire country changes. At the moment, we have no

alternative other than sending our children to the existing educational institutions.

However, we can certainly do one thing. The children remain in their schools/colleges

for about six hours, and they are at home for the remaining hours. We can certainly do

something during those hours. But what can we do? What can we teach them during that

period?

A very old story comes to my mind. Our country India is a beautiful land.

Whatever message has been given to the people here has been given through the medium

of stories. A story is, as we all know, fiction which is close to and which resembles truth.

It is fiction because we are never sure whether such a thing as narrated in the story really

27

happened or not. It is true or it resembles truth because it contains the element of

probability.

So let me narrate the story for your benefit. What does the story say? It goes on

to say that there was once a king. He had three sons. When the king grew old, he began

to think as to which of his sons should be declared his heir. As it happens in most of such

stories, the king thought of putting his sons to a test. The king gave a rupee to each of his

three sons and asked them that they have to fill their respective rooms with the rupee

given to each one of them.

After listening to the directions of their father, all the three sons went to their

rooms. All the three had equal amount of money with them and each one was expected

to perform the same job. But each one of them had his own brains, his own

understanding. The elder prince thought that his father had gone crazy with old age.

How can a wise man think of filling such a big room with just one rupee? Many thoughts

came to his mind, but he remained indecisive. However, it was the father‟s order and it

had to be obeyed. But he did not seem to reach a decision. At that moment, his sight fell

on the sweeper who was pulling his cart filled with the rubbish of the town to throw it

outside the city limits. The prince thought of a plan. He summoned the sweeper to his

presence and asked him to throw into his room all the rubbish that he might collect from

the town. He promised to pay the sweeper a rupee in lieu of this job done. The sweeper

carried out the order of the prince and filled his room with the rubbish.

The middle prince also did not think of any better means. After a lot of thinking,

he reached the conclusion that a rupee can buy only dry grass in enough quantity to fill

the room. He took the decision and giving the rupee to one of his servants had the dry

grass bought and filled his room with it.

The youngest prince was also thinking of means to fill his room with the rupee

given to him. He began wondering that if his father has ordered him to fill his room with

something worth only a rupee, there must be some such thing which can fill the room and

lwhich can be brought with just one rupee. He thought and thought deeply on this. At

last, he thought of one thing. He went to the bazar with that rupee in his pocket. He

bought with that rupee a lamp, an incense and a lute. With these things he came to his

room. He lighted the lamp in his room and it was filled with he light of the lamp. Then

he lighted the incense and the fragrance fill the enire room. He sat in the room and began

playing the lute, and his room was filled with music.

In the evening the king arrived at the appointed hour. First of all he went to the

room of the eldest prince. He felt the foul smell from quite a distance. It did not take

long for the king to realize the truth. He felt pained and he rebuked the prince.

Thereafter he moved towards the room of the middle prince. He saw what he had done

with the rupee given to him. He felt rather anguished at what both of his elder sons done.

At last he went towards the room of his youngest son. No sooner did he enter the room

than his eyes were filled with light. He could smell the sweet fragrance because the son

had already burnt the incense there. He could now listen to the sweet music coming from

28

the lute being played by the prince. The king felt overjoyed at all this. He hugged the

son and appointed him the heir-apparent.

You must keep in mind that the right education is that which fills us with the light

of love, which fills us with the smell of truth and which fills us with the music of joy.

The education which fills us with unnecessary competition, falsehood and prejudice that

cannot be called the right education. In fact, we should not call it education at all.

The education is which makes us poised, transforms us into joyous persons. It

teaches us to live each circumstance with joy.

What is joy? What would you call joy? You sit beneat the electric fan and relax.

You have already taken a delicious food to your fill. You have all the comforts of life.

In such a situation, you just smile. Cannot we possibly call it joy? Do you not consider

all this joy? But, to my mind, this is not joy. This joy did not come from within you: it

did not come out of your inner self. Joy is something different. It comes out of your

inner self. It is not at all affected by the external elements.

What, then, is joy? …the electric fan has stopped working. The mosquitoes is

buzzing around you as if they were deeply in love with you and adored you. They drink

your blood as if their life depended on it. It is the summer weather. You perspire so

badly. You can feel smoke and dust all around you. But still you smile. That is real joy.

This is the first education. But how can we give this sort of education to the

child? Should we go to the life of Lord Rama or to that of Lord Krishna to understand

this? Rama did not become Lord Rama all of a sudden, and Krishna did not become Lord

Krishna all of a sudden. Rama could become Lord Rama and Krishna could become

Lord Krishna because of the samskaras that they possessed in them. They were born in

royal families. When they reached an age which made them eligible for education, they

were sent to their gurus or teachers. The Gurus gave them the samskaras. The Gurus

kept them in their ashrams or monastries, not as princes but as ordinary students; they

made them do even the most humble menial jobs. The idea behind this was that a prince

should not just learn how to rule, but he should also know what kind of life a poor wood-

cutter lives. That is why the Gurus sent them to the forest to collect wood. The Gurus

wanted that the princes should not just know how to issue orders, but they must also learn

how to abide by the orders. The Gurus would give them the harshest of lessons, but the

Guru-mother, i.e. the wife of the Guru, would provide them the motherly affection.

During the education of the princes, both harshness and affection went side by side.

That is how Rama could become Lord Rama. That is why neither the royal throne

could attract him nor the fourteen year-long exile in the forests could cause him any pain.

He had learnt how to face each circumstance calmly. How can one live each moment

joyfully - the mystery of this principle had become part of his personality from his very

childhood.

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You can also transform your own children into Ramas and Krishnas: yes, this is

possible. You can teach your children from their very childhood the way how to live life

in a joyous manner. However, this education cannot be provided orally. This can be

given only by yourself living those precepts, by yourself becoming an example. It is

necessary that the child should be given education in a way so that they can lead life

calmly whether life is harsh or comfortable.

But our thinking is absolutely different. We are ever making efforts to provide

our children with the best of comforts in life. While so doing we forget that the child

might face hardships in life tomorrow, and how he will face life if and when such a

situation arises. By providing him with the maximum of comforts, we make our child

handicapped. What I mean to say does not imply that the child be thrust into hardships

and discomforts. While providing him comforts, we should also see that occasionally

comes face to face with hardships and difficulties. This will help in the balanced

development of his personality. This will also add to the resistance power within him.

Perhaps you might be aware of the fact that the children in India do not fall ill as

easily and as often as do the children in America because the latter have much less

resistance power than the former. Put an American child in the situation in which an

average/ordinary Indian child is living, and you will find that he instantly falls ill and we

will have to get him hospitalized. The reason simply is that he has been born and brought

up with so many facilities and comforts that he is not capable of bearing even the least of

discomfort and difficulty.

A study has revealed that as we in India have our family doctors, similarly in

American they have their family psychiatrists. A large number of families there are

victims of one or the other psychological ailment, and they need the constant consultation

and help of a psychiatrist. Can you ever think of such a scenario in India? It is not so

even today in India. The reason why we Indians are still safe from such psychiatric

problems is that in Indian life we daily face both the positive and negative situation.

You must keep in mind what I say here. When you teach your child, you must

say „yes‟ when you feel that saying „yes‟ is the best thing, and that you must say „no‟

when you are sure that the situation demands saying so. You must say „yes‟ or „no‟ with

determination and firmness. But look within yourself and see how do you say „yes‟ or

„no‟ to your child.

Take the instance of a young girl. She goes to her mother and says, “Mother, I

want a chocklate to eat.” The mother will sure say no and further advise her child that

eating chocklates will cause problems to her teach. The child will naturally insist on

taking the chocklate. The mother will again say no discouraging her from this. Then

again the child insists, cries, taps her feet heavily and tries to create a scene. At last the

mother gives in and allows her to take chocklate.

Do you know what will be the result of all this? That small child has come to

understand that if he needed a chocklate, she must weep and cry like that. Only then

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mother will let her have the chocklate. Then this habit will not come to an end with the

childhood and it will sure remain with her later in life as well. Today she weeps and

cries before her mother, and tomorrow she will weep and cry before someone else.

Today she cries just to have a chocklate, but tomorrow she might create the same kind of

scene demanding a scooter or something like that. And when you refused to buy her a

scooter, she will again weep and cry and create a scene. Then, she might behave the

same way with her husband also.

I would wish to share with you here an example. This is not something confined

only to girls, and this can happen with boys also. Who has been responsible for this habit

of the child? Obviously, the mother who acquisced to the request for that chocklate. Had

her mother at that time told her firmly that it means „no‟ when she says as such, and when

she says „yes‟, it means yes, then the result would have been a balanced development of

the personality of the child.

Actually, what happens? When we say „yes‟ to our child, we are well aware that

there is „no‟ hidden behind our „yes‟. And similarly when we say „no‟ to our child, there

is always „yes‟ hidden somewhere behind our „no‟. If it is sixty to eighty per cent „no‟,

then it is also twenty per cent „yes‟. Our own mind is not working as a whole: it is in

parts. And that is why the children fail to understand as to what do their parents expect

of them. The children always know that the parents‟ „yes‟ can always change into a „no‟,

and vice versa.

The first and foremost thing is that when you say „yes‟ you should mean it and

should be firm on it. Similarly, when you say „no‟, you should mean it and should be

firm on it. If the child feels sad because of this, let him feel so. It is not necessary that he

should go out playing daily with his shoes on. He should sometimes also play without

the shoes. Suppose he is one day in a situation when he has to play without shoes on. In

that situation also, he should be able to play. It is necessary to give him this kind of

education. You must not teach him to wear only the beautiful and costly clothes. He

must also be taught to wear simple and coarse clothes.

There was once a very good professor in Pune. He used to teach engineering

students in a college. He would tell his students that they had the time from this morning

till evening and during this day they have to earn at least a hundred rupees without

divulging their identity. He put it as a pre-condition for them to clear the examination.

His students did make endeavours. They would make different kinds of efforts to

earn the required sum of money. Some of them would, of course, succeed in this venture.

Some would even say that they would not be able to earn this. To such students, the

professor would say that then there was use of their becoming engineers. It is better to

fail you in the examination.

You must teach you child to accept your „no‟ if he has learnt to accept your „yes‟.

The child must be taught to bear a bit of pain.

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An incident of past comes to my mind. A small kid was weeping bitterly.

Perhaps he was hungry. I asked the child‟s grandmother that the child was weeping

because he was hungry and that she should feed her milk. The grandmother replied in the

negative saying that he should weep; he must learn that there can be delay in getting milk

even if he weeps this way. In case he becomes habitual of getting anything as soon as he

wept, this will not be good for him in later life.

In Norway and America people get depressed quite easily. As compared to them,

people in India do not get depressed so easily. What is the reason behind this? The

reason is obvious. A person born in India is used to face in his life much more hardship

and difficulties than the one born in America or Norway. In India, a person can smile

even if he has spend the nights on road pavements. Why so? Because he has learn to

sleep on the pavement from his very childhood. He can make the stone lying near by his

pillow. He can enjoy as sound a sleep with his head resting on that stone as you might be

able enjoy on a cushioned bed in the air-conditioned room. The things which can cause

much pain and suffering to an affluent person, the same things and situations are a matter

of routine for him.

The first and foremost education in life is to teach the child to live through pain

with a smile on the face, to learn to smile when the circumstances compell you to weep.

Try and start giving this education first of all to the child. In the childhood every child

has this kind of art. However, gradually, we supress his smile. We teach him to be, to

look serious. On the other hand, we should have taught him something else. As it is, we

should teach the child to be sincere and not to be serious. It is very essential to be sincere

whereas it is not necessary at all to be serious.

We should teach the children to smile. We should teach them how to smile in all

the circumstances of life. And this smile should not just be a show off, it should reflect

your inner self, your inner happiness. When will the child begin to reflect his inner joy

on this face?

According to old education system in India, a child was sent to the gurukul, the

old nomenclature for school, when he became six years of age. Here the teachers gave

him education which was those days known by the name of Brahman-Updesh, or

teaching about Brahman. The first education given to the child was about Brahman.

This implied the purity of heart and soul, the purity of one‟s inner self. The child was

first of all taught how to make his mind peaceful, how to make his inner self pure and

pious. It was later on and after this that he was given education in languages,

mathematics and science. The reason behind this was that it was believed in India that

whatever knowledge one might gain in the field of mathematics, science and languages, it

would be of no use until one learns how to keep his mind at peace and how make his

inner self pure and pious.

Just reflect over the lives of some people who otherwise enjoy affluence in life

and some directors and big companies. They work hard throughout the day for their

respective companies. They feel dead tired by the evening, and then they go to club to

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refresh themselves. There they have a few drinks, play cardss and indulge in some

entetainment. Thereafter the return home and fall down on the bed to sleep. What is

their life? If you are a director of a big company and if that makes you lead this kind of

life, what is the utility of all this?

Today in India, Kerala is the only state enjoying hundred per cent literacy. At the

same time, it is also a fact that Kerala has dubvious distinction of the maximum number

of suicides being committed in India. If a man has to commit suicide even after he gets

all the education, then what is the meaning, what is the utility of this education?

However, the fault does not lie with education. The fault lies with our system which has

made education one-sided. As it is, our education develops only one part of our brain,

and the other part remains completely undeveloped.

I hope you probably know that the human brain has two parts. One of it is on the

left side and the other on the right side. The one on the left is contains logic,

mathematics and science. And the right side part contains intuition, metaphysics, art,

language and others. The education being given to the child today develops only the left

side of our brain - logic, intellect, rationality, discrimination, ethics, etc. We seem to

have forgotten to develop the right side of the brain. When we were children, both parts

of our brains functioned equally well. Our education system lays stress only on the

development of the left side of the brain and the right side remains undeveloped. That

results in our restlessness.

The right side of the brain can be developed through meditation, through peace

and poise, through the art of realizing your inner self. This is what was called in earlier

times the Brahman-Updesh.

You are always thinking and making efforts to send your child to the best of

schools. You do not mind paying fees, whether it is a thousand rupees or two thousand

rupees per month. The thing you give all of your attention is that the school should be

the best one. But you entirely miss one point. You do not bother that the school provides

for only one-sided education. What will happen to the other side of the brain? You may

send your child to any school you deem is best. But at the same time it is also necessary

that you send the child to a pious, holy saint also. Your child spends five to six hours in

the school daily. Your must persuade him that he spends at least half an hour daily with a

pious saint. Encourage him to learn about meditation and reflection. Have you ever

encouraged your child in this direction?

People often complain that their children refuse to go to any saint. But I would

like to ask the parents if they have ever seriously encouraged or persuaded their children

to do so. The children can spend five to six hours in the school with their teachers. I do

not think there can be any problem with them if they spend just half an hour with any

holy saint.

To my mind, you yourself have not given any importance to meditation,

concentration or company of the holy. You have developed a belief that meditation or

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concentration is for old age, for the people who have nothing more useful to do in life.

But this is not true: it is far from truth. Meditation and concentrartion constitute the

beginning of life. They constitute the basis of life. Whenever the child begins his

education, you must teach him how to make the slate of mind clean and blank.

Once Vivekananda was asked by someone what he thought was the meaning of

education. To this question, Vivekananda replied that , according to him, education

means enabling the student to write on the slate of his mind whatever is necessary to be

written there; and when it is necessary to clean the slate, he should be able to make it

clean. In other words, education means enabling one to write on mind‟s state whatever

one wants, to wipe the slate clean whenever one wants.

Today we do not have this in our hands to write or clean the mind‟s slate as per

our own wish. On the other hand, what happens is that we forget what we want to

remember and whatever we want to forget that keeps coming to our time and again. You

want to remember a lesson, and you repeat it time and again, but still you cannot

remember it and forget it. In general also, the things we do not want to remember and

want to forget about, these things would crop up repeated in our mind. The reason

behind this is that we lack the art which enables us to control our mind. We do no know

the art of either writing something on the mind‟ slate or wiping something off this slate

that was imprinted there earlier. To realize this is kthe first art. And you can sure teach

this art to your children. If you send your children to a good school, then you must send

also to a holy saint. Even if the child does not feel like going there, you should persuade

him to go there. But you must take him to a saint at least for half an hour daily. Make it

a habit with the child from his childhood. In the presence of the saint, you yourself

observe silence and peace of mind, and ask your ward also to do the same. If you say

that you do not have the time for all this, then it is sure that the child will also say the

same. First of all, you will have to sit in the holy presence yourself. This is the first

lesson. This is the basis of our education.

The second lesson is the smell of love. In our modern-day life, we do lack

something, it is love. There was a time when we used to live in joint families. All

members of the joint, extended family would sit together and have dialogue on various

issues amongst themselves. They shared with one another all the happenings of the day,

all the progress made on various ventures. They would also share some light moments

and laugh with one another. At the end of the day, they would all sleep together in the

same compound.

However, this system has come to an end today. The son comes home, has his

food and goes direct to his own room. The father comes, takes his food and heads direct

to his own room. The daughter comes, has her food and moves straight to her room.

Each member in the family has a room to himself or herself. Even though the family

lives together, but all members of the family live separately. They seem to have to no

time to meet one another. Early in the morning, the fathes leavess home for work. The

follows him soon to go to his work or to join his father at work. The father is busy in his

work and the son is busy in his own work. The mother is busy in her own household

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chores and the daughter is busy in her own things. Everybody is busy. The mutual love

has lost somewhere in this busy-ness.

Distances are increasing by the day. The father has a separate world of his own,

and the son has his own, separate from that of his father. Mother is a captive in her own

world, and the daughter is a prisoner in her own world. The family is one to show off.

But the unity of the family has been lost somewhere. The thread seems to have broken

and the beads have scattered around.

Can you possibly share all the secrets of your heart, literally bare your heart to

your own son? Can you say with any amount of certainty that your son can bare his heart

before you? Look into your heart, think awhile and then answer this question. Is it so?

Can your daughter share all her secrets, all her thoughts with her mother? Can the

mother share everything in her heart with her daughter? Perhaps, the answer to all these

questions is no. Both the mother and the daughter hide one thing or the other from the

other.

Many young boys and girls come to me. They often ask, “Look, Guru Ji, we can

tell everything, share everything with you, but we cannot do so with our mother. When I

listen to them speaking such words, I really feel pained.

The fact of the matter is that your children are afraid of speaking the truth in your

presence. They are afraid of what you might think about them thereafter. And, actually,

this is right. Here just remember the father of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi did

not become such a great personality for nothing. At the back of his greatness lies the

education given him by his father.

Let me share with you an incident from the life of Mahatma Gandhi. When he

was just a child, one day he was pressing the feet of his father. Suddenly, drops of tears

from the eyes of Mahatma Gandhi fell down on the feet of his father. His father asked

him, “Mohan, my son, why are you weeping?”

Gandhi told everything to his father. He told him that he has committed theft. He

has also taken non-vegetarian food and he has also smoked cigerattes in hinding. He told

everything to his father, everything which he had earlier kept hidden from him.

In such a situation, what would have a normal father done? He might have got

angry. He might have rebuked his son and would have threatened him. And, as a result

of this, the child would have felt terrified. And, then he might have tried to find out some

excuse justifying why he had had to do it and saying that he did not do so willingly. He

might have presented any excuse for what he did.

Keep this in mind that whenever you try to hide your evil for any reason, it

implies that you are strangulating the truth. But Gandhiji did not give any excuses. His

father was also a very mature and intelligent person. He did not feel annoyed at all after

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listening to these unbcoming deeds which his son had done. He listened to his son with

patience and concentration.

After listening to everything with patience, the father aked him, “Son, would you

wish to repeat the same things in future also?” Gandhiji replied in the negative and

assured his father that he would never do these things again.

His father then told him that it was all right and that he should now forget about

all these things. He further told him that he should feel as if it were just a dream and that

dream has since been over now. Let us make a new beginning. Let us begin life afresh.

Tomorrow is your birthday. You had commited a theft. Is is true? Today you should

give something in charity with the same hands with which you had committed the theft.

Today you offer sweets to the orphans with the same hands with which you had earlier

held the cigerette to smoke. Today you pray to God with the same tongue with which

you had earlier called names….

Mahatma Gandhi has written that had his father that day rebuked and slapped

him, he might have become a thief and he would never have become the Mahatma. The

reason? When he would have slapped me, an inferiority complex might have overtaken

me that I was a thief, I was a sinner, I was a non-vegetarian, and I am a bad boy. And the

psychiatry says that the thing about which you feel guilty gets repeated by you time and

again.

The father of Mahatma Gandhi first of all removed any inferiority complex from

the mind of Gandhiji. Thereafter he taught him good things. As a result of that

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born of Mohan, and he became worthy of reverence

in the world.

We often say that we all should speak the truth. But do you have the moral

strength to listen to and face the truth. First of all, think if you would be able to listen to

the truth.

Let me share with you another incident from the life of Mata Madan Kaur Parakh.

It is a true incident, and not just a fictional story. Madan Kaur got married. She went to

the house of her husband. It was her first night with her husband. Just as there are

certain questions and apprehensions in the mind of any woman, she also had several

questions in her mind. She asked her husband, “See, my lord, from today, we are going

to begin a new life. From today onwards we are life-companions of each other. You will

share with me each and everything you do now onwards. It is the wish of every wife that

her husband shares with her everything he happens to do outside. A husband also has the

same expectation from his wife.”

Madan Kaur said all this to her husband. Do you know what was the reply of her

husband. The husband replied, “I shall sure tell you the truth, but do you have the power

to digest the truth? If tomorrow as I come back home I tell you exactly what might have

happened with me outside the home, will it not affect our relations. Will our relations be

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the same as they were before I told you the truth? Or, will all this create a kind of wedge

between both of us because of my doings.

We proclaim that everybody should speak the truth. But we do not lhave the

moral strength to listen to and face the truth. We do not have the strength to realize the

truth.

So to become good father and mother, it is essential that you have the strength to

digest the truth. In case you do not have the strength to face and digest the truth, then

you should be prepared for the situation when falsehood will overtake your relations.

So the second rule is the smell of love. Love does not mean that you should love

your mother and you should love your father, you should love all members of your family

and you should love your neighbour. Love does not imply a mere relationship. It is,

rather, a state of mind. It is a state of your consciousness. If it happens, it will happen

with everybody; if it does not happen, it will happen to nobody. About love, you cannot

say that it is more with one person and less with the other. What is more or less with

different people, that is not love: that is attachment. It is attachment and not love. What

happens with one and does not happen with the other, that is also attachment, not love.

Love is which is equal with everybody, with all.

You, of course, teach your son to touch the feet of his father. But you never

advise him to pay respect, to speak with respect to the old servant in the family. He may

be a servant or a drive. But he is older than your child in age. The child should be

respectul towards him also. Have you ever taught him to do so? Did this ever happen to

occur to you?

This is the story of love in human relationships. But love cannot be confined to

this limit only. Love is limitless, immense. When love sprouts inside you, your entire

life-style undergoes a change. Then your love does not remain limited to humans alone,

it gets reflected in your feelings for inanimate things also.

When your child comes back from school, he throws his school-bag wherever he

wants to. Then he takes off his shoes and leaves them wherver they might be. At that

time you simply ignore that the child threw the bag with unnecessary force. If he throws

the bag like this today, it is just possible that tomorrow he might throw any other

household thing or even a person with the same force. The question is not of throwing

the bag, the question is of a tendency, a bad tendency growing in your child.

So the lesson of love does not imply merely love for human beings, love animate

as well as inanimate things also. Just take the example of a handkerchief. You can either

put it somewhere quietly with love or you can just throw it in anger. If you can get

annoyed at a handkerchief, why cannot you pick the handkerchief up with a feeling of

love.

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There was once a thinker. One day he went over to meet a known saint. He

covered quite a great distance to meet him. That sage lived on the top of a hill. The

thinker felt tired by the time he reached the dwelling-place of the holy man. He had

become rather fed up with the journey. As he entered the place of the saint, he threw

open the door with great force and then again shut it with equal force. Then he threw his

shoes on one said. Thereafter he went over to the saint. He bowed to the holy man and

sat down. He said to the sage, “O holy man, I have come to have a discourse with you.”

The saint replied saying that a dialogue and discourse is possible only if he was in love.

In the given situation only polemic could take place because the thinker was not in love,

rather he was in anger.

The thinker again told the saint that he had no personal grudge against him and

that he was no doubt in love. He further told him that it was the result of love and

devotion for him (the saint) in his (thinker‟s) heart that he had covered this long distance

to see him.

The holy man said, “Brother, you are making a mistake. Love should not be for

me alone. You will have to be loving towards those shoes also, you will have to be

respectful and loving towards that door also.”

Now the thinker was forced to reflect on what the saint had said. He asked the

saint what he meant by love towards the shoes and the door. The saint replied that he

should go to the shoes and seek its forgiveness and promise that in future you will not

throw them in anger. You should also go to the door and seek its forgiveness because

you opened and then shut it in anger.

The thinker said to the saint, “OK, what will happen, if I do so? Will the door and

the shoes be able to understand my feelings of love for them?”

The holy man asked him to do so and advised him that the door and the shoes

may or may not understand the feeling, but he himself will surely understand that.

Later on that thinker put his memoirs to pen. Therein he wrote that “I was keen to

have dialogue with that holy men and that is why I had to do as he had told me to. I went

to the shoes. I sought their forgiveness. I went to the door. I sought its forgiveness.

When I was doing so I felt that I was doing a crazy thing. But after I had done all this, I

felt a strange kind of peace running through my entire being. I felt saturated with poise

and peace.

This is a lesson in love We should also teach our children to live in love.

Sometimes you see that you child tears down the book. At that time you show your anger

towards him and you try to make him understand that the book had cost you a bit and that

he had put you to such a loss.

You try to tell the child about the cost of the book. After what you tell the child,

the latter comes to understand that the book should not be torn because it has cost you

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quite a bit. And, tomorrow when the child begins to earn money for himself, he might

then say that now he will do whatever he wanted.

You should make your method of making the child understand a constructive one.

You should tell him, “Child, does it behove you to tear a book?Will you feel good if

someone comes and tears your shirt? I know you will not feel good if someone tears

your shirt. Therefore, it does not look good when you tear a book. It does not behove

you. The very feeling of tearing something is inauspicious. You are such a good and

intelligent child. Should you not love your book?”

Try to transform and develop the attitude of the child in this way. But when do

we love? We only tell the child when he is grown up that he does not know what efforts

we put in and what amount of money we spent to make him grow into a person as he is

today. We also complain despite all these efforts of ours, today he does not have the time

to care for us, to feel for us. Obviously, we want compensation for whatever we did –

our love for him, our efforts and our money - for him. This is no love. At the best, you

can call it business.

Of course, it becomes every child that he should serve his parents. But he must

not serve his parents because earlier they had served the child. It is not a give and take

situation. It is necessary to understand this. We all should also understand that selfless

service love produce ecstasy in the heart of the doer. Thus, we should serve our parents.

This service will help us develop ourselves in life. This is the only right way to live life,

to make life full of fragrnce, to make life peaceful.

So, the first rule is ecstasy, second is love and third is knowledge/education.

One knowledge is that which comes from the books. The second knowledge

sprouts from the inner peace and meditation. It is only the latter which takes a human

being to the pinnacles of glory.

Lord Mahavira had not taught any scriptural literature to his disciple Indrabhuti

Gautam. He told him the rules and principles in brief. Gautam told of his curiosity and

with the satiation of cruiosity, Gautam became the enlightened one.

Gautam once asked Lord Mahavira, “Lord, what is tatva or element?” The Lord

resolved his query by saying that whatever is born is tatva. Gautam again asked,”What is

a tatva? The Lord again replied that whatever is subject to decay and death is a tatva.

Gautam repeated the question a third time, and this time the Lord replied that what is

stable and eternal is tatva.

There are only three things in life – birth, death/decay and stability. Somethings

are newly born, some get decayed and are destroyed and there are still some which

remain as they were. It was just listening to these three things that Gautam got the

enlightenment.

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Why did it happen the way it happened? It happened this way because knowledge

is inherent in man. Just as the veil over it is removed, it gets manifested.

I gave you in this chapter three principles of education. The first principle is that

we should teach our children to smile even when they are in pain. The second principle

is that we should develop love in their lives. It should be love for all. It should be the

love for all things. The third principle is that we should develop knowledge. For this

knowledge if you send the child to school, he should also be advised that he must get

knowledge in meditation, concentration and prayer.

Mother is the first teacher of the child. She has to share the maximum of

responsibility for upbringing and development of the child. The mother should

understand her responsibility. She should perform the duty of a guru, a teacher. She

should educate the child. But for this it is necessary that the sense of guruship should

develop in the mother‟s own life. The mother herself should live all these principles.

That is why I often say that being a mother is a penance, a meditation.

All the ladies, my sisters who happen to read this will becomes mothers in the real

sense of the word, this is my faith, my hope.

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Chapter III

DREAMING A GOLDEN OLD-AGE

A poet has said in a Hindi verse which, translated into free English, would mean

that we have reached the edge of a forest mistaking it for a beautiful garden, but here the

buds are dead and the „tongues of thorns‟ have also gone dry.

Man sets out in his life to find out a beautiful and fragrant garden and fragrance of

flowers, but by the time he reaches his ripe age and is close to the end of his innings, he

finds himself in a dense, dark forest. He had set out in search of laughter but got instead

tears; he had set out in search of fragrance but got instead only foul smell.

Why does it happen this way? As we smile, is our smile a real one or it is just a

show off. Let us introspect.

Nietche once asked someone , “Brother! Why do you keep smiling all the time?

He replied, “I always keep smiling so that I do not feel like weeping any moment.”

Perhaps there is a lot of pain inside us and we have kept it suppressed. Life is

which is always flowing, always moving ahead. That is why there is a saying that water

is best flowing, and in case it stops flowing, it will turn into mud. In the same way, so

long as life keeps moving on and on, we call it life. As soon as it begins to stop, it is a

sure sign of the approaching death. It is this stage which we call old age.

In this chapter we shall address to the theme of dreaming about thegolden old

age. How can we make our old age golden? Perhaps it may be right to say that old age

itself is golden, but how can be identify that it is golden. Actually what happens is that

our body gets old and weak, but our desires and aspirations remain the same and they do

not get old. These desire always remain as young as ever. For this reason, we feel that

old age is painful. It is taken as an age which makes us feel sad.

What do you understand by old age? Old age does not mean that you have

reached an age of say fifty or sixty years and that implies that you have got old. In fact, it

is not so. A young man of twenty years of age can also be old, and an man of fifty years

can also be young. What is old age? Let us first of all try and understand this? The first

and foremost symptom of old age is the beginning of stiffness of body; as the body gets

stiff and frozen, that implies the approaching old age. It is the time when the flexibility

of body begins to cease. It was the flexibility with which you could bend, take turns,

move about easily. And, at this age you begin to lose this flexibility. Now you find it

difficult to bend down or move about. The body gets quite stiff. But worse than this

beginning of stiffness in body is the approaching stiffness in mind. The stiffness of mind

implies standing firm in support of your convictions and assumptions. You begin to

believe that what you believe is the only truth, all else is wrong.

41

The first symptom of the approaching old age is the stiffness. If we want to make

our life golden, we must learn how to save ourselves from this stiffness.

What is the meaning of stiffness? You might have often seen some people

bending quite easily, and there are some other people who cannot bend with ease. They

feel pained in bending. This pain is the symptom of the fact that you body is getting stiff.

Second stiffness is of the mind. You will rarely come across a person who will be willing

to listen to any new and novel thing you might wish to communicate with. Even if there

is one who listen to it, he will not be willing to agree with it. He is not ready to listen to

or accept anything that is new. When this stiffness increases a little more, then the other

fellow is not even willing to listen to you. He would say, “I would listen to only what is

in agreement with my way of thinking, and I shall not listen to whatever does not agree

with my way of thinking.” This is the stiffness of mind.

First of all, lyou must identify the stiffness within you. If you objectively look

within yourself, you will find that such a stiffness is somewhere hidden within you. We

have already firmly made up our mind that this is right and that is wrong. We are

prisoners of our own convictions. We have decided before hand, and we cannot free

ourselves from this captivity.

People come to us. Some people come and tell me that you say this and this, but

Lord Mahavira has said differently. Let us examine what they have to say. When they

say that Lord Mahavira has said this thing and you say the same thing differently, they

seem so confident as if they were just coming after meeting Lord Mahavira. I feel like

asking such people as to how did they know that Lord Mahavira had said what they say

he said. If ever I put this question, they would say “we have heard people saying this”.

Who told you so? And from whom did your source hear all this? Your source was surely

not Mahavira. It was someone else.

This is the stiffness of mind. Just think for a while what is the basis of your

assumptions and convictions. If you tell someone that this is good, may I know why this

is good. And in case you say that this person is not good, why is he not good. If you

analyse it, you will find that only the photograph which fits well in your photo-frame is

beautiful, and which does not fit in that photo-frame, that is neither beautiful nor good.

We never think that our photo-frame could possible be wrong. One would rather say that

the photo-frame has been made by himself, how can it ever be wrong?

This is prejudiced mind, a mind caught in stiffness and frozenness. This happens

with almost everybody. When we are still children, our mind is quite fluid. Absolutely

fluid, in fact. It is so because a child does not think much. When a child is born, his

mind is absolutely clean. There is no upheaval of thoughts in his mind. That is why a

child learns whatever is taught to him. We cannot imagine that the child can learn this

all, but during that age the child is the most impressionistic. The mind of the child

remains fluid until he reaches the age of about fifteen lyears. Thereafter a number of

complexities begin to enter in. So long as his mind is fluid, he is ever ready to learn.

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It is in the nature of the child that he likes certain things a lot. For example, he

likes very much to play. Even more than that he likes to learn something new, something

fresh. He is ever keen to learn, to acquire something new. Novelty is his preference, his

first love. You can find this for yourself. Give your child a joy. He will play with that

toy for a while only. Then that new toy will become outdated for him, and he will

expect another new toy. Then you will give him another toy, and soon he will reject that

one also. He needs a new thing every moment. He is always keen to live among new

things because life is a flow and during the childhood this flow is at quite a fast pace. The

child lives at a fast pace. He lives a life that is very active and alive. He lives his life in

its fullness. When he looks at you, he looks in your fullness. He absorbs you in full, in

your entirety. He cultivates in him all that you are. His eyes are wide open. He has not

yet closed them. For him life is still blooming.

When does old age come? The old age comes when begins the extinguishing of

life. In other words, when the tendency to learn something new ceases or decreaes, it

implies the approaching old age. The first and foremost principle of making your old age

golden, to turning your life golden is that you always keep learning something new.

When you go to bed to sleep at night, you must pause and reflect whether you have learnt

any new thing today. Is there anything new which you might have imbibed that day?

Did you not learn or imbibe any new thing today?

Often people are heard saying that our hair have not gone grey in the sun: we have

a lot of experience of the world. But this seems only a matter of saying only. Often the

hair get grey just like that. We do experience certain things time and again, but do we

ever learn from those experiences? In the childhood, you felt that it was your own pencil,

it was your own note-book. When you grow up, you begin to fight saying this is my

house, this money is mine, this thing is mine and that thing is mine. And still further, you

even begin to claim that this thought, this idea is mine…. My son does not follow the

way I think is right for him. In other words, my son does not abide by my instructions.

A child who does not follow your ideas is taken and declared as disobedient. In that case,

all the children in the world will have to become disobedient provided those children are

full of life. In case they are not full of life, they will be sure obedient. Such children do

not have any ideas of their own. They are not creative at all. In case the child is creative

and has his own ideas, his thinking will sure be different from that of his father. Since

the child represents a new life, his answer to the problems and challenges of life will also

be a new one. When the father was young, he had his own life, his own ideas, his own

way of thinking, his own business, his own house and his own different kind of

circumstances. The replies to the then contemporary issues were also different. Now the

world has undergone a significant change. Life has changed. The questions have

changed. Therefore, answers to these questions will also be different. And it is important

and right that they differ.

For example, your grandfather had his own times. He used to wear a simple

cotton shirt and a dhoti. In case you go to office today with that kind of dhoti, you will

become an object of laugher for others. The times have changed. Man has to change

with the changing times. I do not say that we should change everything. I do not mean

43

this. But you will have to give your child the freedom that he should be able to live his

life according to his own thinking and keeping in with the changing world.

Every father wants that his father should become like him and that he should live

his life according to his (father‟s) thinking. The son should do whatever the father wants

and desires. The son should mould himself into a true copy of his father. But how is that

possible? The son is also the master of an independent life. He has his own personality.

That personality in itself is distinct and different from any other. Why do you want to

mould and shape it into your own reflection. You must give him freedom to develop his

personality his own way.

However, as a result of the stiffness of mind, a father is reluctant and sometimes

even opposed to give any freedom to his child. He does not let his child get free from the

web of his own thinking.

The first principle of making the old age golden is the imbibe the spirit of always

learning something new. Everybody must have aspirations and wishes to learn new

things, to live new things in life. Only such a wish and aspiration gives your life

liveliness. Only this kind of tendency provides life pace and progress.

Once Swami Ramatirath was travelling to the United States of America. A ninty-

year old man was also travelling in the same ship in which Swami Ramatirath was

travelling. That old man did not speak much and he also did not waste his time sitting

here and there with different people. He would sit in his own seat in a corner and try to

learn something new. He would continue learning new things and new devices from

morning till evening. Once day Swami Ramatirath asked the old man what he had been

learning to acquire all the day.

The old man said that he has been trying to learn Chinese language.

Swami Ramatirath heard this. He felt rather surprised. In a tone of surprise, he

again asked the old man if he was learning Chinese language in this old age. The old

man spoke in a tone of equal surprise and wanted to know which age he referred to.

Swami Ramatirath tried to explain saying that he seemed to be nearly ninty years of age.

And in this age you are trying to learn such a difficult language. After all, how will you

benefit yourself from learning this language in this old age.

The old man asked, “Brother, which place do you come from?” Swami

Ramatirath told him that he was an Indian. The old man then replied that he could then

make out why Indians are poor though live in such an affluent country.

Hearing this uncalled for remark, Swami Ramatirath said to him, “Gentleman,

what is the meaning of what you say? I have not been able to understand the remark that

you have made. Please explain it to me.”

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The old man replied, “When the desire, the aspiration to know and learn

something new dies, the life itself comes to an end there. Where life end, there affluence

disappears. I am not yet dead. I am still alive. Since I am live, therefore I am trying to

learn something new. So long as I am alive and so long as I am not dead, I shall continue

to knowing and learning new things.

This is the aim of life. This is a characteristic of an active alive life. I do not

mean to say that you should learn a new language every other day. But I must say that

you should be ever ready to learn new things in life. You must know and learn a new

thing every day.

Knowing and learning new things is the other name of life Aspiration to learn a

new thing is the other name of youth.

If a bud gets afraid of fading away even before it blossoms into a flower, then the

bud will never be a flower. If someone stops running for fear of falling down, he will

never be able to run. If one does not put his foot in water for fear of gretting downed, he

will never be able to learn how to swim. Man must be ready to always learn something

new. In your life you should daily make an introspection to find out if you have learnt a

new thing.

As I discuss this, I have people of fifty or sixty years of age in mind. There are

some people who grow old even though they are still twenty or thirty years of age. The

age of sixty is too far for such people. The desire, the aspiration to learn a new thing is

dead in them. You must always keep learning new things. Keep learning new things.

I had recently called upon a holy man. He was about eighty years old. He was a

great scholar. Seeing me, he got up and welcomed me in. He asked me, “I learn that you

conduct meditation camps. I wish that you teach me also something of those camps.”

This is the aspiration to learn a new thing. Learning a new thing is a must. Do

something best in the world. Whatever you do in a routine way, try to do it in a perfect,

the best way.

I had ready a sentence somewhere. It went as - The great people do not any

extraordinalry things but whatever they do, they do in an extraordinary way. Bring

novelty in whatever you do. The ladies in the house prepare the kitchen. They must

always keep on thinking what novelty they can bring out in what they cook so that the

dishes they prepare are the most tasty and healthy. The aim should be that the food thus

prepared should make members of the family healthy. The son who daily complains

about food should also appreciate.

You go to your office everyday. You must think what novelty you can bring

about in your routine work there so that business is not mere business and it also adds to

the pleasure to the welfare of the general masses. This is an issue for you to ponder

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about. But did you ever think on these lines? Perhaps never. You always thought of your

own benefit. You never made the happiness and welfare of all your objecive.

You can make kthe beginning wherever you are. Only the temples and the

Sthanaks (places where the Jain saints usually halt and where their followers meet

together) are not the only places of worship. Your office can also be transformed into a

place of worship. Your factory can also be transformed into a temple. Your shop can

become your prayer room. But it never occurs to us that we should do something which

is extraordinary, what is new and what is to the benefit of all.

Why do the students get bored with a teacher? The reason is that a teacher teaches

them only what is written there in the books. If you want to teach what is already there in

the books, what is new there in your teaching? A student can do by reading the same

material from a book. Then what is the need for that student to go to a teacher? A

teacher is efficient and competent only if he teaches the same thing in a novel way. But

most of the teachers never think of this. Their sight is fixed only on fulfilling their duty

only. In case, a teacher begins to think that when he goes to class tomorrow he will teach

his students a new thing, a new topic in a new way. He must also reflect how to make his

teaching perfect. When he begins doing this, he will find pleasure in whatever he will do.

And this pleasure will flow from his new methods, his novel ways.

Make life creative. Creativity is the first golden rule to make the old age golden.

The second principle to make old age golden is that an old person must play with

children for some time every day. He should play as if he himself were a child. There is

an old saying that a family who prays together stays together. I would wish to change

that saying a bit, and say that a family who plays together stays together.

Have your ever wholeheartedly played with your child? If ever you did play with

him, the fact of your being elderly to him was always on your mind. And when this fact

of being elderly is on your mind, you cannot put yourself wholeheartedly in the game.

You continue issuing instructions while playing with your child. Make yourself a child

when playing with the child. This might seem something new to you. But you try it at

least once. Look how highly inspired you feel? It is the law of nature that the level of

your energy reaches the level to that of the one in whose company you are playing. A

child is whose life is still blossoming. The level of energy within him is the highest.

That is why we often say that the children have unusual energy. Have you ever thought

as to what is that energy? Maybe, he eats much less than you, but the level of energy in

his body is much higher than the one in your body. The reason for this is that he has

within him a lot of inspiration and encouragement. Whenever you ask him to accompany

you, he is every ready and leaves with you. You ask him to run, he will run around. You

ask him to jump about, he will start jumping. He is always ready to do whatever you ask

him to.

You must spare at least half an hour for the child and play with him. But what

game should lyou play with the child? Play with him as if you were also a child, and not

46

as you are an elderly parent. Forget everything else when you play with the child. Forget

about what the people looking at you might comment or remark. If they make a remark,

let them. But you should continue playing with the child as if you were yourself a small

child. Then you will find how inspired and energetic you feel throughout the day.

Make this little experience. You go to a hospital and wander inside it for half an

hour. How would you feel during and after this visit. What will your experience be like?

Then you go to a school of the children and play with them for half an hour. How did

you feel during the play and thereafter? You will clearly see the difference. After your

half an hour visit to the hospital, you will feel a little tired. Why? Because everyboy

therein was ill. The level of energy among the patients goes week. When you are

visiting there, the environment there sucks away your energy as well. Consequently, you

will feel somewhat tired. However, when you return after paying a visit to the children‟s

school, you will feel fresh and active. The reason? The level of energy among the

children is the highest. When you are closer to the children, you get some energy from

them and you feel relaxed and fresh.

If you play with the children as if you were also a child, it will mean developing

the level of your energy. In case you behave as an elder in the presence of the children

and you keep on finding faults with them and keep on saying do this and do not do this,

the result will not be encouraging. You will not get any energy. On the contrary, if you

chide the child, you will feel losing your energy.

You play with the child making yourself a child. You should forget about your

age for the while you play with the child. While playing with him, just only play. And

while playing, you must follow the principle that neither will win or lose. In other words,

if win or loss is essential, both the parties will either win or lose.

Once I learnt that there was in existence a fun club. The first principle of that fun

club was – I shall support everyone to win. I shall give moral support to win even to the

opposing team. You will feel that this is quite a strange principle because whenever we

play, a sense of prejudice comes in the game. A feel overtakes your - I should win the

game and he should lose the game. When prejudice is born, violence follows soon

thereafter.

I had read in newspapers that in Calcutta once a football match was being played.

One of the teams was about to win, and naturally the other one was in a position to lose.

As this situation developed, people became violent. Two persons got killed. Violence

took place where a game should have been played and enjoyed. It happened because a

sense of prejudice had taken over the minds of the spectators.

So the first principle of the gme is that I shall support all the competing teams to

win. The second principle is that I shall give my maximum. And you should give your

hundred per cent.

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The second principle of making your old age golden is that the old person must

play for a while with the children. You should so mix up with the children that they

should not take you as an obstaacle in their game and enjoyment. Sometimes I feel that

the children get frightened whenever they see an elderly person. The elderly people have

made themselves so complex and stiff that their very sight frightens the children. Do not

make yourself stiff. Make yourself simple and flexible. Mix up so intimately with the

children that they should say that their best friend has come whenever they see you going

to them. If the children are laughing, you should also join in their laughter. If the

children are playing, you should also join in their games. When you do so, you will of

course gain something from them and they will also gain something from you. They will

also try to look into your inner self.

Do this for a while and then you will start loving it all. You begin playing with

the children daily. And then when you are suddenly taken ill one day, your grandson will

come to you to enquire about your health. He will place his small hand on your head and

ask if you have a headache and if he should press your head. You will realize that your

headache will disappear listening to the small things of the child. Feel how relaxed and

happy you feel when the child places his hand on lyour head. However, this will happen

when first you go close to the child, befriend him. If you go on saying that you are his

grandfather and that he must come to you and serve you being your grandson, the child

might come to you and serve you but the result will not be that encouraging. He will

serve you because he should. But the loving and effective relationship will develop only

if and when you start playing with him. So the second principle of making your old age

golden is that you must play with your children for some time.

The third principle of making the old age golden is exercise, physical exercise. I

shall narrate for your benefit an episode from the life of Swami Ramatirath. Once he met

an old man. That old was very affluent. But he was as rich as he was helpless. Not to

speak of going about here and there, it was very difficult for him to move himself even a

bit. He said to the Swami, “Swamiji, my own life has now become a burden on me. I

can neither walk nor can I get up. What should I do? I am now just counting my breaths

and waiting for the moment when this life will come to an end.”

Swami Ramatirath old him that he should not feel so disappointed. It does not

matter if you cannot move your body. You can no doubt breathe. You have to do

nothing. You take deep breaths and then breathe out deeply. Make this small beginning.

You inhale and exhale deeply fifty times each in the morning and evening. You are

breaching as it is. What additional you have to do is that you have to breathe in and

breathe out deeply.

That fellow made deep breathing a regular habit with himself. He practised

inhaling and exhaling more and more deeply. After about six months of that first

meeting, Swami Ramatirath again happened to pass by that way. During the second visit,

Swami Ramatirath found that the person was not only walking but indeed running

around. He welcomed Swami and told him that he had really performed a miracle.

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Exercise is the third principle of golden old age. In case you cannot do any

physical exercise, you can at least take to deep breathing. These days people often say

that they do not have any time for physical exercise. I do not say that you should do sit

ups for an hour or half an hour. I would only say that make deep breathing a habit with

you.

But when do we breathe deeply? In fact, we inhale and exhale in just half

measure. We seem to have forgotton how to take complete breath or breathe in the right

manner. If we want to learn how to breather in and breathe out in the right manner, we

shall again have to return to childhood. Just look at the six-month-old child lying on the

bed. See how he breathes. Just look, as he breathes in, his belly can be seen rising up.

As he breathes out, the belly goes down. He seems to breathe through his navel. He

inhales and exhales through his navel.

But how do you take the breath? When you are asked to inhale and exhale

deeply, your chest goes up and down. The breath does not reach the navel. We use only

fifteen to twenty percent of our power to breathe, and let the remaining power unused.

That is why we get only fifteen to twenty per cent of freshness in life.

The breath should go in deeper and deeper. Often when the issue of deep

breathing is discussed with the people, they begin breathing with force. We do not have

to make use of any force while breathing. We have to breathe deeply. We should inhale

deeply and then exhale deeply. When you inhale, your belly should come up and as you

exhale, your belly should go down. This is just a little exercise. Although it is a very

small thing, but it is a wonderful means of removing the stiffness and frozenness within

you.

The fourth principle of golden old age is balanced, controlled diet. But what is

meant by a balanced and controlled diet? The foremost rule of the balanced and

controled diet is that you should take food only when lyou feel hungry. But do you

actually take food as per need or hunger of the body? Or do you take food going by the

clock? When you sit on the dining table to take food, have you ever asked yourself

whether you actually need any food. Whether you should or should not take the food.

The fact is that you never ask yourself this kind of question. You just take the food. It is

time to take food, and you take it whether you need it or not.

When you sit down to take food, you must ask yourself the question whether you

need to take food or not. In case you feel that you really need food only then you should

take it. In case you feel that you can do without taking food, then you must opt for the

latter alternative. Then do not take any food. Whenever you sit down to take food, you

must always keep asking yourself whether you really need food or not. When you cross

forty years of lage, this questioning of the self becomes very essential.When you are still

young and are in the age group of twenty and twenty-five, your body is still developing

from inside. But after the age of twenty-five or thirty, the cells begin to get weak and

degenerate. In other words, less new cells are born whereas more cells die. When you

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are around twenty-five, at the stage the body reaches its pinnacles: by that time it had

developed as much as it had to. Thereafter begins its gradual decay.

The Jain scriptural literature uses a word „udodari‟. This word implies keep your

stomach a little bit empty. What is the scientific reason behind this? Let me tell you that

there is a beautiful reason behind this. It is said that half of the stomach should be filled

with solid food and another twenty-five per cent of it should be filled with liquid. The

remaining one-fourth part should be left empty. It is just like the way you make use of a

mixer in your homes. If you fill the jar to its brim, the mixer will not function. It will not

be able to move at all. To let the mixer function, we must leave some space empty.

Similar is the case with our stomach. When you feel that I can still take in a little more

food, you should stop at that. You should not take more food thereafter and should get

up from the dining table. This is possible only if you are conscious about your diet. If

you are not conscious, you will continue eating. Sometimes you are taking your food

while your mind is somewhere else. Sometimes you take food but all your attention is in

the programmes being telecast on the television.

Let me tell you more more method of learning when you should stop eating food.

When you are taking food, you take two belches. When the first belch comes, it is an

indication that seventy-five per cent of your stomach is full. And if you do not stop here

and continue taking food, the second belch comes which is an indication that your

stomach is completely full. And in case you still go on eating, whatever you eat hereafter

will pass out as it was.

Once a lady came to me asked when should one stop taking more food. I told her

that one must stop taking food after belching for the first time. In case you find that a

little bit of food remains behind in your plate and you do not want to throw it away and

thus taking more food in a way becomes essential, then you must stop after the second

belch.

The lady said to me that she had never belched while taking food or after that.

You can just laugh at that lady. But how many people are there who know that

they do belch while taking food. This ignorance of ours is because we have lost

awareness. When you are taking food, you are not fully aware: it is as if you were asleep

or you were as good as unconscious. There are many for whom the entire life is spent in

sleep. Then there comes a moment in life when your body takes such a shape that it

becomes difficult for you to get up without the support of someone else. While such

people move about, they feel as if their upper floor is trembling. The ladder is

vacillating. It is at that stage that you remember that you should go to a health club.

Then you will pay hefty fee there and work rather hard and then be able to reduce a little

bit of your burden.

But there can be no need to do all this provided your become a little conscious, a

little more aware. Take your food while you are aware of what and how much you are

taking. God has blessed you with such beautiful things to eat. Can‟t you remain just

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aware while partaking of this tasty food. In modern-day world there are millions of

people who fail to get even coarse food twice a day. You are getting food, but you have

no respect for it in your mind. When you take food while looking at the television, it is

insulting the food. Learn to be aware of what and how much you are eating.

After this we must take care of one more thing about the food, and that we could

lessen the frequency of taking food. If you take food only once a day, it is best for you.

It is the best for you both biologically and theologically. However, if you are not

satisfied by taking food once a day, you may take food twice a day. But we find that

people go on eating something or the other throughout the day. If you go on eating the

whole day, it amounts to insulting yourself. You are also, in this way, inviting so many

maladies for your body.

Eat less and eat fewer times in a day. This means balanced and controlled diet.

The fourth principle of golden old age is the development within of unattached

consciousness. You must loosen the stiffness within. You reach the age of say fifty or

sixty years. You have already done whatever you wanted to do in your life. You have

earned enough, earned as much as you wanted to. Now is the time for you to raise

yourself above all these things. Keep with you the amount of money which you think is

necessary and is required to make your old age tolerably comfortable. Hand over the

remaining to your children. Let them do whatever they want to with this amount of

money.

There was in ancient India a system according to which one was supposed to take

sannyasa - it was called the sannyasa ashram. It came after the grihasth ashram. Here

sannyasa did not mean renunciation of household and going to the mountain or the forest.

It actually mean living at home, but keeping oneself above all the problems and

complexties of the household. Live in the house, live in the family just as lotus remains

above the mud. You live in the family at home, you are above all, indifferent to all

familial and worldly things. Do not become of the world. Tell your children that you

have done what you wanted to, and now it was their innings to do whatever they can. Of

course, if the children need your advice and come to seek it, you must give them your

advice. But check yourself from interfering in their affairs. Old people are generally

habitual of interfering. They often keep on repeating that in their days they did this and

that, and that the children are not doing as much. You must understand that your time

has now become a thing of the past. Now it is their time. Let them live in their own way.

When you keep on meddling in the affairs of the children, you are responsible for

lessening your own respect in the eyes of the children. The respect they have for you will

go. The father and grandfather should behave in such a way as the children feel it their

duty to seek your opinion and advice. You give them your opinion only when they ask

for time at least twice. You must not act the other way round, i.e. you advise them twice

even when they seek it only once. Make your suggestions and advice valuable. Just as

there is a good consultant. In case you want to see him, you will have to seek an

appointment. Make yourself a good consultnt. Do not give your opinion unasked for.Of

course, it you find the situation demands that you must give your opinion even when no

51

body is asking for it, you may give it on the sly. But do not insist or emphasize. Let the

children learn. The worst is that he will fall down once. And, if he falls down, only then

he will learn how to walk. If he falls down once, he will walk carefully in future. You

cannot save him from falling all the time. If you go on trying to save him time and again,

he will sure mind it.

When old age comes, man must learn to renounce, to give away. You have

played your innings well, and now let the children take over and let them be on their own.

You concentrate on your own well being. However, it does not imply that you stop

loving your children or you begin hating them. Live with the children in a relationship of

love. Shower all your affection on them. But it is also a fact of life that each plant needs

some space to grow and flourish. If you will not provide it suitable opportunity and

space, the plant will not grow properly. There will be hot son, there will be storms and

there will be rain, but all these things – son, storm and rain – are essential for the plant to

grow. If you say that you will try and save that plant from all these natural hardships, the

plant will never grow or flourish properly.

It is said that once a farmer prayed to God saying, “O Lord! I am in great

difficulty. When I sow the seed, sometimes it is too much of heat and consequently the

seeds are burnt down. They do not sprout. And sometimes it is excessive rains and all the

plants are washed away by the rain. And sometimes birds and animals come and destroy

my crops. I am in dire straits. Please bless me me that none of these happens this year.

It my not be excessive heat, it may not be excessive rain and no birds and animals should

destroy my crop and the plants should be safe from the disease. Please give this blessing

to me.”

The Lord God replied that he may ponder over his request carefully. The farmer

again said that he need not ponder over it any more, and that He might bless him with all

these things. God gave him the blessing he had asked for. The farmer sowed the seeds.

It was a wonderful crop. It was not excesively hot, not excessive rains, no storms and no

disease to the crop. The farmer went to the market and sold off his crop and earned a

good profit. The next year the farmer took out the seed he had saved from the last year‟s

crop, sowed them in his fields, but none of them sprouted. Why? The seed had become

impotent. Because there was no challenge before that seed: it had faced no hardship.

You might have heard the name of Henry Ford. He was a millionaire. When his

son was eighteen years of age, someone saw him standing in a queue of applicants

seeking jobs in some institute. He was rather surprised to find the son of Henry Ford (a

millionaire) standing in a queue seeking a small job. The person went to Henry Ford and

asked him the reason for it.. Henry Ford replied, “I know that my son might be standing

somewhere in a queue seeking some job. But this is necessary for him. It is essential for

him that he serves somewhere at least for five years. When he will work there as a labour

and then sit in the chair in which I sit now, he will learn what exactly the labour working

in my factory has been doing. Only then he will realize the value of this chair.

52

Do not develop love for your children beyond a limit. Beyond that limit let them

be on their own. If they fall down, let them, and thus gain their own experience.

This is a very important rule of the golden old age that you loosen your grip.

Take yourself a little afar - both from within and without. Become indifferent and

unattached. Become firm within. Do not emphasize or stress. And, if I say, become a

Jain in the true sense of the word. The word jain implies becoming not-assertive and

delving deep into infinity.

Once there was a person in search of a spiritual teacher. He thought of a plan to

test the persons or persons as the true spiritual teacher. He took a black crow, put it in a

cage and hung the cage outside his house close to the front door. Many holy men often

visited his house. Whenever a saint came to his house, he would ask him to look at the

very beautiful swan he has kept as a pet. Many of these saints would reply saying that he

was a fool as he called a crow a swan. He would again say to the saint, “Maharaj, please

clean your eyes and look again. It is not a crow. It is a swan.” The saint would feel

annoyed and leave his house.

This went on for quite some time. He annoyed many a saint. But he did not feel

bothered at this. One day an old saint happened to visit his house. He repeated what he

had been telling other saints - “Look, sir, how beautiful this swan is which I have kept

as a pet.”

The saint replied, “Brother, this is not a swan, rather this is a corw.” But the

fellow was insistent and said, “Maharaj, you cannot see properly. This is nor crow. This

is really a swan. Please clean your eyes a bit and look at it again.”

The saint replied with the same poise that it is all right. It is a swan to you, and it

is a crow to me. You are right in your own way, and I am right in my own way. Leave

this question whether this is a crow or a swan. But only keep this in mind that you should

always keep your eyes open: it can be a crow and it can also be a swan. Do not insist that

it is a crow or it is a swan. The fellow understood the saint‟s meaning. He instantly fell

on his feet and took him as his spiritual teacher. Now his search for a true spiritual

teacher had come to an end.

This is non-assertive tendency. Develop this tendency within you. Thus, in this

chapter I have narrated for your benefit some rules for the golden old age. I hope you

will reflect on these. I am sure these rules will sure prove beneficial in your life and will

serve as door to ecstasy.

53

Chapter IV

RETURN TO SELF

There was once a small girl. Her name was Lacchhi. Lacchhi lived along with

her grandmother in a small hut a little distance away on one side of a village. There was

no one else in their family living with them in that hut. Their hut was also at a small

distance from the village. There was no child around with whom Lacchhi could play.

Thus she often felt very lonely. Her grandmother used to play with her sometimes, but

she was an old woman and how long could she play with her. Moreover, the

grandmother had many other household chores to attend to. Thus Lacchhi felt very sad,

restless and depressed.

One day a peacock came to the hut of Lacchhi. The peacock began dancing in the

courtyard of her hut. Lacchhi felt rather pleased seeing the peacock dancing. Looking at

the peacock she began laughing, dancing and singing. Both the peacock and Lacchhi

were in a mood of joy. The bird had also found a friend in Lacchhi, and Lacchhi had

found an opportunity, an excuse to dance around.

Gradually this became a daily routine with both of them. The peacock would

come daily to her courtyard and dance there. And this routine went on and on. With

each passing day Lacchhi began to remain in a happy and joyous mood. He did not

where her weeping, sadness and disappointment had disappered. It seemd as if peacock

had completely overshadowed Lacchhi‟s heart and mind. He had become a friend to her.

The time went on. Now the peacock did not come to her courtyard daily. It

would come one day and may not come the other day. Then it began coming to her after

two days, three days and then four days. But now Lacchhi danced every day. As time

passed, the peacock‟s visits became less and less frequent. Now it would come only once

in a fortnight and sometimes even once in a month. After some time the peacock stopped

coming at all. However, Lacchi continued with her dance: her dance as well as her joy

remained ever with her.

Here the story comes to an end. The story-writer writes that you should yourself

become what you want. In case you want happiness, you should become an embodiment

of happiness. Lacchhi wanted peacock, and one day she herself became a peacock.

Lacchhi wanted a friend, and now she had become a friend of herself. Lacchhi required

love, and she became her own love.

This is the mystery of lofe. You become what you want. You should try and

become whatever you want. However, it is very easy to say all this, lbut when we come

to doing it, it gets rather difficult. When we listen to such a beautiful story in a discourse,

you wish that you could also become like that peacock and like it enjoy the same pleasure

and ecstasy. But as you leave after listening to the discourse and reach home, you feel

54

yourself surrounded from all sides by various problems of life. Then you realize that it is

a different thing to hear to a story, but it is quite another to follow what has been said

therein.

Lacchhi is our ideal. We have to learn from her this mystery - how can we

become what we want? However, how can this ideal become part of our life? And, what

do we require after all? Have you so far thought of this? Perhaps so far we do not know

what we want. Had you been asked this very question in your childhood, what would

have been your answer? Someone might have said that he wanted to become a doctor,

some other might have expressed a desire to become an engineer, and still another might

have expressed his desire to become a great man. But what is the source of all these

answers. The child looks at the people around him and a desire crops up in his mind that

he should also become like them. This is not his own answer. This is an answer

influenced by the outside environment.

You ask a small child as to which took-paste he would like to use. He will

instantly be reminded of an advertisement on the television. He will immediately respond

that he would love to have Colgate or Close up.

Once a person came to me and asked,”Why is it that you hypnotise anyone in a

matter of minutes. Then it is only you whom his mind remembers.” I replied, “No, I

cannot hypnotise. You are already hypnotised. All these advertisements in the print and

electronic media so deeply tempt and charm you that they leave their impress on your

unconscious mind. Then you go to a shop and you remember only those things which

you had read/seen in the advertisements. The same names of thing come out of your lips

and you come back home buying only all those things.

Thus, the fact remains that we ourselves do not know what we want. We must sit

in peace and ask ourselves at least once as to what we want. In reality, what do you

want? You should ask yourself this question in a firm manner. You will wonderstruck

that you do not know exactly what you need. At last you will admit and say that you did

not know what you wanted. But you must keep on discovering this.The researchers say

that every person needs three things. The first thing he needs is freedom or

independence. He hates the bondage. He wants to be free. The second thing he requires

is happiness/ecstasy.And the third thing he needs is peace.

Now where can we find freedom, ecstasy and peace? At what place are they

available? Where can we search for them?

It is said that when God created this world, he created multiplicity of beings. He

created dog, monkey and lion…. But he found one or the other flaw in each one of

them. After creating monkey, God might have felt that its tale has been too long. After

creating the dog, He might have realized that this being never sits still and is always

barking. After creating the lion, God felt that it looked very much dangerous. Whatever

he created, He later on found one or the other flaw in each one of them.

55

Ultimately, God resolved to created such a creation which has no flaw, no

weakness. He thought that the new creation will be such as no one is able to point out

any weakness in it. It is said that at last God created mankind. He felt rather pleased at

this creation. He was sure that this was the supreme creation. His eyes, nose, ers, fce and

in face the entire body was unique. It was such a being that no flaw can be found in it.

The Lord God thought that man was his unique creation and that he had not left

any flaw or weakness in his creation. He is in my own image. Then God felt that it was

what He thought of His creation. He felt like asking someone if there was any flaw in

this creation of His.

This story has been the work of Kahlil Gibran. He says that God first called the

slanderer and asked him, “Well, my dear slanderer, I created human being. It is my

supreme creation. I do not think I have left any flaw or weakness in his creation. Still it

would be better if you would kindly analyse him and then let me know if there was any

flaw in the creation of man.

The slanderer made a thorough observation. After his complete inspection and

observation, he said, “God, there is one flaw in him. You did everything else, but you

failed to put a window to his heart. As it is, no one will be able to find out what he might

hide in his heart.”

The slnderer was after all able to find out a flaw. It is in the nature of a slanderer

to find out a fault. Still the flaw which the slanderer pointed out is in fact there in man.

How can the other know what is hidden in the heart of man when man himself

does not know what he has been hiding in his heart. The ecstasy, peace and freedom

which he has been trying to discover in the externl world, are not available in this world.

All these things are available within man. But how can one look or peep into the heart

of man as there is no windown to it. This is the tragedy of human life.

Always remember one thing. Whatever man tries to find out in the external world

is in fact no available outside. That is hidden within us. We shall be to return inside to

fulfil our desire. It is only by returning inside that we can perform perfect deeds. We

can return to peace and ecstasy and freedom only by returning within. As it is, our inner

self is our real home.

The theme of this chapter is „our returning home‟. It means that we should return

to our homes.

When it is summer vacation for the children, all the families got for an outing.

They generally visit a hill station. They spend many days, say ten or twenty days there

on the hill stations or at other places of entertainment. After these pleasure trips, they

return home. As they reach home, they feel a strange kind of rest and comfort. They get

at home the rest and relaxation which they were not able to get at the hill stations and

56

other places of entertainment. After they reach home covering quite a long jourey, their

inner self spontaneously speaks out: well, we have reached home, our home.

Just think for a moment that you get such rest and relaxation and comfort after

reaching home. But how long it has been since you got this house constructed. Maybe

only five years or just fifty years. The age of the house is five years or fifty years. So

when you reach a home which you built only a few years back you get such rest and

relaxation, imgine how great comfort and rest you migh be enjoying when you return to

your permanent home.

In today‟s discourse, we shall only discuss the issue of returning to that home.

This is not something very new which I am trying to share with you. Each rishi and muni

has said this. He has told and advised us how to return home. The first and foremost

principle, or the golden principle of returning hom is nindami which in Jain scriptural

literature is a doctrinal term.

Generally, the word „nindami‟ has been explained as doing self-criticism or self-

introspection. When it is the time of the day of Samvtsari, popularly called

Chhamachhari (which falls on Bhadon sudi 5) , people resort to self-criticism and often

say that „none else is worse than me‟. However, mere saying of these words is no self-

criticism. In fact, it involves self-introspection. Similarly, this word nindami does not

mean slandering, rather it means self-introspection or self-analysis. We should do our

analysis ourselves, but how can we do it? How to observe and analyse? We have heard

many times that one must look at oneself with one‟s own eyes. But how can we do that?

Should we do so by keeping a mirror before ourselves? No. Then, how to do that? If we

close our eyes, many ideas and thoughts and feelings hover before our imagination. You

may dream also. Then how to see ourselves with our own eyes? How can we self-

criticize and self-analyze?

There is a method of self-analysis. It has three stages. The first stage is

remembering. But what should we remember? From morning till evening, from the

moment you got up till the present moment, remember all that you did: you should

remember each and every moment. In the beginning you will find that only important

things you did, the important happenings that took place will come to your mind. You

might also forget several things in between. Still you keep on remembering. This is the

first stage.

The second stage is to re-live. It means you should try to re-live that moment.

Re-live that moment as if it had just occurred. For example, you had a quarrel with

someone during this noon. Remember that moment when the quarrel took place.

Remember the anger that you had then felt and bring the true feeling to your mind. As

you re-live the past experience, there comes the third stage. This is called releasing. It

means to free yourself from the effects of that experience.

Now, see, you will say that I ask you to remember the things which happened in

the past while other scholarly persons say that there is no benefit of remembering the

57

past. What will be the use of remembering the past? Many things of the past keep

coming to our mind just like that – without making any conscious effort in this regard.

Then what will be the use of making a conscious endeavour to remember the past?

The human mind, as it is, has a way of its own to function. How does the human

mind function? First of all it gets the information. In other words, we see something or

someone. We sometimes say that „I have seen this person somewhere‟. This is

information. Then comes discrimination. We recognize the person. Yes, he is the same

man who met me, say, two days back at the ticket counter and he had helped me a lot. At

that very moment, the third part of the mind awakens - he had helped me. The third part

is evaluation. This third part says that this man is quite nice, a gentle man to the core.

This way you try to evaluate the person, you judge him. Thereafter awakes the fourth

part of the mind. We call that part impression.

Information, discrimination, evaluation and impressions are four parts of human

mind‟s functioning. Now where is the bondage? So long as you remember, there is no

bondage. Since you know the man, everything is all right. You recognize the man, you

have the sense of discrimination. You have also evaluated the person and said that he is a

very nice man. So far there is no bondage. Now the bondage lies in the impression.

When an impression overtakes your mind, the bondage occurs. What happens is that

when you meet that person again the other day, the same impression will overtake you

and you will not be able to see that man from a new light, a new perspective.

Try to understand this with the help of an example. There was once a person by

the name of Ramesh. There was another person whose name was Jayesh. The latter had

a very rich library. He had very valuable books in his library. Some of the books in his

library were quite rare. Ramesh was working on some project. It was part of the

research he was doing. He was now in need of a book. He heard from friends that there

is a person by the name of Jayesh and he is said to be a very decent man. He also has a

very rich library. He felt that he should go to him and seek his help in getting that book.

Early one morning Ramesh went to the house of Jayesh. Jayesh was in a very good modd

that day. He had got a phone call from his factory a little while ago that the tender he

was expecting was sanctioned in his favour. He expected a huge profit from this work.

This had made Jayesh very happy. It was at that very moment that Ramesh called on

him. Reaching there, Ramesh told him that he needed a little help from him.

Jayesh replied, “O.K., come on, please. Say, what can I do for you?” Ramesh

told him that he need a book. And, Jayesh accepted his request and agreed to lend him

the book. He was courteous enough to say that he (Ramesh) should consider his

(Jayesh‟s) library as his own. He offered that he could take away any book he needed.

Thereafter Jayesh showed him his library. He gave to Ramesh the books he had

asked for. Not only this, he also shared with him a cup of tea.

Ramesh was rather please at the treaatment he had got. He said to himself that

„Jayesh was quite a decent man. I came to ask for one book, and he showed me his entire

58

library and in addition to this he also gave me a cup of tea. All this even though we were

strangers to each other, with no prior introductions. Where do you come across such

people in the world today?‟

Ramesh returned home with an excellent impression of Jayesh in his mind.

Ramesh had a friend by lthe name of Naresh. Naresh came to see his friend, Ramesh, at

the latter‟s house in the evening. He was also working on some research project and he

was also in need of some book. He placed his problem before his friend, Ramesh. Now

Ramesh assured him that his problem will of course be solved easily. He further told

Naresh that he had met a person only that morning and that person was really a decent

man. He told him that his name was Jayesh and that he had a very good, rich library.

Ramesh also told him that he also needed a book and it was with this purpose that he

went to that man‟s house in the morning. He gladly informed his friend that that fellow

not only lent him the books he needed but also behaved in such a courteous way that he

cannot express it in words. Ramesh said that the fellow has made him his admirer in the

very first meeting. He made me sit with him for a while, offered me a cup of tea and

offered that he could visit his library without any hestitation to get any book he needed in

future. So Ramesh advised him that he should also call on that person, Jayesh. You may

get the book you need from there. He is the best of persons. You will also return with

the best impression of man.

Naresh was highly impressed listening to this kind of praise of the man. He left

for the house of Jayesh in order to get the book he needed.

On the other said, Jayesh went to his factory and learnt that the tender he was

expecting did not go in his favour. He was expecting a profit of lakhs, and now all that

had been washed away with this one decision against him. He felt rather disappointed at

this news. He was in a very bad mood. He returned home and soon had a tiff with his

wife. This further deteriorated his mood. He was in great tension. At that moment

Naresh reached his house and greeted him. He told Jayesh that he had come to seek his

help. Jayesh was in great tension. He felt irritated with this help-seeker, and said in a

harsh tone „what kind of help do you need of me?‟

Naresh told him that he needed a book from his library.

Jayesh replied, in quite a curt manner, if it was the proper time to borrow a book

from someone. The library is closed now. And you cannot get the book.

Naresh felt quite surprised listening to the reply of Jayesh. He had come to

Jayesh having a very good impression of him. But the rude behavious of Jayesh pained

him a lot. He began thinking, „Ramesh praised him this much just for nothing. He does

not look decent from any perspective. I came to his home and he did not ask me for even

a glass of water.‟

Naresh returned with a very bad impression.

59

About a month went by. After about a month, per chance all these persons

happened to meet one another at a crossing. From one side Ramesh was coming and

Naresh was coming from the other side. Jayesh happened to be coming from the opposite

direction. Ramesh‟s sight fell on Jayesh. On seeing him, Ramesh was filled with the

feelings of joy and happiness. His mind said, “What a wonderful, nice person he is! It is

my good luck to be face to face with such a good person. He had helped me so much at

that time. He had told me that I should return his book after a fortnight, but I could not do

so by the due date. Now I should meet him and seek his forgiveness for being late.” This

kind of thoughts were going on in the mind of Ramesh.

On the other side, Naresh also happened to see Jayesh at the same time. On

seeing Jayesh, his mind was filled with a sense of grief and complaint. He said to

himself, “What an inauspicious beginning to the day it has been! I have seen early in the

morning the face of a man so bad and indecent. God knows what might happen later in

the day!”

Now, see, there is just once man. When Ramesh happens to see him, he finds him

a very noble, decent person. But when Naresh happens to see him, he feels inauspicious

to meet him.

On the other hand, when Jayesh saw both Ramesh and Naresh, several thoughts

cropped up in his mind as well. As soon as he saw Ramesh, a sense of complaint against

him came to his mind. He said to himself, “Oh, here is a good acquaintance. I had told

him to return the book in a fortnight, and now it is over a month and this fellow even did

not bother to give me a ring and inform about being late in returning the book.”

But as he saw Naresh, he seemed to say to his himself, “This poor fellow came to

me to borrow a book, and I was in an agry mood for something else but refused the book

to him. I did not even offer him a glass of water. Now I should meet him and seek his

forgiveness.”

Just think on this issue. Who thinks what for whom? These are the impressions

you carry about different persons. Why does Ramesh see a good, decent man in Jayesh?

Is Jayesh still equally decent to Ramesh at this moment of time? If we look at things

closely, we shall find that Jayesh is not being decent, good to Ramesh at this point of

time. He has anger in his mind towards Ramesh. The reason for this anger is that

Ramesh did not return the book in time. On the other hand, at this moment of time

Jayesh has affection of Naresh. But how does Naresh feel for Jayesh at this time? He

perceives a bad man in Jayesh. Why? The past experience comes to his mind. In fact,

past experience is a kind of spectacles we put on while looking at other people, and this

spectacle is what we call samskara or impression. And, God knows how many such

impressions we carry in our minds during our lifetime.

Thus, the word nindami implies getting free from such impressions,

endeavouring to live each day in a new way. When you get up in the monring, everyday

you should feel that it is a new life, a new breath, a new relationship…. If, for example,

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you had a quarrel with someone last evening, you must do the nindami in the evening

before going to bed to sleep. Remember what happened, remember all the events which

took place and forget about them all.

When you get up next morning, it should be a new beginning, a new relationlship,

a new life. Today when you receive a phone-call from him, do not remember at all that

this very fellow had had a quarrel with you the previous day and now he has talking to

you in such a sweet tone. Leave the yesterday behind. Yesterday was yesterday, and it is

today. Live in the present, today. The quarrel took place yesterday, and it has gone with

the yesterday. Today has been a new day, a new beginning. Why paste the yesterday‟s

quarrel on the face of today?

Once Vivekanand‟s mother asked him, “Son, you should not go close to that

three. Evil spirits reside there.”

Vivekanand replied to his mother that only those fear the bhut or evil spirits who

live in the bhut or past time.

….And we all live in the past. We call ourselves humans but in fact we are just

bhut and only bhut. Look around and you will find the dwelling places of the bhut. The

reason? We are used to live in kthe past, to live in our ancient history….Five days back

someone said something to you and you felt humiliated. If thereafter he comes to seek

your advice, even then you will turn your face to the other side. Why? Because he had

insulted you five days back. You hold on to the past rather tightly. You preserve it as a

very valuable property…

Nindami is a means of getting free from your past. You must bear in mind that so

long as nindami is not in your life, we do not live our life in the true sense of the word.

Nindami means wiping off all the samskaras or impressions which have been added to

your mind. The first step in this direction is to sit with a peaceful find and then try to

remember all the happenings of the day, all that you did during the day. Thereafter you

should realize as to what kind of feelings these happenings or activities gave birth to in

your mind. What kind of ideas arose in your mind? What chain of reactions they caused?

Just look how do you feel? When you look at all these past happenings and their

reactions with depth and objectivity, you will automatically free yourself from the

impressions of these happenings.

Of course, we someimes remember the past happenings and activities, but we do

so in a subconscious or unconscious way. Nindami means doing so with a fully

conscious mind. Look at these happenings/activities as ifkthey had taken place not in

your life but in someone else‟s. Look at them as if you were sitting at a distance and

were looking at a film reel. Do not look at them with a subjective mind. Look at them as

if they happened to some other person.

If you remember having done a very good thing during the past day, do not

indulge in self-praise. And, if you find you have done a really bad job during the past

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day, do not begin condemning yourself. Now your duty is just to see the past

happenings. Just observe them. This is nindami.

This is the first step. What will be the result of this? I shall try to explain this

with the help of an example.

There was once a lady professor. She used to teach philosophy. She was quit

While teaching philosophy for quite a long time, it began to affect her life also. She had

first learnt and then taught for many times over several things such as life is evanscent;

the physical life is there today, and it may not be tomorrow. Everybody has to meet his

death one day or the other, and so on and so forth.

One day as she was teaching her class, she suddenly got a message. The message

is tragic: her husband had met with an accident and died.

As one gets such a tragic news, naturally one gets numbed for a while, unable to

think of or do anything. He weeps, cries. That woman listened to the news of her

husband‟s death, and instantly felt a serious shock. She felt overwhelmed with grief. Her

heart wept bitterly, but she retained a near-normal, balanced outward appearance. Not

only this, she rationalized to herself in a moment that death has a very intimate

relationship with life: it is an integral part of it. If death is so sure, so unavoidable, then

why weeping and grieving as it comes.

That lady professor remained calm and quiet. She did not let even a single tear to

drop off her eyes. People were rather surprised to find her fully poised and balanced

even in such a moment of tragedy. They felt that she was a very strong woman. She was

really wonderful. She did not even shed even a single tear. What a great woman she is.

All women should be like her. People said all these things about her.

In fact, we consider weeping our weakness. This is a wrong notion. Weeping is

not a weakness. It is a natural expression. It is just like laughing which is also a natural

expression. If weeping is a natural expression, then what is bad in it? What is in it which

makes you weak?

You might have seen in kyour life that at times woman gives expression to her

feelings by weeping, but men generally fail to weep. The male complex is that weeping

is a sign of weakness. And, he does not want to show himself a weak person. Thus, it is

difficult for a male member to weep. In fact, his ego comes in the way. But a woman

gives in to weeping. As compared to man, her ego is only momentary. That is why she

even weeps over trifle issues. A benefit that she gets from this habit of hers is that

feelings do not get stored in her mind. In her case, a catharsis of her sad feelings,

feelings of her disappointment takes place with her weeping.

The psychological studies reveal that as compared to women, more men go mad.

And, men fall victim to heart attacks more than woman. Why is it so? Because both the

ailments of getting mad or suffering a heart attack are connected with the feelings and

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sentiments of man. When such feelings affect man suddenly and deeply, he suffers a

heart attack, and this also gives birth to many psychatric ailments. A man can go mad

also.

That woman successfully his her grief within her heart. She even maintained her

daily routine. A month went by, two months went by and in this six long months were

gone. Thereafter, she began having fits of hysteria. When the doctors asked her if she

had any tension, she always refused to admit any. The doctors were not able to find the

cause of her malady. They prescribed many medicines. She took lot many tablets, but to

no effect.

Then one day that woman happened to meet a saint. She asked the holy man,

“Maharaj! I often get fits of hysteria. I have made all efforts to get the ailment treated,

but nothing has benefited me. You are a holy person. Please bless me so that I get rid of

this ailment.”

The saint patiently listen to what she told me. Then he reflected on the issue for a

while. Thereafter he said, “I would like to know about your life. Are you willing to

share with me all the details of your life?”

The woman said that she had to objection talking to him and sharing with him all

such details. And, I always speak the truth, she told him.

The saint asked, “What do you do? I am mean, what is your profession?”

“I am a professor. I teach philosophy.”

“Who else is there in your family?”

“No one. I live alone.”

“Did you not get married?”

Yes, I did get married. I had a husband….”, she left the sentence incomplete.

“Yes, please say it.”

“He died in an accident.”

“When did it happen?”

“It happened about eight months back.”

“You might have felt rather aggrieved at his death.”

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“Yes, sir. But death is a stark fact, a truth. It cannot be avoided. I took the whole

episode in this manner, and consider it a normal thing of the world, I just forgot it.”

“Did you not feel like weeping?”

“I did feel like weeping, but I did not weep. I made myself realize that weeping is

a childish act. It is not a way out. I cannot help things.”

The saint could get the thread. He was quite an experienced, enlightened saint.

He asked her to sit by him and he would cure here.

The holy man made her meditate. He took kher to a peaceful, poised and deep

meditation. Then he asked her, “Now remember the moment when you for the first time

got the news of your husband‟s death, when you first learnt that your husband is no more.

How did you feel, how did you react at that moment?” The woman went deep inside her,

and remembered that moment. She was surprised to realize that her heart began to beat

hard. Her inner self melted and came out in the form of tears. She tried to check her

tears. But the holy man asked her not to check her tears and rather let them come out.

Weeping is not something bad. You should weep, and weep bitterly.

The woman wept and wept. You went on remembering her husband and his

death, and continued to weep. She went on weeping for three or four days.

After eight days that woman became a normal self. She no more suffered from

fits of hysteria. She felt herself light: all her burdens were gone. She went to that saint

again. She said, “Maharaj! You did for me what the doctors could not. I am now totally

healthy, very light, no burdens. But I fail to understand one thing. How did all this

happen with just my weeping?

The saint told her, “Until then, you did laught, but your laughter meant nothing.

Now after weeping, when you will laugh, it will a meaning, it will be a true laughter. “ It

is said that after that moment that woman never suffered a fit of hysteria.

This is a case study. This is an incident which took place in real life. There is

nothing imaginary in it.

This is nindami. To go into the past and look at things. You might have seen that

it happens several times in a day that someone says something bad and you will angry but

you still say that it should be ignored. At that moment, you say „let it go‟, but do you

really let it go, do you really forget it? You continue feeling the pinch somewhere. And

gradually this pinch continues to grow until it comes out one day in the form of a serious

ailment.

Why should we let that small pinch take the form of a serious malady? You must

try and kill it when it just begins. Make it lifeless when it just begins to get life. Lord

Mahavira has said, “Remember all the events, all the happenings from morning till

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evening. Remember what did you do at that moment? Just see and remember, without

passing judgement, without appreciating or condemning. See them without any

prejudices. Be a witness to your own life and situations. You will find that a lot will

melt down and go out.

Lord Mahavira has said something more than this. Why looki at the things of the

past in the morning and evening only? Look into yourself the moment you find yourself

in tension or stress. For example, there is a time when you feel you are getting angry. In

that situation, stop yourself for a while. Inhale a deep breath and exhale it. Then look at

your anger. You will be surprised to find that your anger disappears instantly. The

feelings of anger will be momentary and will not survive for long. But what do we do

actually? We let the anger, which we felt at that moment, go with us farther and farther.

With the passage of time it takes such a monstrous shape that it gets deeply imprinted on

our mind. It sours our relationship into enemity and this feeling finds a permanent place

within us.

Remember that whenever you find your mind imbalanced, whenever you feel

indecisive, when you find yourself tense, then you should stop yourself a while. Then you

should take in a deep breath and then leave it out. Half of your tension will disappear at

that very moment. And, the remaining half will go when in the evening you sit down to

look at the things of the day. As it is, we normally do not do so. We generally say that

we can handle this later on. And later on these feelings of anger and tension go on

multiplying. They go on increasing and increasing.

The nindami is the first step towards inner purification. Nindami implies how can

we go back to our real self? Practice nindami daily. You should spare for this purpose a

time of only five minutes before you go to bed. Begin with five minutes. Sit peacefully.

Take a deep breath in and then breathe out. Just look at the things and events which took

place with you today from morning till evening. Just look at those things. Just see what

miracle it results in! You will find that thereafter you will have less dreams during your

sleep. As it is, dream represents the impressions of we did or faced during the day. All

these events/happenings leave impression on our mind and during the night we go

through all that again in the form of dreams. In other words, what is left unfulfilled

during the day gets fulfilled in the dreams Suppose you wanted to meet someone during

the day, but somehow you could not meet. And you meet the person during your

dreams. This is what your mind does.

If your sleep after observing nindami, you will find that thereafter you begin

enjoying sound sleep. Dreams become fewer. You will realize this yourself. To begin

with, observe nindami for five minutes only. Gradually, you increase these five minutes

to ten and then to fiften minutes. Just look at the past events intently.

This is the first stage.

The second stage in this direction is garihami. Now you have looked into

yourself and at the events of the past day. Self-analysis and introspection purifies your

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inner self. Still some impressions remain attached outside your soul. These remains also

need to be removed, washed off. Lord Mahavira has said that you must perform

garihami to make your especially pure. What is exactly meant by the word garihami?

The word garihami means discovering a person who is as deep as the sea, who might

listen to something and digest it within never to let it out again, going to that man and

then tell him everything of the past day. Tell him all that you did, tell him wherever you

slipped and tell him whatever made you tense.

This practice is still prevalent among the Christians. To begin with, this practice

was found in almost all the religions of the world - in Jains, Buddhists and others.

However, the Christians have kept this practice alive even today. They call it confession.

There is a box in their churches. It is called confession box. Behind a curtain sits the

Christian priest, the Father. People come to the box and confess before him. They talk to

him without any hestitation and in a very straightforward manner. After listening to

them, the priest proclaims punishment as per rules.

This is a beautiful practice. What happens after the garihami or confession? You

come out of the inferiority complex after doing so.

In the recent past we had organized a camp. What happened during the camp was

that a person participating in the camp left it quietly without telling anybody. After

leaving the camp, he felt guilty in his own heart. He developed an inferiority complex

that he had done a bad thing. When later on he heard the experiences of the campers, he

felt a sort of fire burning within, the fire of penance.

Then he gave me in writing a letter seeking forgiveness of me. He wrote that he

had made a great mistake. If I am not forgiven, I shall continue to feel the pinch and this

will disturb my peace of mind.

I understand that by this kind of confession, garihami, he felt light. Otherwise, he

might have carried on the burden of his guilt for ever. He might have continued to think

himself to be a bad person.

Thus, garihami frees you from any inferiority complex. But for that you will have

to find out and meet a true Guru. However, if you start observing garihami before an

unworthy and undeserving person, you will be mislead or even exploited. It is very

essential to have a true Guru to perform this. You need a person who does not look at

your deed, but who looks at you. Try to understand it again. I said that you need a

person who looks at your deed and not you. You are in need of a person who does not

look at the waves but at the sea beneath them. For example, if you happened to commit a

theft, then this theft was the deed you did. You did this deed with your body, with your

mind and with your words. If you committed a theft with your body, mind and word, it

never implies that you have permanently become a thief. No, it is not so. Yes, of course,

at that moment you were a chief, but now at this moment when you are performing

garihami, you are not a thief. He who has the ability to perceive this, you should go to

such a man and perform garihami. Such a person should have the sight to x-ray your

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inner-self from its depths, who could see beyond the deeds to the doer. Go and perform

garihami before such a person.

You felt angry at one time. But this does not imply that you personify anger.

Anger came to your mind for a moment, you expressed it and in a while that feeling was

gone. The very next moment, there was no feeling of anger in your mind. You were not

angry then. He should be a person who reminds you that, reminds within you every

moment that what you did was not your true nature, it were not you, and that you are

different from what you did. You need to be reminded that you are different from your

actions. No doubt, you performed those deeds/actions, but you are not those actions.

If you look through the window, you see the sky. However, the window is not the

sky. If you look through the door, you can see the city, but the door itself is not the city.

They are only the means to look through. It has been through you - through your body,

mind or word - that a small action has been performed. You told a lie, but if you

confess that told a lie, this will free you from that falsehood.

Thus, he who brings you out of your inferiority complex is the true Guru. You go

to him and perform garihami. Tell him everything. Hide nothing, tell him all. You

should look at your entire life in one moment - from childhood till day. Everything

need to be expressed/confessed before a true Guru. You fill find a new birth, a new life

for yourself.

I am not saying what is there found written in a book. I have done this myself.

That is why I know how effectively it can change your life.

So this is he right path to return home. We have thus come back to our inner self,

inner home. Now is the time to return our own small house we have built. Please close

your eyes and concentrate on the Real One.

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Chapter V

MEDITATION FOR FREEDOM FROM TENSION

I begin this chapter with a Puranic story that I narrate here for the benefit of the

readers.

Once Urvashi, a dancer in the heaven, asked god Indra, “O god of gods, I have

lbecome fed up living here in the heaven. It is the same boring routine - dancing before

the gods, appreciation coming from the gods, the same heaven , the same surroundings

and others. I need a change. I want something new. All the gods are already my

admirers. They all are under my spell, my charm. When they appreciate me, this does

not produce any romance within me. I wish to go on earth and charm the inhabitants of

the earth with my dance. This will give me new romance, a new kind of pleasure.

In the petition of Urvashi, the element of request was less and that of ego much

more. God Indra recognized her pride and said, “Urvashi, you say that all the gods are

already under your charm. I think this is not right, and this is your mistaken belief. Of

course, you might have put many gods under your spell and also received their

appreciation. But still there are many divine beings who are not under your spell.”

Urvashi replied, “Sir, this is not possible at all. In case, they are male, then they

are under my charm. I have control over them.”

Indra again said to her, “Urvashi! They are not just men, they are great men.

They have been absolutely unaffected by either your dance or beauty. You cannot put

them under your charm.”

Urvashi again said, “If they are men, then I shall control them, I shall bring them

under my spell. You may send for them. I can prove before your eyes what I have been

saying.”

There were three great men -- Kacchh, Kukacchh and Kardam. Now god Indra

send an invitation to three presons. Some other gods went to these sages with the

message of Indra. They invited these holy persons to see the dance of Urvashi. These

rishis felt much pleased receiving the invitation of god Indra and said that they must go

because the kind of gods, Indra, has sent the invittion.They also told that so far they have

only seen the monkeys dancing, bears dancing; they have seen the peacock dancing, and

they have seen many other birds and animals dancing, but they have never seen a woman

dancing. We have heard a lot in praise of Urvashi including that she can put even the

gods under her charm. We are keen to see that Urvashi dancing, the woman who can

enthrall any and everyone. We want to see what attraction is there in Urvashi which

tempts every person.

The day and time was fixed. At last those three persons presented themselves in

the court of Indra on the appointed day. The beard of the great rishi Kacchh was so long

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that it reached his neck and he had just put on a cloth around his waist. The beard of

rishi Kukacchh was also long enough and it reached his naval, and he wore a only a loin.

The beard of Kardam was even longer and it reached his knees. Therefore he felt no need

to put on any robes and he reached the court of Indra in his naked state.

The king of gods, Indra, welcomed them and gave them seats to sit in. All the

three rishis got seated. Thereafter Urvashi entered the court. Before beginning her

dance, Urvshi bowed to the three special dignitaries and said, “O great rishis, I shall take

off my robes one by one while I go on dancing. Do I have your permission to do so?”

The sage Kardam said, “Urvashi, what is there to seek anybody‟s permission for

that? There are millions and millions of species in this universe, and among them there

are only gods and humans who wear robes. No other species wears clothes. They all go

about naked. Then if you want to get naked, what is strange in it and what problem it can

cause to anybody.

Urvashi began her dance. As she went on more and more into her dance, the gods

began to swing in ecstasy. When the dancing reached a particular stage, Urvashi made

her first piece of dress fall down. As she did so, Kacchh closed his eyes. He could not

check, control his mind. The closing of eyes simply meant that Kacchh was able to see no

more.

Urvashi looked at Indra and smiled, implying that she has succeeded in

enthralling the first rishi. Indra blenched a bit. But still there were two more rishis who

were beyond the influence of Urvashi. Indra was confident that they would not get

defeated by Urvashi. He gestured to Urvashi that she should continue with her dance.

Urvashi felt highly inspired, with added inspiration and encouragement she went

on with her dancing. A little later, she let her second piece of dress also fall down. Now

it was the turn of Kukacchh to get defeated. He also closed his eyes at this moment.

Urvashi‟s joy now knew no bounds. She looked at Indra with a sense of victory

and smiled. Her looks and smile were obvious. She was well aware that the second rishi

had also fallen in her thrall.

Indra felt a little more modest. But still one more rishi remained and Indra had

full faith in him. He gestured to Urvashi to continue with her dance.

Now the inspiration of Urvashi was sky high. She brought all artistry, all

perfection to her daance. All the heights and subtle nuances of dance she realized. It was

a rare moment, and perhaps in the assembly of gods also this was the first time ever. It

seemed as if time moved along with the movement of her feet. When her dance was at its

peak, Urvashi let the last piece of her dress also fall down and now she stood naked

before the audience. He eyes were fixed at rishi Kardam.

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The great rishi Kardam sat still and poised and looked at Urvashi. There was

absolutely no sign of desire, of lust visible anywhere in his eyes. Urvashi felt frightened.

It was the first moment in her life when she saw a man so firmly poised and at peace.

Kardam neither closed his eyes nor admired the beauty or dance of Urvashi.

Looking at Urvashi standing naked before him, he only asked her to remove other clothes

also.

Narad now stood up and told the rishi that Urvashi as she then stood had no more

clothese to take off.

Kardam again said that what was then visible to his eyes was no peculiar or

special. Whatever it is should be removed.

Narad again intervened to say it was now only the skin of Urvashi.

Kardam said that let this skin be removed away. I want to see what is beneath it.

Narad said, “O rishi, it is not possible to remove away the skin. Obviously, there

are bones, flesh and blood beneath the skin. There is nothing more than this under the

skin.”

Kardam again said, “Then why have we been invited here? We were told that

there is something peculiar, some thing special in Urvashi. There is something in

Urvashi which attracts all, which enthralls all. If it is only bones, flesh and blood, then

what is special about it? We had come here to see the peculiar, distinct Urvashi within

this Urvashi. There is nothing distinct and peculiar to see in bones, blood and flesh. It

seems we were invited here for nothing, and we seem to have wasted our time.”

Now the question of Kardam is - where is Urvashi within Urvashi? He wants to

see that distinct, peculiar Urvashi within this visible Urvashi. If Urvashi is also made of

bones, flesh and blood, then what is peculiar and special about her? This is in the body of

every person. What is special about Urvashi? What were we expected to see here when

Indra invited us?

Let us also put to ourselves the question which Kardam put to the audience of

gods? Your name is Amit/ Then, where is Amit within Amit? Where are you in your

self? Where am I within me? This is the basic question. In fact, it is on the resolution of

this question that all the religions and philosophies are based.

Where am I within me, where are you within your self, where is Urvashi within

Urvashi? We have to get familiar with the essential element within me, you and

everybody else. The essential way to do so is called kayotsarg. The kayotsarg is that

method, that means of meditation through which you travel up to your real self. It is that

highway which takes you to your real self.

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We must remember that if a seed has to travel up to tree, it is essential that it must

get split. It is only when it gets split that it sprouts. And only thereafter it will grow up

to become a tree. Just one seed is enough to make the entire earth look green. One seed

will grow into one tree, and one tree will produce thousands of seeds which in turn will

grow into thousands of trees. Thus, a small seed has the potential to make the entire earth

green. But when? This happens only when the seed hides itself in earth and comes out

of its shell, and thus gets free from what is superfluous around it.

If you try to split the seed, you will find no sprout within it; you will find no

leaves, no blossoms and no tree. However, it never implies that the seed does not contain

all this. All this is inherent in the seed. But to let its inherent potentials to become real it

is essential that it allowed a natural growth. It should be allowed to make its journey in

the lap of nature. It should slowly get free from its shell and face the challenges, face the

vagaries of nature on its own body. Only then it will transform into a tree.

We have also created a shell around ourselves. This shell is rather strong. As a

result of this shell, what is within us does not blossom. It cannot come out. What is that

shell? What is that outer clothing? This shell is the other name of tension, of stress. We

are always enclosed within the shell of tension and stress. We are buried under this.

Look at the small child. There is a freshness on his face, there is brightness in his

eyes. The child grows up gradually, begins to go to school , and as he grows up further,

he begins going to college. When he further grows up, be begins a job or his own

business. He matures as he grows up in years. A strong shell of tension begins to take

shape around him. His face loses the freshness and begins to look faded and jaded.

Looking at things world-wise, we say that he is progressing, but the fact is that he

is regressing. The reason? The tension is increasing. What helps in the removal of the

shell of tension is called the kayotsarg.

Perhaps you might not have ever thought that this could possibly be the result of

kayotsarg. As it is, when a person performs the kayotsarg he thinks that this is a spiritual

practice which is performed whiile doing samayak or pratikraman. It has nothing to do

with your remaining life. Often people believe that if they perform kayotsarg it will only

add to their spiritual merit or it will please God, and there the matter ends. However, it is

not so. What Lord Mahavira has told us is intimately related with life. This way,

kayotsarg is also related with life. This is a way to relieve tension in our life.

What is tension? Have you ever thought as to what the tension is. You often say

that I am tense today and that no one should disturb you. But what is really meant by

tension? First of all, we have to try and understand this tension. Once we are able to

understand it, only then we can go ahead in this matter.

Whenever you are tense, your body gets stiff. Your hands, your feet, your face

and in fact your entire body gets in the grip of stiffness. It loses its flexibility. Your

freshness disappears. You get stiff, and this stiffness is caused by tension.

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Where does this tension come from? Yes, this tension does not come from

anywhere outside. It manifests itself from our own inner self. For example, you want to

clench your fist and for this you will have to make your hand a little tense, stiff, and you

will have to use some force. And, if you want to open your clenched fist, you will have

to nothing. Just loosen up the tension, stiffness which you had produced in your hand,

and the clenched fist will automatically open up.

It is obvious that when we want to bind something and whenever you want to

catch hold something, the coming of tension there is natural. We try to grasp wealth, we

try to get hold of our family, and in fact whatever we seize it is natural that tension will

come when you try to tighten grip over something.

Birth of a desire is natural and it is not a bad thing. Desires are born in the heart

of each and every human being. There is nothing unnatural about it. If we are humans, it

is natural that desire will get born in our minds. People often say that we should not let

desires be born. I shall not say this. On the other hand, I shall say that if the desires are

born, let them. But you must not make resolutions that you should fulfil these desires at

all costs. When this desire to fulfil the desires is born, it marks the beginning of struggle.

When a desire is born, you may try to fulfil it. If it gets fulfilled, well and good,

but if somehow it does not get fulfilled, even then it is well and good. If you are able to

develop this kind of attitude, there will be no tension. When does the tension arise? It

arises only when we say that this desire must somehow be fulfilled. Then you work a lot

hard: you do everything possible to fulfil that desire. Ultimately, you fail to fulfil that

desire. Desire remains unfulfilled. This unfulfilment of desire brings disappointment for

you. You begin once again to work harder so as to fulfil that wish. But still fulfilment of

that desire eludes you and once again you are disappointed. This recurrence of

disappointmet leads man into tension, depression and frustration. It is at such a stage that

man shares with friends that he is highly and depressed and he cannot help it.

What marked the beginning of depression? What marked the beginning of

frustration? All this began with the desire to hold on, to grasp, to seize certain things.

You try to hold on to, to grasp and to seize something and think that it should be so.

If you wish that tomorrow morning the sun should rise in the east. Such a desire

of yours will sure be fulfilled because the sun rises in the east only. However, if you hold

on to the desire that the sun should rise in the west and that you will not eat anything until

the sun rises in the west, your desire will remain unfulfilled. You may or may not take

your food, the sun will rise only in the east because this is the law of nature. Whatever

your desire, this law of nature cannot be changed.

Where does the tension begin? It begins when you hold on to unbecoming

desires. That marks the beginning of tension. Look at the people, people fall victim to

tension because of trivial things. They get tense because of things which are rather

trivial, absolutely worthless. People struggle and strife for these small things. For

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example, one may ask why someone has put the book here and not there. This will lead

to heated arguments and a quarrel. Why has this shoe been kept on the rack and why not

here on the floor? This will make the atmosphere tense. We hold on to such trivial

things and begin arguing why this way and why not that way.

Tension is caused by holding on to such worthless things. If you hold on to good,

useful things, this will not cause any tension. However, look at what we do daily. Let us

also analyse what things we hold on to. Our analysis will reveal that almost all our deeds

and desires are holding on to worthless things. All our struggle is in darkness.

Once there was a little baby girl. She would walk in the sun and while under the

sun she would clench her fist, and as soon as she entered the room, she would undo her

fist. She repeated this many times. Her father asked her, “Child, what are you doing?”

The baby replied, “Father, there is lot of darkness inside the room. I go out in the sun,

grasp the sunlight from outside in my fist and take it in.”

The father of the child laughed listening to this. You may also laught at this. You

may take it as the innocence and simplicity of the child. Can the sunlight be caught in the

fist? But the fact is that we all have been doing this in our lives. We have been trying to

hold on to what cannot be held on to.

A little earlier in the preceeding pages I had discussed the golden old age. Old

age is a characteristic of life. Human body must decay one day sooner or later. Nobody

can stop the approaching old age. At the same time, however, no one wants to become

old. Everybody wants to remain young for ever. Even when the old age is there, human

beings make efforts to hide it. As the hair begin to get grey, people try to give them a

black look by the use of hair-dye. What is this all about? This is only a feeling to remain

stuck to youth. Humans try to get hold on to youth so that they remain young ever, but

you cannot hold on to it permanently.

Once a lady was taking part in a camp. A worker serving in the camp addressed

her as aunt telling her to sit that side. The lady felt very bad by that address. The worker

could not understand the reason for her annoyance. At last he asked her the reason of her

anger. She replied, “You could have addressed me as sister. Do you think I look like an

aunt?”

In the same way, once during a class of self-study, a lady was per chance

addressed as Mataji (respected mother). She was also angry. After all, what is the reason

behind this kind of annoyance? Why do the ladies loathe the words like aunt or mother?

They think that these words are meant to address older ladies, and they do not want to be

taken as old as yet. Even the words which are indicative of old age are disliked by these

ladies.

We must remember that the human body will sure undergo a change, because

change is its nature. But it is also in our nature to hold on. We always continue making

efforts to look younger. We make so many efforts for this. Anyway, one may make any

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amount of efforts, but the body will change because it is subject to change. But we wish

to hold on to it. This meaningless effort at holding on makes our life full of tension. If

we free ourselves from this kind of meaningles holding on, we can be free from tension

in life also. For this purpose, we must realize the truth, the reality. We must accept the

truths of life. If we accept these realities and truths, we shall remain tension-free even in

the moment of chnge. The change will take place, but it will not pain us, sadden us. We

shall be prepared for tht. We would have accepted that reality.

As it is, we do not accept the reality. We wish that the circumstances remain

status quo, they should remain as we wish them to be. Such a desire brings tension

beceause the situations are not always to our liking. To keep ever changing is their

nature. If we try to hold on tight the circumstances, our tension will also be more in the

same proportion.

Let me illustrate this with the help of an example. A child is born. Before the

child takes birth, both the child and mother are one. Both of them have just one body.

Then the child is born. How does the mother feel then? My child. She does not only

have the feeling that the child is hers but also that she is the child and the child is she.

Both of them are one. If and when the child suffers some pain, the mothers also

lundergoes the same suffering. In contrast, the father‟s suffering is a little less because

there is a distance between the child and the father. Being father is a matter of faith

whereas being mother is an experience. Being father is not an experience.

A mother becomes mother only after living that experience. The child is

produced from her own body That is why she perceive herself in the child. Even after

the child is born, she continues to believe that she and the child are one.

Then gradually with the passage Nature helps the child grow. Now the child

begins to play. Now sometimes the child comes to his mother‟s lap and sometimes he

does not. Sometimes he plays here and there, and only thereafter comes to his mother‟s

lap. After a while, he again goes to play and then returns to the same lap after some time.

But the mother always says that the child is hers. However, the time and nature gradually

work on the child. The child grows up further. Now the toys are more important to him.

While at home, he plays with the toys and outside he has friends. He has balls to play

with, a playground to play in, television to watch, and so on. Gradually, his world gets

bigger and bigger. Now for the child it is not his mother alone, he has many friends, he

has many toys. He does not play with his mother alone, now he goes out into the play-

ground to play. He plays cricket. He plays football. However, still the mother feels that

the child is hers.

The time passes on and the nature continues to work on the child. The child

begins to go to school. It marks the beginning of his studies. Now he has to read, write,

appear in the examinations, and good marks also. Now his world has become quite big

and wide. Sometimes he remembers his mother. Otherwise, he is busy in his studies or

in his games. He is absorbed in so many things. He is busy. The memory of mother

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does not come to his mind quite often and easily. But still the mother feels that the child

is hers.

Time passes on and the child grows up further. After completing his studies, the

child comes back khome. Then one day another woman enters his life: he gets married.

Then one day the mother cries out loud: “until yesterday this boy would listen to me, and

God knows what has happened to him today?”

There is a saying in Russia that a mother makes her son intelligent after working

hard on him for twenty-five years. And after that another woman enters his life, and the

latter befools him within five minutes.

Just think if the child underwent a change suddenly after twenty-five years. No.

The change has not been sudden. The beginning of change in him hd started the moment

he had taken the birth. Prior to birth, he was with the mother. After the birth, he got

separated from her. Now they became two, earlier they were one. Thereafter the

distance between the two went on increasing with the passge of time. This process went

on continuously. And this happening was quite natural and spontaneous. It had to take

place. However, the mother wonders how and why it happened. The reason simply is

that she is living under the delusion that she and her son are still one.

It is a fact that he is her son. However, during his life-journey of twenty-five

years the child has also gathered a lot many things. There have been many things which

have shared his attention. The eye of the mother always failed to see those many things.

She failed to see that change, that pace. That is why she falls a prey to tension at a point

of time when she feels that her son is deceiving her, that her son is now becoming of

someone else.

In fact, he who realizes the truth of change is really an enlightened person. Lord

Mahavira has said:

khanan janahi pandie

It implies that he who recognizes the moment is enlightened. The moment is ever

subject to change. He who is able to read the truth of that moment, writes it on his heart

is really enlightened. And such a person is never falls prey to grief.

However, we fail to get hold of the change. We fail to read the truth of change.

That is why we feel aggrieved at the results of change.

Take for example lyour hair and nails: they go on increasing every moment.

However, if you look at them suddenly after about a fortnight, you will feel surprised that

they have increased quite a bit. Did the nails increased this much in a single day? No,

this did not happen all of a sudden in a single day. They have been increasing every

moment. But we fail to perceive that moment of change. Now the irony of the situation

is that we cannot get hold of the moment of change but we put a strong hold on

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relationships and situations. We do not want them to change, and wish them to remain as

they were. This is the reason behind our tension.

You have a friend. You are quite intimate with him - a fast friend. And you wish

that this close friendship continues for ever in this way. However, then a moment comes,

a situation arises, and the two friends go different ways. Then you say that he ditched

you. You fail to understand that it is not necessary that the intimacy, the fast friendship

which you enjoy today may continue through your life. Change is the other name of life.

However, we try to hold on to things, to situations. This marks the beginning of tension

in our life.

You are setting out on a journey. Suppose you do not have proper space on the

sleeper, and you get tense. The train is not running at a pace of your liking and you are

tense. You do not understand that such happenings are an integral part of human life.

You will one day get a full sleeper in the train and the other day you may have to share it

with someone and you may not get the whole of it for yourself. Sometimes you will earn

benefit, and the other time you may be losing. All this goes on continuously in life.

However, we wish that we earned benefit today, and we must earn benefit tomorrow as

well. If someone helped me today, he ought to help me tomorrow as well. This

expectation of ours, this grip of ours causes tension in us.

He can we free ourselves from this tension? We have given birth to the tension,

but how to get out of this meaningless tension and the cause of tension? We cannot be

free of the tension by mere listening to a discourse or reading a book. What should then

we do for this? What kind of practice should we follow? What procedure should we

follow? What is the best way for this?

The best way to free ourselves from tension is kayotsarg. But what is meant by

kayotsarg. The word kaya here stands for body and the word utsarg implies giving up,

leaving. The literal meaning of the term is „leaving the body‟. But what are the

implicatings of leaving the body? Does it mean courting death? No, absolutely not. It

has an entirely different meaning. The word kayotsarg here means giving up or leaving

the feeling that I am the body and that the body is me.

In the moment of the kayotsarg, you transcend the body. When you transcend the

body, it implies that you transcend and get free from all relationships and attachments.

Body is the fount of all attachments. As soon as we discard attachment for the body, we

are free from all other attachments.

Kayotsarg is the best method. However, it is a bit difficult to live this feeling.

Our grip of things, situations and relations is so hard, so firm that we feel the pain as soon

as this grip gets even a little bit of weak. The issue of reading through the entire

Kayotsarg Sutra remains a mere wishful thinking.

For instance, a friend of yours happens to meet you. He is somewhat sad. You

ask him the reason of his sadness. He tells you that he had a very beautiful and costly

watch which he has lost. I am sad at the lost of this watch.

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You try to make him understand the reality. You have listened to many a

discourse. No? You advise him that watch is not a very important thing. Such things

come in life and go. It is lost today and tomorrow you will buy a new one, a more

beautiful and more costly than the one you had lost. You tell him that he need not be sad

at this. Moreover, he will not get his watch back even if he feels sad. You emphasize

that he must not feel sad any more. You want him to forget all about this and learn to

smile.

Now it may just be a coincidence that next day you yourself lose your watch.

What happens when you lose your watch? Do you remember the advice you gave to your

friend the day before? Do you feel that watch is a thing the likes of which come and go

in life. It is a small thing: it was to get decayed one day. One must learn to smile, and so

on. If someone tries to give you this kind of advice, you might ask him to shut up and

also tell him that you have heard this kind of lecture many a time. You might also ask

him to bring a new watch for you.

Remember, no one feels sad just for the loss of a watch. The sadness comes with

the realization that I have lost my watch. If someone else loses his watch, we give a fine

discourse, advise him and teach him the way to discard sorrow. But when one loses

one‟s own watch, all discourses, all advices are put aside: one wants one‟s lost watch

back, and all else can follow.

Once there was a gentleman. A camp was in progress. A participant in the camp

had a severe pain in one of his feet. The first gentleman told the other that pain in the

foot is not something strange, it is just natural. If you do not have he pain, how will you

meditate? How will you then concentrate? How will you transcend your physical being?

He went on in this vein for some time. He seemed to make a good discourse. His lecture

went on until he taught him the way to realize moksa or liberation by transcending the

physical pain.

I was looking at all this. I felt interested in and liked the way he taught.

However, after a few days the first gentleman also happened to attend the camp.

Incidentally, he also happened to have pain in one of his feet. The pain seemed quite

severe. He came to me saying that it was rather difficult for him to even sit because of

the severe pain.

I told him about the liberation, about meditation and about concentration, and

advised him that for all this he will have to bear some pain. I also reminded him that he

himself was teaching all this to a gentleman.

He said to me, “Sir, liberation can wait: first, I wish to have my pain removed.

Please do something for this…..The question now is: who has the pain? Who is suffering

from some loss or pain? In this case, the pain is to “me”. When the pain is to someone

else, you remember all the philosophy, all the books and discourses. However, when the

pain is to yourself, liberation and meditation and such other things are put in the

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background, and what remains in the foreground, at the top of your mind is the pain, the

loss you have just suffered.

This feeling of mine, I-am-ness is the grip, and the kayotsarg means getting free

from this entanglement.

For the sake of saying, we say that human body is subject to decay. The soul is

immortal and eternal,and so on. But as soon as we leave the place where we have been

listening to such a discourse and a dog happens to chase you, let us see who tries to run

away from the dog. Is it the human body or the soul within? Sure, it is the body which

runs. It runs fearing the dog might bite it. If the dog bites, it will cause pain to the body.

At that moment why do we not realize that human body is evanscent. Why? Because

we tend to feel that I am the body. This is the feeling we then have, and kayotsarg is the

name of getting rid of this feeling, coming out of this feeling. I am the body or I am not

the body: think deeply which alternative you think is right.

You might think how can breaking off the disentanglement of body help remove

the tension? Let us first see how and from what place does the tension start? Who is the

closest to you? You will find that even your mother is away from you, your wife is also

away from you, even your brother and wealth and home all are away. What is the closest

to you is your body. It is with this body that all the relationships start. The brother is

only if you have the body; the home is only if you have the body; you have the mother,

father, wife and all else only if you have the body. In fact, everything else is only if you

happen to have your body. If you do not have the body, you have nothing. It implies the

thing closest to you is your body. It also means that when you loosen your grip over

body, the grip over all other things which are futile gets loosened automatically.

But how can we discard our grip on the body? Let me share with you an incident

and with the help of this incident let us try to find a way-out.

This incident happened in the United States of America. Once there lived a poet.

Once he was on a long journey along with his wife. The journey was rather long. While

on the way, the poet had a severe headache. It was very, very severe. The place they

were passing through was dense forest. There was no village or town or city close by.

The headache was so severe that he was finding it almost impossible to drive. Helpless,

he stopped the car on the roadside.

Incidentally, the wife of the poet had brought along a book to read through during

the course of journey. She had been reading the book all through this while. The book

had discussed in its pages the different ways of meditation. One of the methods detailed

therein said that whenever you have pain in any part of your body, you should look at

that pain consciously. Look deeply into the pain and try to find out what is the pain.

Doing so consciously helps in the cessation of the pain.

The wife told the husband about this. At first the husband felt that it was all non-

sense, futile. But his wife insisted, and he gave in to her insistence. Thus, the poet

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agreed to concentrate. He sat down peacefully and began looking at the pain. He went

on looking deeply and consciously. In the beginning, he had the feeling that the pain was

increasing, and in fact it increased so much that he felt as if his head will burst forth. But

soon a point came when he began to realize that the pain began to melt down. It went on

melting until only the waves remained. After only a few moments he felt that the

headache was really gone.

You can also have the kind of experience which the poet had. You can also

follow the same method. It is the method of kayotsarg. Again, kayotsarg means looking

at the body in a way as if you were looking at the body of someone else. It also means

looking at your every experience as if that experience was happening with the body of

someone else.

Imagine that you are having a severe pain in your feet. At that time you should

begin looking peacefully at the pain in your feet. What really happens is that as and

when you have such a pain the first thought that comes to your mind is that this pain

should go. First of all, you think of ways and means of getting rid of that pain. You

think of various means of doing that. But this is the fundamental principle of life that

the thing you discard the most comes back to you with the same force.

You can easily understand this with the help of an experiment. For example, you

are asked to close down your eyes and recite a particular given mantra. Recitation is

quite an easy job. As you recite that, you are allowed to let any thought, any idea enter

your mind; you may remember anything, but you must not remember the monkey. You

are given the freedom to remember America, Pakistan, your wife, your wealth or any

other thing in the world, but you must not let the thought of a monkey enter your mind.

See, what happens. You may or may not think of anyone else, but the thought of

monkey will surely enter your mind. Whatever you want to discard bounces back to you

with the same force. Whatever you deny time and again, each time it comes back to

become yours. What you want to wipe off your memory comes back to your memory

afresh.

That is why I say that whenever you have a pain, do not treat it as if it were your

enemy. Do not try to dispel it with an aggressive force. That is a characteristic of your

body. Treat it in a friendly manner. Look at it with peaceful mind. Go on looking at it

continuously. You will be surprised to find that soon the pain will be no more.

I do not say this from what I have studied or what I might have heard from others.

This is my own personal experience. When you look at the pain with a feeling of love

and affection, it automatically goes away. As it is, pain means that your life-force has

got stuck somewhere. The natural flow of the life-force has got hindred somewhere, at

some point. When you begin looking at it with love, the hindrance, the obstruction

automatically gives way. And, the flow of life-force begins anew. Thus, the pain is

relieved.

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The first characteristic of kayotsarg is: you should look at the experiences of

your body in a way as if this body were not yours, but of someone else‟s. Whenever you

feel hungry, sit still and peacefully for a couple of minutes and try to look as to what is

hunger. What happens when hunger comes? We have been saying it ever since our

childhood that we feel hungry, but what happens within the body the moment you feel the

hunger. Does something burn therein? Does one feel the heat there? Actually what

happens with the feeling of hunger? If you are able to look clearly at the hunger, a

moment will come during your looking at hunger when you will feel yourself isolated

from hunger. You will transcend the hunger. This is what we call fasting.

Fasting does not mean bearing the hunger. On the other hand, fasting means

separating, transcending yourself from hunger and feeling that you do not feel hungry and

that you are not hunger. Consider yourself separate from the hunger.

There might come an opportunity when you feel highly thirsty. Keep your peace

and try to look at what is the thirst. By merely looking at the thirst, you will find that you

have separated, transcended from it.

This is the first characteristic of the kayotsarg. This is the first principle. What is

the second chacteristic, principle of kayotsarg? For comprehending this second

characteristic, we shall look at an incident from the life of the king of Kashi. Once the

king of Kashi was to undergo a surgical operation. The king had great faith in the

Bhagavad-gita. He used to read and recite the Gita with great devotion. When the time

came for him to undergo operation, the doctors told him that first they would make him

unconscious and then operate upon him. The king told the doctors that they must not

make him unconscious prior to the operation, rather they should let him read the Gita.

The king told the doctors that he would go on reading the Gita and they could go on with

the surgery. And when the surgical operation is completed, they should let the king know

about it and he would stop reading the Gita.

And the king actually did what he had said. The doctors performed the surgical

operation on him and he went on reading the Gita. He felt absolutely no pain. The

doctors were really surprised. They asked the king of Kashi if he did not feel any pain

when they performed surgery on his body.

The king replied that he transcends the body as he goes through the contents of

the Gita. He said, “I become so engrossed in the Gita that only Gita remains and I myself

become minus of all. Though I live in the body but at the same time I transcend the

body. Thereafter nothing happending to the body bothers me.”

This is the second chacteristic, principle of kayotsarg: find out some object, a

right object which leads you to the right meditation. This object can be anything like

breathing in and out; it can also be some invocatory formula. It can also be remembrance

of a true Guru or it can be devotion to God. It can be anything. Only that person or thing

can be such an object about whom who have a deep sense of devotion, faith and

commitment.

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You must try and find out such an object, and after finding out you must practise

daily to meditate by concentrating your mind on it. You must make a continuous

practice. After this continuous and consistent practice, you will realize that your grip on

the body is loosening. You will find yourself transcending the body. When you will

begin to transcend the grip of body, you will be seeking liberation from all that belongs to

body - your family, society, and so on.

Someone asked me that I say that there should be no hold, no attachment. If there

is no attachment, if there is no holding on to things of life, how will we be able to work?

We work only because we are attached and hold on to life. We earn wealth and other

physical comforts only because of this. If this attachment goes, we shall become inert. In

that case, who will look after the needs of the family? Moreover, why will one work to

look after the needs of the family? If there is attachment, we bring up our families and

we exert ourselves for their comfort and earn money to meet their needs.

I replied to him saying that you exert yourself a lot and earn a lot of money

because of this attachment, but still you fail to find peace. When you work with a feeling

of attachment, you are less interested in the work you are doing and your main interest

lies in the fruit, in the reward of that work. When you will begin to work considering it

your duty, when you will begin to work for taking pleasure out of it, then the work itself

will become your reward. You will be able to enjoy the fruit of your work while still

doing your work. The material reward of that work may or may not come by, but you

will have already achieved your reward. In other words, in that situation, the reward will

sure be there when you work. When you work with a feeling of attachment, the work

itself becomes interest-less. It is a kind of burden. But when you work with no feeling of

attachment, the work turns into worship, an object of your reverence.

However, when I speak of detachment or non-attachment, it does not imply sitting

idle or inert. It means to work, but never bother about the reward of it. Take work itself

as your reward. You will feel that the flowers of salvation blossom in your life. Your

life itself will turn into a temple, your body will become an altar of worship.

Thus, the first principle of kayotsarg is looking at the experiences of life in such a

way as if this body belongs to someone else. The second characteristic of it is

remembrance of such a thing, concentrating your mind on such an object in which your

mind gets fully engrossed. You mind will sure get engrossed, you will see, in that object

in which you have faith, devotion and commitment. With these two principles your grip

on the body will begin loosening up. As the grip, hold on the body will loosen, the body

will begin to get healthier. It will be a miracle: the health will improve in the same

measure in which you loosen up the grip.

Why does it happen this way? Try to understand it from the scientific

perspective. I was a reading a book by George Sylvia. He writes that our bodies have

inherent auto-healing system. In other words, nature has created such a system in our

bodies as it can regain health of its own. However, it fails to regain health of its own

because our thoughts hinder its way. Our attachment with the body does now allow the

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body to work in a way it should. Our mind creates hindrances in the way of body‟s auto-

healting system, the procedure which helps body get healthier of its own. That is the

principal reason why body fails to become healthy of its own.

George Sylvia goes on to say all the ailments we suffer from are not physical in

nature. Most of these ailments are caused by the combination of body and mind. We

have to find out remedies from outside for the maladies caused by the combination of

these two. On the other hand, the ailments which are purely physical in nature do not

need any cure from outside. However, this outside cure is not required only if mind does

not cause any hindrances in the way. If mind creates these hindrances, then this auto-

healting will get obstructed and outside cure will become obligatory.

You must take care of your body, but you must not hold on to it. Taking care of

something is one thing but holding on to it is absolutely different. You do take good care

of your home. But if you hold on to your house and keep sitting at its door-steps, it will

sure obstruct the pace of your life. You will be called a cynic, a diseased mind. We do

not take care of the body, rather we hold on to it. All our thoughts and feelings hover

around the body.

Look at the clothes you are wearing: they are close to the body. The food you

take is also connected with the body. The house you own is also connected with the

body. Your family is also connected the same way. You name anything and that is

hovering around or close to the body. Come out of this grip a bit. The best way to do so

is kayotsarg.

I have given in the preceding pages two characteristics, two principles of

kayotsarg. You ought to reflect on them. You must get release from the feeling of

tension. Let the real Urvashi within Urvarshi, the real self within you come out.

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Chapter VI

BALANCED PLANNING OF TIME

The topic of our discussion in this chapter will be the balanced management of

time. How can we plan our time? How can we do proper planning and management of

time? First of all, let us understand that proper planning of time is very, very essential.

But why is it essential? Look at your own life. What is the average age of man these

days? It was a hundred years earlier and then gradually it got reduced to eighty years and

these days it has come down to sixty years. We all know that the average age of man

these days is about sixty years. About one third of this, i.e. about twenty years out of the

total age of sixty, is spent by us in sleep. Of the twenty-four hours of day and night, man

takes rest, i.e. sleeps for about eight hours. In childhood this duration is a little more

whereas in old age it becomes a little less than the average of eight hours. As we grow

old, the duration of sleep gets automatically less. That is why I have kept the average

time spent in sleep to eight hours. So of the sixty years of age, about twenty years are

gone in sleep. Now we have forty years remaining.

We know that everybody must follow one or the other profession/vocation to

make out his livelihood. Some people take to some government or private job. Man

must also have time to earn his livelihood, to earn money for his life. The right and

proper time for this purpose is eight hours, though man is never satisfied after giving

eight hours to his vocation. He wants to spent maximum of his time in his vocation. The

reason simply is that the attraction of money always dominates his mind. Of course, he

does business work during the time meant for this purpose, but he remains engrossed in

the things related with his business/work. The right time prescribed for business

purposes is eight hours. In fact, eight hours is sufficient to earn enough to fulfil the needs

of life. Thus, eight hours of the daily twenty-four hours are spent in business. In other

words, about twenty years of the average sixty years of life are spent in dealing with

things connected with work/business. Now, we have just twenty years of life remaining

with us.

We are just infants for the first about five years of our life, and the next about

five years are spent in playing about. Now we have only ten years left with us.

There are many more things in our life which need our attention. Some of your

time you spent in entertainment whereas some more is spent in meeting together with

friends and relatives, conversing with acquaintances and doing many odd things. An

average of two hours daily are spent doing these things. In our words, five years of our

life are spent in these things. Now only five years are left with us. And these five years

are also spent just like that: for example, sometime you fall ill, some time is taken by

mutual bickering and quarrels, visiting hospitals and courts. In this way, the remaining

five years are also gone by.

We fail to make out how our whole life span is spent. And people still say that

life is sixty long years. In spite of this, we do not know how this life span is spent. Why

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does it happen this way? The reason for this is that we fail to plan our time in the right

and proper manner.

For example, you run a house. And, you run a factory. For this you make

planning as to how to run the house or factory. If you have say fifty thousand rupees, you

plan a budget for that amount. You plan that this much of this amount is to be spent on

this particular purpose and this much on another purpose. You plan the budget and then

spend the money accordingly. All this necessary to run a house and to run a factory.

Otherwise, you will not be able to run your house or factory. If you plan your expenses,

if ou plan your income, why do you not plan your time?

You always say that you will do this or that work when you have the time. “If and

when I have the time…”is such a sentence which we make use of very often in our life.

You may be talking to anybody, but the use of this kind of sentence will be heard quite

often. We are never in a position to find time for things which we actually do not want to

do. We keep on putting off things in which we have no faith, no commitment. The

availability of time is only an excuse, a shield to protect ourselves. We do somehow

make time for things in which we are interested, the things which we love, the things in

which we have some hope of material gain. We find time for such things even if we have

to give up or postpone certain other jobs.

When you are invited either for meditation or for self-study, you immediately

bring in the sentence “if there is time” to protect yourself with. You make a show as if

you have great faith in meditation or self-study. However, you always say that you will

sure do it „if you have the time‟. You promise to do meditation, self-study and perform

samayak provided you have the time.

The pre-condition is „if there is time available‟. But do you have get free time to

such a thing? When do you get the time? Even if you try and sit for a while for any of

these things, hundreds of worries and anxieties always keep you occupied. Sometimes

you are fed up with the inspiring words of someone. Sometimes you find yourself under

moral pressure of the saints and sit down to meditate, but your mind is not in it: it

wanders somewhere else. As soon as you sit down, the mind is worried about when to

get up. There are thousands of jobs needing your attention. Innumerable feelings and

thoughts attract your attention in different directions. You apprehend that business at the

shop would suffer, so many customers will go back and so much of loss might occur.

Why so? Because you have dependence on the shop. You are more interested in

the profit coming from the shop. You are interested in this or that job. On the contrary,

you do not have any faith in meditation. That is why you do not have any time for

meditation. Even if you find time for meditation, your mind is never in it, rather it gets

distracted in numerous other things. Since you remain engrossed in innumerable things

of the world, that is why you fail to receive the gains of meditation, of dharma, of self-

study.

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Do you ever feel satisfied, contented with the jobs in which you find yourself so

much interested? You work hard throughout the day. As you lie down on the bed at

night before going to sleep, are you at that moment fully satisfied and contented that all

the things you wanted to complete have been completed during the day‟s hard work.

Were you able to accomplish what you had wanted to? The answer is always in the

negative. At that moment before going to sleep, you regret that a particular work

remained incomplete though you wanted a lot to complete it. You could not complete

despite all your wishes and hard work. Thus, when you go to sleep everyday, you are

never a satisfied, contented person. You are ever worried that tomorrow morning you

have to do this job, complete that work. The morning will change into noon and noon

will change into evening and evening into night. And the same moment of discontent,

dissatisfaction will again take over. If such a thing happens only once or at the most

twice, it will be all right. But this is everyday occurrence with you. This happens daily

with all of you. You find yourself overcome with discontentment and dissatisfaction.

This sense of discontentment goes on until the very end of your life. When you

complete your life journey of sixty years, you are full of discontentment and

dissatisfaction even at that time.We feel that we were not able to do what we should have

done. No doubt, we kept overselves fully occupied in doing various things, but we could

not do what was worth doing. It is not that we were able to do nothing. We sure did a

lot, but we did those things which should better have been left undone. It would have

made no difference had we not done all that. We could have lived a good, worthy life

even by doing much less than what we did. We kept ourselves pre-occupied for nothing.

We kept ourselves busy day and night. However, we miserably failed to do which we

were supposed to do in life, which was the object of our life, for which nature had

provided us with all the necessary means.

In the present context, an episode from the life of a Parsi friend, Peston, comes to

my mind. One day he was expecting some guests at his home. The wife of Peston said,

“see, our most loving and honoured guests are expected. Today we shall offer them Shira

for food. But we do not have at home either the flour or jaggery or other material required

for preparing Shira. So you may please go to the market and buy all these things so that

we prepare Shira for the guests.”

Mr Peston left home for the market. He was a man of rare commitment. He

reached the market. He came across a crockery shop. He saw beautiful vessals, plates

kept there. Peston thought that when the guest arrives, the Shira we want to prepared will

be placed before him, but we do not have any good quality plates at home. Therefore, it

will be good to buy some new plates. With this in mind, he purchased a few plates along

with some cups and spoons.

Now Mr Peston went farther into the market. His footsteps were falling on the

ground, but his mind was walking much ahead of his feet. He thought that Shira will be

sweet. Will they offer only sweet to the guests? Something salty should also be taken to

be offered along with the sweet one. He entered a shop and purchased some packets. He

moved on. A little ahead he saw a shop selling cold drinks and sherbat. A thought came

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to the mind of Peston that he should also buy some cold drink for the guest to arrive. So

he purchased a bottle of sherat. This led him to think that there are no good quality

tumblers available at home. It is also necessary to buy some good glass tumblers. He

searched out a shop and from there purchased a few tumblers. Then he walked farther

into the bazar. His mind was now thinking of Shira. He began thinking that Shira

prepared with just jaggery or sugar is no good Shira. Some quantity of dry fruits should

also be added to it. So he went on to a shop of dry fruits. He purchased cashewnut,

almond, etc. in small measures. Thus Mr Peston purchased whatever came to his mind,

and he did quite a lot of shopping that day. He purchased so many things that he felt it

quite difficult to carry all of them home, but he forgot to buy flour and jaggery.

It was a heavy carriage. Mr Peston somehow carried the things and reached

home. He was perspiring all over. He was happy in his heart that his wife will appreciate

his effort as soon as she saw him bringing so many things home.

Often this is the psychology of the husbands that they expect appreciation when

they do some shopping and take things home. Mr Peston was also hoping that his wife

would appreciate his endeavour. Mrs Peston saw all the things he had taken home, but

the things for which she had sent Mr Peston to the market were not there. She felt a bit

irritated and said that he has returned without buying those things precisely for which he

had gone to the market. She told him that he has brought so many other things which

were not needed but has not brought what was essential. How can we now prepare Shira

without these essential ingredients?

Poor Peston had to cut a sorry figure.

You can only laugh at the situation of Mr Peston. But if you think over the

situation a little deeply, you will find out that your position at the end of life-span will not

be much different from that of Mr Peston. When you will find at the fag end of the

journey of life you will find that you have left undone only what you should have done

whereas you have done so many other things. All this happens only because you fail to

properly manage time. We never think that life needs planning as well. We do whatever

our mind takes a fancy to at a given time. But there are things which appear to be good

and which are actually good: these are two different things. It is not necessary that

whatever appears good to you may in fact be good. It is only after the result is out what

was good and what was not good. Therefore, proper and right planning of time is very

essential.

What is planning? How should be live our life in a planned manner? For this, the

first principle is right division. Here the right division implies the right division of time.

But how can we divide time in the right manner? In this respect, our ancient holy men

have written beautifuly. They have proclaimed that first of all we must reflect on the

purpose of our life. Why and for what are we living? Reflecting on this you will reach

the conclusion that you are living for yourself. The most important thing in life for you is

your own self. It is your soul. Family, children, wealth, etc. everything else comes later

on. Your own self is the most important for your. Therefore, you should set apart a

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specific period for your own progression, for your own spiritual development. You must

prescribe twenty-five per cent of the total time, i.e. at least six out of the total twenty-

four hours of day and night, for your own development.

What is exactly meant by the spiritual progression? Spiritual progression implies

betterment of the soul so that you blossom both from within and without. It is necessary

for spiritual progression that you ought to spend some of your time with your own self. It

might sound a bit difficult for your, because you can spend time with anybody else in the

world but not with your own self. You can spend time with your bitter enemy, but will

find it difficult to live with your own self. Why is it so? The reason simply is that ever

since time immemorial man has been living outside, with his friends, with his family,

with his enemies. He has lived with a wide a variety of people, but not with himself.

That is why man ever feels the need of others. Once you begin living with yourself, you

will learn that it is a very joyous experience.

The best way to live with his own self is meditation. Man is with himself only

during the period he meditates. Meditation takes you close to your soul. It provides you

with its own shade. It gives you relief and rest. It provides you with your own home.

During the moments of meditation, you are with yourself. At that time, the family as

well as feelings of anger, jealousy, etc.disappear. Even the body also dissolves for your.

What remains with you is your inner self, truth, consciousness and ecstasy.

You must meditate at least for two hours daily. Do not get alarmed when I say

two hours. You can willingly spend all the twenty-four hours of the day with the world.

Why cann‟t you spend two hours with your own self? In the beginning, you will not feel

interested in this because your minds tends to lead you to somewhere else. Gradually,

you will find that mind begins to obey and thereafter these two hours will become the

most enjoyable period of your life.

You ought to spend at least another two hours on self-study. You should read the

best of literature. This will help you to learn as to what the philosophers and thinkers

think of the world and man. Your own thinking will become mature. The self-study will

clean up the mirror of your soul.

During the remaining two hours, you must complete your daily things. This

includes bathing, taking food, etc.

In this way, you must prescribe at least twenty-five per cent of the day for your

own self.

Now, the second issue is of vocation, the profession for livelihood. You should

set apart an equal measure of time, i.e. twenty-five per cent of the time, for your vocation.

You will initially feel that it is too little a time. But I must say that only this much of

time should rightly be devoted to business or other vocation. If you work hard and with

your full potential, you can sure earn for yourself and your family the daily needs of life –

food, clothes and house. You can earn enough to make both ends meet. As for as your

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desires are concerned, there is no end to them. Any amount of time is insufficient for

them. You may spend your entire life, you may spend several of your lives, but still you

will not be able to fulfil all your desires.

If there are four members in the family, a house comprising four rooms is more

than enough. What will you do with a house which has a dozen or so rooms? But it is

also a fact that dozens of rooms are added to your home, knowing fully well that these

rooms are not required. Moreover, while doing so you simply gloss over the fact that

there are others also who need food, clothing and housing. The more you desire the

more will be the imbalance in society. Suppose you build a house comprising fifteen

rooms, but there will several people around you who have no room over their heads.

Desires, especially unnecessary desires create imbalance in society. Economic and social

imbalance gives birth to jealousy, and jealousy is the mother of discord and violence.

Therefore, it is necessary that you should only as much as can fulfil your needs, essential

needs. And, for that purpose six-hour work daily is enough.

Thereafter in order of priority come the family, society and country. You must

also spare some time for the family with which you live, of which you are a member.

Your family includes your mother, father, wife and lchildren. You must also devote part

of your time to them. You ought to sit with them, talk to them and share their joys and

sorrows. This will lead to the mutual love and affection among members of the family.

Man is also supposed to give some of his time to the society he belongs to. Man

must take part in social activities. This will add to the beauty, joy in your life.

Third comes the country. You owe some responsibility towards the country, the

state, the town you live in. Today you are a resident of Delhi, but what have you done for

the city of Delhi? Everybody in the city creates noise pollution, there is a lot of

environmental pollution, there are innumerable pot-holes on the roads, heaps of garbage

can be seen at so many place, and so on. You need to give some time to attend to such

problems.

It is easier to make a petition, but think for a minute what you have done in this

respect. Did you make even the slightest of effort to resolve any of these problems facing

the town? Did it ever come to your mind that you should do something in this behalf?

You ought to bring about awareness among the residents of the town you live in. There is

corruption all around in the society, many diseases spread at one time or the other, there

are so many orphan children. But did you ever do something or did you ever think of

doing something for them?

You owe a responsibility towards your town and city. You must set apart a least

two hours daily for various projects aimed at the development and prosperity of your

country. In this way, you should spend at least six hours daily dedicated to your family,

city and countlry.

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For the remaining twenty-five per cent of the total twenty-four hours, you must

rest and relax your body. In other words, this much of time you should give to sleeping.

This is the right planning of time. One must spend twenty-five per cent of the

time for self-development, another twenty-five percent in earning one‟s livelihood and

another twenty-five per cent he should dedicate to his family, city and country. The

remaining twenty-five per cent he should devote for providing rest and relaxation to his

body. This is the right and proper planning of time.

Whenever and wherever this planning becomes imbalanced, it marks the

beginning of tension and disease in life. The main reason for the tension through which

man is today passing is that man has not been able to plan his time in the right manner.

Man lives life on the physical plane only. He works hard, he exerts himself day and night

only for physical comforts. He creates daily newer and newer comforts for himself. But

none of these comforts provides him with contentment and joy. The reason? Joy is not a

characteristic of the body. It is a characteristic of the soul, it is the nature of the soul.

Unfortunately, man has no time for his soul. He has saved no time to realize his soul. He

is ever engrossed in the worship of the body. That is why he remains in tension, is ever

surrounded by sorrow and anxieties.

Planning of time is essential. A balanced division of time is equally essential. If

you abide by the proper planning and balanced ldivision of time, you are sure to lead a

life of peace and joy - wherever you might be whether at home, in the family, at shop, or

in society.

Once there lived a man in Chennai. He was a chartered accountant by profession.

You know very well how busy and how preoccupied a chartered accountant usually is. I

need not dwell on this as this fact is very well known to you. As it is, it depends on the

individual. He can increase the load of his work as much as he wants to. In the inverse

proportion, he can decrease the load of his work as much as he likes. That fellow in

Chennai had also a lot of work but he had so planned and divided his time that he would

go to office at ten in the morning. He would close down his office at six in the evening

and come back home. Even if there was a heavy load of work, even if the work was

rather important, he was strictly puntual to his time. He would close his office premises

at exact six in the evening and reach direct home. He will have his food at the appointed

time. He would give some of his time to the family. He would meditate, self-study and

perform samayak at the appointed time. He had fixed his time for going to bed, and he

would always abide by it. His life fully and rightly planned. That fellow lived a life of

sixty years. He was fully healthy and normal till the very end of his life. He attended his

office even on the last day of his life. He died the death of a saint, a holy man. He was

sitting in meditation, self-introspecting and self-studying when he breathed his last.

This is a true happening. That fellow had a friend. He was also a chartered

accountant. Both of them had passed the C.A. test at the same time. That friend always

laughed at him. He would often say, “O dear, clients come after six in the evening and it

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is at that time that you close up your office. Have you ever thought how much loss do

you suffer because of this?

But the fellow always told his friend that he loves to live his life this way and he

would never change his life style come what way. His friend would come to his office at

nine in the morning and would work there till late into the night, even up to eleven or

twelve midnight. It was only after that that he went back home. For him it was work and

work and only work. He was ever busy with his work. He never paid any attention to

other things in life. He earned a lot of money but he lost his health and happiness. He

was only thirty-five years of age when he suffered the first attack. He was only forty

years of age when he fell prey to diabetes. But he did not let the pace of his work

slacken, and maintained the same pace.

In such cases, nature always gives warning to man to stop, but man fails to pay

attention to this warning. He does not change the pace of his life style despite this

warning. That friend also remained busy with his work. When he reached forty-fifth

year of his age, he developed chronic headache. It was soon followed by pain in his feet.

What happens when a disease takes over body? Man becomes irritable by nature. He

loses his balance of mind even on trivial matters. This was the condition now of that

friend. He remained unhappy with the family, and the family was unhappy with him. He

got several complicated diseases. He was rather sad and disappointed and also

discontented.

No doubt, he earned a lot of money during his life, but along with that wealth he

also acquired a number of ailments and diseases. That is why wise old people have said

that as man develops more and more love for his position in the society he acquires in the

same proportion ailments and maladies for his body. He loses his balance of mind, his

peace of mind.

Do not be unmind of time. Do not be unmindful of your body. Do not be

unmindful of your own self. Prepare a time-table. This time-table of yours should

guide you to distribute your time for different things in life. You must know as to how

much time you have to give to which particular thing and how much of time you must

keep up to yourself. You must know the time you should be taking your food, you must

know the time when you want to or need to go to sleep, and so on. Plan and distribute

your time in a rational manner. If you begin to live your life in this way, you will feel

free from all tension. You will experience a strange kind of satisfaction.

You begin taking food at the proper fixed time daily. You will realize that you

feel hungry at the given time. The digestive system will so adjust itself that the digestive

elements will get ready to digest the new food in the body at the fixed time. These days

people are generally prone to acidity and obesity. Why does all this happen to our body?

It happens because one day you take your food at twelve noon and the next day at one in

the afternoon and the day following at three in the afternoon. After all, your stomach is

also like a machine. It has also its potential as well as system to work. When you

consciously or unconsciously create a hurdle in its working, it does affective the

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mechanism of the stomach. The result is the ailment of your body. In case you begin

taking your food at daily at the fixed time, say at twelve noon, your stomach system will

be aware of this fact and well before that time all the juices meant to help digestion get

collected in the stomach and you feel the hunger at the given time. In case you do not

take food at that time, those very juices turn into acid and begin harming the inner skin.

This is the beginning of the acidity which can further turn into an ulcer.

Thus, taking food at specific fixed hours, going to bed at the specific fixed hours

and meditating at the specific fixed hours is always helpful to the body. You tell the

beads some times and some times you perform and you do so sometimes by getting up

early in the morning and some times you do so in the evening and another day at some

other time when you find it convenient. This is not right and instead of this you should

fix a time for meditation and samayak. For example, you may make up your mind that

you will meditate and perform samayak from nine to ten in the morning. You stick to

this resolve for about a fortnight. The next day your mind will turn to meditation at the

given time even if you are at that moment doing some other work. The reason is that

mind has got a routine of its own, and it will remind you at the fixed hour that it was now

the time for meditation.

This is the planning and division of time. Prepare a time-table for yourself. It is

not very difficult. This is quite easy. It requires only a little bit of effort.

Now we come to the next principle. You have prepred a time-table. Now it is

equally essential to put that time-table into practice. A very important point to be noted

here is that you must say no where it is necessary to say, and you must say yes where it is

necessary say so. How? For example, you receive a phone call from your friend

informing you that he has a certain programme tomorrow at twelve noon at his home. He

extends you an invitation to participate in that function. Now you realize that tomorrow

twelve is the time which you have reserved for yourself. But a pressing invitation from a

friend has come and you cannot say no to him because the friend might feel annoyed at

your saying no. You cannot, at the same time, say yes because by saying so your time-

table gets disturbed. You respond to the friend in the positive, saying that you will sure

try.

“Yes, I shall try.” This very sentence coming from your lips indicates the

uncertainty of your mind. You should prepared yourself to be certain in mind. In case,

you feel that you cannot go, you must say no. In case, you have the time and you want

to go, you must say yes. Do not try to create an unnecessary middle way out

Remember one thing. He who wants to please all cannot please anybody. After a

while people will understand that your positive as well as negative response mean

nothing. No body will have firm faith in your response. He who is uncertain, unsure in

his own mind cannot assure anybody else. Even your own children will soon become

aware that it makes no sense when papa says yes and it makes equally no sense when he

says no.

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For proper planning of time, it is very necessary that you must not be afraid of

saying no when it becomes essential to say so. If it is essential to say yes, do not hesitate

to say so. If it is the time for your food, say for sure that you will take food. Suppose

you go to someone‟s house at night and you do not eat anything at night. The host brings

some good dish and places it before you. You express some initial reluctance and say

that you will not have anything. The host insists and you melt down and accept the given

food. Then this begins to happen quite frequently.

We hesitate, rather fear saying no.We feel that our saying no might offend the

other person. But a mere apprehension that the other might feel bad cause a great harm to

our own self, to our own body. It may be that the other person might feel a little offended

to begin with, but soon he will realize that if you do not eat anything at night, it means

you do not eat at that time. Then he will accept that if you say no, you mean it; and if

you say yes, you mean the same. In the beginning, people might have difficulty in

understanding, but gradually they will sure learn what you mean and they will trust your

no as well as yes. This will also add to your stature as dependable person. Therefore, do

not be afraid of saying no. If it is essential to say no, do not hesitate, do not be afraid of

saying no.

The next principle of planning the time is that you do with love whatever job is in

your hands. Perform your job with love. For example, there is a housewife. She has to

cook food in the kitchen. If cooking is her responsibility, then it is for her to cook food.

She can have two kinds of mental attitudes towards this work. One, she does the cooking

taking it as a burden, a work forced upon her. She does not feel happy that she has to do

this cooking job daily. Everybody in the feels joins in eating food, but it is she alone who

has to suffer in the heat by the side of the stove. This is one way of thinking. The second

mental attitude is that you cook the food with a feeling of love. While cooking food in

the kitchen, she should feel proud that she has been assigned a wonderful job. She feels

happy in the thought the food cooked by her will satiate the hunger of everybody in the

family. Everybody will feel happy and satisfied after taking the food prepared by me.

They all will relish the taste of the food.

These are the two mental attitudes a housewife can have towards her job. The

first attitude causes stress and strain to the housewife. In such a situation, she will of

course do the work, but neither the work will seem interesting to her nor will she

enjoying doing it. On the other hand, the second attitude fills her with pleasure. The

food thus cooked by her will not only give pleasure to her but will also satiate those who

ltake it.

When you take up a job with a feeling of love, the work seems easier and smaller

to you. However difficult the work, it will look easier to the doer. But when you do a

job under compulsion considering it an enforced burden, the same job begins to look

much bigger and difficult. This feeling of love turns even a mound into a small particle.

On the other hand, tension makes a particle into a mound.

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Once there was a saint. He was climbing up a hill. He had a bundle on his head.

It was the season of summer. Imagine the heat of summer and you have to climb up

carrying a bundle on your head. The saint was drenched with perspiration. He felt it

quite difficult to move ahead up the hill. On the way, the saint came across a small girl.

She was carrying an infant on her back. Still she was climbing up that very hill.

The saint went to that girl and said, “Daughter, you might be feeling rather hard.

You are yourself a small child and you have to climb up the hill carrying such a burden

on your back.

The girl replied, “O holy man, the burden is in fact on your head. On my back is

my brother. Since he is my brother, I do not feel any burden.”

Where there is a feeling of love, the feeling of burden is not there. Where there is

no love, the feeling of burden will be there even if there is no burden really. The question

of of love. Love makes your work sweet. Therefore, whatever you do, do it with a

feeling of love. Even if it is a small job, you must do it with a feeling of love. Even if

you have to set the bed sheet right, do it lovingly. Even if you have to undo the laces of

your shoes, do the job lovingly. Whatever job you are doing, do it with love and

affection in your heart. You will sure find a change in your performance as well as in

your own self.

Take for example the pillow you use to rest your bed on while lying on the bed.

Place your hand on it with a feeling of love before going to bed. You will find that your

sleep thereafter will be sound. This loving touch of pillow for five minutes will tranform

your sleep.

There was a man in Nasik. He had not been having normal, good sleep for the

last about six months. He had been continuously losing weight for not having normal

sleep. One day he came to me and we happened to discuss the issue of friendly feeling. I

told him during my discourse that we should show friendly feelings even to inanimate

things - you should show your love even to your bed, your pillow.

The wife of that person was also present during the discourse. She thought that

she should put into practice what I had said. That lady put a loving hand on the bed, on

the pillow of her husband for about five minutes. In the morning as the husband got up,

he expressed his sense of wonder that he had had a good sound sleep this night after

about six months.

This is a true incident of life. You can test it by doing so yourself. For example,

you sit down to take your food. One way of taking food is that you gulp it down

immediately as it is placed before you. The second way is that you first lovingly

remember the woman who has prepared the food for you. You thank her from your heart

that she prepared such a tasty food for you. Thank in your heart the peasant who

produced the grains which form your food. Thank that earth also which produced those

grains. Thank even the plate in which your food is placed. If there was no plate, you

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might have had to take food holding it in your hand. Thereafter you begin taking the

food. You will find that the taste of the food undergoes a transformation. You will relish

the food better, and you will find satiated with a smaller quantity.

The famous author, Carnagie, has written a wonderful thing. The feelings of our

heart and mind get reflected on our face, and they influence our temper. However,

contrary to it also happens. The feelings of our mind also get influenced by the kind of

face we carry.

If you are angry at heart, the same anger gets reflected on lyour face. But this is

also true that you bring reflexes of anger on your face, gradually your mind will also get

filled with anger.

We cannot hold on to the mind in a direct way. But we can sure contol the

reflexes of the face. Earlier we were reading a book while weeping, now we can read the

same book laughing. In the beginning you will feel that it looks like show-acting.

Gradually, you will find that the same smile comes from your inner self.

Whatever you do, do it lovingingly. When you do a job lovingly, you will not

feel the weariness, rather you will find a strange kind of satisfaction and energy after

completing that job. You will find yourself refreshed.

We ought to plan our time, our life in this way. The first principle of planning

time is the right and proper division of time. Twenty-five per cent of the total time

should be for your own self, twenty-five per cent for your vocation to earn your

livelihood, another twenty-five per cent for your family, society and countlry and the

remaining twenty-five per cent for your rest and relaxation and sleep. The second

principle is preparation of the time-table and plan your life in accordance with that time-

table. The third principle is that you should not be afraid of saying no. You must say no

when it is necessary to say so. The fourth principle is that whatever you have to do you

should do it lovingly.

Make these four principles an integral part of your life. After you do so, you will

find that you will never find an opportunity when you will have to say that you do not

have time for this or that thing and that you will do a particular thing if and when you

have the time. He who says so is either a fool or actually is not inclined to do that. In

case he is a wise person, if he knows the value of proper planning of time, he will sure

say “yes, I will do it” or he will say with certainty “no, I will not do it.” To say that I

have do not have the time is not the right answer.

I hope these principles of planning time will help you make your life planned,

balanced and sweet.

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Chapter VII

SOOTHING SHADOW OF SOLUTION

Now I have a set of questions before me, and in the following chapter, we shall

discuss these questions and try to find their answers.

Question: In our tradition, taking of food at night is taboo. How far is it rational. In

ancient times, there was no electricity and the possibility of unconscious violence was

there in cooking and taking food in the dark. These days we have electricity and your

nights are as well lit as the day. Why do you then preach avoiding food at night even

these days. Why is it necessary to avoid taking food at night? Please give us a scientific

explanation.

Answer: There are two kinds of beings in this world. There are some beings who move

about when it is the sun. And, there are some beings whose life is connected with the

moon. The former get affected differently with the presence and absence of the sun.

Similely, the latter also get differently affected by the presence or absence of the moon.

The beings which begin their movement with the pace of the sun start opening up with

the rising of the sun. As the lotus blossoms, they also begin to open up and expand.

When the sun reaches midway of its journey by noontime, they open up fully, they

blossom fully. In the process of their development, they absorb certain elements from the

outside environment. In fact, what they absorb from outside is their food for

consumption. In other words, the elements which they consume as food which gets

transformed into their opening up and blooming. And then as the sun goes down towards

its end, these animals close within their shell. The opening which had opened up gets

closed of its own. And, with its closing up they go into hybernation. This is the natural

principle of their body.

Man is also a being who lives by the movement of the sun. As there is change in the

movement/placing of the sun, there take place strange kind of changes in him, within his

body, within the elements of his body, in his mind and in his complete personality.

According to the yoga, there are several chakras in our body. Among them the most

important are the nabhichakra and hridayachakra. The entire system of our body is

controlled by the former whereas the latter is the centre of all our feelings. When it is the

beginning of the rising of the sun, the process of opening up of these chakras also begins.

Then as the sun rises up, these chakras open up fully. In the evening as the sun reaches

the west, these chakras gradually and slowly close down.

The food you take in is related with the digestive juices. The latter is linked with the

nabhichakra. With the setting of the sun, the nabhichakra begins to close down. As the

sun goes down, a special kind of change takes place within your body. Your nabhikamal

gradually and slowly begins to close down.

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Now, let us see, there take place several changes outside in the nature as the sun goes

down in the west. In the cities you do not feel the change much. You go to the villages

and see the change. If you want to really see the scene correctly and properly, you should

go to the villageside. When the sun sets, the birds come back to their nests. There are

several kinds of insects which go into a state of rest or hybernation. At the same time,

there are certain kinds of insects which become active with the setting of the sun. The

number of flies goes down whereas the number of mosquitoes goes considerably up. All

these changes take place in the environment with the setting of the sun. Peace begins to

dawn in the atmosphere. A kind of mystery hovers all around. All is quiet.

It also becomes essential for man that he should go to rest as the sun goes down in the

west. That is the time for him to rest his tired limbs.

Is that the only time for rest and relaxation? In our tradition, the night has been divided

into four parts. The full night is taken to be twelve hours, and it is divided four equal

parts of three hours each. As we enter the first part of this division, we should free

ourselves from the labour and begin to rest. In the second part, we should go to bed and

sleep. As the fourth part of this division begins, that is three hours before sun-rise we

should get up. This stage is equal to the first division of night: man should enter the stage

of rest for three hours before going to bed and after six hours of sleep and should come

out of sleep three hours before sun-rise.

When we begin taking food, it takes fifteen to twenty minutes for us to complete.Our

body needs three hours of exertion to digest that food. These days we often take heavy,

fried food such as paranthas, fried cooked cheese, etc. To digest this kind of heavy food,

our body will have to work for a longer time and exert even more. When you take your

dinner late at night, the first wrong thing you do is that you go against the nature of body.

Second, when at night your body needs rest, you put into working hard, to exert a lot.

These days generally many people return late from work, take their dinner and

immediately thereafter go to bed and sleep. What happens then is that you want to go

into a state of rest, but within your body an effort is required to digest what you have

taken. This creates a dichotmic situation for your body. You wish your body to do two

different kinds of jobs. You expect it to go to sleep and at the same time put it on the job

of digesting the food. But body is just one body, one organism. It will not change for

your asking. If you create any hurdles in its natural functioning, it will find its own way

out. If you go to sleep, your body will not digest the food properly. The food will remain

within lyour body undigested. This very food if digested would have given you energy

and alacrity, but in this situation the undigested food becomes a cause for various

maladies.

When outwardly you put your body to rest but inwardly expect it to work and exert, the

body begins to fight against itself. The result is that it can neither rest properly nor exert

as expected. Obviously, the food you take late at night never gets properly digested.

Moreover, the sleep that you have in such a situation is never a sound sleep. It will be

either a disturbed sleep or you will be having dreams. In case you have taken more food

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and spicy food, the dreams will be exciting and if the food was hot, the dreams might be

sensual.

The first consequence of your taking late food is that the time for your going to sleep gets

postponed, and you go to sleep late. Second, if you go to sleep late, naturally you will get

up late. If you go to sleep late, it is obvious that you cannot have proper rest. You do

sleep for some time but you fail to attain the energy and power that you might have

otherwise attained by sleeping.

From a scientific perspective it is a fact that sl ten to two at night is the best time to go to

sleep. This is the time when you get the most energy, freshness and alacrity from sleep.

This is much more than what you might expect to get by going to sleep at twelve at

midnight and remaining in sleep say still ten in the morning. When you go to bed early,

your body gets more rest and more energy. The reason obviously is that this is the proper

time for the body to have sleep. When the body goes to rest at the proper time, it will get

more rest and more energy in less time. You can understand this in this manner.

Suppose you have to deposit your tax by the thirtieth, but in case you do not deposit the

tax by the stipulated date and you go to deposit the tax after the due date, you are asked

pay penality. In the same way, when the time to go to sleep passes by and you go to bed

after that due time, your body has to pay penality. In other words, body needs more time

to have sleep but still it gets less rest and less energy.

Giving up of dinner is not just related to violence. Of course, this reason is sufficient in

itself. But there is another reason as well, and this another reason is also rather important

and meaningful. And this another reason is that late dinner is against the very nature of

the constitution of body. By taking late dinner is like torturing your body. You torture

your own self. As a result of this the entire system of functioning of your body gets

imbalanced. In the beginning, you do not realize this, but gradually the system begins to

fail. As the system fails, many maladies and diseases overtake the body.

As per our physical constitution, the body will abide by our wishes if we try and walk.

The foremost reason for not taking meals at night is that both the subtle and gross body

of yours are related with sun. When you take food when the sun has not yet gone down,

it gets digested very quickly. When you take food after the sun has set, your body has to

work over time. It has to exert a lot. A work which could have been accomplished

during the day within our hour is not completed in two or even three hours. How long

can the body go on doing over time? A day will come soon when it will get tired and

exhausted. The system will fail.

Second, when you go to sleep late, naturally you get up late. Consequently, a specific

kind of poison begins to accumulate in the body. Your sleep is connected with your food

and with sleep is connected your mind. Thus it is necessary to give up the habit of taking

food at night. You must also remember, this habit is not limited only to the Jain

community. All the wise men in the world, all those who understood the relationship

between food and body structure, they all advised mankind against taking food at night.

By so doing you can become healthier, you can become more energetic and you can live

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a long life. This also helps your mind to remain in a happy mood. Your body remains

ever healthy. You feel very, very light. You feel free and light and healthy like birds and

feel like flying in the sky.

Question: How can we make our relations sweet?

Answer: A relation can well be called a relation only as long as it has two things. The

first such thing is truthfulness: you should be truthful in your relationship with your

acquaintances. The second is mutual faith: you should have deep mutual faith in each

other.

What do we exactly mean by truthfulness: it does not merely imply speaking truth. We

take it to mean that you should behave with others as you would wish that the others

should behave with you. For exmple, you would wish that no one should put any

pressures on you. Similarly, you should also ensure that you do not pressurize anybody

in life. However, often the attitude is imbalanced. The male would wish that the woman

in his life should not in any way put any pressures on him. In the same way, the woman

would also wish that the man should behave as per her wishes and desires. This mutual

imbalance causes tension in relationships.

The first and the foremost way to make mutual relationships sweet is truthfulness. You

should do to your acquaintances and friends what you wish them to do for your.

The second point is the strength to digest the truth. Of course, we should speak the truth

to each other. But we must have the strength to listen to and digest the truth along side

tht of saying it. Suppose one of your relations has committed a wrong today, do not

stretch that issue so much that the fellow might feel ashamed and might have to think ten

times before admitting that wrong. It is natural for anybody to commit some mistake

sometimes. We commit mistakes at each step. Let us listen to the other who has

committed a mistake and provide him guidance with love. We must not stretch the issue

much. Do not blame him. Give him love. Provide him help and guidance with love.

Suppose a kid at your own home commits a mistake. If the other tells him once about

this, he will sure listen to her. Even if she does it twice, he might listen to her. He might

perhaps listen to her if she does so three times. But if she goes on doing so, the child

might think in his mind that it was no use speaking the truth and telling about the mistake

he had done. Therefore, it becomes essential for us to digest the truth.

One more point to ponder. When does a house become a home? It turns into a home

when each member of the family feels that it is my home. Once I went to visit a house.

A girl of about seven or eights years of age was there. I asked the girl, “Daughter, your

house is quite a big one.”

After listening to what I had said, the girl replied, “no, no, it is not my home. It is the

house of my grandfather.”

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A small little girl did not feel that the house owned by her grandfather was her own house

as well. Perhaps she feels that her grandfather is a different entity and she is different

from him. Whatever belongs to him does not belong to her. How did such a feeling enter

into the innocent mind of that little girl? Where did such ideas come to her from? How

did the little girl decide that there is difference in what belongs to her and what belongs to

her grandfather?

Think over this for a while. Think deeply. You will realize that somehow the little girl

had realized that his house is not hers. What ways and means the grandfather might have

employed to prove it to the little girl that this house is his, and his alone. Maybe, even

the grandfather might not be aware of the fact that his behaviour is proving with his

behaviour that that house was his alone. This may be some subtle hint. But the little girl

had caught that subtle hint and made up her mind that this house was not hers and that

this was of her grandfather.

For bringing about sweetness in mutual relationships it is fundamental that each member

of the family must have a feeling that the house they live in belongs to each one of them.

Therefore, it becomes necessary that whenever a new decision is taken in the family or

whenever some gathering or function is arranged at home, it becomes your responsibility

that everybody knows of this and everybody gives his own opinion in this regard.

Whtever you plan doing in the home, every member of the family should be actively

involved in it. The member may be an elderly person or a small kid. This remains a fact

that what you are planning to do, you will sure go ahead with it. But if you seek the

opinion of all others in the family, the programme will then become the responsibility of

the entire family. This way, everybody in the family will feel that his or her self-respect

has been lhonoured. He or she will also feel that the work ahead is her/his responsibility.

This will add to the intimacy and sweetness to mutual relationships.

There lives an affluent joint family in Jalgaon. Whenever a child is born in that family, it

is a tradition with the family that each member selects two names for the child. When

each member has done this, all those names of the newly-born child are written on a

board. The name will gets the maximum votes is then given to the child.

This is a very minor incident. But this adds to the depth and intimacy of mutual

relationships among members of the family. Every member, from a small child to the

elderly person, feels respected and honoured. Every member of the family feels that each

job in the family is her/his responsibility.

Let us ponder at another principle to make our mutual relations sweeter and deeper. In

olden times this principle was alive and applicable in our homes. It was also because of

this principle that our families remained joined. But in modern times this principle is

gradually getting dissolved. What is that principle? This principle is: all members of the

family must sit together for fifteen minutes daily. During these fifteen minutes they

might meditate or they might pray. When you sit in quiet and peace for fifteen minutes,

what happens? Your minds wanders less, fewer ideas enter it and the inner atmosphere

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gradually overtakes. In a little while the collective consciousness becomes one. For

example, I am reciting “om” within me, the person sitting next to me is also doing this,

and eight others who sit there are also doing the same. Thus the outer environment get

affected by ten times.

Make it a principle in your family at home that each member of the family will sit with

others for fifteen minutes daily. If the morning hours do not suit you, you can fix this in

the evening. But you must ensure this that all members of the family will sit together for

fifteen minutes daily before going to sleep. Also, fix a place in your home which we

might call the sacred place or the altar. Sitting here you should pray and meditate. You

may concentrate or you may perform your samayak. However, the principle should be

that every member of the family must sit there. You will soon find that such a place

becomes sacred like a temple. There will become a temple within your home. In other

words, you might also say that your home will become a temple, a place of God.

All must sit together. And as you get up after fifteen minutes, everybody must wish each

other respectfully and lovingly. Speak to each other. The younger ones must touch the

feet of the elders, and elders must bless them.

It must not be that as the younger one touch the feet of the elders, the latter are looking in

some other direction. They must look at the one touch their feet.

When it is the festival of Diwali, the younger members of the family touch the feet of the

elders. How do they do so? They are rather quick with it as if it were an essential

formality which somehow needed to be fulfilled. When you do so with great speed, in

that situation speed will be there but no feelings will be there.

Such a salutation is meaningless. If you bow to the elders, bow with a feeling. The elder

ones should also bless them with a feeling. Each member of the family should meet the

other with respect, with love. Even if the other is a small child of say about five years,

you must meet him with feeling and you must ask him how he is. Meet even that child

with folded hands.

Meeting the other with folded hands is a way of salutation. This is a very old tradition of

salutation in India. However, this tradition is almost dying out these days. Now a days

we salute the other with folded hands only if the other fellow is quite older than us. We

shall welcome with folded hands if out spiritual mentor happens to meet us. You should

bow your head before the spiritual mentor. But you just do by showing respect with

folded hands. And, where you should fold hands, you do nothing of the sort.

As it should be, we must salute the other with folded hands even if we happen to meet per

chance on the way. When you fold your hands, your hridayachakra opens up.

Try to understand. You have a physical heart. It is on the left side of your body. It

throbs. It is like a pumping set. But there is neither any feeling nor compassion. When

we say that my heart is full of love or may my heart is full of compassion, where is that

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love or compassion? Where is that heart which cotains love or compassion? That is in

the middle of our chest, at a little lower side. This is called hridayachakra, anahat

centre. This „heart‟ of ours is the real abode of our consciousness.

There are times when you are called up by name. For example, I might say who of you is

Parveen Kumar? He who amongst you will be Parveen Kumar will touch his „heart‟ with

one of his hands and say that he is Parveen Kumar. In other words, when you tell the

other as to who you are, you always do so while touching your heart with one of your

hands. Obviously, you have not been trained to do so by anybody.Your hand

automatically touches your hridayachakra as you identify yourself. Why does it happen?

It so happens because your real self lies here. This is your real home.

When you salute with folded hands, the circuit of the hridayachakra gets complete. Your

salutation may not be of any help or use to the other, but it benefits you a lot. When your

hands get folded, something develops in the centre of your „heart‟. Something blooms in

there. Just see as you meet one with folded hands, you will quite a bit in the centre of

your heart.

That is why there has been a tradition in India that whenever you persons meet, they

should greet each other with folded hands. As a result of this, the heart centres of both

the persons bloom. A feeling of love passes through both the hearts.

We ought to try and renew this tradition which has almost disappeared. And, we should

begin this from our own home. For the first fifteen minutes we all should sit together.

As we get up to disperse, we should greet each other in our traditional way. You will see

that a strage kind of change will take place. The home will get transformed into heaven.

There are several members in the family. It is quite natural that sometimes we get

annoyed with one another. If no effort is made to undo this little bit of annoyance,

gradually it will settle down like a big knot in both the hearts. You should sit together

daily and greeting one another as you get up to disperse is an effort which will not let any

knot settle down in your heart.

I remember one incident. There was a person in Chennai. He has transformed his home

into a heaven with the help of this principle. About fifteen years back, he had quarreled

with his younger brother. Both the brothers had not been on speaking terms for the last

fifteen years. Once the younger brother had to go to the house of his elder brother on

some very urgent task. You may call it a coincidence but that was the time when the

elder brother and his family were sitting together to meditate. The younger brother had

also to per force sit with the family. As the sitting and meditation came to an end, they

all got up and greeted one another. The elder brother greeted the younger brother also.

As a result of this one greeting with folded hands, the wall of differences which had come

up between two brothers got rent apart in a moment. The younger brother fell to the feet

of his elder brother and began weeping. All grievances and misunderstandings of the last

fifteen years melted down in a moment. The children of the elder brother greeting their

uncle, the younger brother of their father. The uncle felt overjoyed at all this. The

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younger brother came to me and asked, “Maharaj, the heavenly bliss that I have

experienced today is rare experience of my life. Your teachings have transformed the

home of my brother into a heaven, but this has also filled mine house with happiness and

joy.

If the mutual relationships are sweet, then our home is not mere home but a temple, the

abode of God. It becomes heaven. If there is no sweetness in relationships, home looks

barren, it is just ruins where fear and cries prevail.

I have just narrated a few principles of developing sweetness in relationships. Just test

these principles. I am sure this will sure make lyour home a heaven and all members will

find themselves bound in a chain of love. The whole family will become a rosary, all

members in beads and all bound with one thread of love.

Question: In one of the chapters of this book, you have given the instance of a woman

professor and you have supported the view that shedding tears helps relieve your pain. If

tears, shedding of tears is the only way to get relief from pain, wht will be the utility of

equipoise which means that one should take joy and sorrow in the same way. Please

explain this mutual contradiction.

Answer: What is samta dharma? What is the meaning of the term? Often we say that

you should not have either attachment or hatred for anything, treat everybody and

everything equally. What do you understand of this? Does it mean that we should have a

stone-face. Should we neither laugh nor weep? This is not samta dharma or equipoise.

A very simple and straight meaning of the word is that you should ever feel ecstatic.

Your face should always reflect joy and happiness. Samta means that you should come

back to your real nature, to your real home. Human nature is peace and ecstasy. Samta

means to ever remain in a mood of peace and ecstasy.

I referred to the weeping as a way to get relief from pain in a particular context in the life

of that lady professor, and it was the right way in that context. In case you are very sad in

your heart of hearts and you feel like weeping, then do not try to supress or stop weeping.

If you realize from your within that there is no use weeping and you do not feel like

weeping, then it is a different story. If you have had no experience and still you do feel

like weeping from within your heart, it will be wrong to suppress weeping only because

you have heard that weeping is of no use and it does not behove you. To suppress

weeping is somethig entirely different from transcending the stage of weeping. You

should try to learn and understand this distinction.

You can also understand this in this manner. You have gone so deep into ecstasy that

you never feel anger or annoyance. This is one thing. You do feel anger and annoyance

but you have heard that anger is a devil and that one must not feel angry. Therefore, you

try and suppress the anger. This is another thing. This latter is entirely different from the

former. In case you do not feel the feeling of anger from within your heart, you are

perfectly happy. However, if you do feel anger from within and feel it a lot, but you try

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to make a show of being in perfect happiness and without anger, you may not be able to

keep this kind of mask on your face for a very long time. Just ponder over this issue.

In case, you have no feelings of anger in your heart, no outside events can cause you any

disturbance. On the other hand, if feelings of anger are there inside, in your heart, there

may or may not be any outside events you will sure create them. The anger within you

will create events of its own, and then express itself.

In case, you are sad within, the inner sadness will come out in the form of tears. In that

case, if sadness wants to shed itself out in the form of tears, let it. Tears are not a bad

thing. It is a natural system with the body. If the body wants to shed tears, let it shed

them. Do not try and suppress them. If you do so, this will surely have reaction on the

body. The tears will take some other form and appear out on the body.

There are people who begin shedding tears as they sit and meditate. At that moment of

time, they do not have any sadness or grief in their heart. Still they feel that tears

automatically begin coming from their eyes. Where do these tears come from? There are

a lot of tears which are gathered togeher in your body. They are preserved there, kept in

check by you. When you are in meditation, your body relalxes and you are at peace with

your self. Consequently, your hold on the tears weakens. All the rubbish that is within

automtically comes out. Let it come out.

What I want to say is only this that you need not hoard tears within. In case, they are

there in your body, it is good that they are shed out. Of course, if you are an enlightened

being and no outside events and happenings affect you in any way and you have fully

realized that death is a must. You cannot avoid it. It is a natural even in the life of a

human being. In case, you remain unaffected even by death, this is what I have called

samta or equipoise. Such an attitude of remaining indifferent to any outside event or

happening produces the feeling of equipoise. When this feeling is born, tears bid good-

bye to you. Then there remains no question of shedding or not shedding the tears.

Question: Please throw some light on the mutual relationship between samvtsari and

samyagdarsan.

Answer: We want to attain perfect happiness, ecstasy in our life. We want to acquire

perfect peace during our life. This has been called moksa or salvation/libertion in our

scriptural literature. The fundamental principle to attain all this is called samyagdarsan

or right knowledge. In simple words, it means making your attitude equal and balanced.

What is the basis of samyagdarsan or right knowledge? When our knowledge, our

attitude will become right? We shall acquire right knowledge and right attitude only

when the feelings of anger, pride, attachment and avarice within us will gradually get

weakened. As the evils will get weaken, the right knowledge will gain strength. And, as

the right knowledge strengthens, the evils like anger become pacified and get weak. Both

of them cannot survive simultaneously.

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There are references in the scriptural literature that if a person stretches his anger for an

year or longer than that, he loses his right knowledge. He does not remain a Jain, rather

he becomes a non-Jain. He may continue to write Jain as a suffix to his name, but inner

self, his real seal will not remain a Jain. That is why holy personages lhave fixed one day

in an year when you are supposed to check and break the continuity of the chain the

feelings of anger, pride, ego, attachment and avarice. Stop the flow of these feelings. Do

not at any cost let them go beyod an year.

What will happen if these feelings go beyond the duration of one year? Take for example

the case when some acquaintance of mine and I lose earlier friendly feeling and develop

unpleasant feelings of anger and enmity. We become foes, bitter foes of each other. This

kind of inimical feelings between the two of us remain there for two months. Time goes

by. Four months go by, six months pass , eight months are gone, eleven months pass by,

and our enmity with each other remains as it was. In case, this kind of relationship

continues for more than twelve months and the knot of enmity within me remains as it

was for more than an year, I shall no more remain a Jain: I shall become a non-Jain. To

save myself from that, I must untie that knot before the year is out.

This is what has been fully explained in our scriptural literature, the Agams. The first in

the order of such evils is anger. The second is pride or ego. What is exactly implied by

pride? It is a kind of comparison or contrast, it is when you begin to consider yourself

superior to the other. In fact, when you go on comparing yourself with others, you will

either develop an interiority complex or superiority complex: you will either consider

yourself superior to the other or inferior to the other. You must analyse your self.

Neither of these two complexes should remain like a knot within your mind. If it

happens, you will lose your right knowledge.

The third evil in the order is deceit. It is like ditching someone who had with in you.

You prove yourself unworthy of someone‟s faith. There was difference in what you said

and what you did to a person. In case, this kind of feelings remains within your mind for

more than an year, you will lose your right knowledge.

The fourth is avarice or greed. Excessive greed of anything is also a serious evil. This

should also not remain in your mind for more than twelve months. Otherwise, your right

knowledge will go.

The day of samvtsari is a kind of witness of your being a Jain. In case you wish to

continue to remain a devotee of jin or consider yourself a Jain, in other words, if you

wish to remain a truthful and noble person whose self is saturated with ecstasy and peace,

then the day samvtsari is rather important for your. It is the day for you to make self-

analysis. You must cast a look within and find if kthe feelings of anger within you have

not gone older than an year. Think around if there is a person with whom you have been

having feelings of enmity for more than twelve months. If the answer to these two

questions is in the positive, then samvtsari is an occasion for you when you must visit

that person and embrace him. You must go to him and seek his forgiveness. Fell down

the wall of enmity. Rend apart the wall in your heart. In case you are not in a position to

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rend apart this wall even after a period of one year, then this will become stronger by the

day, and it will survive even for generations.

Samvtsari is the day when you must make self-analysis and self-evaluation. All other

festivals that we come across during the years are celebrated by taking and distributing

sweets and other eatables. We make merry on these days of festivals. However, the

Samvtsari is very different from all other festivals. On this day, you do not go out and

meet others. On this day, you try and meet your own self. Self-analysis is made on this

day. You look back at the events of the past year and make an assessment as to where

you slipped, whom did I hurt with my words or deeds, and when did I fall to untruth,

deceit and greed. One must look at one‟s own self, look at the wrongs and evils and sin

one has committed during the past twelve years and one must atone for them. One must

give an account of himself for the past year in his own court. You must confess the

wrongs that you did and promise with your own self not to repeat them.

In fact, Samvtsari is the day when we look back and analyse the events of the past one

year and then confess to our own self all the wrongs we did. This day provides you with

an opportunity to get hold of the moments when you got excited, when you got

individualistic and subjective. Such moments might have added to the filth on the soul.

A true and humble confession will help wipe off such a filth.

You will sure find yourself rather light. You will feel no burden. You will get filled with

ecstasy. And, this ecstasy is in fact your true nature.

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Appendix I

ACHARYA SAMRAT DR SHIV MUNI JI MAHARAJ

- a brief profile -

Acharya Samrat Dr Shiv Muni Ji Maharaja being now heads and leads the Jain

sraman sangh. Detachment, austerity, enlightenment and meditation are the four pillars

of his pious life lived in equanimity. His mind is ever in quest of knowledge and

engrossed in meditation. There are numerous responsibilities of the sraman sangh which

he as being at the helm of affairs in the hierarchy carries out in a quiet, natural and

proficient manner, but along side this he is ever on the move upward on the path to

spiritual progression.

Shiv Muni was born in a very affluent and respectable Oswal family of a small

town called Malout in the Malwa region of the Punjab. By the time he entered the

university for higher education, he came to be known for his sharp intellect and his power

of comprehension. He passed each of his examination, from the primary to the

university, in the first division.

He had nurtured an intense desire to know and realize truth ever since his

childhood. His education in the colleges and the university could not satiate his hunger

for truth, rather the acquisition of higher academic knowledge further intensified his

desire for higher spiritual knowledge. During his student life he travelled far and wide

throughout America, Canada, England and several other countries. The wealth and

material comforts of worldly life failed to tempt and bind him. Then he turned towards

studying the faith of his family, the Jainism. He made a thorough study of the life,

utterances and teachings of Lord Mahavira. This stirred his inner self and he made a firm

resolve to renounce this worldly life and take to the life of an ascetic.

Of course, there were many emotional pressures from the family and friends, but

nothing could deviate him from his resolve. And, as it happens in the case of all great

men, his resolve was not uncalled for. It was this resolve which was in future to give to

the sraman sangh a dynamic and enlighted spiritual leader. He entered the sraman sangh

as a disciple of Gian Muni Ji, well known Jain scholar and exegete and himself a disciple

of Acharya Atma Ram Ji.

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Shiv Muni Ji made an intensive study of Jain philosophy and theology. He got

his doctorate from the Punjabi University, Patiala, on the topic of “Doctrine of Liberation

in Indian Religions, with special reference to Jainism”. A study of this disseration, since

available in book form, would reveal to any reader the author‟s depth of understanding as

well as his insatiable thirst for more and more knowledge.

After a few years of his initiation into the sraman sangh, Shiv Muni Ji planned, as

per the directives of his Guru, to travel throughout India preaching Jain tenets. Shiv

Muni sojourned through the interiors of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh,

Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnatka, Orissa, Tamilnade,

Gujarat and other states. Wherever he visited, people welcomed him and liked his

personal piety and simplicity of life. It was during this sojourn that the sraman sangh

selected him as its first Yuva Acharya.

One could see him apparently travelling from village to village in different parts

of the country, but in reality he was constantly on the upward move of his spiritual

journey. Through the medium of meditation, he went deeper and deeper. During the

course of this inward sojourn, he had had wonderful experiences of truth and meditation.

He seems to have proved that even in this era one could know the truth, realize the truth

and live the truth.

Presently, Shiv Muni Ji has been busy preaching and spreading the higher

knowledge through meditation: it is through this medium that he has himself lived the

truth. Thousands of people have benefitted from this endeavour of the Acharya.

Demands have constantly been pouring in from all over the country for holding

meditation camps.

The Jain world considers itself fortunate to have as its spiritual leader a person

who is so enlightened, so austere and simple and so given to meditation.

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A BIREF RESUME OF ACHARYA SHIV MUNI JI

Place of Birth: Malout, District Muktsar, Punjab

Date of Birth: 18 September 1942 (Bhadon sudi seven)

Mother: Mrs Vidya Devi Jain

Father: Mr Chiranji Lal Jain

Caste/Varna: Vaisya, Oswal

Family: Bhabu

Initiation: 17 May 1972, 12 noon

Place of initiation: Malout, Punjab

Religious Teacher: Shri Gian Muni Ji Maharaj

Disciples: Shri Shirish Muni Ji, Shri Shubham Muni Ji, Shri Shiyash Muni Ji,

Shri Suvrat Muni Ji, Shri Shamit Muni Ji

Yuva Acharya: 13 May 1987, at Pune (Maharashtra)

Sraman Sangh

Acharya:

Appointment: 9 June 1999, Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra

Chadar

Mahotsva: 7 May 2002, New Delhi

Academic

Achievements: M.A. in Philosophy and English Literature, Ph.D., D. Litt.;

Deep and thorough study of Jain scriptural literature;

Distinct research work in Dhyan-Yoga meditation.

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Appendix II

SHRI SHIRISH MUNI JI MAHARAJ: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Shri Shirish Muni Ji Maharaj is one the prominent disciples of Acharya Dr Shiv

Muni Ji Maharaj. He for the first time came in contact with the Acharya during his stay

in Bombay (Khar) for the rainy days (chaturmas) of 1987. Sitting at the feet of Acharaya

Shiv Muni Ji, he realized the importance of spiritual discipline and meditation and took

his teaching to heart. In fact, Shri Shirish Muni had then been on a business trip to

Bombay from Udaipur: those were the days when he was settling down well in his

business. However, reaching the pious presence of the Acharya he felt that spirituality

was the best trade he could carry out. There is no end, no apex of the worldly business

whereas spirituality itself was the highest state. Thus he dedicated his self in the feet of

the revered Acharya.

After receiving the consent of his parents, Shri Shirish received initiation into the

sraman sangh on 7 May 1990at Yadgiri in Karnataka. Prior to that, he remained for three

years as an apprentice disciple (vairagi) with the Acharya and learnt to tread the path to

spirituality under his guidance. After initiation, he went deeper and deeper in meditation.

Simultaneously, he continued to acquire academic knowledge and acquired proficiency in

Hindi, English, Sanskrit and Prakrit languages. The way he gives discourses attracts

huge congregations. He is strongly in favour of socio-religious reformations and ever

contrinues to persuade people to work in this direction.

Shri Shirish Muni Ji is a saint blessed with the qualities of humility, simplicity

and service. He is very active in furthering the noble mission of meditation and self-

study as initiated by the Acharya. He has been justifying his sainthood by working

selflessly for the amelioration of mankind.

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SHRI SHIRISH MUNI JI MAHARAJ: A BRIEF BIODATA

Place of birth: Nai, Udaipur (Rajasthan)

Date of Birth: 19 February 1964

Mother: Mrs Sohanbai

Father: Mr Khyali Lal Kothari

Caste/gotra: Oswal, Kothari

Initiation Date: 7 May 1990

Place of initiation: Yadgiri, Karnatka

Religious Guru: Acharya Dr Shiv Muni Ji Maharaj

Inspiration for

Initiation: Grandmother Mohanbai Kothari

Academic

Qualification: M.A. in Hindi literature

Religious Study: Deep study of Jain scriptural literature;

Study of Jain philosophy and thought;

Proficiency in Hindi, Sanskrit, English, Prakrit,

Marathi, Gujarati languages

Projects of note: Organizing meditation camps;

Efficient organization of self-study camps and of

educating the children;

Helping the Acharya in all other projects/missions.

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Appendix III

SHRI SHAILESH KUMAR JI: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Shri Shailesh Kumar Ji is a devout follower of revered Acharya Shri Shiv Kumar

Ji Maharaj. He has studying religion and culture, yoga and meditation under the

Acharya‟s care and supervision for the last about fifteen years. He has also been studying

and teaching and giving training all this while. The Acharya is strongly of the view that

the message of Jainism should be taken to the length and breadth of the world, to

everyone everywhere around the globe. He also wants to carry on this job in a well

planned and smooth manner. For this purpose, he aims at the establishment of a Shravak

Sangh which should, under the direction of sadhus and sadhvis, take the message of

meditation and yoga, self-study and other teachings to the entire mankind.

Shri Shailesh Kumar has lived a practical life. He is a devotee of truth,

committed to truth. He is a person strictly disciplined. He himself lives in strict

discipline and wants that discipline should be brought in the fields of society, religion and

meditation. He is ever ready to contribute towards this direction. His life is like an open

book: he is from within what he looks like from outside. He is the same in his word and

deed, profession and practice. He is quite straightforward. He gives his hundred per cent

to any job he takes in hand. He is an embodiment of sociability, sincerity and affection.

He is a highly devoted and committed personality. He is a soul liberally blessed by

Acharya Atma Ram Ji Maharaj and Acharya Shri Shiv Muni Ji Maharaj and other Jain

saints. He has dedicated his entire life to the cause of spreading Jain tenets under the

direction of the revered Acharya. The vision of the Acharya is now his own vision.

Through meditation camps he has been bringing thousands of young boys and girls to

the feet of the Acharya. He has been contributing a lot towards setting up a society given

to pure righteousness and religion. The revered Acharya has given four objectives -

meditation, service, education and research. Shri Shailesh Kumar has dedicated his entire

life towards the fulfilment of these objectives.

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A BRIEF BIODATA

Place of Birth Bombay

Mother‟s Name Mrs Sarla Devi Mehta

Father‟s Name Shri Chander Kant Mehta

Education Deep study of the scriptural literture;

special research work in the field of

meditation and yoga

Languages Known Gujrati, Hindi, English, Sanskrit,

Prakrit, etc.

Special Interests:

Devotion to meditation, teaching of

stuents in meditation, editing of the

works of the Acharya, organization

of the camps for self-study, teaching

in the child camps, planning of

meditation camps of the Acharya,

grandmaster in the Reiky method of

treatment, teaching in the Jain

Gurukul, free treatment and training,

and such other things.

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