Baba Hariji addressed a group during fall Navaratri '99 with the following speech,

With great love and respect, I would like to welcome you all. Before we begin today, I would like to offer you my love during this time. What else can one offer another in this desert of life? I have nothing else to offer you anyway. That's all we have that we could offer to each other. Being in union with ourselves fills us with that love. The more we distribute it and the more we share it, the more it grows.

In fact, any wealth that diminishes by giving is not the true wealth. True wealth grows as it is given and shared. So that's what I would like to offer you. I see it in your eyes, I see the reflection of that. Your eyes are filled with it in response.

Love is called prem. Love awakens love, hatred awakens hatred, and anger awakens anger. Love awakens love. What we give always comes back to us. If we want to receive flowers, we have to give flowers. If we give thorns and expect to receive flowers, that's not natural. As the eternal law says, we receive what we give. Love unites. Our bodies may be different and we are many bodies. They will remain different, but in love something unites that is behind that body or within the body. We have to think of that. That love which is the common thread, which recognizes its own extension in each. Once true love has been established, it's only then that any sort of exchange can happen. It's only then listening can happen. It's only then sharing can happen.

We have to listen from the heart, not from the mind. Mind has never been a good listener anyway. By nature, it's deaf. It doesn't listen. If you try to listen with your mind -mind is already thinking what is it going to say. The true listening happens from the heart. And true talking also happens from the heart. When the talk resonates from the heart, it has that fragrance of fresh flowers. It has that freshness. If the talk comes from the mind, it is very different. It's almost like plastic flowers, which don't have heart in it. In order to be able to listen, we have to be very still inside. As calm as a silent witness.

I think we are here for next nine days. It is a wonderful time to practice this experience. I will be sharing with you yoga. Yoga for me is not just an exercise. It never has been just an exercise. The very word 'yoga' means union. Union with ourselves, the deep Self. The part of the self which has always been here. Before I took this body; before even we all took this body. That part of us which is here and which will be here even after we shed this body. The practice of yoga is to come in touch with that. It's a journey homeward.

It has been a question for time immemorial, how to get in touch with that Self. Yogis looked for it by sitting in the caves of mountains. The easiest vehicle that the yogis found is through their breath. It is very simple. Through the breath, the very moment we take a breath, we begin to practice yoga. The practice begins by being in the very moment. If we are living in our mind, we are living in the past or in the future. Mind is never in the present moment. It likes to be there in the past or future. Either you are thinking what happened to you, what somebody else did to me or what might happen in the future. Practice of yoga is being in the present moment. And present moment can be experience by being in touch with our breath. It is very simple yet very difficult because it requires discipline, requires awareness, living yoga.

This reminds me of the story of a person who was saying that he was out to look for a philosopher's stone. He had an angel. The angel was very kind. He took this stone and put it right in front of his house. Right in front of the door. This person gets out and looks at that stone, picks it up and says, "No this could not be it. It so simple." He tosses it out. Then goes wondering looking for that stone.

The same thing happens with our breath. Without it, life can't go on. It is so precious. It brings us back to life every moment. Yet we take it for granted like we take all the dear things to us for granted all the time. If we pay due respect to it, it does wonders.

In India, breath is called ;pran vayu bhagawati'. The mother in the form of prana, the life force who brings us to life every moment and who nurtures us. It is the divine mother in the form of prana, life force. If we receive this breath with that grace, with that gratefulness, it enriches our life. It really does. The moment we take a mindful breath our body likes it. Our whole being likes it. Somebody is paying attention to me. Then the body doesn't react like a neglected child. It listens to you. It listens to us. So what I share with you is we live yoga, we don't do yoga.

The concept of doing yoga that you may have, twisting your body and standing on your head, that's not my concept. In yoga there are 8600 thousand asanas or poses. 8600 thousand! Depending on the number of wombs that a soul has to go through. Yoga postures are designed after each creature. No matter how you sit down, squat or walk you are already in one pose or another. If you think just being in a pose is yoga, you are already doing it. What I am saying is how to turn that practice into yoga is by being aware of our breath, by being aware of the posture of our body. How we hold our body.

Depending on how we hold our body, that's how energy flows in our body too. If you sit like this (slumping) the flow of energy breaks like the kink in the hose that waters the garden. That's why there is a practice of sitting with the spine straight. Let the energy flow. Being aware of our posture, being aware of our breath, I am living yoga, I am living in the union with myself.

Otherwise life goes on living in the past or future. We try and live in the present moment too and that turns out to be a very unpleasant experience. You cannot ride in two boats at the same time. You have to be in one to be in the present moment. Otherwise we answer the telephone and say something totally different that we didn't mean to say, because we have become the embodiment of the past or future. We say things to somebody that we don't need to because we are not living mindfully. Then we are not truly living.

Other Short Stories Recited

by Baba Hariji

Stilling the Mind

There was a story of this elephant procession that was all decorated with golden jewelry. It was going through the market and swinging its big trunk left and right, catching bananas from the vendors on the left, and sugar cane on the right, doing all kinds of nuisance. The mahawat, the little boy that was riding on it, was very clever. He gave the elephant a post with a flag on it. Then the elephant was very proud. The elephant held that post nice and straight.

It's our mind. We have to give it something to hold onto. It may be listening to your breath, or your mantra, or whatever, but it needs something. That's the meditation. By meditation we become still.

The door that seems impossible to open becomes open when you're not ready for it. One day it happens when you're not looking for it. And then it doesn't matter whether it happens again or not. Because then you know it exists and you don't have to believe it. We have to believe in something that we are not very sure of. You don't have to believe that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. You just know. That's what meditation is about.

The Scholar

There was a great scholar of Advaita who went to Kashmir to have a discussion with the great Shakta-saint of Kashmir. He did not believe in Shakta-theory. When he arrived in Kashmir, he got sick to such a point that he could not even move. A little girl came to him and whispered in his ear, "Oh great one, what are you doing here? Why have you come?" He said, "I have come here to speak against seeing the world as Divine Mother, to speak against Shakti, but right now I am so sick, I have no strength. I have no Shakti even to move." "If you have no Shakti, the little girl offered, and you cannot move, are you not yet convinced that without Shakti you cannot even speak against Her? You can speak against Her only with Her blessing, not on your own! She exists in every single particle, and I am Her!" He was a great scholar. Immediately he realized the hollowness of all theory in his head, and recognizing the true form of Shakti. He bowed to Her.

Baba has taught us that during Navaratri, we simply try to come closer to the Divine Mother by truly accepting Her presence in that form as a Mother. Be just like a child to the Mother. Like a seeker once said, "Oh Mother, I have been calling you not only during Navaratri. I have been calling you, Maa, Maa, Maa... for years and you still not have come to me. But I know that Mother likes to hear her name Maa coming from her baby, so sweet the name! I know that you just like to hear it, O Maa. This is why you donêt appear before me! So I will keep calling."

So this is the attitude of a true seeker. If the child is persistent and calls the Mother again and again, no matter how many things Mother is doing, sooner or later She drops it all. She comes and picks up the child, and gives to him her full attention. As a seeker, all we can do is call with that vibration of the heart. She does exist. Maha Kali does exist. Maha Lakshmi does exist. It is not just words, theories, and ideas. In Sakar form, the Divine Mother has existed, is existing.

Meet the faces at the Ashram:

Through this column we salute the special individuals at the Ashram: