Thus spoke Aghoreshwar

Friends, if you desire respect and prestige in society, then make sacrifices and undertake difficult actions. That sacrifice, that austere action, need only be this: if you do not need to be in the company of undesirable people, then you should not be in such company.

We should be full of enthusiasm. "This life and in this life" should be our motto.

In life's eternal struggle, those who face difficulty, even impossible situations, calmly, and adapt them to their advantage, are remembered by history and called saints and the great ones by the religious books.

Have mercy on yourself. You have been deceiving yourself all along. Be still and attain peace.

Do not place books over your mind. Let the mind prevail over your books.

Maybe you have never worshipped. Maybe you do not know how to worship. Maybe you have never done any serious thinking and have not met a saint. No harm done. If you have true devotion and trust, it will lead you to the true path.

The day you discover yourself that there is bound to be ups and downs in life, pain and pleasure will cease to agitate you. You will be still. It is this stillness of the mind that the yogis have called Samadhi.

Human life is the pinnacle of all creation. That is why you are great.

Silence and Sound
by Baba Harihar Ramji

During Sunday morning satsang at the SonoMa Ashram on August 31, 2008, Baba Harihar Ramji spoke the following words:

During Sunday morning satsang at the SonoMa Ashram on August 31, 2008, Baba Harihar Ramji spoke the following words:

I would like to welcome you on this beautiful morning.

The wholeness that we are all looking for is like silence. Silence is always there. When we hear a sound, all our attention goes to the sound. We think about it. We sing and dance with it. We cry with it. We get angry and happy with it. But it's momentary. Sound comes from somewhere and then dissolves - it is heard because of the silence and is absorbed into silence, which is always there in the background.

We say, "Silence was interrupted." Silence is never interrupted. It's our attention that is diverted - we are distracted. It's easier to flow towards the sound. It comes to us and hits us. But the silence which is always there doesn't hit us that way. So we have to flow towards it. We have to bring our mind to it. This is our work.

In the same way, that Great Unknown that we call with so many different names is always there in its wholeness. When our attention is there, it's very alive and vibrant, and very much present in our life. We become aware of its magnitude, power and love. But when we are distracted by the world, by our life and our story, by our aspirations and fears, then it's not so imminent and present.

Whatever we do to bring our attention back to that silence, to that wholeness, is very precious. It requires effort, but it can be achieved.

How to bring our attention to it? We have to do something very concrete and practical. The practice that we have is to stop, take a step back, take a deep breath, and tune our attention to that silence. It seems like a very simple practice, but it's powerful.

We can practice throughout the day no matter where we are and in a way that nobody even notices. We can stop our breath. The breath is moving constantly – the very moment we stop our breath, we know immediately we have stopped. We stop the breath wherever it is, whether we are inhaling or exhaling, right at the throat, the glottis. We do this with awareness, as a very conscious effort, not out of some reaction. It has to become a habit, a way to just take a little break.

After we stop our breath, we pay attention to the stillness of our eyes. We fix our eyes on something, just for a few seconds, not longer. Then we become aware of the stillness of our body. Breath is stopped, eyes are stopped and body is still, just for a few seconds. We can even hold the breath a little longer. Before we begin to stress, we slowly breathe it out.

Movement in the mind begins with the movement in the eyes. If our eyes are still, our mind is still.

There comes a time when we can do this little practice while walking or engaging in other things. It's just like learning to drive. So much attention and presence are needed in the beginning. Hand is on the steering wheel, foot is on the brake, and we are looking only ten feet ahead. We are very poised and attentive. But with practice, eventually we can drive with one hand and look around, but a part of us is always in tune with the road and our car.
I encourage us all to make this practice part of our daily life and taste that stillness. In that stillness our wholeness becomes very alive. A practice doesn't need to be long. We can do it for a short time, but often, during the day. Then it becomes a part of us.

This is the call of this time that we live in. If I said to sit and meditate for two hours a day, nobody would do it. It's not practical. We have to bring our practice to a level that is practical, that we have no excuse not to do.

Baba says, "Enjoy life. Enjoy the world, like an ant enjoys the sweet, not like ‘fly the fool' who lands in the honey and gets all caught up in it." So engage, disengage, engage, disengage, like an ant that walks around from outside, takes a nibble, comes back, walks around, takes a nibble …

This is called "developing the art of detachment." We can enjoy the world only when we are able to detach from it. When we get totally sucked in and identified with it, we lose ourselves. We lose our peace.

Once we stop and turn our attention towards that silence, that wholeness, mind cannot comprehend it or put it in a box. The very moment we have identified with it and bring our attention to it, we become it. We become aware of its magnitude. We become that pitcher filled with water in the middle of the ocean. We become the ocean.

And when we become the ocean, all those virtues we talk about become very close. We connect with our heart and see that strength. We are able to love. We are able to forgive. We are able to trust. We are able to accept. We are able to give. By bringing our attention to that which is always there, we merge into it momentarily … and then engage in the world with a fresh start.

OM TAT SAT