During the Yatra or holiday season people come from Delhi, Bombay, and other cities and towns big and small. As they travel in their vehicles bought from newfound wealth and with newfound arrogance, consequence of the model of development as opposed to model development taking place in the country they drink their beers and alcohol and throw the bottles out of the windows, they eat their chips, biscuits and other food stuffs and throw the empty packets and containers, plastic plates, cups and glasses wherever and anywhere causing litter everywhere. At one time no plastics used to be seen here, no garbage used to be seen here. They litter, choke and pollute the spring, stream and river waters with all sorts of garbage and their feces – fecal signatures, ‘I have been here, we have been here’! And most of the people who do this are the modern day educated people!

 

This is the problem: the administration is encouraging tourism without any concern for the environment. They are not educating the people how to have respect for the environment.  Now they are encouraging and enticing people to newly developed ski and other resorts in high mountain slopes and to trek in remote and ecologically fragile areas without ensuring the cultural, environmental and ecological sanctity of the places, all for the profits. Already the ill-effects are being seen not only on the environment but also on the local people as they have started to ape all this and have started to show negative behaviour patterns and bad habits like increasing alcohol consumption. The garbage has started to accumulate everywhere. Respect and responsibility is nowhere to be seen. Nothing is held sacred. There is no in-depth study and teaching in the schools; if any, it is mostly in passing and cosmetic. Once in a while they will take out a little procession and the kids will go out and clean up some area – that is it! Done!

 

That real feeling for the environment, the real respect is not there.

 

How can you continue to enjoy the place if you do not respect and sustain it?  They want to turn Uttarakhand into a tourist-centric state and at the same time they want it to be a hydro-energy producing, ‘power state’ with hundreds of dams on the many rivers and streams it is graced with. Already they have announced that it is an ‘organic state’ – that everything here will be grown organically. That is a good thing. Also almost half of the state is forest cover supposedly the largest of any state in the whole of India. But how mindless tourism and dam building are going to affect all this no-one seems to care blinded by the fake and fraudulent ‘song of development’.

 

On the Ganga itself there already are and will be, if we do not stop them, innumerable dams of which we know of, if not more. It is terrible. They are to build them bumper to bumper as it were making her disappear into tunnels and reservoirs, never to be seen as free-flowing as she has been since the birth of the Himalayas. And they are blasting the mountains with crates of dynamite breaching all contractual norms, bulldozing forests and uprooting trees and people from their ancestral roots and their cultural moorings and with total disregard for the environment and ecology. It is a horrifying spectacle and has ominous forebodings.

 

An education system where they teach conservation of energy, respect and sustenance of the environment is drastically needed for all, young and old, urban dweller or rural dweller.  Everyone should conserve energy, everyone, I cannot emphasize enough.  Do not keep bulbs, cooking gas, computers, etc., on needlessly. If you are not using it, switch it off – because ultimately that is the requirement, respect it. It all counts however small. The Ocean is a collection of drops! The more energy you waste, the more excuse they will have for building environment destructing dams. It is all connected.

 

They say that there is great shortage of power, yet there is so much power-theft happening and power-wastage but they are hardly doing anything about it! An international study has been done that shows that if they could just take care of what is being robbed and wasted there would be no need to generate any more power. The power robbery is being done by the big industries and offices at a very large scale in cahoots with the officials. That is a menace. The big businesses have huge consumptions but with the help of the junior officials they manage to manipulate, even bypassing the meter to show less. Also many householders having become emboldened by the apathy and connivance of the power officials are obtaining the power surreptitiously by hooking their personal wire directly onto the departmental supply line that runs the course outside their house. At least half of the power generated is being robbed or wasted both at the transmission and the consumption end.

 

And the people who are using honestly have to suffer and bear the regular increases in the tariff, increasingly paying more and more. Otherwise the tariff would be half – easily. So in this way one is punished for being honest! This is why everyone has to become aware. This is again why in schools they should be teaching this. These are the real life teachings, because then in the future when the children grow up they will see the environment and their social obligation in the right way.

 

It is so important…it really hurts to see the damage being done. The connection between the actions and the consequences are not seen. It is such a dumb existence. There is no real-time development of the intellect. How things are connected is not taught. How a little action here may have a manifold domino effect somewhere else is not understood! To be able to develop a mind that thinks in this way is very important. That is what makes for a great mind.

 

The ‘consume and more consume’ philosophy of the modern model of economics is the culprit. It is only encouraging future generations to become endless consumers. They are not teaching them to respect, sustain and take care of the resources available. Conservation is not the emphasis, consumerism is.

 

Even a kettle boiling over needlessly because you have gotten occupied elsewhere and have forgotten needs to be checked. These things are quite a regular feature of people’s lives. It may seem insignificant but ultimately it affects the environment in a cumulative way. Energy and resource material is being wasted in your unawareness. It will come back to haunt you as resource retribution. To be conscious of this is to respect things.

 

Everything is connected. One little action of yours can affect soil erosion, deplete the life sustaining resources and damage the environment resulting in existential problems for all life.

 

To know your actions and its connecting consequences is to be conscious. That is what is meant by living consciously, living right. You have to understand the farthest consequences of your actions; otherwise you will not be able to save this planet – that is for sure – and yourself!

 

Natural resources are depleting very rapidly – that is a fact. A few days back a chief scientist from England was speaking on the BBC and he said that in the next fifty to hundred years the oceans will rise by six metres, the warming is taking place so rapidly and melting the Earth’s glaciers everywhere. Six metres is about twenty feet, so you can imagine that this will affect many countries while many islands will disappear forever.

 

And then because the graph is not linear, the progression of disaster is not arithmetic, it is geometric. It escalates in such a way that each effect is manifold and in leaps and so would become difficult to reverse finally. It is a cataclysmic tragedy in the making. And humans do not understand this even for their own good, and least of all, they do not even consider the importance of other life forms.

 

Look, we have all these trees, because of whom the birds come here to eat of their natural fruits, and nest… But if you go to the villages there are no birds because they have cut down all the trees. The birds love to come here – you can see and feel the happiness in them because they have a place. They eat the fruits and then seed the area creating new trees and forests thereby sustaining the environment and maintaining the circle of harmony of things. And that is why human beings have a responsibility. But they in their consciousness, in their awareness, in their daily living, in their daily activities do not think about these things. They are thinking only about themselves! They are not in harmony with the environment; they are not in harmony with themselves.

 

Life is just about oneself “me, me, and me”. And that definition of ‘me’ is a very small one.  It is about personal desires, emotions, likes and dislikes, vested ideas and the comforts and pleasures of body. There is no other concern or responsibility.

 

But, you know, this ‘me’ in reality is very big and immense. It depends on how big and open your mind is – on how immense and universal it is – and therefore your life.  And so human beings are devoid of compassion now because they cannot think of anything else except about themselves. That is why in the world today you see very little compassion. It is mostly conflict, struggle, strife, competitions – this is all you see.

 

If you observe in the day how many moments were spent in expressing compassion, you will find hardly a moment. But those who want to evolve further have to become more contemplative. Otherwise normally there is no time for contemplation. Life is always looking out seeking for the next excitement. Also the only time for looking within for seekers of meditation is when they sit. And there too most of the time it is all about a very small ‘me’.

 

That is why sadhana and meditation must be an ongoing and continuous process for it to be truly transforming.  It is not just sitting with your eyes shut; it is also when you are in the kitchen doing things, making things, boiling water – you are there, you are present – that too must become meditation in action. And every other time, even so when you sleep!

 

That conscious level, the awareness level must continue to increase; that makes for a conscious living. It is only then that the effect of sadhana bears fruit.  Otherwise it does not! Because whatever you may accumulate when you sit in terms of energy or quietude is lost the moment you express yourself, because there is no connection, there is no integration.

 

So meditation is the whole life, and not just a part of your life or a part-time affair. It is the whole of life wherein your every act and even your sleep becomes conscious. Then the sadhana becomes a rapid journey.

 

Until such time it is a seeking; after that it is revelation and a finding.  You do not even need to sit, although it comes naturally then. It becomes a rhythm.

 

Contemplation then becomes a natural extension of your being. But right now it is not available to you because you have never used it, so you hardly ever do it. It is not considered important to contemplate one’s actions, one’s thoughts, to contemplate on what is the right action and right thought. If you do, then you will see – and you will feel very bad about the situation the world is in now. You will feel compassion even for stones.  So that nothing is inappropriate, you will treat them fairly too. That will become your nature – not your ‘second nature’ – your first nature.

 

And therefore the ashram communities are supposed to be different if they are to be the future of humankind. Finally it is not a phenomenon reduced to a certain area; that area at any moment is only a location in time and space. Ultimately it has to become universal.  There is a future of humankind, a future society of humankind, a future destiny in consciousness. It has always been the case. It is like making a culture in a Petri dish in a laboratory. You have to have it in a certain space, a certain area first – but ultimately it is supposed to spread everywhere.

 

That is also why it is important to understand the objective of being here. If the objective is a small one, then you benefit only that much. But if you understand the objective in its totality, then the benefits are so much more. And it is only then that you can understand and therefore commit yourself wholly and totally. Otherwise you will have a part which works in appreciation and acceptance and another part which works in opposition, because the understanding is not complete.

 

And therefore sadhana is very different from spiritual tourism I tell you! It is not just going somewhere and getting enlightened! It is a whole different thing. In fact, even the so-called self-claiming ‘enlightened’ people of today will have to do sadhana if they want the real thing!

 

The so-called ‘enlightenment’ is nothing more than a commodity otherwise and in most cases self-delusional. It is just another high to be sought like other highs. It does not involve any transformation. It does not require the whole of yourself – the whole of you in your totality, rather for that it means facing and working with crisis situations, turbulence and difficulties of both the outer and inner worlds.

 

Aurobindo also concurs when he says: ‘It is not until you pass through hell that you will enter into heaven’. For you have to deal with every corner of your consciousness, even your subconscious. You have to deal with your ignorance; you have to deal with your darkness. It requires strength.

 

Sadhana is meant for strong people, it is for people who are mature. And that maturing takes a while. And that is why it requires you to commit yourself to the environment of sadhana. It is not a whim and a fancy thing.

 

And it can easily be done – if you can convince yourself to travel joyfully. It just shows that you are weak if you cannot do it, because you succumb to whatever mood or feeling that comes up.

 

There is always an observer and a witness in you. If you can situate yourself there and if required, work and act from there, you will always be a master – whatever the mood, whatever the crisis. That is one of the first steps in sadhana to be taken, so that you are always behind, above and beyond. Then you can deal with your situation, inner or outer.  Otherwise you do not get an objective purview, leave alone an inner view of things.

 

That is why it is a process. There is no such thing as ‘instant enlightenment’. That is nothing but a farce and a fooling of people.

 

And that is why and where the problem arises, because one’s expectation is raised high quickly and falsely. One has no anticipation and therefore appreciation of the amount and kind of work involved. And when the moment of trial comes, you collapse – because you are not expecting it, because, well, it is supposed to be instant enlightenment!

 

It is like taking a pill of ecstasy to get high. The moment the ecstasy has worn off, you are down and you cannot help yourself. So you are still a slave and more so.

 

What kind of enlightenment is that?  That is not sadhana – that is self-delusion!  Mastery is not a tablet to be taken! Mastery requires working with yourself, a greatly difficult work.

 

There are many gullible fools out there in the world and many to fool them who profit of them. You know, like Mataji says, big ‘gurus’ are out there – where all the ‘cream’ goes.  Let them come here for some time – the so-called ‘cream’ will be dissolved into watered milk. Let them come here and sit with us: we will see how much water there is and how much milk leave alone cream…

 

It just shows you have not understood sadhana, even though you may have been thirty years with a guru, acharya, or bhagwan, rather there has been only gossip, pursuit of vested useless interests and seeking of some ‘delusional idea of selfish enlightenment’ for which you are still waiting.

 

And this thing of taking over the world, being ‘the signatures of the world’… my God! If this is not self-delusional then what is, I ask? And the consequences, the results are there to see. You can see how the ‘self-claiming enlightened’ disciples of the ‘acharya’ are trying desperately to look and behave exactly like him! And ‘the cream’ goes there. Of course! Because it is the cream of the world – or that is the belief. You are welcome to that cream – but you will not convince me of such cream.

 

You have to remember that the sadhak is persevering to be a master of the situation, not a slave to it. So you are not to be slave to your moods – remember that.

 

You seem to have not understood this so you have to keep remembering this. The Gita too says, in reality the prakriti is subordinate to purusha and not the other way round. The shifts of your nature and in your moods, this is prakriti, not purusha, your Being, rather now your Being, purusha, is subordinate to your moods which is prakriti.

 

Through your sadhana you have to awaken to this reality. In that is the process of evolution. Your Being, purusha, is ensconced in the prakriti – purushaha prakritistaha, as The Gita confirms – covered by it as if in a cover. Through your sadhana it must emerge and become the master of that cover and not remain subordinate to that cover. The shift has to be made. So it requires working, so it is required of you to be a seeker and a worker, not a tourist. You are welcome of course to make the choice of being a tourist and remaining one, but our place here is meant for seekers. That is my nature, that is my Being – so it will be reflected here.

 

So you have to make your choice. I am not like those guys, those so-called ‘enlightened clones’, who claim for all sorts of things just to get a large number of people. I want something authentic. My whole being will not tolerate it. My conscience will not allow it. Whether the ‘cream’ come or do not come – whether it is screen cream or face cream, I am not interested.

 

I am interested in people’s growth. Not some kind of ego-ambition game and drama – which will not last when this world dissolves and you will all go back to the same beginning.

 

So your actions are very important. If you are seeking for an inner transformation, you have to work for it and towards it.

 

Do not expect miracles. Sadhana is cause and effect: the cause is your working, the effect is your transformation. And I am the Grace you pray will guide.

 

Then miracles would happen.  But they should happen if you are qualified to receive them. If you are not qualified, do not expect them. That should be your attitude. Otherwise you ridicule and belittle the work that is required to be done. And there would not develop the depth in your sadhana and in yourselves nor the sense of the sacred.

 

If we think more deeply, deeper will be our existence, and deeper will be our actions when they are expressed. They will be profound indeed.

 

Arya Vihar

18 April 2006