‘I see men afraid to cry.

 If only they would,

The world would be so good,

The world would be so good.

We would feel, we would feel,

We would laugh, we would laugh,

We would joy and we would fly,

Life is a dream,

Life is a stream,

Boundless endless timeless flow.

Let it glow, let it glow,

Let it roll, let it stroll.

Life is a dream,

A time flowing stream’.

 

It means a tender heart. When you meditate your heart has to become soft and tender. It is one of the signs of advancement when you start feeling everyone and everything as if they are you. You start to feel and see yourself in the other.

So let us see ourselves in the other. Whatever is, is Brahman. This is a realization, this is a fact, this is the truth – it is One Reality that has become each and everyone.

So this is ‘futuristic’ – ‘I see man afraid to cry, if only they would, the world would be so good…’

Even if you were to cry for yourself, most often what happens is, it is from a reaction. Or there is this idea that to cry is to be weak.

Can you cry for your enemies?  That was the state of Jesus.  It is the psychic. When your psychic awakens – what Aurobindo calls ‘the psychic’ – you would weep for your enemy, the very enemy that is persecuting you because the psychic is one with all. That is the nature of the psychic.

That is your heart. It is something that you cannot learn. It is something that you find through your sadhana. That is why for Jesus it was, you can say, easy. He could forgive. His psychic is awake.

The quality of your soul is such that it feels one with all beings and things. That is why we practice that in the morning through the Suryamudra/Namaskar. We remember to apply!

 

You wanted to know how to go about it? You have to remember and apply. It does not mean that you allow yourself to be taken for granted. In this you dignify the other and you dignify yourself. This is an inner development that comes from meditation.

So you can transform your state through sadhana. As our state changes, so does our interaction.

‘I see man afraid to cry’ means the need for heart in our behaviour, in our interactions. Then there would be kindness. And if everyone is kind then there is no problem in the world. The problems are only because there is conflict, conflict of interest, clash of interests, clash of egos, the clash of separateness. So you are individuals and yet you are one; that would be a more comprehensive realisation.

‘I see man afraid to cry, if only they would, the world would be so good. We would feel…’

Do you feel each other?  So ‘we would feel we would feel…’ Where have the feelings gone? Then ‘we would laugh, we would laugh’ we would laugh together. There would be no obstacles, hurdles in the relationships. So you have to watch yourself as to what are the reasons for the conflict. You have to look and watch, understand. And if it happens, you have to watch afterwards, think about it, contemplate on it, and try to understand. Then you get a hold over it and yourself increasingly.

You cannot laugh together, because you do not want to laugh with each other. You can only laugh when you feel the other as yourself. Then your laughter is their laughter, and their laughter is your laughter. Only then there can be joy, and then you would soar and fly. Now it is not the case. There is a separation, and it seems absolute. It is absolute – there is a wall in between, that and me, you and I. So therefore there is a greater possibility for conflict rather than harmony.

And why not? ‘Life is a dream, life is a stream.’ Now life is a pain – especially when somebody you do not like comes near you! Then you cannot even see the person, because immediately the dislike comes up. It takes hold of you. The hate comes up, the anger comes up. Yeah, this is ‘normal.’ So what do you do? (Laughing) You ‘express’ –  then the other one expresses, then you express, then the other expresses – and it is endless.

Supposedly there are some guys here, they have some secret knowledge that ‘you express whatever and then you exhaust it’. Exhaustion is temporary, rather, you only create future animosities, future Karma and future patterns – unless of course both are doing it as a therapy and understand it to be so and that ultimately you are supposed to go beyond this. But I wonder how many go beyond it – they are still doing the same thing even after years, unconscious as ever. Anyway, it means you have to work more deeply with yourself.

 

To live in the world with joy you have to be beyond the world. To live a relationship in joy you have to be beyond the relationship. To be more than yourself you have to be free of yourself. You have to be a witness to your own self, to your own likes and dislikes, to your own emotions, to your own desires. Then you find that liberation, and then you can live freely.

(A long silence)

 

‘I see men afraid to cry.

 If only they would,

The world would be so good,

The world would be so good.

We would feel, we would feel,

We would laugh, we would laugh,

We would joy and we would fly,

Life is a dream,

Life is a stream,

Boundless endless timeless flow.

Let it glow, let it glow,

Let it roll, let it stroll.

Life is a dream,

A time flowing stream’.

 

That is how life becomes then. You are not a slave to it; you are a Master of it. But to achieve this you need your meditation, you need your sadhana, you need working with yourself – and working never stops.

So if you do not like someone, you work it out with that someone, or work it out by yourself if the other is not willing to work it out with you. You have to work it out. That is sadhana. Neither do I say you must always like someone, (laughing) it is for you to find out! Sometimes things change and you do not know why and suddenly you start liking that someone, and sometimes you start disliking someone you have known and liked in the past. But you have to find the answers, the reasons.

You have to find the motives for your likes and dislikes also, so you would understand then whether your likes and dislikes hold any validity. Many times they do not. So if you understood, then many of your likes and dislikes would disappear. And the few that remain, well, we will see what is to be done about that as we go along in our sadhana.

How can you fly if your dislikes hold you down, and your likes also hold you down? If it is occupying you, if it is weighing you down, then how can you fly? You cannot fly. So this groundwork has to be done, then you can fly in the sky. That is why sadhana is quite laborious at a certain level. It requires continuous working, continuous watching: watching and working, watching and working, working and watching. It is repetitive but not mechanical, repetitive consciously. If it is not conscious it becomes mechanical. It has to be alive.

 (A deep silence as birds are chirping in the background)

S: Giridharji, can you explain why from a space of meditation, sometimes I feel whatever I do and as I am in my normal life it is completely fake, like a pretension. It is really not myself.

It is because the integration has not happened between the inner and the outer and you are still in transit but when that happens you will feel one and whole. So you are still on the way. When the inner and the outer are integrated they become one whole. Now they are still separate, that is why you feel so.

Once the whole is done then there is no such thing. You feel yourself all the time to be complete and whole, and therefore authentic. Now you feel that this is fake. It is not ‘fake’ as to what people understand as ‘fake’; it is just that you feel these two separate things. When the outer is taken up in the inner and integrated then it is one, then you will not feel in this way.

You are in transition – there has been an opening inward but it is not sufficiently done, that is why you feel this way. Otherwise there are those that are wholly out and they feel only the outer is real. When because of meditation the initial inner opening is made – the inner is experienced, then you live like a dual being, the outer and then inner, so long as the inner and the outer have not merged and become one in totality but when that happens, there is no problem, then there is not two any more, then you do not feel like this.

S: It can be painful also sometimes.

Yeah, until such time it is a little frustrating. But it is only a matter of time, matter of time, practice and meditation.

S: The fear of losing identification is also there in these moments…

Identification with what?

S: Myself first, and whatever I am, I have or I do.

Once the integration happens then nothing of this sort remains. Then you arrive at the true identity. It is always there. You are one, you do not live two positions; those positions have been reconciled and completed. The false identity falls away and the true identity stands up and shines. Then there is no more of this confusion.

Thank you for all the flowers.

 

Arya Vihar

21 February 2008