Namaste my beloved friends. Based on astrology many a times people condemn you. People say that your horoscope is very bad. People say that there are certain very malefific planetary aspects in your chart. Some people will label you as mangalik. Basically because of astrology and because of certain astrologers you become a figure who is totally condemned and then you start wondering is my horoscope really so bad? Yesterday a young man came with this kind of question. Am I so bad? And that question touched my heart. And so I thought that there must be many many people just like this young man who may feel so low.
Yesterday a young man came to me. His eyes were restless. His face carried pain and his voice had anger mixed with helplessness. He said to me, “Sir, certain people told me that my horoscope is very bad. It is so bad that it should be thrown in a dust bin.” I looked at him and I said, “Please sit down.” And then I said something that I want every listener to remember.
No horoscope is bad and no horoscope is good either because good and bad is the play of the mind and the mind is a monkey. Always remember truth can be very shattering. And the truth is there is no good, no bad. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. Everything is as it is. All condemnation and division is futile. Always remember you are the child of God and God loves you. I can understand how you would have felt when you were humiliated by people who said that your birth chart, your horoscope is bad, very bad. But don’t worry, such men and women are fast asleep. And those who are asleep cannot help you with the truth.
And the truth is every kundali, every horoscope comes with a certain purpose. Something has to be done. Some unfinished business has to be finished. You are not born accidentally. The universe has a purpose to be met through you. So then how can you become useless? How can anybody call you useless? How can you become bad? How can your horoscope be labeled as bad?
Bhagan Ramadan Maharshi says there is nothing wrong with God’s creation. Mystery and suffering only exists in the mind. Good or bad is totally based on situations. If a knife becomes your shield and you can save yourself, protect yourself, then the knife becomes your savior. If the knife is used to harm you, then the same knife becomes your killer. Now, if you ask me whether a knife is good or bad, then the answer is impossible. A conscious person would never label anything or any person as good or bad. He is perfectly aware that it all depends on what purpose is. If the purpose is good, then even a knife becomes God.
Once it happened there was a young man and what a man he was. Simple, hardworking and always helpful to all the people of his village. One day he lost his wife. She died in an accident. After few days he lost his daughter. She fell sick and he was short of money. The doctor wouldn’t come and the only daughter that he had took her last breath at midnight. When the whole village was fast asleep, she was only 6 years old. And now the young man had to take her dead body all the way to the graveyard all alone. Now there was nobody in his life. Everything was lost. Everything was gone.
People started gossiping. This man must have done many sins in his past life. Some would say this man must be a curse to our village. And some said how illated this man is. And slowly slowly all the villagers started condemning him. They started maintaining distance from him. Now the young man left out by all took to drinking. He became a drunkard and every day he was found with a bottle in his hand swinging around walking through the narrow lanes of the village.
The villagers decided to kick him out of the village but they couldn’t. The law of the land would not let them do so. And so they all would try by every means and ways to ridicule him, to insult him, to treat him like an animal. And the young man would laugh. He would simply laugh and move on. At times a few villagers would beat him and he would start bleeding and yet he would not say anything. He would just slip out and keep moving from one place to the other.
One day it started raining and the rains were showering so heavily that the village was flooded with rainwater. The rains were not stopping. Many houses were flooded. People became homeless. The crying of the woman, the crying of the children, havoc all around. And the young man could not control himself. He could not see dying children and the plight of the woman in his village. And so for the first time in his life, he looked up in the sky and said, “God, if you stop the rain, I will stop drinking.” And that is my word.
And the miracle happened. The rain stopped. God said, “If by stopping the rains, one good thing is happening. If one man is waking up from his sleep, then it is worth it.” And the rains stopped and the man started crying. He became one of the greatest lovers of God that the world has ever known.
The villagers came and said, “You saved our lives. Please stay with us. We will help you in every way we can.” But the young man was fired up. He was no more the same. He said, “I am living now. The call from the mountains has come. God has chosen me and my journey has begun.” And it is said that the young man went on to become one of the finest yogis that the world has ever known. A man who was condemned, a man who was beaten to bleed, a man who was labeled as mad and bad becomes the finest yogi.
Everything is possible, my friends. Everything is possible. And I say it to all my listeners that everything is possible only if your heart is pure. Only if you are a man of heart and not of head. People are shallow. The majority is shallow. They are quick to judge. Rarely they can observe. And remember observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
The yogi only observes deep observation. The yogi will never label you as mad or bad. He will simply observe you. Through his observation, he may feel sorry for you. He may feel compassion for you and he may try to help you, not condemn you. Compassion will cure more evil than condemnation. This is what a true yogi believes in.
But certain astrologers are quick to condemn, quick to label someone as bad. And that is the greatest tragedy of this human world. It is shallow. So shallow that the real yogi is therefore not found in this crowd. He moves as an individual because he’s perfectly aware that truth happens to an individual and not to a crowd. Always remember truth happens to individuals and not to crowds.
Your mind is made to believe that your horoscope is bad. Belief is a pure poison. Never believe a thing. Experiment. Leave it thoroughly so that you can say on your own authority that it is true. Always remember an intelligent man never believes, he experiments. And then based on his experiments, his own experience, he comes to the truth of the matter. Belief is disastrous because it closes your mind.
Once you believe that cutting your hair on a certain day is bad, then no matter what you will never cut your hair on that specific day. Now there is no proof of anything bad happening. But just because you have come to believe, you have simply closed your mind. Now even if Jesus comes, even if Lord Krishna comes, Lord Buddha comes, Lord Mahavira comes, nobody could convince you because you have simply closed your mind. Now what God has to do with what you do with your hair. There are millions and millions of people on this planet and God certainly has much better things to do than to watch who is cutting his where when. But people fall for beliefs and that is how they go on missing the many opportunities that God brings.
If you have a belief and you come against an experience which the belief says is not possible or the experience is such that you have to drop the belief. What are you going to choose? Belief or experience. The tendency of the mind is to choose belief and to forget experience. That’s how you have been missing many opportunities when God has knocked at your door.
There are women who are approached by men who are simply awesome and yet the woman go on rejecting them because they are mangalik meaning they are having a very strong Mars. There are men who are approached by beautiful well-cultured woman and yet they go on rejecting because they belong to a different community. Marriage with somebody who is outside the community or cast is believed to bring miseries to the family. So you see belief plays a major role in people’s lives. They are well educated but what they follow is belief and not experience and that keeps them away from the truth from love from God.
A young man was in love. It happens. Love happens at the most unexpected moment and you can’t help it. You just can’t. You cannot manage love. It is not politics. And so the young man fell in love. And what a beautiful woman she was. Her glow, her smile, her grace, her soft voice, her understanding. The young man could not stop himself from falling in love. He was a meditative man. He was aware that he is falling in love. But still he could not stop himself.
Love is very powerful, more powerful than electricity. And so love blossomed. He fell madly in love with that woman. Love is an alchemist. You become what you love. And the woman was a strong believer of astrology. The young man also started believing in astrology.
And then one day something strange happened. The young woman came and she said, “We need to break up.” The man was shocked. He said, “What happened? Did I do anything that made you upset? Please tell me you are breaking my heart.” The woman said there is nothing wrong with you. In fact, I have been dating with you for the last 10 months and you have been such a gentle man. Then why are you breaking up? Asked the young man. And the woman said because my astrologer has said that your horoscope is bad and it is so bad that it should be thrown away in a dust bin.
The man fainted. She had to call an ambulance. But that was the only day when she met him. She never met him again. Never. You see, it is her belief that overshadows experience, overshadows facts. The man went into a trauma for the next 6 months until he was finally out of it.
It is a myth that it is only women who become victims of love and relationships. Majority of men suffer more than a woman on this planet. There are more men who take pills at nights to overcome their breakup trauma. Belief plays a major role not experience.
You can easily come out of the belief that your horoscope is bad only when you put aside the monkey mind and start turning inward. Just look inward and you become aware of the truth. Blind people believe in light. Those who have turned inward have the eyes. They don’t need to believe in light. They simply see it.
It is said that there was one blind man who believed that there is no light. He was very good at logic. He was a very logical person. And the villagers were fed up of him because he would argue that to experience light either he has to feel the light, smell the light or touch the light. Now light has no smell and you cannot feel the light. Neither can you touch the light. And so the blind man would laugh at them and say, “There is no such thing as light. You all are blind like me and you all are just fooling me. There is no light.”
The villagers had no answer. But one day Buddha was passing by and the villagers thought that now the moment has come. Only Buddha can answer this blind man. And so they took the blind man to Buddha. They said the blind man is a logical man and through his logic he has been denying the fact that there is light in this world. Now only you can help us. Please help us.
Buddha said the blind man is right and you all are wrong. What he needs is eyes to see and not arguments. You have come to the wrong person. He needs a physician. Please take him to a good physician. The villagers asked, “Do you know any good physician? Because we don’t have anybody in our village who can cure this man’s eyes.”
Buddha said, “You can take him to my personal physician.” A great king had provided a personal physician to follow Buddha just so that he can take care of Buddha’s body. And so the blind man was brought to Buddha’s physician and Buddha left the village.
After a few months, the blind man’s eyes were cured. It was not that he had lost his eyes. It was just some severe infection that had brought a certain blindness to his eyes. And now his eyes were cured. The blind man was no more blind. His joy knew no bounds.
The first thing he did was to ask, “Where is Buddha? Where is the man who has given back my eyes? I want to meet him. Please tell me where is Buddha? Where is the master?” Nobody could give him the address of Buddha because Buddha never lived at one place for more than a month. And so they just showed him the road through which Buddha had walked. That was the only time when they had seen Buddha walking out of their village.
And the man took to the path of Buddha. He searched and searched and he would ask everybody at every village at every town, did you see my master? Did you see the Buddha? And people would just show him the way. They would say, that was the road we had seen him walking.
For many days and weeks, the man searched and searched until one day while walking through a forest, he dropped down. He was thirsty and somebody came from behind. Somebody came from behind and said, “Take some water. You must be thirsty.” And the voice the voice moved the man’s heart. He remembered the voice. It was of Buddha. The same conviction, the same depth, the same love, the same care.
The man turned around and his eyes were filled with tears. He started crying. He couldn’t control himself. Looking at Buddha, he said, “Master, oh master, I have been searching for you. Look, look at my eyes. They are yours. They are a gift of yours. How should I thank you? Because of you, I got back my eyes. And to meet you, to share this joy with you, I have been searching you all this while.”
Buddha said, “Look, now I have come. Now you can relax. Whenever my devotey thirst for me, I come. My legs move towards those who are deeply in love with me. You relax. Now I am with you.” And the man relaxed. He relaxed so much in the existence that he went into trance. The moment Buddha touched him with his presence, the man became one of the greatest lovers of Buddha.
And whenever anybody would ask him, “What is the reason you love Buddha?” He would answer in one word, just one word, experience.
Experience matters, not belief. The man experienced the compassion of Buddha. Buddha provided his personal physician to treat the blind man and who would offer his or her personal physician to a complete stranger. But it was Buddha’s compassion, his love, his grace that moved the blind man to him.
Buddha was a godly man and godliness is not something that can be proved or disproved by your logic. Godliness is something that can only be experienced.
And so before you start believing that what has been told to you is truth, my appeal to you and through your question to all my listeners is that instead of believing, instead of falling prey to belief, turn inward and experience what you really are by being more and more meditative. Discover yourself. Otherwise, you have to depend on other people’s opinions who don’t know themselves.
Once you become a meditative man, you don’t have to rely on what others say about you. Then there is a certain depth to your life, a certain music to your life. Everything around you remains the same, but you are no more the same. Noise on the outside remains but peace within you remains undisturbed by noise on the outside. Then you are truly transforming because the real growth is the growth within.
When belief drives your life, you become a coward. You become closedminded. You become fearful. And this fear compels you to find support to comfort you. Remember life begins where fear ends.
Focus on your own experiences. Drop all your beliefs. Only then a beautiful person within you will evolve. Only then there is a possibility for you to live a joyous happy life. Nothing is wrong with your life. If at all there is anything wrong, then it is within you.
And unless and until you start turning inward, unless and until you start meditating, you will continue to live your life by relying on others. You will continue to focus on the outside and you will continue to miss the fact that nothing on the outside can be controlled only within.
People change, situations change, life goes on changing. Someone today is a friend, tomorrow becomes a stranger. Someone today likes you, tomorrow dislikes you. Someone you trusted betrays you someday. Never rely on that which is on the outside. Just watch by being a witness.
Meditation is a witnessing. To meditate means to become a witness. Watch from your inner sky and let the clouds float. Become just a watcher. Just witness the many thoughts that come to your mind. You don’t have to struggle. You don’t have to entangle yourself. You just have to treat all those thoughts as visitors. And visitors should not be served with tea or coffee. So never entertain thoughts when you meditate.
The very base of meditation is witnessing. The more you become a witness, the more you will be able to focus on the self without getting distracted to thoughts. When there are thoughts, it is a distraction. When there are no thoughts, it is meditation, says the greatest spiritual master Bhagan Raman Maharishi.
The key to witness while you meditate and the same key also enables you to overcome the many challenges of material life as well. Always remember nothing is bad and nothing is good. It is your perception that labels. You see a flower outside your window and you say, “How beautiful is this flower?” Somebody else looks at the same flower and says, “Looks like a boring flower. No colors, plain white.”
Now the flower exists in its own authenticity. It has nothing to do with what others say about it. Be like that flower. Be engrossed in your authenticity. Then millions may interpret you as good or bad and yet it will not make any difference to you.
You will become a dance dancing in the breeze just the way flowers dance swing in the breeze. Be a flower be a dance. Let belief drop out. Let your experience become your guide. Then the whole universe will be available to you. Then nobody can disturb you.
Then you no more remain a limited version. You become an unlimited version. Then you start resonating with higher rims of consciousness. Then you get the wings to fly. Then there is no looking back. The sky is clear and you are ready to fly.
Meditate every day. Drop your belief and embrace your experience.
Jai Shri Ganesha. Jai Guru.
