Go deep, connect to your real self
Yesterday I was visiting a friend, and his room had a big window, just looking out at the Arabian Sea – it was just over the sea – and I was reflecting on this verse. The Gita tells that because the sea has so much volume of water – it’s so deep and it’s so wide – that the rivers that come into it, whether they are very wide full rivers or very small rivers, don’t affect it. A little lake, if those rivers were coming in strong they would flood it over, and if the rivers didn’t come at all the lake would dry out. But because the ocean is so deep, the rivers come, whatever way – the ocean feels it, the ocean knows it – but the ocean is not affected. So similarly, when our happiness, when our fulfilment, when our love, is deep, when it’s actually connected to the atma, the soul…. the soul is sat-chit-Ananda; it’s eternal, full of knowledge, full of bliss. And what is that ananda? That Ananda reaches its fulfilment in its relationship with Krishna – to feel Krishna’s love and to offer our love to Krishna, like watering the root of the tree – then we have this natural love for all living beings. If you water the root of the tree, that water extends to every part of the tree and we are all parts of God. That is fulfilment. The dualities of the world cannot touch that place in our heart. Health and disease, victory and defeat, success and failure, honour and dishonour, pleasure and pain cannot touch that part of heart because that is reality on the spiritual level. That is inseparable from us; that is who we actually are.
But in order to make that connection, we have to give time…. like tonight time for satsang, time to be with people who are actually gathered together for enlightenment, for devotion…..at our home or in the ashram, wherever we may be living, time to have our own personal spiritual practice and collective spiritual practice. We chant this beautiful Maha-mantra, we meditate on the Lord in his pastimes and his teachings, we read from spiritual books, holy books like Gita and Bhagavatam, we come to talks, we have our pooja, we offer our prayers…. and beyond our careers and everything else, we try to engage as a priority sometime in seva, unselfish service to Krishna and to others. That’s our spiritual need.