Let's Celebrate God's Light Within - 10th March 2024
Saar (Essence)
Ananta emphasizes that life is a 'zombie existence' until one discovers the intuitive light of the Atma or Satguru within. He urges seekers to prioritize this inner presence over external narratives to find true stability and peace.
Till you find the light of the Atma within, your entire life is unstable and unsteady.
Don't engage with the world until you find the light within; come to God's presence first.
The intensity of the inner light acts as a compass, guiding you away from the clutches of Maya.
devotional
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
To Gopala and all of you who sang this song which said: if you don't come to the Guru, then what's the point? What's the point? You could collect all the money, you could collect all the material wealth, all the pleasures of the world, but if you've not met the Guru in your life, then what is the point? So what is this Guru that Shankara was talking about and why is it so important? Why is he saying that nothing else is important, that you need to meet the Guru, and if you haven't come to the feet of the Guru, then your life is not truly a life? Anywhere else, it is pointless.
So I can speak from my experience that till you find the light of the Satguru within, till you find the light of the Atma within—the Holy Spirit within yourself—till then, actually, our entire life is just very unstable. It's very unsteady because we never know what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is the truth. Why am I here? What is the purpose of our existence? What is love? Who is God? We don't know any of these things and therefore we haven't truly come to life. That's why I like to use the term 'zombie life.' You're leading a zombie life because it's all narratives in the mind, but they are all meaningless in reality. All the constructs that we make, till you come to the Guru within, we don't come to a sense of stability in our life.
So this Satguru presence within is actually God's presence within yourself. At the core of your heart is the shining light which is God's presence. Don't visualize this, don't imagine this; it is a light which is unperceivable but something that you know intuitively. It's a great, bright, intuitive light. So we must come to this light within and our whole life must be dedicated to first the discovery of this holy presence within ourselves and then to abide in it, to love it with all our heart. Then there is a sense of actually being alive.
And there'll be times where you may wake up and you may feel like you're disconnected from this presence because you don't know what adventures you had, you see, which realms you visited—those things that we call dreams. You go through all of these things and you may have returned here after millions of years of dream time. You can't really see; it may seem like you went to sleep last night and you woke up this morning, but we don't know in our experience how much time has really passed, you see. So you may wake up and you may find that there's an emptiness—not the holy emptiness, but like a darkness or disconnection when you wake up, you see.
So my advice to all of you is that don't start your day in that way. Don't start engaging with people, don't start answering emails or messages; don't do any of that till you find the light within again. Come to God's presence first and then engage. Then engage, because you don't want to yourself meet your life in an egotistical way and you don't want others around you to meet you in that way either, you see. So be connected to this light always. And if you feel that you haven't found this light, this Atma within, then you must dedicate—make it top priority, top priority—to come to the Atma Darshan, the presence of the Atma within.
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And already it must be at the top because you've got this information now that God's presence is discoverable and you can find Him within yourself. As the great sages have told us, and as was sung earlier: where are you looking for Him? You may go everywhere, you may go to hundreds of holy places, but if you haven't looked within your heart, then nothing will change. So you must find it. It's not a bad thing to go to holy places and pilgrimages, but just that alone will not suffice. Use that; use the energetic presence of these places to dive within yourselves to discover this shining light of God's presence within yourself. Again I'm saying: don't visualize and don't imagine. Your intuition will tell you that this is the light. You will recognize this light within without having to imagine anything.
And then don't let it go out. Just then, how to live our life? If you sense in your heart that the light is elevating, it is deepening, it is stronger, you see, then your path is auspicious. If you feel the light gets dim, if you feel like you're losing your presence, you see, then you're taking the wrong steps. So it becomes an inward compass that guides us always. Even if you haven't yet started hearing His voice within, you can use that presence to guide you in terms of allowing Him to move you, allowing Him to guide you. But also in terms of the intensity, the palpability, the tangibility of His presence will indicate to you whether you're in the right direction or not.
So then life becomes stable because you just have to depend on what God is pointing you to, what your Atma within is guiding you towards. And then you escape the clutches of Maya, which wants to hold on to this life with all its might and it hides in every mental construct, in every narrative. So you free yourself from the clutches of Maya. You free yourself from the clutches of this hellish experience which we try to make palatable through pleasure and things like that, but it never really becomes, you see, never truly becomes Heaven. It never truly becomes Ram Rajya. The Kingdom of Heaven is the same as Ram Rajya.
So we must find God within ourselves, we must find Ram within ourselves, and then we can live in His light. Then it truly doesn't matter so much what is happening in the outer. The outer is compelling and it'll pull you from time to time, but whenever you notice that you got distracted, you're feeling disconnected in your heart, you feel like the Atma is just a notion... so when you feel that God is just an idea and not reality, you see, God is just a concept and not a living presence that you can feel within yourself, then you've gone too much with Maya. You've gone too much in the Maya.
So the Guru presence is this holy presence, God's presence within yourselves. So let's use today to bow down to that holy presence within our hearts and celebrate the grace, the beauty of our life that we've come to the discovery of this which is so rare in the human condition. Which is so rare in the human condition: that this is true, that there is a living being, a living presence within ourselves which is God. So let's use today for that. And I'm all right that the birthday of this body can be used as the pretext of that; there's nothing so great to celebrate in that. So I'm happy I can use that as an excuse to get this point across to all of you and to, of course, celebrate my beautiful children who just got married. All of us with full heart wish you so much auspicious joy, love, peace, all the good things that life has to give you. But remember that if both of you walk together towards God, then your path will be harmonious; you will be getting closer and closer to each other. So, full blessings of our Guru and everybody.