Whatever problem, Whatever situation we may have in our lives - Just be with God - 31st October 2025

You see, so the challenge in satsang is how to still walk alone. But when the mind has lost interest, the mind basically gives up and says, 'Now this is beyond my level. So let's turn away and start thinking about what else we have to do in the rest of our day.' And in that, the crux of what was intended to be shared then is lost. You see, so we had the appetizer, but then we turn away from the main meal. So the appetizer is what to do. The mind can deal with that. It loves to hear. The spiritual mind wants to know what to do. But then when it goes beyond that, when it goes to the point of surrendering in the light of the Atma within, that is when the mind is out, moves, or starts to imagine all kinds of things which have nothing to do with reality. So all of you with me till this point? Turning towards God, emptying oneself, full of love, humility, gratitude for God. Then we come to that where the truth is found. This is where Bhakti and Jnana meet. You can come to this point by sincerely letting go of who you are and asking sincerely: Who am I? You will not reach some other station. I think devotion and love for God, you reach station A. In asking yourself who you are sincerely, you reach station B. It is not like that. You have to reach the same station. You will land on the same airport where truth, love, beauty, true knowledge, all that is fine.

So the drop now is gravitating towards the dissolution in the ocean itself, and the ocean has the pull of love pulling us in. And Maya as the pull of fear, desire, separation, duality pulling us out. Sense both of these. So, who's unfamiliar with the pull from the world? Anyone unfamiliar with that? Right now, you could get a thought about the topic that you are conditioned with. And that thought, when believed, could turn you away towards the world. Are we familiar with that or not? Especially on Zoom, it is easier because the internet is fully accessible. You can even mute this Zoom and you can put on a YouTube and hear that. You can do any of those things. But that force is recognizable for us, isn't it? So what about the other pull, the loving call from the heart? That also felt. And all you have to do, all most of us have to do, is close our eyes for a few seconds and just let a few thoughts go and you're in the beautiful magnetism of the heart. It's not much more difficult than that. Is that your experience or...?

Yes.

Don't disagree. See? What is the color, shape, size of that which is drawing you in? What will you get as a result of that? We don't know, is it? At least in the mind, is it really there? That also we don't really know. Exactly. So we can't really, really say that every time I turn within I'm pulled into the magnetism of love. So remember that what we call love is usually of the variety of the outpouring. 'Oh, I feel, I feel, I feel so much love. I feel, you know, I love you, I love you, I love you.' That love. So let's call that the outpouring of love. As long as it is unconditional, then it is also pure love. But it is the outpouring of a deeper love. And this deeper love is the source of it. And we don't have any external mechanisms to make out, to measure, to conclude. We just not able to do it without traditional tools. And that is why this project will always be a project of faith. Are you okay with me so far?

There's a felt, there's an outpouring of love which you then can measure and say, 'Right now I feel so much love,' you see. And there are other times where you feel that there's nothing, it's just dry, not feeling anything at all. It happens to us in satsang also. Even if the same things are being shared in the same way, some days we may feel so much love and on other days it just be boring, dry, irritating, same old, same old. So we can't really predict. Everybody would love to have the first, but God in his wisdom decides how much is needed when in terms of the outpouring. And this needs faith. And again, faith doesn't mean you must follow because I am saying it. Faith means that in your heart you know it is true. In the universal heart which is playing as all our hearts, universally it is recognized to be true. That as we follow the fragrance of even the felt love, we are led to that which is beyond all feelings and can be recognized only from a much deeper place. So this is the leap of faith: to trust your heart. Again, not the emotional heart, the feeling heart, but the deeper place more than what we think we know—that is faith. It is like saying: Who lives in your heart? So there are two ways to answer this. One is conceptually. Yes, everybody has told me, I've even had some beautiful feelings from my heart. So then conceptually, inferentially, we may say it is God. But what is the other way of saying this? Able to follow? One way is conceptually we infer because of feelings, because we've heard from so many credible people: God lives in my heart. What is the other way of saying you? What gives those credible people the credibility to say? Is it just a rumor that's been spread since time began? Is God in your heart just a rumor? A popular rumor? Or does it have some credibility? And if it has credibility, then what gives it that credibility?

Most of us, or at least most of our brothers and sisters, live as if it is just a rumor. You don't know, must be. 'Oh no, I also can tell, let's get real.' So 'let's get real' is actually saying 'let's get unreal.' The reality is left behind just because it seems to be unreality to our senses. What is the basis on which you can say that God is in your heart? See, so if the basis is at the point that you agree with it because your teacher tells you it is that way, it is a starting point. But it has to become your own. Exactly. So it has to become your own inside. Will it become your own inside? In the same process we were talking about, you can confirm that the sun is not fiction. When you come into the light of the sun, sitting in a dark cave like Plato's cave, it will seem like fiction. So don't just say 'the light of God' or don't just say 'Oh, love and light to you.' It's very popular to say these things. It's all right. It's very sweet to say, but what is that light? So the invitation was to spend as much of our life in that light as possible. Because spirituality is the process of getting that tan then. If you want that tan and then you say 'I don't go into the light,' then how is it you want to get tan in the light of God? And you don't need any sunscreen. There's nothing to protect. Yeah. So you feel, if we feel that whatever appeals to us... So I would say Ram Ji is standing with me. Where does that feeling get me? Where does that power the feeling? Where does it get us?

Yes.

What happens to us in that bow? In that feeling?

Exactly.

Yes. So good. That's exactly the point. So it is no longer, although the words may have come as inspiration from the outside. The exercise may even be imaginary where we say, 'Imagine if the Lord was with you right now.' But the point of it is that it brings us with a great innocence into that very same place of the heart temple. Isn't it? And then what does your heart tell you? Does it say, 'No, it is not true. God is not with you'? Your heart tells you that it is true that inside, outside, everywhere is only made up of God himself. And it's a beautiful way to remain in that feeling, to remain in that remembrance. It is the forgetting of this fact that gets us in trouble. And although many times in satsang we may say, 'God is on the inside, look for him on the inside,' you all know that the so-called outside is only inside as well. Isn't it? There is no real outside. It's like a dream is always inside the dreamer. This world dream is also always inside the observer. So anything that brings us in that holy place, in that holy luminosity of God's light, that is good enough. So the process of turning towards God, starting from the remembrance that we have to turn towards God to the actual sitting empty in the holy sunlight—that whole process we are calling prayer, contemplation, whatever name you want to give to it. Satsang, another name for the same thing: to come to the company of God, to the company of the truth. So remember that when we are using the word prayer, we are not saying just the petition part of prayer. Most of the world view that prayer is petition to God. It includes the petition part, but it's much, much, much more than that. You may just turn inwards in a gentle loving glance. That is prayer. On the other hand, you may say the best sounding words without turning within at all. That is not prayer. It may sound like the holiest words. So prayer is both the invocation as well as the resting in God. Yes. So the words that are shared in satsang can only bring us to the point of you having to apply them. The rest of being in satsang may help with the application part as well. But for now it is safe to presume that you have to apply. Very strange examples are coming today.

That is prayer. On the other hand, you may say the best sounding words without turning within at all. That is not prayer. It may sound like the holiest words. So prayer is both the invocation as well as the resting in God. Yes. So the words that are shared in satsang can only bring us to the point of you having to apply them. The rest of being in satsang may help with the application part as well. But for now, it is safe to presume that you have to apply. Very strange examples are coming today. So it came to say that if you don't sit or stand in the light of the worldly sun, you get a deficiency, a vitamin D deficiency. But if you don't stand in the light of the inner sun, you get a zombie life. Which one is worse? You decide.

Worst. The worst is getting either.

How to live like a zombie? Just don't turn inwards. Suppose that we don't turn inwards but we read a lot of books about turning inwards. Zombie or not?

More dead than death.

So the point of the reading is that it should bring us inwards for everything. We may read a lot of books about humility but forget to do any humble act and then still be left with the delusion that we are humble because we know what humility is. I feel that that's worse than not knowing what humility is and not being. That is my fear that came what, about two years ago, three years ago in satsang, where my fear was: are we going to be just reduced to a lip-service spirituality? We think we know a lot and we think we know ourselves, but there is no evidence of that in our presence, in our light, in our expression. And of course, I'm including myself in this.

So one prompting that stayed with me from that time is Gerard saying, "No faith, no risk" or "No risk, no fear." And I realized, I asked myself, so what am I risking? Because faith always is risky. When you turn away from the world in the faith that God is in your heart, the mind will tell you that you're missing out on life. You're missing out on opportunity. You could end up becoming a nobody. Nobody knows who you are. You have no money in your bank. Nothing to call yours. You have spent your whole life chasing this made-up idea of spirituality; therefore, chasing the spirit, chasing the heart.

So if I was to ask that if you could spend your entire life without being in the light of spirit, or you could spend your entire life just having no fulfillment of your worldly desires—how do we choose? Whole life without the light of spirit or whole life without the fulfillment of worldly desire? So I'm going to hold you to that answer, all of you, because we have to live like that. I'm not saying you're not living like that, but it gives us a good steering wheel as to how to steer our life. And the beauty is that in the light of spirit, it doesn't have to be that your worldly life is your worst-case scenario. It could be, and that's why it's a risk. They're not taking away the riskiness from it.

But the famous example: everybody wants to be King Janaka and nobody wants to be Ashtavakra. Yeah. For whom the references mean: King Janaka obviously was the ruler of a kingdom and yet enlightened, and Ashtavakra lived a very, very frugal, simple life and his body was distorted in eight places, eight distortions. What is the determinant of that? What is the determinant of that? What our priorities are. What is our real—what is the real determinant of that? Oh, maybe the word "real" is to go too far. But mostly a good determinant of that is time. Time.

You're in a relationship. You say, "I love you the most." And your partner says, "I need more than words." You want to escape the life of Maya, lead a godly life, a spiritual life, live the life in the light of spirit. What takes up your time, attention, focus? That is the determinant of that. You may meet many people in social circumstances also. You know, most people I talk to, they say, "I'm also very spiritual." So what is the determinant of that? Is it just the concept? "Oh, I also read a few books. I'm also spiritual. I also attended some meditation classes. I'm very spiritual."

I'm not looking down on these things, but are we trying to lead our lives in the light of spirit? Shouldn't that be the determinant of our spirituality? So how easily we can say, "I'm very spiritual, very spiritual," but we don't spend time in the light of spirit and yet we are able to say, "I'm very spiritual." Where is the spirit? What has that spirit done in your life? What if the bigger question is: what have we allowed it to do in our life? That is why what is being shared in satsang—to remain in the light of the spirit—is a life-giving injection. There are IV fluids for those who are completely dehydrated.

Now the thing is that most of us leading a zombie life, most of our brothers and sisters leading a zombie life, will not even realize the zombiness of it. That is the power of Maya. That is why she's called the greatest con artist. Kabir Ji wrote another very provocative set of words. He said, "Oh mind, you foolishly wasted this life, made this life futile." What is he talking about? Who is he talking to? Everyone. We foolishly wasted our lives in what? Now the number one defense could be: he doesn't mean it about me. Because how many people have heard this? I saw on YouTube the singing of it got tens of thousands of views. So he's looking at the human condition and talking to all of us. But what is he calling futility? It's like Ecclesiastes where King Solomon, was it who said, "It's all vanity. All vanity"? Vanity is not that kind of vanity in this case. No, it's all going to waste—the diamond in your pocket that you never met.

Exactly. So what is he talking about? How are we spending our time? You see, in this case, when he's talking about the lifetime being wasted, he's talking about the time part of it. Possibly he's not talking about the intention part of you because all of us have the highest intention about our lives, but that intention translating into application—exactly the consent we've been talking about. You see, the "yes" from within is the consent for the spirit to act on us, for God's action in our hearts. But you can't just "yes" and run. If you signed up for a medical procedure, you can't just sign and then run from the hospital. You have to be operated on also.

So this is the point: both the "yes" and the lifetime to be made available for God's action in our hearts in the form of true love, true knowledge, beauty, and holy presence. When it comes to time spent with God, we want to become very non-phenomenal. "Why does God need time? He is beyond time and space. He should be able to do this." But remember that He's kept the principle the same so that we can understand them. The principle is like if you are a parent and your children don't call you for a month and then they say, "But I really love you." Relationship with our partner is a very good example.

So how not to waste this life? Am I saying everyone should start their life in robes, go into the jungles, sit in caves? There's no guarantee that in the jungle you will be more in the heart. You may be more scared of monkeys and tigers constantly, or the discomfort in the body because of the lack of the lifestyle we are used to may create too much distraction for too many years. So there's no guarantee of any of that. There are many people who escape city life, want to live in farmlands and in Goa and all beautiful places, and many times they're not able to escape their own mind. Remember, the drama is not in your life. The drama is not in your life. The drama is in your head. So to escape the drama, you don't have to escape your outer life.

And humility is the best—sorry if it sounds like a digression, but it really is not—the best support system in this entire journey is humility. Don't take yourself to be anybody. It's both a spiritual pointer as well as just a safeguard, a beautiful safety net. When we take ourselves to be the servants of God, when we try to hand over our will to God, then very few things can actually trouble us. What can trouble us? When we don't get what we want, that is troublesome. When things don't go my way, that is troublesome. How many of us can be this? Even this famous poet wrote this saying—it means that if it goes according to my mind, it's good, but if it doesn't go according to my mind, it's even better. Why is it even better? Then it's going according to God's mind, God's will. That is humility. And it takes us away from getting distracted by our mental energy.

That's why surrender is so important. Unless you are surrendered, how will you rest in your heart? Every minute something will bother you. This happened and that happened. If you're too attached to your ways, then the mind will have a hundred opportunities to distract you every day. But as much as you may work towards making everything just perfect for your life, it doesn't work out that way for anybody. It's very important because what happens when you close your eyes, or even with open eyes you try to remain in that holy light? The mind will come and say, "You know, it is very wrong what that person said to you." Okay. And we put ourselves in this sort of heroic position of being right constantly. How is it that everybody in the world is right? This mind's game is just a strange, absurd game. And when everybody takes themselves to be right, what happens? You can't get anyone else to agree with that, unless the other one is mature.

How all of this helps us to stay simply and lovingly in our heart—I hope all of us can see a connection. And if you think you're a Gnyani and you can just ask "Who am I? Who am I?" and you don't have to work on yourselves, that's very mistaken. A lot of the work happens in even inquiring. Honestly, I really want this, I really want this. And if you get used to asking, "Who am I? Who is the one that really wants this?" then you learn to drop some of this tight grasping anyway in the process of that. But if you think that just by asking and then coming to a conceptual answer that "I am Brahman itself," you may feel that that answer is the answer, but it is not. Every answer, including Advaita itself, every bit of language is at the exclusion of everything. There is no word, no concept which is in the inclusion of everything.

So basically what I'm trying to say is that there is no escaping this. If you want to come to your true life, you have to spend time in your heart temple. Are all of you clear about how to cook so that He may make you eat? Yeah. Suppose that you have the full toolkit now but you don't apply, you don't actually look, but every day you are—and I'm speaking about myself—so every day you have a good explanation for why today you don't really cook. And just to be clear, when we talk about cook, we're talking about whatever is the process needed to get us—whatever is the active process of recollection—and then the eating part is the attempt to remain empty so that He may take us into God. So suppose that you know this and you don't do it, but every day you have a good explanation for why. Is it good to die like that? How am I able to say all of these things? Talking about myself. If you rationalize it to yourself and maybe to your teacher and to maybe the whole world, it's not good enough. Especially because of the point where we said that to be in His light is not at the exclusion of anything except at the exclusion of the false me.

Father, may I ask something?

Yes.

So are you saying that we should spend two to four hours a day in God's presence? So does that mean that we shouldn't do anything else? I mean, for example, if I'm walking on the street or I'm cooking some food and I'm inside my heart in those moments, do those count like two to four hours? Or should I stay not doing anything, just praying and in solitude?

All of those count. All of those count in the spirituality of our life.

Can I ask something? Yes. Um, so are you saying that we should spend two to four hours a day in God's presence? So, um, does that mean that we shouldn't do anything else? I mean, for example, if I'm walking on the street or I'm cooking some food and I'm inside my heart in those moments, do those count like those two to four hours? Or should I stay not doing anything, just praying and in solitude?

All of those count. All of those count in the spirituality of our life. To lead a life fully in the light of spirit, we need to spend as much of the day as possible in His remembrance, in His presence, in His light. But um, they do not count in the two to four hours.

Okay. Okay. Yes.

And we've taken examples for this one. We said that if you talk to your partner or children and you say, 'Come, come sit with me while I'm working out. Come, come sit with me while we're watching this TV show together. Come sit with me while we go for this run.' All of those times count, but they don't count in the heart of your true relationship. So out of sixteen, two to four should not be that difficult. This I'm reminding myself. Okay, it seems like let's break down if you want to do it one more time. Let's break down our sixteen hours and remove the non-essential things from that. So let's say social media: essential or non-essential? Maybe ten minutes a day. Then how much time are we all spending on average? Social media is usually a big... yeah. Because those algorithms are designed to pull us in. See, they're like Maya's big servants. So, because I used to participate in running a marketing agency, I know those algorithms are designed to just keep the engagement of the user for as long as possible. And content creators are incentivized if their content keeps the user on the platform for longer. So the very design of it is to pull us in and not leave us. So social media, if you can cut out a lot, I feel that will give us a lot of time.

Easier to pray also.

Exactly. So then entertainment, maybe that time can be reduced. What else? I feel like between these two hours we can easily find, even if you have like full-time jobs, things to work. Yes, I'm not saying either way doing it, at least conceptually it is not difficult to find. Also what you could do is that if it is a question of attention span, you could do smaller breaks. Take fifteen minutes off. That's it. You go to that place and work for half an hour, forty-five minutes and take fifteen minutes off. Then you'll find that time depends on your temperament. I'm more of the like, 'Okay, if I want to do it then I'll just go at a stretch,' but other temperaments, smaller pieces is fine. And as much as possible during the rest of the day, just try and keep God's name with you or if you're doing the inquiry, keep the inquiry with you as much as possible.

Father, writing to God and expressing love and sometimes sharing challenges, does that also count in this time?

You can count that in this time. All these, they're no black and white really. We were talking about this Satsang also, maybe after the broadcast, and it is very difficult to determine the boundaries of this. We just have to be heartfelt. So that two to four hours is just like a broad guideline. But so, one child was saying that she heard some bhajan and that was just looping inside her like an inner singing was happening, which is very beautiful and kept her with God. So does that count? So far we were saying no, let's not count bhajan and things, but that's a very compelling argument. And then so then I said, but where do we draw the boundary? Like yesterday I saw a few episodes of Ramayan and in that I was just sitting watching it, crying, crying, remembering God so much. Does that also count? Then it becomes very broad. So that's why I was saying that the safest boundary is that eyes closed to the exclusion of everything else in the world, and mind doesn't like that at all. We are just empty for God. So let all of these things that we discussed today, let them count in the two plus part, trying to make it four.

Yes, Father. Father, when I keep my eyes closed usually there is a tendency to go to sleepiness. So it helps me to be more focused with my eyes open and praying.

Yeah, that's fine. That's if you have that, then that's fine. And we must also try and pray... like I have this bad habit of leaving it to the end of the day to catch up on my prayer time. But um, it's better actually, and I should have applied this to myself also, to be just fresh and then wide awake for our prayers. So just after waking up or after we are well rested and not when we are particularly tired. But I won't compare this because I'm not good at applying this to myself yet within. Yeah, if with eyes open you can pray and that keeps you awake, that's fine too. Remember that there is not so much about the letter of it; it's more about the spirit of it literally. So that two hours becomes one hour, forty-five minutes, but really your intent was only to be with God. That could be better than four hours of, you know, just watching the time and saying, 'When is this getting over? What am I doing?' The spirit of it is what is important. What is the mind tendency going to be? Postpone it. Leave it for tomorrow. Today is a bad day. Today too much is happening. I'm an expert in all these excuses. Today I'm really feeling that if you want to know what someone needs to grow at, they need to listen to what they say in Satsang. I feel like I have to apply all this to myself so much. So when the Atma speaks through the mouth, it is not at the exclusion of the one whose mouth is being used. Much an inclusion of that one who needs to hear. For all of you as future teachers of God must always be careful, wary of this tendency to say, 'No, no, all this applies to you only.' This is how pride can get to you. Yes, it's exactly the question I asked. One child said, 'OMG, that question about spending your whole life without the light of spirit or spending your whole life without worldly desires being fulfilled, which would you choose?' Exactly. You're being nice and reminding me in indirect ways that it's time to go rest. I didn't notice that it's already... but now twice a week seems likely. We can change the announcement also, have regular sessions Monday and Friday, see where it comes. Satsang will be a cookie, glass will be eaten together. I don't really know when those will be. I realized that if the frequency is going to be lower, then the concrete class be frequent so we get a sense of the project itself more. What I mean... start... everybody's looking a bit confused.