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The Way of the Heart

Book by Swami Dhyan Giten · 50 quotes · Love, Life, Meditation

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The Way of the Heart Quotes

“Meditation brings all that is valuable in life.  Meditation brings love, silence, joy, truth and freedom. It makes your being full of songs. Meditation makes the meditator take life playfully. If you succeed in life, good. If you fail in life, good. One remains undisturbed in love and aloneness, in sadness and and joy, in success andfailure and in life and death. Life comes and goes and the meditator remains unaffected. Even death is just a drama. Just as the meditator enjoys life, he also enjoys death. Meditation is the greatest miracle there is. It is the greatest gift than God has given to humanity.”

“A man without love is like a plastic rose. A man becomes a human being only when he is in contact with his heart. With love man is no more an animal. Otherwise man is just like other animals except that he has a bigger and efficient mind. That difference is quantitative, it is not a qualitative difference. The realdifference is only when there is a difference of quality. And love is the only quality that brings a new quality to you. Out of one-hundred men, ninety-nine do not even know what love is. It is the rare individuals who come to know what love is. The real man requires two things: love and meditation. If a man can love he is bound to find the way to meditation, because love gives you certain glimpses of meditation. Love makes you silent. When two people who really love each other meet, they have nothing to say. They may hold hands and sit silent together. Love gives glimpses of meditation.  Love is a natural jumping board for meditation. So begin with love, and love as deeply as possible. Love as many people as possible, because each person is a unique experience. And love not only people, love animals also because they have a different plane of existence, a different level of consciousness. In this way your life will become more and more enriched. It will produce the perfume of love. And that perfume will start moving into meditation naturally.”

“Meditation brings a revolution of our innermost being. As we go deeper into the silence of our inner being, desires disappears. Desires exists only on the surface of our consciousness. They are like waves existing on the surface of our consciousness. When you dive deeper into the ocean of our consciousness there are no waves. Then you can come back to the surface of our consciousness, but you cannot lose contact with the center of our inner being. Then you can remain in the world, in the marketplace, and yet remain in tremendous silence. One can be in the crowd, and yet be absolutely alone. One can act with love, silence, joy, truth, freedom and creativity, but without any tension. This is the most fundamental thing for a meditator to be in the world, and yet to not be of it. It is to be in the world, but not allow the world to be in you. Then the whole world becomes a stage, and all relationships become a great drama. Then the meditator becomes the center of the cyclone.”

“Meditation brings all that is really valuable in life. Meditation brings love, silence, joy, truth, freedom and godliness. It makes your heart dance. It makes your being full of song. The meditastor takes life playfully. And if you are not serious then there is never any frustration. If you succeed, good. If you fail, good. Neither failure brings misery, nor success brings euphoria. One takes both things with a deep equanimity. One remains undisturbed by success or failure, love or aloneness and joy or sadness. One remains centred and grounded in oneself. Meditation makes you the center of the cyclone. Life comes and goes, and the meditator remains unaffected. Even death becomes a drama. The meditator enjoys both life and death. Meditation is the greatest gift to humanity from God.  Meditation gives your mastery over the inner world, which is always higher than the outer world. Life without meditation makes you unaware of yourself.”

“Truth is only one. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth does has not belong to anybody. Truth does not belong to any religion, to any ideology, to any church, to any country or to any time. Truth is eternal. Truth is the very centre of the whole existence. It is also our being, our life centre, and everyone's being. We are different on the surface, on the circumference, but we are joined at the centre. As we start moving  towards our innermost being, towards our center, we start moving towards oneness of being. On our journey towards oneness of being, first our personality is lost. The personality is a very peripheral thing, a very cultivated and conditioned. It is something imposed from theoutside. And when the personality  disappears, individuality appears. Individuality remains for the whole journey between the surface and the inner being, the centre. Then when you enter the centre even individuality disappears, and you become universal. It is to attain the ultimate truth. A man who has reached to truth lives only to liberate people. His whole life is nothing but a sharing of his joy. He has nothing else to live for. All his desires and ambitions have disappeared. He has no motivation of his own. As long as he lives he lives and breathes for all. He lives for all. He has reached the ultimate height of love, silence, truth and freedom. He has inherited the whole existence. This is possible for those who really want to know the ultimate truth. It is possible for anyone, who are ready to go on a journey to risk his personality, to attain individuality, and then to risk even individuality to attain universality.”

“Man without meditation is homeless. He knows not from where he comes, why he exists and where he is destined. He knows not how to exist, so that he can know the truth of his being and the mystery of life. Without meditation everything remains closed. Meditation is the key. Meditation is the key that can open the lock of the mind to go beyond the mind to the real treasure of life. Once you can go beyond the mind, you will know your home. To know it is to become part of the mystery of existence. To know it is to know deathlessness, eternity. Once it is known, then ordinary life is no more ordinary. Then life becomes full of love, silence, joy, truth, freedom, beauty and music. Meditation is taking a vow to enter into the world of meditation. It is taking a vow to be concentrated on how to be more meditative, more aware and more conscious. And once you put your energies in one direction, things starts happening on their own.”

“The world teaches you to be logical, but logic destroys your love, which is far more valuable because it is through love that you will know God. It is through the heart that there is a possibility to know the beauty of existence. We have been brought up in a very alculating way. We are being made to be clever and cunning, because that is what succeeds in the world. That is what helps you to achieve ambitions. You are brought up in a way, so that you can go on ego trips, on power trips, but reality is not an ego trip. To be in contact with reality, one has to put aside the ego and all the cunning and calculating ways. One has to learn to be more in contact with the heart, with the aesthetic sense, and to be more in tune with existence. You have to be more in a love affair with life. You should be more open to the wind, to the sun and to the rain. You should be more full of wonder, than logic and knowledge. Each moment should be a moment of awe, of wonder. Looking at life with eyes of the heart, the whole world becomes full for God. If your heart is hard, cunning and calculative, God disappears from the world. God dies. Then you live in a godless world. Living in a godless world is not worth living at all. Life loses all beauty and become absolutely mundane. Padma, my beloved friend for many lives, said once: "What would be the reason to live if there would be no spirituality?" The meditator have to live a life of grace, a beautiful life, a life of love, silence, joy, truth, freedom and creativity. Then you will become open to God.”

“It is only through bliss that one becomes a messenger of God, the divine. The moment that you are blissful you become a vehicle, a passage for God to descend into the world. You become an opening for God to pour into the world. Every blissful person can become a blessing to the world, because he becomes proof that God exists. There is not any outer proof. Only the presence of a blissful person is an indirect proof that something more than the mundane exists. It is proof that something more than the so-called life exists. Philosophers and theologians have argued much to prove God, but they have not succeeded. Mystics have proved it without any effort, because their presence was enough. Every blissful person is a messenger of God. Meditation is the way to create as many blissful people as possible, because the world now needs as many proofs for God's existence as possible. The misery and darkness of the world are becoming too heavy that God is disappearing from the world. The meditators have to become bridges between the ordinary world and the spiritual world, which is within the ordinary world.”

“One can be rich by possessing many things, but that will ultimately be to befooling yourself. You come empty-handed into the world, and you will leave the world empty-handed. All your possessions will haveto be left behind. You can waste your whole life in accumulating possessions, but you are not really gaining anything through life. Instead you are wasting an opportunity to be really rich. The real richness is something inner. It has nothing to do with outer things. It does not mean that you have to be against things. It does not mean that you have to be against life. You can enjoy things and you can enjoy life in all its joy and beauty. But remember that's not all. Your real treasure is within you. Do not get lost in the noise and the jungle of the world. Meditation is the greatest richness, because it makes you aware about your own real treasure within you. And the key to your own real treasure within you is through meditation, through silence and through  awareness.”

“Healing happens through the whole. Healing happens through God. Healing is pure love, which comes from the silence within us. Healing does not happen through us. Healing comes from the beyond. When a wound heals it is not you who is healing it. It heals by some mysterious energy. That mysterious energy is called God. It is only a name for all that is mysterious. It is a name for all that which is not comprehensible to reason. How an illness disappears and health comes back is a miracle. Even medical science accept the fact that we can help the healing process, but we cannot heal. We can help the healing process by removing the barriers to the healing process. We can prepare the ground for the healing energy to function, but the healing energy does everything on its own. Joy is the ultimate consequence of healing when you have been healed. Then there is no more wound. Then your being is full of wellbeing. It happens through God, through the whole. The function for you is to remove all hindrance for the healing to happen. The work of a meditator is not to create barriers for the healing energy. That is all we can do: we can remove all hindrances for the healing process. When I pursued an advanced training in spiritual healing in USA 1984, was told that I had the capacity to become a seventh chakra healer, a spiritual healer, to act as a catalyst and channel for spiritual energy from the seventh chakra through the heart. The last 30 years has meant to develop and deepen this capacity to an instrument of subtle catalytic effect. We can open up to existence. We can become available to all the energies that are showering on us - and then the healing happens on its own. It is always God that heals. And joy is the experience when you are healed, when nothing is missing, and you have come home.”

“If one never learns the art of living, you can't have silence, love, joy, truth, freedom, beauty and grace in life. It all depends on how you live. It all depends on how you approach life. One comes into life with a great potential, but very few people develop that potential. The potential remains unused. The seeker of truth have to become committed, dynamic and always move into the unknown. He needs to be always reaching for the stars. And then life becomes filled with joy and fragrance. It is that fragrance that has been called, God, nirvana, and enlightenment. It is life that blossoms.”

“Meditation brings an inner unfoldment of love, silence, joy, creativity and compassion. When that inner potential becomes actual you are no more the same. On the surface you are the same, but because your inner centre flowers, it is radiated on your surface too. One becomes luminous. And everything is sharpened by the inner flowering through meditation: your intelligence, your love, your creativity and your compassion.”

“Religion is a paradox; you have to become nothing to become all. You have to become nobody to become a god. You have to prepare for nothingness, and then the whole descends in you. Jesus says that the meek, the humble and the egoless belong to the kingdom of God. So the person who is not is the greatest, and the person who thinks that he is the greatest is just an idiot. People like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Ghingis Khan, George W. Bush are basically stupid. Their whole desire is psychopathy, narcissism and megalomania. They create much suffering for themselves and other people. They go on stuffing their ego like a balloon, and then one day it bursts. Every day the ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and a moment comes when the puncture of the balloon happens, and everything goes flat. The ego is the roots cause of it, it is bound to create hell for yourself and for other people. Egolessness is paradise. The moment that you are meek, humble and egoless, you will enter into the kingdom of God. Then the last should be first. To be egoless is to be in the kingdom of God. But everybody is trying to be the greatest. And the whole project is doomed from the beginning, because it cannot succeed. It has never succeeded, because it is against existence. It is trying to work against existence. Ego means that you are trying to win against the whole, which is not possible.The part can never win over the whole. No-ego means that you dissolve with the whole. Then suddenly life becomes a totally new  phenomenon. Then life has tremendous  love, silence, joy, truth, freedom and beauty.”

“Man cannot get out of misery unless he realizes that something in him is deathless. Death is the basic cause of all fears. People are afraid of love, because when they go deep into love they suddenly experience themselves to be close to death. Only meditation can help, because only meditation can make you aware that you are deathless. Even if you want to die, you cannot because there is no way to die. You existed before birth and you will remain to exist after death. Birth is only entering a certain body, and death is leaving that certain body - but you are eternal. To experience this eternity, this deathlessness, becomes the foundation for a totally new life. It creates the foundation for a new life style of fearlessness without misery. A person starts living in joy if only one experience becomes possible: deathlessness.”

“There is nothing more delicate than love in existence. Love is the most precious thing. Love is the opening of the heart. Love is the flowering of the heart. And the moment that the heart opens like a flower the whole existence becomes available to it. Then it can sway and dance with the wind, with the rain and with the sun. Suddenly all barriers disappear, and as you open up barriers evaporate. Opening up to existence like a flower means coming out of imprisonment. Otherwise we are living in a way closed to everything. The whole life of a closed person is fear-oriented. He is afraid to open to life. He is afraid to be open and vulnerable, because you may be hurt, cheated and deceived. It may be better to keep the windows and doors of the heart closed. But a closed life is bound to be miserable. Just as the closed life is fear-oriented, the open life is love-oriented. It means to trust existence. And through trusting existence, you can allow yourself to live and dance.”

“The truth is one. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth does not belong to anybody. Truth does not belong to any religion, to any ideology, to any country or to any time. Truth is within. Truth is eternal. Truth is the centre of the whole existence. Truth is always in our centre and everyone's centre. We are different on the circumference of our consciousness, but we are all joined at the centre of our consciousness. When we start moving toward our centre, first the personality is lost. The personality is a cultivated and conditioned thing. When the personality disappears, individuality appears. Individuality means that we are in contact with our inner being, our authentic self. When you go deeper into the center even the individuality disappears, and you become universal. The man who has attained to truth lives only to liberate people. His whole life is nothing but a sharing of his joy and freedom. As long as he lives he lives for all. He has reached the ultimate height of joy, silence, truth, freedom and godliness.He has inherited the whole existence.”

“As modern civilization develops, love disappears. Love has disappeared from society. Love is the only quality that man goes on missing. The basic structure of civilization that we have chosen is anti-love. The reason for that is that civilization is basically head-oriented. Civilization ignores the heart. The head is very efficient, but it is a mechanism. And a man who only lives in the head becomes an efficient robot. Then man becomes very useful for the society, but for himself he becomes a mechanical machine. Only a man of love lives a joyful and meaningful life. Love is what makes life meaningful. Love is what creates meaning in life. Only a man of love develops a soul. A man of love lives a natural life. He becomes close to the earth, to the rocks, to the animals, to the rivers, to the people and to the whole ecology. A man of love is at home in the universe. Love is what makes us feel at home in life. Man has to become capable of living naturally, lovingly, and yet be able to use the mind. He should live in the heart, and the mind should be used when needed. A totally new kind of civilization is needed: a heart-oriented civilization. If man is going to survive, if life is going to exist on earth, this new civilization is urgently needed. The old man has failed, so the new man is needed. Man has failed, because his heart is missing. Man is in a state of heart failure, where only love can save him - otherwise there is no hope for man.”

“The heart is always young. The heart never accumulates the past. The heart lives in the moment. The mind is always old. The mind accumulates the past. That is why the heart and the mind are never in agreement. They cannot be in agreement, because the mind talks about the past, and the heart lives in the here and now. The heart is the only hope for man. The heart is the door to know reality, because reality is the present. The mind can never know reality. The past is always standing in between reality as a wall. It is the heart that gives you the feeling of being alive. It is the heart that gives you the feeling of being joyous and spontaneous. And it is only the heart that can move into meditation. It is only the heart that is the hope for man if he moves from the head to the heart. It is only the heart that is the hope for man if he starts listening to the heart and follows the heart.”

“Love makes man an ocean. It gives man a kind of unboundedness, an infinity. It helps you to know that you are not defined by any limits. It helps you to know that you are not confined by the body or the mind. It helps you to now that you are not confined at all. It helps you to know that you are as vast as the open sky. It helps you know that even the sky is not the limit. There is no limit to you. That is the beauty of love. Love makes you aware of vastness. That is the first experience of godliness. And if the first experience happens, then other things follow in their own time. The first experience triggers a process. then everything follows and then you have not to do anything else. Just one thing you have to do, which is to start with love. Love as much as you can. Love as many people as possible. Love not only people, but trees, animals, birds, rocks, rivers and stars. Love means to become loving. Be love, so whatsoever you do should have the quality and flavor of love. Whatsoever you say you should say with love. Do not be rude to anybody or anything, because God permeated everything. Be love and you will know what meditation is. Meditation is an experience of love, and love brings you to the ocean, to the unbounded, to the vast. It will open the door of the temple of love. Only this door will open the door to the real temple where you will find the real God.”

“Meditation is the only way to know the deathless within ourselves. The body dies, but not you. The body is born, but you are not. You have been before birth, and you will be there after death. Life is not just an episode between birth and death. There are many births and many deaths in a long eternity of lives. Birth and death are just small events. They are like waves in a river which come and go, but the river remains. The river goes on and on. Unless this becomes your experience, one cannot live joyously,because the fear of death contaminates everything. The fear of death is the basic fear behind all fears. We may not be conscious of the fear of death, but it is always there. There are two basic taboos in the world: sex and death. We don't talk about sex, because sex is bound to bring up the question of death. We do not talk about death, because tha tbrings up fear. Meditation is the only way to face death. Meditation means becoming aware of your being. Then you can see clearly that you are not the body and you are not the mind. You become a witness to the body and the mind. As this becomes your deeper experience, a freedom arises in you. Remaining unidentified with the body and the mind, one becomes aware of eternity, of deathlessness. This awareness makes your whole like take a totally different perspective, a different vision. Then even death takes a totally new perspective. You will be able to see in death that the body is dropping, and that the body is dropping from you. The greatest experience in life is to see death clearly with awareness .It is the greatest experience, because one who can see death happening with awareness is never born in the body again.  Then he becomes part of the eternal flow of consciousness. He becomes part of the universal consciousness. He becomes part of God. Unless this experience happens you will have to come back again and again into the body. Life in the body is just like a school. If you  fail, you will have to come back. If you pass, then there is no need to come back. Everyone has the potential to pass, so go into meditation and make this your goal.”

“Meditation is the only way to know your being, which is already perfect. The inner being needs no perfection. It is already overflowing with joy, silence, love, truth, freedom and peace. Meditation makes you aware of that which is already perfect within yourself. It is a way of awakening one's own self.  And the moment your own self is awakened you are rooted in existence. Then you know that you are part of divine existence. Then you know that you are part of an organic unity of the whole. To experience it is to become divine. And to know oneself as part of the whole, an intrinsic part of the whole, bing great joy, because the most significant part of man's life is to know that he is needed by existence. Without meditation man feels useless, but with meditation man feels useful. With meditation man's passion becomes compassion. With mediation man rises to new heights, and compassion becomes unconditional love.”

“Everybody is born with a song in their heart. Unless the song inside is sung, one remains miserable. Then the purpose of life remains unfulfilled. The moment you have sung your song, joy explodes in your life. You have arrived home, because you have poured your heart into existence. In that creative pouring one becomes part of the whole. All separation from the whole thing disappears. Then the ego is dissolved. And with the ego dissolved, birth and death disappears. Nobody attains it without being creative. Anything to be true, authentically true, has to be creative. Do whatsoever is your inner feeling to do. Find the inner ear, the inner listening, which can hear the small voice within, and follow it. Meditation is the way to throw you back upon yourself, so that you can listen to your heart and follow it. You cannot get a map of the journey. That has to be discovered by you. It is written within your being, but meditation can help you to reach that innermost core, where you can read the writing that you have carried with yourself forever, but which you have not looked at.”

“Man can live either as an island isolated from existence. He can think himself separated, but then there is misery. The misery is created, because we are going against existence. You cannot be happy if you are going against existence. Then you are fighting a losing battle trying to swim upstream in opposition to the current of the river of life. You may succeed for a while, but sooner or later you will be tired and  exhausted. It is your own ideas that the river is an enemy that has created the whole problem. The river is not fighting you. You have tried to fight it,and you got defeated. The part can never win over the whole, If you would have accepted going with the flow of the river, there would have been no defeat. You would not have felt that existence has been against you. You would have felt that existence is a friend.  You would have felt a joy in going with the river. You would have felt that the river was giving you strength. That is the way of the religious person. The first way - The way of the ego  - is the way of the irreligious person. The second way - The way of the heart - is the way of letting go. It is the way of the religious person. And the moment that you let go and merge with existence, God becomes your strength and there is great rejoicing in the heart. Then each momentis a moment of joy without any fight and struggle. That is the miracle of being religious.”

“Meditation is the art of being alone. It is to forget the whole world. It is to forget the worries, chaos and tensions of the world as if it does not exist anymore. When you come to that space inside you, when only you are and nothing else exists, that is aloneness. It is not loneliness. You are with yourself. You are not missing anything. For the first time you are with yourself, For the first time you are not lonely. Ordinarily people are lonely even when they are in a crowd of people. Even while they are with friends, they are lonely. One tries to forget the loneliness through alcohol, looking at TV or through being constantly occupied. One tries anything that can help you to forget yourself and your loneliness. But sooner or later you have to come back to yourself and your loneliness. People are lonely in crowds and lonely in their relationships. Meditation is what creates a miracle: you are alone, but you are not lonely. For the first time you are with yourself, for the first time you can love yourself in your aloneness. For the first time you find bliss of aloneness. The moment that you start finding the bliss of your aloneness, it becomes wisdom. Then you are not dependent on anybody. You have found the source of bliss within yourself. That is wisdom. Now you have freedom: you can be everywhere, and you can be blissful.”

“The existential law of love is that the more you give, the more you have. The law of love is also that the less you give, the less you have. And if you don't give at all, love simply disappears from your heart. And if you go on pouring love infinitely, it goes on growing in you infinitely. It is always in the same proportion as you give. Once you understand the law of love, your life goes through a radical change. When you start giving love for no reason other than for the sheer joy of it, the whole universe expands. Then from every direction love starts flowing towards you. Life becomes a festival through life. Then life becomea spring, and thousands of roses bloom in your heart. All that is needed is to share your love without any conditions, and without asking for anything in return. Let this be your meditation: become loving and finallybecome love itself. That is the moment when one discover God within one's own being. God is another name for unconditional love.”

“The most important thing in life is to discover  your truth. Truth is there, because we are alive and conscious. We have to go deeper into our consciousness. And once we have found our consciousness, we have found truth. Once you know who you are, you have found truth. When you find truth, the outer world will be the same, nothing in the outside world has changed, but you will be a totally different person. The outside world will be the same, but nothing will be the same, because you will have a totally new perspective, which is eternal, timeless and deathless. Now you will know that you were before birth, and you will be after death. Now you are free from all small things: life's failures and successes, richness and poverty and small pains and pleasures. Now you can remain centered in every kind of situation in life. Nothing will make you waver, your groundedness is solid and absolute. This integrity, groundedness and state of consciousness remains untouchedby everything. This is the goal of meditation. Once it is discovered, one can live with joy, grace and God within one's heart.”

“Man can live either as love or as an ego. These are the only two alternatives  in life. It is the only two alternative lifestyles. The ego is very attractive, because it promises great things, although it delivers nothing. The ego creates dreams and fantasies, but these fantasies take you further away from yourself. And to be away from yourself is to be away from God, the divine. Love is not at all persuasive. It will not prove itself. You have to choose love, because it does not propagate itself. When the ego fails, because of its deceptive dreams and mirages, it fails for intelligent people. For the stupdid people, it never fails. In that failure of the ego, one moves to egolessness. This is what love is: love is egolessness. Now there is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve and your whole energy starts resting within yourself. And when your energy comes to rest at your center, one comes to know that one is not, only God is. One comes to know that God is my strength. One comes to know that God is my existence, hat God is my being. One comes to know that one is just a small manifestation of divine energy. To know it brings great joy. All worries disappears, all entities disappear, and now you know that there is somebody greater than you who takes care. You are his project to help you to be joyful. When you are inside yourself, you immediately hear the still, small voice within you - and that becomes your inner teacher, your inner guide and your guiding star. Then you have your own insight and you know what is right and wrong. Now you know that living according toone'e own being is to live authentically. That is the way of the spiritual person.”

“Man is not an isolated island, but we live with the false notion of being an island. We are part of the whole. We are not apart from the whole. We belong to the continent, and the continent is infinite. The ego is an island,. but your being is not an island. To follow the dictates of the ego is to make a mess of your life, because it takes you away from the unity of existence. It is trying to create a separate entity, it is trying to be separate from the unity of existence. This is doomed to fail from the beginning, because it is not in accord with the law of existence. How can the three be separate from the earth? How can the leaf be separate from the tree? The moment the tree is separate from the earth it is dead. Life is being with the tree. Life is part of the tree. The larger your ego is, the more it suffocates our being, our life source. The moment you drop the ego, you are free. You are free from all imprisonments. Then the whole universe belongs to you. Then all the stars, rivers and mountains are part of you. To be in this unity is to be in joy.”

“Love is the quality of the heart. Love is really the only thing that is valuable. Things have prices, but they have no real value. Love has no prize, but love has immense value. Love is the only experience that makes life meaningful. Love is the only experience that is not available in the marketplace. Love is the only experience that is not of the world, and yet exists in the world. Love is the bridge between man and God. Only love can penetrate into the unknown. Only people who know love know the richness, the joy, the poetry and the beauty of existence. Love is the source of all that is good, meaningful and beautiful. Love opens the doors to the mysteries of life. Love opens the doors to the inner shrine of God.”

“What is religion? Religion is to be in tune with the whole. Religion is to be in love with the whole. Religion is to be together with the whole. Religion means to listen to our own authentic being. Religion means to listen to the silent voice within ourselves, which will always lead us right. Religion means to realize that God is already available to you, both from the inside and from the outside. Religion means to realize that we are already one with God. Religion means the understanding and awareness that makes your doors open and allow God to enter in. The purpose of reöigion is to dissolve in silence. When you lose yourself for the first time you are yourself. When the ego disappears, we become awareness, joy and spontaneity. We become a vehicle, an instrument for the whole. The three dimensions of existence, the three faces of God, are life, love and light. The first dimension is just the beginning of a great journey, a great pilgrimage. Those who think that life is the end miss the whole point of life. The majority of people Take life as the end. What happens then is that people become greedy for life. Their life becomes full of greed, possessiveness and violence. Life should not be taken for granted. The people that take life for granted are the worldly people and these are the people who have made the world ugly and violent. These are the mundane and mediocre people. They become politicians, hoarders and exploiters. Their whole existence seems to be directed towards one thing: survival. Life lived without love and light is only one-dimensional. Love means introducing a new dimension into your life, which is the dimension of the heart. Love means to introduce joy and delight in your being. Now you don't live only on the one-dimensional horizontal plane. Now you live in two dimensions: life and love. Your life becomes rich. Only by going through the fire of love, one becomes a heart. It is the fire of love that creates the soul. Not having a heart is what makes life meaningless, but millions of people live without a heart. The heart is the spiritual centre of our being. It is only the heart that can bring joy to our life. Never be afraid of love because it is love that will bring you closer to your heart. And it is the heart that can open the doors to God. God can enter only through the heart. God is hidden in our own heart. God is within ourselves, but we seek him outside of ourselves. We seek him in the churches, the temples and the mosques, and we go on missing him. God is not in the scriptures either. God emerges out of your heart. Love people, love trees and love animals. Never miss an opportunity to love. The more you love, the closer you come to God. Love is the bridge to God. How do love and meditation relate to each other? How do relationships and aloneness relate to each other? How do God meet you in different forms in the outside world, and how do God meet in you in the inside world as your own self? In the outside world, in love and relationships, God is meeting you in many different forms. In the inside world, in meditation and aloneness, God is meeting you as your own self. Balance is needed. Love and meditation and relationships and aloneness are a balance between the inner and outer world. Love and meditation, the inner and the outer world. Love and meditation and the inner and outer the world is needed to create a balance. Together these two poles create a wholeness; together they will heal you. Make these two poles part of meditation, so that love and relationships are good to create wholeness. And in the outside world, God is meeting you in many different forms. And when you feel the need again to be alone, God is meeting you as your own self. God is everywhere, so there is no need to choose. There is also a third dimension: light. Light means introducing meditation in your life. It means”

“The divine in man arises through meditation. Meditation is the door to the divine. Nothing is more godly than meditation, because in meditation you slip out of the mind. You disappear from the outside, and you exist at your innermost core. And your innermost core is rooted in God. Just as every tree is rooted in the earth, every consciousness is rooted in God. God means the ultimate consciousness. Meditation is the bridge that takes you to the very source of your being. Once you have tasted the joy of being at the source, then everything else in life becomes meaningless. Then you can go on living the ordinary life, but it is all acting. It is a drama. You can play this drama, but you know that you are not part of it. It is a play, it is not your existence. You can have all kinds of relationships in the world, but now you know the beauty of being alone. You know the bliss of being. You know the bliss of being at the centre in solitude. Once that window opens your life is transformed. And that is the whole purpose of meditation. The purpose of meditation is to open that window, so that you can really know that you are godly.”

“Love makes man an ocean, an infinity. Love gives a kind of unboundedness. It helps you know that you are not defined by any limits. It helps you to know that you are not confined by the mind and the body. It helps you to know that you are as vast as the sky. The beauty of love is that it makes you aware of your vastness. That is the first experience of godliness. Love as much as you can. Love as many people as possible. Love not only people, but animals, brids, trees, rocks and stars. Become loving, so whatsoever you do, it should have the flavor of love. Whatsoever you touch it should have the touch of love. Whatsoever you say, you should say it with love. In the beginning it is hard, but make it a meditation. Meditation is an experience of love. Love brings you to the oceanic, to the vast. Then the door to the temple opens, and you enter the real temple, where you will find the real God.”

“God comes like a breeze. You cannot see it, but you can feel it. And you can be mmensely enriched and nourished by it. If somebody is open to you, they will also feel your bliss. God cannot be believed in, and those who believed in God are deceiving themselves. A real trust in God is not a belief, it is an insight and experience. God has to be experienced. When you do not have an experience, you are open to experience. In that freedom something can transpire. In that silence and emptiness, you are open for something from the beyond to transpire like a breeze. You cannot see it, but you will feel it. It has a freshness to it. You will feel the fragrance, and it will transform you. Then God is a certainty to you. Then only God exists.”

“The two qualities courage and being blissful prepare the ground for God to descend in you. You have to be courageous, because God is the unknown. And whatsoever you have been taught about God is sheer nonsense. When you really come to know God, you will be utterly surprised. There is no way to describe the experience. God remains indefinable and inexpressible. The experience of God is so inexpressible that even those who have experienced God cannot express their experience to somebody else. The word "mystic" describes one who has come across such a truth that he can only say that it is an unexplainable mystery. One needs enough courage to explore the unknown. And one needs to be blissful enough for God to enter in your being. Unless you are blissful you are not ready for God. God cannot happen to people, who are sad and miserable. God is a song, a dance, a consciousness. Misery makes people shrink and become closed, and bliss makes people open and available - and God needs all the space. Then only can the ultimate sky enter you. You have to become spacious enough to become as vast as the sky.”

“Meditation is a transcendence of all identities. We are identified with the mind and the body, The first step of meditation is to transcend identity and to become aware that we are not the mind and the body. The second step of meditation is to become aware that we are identified with the heart, with our feelings and emotions. These are the steps in meditation that we are identified with; the body, the mind and the heart. Out of these steps in meditation comes the most positive phenomenon in existence: suddenly we become aware of who we are. And then a miracle happens: out of knowing who we are we suddenly attain the biggest yes in our life. You attain a total yes, an absolute yes, a sacred yes. That yes is a transcendence of all misery, of all ignorance and of all bondage. You become part of eternity. You become part of God. You become God himself. That is the ultimate goal of meditation.”

“Man can only discover truth through meditation. Truth is not something that the mind can know. Mind can theorise about truth, buit mind can never discover truth. The nature of the mind is not to reach the inner being, the centre of consciousness. The mind exists on the circumference of our consciousness. The mind is needed to communicate and relate with others. Truth is your very being. Truth only happens when you fall into deep silence. Truth happens when you forget the whole world. Truth happens when the other is completely forgotten. In these moments of silence and aloneness truth is revealed.  It is not a conclusion of the mind, but a revelation of no-mind. Meditation simply means turning in. Mind is always turning out. Mind is basically extroversion. Mind is a beautiful instrument. You can use the mind, but do not allow the mind to use you. Remember that the real truth is at the center. At the center there is only consciousness, no thought, and no desires. All the faculties of the mind stop functioning, and you are simply aware, alert and watchful. You simply are. In that state you are truth. And once it is experienced, it starts changing your whole life. If you know your truth, you cannot be untrue in any way. Even to be untrue to others becomes impossible. The joy of being truthful is such that who would like to fall into the darkness of being untrue. The lying person becomes a problem to himself and to others. Truth brings many gifts, but one has to open the door of meditation. Nobody can give you the truth. Truth is already given to you from God himself, Truth is not something that has to be found. Truth is already within you. Meditation means a decision to find your truth. It is a commitment that from this moment my life will be devoted to finding my truth, The truth is not very far away. It needs only one step: it is the step from mind to no-mind.”

“Love is the most divine experience on earth. Love proves that existence is not without meaning. Except for love there is no proof for the significance of life. If one has not experienced love one will feel meaninglessness in life. If one has not experience love one will feel an emptiness in life. One will feel at the mercy of unknown and material forces. That is how materialists look at life.Life is just a combination of matter. and love is a combination of hormones and chemical reactions in the body. But then there is no significance in life, and without significance in life one can only drag through life. There is no song, no dance in life. The existentialist philosophers says that life is meaningless, but they still go on clinging to life. They talk about anguish, fear, anxiety, despair, struggle and death. But nobody  becomes convinced that life is really meaningless, becauselife is not meaningless. Life has intrinsic value, but its has to be discovered. We are intuitively aware that life is not meaningless.  Love gives us proof of it. A lover has no doubts about life's  meaning. It is only through love that people have slowly discovered the ultimate meaning, which is God, the divine. It is only through love that people have  discovered the whole science of meditation, because in loving moment the mind stops. When you are really in love, in those momentsthe past and the future disappears, and the present moment becomes all. That is what meditation is. Love gives you a glimpse of meditation. And through meditation a window opens into the existence of God. That is why love is the most divine  phenomenon on earth. A seeker of truth has to be both a lover and a meditator, because both these qualities support each other. If you love, you will be able to meditate more deeply. If you meditate, you will be able to love more deeply. If you meditate, you will be able to love more totally. Love and meditation help each other. They support each other. The whole man knows both love and meditation. He lives on the earth, but he is part of the sky. And to be whole is to be holy.”

“The only way to know God is meditation. Meditation means a state of consciousness, where all thoughts have been dropped. The thoughts still remain there, but they are no more part of you. You have transcended them, and you are standing above them like a watcher on the hills. That is what meditation is. Meditation is not against thought. Meditation is transcendence. Transcendence is going beyond thoughts.And these are the great moments of life, when love starts showering from the beyond and one becomes a beloved of God. But one has to earn it, one has to be worthy of it and one has to deserve it. That earning comes through meditation. Meditation prepares you to receive love. After beginning to meditate when I was 15 years old, and after conducting satsang for 10 years in Sweden, I began to meet God every day. I meet God in the wind, and in the silence of nature, which filled me with bliss. It gave me the feeling of being one with the whole. God is always ready to give, but we are not ready to receiveit. We are not open, silent and empty enough to receive it. We are so full of thoughts, desires, memories and dreams that there is no room within us. This room has to be created. That is the art of meditation. And then you will start dancing with God.”

“Bliss is the greatest blessing in life. Without knowing bliss one lives in vain. In fact, one does not live, but only survives. One simply vegetetates. Life starts only when you start moving in the dimension beyond death. That is what meditation is: a ladder, a strategy, to go beyond death. And only a glimpse of the beyond is enough. Then you know that the body is going to die, but you are not going to die. You were here before birth, and you will be here after death. You are part of eternity. When you experience this, life becomes blissful. And in that blissfulness, one feels that God has blessed you. Then naturally gratitude arises. This gratitude is prayer, which is the highest state of love. Then you become thankful to existence. You feel what agift has been given to you. It is a gift that God has given to you only out of his abundance.”

“Love is always great. Greatness is part of love. Vastness is the flavour of love. That is why our so-called love is not love, because it is too small. If love is too small, it is not love. Our love is too confined, too conditioned and too demanding. And then life becomes a desert. And one feels that there is no meaning , no joy, no growth, no poetry and no music in life. And all is futile and meaningless. But we are responsible for the desertlike and joyless existence. Without love, we become dry. With love, there is joy. With love, there is growth. Love can only be great. The problem is that we want something mpossible: we want love, and we also want to protect our ego. The ego is small, and love is always great. They cannot exist together. It is against the law of existence. Either you choose the ego or you choose love. You cannot choose both. And in the conflict between ego and love most people choose the ego, because it is small and controllable. Then you feel safe and secure. The vast sky of love is beautiful, but one feel afraid to go into such unknown territory. The ego can be controlled, but love cannot be controlled. With love you have to understand one thing: love is larger than you. Unless one is ready to surrender to love in trust, one cannot know what love is. And without knowing love, one cannot know what life is either. And then all talk about God is mere talk. You don't know life and you don't know love, so how can you know God? God is the crescendo of life and love. God is the highest peak of life and love. Meditation means to learn to go into the unknown. It means to go into the great, the vast. And this adventure creates the soul, The soul has to be earned. Business people has no soul, because they live a soulless and mundane existence. Meditation means being ready to always leave the unknown. This very search gives integrity. Learn the art of great love. Those who have known love have known all. Those who have missed love have missed all.”

“Love is the most divine experience on earth. Love proves that existence is not wthout meaning. Except for love there is no proof for the significance of life. If one has not experienced love one will feel meaninglessness in life. If one has not experience love one will feel an emptiness in life. One will feel at the mercy of unknown and material forces. That is how materialists look at life. Life is just a combination of matter. and love is a combination of hormones and chemical reactions in the body. But then there is no significance in life, and without significance in life one can only drag through life. Thereis no song, no dance in life. The existentialist philosophers says that life is meaningless, but they still go on clinging to life. They talk about anguish, fear, anxiety, despair, struggle and death. But nobody becomes convinced that life is really meaningless, because life is not meaningless. Life has intrinsic value, but its has to be discovered. We are intuitively aware that life is not meaningless. Love gives us proof of it. A lover has no doubts about life's  meaning. It is only through love that people have slowly discovered the ultimate meaning, which is God, the divine. It is only through love that people have discovered the whole science of meditation, because in loving moment the mind stops. When you are really in love, in those moments the past and the future disappears, and the present moment becomes all. That is what meditation is. Love gives you a glimpse of meditation. And through meditation a window opens into the existence of God. That is why love is the most divine phenomenon on earth. A seeker of truth has to be both a lover and a meditator, because both these qualities support each other. If you love, you will be able to meditate more deeply. If you meditate, you will be able to love more deeply. If you meditate, you will be able to love more totally. Love and meditation help each other. They support each other. The whole man knows both love and meditation. He lives on the earth, but he is part of the sky. And to be whole is to be holy.”

“Until now the whole of humanity has been in some wayor other condemning life and the joy and beauty of life. Until now the past of humanity has been life-negative. And to be life-negative is to be against God, because lifeis God. God is not separated from nature, people or life. All the organized religions have been life-negative. All the organized religions destroy something valuable in you. They make you feel guilty about yourself.  They make you feel guilty about being life-affirmative. They make yo ufeel guilty about loving life. They make you guilty about enjoying the joy and beauty of life. Meditation is helping you to be free of all guilt, and to rejoice in life. Meditation helps you to rejoice in even small things of life. Then even having a cup of coffee, taking a walk in nature or meeting a friend starts having  a sacred significance. You can have a cup of coffee in a prayerful way, and with such meditativeness that there is no need to go to a church or temple. Meditation is a help to rejoicein life and also help others to be happy, because bliss is divine.”

“Saying yes to existence means surrendering to God. It means not living the isolated life of the ego. It means becoming one with the whole. It contains in essence the whole of religion. Meditation is saying yes to existence. And then there is no fear. When you drop your ego all fear disappears. Then whatsoever God wills you do. You are no more responsible, because you are not. Then it is all up to God. With this trust a great revolution in your life happens. You don't exist as a separate entity anymore. It is like a drop slipping into the ocean. It means losing its limited definition, it means losing its identity, but it means to gain tremendously. It becomes the ocean. So the loss is not much, but the gain is infinite.”

“Love is always flowing. Love is a river. The moment you stop a river, it becomes dirty. The river is only clean when it is flowing. The same is true about love. Love should be in a constant flow. But our minds are always trying to make love static. We try to cling to love. We try to make love a static and permanent phenomenon. We destroy the possibilities for change. We are afraid of change, because we don't know where the change will lead. So we want tomorrow to be exactly like today. That destroys all possibilities for growth. Let the future be open. The natural life is change. We have to flow with nature, and with the ultimate law of existence. Be in tune with existence, without expectations on your part, and you will be enriched. Each moment will bring new life, new joy. And a person whose love is always flowing becomes vast. He becomes as vast as the sky itself. In that vastness one knows what God is. That vastness is God.”

“Love and prayer are two different expressions of the same energy. Love is more earthly, whole prayer is more unearthly, but the  experiences are the same. Love is more limited, because it aperson-to-person experience. Prayer is unlimited. It is from person to the impersonal existence. In the beginning it is from the person to the impersonal existence, but when you relate deeper with impersonal existence, the person is lost. It is like a drop disappearing  into  the ocean. The drop loses its boundaries. It become the ocean. The old identity of the drop will be gone. Many people think that they know what love is, but they do not know what love is. So how should they know about prayer, which is the highest form of love? Prayer is almost non-existential, and even love is experienced by very few people, because love also demands many essential things before they can experience it. Love cannot coexist with jealousy, anger, violence, hate,ego, possessiveness and domination. These are allanti-love phenomenon, which will destroy  the  possibility of love. To grow in real love one needs courage. Love challenges you. And you have to drop many things to become worthy of love. The first thing to drop is the ego. But we would like love with our ego intact. When love do  not exist, then everything higher than love is impossible. Prayer is the ultimate flowering of love. A man who knows love deeply, who has been able to drop his ego, will move towards  prayer  If loving one person is so beautiful, then how much more beautiful will it be to love the whole existence.  That is prayer. One need not believe in God to be able to pray. First one has to know love, then one has to know prayer and then Godis the third experience. True religiousness arises out ofl ove. Prayer is an overflowing love. And ultimately prayerreveals God to you.”

“Prayer is the most beautiful flowering in existence. Prayer is the ultimate state of love. When one is loving, prayer becomes  natural.  One has to thank existence. Feeling thankful one bows down to the whole: to the trees, to the birds, to the animal, to the people, to the rivers, to the mountains and to all that us. When one is loving, prayer will come of its own accord. And when it comes of its own, it is neither Christian, Mohammendan or Hindu. It is simply prayer. Then it unites you, not only with humanity, but with trees, animals and rocks. It simply unites you with existence. It becomes a bridge to existence, which speaks from your heart to the heartbeat of the universe. Then the whole of life becomes prayer. Then to be is a prayer., And only when everything is prayer, one has come to know the mystery, which is at the centre of prayer.”

“Religions all over the world have for centuries been telling people to serve humanity, ut this has not produced any effect, On the contrary, it has created hypocrites. People who are not blissful are unable to help anybody. You can only give light to others if you have the light in the first place. What has been happening is that blind people lead other blind people. This is a dangerous game, because if the blind person knows that he has nobody guiding him, then he tries to be aware and find his own way. He remains aware, careful and cautious. But if he finds somebody to lead him and guide him, then he need not be so alert. But if he is completely unaware that the guide is also blind, then there is more danger than before, and he will not live cautiously. He will think that somebody is there to take responsibility, so now he need not be alert. It is because of this situation - blind people leading other blind people - that the whole of humanity has almost become a madhouse. Life has almost become intolerable. And the people that have taught service to humanity have only hindered the growth of people. People start serving others, without knowing whether they are capable of helping others. The desire to guide others is there in anybody, because it is very ego-gratifying. That is why everybody is ready to give advice whether you ask for it or not. Only the people who are blissful can be helpers. Unless a man is conscious it is possible for him to guide anybody. One can help others only if one has first helped yourself. It begins from your very being, from your innermost core. There has been enough of the kind of help, which has done enough harm. The first step is to help yourself. If you can attain to light, to bliss and to an experience of godliness, then you are bound to help others. Then there is no need to say something about it. It will happen by itself, because your bliss, love, silence, light and truth will start overflowing. And only the joyful person can be helpful, the miserable person can only do harm. The most basic thing is to become blissful. You can only share what you have. A man who has learned to love himself will be able to love others. A man who has become blissful will be able to spread his bliss. One always gives whatsoever one has. One radiates it. It starts to radiate and to function on its own accord. It is a magic, which works on its own.”

“Meditation opens your inner consciousness like the sun opens the flowers. The presence of the sun functions like a catalytic agent. The same process happens in meditation. Meditation creates an inner warmth. The non-meditative person is cold inside. He has no heart. He is just mind. The meditative person's energy starts moving from the head to the heart . The heart starts becoming warmer, and in that warmth your being opens up like a flower. In that opening of your being, one feels like coming home.”

“Man ordinarily lives in a state of unconsciousness. Man lives almost in a kind of sleep. Only in a minimal way he is awake. Only in an emergency does he suddenly become alert. Suddenly you will see a change and a alertness in him, which was not there a moment ago. Suddenly all your thinking disappears, all your dreaming disappears and all the fantasies that continuously goes on has stopped. For a moment the mind stops, there is a blank and in that intervall you are alert. Ordinarily it seems that a person can only attain to a few second of awareness in his whole life. People live like robots, machines. People go on doing things effectively and mechanically, but that does not prove that we are conscious. The ordinary man, the mob, the crowd, is unconscious and mechanical. The society wants people who are unconscious and mechanical, because they are easy to manipulate, control and exploit. It is only through consciousness that you can go beyond this mechanicalness. The spiritual journey means that you are given a new dimension, the spiritual dimension. The whole work of the spiritual journey is to bring you some consciousness of your self, of your being. It is an effort to make you conscious,to help you to rise above your biology, unconsciousness and mechanicalness. Very few people have attained to their spiritual selves. Most peoplel ive on the biological level, and they die on the biological level. Everybody has the potential, but most people do not work on it, so it remains a lost potential., The potential has to become actual. So make an effort to make your life concentrated effort to become more and more conscious. And as glimpses of consciousness start arising in you, you will be surprised that bliss will follow each moment of consciousness. As consciousness deepens, bliss deepends. Bliss is the consequence of being conscious.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world.  The first kind is the creative and conscious people and the second kind is the destructive and unconscious. Great awareness is needed to be creative and conscious, while no awareness and consciousness is needed to be destructive. The creative people have attained inner awareness. The other kind of people are the violent and destructive people, who are the unhealthy, narcissistic and pathological people. These are the people who bring misery and human suffering to the world. They themselves are miserable and they create misery for others. Alexander the Great killed thousands of people, Joseph Stalin killed millions of people and Adolf Hitler is one of the greatest murders history has known.  The world would have been better without them. The creative and conscious people are a blessing to the world. Without them humanity would not have progressed at all. These people are the salt of the earth. Life has some meaning, joy, beauty and song, because of these people. People like Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu made themselves blissful, and spread the secret of being blissful in the world. They spread their light in the world. Meditation is the way to become blissful. Become blissful, because you can only give that which you have. You cannot give that which you do not have. Become a source of bliss and blessings to others.”