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“Happiness only happens in the heart. It is only in the heart that anything of real value, of eternal value, grows. It is only in the heart that love, joy, silence, truth, compassion, freedom and God grow. The functioning of the heart and the head are totally opposed to each other. Happiness never happens in the head. The head is like a desert. Nothing grows in the head. And we are trained for the head, which becomes  a problem in our life. The head is based on doubt, and the heart is based on trust. Our whole training in the education systemis doubt, thinking, logic, reasoning and questioning. That is not the way of the heart. There is very few people, who actually know that the heart exists. For many people the heart is just a metaphor, and at the most the heart is a mechanism for the blood. But that is not the heart that the mystics have talked about. There is a center deep inside you,and that center can only be known through trust. Meditation is a jump into trust. it is a love affair with God, the divine. The head will condemn it. But don't listen to the head. Listen to the heart. The heart is the voice of God.”

“Society destroys the very roots of trust. Society does not allow you to trust yourself. It teaches you all other kinds of trust: trust in the parents, trust in the teachers, trust in the church, trust in God, but the basic trust in yourself is destroyed. The man who trusts himself is dangerous to society, because a society depends on slavery. A man who trusts himself is an independent man. Freedom will be his life. His love will have a truth to it. The society needs dependent people, who do not trust themselves.”

“Intuition is basically to develop a trust in yourself. When you trust yourself, you can trust others, you can trust existence. Start trusting yourself is the fundamental lesson on the spiritual journey. Love and silence are the two ways to develop intuition, to develop trust in yourself. Start loving yourself, if you do not love yourself, who is then going to love you? Trust is only possible if you first trust yourself in yourself. The most fundamental thing has to happen within you first. In India, where they have developed the inner science of spirituality for thousands of years, they made the basic condition that one should begin to develop trust in oneself. A man or woman who trust comes to know the beauty of that the more you trust yourself, the more bloom. The more he or she trusts, the more he or she can trust life, the more he or she can trust the unknown. The more you trust, the more you can relax in your being. You know that you are cherished and supported by the whole. When you start to feel this trust and love of the whole, you start to grow roots in your being.”

“Meditation means to learn to surrender to existence. Ordinarily we are fighting and struggling with existence, because that is how we have been brought up. We have been brought up with the idea of fighting and being aggressive, because it is the way to compete and succeed in the world. Meditation means that we are not concerned with success. We are concerned with silence, joy, peace, truth, compassion, freedom and God. Even if you succeed, death is going to destroy anything, so it has just been a wastage of our life. You may have power, status, money, position and prestige, but it will all be taken away by death. But if you have known love, it will go with you. If you have known joy, it will go with you. If you have known the truth, it will go with you. If you have known freedom, death cannot take it away. These are the real treasures of life. But they can only be attained if one surrender to the whole. You have to love so totally, so that you can trust the whole. You have to love so deeply, so that you can surrender to the whole. You have to disappear as a separate entity. You have to become part of infinity and become a wave in the ocean of God.”

“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.”

“It is unfortunate that very few people have ever tried to know meditation, because meditation is the way to joy and happiness. Meditation means to participate in the celebration of existence. Without it life remains a misery, a sadness and a frustration. Meditation is the only way to be the blessed one and to participate in the mystery of ife. Meditation is the door to God.”

“You cannot seek happiness. If you seek happiness, you will become more and more unhappy. You have to disappear for appiness to come. You cannot seek and demand happiness. Happiness is a grace, which comes to you when you are open and available. If you demand happiness, you will destroy it. Happiness comes when you are not. It comes when you are silent and empty. In your total emptiness, suddenly happiness is there. You are the hindrance to happiness, so you cannot seek it. If you disappear only then happiness is there. When the self is completely gone, then only you are happy. To attain to happiness, one has to dissolve oneself completely. You have to disappear so that there is no hindrance to joy and happiness. Joy and happiness is the essence of existence, it is the nature of God. If you are not there, God will be there.”

“These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the Whole The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego: 1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego. 2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego. 3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean. At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole. It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. You have found the door to God. You have come home.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Man can only come in contact with God through meditation. Meditation is the only way to come in contact with God.  God symbolizes the whole, the universe. God symbolizes the totality of all: the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun, the people, the trees, the animals, the flowers and the earth. God is aloving symbol of all that is. God is not a person, God is a presence. God is consciousness. When you are silent in deep meditation, you start feeling a presence surrounding you, and surrounding the stars, the people, the trees and the mountains. It is a subtle aura of light. The whole existence is radiating life, light and joy. The whole existence is a dance, which never begins and never ends. The moment you start feeling this infinity of existence, there is nothing that you can do than bow down in gratefulness to the mystery of existence. There is nothing else to do, but to bow down in thankfulnessfor the precious gift that has been given to you. There is nothing else to do, but to bow down to the precious gift that you are alive and that you can love and be loved. Thankfulness for this gift arises when we say yes to this great opportunity. Thankfulness arises when we put the mind aside, and start functioning from the heart. That is meditation. Meditation means to move from the head to the heart. Then God is felt, and the presence becomes tangible. Then one has to surrender to the presence. One has to become one with God.”

“The most fundamental thing to understand is that life is God's gracious gift. Deep in our heart we have to understand that life is a tremendous gift, which has not to be wasted. Life is an opportunity to grow. We have to understand that each moment in life is precious. One has to look inwards. One should not remain concerned just with outside things, because that is how people waste their lives. One should start searching within and ask who we really are. One should go deeper into one's consciousness to find our authentic inner being. The moment you find your inner being all questions are answered. Then there is no confusion anymore, and a clarity arises. This is the moment when you understand how much the universe has given to you. And when you move into silence, you are moving into God.”

“God has no name. All organized religions have given names to God to be able to have a personal relationship to God, but God is not a person. God is the underlying force, the energy and the consciousness of existence. If you cannot feel God, the divine, within, you cannot feel him without. The first step is to feel God within. Then prayer to a personal god becomes meaningless, and meditation becomes meaningful. The second step is to realize God without, to realize that God is not the creator, he is creation. He is not separate from creation. He is the force and consciousness of creation. The world is God's dance; the world is God's play.”

“God is all that exists. Every stone, flower, tree, animal and human being are on a spiritual journey to recognize their true self, their divine essence. We have been living lives as stones, flowers, trees and animals in order to develop our consciousness. Stones, flowers and animals also have consciousness. The more matter, the less consciousness. The more consciousness, the less matter. God is not a person, God is the underlying thread of consciousness in existence. Real love means to realize that we are one with the other person, one with nature, and one with the trees, the stones, the earth and the blue sky. It means to realize that all of life is God. I was 9 years old when I had my first spiritual awakening, my first glimpse of wholeness with existence. This created a deep thirst and longing in my heart and being to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within, the inner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth, the inner language of silence. Now I notice that this silence is going deeper, and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence. It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with existence. It means to find the whole existence within myself, it means to discover that existence is alive in my own heart and being. The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an ecstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart. It is to realize that the whole existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God. Silence is the inner door to God.”

“Sermon of the Mounts Matthew 5 AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO A MOUNTAIN, AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM The Gospels starts in a very beautiful way. The Bible is the book of the books. The meaning of the word "bible" is - the book. It is the most precious and beautiful document that humanity has. These statements are the most beautiful ever made. That is why it is called "The Testament", because Jesus has become the witness of God. While Buddha's words are refined and philosophic, Jesus words are poetic, plain and simple. The beginning of the Gospel of Matthew states that 42 generations have passed from Abraham, the founder of Judaism, to Jesus. Jesus is the flowering, the fulfillment, of these 42 generations. The whole history that has preceded Jesus is the fulfillment in him. Jesus is the fruit, the growth, the evolution, of those 42 generations. The path of Jesus is the path of love. Jesus moved among ordinary people, while Buddha - whose path is the path of meditation, intelligence and understanding - moved with sophisticated people, who was already on the spiritual path, Jesus is the culmination of the whole Jewish consciousness, while Buddha was the culmination of the Hindu consciousness and Socrates was the culmination of the Greek consciousness. But the strange things is that the tradition rejected both Jesus, Buddha and Socrates. All the prophets of the Jews that had preceded jesus was preparing the ground for him to come. That is why John the Baptist was saying: "I am nothing compared to the person that I am preparing the way." But when Jesus came, the etablishment, the religious leaders and the priests, started feeling offended. His presence made the religious leaders look small. Hence Jesus was crucified. And this has always been so, because of the sleep and the stupidity of humanity.”

“Sermon of the Mounts Matthew 5 AND SEEING THE MULTITUDES, HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAINS, AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. The multitudes, the masses, the crowd, is the lowest state of consciousness. It is a deep ignorance and sleep. If you want to relate and communicate with the masses, you have to come down to their level. That is why whenever you go into the masses, the crowd, you start to feel suffocated. This suffocation is physical and psychological, beacuse you relate to people, who functions from a very low state of consciousness. They pull you down and you become physically and psychologically tired and drained. That is why a need for meditation and aloneness arises. There is a practice in the life of Jesus that he noves into the crowds of people, but after a few months he goes to the mountains. He goes away from the crowd, to be with God. When you are alone, you are with God. To relate to the masses brings you down to their level of consciousness, but only in the presence of God, you can fly. With the crowd, you can not fly, you become crippled, and the masses will not tolerate if you do not live according to them, according to their level of consciousness. To be able to work with the masses, to be able to help them, you have to relate to them according to their level fo consciousness - and this is tiring and draining. Both Jesus and Buddha moved to the mounatins, to a lonely place, just to be themselves, and to be with God to regain their vitality to be able to come back to the masses where people are thristy. The montain is where Jesus do not need to think about the masses, where he can forget the mind and the body. In that moment of aloneness and meditation, one simply is. This is the inner being, the source of life. And when you are full again, you can share again. AND WHEN HE WAS SET, HIS DISCIPLES CAME UNTO HIM. To talk to the masses and to talk to disciples is two very different things. To talk to the crowd is to talk to people, who are indifferent. The crowd is resisting, defensive and argumentative. To talk to disciples means to talk to people, who have a basic thirst. It means that they are not defensive, they are open to listen to the heart of truth. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING. Jesus escaped into the mountains from the crowd, but he did not escape from the disciples. He was available to the disciples. In his aloneness, Jesus is with God. And through Jesus, the disciples can feel God. The closer the disciple come to Jesus, the more they will see that Jesus is a silence and emptiness through which God can sing. And the more the disciple himself will become an emptiness, he will also be able to help other people. AND HE OPENED HIS MOUTH, AND TAUGHT THEM, SAYING. BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This is the most fundamental statement of Jesus. With this statement, Jesus has said everything. The "poor in spirit" is exactly what Buddha means with the term Shunyatta - "emptiness", no-self, nothingness. It is when the ego disappears, and you are a nobody, a silence. If you are a nobody, if you are nothing, you are God.”

“Meditation is an inner journey. It is a journey from your periphery to your inner being, your center. Normally we have lived on the periphery for many lives, so we have become totally oblivious of the fact that we have a center. A man living on the periphery is without a soul. It is a man living without roots. He knows not where he his coming from, he knows not where he is and he knows not where he is going. Meditation means an effort to become conscious. It means to create the fire of awareness in you. It is to find the inner being, the center, in us, because it is there. Once we have found the inner center, we find our roots. Then we have a soul. We know who we are. And that is the greatest moment in a man's life. It opens up the mystery of life. Suddenly God becomes available in all its joy, beauty and mystery. Then life becomes eternal. Then there is no death. Then our life becomes a joy.”

“Life is really very simple. In each moment, we have the opportunity to choose between saying “yes” or “no”, to listen to our intuition, to listen to our true inner voice, the Existential voice within ourselves. When we say “yes”, we have contact with Existence and we receive nourishment, love, joy, support and inspiration. When we say “no”, we create a separation from life and begin to create dreams and expectations of how it should be. We begin to live in the memories of the past and in the fantasies of the future – as if any other time than here and now really could make us happy and satisfied.”

“Wisdom happens through the heart. Wisdom is of the heart, not through logic. When the heart is open with love, when the heart is surrendered to life, then a new insight arises in you, which is a deep understanding of what life is really all about. It is a deep understanding of who you really are. It is a deep understanding of why this existence really exists. All the secrets of life are revealed through the heart, but not through logic. God, the divine, existence, has a direct connection with the heart, but has no connection with the head. If one wants to approach God, the divine, the way goes through the heart. once you have know the wisdom of the heart, then you can use the mind in service of wisdom. Move your energy from the head to the heart, and as your love grows, wisdom will descend on you.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Love is the most mysterious experience in life. Love is something that you never fully learn; love is something that you ontinuously go deeper and deeper into. The mystery of love deepens more and more. Love cannot be explained. Love cannot be defined. Love can only be lived, but it can never be understood. Love is so vast, so infinite. If you allow love to happen to, you you are allowing the mystery of life to happen to you. And it is through the mysterious that one comes close to God. Love is the beginning of God. God is so far away, so we need something more human and concrete to approach him. That is what love is. Love is the possibility of reaching God. God is love in its unmanifest state. So never try to make a philosophy of love. There is not other way to know love except existential experience. Unless you experience love you don't know it. Existence needs experience. You have the capacity to know, to see, to feel and to be love. Become a friend to all that is. Become a friend to human beings, to animals, to trees, to birds and to rocks. Create the quality of friendliness. Let it flow towards everyone irrespective of nation, race, caste and creed. And then slowly your consciousness will start becoming universal. Friendship is a way to drop the ego and become egoless. The ego exists by creating enemies, because the ego exists through fight and conflict. The moment the ego disappears, all your boundaries disappears, and you become one with the universe.”

“Satsang is an initiation into the space where one starts belonging to God, the divine. Satsang is an initiation into the space where one no more thinks of oneself in egoistic terms, but where one starts thinking in terms of the whole. When you start feeling yourself in harmony with the whole great joy arises in your heart. Harmony with the whole is joy and disharmony with the whole is misery and separation. Whenever we a attuned to the whole suddenly the clouds on the sky disappear, and all is sunshine. Suddenly the flowers start blooming in your heart, and you are full of the fragrance of the unknown, of the beyond. But it happens only in the moment when you are in harmony with the whole. And everybody knows these moments once in a while. It happens accidentally: watching a sunrise. listening to beautiful music, in love, out in nature or for no reason at all. - and you fall into a subtle harmony. Something inside you becomes silent and quiet. The beauty of the sunset or the music may overwhelm you, so that you for a moment forget that you are separate from life. And then you feel great joy, beauty and silence. Satsang means to learn the art of creating situations, where it starts happening more and more consciously. It is to learn the art of creating the right conscious space for it happens, so that one day it happens but never leaves you again. This is the day of enlightenment, and one becomes a Buddha or a Christ. That is the day of harmony, when it has become so ingrained in you, so that now there is no possibility of separation from life.”

“Up to now the whole past of humanity has been to condemn life and the joy of life. It has been a life-negative approach to life. It is to be against God, the divine, the whole,  because life is God. All the organized religions, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism, have been life-negative. They destroy the capacity to love life, and make you feel shameful and guilty about your joy in life. Meditation and awareness helps you to become free of all shame and guilt, and find the joy in life. Meditation is to rejoice in life, and also to help others to be happy in life, because life is divine.”

“Joy and happiness immediately happens when you remember that God loves you, that you are fulfilling a purpose in existence and that in your own small ways you are working for God. The moment we realize this joy arises in our heart. Then life is no more meaningless. We are messengers of God, and we are doing something greater than ourselves. Remember this more and more, so that it becomes a constant undercurrent in our consciousness. You will start flowering, and just to know that God loves you kindles a light in you, which cannot be extinguished by external forces.”

“We have taken life for granted. We do not take life as a blessing. We are not thankful for life. Life is God's gift to us. Once we understand this, we start thinking about life in a different way. When life is a blessing, joy is born. From this moment start looking at everything as a blessing. Even if you sometimes feel pain, see it as a blessing. Take ups and downs in life for granted. You may not understand, but this is a blessing. One day you will understand that it was a blessing. You will understand that it was needed, and that it helped your growth. Even suffering is a blessing. It helps you to become integrated.It takes childishness away from you, and it helps you to mature. A person who has never suffered  remains childish, superficial. He can't understand life's deeper things. The man who has suffered becomes mature. He can understand the depth of life, and he can see other people's life with more love, understanding and compassion. That makes him more human. Try to find a blessing everywhere. Sometimes it is a blessing in disguise. But if you can watch, you will find it. It is always there :in success, failure, love, aloneness, pain, suffering, life and in death, too. It is there in summer and winter, in childhood andold age and in health and sickness. A person is really religious, who can see blessings everywhere.”

“The word "seva" means selfless service. It means to be a servant of God. A servant of God is ready to serve existence. A servant of God is ready to worship God through service. Real worship is service. it is to pour your love where it is needed, on the trees, on the birds, on the stones, on the animals and on human beings. Everybody has an inexhaustible inner source of love. Love is our true nature. Love is a healing force. Wherever you find suffering, pour and shower your love. Love heals. Love heals not only the person you shower love on, it heals you too. When you see somebody becoming whole, a great joy arises in you. Service is creativity. And by serving existence, you come closer to God. Love, laugh, make people happy and share whatsoever you have. Share your being. That is the way of the healer. Then God is bound to come to you. He always comes to people, who have fulfilled the basic requirement: unconditional love. That is true service.”

“Meditation is the door to the divine in man. There is nothing more godly than meditation. In meditation you slip out of the mind, and you exist in your being, in your innermost core. Your being is rooted in God, the divine. Every consciousness is rooted in God, ecause 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, then everything in life becomes divine.”

“Man builds his life on sand. That is why everything he tries to do fail. His life does not have a foundation in the eternal. His life is built on the momentary. And when one house built on sand collapses; he starts to build another house. We never seem to learn anything. When one desire is frustrated, we immediately jump to another desire.  To desire means to go against the whole. Not to desire means to relax with the whole. it means to have no desire of one's own and to go with the whole. It means that whatsoever the whole wills is my will. I am not trying to achieve any individual goal.  The moment you try to achieve an individual goal, you are in trouble, because we are not separate from the whole. We have to learn to be be part of life, existence.  It is because of our individual goals that every day becomes a frustration. The seeker of truth has to build his house on a rock, which is only found in meditation. Meditation isa state of no-thought, no desire and no dreams. Then each moment will be a joy, because you are no more. Meditation means to know that we are no tseparate from life.  We are part of an infinite continent, which we can call God, truth, the ultimate, the absolute or the whole.”

“Love is the most divine quality. When you grow in love, you are growing towards God, the divine. When you stop growing in love, you stop growing. Some people go on accumulating money, power, status, position and knowledge. It is wasting life to collect trivia. It is only through love that something starts happening to your being. A new joy fills you from within, a new light dawns on you and a new awe and wonder about life starts moving through you. You begin to look into existence through the heart, which is the true window to life.”

“Meditation is the beginning of becoming  part of existence. The ego creates a separation from existence. The moment we drop the ego, then we find our roots in existence. Then there is no separation anywhere.  Then  God beats in our heart. The same God that flows in the rivers and rises in the sun, circulates in our blood. It is all one. But the contemporary man feels separated and alienated. Never before has it happened on such a vast scale. Almost everybody who is intelligent feels uprooted and alienated. And of one feels alienated, life cannot be a joy. Life is a joy only when we start feeling a home in existence.  Meditation is a help to feel at home with existence, with the trees, the earth, the people and with the animals. Only this experience makes one religious.”

“Life is an opportunity. Rarely do we see that life is a gift and an opportunity to grow, to be. Even misery is an opportunity, because it is out of misery that the desire for joy arises. it is only out of darkness that the desire for light srises. Life means all that it contains: joy and sadness, love and aloneness, good and bad, positive and negative experience and success and failure. All is God's gracious gifts. Meditation means to recognize that all has been given to you as a gift and an opportunity to grow. We have not earned it, and we are not grateful for the beauty of existence. Meditation is to learn to be thankful to existence. Gratefulness will make you come closer to God.”

“You can love out of joy or misery. When you love out of misery it is a need. You are not coming out of the joy of your being, you are coming from misery. You need the other to make you happy. You are dependent on the other to make you happy. And because you are dependent on the other for your happiness, love becomes a bondage. Love is not freedom. You cannot be separate and you cannot be together with the other person. When love comes out of the joy of your being it is authentic love. Now you arenot dependent on the other for your happiness. Now you are simply sharing yourjoy. Your life is a gift. You give out of your abundance. Meditation makes you joyful in your aloneness. Meditation is the first step,and love is the second step. When you have the joy, then share it, because by sharing it, it grows. The more you give, the more you have. And the less you give, the less you will have. If you do not give, it will disappear from you. If you want infinite love and joy, then go on giving unconditionally. The ultimate experience in giving infinitely is called God. That is pouring oneself into existence with love and joy. It is like the river pouring itself into the ocean. And then the river becomes the ocean.”

“Love starts with loving and accepting yourself as you are. Loving yourself and selfishness are two different things. To love and accept yourself does not mean to be narcissistic and obsessive with yourself. A basic love and acceptance for yourself are a basic phenomenon to learn to love other people. It is only then that you can really love somebody else. Accept yourself, love yourself, because you are God's creation. There has never been anybody like you, and there will never be anybody like you. You are a unique creation of God, and without you God's symphony would be less. Acceptance creates the climate and atmosphere out of which love grows. Love is only possible when there is a deep acceptance of yourself, a deep acceptance of others and a deep acceptance of existence. Then for the first time, life is happening in your lifeand God is happening in your life. That is what life is all about. The moment you love and accept yourself as you are, you begin to trust yourself, you begin to trust others and you begin to rust existence. When you accept yourself, you begin to accept life. When you reject and condemn yourself, you also rejectlife. If you reject yourself, you are also rejecting God. If you accept, yourself, you also accept God. Then whatsoever happens is God. Then life is good and death is good, then love is good and alonenessis good. But you have been conditioned to not love and accept yourself. Your mind has been poisoned not to love and accept yourself, which creates a tension in you between who you are and how you should be. This creates a tension and anguish in people. Humanity has lived in this tension, anxiety and worry for centuries. All societies and cultures have socialized and taught you an ideal of how to be, which has to be fulfilled. Nobody has ever told you that you are valuable, loveable and a beautiful being as you are. To love and accept yourself as you are is the most difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your socialization, your education and your culture. You have been told how to be by your parents, teachers, politicians and priests. You have been programmed to never love and accept yourself as you are and always strive to get better and improve yourself. When you stop trying to improve yourself to fulfill the ideal of how you should be, in that acceptance life starts flowing through you. When you don't judge and condemn yourself, you flower and life starts caressing you. The whole existence starts pouring its energy into you when you are open. Accepting yourself is prayer. Accepting yourself is gratitude to life. Accepting yourself is to relax into your being, which is how God wants you to be. Accepting yourself is to be who you are. Then life showers its gifts on you abundantly, which we could not receive before because we felt that we were not worthy to receive them. Acceptance is the door to God, to live God in your life.”

“Man can live in misery, but man can also live in joy. It all depends on how you live, on how you approach life. If one never learns the art of living, life will be a misery. Unless you learn the art of living, you can't have love, silence, joy, awareness, truth and freedom. Everybody comes with an inner potential, but very few people develop that potential. The potential remains unused. One should be more like a flowing river, than a stagnant pond. We have to become flowing, moving into the unknown and always reaching for the ocean. This has been called God, truth, nirvana and enlightenment, but it is really nothing but life blossoming.”