Swami teaches... Part 3. Shivarathri Is the Time for Auspicious Spiritual Contemplation

March 6, 2008

Light and Love Swami teaches... February - March 2008

Part 3. Shivarathri Is the Time for Auspicious Spiritual Contemplation When you have faith in yourself, you will have faith in God. Realize that there is nothing beyond the power of God. Love God with that supreme faith. Then you will be drawn towards God. It needs purity. A magnet cannot attract a piece of iron covered with rust. Similarly God will not draw to Himself an impure person. Hence, change your feelings and thoughts and develop the conviction that God is everything. God will not give you up when you have this conviction. Look around, Swami has a myriad eyes who all are Divine as your own eyes. For this you have to get the conviction that God is omnipresent. When you have that conviction, you will not indulge in falsehood or practice deception, you will not abuse others or cause harm to them, you will acquire all virtues.

"So we have to start from the position that we are children of God, encourage people to assimilate that great truth, and then to understand the implications – specifically that we are all channels of expression and experience of God, with the freewill to learn by experience." Adrian Cooper, author of the book "Our Ultimate Reality." Jnana (knowledge) is usually associated with two ways of acquisition - the worldly or the material and the spiritual or Brahman path. The worldly path is like a pair of scissors. It cuts knowledge into pieces. The Brahman path is like a needle - it makes the separate parts into One and indivisible. The sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) must be aware of both. When you declare a person to be a jnani (liberated person), he/she has passed through these two stages. (However, one thing is to know the path, quite another thing to walk on it). Those who have studied the Vibhuthi Yoga in the Bhagavath Gita will know the infinity of forms which the Lord assumes. If one has faith that the Lord is present in the atom, one will have a vision of the Lord even in the atom. (But if you make a distinction between different objects, treat some as pure and others as impure, you will not get that vision).

A sculptor creates an idol out of a rock. Because of the form given to it, it is installed in a temple and worshipped. In fashioning the idol, the sculptor chisels away many chips of stone. The chips may proclaim verily their kinship with the idol worshipped in the temple. They may say: "You and we are one. The only difference is, you have a form and we have none." Thus, the Divine exists both in the form and in the "formless". Most people look at all things from the worldly point of view. Change the angle of your vision. When you practice seeing the world from the point of view of the omnipresence of the Divine, you will get transformed. Reverse the Maya Reality's 'machine' centered point of view and turn it into the Divine-person-centered point of view.

(The reason most people don't manifest what they could, is that they do not feel what they deserve. Nearly all of us have an inferiority complex. We don't know who we truly are. In addition, there are many people who think the Universe revolves around them and they themselves are the centre. Many humans also have no control over their own thoughts, often choosing to focus on the evidence provided by their own physical eyes, often focusing on negative things, thinking the worst. Such persons, as a rule, have been slaves of own negative thoughts and desires and different kinds of material values). A decade ago astronomers made the revolutionary discovery that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. The quickening expansion will eventually pull galaxies apart faster than light, causing them to drop out of view. In short, it erases all the signs that a big bang ever occurred. What knowledge has the Universe already erased? This scientific scenario truly reaches to the limits of conscious thinking. Science or the study of observable sensory matter, of measurable and calculable items, can give incomplete information. (The sea has pearls in its depths; but, you have to dive into it to secure them. The waves throw out only shells). All the Universe can exist only in unity with the diverse qualities and quantities of infinite vibrations. (Even hard crystals have phonons, the vibrational modes of crystals).

Through modern scientific knowledge and scientific experiments one may reach closer to Vedic wisdom and Swami's Teaching. It may be so and also may be not. All depends on the spiritual values and quality of thoughts of scientists and spiritual seekers who searching Swami's Cosmic form through science. But very often they forget to look within own Self. With every breath Swami's Cosmic Form as remembers to us His existence, and as asks to revise own thoughts, which are pinpointers for our words and deeds. Always keep your thoughts fixed on the infinite Divine power. The more you contemplate on the Divine, the more and more the bliss gets multiplied. Whatever may be the experience in everyday life, the Reality is one, though it may be called by endless names. All what exists and what less or more changes is the Divine Will, nothing will happens outside this, even the scientific extraordinary ideas and experiments. Unity in diversity exists not only among material forms but also among humans minds who are too part of the Great One. No, they are more than only a part. Human's consciousness is a co-creator, holographic pattern, fingerprint of the Cosmic, Universal Consciousness, alias Creator, Swami's Cosmic Form. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it not enough complete as all other scientific discoveries. It seems, that new the scientific experiments in CERN* what will begin in spring-summer 2008, will bring us closer to the Great One, to the unity in endless diverse forms of all what exist through science. (By the way, on the entrance to CERN is a sculpture "Dance of Shiva"). The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest machine in the world - a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11 245 times a second, traveling at 99.99% the speed of light. Two beams of protons will each travel at a maximum energy of 7 TeV (tera-electronvolt), corresponding to head-to-head collisions of 14 TeV. About 600 million collisions will take place every second. LHC originally conceived in the 1980s and approved for construction by the CERN Council in late 1994. Civil engineering work to excavate underground caverns to house the huge detectors for the experiments started in 1998 and practically ended in the beginning of 2008. The six distinct experiments (characterized by its unique particle detector) at the LHC are all run by international collaborations. Below is the very brief background some of these experiments. Each atom contains a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons, surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Protons and neutrons are in turn made of quarks which are strongly bound together by other particles called gluons. Physicists hope that under these conditions they created, the protons and neutrons will 'melt', freeing the quarks from their bonds with the gluons. This should create a state of matter called quark-gluon plasma, which probably existed just after the Big Bang. The other experiments will be looking for differences between matter and antimatter, possibility the formation the Black Holes and hypothetical extra dimensions in laboratory conditions. (We live in a world of matter. Antimatter is like a twin version of matter, but with opposite electric charge. At the birth of the Universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced in the Big Bang. But when matter and antimatter particles meet, they annihilate each other, transforming into energy. Maybe, a tiny fraction of matter must have survived to form our Universe). One of the experiments forward particles created inside the LHC as a source to simulate cosmic rays in laboratory conditions. This experiment will help to understand why we live in a Universe that appears to be composed almost entirely of matter, but not antimatter. Which conclusions and questions follows from the LHC experiments in the field of spiritual development? May be the LHC experiments show to scientists that quark-gluon mixture is the first 'soup' of Creation after Big Bang... but what was before and more and more before...? Anybody cannot find answer to this. Being a holographic patterns of Creator we (humans) cannot peep beyond and inside Creator. Humans can analyze only the fruits of Creation from tiny bricks in atoms to human brain and galaxies.

But it is possible, LHC experiments (far to discover ‘God’ particle) can quite pictorially show that all Creation is connected with infinite invisible ties. These experiments will show the reality these ties with energy, particles, strings, etc., which all by spiritual outlook are the expressions of Atma.

There is a wish that through these new kind experiments scientists must commit to a new, spiritual-based responsibility. But how do scientific, political and economical leaders embrace the humans development from a spiritual basis? Many of them worked with a large number of international groups to produce the Earth Charter - a UN initiative calling for establishing an cultural- ethical foundation for the emerging society and to help build a sustainable world based on respect for nature, universal human values and rights, economic justice, and peace. It seems that a new planetary civilization is beginning to emerge. It must generate a spiritual and ethical consciousness consistent with its geographical, ecological, intellectual, social, and economic level. Swami's Works and His Will (through different aspects) are in the role of the key for transformation the world on a global, universal spirituality.

The main task towards a humankinds’ spiritual awareness would be a deep respect for the diversity of cultures and life around the world. That expresses itself in and through human values, compassion, tolerance, justice, environmental protection. It will embrace an ethic of respect for other traditions and an openness to learn from others, while remaining faithful to its own particularity. There is a deep need to build a sustainable, and peaceful community of humans and to protect the planet's ecological systems. In and through this process, the modern world created by science, technology, and globalization has an opportunity to find its spiritual centre. Where is a center, then there is easy to build around it different constructions, be they scientific, cultural, economic, social...

Vedas teaches the basic spiritual laws of existence, Swami teaches to look far beyond of emotional attachments towards emotional freedom. Recent scientific experiments has reached close to the truth that all the Universe is connected into one entity on the subatomic level. From Atmic point of view there is no place like home... Our true "home" we reside is an atmic-energetic experience beyond all forms. It is interesting to dare to experience the joy and pleasure of simply being alive.

Black holes lose matter through the emission of energy via a process discovered by Stephen Hawking, worldly known today’s physicist. However, any black hole that cannot attract matter, will shrink, evaporate and disappear. I fancy that when one is not attached to the material animated or unanimated objects, with sincere faith and belief, then the different 'black holes' (envy, angry, fear, anxiety, and so on...) what human mind is ever 'creating' also will shrink, evaporate and disappear. Faith and belief seems to be fundamental to this process. By laws of Creation (the Divine Will) humans are an infinite aspects of Atma and share the same infinite creative characteristics of Atma even through scientific spirited experiments. Humans are limited only by their capacity of thought supported by faith and belief. That is why Swami always underlines the significance of faith and belief. With faith in our Atmic nature, being supported by Unconditional Love, Gratitudeand belief in the creative power of Cosmic Consciousness anything is possible inside (not beyond) the diverse forms of Creation and their relations with each other. (Reet's compilation from: Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 9. "Thieves or Masters?" Chapter 4; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 14. "The four blemishes," Chapter 15; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 16. "Build temple in your hearts," Chapter 8; Sathya Sai Speaks.Vol. 21. "Bhaktha Sakhaa Bhagavan!" Chapter 17; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 28. "Idol worship and God Omnipresence," Chapter 4). References: CERN-Brochure-2008-001-Eng. Communication Group, January 2008. http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/LHC-Milestones/Flash/LHCMilestones-en.html (Wait a little, when it downloads. Click to the indicator below; you can read popular history of LHC from this idea in1980 - to 2008). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Charter#History

PS: *CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research or in France - Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire.’ FYI: Studies into the safety of high-energy collisions inside particle accelerators have been conducted in both Europe and the United States by physicists who are not themselves involved in experiments at the LHC. Namaste -Reet