Fire

*Fire*

The senses are like fire. Your life is also like fire. In the fire of senses, whatever you put in burns. If you burn tyres, it creates pollution and bad smell. But if you burn sandalwood, it creates fragrance.
Celebration happens around the bonfire. Grief happens around the fire of cremation. The same fire that supports life in winter, can also destroy. One fire, like a ghee lamp, lights your way and purifies. Another fire made of toxic material creates pollution.
You are also like fire. Are you the fire that creates smoke and pollution or the flame of camphor which creates light and fragrance? A saint is like a camphor flame that creates light and the fragrance of love. He is the friend of life.
The fire that creates light and warmth and is useful is of higher quality. The fire that creates light and a little smoke as well is of medium quality. The fire that creates darkness and only smoke is of low quality. Learn to distinguish the different fires. If your senses are engaged in goodness, then you will create light and fragrance. If engaged in impurity, you create smoke and darkness. It is samyama that transforms the quality of fire in you.
~ *Sri Sri Ravi Shankar*

You Are Privileged

Weekly Knowledge #152
Rome
06 May 1998
Italy

*You Are Privileged*

Among all planets in the solar system, the earth is privileged to host life in its many forms, and among all the species, humans are most privileged for they can host the Knowledge. Among all the knowledgeable ones, you are most privileged. .... guess why.

Again and again you remember that you are peace, you are love, you are joy and that you are hosting the Creator. If you don't realize that you are the host, you live like a ghost.

The under-privileged are those who do not realize that they are privileged, and so they also host, but they host all the negativities.

Like the birds returning to their nests, again and again come back to your source; only there can you realize that you host the Creator.

�� *Jai Guru Dev* ��

Dreams

Weekly Knowledge #146
Lake Side,Chandigarh
26 Mar 1998
India

*Dreams*

When something is unbelievably beautiful or joyful, you wonder whether it is a dream. Often, what you perceive as reality is not joyful and so when misery is there, you never wonder if it is a dream. You are sure it is real. This is knowing the real as unreal and unreal as real. In fact, all the miseries are unreal. A wise man knows that happiness is real, as it is one's very nature. Unhappiness is unreal as it is inflicted by memory. When you see everything as a dream, then you abide in your true nature.

Payal asks : "What about a nightmare?"

Sri Sri : A nightmare is a dream mistaken as reality. There is no confusion in a dream at all. Keep wondering whether all this is a dream and you'll wake up to the real.

�� *Jai Guru Dev* ��

Visalakshi mantap

Visalakshi mandap in all grandeur

Tarka, Vitarka & Kutarka

Weekly Knowledge #148
Bangalore Ashram
09 Apr 1998
India

*Tarka, Vitarka And Kutarka*

To know yourself or to judge your actions you need to know Tarka, Vitarka and Kutarka.

Kutarka is wrong logic. Most people apply this logic and get caught up in ignorance. For example : The door is half open means the door is half closed. Therefore, the door is fully open means the door is fully closed!

Or: God is Love. Love is Blind. Therefore, God is Blind!!!

Tarka is sequential logical understanding; it increases scientific knowledge. When sequential logical understanding changes, then scientific conclusions change. For example: Pesticides and antibiotics were considered to be very useful in the past, and are now proven to be more harmful. In tarka, the paradigm changes.

Vitarka is asking questions to which there are no evident answers....Who am I? Where am I? What do I really want? These philosophically appealing questions bring forth spiritual knowledge, increase your awareness and bring about the blossoming of Consciousness, i.e., Atma Gyan increases.

The wise know to distinguish between the three. They will not apply kutarka or tarka for vitarka, and vitarka fortarka.

�� *Jai Guru Dev* ��

Impression and expression

Weekly Knowledge #147
Calcutta
02 Apr 1998
India

*Impression And Expression*

Do not make an effort to impress others, or to express yourself. Your effort to express yourself becomes an impediment. Your effort to impress someone also becomes futile. If you do not try to impress, expression comes naturally. When you come from the self, your expression is perfect and your impression lasts for ages.

Often you don't seem to have a control over your impressions and expressions. Wisdom is selecting your impressions and expressions. Enlightenment is when you do not take any impressions at all, whether good or bad. Then you "master" the art of expression. Many impressions in the mind cause:

- Confusion

- Distraction

- Chaos

- Lack of focus

- and finally, derangement of the mind.

Nature has inbuilt in us a system through which it releases some of the impressions - through dreams, and through meditation.

Excessive expression loses the depth and luster, the serenity of yourself. Meditation erases the impressions and improves the expression.

�� *Jai Guru Dev* ��

Changes after kriya

Q. After kriya, lot of changes have happened mentally and physically, but some sort of sorrow keeps coming in. How do I get over this?

#SriSri: You have come here, now leave all your sorrow here. You just keep the faith that everything will be good.