Initial is the idol worship or pratima pooja. Next is the recitation of japa or stotras, here no flower, no material offerings is required always the material is generated from your own system in the form of sound and some vibrations. That becomes the next step, the greater, the elevated one. Uttama maanasi pooja...... Then the still better and the best is maanasi pooja.

So, the purpose of spirituality is to recognise the mind as a functional unit of consciousness equally so the intelligence and ego, and then try to enlarge and expand their functional parameters. Make the mind broad, make the mind deep, make it lofty, make it larger and larger. I think if you can take up this point it will be very very good.

The world will always be a conglomeration of the pairs of opposites and there will be good and bad, ups and downs, favour and dis-favour always. It does not matter if you are able to assimilate all kinds of impacts, that assimilation will necessarily result in an enrichment, expansion and empowerment of our inner personality. This inner enrichment is the most cardinal in human life. You cannot always direct and determine the course of events in this world.

I would like every one of you to talk to God in your manner. Don't wait for worshipping him in the pooja room. Talk to him from the bathroom, from your bed, from your office, from anywhere and everywhere. And you can talk to him a little loudly. Others need not hear. Otherwise they will say that this person is mad. So you talk to him. You can register your resentment, doubt. "My dear God. I don't think you have done well. Your fame will be affected. Better rethink your position”. Any kind of a talk you can make. One is a stuti you offer or perform when you are alone in a pooja room in front of lit lamps etc. Another is a free talk, conversation. sakhya bhava, it is called. And finally comes a stage where you get reconciled with anything that comes and goes. Devotees will say, “It is all given by God and taken by him. I have nothing to say because I rely upon him. I am fond of him. If something God has done, I accept it.”

The very first act or event of birth, you tell me very clearly, whether it is something that you desired or not. I don’t think you have two answers for it. Our arrival in this world has not followed our desire. We started desiring, if at all, much after we were born. Similarly, our body is growing. At a particular time the growth is arrested by the body itself. You start growing till 18, 19, 20 or 21. Between 18 and 21 the body arrests its growth. Means what? The biological laws which are in motion, which are in force, they - as they bring up the body, make the body grow - they also arrest the body, body’s growth. Then we are heading towards decline and finally old age and finally the body breathes its last. There are many instances where the living individuals would not like to die. They desire to live longer. Despite that they die. So the first event called birth is not a desired event and the last event called death is not a desired event and our whole life is between these two points—the not-desired birth and the not-desired death.

M. my little son, don’t have any doubt. You may doubt yourself but don’t this doubt wisdom and its excellence. It will be a great shortage or even sin to doubt these great things. This is the backbone of our culture. Appreciate it, you may not be able to follow it, I don’t expect you also, but never doubt it. These are all records written by people. I don’t think your grandfather has left such a message in the form of a writing. But here is a common grandfather called Shankara and similar people, who have made a record of what they felt, understood. And they are saying, it is a question of delving into your mind and making the mind pure. Not by force, but by fondness. Not by valour and heroism, but by humility. Not by a mood of conquest, but by a note of affinity, attunement. Like it, it becomes yours! Be fond of it, it will come to you, flood you.

See, the mind which is clinging to things, it decides to leave. And when you decide to leave, when poverty comes you, when you are a householder, it is a suffering. When you openly embrace poverty as an austerity and you start moving away from the house, then the starvation is a great honor, it is an enrichment, it is a crowning glory everyday of your starvation! You will not curse it. See, the same plight when it comes to you when you want it, when you have opted for it.

When your realization becomes supreme and faultless, it becomes continuous; you will always refer to God as “I”, not as you, he, she, it or they. God has no external focus. The focus is always inner, inner - the Subject. In your own daily experience, the Subject survives and the objects transit and disappear. The entire wakefulness disappears, becomes extinct, when you go to sleep and from the sleep we exit into dream that is a parallel wakefulness. From there you exit again into wakefulness, so the wakefulness disappears, sleep disappears, the dream disappears. Then what is it that survives? The sleeper, the waker and the dreamer; and all the three are the same.

Even a small measure of this practice called karma yoga; it relieves you from the mighty and great fear. If the mind is relieved from fear, don’t you think it is a very great gain? You cannot say, “All the fear in my mind has gone. I have no fear.” No! Some other situations, some other causes may be fearful or frightening. So this formula has to be adopted throughout and you cannot get away from it. It is just like “I have taken breath once, that should be sufficient for the whole day,” you cannot say. Breathing in and breathing out, breathing in and breathing out, heart beating, resting, beating, resting, circulation on and on, on and on. Like that the karma yoga orientation should continue with every bit and piece of your activity.

Another is you should be able to perceive everything as God. The entire world is God. You are surrounded by the world. So, you are surrounded by God. Our body is pāṁcabhautika. That means that you are not only surrounded by, you contain Godliness in the paṁcabhūtas. Then beyond the paṁcabhūtas, the mind, intelligence and ego are there. They are also nature's constituents. They are a display and a manifestation of God. So, where is non-God? The world is God, the body is God, the mind is God, the intelligence is God, the ego is God! And so far as the Self is concerned, nothing is to occur to it and nothing has occurred to it.

Why are you coming to a Guru? Only to lay your mind open before him so that he can read it very well and tell you where you lack and where you should improve. So I think the question of fear never comes! On the other hand, it is to take away and redress all fear that if at all you come to an ashram and to a Mahatma. So a better understanding of what you are here for should be known.

 What is religion? Whenever any kind of an act or a pursuit or an expression is thought of, which is addressed to god or related to god, it becomes religious; any kind of an action, performance or pursuit. What is this secular? Anything other than this. When we get up early in the morning, people say it is not a religious act but when you take a beautiful bath and go to the temple or sit in the pooja room, we consider it to be religious. If you have to take bath, you have to get up. Without getting up, you cannot have your bath. So, getting up is a preliminary or part of the bathing process. So, is it not also religious then? Without having your bath and going to the pooja room, you cannot worship.

Bhagavadgeeta tells you only this much. When the expected result occurs, do not be unduly delighted. Handle the result for whatever purpose you further want. A child is born. Get concerned about how to look after the child. You have passed the school. Think about whether you want to prosecute your studies and get the right admission. When you have completed your graduation or post graduation, decide what you are proposing to do. If you did not get campus selection, try to apply for other places and get hold of a job. Find out what are you fit for. So, every time the self examination process should be on and utilization of the result is very important. Every result has to be used, employed. What will you employ it for? So this is a constant introspection that should be there.

When you understand that that there is a mutuality between the individual and the rest of creation, automatically you must have love for the rest. Generally when we speak of love, the love is always for something you love. Love can be thought of only between a lover and the loved, or the beloved. So don’t think of love which is centered in yourself. If you are loving yourself, not sufficient. Love your family. Then naturally love the society, nation, globe etc. all of them go together. So if you think a little bit you will find, you must be having a love, an abiding love for the rest. This brings in the quality of amiability. You cannot be a seclusionist, you cannot be a separatist.

I would like you to understand that in India there are various systems of philosophy and some of the philosophical systems and even religious practices are not based upon God. For example – Jainism does not believe in God. Buddhism does not believe in God. Nyaya does not believe in God. Vaisesika does not believe in God. Charvaaka does not believe in God. But they are also a system of philosophy like anything else, the orthodox system. So, not to believe in God is not something unusual here. The only point is whenever somebody says ‘I don’t believe in God’, he should have his own reason and whatever he further believes in, that must be better. That is all.

The entire purpose of Shreemad Bhagavatam is to present Krishna giving instructions to the devotee because the devotion is revolving around the devotee, and the devotee should know what is devotion, how to go ahead with it, how to enrich it, empower it, and lead it to where it should go.

You will find how Krishna grew up in adverse circumstances. He was supposed to be a prince but he was growing as a cowherd boy. Many of you have the tendency to blame circumstances. “My parents did not bring me up well.” “My circumstances were not all right.” “I did not have this opportunity and that opportunity.” What nonsense are you saying? Are you supposed to be simply a product of the circumstances? Don’t you have a mind, intelligence and ego? Can you not outlive whatever is to be outlived?

Understanding that there is something imperishable, and the imperishable is your own inmost presence, what you have to do is you have to access it. So how to access it? That is very important. So the stage where one accesses the imperishable and gets involved in it, that is called yoga, and what is this yoga? Seemingly, it is two factors uniting between themselves, but actual yoga, there is no union. Then what is yoga? The intelligence which is swinging and swerving, oscillating, tossing, the tossing element completely stops and the intelligence remains un-flickering, firm and luminous. So is there any union there? No … no … no … no. May be while it was tossing, it was reacting to an input. So you can say an input came in the form of doubt or enquiry, then the intelligence picks it up. So there is a union between the impact and the intelligence.

Right in the beginning I told you that we can only expose you to this area of knowledge. While we are exposing you, you should receive it, wholesomely. As you receive it, we will expose. As we expose, you will receive. So it is a mutual or a bipartite affair. But after we have exposed, I think I cannot do anything. Whatever you have heard, you should make sure that you have understood it. So you should introspect or ruminate over whatever you have heard, until at last the knowledge becomes assimilated and becomes your property, not my property. Every piece of information that I am sharing with you, is supposed to be your knowledge as it is my knowledge. There, your own individual personal rumination is important.

When I say the mind is greater than the body, what do I mean? If at all mind is a substance, it is not a substance comparable with the physical and chemical things we know of. The mind is consciousness. As consciousness, it has got infinite magnitude. That is why we are able to perceive through the senses and then take into our body all the things that we are seeing – a mountain, a lot of distance, a lot of variety, the sun, the moon, the endless space, all these are personalised, mentalised and experienced by us. What is the proof that there is an expanse before me? Because that expanse is felt and experienced by the mind. If the mind were something small, it would not have been able to contain all the magnitude that the senses try to picture. That is why I say the mind is far greater.