New Year Message to USA devotees via Skype

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Yes, New Year blessings for all of you, with a lot of love, fondness and concern. May you all have good health, good mind, good intelligence and good professional and prosperous life.

Our program was over only last night and certainly it was very exhausting and tiring, and all that on the one hand, but it has been very successfully over, better than perhaps in many other years. In one or two days I will need for a little recouping but no work is going to be stopped, we carry on.

Tell me what you want me to say or to ask about?  

Audience: Swamiji we have gathered for the New Year day, so give a New Year message for us.

One important item that you can do today or may be in the next one or two days even, how did I spend the year that passed? A proper evaluation of whatever has taken place throughout the year. See life is interactional and you will have interacted with a number of items, like persons on one hand, members of the house, then members of the society, then the professional front, you will had a number of interactions with all of them. These interactions how did they fair, on the one hand how effective and useful these interactions were to the other parties and how did they benefit you and enrich you throughout the year. This is one evaluation that you should take.

In that evaluation, certainly I expect, where are the deficiencies and lacks on your side? Could you have improved them and if I have to improve them now, how can I improve? Have I caused any undue hurt to anybody? Then feel sorry for it. And if possible call that person and then say, I am sorry, I have hurt you. That is something very important. Then did you get sufficiently enriched by the year’s interactions. If you did not get enriched where was the deficiency and lack of readiness? This is something that you should go through.

Then did you observe from the others, something that is good as a lesson, as a value for you to incorporate in your life. As I always say so far as our mind life is concerned, the twin process of eliminating the undesirable factors and incorporating the desirable ones, this twin process should be constantly all throughout life. Applying this principle did you incorporate something desirable in your life during the past year? And were you able to eliminate the undesirable ones, a few of them, if not all, at least to some extent? This evaluation is very important. If the whole year has not been able to give you any kind of an improvement or enrichment then actually that life is wasteful. Externally we cannot always expect to be alright, the world will always be a collection of pairs of opposites. There will be good as well as bad. Prakriti consists of good things as well as bad things.

In America we had a very, very disheartening development, a youngster suddenly takes a gun, shoots x, y and z, he then goes to one or two schools, shoots many of the children and finally shoots himself. Now what does it indicate? We are not simply to look at it as a criminal development. It is actually a psychological out burst and lack of control. A member of our society has behaved in this manner. What is the reason for such behavior and what are we thinking or doing in the matter of reinforcing the mind to see that we are able to take sufficient safe guards against such fissiparous outbursts.

I am very sorry that social behavior of people is always a subject of direct and full concern for the administration. You and I can improve ourselves morally, ethically, behaviorally, characterally and the like. But so far as the behavior of the society’s members are concerned no individual has any power to ensure that another behaves properly. That is why the administration has to be very strong. The administration can only take punishmental measures. They cannot get into the minds of the people and correct them. That is not possible. There is no legislation possible or effective.

So why is our society behaving in this manner? What is the lack and how shall we pluck it? This is a matter not for you and me alone to think. The people in charge of administration will have to take stock of the situation and think. I mentioned it only to say that we are living in such a society where such uncontrolled actions also take place and many of us members of our society become victim. Why say much? We are living in such a society. So there will be a number of adverse inputs also possible. Thank God if you did not have them. So what I want to say is have you eliminated the undesirable elements from you and have you incorporated the desirable elements, if you have not been able to do, what is the reason, where do I lack? What is that inner strength that will let me to do so, have I done something about it? This is a matter of spirituality.

The entire spiritual science that I know is only to improve, enrich and empower your inner personality so that your interactions will be better, nobler and more effective and the interactional enrichment for you every time will also be unhindered. Understand spirituality to be of this dimension and having this objective and then take the subject, pursue it, if you have doubts, you ask us. You read books; all our books contain only characteral, behavioral and interactional discussions.

I am using three words. Characteral elegance, try to be elegant in your character and in your behavior be majestic, majestic and in the interactions be excellent. Characteral elegance, behavioral majesty and interactional excellence are the three values, objectives for which every one of you can work irrespective of whether you are in home, in the professional life or in the society I think this are subjective, personal,  direct qualities which will always make you a better person. Give a lot of emphasis on this, try to introspect over them, spend enough mind hours in developing these qualities.

What will constitute characteral excellence? How can we have a behavioral majesty and when will our interactions will be excellent, should be the constant consideration for you. I think spirituality aims at it. Because these are qualities which are included in the spiritual counterpart of your personality, namely mind, intelligence and ego. These are not material parts. They are spiritual constituents, if at all. Now these qualities are to be imbibed, strengthened and displayed by the mind, intelligence and ego. That is why spirituality becomes very effective. When we explain in experiential Vedanta, what exactly is the content and message I think the response we have got is something very, very good and great.

One person who working as a director in a market research firm, a multi-national important firm, he has given us a letter which we will reproduce in one of our Vicharasetu sometime, now he says, “In eighteen years of education and eighteen years of professional life, experience, training etc, I have not been able to find anywhere, the western countries have spent a lot of money, many have made bumper profits also, in dealing this management side none of them has been able to touch the core of this management. What I could not get in thirty six years, I got in three days of experiential Vedanta exposure.” he said. And he has been benefited immensely during the past year where his company underwent with a merger with another company with two streams of people coming together, and there will be a lot of confusion, disharmony, competition and all that. In spite of it, he said he has been able to behave excellently well and he has come out with laurels, this is what he has said.

So understand the relevance of spirituality in this context. All of you are professionals and then lay emphasis on characteral elegance, behavioral majesty and interactional excellence, all being spiritual, spiritual, spiritual practice and its benefits. I think this a sufficient message for you. I wish all of you to do well, this year, much better than what you did last year. Okay, be hopeful, confident and successful, effective. Hari Om Tat Sat. My fond blessings to all of you.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.