10 August 2013 - QA 2

Is God present? All these Puranas look like stories of fiction to me. How do I find God? How do I believe his presence, and why should I believe?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Now listen, let God rest. Don’t worry about God now. Worry about yourself.

Who are you? First atma (spirit), and then paramatma (the Divine spirit).
The paramatma (God) is beyond the atma (individual soul). First get in to the compound (i.e., know who you are), after that you can get into the house (know God).

People who say, 'I don’t believe in anything', should at least believe in the word that they are saying. If you say that you don’t believe in anything, at least you believe that you don't believe in anything, right?
So, who is the one who is saying it? Who are you? Are you your thoughts? No, they keep changing. Are you your body? Just picture yourself 5-10 years back, your body has changed so much.
In one year, every cell in our body changes. Do you know that?
So each cell of our body is changing. The lining of our stomach changes every five days. Blood changes every 24 hours. Our skin changes in 30 days. And every cell, every atom in our body changes in a year’s time.
So your body is a flowing river. Same river, but water is new. So you are new and you are ancient as well. It is the same with Ganga, the same with Yamuna, the same with Kaveri (rivers in India). The river is the same, from many years, but the water is always new. In the same way, you are new and you are ancient as well. Observe what is ancient within you and what is new. Know yourself. God will follow automatically.

So, don’t make an effort to believe. You shouldn’t force yourself to believe anything. Faith is not something you can force on yourself. It is something that comes up within you. Either through science or through spirituality. Through meditation you reach the same one goal. What is that goal? The whole universe is made up of just one wave function, just one vibration, one thing! That one thing is responsible for everything. And that one thing is what I am. You call it God, or Brahman, or he, or she, or it, or anything, it will work.
When you go deep in meditation you merge, you dissolve, into that one pure consciousness. With that innocent nature and with love, the attainment happens.

Love means, when your mind becomes so light.
In anger and hate, the mind stays lifeless, and heaviness is felt. When you are in love, the mind becomes so light. Have you experienced this?
See when you are happy, what is the feeling that you get? A sense of lightness. And when you are unhappy, it feels like a stone is sitting on your head, right? Yoga is the science to make you feel lighter. It is not just weight loss programs, but it make you feel mentally lighter as well. You lose all that mental stuff of anger, jealousy, hatred, greed, etc, that you acquire from everywhere, and feel so light from inside.

When can you feel light? When you know, when you believe, when you have the faith that the right will win – Satyamev Jayate (Truth alone wins). Then you have confidence that what you want will happen.
When you have a sankalp (resolve), and vishwas (belief), then even if you have to fight someone in a court, you will do it with a smile. Even for a fight you will go with a smile. Not with anger and heaviness of mind. Are you understanding this? This is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita.

In Chapter 2, Krishna says, 'Yoga-sthah kuru karmani, sangam tyaktva dhananjaya. Siddhy-asiddhyoh samo bhutva, samatvam yoga ucyate'.

Become steadfast in yoga, feel the lightness within you. Demonstrate belief of victory and with this perform your duty, keep working. Then you will see, there is no tiredness. When do you tire? When the ray of hope becomes dim. And when raga and dvesha (cravings and aversions) dominate the mind, then a person gets tired.

If there is a unique gift given to the world by India, it is this – fight without cravings and aversions. This is a big gift to the world. So, challenges come. Face the challenges with poise, equanimity, serenity and dignity. Sincerity and serenity, these two are needed to face situations.