Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
(After a pause) Got it? When you are waiting for an answer, what is waiting? The mind has already stopped. When you are astonished, the mind has stopped. When you are in laughter, or panic, or fear, or when you are in deep love, the mind has stopped. Time has stopped. There is an experience of timelessness. Have you experienced that timelessness? Just sit on the banks of the Ganges alone and watch the water flowing. Suddenly you feel it is a moment of eternity. Same way when you watch the sun rise or set, moon rising or setting or watch a child playing, a sudden spurt of energy comes from within you and the mind is already still. You don’t have to wait for this to happen sometime in the future. It is happening here and now.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Vishala means broad, Akshi means vision. That which gives you broad vision is Vishalakshi.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Satsang, meditation and pranayama is the best gift to you. Chanting mantras, doing pujas has its place. Don’t worry too much about it. Meditate and do a little puja. Don’t leave it out completely nor overdo it.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes we will have one, in another five years.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Me! (Huge laughter)Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You are already close to my heart. I want more children to be educated in spirituality, to create a violence- free and stress- free society. We need to globalize wisdom. There are one thousand of us here. If we each sponsor a child, we would do a great service. Do service. Donate 2% of your income. It would be of immense benefit to you and them.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
This is a good question - why am I here, what do I do? Keep asking. When you keep asking these questions, either you go crazy or you become wise. I wish you become the latter, become much wiser, ok? Don’t tell me crazy people are very wise. It’s the other way round - wise people are sometime crazy too.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Crisis is the mother of many inventions. A crisis makes us very creative. However the crisis should not go on too long, that is not good.What can help anxiety is breathing techniques like pranayama which channelizes the life force energy in our body. We all float in a sea of prana (life-force energy). There is prana even in a stone.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Ujjayi breath. You are in the ocean of breath.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
This is not the case in reality. There are more good people in the world than there are bad ones. There is more love in the world than hatred. There is more happiness than misery. But it seems the other way around. Don’t blame the society. You have a responsibility and you carry on fulfilling that. Continue spreading satsang (company of truth). Same was done by Mahatama Gandhi. Before independence in India, people were so depressed thinking they would be enslaved forever. So what did Mahatama Gandhi do? He started to have satsangs across various places in the country. People got courage from that. Same way we need to spread that a wave of satsang and awareness, not that of hatred.