15 May 2014 - QA 7

Gurudev, to walk on the path of Yoga, two things are essential: Practice & Dispassion. How to develop these two separately?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Knowledge takes you towards dispassion, and action results in practice. For practice, we need to do something; we need to do pranayama, meditation, etc. Dispassion happens through knowledge and awareness.
Just wake up and see this again and again – Everything is Nothing.
Before doing anything, there is nothing. After doing anything, there is nothing. So, nothing is really what everything is!

You cannot become a true believer without first being an atheist. It is necessary to be an atheist. So first be an atheist.
What does it mean to be an atheist? When one does not believe is anything.
When you say, 'I don’t believe in this, I don’t believe in that, I don’t believe in anything. This is all nothing. Whatever I see is all nothing', and you discard everything, then you will be able to see what is.
So you cannot become a true believer without being an atheist in the first place.

That is why in the beginning, don’t believe anything. Don’t believe in anybody’s words. Then, don't believe even in what your mind is saying.
So by negating everything one by one, you arrive at nothing. And when you arrive at nothing, you then realize something, 'Oh! This nothing is everything!
This is the most beautiful knowledge.

In this way, through total disbelief we reach a place of total belief. From an atheist, you become an enlightened. In fact, only a good atheist can be a good believer.