Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Good karma gives you joy bad karma brings you misery.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Karma, karma in the past, yes. They have just come to take service from the parents, like mentally retarded children they come. They have just come to the world to get some seva done by the parents, that’s all. They are not even aware that they are enjoying or suffering. For others it may appear they are suffering but for them they are not suffering. Do you see what I’m saying? They have just come to the world to take seva from the parents and to bring them misery, which was due to them somehow.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

When your faith gets shaken know that doubts are very weak. Doubts are even weaker. You need to just see a broader perspective and relax and know the best will happen to you.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

No aversions and desires come into your mind, then how much you flow with them or how much you hold back is your wisdom. Got it? See a desire comes into you, I want to have more ice cream, and doesn’t matter have ice cream. But a desire comes into your mind let me go strangle this person. Know that if you act on this second desire you will end up in prison. But the first desire if you overdo it you may end up in hospital. Got it? Clarity of mind, wisdom is needed you are doing the right thing. Do meditation, become hollow and empty. Don’t you see an improvement in yourself? ‘Yes’ How much improvement do you see? A lot of improvement right!

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Yes, that’s why even when there is pain and suffering the Divine has not left you, and is always with you. You have been blessed and helped to move along. But that doesn’t mean you invite more suffering and inflict more suffering into yourself. See when we say we need to eliminate suffering, the church of Germany said this is wrong. We just had a meeting; our people had a meeting with the Evangelical church in Germany. They said it was all fine but you talk against suffering. You say you should not suffer but suffering is so important. This is the logic they were giving. They said you are speaking against suffering but suffering is important. Without suffering life is not complete. Can you understand this dilemma? They say you must suffer in order to feel the experience of blessing. You don’t need to encourage suffering. In that case then every criminal has inflicted suffering on others and made them to pray to God, then he must be having a lot of good karma by turning everybody towards God and creating, inflicting suffering on millions of people. No, no this is the wrong understanding. Suffering anyway comes, when it comes you pray but desiring for suffering is masochism.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

You have lost someone dearest to you. Just don’t do anything just be with it.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

That any way you do. You can’t control emotions by thought you can invoke emotions by thought. Only by being more aware emotions settle down. Thoughts, emotions, and awareness: the more subtle and more basic level of consciousness. That happens and there is no how to it, it just happens. Pranayama, meditation, listening to knowledge all of this indirectly helps. Usually the example would be when you want to get the mango from the tree which is so high you hit the branch, you don’t hit the mango directly. Then you will not get the mango, you will only get juice on your head. You throw the stone in such a way the stone doesn’t land up on your head or on the mango but land up in your hands. So you throw the stone at the branch and the mango falls. In the same way, all the techniques, everything we do is an indirect way to invoke consciousness. Got it?!

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Yes, there the angels, 64 Arc Angels are there called Yoginis and their existence help people to meditate, or do yoga. Yoginis are very important to bring experience to people. And so it’s part of this Navartri that we invoke those names of the Yoginis. See ‘yagna’ means what? Five elements, with this what do you do? That which is so subtle through chanting you bring it to the air element, then fire element, then to the water element and then to the earth element. So, how has the creation happened, from the space first the gas was there, from the gas fire came, from the fire it cooled down and became water then the earth. So in the yagna the same process is used. Have you seen the water crystal formation? How many of you have seen this? You know a gentleman in Japan photographed water when it forms crystals. So when you keep chanting the different songs to water, and the type of formations it does is so interesting. The most perfect crystal formed was when ‘Om Namah Shivya’ was chanted. You know they chanted all different things. There was one jar of water when they chanted amazing grace and the crystal were nicely formed but in the center it was disturbed because in the song you say some self-blame words; a wreck like me or wretch is it? Save a wretch like me, and because of the words, ‘wretch like me’, in the song you find it in the crystal formation. In the center it is disturbed, but nicely formed in the circumference. And like that Beethoven songs, different songs, different chantings when they are chanted with a jar of water they photographed the water. They also photographed the water with Sanskrit chants of ‘Om Namah Shivya’, and I tell you it’s amazing. You should watch it; it’s the most perfect one. The crystal has totally formed very well from center to the circumference. Same way when you say to the water, ‘thank you, thank you very much, thank you very much’, it’s very good formation. When you tell the water some bad words and the crystal formation is so different. So this is very true that when you chant and put the focus on the water in a pot, that absorbs and the molecules changes. This is interesting and ancient people from ten thousand years ago, twenty thousand years ago knew these things. You know they have different herbs to attract different things and different energies. See, the universe is made up of bio-energy, bio-rhythms. Each animal brings down a certain rhythm on planet Earth. Human beings bring a particular type of energy on the planet Earth. So the whole thing is play of consciousness and the layers and layers and layers of consciousness and that’s what this is. Navratri is the time you realize the whole universe is made up of one consciousness. It’s like suppose you have ten television sets in your room and you are watching all different channels and you find some horror channel and you throw stones at the television, it’s not going to work. You simply have to switch the channel, correct! If there is a sad story and a pleasant story in different channels an engineer would not even look at it. He would only look at it all as television tubes and its one electricity which is playing through all the televisions, and it is bringing up hundreds different channels, thousand different channels today, right! Our mind, our consciousness is the same.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Oh ho! There could be a million TV sets but the program can be seen in any, every television, 100%. Isn’t it?! When news is broadcasted, it does not say in only twenty televisions I can project myself, no. There is one television station which broadcasts but it can be caught in a million TV sets, just tune in, that’s it!

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

They are as dear to me as anyone else. Even I work better on the photos. That’s what people tell me.