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Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q: I feel sad and sometimes outraged looking at the corruption around. When will we have a Divine society to live in? What should be done? |
Sri Sri: When people like you will collectively move ahead, then definitely it will happen. But if corruption goes on increasing like this only, then forget about that, it will not happen in 2060 as well. There is no end to it. That is why, only now is the time. There is corruption in bureaucracy, there is corruption in media, there is corruption in the entertainment industry, and only a wave of spirituality can cure this.
You know some of our children wanted a license for a factory, and they refused to pay any bribe. They said that they follow spirituality, and they are not going to pay any bribe. They confidently agreed to come back ten, 30, 50 times if needed, but they got the license the very next morning. If people of the society will be on the right path, then officers will automatically start following you. If society is corrupt, the officers are also corrupt, then that becomes an accepted norm. When you make your mind strong, when you take this conviction to be not corrupt, people also change.
Q: Do the ones who have died, feel something? Is there anything after death? |
Sri Sri: Yes, it happens for some time. At least the effect of worldly memories remain up to one year, and then it fades away slowly in next two – three years.
Q: How does one experience that blissful divinity with in? |
Sri Sri: Meditation, Seva/Service and Satsang.
Q: How to have focus while studying? |
Sri Sri: Do at least something. Sometimes a little pain is also good. Like if you cannot walk, but when you participate in a marathon, you put in your 100 percent. Isn’t it? Like if you are thrown in an ocean, until you don’t find the shore, you continue swimming. Would you leave in between even if you are tired? So, even if you don’t feel like doing, it is boring, take it as a challenge, “I will somehow finish this subject”. Even if you don’t know swimming, you get to learn that in water.
Q: What should be one’s main motive in a student’s life? |
Sri Sri: The main motive is in life. But students are time bound. Main motive in life should be to see a better nation, a better world. When you have love for your nation, achievement also happens.
Q: (A boy discussed some personal problem) I find it difficult to have that sense of belongingness with everybody. What do I do? |
Sri Sri: Having a sense of belongingness doesn’t mean to flow emotionally. Use your intelligence. Do only that what you can do. What you cannot do, nobody will expect that from you also.
Q: Is it ok to ask God helping us in exams, to get us through the examination? Does it happen? |
Sri Sri: Whatever you need to wish, you can do that, and it gets fulfilled. God is a very lively and loving consciousness. That is why, desires get fulfilled.
Q: I was once told that Yogis do not meet with the God, have you ever met with God? |
Sri Sri: First tell me, who is God according to you? Somebody sitting up in the heaven! No! God is that from which nothing can escape. When the mind is totally relaxed, it merges in the Divine, it relaxes in the Divine. The whole point is to relax the mind in that soothing consciousness. When the wave is on the surface, it is a wave. But when it identifies itself with the depth of the ocean, it becomes the ocean.
God is love and it is inside each one of us.
Q: How to change the system? Sometimes I feel very outraged and I don’t get to understand how to stand up against that. Please guide. |
Sri Sri: Yes, you are right. That is why we all have to work together. We can achieve a lot when we do something together. When you know, there are so many people with you, you get that confidence. Come up with your ideas. Float your ideas. Those who have interest in spirituality, those who have human values should run the country. When some mean people get into power,then it creates problem for the whole nation. We will have to choose the right people. There should be an independent agency. The agency where they can check any corruption, an agency that is independent of the government so that it can also check corruption at the government level as well. The path is long, and you will all have to work for it. The path is long, lots to do, and I am confident that you people can do it. Then nobody will be able to practice corruption.
Q: When I do something good, even then my parents sometimes don’t let me do that. How to go ahead in such a situation? |
Sri Sri: Take this as an opportunity to bring out that skillfulness in you. It is like if cloth has been tangled in a bush, you need certain skill to gradually remove it from there. You don’t run, but patiently deal with them with your skill. Have such a skillful conversation that they get agree to whatever right you say.
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