Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Keep your body healthy and keep your emotions positive. Very simple. It is like asking, “Where do I put on my pants and where do I put on my shirt?” You put your shirt on top and pants at the bottom, not the other way around. So everything has its place: ego has its place, emotions have its place, our body needs to be healthy and strong. So you need to respect the laws of nature, okay?Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You know, you should read the book Celebrating Silence. Read the book and gift it to everyone you know.I was travelling from Canada to the United States of America. A man at the security check came running to me and removed a copy of Celebrating Silence from his bag. ‘You are the author of this book?’ he asked me. I said, ‘I suppose so.’ He then told me that somebody presented the book to him for his birthday. ‘My life has changed after reading the book,’ he said. He hasn’t done the course, doesn’t know anything about the organisation, just reading some pages from the book made a difference. You all have the book Celebrating Silence and Celebrating Love? You should gift it to everyone. It makes a difference. All the knowledge is present there.
I have spoken in detail about karma in the book.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Just one drop of blood is enough to test the blood in your body. From just one drop of saliva, doctors can determine your DNA. The functioning of the kidney, pancreas… everything can be detected by one drop of saliva, one drop of blood. You can virtually create every possible creature from one human DNA. Did you know about this?Scientists say a single human DNA has the DNA chains of all the animals on the planet. An elephant, crow, mosquito, even a hippo …. so there is a hippo hiding inside you. But inside a hippo, there is no human being. At least, science hasn’t made any claims on this yet.
Modern science and ancient knowledge are in the same boat. The most ancient Vedic knowledge says the same thing.
There is a doctor from Germany who has scientifically proved that everything is nothing, the whole universe is nothing. What you think as a solid substance is actually nothing. People think he is crazy. But he gives scientific explanations for every fact.
It is startling to hear the same truth as the Vedantic Truth that has been around for thousands of years.
From subjective and objective analysis, they ultimately mean the same thing.
Anyways, enough discussion for today. Remember: Just drop all that is bothering you, if you are not free today, you can never be free anytime. Don’t expect freedom to come to you.
Tonight I am free, everything is going to happen the way it is going to happen.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
That is not the real world, this is not unreal. It is difficult to keep equanimity in the midst of the world’s problems. But have you noticed a qualitative difference in your life since you started on this path?All you need is re-enforcement. This is required up to a certain point. It’s like watering and nurturing a small plant. This is very important, but when the small plant becomes a tree, this is no longer required.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
hey can’t do that without any reason. Tell them to do The Art of Living course sometime when they are in a good mood. Coax them to come to be a basic course and we will train them not to hit you.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Nobody taught me the principles of the Art of Living like accepting people as they are and present moment is inevitable.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Do it from your side and let go of the rest.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Easily. Everyone can do this. Accept people as they are.When you have the remote control in your hands, you can change the channel on the television. The same television can show a horror channel or something nice. The remote control of your life is in your hands.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Well, anthropologists have all the logics and theories and there are many who agree and disagree and contradict. It is all in the history books, my dear. So many theories have come up, don’t bother about it. This is because of the presumption of some people that people must have been born in one place and spread everywhere afterwards. It is not necessary people are born only in one place. There could be births in ten places at the same time. Why should there be a single origin? This is erroneous thinking. Historians in the past had only linear thinking. They only had one origin and everything going from there. They don’t know this idea of spherical thinking - means at the same time, in many places, life could have been created. Yes? In the Puranas it says there’s not just one place. In many places simultaneously people were created. And that seems to be the correct thing, not just one source or one origin for people. In Sanskrit, “Arya” means the noble, that’s it. Arya means what? The noble, cultured, civilized, educated - so it’s an educated, cultured person. Mister, like you say mister or miss, honorable, that way Arya was addressed. The way people were addressing the well- educated, cultured people - Arya. The word sir is similar to the word arya. In all the Sanskrit dramas this word is used. In the Vedas it is said,“Krinvantovishvamaryam,” let’s make the whole world Arya. It means let’s make everyone educated, cultured, civilized - that’s what it means.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You want to do it, you can do it. Know that you can do it for the next one week. You will not touch it or spend more than one hour on the computer. Not one minute more than one hour. You take such a vow for one week - I am going to do this - and you can do it.