Question & Answers with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Q:
(A member of the audience asked this question. It was inaudible.)
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
We can never be separate from Eeshvar (God). Eeshvar is one who is always there with everyone, for everyone.Q:
How is it that having experienced dispassion and bliss, the mind still goes towards the mundane?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
That is the nature of the mind, never mind! The mind is made up of three qualities ie, sattva (purity/clarity), rajas (activity/action) and tamas (inertia). According to the combination of these three qualities, different states of mind prevail at different times. Don’t be bothered by these. Everything comes and goes.Q:
What does the intellect have to do with spirituality?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Spirituality makes your intellect sharp. They are not contradictory, they complement each other. Don’t think spiritual people shut down their intellect. They have a spirit of enquiry. Your questions assume a higher dimension. If your intellect is mature, then you have no choice but to be spiritual.Q:
What is the significance of the sacred thread?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
The sacred thread indicates the three responsibilities that you shoulder: duty to parents, duty to society, and duty towards the knowledge you receive in life. You have to disseminate the knowledge in life.Once you finish the duties, then the thread is thrown – this means that you have taken Sanyasa (renunciated the world). No more duties left.
Q:
What to do with good friends whose paths have just changed? There has been no growth since the last five years. Slowly, there is nothing to talk about but they are good friends.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
You need to educate them.Q:
Guruji, if we are following one path can we read books written by other spiritual masters?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Yes it is okay as long as it does not confuse you. Reading too much only gets you more confused. ‘Pothi pad -pad jug mua Pandit bhaya na koi, Dhai akshar prem ke pade so Pandit hoye’. This does not mean you don’t read, read a little, but not too much.Q:
Guruji, Dr. Stephen Hawking has a very strong belief about our present human life. He says that there is nothing beyond this life, there is nothing beyond this existence. I don’t know how much he has studied religion but I know that you have studied physics. So how would you like to reply to him?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
No scientist would ever say, ‘I know everything and whatever is here that is all and there is nothing beyond’. Not at all, Stephen Hawking has not said what is here is the ultimate. He said there are many levels and many dimensions. Our brain is a frequency analyzer; it can only analyze certain frequencies. Right here there are so many other frequencies. So no scientist ever refuses the possibility of many layers of existence, many worlds right here, because there are many waves. What you see is just a wave function and in wave function there are infinite layers, one inside the other, one inside the other. So microcosm to macrocosm, there are so many worlds and so many levels of timeQ:
I spent a lot of my life chasing questions. How to be calmer and decisive, instead of being tensed?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Make a drastic shift in your life from wanting everything from everybody to giving to everyone. Know you are here only to give instead of take. The strength for you is ‘I want nothing from anybody and if I can be useful to 10, 20 people in life that´s good enough, and my needs will be taken care of by nature. This body belongs to planet earth. It is made of the materials of the planet earth, and will go back to this earth.’ When you can’t lift your hands, nature will make arrangements to feed you. You will be taken care of, if you can’t see. It will put that compassion into someone to come, and feed you. So you must know that this body belongs to planet earth and it will take care of you.How can I be useful to the planet? Just having these thoughts gives better direction. The lack will disappear. How to draw abundance towards you is not to be greedy, self-centered.
Q:
Is it possible to breath in a different way without thinking about it?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
We all have talents. We all have ten fingers but some can take a guitar and produce music and some can’t. But, everybody has abilities. If we learn about the different rhythms in our breath, we are able to have control in our lives. Take long deep breaths in and breathe out as slowly as possible. Deep inhalation and slow exhalation calms the mind. When one is working with a computer the eyes start worrying and it's good to do some eye exercises. This will build up the circulation. I just landed now from India after eighteen hours of flight. Do I look tired?Q:
Dear Guruji, please say something about Shiva. I am Shiva worshipper and he has brought me to Art of Living and you.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
Shiva is the principle in which everything is born, into which everything will go. There is no escape from Shiva. Shiva tatva means Shiva Principle. Shiva is not a person. Shiva is the space, is the consciousness. To describe that they put Shiva in blue. Blue means like the sky. You know, Shiva’s description is so beautiful (reciting a Sanskrit verse) it’s like liberation, liberation from everything. It is the lord, it is the most powerful, it is all over, spread everywhere. There is no place that it is not. It is where all the knowledge is present, that consciousness, that space. It has no attributes. It was never born, Shiva was never born nor has any attributes. It is a Samadhi state where there is nothing, just the inner sky of consciousness. That is what is Shiva. Where there is alertness and no action. To describe the alertness they put a snake around Shiva’s neck. They put a trident in the hands of Shiva - means it is beyond the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. Shiva is holding a trident that means it is beyond the three states, in the fourth state, which is absolutely benevolent. The one state in which everything exists in the universe -the dark space, the dark energy - scientists today started calling it the dark space and the dark energy - in which everything else exists. The sun, moon, stars, everything exists in this one solid state of consciousness.