How to get rich ?

We have survived the most feared doomsday in the history of human civilization. The Mayan calendar and the deadlines have been proved wrong but as the human race survives, the most advanced species on the face of the earth are getting wretched. They are getting poor and hence feeble.

Talking of poverty, if you look at history, the meaning of wealth has changed over time. The cave men's wealth was food, they hunted animals and conquered forests for food. That resulted in capturing territories and hence building kingdoms. They invented weapons made of stone, wood, brass. Definition of wealth changed. In order to maintain and protect the kingdoms, the wealth needed was strong men, warriors. To create and maintain the system, a currency was needed - then came precious metals. Gold captured the imagination of thinkers and philosophers. The same shiny metal would be no value a few thousand years ago for the cave men. They could not have made attacking weapons out of it. Meaning of wealth changed again. With gold and jewels, men fought for power. The next phase of human civilization saw the emergence of pride, the pride of becoming world leaders. The world wars were not meant to capture gold mines of hostile countries. It was the supremacy of human prowess. We evolved from that and we have reached a point where we have everything our fore fathers wished for as their wealth at different phases- food, gold, land, prowess, dignity and pride. So, the question arises - what do we wish for now to call ourselves wealthy? How do we get rich today?

After much thought and weighing different valuables I posses, I came to conclusion that if there is something I would call wealth and thus protect it is Relationships. We build and treasure relationships in our life and like wealth it comes to your rescue when you are in distress. The tools used to earn this wealth is love, compassion, forgiveness, accommodation, ignoring faults in others. It's not an easy job to do. Like it takes sweat and persistence to build wealth, so does relationships need a big heart and patience. People don't realize how much vulnerable our life has become that it takes years to build a good relationship and earn the right people in our lives. Having said so and as the old saying goes, it takes years to build and so it takes a few seconds to loose.

Like money and gold, if we do not build on it, we lose it. We spend it and we waste it. Similarly behaves relationship. Once we have the people in our lives, if we do not nurture them with constant love, affection, care and communication, we too will lose them. Look back and you will realize how much wealth you have wasted in the last few years just because you did not have time to value them as wealth. We did not spend time and effort of retaining those. We lost them.

Now, what we get out of this wealth is far more precious than what you could harness from so called fictitious worldly wealth. Relationship is non-perishable, money is. You never lose this - It stays, waiting for you. Look back, forgive if you are hurt, find if you have lost, establish connection to someone in the past. All it takes is a little time and a heart filled with love. That gold will come back to you. This has happened and will keep happening. Unlike money, lost relationships can be regained and re-earned. All the tools it needs are the one that I have already mentioned and many more that you know but above all tools you need - Patience and Acceptance. Rest all will follow.

Since all this inspiration comes from my Gurujee and Baba who guides me in my journey towards being a better human, the wealthiest people on this earth today are the ones who have built that relationship with the Supreme, or, are on the path of building the same. Your love and journey towards Baba, guided by your Guru will lead you to discover the greatest wealth of your life. Go, get on the journey and earn more wealth. Go, get rich.

PS: discovered something similar in Dec 2013 while reading - Page 24 - THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING effects their actions have had on others, and experience the emotions their actions have caused. One man told Kenneth Ring: I realized that there are things that every person is sent to earth to realize and to learn. For instance, to share more love, to be more loving toward one another. To discover that the most important thing is human relationships and love and not materialistic things. And to realize that every single thing that you do in your life is recorded and that even though you pass it by not thinking at the time, it always comes up later.

The Ultimate Power

(The origin and End of life)

Ever wondered how flawless initiation and culmination of any event is, needless to mention- Life?

              When a woman gets pregnant, in her womb germinates a new life. A life in a sac which had no sign of life before! A regular body doing its daily metabolic activities suddenly becomes the generator of a new life. Every new life has a soul or aatmaa, at least all religions believe so. Now the question arises where did this life come from? Answer to this question is not a mystery. Medical world can provide explicit details. But we have to agree that from ‘nothing’ a life full of energy and sustenance emerges. The new body will come to the world and maintain its lifecycle for years to come. The body will take energy, give energy and will create a presence in this world.

                Having said that, what ignites a thought in my mind is this – Was there an energy which existed in the womb to germinate a life? I believe yes. And since we know that the super power or the ultimate energy is still a mystery for non-believers and a matter of realization for great saints and gurus , it definitely exists. I realized this recently.  And I want to validate my belief.

               God as we know is the ultimate power with no limits and no definition. I believe every Sadhak seeks for the final answer and wants to realize the ultimate definition till the very end. But what they have found in this path of realization is that the Ultimate Energy is FLAWLESS. That intrigued me to think, is that flawless energy present in the womb of every woman which generates a new life? I believe yes and because of one characteristic – It being flawless. The conception or fertilization generates a flawless life, in six weeks you can feel the heart beat of a new life and the body takes shape.

               As the body takes shape and organs develop, the life although generated from the ultimate energy, starts to indulge and divulge into the world around it. Starting here on, the body starts getting flaws, one after the other, the life gets vulnerable to factors around it. Starts with physical complicacies and then as soon as it steps into the world, it is on its own. Here, the mental and psychological complicacies creep in. And the struggle of the life starts, struggle to survive and keep up with the challenges of the world. Some bodies successfully survive these, some do not. Some get physically challenged, some mentally but most of them survive, in their own ways. Maybe, because the energy is still there. And interestingly, as the life progresses towards the culmination, it loses all the flaws, sheds all the pain and gain it had accumulated in its journey, it suffers in order to get rid of the flaws and finally merges into its own origin. It becomes one with the Ultimate power ( I say Shree Sai, Lord Jagannath, Maa Durga – All different forms of the same Energy). And there are no sufferings what so ever as it merges in the same. From zero to zero or may be from God to God, a life is a mere role in this world that we play– so why waste it? Why not find your purpose and play your role? Why not make a difference?

I love Baba. I am from him. I will end in him.

Jai Shree Sai

No Body, One Soul

Question arises when someone address you as 'You are no body'. Questioning - who you really are? Are you irrelevant and non-existent for somebody at that moment? May be yes and may be not, depends on the person who addressed you as no body and depends on the situation which provoked the speaker to say so. No matter what goes through your mind at that instant, the reality is that he or she was right, if not in whole, partially right. You are No-Just-A-body, you are a soul embodied by matter, the matter is called body. A man's relevance and identity is beyond the matter because science has proven that matter change. No matter can stay in one form forever, it has to change under different circumstances, it has to erode and decay and eventually take another shape. Your body is no different. Referring to science, what remains intact is the energy. It can transform from one form to the other but the total energy remains the same. This is something our vedas and ancient scriptures have referred as a phenomenon with our soul. Soul like energy is intact is often encapsulated by a body or rather matter which changes form time to time.

Now having realized that, the next question that arises is having a limited span of time of the body which we refer to as life on this earth, would you focus on caring, uplifting and realizing the eternal soul or the short lived body? One side of the coin is no mystery for humanity since its origin. The reality is that matter changes and the body dies. No one ever with what so ever power of science has been able to stop the nature's process of death or diminishing the matter. One the other side of the coin, the intangible part of this concept is that who will validate the ever existence of a soul?. Trying to find an answer to this question, it makes me wonder why in a time limited span of life, a man seeks God, why he/she feels the pain and happiness of something completely unrelated to his/her life? why a living being cares for his/her siblings, relatives, non living things around them, animals, trees and flowers? Why do you and like all your forefathers have been seeking guidance from books and scriptures? We have knowingly and unknowingly shaped our lives in a way designated by ancient and prehistoric texts and we constantly go back to these books for showing us the right path in this short life. Why reading the Mahabharat, the Ramayana, The four vedas, the Gita, the Sai Satcharitra, the Bible and many other religious scriptures have influenced mankind in achieving peace and happiness. The answer lies in the question itself. Souls exist through these books.

The lives and after-lives of souls, both good and bad has lived through the ages. The lives of saints, kings, teachers, disciples, farmers, warriors, servants, and Gods have been passed over for ages from one generation to the other, sometimes written, sometimes by folk lore. All these books have are individuals, incidents, teachings and realizations that can help us learn and shape our lives for a meaningful existence on this earth. If we have ever been influenced by the life of great saint, we know his soul is present. Reading the Sai Satcharitra and vaguely relating to the life around Sai Baba and for that case reading the Bhagwad Gita or Bible and being able to learn from the inferences of Lord Krishna, Jesus and Sri Ram makes us realize that those great souls of Gods and Demigods still live and exist. Had that not been true, we would not have felt the greater necessity or seen the greater expansion of spirituality in this modern world. If closing your eyes and for a moment seeking blessings from the Guru or the Paramatma or seeking comfort from someone you love gives you peace and happiness, you already realized that there is no Body but one Soul. And yes, you are nobody and you are one of them....

Journey of a Soul

Of millions of cars in the street across the world, GPS has changed the way people reach their destinations. In the early age human beings had a limited mobility in terms of the land they could reach. With the evolution of the species and its interaction with the nature's creations, man started conquering lands then water and air. Technological advances raised mankind to new heights when we floated in the space and landed on the moon.

On the earth evolved a more sophisticated species from a mere four limb crawler to a man who created cars and rockets. Roads were built and man started exploring new lands. Every man, woman and child realizes the joy within when he or she steps on a new place on earth, may be a few hundred miles from where he or she was born or across continents in a new country. When one watches the sun rise from a shore of the sea in an unknown land, the ecstasy and the joy within surpasses all adventures and achievements. As the man feels the warmth of the rising sun, he slowly closes his eyes to absorb the energy and that brings smile to his face. Even when he knows it is the same sun he has always opened his eyes to. It's a indefinite joy and cannot be defined in words. It's personal and intimate and can only be felt.

On his journey of never ending conquest and search for the knowledge, man created roads and highways, ocean routes, air traffic routes and even a definite route to the moon and beyond. Man started travelling in seek of something unknown, something new. And suddenly he realized the importance of guidance. Guidance for the traveler, information of the route undertaken and definition of the destination. Our ancestors created landmarks and monuments, rigorously drafted maps and learned to read the stars for not getting lost. The twenty first century man created the GPS, the global positioning system. Twenty four earth orbiting satellites powered by the energy of the sun send signals to the earth for man to navigate. The GPS unit in the car and in hand receives the signals and guide us to our destinations.

If we divert from the route shown by the GPS, it guides us back to the original route, at least it tries. If the driver is adamant to take a different route, GPS always re aligns by recalculating the driver's location as how to reach the destination. Eventually he reaches his destination. The driver has the option to set up the navigation options in his GPS. He can choose the shortest route, fastest route, whether to avoid toll roads or take a particular scenic route. And man follows the GPS because he believes in his choices, he believes in the options he set for himself. But man knows he has to reach his destination , destination that he chose. And he does.

The world is governed and run by the supreme power in a fashion similar to Satellite and the Driver. Replace Sun with the ultimate power, Satellite with God we believe in, Signals with the spiritual energy, GPS with the Guru, Options with the methods of belief, GPS instructions with the faith and rules, driver with the soul, car with the life, highways with the path to salvation, new lands with the realm of self realization and happiness, and destination with the Supreme God.

Some drivers choose not to use a Guru or GPS. Sometimes they use their instinct, sometimes knowledge and sometimes maps. Some of them make it to the destination some of them don't. Some people choose to get a Guru. Their journey of life becomes easy and they reach the destination. That also calls for constant education for the disciple and the Guru, in other words maps and software upgrade for the GPS and education for driver. That ensures the driver reaches destination or in other words soul reaches to the Master.

PS: Guruji CB Satpathy in his book "Shirdi Sai Baba and other perfect masters" wrote a chapter 'The divine journey of the soul' written between 1991-95 and later published in the book. I came across this book towards the end of 2013