Life, Love and Light: Messages from Existence by Swami Dhyan Giten - HTML preview
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THE FLOWER OF LOVE
Love means to be willing to sacrifice oneself for another. Hate means the desire to destroy the other. In the world, there is an abundance of hate and no flower of love. Hatred comes to an end when a person begins to see himself in all living beings, and begins to see all living beings – the whole existence, the stones, the trees, the animals and the human beings - in himself.
It is to see the divine, Brahman, God, in the whole existence. There is no other obstruction in the way of love except hate.
Without hate, love will bloom.
Love is our nature.
Love is the nature of life.
Love is not born, it does not die.
Love is eternal.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten
To be a spiritual teacher you need to develop the skills and the art to convey the truth to others. It is the most difficult part, because something has to be said about something that cannot be said in language, something has to be transmitted which is not transmittable. To be a spiritual teacher needs a particular training, a particular training to convey, a particular training to help, a particular training to advice and counsel, a particular training to create new devices and methods, because every individual and age need something different.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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Awareness and compassion are the flower and the fragrance of the spiritual teacher. Compassion means living to give.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
To be a spiritual teacher is the call of compassion.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
The spiritual teacher speaks to the ignorant person in one language and he speaks to the conscious person in another language to help them to take steps to truth.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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Shraddha, loving trust, is the climate between a spiritual teacher and a student.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Shraddha, loving trust, is a spiritual discipline in itself between the spiritual teacher and student.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Without trust between the spiritual teacher and student it is not possible to attain to no-mind, because to attain no-mind needs trust.
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Man is like a river on his way towards the ocean, towards the divine. The drop has a thirst, a longing. The drop knows nothing of the ocean, but the drop longs to become one with the ocean.
The drop cannot find fulfillment until it becomes on with the ocean, the divine.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Truth cannot be conveyed through words. Truth can only be known through silence. When knowing truth, it becomes a responsibility to share it. Through sharing truth, our truth will become deeper. If people are spiritually ripe to listen to truth, it is good. If people are not ripe to listen to truth, it is also good.
If people are ready to understand truth, it is good. If they are not ready to understand truth, it is also good.
If people are ready to understand silence, it
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is good. If people are not ready to understand silence, it is also good.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
METHODS TO DISPEL THE IMPURITIES OF THE HEART
What are the impurities of the heart? The meditator has to dispel all impurities of the heart.
1. Compassion
Fill the heart with compassion and then violence, anger and jealousy will disappear. Before moving into meditation, feel unconditional love and compassion towards the whole world. The first purification of the meditator is that when you sit in meditation, begin by feeling compassion for the whole
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world. Compassion will dissolve the impurities that accumulate in your heart and mind.
2. Friendliness
The second thing to purify the heart is friendliness towards the whole World - not only towards man, but towards everything.
3. Cheerfulness
The third thing to purify the heart is cheerfulness, a feeling of joy and cheerfulness. When we are in joy, no impurity flows towards us from the world. When we are sad, we immediately start thinking of making the whole world miserable. Cheerfulness is to fill your heart with joy and cheerfulness.
4. Indifference
The fourth method to purify the heart is
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indifference, no matter what happens. Whether good or bad things happen. Whether success or failure happens, whether self-realization happens or not - remain indifferent. One remains centered and balanced between the two, one does not choose between the two. These four methods are the essence of religion.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Your actions bind you, because you think that you are the actions. Actions bind you, because you think that you are the doer. The "I", the ego, behind the actions goes on binding you to those actions.
Through countless past lives this feeling of being the doer has become strengthened. You think that you are a great doer, while in reality there is no other doer than existence. How can you drop these attachments and
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karma?
If someone becomes conscious that he is not the doer of the actions - all actions are the will of the whole and he is only a flute in existence hands.
At that moment he is free of karma. If the bondage of karma is not destroyed, there is no freedom.
A meditator says: Now I am not doing anything, everything is done by existence. If someone receives this insight both the bondage of present karma and the bondage of all past karma will vanish.
Karma can be dissolved only when cut from the root - and the root is the ego, the sense of that "I" is doing.
So the doer, the "I", has to dissolve. It is not necessary to focus on the actions, only the "I", the ego, has to be dissolved. Whenever there is a feeling that "I am doing this", remember that you are only the seer, the witness.
Be a watcher. Whenever the feeling of "I" is there, shift it to the watcher.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
To know life you learn the art of death. A seeker of truth who wants to know life must go through the experience of death. Man consists of two layers: 1.The body, which belongs to the dimension of death and 2. The soul, the consciousness, which belongs to life itself. A person who accepts death will attain to the deathless. For the person who is conscious about death, death does not exist. Then death becomes a door to the deathless, to the eternal.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
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The whole message of Jesus Christ is rejoicement. Jesus has said: Those who lose themselves will find themselves. It is to dissolve like a drop falls into the sea. The spiritual teacher is a death, but he is also a rebirth, a resurrection, a rejoicement.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Meditation is a death, a death of the ego. A meditator has to pass through a death. Meditation is the art of learning to die consciously. The spiritual teacher gives you meditation to die and to be reborn.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop becomes the Ocean
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The basic teaching of all religions is silence. A silence spreads in our inner being; the mind will begin to dissolve. That silence unites you with truth. When a person is ready to dissolve into silence, his ego will disappear, and he will not be separated from existence.
A holy person means one who has become silent within. A spiritual teacher is a death, because the ego of the student will dissolve completely. Within the student arises a pure emptiness, and samadhi is born.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Enlightenment is a door to existence. Enlightenment is the insight that everything is as it should be. Everything is perfect as it is. The meditator knows that he is going to die but he also knows that he is going to be reborn. Enlightenment is the realization that
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you are part of existence, of the whole. A great rejoicement happens in enlightenment, because you are at home in existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
The meaning of life is to become conscious. The whole evolution of life is to become increasingly more conscious.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Enlightenment is the realization that all is as it should be. Everything is perfect as it is. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve.
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Enlightenment is a state of non-doing, of effortlessness. Enlightenment is the feeling that you are at home in existence. You are part of the whole. You don't exist separately, all separation has disappeared. Enlightenment is the understanding that all is good and that all is a tremendous harmony.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Don't be worried whether you will be able to be enlightened in this life. Once you have started the journey, you have already made it. Every river is constantly moving to the ocean. The only problem is with people, who have become closed stagnant ponds, which are not open to flow. To become a stagnant small pond means that there is no growth, there are no new experiences.
To be a sincere seeker means to drop this
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static state and become a flowing river. It does not matter when you reach the ocean. Once you have started moving and flowing, falling into the ocean is absolutely determined.
You have gathered the trust, courage and silence to jump out of the static state into a living being.
When you have started flowing, then falling into the ocean is bound to happen. And you are the ocean, every drop contains the ocean, it is of the same nature.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
When a person experiences the divine, he can no longer condemn anyone. Love becomes natural to him, because he starts seeing godliness in everybody. The person that has entered the inner temple of the heart of all living beings truly sees.
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To experience godliness one has to recognize that which is hidden deep in the inner temple of the heart. The divine is hidden deep within yourself.
Godliness is the original source within everybody. Godliness is the ultimate mystery. Godliness is the universal self. It is the ultimate limit of existence.
Godliness is everywhere. Everything in the world is a reflection of the divine. To recognize the divine is the ultimate wisdom, the ultimate truth.
― Swami Dhyan Gten, When the Drop
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The last words of Buddha were: Be a light to yourself. You are born with a light within you. You are enough for yourself. You are sufficient to yourself. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you.
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Buddha defines wisdom as living in the light of your own consciousness. This message of Buddha functions as a reminder to the seeker of truth on the path to enlightenment.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Happiness is the meaning and goal of life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
The divine way is to remain true to love. Remain true to love and remain true to life. Love and meditation are one of the most essential messages. Love and meditation
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should go hand in hand. Only two meditators can live together in love.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
The truth is that egolessness is the door to bliss. The moment you are egoless, you are nothing, you become a door to the divine.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Joy and happiness is a state of consciousness, a state of being.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the Heart
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Happiness comes from without, bliss comes from within. Happiness is dependent on other people and outer causes; bliss is not dependent on outer causes.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
The most important question of all questions is: what is real happiness? And how do I achieve real happiness? Real happiness has nothing to do with money, power, position, ambition or success. Real happiness is a totally different dimension. Real happiness has to do with your consciousness, not your character. Real happiness is to not be dependent on outer sources to love and happiness. You have to learn to be happy.
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We rejoice in others, but not in ourselves. We get a little happiness, but always from others. Do we ever rejoice in ourselves? The seeker, the meditator, should start delighting in himself. He should slowly give up delighting in others. Happiness and unhappiness are related to other people and outer causes. As long as happiness and unhappiness is dependent on others and outer causes, we are dependent on others and we will not find our inner source of bliss. Living dependent on others for happiness makes you a slave. You sit unoccupied and feeling unhappy. You think that if some friend arrives it will be fun. Alone, you begin to feel sad. The meditator should start rejoicing in himself. You are sitting alone, be joyous. Without external reasons, simply be happy. Do not make your happiness dependent on other or outer causes. Happiness can only come from within, without any reason. Happiness because of others and outer reasons is
only a false happiness - love, relationships, power, money, status, position and fame -
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the end result will always be frustration and misery.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
An individual who is rooted in his inner self is always blissful. If bliss is not forever, it is not bliss. Happiness and unhappiness comes and goes, but bliss is always there. What is always within you, it is your nature, your true self. Your very nature is bliss. But you have forgotten your true nature, bliss, and have become identified with what continuously changes: happiness and unhappiness.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the Heart
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An individual who is rooted in his inner self is always blissful. Through awareness, the meditator continuously experiences the blissful self. An individual who is experiencing centeredness and bliss can also be surrounded by unhappiness, but he is not identified with unhappiness. The meditator is rooted in bliss through awareness. Through awareness, the experience of bliss can be found. Awareness is the method through which you can recognize your true nature.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
What is happiness? We have been taught to be ambitious and competitive, but no ambitious person has ever been happy. If you watch the people who have succeeded in the world, who have all the money, power and success in the world, they are not
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happy. Happiness has nothing to do with success.
Happiness has nothing to do with ambition. Happiness has nothing to do with money, power and prestige. Nothing fails like success. Happiness is a totally different dimension. Happiness has to do with your being, with your consciousness not with ambition and success.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
In this world, there is only one happiness and that is to be yourself. And because nobody is himself, everybody is trying somehow to hide, with masks, with pretensions and with hypocrisy. They are being taught everything in the education system, but they are not taught to be themselves. This is what makes everybody miserable. To be what you do not want to be,
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to do something that you do not want to do. These things are the basis of all misery. Sooner or later, you have to decide. You have today: Whatever the cost, I want to be myself. Condemned, ridiculed, losing respectability, everything is ok, but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else. This decision and declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd of people, gives back your natural being. Then you can simply be yourself just as you are.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
Be truthful to yourself. You do not need to change anybody else. If you can grow yourself that is enough. To be authentic means to be true to your own being. Always listen to your inner voice; otherwise your whole life will be wasted. Don't allow anybody else to try to manipulate and
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control you. To be authentic means to be true to oneself. Truth means the authenticity of being, not imposing anything that you are not. Truth means not to pretend, just be whatsoever you are. It is to be authentic, true and respectful to your own soul. Risk everything for truth, otherwise you will remain discontented. Even a single moment of authenticity is better than a whole life of inauthentic living. Love is only possible with the truth. Love has to be lived; otherwise your life will be futile. Risk everything for truth. Never risk truth for anything else. Then tremendous happiness will be yours. Once you are true, everything becomes possible.
It is not always easy to be true to oneself, but whenever people do it they achieve such beauty, grace and contentment. Always listen to the inner voice, and don't listen to anything else. The world is a supermarket, and everybody is interested in selling things to you. Society wants to make you a hypocrite. Just close your eyes and listen to
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the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about, to listen to the inner voice.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Life is the journey, and love is the goal.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
The first thing about being authentic and to create loving relationships to yourself, to others and to life is to remain true to your own being and to listen to your inner voice. Be truthful to yourself. You are not needed to change others or try to teach others according to your ideas, expectations or ideology. If you change, that is enough. How
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to remain true? The first thing is to remain true to your own being and to listen to your inner voice; otherwise your whole life will be wasted. The first thing is your being. Don't allow others to manipulate and control you. There are many people that try to control you, that want to change you, according to their ideas, ideals and ideologies. Remember to be true to your inner voice. To be authentic is to be true to oneself. Always listen to the inner voice and don't listen to people that want to control and manipulate you. Just close your eyes and listen to the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about, to learn to listen to your inner voice.
The second thing about authenticity and creating loving relationships to yourself, to others and to life is to learn to listen to yourself and your feelings. The hypocrisy of the society is to teach you to not listen to yourself, to your feelings, and to not show your true face. So each individual becomes like an island, closed and separated. From
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early childhood, we have been taught to suppress the real. In unconscious and mechanical ways, we go on suppressing, without knowing what we are doing. Listen to the heart, and whatsoever is true, bring it out. And once you know how to be true, it will be so joyful and beautiful that you will never go back to being false. Be true to yourself that is the basic responsibility towards yourself. You are answerable to your own being. This is the whole problem: how to be yourself. Then life becomes a beautiful mystery to be loved, and not a problem to be solved.
The third thing about authenticity and to create living relationships to yourself, to others and to life is to learn to trust yourself. If you trust yourself, you can trust people, you can trust in existence. But if you don't trust in yourself, then no other trust is possible. Society destroys your trust at the very roots. Society does not allow you to trust yourself. Society teaches all other kinds of trust: trust in the parents, trust in the
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church and trust in the state, but the basic trust in yourself is completely destroyed. Society destroys the basic trust in yourself deliberately, because a man who trusts in himself is dangerous for society. A man who trusts himself is an independent man. The society needs dependent people, who are easy to manipulate and control. This is why the society destroys the trust in yourself, because an individual who do not trust in himself is shaky and afraid and then he is controllable. Start trusting yourself. Trusting yourself is the fundamental lesson.
The fourth thing about authenticity and to create loving relationships to yourself, to others and to life is to learn to love yourself. If you love and accept yourself that is the beginning of accepting all. Then all is good as it is, in that experience life takes on a new joy, a new gratefulness. If you reject yourself, you are rejecting existence. If you accept yourself, you have accepted existence. Then life is good, you feel grateful. Then
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whatsoever happens is good, because it happens out of the whole. But you have been
conditioned for centuries not to love and accept yourself. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are. Once you are incapable of loving yourself, you will never be able to love anybody. You can love others only if you are able to love yourself. A person who loves himself sooner or later starts overflowing with love. Love yourself because if you don't love yourself; nobody else will ever be able to love you. You cannot love a person who hates himself. How can you love a person, who is condemning himself? He cannot love himself, how can you love him? He will not believe you. He cannot allow anybody to love him, because he knows that he is unworthy of love. And you know what you are: worthless. That is what you have been told by the parents, the priests and the politicians. Nobody has ever accepted you as you are. Nobody has given you the feeling that you are loved and respected, that you are needed and that this existence will miss
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you that without you this existence will not be the same. Without you this existence will lose some joy, love, beauty, truth and poetry. Nobody has told you that you are love and respected by existence. Love and accept yourself, relax into your being, you are cherished by the whole. Once you start feeling this love and respect of the whole in you, you will start growing roots in your being. Only then you can love people, you can love the trees and the animals. Love is only possible when there is a deep love and acceptance of oneself, of the other and of the world. And then you will be surprised: life is always ready to shower you with gifts. Life is always ready to give abundantly, but we cannot receive it, because we don't feel that we are worthy of receiving it. Accept yourself, love yourself, you are God's creation.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
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Knowing yourself, you know all.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop
Enlightenment is the realization that all is as it should be. Everything is perfect as it is. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve. Enlightenment is a state of non-doing, of effortlessness. Enlightenment is the feeling that you are at home in existence. You are part of the whole. You don't exist separately, all separation has disappeared. Enlightenment is the understanding that all is good and that all is a tremendous harmony.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop becomes the Ocean
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Enlightenment is as easy as drinking a glass of water.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Enlightenment is to dissolve into the silence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Enlightenment is to go beyond the ego, which is separated from life, and to discover our authentic being, which is one with existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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Enlightenment is our inner nature. Enlightenment is our being. Enlightenment is not a happening, which we have to work for. Enlightenment has already happened in our being. It is the fragrance of our life, of our being.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Enlightenment is to find the light within, which overflows and spreads in all directions.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Enlightenment is to discover the eternity of our being. Enlightenment is to discover thatthere is no death, that death does not exist, and that death is an illusion.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten
Modern Western psychology does not know anything about enlightenment and the organized religions have prevented people from attaining enlightenment, because enlightenment means freedom. Society does not want individuals to become free.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Humanity has been living under a dark and destructive self-condemnation. Humanity has been poisoned and condemned, so that nobody thinks himself a beautiful being, nobody thinks himself worthy enough. If you condemn yourself, how can you grow and how can you worship existence? If you
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cannot worship existence within yourself, how can you worship existence within others? You can become a part of the whole only if you have a respect for the divine that resides within you. In creating you, God has already shown that he loves you. By loving yourself, you will know that you are a medium for God. In choosing you to be a medium, he has already loved you and respected you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
The priests say that you are a sinner and that you will go to hell. And the priests make you very afraid of loving yourself, which cuts off the roots to your inner being, to your inner source of love. Your whole life will be wasted in self-condemnation. That is why there is so much hate and lack of love in the world. The idea of learning to love yourself arose
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because of all the religions for centuries teaching you not to love, accept and respect yourself. The religions have created a conditioning in the mind which condemns you. It is the priests and the state which has created this condemnation through continuous repetition to convince you that there are things in you that is not acceptable. You have to hide them, you have to repress them. They teach you that the unacceptable in you has to be controlled, condemned and repressed.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
Your natural being is not acceptable to the religions. Their conditioning has been going on for centuries and naturally you begin to develop a certain conscience, which is not the same thing as your consciousness. The conscience is social conditioning and the
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consciousness is our natural and ultimate nature. For the consciousness there is nothing in you. The religions have been teaching you that you are born in sin and that our natural nature leads to more sin. They have taught you that you have to fight with yourself; you have to fight with your nature. Their basic teaching is that your nature is evil and you have to reject it. Almost everything in you that is natural has to be rejected. Life has to be denied, love has to be denied, sex has to be denied and joy has to be denied. This is a very cunning strategy of the religions, so that they could catch hold and control humanity. They have repressed your sexuality that is our basic life energy. It is the energy that basically keeps you alive. The
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word sex has been so condemned that even using the world makes you feel like you are doing something wrong.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
The first thing is to learn to love yourself. This is the first step to get rid of all the teaching and condemnations of the religions. This allows you to not feel guilty about anything, because nature has given you so much that should be accepted with joy. Loving yourself means that you throw out all the garbage of religious condemnation, rejection and repression.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
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Budda says: Love yourself. To love yourself is to get rid of self-condemnation and thinking that you are not worthy or loved by existence. Love yourself, says Buddha, but love begins with yourself and then it goes on spreading. Love yourself; says Buddha, and then adds and Watch. This is meditation, but the first requirement is to love yourself. A person who loves himself can easily become meditative, because meditation means to love yourself and to be with yourself. meditation is to enjoy yourself in your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself is what meditation is all about. To be is the greatest miracle and meditation opens the door to this great miracle. But only a man who loves himself can meditate. Unless you love yourself, you cannot be with yourself. Create a loving climate and atmosphere around yourself. Love your body and love your mind. By loving yourself, you will destroy the self-condemnation that society has implanted within you.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the Heartove is as easy as drinking a glass of water. Love is a natural state of being, a natural state of consciousness. Love is your very being, but love has become almost impossible, because society and the religions do not allow it. Society and the religions condition you in such a way that love becomes impossible and hate becomes the only possible way. Society and the religions have reduced humanity to a mere state of survival, to a low state of consciousness.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the Heart
Love listens only to the heart, which makes love dangerous to the society and the religions. They do not want human beings; they want a crowd of sheep. And the best way to destroy human beings is to destroy their capacity to love. Society and the religions want human beings, whose
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souls are crushed. This is the reason why the world stinks of hate.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the Heart
What is meditation? Meditation is to learn to be with yourself, meditation is to delight in your own being. Meditation is a totally relaxed state of consciousness, where you are not doing anything. Meditation is just tube, not doing anything, no action, no thought and no emotion. You just are, and it is a sheer joy and delight. This joy and delight when you are not doing anything comes from nowhere or everywhere. The essence of existence is joy. Joy and happiness is your very being, your innermost core. When you look at the birds, the trees and the stars, you will see that the whole existence is joyful. Birds are happy for no reason, trees are happy for no reason and flowers are happy for no reason. The whole
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existence is made of joy. If you can just be with yourself, not doing anything, just enjoying yourself, just being with yourself, not doing anything, then you are in meditation. When you are happy for no reason, the joy and happiness goes on spreading to others. It becomes a sharing. This is what compassion is. Meditation is being with yourself, and compassion is overflowing from that being. It is not that you have to be compassionate. In the state of meditation, you are compassion.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
Meditation means awareness. Except for meditation, nothing makes a person find his inner being, it changes a person. If meditation is progressing, then the only criteria of its progress are love, the only criteria for its progress is compassion. A
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man of compassion always thinks about you, about your needs. Love always thinks of the other, the ego only thinks of oneself. Love is always considerate, the ego is absolutely inconsiderate. The ego has only one language and that is of the self. The ego always uses the other; love is always ready to serve
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Call of the
Meditation expands our inner being. The inner being is like a small, individual river flowing towards the ocean. In meditation, I feel how my inner being expands into an inner ocean, which is part of everything, which is one with Existence. Through the inner being, we come in contact with the inner ocean, the undefined and boundless within ourselves, where we are one with life. We realize that God is part of life. We realize
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that God is not a person, but the consciousness that is part of everything. We find God in a flower, in a tree, in the eyes of a child or in a playful dog. Through discovering our inner being, we discover that we are also part of the flower, the child or the dog. We realize that God is everywhere.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
Meditation is the only way to help you to move from the lower to the higher rungs of the ladder of life. Meditation means awareness. When you become aware of the body, you move beyond the body. Awareness means transcendence. When you become aware of the mind, you have gone beyond the mind. And the moment that you have become aware of the heart. You have moved beyond the heart. The body, the mind and the heart are the
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most fundamental planes to become aware about. When you have moved beyond these three planes, you have come to your real self. And only then does one know what life is all about.
Then one comes to know the truth of life. One comes to know the meaning of life and the greatness of life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Meditation is a death, a death of the ego. There will be a rejoicement, a resurrection, but that will be a totally new, fresh original being. It happens in love, music, dance and creativity, that only for a small moment you slip out of your ego, your personality, and come in contact with your inner being, your individuality. But that happens only for a single moment, and then you are back again. In silence and meditation, you disappear. Then even if you resurrect you are a totally
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different person. You have to learn to live with fresh eyes, with a totally new heart.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, When the Drop becomes the Ocean
Meditation is an initiation into a wider context of existence. You are a small drop, but behind you is the great ocean of God. You are God's river. Even if you are a drop, without you the ocean will be less. And the ocean is nothing but millions and millions of drops together. You contribute something to God. The very idea that one is needed in existence gives you roots.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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God is all that exists. Every stone, flower, tree, animal and human being is on a spiritual journey to recognize their true self, their divine essence.
We have been living lives as stones, flowers, trees and animals in order to develop our consciousness. Stones, flowers and animals also have consciousness. The more matter, the less consciousness. The more consciousness, the less matter. God is not a person; God is the underlying thread of consciousness in existence.
Real love means to realize that we are one with the other person, one with nature, and one with the trees, the stones, the earth and the blue sky. It means to realize that all of life is God.
I was 9 years old when I had my first spiritual awakening, my first glimpse of wholeness with existence. This created a deep thirst and longing in my heart and being to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within,
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theinner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth, the inner language of silence. Now I notice that this silence is going deeper and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
God has no name. All organized religions have given names to God to be able to have a personal relationship to God, but God is not a person.
God is the underlying force, the energy and the consciousness of existence. If you cannot feel God, the divine, within, you cannot feel him without.
The first step is to feel God within. Then prayer to a personal god becomes meaningless, and meditation becomes meaningful.
The second step is to realize God without, to realize that God is not the creator, he is
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creation. He is not separate from creation. He is the force and consciousness of creation. The world is God's dance; the world is God's play.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
The inner emptiness is the door to God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Your heart is the roots to God. Your heart is nourished by truth, by God, but you have forgotten the heart. Come back to the heart, and you will be able to know the truth. You will be able to know the truth as the truth and the false as the false.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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Silence is the invisible door to God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
The inner emptiness is the door to God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
God is within yourself.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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God is Everywhere: You are Divine,
― Swami Dhyan Giten
God is your innermost being.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
The inner emptiness is the door to God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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It is love that opens the door to God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
God is not a person; God is the underlying consciousness in Existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
God is all that exists. Every stone, flower, tree, animal and human being is on a spiritual journey to recognize their true self, their divine essence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere: You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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God is all that exists. Every stone, flower, tree, animal and human being is on a spiritual journey to recognize their true self, their divine essence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Nobody ever reaches to God; God comes to you when you are open and receptive, when you are ready.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Life is like playing “hide the key” with God. God has hidden the key and now it is up to us to find the key again. It also takes us a while to realize that the key is hidden in our own heart. Our heart is the door to allow life
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to guide us. Our heart is the door to say “yes” to life. Our heart is the door to surrender to life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Silent Whisperings of the Heart - An Introduction to Giten's Approach to Life
Meditation is the door to that which cannot be thought of. Those who escape from meditation cannot meet the divine. The divine is a benediction.
The divine is everything, everywhere. God is consciousness. God is bliss.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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When we go closer to the divine, bliss is growing.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
When we get closer to the divine, benediction starts happening. When we go away from the divine, benediction starts disappearing.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Only when the seeker is lost, the truth is there. Seek, and you will miss it. Seek not, and you will find. The very seeking becomes a barrier to truth, to the ultimate experience.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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Your heart is the root to God. Your heart is nourished by truth, by God, but you have forgotten the heart. Come back to the heart, and you will be able to know the truth. You will be able to know the truth as the truth and the false as the false.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
The thirst for the divine is in everyone. The thirst for the divine is an innate quality. It is our inner potential. We may be aware of it or we may not be aware of it, but there is not a single individual who has not the thirst for God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere
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The most fundamental question in life is to learn that existence cares for you. Existence is not indifferent. Existence is full of love. We are taken care of in infinite ways, but all those ways are invisible. They are not tangible, you cannot see them, you can only feel them. These hands are God's hands.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
God is not separate from existence. God is another name for existence, it is another name for nature. And once this understanding is settled, great trust arises. Then we are not aliens, then we are part of existence. We are not just accidental in existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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Existence needs you the way we are. You are fulfilling something immensely valuable in the life of existence. We are not meaningless n the growth and evolution of existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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Each moment of your life is a service. If you know it, you will feel tremendously joyful and happy. If you don't know, you will feel burdened. But whether you know it or not, you are serving some great service.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
The modern man feels alienated, because God has disappeared from the horizon. The modern man feels meaningless, because meaning is possible only when you relate yourself to something higher than you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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Life's only law is change. Everything is continuously changing, evolving and developing. Hindus say that it takes 840 million lives to become a human being, which emphasizes the precious gift of being a human being.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
A spiritual man is happy with the whole existence. He says "yes" to the whole existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Try as a meditation, to be with a stone, a flower or a tree, and you will find that they have consciousness. If you become friends
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with a tree, you will find that the tree will welcome you as a friend. The tree will be happy to see you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
A good man cares about others. A good man has not only selfish desires. He is not only centered in himself. A bad man has no concern for others. He has only selfish concerns. He is centered in his own world.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
The inner being is not only the meditative quality within, the inner silence and emptiness, it is the door to the whole.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
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Love makes you feel at home in existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Meaning needs context. Unless you are part of something higher and larger than you, you can't feel meaningful. Meaning arises out of context, and modern man has lost all contexts. He seems to be simply alienated, an isolated island, unrelated to existence, and that is the greatest source of misery. For the first time in the history of mankind life has become meaningless, because we have made it so.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
We have lost the capacity to trust, to love. We have lost the sensitivity to feel the infinite around us. We have forgotten how to relate with the totality. We have forgotten how to relate to trees, birds, animals, rivers and people. We have even forgotten how to relate with our own self, with our own body and with our own mind. We are living unrelated and meaningless lives, which is why a sadness is surrounding humanity.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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God is not a theory, God is not a religious ideology or theology, God is an experience. God is an experience of dissolving into reality. It is an experience of drowning in God. It is an experience of melting into the total like ice melting into water and becoming one with the river. This melting with the whole is the whole process of meditation. When we are frozen like ice, we can have an ego, we can have an identity. The ego is a frozen phenomenon like ice. When we start melting, the ego starts disappearing, and the ultimate experience of the dissolution of the ego is God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
GOD IS HIDDEN IN YOUR OWN HEART
Only by going through the fire of love, one becomes a heart. It is the fire of love that
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creates the soul. Not having a heart is what makes life meaningless, but millions of people live without a heart. The heart is the spiritual center of our being. It is only the heart that can bring joy to our life
Only by going through the fire of love, one becomes a heart. It is the fire of love that creates the soul. Not having a heart is what makes life meaningless, but millions of people live without a heart. The heart is the spiritual center of our being. It is only the heart that can bring joy to our life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
Never be afraid of love because it is love that will bring you closer to your heart. And it is the heart that can open the doors to God. God can enter only through the heart. God is hidden in our own heart.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
God is within ourselves, but we seek him outside of ourselves. We seek him in the churches, the temples and the mosques, and we go on missing him. God is not in the scriptures either. God emerges out of your heart.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
Life is a divine blessing. Life is a gift of infinite value.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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One should not waste life. Life is a great possibility to be, to grow, and one should not just vegetate and be lethargic. We have got life without paying for it, which is why we think life is valueless. One goes on living life like we can simply waste it. We waste life by putting our attention on the trivial things: money, power, position, status, greed and prestige, but we never think about life and its infinite value. Everything else is just trivial in comparison to life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
Life is the greatest blessing, which has already happened. Life is a gift through which the whole have already loved you. By being alive one has already been accepted by God. God celebrate your being. God is happy that you are.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
The person who is incapable of love will remain incapable of reaching God, because God remains the ultimate love-affair. If you are afraid of love. How can you approach God? Jesus is right when he says: "God is love.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
You cannot seek happiness. If you seek happiness, you will become more and unhappy. You have to disappear for happiness to come. You cannot seek and demand happiness. Happiness is a grace,
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which comes to you when you are open and available. If you demand happiness, you will destroy it. Happiness comes when you are not. It comes when you are silent and empty. In your total emptiness, suddenly happiness is there. You are the hindrance to happiness, so you cannot seek it. If you disappear only then happiness is there. When the self is completely gone, then only you are happy. To attain happiness, one has to dissolve oneself completely. You have to disappear so that there is no hindrance to joy and happiness. Joy and happiness is the essence of existence, it is the nature of God. If you are not there, God will be there.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
The way of surrender is to surrender to the whole, and allow the whole to direct your life.
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The ego makes you separated from the whole; the ego makes you isolated from the whole. The way of surrender is to drop all ideas about directing your life. It is to become a vehicle for the whole, and simply accept whatsoever the whole offer. It is to become more and more deeply in tune with the whole, with existence, with God. It is to allow the whole to function through you. This creates an inner flowering. For one day take as a meditation to allow the whole to function through you with no direction or effort from your side. Move moment to moment, knowing that the whole is running the whole world, and that the whole will take care of you. The world is so big, there are so many suns, stars and galaxies, and everything is going perfectly well - as long as men do not interfere. Meditate, eat, sleep, relate with friends and just be, and allow the whole to direct you and take care of you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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FOLLOW YOUR HEART, FOLLOW YOUR BEING
How do we come in contact with our heart and begin to see the truth? We need to follow our heart; we need to follow our own nature. We need to have the courage to listen to our heart. To follow our nature means to learn to trust yourself. Hidden deep within ourselves is the silent voice of truth. If you become silent, you will be guided from within from the silent voice. To follow our nature is the only possibility to attain freedom. When all lies and conditions from society are removed, you will discover your essential nature. Your nature is to become God. To follow your nature is to follow your consciousness, but you have been told by the parent, the teachers. the priests and the politicians to follow ideologies, philosophies and religions- and not to follow your own nature. When you know your own inner voice, you will be free. If you listen to your heart, no one can manipulate and control you again.
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To become available to your inner nature is mediation. It is to become aware that there is source within you, from where God speaks to you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
Love is what makes life meaningful. Without love, life becomes meaningless.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
Love is the proof of the existence of God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, God is Everywhere:
You are Divine, Everything is Divine
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If you love, the whole existence becomes beautiful. Love makes everything beautiful. If you love all is beautiful, but if you don't love nothing is beautiful. Learning to love is the only magic in life. Learning to love opens all the mysteries of existence.
One who settles for an unlovable life says "no" to life, which creates a lonely, dark and miserable life.
One who learns to love says "yes" to life. He learns to love life and to experience life fully. He opens his doors to life, while somebody who says ”no" closes his doors to life. Learning to love life is the way to know God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
Meditation is the art of learning to listen to our own heart. Meditation is the art of learning to listen to the intuition, the inner guide. Meditation is the art of learning to not
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listen to the voice of the outer spiritual teacher, but one's own inner spiritual teacher. Our intuition, the inner guide, the spiritual teacher within, is always available within ourselves. Our intuition, our inner guide, our spiritual teacher within, is our being, which always wants to talk to you. In each situation, it gives you a message, which is always right. The being shows you what to do and in which direction to move. You will always be able to see the light by listening to the being. In the inner being, there is immense light and clarity. The inner being is already in contact with the whole. But mostly we live on the periphery, because our mind is the periphery. So slowly we forget that there is something inside ourselves, which has significant messages to us. Meditation is the process of moving within to the inner being. Rather than listen outside we have to listen inside. To be in contact with the inner being is going the right way.
God is your inner voice. You have to move within to hear the still, silent voice of
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God. When you have learnt to hear it, your whole life is transformed. Then you have learnt to listen to your being and to follow your own heart.
One who can listen to your inner being has learnt a new language. One who can listen to his being has become capable of listening to the being of the whole existence. He can hear the song of the birds, he can hear the wind passing through the trees and he can hear the silent whisperings of the trees. The meditator has to begin with himself. The meditator begins to listen to his own being, and ends with listening to the being of the world. The day that you realize that your being and the being of the world are not separate, but one is the day of enlightenment. This is the ultimate fulfillment of life. The meditator has to make a commitment to put his energy into realizing the phenomenon called God, Tao, dharma and truth.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
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Life is intertwined, where everything is part of everything else. Man, woman, flowers, trees, animals, mountains and stars - all is one. The tree is separate and the earth is separate, but the tree is in reality never separate from the earth. The earth is never separated from the tree. The sky is separate, but in reality the earth is never separate from the sky. In reality, they are together. The reality is oneness. All things are together, intertwined, part of each other. If you go deep into one thing, you will end up with the whole. If you can understand a man, a woman, a flower, a tree, an animal or a river in depth, you will meet the
whole existence. If you can understand a flower in its depth, you will see the whole existence, and you will understand all men, women, trees, stars and planets. If you go deeper into a single flower, you will understand that in a small flower the whole
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existence is present. When you love a flower, the larger the flower will become, because love is nourishment.
Life is together, intertwined. Everything is part of everything else. All is one. Everything is a door to the whole. If you go deep within yourself, you will reach to the inner being, you will reach to the depth, which is the depth of everything. Only on the periphery, we are separate, at the inner being, at the center, we are one. Life is one. Life is God. We need eyes to see to recognize this togetherness, this vastness, his oneness.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
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Man can exist either in conflict with existence or in harmony with existence. Man can exist either as an enemy to existence or as a friend to existence. For existence it is the same. Existence is neither inimical to you nor friendly. Existence is simply available. Existence simply reflects you, existence echoes you. Existence is a mirror to your face.
The whole thing depends on you. If you are inimical you will see your own face in nature. To be a seeker of truth means to choose to be consciously a friend with existence. When you start looking at existence in love, truth, a deep harmony arises with the trees, with the animals, with the sun, with the wind, with people and with the stars.
Step by step it goes on spreading in your life, and a moment comes when you are no more and you disappear into the whole. That makes a deep joy happen, which is our deepest thirst and longing. That is what everybody is searching for consciously or unconsciously. The key is to be in harmony with existence.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
Existence loves us. Otherwise we would not be here. Life is a gift of God. It is not our choice to be here, we have been chosen to be here by existence. It is a decision by the whole. Existence goes on giving us gifts on all levels: physical, psychological and spiritual. A meditator has to remember that existence goes on pouring so many gifts, and that he has not thanked it by contributed anything in return. Real gratitude to existence is expressed by creativity. When we create something in return to enhance existence, we start being creative by showing gratitude. In our own way we are participating with God. It can be a song, a painting or to make people happy and create more happy and smiling faces. It is to make a little change in the world, and create a
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better and more beautiful world. If we can create something out of gratitude to existence it brings joy. Creativity is the way of prayer.
- Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole
Man can live in misery, but man can also live in joy. It all depends on how you live, on how you approach life. If one never learns the art of living, life will be a misery. Unless you learn the art of living, you can't have love, silence, joy, awareness, truth and freedom. Everybody comes with an inner potential, but very few people develop that potential. The potential remains unused. One should be more like a flowing river, than a stagnant pond. We have to become flowing, moving into the unknown and always reaching for the ocean.
This has been called God, truth, nirvana and
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enlightenment, but it is really nothing but life blossoming.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
Man can live either as an isolated island or in harmony with existence. Man can live isolated from existence with the attitude that he is separated from existence, but you cannot be joyful if you are going against existence. Going against existence is the way of the ego. It is like trying to swim upwards in opposition to the current of the river of life. Going against existence is fighting a losing battle. It will make you tired and exhaustive. It is your idea of being separated from existence that has created the whole problem. Existence is not fighting you. Being in harmony with existence you would not have felt that existence has been against you. Being in harmony with existence is the way
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of the spiritual person. The moment you merge with existence, God becomes your strength and a rejoicing happens in your heart.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
We have been taught that life is a fight and a struggle. We have been taught to fight, because of the idea that man has to continuously fight for his survival. We have been taught to fight, because of the idea that man and nature are enemies.
Nature is not our enemy. Nature is our home. The universe is not antagonistic to us. The universe means the earth,
which the universe fills with flowers, trees, animals, people, rivers and mountains. The universe is supporting them. Why would the flowers, the trees and the rivers otherwise grow?
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Man is part of this existence. But the idea that we have to fight creates a separation between us and the whole. Man becomes an isolated island. Then we live in fear, anxiety and worry. So how can we be happy? Instead we feel alienated, alone and meaningless, because the whole seems to be a constant fight and struggle.
For the person who has been fighting with existence, death seems to be the ultimate thing. But for the person who
has surrendered to existence, who is in tune with existence, death is not the ultimate thing. Surrender means to let go of your ego, so for him there is no death. It is only the ego that dies, because the ego is a separation from the whole. Itis the ego that fights with the whole. Surrender means to drop all that is superficial and shallow. Surrender means to become egoless.
Surrender means that our heart starts to beat in tune with the universal heart. Instead of being an isolated island, we become part of the whole continent. And
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then we live in love, joy, silence, trust, truth, freedom and the eternal. Suddenly we know the joy and beauty of
surrender. Surrender means to yes to the whole.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
We are all searching for happiness consciously or unconsciously. Happiness is the goal of life. Not only are human being searching for happiness, but trees, flowers, animals, birds and rocks. The whole existence is searching for happiness. Only man is conscious enough to penetrate into the ultimate mystery of life. But not all man, because few people are really conscious. The majority of people live in unconsciousness.
Meditation is the process of transforming unconsciousness into consciousness.
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Meditation is the only way to give you a glimpse and an experience into your consciousness. Meditation is the only way to give you a glimpse that you are something much more .And the moment that the first glimpse happens your first window to life opens. And your life becomes a joy.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
A man without meditation is not part of existence. He exists, but he is not part of existence. He is separate from existence. There is no bridge between him and the whole. Life begins with meditation, because meditation creates the bridge between you and the whole. Without meditation you're like a separate island. With meditation you become part of the whole continent. The ego tries to live like a separate island.
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The ego is afraid of being part of something which is larger than itself. The ego tries to live a confined life. The ego is afraid of love, because love is larger than the ego. The ego is afraid of meditation, because meditation is far larger than the ego. The ego is afraid of joy, because joy happens when you are connected with something larger than yourself.
The whole is interconnected. It is only the stupidity of man that tries to live separate from the whole. This is why man lives in misery, because man lives in separation from the whole.
Meditation gives you a taste of joy, because meditation give you a taste of something that is larger than yourself. It gives you a taste of the infinite, of the oceanic. Then you understand that existence loves you and cares for you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
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The spiritual journey means to learn to listen more and more to the heart. It means to learn to follow the heart. It means to gather the courage to follow the heart, instead of listening to the mind. The mind is not yours; it is given by the society.
The heart is yours; it is given by God, the divine. If you listen to the heart, it will not be difficult to go into meditation. Then you will know what to do and not to do. You immediately know what to do in the moment. You know from your being. The heart knows what to do, because the heart is already in contact with the whole. The heart lives in the mysteries of existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
Meditation is the beginning of becoming part of existence. The ego creates a separation from existence. The moment we
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drop the ego, then we find our roots in existence. Then there is no separation anywhere. Then God beats in our heart. The same God that flows in the rivers and rises in the sun circulates in our blood. It is all one. But the contemporary man feels separated and alienated. Never before has it happened on such a vast scale. Almost everybody who is intelligent feels uprooted and alienated. And of one feels alienated, life cannot be a joy.
Life is a joy only when we start feeling a home in existence. Meditation is a help to feel at home with existence, with the trees, the earth, the people and with the animals. Only this experience makes one religious.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Man is Part of the
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Love is the most divine quality. When you grow in love, you are growing towards God, the divine. When you stop growing in love, you stop growing.
Some people go on accumulating money, power, status, position and knowledge. It is wasting life to collect trivia. It is only through love that something starts happening to your being. A new joy fills you from within, new light dawns on you and a new awe and wonder about life starts moving through you.
You begin to look into existence through the heart, which is the true window to life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Man is Part of the
Love has disappeared from the world. Society is deep down against love. Society has created substitutes for love for example marriage. These are substitutes for love, so
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that you do not begin to search for real love, which is not ordinarily available unless you raise your level of consciousness. Love is not an exclusive relationship; Love is the ultimate flowering of our consciousness. God has also disappeared from the world, because love has disappeared from the world. One cannot connect with God through the head or through beliefs. You can only connect with God through the heart. The society pretends to be religious, but it is only a facade. The religion that exists is just a formality, a belief. Real religion is something else, but the moment you re really religious the society will be against you, because it Isa danger to society, to the politicians, to the church and to the vested interests, who are oppressing and exploiting people.
We have to change the milieu that exists on earth today. We have to create a milieu of love in the world. Love unconditionally, love for the sheer joy of loving, not for receiving anything back. Love and you will see that
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a door has opened and God has entered into your life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten
Humanity is suffering from a lack of love. That is the basic problem of humanity. All other problems arise out of this basic problem. War, conflicts and poverty can disappear within minutes, because they are not the real problems. The real problem is that love is missing. We have the technology to make the earth into a paradise, but we do not have the heart that can share and make the earth a paradise for everybody. Instead, science and technology are used to destroy. Seventy percent of every nation's income is wasted on war, violence and destructivity. Humanity can become happy. The world if full of all that is needed to make humanity happy. But inside man something is missing. The real heart is missing. Man has forgotten
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the language of love. Man lives through anger, violence, conflict, ignorance, jealousy, competition and war. These are the poisons of love.
A meditator has to drop all that goes against love. When the barriers to love are removed, love starts flowering, because love is our essential inner nature. The inner source of love is already within us. Once we find this inner source, love becomes a golden light. Itis a light that lights your path, it is a light that can light the path of many people and it is a light that can make you aware of God. Love is the only light that can make you aware of the presence of God. It is love that can become the realization of God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, the Way of the Heart
To say yes wholeheartedly is to be religious. It has nothing to do with a belief in a god. All that you need is wholehearted yes. All that
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you need is a total yes, so that not even a small fragment of no remains in the heart. When you say a total yes, you become a light unto yourself. And this light starts to guide you on your path. Then no outer guide is needed.
When you say a total yes, you don't hold back. The total yes means to flow with life and to be available to life. The total yes means that non-resistance is all that is needed. We have to cooperate with life. Our mind is very afraid of saying yes. The mind naturally resists saying yes. The mind lives through saying no. We have lived with saying no for so many lives that we have forgotten the possibility of saying yes. We have forgotten the possibility of saying yes to ourselves, to say to others and to say yes to all that is.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Love and trust are different expressions of the same phenomenon. Love is the beginning of trust, and trust is the culmination of love. Then you can trust yourself, you can trust others and you can trust life.
Trust happens in the heart. When the heart begins to resonate in a deep harmony with the whole, there is a meeting. That meeting is trust, and that is not possible without love.
In the school of love, you learn the art of trust. Both love and trust have disappeared from the world. Love exists no more. Trust exists no more.
Love and trust are immensely beautiful. It is through love and trust that you will find harmony with the whole.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Love is the quality of the heart. Love is really the only thing that is valuable. Things have prices, but they have no real value. Love has no prize, but love has immense value. Love is the only experience that makes life meaningful. Love is the only experience that is not available in the marketplace. Love is the only experience that is not of the world, and yet exists in the world. Love is the bridge between man and God. Only love can penetrate into the unknown.
Only people who know love know the richness, the joy, the poetry and the beauty of existence. Love is the source of all that is good, meaningful and beautiful. Love opens the doors to the mysteries of life. Love opens the doors to the inner shrine of God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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The most important thing in life is to discover your truth. Truth is there, because we are alive and conscious. We have to go deeper into our consciousness. And once we have found our consciousness, we have found truth. Once you know who you are, you have found truth. When you find truth, the outer world will be the same, nothing in the outside world has changed, but you will be a totally different person. The outside world will be the same, but nothing will be the same, because you will have a totally new perspective, which is eternal, timeless and deathless.
Now you will know that you were before birth, and you will be after death. Now you are free from all small things: life's failures and successes, richness and poverty and small pains and pleasures.
Now you can remain centered in every kind of situation in life. Nothing will make you waver, your groundedness is solid and absolute. This integrity, groundedness and state of consciousness remains untouched by everything.
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This is the goal of meditation. Once it is discovered, one can live with joy, grace and God within one's heart.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man can live either as love or as an ego. These are the only two alternatives in life. It is the only two alternative lifestyles. The ego is very attractive, because it promises great things, although it delivers nothing. The ego creates dreams and fantasies, but these fantasies take you further away from yourself. And to be away from yourself is to be away from God, the divine. Love is not at all persuasive. It will not prove itself. You have to choose love, because it does not propagate itself. When the ego fails, because of its deceptive dreams and mirages, it fails for intelligent people. For the stupid people, it never fails. In that failure of the
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ego, one moves to egolessness.
This is what love is: love is egolessness. Now there is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve and your whole energy starts resting within yourself. And when your energy comes to rest at your center, one comes to know that one is not, only God is.
One comes to know that God is my strength. One comes to know that God is my existence, hat God is my being. One comes to know that one is just a small manifestation of divine energy. To know it brings great joy. All worries disappear, all entities disappear, and now you know that there is somebody greater than you who takes care. You are his project to help you to be joyful. When you are inside yourself, you immediately hear the still, small voice within you - and that becomes your inner teacher, your inner guide and your guiding star. Then you have your own insight and you know what is right and wrong. Now you know that living according to one's own being is to live authentically. That is the way of the spiritual person.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Prayer is the most beautiful flowering in existence. Prayer is the ultimate state of love. When one is loving, prayer becomes natural. One has to thank existence. Feeling thankful one bows down to the whole: to the trees, to the birds, to the animal, to the people, to the rivers, to the mountains and to all that us. When one is loving, prayer will come of its own accord. And when it comes on its own, it is neither Christian, Mohammendan nor Hindu. It is simply prayer. Then it unites you, not only with humanity, but with trees, animals and rocks. It simply unites you with existence. It becomes a bridge to existence, which speaks from your heart to the heartbeat of the universe. Then the whole of life becomes prayer.
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Then to be is a prayer. And only when everything is prayer, one has come to know the mystery, which is at the center of prayer.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man needs peace, not war. Man needs love, not violence. We have been tortured enough with ideas of heroes, war, propaganda, hate, destruction and violence. Science has given us enough of destructive power and weapons that if we go living in accordance with the old destructive values then and ideals humanity is finished.
The future belongs to the new man, to the intelligent and creative people, not to the soldier.
Only love can give us the balance. Humanity has lived against love up to now, and that is why there is so much misery, hate, violence and destruction in the world. This is because
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humanity has lived in a destructive way up to now. Now there are only two alternatives: either humanity changes or this is the end of humanity.
The time for the old values and ideals are over. We have to live in accordance with a new life affirmative vision of life.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, the Way of the Heart
The existential law of love is that the more you give, the more you have. The law of love is also that the less you give, the less you have. And if you don't give at all, love simply disappears from your heart. And if you go on pouring love infinitely, it goes on growing in you infinitely. It is always in the same proportion proportion.
Once you understand the law of love, your life goes through a radical change. When you start giving love for no reason other than for the sheer joy of it, the whole universe
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expands.
Then from every direction love starts flowing towards you. Life becomes a festival through life. Then life becomes spring, and thousands of roses bloom in your heart. All that is needed is to share your love without any conditions, and without asking for anything in return.
Let this be your meditation: become loving and finally become love itself. That is the moment when one discovers God within one's own being. God is another name for unconditional love.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Life is a ladder from the lowest to the highest. The majority of people live at the lowest rung, where we find ourselves at the time of birth. Many people think that just to be born is enough, so we go on living at the
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lowest rang for the whole of our life. Birth is just the beginning of a long journey, but the majority of people die at the same spot where they were born. They have not moved a single inch. They have just vegetated between birth and death. Their life energy has remained on the same plane. It has not developed, it has not gone upwards. They are too occupied with their own small things, so they have no time to look upwards. Life really begins only when you start moving on the higher rungs of the ladder of life.
There is nothing more delicate than love in existence. Love is the most precious thing. Love is the opening of the heart. Love is the flowering of the heart. And the moment that the heart opens like a flower the whole existence becomes available to it. Then it can sway and dance with the wind, with the rain and with the sun. Suddenly all barriers
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disappear, and as you open up barriers evaporate. Opening up to existence like a flower means coming out of imprisonment. Otherwise we are living in a way closed to everything.
The whole life of a closed person is fear-oriented. He is afraid to open up to life. He is afraid to be open and vulnerable, because you may be hurt, cheated and deceived. It may be better to keep the windows and doors of the heart closed. But a closed life is bound to be miserable.
Just as the closed life is fear-oriented, the open life is love-oriented. It means to trust existence. And through trusting existence, you can allow yourself to live and dance.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
To be happy needs a strong spirit. It needs no courage to be miserable. That is
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why millions of people are miserable. Society consists of miserable people. Society wants people to be miserable, because then they are easy to manipulate, control and exploit. But to be happy one really needs a strong spirit. You need a strong spirit for two reasons: he first reason is that the whole of humanity is accustomed to living in misery and the second reason is that you have to go against the accustomed misery of humanity. It means that you have to leave the collective unconscious. You have to leave the unconscious crowd, the mob. There are many kinds of crowds: political, religious, cults, Conservative, Fascist, Christian and Islamic. The miserable person cannot be alone. He always wants to belong to a crowd. The miserable person is like a sheep, who wants to belong
to a herd. Sheep’s are always afraid to be alone.
The happy person has to be like a lion. The first thing for being happy is to learn to be alone. The first step is to drop the mass mind. The mob is the lowest possibility of
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humanity. Whenever you want to be alone and you want to leave the
collective unconscious, when you want to leave the mob, the mob will try to hinder you. The mob will create every
hindrance. The mob becomes afraid, because if one person leaves the mob, then other people may also try to leave the mob. The crowd does not want to lose its power, because the crowd consists of the politicians, the priests, the establishment, the status quo, the media and the rich, and they all depend on the mob psychology.
The happy person is a danger to all of them. So this is why a strong spirit is needed to go against the mob psychology to be happy.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Society creates all kinds of conditioning and hindrances for us to reach our true nature. Society does not allow us to be ourselves. Society is dampening all our attempts to be happy. The whole effort and conditioning of culture, politics, religion, education, media and civilization is not to allow you to be your own natural self, not to allow you to be happy.
This is done for the simple reason that the person who can be himself and who can be happy cannot be manipulated. If people are to be manipulated - politically, socially and religiously - then their trust to be themselves has to be destroyed. We have not yet been able to create a natural and life-affirmative culture. So the individual has to make every effort to be himself and to be happy for himself, so that others also can be allowed to be who they are and to be happy. The first concern is our own being, our own consciousness, our true self, and everything else is secondary. The first concern is not society, the church, the world and to fight for your country. The first responsibility is to
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discover our innermost being, our true self. Once it is discovered everything else becomes easy, and it happens on its own accord. Then love, silence, joy, truth, compassion, freedom, creativity and grace flows. They are by-products of consciousness.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Meditation is the art of being alone. It is to forget the whole world. It is to forget the worries, chaos and tensions of the world as if it does not exist anymore. When you come to that space inside you, when only you are and nothing else exists, that is aloneness. It is not loneliness. You are with yourself. You are not missing anything. For the first time you are with yourself, for the first time you are not lonely.
Ordinarily people are lonely even when theyare in a crowd of people. Even while
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they are with friends, they are lonely. One tries to forget the loneliness through alcohol, looking at TV or through being constantly occupied. One tries anything that can help you to forget yourself and your loneliness. But sooner or later you have to come back to yourself and your loneliness. People are lonely in crowds and lonely in their relationships.
Meditation is what creates a miracle: you are alone, but you are not lonely. For the first time you are with yourself, for the first time you can love yourself in your aloneness. For the first time you find bliss of aloneness. The moment that you start finding the bliss of your aloneness, it becomes wisdom. Then you are not dependent on anybody. You have found the source of bliss within yourself. That is wisdom. Now you have freedom: you can be everywhere, and you can be blissful.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Everybody is born with a song in their heart. Unless the song inside is sung, one remains miserable. Then the purpose of life remains unfulfilled. The moment you have sung your song, joy explodes in your life. You have arrived home, because you have poured your heart into existence. In that creative pouring one becomes part of the whole. All separation from the whole thing disappears. Then the ego is dissolved. And with the ego dissolved, birth and death disappears. Nobody attains it without being creative. Anything to be true, authentically true, has to be creative.
Do whatsoever is your inner feeling to do. Find the inner ear, the inner listening, which can hear the small voice within, and follow it. Meditation is the way to throw you back upon yourself, so that you can listen to your heart and follow it.
You cannot get a map of the journey. That has to be discovered by you. It is written within your being, but meditation can help you to reach that innermost core, where you
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can read the writing that you have carried with yourself forever, but which you have not looked at.
- Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the Heart
Truth is only one. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth does has not belong to anybody. Truth does not belong to any religion, to any ideology, to any church, to any country or to any time. Truth is eternal.
Truth is the very center of the whole existence. It is also our being, our life center, and everyone's being. We are different on the surface, on the circumference, but we are joined at the center. As we start moving towards our innermost being, towards our center, we start moving towards oneness of being.
On our journey towards oneness of being, first our personality is lost. The personality is a very peripheral thing, a very
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cultivated and conditioned. It is something imposed from the outside. And when the personality disappears,
individuality appears. Individuality remains for the whole journey between the surface and the inner being, the center. Then when you enter the center even individuality disappears, and you become universal. It is to attain the ultimate truth.
A man who has reached to truth lives only to liberate people. His whole life is nothing but a sharing of his joy. He has nothing else to live for. All his desires and ambitions have disappeared. He has no motivation of his own. As long as he lives he lives and breathes for all. He lives for all. He has reached the ultimate height of love, silence, truth and freedom. He has inherited the whole existence. This is possible for those who really want to know the ultimate truth. It is possible for anyone, who are ready to go on a journey to risk his personality, to attain individuality, and then to risk even individuality to attain universality.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Meditation is the door to the divine. Nothing is more godly than meditation, because in meditation you slip out of the mind. You disappear from the outside, and you exist at the innermost being, at your inner core. Your innermost being is rooted in God. Just as every tree is rooted in the earth, every consciousness is rooted in God. God means the ultimate consciousness. Meditation is the bridge to your innermost being, to your consciousness. Once you have taste the joy of being at the source, then everything else in life becomes meaningless. Then you can go on living the ordinary life, but it becomes a beautiful drama. You can play it as well as you can, but now you know that you are not part of it. It is just a role to play, but it is not your existence.
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You can have all kinds of relationships in the world, but you know the beauty of being alone. You know the bliss of being. Once that window opens your life is transformed. And that is the whole purpose of meditation: to open that window, so that you can really know that you are godly.
- Swami Dhyan Giten, the Way of the Heart
Meditation is the only way to know the deathless within ourselves. The body dies, but not you. The body is born, but you are not. You have been before birth, and you will be there after death. Life is not just an episode between birth and death. There are many births and many deaths in a long eternity of lives. Birth and death are just small events. They are like waves in a river which come and go, but the river remains. The river goes on and on.
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Unless this becomes your experience, one cannot live joyously, because the fear of death contaminates everything. The fear of death is the basic fear behind all fears. We may not be conscious of the fear of death, but it is always there. There are two basic taboos in the world: sex and death. We don't talk about sex, because sex is bound to bring up the question of death. We do not talk about death, because that brings up fear. Meditation is the only way to face death. Meditation means becoming aware of your being. Then you can see clearly that you are not the body and you are not the mind. You become a witness to the body and the mind. As this becomes your deeper experience, a freedom arises in you.
Remaining unidentified with the body and the mind, one becomes aware of eternity, of deathlessness. This awareness makes your whole like take a totally different perspective, a different vision. Then even death takes a totally new perspective. You will be able to see in death that the body is dropping, and that the body is dropping from you.
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The greatest experience in life is to see death clearly with awareness .It is the greatest experience, because one who can see death happening with awareness is never born in the body again. Then he becomes part of the eternal flow of consciousness. He becomes part of the universal consciousness. He becomes part of God.
Unless this experience happens you will have to come back again and again into the body. Life in the body is just like a school. If you fail, you will have to come back. If you pass, then there is no need to come back. Everyone has the potential to pass, so go into meditation and make this your goal.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man ordinarily lives in a state of unconsciousness. Man lives almost in a kind of sleep. Only in a minimal way he is awake.
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Only in an emergency does he suddenly become alert. Suddenly you will see a change and alertness in him, which was not there a moment ago.
Suddenly all your thinking disappears, all your dreaming disappears and all the fantasies that continuously goes on has stopped. For a moment the mind stops, there is a blank and in that interval you are alert.
Ordinarily it seems that a person can only attain to a few second of awareness in his whole life. People live like robots, machines. People go on doing things effectively and mechanically, but that does not prove that we are conscious. The ordinary man, the mob, the crowd, is unconscious and mechanical. The society wants people who are unconscious and mechanical, because they are easy to manipulate, control and exploit. It is only through consciousness that you can go beyond this mechanicalness. The spiritual
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journey means that you are given a new dimension, the spiritual dimension. The whole work of the spiritual journey is to bring you some consciousness of your self, of your being. It is an effort to make you conscious, to help you to rise above your biology, unconsciousness and
mechanicalness.
Very few people have attained to their spiritual selves. Most people live on the biological level, and they die on the biological level. Everybody has the potential, but most people do not work on it, so it remains a lost potential. The potential has to become actual.
So make an effort to make your life concentrated effort to become more and more conscious. And as glimpses of consciousness start arising in you, you will be surprised that bliss will follow each moment of consciousness. As
consciousness deepens, bliss depends. Bliss is the consequence of being conscious.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man without meditation is homeless. He knows not from where he comes, why he exists and where he is destined. He knows not how to exist, so that he can know the truth of his being and the mystery of life. Without meditation everything remains closed.
Meditation is the key. Meditation is the key that can open the lock of the mind to go beyond the mind to the real treasure of life. Once you can go beyond the mind, you will know your home. To know it is to become part of the mystery of existence. To know it is to know deathlessness, eternity. Once it is known, then ordinary life is no more ordinary. Then life becomes full of love, silence, joy, truth, freedom, beauty and music.
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Meditation is taking a vow to enter into the world of meditation. It is taking a vow to be concentrated on how to be more meditative, more aware and more conscious. And once you put your energies in one direction, things starts happening on their own.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
It is only through bliss that one becomes a messenger of God, the divine. The moment that you are blissful you become a vehicle, a passage for God to descend into the world. You become an opening for God to pour into the world.
Every blissful person can become a blessing to the world, because he becomes proof that God exists. There is not any outer proof. Only the presence of a blissful person is an
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indirect proof that something more than the mundane exists.
It is proof that something more than the so-called life exists. Philosophers and theologians have argued much to prove God, but they have not succeeded. Mystics have proved it without any effort, because their presence was enough. Every blissful person is a messenger of God.
Meditation is the way to create as many blissful people as possible, because the world now needs as many proofs for God's existence as possible.
The misery and darkness of the world are becoming too heavy that God is disappearing from the world. The meditators have to become bridges between the ordinary world and the spiritual world, which is within the ordinary world.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Love is always flowing. Love is a river. The moment you stop a river, it becomes dirty. The river is only clean when it is flowing. The same is true about love. Love should be in a constant flow. But our minds are always trying to make love static. We try to cling to love. We try to make love a static and permanent phenomenon.
We destroy the possibilities for change. We are afraid of change, because we don't know where the change will lead. So we want tomorrow to be exactly like today. That destroys all possibilities for growth. Let the future be open. The natural life is change. We have to flow with nature, and with the ultimate law of existence. Be in tune with existence, without expectations on your part, and you will be enriched.
Each moment will bring new life, new joy. And a person whose love is always flowing becomes vast. He becomes as vast as the sky itself. In that vastness one knows what God is. That vastness is God.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Love and prayer are two different expressions of the same energy. Love is more earthly, whole prayer is more unearthly, but the experiences are the same. Love is more limited, because it person-to-person experience. Prayer is unlimited. It is from person to the impersonal existence. In the beginning it is from the person to the impersonal existence, but when you relate deeper with impersonal existence, the person is lost. It is like a drop
disappearing into the ocean. The drop loses its boundaries. It becomes the ocean. The old identity of the drop will be gone. Many people think that they know what love is, but they do not know what love is. So how should they know about prayer, which is the highest form of love? Prayer is almost non-
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existential, and even love is experienced by very few people, because love also demands many essential things before they can experience it.
Love cannot coexist with jealousy, anger, violence, hate, ego, possessiveness and domination. These are allantois-love phenomenon, which will destroy the possibility of love.
To grow in real love one needs courage. Love challenges you. And you have to drop many things to become worthy of love. The first thing to drop is the ego. But we would like love with our ego intact. When love do not exist, then everything higher than love is impossible.
Prayer is the ultimate flowering of love. A man who knows love deeply, who has been able to drop his ego, will move
towards prayer If loving one person is so beautiful, then how much
more beautiful will it be to
love the whole existence. That is prayer.
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One need not believe in God to be able to pray. First one has to know love, then one
has to know prayer and then Gods the third experience. True religiousness arises out of love. Prayer is an overflowing love. And ultimately prayer reveals God to you.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
There is only one victory in life and that is to attain inner bliss. One can have all the money, power, status, wealth
and possessions of the world, but still live in misery.
The wise man will not waste a single moment. His whole life will be a concentrated effort to attain blissfulness. Unless you attain bliss, you will have to come back again and again to the body. You will have to be born again and again. You
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will have to go through the whole of life and death again.
Life is like a school. If you fail, you will have to go back to the same school again. If you pass, there is no need to come back. Only a man who has become awakened never comes back to the world. Then he lives in eternity. He lives in a bodiless immortality. He becomes part of the whole. He becomes oceanic, vast.
The body is a confinement, The body has limitations. And growing up includes the frustrations of life, diseases, illnesses and old age. And they go on until you die. The body is a confinement, which is why the whole effort of meditation is to give you an experience of bodilessness. It gives you the experience of going beyond the body. It gives you the feeling of your consciousness. To know your consciousness is to know the unbounded, the infinite and the immortal.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Man can live in two ways: either he can become a stagnant pool of energy or he can become a flowing river of energy. The stagnant pool of energy becomes the ego. The river life flow helps you to always go beyond yourself. It is a moment towards the ocean, towards the unbounded and towards the infinite.
That is the way of the meditator. Life should be like a river. Life should be always moving and changing. Life should be ready to go into the unknown. It should always be ready to risk the familiar for the unfamiliar. Then a constant adventuring consciousness makes a man a meditator. It is the greatest adventure there is.
The earlier a person becomes aware of these two alternative possibilities, the more it makes it possible for a person to become a meditator. Otherwise slowly people become accustomed
to being stagnant and forget that they could have been flowing rivers. That is why many people live stagnant lives. They live very ordinary lives without joy and meaning.
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They simply go on moving in repetitive circles of mechanical behavior. They do the same thing again and again from birth to death.
That is not the right way to live. The right way to live is to live adventurously, always exploring and reaching to the stars. Then life becomes naturally meditative, because each moment brings so much joy.
The meditative person lives an open life. He welcomes each moment in life. And with that welcoming heart one slowly becomes aware of something which has been called God, truth, love, freedom, nirvana and enlightenment. This is different names for the same experience.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Meditation is the only way to know your being, which is already perfect. The inner
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being needs no perfection. It is already overflowing with joy, silence, love, truth, freedom and peace.
Meditation makes you aware of that which is already perfect within yourself. It is a way of awakening one's own self. And the moment your own self is awakened you are rooted in existence. Then you know that you are part of divine existence. Then you know that you are part of an organic unity of the whole. To experience it is to become divine.
And to know oneself as part of the whole, an intrinsic part of the whole, bring great joy, because the most significant part of man's life is to know that he is needed by existence.
Without meditation man feels useless, but with meditation man feels useful. With meditation man's passion becomes compassion. With mediation man rises to new heights, and compassion becomes unconditional love.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
We are all searching for a home. Everybody -consciously or unconsciously - are searching for a home. Somewhere deep within our being is a remembrance that we had home. It is very vague, but you have not forgotten incompletely. It goes on surrounding us like a fog, a thirst and a longing.
It is like a faraway country, where you were happy, blissful and joyous, where there was no anxiety and no anguish, where life was pure bliss, and where life was a dance, a song. Deep down somewhere that desire and longing still lurks. It still goes on guiding you to find it again.
All religions are born out of this longing. It is a feeling that "I am homeless. This is not the place where I belong. This is not life, this cannot be all, and something more must be
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there. We do not known what this more is,
but it is a persistent feeling that goes on working inside.
Sooner or later one has to listen to it, and the sooner one listens, the better, because one never knows when life will be finished. Any moment it may be. If a man becomes committed and interested in religion when he is young, then there is a possibility that he finds the real home. Meditation is the process to find our real home.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, the Way of the Heart
Saying yes to existence means surrendering to God. It means not living the isolated life of the ego. It means becoming one with the whole. It contains in essence the whole of religion.
Meditation is saying yes to existence. And then there is no fear. When you drop your
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ego all fear disappears. Then whatsoever God wills you do. You are no more responsible, because you are not. Then it is all up to God.
With this trust a great revolution in your life happens. You don't exist as a separate entity anymore. It is like a drop slipping into the ocean.
It means losing its limited definition, it means losing its identity, but it means to gain tremendously. It becomes the ocean. So the loss is not much, but the gain is infinite.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Until now the whole of humanity has been in some way or other condemning life and the joy and beauty of life. Until now the past of humanity has been life-negative. And to be life-negative is to be against God, because life is God. God is not separated from nature,
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people or life.
All the organized religions have been life-negative. All the organized religions destroy something valuable in you. They make you feel guilty about yourself. They make you feel guilty about being life-affirmative. They make you feel guilty about loving life. They make you guilty about enjoying the joy and beauty of life.
Meditation is helping you to be free of all guilt, and to rejoice in life. Meditation helps you to rejoice in even small things of life. Then even having a cup of coffee, taking a walk in nature or meeting a friend starts having a sacred significance. You can have a cup of coffee in a prayerful way and with such meditativeness that there is no need to go to a church or temple. Meditation is a help to rejoicing life and also help others to be happy, because bliss is divine.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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The search for love, joy, silence, truth, freedom or God is really a search for a union with the whole. We are brought up by a society, civilization and religion in such a way that we are given a false identity. We are all deceived by powerful people, who depend on lying and cheating. They have been cheating for centuries to be able to accumulate money and power, and they are afraid of allowing anybody to discover the truth.
The whole business of the politicians, the priests, the establishment, the status quo, the vested interests, the education system, the media and the rich depend on people who are gullible and ready to be deceived. From the very childhood these people create such situations that the child becomes aware that if he wants to survive in the world he has to compromise his truth. If the child says the truth he will be getting into trouble.
By the time he is strong enough to be truthful he has lost all sense of truth. The lies have gone so deep in him that they have
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become unconscious, so that it has become almost impossible to get rid of them. That is the whole process of a man searching for truth: to undo what the society has done to him.
You have to be reborn, and you will have to become aware that the ego is a false identity imposed on you. You are not separate at all from the whole. You are part of the organic whole. And to know it brings great joy, because when you are not a separate entity, then how can anxiety and anguish exist? Then life becomes a joy. Then there is freedom without any fear.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
We know a love that is momentary. It is a love that one day is there, and another day it is gone. Its very momentariness shows that it is not real love. It is something that is
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masquerading as love. Maybe it is really lust, some psychological need, the fear of being alone, an effort to remain occupied with another person or an effort to fill one's inner emptiness. It can be a thousand and done things, but it is not real love. The most essential quality of real love is its quality of everlastingness. Once you have taste the eternity of love, the timelessness of love, you are transformed. Then you are no more part of the mundane world. You enter into the world of the sacred. You enter into the holy world.
You can go on living in the same ordinary way. In fact, you become more ordinary than before. You lose all pretensions. You lose all egoistic trips. You forget about being somebody, you become utterly ordinary. But in that ordinariness there is a light, a beauty and a grace. You are full of light, because you are full of love. You are always ready to share, because you have found an inner inexhaustible source. You have found the inner source of love, which is our true nature.
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This love has nothing to do with relationships. The love which is eternal relates, but it never becomes relationships. The love which is eternal relates to the trees, to the animals, to the birds, to the wind, to the people, to the moon and to the sky. It is a twenty-four-hours-a-day relation, but it does not create any
relationships. Relating is like a river. It is a flow, it is a movement, it is alive. It is a dance.
Relationships are something stagnant, it is something static. Something has stopped growing. The joy has disappeared. You start feeling sad and anguish arises in you, because you start losing contact with life.
Life is always river like. Man's greatest joy is being free. But in relationships you are tethered to a husband, a wife or a friend. The human mind continuously creates situations in which the freedom is lost. The seeker of truth and freedom has to know the difference between relationships and relating. Never lose your freedom, and never
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destroy any else's freedom. A really religious person remains free, and he helps other people to be free.
It needs constant awareness and vigilance to be free, because our minds always want to cling. The mind wants to cling to the known, to the secure and to the familiar, because you are afraid of the unknown, the unfamiliar.
So on one hand you cling, and on the other hand you want freedom. We can only grow in freedom. When we choose freedom, our life will become a constant joy, a constant growth.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man is born as a seed, but most people die as seeds. They never find the right soil to grow and reach their potential. They never find a gardener. They take themselves for granted.
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They think that whatsoever they are that is the end, but this is not the end. It is only the beginning. But most people live in this way. They never search for their potential. They never become explorers of their inner world.
The seed can become a tree. The tree will dance in the wind, in the rain and in the sun. Birds will make their nest in it. People will rest underneath its shade. And when a tree has beauty, form, flowers and joy there is great contentment in the very being of the tree. It has fulfilled its mission from seed to become a tree.
The same experience happens to man when his seed becomes bliss. His seed has reached its potential, because bliss is the highest state of consciousness. He may live on the earth, but he is no more part of the earth. He belongs to the beyond. He may still be in the body, but he is no more the body. He is a buddha. He is pure awareness. Now he knows his immortality. Now he knows that he was never born and he will never die. Bodies come and go, but the
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innermost core remains. Knowing this all fear disappears. For the first time you start experiencing life at its highest level. At the deepest core of his being, there is only joy.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
The only way to know God is meditation. Meditation means a state of consciousness, where all thoughts have been dropped. The thoughts still remain there, but they are no more part of you. You have transcended them, and you are standing above them like a watcher on the hills. That is what meditation is.
Meditation is not against thought. Meditation is transcendence. Transcendence is going beyond thoughts. And these are the great moments of life, when love starts showering from the beyond and one becomes a beloved of God.
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But one has to earn it, one has to be worthy of it and one has to deserve it. That earning comes through meditation. Meditation prepares you to receive love. After beginning to meditate when I was 15 years old, and after conducting satsang for 10 years in Sweden, I began to meet God every day. I meet God in the wind, and in the silence of nature, which filled me with bliss. It gave me the feeling of being one with the whole.
God is always ready to give, but we are not ready to receive it. We are not open, silent and empty enough to receive it. We are so full of thoughts, desires, memories and dreams that there is no room within us. This room has to be created. That is the art of meditation. And then you will start dancing with God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Religions all over the world have for centuries been telling people to serve humanity, but this has not produced any effect, On the contrary, it has created hypocrites. People who are not blissful are unable to help anybody. You can only give light to others if you have the light in the first place.
What has been happening is that blind people lead other blind people. This is a dangerous game, because if the blind person knows that he has nobody guiding him, then he tries to be aware and find his own way. He remains aware, careful and cautious. But if he finds somebody to lead him and guide him, then he need not be so alert. But if he is completely unaware that the guide is also blind, then there is more danger than before, and he will not live cautiously. He will think that somebody is there to take responsibility, so now he need not be alert.
It is because of this situation - blind
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people leading other blind people - that the whole of humanity has almost become a
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madhouse. Life has almost become intolerable.
And the people that have taught service to humanity have only hindered the growth of people. People start serving others, without knowing whether they are capable of helping others. The desire to guide others is there in anybody, because it is very ego-gratifying. That is why everybody is ready to give advice whether you ask for it or not.
Only the people who are blissful can be helpers. Unless a man is conscious it is possible for him to guide anybody. One can help others only if one has first helped yourself. It begins from your very being, from your innermost core. There has been enough of the kind of help, which has done enough harm.
The first step is to help yourself. If you can attain to light, to bliss and to an experience of godliness, then you are bound to help others. Then there is no need to say something about it. It will happen by itself, because your bliss, love, silence, light and
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truth will start overflowing. And only the joyful person can be helpful, the miserable person can only do harm.
The most basic thing is to become blissful. You can only share what you have. A man who has learned to love himself will be able to love others. A man who has become blissful will be able to spread his bliss. One always gives whatsoever one has. One radiates it. It starts to radiate and to function on its own accord. It is a magic, which works on its own.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
We are all ancient people in the world. We have always been here and we will always be here. We existed before death and we will exist after death. Birth and death are small events in the eternal life. This insight
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happens only through meditation. If you remain identified with the body and the mind, then birth and death become the limits of your life. When you realize that you are not the body and the mind, you see that birth is not the beginning and death is not the end. You are beginning less, endless. This insight makes you realize the world of eternity. And the deepest thirst and longing of man is to become eternal, to go beyond death and become deathless. Meditation belongs beyond birth and death. The real seeker of truth always searches for the eternal, the deathless. The worldly and mundane people search for power, money, positions and possessions, which death will always take away from them.
Only meditation cannot be taken away from you. To find meditation is to have found the eternal, the deathless and the bottom of existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Meditation: A Love
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Man can exist in two ways. He can exist in time, where we ordinarily exist. To exist in time is bound to bring death. There is birth and there is death. Man can also exist in eternity, where there is no birth and no death.
Mind moves in time in sequence. Time is linear, and moves from point A to point B. Work is done by the mind which is why the universities, the schools and the colleges train your mind, because society needs skilled workers.
Eternity represents meditation. Meditation means to jump out of the mind. It means learning to be absolutely inactive and doing nothing for a few moments. You have only tosit silently, doing nothing, and everything goes on happening of its own accord. Meditation is not something that has to be done; it is something that has to be understood. If you understand meditation then that is enough. Then you can sit anywhere and fall into meditativeness. Meditation is not action, but a state of
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silence, a state of inaction where everything stops. Time stops, movement stops and you are in a total rest. And those are the moments when you know that you are immortal. You know that the body will die, but you are not going to die. Then all fears disappear, because all fears are rooted in death. And to be fearless is the most fundamental thing for living joyously. The fearful person cannot live joyously. He cannot love, because he is afraid. Meditation is learning to be adventurous, always ready to go into the unknown and always ready to explore that which is not known. He is always ready to take risks, because he knows that there is no death, so there is no fear. Then to live dangerously is playful.
This depends on one thing: that one has some experience of one's immortality. It depends on the experience that "I was never born and I will never die." This is possible through meditation.
A meditator has to learn to do only the
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essential in life and not waste one's life on doing the non-essentials. You need to learn what is important and meaningful in life. A meditator has to learn how to relax, how to rest and enjoy rest. And slowly one settles into one's inner being, into one's own center, and the moment you touch your center you touch eternity, timelessness. That is what meditation is: an exploration of eternity.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Bliss is the greatest blessing in life. Without knowing bliss one lives in vain. In fact, one does not live, but only survives. One simply vegetates. Life starts only when you start moving in the dimension beyond death. That is what meditation is: a ladder, a strategy, to go beyond death. And only a glimpse of the beyond is enough. Then you
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know that the body is going to die, but you are not going to die. You were here before birth, and you will be here after death. You are part of eternity. When you experience this, life becomes blissful. And in that blissfulness, one feels that God has blessed you. Then naturally gratitude arises. This gratitude is prayer, which is the highest state of love.
Then you become thankful to existence. You feel what gift has been given to you. It is a gift that God has given to you only out of his abundance.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Love is always great. Greatness is part of love. Vastness is the flavor of love. That is why our so-called love is not love, because it
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is too small. If love is too small, it is not love. Our love is too confined, too conditioned
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and too demanding. And then life becomes a desert. And one feels that there is no meaning, no joy, no growth, no poetry and no music in life. And all is futile and meaningless.
But we are responsible for the desert like and joyless existence. Without love, we become dry. With love, there is joy. With love, there is growth. Love can only be great. The problem is that we want something impossible: we want love, and we also want to protect our ego. The ego is small, and love is always great. They cannot exist together. It is against the law of existence. Either you choose the ego or you choose love. You cannot choose both. And in the conflict between ego and love most people choose the ego, because it is small and controllable. Then you feel safe and secure.
The vast sky of love is beautiful, but one feels afraid to go into such unknown territory. The ego can be controlled, but love cannot be controlled. With love you have to
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understand one thing: love is larger than you. Unless one
is ready to surrender to love in trust, one cannot know what love is. And without knowing love, one cannot know what life is either. And then all talk about God is mere talk. You don't know life and you don't know love, so how can you know God? God is the crescendo of life and love. God is the highest peak of life and love.
Meditation means to learn to go into the unknown. It means to go into the great, the vast. And this adventure creates the soul; The soul has to be earned. Business people have no soul, because they live a soulless and mundane existence. Meditation means being ready to always leave the unknown. This very search gives integrity.
Learn the art of great love. Those who have known love have known all. Those who have missed love have missed all.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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Meditation brings a revolution of our innermost being. As we go deeper into thesilence of our inner being, desires disappears. Desires exists only on the surface of our consciousness. They are like waves existing on the surface of our consciousness. When you dive deeper into the ocean of our consciousness there are no waves. Then you can come back to the surface of our consciousness, but you cannot lose contact with the center of our inner being. Then you can remain in the world, in the marketplace, and yet remain in tremendous silence. One can be in the crowd, and yet be absolutely alone. One can act with love, silence, joy, truth, freedom andcreativity, but without any tension. This is the most fundamental thing for a meditator to be in the world, and yet to not be of it. It is to be in the world, but not allow the world to be in you. Then the whole world becomes a stage, and all relationships become a great drama. Then the meditator becomes the center of the cyclone.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
As modern civilization develops, love disappears. Love has disappeared from society. Love is the only quality that man goes on missing. The basic structure of civilization that we have chosen is anti-love. The reason for that is that civilization is basically head-oriented. Civilization ignores the heart. The head is very efficient, but it is a mechanism. And a man who only lives in the head becomes an efficient robot. Then man becomes very useful for society, but for himself he becomes a mechanical machine. Only a man of love lives a joyful and meaningful life. Love is what makes life meaningful. Love is what creates meaning in life. Only a man of love develops a soul. A man of love lives a natural life. He becomes close to the earth, to the rocks, to the animals, to the rivers, to the people and to the whole ecology. A man of love is at
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home in the universe. Love is what makes us feel at home in life.
Man has to become capable of living naturally, lovingly, and yet be able to use the mind. He should live in the heart, and the mind should be used when needed. A totally new kind of civilization is needed: a heart-oriented civilization. If man is going to survive, if life is going to exist on earth, this new civilization is urgently needed. The old man has failed, so the new man is needed. Man has failed, because his heart is missing. Man is in a state of heart failure, where only love can save him - otherwise there is no hope for man.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man can only discover truth through meditation. Truth is not something that the mind can know. Mind can theories about
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truth, but mind can never discover the truth. The nature of the mind is not to reach the inner being, the center of consciousness. The mind exists on the circumference of our consciousness. The mind is needed to communicate and relate with others. Truth is your very being. Truth only happens when you fall into deep silence. Truth happens when you forget the whole world. Truth happens when the other is completely forgotten. In these moments of silence and aloneness truth is revealed. It is not a conclusion of the mind, but a revelation of no-mind.
Meditation simply means turning in. Mind is always turning out. Mind is basically extroversion. Mind is a beautiful instrument. You can use the mind, but do not allow the mind to use you. Remember that the real truth is at the center.
At the center there is only consciousness, no thought, and no desires. All the faculties of the mind stop functioning, and you are simply aware, alert and watchful. You simply
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are. In that state you are truth. And once it is experienced, it starts changing your whole life.
If you know your truth, you cannot be untrue in any way. Even to be untrue to others becomes impossible. The joy of being truthful is such that who would like to fall into the darkness of being untrue. The lying person becomes a problem to himself and to others.
Truth brings many gifts, but one has to open the door of meditation. Nobody can give you the truth. Truth is already given to you from God himself, Truth is not something that has to be found. Truth is already within you. Meditation means a decision to find your truth. It is a commitment that from this moment my life will be devoted to finding my truth, The truth is not very far away. It needs only one step: it is the step from mind to no-mind.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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What is religion? Religion is to be in tune with the whole. Religion is to be in love with the whole. Religion is to be together with the whole. Religion means to listen to our own authentic being. Religion means to listen to the silent voice within ourselves, which will always lead us right.
Religion means to realize that God is already available to you, both from the inside and from the outside. Religion means to realize that we are already one with God. Religion means the understanding and awareness that makes your doors open and allow God to enter in.
The purpose of religion is to dissolve in silence. When you lose yourself for the first time you are yourself. When the ego disappears, we become aware, joyous and spontaneous. We become a vehicle, an instrument for the whole.
The three dimensions of existence, the three faces of God, are life, love and light. The first dimension is just the beginning of a great journey, a great pilgrimage. Those who think
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that life is the end miss the whole point of life. The majority of people take life as the end. What happens then is that people become greedy for life. Their life becomes full of greed, possessiveness and violence. Life should not be taken for granted. The people that take life for granted are the worldly people and these are the people who have made the world ugly and violent. These are the mundane and mediocre people. They become politicians, hoarders and exploiters. Their whole existence seems to be directed towards one thing: survival. Life lived without love and light is only one-dimensional. Love means introducing a new dimension into your life, which is the dimension of the heart. Love means to introduce joy and delight in your being. Now you don't live only on the one-dimensional horizontal plane. Now you live in two dimensions: life and love. Your life becomes rich.
Only by going through the fire of love, one becomes a heart. It is the fire of love
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that creates the soul. Not having a heart is what makes life meaningless, but millions of people live without a heart. The heart is the spiritual center of our being. It is only the heart that can bring joy to our life. Never be afraid of love because it is love that will bring you closer to your heart. And it is the heart that can open the doors to God. God can enter only through the heart. God is hidden in our own heart. God is within ourselves, but we seek him outside of ourselves. We seek him in the churches, the temples and the mosques, and we go on missing him. God is not in the scriptures either. God emerges out of your heart. Love people, love trees and love animals. Never miss an opportunity to love. The more you love, the closer you come to God. Love is the bridge to God. How do love and meditation relate to each other? How do relationships and aloneness relate to each other? How do God meet you in different forms in the outside world, and how do God meet in you in the inside world as your
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own self? In the outside world, in love and relationships, God is meeting you in many different forms. In the inside world, in meditation and aloneness, God is meeting you as your own self.
Balance is needed. Love and meditation and relationships and aloneness are a balance between the inner and outer world. Love and meditation, the inner and the outer world. Love and meditation and the inner and outer world is needed to create a balance. Together these two poles create a wholeness; together they will heal you. Make these two poles part of meditation, so that love and relationships are good to create wholeness.
And in the outside world, God is meeting you in many different forms. And when you feel the need again to be alone, God is meeting you as your own self. God is everywhere, so there is no need to choose. There is also a third dimension: light. Light means introducing meditation in your life. It means.
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― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Love makes man an ocean, an infinity. Love gives a kind of unboundedness. It helps you know that you are not defined by any limits. It helps you to know that you are not confined by the mind and the body. It helps you to know that you are as vast as the sky. The beauty of love is that it makes you aware of your vastness. That is the first experience of godliness. Love as much as you can. Love as many people as possible. Love not only people, but animals, birds, trees, rocks and stars. Become loving, so whatsoever you do, it should have the flavor of love. Whatsoever you touch it should have the touch of love. Whatsoever you say, you should say it with love. In the beginning it is hard, but make it a meditation. Meditation is an experience of
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love. Love brings you to the oceanic, to the vast. Then the door to the temple opens, and you enter the real temple, where you will find the real God.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Love means surrender of the ego. Love means to drop the idea that we are separate from existence. We are rooted in existence. We are one with existence. We live through it, and it lives through us. We are independent. You cannot exist without the whole, and the whole cannot exist without us. Existence needs you in some way. You are fulfilling a certain need for existence. The smallest blade of grass is needed as the greatest star. There is no hierarchy in existence. Nobody is lower and nobody is higher. All is needed, because existence means the togetherness of all. We all
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contribute something to existence. And existence goes on giving to us everything that we need.
Once this interdependence is understood our life starts having a new kind of joy, beauty and grace. Then there are no problems. Problems are created by the ego, because the ego is a separation from the whole. The ego lives in fear, because it is separated from the whole.
The moment the ego is dropped nothing goes wrong, because all is perfect right as it is. That is exactly the meaning of God - that all is good as it is.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Wisdom comes from the innermost depth of your being, not the intellect. Our intuition is the inner teacher, the inner guide, the inner
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master. The old Indian scriptures say that the outer spiritual teacher is helpful to find your own intuition, your own inner teacher, your truth. Intuition is to create a trust in yourself and in your intuition, your inner guide, the inner master. Intuition is to learn to listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. You have to be silent, quiet, so you can listen to the still small voice within you, and then follow it. Wherever it leads, it is good. Go in deep trust, following your own voice. The more you come in contact with the inner silence, the inner emptiness, the more you have access to your intuition. Silence is the nourishment for intuition. If something increases your love, joy and silence, it is the criterion that it is the right path for you. If something decreases your love, joy and silence, it is a sign that you are on the wrong path. Do not compare yourself with others when it comes to making a decision about what you should do, follow the love, joy and silence of your heart and inner being. When
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you are in contact with your inner silence, you just know what you should do -you do not have to think about it, and you do not need to compare the pros and cons – you just know. You can listen to the advice of others, but always listen to your intuition, to your inner teacher and guide in life, when you take the final decision. The intuition, the language of silence, will always lead you right.
In 1982, I was directed by the Divine presence in a trance session with the American trance chancellor Lin David Martin: “You have listened to your intuition, to your true inner voice, more than most. You have been searching for the contact with the Spirit for a long time and now it is beginning to manifest on the outer plane. You have been gifted many times in previous embodiments and now everything will come rather easy for you. I want you to put your energy into the lives of others, because you can. Intuition means something that arises from within the inner being. Intuition is the
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voice of being and consciousness. It is your potential, which is why it is called intuition. Unless you have your intuition, unless you have your own wisdom, your own vision, your own clarity, your own eyes to see, you will not be able to understand the mystery of existence. To give meaning to your life, to your heart, existence has given intuition to your heart. Out of intuition arises the possibilities of art, of love, of friendship-intuition will lead you to wisdom, to enlightenment. Then your life is a life of immense light, joy and serenity. Intuition is the language of silence, the Existential language. The word “in-tuition” means to listen within yourself. Intuition is the silent voice within, which is already in contact with the Existence. Intuition is the voice of God. Intuition is to create a trust in yourself and in your intuition, your inner guide, the inner master. Intuition is to learn to listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. You have to be silent, quiet, so you can listen to the still small
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voice within you, and then follow it. Wherever it leads, it is good. Go in deep trust, following your own voice. Intuition means something that arises from within the inner being. Intuition is the voice of being and consciousness. It is your potential, which is why it is called intuition. Unless you have your intuition, unless you have your own wisdom, your own vision, your own clarity, your own eyes to see, you will not be able to understand the mystery of existence. To give meaning to your life, to your heart, existence has given intuition to your heart. Out of intuition arises the possibilities of art, of love, of friendship – intuition will lead you to wisdom, to enlightenment. Then your life is a life of immense light, joy and serenity.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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A man without love is like a plastic rose. A man becomes a human being only when he is in contact with his heart. With love man is no more an animal. Otherwise man is just like other animals except that he has a bigger and efficient mind. That difference is quantitative, it is not a qualitative difference. The real difference is only when there is a difference of quality. And love is the only quality that brings a new quality to you. Out of one-hundred men, ninety-nine do not even know what love is. It is the rare individuals who come to know what love is. The real man requires two things: love and meditation. If a man can love he is bound to find the way to meditation, because love gives you certain glimpses of meditation. Love makes you silent. When two people who really love each other meet, they have nothing to say. They may hold hands and sit silent together. Love gives glimpses of meditation. Love is a natural jumping board for meditation.
So begin with love, and love as deeply as possible. Love as many people as
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possible,because each person is a unique experience. And love not only people, love animals also because they have a different plane of existence, a different level of consciousness. In this way your life will become more and more enriched. It will produce the perfume of love. And that perfume will start moving into meditation naturally.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Man cannot get out of misery unless he realizes that something in him is deathless. Death is the basic cause of all fears. People are afraid of love, because when they go deep into love they suddenly experience themselves to be close to death. Only meditation can help, because only meditation can make you aware that you are deathless.
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Even if you want to die, you cannot because there is no way to die. You existed before birth and you will remain to exist after death. Birth is only entering a certain body, and death is leaving that certain body - but you are eternal.
To experience this eternity, this deathlessness, becomes the foundation for a totally new life. It creates the foundation for a new life style of fearlessness without misery. A person starts living in joy if only one experience becomes possible: deathlessness.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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The truth is one. Truth is neither mine nor yours. Truth does not belong to anybody. Truth does not belong to any religion, to any ideology, to any country or to any time. Truth is within. Truth is eternal.
Truth is the center of the whole existence. Truth is always in our center and everyone's center. We are different on the
circumference of our consciousness, but we are all joined at the center of our consciousness.
When we start moving toward our center, first the personality is lost. The personality is a cultivated and conditioned thing. When the personality disappears, individuality appears. Individuality means that we are in contact with our inner being, our authentic self. When you go deeper into the center even the individuality disappears, and you become universal.
The man who has attained to truth lives only to liberate people. His whole life is nothing but a sharing of his joy and freedom. As long as he lives he lives for all.
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He has reached the ultimate height of joy, silence, truth, freedom and godliness. He has inherited the whole existence.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
God comes like a breeze. You cannot see it, but you can feel it. And you can be immensely enriched and nourished by it. If somebody is open to you, they will also feel your bliss. God cannot be believed in, and those who believed in God are deceiving themselves. A real trust in God is not a belief, it is an insight and experience. God has to be experienced. When you do not have an experience, you are open to experience. In that freedom something can transpire. In that silence and emptiness, you are open for something from the beyond to transpire like a breeze. You cannot see it, but you will feel it. It has a freshness to it. You will feel
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the fragrance, and it will transform you. Then God is a certainty to you. Then only God exists.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
The two qualities courage and being blissful prepare the ground for God to descend in you. You have to be courageous, because God is the unknown. And whatsoever you have been taught about God is sheer nonsense. When you really come to know God, you will be utterly surprised. There is no way to describe the experience. God remains indefinable and inexpressible. The experience of God is so inexpressible that even those who have experienced God cannot express their experience to somebody else.
The word "mystic" describes one who has come across such a truth that he can only say
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that it is an unexplainable mystery. One needs enough courage to explore the unknown.
And one needs to be blissful enough for God to enter in your being. Unless you are blissful you are not ready for God. God cannot happen to people, who are sad and miserable. God is a song, a dance, a consciousness. Misery makes people shrink and become closed, and bliss makes people open and available - and God needs all the space. Then only can the ultimate sky enter you. You have to become spacious enough to become as vast as the sky.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
Life is to be lived, loved and experienced, because it is only at the innermost core that you will feel the presence of God. When you live, love and experience life, you come close
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to the creative energy of existence. You have to be creative yourself. That is the only way to start participating in God's creation. It is only through mediation that you become a servant of God, the divine. The moment you know the godliness of existence you naturally become a servant of God. It is not something imposed on you from the outside. It comes out of your love for existence and from your wish to make the world more beautiful.
― Swami Dhyan Giten, The Way of the
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