
These are the features of being sincere
- Give up desires of the senses. This includes food , alcohol and sex.
- No matter what kind of difficulties you face , not to be upset – tolerance
- Sincerity. Here sincerity means not to lie to yourself. Meaning believing you have made progress when in reality you still crave things And people in the world
- Compassions. The true word is karuna. It is not pity or sadness. But a manifestation of love
- Satisfied with what you have and don’t have. Meaning the craving for money is gone.
- Truthfulness. God is the Only truth. The body and world are pits that take us away from truth
Now are you sincere?
Life is full of challenges
This is not a fairy tale where e we can say – they lived happily ever after. It is rough and at times even worse than rough
Everyone suffers. No matter who. You may see the richest person or the popular Hollywood stars – they all suffer
We have two types of suffering
- Suffering from not having basic needs
- Suffering from vanity. ( such as loss of fame, not being invited, )
Again suffering is of three additional types
- Physical
- Of the mind and emotions
- Spiritual pain
Spiritual pain is quite rough – where a person wants to believe in karma, in justice, equality, where we want to so eagerly go within but unable to do so, we feel forsaken etc ( but that is not true)
But all pains are bad
The practice of yoga can help all 3 but primarily the 2 and 3. But one cannot practice without a Guru. So much subtleties that you must pass through. Each one has a slightly different need and guidance
Remember much of our pain is from desires and wants. It is bound to occur. Our desires are often left unfulfilled due many lives. And when it comes, it’s a hollow victory
Many times I advise , guide. But few grasp it. The ego of the disciple leads them to failure.
Even if you are right, listening to the Guru in silence gives great success. In time you will understand the wisdom of the Guru and why he said things
My heart is out to all. How much I would love to see the suffering end.
Wake up from this nightmare of an existence and experience the divine consciousness
This life is a master novel, written by God, and man would go crazy if he tried to understand it by reason alone. That is why I tell you to meditate more. Enlarge the magic cup of your intuition and then you will be able to hold the ocean of infinite wisdom.
Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda
So there you have the answer. But strangely enough we never ask why me to the same event when good things happen to us unexpectedly. Tricky selfish polarized mind. It hurts us. Conquer it
The mind is very impressionable. Once a wrong concept goes in your mind, it takes a lot of work to get rid of it
In the name of spirituality , you think all books are ok to read and everyone is good to listen to – that is not true
From my perspective – all the books on witness attitude are Wrong. They have not grasped an iota of truth.
Now since you cannot go to the true witness attitude – which is God – you will think that human ego watching the body eat food and enjoy sex and taking walking is witness attitude. Utter foolishness
In my college group I see many people talk about this insane witness attitude. How can thinking or witnessing the physical world lead to super consciousness ? It can’t
Those who live in the physical world. Only know the physical world
Those who are spiritually minded live in pure consciousness – and They being a witness to entire universe are aware of things remotely Now that is beginning of witness. True self which knows much more than the ego generated thinking !
Back to my point. Be careful of what you hear or read. Some people from my guru bandhu group started promoting Vishnu sahastra and other puja. Yoga progress is not about rites or ceremony. It is about going within. But yet hearing the wrong thing repeatedly, many foolish people have given up mediation or waste time in those things – all because of ignorant advise.
Once those wrong thoughts take a hold Of you, you cannot escape. You will get angry or even violent if someone suggests otherwise.
I had emotions of frustration when I saw things being not followed in the right way. Now I enjoy people making errors. It has nothing to do with me. Just a play. Whatever you believe in and Want to follow, the good lord lets you pursue it God will correct you if you have a true interest in him But most people lack genuine interest. They want to her worship others.
A true Saint will not tell you much about his experience. He does not want you to cling to him or be your guru ever. Nor does he want you to follow his advise based on miracles. Or stories of miracles
The biggest example that they leave is of forgiveness. Or love. Caring. Or being generous. Something. In their presence you feel the divine. But they will make you forget it also when they are away.
It has to be your choice. Uninfluenced.
So be careful of what you read. Shankaracharya and other great shastras forbade their disciples from reading other books. It was for this reason. This is now the age of reading anything
If you want to do that, just be careful.
Elsewhere in my blogs I have tried how to recognize a true Saint. Look it up. Again.
So today is the beginning of Chaitri Navratri.
India has a cultural new year which is after Diwali and usually falls in the month of October / November
The other new year, is the Hindu new year. This new year is celebrated all over, but more so in Maharashtra
Now the Significance of the day and 9 days are around Durga.
This is the story. It is a deep story giving guidance for spiritual progress. I will only give the story.
The Devas were very much troubled by an Asura called Mahishasur. Mahisha means buffalo. (The word is mahisha and not Mahesha which means shiv)
Now this demon had the gift that it could only be destroyed by a female and not a male.
The second problem was he could change into any form or shape
The other problem was even worse. Every time he was injured, from every drop of his blood that fell on the ground another asura (demon) would arise, just as powerful as he was. Obviously, in a battlefield this became an unsurmountable problem
So all the devas got together and prayed to Brahma, vishnu and mahesh. Each of the Gods, gave a portion of their energy and created Durga
She immediately went to battle and started fighting Mahishasur. Obviously Mahishasur was injured and as soon as he was injured Durga suck the blood not letting a drop fall down! Thus in no time Mahishasur was killed. Previously the devas fought years on without success
Now Goddess Durga is worshipped by 9 different names. They are
Sailaputri, Brahmacharini, Chandraghanta, Kushmanda, Skanda Mata, Katyayani, Kalaratri, Maha Gowri and Siddhidayini.
The 9 days of Navratri, she is worshipped in different ways
- Day one – Sailaputri (daughter of shaila meaning mountain – Parvati. On this day, people to Ghatasthapana and Chandra Darshan
- Day two – She is worshipped as Brahmacharini – (one who does not consummate or engrossed in Brahma. Dual meaning).
- Day three – She is worshipped as Chandraghanta and Saubhagya is its significance
- Day four -On this day they do Kush puja. The correct word is kushmanda. Meaning kush is cannabis and mundana means to enjoy.
- Day 5 – laxmi puja. Also this day is celebrated as skandamata puja. Skanda refers to Kartik swami and mata is mother. Thus another name of Parvati
- Day 6 – Katyayani Puja. Katyayani means removing rigidity. (The stubbornness )
- Day 7 – Kalratri puja – Kaal meaning death or night or darkness
- Day 8 – Sandhi puja or Annapurna Puja
- Day 9 – Ramnavmi puja
As you can see, I have run out of space to give the spiritual meaning. However they are all representative of the steps to perfection in Meditation
Like usual, the meaning I have given remain ambiguous since it will not help unless you are adept at meditation.
An image of Durga Ma. Bottom shows Mahishasura being slayed
Link to Original Document
This word refers to ignorance. What is the cardinal ignorance? You can say that the cardinal ignorance or more appropriately, lack of knowledge is that of God or your self. That is why so many religions and so many opinions. Everyone of them has zero experience of God or self or so miniscule that they preach foolishness.
I am not referring to the ignorance that people talk about in the world. So I am not referring to ignorance of not knowing how to treat a disease or how to solve world political matters or not knowing how to sing.
Those are trivial compared to the cardinal ignorance above
So there are two types of cardinal ignorance or Agyan
Boddha or baudha agyan
Purusha Agyan
Baudha Agyan is is the first thing that we have to get rid off. What is that? That is the agyan or ignorance of not even knowing which are the accurate scriptures and what is the correct method to get back to God. Countless people have spent many lifetimes trying to figure this out. The Christians believe Jesus is the son of God and he is the only way back to God. It says so in the Bible. The Islamic faith believes Mohammed Paigamber was the last prophet. The Vaishnavs believe Krishna is the Supreme Godhead and ISKCON is a classical example of the same. Judaism believes in the Torah, a book which was there before the creation. Swaminarayans believe that Swaminarayan is the highest and they show a video depicting all the layers with Swaminarayan at the highest. They build temples weigh Pramukh swami in Gold and use the fortune to build temples.
I mean no disrespect to any. So the question is who is right and who will you and who should you follow. Every person is very adamant about what they believe in. Sadly they can be entirely wrong but they will stick to it. Do you see why the first step is getting rid of the Baudha Agyan. Which in other words, is picking the right and correct understanding and experience.
So I have my own thinking. I maybe right. I most certainly think I am right. What do I think? Not so fast. Why do you care? You should not even care. This is the right time to leave. What will happen, if you are insecure in your knowledge, you will want to know and then say…no…and go about your usual way. If you are secure in your knowledge..you will read what I have to say, just to justify your anger and throw a debate. Please dont. Just depart. I have no desire to justify or prove. If you think I am stupid and wrong, I accept it. Just let me dwell exactly as I am. I am quite content actually. If you think I am right, then why are you wasting time..reading my blogs? That is so foolish. Look for someone who can awaken and give you the power to be like I am.
After all this, the highest shastras, are the Agamas and trikka. You will not find them easily on the net. And what you will find is wrongly translated in many many places. Why wrong? Because it was translated by those without any experience.
In Hinduism, they say Ganesh loves the laddu. Now if you followed the Agamas, you would know the deeper meaning and say wow. If you do not understand it even though you read it, you will assume, Ganesh as a God, who has preferences for Food. Do you see where i come from? Just because you read something, your interpretation can be very very wrong.
So, sadly…..the billions upon billions people will be stuck in their wrong way and path. And false understanding. They will dance, jump, shout out loud the name of God. I wish I could tell them, God is not deaf. He can hear the walk of an ant, and the sound of every leaf dancing in the wind. No reason to perform antiques.
Best wishes. Like I said, I have my own thoughts. I knew I was crazy. Now you have your proof about it. Hopefully, you will come to your senses and stop reading what I write.
Link to Original Document
Thursday is Maha Shiv ratri. March 11 2020
It falls on the night before New moon in the month of Magha
There are many stories on the story behind it. I have written it elsewhere and you can easily do a search on it on the web.
In Sanskrit – maha means great, shiv refers to Shankar bhagwan and ratri means night
So what are you supposed to do?
On that particular day, you eat light. Eating fruits and potatoes, yam. When night comes, you go to your meditation chamber and meditate. This is one of the days, by history, Shankar appeared in person, with minimal effort. Well, if it worked in the past, why would it not work now?
So, on a cosmic level, all Indian holidays are based on lunar months and those days are more favorable days for meditation. Does it really matter? Of course it does. We are constantly contending with outside forces and we battle go within – during meditation. We battle to silence our mind also. Those outside forces accounts for the 4 Yugas as described in Hinduism – Sat yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapar Yuga and Kali yuga. As it so happens besides those major cycles calculated in thousands of years, there is a smaller cycle based on 1 year and even a smaller cycle based on the day.
The Rishis of ancient India had perfect vision and gave all this information to the people. They saw the cycles in meditation. They did not look at the outside stars or use a telescope.
So based on their infinite vision, they came up with Maha Shivratri, one of the best days for getting the blessings of Shiv
So who is Shankar bhagwan? I have talked about it elsewhere. Both Ram and Krishna worshipped Shiv. All ancient Rishis worshipped Shiv. There is no exception. One of the signs of awakening of Shakti is a sudden love for Shiv.

As such Shankar is described as follows. He wears no clothes ( Digambar ). His wife is Parvati. Also known as Annapurna. He has a snake around his neck. He has a trident. His two sons are both God – Ganesh and Kartik (Skanda). His best friend is Kuber – the gatekeeper for money. He left Parvati and went straight to the Himalayas. In spite of all these great people around him, it is said in the rare occasion he wants to eat, he begs for food. He covers his body with ashes. When the world is getting destroyed he dances and that dance is called Tandav. Shakti also dances and that dance is Lapasya.
All Yoga and all meditation starts from him. In all there are 84,000 ways. All meditations are from him…and directly or indirectly, all meditations and results go back to him.
He is the easiest person to please. All you need is purity
A true Guru is the same as him. Such Gurus are very rare.
There is a story of Shankar. Once the Devs and Danavs ( demi Gods and demons ) had a joint project. It is called Samudra manthan. Sage Durvasa gave a very special garland to Indra, the king of the demi Gods. Indra, not knowing the worth of the Garland put it on his elephant named Airavat. Bees came about and started humming and harassing the elephant. Airavat threw the garland away. Sage Durvasa got angry and told Indra, he will be bereft of all strength from there on. After all the garland was a special power of Shakti (Shree). The danavs came and invaded the heavens. And under the guidance of Bali, the heavens collapsed to the danav. Indra went to VIshnu and asked for guidance. He said, pretend to be friends with the Danav and get the nectar of immortality from the oceans.

So they embarked on Samudra manthan. So they use a huge mountain called mandara and immerse it in the middle of the ocean of milk. Then they take the snake Vasuki, which is around Shankar and use it as a rope and they start churning the ocean. The first thing that came out was poison, a terrible poison called halahal. Now the rule was anything that came out, had to be used. No one was willing to drink it…and the poison started to infiltrate the world. Shankar appeared and gladly drank the poison. When he swallowed it, his throat immediately became blue in color. After that he was known as Neelkanth. Kanth means throat, and neel means blue.
Later from the Samudra Manthan – churning of the ocean of milk, they had the nectar of immortality came out. This was meant for the devas and of course the danav should not drink the immortality. So the danav were mislead by Vishnu. Vishnu took the form of Mohini and the danav blindly followed Mohini and at that time, the devas drank the nectar. One Asura or danav named svarbhanu did not follow Mohini and stood in the line of the Dev and drank the nectar. As soon as he was discovered, Mohini (VIshnu) cut his head off with his Sudarshan chakra. But since had already tasted the nectar, his head and body became immortal and are known as Rahu and Ketu. They are the eclipses that occur on earth (Sun and moon) and torment people even now
The other things that came from the Samudra manthan were divided in many ways
They say there were 14 such gems that came out.
Vishnu married lakshmi, the goddess of Wealth. She herself is wealth. He also got kaustubha and the divine bow called Sharanga. VIshnu Bhagwan also got the shankha or divine concha.
Kamdhenu – the divine cow was taken by Brahma and later Sage Vasistha.
Airavata the elephant and Parijata was taken by Indra.
The Uchaishrawavas is a 7 headed horse was taken by the Guru of the danav or asur, named Bali
The divine vaida named Dhanvantari became the dr for the devas.
Shiv got the half moon and that moon adorns his head.
The moral – when we meditate we will meditate with good thoughts and bad thoughts together. If you continue, the divine nectar will appear and that will strengthen the good thoughts and bad thoughts eventually perish. However at times, our good thoughts will get eclipsed by Rahu and Ketu.
Now there is a very detailed interpretation of all the jewels and moon etc that appears. However, it is beyond the scope for this public domain web page.
Link to Original Document
Humans have a funny attitude. About life. Their problems. Their hardship. And about other people and their success
Let’s take a situation of getting married. We get married. Or live together. Except for the legal situation, it is the same. Now when you get married – either arranged marriage if you are from India, semi arranged or you date and fall in love, you have decided to spend your life Together. Unless you are in it just for the money. But want to spend life together means, you are accepting to live with all the flaws of the other person ! After a while, the flaws of the other person will get on your nerves. You who get irritated and later it may cause anger and intolerability and you just can’t cope with it. But whose fault is it? Is it the other persons fault? It is your fault. You consciously accepted and thought that you are strong, incredible and can deal With the faults. Or conveniently blinded yourself to it! The whole problem occurred because you wanted to marry. Or you saw others getting married
Ultimately it was your karma
Or you marry and have kids. Accidentally or knowingly. And the kids are not respectful or loving to you. However, still that is the variable factor of life. You see the difficult family lives of some people. You just did not stop to think it could be you.
Ultimately it is your karma
Now yes there are some people who have good spouses and kids. But they have they own set of other things in life that did not go well
Or you chose not to marry. That is also a karma. And in your imagination you think it would be wonderful. But Uncle Sam will have you pay more taxes. You may not have someone to take you to drs and you will be very lonely at that time. And there are other things that may happen in subsequent lives
Ultimately it was your karma
You can think of many situations. You don’t study and have financial issues later You study but don’t do well. It could be your past karma haunting you.
Thus the end result is all from your karma. So why not do good karma? So what is good karma? Helping those in pain. Financial charity. Giving food Serving others. Meditation so you can destroy your ego. Not complaining when life goes wrong. Being tolerant to others.
What about the karma of talking? That is just as bad. It is said that entire war of Mahabharata occurred because Draipadi said, a son of a blind person will be blind and laughed! It happen when there was the inaugural of Indraprastha, the new Capitol of Pandavas and the palace was built by Mayajal. It was illusory palace where water looked like floor and floor looked like water
The other karma I did not talk about is karma of thoughts. If you keep things evil or bad thoughts of others – hoping or wishing bad on others, eventually the same bad thing will occur to you ! Many times the bad in our life comes from our own wrong thoughts
Thus there are 3 karmas. Karma from body, speech and thoughts. There is a great prayer of forgiveness
From Mukundamala:
कायेन वाचा मनसेन्द्रियैर्वा ।
बुद्ध्यात्मना वा प्रकृतिस्वभावात् ।
करोमि यद्यत्सकलं परस्मै ।
नारायणयेति समर्पयामि ॥
It means God forgive me for all my errors from the body, speech, mind, from my senses, intellect, or from habits. I surrender my self with all my above actions to you Narayana ( Vishnu )
And eventually you suddenly realize . I was there architect of this mess. You were the architect even of the devil. It was your mind that was the devil. It just close to blame others!

A human life is rare? Human population is 7 billion
Insect population – 10 quintillion
Fish – 3.5 trillion
Bacteria 5 million trillion trillion
Human life is relatively rare.
This brings the question of rebirth – some may agree. However, many will not be able to believe in rebirth as an animal
The only way to know for sure is by deep mediation. Or having faith in the words of shastra or enlightened people like Yogananda.
Since your own mediation is extremely weak – meaning you have not experienced yourself as pure consciousness without any body ( gross or subtle or causal) – you cannot grasp or accept.
With trillion of people on earth hardly less than 100 have true strong desire for that divine experience. We may think we have that desire – but it is contaminated with other desires of food, sex, money, fame
True desire for that experience includes a strong desire of that experience alone
Those who have that kind of desire that will certainly find a Guru. Such Guru are rare. It will be difficult to hold on to such a Guru though. Your mind will betray you with doubts.
I have written a lot but hardly one has understood. Or asked for more. Few ask where can I find such a Guru
What a tragedy !
It’s already too late to ask
Banat, Banat, Ban jaay
Those are famous words from Lahiri Mahasaya
He says spiritual progress is like – almost there, almost there and done!
One has to keep trying.
Tirelessly
The Mind May cooperate for a few days and then suddenly – stops cooperating. Becomes Stubborn. Indolent. Does not want to meditate. Will not go within. Or might just chatter away.
Another common enemy is music. The mind keeps humming a music tune. Irritating. You just can’t stop it
And During such times , the only thing we can do is persists
Because success is Sudden. All the ignorance in the self knowledge suddenly disappears
Ramana maharshi said

Why or how is that? It’s simple. You either identify with your true self or you identify with nature (.Mind or body or ego)
There are though 7 steps of sort
Initially you just read such things and contemplate on it. In the third step you, you learn to meditate. The first three steps are simultaneous.
That’s when you learn the obstacles or self created problems that has kept a Veil. Our habits. Our desires. Our ego. Our vanity. Our love for the body ( our and love for others body).
They all last till you reach the stage of sattwapatti
Anyway suddenly all the millions of years of ignorance, habits formed since you were like a rock disappear
And you laugh You realize you played a game of hide and seek.
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