Developing Bhakti

Today Sri Swami Vishwananda wants to share with you the following message: The more you feel Him, the more you become part of Him. Like it is said also in the Gita, “When one chants the name of God, the Lord takes full possession of the person. The more the person looses oneself, the more he looses the Ego, the pride, the more the person will realise the Divine. But the more one hangs on the pride, the more one hangs on the identity, less it will be there real happiness to be found. So the easiest way that the Lord has given is to sing His glory. Any Divine Names just sing it. And when you sing, let yourself, be drawn into it. Not just try to think with the mind. Especially in the West we like to use the mind a lot, we like to understand thing, with our mind. But our mind has a limit. Does the mind understand the heart? It will never understand. The mind will understand things only, when there is a limit to it. When there is a wall that you can bang yourself, on it, the mind will understand. And then of course you will complain about it, it hurts.
Whereas when you centre yourself in your heart, and awaken this Divine Consciousness, you will always flow. No matter what, you will enter Divine Ecstasy, you will feel different energy flowing through you, where the mind can’t understand it and then the mind will cry, “I want to understand it, but I can’t”. Then the power of the mind decreases; the power of the heart increases. And it’s so simple that what the Lord has send you here to realise. To develop Bhakti and get self-realised.

Story of the shoe maker

Once in a town, there was a shoe maker. He would make his shoes while chanting God’s name. And whenever he would go to sell his shoes in the market, he would tell everybody, “Look, by God’s Grace, I bought the leather for one Euro. I bought the nails for a few cents and all together the shoes cost five Euros. I will make a profit of two Euros, by God’s Grace.” He was very sincere. And with everything that he did, his mind was always centred on God. He accepted everything as God’s Grace. The people around him saw this innocence and this love he had for God and they would buy the shoes without any bargaining.

So it happened one night, he could not sleep. While he was sitting in his courtyard, a group of robbers came by, and they kidnapped him. They then went to rob another house. When the owner of this house heard noises, the thieves ran away and left the shoe maker behind with all the jewellery they had robbed. The homeowner saw this innocent shoe maker with all of his belongings and said, “It’s impossible!” But since the shoe maker had all the jewellery on him, the homeowner had doubts in his mind, and said, “Let me call the police.”

The police came and put the shoemaker in prison. The next day he was brought in front of the judge, there the shoemaker said, “By the Grace of God yesterday night I could not sleep. By the Grace of God I was sitting outside of my house. And by the Grace of God some robbers came and kidnapped me. By the Grace of God this man found me. By the Grace of God he thought that I came to steal from him. And by the Grace of God I am here.”Seeing the innocence in the shoe maker, the judge said, “This man is not the one who stole, he has spoken the truth.” While coming out of the court, the shoemaker said to his friend, “It is by the Grace of God that I was freed.” This shows that very often we take everything for granted. We forget that behind all our actions, behind all that is happening is God’s Grace. If we start seeing it in this way, we’ll be happy and we will find peace in everything. Even the worst of things that might come in one’s life, we will see it in a different way.

Diving deep in your heart

We all are here because of our spiritual path, of our spiritual way, this way to the heart, this way to realization – God realization. Most of you probably know that the main aim of this life is to know thyself, to realize in completeness who we are in reality. In this search many travel everywhere, to India, you travel to America, everywhere around the world. But all the search outside have a limit. You are on a search, the search bring us to different places. We will meet different people, but still we are uncomplete. You say God have left heaven to realize it here. Whatever I’m doing I’m bringing for Thee, whereever I go just I’m looking for Thee. But all my search towards the outside is of no use. Until at the end you will realize that God is always with you – deep in the heart. God is always with you. It’s like in the ocean you have lot of precious treasures, and to get it you have to dive into the ocean, go deep inside. So God linked deep inside the heart of man. With your mind you have to dive deep within your heart. (...)
See, when you love others you see the goodness in others, but when the point comes to love oneself, you see all your negativity. You should stop look at the negativity look at the positiveness within yourself. And when you stop looking at this positiveness and stop thinking about yourself positively you will dive deep inside this ocean and your heart will open up for the divine, and you become a diver. The Beloved is always with you all the time

Be Happy with whatever He gives You

When you put your mind aside and try not to listen to it, you will awaken this divine love. When you say, “God, I surrender to you, I tried my best. I did everything, every yoga, every meditation, I did it all in my life, but still it’s not coming. I say I’m tired with that, I surrender myself to you now. You do what you have to do.”
In this deep surrender, you’ll see how close God is with you. Because often we do lots of things, but we have expectations. We pray, and we expect something. We meditate, we expect God to jump into our meditation. This expectation will not lead you anywhere. Only when you don’t expect anything from God, and accept, like a child, whatever the Father is giving, and are happy with whatever He gives you, then He will also give you the full realization of this divine love. So, look deep within yourself, and try your best to feel Him.

The power of Love

Start to love now, this moment. Open your heart and love. Let it flow. The more you open up, the more your mind is pure, the more your mind is positive, the more loving you will become, and the more love you will be able to give. And know that whatever you do with this love, will always be perfect. When you meditate, you will enjoy your meditation. When you do yoga, you will enjoy your yoga. When you chant the name of God, you will enjoy it. People meditate and chant, but when there is no love in it, it fades with time. Love with limitation fades. But true love, real love, unconditional love, never fades. So cultivate this love, cultivate this unconditional love, and surrender to the Divine.

Awakening Divine Love

Jai Gurudev everybody. As you are all aware, human life has a purpose. As you know, that purpose is to realize the greatest goal, which is the true self, which is love. This love seems far away to the mind, and sometimes even inaccessible, but actually it is close. As you all know, you are an incarnation of love, you are part of the divine. To attain this divine love, to attain this blissfulness again, to become satchitananda—this is what we are all trying to become. In reality, you are that already. It’s just that you don’t let it out. You like the love on the outside, you think it’s easy, but after some time you say, “headache.” As you know, this love is eternal. This love is waiting to be awakened deep within you. This love you have been carrying for many lifetimes. Firstly, to have the opportunity, to have the grace of being spiritual, of being on the spiritual path, is itself an attribute of this divine love. Everybody is searching, but it’s only when this love comes to the point of sprouting out and growing and maturing that one realizes oneself—realizes this love. The question comes to the mind, “Why every time we come back do we have to do the same thing all the time? If we have already realized this love, if we have already attained this love, why don’t we have it now?” To understand this, look at a child. A child just goes along with the daily routine. It doesn’t bother to think how things have to be. We older ones, we like questioning things; We like to doubt things; We like to put some spice into it. Then, when we have put too much spice into something, the path, the flavor, has changed—then it’s too hot. This pure love, this divine love is present at all times.

Complete surrender

While singing, people were dancing. In dancing for God, you’re dancing yoga. You’re forgetting about your body, you’re forgetting about your mind, you’re just singing the glory of God, singing the name of God. In this way, you’re decreasing the power of the mind. You will notice that after moving, when you sit down and relax, your concentration is much better than if you just sat down. When you just sit, your mind is jumping left and right.

So, when you dance in the right way, you’re energizing yourself. You’re calling upon this inner Self to reveal itself. And when you lift your hand up, you’re calling to the Lord, to God, saying: “I’m in this illusion. I’m drowning myself in this illusion. Here, I’m lifting my hand up to you. Pull me out of this illusion. I’m surrendering.” You will notice in all the holy scriptures there is this phrase which says: “Lord, I’m lifting my hand up to you. Come to my rescue.” In Psalm 54 you will find it, in the Koran you will find it, you will also find it in the Gita.
So, singing the glory of God transcends all religion. Transcends all culture. Transcends all race. Transcends all that the mind can create. You will find God inside of you. Man lives in ignorance. Of course, you need a little knowledge of God, a little knowledge of the Divine to get out of it. But in the end, you have to surrender completely. It’s neither your intelligence nor your ignorance that will make you realize your true self. It's your surrender.
It’s like when you’re walking barefoot, and you get a thorn in your foot. You need another thorn to remove it. The thorn of ignorance entered your feet, and you need another thorn to remove it. But what you do afterwards? Do you keep both thorns in your pocket and say, “Okay, I will treasure them.” You don’t keep both of them, you throw them both away. So, even knowledge will bring you only to a certain level. The rest you have to surrender yourself completely to this love of God. You have to surrender your mind completely. You have to surrender your body completely. And you have to surrender your soul.

Looking for the Truth

When you’re centered, when you concentrate, when you pray, when you chant the name of God, that moment is between you and God. Christ said, “If you want to pray, don’t make it a show. Run to the darkest corner where you and God, your Father, are alone… then converse with the Divine.” And this corner is your heart, where you can be quiet. The mind is not quiet, the mind is always thinking. You will quiet it by chanting. When, through chanting, you train the mind to go inside your heart, in that deep quietness, you will realize that God is sitting there. You will realize it, not because you know it in the mind, not because you have read it, but because you will feel it.
We are all searching for the Truth. Of course, people will go left and right looking for the Truth. Until one finds their spiritual path, one is never satisfied with where they are. It’s like a train which is traveling but does not know its destination. People go left and right, it’s the same with this train. But when one knows the destination, one goes directly to thisdestination. When one knows one’s path, one goes directly. Take this path and just go and realize yourself.

Overcoming the mind

One major factor that stops mankind from becoming love is the mind. To overcome the mind, chant any Divine name. When you practice this regularly, the mind will focus on simplicity. While you were singing bhajans, your mind was not troubling you. When you chant, your mind is busy making it hard for negativity to take over. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, keeping your mind fixed on God. This will help you open your heart.
Chanting Divine names is one efficient way of controlling the mind. Look at any religion; Christianity does the heart prayer. Hinduism has the japa mala. Muslims have the rosary. The name of God is very important and it’s very simple. Why complicate it? Why complicate things when God has given you something so easy? By chanting His name you feel so close to Him. But it doesn’t stop here.
It’s like when you know there’s a treasure somewhere and you know the location. By calling the treasure, “Oh my treasure come out, come out, come out.” Will the treasure come out? The treasure will not come out. There are a a lot of stones and earth you have to dig out until you get this treasure.

Ways to realize divinity

There are many ways to realize divinity within oneself, like there are many rivers that flow to the same ocean. The main thing is to find the simplest form. The simplier it is, the more you feel free in whatever path, in whatever way you are. That is the best way. I can’t tell you the way you will realize God and that way you will not realize God. God is sitting deep inside the heart of man and you just need to focus your mind on your heart. Try your best at all times to feel Him.

The best way is to start loving, without thinking of loving, without asking the question, “How to love?” Train your mind to focus on God. Train your mind to focus on yourself. By focussing, take any divine name, take any divine aspect. Keep chanting the name. Then you realize that you have become one with this name. It’s not the name apart from you, but it’s the name of your own Self.
The more you think of yourself being human, which many people often think about, the more they become human. But the more you think of yourself being the Spirit, being part of Divinity, the more you will become the Spirit and Divinity.

Finding God in oneself

The grace of God has given many ways to mankind. Many times He has manifested Himself in different Masters to help all children. Even if it seems to the outside that the different Masters have different ways! But if you analyze all of them, you find that all of them bring the message of Love - a message that one has to discover the love deep inside oneself. Don’t try to find God outside. Often people want to find God…it’s nice to have all the pictures of the Masters, but God has to be found firstly within oneself. You see the picture outside, this is just an image that enables mankind to fix that attention on something – because the mind of man is very difficult to control, isn’t it?

Training the mind

As long as man is stuck in the mind, as long as he doesn’t purify the mind, this love will never shine. You will never realize this love. Even if you think you know it because you have read about it, or somebody has told you about it, or because Swami has said it, and you say, “Yes, I know this love is there,” as long as you don’t purify your mind, as long as you don’t purify yourself… it will be difficult to realize this love. How do you purify the mind? The easiest way to purify the mind is to chant. Chant the name of God continuously. You were chanting the Maha Mantra, “Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.” It is said by just chanting this mantra, one can gain liberation. But one has to chant it with faith. Mere chanting alone will not help, but chanting with the heart, will help. How do you chant with the heart? How do you train the mind to calm itself? By focusing it. It happens when you discipline yourself and say, "Okay, today I will chant." Let’s say you start by taking your japa mala or rosary, and you chant your mantra. By focusing yourself on chanting, you’re discplining the mind to focus on the mantra. The more you do it you will see, and you will not even need your japa mala, you will not need a rosary because it will automatically be chanted inside your heart. When you become the mantra, you reach a point of realization. You reach a point of elevation, but it’s not the final one. There is still more to go. And how you get there is only through abandoning yourself in the hand of God. When you say, “Lord, I surrender to you. I surrender myself, my body, my mind, and my soul completely to you.” Not superficially, but sincerely. And how do you do it sincerely? When you're sincere with yourself and say, “Yes, God, I want you. I’m surrendering myself to you.” When this comes from your heart sincerely, it will happen.