Swami Vishwananda
In Babaji Cave Springen Center
Swami Vishwananda: You are all here for one truth. This truth is love, equal in all of you, and present in each one of your hearts. This love is waiting to come out and to express itself. But so often there is a blockage. So often there is a wall that stops man from loving unconditionally. When you realize that the only path is to love and to be love, you realize how much God loves his creation. The same way God loves, the same way you can love. All other kinds of love are secondary, because all of you are here to become love.
To become this love there are many obstacles you have to overcome. People think to love God is to love something separate from them. Like whenever we pray, we pray to the outside. We should stop separating the Divine and us. Try your best always to pray. It doesn’t matter which kind. When you talk with God, talk with the True Self inside you. Do it from your heart.
Swami Vishwananda: Often we ask ourselves, “How can we please God? In which way shall we please God? How can we make God happy?” There are many ways that God is happy with us. But the best way to make God happy is to be happy ourselves. God is happy when we are happy. It’s because our happiness is His happiness; because we are part of Him.
How we make ourselves happy is through serving and helping others. The greatest happiness is derived from serving. The more you help, the more you will make somebody else happy. You will then see that the happiness you have inside of you will grow and grow. But the more you stop helping others, the more you push yourself backwards on the spiritual path. You will become untruthful towards yourself the more you say, “No, why should I help?” And when you become untruthful towards yourself, you stop the heart from opening up. The more this happens, the more you become miserable.
Christ said: when you help others, it must be unconditional. After we help, we should forget about it. We should love and forget. We don’t expect anything when we love someone else, do we? Well, there are two kinds of love. There’s a love on the outside, where you always expect something in return, but there’s also another type of love, where you will do anything for this person. You will do anything just to please this person. But even that kind of love is still divided into two: unconditional and conditional. Whatever is done unconditionally will always make you happy. But what is done under a condition will always make you unhappy. And to awaken this unconditional love, to make this love grow greater and greater is not that difficult. Like I always say, “You only need to want it.”
Master Christ Jesus
“No greater love hath any man than he would lay down his life for his brother.”
Swami Vishwananda:
Once a teacher said to his disciple, “My dear disciple, now it’s time for you to find God fully and to realize yourself.” Actually that's what we all are here for. In the Hindu tradition we have four questions in life that we ask ourselves:
· Where do we come from?
· Who are we?
· Where are we going?
· Why are we here?
Swami Vishwananda & Brother-Cousin Ravi
in Vrindavan, India 2008
If you can answer only these four questions, you are fully realized. So the Guru said to the disciple, “Now it’s time for you to fully realize yourself. Come.” The disciple said, “My dear teacher, I love you so much, but my wife loves me very much, and she will be really unhappy.” So the teacher thought for a while and said, “Okay, you really think that she loves you that much. You are perfect in yoga. Here, take this pill." The teacher gave the disciple one pill and told him, “Next Monday, before you go to bed, take this pill.” Afterwards, you will appear dead on the outside, but you will hear everything.” The disciple said, “Okay, let’s try it.” When Monday arrived, the disciple took the pill at night and he slept.
Normally the disciple would wake up early. The morning after he took the pill, his wife saw that he was not getting up. She was asking herself, What is wrong?” The wife started to push the husband saying, "Hey, get up.” There was no reaction. Then, the wife started screaming so loudly that the neighbors and people came. Everybody was crying, “Oh, why have you left us?” The wife threw herself on the body and said, “Oh, why have you left me alone here? We are here for each other.” There was big crying.
The son came and said, “Father, why have you left us?” The mother came and said, “Oh my son, I should have died before you. You are so young. You still have your full life in front of you." At that moment the teacher, the Guru came and said, “Why are you calling everybody?" And they said “Oh he has left us; our father, husband and son has left us.” Then the Guru said, “Well, I have a solution. I see that all of you love him so much.” The wife said, “Oh my dear husband, I should have died in your place.” The mother said the same thing. Then the Guru said, “Well, I have a pill here. Whoever will take this pill will die in the place of my disciple, and thereby he will be revived.
So the Guru turned to the wife and said to her, “Mataji, respectful mother, you were just crying that you should have died in your husband’s place. This is what a good wife will do. You love him so much. Here take this pill.” That moment the wife stopped crying and said, “Why are you saying that? I have little grand-children. It is his bad luck that he died. I can’t do that.” He turned to the Mother “Mother you were just saying you are old, you can take the pill.” The Mother said “Well, it’s his Karma. I can’t do that. I still have my grand-children to look after.” So everybody said the same thing.
At that moment, the Guru took some water and threw it on his disciple’s face. The man woke up, looking at everybody. Having heard everything while everyone thought him dead, he was thinking of how great they were expressing their love, but in the time of sacrifice no one was there. And that is what Christ said! A true friend is ready to sacrifice everything. And love is that sacrifice, actually. If you truly love, you will sacrifice everything.
Swami Vishwananda: You are all here for one truth. This truth is love, equal in all of you, and present in each one of your hearts. This love is waiting to come out and to express itself. But so often there is a blockage. So often there is a wall that stops man from loving unconditionally. When you realize that the only path is to love and to be love, you realize how much God loves his creation. The same way God loves, the same way you can love. All other kinds of love are secondary, because all of you are here to become love.
