Ayurveda Initiative For Global Health

Life is eternal; we never give a thought to this truth. When someone dies we declare that the person is immortal, but the truth is we ourselves are immortal too. That is why we do not feel that we have grown old. No matter how old a person is, he feels he is never going to die. If someone else dies, we say, ‘oh that poor fellow died’. ‘Everyone else dies but I won’t’, this feeling is there somewhere. There is a stream of awareness within us that cannot be destroyed. To acknowledge and observe that stream is spirituality – ‘I have not changed, I have not grown old, I am just the same‘. This brings such courage and strength in life that nothing can shake you. Examining your life, observing it is spirituality, it is ‘satsang’. Satsang is not just singing bhajans but pondering on the truths of life. What is the most important truth of life – there is an element within me that does not perish, does not diminish and is deathless. If you direct even the slightest attention to it, life becomes...

Every event however pleasant causes pain in the end. Greater the joy; greater is the pain. Longing for an event or waiting for a pleasurable event is again pain. Before you want something the feverishness of wanting it, is painful. When you have it the fear of losing it is painful. When it is gone, the memory of its joy, is painful. Pain and Love are the two sides of the same coin.  Love creates tremendous amount of pain and so does separation. A wish creates tremendous amount of pressure in the mind. Trying to please someone creates pain, to know and understand whether they are pleased or not, also creates pain. You want to know how the other person’s mind is, while you still don’t know your own mind. To do spiritual practices, you need to put effort and that’s painful. Not doing it creates even more pain. If you really look from the eyes of the wise there is nothing in this creation that is devoid of pain. Pain is the tail of everything in this world.  When you realize tha...

Should we take sports seriously or lightly? The answer is both.  It loses its charm and lightness if you take sports too seriously. It turns into a battle or business and that’s where all the unethical practices can stem from. When we do not take sports in a lighter spirit and treat them as larger-than-life, we get depressed and anxious about failing. For many sportspersons, this becomes a trigger for a host of mental illnesses. A game is a game because it is foolish. If you find meaning, it is not a game. A fool does something unique, yet meaningless. All entertainment, including games, are an act of foolishness in some way. Just imagine if somebody from another planet lands here and sees a huge crowd watching a game – one ball in the middle, a player trying to hit it all over, another trying to catch it and bring it back to the centre, only to throw it away again. Why go through all this trouble, the alien might wonder. It would appear absolutely funny and pointless. For hours to...

When you are talking, connecting with someone, when you look at your friend or somebody you love, something happens inside you. You feel as though some new energy is coursing through you, a joy that is hard to describe. Capture that great moment, for those moments are timeless. But don’t stop there. Okay, you might have experienced those timeless moments by the presence of that person, that person might have brought forth those emotions in you. So what? Instead of getting immersed in that person or in the situation, just be with the spring of bliss rising in you. The Divine has given you all the small pleasures in the world but has kept the bliss to Him. To get the highest bliss, you have to go to Him and Him alone. Be sincere in your attempts. Once you get bliss, then everything else is joyful. Without bliss, joy in anything in the world will not stay. Give satsang and meditation your highest priority. Give prime time to the Divine and know that God belongs to you. Either through awar...

Question: Guruji, when we die the body and breath are left behind and our mind, memory, soul are still together with the impressions. Do the intellect and ego also still stay with us? Can we use our intellect to calm our mind then? Gurudev: The impressions of the intellect and the cravings and aversions of the mind go with the subtle body. So when you die what happens is for sometime the soul is in confusion, it does not know. It has just come out of the body but it does not know what to do. It doesn’t want to get into the body because the body appears like very gray matter, very dark and completely unbearable. So it doesn’t want to get into it, it feels very bad and averse to its’ own body most of the time. Sometimes they go in. So the soul is out there and very peaceful, the soul is totally at peace. They see people crying, wailing. It tries to tell them, ‘hey I am okay, don’t worry’, but they cannot communicate. There is a tradition to keep the light burning at the bedside of the bo...