(Satsang conducted on 31 May 1991 at the Rājarājeśvari Pīṭham, USA)
Guruji: Swamiji, would you like to say a few words? Alright. I’m honored by this august audience. We have many intellectuals here: renunciates from the Holy Śaṅkarācārya order of Shringeri; we have devotees who are doing serious sadhana, and we have plain simple human beings, to which category I belong. So it’s harder to speak in front of you. I need some strength to speak in front of you, so I will invoke the Devī Sarasvatī onto my tongue, so that what is in my heart will be on my tongue.
praṇo devī sarasvatī vājebhirvājinīvatī
dhīnāmavitrayavatu hariḥ oṃ
śrī gurubhyo namaḥ hariḥ oṃ
ayam muhūrto sumuhūrto astu
The world we live in today is a world of contrasts. Sometimes we wonder while seeing the trees and not the forest, whether the humanity is proceeding in the proper direction. When we see that some of the major decisions, affecting the peace prospects in this world, have being taken in a fashion, which perhaps leaves room for improvement. We all share a concern in this, we share a concern for the way we are treating our mother nature and we ought to be doing something about that in a more positive sense compared to what was done before.We as individuals sometimes feel insecure, anxious, fraught with fear, not knowing how to resolve our own problems, let alone dealing with the problems in the world. The question arises in our minds, if we want to leave a world in a little better place when we leave it, than when we entered it, what is the way that we should start going about it? Where does this process begin, and how does this process spread?
Let me start with an example. One of the first realizations I had, was when I was standing in front of a mirror. I was seeing myself reflected in the mirror and I smiled and the mirror image smiled, I laughed and the mirror image laughed, I cried and the image cried. After a little while I was wondering whether I was seeing my image in the mirror or my image in the mirror is seeing me. Who is the real me? Whether it's located in front of the mirror or behind the mirror? And then a train of thought followed and I started talking with myself. Supposing I wear a bowler hat and the image would have a bowler hat in it, and supposing I was like Ravanāsura, the demon king, who had ten heads standing in front of the mirror, then that image would have the ten heads. If I imagine myself to be Mahākālī, with ten heads, twenty hands and twenty legs, standing in front of the mirror, I would see myself with ten heads, twenty hands and twenty legs. Supposing, I was ten people myself, ten separate individuals, and I stood in front of the mirror, then I would see ten different people as my own reflection. One step further, if I was the world myself and I stood in front of a mirror, I would see the world as my own reflection. However many people it has, however many cars it has got, however many highways, however many suns, galaxies, stars, however many trees, it is all a reflection of myself.
Then I understood that my mind was a mirror so pure that it was reflecting myself to me and I happen to be the Cosmos and I'm seeing myself. So in this moment of realization there's an equation between me and the world that I'm seeing. The world is mirroring me. If there are parts of me that I do not like, then those would be the parts in the world, which I see, which I am not liking. If I want to see the world in a better way, then I must start improving the parts inside of me, so that they could be reflected in the world in a better way. Then I realized that any process of change must begin with who? Myself! The process of change begins with you. You are the center of the world. You are the world. For a moment a little fear grabbed me. Am I all alone in his world? Is there nothing else beside this world, other than me? This feeling of absolute loneliness, that there is nothing else besides you in this whole world and it's all really just a mirror of yourself. It is born inside of you, it's growing inside of you. All the multiplicity, all the differences that you see are like a dream, which have arisen in your mind's eye and they are going to vanish like a dream in your mind's eye. I am the container of the Universe. If you want to prove, that A contains B, what would you do? Deny A, and see if B can exist. So if I want to prove that I contain the Universe, what do I do? I deny myself, and see if the Universe exists. The existence of the Universe is conditional to my existence. The first reality is reality of my thoughts. The world out there is a derived reality from these thoughts. If thoughts are imaginary, then the world which is derived from this set of thoughts cannot be a higher reality than the thoughts themselves. Do you follow me?
So the process of bringing about a change I want, in the dream that I am seeing, must start with a better dream. I must start dreaming a better dream. I must make believe to myself that I must create a reality, which comes from within my own self, and this reality becomes the model for what’s happening.Is it not this function of management that you make a prophecy, and make that prophecy come true? You have a dream, the great presidents of America had a dream and they worked for it and they made those dreams come alive. You and I, every one of us, can have our dreams and make them come true. We must understand that every one of our dreams is going to manifest sooner or later. How soon they are going to manifest? That depends upon the clarity of our thinking, the clarity of our projection into this. So the process of change has to begin from within ourselves and we have to start having a better dream.
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