Bangalore, India
If we call for an agitation, you will see everybody will join but for meditation only the intelligent will join.
But, I think, times are changing. Wherever we go, we get more crowd for meditation than for agitation. That is why I said, there is a positive change in society.
It is media which likes agitation the most. See, we are thousands of us sitting here, and not even one-fourth of these many people are in town hall, shouting slogans and agitating. But the media is interested in that event, even though there are just five hundred people there.
The media projects negative news better and more vigorously.
I don’t want to keep all the youth and talents held up here in the Ashram. I want you to be active out there in the society. It is we who need to bring peace where it is needed.
You can’t say, I am so peaceful, let me just be here. Of course coming here is needed. You need to put your mobile to charge every once in awhile, but you can’t leave your mobile on the charger all the time. How will you use the mobile? Then it is no longer a mobile.
You charge your mobile and then take your mobile off the charger. It cannot be hanging onto the charger all the time.
Similarly, you need to do work there, and you need to come here as well; both!
Otherwise, the mind keeps looking for a partner. In marriage, that looking for a partner thing comes to an end, 'Okay, I have found a partner, I am set.' So now you can focus on other things.
When there is commitment, it puts you on track.
You know, when you don’t get along, you forget all those days when you got along very well. Because those days, you didn’t get along, you feel, 'Oh, from the very beginning, we never got along.'
An American couple who were married for 40 years came to me and said that they wanted to divorce. The lady said, 'You know Gurudev, we have been married for 40 years but we never got along even for a single day.'
I said, 'How could you spend 40 years and never get along for even one day?!'
They are already around sixty to seventy years old. They could not get along for the last forty years and still they were carrying on.
Usually this doesn’t happen in American society. If two people don’t get along, that is it, they don’t stay together at all.
Suddenly in your mind you think, at some point, 'Oh, we never got along in the past also.'
Well, the world is like that. There is no guarantee that those people with whom you think you will get along very, you will actually get along with them very well. The grass is always greener on the other side.
If everybody is saying that then it is not okay. You must consider their opinions.
Here, I won’t say, don’t be a football of other’s opinion.
What you feel is one thing, and how you express yourself is another thing. You may be feeling very calm, very happy, but when you express that, you should see, how you can express it and where you should express it.
What are the Ashtada Prakriti? Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and ego. These all come in our nature.
Some saint or wise man said, let there will be one Ganapati for each of these Prakritis, that is all.
Don’t get into all these things; why twelve Jyotirlingas or Ashta Ganapati? In the ancient days, these were ways to integrate the society.
In the ancient days, people wanted to integrate the population because every six hundred kilometers, the language and culture changes in this country.
There is nothing common between South, North, East and West, so, how do you integrate the country? Then they said, 'Go to the twelve Jyotirlingas. Go to Kashi, go to Rameshwaram, go to Trimbakeshwar, and so on. Like that they promoted a sort of spiritual tourism and national integration. That is all.
It is the same with Ashta Ganapati as well. The idea was that people go all over the different areas of Maharashtra. They wanted to unite people, make them move around as pilgrims.
In those days there were no other holidays or tourism. Pilgrimage was tourism.
When it is sacred tourism, people feel, 'I must do it', and so they created all these different temples to go and visit.
Once I was in England a long time ago, and a lady asked me, 'Gurudev, what can I make for you for breakfast?'
I said, 'Make anything, whatever you like.'
Then she said, 'Can I make Dhokla (a vegetarian food item that originates from the Indian state of Gujarat)?'
I said, 'Yes, you can make Dhokla.'
She asked me, 'Do you like it?'
I said, 'Yes.'
So, she prepared Dhokla and then she called everyone else and said, 'Gurudev loves Dhokla.'
Just imagine what happened. Every day, wherever I went for the next fifteen days, breakfast, lunch and dinner, I got only Dhoklas.
I feel so sorry for those people who try to be funny. The so-called comedians, they struggle every day to find new jokes to make people laugh. And it is such artificial laughter.
If you see all those comedians who make those jokes, they are miserable. It is really not funny, you feel like weeping looking at them.
