Spiritual Knowledge Relieves
You From Karma

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Keep yourself happy and don’t see horror movies. Watch pleasant things and keep your mind pleasant, don’t stress out. Relax more.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Don’t see the source as something far away and try to connect to the source. Just relax! Whenever you relax you are the Source. In the spiritual plane only relaxation, doing nothing connects you to the Source. Mind and body works on completely different laws. Body works on effort. To build muscles you will need to do effort. But to improve your memory the more effort you put, you will drain your memory power. For memory power what do you have to do? Relax more, rest more.
So the mind works on relaxation and effortlessness and the body works on effort. And this is the beauty, this is the combination.
Mind is infinite, body is finite and life is a combination of finite and infinite.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  When you feel you are getting into depression it is wisdom that takes you out of it. It is emotion that sinks you into depression and it is wisdom which takes you out of the depression. At least you had this intention to ask the question. Wanting to know the answer itself shows there is some wisdom there. Often depressed people don’t talk at all. They don’t answer, they don’t ask questions and they don’t want to do anything. But this is good, you have this much wisdom that you wanted to ask this question. You wanted to get out of depression. You are already out of it, okay! Do Sudarshan Kriya and some more advance courses and you will easily come out.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  You talk to the teachers and doctors here they will tell you what to do. Are you sleeping on a hard surface? (Answer – yes I do sleep on a hard surface but since I have come here I am sleeping on a bed) Yes, that is it. You use a soft bed you will get back ache. I have seen many times they keep such thick pillows in hotels and other places. You put your head on the pillow, the next day your shoulders and neck aches. Most of the people have this experience that is why I started carrying my pillow. A very soft pillow is no good for your head. And once our cranial gets disturbed, the spine gets disturbed. That is why it is there the cranial sacral treatment. The cranium and the sacrum, the whole thing needs to be taken care. You have to sleep on a hard surface, have the right thickness of pillow which will suit you and make you feel comfortable. A hard pillow, not the foam ones, those soft pillows are the worst. It should be not too hard like a rock and not too soft like foam but somewhere in-between, like cotton pillows. The old system is the best! Or there is this new pillow that has come and that’s also good. Yes, but we don’t want to do any more pillow marketing here. Take care of your sleeping postures and in the morning do some Yoga asanas, that would help and shavasana will help.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Yes it is the same. Where are you in the body? Everywhere! And that’s how the atma is. Atma is like space.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  If you cannot accept then don’t accept, let it be.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  This is the right way. If you feel sad then what to do, just accept it. Do what you find easy to do; don’t do what you find very difficult. If it is hard to accept the situations then don’t accept. If not accepting the situation is easier, then do that. Whatever is easy for you to do, you do that and be happy, okay!

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Meditation, knowledge and going inward. The inner silence helps to improve intuition.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Don’t overdo anything. First you talk to the friends of your parents, your uncles and aunts or the close friends of your parents. They may listen to you more than your own parents. This is simple human psychology. Sometimes a man doesn’t want to listen to what the wife wants to say. But if it comes from some other friend of his, they immediately do it. But if wife says, they say, ‘no’. They think if I do everything that wife says I will be called henpecked. That’s the psychology in the mind. Similarly parents don’t want to listen to the children; they may listen to their friends better.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Never mind whomsoever has chosen, once they are there it is okay, right. It can be this way or it can be that way, never mind.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  This is a very good thing. You are fortunate that this question is troubling you. Now have a little patience. Keep asking yourself, ‘who am I’ and do seva.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  Karmabhumi means where you are here to do action. You come here to get rid of all your karmas. And how do you get rid of the karmas? Through knowledge. Every part of the world has some specialty. You go to a Scandinavian country and that is known for skiing. You can’t ski in Bangalore. Bangalore is known for Chow Chow, you know the bulb type vegetable which they cook here. It is so delicious; you don’t get it anywhere else in the world. So nature has put some specialty everywhere. India has been a spiritual land for a long, long, long time, from millenniums. Spiritual knowledge has gone to the world from India. Spiritual knowledge always relieves you from karma and brings freedom and so it is called Karmabhumi. But if there is no spiritual knowledge it will no longer be a Karmabhumi. You know Switzerland is known for watches and chocolates. But if other countries are making better chocolates and better watches, Swiss will lose its charm for chocolates and watches. Similarly Canada is known for maple syrup. You can’t get maple syrup anywhere else in the world. Do you know maple syrup? Many of you have not even heard about it, because we have never heard about maple syrup in this country. Even if you go to Kashmir where there are maple trees, but nobody knows about maple syrup. So every part of the world has some specialty and India has been endowed with this special gift of spiritual knowledge. That’s why Jesus came here and stayed for twelve years in Mylapore area and learned spirituality. And then went back to teach people. And Muhammad said, ‘I get cool breeze from the east’, from India. So from ages spirituality has found its roots in this country but it fast vanishing. We need to water it and keep it up, okay!

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:  God is neither created nor destroyed because God is not a linear function. Anything linear has a beginning and an end but a sphere does not have a beginning or an end. You got it? Tell me which is the beginning point of a tennis ball? Is it easy to know where does the tennis ball begin? You answer this then I will answer your question. Simple thing I am asking you, show me the beginning point of a tennis ball or a cricket ball.