22. Catch the Right Guru🔗

Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory - these are the five modifications that lead you to suffering or non-anguish. Realize all these five can either be used or abused. Just this knowledge, this understanding that it can be used or abused, that it can lead to either joy or suffering, is enough - you will start using them rightly. Whenever any of these five is leading you to suffering, realize that you are abusing it, you are misusing it. Whenever it is leading you to joy, you are using it properly. Whenever you are in suffering, understand that one of these five is being misused by you. So, decide that you will use it properly. Whenever you are in joy, understand that any or all of these five are being used by you in the right way.

Let us enter into the next sutra. Pratyakṣa anumāna āgamāḥ pramāṇāni

It's a beautiful sutra. Here Patanjali is describing each of the five definitions in a deeper way - what is right knowledge, what is wrong knowledge, what is imagination, what is sleep, what is memory. People ask me, 'Yes Swamiji, we know that all these five can lead to suffering or joy, but how to use them to lead to joy?' Here Patanjali is giving us the key to use these mental modifications towards joy. Please understand, all these five can be used to increase your energy or reduce your energy. They can either bring you miraculous powers and extraordinary energies or they can make you more and more dull, dead, depressed.

Nowadays, scientists are saying that if you constantly tell your kids, 'You are dull, you are dull, you are dull', they will become dull. If you constantly praise them, saying, 'You are bright, you are bright, you are bright', they will become bright!

There is a beautiful incident in Sri Ramakrishna's life. When his young disciple Vivekananda used to visit him, Sri Ramakrishna would constantly repeat to him, 'You are the incarnation of Shiva and Vishnu, you are the incarnation of Nara-Narayana, you are the incarnation of God.' The other disciples used to ask him, 'What is this, he is just a young boy, a college student, and you are saying he is the incarnation of God! How can it be?' Sri Ramakrishna would say, 'Don't bother about that; just by my word, he will become that! He will achieve that state. He will start living that state.'

Whoever you strongly believe, whatever they say will mold your personality; it will mold your personality. That is why I always tell people, 'Catch the right Guru; he will constantly remind that you are the Ultimate, you are God, you are living in the eternal energy. He will constantly remind you about your original state.'

There are two states in you: one is the original state, the divine state; the other one is the cloud of ignorance that covers you. If you catch the right Guru, he will constantly tell you that you are divine, because he is in the divine state. If you catch the wrong guru, he will constantly tell you that you are covered by a cloud of ignorance, because he is covered by that cloud! So, catch the right person. Catching the right guru does almost 80% of your job. I can't say just 80%, I think 90%... no, not even 90%, 100%! If you catch the right Guru, and if he also catches you, nothing else is needed. Your work is done, because he will constantly kindle your right imagination; he will constantly make you understand the truth.

When you use your power of imagination in the right way, you don't need a separate time for meditation; all twenty-four hours, you are in meditation! Carrying the right idea about you is a twenty-four-hour meditation. Twenty-four hours, that imagination gets strengthened in you; twenty-four hours, you are meditating; twenty-four hours, you are going towards the higher consciousness.

CONTEMPLATION

Internalize this one truth today: whatever the Guru is doing, he is constantly reminding me about my original state.