Q&A ON FEELING CONNECTION🔗

1. Does feeling connection carry over to the next birth?

2. Can we have feeling connection with several deities and Gurus simultaneously?

3. Can you throw more light on the four kinds of feeling connection described in the Vaishnava tradition?

4. I used to do a lot of pooja and temple-hopping earlier, but after coming to you I have lost interest in all that. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

5. You mentioned about feeling-connection with God or Guru. What is the feeling-connection actually? Is it just continuously thinking of Guru?

6. How does the feeling connection to something which is higher than me nullify the constant harassment I go through from my body and mind?

7. Is there a way for us to progress faster in our spiritual practice?

8. What is the path to experience intense feeling connection?

I will share a few truths about feeling connection.

Feeling connection is nothing but the ability to feel connected to the Divine. It is the ability to melt and merge with the Divine.

Feeling connection with the Divine is the ultimate technique for your life. You don't need any other solution or method to get out of any problem – whether it is your day-to-day problems, or the problems caused by unfavorable planets, or by disease, or mental negativity, or black magic – for any kind of problem, feeling connection is enough to find a solution.

Without feeling connection, even meditation, or the extraordinary powers, or the spiritual experiences you receive on the path, only make you more egoistic and arrogant.

Feeling connection with God or an enlightened being is the subtlest, best gift that can ever happen to a human being.

For anything to blossom, it needs a connection with the highest possibility which it can become.

For the fruit to be completely ripened, it needs to be connected with the tree. Once the fruit is completely ripened, it carries the seed which can become one more tree. The physical connection with the mother tree may not be required. But until it happens, the connection is essential.

In the same way, for a baby in the womb to grow completely, it needs to be connected with the mother through the umbilical cord. Only then a complete body is created. Once the complete body is created, it will not need the physical umbilical cord connection. But until then, it is vital for its survival.

Enlightenment is the highest possibility of a human being. For that to happen in you, it is vital for you to have the feeling-connection to a being who is already in that space, who is already mature, who has already ripened in enlightenment. That is why vitarka, the feeling-connection with the Master, is the ultimate gift that can ever happen to human beings.

I call it a gift, because only those who have grown at least to a certain level in the subtle understanding can even smell the presence of the Master. Only they have the courage to even enter into that great feeling-connection, because the feeling-connection with the Master will just make you into an enlightened being.

The feeling-connection to the being who represents your own highest

But sometimes, people carry a strong arrogance, 'I know many things, I have seen so many things, I know so many gurus, I know so many things.' Or they are stuck with some moral ideas.

You see, you constantly project to people that you cannot be bent so easily. You take that as a pride. And now slowly, slowly, you start telling that to yourself and cheat yourself also.'

So now, even if you want to bend, one part of you will tell you, 'You are not the guy to bend! Why are you bending?' This is like having a wife inside you, to oppose you at every step! Then live with that fellow, that's all! So just make this decision, 'I want to have it and it should happen.'

Surrender, bhakti and all that - let it happen on its own. You don't ask for that. You ask only for friendliness and the deep feeling connection.

Actually, when a person has vitarka, I see very clearly that there is a tunnel of energy between him and me, like a bridge. So when I bless him, 'Let the experience happen in you,' the energy flows into him just like a ball.

Whenever a person with vitarka comes around me, it is such a joy. You see, in my whole leela, all of you enjoy, my shakti (power), and I enjoy your bhakti (devotion). That is the way the whole leela happens.

Vitarka means feeling connected beyond your logic. It is ‘just knowing’!

Listen: knowing that something is the truth by your own experience is anubhooti.

When you have vitarka, all my experiences become your experiences, even before you go through the whole process. Having vitarka is almost like directly downloading all my products, and straightaway patenting them in your name! If you don’t have vitarka, you need to pay for every product I patented it and buy it; you need to work for it. If you have vitarka, it is like a straight free download.

When you have vitarka, all the experiences, all the components of jeevanmukti (living enlightenment) with which I am living, will straightaway become your life-changing or decision-making strategies, even if you have not yet experienced jeevanmukti.

For example, I do not worry because I know that eternal time is in front (living enlightenment)one by one. I can go on transmitting it, component by component. But by the time all the components are reproduced in you and imbibed by you, so much time gets wasted.

For example, if you needed to personally reinvent everything you use in your life, can you imagine how it will be like? First you need to invent a light, then the switch, then the bed, then air-conditioning, then your car, then your house...and by that time you will be in your grave!

Suppose you say, 'No, I don't believe in anybody, I don't accept anybody, so I am not going to accept what anyone else has invented. I am going to reinvent each thing myself. I will not bow down to Edison by using the electric light which he discovered. I will reinvent it myself.' What is going to happen? Edison is not going to lose anything; you will be losing! So vitarka is actually an intelligent game; it is not a foolish game.

When you have vitarka, my experience becomes like your experience for you. Even without the direct experience of jeevanmukti, you can straightaway take thousands of amazing decisions that can be taken only with a jeevanmukta's mental set-up. Straightaway you can start living, radiating, taking decisions from a liberated space. Vitarka helps you live enlightenment without your having to go through all the processes and struggle and reinvention.

That is why so much there is so much emphasis on feeling-connection and guru krpa (grace of the guru) in our tradition. Even though a few people have exploited the tradition by sitting in the guru's seat without becoming enlightened, the tradition itself cannot be rejected, because it has helped too many people. are relaxed from that feeling, and your foolish logic is not working, the ego disappears.

When you sit and melt for at least a few hours, that tight grasping logic relaxes its declaration of power over your body.

I tell you, if you experience the space of disciplehood, the joy of being receptive, you taste the ultimate. Forget about all your other desires, because anything else will be lower than this. Whether it is having Miss Universe as your mistress or the world's largest palace as your house or name and fame or power in your hand - everything will only be less than the joy of being a disciple.

One important thing to understand is that vitarka is not blind faith.

It is not blind faith, but it is beyond logic. You just know that it is true, even without experiencing it. Whatever you always know was true, Master will express exactly that. That is vitarka.

But there are some people who are very adamant and say, 'I will earn and I will live. I will work, so tapas, get the experience, and only then I will enjoy it.' Then go ahead! There are other people who say, 'Who cares whose wealth it is; as long as it is around me, it is mine! Come on, let us start enjoying it!' Then go ahead and enjoy it!

So you should find out which category you belong to, and decide accordingly.

Deciding based on intelligence, deciding based on the right understanding, deciding beyond logic, is actually not even a big process. You just need to make a conscious decision - 'I am dropping my ego and my attitude of analyzing, analyzing.'

First of all, do you know what is right and what is wrong? Your very logic that is telling you what is right and wrong is cheating you - but you don't know that.

Sri Ramakrishna gives a very straight truth, 'The crow thinks he is very intelligent and goes around and shouts at everybody, and finally comes and eats filth.' The crow thinks he is a very intelligent guy and goes round criticizing everybody and everything, and finally it comes back and eats filth!

You go on trusting your logic which tells you that everybody else is a cheat, and finally that logic itself cheats you. Many times, you get caught in your own pseudo-logic. Your logic doubts everybody else, but not itself. It is like employing a security guard so that he will protect you from everybody - and finally that fellow kills you!

Solid logic is like polishing, polishing, polishing, polishing, and polishing. What will happen when you polish a knife again and again and again? It will become sharp. Actual logic or tarka, by its very existence, will sharpen itself continuously. So naturally it has to become vitarka. Unless you interfere and make it into kutarka, it will simply become vitarka.

Vitarka means having the broad logic that accommodates and is ready to accept even the things which are not taught to you in school. Even for three or four days, if you just sit with tarka (simple logic), without kutarka (without negativity or anger), it will grow into vitarka; it will simply grow into vitarka. Sharpened logic always leads you to vitarka.

Vitarka takes away many sufferings, it eliminates the need for many unnecessary practices, which are not needed for everybody. Many components of jeevanmukti can be transmitted directly into you just through your vitarka, without your going through all the drama and the practices necessary for the experience.

Even if you feel that you don’t have vitarka, and you want vitarka, just create a strong prayer. You will see that tarka breaks and evolves into vitarka. But consciously you need to decide, ‘Yes, vitarka is right and I want that. It has to happen in me.’ You need to make this decision.

Ramakrishna was deeply connected to the form of the goddess Kali, whom he related to as his mother. He had all kinds of experiences with the deity of Kali. He was living with that deity, with Devi; a very powerful feeling connection.

He used to keep a small thread near her nose just to check whether she is really breathing, and he says she always used to breathe, and he always saw the thread moving with the air with her breathing.

He experienced so many other things with that deity. I will share the story of how he put the conch shell bangle on the Kali deity.

Someone made an offering of conch shell bangles for Kali in the Dakshineshwar temple, where Sri Ramakrishna was the priest. The deity had four hands, and they were able to slip the bangles onto three of her hands. In the fourth hand she held a large ‘shira’ (the severed head of a demon), so the bangles would not go past, without damaging

So I decided to use the same threat on Ganesha. But even when I threatened him, he was not responding! Then I thought, 'I will really put you in the well, just to show you that I mean what I am saying'.

So I put my Ganesha deity inside a bucket which was used to draw water from the well, and lowered the bucket into the well using a rope. When the bucket touched the water, I yelled, 'I will really drown you!'

Still there was no response, so I thought that he might not be able to hear me from inside the well. So I took a funnel which was used to pour kersosene into the stove, and started shouting through that, 'I will really throw you into the water if you don't eat!'

I think that funnel was the first loudspeaker or mic that I ever used! But there was no response from Ganesha.

Then I realized that I did not put any food in the bucket for Ganesha. I thought that maybe after when he is near the water he would change his mind and eat. So I put the food also in the bucket and put him inside again, but he still did not eat. I repeated this three or four times, but nothing worked out, and I did not feel like really throwing him into the well! So I finally took him out of the well.

Then I thought that maybe he does not like my mother's food. So I went to the temple and got the same food which they offer to the Ganesha deity in the temple, and put that food in front of him, saying, 'Okay, your regular diet is here, now eat.' But again he did not eat.

Understand, this is what is kutarka. I was torturing him. I was torturing him and trying to force him to eat.

One day, suddenly a click happened in me – 'Oh, God! Nambiandar Nambi So vitarka reduces a lot of your suffering and struggles, and straightaway makes things a lot easier for you.

Below is a powerful meditation to experience vitarka:

ABOUT THIS TECHNIQUE

Vitarka is the sweetest and one of most beautiful ways to connect to the Divine. Unlike any other spiritual practice, here the path and the goal are both equally blissful. Losing yourself in the Divine is a joy in itself. It is its own reward.

When you experience deep vitarka with someone, that person becomes your doorway to the Divine. When you lose yourself in the other, you are taking a leap out of yourself. You experience the joy of going beyond your boundary and merging into another.

This technique is a simple but effective way to awaken the mood of vitarka in you.

DURATION

Not applicable

INSTRUCTIONS

Close your eyes and sit in a relaxed way.

Bring to your mind any person who awakens devotion in you. It could be any person who has enriched your life, to whom you turn for spiritual clarity, who means a lot to you.