The Flowers of Enlightenment
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August 16, 2010
I am not going to talk about seva for the sake of social service, name and fame, or morality. I am talking about seva as a science of enlightenment. Seva makes you live enlightenment. Continuously, life gives us turiya vana sampanna, which means, the flowers that happened in the state of Turiya. Turiya means the fourth state, which is beyond the waking, dream and deep sleep states. Fortunately, all human beings experience Turiya at some point or other in their regular life, whenever they feel a little peace or joy in any way. Even if it is through the senses, that moment where you feel satisfied, you go through a glimpse of Turiya. Each time Turiya happens in you, joy happens in you, and it brings one lesson to you. It shares one truth with you. The truths which you collect from Turiya is what is turiya vana sampanna.
When you sit in the Master’s presence in meditation, or when you are peaceful, whatever ideas happen in you are flowers collected from the Turiya state: turiya vana sampanna. The ideas can be about life, relationships, how to live, money, love or whatever! But unfortunately, we do not understand the science of how to make those flowers happen again and again, and to keep them as part of our life. We just let them wither away, drop, and disappear without becoming fruit; without them becoming part of us. How to make this turiya vana sampanna, the flowers of the fourth state of consciousness, become part of your bio-memory and lifestyle? It is through Seva. When you start serving, all the difficulties you face just go against the current of your bio-memory, which is fear and greed. Seva means working without greed and fear. Naturally, there will be enough of churning and boiling: Why should I do this? Every moment that question will be asked, because there is no result; after you do everything, you don't get anything. I tell you: if you get anything, don’t do that work. It is not seva.
When you sit with the Master, the turiya vana sampanna, the flowers from the highest consciousness, are constantly shared with you. But how to make them as an eternal garland, a garland of paarijaata flowers? Paarijaata is the heavenly flower which does not wither away. Now the flowers you receive from Turiya should become paarijaata in you, not just an ordinary rose or ordinary lotus! The ordinary roses which you receive give just one moment’s pleasure. By the time the pleasure withers away, the rose also withers away. Not only the flower will not be there, the emotion with which the flower was shared will also not be there.
Now it is time to make the flowers of the higher state of consciousness into paarijaata in you. Seva straightaway brings you a garland of parijatha.
I am not interested in giving you ordinary garlands. People are given ordinary garlands on a stage. The moment you get people on stage and put a garland on them and a few thousand people clap, they are just elated. Then they start doing work. But that is not seva. Maybe that is service, not seva. I am differentiating between the meaning of seva and service. Service is not the literal translation of seva. Seva means, the work done to retain all the flowers of higher consciousness eternally in your being as paarijaata.
I tell you seva is the highest form of creativity. Any ordinary service, any ordinary work, creates something in the world - but seva creates a very new you, a being which lives enlightenment. When you do ordinary work, you don’t need to justify why you are working, because there is greed and fear, which are enough justification! But when you do seva, you have to constantly justify, you need to remind yourself - why are you taking up this thing? What is the need? So you constantly need to remind yourself, justify why you are doing this. Naturally, the ideas with which you justify will become part of you, and those ideas will make you live enlightenment. Those ideas, the truths from higher consciousness becoming part of your bio-memory by seva, is what I call a rose garland becoming a garland of paarijaata, a garland of heavenly flowers.
Do seva intensely and sincerely with these great spiritual truths. Continuously be inspired by these great spiritual truths. Constant remembrance of these ideas will make the flowers of the higher states of consciousness become part of your bio-memory.