A TRUE PERSPECTIVE🔗

Beyond the self centered life

In the East, seekers are requested to go to the Himalayas. People ask me, 'Swamiji, why should we go to the Himalayas?' Understand: when you go and live with nature in the hills, suddenly you realize: life is not centered on you. In cities, the whole life is centered on you. You logically know your whole day routine when you will get up, what you will do after that, where you will go next, how you will come back and where you will come and rest. The whole thing is under your logical control, under your plan. The whole thing goes according to your intellect, your logic. Because of this lifestyle, by and by you start believing unconsciously you are the king or ruler of your life. You do not believe there is a higher force behind the whole thing. That is why when you fall sick or when something beyond your logic happens to you, you get a big shock. Your unconscious never believes there is something beyond your logic because you live a routine life. The whole routine is practically under your control or under your prediction. Maybe you will get caught in traffic for ten minutes or one hour. But you can predict it. At the most you will have an accident. Even that can be predicted. So almost all the things or at least the majority of things are in predictable limits. That is why, by and by, you start living a self-centered life in which you start believing that life is under the control of your logic.

Once in a while if you go and live in the Himalayas where life is wild, natural, not logical, not organized, not arranged, where you can't call 911 if you are sick, no ambulance is possible, forget about medical care, you will know what it is. Every year we go to the Himalayas. I take people from around the world to the Himalayas. People ask me, 'Why do you spend 15 days, Swamiji?' I tell them, just to give you the glimpse that life is something more than your logic, life is something more than your intellect. It is not under your control or prediction as you believe unconsciously. If you see that nature, vast nature, you will understand how small this so-called civilization is. You will understand that all civilizations of planet Earth, or the great science, or anything, is just dust in front of Nature. You will understand you are nobody in front of Nature.

If you live in the cities, you think, or you start believing unconsciously, you have conquered Nature. You never allow Nature to intervene in your life. You have an air conditioner, a heater, everything. Whether it rains or shines, your life doesn't change much. You managed technically to believe that life is under the control of your logic. But only when you live in the wild nature, a place like the Himalayas, you will realize that life is something beyond your control. Life is a blessing. You will not take life for granted. You will experience life which is beyond the self centered life. If you live in the city, constantly you think that the whole thing is created for you by you.

Paramahamsa Devotion, the Path to Liberation – Shiva Sutras 27 Apr 2006, Seattle, USA

Left: In sacred city Varanasi, India, 2006.

Bottom: Triveni Sangam, Allahabad, 2006. This place is the confluence of the three sacred rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati.

Paramahamsa took a group of 90 people to Varanasi - the spiritual capital of India, between the 3ʳᵈ and 11ᵗʰ of Jan, 2006. The main purpose of the visit was to dissolve the ashes of Sri Sri Sri Nithya Arunachalananda Swamiji, beloved father of Paramahamsa, who attained Maha Samadhi (left the body after Enlightenment) on 12 Nov 2005, in the holy waters of the River Ganges in Varanasi

Paramahamsa dissolves the ashes of his beloved father in the sacred waters of river Ganga in Varanasi in 2006. A group of disciples accompanied Paramahamsa on the trip.