PURE DEVOTION🔗

The power of chanting

Shankara says: bhaja govindam bhaja govindam govindam bhaja mooda mate . . . samprapte sannihite kale nahi nahi rakshati tukrunjkarane

There is nobody who is more intellectual or sharper than Shankara. Any philosophy on planet Earth will either accept him or reject him; they can never go beyond him. He is the ultimate intellectual jewel. He is incomparable. If you read the Brahmasutra Shankara Bhashya, you will understand that no more philosophies can be created. To read the whole thing, you need 10 lives. He took 10 years to write it!

The above line from Bhajagovindam means, 'Fool! Chant bhajagovindam 3 times and at the end of your life when Lord Yama, the Lord of Death comes, you will be enlightened! That is the only way to reach enlightenment, not by tukrunja - which is the grammar to learn Sanskrit and scriptures. By intellectually analyzing, you will make any problem only worse.

Out of love and bliss, things will be flooded away. When the flood of bliss happens, there will be no peak or valley. Everything will be on the same level. You will not know which is a problem or which is happiness! Everything will dissolve into Eternal Bliss or nithyananda!

Paramahamsa 2005, Himalayas, India

Worship at Los Angeles ashram, USA - 2007.

Guru Puja under the sacred banyan tree, Bangalore ashram - 2006, in the presence of the Master.

The only way out

There is a beautiful saying in the Hindu epic Mahabharata: there are three balas - three strengths - physical strength, mental strength, spiritual strength. Physical strength means just physical health, physical well being, physical power. Mental strength is mental power, intellectual power. Spiritual strength is love, compassion - all these things. If a man is having only physical strength without spiritual strength, he will become just a gunda - rowdy, just a barrier, criminal. If a man is having only intellectual strength without spiritual strength, again he will become only cunning. Only when you are endowed with spiritual strength, the other two strengths will become useful for humanity. Somehow we miss the emotional strength, the emotional being, which is the reason why the whole of Science has turned towards destruction.

Today we have atomic weapons on this planet Earth, which can burn this planet seven hundred times, not once or twice. Of course this is a report five months ago. Now it can even be seven hundred and three times or seven hundred and four times. Our intellectual growth without emotional growth leads only to more and more danger. We have worked towards intellectual growth, but have forgotten the emotional dimensions.

Sri Ananda Venkateshwara arrives at the Bangalore ashram much to Paramahamsa's delight. The deity remained next to the Laughing Temple for a few months before it was shipped to the Los Angeles ashram in 2005.

Our Rishis, our Mystics, our Masters, have worked on the emotional dimension, on the development of emotion. That is why in India, every village will have a big temple, bigger than even the school of that village, bigger than the basic necessity of the village; all other things are only secondary. Temple is the primary thing for any village or settlement to be created.

Sharada Devi says, 'Even if you are cheated, if you live with love, you will live like God on the planet Earth; you will live like a God.' On the other hand, even if you are not cheated, if you live without love, your love will be deeply dry and dead. Your life will be just like a dull dead leaf. Without love even if you make all the comforts of life, you may have a bed, but not sleep.

Somebody asked me, 'Swamiji, in India our ancestors wasted all their energy by building temples. Every village has got big temples. What is the need of having such big temples? See other countries, they have all built big universities, scientific research centers. They have all built beautiful infrastructure, roads, bridges - all the possibilities for economic growth, but our rishis built only

temples.' I told them, 'Fools! You do not understand the rules of your Self. You do not know the greatness of the Rishis and Mystics. You say they wasted our energies in the temples. You do not know that these temples are the root cause for our emotional development. Because of these temples, our country is out of psychological disorders and diseases. In such a big country, the whole of India, only one percent of the population takes any medicine related to disorders related to mind.‘

The deities of Sri Anandeshwar and Anandeshwari, prior to getting consecrated at the Bangalore ashram are seen in procession here. The procession named Kodikkan Ratha Yatra offered darshan of the deities to more than one crore pairs of eyes.