Meditation Chapter No.27, Mysticism, reading, forums, Numerology, Sun Signs, Divination

Posts: 5114 · Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 10:57 am

So first of all be grateful to your body. Only someone who is grateful to his body can be grateful to other people's bodies. First of all become filled with love for your body, because only someone who is filled with love for his own body is capable of loving other people's bodies. The people who are teaching you to be against your body are irreligious. The people who are telling you that the body is your enemy, that it is evil, that it is this and that, are irreligious. The body is a great miracle. The body is amazingly helpful -- be grateful to it.

What is this body? This body is made up of five elements -- be grateful to the body, be grateful to these five elements.

What will happen to you if one day the sun dies? Scientists say that in four million years the sun will die: it has given enough light, it is becoming empty, and a day will come when it will die. Right now we are under the impression that the sun will rise every day. But a day will come when people will go to bed thinking that the sun will rise tomorrow and it will not rise. And then what will happen? Not only will the sun die, life itself will die because life is sustained by it, because all heat and energy are sustained by it.

You sit by the side of the ocean: have you ever thought that seventy percent of your body consists of ocean water? Man was born on land, but micro--organisms first came into existence in the ocean. And you will be surprised to know that even now the proportion of salt to water in your body is the same as in the ocean. And when this proportion in the body is slightly disturbed you get sick.

Sitting by the side of the ocean, do you ever remember that you also have something of the ocean inside you? You should be grateful to the ocean for the ocean which is inside you, and you should be grateful to the sunlight for the sun which is inside you, and you should be grateful to the wind which is moving your breath. You should be grateful to the sky and the earth that made you. This I call gratitude, divine gratitude.

You cannot become religious without this gratitude. How can an ungrateful man become religious? Once you begin to experience this gratitude constantly, you will be surprised -- this gratitude will fill you with so much peace, with so much mystery. And then you will understand one thing: that you are not worthy of being given all these things, but because you have all these things you will be filled with thankfulness. You will be filled with gratitude because what you have received will give you a sense of fulfillment.

Express your gratitude. Find ways to develop gratefulness and your meditation will deepen through it. And not only your meditation, but your whole life will change tremendously. Your life will become very different, it will become something completely new.

Jesus was crucified and when he was dying he said, "Father, forgive them. Please forgive them because one, they don't know what they are doing" -- that was his compassion -- "and two, there was a distance between you and me, and now that gap has closed. They have helped me to drop the distance that was there between us. For that I am grateful to them."

So when you relate with anyone in your life, constantly remember your gratitude. You will find your life becoming full of wonder.

I have told you four things that are necessary for the purity of the emotions: friendliness, compassion, cheerfulness and gratitude. There are many other things, but these four are enough. If you meditate over them the rest will automatically follow on their own. This is how the emotions will become pure.

I have told you how the body can be purified , how your thoughts can be purified and how emmotions can be purified. Even if you can only manage these three you will still enter into a new and amazing world. Even if you manage only these three, much will happen.

I will talk about the three main princples later on. I will discuss emptines, of the body, emptiness of the mind and emptiness of the emotions. I have been talking about purification; later I will be taking about emptiness. And when purity and emptiness meet, samadhi, enlightenment happens.

Now we will sit for the morning meditation which I have already explained to you. We will begin by making the resolution five times. Then for a while we will go into the feeling state. Then we will watch the in-breath and the out-breath, keeping the spine erect, the eyes closed, watching with awareness the area near the nose where the breath comes in and goes out.

Everybody spread out so that no one is touching anyone else.

There are some questions -- in fact, there are many questions. I will try to give a combined answer to all of them. I have divided them into categories.

The first question is: What is the place of religion in the scientific age? And what is the use of religion in national and social life?

Science is the form of knowledge which looks for the inner, hidden power in matter. Religion is the form of knowledge which looks for the inner, hidden power in consciousness. There is no conflict between religion and science; in fact they are complimentary to each other.

In an age which is only scientific there will be more conveniences, but there will not be more happiness. In an age which is only religious some people will know happiness, but mostly, people will suffer inconveniences. Science provides the conveniences, very few people can know peace. If there is no peace, then many people can acquire conveniences but they will not know how to enjoy them.

Until now all the civilizsations that man has given birth to were incomplete, fragmented. The culture that the East gave birth to depended purely on religion. It was not interested in science. As a result, the East was defeated: it became impoverished and ruined. The culture that the West gave birth to is at the other extreme: it is based on science and it has nothing to do with religion. As a result, the West has triumphed and has accumulated wealth, propserity and conveniences -- but it has lost its soul.

The culture that will arise in the future, if it is truly to be for the evolution of mankind, will be a balance of science and relgion. This culture will be a synthesis of religion and science. It will not be only religious or only scientific: it will be either scientifically religious or religiously scientific.

So far, both experiments have been failures. The Eastern experiment has failed and the Western experiment has also failed. But now we have an opportunity to create a universal experiment which is neither of the East nor of the West, in which both religion and science are combined.

So I say to you that there is no conflict between religion and science, in the same way that there is no conflict between the body and the soul. Anyone who lives only on the level of the body will lose his soul, and someone who tries to live only in the spiritual dimension will also not be able to live rightly because he will lose contact with his body.

Just as human life is a balance, a synthesis of body and soul, in the same way a complete culture would also be a balance, a synthesis between science and religion. Science would be its body, religion its soul.

But if somebody were to ask me that if we had to choose between religion and science, what should we choose? Then I would say that we should be ready to choose religion. If somebody were to ask me to choose between science and religion becaue one of them had to go, I would say be ready to choose relgion. It would be better to be poor and inconvenienced than to lose the soul of man.

What is the value of conveniences that cost us the self? And what is the value of wealth that deprives us of our very being? In reality, they are neither conveniences nor wealth.

I will tell you a short story, it has always been one of my favorites.

I have heard that once a king in Greece fell sick. He was so sick that the physicians said he was not going to live, there was no hope. So his ministers an the people who loved him became very worried and anxious. Just then a fakir entered the village, and somebody said, "People say that if you call the fakir and he gives his blessings, sick people are cured."

They went to get the fakir and he came. The moment he came i he said to the king, "Are you crazy? Is this whta you call a disease? It is not a disease. There is a very simple treatment for it."

The king, who had been lying in bed for months, sat up and said, "What treatment? I thought I was finished. I don't have any hope of getting better."

The fakir said, "It is a very easy treatment. Brint the coat of a man of the village who is both prosperous and peaeful, and this king should wear. He will become healthy and well."

The minsiter ran ...... Thre were many prosperous people in the village. They went from house to house saying, "We want the coat of a man who is both prosperous and peaceful."

And the prosperous people said, "But we are unhappy ........

Acoat --- we can give our lives, what to say of a coat. If the king can be saved, we are prepared to give everything. But our coats won't work because we are prosperous, but we are not peaceful."

They went to each and every man in the village. They searched the whole day, and by the evening they had lose all hope. They realized that it was going to be difficult to save the king -- a cure was beyond reach. In the morning they had thought, "The cure will be very easy to find," but by the evening they realized, "The cure is very difficult, i fact, impossible to find." They had been to all the rich people.

In the evening they returned, tired and sad. The sun was setting. Outside the village, near the river and sitting next to a rock, someone was playing a fulte, Its sound was so musical and there were such waves of bliss arising from it that one of the ministers said, "Let's ask this last person --- maybe he is peaceful."

They wnt to him and asked, "The sound of your flute, your song sounds so full of bliss and pace that we would like to ask you something. The king is sick and we need the coat of a man who is both peaceful and prosperous."

The man said, "I am willing to give my life, but just look closely --- I don't have a coat." They looked closely, it was dark --- the man who was playing the flute was naked.