QUESTION & ANSWER WITH GURUDEV

QUESTION & ANSWER WITH GURUDEV

POSTED ON: SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2022

Q: I know that some impressions are troubling me, but I don’t know what impressions are troubling me. I know that to progress it is important to remove them. How to identify and remove them?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

You’re in the right place. Just relax. It will be done for you. Some things you have to do by yourself and some things you have to let others do for you. You can’t say that you will do everything by yourself.

If a surgery needs to be done, you should allow someone else to do it on you. If it is a massage, you have to allow someone else to do it on you. You cannot say, ‘I will massage myself’.

But, if you have to eat, you have to do it on your own. You cannot say, ‘I am thirsty but let someone else drink for me’. You have to drink by yourself.

Similarly, you have to meditate. The restlessness in the mind and lack of focus comes by the over-utilization of our energy and our senses. If you are very focused and centered, just go and see a movie and after 3 hours you will notice that your focus is gone. Watch cricket for may be 2 hours and after that see how rattled your mind becomes; vatta imbalance happens and the mind can’t focus. Similarly, if you’re working on an ambitious project and there is anxiety about the success of the project, then you’re centeredness is gone. You’re mind gets ruffled.

Suppose you’ve eaten too much, or you have not had enough sleep, or there is an anxiety to achieve something immediately, then the mind is not focused. Overuse of any of our senses, touch, smell, taste, hear and sight makes you lose your focus.

In Gita it is said, 'Drop all the five senses for some time and then you will notice that the mind gets really centered and your intellect becomes laser sharp’.

It is like what you feel after an advance course, the mind becomes as clear as a crystal. How many of you have had this experience in meditation? (Many in the audience raise their hands). The moment you use your senses more than its capacity, you feel drained. When you feel drained the mind is all over the place. There is not enough prana; not enough energy.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar