QUESTION & ANSWER WITH GURUDEV

QUESTION & ANSWER WITH GURUDEV

POSTED ON: FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

Q: You spoke about listening to the 'Anaahat Naad' in silence. But if I try to do that, I feel very awkward as if I have some disorder. Once when I told my doctor about this he said that I must be hearing things and that I have some mental illness.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Relax in the sound that you hear from within. We try to fight with that inner sound, we try and get rid of it. Don’t do that, instead relax with a calm mind in the sound.

For example, the people in Mumbai and Delhi who have homes near the main road, or in New York have a home by the highway hear the sound of heavy vehicles 24 hours in a day. If you go stay there for one night after having stayed in the ashram, neither will you be able to sleep nor will you be at peace, because here you have become so used to sleeping in an quiet peaceful environment. Every five minutes you hear the sharp noise of a vehicle passing by, and not just that, you feel the vibrations also, as if it passing right over your head. Since we are not used to these sounds we keep fighting with them.

In foreign countries, if you have your home near the highway or some main road, then it is very difficult to get some peace there. You lose all your serenity. If someone new goes to live in such a place, they become very uncomfortable and lose their sleep. Without sleep, your entire body becomes shaky and you feel fearful. But those who have been staying there since a long time become habituated to the noise, so they do not have a problem sleeping despite the noise. They sleep very easily, snoring away the whole time, because they have gotten used to it. The same is with the people in Mumbai. Those who stay near the main road can hear a lot of noise in their house but since they have gotten used to it over time, they are not troubled by the noise.

Similarly a voice arises within us and we think we have some disease. We go to a psychiatrist who gives us a medicine which instead of resolving the problem creates another problem, making it worse than before. So all I am telling you, accept the subtle sound and relax in meditation. Just imagine that you are gently soaking into the sound. Accept it lovingly and you will see that everything will change.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar