Chapter 6 - Guru Is The Way
Day 43
We need to remember one thing that our body is pure. "Havih" is the offering we put in a yajna or homa, the sacrificial fire. A yajna is happening in this world, and your body is just an offering.
Your body is offered in the flames of time. Time is moving just like you are moving. In front of our eyes, 20, 30, 40 years have passed. Yet you have not woken up.
There is no time for knowing where you are. Life is coming to an end, and the body has become an offering. Look with honour at this passing life.
Offer it as it is and do not cling to it. For this to happen, you need a feeling of surrender. We offer our body at night, but take it back in the morning.
That is how people surrender. Someone told me, "Each day as I go to sleep, I surrender my body and the next morning I take it back as I have more work to do."
But this is not how it is. When we make an offering into fire, once it enters the fire it becomes ash, the result can be seen. The offering cannot return as it was.
This is the nature of fire. Similarly, once your life starts it burns in the passage of time, and cannot remain the same. If it stays the same, then you are inert and not human.
People undergo transformation. In a song, Akka Mahadevi sang "You do not accept offerings from those who do not transform." Life is an offering. This body is an offering.
So with this attitude, offer it up and wake up to life. Then there will be no possibility of worrying, and we will come back to life. Knowledge is food.
As your body requires food and sleep, in the same way your soul requires knowledge and understanding. The root of all problems, worry, hatred and misery is lack of knowledge.
If you have knowledge, then there is no misery. Where there is misery, there is no knowledge. Understand this. When your stomach is full, you do not feel hungry.
If you feel hungry, then your stomach is not full. Look at the faces of some so-called wise people. Their faces are full of worry and misery. If they are wise or knowledgeable, they should be cheerful and full of happiness.
If you are unhappy, then you need knowledge. Go into some knowledge and examine your life. Try to analyse it. Where are you heading in your life? Many times you have been born, cried and died.
Now wake up and look around. Life is a celebration, in which you grow in knowledge and celebrate life. Knowledge is food for you. If you have knowledge, your pleasantness and enthusiasm will increase and overflow.
The more you know, the more your mind will be full of happiness. Misery is not your nature. Do not think that misery is inside of you and go searching for it.
Sit quietly and think about the words of knowledge that you have listened to, and your mind will become happy. Why do you attend satsang?
Although you may not understand all that has been said, whatever you have heard washes impurities away from you, and the mind feels relieved and happy.
Half there, you listen without paying attention or you nod off. That is why many philosophers and wise men have come to this world and given discourses.
But most people are still sleeping. At any point in time, it does not look like anybody is awake
