Question: I want to help bring peace to the world. How can I make an impact? Should I join a politically active group? Or can one person accomplish more through meditation, prayer and chanting? Answer: I would say prayer, chanting and meditation would be more helpful. If you still want to join a group, all…
Living together happily as one beautiful family with total love is God. People still ask me, “What is it that I have been doing all these years? I’ve been practicing, but I haven’t realized God, I haven’t had any experience.” I don’t know what experience it is that they want. They want to be lifted…
There is no other duty for man except meditation on the self. Dismissing all else, one should establish oneself in the self. There remains nothing to be done or attained when the self is experienced. For that Brahman the immortal is before, behind, to the right and to the left and stretched forth above and…
Divine Will has no tinge of selfishness. Ego means selfishness, “I,” “me,” “I am doing it for my sake.” So whatever you will to do for your sake is egoistic and will have its own return. We have to face it. But without the ego, we would say, “Some Cosmic Power makes me work. The…
Question: How can I know when to serve others and when it is best for me to say no without guilt? Answer: You yourself should know how much you can give. You cannot give beyond your capacity. If you have done a lot of service that day, and if you are really tired, you should…
If you want God, what should you do? Simply sit and cry? No. You should serve God. If you really want to attract somebody, if you want to get somebody’s love, you must serve that person. You must do all that you can to attract that person so he or she will love you. You…
Everything is empty without God. Marriage, an ashram, even sannyas (monkhood) is empty if there’s no God. Each one is trying to find that joy through different ways. To find God, you don’t need to do anything. Neither taking sannyas, nor having a family, nor living in an ashram, nor having anything is going to…
That is a big question. I can put it into one small sentence: the meaning of life is to serve. That is the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to serve, not to live for your sake. Life is not given for you to live for yourself. You have been made to live,…
They are children. They are yet to know what is right and what is wrong: that’s why they are under your care. They were given in your hands to take care of them, to train them, to discipline them. Don’t you do it with your dogs? You take the dog to a bad dog company…
There is a practice: sit comfortably in a quiet place, think of all the troubles you had in the material-oriented existence and the complicated life and the influence by the affluence. Think, contemplate well, and you will understand you were not happy for even a moment with that kind of life. The more you contemplate…
Question: I want to know God, but I keep getting attracted to relationships. If God doesn’t want me to be married, why can’t God help me to want only God? Answer: That’s what God is doing. You are beginning to feel that way now. If God had given you a partner, you wouldn’t even be…
Question: How can we cultivate the neutrality to evaluate our own thoughts and actions, which are so close to us? Answer: Find out whether your own thoughts are based on selfishness or not. If your thoughts are based on selfishness, then they are always wrong. Because you are putting your own concern as your primary…