Life is wonderful!

This post could be quite shocking, I don't really expect people to totally agree with me as it takes for all us to evolve over time to get this. Nevertheless what I am saying below is worth a read just to realize there could be a perspective like this.

Often we see people struggling with life always complaining and feeling miserable and discontented. When we talk to such people it would seem so big and we empathize with them, feel sorry for them. But there could be several questions here. First one is if the Life really is a struggle? If we assume it is, what could be the ways by which one can handle it? As a friend or an observer what could we do to help the person?

Is Life really a struggle? I would say it is an absurd idea to think it to be a struggle! I can confidently say this because I have a Guru who constantly guides me and even to take way any pain if there is any at all. How does that work? Is that a magic? No! Any which way you analyze this phenomenon, you can only be thoroughly convinced that it is true. The whole struggle is only till the time one finds a Guru. Beyond that you just need to rest and the Guru takes all the care to steer your life in a safe and sound manner. All that one is left to do is to be in absolute Gratitude! Life is wonderful! Every moment is filled with Wonder! I have only been in wonder ever since HE touched my heart. This might sound like being credulous.. But it is not so. Even if what I go through may appear to be a struggle some times to an external observer, it wouldn't cause even a slightest pain for me. As an instance, I have already narrated a story about my accident in my  previous blog. It was quite an accident, but dramatically I and my wife had such safe way of escape. I know it is hard to believe. But being in Gratitude by itself is such a blessing that it really does not matter to whom you feel grateful. Every experience in this life is both an effect of our previous actions and also a reason that propels us in the right direction of evolution. The experience by itself could result in super ecstatic bliss or an excruciating pain. It does not really matter. If we are in total gratitude we can only be grateful of whatever experience it is. There is no struggle. His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar always says that Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. It is the suffering that causes one to declare that life is a struggle. But whatever may be the pain, if there is no suffering then Life is totally wonderful - Filled with Wonders!!!

If you look at a child's face you can very much appreciate what I am saying here. Child's world is full of wonders. Even though a child might ask questions, those questions do not arise out of anguish, they come from the space of wonder. They are perpetually awestruck and wonderstruck. Evolution is growing even beyond this state where questions completely stop and only wonder remains. Unfortunately as we grow into adulthood our questions seem to turn more sour and wonder seems to be completely absent. The secret to making the Life Wonderful is to have total faith in the unseen power and drop all the questions and celebrate every moment of Life!!! And the natural next step would be to just share the joy of this celebration to everybody around! And this really can bring in that real transformation in each person that will make their Life Wonderful too!!!

India - The land where sensitivity and sensibility prevails over everything else

India of course is the land of spiritual epicenter, but what exactly does that mean? It is worthwhile knowing about the land both for the people having traces to this land as well as for others.

Whatever I am about to say applies to a large extent to all native civilizations except that there is something more special about India that has made it sustain its culture and practices to the original best even today.

Take for example food that people eat. India has the most number of cuisines in the entire world. If you are a traveller who tastes the food around the world, an entire life is not sufficient enough to taste all the different cuisines in India. For all practical purposes everybody in India is a vegetarian. If at all some people eat non-vegetarian food, they hardly have one non-vegetarian meal in about 3 weeks time at an average and not more than that. I can tell this having a first hand experience growing up as a non-vegetarian until I left eating non-vegetarian food about 12 years ago. This shows the sensibility of Indians to keep the environment sustainable and sensitivity towards the life of animals. Today we hear about the German Environment Minister banning non-vegetarian food in all official functions. Still I bet the average meat consumption in that country would be several times more than that in India. 

If you talk about consumption of energy, India still consumes 500-1000 kg of oil equivalent per capita compared to close to 10000 kg of oil equivalent per capita by USA. Although several statisticians would attribute this difference to the economic development aspect of a country, I would question that. Do you consider burning the natural resources making it extinct which we still have no way to manufacture from nothing and clearly dependent on what is actually available as a limited quantity, any indication of a developed nation? This is totally absurd. India culturally has always been a pioneer in using renewable energy and using every opportunity to reuse than use and throw. This again shows the level of sensibility and sensitivity towards the natural resources that are available in limited quantities.

Let us take the behaviour of people. In spite of having such a big population, India remains a largely peaceful and the largest democracy in the world. Many developed countries in the world today are suffering from either the extremity of violence which they try to control by force,  or deep depression in spite of having quite a good economic condition. India on the other hand redefines the aspect of coexistence in spite of an enormously varied culture, language, religion, economic conditions, education and aspirations. This is fundamentally possible because of a deep rooted culture and wisdom of this land and nothing else. Whatever was done to this land from the last 600 years by the external rulers, nobody could take away this aspect of unity in diversity from the depth of every Indian. Sensibility towards family and society and emotional sensitivity are I would say trademarks of every Indian.

Take the case of scientific advancement and contribution to the subject of Mathematics. Indians have always known that earth is spherical several thousands of years before it was known to the rest of the world. The sanskrit name for earth is "Bhoogola" which literally means "Earth that is spherical" and this term has been in use for several thousands of years. Everybody quite well acknowledges now that Aryabhatta invented the number zero which is so fundamental to Mathematics. Talking about Technology, In the epic literature of Ramayana, there are several references to the Aeroplane (Pushpaka Vimana) and Vaimanika Shastra talks about technical details about fuel used, aeronautics, avionics, metallurgy and mentions about 120 different models of planes and this was written at least 10000 years ago. The ancient scientists (otherwise known as Rishis) were quite sensible as to who they can pass the deep knowledge to. It was passed on only to qualified students so that they can further expand the science and use the technology sensibly without causing any disastrous effect to the world. And of course the scientists were quite sensitive to the effects of technology on environment.

Let us take the advancements in the field of Architecture. In spite of the rulers from outside India having destroyed numerous Architectural marvels and tried side constructing along the walls of existing monuments (Ram Janmabhoomi and Krishna janmabhoomi for example), still India remains a land filled with most number of Architectural wonders. Thanjai Periya Kovil built during the Chola period is one of the largest temples in India. The Architectural excellence was so much that the Indian Kings built Ankor Wat in Cambodia which is at present the largest religious monument in the entire world! These huge religious monuments are also known to be the energy centers constructed in a manner to draw and direct the subtle cosmic energy into the structure so that people who visit benefit from that. This again shows the great intentions and sensibility of the Architects and a great sensitivity to even be able to sense the cosmic energy!

I want to talk about the History of India a little bit here. I feel a great injustice has been done in the last few centuries to completely distort and misrepresent the Historical heritage of India as a land. Unfortunately even the independent India embraced the same colonial narration without digging deeper into the History. But there are enough documented evidences pointing to the historical existence of India as a Land and Culture with a great and advanced civilization several thousands of years ago. It now is only a matter of the present day Historians and Indologists with the help of a willing government to unearth all these evidences and give a brand new narration which will tell the truth as it was. I am sure the whole world will benefit learning about the sensibility and the sensitivity with which the people of the past in this land lived and contributed.

Art is a form in India that was never separate from the General Living. It was an integral part of everybody's life be it singing, dancing, music, painting, carving, pottery, etc and it was never considered a property of the rich few unlike in other parts of the world. Every bit of the living included art as its expression. Art is a surely a way to measure the cultural growth of any country. In that respect it is always quite evident that India had reached its pinnacle in its artistic expression several thousands of years ago and has been continuing on that journey even until today. No country even today has these many forms of dances, music and singing. And the refinement in each of these is immeasurable. Clearly it requires an enormous sensitivity to even be able to perceive the art form. And the people in India have always been quite sensible even in selecting the materials used to create the art forms.

India had also reached the pinnacle of Culture and Language. These two were always connected in India. India has the largest number of dialects as a nation and surely every dialect is connected with a certain cultural marvel. Be it the way people dress, the food they eat and the societal norms they follow everything has a vocabulary in the Language they speak and write. The respect that was given to women was supreme and there are certain cultures in India even today who follow matriarchal system. The sensibility towards women power has been quite evident and sensitivity towards people's cultural expression is so powerfully celebrated and expressed in innumerable literatures.

Education is a field that India has always been number one throughout the history. It is an undeniable fact that various princes and princesses from around the world were sent to Indian universities of the past to learn from. Nalanda and Takshashila are great examples of this. The system of education was so perfect that whoever had gone through the system would always come out as an expert in their own field unlike in today's world where people coming out of the system still need to go through some amount of training from respective industry in order to be any productive. The faculty and the whole system of education was so sensible towards producing only experts and no mediocres. The sensitivity towards the cultural and religious differences within the universities were so great that supreme forms of debates had evolved. For example whole nation is aware of the way Sri Adi Sankara used to debate travelling throughout India The best part of these debates was that the audiences always enjoyed the feast of knowledge and however different their viewpoints were, people who debated always respected and celebrated their differences.

India's Wealth is the very reason for the number of external looters having occupied the land and exploiting it to the core. The rulers were so barbaric that for instance even while leaving the country the British is known to have taken back ships of gold from this land. At one point India's contribution was upto 40% to the world GDP. Even with this type of economical advantage, India never conquered any part of the world by force unlike several middle eastern and western countries. India always demonstrated a Great sensibility by leading the way on how to sustain growth and economic supremacy. At the same time, it was always sensitive to people around the world and it is very evident with the way even businesses were conducted in the past by Indian Business leaders.

Health is one area where India is THE LEADER even today. While every other systems of health science and medicine in the world revolves around curing a disease, Indian systems of medicine always looked at disease as just a symptom of a larger problem and always had a wholistic view in order to address the root cause of the problem. This is why it is very common to see that the medicines administered to the same disease might different from one subject to another which might puzzle people following other systems of medicine. Health is not just a state where the subject is experiencing an "absence of disease", but a measure of how close is the subject to his/her own self. The word for health in Sanskrit - Swastha - means exactly that. This clearly shows the amount of sensitivity towards attaining health and the sensibility of the Medical community towards bringing a wholistic system of medicine.

Religion in India has always been projected as a subject of controversy by certain elements within the country and abroad. This is very unfortunate. In reality India is the only nation in the whole world where there is representation of every religion of the world. There are even some religions which originated from outside India and now only practised in India as it was destroyed in its place of origin - an example is the religion of zoroastrianism. People have always celebrated the differences in religious practices and celebrations themselves! India is the only country where Hindus even celebrate Christmas and Christians celebrate Deepavali and the list goes on. One is astonished to hear the fact that the mortal remains of St Thomas who is one of the twelve disciples of the Jesus Christ who visited India still remains in the city of chennai. If only Jesus was born in India I can assure that his remains would have remained until today. It is also astonishing to note that all Religious practices that are done to this day in India are very well aligned to the nature - be it the timing of festivals with the seasonal changes and the methods of celebration with Havans that has caused immense benefits to the environment. The Indian ancestors were always sensitive to the effects of the religious practices and so sensible and intelligent to device such forms of worship that are never heard of in other parts of the world.

Lastly I don't want to leave out the area of Spirituality where India is overwhelmingly considered a clear leader and remains the land that guides anybody and everybody to attain their respective spiritual goals. His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar always talks about the clear difference between Spirituality and Religion. Whereas the latter focusses on the outer rituals and traditions which are way different in different religions, the former which is considered the core part of any religion is something that is common across all religions of the world. Quite often people misunderstand Spirituality and end up building several concepts around it. Spirituality simply deals with upliftment of the Spirit that every individual is made up of. It is the spirit that drives anybody to achieve anything in the world which is why we often refer to an individual who is very enthusiastic as somebody having high spirit. All the human values like compassion, forgiveness, sincerity, etc are natural expressions of the spiritual wealth inside an individual. This is why one of the missions of the organization started by Sri Sri named "The Art of Living" is to bring a Transformation in the society by strengthening individuals by teaching them how to get rid of stress through breathing practices and Sudarshan kriya (One of the most powerful breathing practices that exists today). In essence, India as a land has always demonstrated the sensibility of guiding the entire world in the area of spirituality and has always been sensitive to the various states of one's mind and delivering the knowledge of spirituality accordingly to the individuals.

India has always remained and always will remain as a land where sensibility and sensitivity prevails over everything else in all walks of life. It is my sincere prayer that the whole world looks towards India not as a competition, but as an inspiration to learn and benefit from its historical richness and the spiritual wealth which is the very basis for the much needed human values in the present world.

Feminity is the Supreme Power!

Seeing the title, some of my male friends might wonder if I am writing against them! But this is one of my favourite ones ever since I came in contact with His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. My question to you is.- Do you think Feminity is present only in a female? If you thought so, I totally challenge that idea. Every human,  whether a male or a female is made up of both the qualities of masculinity and Feminity. I equate the quality of Feminity with motherhood, love and energy and masculinity with peace, potential and strength.  But I consider Feminity to be supreme and much more powerful than masculinity.

According to the Hindu belief, Shiva is considered a male and he represents the consciousness itself which pervades every particle of this creation and beyond. But Devi is considered a female who is the very reason for the creation to function. Devi is responsible for the movement of the subtle life force energy which brings all the liveliness in this creation. Without Devi energy Shiva remains only as a potential and there would be nothing tangible. Without the help of Devi, there is no way one can realize the truth that is Shiva.

If this is confusing, I can switch to science and try to explain this. According to the quantum physics, everything in this world is made up of quantum energy. The quantum is nothing but vibration. Essentially everything that we see, touch, hear, taste and smell are some kind of vibration which also means movement with different frequencies. I consider the movement to be even possible because of the Devi energy and the potential of this movement is called Shiva. In reality there is no difference between the two as the Silent form of the energy is called Shiva and the dynamic form of the same energy is called Devi or Shakti.

But in order to realize the Silent form one has to take the help of the dynamic form which is the very basis for every expression in this world. That is the reason why we see so many forms of Devi in Hindu worship. We see the serene form as well the dreadful form. We see the divine smile as well as the deadly anger. We see the mother divine that represents supreme love as well as the utmost devoted Radha (which means longing).

Every form of art is feminine and every beauty in the world is feminine. All Rivers are feminine in every native culture of the world. Life is born through women who represent Feminity in its pure form. Every person gets any kind of solace in this world only through feminine qualities of motherhood, compassion and Love. Joy be it physical or spiritual is possible only through Feminity. Any spiritual experience is essentially only the feminine energy moving upward all the way from the base of the spine to the top of the head. One remains grateful after that and the quality of gratitude itself is feminine. Out of gratitude one goes and serves people and serving as an expression of joy and Love itself again is feminine. All the blessings that get bestowed out of the service is again feminine. So as I mentioned earlier every possible expression and experience in this creation is possible only because of the Feminity and hence it is all supreme and all powerful!!!

Answer to loneliness!

In the growing world of nuclear family and 2 parents single child and even single parent single child, it is only quite common that one often feels lonely. Loneliness brings with itself all sorts of negative effects which in extreme cases lead to depression and even suicidal tendencies. But I would like to draw a striking difference between being alone and feeling lonely. One can be in the midst of a crowd and still feel lonely. On the other hand there are several people who personally prefer to be alone and not experience an iota of loneliness. Then what really is the reason for the loneliness? 

It is lack of awareness of ones own self. If anybody is feeling lonely it is because the person has always looked at oneself through the eyes of others and never really looked at oneself deep within experiencially being aware. They want other people to relate to and never got a chance to relate to oneself. What is our relationship to our own self? Have we ever wondered about that? Loneliness smply means craving for attention from others. We don't know who we are, and what we are capable of. We don't know what our life is all about and the purpose of being on this planet. The moment one starts enquiring about these precious questions, there is no time for being lonely. This life is a precious gift from nature. But it is so short that it is almost insignificant in contrast to the duration of the existence of this planet and the whole creation.In such a short span of life time on this planet it is such a waste of time to crave for attention from others. I am not saying not to relate to people at all. That is an other extreme viewpoint which leads to insensitivity and once again leads to depression. What I am saying is that there have been many people in our life who have given love starting from the mother, siblings, friends, etc. Let us feel grateful for their love. Have we ever taken some time to feel grateful and expressed the same to them? It is extremely rewarding just to feel the gratitude. It really does not matter to whom you are grateful for. You could be grateful for the comforts you have been provided with, nice people you have met, being able to breathe, to the life itself!!! But the very feeling of gratitude kindles a certain quality in us which is invaluable. Being grateful every moment makes you so alive and brings such an ecstasy in your life that anybody around gets attracted towards you and start celebrating just being around you. There is no question about being lonely. On the other hand you start relieving people of their loneliness and kindling that same fire of love and gratitude.

One more phenomenon is that when you meditate and go deep within, you first realize that you are nobody. You are not the body, you are not the breath, mind, intellect, memory nor ego and start realizing you are made of just love and subsequently you also realize that since everything in this creation is made of love you are also all that, you are everything that is around. The whole journey is about moving from somebody to nobody to everybody. When you realize you are no different from anybody else and you are in the company of everything around including your own body, its cells, the molecules and atoms, how can loneliness set in? You can be sitting all alone and still experience the liveliness of the creation. This can also only happen when the prana (subtle life force) level is high which is why every sipiritusl master emphasizes on practicing Pranayama (breathing techniques) that totally elevates the level of prana. I have definitely known this through experience and vouch for it. I have learnt the Sudharshan Kriya from His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and it has brought me such a clear awareness and enabled me to live life to its fullest potential. I would definitely recommend this to all. I have personally facilitated people to do this practice and have seen several who were in depression and loneliness totally coming out of it and fully living their life with such a great happiness!

 

Why do spouses fight?

Is there any family at all where the spouses don't fight? I have not seen or heard one! Interestingly you might have also observed that closer the spouses get, more the fight becomes. Spirituality uncovers a well kept secret that clearly explains the whole phenomenon!

We might have seen when a boy and a girl remain lovers, the fights are a little lesser than when they get married. What is essentially the difference? It is the distance!!! Love brings people together and does not like distance. But the moment they come together the element of respect starts decreasing. And the ego in the person gets hurt because of this and it rebels against the person and thereafter the fight starts. It is always the game of distance and respect. When there is  distance, respect is there, but love diminishes. When distance is reduced respect reduces and fight begins. This phenomenon was very well known in ancient India which is the very reason in India during the month of July the wife goes to her mother's home leaving the husband. This increases the distance and there is a depth of respect and longing that develops. They start exchanging letters. Sweet love flowers once again between them. It is always the longing that keeps the love alive. The moment longing stops, love also stops almost immediately.

Also His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar often gives valuable advise to a wife and a husband which has been so handy to several people. First advise is for the Husbands. He says it is so important that a husband be sensitive to the wife's emotion. For example a wife may be telling something bad about her brother or father or any relative of hers. But the moment husband joins hands, almost immediately the wife will switch sides! So never talk bad about her relatives. Also women are interested in visiting temples, performing some religious ceremonies. Never stop then from doing that! And if they go out for shopping, simply give your credit card to her, no questions to be asked! And here comes the advise for the wives! Never step on the Husband's ego! Keep pumping his ego. Even if the whole world says he is mindless and useless, a wife should never say so. She can say you have a great intellect, just because you don't use it does not make you brainless! Jokes apart, this is so much scientifically true. Normally women are predominantly right brained and that allows them to be more artistic and emotionally vulnerable whereas men are predominantly left brained and hence logic dominates with more sense of ego and taking pride in achievements.

But divine love has no such distinction of gender. It is something totally unconditional and very much above all the other forms of love put together - love between spouses, love for siblings, etc. When somebody experiences the divine love even for a few moments, understanding of the phenomenon described above is almost automatic and all other forms of love is sustained without any problems. Because in divine love there is both love and respect at the same time. However you go closer to the divine or a Guru, love and respect never diminishes and they only keep increasing day by day. At the same time longing is always there which sweetens the love for the divine. The sanskrit word "Radha" means longing and it is always referred to along with "Krishna which is pure love. Radha and Krishna can never be separated.

Being with a Guru and continuing with the practices learnt from the Guru and walking the path of the Guru enables one to be always soaked in the divine love. Then all the little fights between spouses are nothing to be worried about. In fact it's occurrences becomes quite infrequent and you start enjoying event moment together!!!

Family or No Family in spiritual journey?

This is a very common question in anybody's mind when he/she tries to walk the path of spirituality. Forget about even spiritual path, for that matter everybody who has not married goes through this question - whether to marry or not marry, whether to have family or not have family. There are several things going on in the mind. More so in the minds of the Millennials. 

Some think they will loose their freedom if they marry. Some are scared to take any family responsibility. Some think marriage will ruin their quest to achieve their goals be it material ones or spiritual ones. Some even want to be a celibate thinking that is going to take them deep in spiritual journey.  Some want to marry and have family to expand their progeny. Some want to marry just to be with that one person they always dreamt of being with. Some think marriage is part of the social system and whether they like it or not, it is one of those customs that they need to follow. Some marry just because their parents want them to get married. Some just want to be in a live-in relationship with no commitments. 

Most of these thinking arise out of misconceptions about life itself. Opportunities in life present themselves in various ways to experience Love in different forms. Yet instead of being in that space of love, we look forward for something special and we are also often afraid of getting entangled. There are deeper secrets as to why those moments present themselves which I will not talk about here. Instead let us look at what we do about those moments. For example let us take a situation when some boy looks at a girl and falls in love - Love at first sight. There are some sensations arising all over the body. A feeing of thousand flowers blooming within the heart, songs of romance playing all at once in the ears and uncontrollable smile! But right after, fear starts whether the other person will also love. What if the person rejects his love! So effectively the moment of Love got lost and all the focus got shifted to the future. But nobody bothered to see where this surge of love came from? No doubt the other person was responsible to create a spark, but what is the source of the feeling of that love in enormity? You will be amazed to realize that the actual source is deep within us and we are the source of Infinite Love! You may have noticed a happy person writes nice poem looking at the moon whereas a sad person looking at the same moon starts describing it as a depressing object with rashes all over! The moon is the same! But how one feels about it is entirely dependent on the state of the person looking at it. This clearly proves that though the external object/person may be a trigger, the source of the emotion is within the person experiencing that object/person. When you experience a sense of deep love looking at a person or an object try this - forget about the person/object who kindled it for a moment and go deep into yourself observing the sensations caused by that experience of love. You might notice the experience of love multiplies many times more! This is a natural phenomenon and that is why we often close our eyes when experiencing deep moments of love. When you regularly meditate, you can easily slip into the state of ecstatic love at will without even any object or a person having to trigger it.

When you don't know this truth, we keep wandering around searching for that experience of love thinking marriage might give that, family might give that, or being independent without a family might give that. And we end up going around in circles along with the moving target. The moment you know this truth, you soon realize it really does not matter what you do, but the bliss of love stays within you no matter what! When you experience the true love deep within, a natural tendency arises to share that love with everybody around. You cease to expect joy from some object or a person, but your very actions start becoming an expression of that pure Joy and Love from deep within. You start taking every opportunity that life presents with both hands happily accepting it and fulfilling them without any regrets, because you stop expecting joy out of the completion of the action. The action simply happens as an expression of the joy within. His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar often says we are all made up of a substance called bliss or love and all other emotions are deformations of pure love itself. When we know this, it really does not matter - Family or No Family is not a question anymore! The whole world becomes your family - Vasudaiva Kutumbakam!!!

Why does Love hurt?

If there is something that cuts across all cultures, languages, all living beings and even non-living things (I will explain below why even non-living is included here), that is love. If it does not follow the step by step path of attraction, love and being grateful, it definitely hurts. As much as we long for love, it is also the very reason for all the negative emotional roller coaster that we go through including anger, jealousy, greed, lust, disinterest, hate, fear, sadness, etc. This may sound crazy at first. But love for perfection results in anger when things are not perfect. Loving only things/beings that belong to you makes you jealous when that/those which does not belong to you is doing better. Love for holding things beyond what one can handle make one greedy. Love that does not see beyond the object of love becomes lust. Love that does not have any direction becomes disinterest. Love in the opposite direction becomes hate. Love standing upside down is fear. Repeated thought of love for something makes you sad.
Having said all the above, why is still love being longed for and why people even die for love? Because everything in this creation is made up of love. Just like how protein is made up of amino acids, this entire creation is made up of a substance called love. Love is just not an emotion. It is the same force of love that binds all the planets to the Sun as the force that binds all the electrons to the nucleus. It is the glue that binds everything in this creation. And the feeling of longing is not necessarily bad. In fact it is the longing that makes love infinite. At any point if the longing dies, love also dies with it. Why does the love hurt then? Because we try to hold love that is infinite. In an effort to hold love, we constrict the expression of love causing suffocation. Putting a boundary to the expression of love in an effort to possess love is the cause of the hurt. Also demanding love destroys love. Love flows unlimited outward because each of us is a source of infinite love. Hence allowing it to find its expression in every manner makes one feel abundant and blissful. But the moment we look for getting love, possess love, hold love it completely destroys it. This is the biggest lesson of life. If there is just one thing that is worth realising in life it is this. That is the reason every religion in the world says Joy is in giving love and not in taking love.
At first this knowledge may sound impractical because we tend to naturally want to hold love. But on the other hand we also have practically seen that every time we have experienced some hurt it was because we were trying to posses love. What is the way out? This is where ancient practices of Pranayama (breathing techniques) and meditation comes handy. I will explain how. As a child, it has been so easy for us to give love without any inhibition. For an innocent child even non-living things exhibit life. Even Sun, Moon and stars are its friends and relatives! Because there is nothing stopping the flow of love from within and child remains the source of unlimited love. But over the years we started accumulating enormous toxins in the body and an enormous amount of emotional garbage in our mind. In the process of becoming intelligent, we started kissing our innocence. But we have remained ignorant of any method that can reverse this process and make us once again innocent in spite of our intelligence. The answer is Breathing techniques. It is a scientific fact that 80-90% of body toxins go out through breath. But it is also scientifically known that gradually out lung capacity has reduced to just 30% on an average. The only way out of this is to once again maximize the lung capacity. And Pranayama is most well known method for it. Also how to get rid of the emotional garbage? Again it can be done using breath. Because breath is the connecting link between our inner world of peace and outer world of dynamic expression. You might have noticed that every emotion we go through has a corresponding pattern of breath. But this has remained unidirectional. We feel a certain emotion and breath automatically changes. But it is also true that by changing the pattern of breath, one can have a greater hold on emotion. The world famous breathing technique called Sudarshan Kriya exactly works on this principle. This rhythmic breathing technique not only works on the level of emotion, it also affects and leaves a long lasting positive effect on all the levels of our existence - Body, Breath, Mind, Intellect, Memory, Ego and the Self. It thoroughly cleanses all the levels and thereby bringing back the child like innocence back to our life allowing the infinite love within us to find its expression in all possible ways it can. We become a perfect divine instrument to the expression of love. There is no question of any kind of distortion of love exhibiting itself nor of any kind of hurt!!! We become ever so grateful for the Love we have received and We become the True flawless Love itself!!!

Evolution means recognizing the subtle aspects of life

Often I have heard people ridiculing the worship of idols by Hindus saying it is a childish act! But I see it as completely opposite! It is so childish as to not recognize the subtle aspects in life which are represented by these idols! I ask a simple question, why do you hang photos of your loved ones in your home? Why do you keep a photo of your lover in your wallet? Just looking at a photo kindles all the great memories and you cherish them, don't you? You automatically get transported to a beautiful world of love and longing! That is the whole point of idols in Hindu worship! The moment you see an idol, you magically get transported to the world of recognition of the subtle aspects of life that it represents and you sing and dance in ecstasy with tears of gratitude rolling down your cheeks!

I agree that if this phenomenon does not happen, there may be little or no point in just paying some customary visit to a temple. That is where spirituality plays a vital role in experientially knowing things under the guidance of a Guru rather than intellectually trying to understand them. For example when you see an idol of a Devi (a female deity), if you have a superficial understanding of what a Devi represents, it may not kindle the bliss in you. But even once if you have had the experience of the scintillating energy that Devi represents, moving  through you from down all the way up to your head and above, then every time you see the idol of Devi, or even when you hear somebody uttering the name of Devi, you immediately start recognizing the aspect that it represents through your experience and you start cherishing the memory of your experience and you simply start dancing in ecstasy! You don't have to believe in what scriptures say, because you have to believe only in that which you don't know. But your experience has made you already know what is, what the Devi represents, and all the subtleties of the life itself!

Same is true with every idol that Hindus worship. The moment you hear the word Shiva, you immediately recognize the transcendental meditative state of your existence if you have even once experienced it through meditation. The moment somebody says Krishna, your presence automatically starts tuning to the playful, skillful, naughty, mischievous nature of Krishna and you start dancing swirling around with joy and ecstasy!

Recognizing the subtle aspects of life is what I call as Evolution! And that can only happen if you have a Guru in your life who guides you in each and every step of your life. And if you have a Guru, then indeed there is no real need to worship the idols because through the Guru you have started recognizing that all the aspects which the idols represent are already present within the self. You really don't need an idol to remind you of the experience, but the experience percolates and reflects in every action you perform in your life. Till that time, at least start recognizing and appreciating the intelligence of our ancestors in establishing the worship of idols and let us not ridicule the system of idol workshop just because we didn't get it! If you have not got a chance to experience what it means to be with a Guru like His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, I only can sincerely pray that your intellect opens up to that possibility sooner than later!