Swamiji answers your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• (On Ananda Healing) What is the advantage in Your system of healing?
  Today, many systems of healing are there. People do heal and give results. But they don’t have enough maturity or purity. When you get energy from somebody, you receive his thoughts as well. When you go to a professional man for healing, he may give you results but he also passes on his immature thoughts to you. If you go to a Master or people who have been initiated by a Master for healing, you will see that only positive Energy will be received. You will get healed and you will also become more mature in your thoughts.
• Why do You initiate people to be healers?
  I have only two hands for healing. I need more hands to spread my Energy and so I initiate people to be my healers.
• Is there any difference between healing done by You and healing done by Your Healers?
  No! absolutely no difference. The same Energy that flows through me flows through them also.
• You are God; Can't Your healers therefore be regarded as God?
  When they heal, they are God. As for me, whether I heal or not, I have already merged with Existence and so I am God.
• Can you give all Your power to Your healers so that they can always be God?
  By all means! If they can take up the responsibility that I have taken, if they can handle the Energy that I am handling, then by all means. It is just a question of maturity and their understanding of handling the Energy.
• What do You want them to do to take up that responsibility?
  Meditate. Secondly, just be in the presence of the Master. It will do a lot of good. Individual instructions like ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’ cannot be given. Just be with the Master, it will make you God or Master. When you go near fire, it will consume you and make you also part of it. Likewise, just be with an open mind near the Master. Being with a Master will make your Being into a Master.
• How long does a person have to undergo healing?
  It depends on the disease and the age of the person, how long he has suffered, how deep rooted the disease is in his body etc.
• Is it possible for You to tell the patient when exactly he will get cured?
  Yes. When I meet him personally, I can tell the exact period.
• How do You plan to serve society on a large scale?
  In serving society, I want to make them more mature, settled, healthy, happy and blissful! My only message or goal is to be blissful and to make others blissful. The method of realising this is ‘Dhyanapeetam’. Here people will be able practice meditation and healing sciences and there will be an Energy centre where the world’s largest live Linga will be installed, which will hold and radiate live Energy. People will come there to receive the healing Energy from the Linga. They will go back as more mature and healthy people. The Linga will radiate Energy to heal 4000 people at a time. This will be the hub of our activity. Regular teacher training or healers’ training courses will be conducted and through this we will serve society on a large scale
• Is distant healing possible? If yes, how?
  Distant healing is possible. At the body level, we are different. At the mental level, we are all connected in a deep and unconscious way. Distance and space do not count.
• Is the healing that You are doing black magic?
  It is not black magic, it is white magic! Energy along with the maturity to handle it is white magic while energy with no maturity to handle it is black magic. If you a give a knife to a child, he might hurt himself or hurt others. He does not have the maturity to handle it. If you give the same knife to a surgeon, he will use it to heal people. It depends on the maturity of the person handling it. In the same way, energy can be used to do good or bad. The man who is spiritually Enlightened will do white magic while the man who has no maturity to handle the energy will do black magic.
• (On Rebirth) Can a person be reborn in any form any number of times?
  Our desires decide this. If a person has killed 10 people in this birth, he will have a desire to kill the 11th person. To fulfil that desire he will be re-born in an appropriate place. A person always doing poojas in this birth might be born in an agraharam (Brahmin priest's house) in his next birth.
• Why can’t that killer decide to reform himself?
  If he commits at least one murder fully, that is with complete awareness, he will not feel like killing again. If you eat one rasgulla with complete awareness, you will not crave for it any more. You may or may not eat it again, that’s a different issue, but you will be satisfied and will not crave for it.
• If we do good in this birth, is there any guarantee that we will do good deeds in the next birth as well? When will we stop having rebirths?
  There is every possibility of it. When a man is used to doing good deeds, he will look to being reborn in a place where he can do people good. Each person has got the complete freedom to decide on his birth. Your parents, your life, your place of birth, all these are decided by you. If you live unconsciously and die unconsciously, you will be confused about what to choose at the time of re-birth. In that confused state, you allow yourself to be pulled by your desires, that’s all. For eg., if you are from Chennai and you go to Bangalore, you will not know what to do there. If your desire lies in visiting temples, you will go to a temple in Bangalore. If you like watching movies, the cinema theatre will pull you to it. In the same way, when you leave your body, you are in a confused state in Existence. Whatever desires you had in your previous birth will pull you to take on a suitable rebirth. Just like what happens when you go from one place to another, things happen from one birth to another also. It is your clear choice because nobody is there at that time to interfere. You should live all your desires fully and with complete awareness, to your maximum capacity. Then you will not have a rebirth. At the unconscious level, you should be desire-free.
• Cant we resist the pull of our desires at the time of taking a new birth?
  If you are conscious and realize that you are being pulled by desires, you can take a suitable decision. But what happens is, the moment the pull is felt, you book your ticket for the next journey and go to that place, that is take on a new birth.
• How to change that?
  We have to bring about a distance between our thoughts (the pull) and ourselves. We should see that we are different from our thoughts. We normally associate ourselves with our thoughts. If we separate ourselves from them, we will get the maturity to handle them. Creating that awareness is the only way.
• (On Religion and Spirituality - a young girl at a college gathering) Swamiji, did love failure cause You to become a sanyasi?
  No ma, it was success in love that made me a sanyasi! I know what the meaning of real love is. The love that you know is only infatuation; simple hormonal torture. Your mind is not under your control. Your hormones are pushing you out of your mind. You need someone outside to satisfy your psychological image, someone who can give you psychological support. You need a shoulder to support you for two minutes, that’s all. That is what you call love. True love is beyond mind and body. Failure in love will create only Devdas not Sanyasis! Only success in love can create sanyasis. Only a person who can love the whole world can become a sanyasi.
• What is religion and why is there so much terrorism in the name of religion?
  Religion is nothing but certain techniques given to us by Masters to help us fly like an aircraft instead of living like a bullock cart. In due course, man misconstrued religion. The importance which was to be given to the Bhagwad Gita was given to Lord Krishna and there started the problem. If we give importance to principles, there is no problem; if we give importance to personalities, there starts the problem. The people who are fighting in the name of religion have not tasted a mouthful of water from the ocean that is spirituality and hence the problem. Had they tasted they would have known that all of them are talking about the same thing that is 'God' or 'Life Force' or 'Cosmic Energy' and about how to realise it.
• What is the difference between religion and spirituality?
  There is an energy that conducts this universe and there is an energy that conducts your own self. Sprituality is about how to establish a connection between these two energies. Flood religion with scientific reasoning; let whatever that is washed away be washed away; whatever stands the reasoning is spirituality. Religion minus superstition is sprituality. When you purify religion, you become a spiritualist.
• Why should we become spiritual?
  Spirituality is nothing but flowering of four things in you and they are physical health, mental health, healthy inter-human relationships and the capacity to respond spontaneously in all aspects of life (what is called responsibility). If these four things are achieved, you become a spiritual person. You will then see that automatically your economic status and character will improve; crime rate will come down and holistic growth will happen in you and in humanity at large.
• Should we discard religion?
  We cannot discard religion just because we do not know the scientific basis of it. Those who discard religion will create another new religion. If there be a group of people propagating ‘Religion’, immediately there will be another group of people propagating ‘No Religion’. The former will rob people in the name of God and the latter will rob people preaching the absence of God, that’s all. Just pick up the good points in religion and leave it at that.
• What do You say about atheists who deny God?
  The spiritual man who argues that God is there and the atheist who argues that God is not there are both fools. God is not research material. He is something to be felt or experienced inside you. He is not to be spoken or argued about. Questions like 'Where is he?', 'Why hasn’t he appeared?', 'Has he gone on long leave?' are all unnecessary. By discussing it this way, you cannot realise God. If you believe in God, just focus on how to improve the quality of your life with that faith; that will do.
• To tread the path of spirituality, one needs an entire lifetime. What do we do for our livelihood?
  Only religion requires time because it is ritualistic. Spirituality does not require time. It is the quality and not the quantity of your life. The common misconception is that spirituality is for retired people who have finished their responsibilities and who have the time to contemplate on God. The fact is that youth needs spirituality more than anyone else. You can continue in your line of work and practise spirituality to excel in all walks of life. You don’t have to become a sanyasi or go to temples for this. You only need to meditate in some form or the other. Simply peform every task with your Being; it becomes a meditation. Adapt yourself completely with your surroundings.
• India has had more number of spiritual Masters than any other country. Why is there so much of violence here?
  If you see the ratio between the population of India and the violence that is prevalent, it is not as much as in other countries. But as individuals, each of us can work better and can take more initiative towards reducing violence. This issue can never be discussed and resolved. Each of us can think of how we ourselves can contribute, how we can abstain from violence. When we are walking on the street, we could avoid plucking flowers or breaking twigs off trees, that might be the starting point. This way the collective load of violence can be reduced. Let us not discuss why society cannot be changed.
• What is the difference between religious people and spiritual people?
  Religious people are those who believe that if milk is boiled and sugar is added and drunk, it will be tasty. Spiritual people are those who boil milk, add sugar, drink it and experience the taste. Those who believe are Religious people while those who have experienced are spiritual people
• Why do many spiritual leaders wear saffron coloured clothes?
  Colour therapy has become popular today. Every colour instills a certain feeling inside the body. For eg., if you put on a red light in your room at night time, you will not be able to sleep whereas a blue light will bring sleep. Science has proven that saffron instills spirituality in a person. That is why Masters use this colour.
• When I want to do good, for eg., when traveling in a bus, I see an old man and I want to offer my seat to him, but I decide against it when I think that I have to myself stand for the rest of the journey. Whereas, when I want to smoke a cigarette, I get a total concurrence from inside me to go ahead saying that one cigarette will not ruin my life. Why am I not able to control myself and do what is really correct?
  Your question is to do with morality. The question is ‘The mind agrees but the heart disagrees, why?’ The cigarette has merged with your Being. You have experienced it yourself and therefore your heart accepts it. It is not through someone else’s preaching that you are accepting it. But the happiness that you get by offering your seat to someone in the bus is something that you have not experienced deeply; you have been told by people that it is good to offer your seat to an elderly person in the bus, that’s all. To push the preaching that is received through the mind down to the heart requires a drilling machine that is meditation. Then, justice, honesty and similar virtues taught to us will become a way of life and there will be a certain juice that you feel when following it. Else, all these virtues will remain as intellectual knowledge without turning into experiential knowledge.