What do you think?
Rate this book


Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
Similarly, your karma makes you settle down in some particular womb, with those kinds of tendencies and with those kinds of attributes. Somewhere, there are millions of beings waiting for this. One half is there, it has to find the other half. It just finds a suitable plug and somehow gets notched up. It’s not that this person is named for that person. This is not the way it works. It’s just like the way many things settle down in certain ways, beings also settle down according to their attributes and tendencies. That’s all it is.That is, all kids are rebirths of karmic bodies which have been looking for places to settle.
Now if a very powerful situation is created, certain creatures become aware of something more than their physical body. The three animals that are very capable of doing this are a cow, a snake and a crow. You know they told you, if your father dies or your grandfather dies you must feed the cow, the snake or the crow. This is because these are three creatures that are capable of a little awareness if a powerful situation is created, not otherwise.Only these three animals, it seems, can have self-awareness other than human beings. There is more:
See, if you have to eat some animal for food, if you have to kill some animal and eat it, even towards that you should have compassion; there is no doubt about it. Even for a rudimentary man, the snake and cow have been a taboo only because these are the compulsory steps in the process of evolution of the soul. It should not matter; if you have the same compassion for everybody, but if you are a rudimentary man who kills, you spare at least these two animals, because they are potential human beings. It’s like killing a man; it is so close...Somehow, the crow gets missed out here.
...In the Indian tradition, the laws were fixed like this: if you kill a human being it’s murder; if you kill a cow it’s murder; if you kill a snake, it’s also murder. That was how it was fixed, but they could not fix a law to say that anything you kill is murder, because the need to kill was there, maybe for man’s survival, for his food. Now the cow is one animal that has human emotions. A cow will shed tears when you have suffering in you. People have very deep relationships with cows in India, and snakes are very sensitive to certain types of energies. Wherever there are meditative situations, or rituals are performed, snakes are drawn there.
Charles Darwin told you that you were all monkeys, your tail fell off and you became human. When you were a monkey, you did not desire to become human. Nature just pushed you on with your evolution. Once you are in this human form, you can only evolve consciously. Unconscious evolution is over for you...Darwin didn't exactly say monkeys evolved into humans, but it is a common enough misconception among laymen. But the snake and the cow being essential steps in the evolution of being are totally against all scientific principles.
...All the process, all the steps in Darwin’s theory are not essential for the being to evolve, but these two forms, the cow and the snake, are significant steps in the evolution of the being.
The reason why there has always been so much importance and stress in this culture on a Guru is that without a Guru there can be no spiritual process. Without him you cannot transform yourself.This absolute surrender to the guru is characteristic of a cult.
Maybe I have to tell you this at this point; I have initiated more people I have not met than people I have met; that is the reality. When someone really longs, I initiate them, wherever they may be, when the longing is deep enough to receive me.
Yes. Many people who were connected to me in some way over three hundred and seventy years ago, not only those who supported us, but even those who persecuted us, who tormented us, are somehow mostly in Coimbatore today. All of them are not our meditators, but they are with us. It is like that. That is the way life functions.
Many of you are still in that state where, if you were simply told something, even if it’s the best thing for you, you would get a little irritated because you still have your own personality, your own will, your own privacy and whatnot. So when I talk to you, I talk as if I am asking, but actually I am really telling you. Even if somebody tells you what is best for you, you will resist because they are telling you, so I make it appear as if I am asking. All this is unnecessary. If your surrendering is total, this is unnecessary. For a rare few, I just say, “You have no choice, you come.”
The only thing is, you need trust to hand yourself over so completely.