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I would like to get into contact with Christel Wilk again. We have
met in Hong Kong in 1994/95 and have hereafter met in Germany for
one of haar classes in 1998 en sinds then have lost contact. I now
live in Holland. I read that she has moved to Morocco. I would be
very pleased to get her current e-mail adress. Thank you. With best
regards Susanne Herbst
Healing Presence Energy Balancing is a unique integration of healing techniques and intuitive invitations. It has evolved over years of joyous living, learning and healing facilitation. Formal trainings in Biodynamic CranioSacral Balancing, Energy Medicine, Creative Visualization and EFT compliment her twenty plus years of journeying inward to self-awareness and personal healing.
Dada JP Vaswani will launch his new book Peace or Perish in Hong Kong on September 4. In an extract here he tells us step 2 on how to bring greater Peace into your lives, by letting your mind rest in God.
Step 2: Let Your Mind Rest in God
The second step to interior peace centers around the words of the great Jewish prophet Isaiah: Thou wilt keep him at peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.
The Prophet was speaking out of experience. He had discovered the secret of true and lasting peace. He must have found that every time his mind stayed on the Lord, every time he felt he was in the presence of the Lord, he was at peace.
Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee!
There was a very wealthy man who came to meet Sadhu Vaswani. He said to the Master, “I have all that I need and more. I am grateful to God who has blessed me with all the wealth of the world. But...”
The Master waited for him to continue.
“I have big mansions to live in—wherever in the world my business interests are located. And my businesses are all doing very well. My children lack nothing—they attend the best schools and universities in the world...
“I have everything the world can give—but I am not happy. Can you please tell me what is the reason?”
Sadhu Vaswani’s reply was a simple one. He said to him, “You are not happy because you lack peace of mind.”
Ashantasya Kutah Sukham! For the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness, says Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. How can anyone be happy if he is not at peace?
The man was not ready to give up so easily. He persisted, “Why do I not have peace of mind?”
“Because your mind is restless,” Sadhu Vaswani replied.
Our minds are restless. They are restless like storm-tossed boats. Our minds wander here and there. Our feet may be firmly planted on the earth—in Pune, New York, London or Singapore.
But our minds wander to the four corners of the globe!
How many months, how many years it takes for a rocket to reach a distant planet like Saturn? But if you think of that planet, it is there in your mind—you are there in thought. Your thought moves faster than sound or light. Your mind will not be confined by any limits or barriers. The mind is its own space; the mind is its own power. This is certainly a good thing for the mind.
But the negative aspect of this is that the mind is restless. It cannot be still; its feet are burning; it cannot stop; it will not stay in one place; it keeps on wandering! Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee!
Can you try a little exercise? Every time you become aware that the mind wanders, quietly, gently, lovingly, sweetly, bring the mind back to the Divine Presence. It is not easy! Even as you become aware that the mind is wandering, we are wandering with the mind! However, do your best to stop thewandering mind in its tracks, and bring it lovingly back to the Divine Presence.
Do not attempt to fight the mind—for the mind can be a formidable enemy! Make friends with it. Say to it gently, as you would tell a stubborn child, that it would be good for it to focus on the Divine Presence. Allow your mind to savor the peace that this can bring. Say to it, “See, see how happy we are sitting in His Divine Presence! He will keep us in perfect peace when we rest in Him. Why can’t we sit at His Lotus feet, and experience the bliss of life?”
Repeat this simple exercise over a period of three to six months. You will be amazed at the change that this brings about in your life! Your life will become new!
When your mind wanders, and you become aware of it, bring it back to the Divine Presence. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee!
It was Meher Baba, the Sufi mystic who said: “A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is Divine.” If you wish to realize your own Divinity, slow the mind down, still the mind and rest the mind in the Divine Presence.
Let me make one thing clear. I am not encouraging you to cultivate emptiness of mind. I am asking you to fill your mind with the Divine Presence. A vacant mind, as Dr. Johnson warns us, invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts vagrants and outcasts to take up their abode in its desolate rooms. Let me repeat: Do not just empty your mind – fill it with all that is noble and good.
The Annapurna Upanishad tells us of a great sage who seeks Truth by withdrawing his mind from sense perceptions. To his surprise, even while he reflects on the steadiness of his mind, he realizes that although it is withdrawn, it is still extremely restless. This is what he says about the mind:
It wanders from a cloth to a pot and thence to a big cart. The mind wanders among objects as a monkey does from tree to tree.
— (Annapurana Upanishad III—6)
The mind is a monkey! The ancient rishi found it wandering from a cloth to a pot to a cart. As for us in the 21st century, we are so ‘advanced’ that we have a million ‘sophisticated’ things for the wandering mind to latch on to!
Recently, a survey conducted among young students in urban India revealed that many of them spent on an average, between 2 to 3 hours per day on their cell phones. They said they were not talking all the time; they spent much of their time sending messages.
I once saw someone sending several ‘SMSs.’ I think we cannot have more apt demonstration of the restless, wandering mind than the act of frantically pressing buttons on a small instrument. Trying to communicate through one’s fingertips. I am told that a little boy in the UK damaged his right thumb beyond repair through constant messaging!
It is not just that our mind keeps wandering during the day, it is not at rest even when we fall asleep. I watch people sleeping—and I find their brows knit with frowns. The calm, relaxed look which you find on a baby’s face when he is asleep, cannot be found on the face of a sleeping adult. This is because we are worrying, worrying all the time. We cannot switch off our anxiety and worry, even when we are asleep.
Ashantasya Kutah Sukham! The disturbed mind is far from peace. How can it mediate? How can it be at peace? How can it even be happy unless it is established in God?
So it is that Gautama the Buddha tells us in forth right terms:
There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind; and there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind.
Let your mind be the master of your body: therefore, let the mind be disciplined and obedient. As the great Greek dramatist Euripides puts it, “The wavering mind is but a base possession.”
All the resources we need are in the mind. And, as Andrew Carnegie tells us, the man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind, may take possession of anything else which he is justly entitled!
Man’s mind, it is said, is not just a container to be filled – it is a fire that needs to be kindled. Alas, we take such care about eating well-cooked, hygienically prepared food; we are obsessed about drinking ‘purified’ water. But look at the trash we feed into our minds!
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee!
How can we hope to find happiness in the world outside, when we fail to realize that it is centered within our own mind?
Earlier, I spoke of the yogi who attempted to withdraw his mind from sense perceptions. I would like to make it clear that I do not expect all of you, my readers, to become hermits and withdraw from the workaday world when I tell you to rest your mind in the Divine Presence. All I am telling you is that focusing on the Divine Presence is an excellent cure for a restless mind.
When your mind is restless, you can achieve nothing; you cannot concentrate on anything worthwhile; you cannot analyze your situation dispassionately; you cannot find a constructive approach to any issues; you cannot solve problems—in short, you cannot face the challenges that life throws before you and hence you cannot face life itself in a proper manner.
Resting your mind in the Divine Presence, as it were, focuses the mind, energizes and vitalizes your intellectual abilities so that you are able to give your best to the situation at hand. This exercise is meant for the working man and woman, business people, executives, teachers and students. It is not withdrawal; it is focusing the mind; it is an attempt to concentrate and thereby acquire greater mind-power; it is an effort to conquer restlessness which scatters our abilities away. Such an effort will not disrupt your work—it will make you work much more efficiently, much more effectively than even before!
Many people tend to set apart work and worship. They feel that there should be a certain time set apart for thinking about God—and a specific time devoted to their work or duty, with which nothing should interfere.
I believe there is a relationship between work and worship. It is this: That work should be done in a spirit of worship; when we worship, we need not neglect our work.
Talking about work and worship, I am reminded of the story of Pundalik. He was such a great devotee of the Lord, that once the Lord Himself came down to earth to have the darshana, or holy vision, of this great bhakta. Just imagine, the Lord was at the door of Pundalik’s humble cottage, waiting for him! At that moment, Pundalik was giving a bath to his parents, who were too old and weak to look after themselves. Seeing the Lord at the door, Pundalik passed a brick to Him and said, “Lord, please stand on this brick and wait, while I attend to my parents.”
What did the Lord do? He was not angry. He just stood on the brick and waited patiently, while his humble devotee attended to his duty.
The Lord who stood on the Vit, or brick, is known in the state of Maharashtra even today as Vithoba.
Many of us find our minds wandering even during prayer—thinking of other things, worldly matters and pending work. If we can think of work even while we pray, why can’t we think of God when we are working? This is also a kind of prayer—and it can go on for 24 hours! You can think of God while you are attending to your duty. You can attend to your work, even as you commune with God.
Someone once asked me: Why does the mind wander? My reply was that the cause of wandering is threefold – even as maya has three faces, three prongs:
1. The first is pleasure, sense gratification. Pleasure draws us like a magnet. Think of your favorite haunts—the cinema, the theatre, the pub, the club, the bar and so on—all these and many other things fascinate the human mind. They grip your imagination and awaken desires within you. It is desires that make the mind wander.
2. The second face, the second prong of maya is wealth. We keep on amassing more and more wealth. We do not even have the time to spend it! Suddenly, death pounces upon us, and leaving our millions behind, we move on, empty-handed, to the Other Shore.
3. The third face of maya is name, fame, earthly greatness, power and authority. There are people who shun pleasures and keep away from the pursuit of wealth; but they are very keen on name, fame, prestige and publicity. They too, are prisoners of maya!
The perfect man is one whose wandering has ceased!
We may not attain this perfection overnight; but we can and must attempt to focus the wandering mind so that we may harness its power for our own good. I read an anonymous statement which said: Focus on God puts you in touch with the Infinite, so that your mind can grapple with the finite successfully.
Lord Chesterfield once said that a weak, wandering mind becomes like a microscope, which only magnifies trifling things. This is very true. The wandering mind makes mountains out of molehills and perceives insurmountable obstacles on the path of progress. On the other hand, the focused mind acquires the wisdom, strength and power to help us face the challenges of life.
In the words of the Zen Philosopher, Chang Tzu:
If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind!
The mind in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all
creation.
Thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee!
JP Vaswani will be launching the book ‘Peace of Perish’ from which this article is extracted on September 4, all welcome see events section for details. Reprinted with permission of the Publishers.
17th – 26th November
Dada JP Vaswani will launch his new book Peace or Perish in Hong Kong on September 4. In an extract here he tells us step 2 on how to bring greater Peace into your lives, by letting your mind rest in God.
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