Message from Swami Nardanand

The retreat in Belgium ended tonight in harmony and bliss, laughter and joy, a deep sense of unity and profound gratefulness for the divine blessings bestowed on us by Guruji, the lineage and Swami Satyadevanand. In the morning Swamiji had an important message that should be shared with all sadhaks. Swami Satyadevanand was translating. Swami Nardanand: 'Most of the people here have been initiated some time ago. Now they understand the methodology better. Swamji wants to say things that are very important to aspirants. After initiation, it is the effort of the Shakti to purify the samskaras by creating manifestations from the innermost level. These impurities are from many lives. They are permanent guests in us. They have no intention to go away anymore. Now Shakti is trying to push them out of you but if you continue to have attachment for them, then it is difficult. When Shakti is working to purify us from anger, jealousy, fear, etc., try not to get attached to these negative qualities. If you continue to cultivate them, if you go on being attached to them, they will come again and Shakti has to expel them again and again. They just play hide and seek and there will be not much spiritual progress. What do we need for this? We need to cultivate a high level of the power of discrimination, of viveka. If there is not much viveka which makes us see that we cultivate the negative qualities over and over again, there cannot be a high level of vairagya or detachment. Vairagya is very necessary. But what is Vairagya? Some people think that vairagya is getting rid of the objects and comforts of the world. No, vairagya is getting rid of attachement to objects, not of the objects themselves. Swamiji remembers a gurubrother of his who came from an affluent family. One day he said that he had left everything and that he now lives in vairagya. Swami Ji said: 'No ,everything outside, you have left, but you still carry all of these objects inside'. So vairagya is not leaving the world, in fact this is not possible, one cannot leave the world, one still needs food, shelter, etc.Before you slept in a house, now you sleep and eat in an ashram, what is difference? So detachment is an inner thing. Here there are sitting many people who have been initiated some years ago and who have been doing sadhana for many years. All those aspirants should observe themselves and compare the amount of ego, attachment and negative emotions we had before and how much they have now. If there is no difference, where is the progress? Shakti will give bliss but we should be careful. Otherwise the bliss will come and go but will never be permanent. Together with our sadhana(meditation-practise) we should be careful that anger, attachment and other negative qualities do not touch us.If the same amount of them remains as before we started our sadhana, then our sadhana has no meaning! But Swamiji has also seen many people who , after Shaktipat really tried to change their life for the better. They tried to reduce their impurities. Swamji saw a big change in the direction of discipline and simplicity happen. (In the afternoon he added: if the student does 5% effort in the right direction, Shakti will do the other 95%.) Sadly there are other persons initiated into Shaktipat who still show much ego, jealousy,etc. If they experience good manifestations of Shakti, they boast that they have good manifestations. They feel superior to others, ego grows, but there is no place for ego in sadhana! Sadhakas should not have jealousy among themselves. Everything is a play of Shakti, noone is inferior or superior. God has created everybody equal. Maharaji (Swami Shivom Tirth) used to say:'samskaras are nothing, they are just like smoke before the sun.' So if someone , based on his perception of having less or different samskaras claims:' I am superior', this is very wrong. In this Shaktipat lineage, all sadhakas (aspirants) are treated equally. Irrespective of colour, background, being newly initiate or not, all receive the same respect. Here everybody is equal. Here,everybody should respect and love each other. Here, everybody should cooperate with each other. In our Shaktipat family, we should try to develop a very good, divine atmosphere and ambience. If you get an atmosphere where everybody tries to help one another, this will create a very nice place and environment for spiritual practises. Here, there should not have any kind of politics. There are persons who have made their own group saying to the people attending: you should not go to other groups.Such attitude is very bad for our spiritual practise. Even some good sadhaks are not attending this retreat because the suggestion was made not to attend! Swamiji feels very unhappy for them . We are all gurubrothers and gurusisters, we are all equal, this is the notion we should all have.' (End of part ONE, part two will follow tomorrow)