December 3, 2024
Swamii: In this space, whatever is called Swami Venkatesananda sits and talks to you; and then the body stops breathing, that's all. But nothing leaves. Nothing comes and nothing goes, right?
Death does not come from somewhere, and life doesn't go from here. Nothing leaves the body, nothing comes into the body. The body disintegrates, decomposes, because that's the normal thing to do. It's doing that even now. Since it's not able to get any nutrition from outside, there's no building up anymore so there's breaking down.
Question: The mind is breaking down too?
Swamiji: It doesn't seem to. There's no breaking down at all for the mind. But you don't even know what the mind is. Go step-by-step, if you jump even two steps you miss out.
This thing called Swami Venkatesananda sits and talks to you. But if I don't eat for the next few days, the building powers of the body are slackened, correct? And since the body ceases even to breathe, the building process comes to a complete standstill. Since neither the building nor coherent force (which keeps the limbs together, cells together, molecules together) are functioning, they begin to fall apart. It's the most sensible thing to do! But nothing has gone, and nothing has come in.
This must be repeated as a formula for half a minute - nothing goes out nothing comes in. And what is is, and what stays stays. What stays is now unrelated to the outside material world.
The divine presence, being everywhere, is in you, in me, and all the infinite creatures, flowing everywhere. Therefore, there is an inevitable interaction. When the interaction is one of love, the result is happiness; if it is one of attachment, the result may be frustration; if the interaction is one of hate, jealousy, fear, the feedback is one of unhappiness. That is what we mean when we say, "the world is a mirror that reflects us". If you look at the world with love, it reflects happiness towards you, if you look at the world with hate, it reflects unhappiness towards you.