Anandmurti Gurumaa is the modern day alchemist, mixing the inner spirituality with practicality and uncomplicated and balanced vision. 4th D Woman Editor Vikrant Shandilya here discuses life, human potential and spirituality with this self – confessed mystic.

I AM FOR EXIST:

Existence is multi – dimensional and all pervasive. You cannot define its starting or its end. One facet of existence merges into another to produce the symphony of life. You can’t exclude anything from life experiences.  I don’t define myself and find it rather awkward when people try to do that for me. Most of the times I end up exclaiming, ‘oops that’s me they are talking about’. I don’t access what I have achieved or try to fix my goals. There are no demarcations in my life. I believe that nothing changes and that is the eternal change. This is the very nature of life, and existence of this sort can never be inert.

LET YOUR MIND SOAR:

Thinking of something, which lets us down and limits us because human mind has its limitation has a very finite existence and very close – cut demarcation, and moves only within them. So anything that happens in mind is very much constrictive. I have to move beyond those constrictions to disseminate knowledge to my listeners. Even Buddha, after reaching the age of 80 and speaking for 40- odd years, was once asked: Do you think you have said what you wanted to say? Buddha answered while sitting besides the written transcripts of volumes of his teachings; “I never spoke a single word in my life”. It is not knowledge, which is imparted from the periphery of mind, it is just borrowed information. Anything that is being said beyond the mind is always new, that’s the real knowledge. At times when many questions are asked repeatedly, they meet with different answers, for I don’t prepare for answers, I don’t think in advance. This is the only difference between a mystic and a thinker.

REBEL WITH A CAUSE:

I do have my share of enemies who find me too hot to handle or very rebellious, and they are not happy about anything that goes against their set conditioned mind. Society is not ready to accept a living person and that too a woman as a mystic. When I try and break people’s set mindsets, it hurts them. But I do it with a smile so that the pain or sorrow of losing something dear to them is compensated. I never get offended of the wrong questions and try to answer them right. But mostly people get enlightened the hard way. That was how I learnt for I did not have any Guru to judge me, correct me and give directions. It was my inner Guru only who kept on whacking me if I erred and it really whacks your hard.

I’AM A MASTER, YET A STUDENT:

There is one level when you reach the zenith of enlightenment and it remains constant. Once a Buddha, always a Buddha. Then there comes a level of mind where a constant change exists. Six years back, I was more rustic and used to sing like a gypsy, but today the ability to express and to bring those feeling out in singing has transformed. Life is a teacher and it sharpens our minds with experience; more you experience, more you grow. It’s wrong to say that Buddha knows everything. He wouldn’t know new technology or gizmos. I don’t know many a things but it neither lessens me as a master, nor does it bring me down from my pedestal. At the level of mind there is always a scope for I don’t comment on things where I have no authority or information. I never preach for everything exists in the form of knowledge and one doesn’t produce more knowledge. So I interpret the existing knowledge with my Vivekshakti (wisdom). I don’t believe in being unapproachable or non-comprehensive for my whole motive is lost if my listeners are not able to approach me. My job is to make them understand that they also have the quality and potential to be what I am today, provided one is ready to explore or exploit one’s potential.

I LIVE IN TODAY:

I have evolved to understand that past, present and future is interconnected. It is just ‘now’ that remains. What we are calling past was sometimes ‘now’ and now it has become our ‘now’ someday. What is the truth? Neither past, nor future. ‘Now’ is eternal and rest is changing nature of the ‘now’. If somebody refuses to talk about his past, it means that he is somewhere stuck in there only and not living in ‘now’. Some feel that by remaining in touch with the past, one loses something. I take it as a challenge. Am I so fragile that just by getting in touch with my past, I can lose anything? And if at all this can happen, I would definitely like to experience it. If I am not living in my now, what kind of mystic am I?

LOVE IS TO GIVE:

Manure (cow dung) is very bad to smell, almost unbearable; but that very manure after mixing with soil results in plants and flowers. And that foul smell transforms in to fragrance. Difference between ‘Moh’ (attachment) and love is same. What people find difficult to understand is that we will become sad if we overcome Moh, which gives us happiness. What is required is to change that manure of moh into fragrance of love. It is much more enriching as you are receiving a lot while giving. It is matter of evolving that attachment into love.

CELIBACY – AN OVERRATED VIRTUE:

I don’t think that celibacy has got anything to do with spiritual attainment. This is just another proof of limited minds. Celibacy was not a part of strict regimen for our seers, as it is widely perceived; rather their search for truth engulfed them so much that they had no time for these physical needs. It was strictly by choice. Time came, when they chose to get married of their free will, seers like Vashishtha were married. And there was a trend to get married with more than one woman and many rishis were actually having more than one wife. But it never belittled their status as a Guru. However, anything that is forced always takes you away from the cause.

SANYASA IS A STATE OF MIND:

I like that I am adventurous and knowingly wind. In every manner it has helped me. I always do what I feel like doing. At the age of six, I happened to mumble some Sanskrit shlokas, without knowing where they came from. It was only when I recited them front of some seer that I came to know they were from such and such scripture. I started moving around with various saints, and enjoyed their company. Gradually, I developed a liking towards coloured clothes. As life is evolving and so is my mind, so I have come out of that love of colour as well. Now I wear anything provided by anybody. I don’t remember taking proper ritualistic Sanyas. I realized that rituals lose sanctity when they are mindlessly followed without any understanding. For me, Sanyas is a state of mind rather than a strict regimen.

I BELIEVE IN STRAIGHT APPROACH:

I am too straightforward and people get offended. Although I know that it was their benefit, but still as a human I feel bad about hurting them. I say everything consciously. Sometimes, listeners take my discourses wrong but they will have to comprehend the truth for truth cannot stoop down. They will have to come up to that level.

I AM HAPPY BEING MYSELF:

I am like a bird singing in forest that not hunger for applause. I don’t have any agenda of enlightening people. I just do my job and leave the rest on their comprehension level. For seers, sages or mystics are highly misunderstood people. No matter how much they try to put things straights, people are people. They have their own interpretations. I don’t care about the expectations and the rules set by my listeners for me. I live on a single rule of awareness. Life is not mundane. For me there was no ambition to be fulfilled, no goals to be achieved.

LIFE IS A CELEBRATION:

I celebrate life to the fullest. If people respect life, perfection comes itself. Then one is more concerned about giving one’s fullest. But people take is a bit too frivolously. They postpone their responsibilities; they don’t do what they are supposed to do. They work half-heartedly, they interact half-heartedly, they live half-heartedly and they pray half-heartedly. Nothing is done in absolute. That’s why they are so unhappy, unsatisfied and in anguish. If 70,000 people are listing to me, I can happily tell them that it is not going to affect me whether they are listening to me whole heartedly or are implementing my discourses. I am happy because I am not having any analysis chart with me that mark how many people are going to follow me or be my disciples. I have done my part, I have shared my knowledge or music, and rest is upon you. I am relieved. Success or failure becomes mundane there.

POWER DOESN’T AFFECT ME:

If whatever I have today-followers, consideration or so-called celebrity status-vanishes tomorrow, I would still be myself and enjoy life. Life is much bigger than all this. Once you have tasted that, nothing else matters. This is the biggest revolution one can gift to oneself. Situations give you chances to understand, to accept, and to deliver the goods. Earlier, I was having some set standards of interpersonal relationship between Guru and disciple. If that was flouted, I would get irritated. Now I am more patient.