Table of Contents
New Year's message
Commentary and questions on the New Year's message
- Commentary
- Question: Does this New Year's message apply to the world at large, or primarily to your disciples?
- Question: Usually I think of self-doubt as the human quality and self-indulgence as the animal quality in us.
- Question: When I see myself cherishing indulgence and I start doubting my sincerity, what should I do?
- Question: What are the forms of self-indulgence that we must transform?
- Lecture to ministers of the Unitarian Universalist Church
Questions and answers
- Question: I think that some of us might be interested to know what your view is of the thinking of Dr. Radhakrishnan, who was probably the best known philosopher of Hinduism in the rest of the world. When he died, you remember, there was almost a page devoted to him in The New York Times. Has his thinking made an impact on your religious philosophy?
- Question: Your practice of Yoga seems to be distinct in some way from the practices of other teachers. When someone comes to you to be a disciple, on what basis do you accept them? What do they have to do in terms of Yoga? In what way is your path distinct from the paths of others?
- Question: If you were to accept a seeker who was meant for you, would he be practising or following certain specific exercises?
- Question: I was going to ask what part Hatha Yoga had in your discipline, but you have already answered my question.
- Question: You mentioned two paths, the mind and the heart. I was wondering if they were mutually exclusive or is there a combination possible?
- Question: I find that search and doubt are part of the same thing, that part of searching is doubting. I'm not sure of your meaning of doubt.
- Question: I think one of the reasons I experience this doubt, as well as other people, is because there are so many bad teachers in the world.
- Question: I'm not sure how truthful it is to say that we are all doing the same thing, we all have the same goals. I'm not sure I am. When Billy Graham says that to me I resent it. When Moon from Korea says that, I resent it. I don't know that we are in the same boat that you are. I think many of us have this dichotomy between personal religion and social religion. We understand that in some societies and some religions and some periods of history there has been some emphasis on social religion hurting the individual. But as Unitarian Universalists, many of us feel that at least historically there is a social dimension in our faith, a very strong social dimension. And I don't feel it or see it coming from your religion. You're saying we'll convert the individual and there will be a better United Nations, a better America, a better India. I think we say that we convert the individual, but also we must convert groups of individuals; we must change institutions and change society. And I don't perceive that you are in the boat about personal religion and social religion.
- Question: I think people would say that the way in which you choose to discover yourself is not good for people because it tends to turn them inward, so their attention is more exclusively on themselves rather than on making the kinds of changes that have a significant impact on large numbers of people. And by concentrating on one's own fulfilment and self-discovery a lot of other things that are of greater need to the world are neglected, in a sense.
- Question: Once they have looked within, then what do your people do socially for the world?
- Question: Is there another kind of Yoga that is specifically for service?
- Question: Is there any difference between prayer and meditation?
Poems from The prayer of the sky
- We are happy
- I depend on God
- Inside their hearts
- The prayer of the sky
- New Age Community
- Interview - The jewel of humility
Jharna-Kala news
- Question: Up to now, it has been a marathon — a lot of paintings in a short span of time. Will you arrive at a point where you will slow down and do only one or two large, detailed paintings?
- Question: Many painters paint objects, like birds and flowers, but most of your paintings seem to be abstract.
- Question: In essence you are really painting what you see?
- Question: Some people feel that your type of art expresses realities that have never been seen by the world before.
- Question: By revealing these scenes to the ordinary world, have you incurred any anger from the cosmic gods?
- Question: Are there any other human artists who have consciously or unconsciously tried to express these other planes?
- Question: Once when you were showing us some paintings I had the feeling that each picture had a soul.
- Question: Would an artist have a better understanding of your paintings than an ordinary person?
- Question: Is it true to say the human mind as we know it was surpassed? Was it your highest aspect that saw the things that you have painted and you only used the human mind to capture them on paper?
- Question: Given what you just told us, do you think in ten or fifteen years people will accept this as a different form of art?
- Question: Most of your paintings have been small. Will you do larger ones?
- Question: Why can't the small ones be enlarged?
- Question: You have worked in many media since you started painting. Which is your favourite?
- Question: What is the particular quality of acrylic that you like?
- Question: Are the colours that you see inwardly much more brilliant than what you paint?
- Question: Sometimes some of the great artists and poets of the past have done works that seem to have been divinely inspired, but their lives did not seem to be spiritual. How is it that one's life can be undivine and his work divine?
