What Spiritual Masters know about Loving Deeply

What does it take to truly transform the world? To inspire the uniting of nations in a vision that fuels the awakening of our unified service? Where do we turn when in search of the keys to restore our spiritual power as ancient Earth awakens us to our higher selves?

What lessons can be learned from the many realized saints whose bare feet and purified intentions have magnetized this planet with the spiritual wisdom that is now being remembered across her many roots?

INSPIRATION FROM MOTHER INDIA

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers… because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”- Steve Jobs

With 53 temples for every 100,000 people, India is often revered as the spiritual capital of the world, renowned as a source of rich and diverse spiritual teachings and traditions that have spread across Mother Earth’s many continents, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.

India has seeded the incarnation of profoundly compassionate and driven guardians of the spiritual realms who have redefined the Western perception of self, health, purpose and sacred communion; all aspects of self-expression that amount to Bhakti, our overflowing love for our Divine Mother creator.

A land whose spirituality and mysticism has inspired countless social innovators, artists and activists, India has rooted, in her spiritual practices, rituals that instill, from a young age, a connection to one’s soul divinity. India’s ancient Vedic yogic teachings are now being globally embodied, as a cure for many of humanity’s social ailments and diseases, by those consciously guiding Humanity through our Ascension – our transformational alignment with the cosmic flow that restores our original state of existence.

Vedic seers believed that unless acquired wisdom was properly activated within the human vessel, clearing distortions and inherited social biases, the capacity for true spiritual comprehension atrophied, i.e. neural and nervous system pathways withered away, limiting the higher senses of the divine mind.

Hence, the mantras, devotional hymns in ancient Sanskrit that contain the vibration of profound wisdom, were taught to children as Vedic initiates, prior to the detailed explanation of their meaning, so that the students could properly sense the radiance of the Absolute Truth. Without a full sense of Truth, all we receive is a shade of our full spectrum reflection.

Chapter IV, Verse 20 of the ancient Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita, “The Song of God,” translates, “Relinquishing attachment to the fruits of work, always contented, independent of material rewards, the wise do not perform any binding action, even in the midst of activities.”

It is believed that billionaire inventor Steve Jobs was directly inspired by this verse of Lord Krishna’s teachings when he stated, “I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

Jobs, who left Reed College after one semester, entrusted to the promise of his future to his blossoming sense of self as he backpacked to ashrams throughout India for seven months in 1973 for the most influential education of his life.

After seven months of enduring the necessary life tribulations and revelations to initiate his own profound realizations, he returned to California with a shaved head, in traditional Indian dress and passion for Zen Buddhism. Upon his return, in 1974, Steve Jobs announced, "There is no one that embodies better what I want to become, other than Gandhi; he changed the world.”

In 1985, when Steve Jobs was ousted from the board of Apple, he changed his style of glasses to circular Gandhian glasses. Reinvigorated with purpose, he began master-architecting what would evolve as an industry-disrupting force, Pixar, the animation studio which brought CGI to life, forever evolving the storytelling experience – how we communicate life’s most important lessons to our future generation of leaders.

Upon his return to Apple in 1997, Jobs’ advertising campaign, “Think different,” which ran for five years, bolstered the Apple brand and reestablished the counter-culture aura of its earlier days, setting the stage for the immensely successful iMac all-in-one personal computer.

When asked by Time Magazine about his choice for the Person of the Century in 1999, Jobs, who kept a picture of India’s revered Mahatma in his wallet, replied, “Gandhi is my choice for the Person of the Century because he showed us the way out of the destructive side of our human nature. Gandhi demonstrated that we can force change and justice through moral acts of aggression instead of physical acts of aggression. Never has our species needed this wisdom more.”

Suffering under the heavy stress of an early budding Facebook, when Mark Zuckerberg asked for Job’s counsel, he advised the young executive to visit the same ashram he had first encountered in Uttarakand – the temple of world renown yogi, mystic and saint, Maharaji-ji. In 2008, Zuckerberg visited for one month to gain clearer purpose and stronger conviction in his company, establishing a vision that clearly succeeded in bridging people divided across nations.

Aware of his looming death, Jobs meticulously planned his own funeral. At his 2011 memorial service, hundreds of influential leaders in business, politics and pop culture received a spiritual introduction to the Kriya Yoga teachings held within Hindu, yogi, saint Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi,” the only book remaining on Jobs’ iPad the last few months of his life.

In a TechCrunch Disrupt interview, billionaire CEO of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff, remarked upon his emotions whereby receiving the mysterious, small brown box at his mentor’s memorial: “This is going to be good… I knew that this was a decision he made, and whatever it was, it was the last thing he wanted us ALL to THINK about.”

THE ASCENSION OF A GREAT SOUL: Mahatma Gandhi

In his first TV interview, when asked, “If England does not grant your demands are you prepared to return to jail again?” With a welcoming smile, Mahatma Gandhi replied, “I am always prepared to return to jail.” When the question was furthered with, “Would you be prepared to die in the cause of India’s Independence?” Smiling and laughing, Mahatma corrected his interrogator, “This is a bad question.”

At the time of Mahatma’s birth, India was preparing to heal from the traumatizing experience of her British colonization: poverty, malnutrition, disease, cultural upheaval, economic exploitation, political disadvantage, and systematic programs - all aimed at creating a sense of social unworthiness and racial inferiority amongst her people.

Under its colonization of India’s profoundly mystical race, the British introduced the Macauly system of education in India to groom Indians with Western knowledge and override her rich history with Western ideals. The Macaulay’s system mandated the immediate stopping of the printing by the East India Company of all Arabic and Sanskrit books, and discontinued all support of traditional cultural education beyond the Sanskrit College at Benares and the Mahometan College at Delhi, which were deemed inadequate to maintain traditional, civilized learning.

On October 2, 1869, with the birth of Mohandas Karamchaud Gandhi, India’s celestial plea for redemption was answered. Incarnated into an elite family, young Mahatma was initially molded into his father’s image, a lawyer and an important government official. Arranged into marriage, at age 13, Mahatma was encouraged to earn his law degree at the Inner Temple of London. After a two-year attempt at his own legal practice in India, a disheartened Mahatma returned home to be called to South Africa, where he personally experienced the humiliating discrimination policies against the dark-skinned Indians who had been imported as laborers.

Mahatma soon became an outspoken critic against the ruling Boers, who, of European descent, saw themselves as racially superior, as God had established a hierarchy of being, in which white Christians were superior to people of indigenous races. In 1907, when Boer legislature mandated all Indians register with the police and be fingerprinted, Mahatma, along with many other Indians, refused to obey this law. He was imprisoned, for the first of many times, for disobeying what he believed to be unjust laws.

Inspired, while imprisoned, by Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Civil Disobedience,” Mahatma adopted this term to describe his strategy of non-violently refusing to cooperate with injustice, though he preferred the Sanskrit word Satyagraha, meaning devotion to Absolute Truth.

Following his release from jail, he continued to protest the registration law by supporting labor strikes and organizing a massive non-violent march. Finally, the Boer government agreed to a compromise that ended the most objectionable parts of the registration law. Mahatma’s twenty years fighting for human rights in South Africa prepared him for his life’s work in India. As he left South Africa in 1914, the leader of the Boer government remarked, “The saint has left our shores, I sincerely hope forever.”

Mahatma returned to India, a hero in his native land, having abandoned his Western clothing for the simple homespun dress of the poor. His homecoming was a proclamation to India to assert their independence from British domination. He preached sovereignty to the Indian masses, encouraging them reclaim their sense of self, Bhakti, by spinning and weaving in lieu of buying British cloth, not only to reclaim the country’s economy, but to also invoke the art of living.

In 1930, in his most spectacular act of civil disobedience, Mahatma led thousands of Indians upon a 240-mile protest to the Arabian Sea where he picked a pinch of salt. His righteous invocation of humanity’s divine right to our elemental resources sparked a mass movement among the people all over the country to source their own salt, a direct defiance of British authority which forced the Indian economy upon the government monopoly.

To resurrect India, Mahatma compelled equality amongst her divided people, directly calling out the evils that undermined peace. The second evil was Hindu-Muslim disunity caused by years of religious hatred. The last evil was the Hindu tradition of classifying millions of Indians as a caste of untouchables, India’s lowest social class, who faced severe discrimination and could only practice the lowest occupations.

Though a frail man, his iron will and immaculate vision raised awareness of all hypocrisy, malpractices, and dogma in all religions to provide a blueprint of inspiration for future social movements around the world. Nonetheless, his alignment to truth manifested the demons amongst the very people he yearned to lead into their salvation, against their own acts of self-defilement.

Mahatma’s last months were shadowed by communal strife between Hindus and Muslims. As he walked barefoot through the scorched villages in East Bengal, locals threw shattered glass upon his path. Gandhi pleaded for amicable settlement between India and Pakistan, but on January 30, 1948, he was assassinated in Delhi on his way to an evening prayer. A young Hindu Brahmin, named Nathuram Godse, who viewed Gandhi’s acceptance of partition as a betrayal of the Hindu population, fired three shots, point-blank into Mahatma’s chest, the bullet holes resembling a garland of love for his great works upon his beloved Mother Earth.

Mahatma’s dying words were reported to be “Ram, Ram” meaning “God, God.” Sixty-three years later, the last words of Steve Jobs echoed his lifetime spiritual guide: “Oh wow, oh wow.”

PAVING THE WAY FOR PEACE

It may be possible to gild pure gold,

but who can make his mother more beautiful? - Mahatma Mohandas Karamchaud Gandhi

Upon our time to rise, our greatest work will be to release the dark hold upon our minds, for our greatest wealth is the evolved sense for our true spiritual self, attained through the deeds embodied to redeem our souls of our own backward-twisted lives.

Born September 27, 1953, as Sudhamani, “ambrosial jewel,” now honored globally as Amritanandamayi Devi, the hugging saint, has demonstrated the power of conviction in self, Mahatma’s Satyagraha, to fully embody a divine resonant force that invokes within those forgotten a mission to serve the collective heart’s calling.

Incarnated into a poor fishing village in Kerala, Southern India, the self-realized spiritual master walked and talked by six months, and at age three was composing beautiful, extraordinarily profound hymns to her beloved Krishna, whom only she could perceive.

While others felt the gift of her presence, her own family met her divine moods with immense shame and disdain. As a child, her immense empathy for the suffering guided her in transforming the intense pain, starvation and cruelty inflicted upon those in need through her own spiritual alchemy, witnessed through her divinely embodied states of ecstasy.

Her rebellious acts against the irrational customs of the locals, such as consoling the poor with what little they had, refusing an arranged marriage, and living along in a small temple built upon the family’s property, delivered so much shame upon her family that her own relatives attempted to poison and even maim her. Nonetheless, through divine intervention, all pursuits to limit her spiritual progress were halted, and soon, through the spread of word, a pilgrimage of devotees began to acclimate around her. Gradually, her own family began to accept that just maybe, their daughter was worth something more.

By 1981, Mata Amritanandamayi Math was officially registered as an ashram, slowly gaining attention from seekers around the world. By 1987, at the age of 34, Amma, the name given to her by her followers, meaning “Mother,”, answered an invitation to begin her first world tour, holding programs in Singapore, the United States and Europe.

In 1989, when Amma received enough money to build her first temple, putting the needs of others before her own, she redirected the funds to build an orphanage for 500 displaced children, and hence launched her first humanitarian program, Embracing the World, which now spans over 48 countries, run by volunteers, with special consultative status to the United Nations.

In October 2002, Amma was presented the Gandhi-King Award for Non-Violence at the U.N. in Geneva. Amma holds the first-ever UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. In October 2022, the Government of India appointment Amma as the Chair of India’s Civil 20, an official engagement group of the Group of 20 - the premier inter-governmental forum for the world’s developed and emerging economies to address financial stability on a global basis.

Amma’s spiritual gift, darshan, which she delivers to her devotees, is her fully accepting hug, which, when experienced by those prepared, is felt as a clearing of the karmic debris from their auric field.

Amma’s free public programs are held throughout India, Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan as well as Malaysia, the Middle East, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South America and the United States. To-date, 40 million souls have received the grace of her healing embrace.

In a country where women’s equality continues to be of the greatest challenge, as the founder of internationally acclaimed, humanitarian-focused Amrita Hospitals and Amrita University, Amma’s supernatural demonstration of the divine potential laden, unraveled, coiled within us all, is of profound inspiration of what we each can achieve, as she spreads her light as far as her vision can reach.

Amma’s ashram, Amritapuri, built upon her small shack in Kerala, is now the international spiritual headquarters for her life’s mission. Housing her 3,500 and growing monastic disciples, Amritapuri towers over the seashore where she begged her Lord Krishna for guidance, after nearly drowning herself in despair over the blind lack of acceptance and compassion of her very own people.

From its humanitarian donations by awakened cosmic citizens across the planet, Embracing the World has invested over $1.68 billion in worldwide charitable activities to fund 162 projects across 48 countries, executed by her 17,000 volunteers spanning all ages and backgrounds, indiscriminately benefitting all those in need.

TEACH US HOW TO LOVE

How powerful is a living embodiment of the divine mother? How powerful can you be, as you deliver your true self into a world that is preparing for peace? As we seek guidance to our daily existence, strength to maintain conviction upon our path, the masters and innovators before us, demonstrate the power revealed as we welcome death, as our greatest gift in realizing ourselves.

For within of us lies the power to serve the kingdom that manifests itself through our surrender to the fire that fuels that universal dream of cosmic peace and harmony. What is wealth, without the guiding sight of those born to lead us into the light? How will you be, as each step you take, becomes one of true belief, honoring the women who have deliver man into being? To Divine Mother creator, I beg, each day, Teach Us How To Love.