{"id":60867,"date":"2016-07-18T14:55:47","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T21:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/?p=60867"},"modified":"2018-12-13T15:27:23","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T23:27:23","slug":"interview-ishwar-puri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/archives\/60867-interview-ishwar-puri","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Ishwar Puri | Video & Article"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Interview with Ishwar Puri<\/strong>
\n Interviewed by Leigh Taylor-Young<\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri is the initiate of his beloved Master Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji and founder of Institute for the Study of Human Awareness (ISHA) in Chicago. He is a former senior official with Indian government, a graduate of Harvard University, and is teaching spirituality in America, as requested by his Sant Satguru, Hazur Maharaj Baba Sawan Singh Ji.<\/p>\n

Leigh Taylor-Young Morton:<\/strong> The first thing I\u2019d like to begin with is it\u2019s obvious that you and I are in the presence of friends and family, so before we begin, I consider this a sacred moment to be with you and share with you.<\/p>\n

I just want to tell you before we start that I love you, and that I know you somehow, and that I\u2019m very honored to recognize a friendship in the Spirit, and that you are many, many things from what I\u2019ve read and witnessed in your seminars. And surely one of the most important now is you\u2019re a spiritual teacher uplifting people into their soul and into their soul awareness\u2014 and if these aren\u2019t the correct words I want you to correct me. I would be very grateful if you would begin our sharing with a prayer that might also bring forward your Master\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I\u2019m very happy to meet you Leigh, and to meet everybody who is present here. It is a delight to come and visit this place and to feel that we are all part of a family. I don\u2019t feel that I\u2019m coming to a new strange place. I feel that I\u2019m in the midst of people I\u2019ve already known; I felt that I already knew each one that I\u2019ve met. That\u2019s a great experience. I think that the spiritual teachings with which I am associated create this feeling that there are no \u201cothers\u201d \u2014they are all our own. When you come and meet seekers of the same path and the same truth, you feel very close to them. That\u2019s how I feel and I\u2019m very happy about it.<\/p>\n

My prayer for everybody present here is that we, all together, work towards our goal of reaching our true home, and understand that this division of ours, this separation of ours, is merely for an experience; it\u2019s not reality. It has been created so we can experience the separation that comes from the fact that you and I look different, we all look different\u2026but it\u2019s only for an experience. The truth is we have always been one. That is, if you go to the source, you come to realize that we are one. But it is not enough to say we are one, it\u2019s necessary to feel we are one. I feel that the best way to do that is to go within yourself and see who you really are. When you find that, you will find we are really all one. My prayer is that we go toward that oneness through prayer and through meditation. That\u2019s my prayer for everybody.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Thank you. Thank you. Your life is so rich, and one of the things that fascinated me was that you were initiated by Sawan Singh when you were nine years old. Is that correct?
\nIshwar Puri:<\/strong> Yes. I was almost nine years old. The date, I remember, was the 9th of March, 1937. That\u2019s the date when I was initiated. When I meet my friends here, most of them were not even born at that time.<\/p>\n

This has been a long association with my master. One good thing that happened was that this process that he taught me of how to develop a relationship with my inside, and the inside master, enabled the Master to be with me at all times.<\/p>\n

That is, I think, one of the requirements of our system of meditation\u2014that you should be able to meditate enough\u00a0while the physical form of a Master is alive, so that before\u00a0he passes on, you get his\u00a0radiant form inside. That is enough meditation. You don\u2019t have to meditate to go all the way to your true home. If you can get the radiant form of a Master while he\u2019s alive in his physical body, you are able to then go on with the rest of the journey with him internally, and he is never away. When you get that stage of having the radiant form of your Master inside, you will see him inside and outside. It\u2019s an amazing experience\u00a0that when you have that, you\u00a0are able to drive a car and you\u00a0find that he\u2019s sitting next to\u00a0you. You\u2019re walking; he\u2019s\u00a0walking with you\u2014 physically,\u00a0externally and internally.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a great experience.<\/p>\n

For a person who gets initiated by a Perfect Living Master like Hazur Baba Sawan Singh, there is no death of the Master, because he\u2019s still there. He\u2019s not only there in Spirit or in some presence; he is there physically visible if you have established a contact with him in the radiant form. That is why I\u2019ve never been alone. That\u2019s a great experience.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> That\u2019s a great experience. I\u2019m shifting from where I thought I was going. In one of your seminars, you shared so eloquently about not only the passing of your son, but also the passing of your father. You described, especially in the passing of your father, as well as your life experience of your son, how the whole family immediately went into celebration rather than grief. Would speak a bit more about that?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> That is true. My father was an initiate of the same Master, and he had done some work. He was a regular meditator. In fact, he meditated more seriously than I ever did in the sense that in the early morning he would take a cold shower, to make sure that he wouldn\u2019t fall asleep during meditation. He took it seriously and had some wonderful experiences. In our family, we knew that he was a leader in this area and other people followed him. The rest of the family became initiates of Baba Sawan Singh afterwards.<\/p>\n

When he died, I knew that the great Master Baba Sawan Singh had told us that he was, in a past life, a tree. From a tree, he had been able to jump over the evolution to a different species, directly into a human being because he was the tree under which a Perfect Living Master sat and broke a twig to use as a toothbrush, which is common in India. This one event, a physical event, can change your destiny. He always knew that, and he used to hit his head and say, \u201cI think it\u2019s wooden still.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he died, I was curious to know where he was because one of my uncles used to say, \u201cHe could have reached halfway to the universal mind.\u201d which we call Trimurti, or the causal plane. I said, \u201cMaybe he\u2019s gone further, but I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ll check with my Master.\u201d I was driving down to Delhi where I had a meeting, and on the way I checked up through meditation. My master said, \u201cYou can\u2019t see him.\u201d I said, \u201cWhy not?\u201d He said, \u201cBecause the moment he passed from his physical body, he merged completely with me and he is in the same place where I am, where totality is.\u201d That was a great experience. I said, \u201cDid he meditate so much?\u201d He said, \u201cNo. It\u2019s not meditation that takes you beyond a certain point, it\u2019s love and devotion.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the real secret of the spiritual path as I understood it (and I still have been able to maintain that experience) is that you cannot go beyond the regions of the mind except with love and devotion. If you want to ask, in a nutshell, what is the spiritual path taught by Baba Sawan Singh, it is that love and devotion is the key. And that\u2019s what I learned from my father too.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> What you all did, realizing where he was, there was no grieving, it was a celebration.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> There was no grieving. When I informed my mother this happened, she celebrated. My brother was in the Navy and she called him and said, \u201cGreat, you know your dad has reached the ultimate,\u201d and he celebrated on the boat. People came to grieve with us in our house, but they were surprised that we were celebrating something. They thought that maybe the whole family had gone crazy.<\/p>\n

If you have an experience of dying while living, you\u2019re never afraid of death; it becomes something very different. Just because we don\u2019t know what happens after death, we grieve, and therefore, we are afraid. Most of the insecurity in our life is fear of death, fear of the unknown. If you have had that experience of dying while living, that means experiencing that while you\u2019re still alive in the physical body. So you have no fear at all. You become totally fearless. That\u2019s a great experience, too, in this world. When you see so many people afraid of so many things, then you suddenly find that there is a way to be fearless, and this is one of those ways.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> I love that\u2014fearless.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Fearless and without doubt. Otherwise, our mind is, I think, indoctrinated to create fear and doubt. First, it creates doubt. \u201cWhat can happen? It can be this or that.\u201d Then that doubt leads to fear because we become uncertain. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen so it becomes the fear of the unknown. That is why we are all insecure\u2014the lack of that awareness of what is going to happen. Once you see what the reality is, you get a certainty that you can\u2019t get any other way. You can have logic and you can discuss things and still be left with doubt, but if you have\u00a0an experience inside it gives\u00a0you certainty.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> When you use the term \u201cPerfect Living Master\u201d would that be equal to Satguru? Is it the same meaning?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Yes. Satguru means a guru who is true. \u201cSat\u201d means true. A true master is one who has achieved something that is true, and what is true is what is beyond the mind. If you are truly aware of the spirit, if you\u2019re truly aware of what we might call our soul in distinction to the mind, then that would be a Satguru or a Perfect Living Master. We call him perfect because the mind creates division and separation, which create imperfection. When you see totality, it is perfect. That is why a human being who has attained that awareness of totality is a perfect person, and he\u2019s perfect because he has seen totality. When he shares that with us, he is a Perfect Living Master, he is a human being living like us, and yet he has that perfection.<\/p>\n

The difficulty arises when we find that we are dealing with a human being and not with somebody higher up. This question has been asked of me several times. \u201cIf the truth is inside us, and we all say go within to find the truth, and the kingdom of God is within you, then why do we need an intermediary? Why do you need a human being outside of yourself to find something that lies inside you?\u201d The truth is that the human being I\u2019m talking of, who I call a Perfect Living Master, knows my inside better than I know it and because he is not working from outside (since that\u2019s a reflection we have created) he\u2019s actually inside us. When you come across such a person in life, he\u2019s actually inside us and he\u2019s helping us from inside. We don\u2019t see him inside, therefore he appears outside. That is why there\u2019s a very close connection with a person who has that awareness.<\/p>\n

Moreover, there are several Masters who have attained a certain level of experience which is higher than the physical experience, but they can only take you up to that. The higher limitation is that they cannot have the experience all the time with them. They can go to a higher level, have that experience, come down, be the physical experience, and explain what they saw (if they can retain the memory of that experience). But a Perfect Living Master does not have to\u00a0be remembering something that he saw; he is in that state all the time, 24-7.<\/p>\n

Even when he\u2019s talking with a human being, his awareness is at all levels of creation, all levels of consciousness, and that\u2019s a very big difference. Even as a seeker, as a disciple, we can have some progress in our spiritual experiences and go, say, to the astral plane. The astral plane is nothing but our own sensory system that operates if we don\u2019t have the physical body. You forget your physical body, become unaware of it, and you are automatically in the astral plane. The sense perceptions still work, they become sharper than they are in the physical body. The sense perceptions, by themselves, are the astral body. It\u2019s not a body, it\u2019s just the perceptions still working together, and they take the same form as if we are in a similar body.<\/p>\n

Once you transcend that, you go to the causal plane where your mind itself becomes your body. The causal body is your mind, the astral body is your sense perceptions, and your physical body incorporates these inside you. What makes all these three alive is your soul, your consciousness. If you\u2019re not conscious they all die. The consciousness, which is your soul or your real form, makes these alive.<\/p>\n

Most people, when they go into these experiences, they go to one experience at one time. This physical world is a reality right now. We\u2019re sitting talking, and this is our reality. There\u2019s no other reality at all; you can be imagining the other things, and we can talk about other things. But when we go into that state of awareness that becomes the only reality. This reality becomes like a dream, and that reality is real. When we get back to this, that looks like a dream and this becomes real.<\/p>\n

The same thing happens at the causal level, but if you reach the totality at the top, all of the levels look like dreams and all of them look real.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> When you talk about the top, the totality, would that be what we might say is the heart of God, the creator?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I could call it the God, the creation of God, I would call that the source of the word, the source of shabd, the source of the sound current, the source of the very stream of consciousness that descends right into every level of experience including where we are now. That is never interrupted.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> The Perfect Living Master is one who can take you to the totality because that\u2019s where they\u2019re sourced. Is that correct?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Absolutely, that\u2019s correct.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> And they\u2019re rare?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> They are very rare. There are a lot of teachers who can take you to different levels of experiences. Most of them today, and there are hundreds, maybe thousands of them, are practicing different kinds of yogas and they get unusual experiences by taking your attention to the different energy centers below the eyes. They do not improve your awareness, they do not change your realities, they bring you a different experience in this reality.<\/p>\n

This physical body, as you know, has a division at the eye level. Below the eyes are centers of energy which sustain all of our energetic experiences, but the awareness is behind and above the eyes. There are very few masters who work at that level. Those who go beyond the mind, where your effort cannot do anything because it\u2019s all mental, and where meditation cannot work because that\u2019s also an effort\u2014 those are very rare. They draw you, pull you, through the power of love. That\u2019s what it is. You can\u2019t struggle to go there.<\/p>\n

I sometimes compare the masters by using the metaphor of motorcars. There is a four-wheel-drive; there is a car that is rear-wheel-drive, where the engine pushes the car; and then there is a front-wheel-drive where the wheels pull the car. It\u2019s a push and pull. Meditation, as we know it, is a push, rear-wheel-drive. Being pulled by love inside is like being pulled in a front-wheel-drive. So the Perfect Living Masters are front-wheel-drive vehicles.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> When you were initiated at nine, were you initiated with the five names of God?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Yes, I was. I was initiated with the same names that my Master said he was initiated into by his own master, Baba\u00a0Jaimal Singh. He was very open about it. At the beginning of the decision process he said, \u201cWhat I am going to give you is what I have received from my master. It has worked for me; I hope it will work for you. If it doesn\u2019t, go and search for more. You are free. Don\u2019t come back to me to get my permission. You are free to go and search anywhere for something better, but do me one favor. If you find something better, come and tell me, and I will also go and take it.\u201d This openness of this path is what struck me as something unusual.<\/p>\n

The others were trying to hold you back and became cults. This was never a cult, and it was so open. \u201cHere is something for you to practice. If it works, very good. If it doesn\u2019t work, find something better.\u201d I took it so seriously that I actually investigated every kind of yoga and every possibility of doing other things so that I could be able to tell him, \u201cI found something better,\u201d but I didn\u2019t. I tried for eight years very seriously, and I couldn\u2019t find anything better. Until today I haven\u2019t. If I find something better, I\u2019ll take it and I\u2019ll go back to a Master and say, \u201cI have found it; you take it also.\u201d It\u2019s such an open thing.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> This is so wonderful because I know you know that a number of us here are involved with a Master, John-Roger, and also John Morton, and we are based very similarly on the five names of God, except we\u2019re not given them all at once. We\u2019re given them as we get progressively initiated in each level. And the sound current is the core. Would you speak to us a bit about what we call Soul Transcendence\u2014the soul, the consciousness of soul, and the audible life stream?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Those are wonderful words. The meaning is the same. There is no difference at all. About getting the initiation in stages, the great Master also used to give the initiations in two stages for young people, and for small kids, like myself. I was taken for a half initiation. He would give to small kids the method of listening to the sound first. He was giving that kind of initiation even to kids five, six, seven years old, and I saw that. I was not the youngest to get initiation, but I was the youngest get a full initiation. He would give them the method of listening to the sound within, and when they grew up, after practicing, he would give them the five names to repeat.<\/p>\n

Those who were already teenagers, he would sometimes give them half initiation by giving them the five words to repeat, and later on teach them how to listen to the sound current. I don\u2019t know if that practice is being followed by other masters or not, but he did do that division into two.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> I love what you said about the openness. Do you think there was a challenge for a true living Master like Sawan Singh in possibly becoming an icon or something adored and worshiped, because of the pull of his power and the love? Was it a challenge for others to not become attached in that way? I think it\u2019s a challenge when someone is so amazing, to make sure that your connection is from the right and not from blind faith.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I understand your point. The way these Perfect Living Masters contain that is by their humility. They are so humble, they never say they are Masters, they claim to be ordinary people. They associate with people like ordinary persons, like any other human beings. That way they hide themselves and they do not allow that kind of adoration that would come if they sat on a pedestal and said, \u201cWe are the higher-ups.\u201d They never do that. That\u2019s one of the keys to understand. If he is a Perfect Living Master he will never say, \u201cI am a Master, I can do all these things.\u201d That\u2019s sort of a disqualification because that\u2019s where you find people running after them and putting them in a state which will be a challenge for them. They meet the challenge with utter humility.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Also, it seems to me that the Perfect Living Master is always turning you within so that you\u2019re not holding the attachment externally, so that it\u2019s for you to become as he is.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri: The difficulty with this problem of attachment is that you cannot fight attachment. The more you try to fight attachment the more you get attached. I was talking to you about my fondness for pizza. Supposing I say, \u201cI am attached to pizza. I\u2019m not going to be attached anymore,\u201d and I said, \u201cNo pizza, no pizza,\u201d pizza will remain in front of me forever.<\/p>\n

In fact, there is an interesting story of an American seeker who traveled to India because he found that in the Himalayan Mountains lived a swami who gave some magical words to repeat and you could get enlightened. He said, \u201cThat\u2019s a good shortcut,\u201d because you know Americans like instant knowledge, and he said, \u201cThat will be great to get some words and get instant knowledge.\u201d He had to travel all the way by bus and go into the mountains. Ultimately, he reached that place and found the swami inside a cave.<\/p>\n

He waited, the swami came out, and he said, \u201cI have come from the United States. I am a seeker and I understand you give certain words and one gets enlightened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The swami said, \u201cSure, I do.\u201d\u00a0\u201cWill you give me those words?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cSure, since you\u2019ve come all the way, I will. Come near me.\u201d The man approached the swami and the swami whispered in his ear, \u201cThe magical words are abracadabra.\u201d He said, \u201cWhat! I\u2019ve come all the way to hear abracadabra?\u201d He said, \u201cNo, there is a catch to it. When you say abracadabra, don\u2019t think of bananas.\u201d The man tried all his life. Every time he said \u201cabracadabra,\u201d bananas were in front of him. The swami was making a point that you cannot push away attachment. The harder you push attachment, the more you get attached to it.<\/p>\n

The answer to that question of how to deal with attachment is in how we get detachment. You can\u2019t practice detachment. The only answer we found was to get attached to something else. You can be attached to one thing, and if you get attached to something else different from that, your attachment will be pulled away. When you get attached to that unconditional love of a Master, those other attachments go away and become detached.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Oh, very good.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> You have to be pulled by that unconditional love, that\u2019s the experience that gives you detachment.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Would you speak about the pull of the living Master when maybe we haven\u2019t even met the living Master yet Perhaps it is predestined? And then there\u2019s the pull of the Master that stays with us while we\u2019re alive with them, and then the pull of the Master after they pass. Could you speak a little bit about how that works?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Predestined? The pull of a Master is predestined because our going back to our true home is predestined. The reason it\u2019s predestined is we came here not for staying here; we came here for adventure. We came here to have a different kind of experience. The consciousness adopted certain instruments, certain tools, in order to have different experiences. These tools were our own mind, our sense perceptions, and the physical body. There are other kinds of tools also, but let\u2019s look at these three.
\nThese three have given us varying kinds of experiences, and we have not come here to stay. We never had that intention. We were not that stupid that we were going to stay in this messy place. Before we ever came here we made an arrangement to find a way to go back, and we\u2019re using that way to go back, at a predestined time. And that is when a Perfect Living Master comes into our life.
\nI\u2019ll tell you an interesting story here. Somebody asked me to see a movie called Inception. You must have seen it. Inception is a story where people can dream, within a dream, within dreams. They can go into three levels dream, within a dream, within a dream. Somebody advised me to see the movie. I don\u2019t normally see movies but I saw that one. In a dream, one thing you can do is to stretch time. A 10-minute wakeful state can create an hour of dream, and an hour of dream in a further of dream can create a lifetime of 50 years. So you can have a whole life experience by just dreaming within dreaming within dreaming.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cHow wonderful.\u201d Here we are dreaming not three times, but six times from our true state. So a timeless moment there can be made into trillions of years here, and that\u2019s what\u2019s happening. We did this in order to have different experiences. And I\u2019ll tell you why we\u2019re having these different experiences, including pain and pleasure and including all the atrocities that are going on: Because we are making this experience an opposite. In this experience of duality, we are making an opposite of the world of non-duality where we belong; but in non-duality we don\u2019t have an opposite to experience, so how do we experience it? By creating a world of duality, it becomes an opposite.<\/p>\n

In that movie, they also have an arrangement of how to wake up if they want to. They have a little totem in their hand which they carry before they go into sleep. In the dream they can take that experience of holding a totem (which is a little prickly thing that pricks their hand) and, through the pain, they wake up. We have a totem too to wake up to the ultimate wakeful state, and that is the appearance, at a predestined time, of a Perfect Living Master. He is the totem. So the living Master has initiated us, and he has placed himself inside us as a visible being. Even if he dies, he is not gone; he still there and we experience that.<\/p>\n

This real nature of the pull of the Perfect Living Master, is unconditional love. It\u2019s really different from the love where we say, \u201cWhat have you done for me lately?\u201d It is not a love where any conditions are imposed on us. There is no judgment involved. A Perfect Living Master will never tell his disciple, \u201cWell, be good otherwise I won\u2019t help you.\u201d Never. He will not be charging at all. He realizes that we are already trapped within our different kinds of karmas into various kinds of obligations and situations. He has compassion for us, he\u2019s not judging us. Therefore, his love is nonjudgmental, unconditional. Even if you associate for a little time with such a person, that kind of love pulls you externally, and then later on internally.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Thank you. We use the word agnostic for someone who doesn\u2019t really have faith in a higher power. Can that person gain benefit, even if their mindset can\u2019t see it, by the presence of the Perfect Living Master coming into their life?
\nIshwar Puri: Absolutely. If you come to some of my meetings you will find a lot of atheists are sitting there. They don\u2019t believe in God, they don\u2019t believe in anything else, but they do believe that they are there. My starting point is to start from where you are. Whether you believe or not, the experiential nature of this path is very different from blind faith. In fact, it requires no faith. You start by knowing you are there, and that doesn\u2019t require any faith. Everyone who is alive and conscious knows he is there. The presence of the Self, in whatever form you see it\u2014whether you think this physical body is the Self, or you think something else in it is the Self\u2014is always there and known to you. It is known so clearly, without doubt, that nobody can question that. Nobody has ever questioned that.<\/p>\n

There are some experiences we have which are called experiences of certainty. One of the big examples of that would be when you go to sleep and have a dream, you forget this body. You\u2019ve gone somewhere else, you\u2019ve gone into a dream world, into dreamland, and then you wake up. Do you then ask, \u201cAm I really awake?\u201d Has anybody ever asked, \u201cAm I awake?\u201d Supposing a number of people stood outside and said, \u201cYou\u2019re still sleeping,\u201d would you believe them? Your own experience of wakefulness carries a certainty that nobody can destroy. These are some of the certainties. Why are you so certain that you are awake that you don\u2019t even pinch yourself, you don\u2019t even try to find out if you\u2019re awake, you know you\u2019re awake. How does that awareness of wakefulness come? One of the main reasons is that you remember that you went to sleep. That\u2019s a big thing, it\u2019s all working on memory.<\/p>\n

Supposing you did not remember that you went to sleep. You could be lost. But if you remember you went to sleep in the same bed, you don\u2019t have to open your eyes to be awake, you don\u2019t have to move, you\u2019re still awake and in the same state in the bed you know. \u201cYes, I went to sleep here.\u201d This recall of the previous state which occurred before you went into a lower level of consciousness gives the certainty of wakefulness.<\/p>\n

The same certainty comes when you get to the higher astral plane; the same certainty comes when you come to the causal plane; the same certainty comes when you go to your true home. These are the experiences of wakefulness. They\u2019re not journeys to somewhere, but we call them spiritual journeys, traveling. It looks like travel because we are traveling in experiences through time and space. Right now we travel and we think we really move. You know, we don\u2019t really move. Consciousness does not move. Experience moves around us and we think we\u2019re moving. The same thing happens at other levels of consciousness that we experience in meditation.<\/p>\n

The truth is that the sense of certainty that comes with internal experience, you can\u2019t beat that. It just carries its own conviction. Even an atheist can come.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come across some strange atheists. One said to me, \u201cThank God I\u2019m an atheist.\u201d Everybody has some kind of belief system, even the atheists and the agnostics.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> One of the things that I\u2019m hearing is there is great value in being a skeptic, which I call checking things out. Check it out, don\u2019t believe. Your real evaluation of something is your inner experience.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I entirely agree with you, entirely agree with you. Skepticism was one of the greatest gifts given to us because if you\u2019re not a skeptic you\u2019ll believe anything that happens. How do you distinguish between one choice and another? Skepticism is necessary. But the only thing is that you can\u2019t be a skeptic forever. If you\u2019re a skeptic and you want to find out something, and you spend your whole life trying to find out, then you have missed the bus.<\/p>\n

The story is told of a man in India. The villages there have wells where they don\u2019t have any parapet walls, they\u2019re level with the ground. A city man was walking in a village and he fell into the well. The well, fortunately, was shallow so he didn\u2019t drown, but he wondered why he fell in the well. He was crying and shouting and somebody heard his moaning and groaning and came to help him. He said, \u201cCan I help you? I can bring a rope and send it down and pull you up.\u201d He said, \u201cBefore you bring the rope, first tell me why did I fall into the well? Secondly, tell me if you bring a rope, how do you know that when I\u2019m trying to pull myself out you won\u2019t drop me again? Explain all these things to me before I agree to being pulled out.\u201d The other man said, \u201cLook, I can answer all of these questions once you\u2019re out of the well. Because you fell into the well, you know you\u2019ve fallen into the well, and you want to come out. Why don\u2019t you wait until we pull out? \u201cNo. I won\u2019t hold the rope unless you first answer all the questions.\u201d We can carry skepticism to that absurdity.<\/p>\n

There are people who would ask questions, and one answer leads to another question because, unfortunately, in life there are a lot of contradictions. You come across so many contradictions when you apply reason to things, and some cannot be explained by reason. People get confused because one contradiction leads to another. You can be so involved in them that you answer, \u201cI am a skeptic, therefore I am doing this. \u201d That kind of skepticism keeps you away from truth. It does not help. Real skepticism, where you want to get answers to your basic questions, is necessary to find the truth, and I agree with you.<\/p>\n

Leigh: <\/strong>I\u2019m so interested in how\u2014considering your early life, your family, your initiations, and your exposure to the Perfect Living Master\u2014you came to be a scientist? If I understand it correctly, you went to Harvard, and you became an engineer. How did that bridge happen?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri: <\/strong>I didn\u2019t see any difference between the two. Today I don\u2019t see any difference between science and spirituality.<\/p>\n

Leigh: <\/strong>Oh, good. I wanted to ask you about that.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri: <\/strong>The scientific approach to creation is trying to find out. The significant change took place from Newtonian physics, to Einsteinian physics, to the development of quantum physics where they found that the observation of a person is changing matter. That\u2019s a very big thing. Einstein himself, in the last moments of his life, said, \u201cI did not give enough attention to the role of an observer.\u201d You know, those comments are now coming into play and people are looking at the power of observation.<\/p>\n

What they\u2019re investigating is, how do we know there\u2019s a reality? I\u2019m talking physics now. How do we know there is a reality? Because we observe it. Whether you observe with your eyes, or through a telescope, or a microscope, or any equipment, you\u2019re observing it. That means an observer is necessary to know there\u2019s reality. Maybe the observer creates reality\u2014something that is being propagated amongst scientists today. Science has come so close to understanding that there\u2019s a very big link between a conscious observer and what he\u2019s observing. Very soon they\u2019ll be able to find out it\u2019s the observation that creates the experience, and not the other way around.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a very old story of people asking, \u201cIs the tree there, therefore I can see it? Or I\u2019m seeing it, and therefore the tree comes?\u201d One can answer that by saying whatever comes first must be the cause, whatever happens later is the effect. That tree has to be the cause before you can see it. If you don\u2019t place a tree in front of you, you won\u2019t see it. But placing the tree in front of you is like an experience too. Is that being created by your seeing the placing of the tree, or are you seeing and that\u2019s creating the tree? When we examine that, then how we see a tree, the seeing of the tree and the tree itself are absolutely simultaneous. There\u2019s no time lag at all. Therefore we can never say which is the cause and which is the effect.
\nIn the Fermi lab near Chicago, there are three colliders where they collide particles to see what happens. They are able to accelerate a particle beyond the velocity of light, and the whole thing is being photographed. The particle reaches the destination before it left. That is an amazing thing. You can see where science is going. A particle can be seen at the destination and it is also there at the beginning, and it\u2019s only one particle. But this is not something new. They knew earlier that in a hydrogen atom, a single electron moves around in an orbit around the neutron. That single electron, where is it?<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Right there.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> It can be anywhere in the whole cycle of orbit all around it. We know the distance from the nucleus but we don\u2019t know where it is. When you put a laser pointer at the point of the distance, it\u2019s there. After that it\u2019s always there, and before that it\u2019s everywhere. These are questions like whether it\u2019s a wave or it\u2019s a particle. This thing has been going on for quite a time.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> When I was young I studied Vedanta and I was fascinated because I knew a lot of physicists who were also involved with spiritual study. One of the axioms was the observer and the observed is one. This is ancient, ancient understanding coming forward now in another way in our modern science.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I agree. This is ancient knowledge which is coming up now to the West but you got it from the East.<\/p>\n

Leigh: <\/strong>Yes, so on that note how do you perceive this ancient, remarkable information, going back to the Mahabharata, to the Vedas, to Vedanta, that was laid down thousands of years ago and that in many respects science is just discovering? Is there a movement from the East to the West in our spiritual understanding?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Absolutely. As I mentioned to you earlier, my Master Baba Sawan Singh predicted that the kind of knowledge that we have had for centuries here in the East is going to move into the West, and the East is not going to retain the knowledge because they\u2019re going to move so much into acquiring material wealth that they will become like what the West was in its development. The West will now seek those answers because the knowledge of the East is going to move to the West, which is happening.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Yes, and we\u2019ve already been through a massive industrial revolution, we\u2019ve had all this materialism, which is a good place to begin to ask the deeper questions.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Absolutely. These questions are being asked not only because they are beyond the material wealth, but because affluence has not satisfied us. Affluence has not given us the answers we wanted and we still have the same questions. That is why this knowledge coming from the East to the West is going to provide those answers.<\/p>\n

Leigh: <\/strong>In terms of the world that we\u2019re seeing today in the newspaper, that\u2019s very hard to look at sometimes, I would love your thoughts on whether this is predestined. Or if we\u2019re creators and we create our reality, or it\u2019s all an illusion, or it\u2019s predestination for a higher purpose,\u2014which would be my optimistic way of looking at it.
\n
\nIshwar Puri:<\/strong> I don\u2019t believe there are creators, only one Creator.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Yes, but we\u2019re creative as humans.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri: The one creator appears to be in so many of us, but doesn\u2019t become many, it still remains one creator. If you\u2019re in a dream, you go to sleep and have a dream and you meet 20 people, are 20 dreaming or one? When you wake up it was only one. This awakening that takes place in us at the end leads to only one dreamer, one creator. Therefore, the one creator is appearing in all these forms.<\/p>\n

When you say that the creative power is generating these experiences, it\u2019s all predestined. It\u2019s simple. Most people in different religions believe in God. What is the definition of God? He is the creator. He is omnipresent, he is omnipotent, and he is omniscient. The third word, omniscient, means he knows everything. Does he know what I\u2019m going to decide tomorrow, or not? If he doesn\u2019t, he\u2019s not God. And if he knows, it\u2019s predestined. So when we\u2019re asking the question of whether we have free will or if it\u2019s predetermined, just with this proposition we discover that if God is a reality as we understand it, then it has to be predetermined\u2014everything. So it\u2019s predestined\u2014the whole thing\u2014 but it doesn\u2019t look like that. And it deliberately does not look like that because otherwise there will be no game, you can\u2019t make any choices and you can\u2019t do anything. Free will is a great experience but only an experience. It\u2019s not real. It\u2019s predetermined. How we make our choices is also predetermined, what thoughts come to us is
\nalso predetermined.<\/p>\n

I had a personal experience with a guy in India. I had gone for an interview for the Navy. After the Navy interview, I came out with some papers in my hand and I met this man with a turban. He said, \u201cDo you have a piece of paper?\u201d I said, \u201cYes,\u201d I took out a piece of paper. He looked into my eyes, he began to write something. I didn\u2019t know what he was writing. Then he folded that paper, and when he folded it he said, \u201cHold it in your hand,\u201d so I held it in my hand. \u201cHave you more paper?\u201d \u201cYes, here it is.\u201d \u201cNow you write,\u201d he said to me, \u201cWrite a number between one and ten.\u201d I said this is a game we used to play as children, where you say write a number between one and ten, and everybody writes five. I wanted to call his bluff, so I wrote three. He said, \u201cWrite the name of a flower.\u201d I thought the most common flower is a rose, he\u2019s asking me to write rose. I\u2019m not going to write that, I will write the name of a flower he has never heard of, so I thought of a flower which is in Punjab, our state, it\u2019s called chameli. I wrote in English, C-H-A-M-E-L-I, in capitals. He said, \u201cWrite your date of birth.\u201d I wrote 1926. That\u2019s not the date, that\u2019s the year, and normally we write the date of the month before the year, but I added the month 11 afterwards.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cOpen the paper I gave you.\u201d I opened the paper. It said three, CHAMELI, 1926 and then the date, exactly like I wrote. Completely floored me. How could he write something that I had not even thought of? How could he write something that I had decided on later? While I was still struck by what he had done, he asked, \u201cShall I tell you more?\u201d I said, \u201cGo ahead.\u201d He said, \u201cWhen I asked you to write a number between one and ten, you said, \u2018I\u2019m going to call his bluff; he is expecting me to write five,\u2019 and when asked for the flower, you said, \u2018He is expecting me to write rose.\u2019\u201d He knew exactly how I thought. He knew it and actually demonstrated it. I asked him, \u201cHow did you learn this?\u201d He said we have a Yogi, we have a swami, and he teaches us how to read the mind of anybody. Obviously, for him to be able to read that, it all has to be predestined.
\nWhen we think we\u2019re making choices, we think we are applying some rules of finding out how to make choices to our current decisions, but they\u2019re all working only through predestination. I have had other experiences which also prove the whole thing is predestined, but we don\u2019t see it like that.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Were you designated by Sawan Singh to become an initiator so could you pass the initiations on? Do you have initiates?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I am only helping people who are marked by my Master. I do not initiate.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Your Master initiates through you?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> He does. I watch it. Not only do I watch it, but because of my relationship with my Master, I ask him, \u201cThis guy has come in front of me and says initiate me. What do you say?\u201d He says, \u201cHe\u2019s marked. Yes.\u201d I don\u2019t even call it my initiation, I call it great Master\u2019s initiation. Most of the people who come to me for initiation are already initiated. Most of them have had masters who took them up to a certain point, and then they couldn\u2019t go any further. They are the ones who are coming for this kind of initiation, which is great Master\u2019s initiation, not mine.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Thank you. I saw one of your seminars and you gave me a key for my life that is so profound. You talked about the five senses. You said the sixth sense is intuition, the seventh sense is common sense (which I loved) and the eighth sense it the sense of humor. Then you said there were two profound words of a mantra and I was all ready for something really deep\u2026 And you said, \u201cSo what.\u201d
\nIshwar Puri: Absolutely, that is a practical mantra.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> I would like you to speak about humor and \u201cso what.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> You can deal with any situation in the world, no matter how profound or how difficult it is, if you look at it in its totality. What is the place that it has in your life? And you will say \u201cSo what and so what.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> That\u2019s a gift to me, thank you, because one of the things that I deal with is that my environment stimulates me. I can get into urgency, like busyness, meeting deadlines, and getting it all done, completing, and crossing things off the list. And it can really lead me to exaggerating their importance. So when you give me the key of so what\u2026<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> I\u2019m so happy the key worked.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> It really worked. It was really useful, and it still is useful. Drawing to a close, I have one or two more questions. One of them is why do you think it is that women generally don\u2019t become Perfect Living Masters?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> That is not true. Women have been Perfect Living Masters.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Can you tell me about them?<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Socrates\u2019 Master was a woman. He described it. He learned everything from a woman Master. There are many Masters who in India who were women also. But somehow because our society is more oriented to male dominance, which has been going on for a long time, women have not been brought into so much prominence. But their teachings exist. There\u2019s no bar on a woman becoming a Master.
\nThere is no difference, at the level of the Soul, between a man and a woman. The difference arises from the mind. If you see from the top how the creation descended and created gender, and created the experience of love by dividing us into genders, you will find that in Parabrahm, which is beyond the region of the mind, there\u2019s no difference. The Soul is only one and it encompasses both the male and the female principles. When we\u2019re talking of Perfect Living Masters, they can be a woman or a man.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Thank you so much.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> You\u2019re most welcome, I\u2019m very happy to have this conversation with you.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Me too, and I hope it\u2019s an opportunity where we got to see each other again and share again.<\/p>\n

Ishwar Puri:<\/strong> Definitely. I feel so much at home here, and I want to thank everybody here, and I love this beautiful place.<\/p>\n

Leigh:<\/strong> Thank you, God bless you.<\/p>\n

\n

Read the complete NDH July \/ August 2016<\/a><\/strong> Edition via ISSUU<\/p>\n

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An Interview with Ishwar Puri Interviewed by Leigh Taylor-Young   Ishwar Puri is the initiate of his beloved Master Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji and founder of Institute for the Study of Human Awareness (ISHA) in Chicago. He is a former senior official with Indian government, a graduate of Harvard University, and is teaching spirituality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":60868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[118,503,504,505,174,463,115],"class_list":["post-60867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-spotlight","tag-god","tag-ishwar-puri","tag-leigh-taylor-young","tag-meditate","tag-meditation","tag-sound-current","tag-spirit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}