Why is no one ours? Because we live in a foreign land. This world of mankind is a foreign land. We are visitors here for fifty or eighty years. This is not our home.
Don’t live here, it’s a foreign land.
This world is like a stack of paper.
It will melt away if water drops fall on it.
This world is a bush of thorns.
One who falls in it is entangled and ultimately dies.
This world is just wood and bush.
With the touch of fire it ignites.
Kabir says to the saints, “Listen brothers,
Only the Name of Satguru is our abode.”
This is not our home. We have only come here as visitors. We are residents of a different world and that is where we have to return to. We do not just believe this, we know this. The seed of man does not belong to this earth. The seed of man belongs to a greater planet. From there, due to his karma, or his error, or for some other purpose, or due to God’s will, he has somehow descended to this earthly plane where birth and death is the regular law of life, where one has to search for immortality. Here we have to search for immortality, whereas immortality is our inherent nature. We are immortal. Do we die? Isn’t it only the body that dies? We never die. But when someone in this world dies we weep, and when someone in this world survives that makes us happy.
So now to live only for others should be the dharma of Swami Satyananda’s life. Since the day this thought came to my mind, I have achieved the aim for which I left my home, fifty or sixty years ago. I did tantra, sadhana, I did everything. I read a lot, traveled around the whole world, saw all the temples of Christians, Muslims, Iranians and Parsis. But now I do hear the voice of God. Still, if I want to talk to Him I do not know His telephone number. I asked for His password and He said, “Not yet, lest you commit cyber crime.” I am not joking. Sometimes I tell you very serious things jokingly. Sometimes saints and siddhas also commit cyber crimes. But nowadays repeatedly we talk about everything.
I am just living to teach spiritual life. I have applied for a booking. My seat is not booked yet. Once it is booked I will leave this body and go back to my original home from where I came.
Rikhiapeeth, 29 November 2000, first published in Bhakti Yoga Sagar Vol. 6