Having gratitude for what has been given to us by God is an important aspect in the development of spiritual emotion. A few days ago, I witnessed one such example of gratitude.

Living in an āshram (hermitage) where SSRF has its research centre in Goa is not like living at home. It is a very spartan lifestyle and the frills and luxuries that are available to us at home are not available in the āshram. However seekers of God transcend their need for these luxuries as for them, the benefits of living in an āshram, far outweigh worldly luxuries with respect to the āshram providing a conducive environment for spiritual development. At a more advanced stage, seekers experience a deeper sense of gratitude for what they are getting from God and the Guru principle and for having the privilege of living in the āshram.

Yoya and Cyriaque, two former international models have been living at the SSRF research centre along with their daughter Anastasia for many months to serve the spread of the spiritual research. Both these seekers have experienced the high life of an international model with fancy hotels, airlines and travel and being pampered while on shoots. Yet when they were in the āshram they blended in completely with its way of life and strived to achieve what is expected out of a seeker.

When leaving they posted the following note on the āshram notice board.

When His Holiness Dr. Athavale heard about the note, He asked to share it with our readers as there is much to be learnt from Cyriaque and Yoya’s yearning for spiritual growth and developing of spiritual closeness with other seekers.

Mr. Atul Dighe

Editor

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Have you ever wondered why psychiatrists themselves suffer from depression or some form of mental illness?

While seeking guidance from His Holiness Dr. Athavale on a spiritual research topic, He mentioned something which would be of value to psychiatrists. His Holiness Dr. Athavale was Himself practicing as a clinical hypnotherapist until He came fully into spiritual practice. He mentioned that as many as 70% of all psychiatrists suffer from some mental illness themselves especially after years of practice.

The main reason for this is that they deal with mentally ill patients who in turn most of the times (90% of the time) are affected / possessed by negative energies or departed ancestors. This means that in 9 out of 10 cases of mentally ill patients that a psychiatrist treats, the root cause of the patient’s illness is in the spiritual dimension.  The psychiatrists themselves having no subtle ability cannot perceive that many a time they are actually dealing with or talking to negative energies. When they try and help the mentally ill patient, they quite often enrage the possessing entity (negative energy) that ends up attacking the psychiatrist at a subtle level. This is the main cause of why psychiatrists become patients themselves and show signs of depression, suicidal thoughts and other behavioural changes which resemble a psychiatric patient. Understanding this aspect and the spiritual dimension and its impacts on mental health can help psychiatrists put spiritual measures in place to both protect themselves and also better help their patients.

Sean Clarke

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Read more:

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• An intellectual way to comprehend the existence of the spiritual realm
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SSRF’s Editor Sean Clarke recounts a heartening spiritual experience while video shooting the SSRF documentary on negative energy attacks through blood stains

While shooting the first episode of Horrifying Supernatural Encounters, I developed a feeling of closeness to the deities of the Absolute Cosmic Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether. As the supernatural phenomena were taking place because of higher level negative energies using the Absolute Cosmic Elements we needed to explain what they were in the documentary script. While writing the script I would mull over how best to explain this concept and visualise it to a lay person. I often found myself in prayer to the deities of the Absolute Cosmic Elements asking them for guidance in writing that part of the script as I felt ill-equipped to do the explanation justice. I felt a deep sense of gratitude and privilege to share this knowledge about the deities of the Absolute Cosmic Elements with the world. It also deepened my appreciation for Them as they are the building blocks for the entire Universe. The production team spent quite some time in preparing a segment of the video that explained the Absolute Cosmic Elements in detail.

In order to shoot the interview with the subtle department seeker Ms. Sonal Joshi, we chose Dr. and Mrs. Desai’s residence. The place in the house that we chose to shoot the interview was very scenic and had big large bay windows. The downside however was that there was too much of backlight and this allowed us only a few hours of shoot time, i.e. in the early hours of the morning and towards sunset. The shoot was scheduled for the last week of April which was right in the middle of summer with not a cloud in the sky. We started shooting in the evening on 21 April 2009 and soon realised that we had only one hour to shoot between the time the backlight reduced and the sunset time started.

Realising our problem, that night on the way back to the ashram and SSRF’s research centre, I prayed to the Guru Principle and to the deities of the Absolute Cosmic Elements if they could provide us with an overcast sky. An overcast sky would increase the time we had to shoot as it would reduce the intensity of the backlight.

That night I was woke up at 3 AM with thunder and lightning erupting in the sky. Then it began to rain very heavily. The production team had a 4 AM start to get to the shoot venue. Though we drove in pouring rain, I was so happy to see the rain and paid gratitude to the Guru Principle and to the Absolute Cosmic Water Element. Sure enough the sky was overcast throughout the day and we were able to get much more shoot-time during the day.

The night prior to the last day of the shoot, the camera crew slept at the Desai’s residence. We were scheduled to start at 6.30 AM and had to pick up Ms. Sonal Joshi from her house at 5.30 AM. However the whole team overslept and only got up at 6 AM. Repeated calls from Ms. Joshi did not help as all our phones were on silent. When going in the car to pick her up, I prayed to the Guru Principle and to the deity of the Absolute Cosmic Water Element admitting my mistake and asking for help. I looked out of the car window and it seemed like a clear day and I wondered if my prayer would be answered. We started the shoot finally at around 7 AM. As we started the shoot clouds began to appear from nowhere and they stayed covering the Sun. As soon as the last dialogue was uttered, within a few seconds, the Sun came out from the clouds and the clouds dissipated once and for all.

It was a very unreal kind of experience to see the forces of nature coming to help with a simple prayer. I had a lump in my throat and tears welled up in gratitude. I felt internally that even though we made a big mistake by not waking up on time, the deity of the Absolute Cosmic Water Element came to our help as He had pity on us but mainly out of respect for His Holiness Dr. Athavale’s mission.

Sean Clarke

Editor, SSRF.org

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Read more:

• Horrifying supernatural encounters section
• Hollywood actress studies SSRF video of demonic possession
• Have you seen “Live an Aware Life”?
• What is a spiritual experience?
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We know that God is Omniscient. Saints are the manifest form of God. They have qualities related to spiritual practice, but most Saints do not have knowledge about worldly matters that is useful in spiritual practice. To my knowledge, H. H. Pande Maharaj is the only Saint who is an exception to this rule. Without thinking, He can instantaneously provide new perspectives on any subject like art, sculpting, spreading Spirituality, classes on raising children in a sattvik (spiritually pure) way, satseva related to collecting offerings through advertisements.

Saints are the true identity of the ashram. Only by the presence of Saints, Divine Consciousness (Chaitanya) is created in an ashram (hermitage) and seekers feel inspired to do spiritual practice. It is God’s grace on us that we are blessed with a gem of a Saint like H. H. Pande Maharaj. I pray at God’s feet to please bless H. H. Pande Maharaj with health and a long life to continue this divine mission. - Dr. Athavale, 5th November 2009

Special features of His Holiness Pande Maharaj

Spiritual level: 85%

Ego: 8% [Required for the mission of collective spiritual upliftment - H. H. Dr. Athavale]

Spiritual practice:

> He has done spiritual practice in many births. Thus He has knowledge of both worldly and spiritual matters.
> His mind is like small child but has immense maturity in spiritual practice.
> He had a few personality defects but with spiritual emotion and sincere desire, He worked on them and reduced them.
> His individual and collective spiritual practice is good and He has many qualities.
> Due to his efforts and desire for God realisation, He made faster progress after meeting H. H. Dr. Athavale.
> He has immense faith in God and constantly feels gratitude to God.

Features of positive vibrations in Him:

> When spiritual healing is required, Divine energy gets activated and is transmitted through His words and speech.
> When He is in communion with God, manifest and unmanifest vibrations of Bliss (Anand) and Divine Consciousness (Chaitanya) from God are attracted towards him.
> While He talks or walks, vibrations of Bliss (Anand) and Divine Consciousness (Chaitanya) are emitted from each organ.

Knowledge:

He feels that seekers should progress quickly. Thus He gets knowledge from God and H. H. Dr. Athavale in the subtle dimension. This knowledge is inspirational to others. When He narrates it to seekers particles of prīti (unconditional love), knowledge and Divine Consciousness (Chaitanya) are emitted from Him.

Prīti (unconditional love):

His eyes depict prīti (unconditional love) due to immense devotion to God and purity within him. When looking at seekers, vibrations of prīti are emitted from him. He can develop closeness with others through His eyes. He loves each and everyone as a parent. He is in constant communion with God and Guru (H. H. Dr. Athavale).

- Mrs. Yoya Vallee, Subtle Art Department, SSRF, 1st October 2009

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Read more:

• SSRF presents latest spiritual research about Saints at the 11th EUROTAS International Conference in Milan
• SSRF seeker Satyawandada attains Sainthood
• Predicting the Future
• Spirituality prepares us for natural disasters and unexpected events

]]> http://spiritualresearchfoundation.org/blog/spiritualmilestones/990/special-features-of-his-holiness-pande-maharaj/feed/ 2 http://spiritualresearchfoundation.org/blog/spiritualworldview/920/spirituality-prepares-us-for-natural-disasters/ http://spiritualresearchfoundation.org/blog/spiritualworldview/920/spirituality-prepares-us-for-natural-disasters/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:34:42 +0000 Rajal http://spiritualresearchfoundation.org/blog/?p=920

Science has failed to predict calamities which have never been experienced before. Saints, on the other hand, have predicted such things.

On the evening of August 20, 2009, the Canadian city of Vaughan (just north of Toronto) got hit by a series of tornadoes. The tornadoes were completely unexpected as the “Tornado Alley” of the region runs much further west of Vaughan. A later search on Wikipedia showed that there hadn’t been any reported tornadoes in Vaughan up until then.

I was interested in this because while I live in Toronto, and we did not get the tornadoes, I witnessed the storm that brought them. My first reaction to the storm was that of disbelief which soon changed to awe tinged with fear. Watching it, I forgot what I had been doing when it started.

(Photo courtesy of Janine Massey on Flickr)

It would not seem easy to prepare oneself for something like a natural disaster, or for any kind of emergency for that matter. Even safely tucked away in my apartment, I could not help getting absorbed in the event which was unfolding before us as I observed the might of nature.

Although many rationalists of the 21^st century boast about the progress made by science, nobody was actually able to warn about many of the serious disasters of the last few years, such as the South Asian tsunami or the more recent China earthquake. The limitations of science can be observed during such calamities.

One of the reasons given by the Indian weather observatory for not predicting the 2004 tsunami was, “India has never before experienced a tsunami, which made it hard to predict”. Even in the scientifically advanced and hurricane-prone US, hurricane prediction specialists admit that although hurricane predictions are improving, there is a lot to be wished for. This shows that though science has advanced, to a large extent it is still not able to understand nature.

Science has failed to predict calamities which have never been experienced before. Saints, on the other hand, have predicted these things.

His Holiness Gagangiri Maharaj has said that the coming period will be so bad that even Saints think that They would be better off leaving Their gross body during such bad times. Thus, as predicted by Saints, the upcoming times are going to be difficult. As found through SSRF’s spiritual research too, there will be more natural disasters. The natural disasters will cause scarcity of day-to-day necessities like food, water, electricity, petrol.

However the most important thing is that Saints haven’t just given warnings but have even suggested the means to overcome these calamities by guiding people to increase their devotion towards God. Our devotion can be increased by performing daily spiritual practice as per the six basic principles. It is by following these basic principles, and learning how to offer our body, mind and wealth that we can build enough spiritual strength to sustain ourselves in difficult circumstances.

While I was very lightly affected by the unexpected tornado storms, for me they were a welcome reminder of the predictions given by Saints, and of the need to intensify my spiritual practice in order to prepare for the times ahead.

by

Rajal Joshi

SSRF team member

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Read more:

• Natural Disasters
• Armageddon and World War 3
• The Real Pollution
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