Chanting mantras inspires the body to heal itself, the mind to become calm and the soul to grow strong. Chanting makes room for divine energies. Mantras are vibrations - they unlock hidden centres and help to dissolve the ego; they help us build invisible tools for shaping a better life. We start discovering resources within.

A young farmer, simple and ego-less, was rearing goats. One day a realised soul in ordinary attire visited him. The poor farmer welcomed him with respect without knowing that he was a great guru. Affectionately, he offered goat milk to the visitor. The guru left after some time. His blessings created a great spiritual armour around the farmer, unbeknownst to him.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Mantra Yoga: Transform Yourself With Mantra Yoga

The festival of Lohri marks the beginning of the end of winter and the coming of spring and the new year. The fires lit at night, the hand-warming, the song and dance and the coming together of an otherwise atomised community, are only some of the features of this festival. The Lohri of north India coincides with Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Samkranti in Bengal, Magha Bihu in Assam, Tai Pongal in Kerala, all celebrated on the auspicious day of Makar Sankranti .

(See also: Lohri , Indian Festivals, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Lohri: Lohri Celebrates the Spirit of Life  

Most world leaders, international organisations and so-called peace summits tend to define peace in the shadow of war, as 'a situation where there is no war"between nations.

By doing so they are actually taking a negative view. By viewing the positive element in contrast to the negative, we will end up underrating the former'spotential. By defining light as the 'absence of darkness"or, life as the 'absence of death", we assign greater importance to the powers of darkness and death, or in the case of peace, to war, rather than peace.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace on Earth: Peace Is More Than No War

Silence is the womb of the tangible world. In the Christian Biblical version of Creation, God 'spoke' and the world came into being. With the pronouncing of the Word, speech became primary, but silence remained primordial.

The heart of Christian meditation is to return to this primordial state of being. It is a journey from words into the creative word of God; this Word is enveloped by silence. By its very nature, silence is unexploitable, often purposeless and for that reason very frightening.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace of Mind: Power of Silence

The computer era has popularised the term "solution". All metros now display advertisements and posters that offer a variety of solutions.

The names are equally enterprising: "Ideal Solutions", "Smart Solutions", "Party Solutions", "Curtain Solutions", "Critical Solutions"... the list is long. When the question is of one's well being, a superficial solution will not work.

Non-apprehension of Reality is the cause for all misapprehensions. A deluded mind creates misunderstandings. One who broods over the past mars the present which is what shapes the future.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace of Mind: The Solution For Eternal Peace

Para vidya alone can show us the path to eternal bliss. Mundane knowledge, which produces 'intellectualism"cannot confer wisdom on us. Even the most amazing of scientific and technological advances have failed to bring lasting happiness in our lives. The exponential increase in knowledge has,surprisingly, led to more conflicts and destruction.

Para vidya is transcendental knowledge, which leads to wisdom.

Apara vidya or secular knowledge merely enhances our vision of the outer world. Wisdom is perennial while knowledge is mainly informative and therefore transient. The former is stable, the latter, subject to change.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace of Mind: Para Vidya, Path To Eternal Bliss

Shivaratri is a festival of fasting, worship and prayer. Fasting is undertaken to get rid of one's ego. Once the ego is destroyed, the Shiva hidden within gets revealed.

Sri Ramana Maharshi often said that Shiva signifies the Great Dissolution. Where things dissolve, there they must originate. Hence Shiva is the source of the entire creation, including Brahma and Vishnu.

(See also: Shivaratri , Indian Festivals, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Shivaratri: Lord of Destruction Also Protects Life - about Shivaratri  

Women are the power and very foundation of our existence in the world. When women lose touch with their real selves, there is disharmony. So, it is crucial for women everywhere to make the effort to rediscover their fundamental nature.

The infinite potential inherent in men and women is the same. If women really want to, they can somehow acquire the strength to break free of the 'rules' and conditioning that society has imposed on them. The greatest strength of women lies in their innate motherhood, in their creative, life-giving power. And this power can help women to bring about far more significant changes in society than men could ever hope to accomplish.

(See also: Womens Spirituality , God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Womens Spirituality: Seeking Life-Giving Shakti  

Most people see money as the starting point of exchange, a means to acquiring goods and services. To be able to access more and more of goods and services, we strive to acquire more and more money, working extra hours.

What we often tend to forget is that money comes at a real price. Money is not the first point of exchange in this world: it is an intermediate point. You earn money for a good life, and, ironically, even as you are struggling to earn money, you are exchanging your good life for it.

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Make Time For Higher Pursuits

Kabir highlighted the importance of santosh or contentment in our lives. Indian culture teaches us to be content in all situations. But today, we are not happy with the grades our child gets, our pay packet, our spouse, or our ageing parents. Much of the stress in our lives is the result of our inability to be content with what we have.

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Contentment is the Kernel of Happiness

The ideals and motto of the Divine Life Society - "Serve, love, give, purify, meditate and realise" - are reflected in the life and work of Swami Chidananda Saraswati. His spiritual journey began on a Buddha Purnima day in 1943 inspired by his mentor Swami Sivananda.

Chidananda's fervour to serve found the perfect outlet in the welfare work he undertook at Rishikesh. He believes that service alone can purify and prepare the soul for deep contemplation.

(See also: Swami Chidananda , Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Swami Chidananda: Service Before Self - Seva as Sadhana - about Swami Chidananda  

Technologically we live in a borderless world. In reality, however, we exist in compartments, separated by walls of caste, religion and geography. We acknowledge the information explosion as being a great achievement and take pride in describing ourselves as a knowledge-based society. Snowed under as we are with mounds of information, we are facing a paradox - we find that ignorance levels are growing as well. The rate at which we are accumulating information is not commensurate with the rate at which our awareness is growing.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace on Earth: Peace or Violence, Make Your Choice

"The park bench was deserted

as I sat down to read,

Beneath the long, straggly branches

of an old willow tree."

"Disillusioned by life with good reason to frown,

For the world was intent

on dragging me down."

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: This Was The Most Beautiful Flower

The art of wise living involves four steps: Plan purposefully, prepare prayerfully, proceed positively and pursue persistently.

The joy of wise living involves the art of joyous looking. There are two types of looking. You can look at the world with thoughts; you can also look at the world without thoughts, from a pure Being.

When you look at the world with thoughts, then you should be aware of the subtle pollution that exists. Thoughts come from memory, memory is the representation of an experience of the past, and so from the past you see the present. Hence, pollution happens.

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Art of Wise Living Brings Great Joy

In an age when 30-something CEOs and VPs no longer surprise us and paradigms are busted each day, holding one's own at the workplace is a challenge in itself. One hundred and forty-one years after Swami Vivekananda was born, we need to evoke his vision and focus on the fact that life at the workplace can be much simpler and more fulfilling.

The Swami may not have been a student of management theory but the fundamental truths that he taught are invaluable in today's globalised workplace, where employees are often resentful of the relative success of others.

(See also: Swami Vivekananda , Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Swami Vivekananda: Swami Vivekananda - The Manager Monk  

The funny thing about life is that there usually isn't much to laugh about!

"I'm not very happy most of the time," quipped Woody Allen. "The rest of the time I'm not happy at all."

On television, the joke is on someone else, so we laugh. Someone else's slip-up, struggles, loss of face, sleepless nights. In real life, however, the joke is usually on us. Maybe comedies bring us relief from our own frustrations and failures by drawing our attention to the fictional disasters of others. Or is it that we get to view a reflection of ourselves in those characters on the screen and so present a disguised opportunity to see the humorous angle of what happens to all of us; a form of catharsis; a chance to unwind and ease the tension of our troubled minds?

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Listen to the Cosmic Laughter

In the alienated and fragmented world we live in today, the human heart cries out for friendship or affirmation from others. That is because we are meant to see in the human faces we encounter, the face of God.

Tell someone that I am here, is the cry of the human heart. Fernando Silva, who runs a children's hospital in Managua, reports the incident of a lonely child in the hospital in search of a human hand to grasp. One Christmas eve, when he stayed in working late into the night amidst revelry, he heard footfalls behind him. On turning, he recognised the sick child who had no one in the world. Fernando drew close to the child and touched him lightly with his hand. The child whispered: "Please tell someone that I am here".

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: True Friends are God's Angels

An article published talked about how 10 per cent of your life is made up of what happens to you, whereas 90 per cent is decided by how you react. So most of the situations we find ourselves in are possibly self-created; maybe only 10 per cent are nature-generated. A self-audit can help us find out how much this applies to us.

I often think about the importance of self-audit - especially when I see the way a majority of youngsters today are faced with increasing pressures from family, peer groups and the outside world. Many find it difficult to handle all this with an even mind. The manner in which the youth is expending itself and the direction it is headed toward is somewhat alarming.

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Come Alive! Try Zero Tolerance

In 61 aphorisms, the Nirvanopanishad describes the attributes of one who has achieved Jivanmukti or liberation, while remaining in the physical body. At the very beginning, this Upanishad makes it clear that when one says: “Brahman encompasses the universe”, one is still assuming that there is duality, of the Brahman and the universe. The Jivanmukta, or the realised one, does not see the Brahman as being separate from the universe. For him, the universe does not exist. Therefore, he himself does not exist. The only existence is of the Brahman.

(See also: Jivanmukti , God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Jivanmukti: A Jivanmukta Lives In Non-duality  

The path of spiritual progress leading to Self-realisation, propagated by Gurudeva Mangatram is the Surat Shabd Yoga, the path advocated by a number of spiritual teachers like Vasisht and Patanjali in ancient times and saints like Kabir and Guru Nanak in mediaeval times.

Gurudeva's teaching includes the themes of bhakti yoga, gnana yoga, nishkam karma yoga and surat shabd yoga . At this stage of experience, the moolmantra was revealed unto young Mangat: Om Brahman alone is being, without shape and form, One without a second, all pervasive, blessing incarnate. To him, the Supreme Lord, we offer our salutations.

(See also: Gurudeva Mangatram , Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Gurudeva Mangatram: Principle of Samata - about Gurudeva  

We are the most complex and wonderful of God's creations. The human nervous system allows us to experience the richness of life. Our perceptions create reality. We become what we think. But the right environment is required to create the right perceptions. Hence bringing up a child is an art. It requires knowledge and forbearance, love and compassion. Merely thinking of it as a responsibility is insufficient.

(See also: Spiritual Parenting , Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Spiritual Parenting: Child Development and the Art of Parenting  

It is a truism that we are creatures of habit. Very soon what may have initially been a challenge becomes a routine and predictable affair.

We seem, by and large, to prefer it that way. Every now and then, however, comes a challenge that requires a supreme effort of will to absorb and routinise it - a life-shattering experience is one such instance. You are left with the shards of your life and have the task of rearranging the pieces. Instinctively, you want to recreate the past - but, like Humpty Dumpty, you find that this is an impossible task.

(See also: Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Read more here: » Peace of Mind: Embarking on an Incredible Journey