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THE RAO INSTITUTE

Guidelines by Professor Srikumar S. Rao

Hello!

A warm, very warm, welcome to the "Are YOU Ready to Succeed?" community!!

From the beginning I was clear that this book would not be an event. It would herald the start of a process and it would build a community. A strong community, closely bonded but loosely knit, that would endure on its own and prove a source of support and inspiration.

Look back on your lives and those of friends, relatives, colleagues and classmates. I will wager that you will find most professional relationships to be superficial and strongly suffused with a 'what can I get out of this' ethos. Not conducive to a happy life.

I was struck by how many of us were chasing the elusive chimera of happiness. I listed the components - financial plenty, professional success, marital felicity, civic recognition, spiritual development. It gradually became apparent to me that none of these - except perhaps the last - was either necessary or sufficient. Paradoxically, ALL of them frequently added themselves to the mix, spontaneously and with emphasis, when this realization took hold and recognition arose that happiness is a 'here and now' phenomenon and entirely within our control.

And that is the genesis of my course "Creativity and Personal Mastery" and the message of my book "Are YOU Ready to Succeed?"

So I now have a vision of a community whose members are united in this quest for happiness, dedicated to helping others in any and all possible ways, highly individualistic, but respectful of others and determined to never, never, never let life encroach or grind one down.

Each of you has lit a fire. A candle flame can be snuffed out by a sneeze or a mild puff of wind. A regular campfire can be put out by a strong gust or a passing shower. But a full blown forest fire? That - to paraphrase my friend, Bill, the Bard of Avon - will look on tempests and be not shaken.

So this is a community dedicated to ensuring that none of the lights go out, that each one builds into a full fledged conflagration, but the only things that get consumed are the ridiculous limitations we all impose on ourselves.

There will be differences in views. This does not matter. What is required is an openness to experimentation, a readiness to change if the evidence warrants it and an acceptance that what one 'knows' as immutable truth is merely a personally created 'reality' no different from one spawned by The Matrix.

And when one accepts this, one awakens each day into a world of possibilities - limitless and totally enthralling possibilities. A world in which you are radiantly alive, aglow with joy and radiating peace and good will. Disregard the 'doom and gloom' that confront you in the headlines each day. They do not apply to you. Read them for knowledge as you would study the topography of a region from a helicopter, but give them no emotional due. For, if you choose to, you can live above the clouds permanently and merely watch as they come and go.

So be ready to help and be helped and explore with this community and help shape it.

Warm regards

Srikumar S. Rao

 

Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it .

Ali Ibn-Ali-Talib

In reply to your need I must say what I have already said so often, that simplicity of approach is what you require at the moment; if you could only see, if you could only hear, if you could only know how simple, how tender, how radiant is the feeling of oneness with your indwelling Spirit!!

I shall try to compare it to a very human experience. When you were in love your imagination was held captive by the one you loved and your whole tone was uplifted to that object. Often the image of your beloved was more real than the actual person, who was as unreal and as unseen as I am at this moment as I write to you. I can only repeat that to receive the sense of the love of the Spirit, to receive the divine wisdom and knowledge, you must truly ponder and meditate and hold the high image steady and true, as you so involuntarily held that human image of your beloved.

It is true that you are at the place of your desire, that you want this infinite peace and comfort in a troubled world, and it is difficult with the interests and alarms of the day to return to a quiet moment of communion like the one of this moment, as you read; it is hard to conjure up in your mind the quality of feeling your mind is now touching. But if you were really in love you would not have to search for this feeling; that involuntary emotion would tone your whole day, the trees would take on a richer hue, the skies clear, and even the people in the street would seem endowed with nobility because that emotion would of itself clasp and hold high the very jewel of your heart's desire.

The materialist knows this and he would say that it is impossible to live in the tempo of youth's first love, and yet I say to you that this is the way and the truth and the life.

You will grow to love the beauty and the clarification of the revelations that will come to you and you will learn gradually that this peace, calm knowledge and inspiration are part of the rebirth that has been the prophecy through the ages for all those who walk this path, the prophecy fulfilled through love.

Is not this peace, is not this powerful knowledge, is not this love worth all that you can give? And remember that the more tender, the more open, the gentler you can be in your quiet time of acceptance, of stillness, the greater will be the power pressed through your silences.

From 'Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood'