Two kinds of Griha Pravesham, generally celebrated in India
When a women get married, she will do Griha Pravesham i.e. she will enter her husbands house its a big event.
Not anymore because they have already lived together in one. (Laugh)
Otherwise it is a major event.
And they made this into a very sacred process because,
One thing is, what kind of women enters your house, will determine the nature of your life
and what kind of children's you bear, your future, your progeny how they live everything is determine.
By what kind of women enters. That's one thing, another thing is how she enters
also determines whatever kind. How she enters is very important, so they wanted her to enter this house
with utmost honor, with utmost auspiciousness because its very important that she enters this house
with love, its very important she enters this house wanting to give herself totally to whatever that is.
If she enters with something else in her mind and in her heart, she can ruin that family in million different ways.
She can bear the wrong kind of children's. They are aware of all this things,
that if she enters this house with certain type of emotion, tomorrow when she conceives
she will draw the wrong kind of life. And she will bear wrong kind of children's, which will make you suffer
for the rest of your life. You know. If a child enters your house, he can freak the hell out of you, OK. No?
You don't think so? So, how she enters is very important, so there is a whole lot of rituals around this.
How she enters the house. This is one Griha Pravesh, its an old house, but she is entering.
So, a big ritual around this. The ritual got smaller and smaller and smaller
and now she enters the house before she is married so (Laugh), doesn't mean anything anymore,
how she enters because, you need to understand this. Today marriage means you're thinking just of
a little bit of romance between the two people. That's not how they looked at it.
They looked at it as a partnership, which is going to determine everything about them and their children and
How the future of this family happens depends on what kind of women and how she enters the house.
So, they took elaborate care so that she enters the house properly.
The other kind of grihapravesham is, you built a new house and you to, your family want to move in
So, you want the house to be in the right kind of conditions for you to move in.
The design of the house, the aesthetics of the house, what kind of paint, what kind of this – all this is different,
that is also important – but what kind of energy fills this space is very, very important.
So before you live there, nobody ever sleeps in a house which is uninitiated.
So it is a minor form of consecrating the space.
Before moving into the house, the house must be… the space must be consecrated -
otherwise people won’t go and live there.
All these things that were done were essentially to create a certain enhanced sense of life energy
so that, the people who live in this house will naturally move towards well-being.
And this sense of no human being should live in an unconsecrated space
is something which is deep-rooted in this culture, because it is just like if you plant
something into this earth, only if the roots are sticking into a rich earth will the flower and the fruit come out.
If the earth into which these roots are sticking in are not… is not rich enough,
is not enhanced enough to sustain life, flower and fruit will not come; even if it comes it will be too meager,
it will never be a full-blown flowering, it'll never be a full-blown fruiting of the plant.
So always these aspects, we paid enormous… gave enormous importance to these aspects of life.
It’s not just about what you eat, it's not just about what kind of work you do,
what kind of space you live in, this is very important in the East.
So people always consecrated their homes in whichever way they know best and only then moved in.
If the kings were sensible and benevolent they consecrated the whole town,
they created any number of places in the town so that the whole town is consecrated;
he wants everybody to live in consecrated spaces.
If you walk on the street, if you do business, if you live in that town,
everyone must constantly live in consecrated space,
because if you want to produce generations of enhanced human beings you need this kind of space,
otherwise only by accident or by personal dint somebody may become something,
you won’t produce a generation of beautiful people.
This culture produced a galaxy of knowledge, a galaxy of enlightened beings.
Every generation produced this simply because they took care of any number of aspects like this.
Nowhere else on this planet have single generations of people risen to such glorious heights of knowing
as this culture has known, but all that got fractured in the last few hundred years.
In the last eight hundred to nine hundred years this got badly fractured,
because of invasions and displacement of people and so many things. You can produce
very great intellects, very great energy, as human beings I'm saying – individual human beings carrying
phenomenal sense of energy and intellect and capability if you create large spaces of consecrated space…
large consecrated spaces where the whole generation of people are in touch with that kind of energy and space.
This fortune almost every family had because before they moved into homes they did this,
periodically they did something to enhance the house; this was part of almost every house.
Every household at least once a year conducted the needed rituals and processes to see
that the space in the house is enhanced – a basic understanding or rather an essential understanding
of how to generate a conducive atmosphere for a human being to grow to his full potential.
When we say a full potential, today’s world is thinking of full potential only as how much money can he make.
Their idea of success has become so rudimentary.
Modern idea of success is unfortunately extremely rudimentary and gross.
How far can you climb in the social ladder, how much money have you made, this is all the idea of success.
So the idea of success was not like this, it was very broad-based and very profound.
Someone was considered successful only if he's in a certain state of blissfulness,
if he's in a certain state of knowing about himself and the world that he lives in
and socially he's honored and materially he's prosperous and he is able to
earn the love of his family and friends and society – only then he's considered a successful man;
that’s how this society looked at it.
It doesn’t matter how much money he had, if he did not earn people’s love they would say his life is wasted.
Even till last generation, people… this was almost in daily conversation, people would say,
“What does it matter how much money you have? Have you earned people’s love?
Does your family love you? Does (Do?) people who live around you love you?
Are you honored by other people’s love or not?”
This is the most important thing, which was…it is not like a philosophy, it was a common thing in the world…
in the society, which in a matter of thirty to forty years we have managed to
uproot it quite substantially, you know (Laughs).
So Griha Pravesham was just this, that you want to create the right kind of soil
for this plant (Referring to oneself) to grow and flower and fruit. If it's properly done.