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Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
I am wondering what I should speak to you. One subject that comes to my mind is about the mind itself. In the ordinary course of anybody’s life, is there any occasion for examining his own mind, mind’s working and finding out what is the wrong in his mind and it’s working? This kind of an inner study and contemplation is not at all done. So what we want to do initially and even finally is, develop the habit of introspection by virtue of which your own mind and the mind’s processes will become a point of examination for you.
People have a feeling that when they meditate, all thought processes should stop or resolve and if they chant a mantra, the mantra alone should be there in the mind. If this is your idea, it is not right at all. Mantra is only a formula which expresses your ultimate objective in life. Your ultimate objective and fulfillment, how it can be had, that should be expressed in the form of a mantra and that mantra you feed the mind with. It is an optional thought which is fed into the mind which the mind should go on repeating. This repeating a mantra is a process or a practice by virtue of which you are trying to change the structure of the mind, the pattern of the mind. When you start the process and a few days or even weeks or months pass, you will find you are in a position to enter into the moment and explore whatever is going on there. So the ability to enter into the mind arena and live there consciously, that is the first purpose of meditation.
The second purpose will be - by so doing, what is the benefit, how this benefit is achieved. When you start understanding your mind is given to thinking and in the thinking several aspects come. You come to know what is your personality like. Is it good according to your own assessment or is it bad? Are noble thoughts coming to you or ignoble thoughts coming to you? When you understand this, invariably you will feel undesirable and ignoble thoughts are parading in your mind. Wherefrom did you get these thoughts? Why don’t you find out? It must have been due to your own susceptibility. What is the susceptibility? Either you are in the company of bad people, you enter into wrong discussions, unfavorable discussions, or you indulge in thoughts of that kind.
When you come to these conclusions, automatically these practices will be rectified. You will not indulge in unnecessary thoughts, bad thoughts. You will not like to have ignoble people as your friends and you will not indulge in any immoral, unethical or ignoble actions. So it becomes a process of elimination for you. Eliminate what? Eliminate the undesirable, understanding the undesirable and trying to eliminate.
When you have understood that “such and such thoughts are undesirable and I should not have them”, you try to dissuade them. Initially you were welcoming them or at least not dissuading them. Now you are on a new mode that is dissuading them. When you start dissuading the undesirable thoughts, I think in a matter of time, how much I cannot tell you now, in the matter of a few months, these thoughts will virtually not come to you.
Now when for any reason, by the law of variety and law of memory, undesirable thoughts do come, then the next point is how to face them. There, an understanding of the mind and the thought process becomes necessary. If unnecessary thoughts come to you and you cannot avoid them, then why do you own them up? “There are unnecessary thoughts appearing in the mind for some reason which I don’t know. As far as my position is clear that I don’t like them and I dissuade them”, you are safe. So whenever they come, you dissuade them that’s all. Nothing more is to be done.
When you start dissuading the unnecessary thoughts, undesirable thoughts for a while, again I cannot say how many weeks or months, you will find either of the two developments. One is their occurrence will be much less, less and less. Even when they come, you will not be affected by them. It will be like writing in water. When some thoughts come and you are not affected, it is like writing in water. Then what do you have to do about them? Nothing! Let them come or not come. You are not going to act upon them and you are not going to grumble and complain that they are coming.
When that unaffectedness is there, you are safe. It does not matter what thoughts come and when. After all, it is the mind that produces them. The mind alone tells you that they are undesirable. The mind alone says that they should be rejected. As long as you have such a healthy and creative mind, are you not safe? So use that mind to bring about the improvement. I would like to repeatedly emphasize. It is not the total extinction of the undesirable thoughts that we want. On the other hand, it is a state where the so-called undesirable thoughts do not overtake you or affect you.
You tie a mosquito net where there are too many mosquitoes. Will not the mosquitoes come? Yes. Where will they sit? On the net. They will try to enter; they may not be able to. So after some time, what will happen? They will go away. “This is not the place where we have our prey.” So they will go away. Do you have to struggle against the mosquitoes? Certainly not. Here also, you try to have an insulation for your mind. That insulation will be in the nature of a knowledge, a conviction, an insight. So I would like you to use meditation as a means for it.
What is meditation? Living with your mind exclusively. Normally we are living with persons, places, circumstances and events. All of them are gross and external whereas in meditation you live with your own mind and whatever the mind does. If the first is a gross interaction, the second is a subtle interaction. In that subtle interaction, you should have sufficient knowledge, what are these thoughts, wherefrom do they come, how they influence us, do they influence, do I want them to influence me or I don’t want. So when you feel strong that a particular thought is not desirable, I think it will stop coming. So what is going to take place in meditation is not the appearance or non-appearance of the thought process, but a qualitative improvement of your personality.
You are all losing the purpose of meditation. Because you feel purpose means thought-freeness. And you never succeed and you have disappointment. Because meditation is disappointing, you stop meditation. The purpose of meditation is to build up your mind. Try to understand the mind and mind processes more and more, more and more, more and more. A number of bad thoughts are coming to you. Why they are coming to you? Because now or earlier, you were in the company of bad. Otherwise, why should they come? So a fact of your life which has occurred, can it be separated? So they will start coming for some time. Maybe months or years.
Now your defense should be – “What I shall do with such thoughts?” So meditation should be a knowledge process , not a mind-stilling process. I don’t know whether I am right in saying this, meditation is not a mind-stilling process, it is a knowledge process. When you are able to deal with and dissolve, deal with or resolve your bad thoughts, then you are safe. The thoughts will no more be thought bad, they will become good.
I can allow your mind to think in any manner. Let it think in its own manner, I am not affected. So I don’t have to pick out my thought process. Whatever is there, I am not affected. I don’t know whether you understand what I say. People are all misdirected. They don’t know what to do with meditation.
So we have got a CD here, three talks on meditation are given. Have you heard them? How is it that you missed? ‘Entry and Exploration’ is the first day’s talk. The second is perhaps dealing with the intricacies of meditation. The third is ‘What after Meditation?”. Three talks. Meditation initially should be to know your mind. You have no time to know your mind. We only work and not knowing, the mind has become useless for us. The mind has got immense potential and possibility. We are not aware of it and we don’t develop it.
So I think meditation should be understood properly. People are coming and telling me, “We want to chant the mantra but distractions come, come, come, come, come, come.” What else will come? With half-an-hour meditation at the age of 45, you say 40 years of wrong thinking should be set right? Is it possible?
So meditation is first of all to understand the complexity of the mind and to know where you stand. And afterwards, you will find meditation is a process by virtue of which you learn the ability to handle your thinking. When some bad thoughts come to you because of your own past, the past you cannot rewrite, memory of that past comes to you, what can you do? It has become part of your life. Now you should know “what shall I do with this memory”. You have to do nothing. Allow it to subside and you go forward because it is part of your life. So whether the memory is or is not, you will remain neutral. Is it not sufficient? This is how you have to proceed.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.