Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

{The first 1.5 minutes have been cut out because of low audio quality. The transcript of the cut-out audio is available below}

Today I feel like telling you either a very big great truth or the finest, in other words a great wisdom. I don’t know how you will hear it, grasp it and make use of it, and be molded and find them. I think, yesterday we returned from Trivandrum. Day before yesterday, G, the missus of the house, P's daughter came and sat by my side and she said, "I am trying to do sādhanā everyday after I get up early in the morning. Previously I had problem with my mind, so many thoughts were coming, what are the different types of work I have to do, the priority about them etc. But now the phase has gone. I am able to keep my anusandhāna uninterruptedly."

I asked her, "Are you peaceful?"

"Yes, I am very peaceful."

"No disturbance and and no distraction comes?"

"No, not at all. I am able to keep my mantra without any disturbance."

"Is it really so?"

"Yes. I had my difficulties."

She speaks very softly and so in an even softer voice she was mentioning this to me. So much so I was not able to feel the impact of her words. I was very much surprised to hear that a girl, a mother of two children with the husband nearby, both of them working in the office, not being able to spend enough time with the children, going to office, holding a responsible position, how is it that she was telling me that she gets up early in the morning and does her sādhanā and in the sādhanā, all the distractions and disturbances she was having in the form of thoughts and concerns about the work pending in the office etc.

Actually, anybody who works anywhere in the world, when the work stops, his mind should not get away from the work. If he wants to be intelligent, thoughtful and more and more efficient, then his mind should be thinking about the work. What is the next item to be done? Have I done it well? Can I improve? Wherein lies efficiency? What further precaution or speed otherwise I have to take up? Unless these thoughts are there, nobody is going to improve his intelligence and performance. That being the case, then the children having to be looked after, guided, food to be prepared to them, some delicacies to be made, a check to be had, the children are also wonderful, two of them are sons. They will come home, open the door, they will prepare some tea, have some snacks, biscuits and all that. Always the mother will not be there nor the father would be there. So the children are used to taking food themselves, preparing the items. I have to know more about them. So that is something very interesting, very unusual. And the children seem to be quite happy, they don’t feel the absence of the parents if my information is correct.

Such a house-wife tells me that "In my mind, whatever you have asked me to do, the anusandhāna, it is lingering, it is coming with no distraction whatsoever. The next point I am going to say, listen to it very carefully. There are two stages - Dhyāna and Samādhi. Dhyāna becomes so when the mind is able to think, revolve the same thought on truth without any disturbance.

Ājyadhārayā srotasā samam. I used to melt butter in the Ashram periodically and there would be a substantial quantity of ghee here. In three or four days, every day I used to collect the butter, then pour fresh water, wash it very well so that the butter milk portions besmeared over the butter will go and keep it in fresh water and after four or five days I would melt. While melting, it is generally a practice to take some ghee and pour it from a height. So this verse used come to my mind.

ājyadhārayā srotasā samam |
saralacintanaṁ viralataḥ param ||

What is Dhyāna? It is not a jugglery or mysticism or a miracle. It is engaging the mind in the same thought, preserving the same thought in the mind. That thought you say it once, it is complete, say it again a second time, it is complete. Say it the third time, fourth time, fifth time, like that. You don’t have to count. So you have to preserve the mantra in your mind. I generally say it is something like preserving, keeping a tender child, one or two months old in your palms. There should not be a force. There should not be any anxiety, tension, heaviness. You make your hand so flexible that the child will be comfortable in your hands. I don’t think there is any force there. There is lot of tenderness, softness and flexibility. In the same manner, being very light in your mind, not being anxious, simply preserve in as gentle a manner as possible, as smooth and light a manner as possible the anusandhāna, the ātmānusandhāna that you have. Now when you are able to preserve it without any distraction or interruption, it is called Dhyāna. It is just like ‘ājya-dhārayā’. So I used to pour the ghee from about one-and-a-half or two feet height and I used to observe how beautifully the ghee is falling in a stream unbroken. To watch that falling of the ghee, that stream, it was so elevating, nice and sublime to me.

As I narrate to you these words, my body, the inner personality also, they become so flexible, pliant, almost melting, very soft, gentle, so much so that I feel like lying (down). Even this sitting becomes a kind of an exertion because every lower part of the body has to support the higher part. That itself becomes a little strain or load. So I would like to recline so that I don’t have to support my body. In that stage I feel more comfortable, relaxed and attentive. What am I attending to or attentive about? It is the mind, mind function. So 'G' was telling me that when I asked her, "Are you peaceful?"

"Yes, I am very peaceful."

"On no day the mind and thought process, the anusandhāna stopped?"

She said, "No."

"That is a little surprising to me.", I said.

When the mind is able to preserve the same ātmic thought for five minutes or ten minutes, the next step will be the entire anusandhāna and the mind will stop, cease to be. So I am wondering why is it not taking place? What is the reason? I do a lot of research because people don’t know what is the goal of meditation and how to achieve it. When the mind is able to revolve the same thought without any disturbance, you should know what is to be next done. You have to go to the source of the thought process, from where the thoughts, the anusandhāna arises. I used to tell people, "Sit in a place and find out the source from where every thought arises." When you reach the source of the thought, thought will not be there. As long as you are thinking, you are not in the source, so from the thinking you have to reach the source. That means no thinking.

I am speaking to you which means the mind should be thinking. In addition to thought, it also expresses it in the form of sounds. But if I have to go to the source of the thought process, then the thought will itself stop. You will know from where the thought arises. Not with the eyes but with the power of cognition that you have. When thus you reach the thought process and then you go to the source, everything will come to a stop. Now this is the mystery. When you reach that source of thought, you should understand that as the source of the entire creation. The entire creation is perceived, felt and cognized by the senses. The senses are on your body. The body is made and preserved by the power and presence inside the body that animate and activate it.

So the entire world is a product and outcome of your senses and your senses are made by the mind substance, the consciousness. When you reach the source of all expressions from consciousness, have you not reached the source of creation? The source of creation is not outside; it is inside. And only your inside is experimentable or experiential to you. When you thus reach that source of all thinking, feeling, reaction, memory, knowledge, doubt, you have reached the end of everything, the beginning of everything. Now to understand that it is so, people are unable to. Some people are able to discriminate, some people will say, "Swamiji, I have reached a state of blank." By calling blank, they have lost their aim. They are losing a great purpose and fulfillment. So our 'G' is peaceful but she is not able to unravel the mystery of knowledge. I want to write to her a letter. There are occasions when I write these things but even after writing the readers and recipients are not able to assess and evaluate what they reach and what they get.

See our A is one. He has been associated with me and the Ashram for quite a lot of time. I think he is a good boy and a good soul. I have given him Brahmavidya Deeksha. He also does meditation. He remains absorbed. Normally he doesn’t have much of worldly interest. But somehow this boy has not been able to evaluate what he has and what he has got. We generally say Āvaraṇa and Vikshepa are two śaktis which Brahman has in the form Maya. That Āvaraṇa means it covers the reality. Vikshepa means when it imposes distraction. So this boy is also deluded by Āvaraṇa and Vikshepa. So he has gone to Australia for doing research in what the eyes see. He was doing a greater research into what sees through the eyes. So it was a research in to the seer layers. That he left and he prefers to search into the seen and the visible. Basically it comes from a lack of recognition that one, the source is in the seer. Secondly, whatever you see here externally in the form of the visible is nothing but a very, a very trifling, pseudo display of the seer. If you are able to evaluate it, which will you as an intelligent person prefer? Always the glory of the seer, the splendour of the seer and this is clearly within one’s own body.

So I am meeting so many instances. A our B’s son used sit on the veranda of the Ashram and he used to have a lot of vibration and ecstasy. I have given him Brahmavidya Deeksha. But somehow that boy has not been able to develop it. It is the same thing which I got from my Gurudev. So sometimes I wonder even when I initiate people and they go through this inner process of realization, when they get at the truth or the brink of it, they are not able to hold on to it, discriminate it, understand it, evaluate it and develop it. This is where we call it a big Maya.

So the mystery I have told you, when the mind becomes uniform in its anusandhāna, the next stage is: the anusandhāna should and will cease. And when it ceases you are, you are the very source of everything. It requires a great mind and a great intelligence to know that within our seeming body, there is a source that displays the whole endless universe. You are so poor and so little that you are not able to understand that within my limited body there is the unlimited source of the entire creation. If you understand it, what is the pedestal that you will reach and are you capable of owning such riches, such grandeur, such great position? Ask yourself, suppose I gift you the whole earth, what will be the total weight and mass, so much of gold I give you saying that administer it, use it; are you capable of receiving the gift? What will you do? Compared to that, what is this gift? It is far, far greater, infinitely greater. To possess it, to appreciate it, to manage it, it is not easy! That is why many people are not able to get at self-realization.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.