Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Today I will talk to you openly and discuss a very important truth and a secret. I want to dispose of this problem once and forever. We will sit here, if necessary for one or two hours but I want to solve this problem for you. It is a deadly secret or a great secret. I want to know what is your problem.

All of you are reluctant to meditate. Even when you meditate, you say “I am obstructed and because of the distraction I am not able to be happy in meditation.” Suppose whenever you sit and meditate, you can switch off your mind. They may invent some medicine also for that. It seems that we have two medicines in Ayurveda, they are prescribed in our śāstras. If you show in front of the nose and the man breathes its smell, he will become unconscious. And they used to conduct operations. At the end of the operation, they will bring the other medicine and make him smell, then he is revived. A Ph.D. doctor teaching at Thaikattusseri told me, “Swamiji, the medicines are written in our texts but we don’t know what they are. Nobody is there to say this is that herb.”

Yesterday our ‘S’ brought to me a particular seed. It is a very very irregularly shaped fruit and seed. Every fruit will have its special feature. This is very very irregular. You cannot imagine there can be a fruit like this, very thin, very ill-shaped. If you open the seed also it is absolutely strange. He says, “Forty tablets if you take for diabetes for 40 days, your diabetes will be cured.” It is so bitter! Yesterday I ate a small piece.

My father used to make vegetable preparation with snake gourd but this is very small. It is called ‘Kaippam Padavalam’. It is a medicinal herb. He used to take, fry the seed and take. Seed means the snake gourd. This is apparently much much much more bitter. Now I am going to try for 40 days, each day one seed. That man will not have diabetes he says. You can measure. Similarly, before long we will have some kind of a herb which will make your mind stop. After some time, your mind will start thinking. We can reach such a state. Now tell me whether it will solve your problem. It is another way of intoxication.

What is it that you want? What is this meditation for? I am talking to you on behalf of śāstras but primarily it is my finding. I find that it is also mentioned in our śāstras. Our mind has got only two positions. Either the mind will think or it will not think. In the event of the mind thinking, you tell me what thoughts will be in the mind. All the thoughts that you are familiar with. We started looking into the world as a child and impressions were formed and whatever has transpired in our life, all these will be coming in the form of memory and thoughts. Tell me, what are all these thoughts about? They are about things you have seen, heard, done, spoken, thought. It is a variety of thought processes. These thoughts may come to your mind. Okay.

Is our mind supposed to think or not think? Suppose you reach a stage where you are unable to think, then will you not become a vegetable? So we are not wanting to get into a state of no thought or no thinking. What is it that we want? Nobody is sure about it. You hear it from me.

You sit closing your eyes, then what will happen? Some thoughts will come. Actually, you must have your mantra and you try to chant the mantra. So the mantra will be forgotten, other thoughts will come. These thoughts you consider to be distractions. You feel that ‘My mind should not think and thoughts should stop and I must get into a samādhi.’ I say, suppose you get into samādhi, this is where you must understand my talk, will you like to be in samādhi once and for all? Do you want to get into it till your body falls? So that is not the ideal state. The ideal state is when one where you are able to remain thoughtful, active, peaceful etc. but without any trouble or torment. That means the mind should be thinking. What will it think? It will think and remind you whatever is necessary from time to time.

I am sitting here, Mā said, “Please say something.” I said, “What shall I say?” “Something”. So I said I wanted to say something. You tell me what gives me these words. I am not manufacturing words. Somehow the mind begins to think on the subject and one thought or the other in the form of series comes and words are added to it or they are made articulate. Who is doing it? The mind is doing it. My point is this, please understand that the mind will think. You tell me what is wrong in thinking. Why should you say it is a distraction?

When the mind goes on thinking, look at my hand, it is remaining. This is called the thought process. By doing this thought process, is my hand in anyway different? After sometime, I stop. So what is in the thought process which is not in the mind? Is not the mind itself becoming the thought? If a quiet mind will not disturb you, why should a thoughtful mind disturb you? It disturbs you because you don’t know the truth.

When I am walking, my legs themselves are walking. In every step of mine, whether I run, stand, sit or walk, nothing besides the legs is present. So what is the problem in walking? So you allow the mind to think, study or look at the thought process and see what is there in the mind or mind-ness, that alone is in the thinking and thinking-ness. In other words, mind and thought are not different in substance or content. Will not this knowledge be sufficient for you to remain undistracted?

What is distracting you? The mind doesn’t get away. By producing a thought, it has not changed. Okay if you have to act on the thought. If you don’t have to act on the thought, keep quiet. So, in meditation, what you are supposed to do is if the thoughts cease, stop and you get into a non-thinking state, well and good, remain absorbed. If the mind is given to thinking, get confirmed in the fact that by thinking the mind does not change. Mind is only showing its potential to think. Do you want a non-walking set of legs or a set of legs which can walk fast or slow? Do you want a mind which is thinking or not thinking? And let it think anything!

“Swamiji, that is not the problem. When it starts thinking, I get disturbed.” That is what I am saying. Why are you getting disturbed? What is there in the thought which makes you disturbed provided you know the mind and the thought are the same? By thinking, are you going to feel red blood will become black or your complexion will change, you will become blind and deaf? You say by thinking my mind will be different. In what way it is going to be different?

So, your meditation should be able to understand that thought or no thought makes no difference to the substance called the mind. When there is thinking in place of stillness, this is what you should make sure of. At least to make sure of it, allow the mind to think. Suppose my mind thinks of God and thinks of the world, the two will make a difference provided you feel God and world are different. If God and world are same, whether he thinks of God or world, what difference is there?

Suppose I refuse to attend to my body, I feel hungry but I don’t eat, I want to pass urine but I don’t go to the toilet. If I don’t do it, if God were to come, ‘See, I am doing tapasya for you. I don’t want to do this.”, what will God tell me? Will he say I should continue to do this nonsense or he will say “It makes no difference, you do it. Don’t hold your urine, don’t keep your hunger, try to eat and appease your hunger and be very normal. I am hunger, I am appeasement, I am forgetfulness, I am memory, I am good, I am bad, I am the sinner, I am the virtuous, I am the heaven, I am the hell.” In the tenth chapter of Bhagavad Gita, He goes on saying “I am this, I am this.” So will he not say, “I am dhyāna and I am distraction also”?

Is there anybody in this group who can try this and be confirmed? Have you tried? I want you to sit and think, allow the mind to get distracted and see what happens. Once this obsession or delusion about thinking is gone, you know what will happen? Any thought that comes to you will not disturb. If you reach such a stage, can you imagine how pure you are? This is the highest level of purity.

Mā, I told you the other day also, I again tell you now. In the Nirvana Prakarana, there is a particular verse:

The meaning is this. Therefore Oh Rama, spandāspandau tvam-ekatām nītvā tiṣṭa yathā-kāmam. Spanda means movement, aspanda means non-movement. Now both, make them alike and one and live comfortably in this world. So dissolve the difference between Samādhi and non-Samādhi. This is what He says. Am I not telling you this?

If you follow what I say, understand what I say, don’t you think all your problems in meditation will be resolved forever? But the catch is not that. Your nature will never allow you to think like this. That is the sinfulness and impurity. So the impurity should go. To make the impurity go, this is the method. And when the impurity goes, this is the result. The impurity will never allow you to think in the manner in which I say but this impurity will go only when you start thinking in this manner; the two are interconnected. As much as you are able to think in this manner, so much pure you will be. And as much pure as you are, so much you will be able to do this.

You must one day dissolve your impurity. How will you dissolve your impurity? This is the practice for it. This will not take away from your mind the sense of bad and good because when thoughts come, the mind itself tells you what is wrong. Say the mind brings ten items to your memory and the same mind tells you out of the ten, these are the priorities, one, two, three. Who tells you this? Nobody knows your thoughts; mind alone knows your thoughts. So, out of the thoughts that come to your mind, the mind itself tells you that out of ten thoughts that have come, three are very important and act on them today. I will interpret it in another manner.

When you want to meditate and you are unable to meditate, being successful in meditation is siddhi, being unsuccessful in meditation is asiddhi. Now in these two, you have to become equal. What I tell you, is it not that? So this is the best sādhanā! It will act as a sādhanā and very soon it will become the siddhi also for you. Have I made myself clear? Anywhere you can do, it is all a question of how clever you are. This is a method of the intelligence and there cannot be any duplicity here. A good man alone will be able to do it. A bad man will never be able to do it. In doing so, your bad will go and good will grow. That is the catch.

Everybody will nod your head but I want to know whether you understood what I said. I am telling you as a fact. What is that fact? Suppose I want to chant the name of God always. I started chanting ‘Narayan’, ‘Narayan’. At least when I eat, put food in my mouth, I cannot chant. When I swallow it, I cannot chant. After swallowing I can chant. So that is also broken. When I chant mentally, I have to look into other concerns. Then it will be broken.

So which is that practice which is unbroken in our life? The way I looked at it is this, whether I chant or do not chant, it makes no difference. When I chant ‘Narayan’, ‘Narayan’, with every ‘Narayan’ there is a break, then I go to the next. In between two, am I not away from ‘Narayan’? Even in Narayan, ‘Na’ ‘ra’ ‘yan’, three letters, when they are completed it becomes one Narayan. So am I referring to Narayan or out of this utterance, 2/3rd I am away and 1/3rd alone I utter? Na-ra-yan. When it is completed, then alone it becomes one Narayan. In the utterance, 2/3rd I am away and only 1/3rd I get it. Then what is the point? No practice can be full except the practice when you feel that whether I practice or do not practice, it makes no difference.

So coming back to the same point, I don’t want you to feel distracted when other thoughts come. Without thoughts we cannot live in the world. All thoughts are in one way or other ways related to us. Do you want to have a no-thought state or a state where no thought disturbs you? Then this is the way. If anyone can practice it with faith in me and what I have said, in 41 days you will find a world of change. Actually this is knowledge, jñāna. This is not a practice but knowledge - jñāna sādhanā.

There is nothing like knowledge as a purifier in this world. The great forest dacoit Ratnakara became a Valmiki Maharshi. None of you has any doubt or wonder at what I say, ‘P’, you should find either nonsense in what I say or you should be able to find a wonder. You must have something to say. Your mind will not allow you to think so. Is it? What?

That is where this Guru Bhakti counts. When the mind will not allow you to think, this is where you feel “My Guru has said it, a Mahātma has said it. So I must believe it and practice it.” What you will otherwise not do, this Guru bhakti will make you do and easily and fast. That viḍḍi-kūśmānḍa story I told you?

Viḍḍi-kūśmānḍa, poor fellow did not know anything. Viḍḍi-kūśmānḍa, Viḍḍi-kūśmānḍa, he started saying the same and he became a much better snake-bite curer. This Guru bhakti has so much of value. Whatever I have seen, heard from my Guru, it is a fact. That fact is sufficient. Who will be able to turn it away? This is something I saw and I heard him speak. Nothing else is required. That fact cannot be questioned.

I am saying this so that your meditation will be an effortless meditation. When distractions come, you try to think in this manner – ‘I feel I am distracted. I cannot stop distraction because the mind gets distracted. Am I going to have a distracting mind throughout? So the one way is that I am trying to take way the distractional note from the thoughts.’ It is like taking the poisonous fangs of a snake.

Suppose you say fire, fire, fire, will the tongue become hot? Suppose in your mind you think fire, fire, fire, will you get burned? So tell me why should a thought disturb you? If fire will not burn you, should the other thoughts burn you? So, half your spiritual sādhanā is based on discrimination. The remaining half is to completely dissolve the discrimination. Half the puja is to the idol with the specific mantra, chant etc. Once that much is done and you are established in it, the next growth will be I am going to rise above this puja and make everything I do and think, a puja. The second part is like that.

I don’t know whether I am saying this and it is of any use to you. He has been associated with me for years and he says only now he has heard with so much of clarity. You can even try. One day you sit and say dog, dog, dog, instead of saying God and see what happens. Why are you saying dog, to overcome the distinction between dog and God, God and non-God. So with every word that you say, this distinctional note from your mind will vanish.

When you start getting this wonderful purity, your face will change. It will look very brilliant. Do you think what I say is right?

In any thought, the thing present is the mind. I take a white piece of chalk and write on a white board. I write black, black, black. Tell me whether the board becomes black or the chalk becomes black. Then what is this black? It is an idea which the formation of the letter, the figure conveys but there is no change either in the board or in the chalk or in the line or even in the writer. It is too much, is it not? With a white chalk I write and then what happens? I write black. Has it blackened the chalk or the board? Then when I say black or think black, do you think the mind will become black? Okay.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.