Janujee, Author at FISU Meditation

Let go and flow: The Journey from Ego to Self

Bliss, Ego, Guru, Impressions, Joy, Light, Love, Mind, Oneness, Relationships, Relative World, Self, Spiritual, Surrender

DO NOT ANALYSE, JUST ENJOY THE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES At the beginning of the relationship between a chela and the true guru, certain glimpses are received of how much one is capable of, how far one can go beyond the limitations one is placed in. With these glimpses, there is always a dawning of light, and that light is the hope that shines eternally in the human chest. So, when a person develops this longing and feels at times a total mergence with any object – not necessarily a guru – if one just lets go, one will experience far greater bliss and a far greater one-ness, although to say a far greater one-ness is a contradiction of terms. We contradict these terms simply because an analysis is taking place here. We are analysing the feeling that one has experienced. Mental analysis of the feeling that one has experienced is always a post-mortem, and such post-mortems can become very, very limiting. Therefore, the next time the feeling wells up again, you are reminded of the post-mortem more than of the experience. If you have enjoyed a certain dish of strawberries and ice cream, fine, you love strawberries and ice cream. When that is served to you as dessert, your mind will immediately associate it with the previous experience of the taste of strawberries and ice cream. In that case, your very experience of the moment of eating the strawberry and ice cream would be limiting, because you are comparing an experience that wells from deep within with the thought processes of your own mind. If we could live a life where every moment seems new, and it is the first time you are seeing that bowl of strawberries and ice cream, how much enjoyment there would be, because it would be devoid of all association of ideas. The first dish of strawberries you had might have been very sweet. The second lot of strawberries might not be so sweet. So a conflict will arise, and that conflict will hold you back from fully appreciating the value of strawberries. Then you will say that “Oh, strawberries are sometimes sweet and sometimes sour”. If you had not known the sweet strawberries, you would enjoy the sour strawberries now, because you would think that it is the inherent nature of that strawberry to have that bit of sourness in it. There are people who enjoy sourness more than sweetness. It is just a matter of taste! Likewise, when it comes to spiritual experiences, one should simply enjoy them. Enjoy them and do not analyse them later. By analysing, to repeat, we are limiting them. Under these limitations, expectations are bred, so the next time you have a similar experience, you will expect it to be of equal stature or even greater, and, with his inherent greed, man will want more. Then you feel disappointed, then you feel cut off, then you feel that why can this not be a continuing, permanent experience? AS SOON AS THE MIND STARTS ANALYISING THE EXPERIENCE, THE VALUE OF THE EXPERIENCE IS LOST As we have said so many times before, the mind comes between reality and your real self. What has recognised the experience? Has the experience experienced itself? Or has the mind experienced it? That is the question. For any experience to be translated through the mind, you would not get the full impact of the experience, because it is being filtered through the mind, and the mind is not pure or clean enough to give it, or put it through, the total impact of the light that is supposed to shine through it. And this is, of course, the limitation. When a person experiences something for its own sake, there is no experiencer. There is only the experience. And who enjoys the experience? The experience enjoys itself. This is very difficult to understand with the mind. But it could be very well understood if one has experienced it. So, to repeat, the limiting factor is the mind, because it tries to analyse. As soon as it starts analysing the experience, most of the value of the experience is lost. It is lost because the mind refuses to surrender to the experience. The mind is nothing but one’s ego self. The totality of one’s mind is the totality of all the impressions gained through various lifetimes. That is the mind, and the mind is the personality of the person, and the personality of the person is his or her ego self. So here you find the ego self, with the analysis cropping up, forever associating itself with other experiences, forever whirling around within itself. The mind is capable of very few limited things. The one thing it is capable of is whirling thoughts. It just whirls and whirls and whirls. Everyone here has experienced this: a thought arises in the morning and keeps circling in the mind all day long. What does the mind achieve through this? Nothing at all. It is as though the mind is caught in a whirlpool, and so it continues to spin. WITHOUT FAIL, THE MIND SUCCEEDS IN ASSOCIATING IDEAS ALL THE TIME The other thing the mind is capable of doing is the association of ideas, and you will be surprised how it runs away with you, so that you will start thinking of one object and end up somewhere far away. You will start thinking of an apple. From the apple, you start thinking of the colour, then that colour, the redness of the apple, will start making you think of the red dress you bought, and then that red dress you bought will start making you think of the shop assistant who served you. She was nasty. And then that nastiness would be associated with the hurried kiss your husband gave you, and he just ran off to his bus, and then from there you will start thinking of buses. “Why must I travel by bus? My husband

Meditation and the Art of Living: The Harmony of Mind, Body, and Spirit

Awareness, Belief, Bible, Bliss, Christ, Conscious Mind, Consciousness, Dharma, Divine, Divinity, Effort, Eternity, Evolution, Faith, Force, God, Happiness, Harmony, Heart, I and my Father are one, Integration, Joy, Karma, Kingdom of Heaven within, Light, Love, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Omnipresent, Oneness, Path, Philosophy, Relationships, Relative World, Religion, Scriptures, Self, Self-integration, Self-Realization, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Strength, The Absolute, Tranquillity, Universe

THE INWARD PRACTISE OF MEDITATION MUST BE RELATED TO PRACTICAL LIVING The purpose of meditation is to bring about self-integration in man. By self-integration, we mean that the three aspects of man, the mind, body and spirit, should become and function as a unit. Meditation helps to bring about this state of being, which is very important and very strengthening. The integration produces harmony in man and helps a person function as a total human being. Most people do not function in this world in a form of totality. Every day, we see people who think one thing, do another thing, and of course, their words would also take the form of something else. That is not functioning in harmony. To produce this state of harmony, we find meditational techniques to be beneficial, where, by repeating again, man functions as a total whole, which is the purpose of meditation. Meditation can be very useful to us in forming this harmony within ourselves, but that harmony that is within also has to be interpreted without in our actions in the waking state of life. Though meditation is an effortless practice, the waking state of life requires some effort to bring about and interpret the harmony within our relationships with people and the environment, and to do so consciously. So, meditation and the effort in the waking state of life should go hand in hand. The analogy I would like to use would be of a person who is addicted to drinking. He can meditate as much as he likes, which will give him some strength, it will produce some harmony in him, but if he does not try to make that little effort of trying to push the bottle a bit further away every time, then he will never be able to experience the sense of sobriety that he requires. So, the inward practice of meditation must be related to practical living; therefore, we find in all our scriptures the dos and don’ts of a practical life. If we take philosophy at its own value, it could very well result in mere mental gymnastics, in which a person operates only on the mental level. But functioning on the mind level only and using what the mind tells us is right, in that coordinated state produced by meditation, this too requires a conscious effort in daily life. So, to make meditation really worthwhile and to give it its fullest value, we also have to improve our daily living with a little effort; in other words, look forward to betterment rather than relying solely on meditative practices. The same thing would apply in many forms of prayer that most religions advocate. It is no good going to church on Sundays and praying, and then throughout the week, everything which we have prayed for or the worship we have done is entirely forgotten, and our lives are entirely contrary to that which we have prayed for. This would mean that we have been insincere to ourselves. We have been dishonest with ourselves. That is what it would mean. Through meditational practices, we activate the subtle powers of the mind Any person wanting to learn to meditate using a proper technique, given to him individually, must first have the sincerity and yearning for self-betterment. That is why he wants to meditate. Many people want to meditate to correct the weaknesses they might face in life and gain strength to replace them, as light replaces darkness. But to find the light, we still have to make the conscious effort to switch it on. So, meditation is an internal process which will give you the strength to extend your arm to switch on the light and thereby banish the darkness. So, both meditation and a practical, lived philosophy would be the ideal ways to make some progress in life and find that integration. That self-integration is self-realisation. Self-realisation could be termed God-realisation. These are various labels only, labels which would define the ideal state of the totality of man. All problems in life stem from the three aspects of man not functioning harmoniously. There are certain vibrational set-ups in our systems. We do know that the whole universe is composed of nothing but vibrations, and vibrations can exist in a subtle form or a grosser form, such as vapour. The subtle vapour could be solidified into ice, which is a grosser form of the same substance, wherein H2O, the constant factor, remains the same. So, the body could be compared to the block of ice, which is the gross form and the subtler form of the body of matter, which composes the body, is the mind. So here, we would say that the difference between mind and body is just a matter of the degree of solidification of matter. So, mind and body are both composed of matter, one in a grosser form, the other in subtler form. Through meditational practices, we can dive deeper within the subtler forms of ourselves, which we term the mind. What is the mind? What is the extent of the mind? I would say the extent of the mind is the extent of the entire universe. Where is the mind located? I am sure one could not say that it is located in the brain or in one’s big toe. It encompasses our entirety, and being of a more subtle nature, it has far greater power than any form which is more gross. So it is through these meditational practices that we can activate the subtlety, the subtle powers of the mind and dive deeper within ourselves so that the subtle powers that are resident in the mind can be brought out into the grosser form of life and thereby make the grosser form of life more dynamic, more vital, more powerful, more harmonious and that would be called living instead of existing. MEDITATION AND THE ART OF DAILY LIVING ARE PART AND PARCEL OF EACH OTHER So, we do

Why are We Dreaming? The Silent Work of Sleep

Bliss, Conscious Mind, Consciousness, Divine, Divinity, Effort, Evolution, Grace, Happiness, Impressions, Joy, Karma, Light, Meditation, Mind, Purity, Samskaras, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious, Tranquillity, Yoga

CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH WAKING, DREAMING, AND SLEEP We experience four states of consciousness: the sleeping, the waking, the dreaming, and the fourth one is the turiya state. That is a Sanskrit term beyond the three we know of. When a person falls asleep, the question is, does consciousness continue? And if consciousness does continue, why are we not aware of the consciousness that is continuing? So, to know whether it is continuing or not, we have to know what consciousness is. Consciousness is one’s spiritual self. That is pure consciousness that requires no support whatsoever from anything exterior to itself. So, that pure consciousness is a faculty, if you would like to use that word, that experiences itself, by itself, for itself. In other words, pure consciousness IS. In the waking state of life, the consciousness that we experience is the consciousness, or the glimmer of consciousness, or the reflection of the consciousness that is put through the filter of our waking mind. So, the quality of the consciousness that filters through our waking mind depends upon the quality of our waking consciousness. If you take a piece of crystal and you put a red flower behind the crystal, then the crystal will appear red to you. Meanwhile, it is pure white and colourless. If you put a yellow flower, then the crystal will seem yellow to you, and if you put a green flower, it will seem green to you. So, the consciousness that we are aware of is a filtered consciousness, and not necessarily the pure consciousness. When a person goes to sleep, the continuity is there, but not that of waking consciousness. The continuity of pure consciousness is there. In the waking state we have what is called the conscious mind, that is the ten percent of the mind we have spoken about, then we have ninety percent of the dormant mind, so-called dormant, it is really not dormant, but so-called dormant, because the conscious ten percent of the mind is not aware of the ninety percent of the subconscious which operates on a totally different level. It operates on a much subtler level, and because it operates on a much subtler level, the ten per cent of conscious, waking consciousness have little cognition of it. When we refine the value of the waking consciousness through meditational practices, we can allow the subtler level of the mind, the subconscious mind, to filter through. DREAMS AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND It is a bit technical, so let us repeat this again. In the waking state, the pure consciousness filters through the waking consciousness. In the sleep state, pure consciousness exists. But if the sleep is deep, then whatever has happened in the subconscious mind is not remembered when we awake. Although they do not remember their dreams, every person is still dreaming or experiencing something in the subconscious. The conscious mind, being of a more grosser matter, or grosser substance, during sleep cannot capture the pure consciousness that is forever shining, and which preserves the continuity in our life through the various facets of waking, sleeping, and dreaming. In a dream, the conscious mind being dead for the moment, to use that term, and the subconscious being awake, the subconscious mind is stirred by the continuing principle of pure consciousness. In one instance, a dream is an association of ideas. Something that happens during the daytime leaves a deep impression on the mind, and because of this impression on the conscious mind, it has a certain effect on the subconscious mind. When the conscious mind is put to rest, the power of pure consciousness lightens the area of the subconscious that is deeply impressed by the happenings of the day. And we relive the happenings of the day, and not only relive it, but we also associate that impression upon the subconscious with various other impressions that are allied to it. That is one kind of dream. Then you have another kind of dream, where, with the power, the light of the pure consciousness, certain happenings which might have happened in this lifetime, in a previous lifetime, or in a lifetime before that, depending very much upon how deep that impression is, can be illuminated, and we experience a dream that has nothing to do with present-day reality. So, if we remember this dream on waking up, we find that, “What is this dream all about? I know nothing of this. I dream of a giraffe, and yet I have not seen one. I dream of a rhinoceros, and I have not seen a rhinoceros in this life. Where does this come about from?” So here, the theory would be that you have seen a giraffe and a rhinoceros in a previous life. Perhaps you were being chased by a rhinoceros. The memory of being chased by the rhinoceros can be interpreted in the subconscious entirely differently, because what remains most is the fear that was created in the chase when you were out in the fields, and this big thing was chasing you with its big horn. And your mind was filled with fear. So, you can have this dream as a dream of the experience, relive the experience, which forms a certain kind of dream. Now, we come to the third kind of dream, in which the impression of the rhinoceros chasing you creates a terrible fear, and you are in flight. You are running away from that animal that is chasing you. This is deeply ingrained as fear. This could have happened in a previous lifetime. But because the mind is so patterned to associate ideas, that very fear that was caused can be translated into something that has happened in this life. For example, you might have a husband who is a bully. Or you might have a domineering wife. Or you might have a boss under whom you are having a terrible time, but you have to feed your family, so

Embracing Stillness: The Transformative Power of Spiritual Practices

Attachment, Buddha, Christ, Conscious Mind, Divine, Divinity, Effort, Ego, God, Happiness, Heart, Impressions, Joy, Karma, Love, Meditation, Mind, Peace, Relationships, Samskaras, Self, Soul, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious, Superconscious

LET GO AND SEE HOW MUCH HAPPIER YOU WILL BECOME It is hard to forget the mind. Thoughts emerge and shift like a merry-go-round. At one moment, you are thinking about supper, then a comment someone made, then the kids, and perhaps somewhere else. Nothing wrong—it is the nature of the mind. Let it happen, but remember you are not causing it. As a bystander, simply observe, letting go of attachment, and mental burdens will dissolve. There is nothing in the world you can truly hold onto: a dress is worn and gone, children grow up and leave, and even you must eventually part. Let go, and happiness follows. If someone throws words that hurt, let them keep their burden; by letting go, you become resilient. Letting go of identity and turbulent thoughts unveils stillness. When this stillness expands, nothing can disturb or harm you. THE WORLD IS GOVERNED BY NAME AND FORM I recently met someone upset about names. “My daughter dislikes this name, my son dislikes that name.” Why worry? A rose is a rose. The important thing is to give love. Names are irrelevant. The Self matters. Call me Gururaj or Joe; I am still me. The world is governed by name and form. A gold necklace, bracelet, or bangle—all are gold at their core. We focus on form and name, forgetting essence. Enjoy the pleasures of objects, but remember their true value. Melting them proves their worth is the same. Fixation on names and forms distracts from inner stillness, a quietness found in the heart. WHEN WE ARE MIXED UP IN TRIVIALITIES IT ROBS US OF THE STILNESS OF OURSELVES Most of our thinking dwells on trivialities—research shows that 90% lacks substance. This thought turbulence causes mental unrest. At least sleep offers an escape from the swirl of trivial thoughts.Examine yourself. How many times a day do you have an original thought or a creative thought? Most days, none; some days, some. Is it not a loss of valuable energy, and not only that, but mixed up in triviality, it robs us of the stillness of ourselves, and when we are robbed of the stillness of ourselves, our souls carry forth all those impressions to the deeper levels of the subconscious. People open their wardrobes and go through several outfits before choosing, wasting energy and creating confusion. Why not decide before opening the wardrobe? Just go for what you already chose. Avoid unnecessary choices and save mental energy. SHEDDING TRIVIALITIES FOR INNER STILLNESS These examples apply to daily life. What drives those decisions? Ego makes you believe you will look better in one suit than another. It is imagination. You doubt the choice, then someone compliments your suit. At the airport in Victoria, I met a beloved who said, “You look dapper in a western suit, charcoal grey with a reddish tie.” No. I am me. That is the realisation needed. Did Jesus or Buddha worry about loincloths? They were unconcerned with appearance. Outward looks are ego. The real self shines through, even in rags. We waste time on trivialities governed by the mind, losing our inherent stillness. Redirecting the mind toward creative, meaningful thoughts helps regain this stillness. When the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious merge, stillness is realised. There, you discover the essence. IF YOU CAN STAND APART IN THE STILLNESS, ALL DECISIONS WILL ALWAYS BE RIGHT It is good to be childlike, not childish. Like children, adults waste time picking and discarding items. Life could be more productive with originality and purposefulness. Most decisions are made by subconscious habits; conflict occurs when subconscious and conscious minds clash, even over simple choices. I know, since my very young days, I have always been involved in social work before I did my present work. Although being a director of twenty-eight companies, there was not a single day when I was not involved in social work, social upliftment. In meetings, a question comes up, and within two seconds I know what the solution should be, but in the meeting it would take two hours because everyone has to say something, and then after two hours of debate they would come back to the decision I made in those two seconds. And most of you who are involved in meetings and things know about that. What a waste of valuable time! And those two hours wasted there, I could have seen a few patients and helped a few people in trouble. But of course, that is how the world goes. Let the world go to hell, but you should not. You have come to this one decision and act upon it, and that does not mean to be impulsive, for the mind is only an impulse, nothing else. These thought formations in the mind create impulses, and you get overridden by them, but if you can stand apart in that stillness, those impulses will not affect your personality, your soul. And then all decisions would always be right. And this is one problem people always have: shall I take the high road or the low road? SPIRITUAL PRACTICES TRANSFORM THE PERSONALITY When one engages in Spiritual Practices, one subdues all the conflicts of the mind and reaches the heart, which goes beyond the personality to the realm of stillness. You see how simple it is. So simple to talk about, but it takes some effort to do; once you get into it, the effort becomes effortless. You start a new job, and at first there is so much effort to orient yourself to it, but afterwards it just becomes routine, natural, and the same goes for meditation. When you start meditating, you say “Oh, I have not got time and this and that and that and that”, which is absolutely false. If you have time to go to the toilet, you have time to meditate, and there is nothing wrong with meditating in the toilet. So that is a very lame excuse. With meditation, we quieten the

Rediscovering the Source Within: Awakening to the Spiritual Self

Bible, Christ, Divine, Divinity, Ego, Evolution, Evolve, God, Guru, Heart, Impressions, Love, Meditation, Mind, Samskaras, Self, Soul, Spirit, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, Subconscious

THE PURPOSE OF EVOLUTION IS TO REACH BACK TO STILLNESS There are no old souls, nor are there any young souls. Since the primordial Big Bang, all the particles that were shot forth have the same age. There is no old soul, and there is no young soul. The soul is not what was shot forth. A primal energy was shot forth, and the primal energy, becoming duplicated and replicated and mixing with other sub, sub, subatomic matter, assumed certain peculiarities which still exist in you today, and the purpose of this existence is to evolve not because of your so-called soul but because of the propulsion of that explosion. No wonder people explode so much nowadays. So, because of this primal explosion and its duplication, replication, and intermixing with various factors that accompany it, individualisation began, and each, because of its various combinations, assumed different characteristics. When they assume different characteristics, they naturally seem to separate from one another. Yet there is only one primal source, but because of the mental mechanisms of Manas, Chitta, Ahankara, and Buddhi, they feel themselves to be apart from everything else. Firstly, they came from a unified state, from that stillness, and the purpose of evolution is to return to that stillness; then one could say, “I am God, be still and know that you are God.” THE REAL STILLNESS COMES WHEN THE SAMSKARAS ARE TUCKED AWAY, AND THE EGO IS EXPANDED How does the mental mechanism affect the heart area? By heart, let us not confuse it with our emotions or feelings. The core of a person’s real self is the heart. That which is usually known as the heart is just emotion and feeling. I love you. From what level do I love you? I love you, or you love me, only because of an emotional feeling, or because you have found something attractive in me. He is the handsomest Guru in the World, and he talks a lot of sense, nonsense and common sense. So those feeling of your love for me stems not from your heart, the core of your personality. They stem from the emotions and feelings which are created by your mind, by the ego self within its own expectations, for the ego self can never remain without expectations. It is always expecting more and more and more, all the time. Because the ego self is being empowered with that Divine energy, it is really searching for the Divine energy, but instead of internalising itself and going deeper to the spiritual level, which is far deeper than the soul, being empowered by it, it is always expecting more and more, and those very expectations is the mother of disappointment. So, you have an appointment with Divinity, but you miss it out of disappointment. When you are disappointed at that level, you try to find it objectively, and you lose the stillness within you all the time. You can never exist without that stillness of the mind. Thank God you sleep; there is some stillness there. Although the subconscious is working all the time, it is churning, churning, churning, swirling, swirling, swirling in its own self. But the real stillness comes when the subconscious samskaras, or impressions, or the memory box, are tucked away,, and the ego is expanded, not sublimated. Remember, you can never sublimate the ego. The word sublimation is a fallacy. You can never sublimate anything. It is just a subliminal conjecture conjured up by the thinking level of the mind. WHEN THE MIND IS RELAXED THE HEART CONNECTS ITSELF TO THE MIND So how do we connect the mind with the heart? The mind cannot connect with the heart until the mind relaxes, and then the heart connects with the mind. The inner core of your personality overrides your emotional self, the feeling self, the thinking self, and the intellectual self, and the heart overpowers all the workings there, so turbulent. In other words, it also means that you do not go to God. You do not go to stillness, but that stillness and God come to you. If the mind is placid enough through the expansion of the ego, so that it becomes transparent, then God comes to you; the stillness comes to you, because it is forever there. It is a matter of realisation. You are still as you are; it is just the realisation, knowing that it is there. You start off by knowing the Chitta and the Manas and the ego I, you know or rather, you think you know. There again, knowing becomes a falsity and thinking becomes a falsity. It has its value in the beginning stages, but when realisation dawns, which is a total assimilation of the stillness, where the soul finds that quietude, then that Divinity dawns upon you automatically. WHEN A CLARITY IS BROUGHT ABOUT THROUGH OUR SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, YOU BECOME STILL What is this automatic mechanism? None. There are no mechanics involved in Divinity dawning upon you and finding that stillness and elevating the soul, which is nothing else but the mind empowered by that Divine energy. So, when clarity through our Spiritual Practices is brought about, you become still. I do not know if you have noticed me – you must watch me – I go into meditation before we start our Satsangs, and of course, there is work from four in the morning until late at night, and that naturally produces tension. When I go into meditation for a minute, look at my face, and you will notice that within a few seconds, all my facial muscles will relax. Because in those few seconds, I have touched the stillness, I have let go of the mind and the soul, and I am there within the spirit, and that is what speaks to you, not my little mind or the soul or the ego-self, the Ahankara, the Chitta is gone. Therefore, as I have told you before, if you ask me half

Switch On the Light: Upliftment Through Spiritual Awareness and Practice

Awareness, Buddha, Christ, Consciousness, Devotion, Divinity, Evolution, Force, Guru, Happiness, Heart, Joy, Krishna, Light, Love, Mind, Peace, Purity, Spiritual, Spiritual Master, Spiritual Practices, The Abstract, Yoga

HOW BHAKTI AND JNANA YOGA INTERTWINE Ramakrishna, the great master, has said that in this time and age, Bhakti yoga is more important because it implies total devotion not only to your guru but to everyone you are in contact with. The basis of bhakti yoga is to allow the heart to flow in total devotion, for if the devotion is lacking, there is no bhakti. To find true bhakti, in the first stages, requires an object of bhakti; that object can be anyone, even my picture. So, from abstraction, you bring life to concreteness. You try to love something abstract, and you cannot do it. It is only after you reach a higher stage of evolution that you can be devoted to abstraction, but with the abstraction, you find subtraction and bhakti disappears and when bhakti disappears, your mind starts functioning in contemplation where you could analyse the reserves of your bhakti and in that analysis you will find the full force of your devotion because your devotion or bhakti is governed by thought forces in your mind. How else will you recognise bhakti if jnana yoga or the thought processes are not recognised? So, Jnana yoga forms a part of your bhakti. As you progress in your contemplation and understanding of your bhakti, your feeling deepens, because bhakti consists of love. When that constitution is formed, bhakti and Jnana yoga, or contemplation, join hand in hand. So, you develop a feeling of love, supported by analysis of the mind, because Jnana yoga is about understanding the workings of bhakti, which is the heart. So, when this combination occurs, it is like mixing colours: you take yellow and blue, and it forms green. Look at the combination. Like oxygen and hydrogen, their combination forms water, which is different from either oxygen or hydrogen. It is a very scientific process. It is not mystical, as some people think; it is practical. BY BECOMING A MASTER OF YOURSELF, YOU MERGE INTO DIVINITY, PURE CONSCIOUSNESS To bring the practicality of bhakti and jnana, it must be externally expressed, and that expression comes through karma yoga. So, to repeat again, in practicality, it has to find its own physical expression, and the physical expression of karma yoga can only be through the actions of your lives. Action in life is not only physical, but the action of life originates in the thought processes of the mind, for the mind is also action; every thought you think is an action. The thought is of a subtle level, and the physical action is of a grosser level. If you can combine the subtle level with the grosser level, what a great difference it will make to your life. So, the conclusion is that bhakti yoga, jnana yoga and karma yoga have to be combined, and when this combination comes about, then you enter the realms of a raja yoga. Raja yoga means the royal path, and when you enter this royal path, you experience the reality of life, and what is the reality of life? Can anyone tell me? The reality of life is to exist in reality. And what is reality? Reality is to be yourself. I might have said in other lectures throughout the world, be yourself. I will never tell you to be like Krishna or Buddha or Christ; be yourself, and by being yourself, you will understand your reality, and by understanding your reality, you will have formed a perfect combination of bhakti, Jnana, and karma, and have Raj Yoga. Raja yoga, raja means the king or queen, the same thing, because a king cannot exist without his queen. So, when this combination is formed, you become a king or a queen unto yourself, and a king can command, and what do you want to command? You want to command that peace and joy in your life. So simple. So, once you become a master of yourself, you can take bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, karma yoga, and raja yoga, and then you can take out your handkerchief and blow it all away. Then you will not need the thousands and thousands of soldiers in your army, the army of your consciousness, because you can rise above petty consciousness and become pure consciousness. And by becoming pure consciousness, you have merged into this one Divinity because Divinity is nothing else but pure consciousness and that pure consciousness is within you all. It is just a bit folded, that is all. It just requires constant cognition and recognition. UPLIFTMENT THROUGH SPIRITUAL AWARENESS AND PRACTICE How many of you go through your day thinking of that purity within you? And that is why you suffer. You idiots. So, in every action, karma, always have a thought of Divinity in your mind and let that be the lighthouse, and the lighthouse is there because the rocks in the sea are all around, and because of the lighthouse, your ship of life does not bump against the rocks. The lighthouse has a light; switch it on so the light can burn, and your ship of life will not smash itself against the rocks. The lighthouse within you is the guiding light, so you can avoid all the rocks that could smash the ship of your life. So simple, switch on the light. People get into many problems and troubles. Because they do not switch on the light, which is done through your spiritual practices, your life will transform. As I look at you, I can read all your problems. Why must you suffer? Be joyful like me. That is why I am with you to tell the one secret of joy, and the secrets are not private; they are open secrets. A true master opens his heart, and by opening his heart, he lets out all the love to everyone. No one in this course can ever leave being the same person. They will always leave with some upliftment and joy; my travelling thousands of

How to Clarify the Mind? Meditation as the Key to Mental Clarity

Awareness, Force, God, Gurushakti, Heart, Internal, Joy, Karma, Learning, Love, Meditation, Mind, Purity, Samskaras, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Path

YOU ARE GOVERNED BY YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES
Thought, word, and action are totally interrelated, because the thought brings about speech, and the speech brings about action, and vice versa. Because action could guide your speech, and action could guide your thoughts as well.

Embracing the Universal Self: Transformation of the Ego Through Awareness and Grace

Awareness, Consciousness, Dharma, Ego, Eternal, Eternity, Evolution, God, Grace, Impressions, Light, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mental Patternings, Mind, Relative World, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Practices, The Absolute, Universal, Universe

THE PHYSICAL BODY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT THE SUBTLE BODY You do not need to recognise the ego to go beyond it, because that would become a mental process, and the mind itself is ego, so the ego is trying to find the ego. It is like saying that you will see your own eyes. You cannot. You cannot see your own eyes; you need a mirror. So, to recognise the ego, one has to go beyond it to observe it. The ego is a bundle of experiences. It is not necessary to annihilate the ego, because it is impossible to annihilate the ego. When we talk of ego, in the sense we use it, we talk of ego as self-centred, so ego again qualifies egotism, a self-centred ego. In other words, it turns inward to itself and not beyond itself, and is caught up in the work of doing. It is like the silkworm spinning and spinning and spinning and gets caught up in the end, in its own silk and it cannot escape So, what is the solution? All these impressions gained in what is termed the ego are binding; they bind one to a certain pattern of action, because the mind is ego and the mind is patterned. We have to unpattern the mind, or unpattern the ego, without destroying the ego. If the ego is annihilated, as many Eastern philosophies propose, then you cannot exist. You would not be able to be part and parcel of the evolutionary process. Everything has an ego – everything does not have an ego, it is an ego. I am sitting here; you are sitting there. We are nothing but little egos. We are definitely all a bundle of impressions, created over so, so many lifetimes, and now we want to get rid of ourselves. That is what annihilation means; annihilation of the ego is committing suicide. Because once you get rid of all those impressions that you are made of, your entire body will disintegrate, because the body cannot exist without the mind, and the mind is a receptacle, the container of the impressions called the ego. So, by annihilating the ego, you are annihilating the subtle body, that is within yourself and the physical manifestation, the physical body, cannot exist without the subtle body. EXPANDING THE EGO TO BECOME ONE WITH THE UNIVERSAL SELF So, what has to be done within this ego self so that it could become conducive to our evolution? That is the question. What can be done? These impressions are there; they cannot be annihilated; they are eternal; they have to exist. I have said many times that every thought that is thought is eternal; it cannot be destroyed. The vibration set up by that thought goes on and on and on, through eternity. So, what one does is expand the ego. Our actions are contracting the ego; we are taking all those experiences of millions of years and compacting them, so that by the very act of compacting them, we are combining one impression with another, and a great number of permutations take place, where new impressions are created. That is how the ego assumes greater and greater importance, and we become more and more self-centred with all those skeletons in the cupboard, multiplying like rabbits. So the idea here will not be the annihilation of the ego, but its expansion, like stretching opaque rubber so it becomes transparent. That is the way to deal with the ego. When the ego is stretched and it becomes transparent, the inner light, the spiritual light, shines through. I have used this analogy many times: if the window is clean and a bright light comes through, you do not notice the glass, even though it still exists. The glass becomes one with the light. The glass, the barrier, is not perceived, because who is the perceiver, except the ego itself. The ego perceives; the ego experiences life’s varied experiences. But if that is expanded to such an extent that the pure light is shining through, all the shades and the shadows on that glass automatically disappear. All the skeletons disappear. One does not need to work through all those impressions gained through lifetimes. One does not need to shake hands with all those skeletons. They are automatically refined. Those very skeletons that have a grosser form become so subtle that they become totally transparent, and that is the way to handle the ego. It is easy to say, let us make the ego transparent, so the light shines through. To make that possible, we have to practice meditation and other spiritual practices, recognise our shortcomings, and address them constructively. Here, desire is valid, desire for betterment, although it has some binding effect, but that desire is of such a nature as choosing between the lesser evil and the larger evil. When we desire to better ourselves, we make or create the conditions within ourselves to draw upon that which is called Grace. And with the help of Grace, meditation, and wanting to better ourselves in positive action, that ego-self expands, it stretches to such an extent that it loses its individuality and assumes universality. This means that the extent of the expansion of the ego is as vast as the universe, so that, while maintaining the little ego self, one is also in atonement with the Universal Self. And when all those impressions are spread across the entire universe, what effect can they have? For having been extended to that vastness, where else could they be placed to put in more impressions, because you have covered the whole field with your little ego? So, the ego in its expansion knows the whole universe. The individual becomes universal. EXPANSION OF THE EGO IS EXPANSION OF AWARENESS When he becomes universal, that is the recognition of the personal God, that we spoke about, for the personal God, too, is a refined ego. So, we must not worry so

Path to Inner Peace: Transforming Negativity through Acceptance, Meditation, and Willpower

Acceptance, Conscious Mind, Devotion, Divine, Meditation, Mind, Path, Peace, Spiritual Practices, Strength, Subconscious, Surrender

ACCEPTANCE IS THE FIRST STEP IN DEALING WITH NEGATIVITY If, subconsciously, the negativity within oneself comes to the fore and produces adverse circumstances, then one has to accept it because accepting it is dealing with it. In everyday life, we find that the expressions of our experiences and thoughts, whatever they may be, are so deeply ingrained in our subconscious that they cannot remain there. If all those thoughts had to remain in the subconscious, we would explode. So, the subconscious mind has to find release, and that release comes about through the conscious mind. When all those weeds from under the ground are pushed up to above the ground, which would mean that when those subconscious thoughts and negativities that we ourselves have put there in the first place – that must never be forgotten – are pushed up into the conscious level, the conscious mind, whereby those negativities become cognisable, then we feel utterly miserable and hopeless. We feel utterly miserable, hopeless and helpless to be able to accept the situation. By developing feelings of hopelessness and helplessness in us, we are not helping ourselves. We are actually watering the weeds and making them grow stronger in the conscious mind, and when they grow more in the conscious mind, they reach deeper into the subconscious. If you want to do gardening, do it the best way. That is the best way: you find its conscious expression more powerful, while at the same time letting the roots grow deeper into the subconscious mind. So, what to do? FROM ACCEPTANCE TO RESOLUTION When we talk of acceptance, we mean facing the problem. The roots are there in the subconscious. They have to express themselves. They have to rid themselves of these burdens. There is no escape. There is no escape from it. We have put them there. We have sown, and we must reap. But when they reach the conscious level, it is up to us whether we feed those weeds, and that is where the bulk of acceptance comes in. From the subconscious mind, a thought arises: “I am going to steal tonight.” Are we going to give vent to the idea of stealing with the conscious mind? Are we going to do that? Are we doing so? Are we doing so? Are we going deeper into the roots? Acceptance means not only the circumstances we are confronted with, but also accepting the fact that I tend to be a thief. That is a true acceptance. I have had a lot of dealings with alcoholics. Sometimes these various organisations call me in to give them talks, and the most important thing which I would have to make the alcoholic realise, is to admit to himself that he has alcoholism. Once he admits that sincerely to himself, I can wean him off his alcohol. So, acceptance means to admit the weakness that is now being pushed up from my subconscious mind. That is what acceptance means. When the alcoholic admits to himself that he has alcoholism, and number two, he does not have the power to deal with it myself, then I go for help. I go to an adviser for help planning my life. One kind of help. I go for another kind of help also, and that is in surrender, surrender to a power which is beyond me. So, firstly, I admit honestly to myself. The problem with alcoholics for example using this for an example is that they do not want to admit that they have alcoholism. That is the biggest problem which any social worker has, or those who deal with people afflicted with this disease called alcoholism. That is the biggest problem they have. So, it is to get the person to admit that I have this weakness, that I am an alcoholic. I have automatically accepted the idea, and when I have accepted the idea that I am an alcoholic, I will try to find ways and means whereby this weakness can be dealt with. And if outside counselling fails, I still have the greatest counsellor of all, and I do not need to find that counsellor in tangible form. No, I just surrender and say, “Thy will be done.” What greater acceptance is there than that? This applies to every problem in life: you just do not accept; you face the problem; acceptance comes on its own; and when acceptance comes, ways and means automatically follow. When one sincerely accepts that one is in trouble, one automatically finds the cause of the trouble, and once the cause is found, as a doctor would say, proper diagnosis is half the cure; one has reached halfway in solving the problem. And after reaching halfway, the other half can be achieved by the acceptance of the injunction “Thy will be done.” THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF MEDITATION See how devotion works? How systematic is it? The whole idea, the whole transformation of the human personality, depends upon one factor, and that factor is the ability to face ourselves squarely in the mirror. When we hide the problems away, like the alcoholic who does not want to admit that he has alcoholism, he can never solve his problems. As these weeds push up from the subconscious into the conscious mind, we know it can be very uncomfortable. Perhaps, most of the time, it could be uncomfortable. To set off this discourse. Meditation does two things simultaneously. One, it stirs you up and makes you face your problem, and secondly, it gives you the strength to solve it. And if that problem is faced face-to-face, pulled out of the subconscious to the conscious level of cognition, and we face it, then meditation also gives the strength to face problems. And if I face the problem squarely and combine strength with a bit of determination and devotion, then there is something higher than me that can eradicate this problem. All that initial knock, that initial disturbance, is lessened immeasurably.

A Human Journey: From Tangible Gods to Abstract Divinity

Ancient Sages, Attitude, Bible, Brahman, Buddha, Chela, Christ, Devotion, Divinity, Evolution, Evolve, Faith, Force, God, Guru, Heart, Krishna, Love, Manifestation, Manifestor, Meditation, Mind, Oneness, Path, Religion, Self, Spiritual, Spiritual Force, Spiritual Path, The Absolute, The Abstract, Universal, Universe

MAN NEEDS SOMETHING TANGIBLE TO APPROACH THE ABSTRACT We know that the spiritual energy that exists in the universe is abstract. The human mind is so constructed that it could never conceive of anything abstract, because it is tangible in a very fine, subtle form of energy. In contrast, the abstract is an energy beyond all tangible energies. It is an intangible energy. So, for the human mind to have any little comprehension of the universal energy, the intangible, the abstract energy, what must he do? Ancient Sages have devised a means; this was not something devised by the Sages, but something revealed to them. By revelation, we mean that the human mind can be brought to such a fine level, and yet, going beyond that fine level of the human mind, one can be in absolute communion with the abstract. In other words, we are led very systematically to that abstract state, whereby the abstractness produced in us becomes one with the universal abstractness, which means that the inner self of man finds its oneness with the universal self of man. That is the abstract conception, and therefore, we say that Divinity is indefinable by man’s mind. But man has to have something tangible. So, how to find that tangibility? If we have an air conditioner in the room with the heat on, we do not see the heat, yet it is there, warming the room. Because the human mind is incapable of conceiving, seeing, feeling, or touching the abstract heat or the abstract Divinity in our sense, he has to have a way and means by which he can communicate. We know for sure that the tangible cannot communicate with the intangible. So, in this case, the intangible or the abstract has to concretise itself so that the human being or the human mind can have a conception of something which is beyond itself. Through analysis, he can find that there is something more to me than just me. Through feeling, he can extend this principle in actually experiencing that there is more to me than the apparent me. THE ABSTRACT MADE TANGIBLE THROUGH PERSONALISED DEITIES So, to find all these various deities, a formulation has been developed. For example, the Hindu people have so many gods, tangible gods, gods that lived householders’ lives. If you take the God Brahma, the Creator, he would have his Lakshmi, and Shiva would have his Parvati. So, those Gods, those conceptions were brought down to such a level that the ordinary man can identify himself with something tangible. A householder can definitely identify himself with another householder. By that, we mean that a husband and wife can identify with a being that also has a husband-and-wife relationship. So, personal Gods were formed. What has happened here is that the abstract God has become a personalised God. What is the personalised God? A personalised God necessarily has to be the son of man, and the son of man we regard to be a personalised God. In different times and in different climes, the same principle has been followed. Buddhists have their Buddha, the Hindus have their Krishna and their Rama, and Christians have their Christ, the Mohammedans have Mohammed. Human beings will find it a spiritual and psychological necessity to have a personalised form of God, and that is why we find in the Bible the phrase “Our Father which art in Heaven.” It has many abstract meanings, but the literal meaning is time and place: there is a place where the Father is in Heaven. Yet the abstract Father is beyond the Father that we conceive of sitting in Heaven with long robes and a big beard. MAN NEEDS A TANGIBLE IDEAL ON THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY For man to proceed on the spiritual path, and this is worth repeating, he needs a tangible form to which he can relate. The best way that man can relate is to a superman, and that is the origin of all these films, like James Bond. Because man within himself feels that he has a greater capacity, a greater capability, and he is forever trying to identify himself with that greater capability and capacity. Therefore, we have these James Bonds, where, while watching James Bond in action, the viewer identifies with that James Bond on the screen. And the reason is not only escapism or daydreaming, because even escapism and daydreaming must have a basis. The basis is that man inherently has far greater capacity within himself than what he displays without himself. So, we know, and all psychiatrists and psychologists will tell us that we use less than ten per cent of our potential. Ninety per cent is lying dormant. So, for man to awaken the ninety per cent dormantness within him, he has to personify an ideal, an ideal which is greater than himself, and that is the purpose of having personalised Gods where God is seen in person. A PERSONIFIED GOD IS A COMBINATION OF THE CONCRETE WITH THE ABSTRACT According to Vedic tradition, certain forms of meditation lead one to the supreme state. The first form is what they call Savikalpa Samadhi, which means to reach Samadhi, to reach a supreme state with form, Kalpa, Savikalpa with conceivable form. So, by having an ideal which is a super-human being, we lead all our attentions to that super-human being and by leading the attention to the super-human being, we try to, and we do identify ourselves with that super-human being, which is Krishna, Buddha, Christ. And when one reaches total identification with the ideal of the personified God, we go beyond that to find the abstract God. So, the conceptions of a personalised God or an abstract God are not contradictory. The one idea is an extension of the other. They are stages that man has to go through. We cannot find Divinity by solving mathematical problems. Divinity has to become very, very tangible. What is a personified God? A personified

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