March 2, 2013
at the 2013 Sangha Gathering at SRSG
Om
Gurave namaḥ.
Parama-gurave namaḥ.
Parameṣhṭhi-gurave namaḥ.
Paramparā-gurubhyo namaḥ.
Akhaṇḍa-maṇḍalākaraṁ vyāptaṁ yena charācharam.
Tat padaṁ darshitaṁ yena tasmai shrī-gurave namaḥ.
Hiraṇya-garbhād ārabdhām śheṣha-vyāsādi-madhyamām.
Svāmi-śhrī-rāma-pādāntāṁ vande guru-paramparām.
Om tat sat brahmārpaṇam astu.
Om śham.
Om. Hari Om.
We have been discussing the stations in spiritual progress and the stations in the progress in meditation also. Because many times people inquire: “How do I know whether I am making progress?” So I have given you some readings and some recordings which will help you. And we have covered some ground in the last several days.
Before I move on someone has asked me a question. Someone received a Shri Vidya (Śrī Vidyā) mantra from our tradition elsewhere. One has to decide which mantra one should be doing and which Guru-tradition you want to follow. Sri Vidya is a vast topic. I’ve looked for someone to whom I could teach it, but no one has come around. And the Shri Vidya we teach here is not the external worship, but the internal path. If one receives a special mantra and one also wishes to follow the tradition in which one is initiated here, one may add that special mantra. But then you have to learn, find out how that particular mantra is to be used, how is it to be practiced? And even those who give the Shri Vidya mantra do not know, or do not teach, how to do the internal processes of the Shri Vidya mantra.
I have the privilege to welcome Prince Indra of Bali. Is he here? Will you stand for a moment, Sir? It is an honor and pleasure to have you here. Thank you. They paid us a visit a little while back, and there was a wonderful Bali dance performance and the sharing of many things.
As you make spiritual progress, some things unravel, unveil, open up inside you. Some things begin to change. If those things are changing, then you know that you are making spiritual progress. For example, your need to speak will become less. When you speak, your speech will be softer and will not cause resistance in other people. One example: You will be able to say the same thing in fewer words.
People are asking me: “Will you answer e-mails during your silence?” Learn how to ask a question. Narrow it down to what your real question is. If you are sending me a three-page letter with the whole history of your emotions, I will not answer. I am not in the business of being a psychotherapist; I am a meditation guide. Find out first. We call it in Sanskrit manthana (“churning”) and pulling the cream up. What exactly is the question? Half the answer is in knowing what the question is, and then write the question in one line; then I will answer. So it’s up to you, whether you want the answer or don’t want the answer. Sometimes it takes me four hours each night to answer all the e-mails. I cannot continue to do that. So your need for speech will become reduced. Your voice will become gentler.
I find that people speak too fast. Your speech will slow down. Before you notice it, other people will notice it. Your speech will have a calming effect on others, not an agitating effect. That does not mean that you will become uncommunicative. As you make spiritual progress, you will become a better communicator because your communication will be positive, beneficial, measured, [and] pleasant. And in fewer words you will communicate much.
If you are making spiritual progress, the words of the ancient scriptures, of the sages, of the saints and the prophets will reveal themselves to you as to what their meaning is. At present, if you are reading them – because some people do not read – but if you are reading the scriptures of whatever religion or whatever philosophical or spiritual tradition, at present you are understanding them in the terms and the terminologies of the common language that you use for your worldly purposes, full of resistances, full of fears, full of anxieties. When you are making spiritual progress, those words will reveal themselves to you. In the Rig Veda we are told:
uta tvaḥ paśyan na dadarśa vācaṁ uta tvaḥ śṛṇvan na śṛṇotyenām.
uto tvasmai tanvaṁ visassre jāyeva patya uśatī suvāsāḥ…(Rig Veda, 10.71.4)
The word in the Vedas for the “word,” in the sense that you read it in the Bible – “in the beginning was the Word” – is vāc, which means speech, which is a feminine word. So the feminine gender is used for the “word.”
uta tvaḥ paśyan na dadarśa vācam “There are those who seeing yet do not see the word.”
uta tvaḥ śṛṇvan na śṛṇotyenām “Hearing, they do not hear the word. But to some – uto tvasmai – she reveals herself, like a beloved bride reveals herself to her lover.”
So the meanings of the scriptures, of the Upanishads, the Bibles, the Qur’ans, of the Avestas and other lesser-known words of revelation will reveal themselves to you, and you will see a depth, a deeper layer. And as you make further progress, the meaning will change and another layer will come. And thus you will communicate with the rishis, with the sages and the saints and the prophets. They will speak to you, as it were, and they will say to you, “All this time, for thousands of years we have been speaking to you, but you have not been hearing. Now hear.” As Jesus said, “Those who have ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 11:15, 13:9; Mark 4:9, 4:23; Revelation 2:17, 3:22). Long before that the Rig Veda said, “They, hearing, yet do not hear; they, seeing, yet do not see.” (Rig Veda, 10.71.4)
As you make further spiritual progress, you become a seer. You begin to see truth. Here and there a sentence comes out of your mouth which is immortal. Sometimes people ask me to autograph their book and I write these blessings. One of the blessing is “May the words you speak today become the scriptures of tomorrow.” This is not merely an empty wish; it can be so. If you reach that status, the words you are saying will be remembered a thousand years from now. So, with the gift of speech, the gift of the meaning of speech, then you will become among the ranks of those rishis and sages, someday, sometime.
“Friends,” I always say, “Be ambitious.” You have no ambition. The only ambition you have is to buy a car and get a promotion in your company. What kind of ambition is that? Have real ambition. This is the ambition.
As you make spiritual progress and as you progress in your meditation, you begin to feel some changes inside your body. Your posture becomes firm. Once you sit down, you don’t want to move. That is a sign of spiritual progress. Not out of lethargy and laziness, but because your ādhāra (the region from the navel down) has become firmly established in the pṛthvī tattva, in the ground, in the earth, and you become stable. The posture becomes stable by itself without you struggling. I have five ruptured discs in my back. I have had a broken meniscus for the last fifteen years in my knee and torn ligament in my knee. And the doctors tell me: “You can’t sit with crossed legs. Stop sitting that way.” I can sit here and speak to you for the next three hours and will not change my posture. No necessity. So these changes occur. Your spine becomes inclined to being erect. Instead of having to remember “Oh, I should be sitting erect,” your spine becomes inclined to be become erect. Something from inside you, that snake that rises up, the snake of the kuṇḍalinī, lying coiled up at the bottom –ahirbudhnyaḥ it is called in the Vedas, “the snake in the fundaments,” rises up and becomes steady. And your spine becomes inclined to be straight. Your posture becomes inclined to be firm. It is no longer required to practice, struggle – fighting with the body, sitting there and saying, “Maybe a massage will help my legs so I can maybe sit for half an hour without moving.” No need. These things will happen. If that is happening, you are making spiritual progress. But not if you just sit for fifteen minutes and do quick, quick, quick mala (mālā), and in the middle of the mala checking to see “Well, how much is left now?” I’m sorry, that’s not meditation.
You have to know the meaning of meditation. So stability, stillness of the body, erectness of the spine – at present we teach you that as a technique for correct sitting. But at a certain point in your development the techniques fall off. The techniques – tell me, how many of you have my book The Philosophy of Hatha Yoga? Well, I’m happy: 90%. Shall I give you an exam on it? I have explained these processes that happen in you because of the way the energy channels begin to flow.
Then, at a certain point, you will begin to feel the natural mūla-bandha, the natural root-lock. At present we are teaching these as a technique for you. When they cease to become a technique and become your mind-body-prana natural inclination, then know that you are making spiritual progress.
In the chakra system, as I have explained in my lectures on kundalini and the chakras, there are two forces: the push-forces and the pull-forces: the lower energy concentrations pushing up, and the higher energy concentrations of the chakras pulling the lower ones up. That is the secret of the words prāṇa and apāna, the kundalini meaning of those words. Don’t forget to get my book Kundalini Stilled or Stirred?, which has just been published.
So, because of these changes happening by way of a slight, beginning-level awakening of energies, the mūla-bandha, the root-lock, forms by itself in meditation; you don’t have to remember to form it. Most people who form the root-lock do it with an effort with the result that the ādhāra part becomes tense. Tension is not supportive of relaxation and meditation. When the root-lock happens naturally because the energy is pushing up and the energy is pulling up, then that tension does not occur in the muscles and the organs of that region. Similarly in the course of your meditation khecarī mudrā [the tongue-lock] will form by itself; the tongue will go up. Sometimes it forms even while you are walking about because you have no more inclination to speak, so you tuck the tongue away. So mūla-bandha forms and khecarī forms.
Many times I have seen people in the beginning who sit down to meditate, and because they have seen in the books and have been taught in the classes to form the mudrā and the chin mudrā and the jñāna mudrā with their fingers. Half their attention is on their finger and their thumb – “Am I forming the mudrā correctly?” As you make spiritual progress, the mudrā forms by itself because the energy curves and circles and forms these mudrās and molds and shapes the body accordingly – and that happens to you naturally. So your posture becomes firm; your spine becomes inclined to be erect.
My body is very weak. Sometimes when I sit down, I need to get a lot of support. But as my meditation progresses, the body becomes inclined to move away from the support and the spine becomes straight – because my guru has taught me to respond to that which is happening in the energy realm. These are things that yoga teachers need to learn. The root-lock forms, khecarī forms, the need for speech changes.
Then, a lot of times I get letters from people: “I feel pressure at this point” or “I feel a pull at this point” or “I feel a sensation at this point,” and “When I meditate . . .” and so on. This is a natural phenomenon. When that happens, simply respond to it. Where you feel the pull, let the mantra go there as though you are breathing from there, as though your mantra is arising there. Let your mind go there as though you are breathing there and as if your mantra is arising there.
We have taught elsewhere how to recognize which is your chakra. That’s a little bit different topic, a separate topic. There are recordings available. Five thousand hours of recordings have been made over the last 42 years. Swami Ritavan has been keeping these recordings, and the archives here have them, and there is a group of volunteers internationally who are transcribing them. I am told by Swami Ritavan that when the transcribing is completed there will be 45,000 pages. If you people help with that, that work will go on long after I’m dead. First making the 45,000 pages of transcripts, and then looking through them and making them readable is a lot of work, and we need that work from you. We need volunteers for that work. This Michelle [Kinsey] here is doing a lot, who is just sitting here quietly, designing CDs and all of that. So I really, really deeply appreciate what people are doing, but a lot more needs to be done.
So, in the initial stages, there are three phenomena that are experienced in the chakras: (1) an inward pull, not an outward pull, in that region, or a pressure, (2) a feeling or sensation – something vibrating, something happening, and (3) the feeling of a flow, as though a stream is passing through that region or the stream is flowing upward from that region.
Also, when the spine becomes naturally inclined to be erect, the next step will be a sensation as if ants are crawling over your spine, or the base of your spine is plugged into an electric socket and is receiving the current. But don’t go about connecting it to the socket in the wall; you would be dead.
These things are not written anywhere. They are not written even in my commentary on the Yoga-sutras. They are given indications in the texts. But when the ancient ṛshis were teaching, they would not only give a lesson in philosophy, they would give an experience! They would alter the consciousness of the disciple and let him see! And then in the Upanishads we can read phrases like etad vai tat (“This is that!”). araṇyornihito jātavedā garbha iva sudhito garbhiṇībhiḥ; etad vai tat “This experience that I have given you, that is this mantra, this recitation.” But you have been reciting it, not experiencing. And only though that experience will you understand the meaning of the Upanishads or Vedas or the Bible or the Avesta. And you would become a teacher, even without a teacher training certificate. I don’t have a teacher training certificate! Nobody ever gave me one. My master never gave me one. I should complain? Because then you will teach from experience. My master said, “Don’t teach from the books.” And I don’t.
Every now and then I teach a text for your entertainment. On October, 2014, I’ll be teaching a course on the Mahā-vākyas, the Great Sentences of Vedanta. They are installing a little computer screen in my room, so I’ll type the lessons on that.
People are asking me, “Who will teach us?” Don’t worry, the teaching will go on. The same one who has brought you here, the same one who has brought you to the Guru’s ashram and the Guru’s seat, the same one will guide you. The guidance never ceases for a disciple. The problem is that there are no disciples. There are no disciples with commitment to self-purification.
Along with these pulls and pressures, sensations or feelings of a flow, if you understand the science of the chakras, you know that each chakra carries powers, elements which constitute your personality, so the awakening happens in those faculties of your personality and in the constituents of your personality. Different changes happen when your navel chakra begins to open, and different changes happen when your heart chakra begins to open, and so on. But mind you, every little emotion is not the awakening of a chakra.
There is a time I used to be available to people 24 hours a day, and I would tell them to call me anytime. Now I am a night person and I do my meditations at night, or I do my japa at night, or I do my e-mails at night, and I work at night. And at The Meditation Center in Minneapolis we had a 6:00 a.m. meditation every morning. So at 3:00 I laid down in bed to rest for couple of hours, maybe to get two hours sleep, because I had to be at The Meditation Center at 6:00. And at 3:30 the phone rings. It was a lady calling from California: “You said I could call you anytime, Dr. Arya. My heart chakra is opening; what shall I do?” And I heard her voice and I said, “Tell me one thing: did you have a quarrel with your husband last night?” “What does that have to do with it?” So every flutter of your heart is not the opening of your heart center.
It is time to stop now. I will continue tomorrow over the next three or four days. God bless you all.
[A group of people from Bali come up to give gifts to Swamiji.] Siddhartha [Krishna], there is something? I was told to be ready for this kindness. Oh, Prince Arjuna! How beautiful! Oh, look at that: a Ganesha from Bali! Thank you so very much. I really appreciate it! Alright. Oh, what book is it? Oh, this is the Ramayana. Is it the Uttara kāṇḍa? Araṇya. I’ve been looking for the Uttara kāṇḍa. This is part of the Ramayana in the Balinese. Is it in Kabir or present Bali? And I’ve asked them to bring me a lontar, a palm leaf manuscript which they are preparing for me. I am so grateful. Thank you so much. Om svasti! Om svasti! Om svasti! I must go for the ārati.
Remember all those details that I am giving you. Alright. Siddhartha, thank you.