Author: ahymsin

Om Om Om

This is 9th June [1995] morning at the ashram in Rishikesh – 5:20 am here. The sky is full of sounds – birds’ songs, so rich – of which I sent you all a cassette at one time. The intruder into the bird songs is the cawing of crows that is loud, imperialistic, uncaring . . . but the birds continue to sing. I hope that during this recording no other loud sounds will be heard. If they are heard, please ignore them. I should have done this recording an hour and a half ago, but the momentum of working the Yoga-sutra II.52 was vibrant, and I continued typing, and now I am a little late. And I do want to put this into the mail so that it gets to Minneapolis and from there gets to Calgary. Calgary, a place I’m really very, very fond of. In terms of seriousness of studies it is only second to Germany where people are really serious. On the other hand, I may be doing injustice to others who do study and don’t want to bother me with questions because they are capable of answering themselves. This is also true of Calgary, but I am happy for any reason to communicate – a teacher of silence who loves to speak. Perhaps I will close with that theme at the end.

Let us understand – layers upon layers, fields within fields, kośas within kośas, pillow cases within pillow cases, veils behind veils. Each one has its own frequency, its own “voice,” shall we say, its own light, its own sound. As you know, in our tradition we merge the light and the sound, and the sādhana of one leads to the sādhana of the other. Again, [referring] to the two sūtras in my little book of blessings:

“May you hear sound that light produces as it travels through space.
May you see the light that sound creates as it travels through space.”

Where is that space? What space is it through which the light and the sound travel? What space is it where they are first created so that the light and sound of the universe may eventually emerge from that supreme mind that contains these intangible principles that cannot be measured by any instrument?

I see it in terms of spanda, the central core of the Kashmir philosophy that developed from the 8th century to, say, the 14th or 15th century and created spiritual and intellectual giants. The philosophy of spanda, the philosophy of vibration: [that] within each force-field there is a certain frequency, its voice, its sound.

What the frequency of ātman, the spiritual self, is only the ātman knows because any statement about ātman can only be nonsense statements. Nonsense, like the questions that people often ask: “Where does the soul go after death?” “What happens to the soul after death?” – as though something can happen to a soul. “Where does the soul go after death?” What an absurdity of questions! What absurdity is that one question! Because, “where” implies place, space. “Goes” implies movement in that space from point to point. “After” implies time. “Death”?! Whose death? The soul’s death?! Ātman’s death?! ­ All absurd. No language can ask a question about ātman; therefore no language can answer it. You would have to say, “NA – Does not apply.” To any question about ātman I will say, “NA – Does not apply.” So let us leave ātman alone. It loves kaivalya: aloneness, solitude, being solo. Kaivalya, the last word in the Yoga-sutras: solitude of the soul.

But to get to that solitude of the soul, one has to pass through those barriers of noises, these frequencies, these high-frequency, low-frequency regions of energies, force-fields. So at each level, the silence is a relative one. Relative to what? Relative to the exterior [level], to that force-field which is exterior to it.

I am answering your questions in a general way rather than answering specific questions.

In meditation, in the practice of mantra, we use mantra as a vehicle to explore the depth upon depth. Whether your japa is to write your mantra 125,000 times . . . . You know that they have mantra banks in India. There is an article in the Journal of Vaishnava Studies (Vol. 2 No. 2, Spring, 1994). It’s published by Folk Books, P.O Box 400716, Brooklyn, New York 11420-0716. That’s the pin code. The FAX number is 1 (718) 852-9109. It’s an article by Philip A. Lutgendorf, titled Banking on the Name. You might find it interesting – mantra banks where people just write their mantra, the individual mantra or the mantra that is taught to them in the given denomination 125,000 times or a million times and so forth and send them as an offering.

That is one way to do japa. After a while the mantra has to sit in the mind.

• The mantra is at the lowest possible frequency of chanting, singing, kirtana.
• Getting a little more silent and muttering it to oneself.
• Going on deeper, closing the lips, sealing the lips and letting the tongue utter it quietly.
• Stilling the tongue, but there is still activity in the larynx.
• Stilling the larynx, but the mind is still sending the pulsations to the vocal organs, but they are intercepted by the silent command – by the command to silence.
• The mantra in the mind as a thought.
• Then mantra as vibration.
• The mantra as a quest for that “wherefrom” it arises.
• And once that “wherefrom” has been found, taken into it, and like a boat, having reached the other shore, is left behind – and you go into deep and eternal silence. Well, not quite “eternal,” but a moment of silence . . . . and slowly becomes a habit.

Now, it is on the matter of habit, habit, habit as to which rampart you think you have your duty on. In this fortress, this pura, this polis, in the City of the Body there are ramparts and ramparts. So where you have formed the habit to stay determines your level of silence. So you have the “silence of speech,” the “silence of the senses.”

Long ago I did a talk called ‘Five Silences.’ You might want to listen to that sometime. Recently I have done an original composition in Sanskrit verse, “Mauna Nimanisa” and was told that it would be published in some Sanskrit journal in Varanasi – in which I have spoken of twelve silences, but we should not bother to go into that right now.

So, our practice of the silence of speech and our practice of mantra leading to interior silence is one and the same as quieting the mind during meditation, during formal meditation. And formal meditation cannot be separated from trying to keep the mind as undisturbed, as much in equanimity as possible during the day, throughout the day. One supports the other; the other supports the one.

The habit of reacting violently with anger, with disturbance with defensiveness, with counter-attack, that we have conquered in our years of practicing ahimsa, is based on this one principle: That situation which makes a coward flee, makes the hero fight. The same adrenaline and the same epinephrine is needed for both. It is a matter of which particular one of these so-called natural responses you chose, you select. Similarly, in a situation of provocation, of disturbance, of agitation, the untrained chose to become tense and troubled, the trained chose to become relaxed. It is a matter of training oneself as to which response you chose. It is only a matter of training. This answers your question: “How can I maintain silent and remain effective in the social norms?”

Question: “How can I be silent and remain effective in the social norms?”

The same way as you drive effectively through a “Silence Zone” in the city.

Does your driving become ineffective? The next time you drive through a “Silence Zone” in the city, as you look at the sign, “Silence Zone,” see the subtle change that occurs in you. It is not simply a matter of refraining from placing your finger on the horn; a certain change occurs in you. Observe that change. It is very subtle. The mind remains noisy and does not quite see the silence. Just a modicum of silence, a drop of that elixir falls into your mind. People say that a single drop of honey will not sweeten the ocean. Indeed not, but where it will fall, a subtle change will occur. That kind of change occurs, my friends, when you enter the Silence Zone in the city. And you drive quite effectively – no problem. So it is when you enter an Intensive Care unit in a hospital. It is not only a matter of making your feet tip-toe; what is the subtle change that occurs in your mind? How does it help you to communicate? How does it help you to communicate with that beloved person who is a patient there, and with others who are around? The change is very subtle. You may come away saddened. You may also come away chastened, having learned something because you now operated your mind at a different frequency level.

It is strange that what we practice naturally all the time appears as something unachievable when it is advised in so many words. So then, the silence both in meditation and in ordinary life is a relative one. It is a matter of changing the frequencies of your being, the spanda-level with which you operate and with which you identify at any given time.

Question: Is this inner state of silence some kind of early and dim manifestation of the ātman?

Yes, indeed! You have answered yourself. If I may contradict myself, and say this about ātman: that all I know about it and can communicate about it is by an allegory, by a simile, by a metaphor: The rays of light – and now I shall not say “sound” – and silence that emanate from it as they travel outward from its central core, the emanations from that core go through the various levels of the vikṛtis (the manifestations, the modifications, the devolutes) of prakṛti, from the innermost buddhi to the outermost active senses – and the plastic pieces and tubings and ropes (bones, blood vessels, cartilage and muscles that keep these plastic pieces tied down) to that level – from inside to outwards, it becomes a progressively slower frequency and, we might say, noisier and noisier, grosser and grosser. The same is true of the reverse process. With whichever layer of yourself you identify, that determines the depth of your silence.

That is to say, okay, you relaxed your hands and feet. Well, it has to filter down; your voice will change. Have you not noticed how the voice of a good meditation teacher changes as he is conducting a meditation? He is using his voice, but at the same time he is identifying with a much higher frequency-layer within himself. That is why his voice changes; and the vocal cords he uses are different than the vocal cords that a yelling, shouting, angry man employs. Both are producing sound. But one sound is allied to an inner silence. The other sound is completely out of synchrony with anything else within himself; he is a bundle of conflicts, and it shows, and in that anger he contradicts himself. So I am unable to separate between doing silence, meditation, mantra, being taken into silence, silence as a practice of not speaking. This also answers the [next] question.

Question: Should the mantra be willed into silence or allowed to dissolve into silence, or does the latter come with practice?

Just as, initially, sitting down and remembering the word So-ham was somewhat of a chore, practice made it perfect – or as close to perfect as it could be. So also mantra became an interior habit. When it arose, you began to listen to it. You had to put in some practice; you had to allow it its own moment of arising and respond to it also. You had to practice it consciously . . . and accept it as grace when it arose within you. So it goes with the practice of silence. When the mantra arises within you and you maintain your interior response to it, your observation of the fact that it is there and you are receiving it as an act of grace conferred upon you; if you can maintain that response within and then you speak, you are speaking from a relative degree of silence.

So once again, with which layer of yourself are you identifying? A relatively lower frequency? A relatively higher frequency? The exterior self, or a relatively interior self? (Here the term “self” is used in terms is “identity,” not in terms of ātman.)

Now this fear: “Oh! I will lose out in society!” is unfounded. You know that I do not teach from a book – Guru has granted me this kindly grace. I do not write from a book. I appear to write from a book, but what is written and what is said is what’s been experienced, a little. And I quote books only to be credible. Who wants to listen to this person’s philosophical fantasies that are all his own, with no philosophical background and so forth? That’s why a give all sorts of arguments and quote scriptures and refer to manuscripts and God knows what – so both the scholarly and the unscholarly will both believe me. And I am saying this from personal experimentation in life: The more silent I became, the more effective I became.

I have recently sent out a little story about my search for manuscripts. I don’t know if it has reached you: “No, no, no! It can’t be done!” people say. “The manuscripts can’t be given.” “The library is locked by court order. Nobody is allowed access.” “It’s in dispute.” “Well, I guess we could allow someone to come with a lead pencil and take just a few notes, a few jottings, but we’re not going to allow photocopying and full-text copying – Nothing.” And then I go to that city and go to the doorsteps of the curator. I don’t even ask for the library to be opened. If I ask, I ask in silence. I’ll tell you, you can have that job that you covet if you know the art of silence. You don’t believe me because you have been trained differently, because you formed a different habit; because you have been taught to counter; because you have been led to a conditioning of the mind wherein [you think that if] someone speaks loudly [and] if you spoke louder, you would be heard. Quite the contrary!

Question: “Whereas silence is golden to some, it is likely to be awkward in Western culture where fluid speech and superb communication skills are so highly valued.”

No, you cannot have good communication skills without silence. Communication skill means modulating silence and sound effectively. We have to lower the voice or raise the voice. Where to emphasize and accent a certain word, where to de-emphasize requires singular self-observation. How can you have self-observation?

You know – I’m sorry to tell you this, but with all this talk in the West about communication skills – I’m not impressed. Uh-uh! You cannot teach communication skills in courses and colleges and training programs. Communication skills are taught in infancy, in childhood. Go to the societies where joint family systems prevail and you will notice what communication skill is. Even go to Spain or South America. Go to the families that are prosperous in modern business, families of a well-known publisher where 45 people live in a single house by choice, not out of poverty. Communication skill there is taught from pregnancy.

“Communication skill” means a loving relationship.

This is a slightly different topic, but whatever effectiveness has come to me, has come from calming myself. And when I handle a situation calmly, it works. Recently I’ve made two cassettes on “Insight Seeing,” a sporadic series I have been doing over a decade or two. If I have some interesting travel, I record my impressions.

One day I was traveling in a train from Haridwar to Delhi – a very nice train; I recommend it highly – and I did not want to talk. One reason that I prefer to travel by car rather than go by train is that it helps me to maintain silence, but what kind of silence does one have to maintain in insisting company? People in India are really insistent in talking. You don’t know. If you sit down in the train, by the time you’ve finished your journey, you’ve probably arranged your daughter’s marriage or your son’s engagement. With a complete stranger, you might even decide to step down from the train and the midway station and go and visit him. It’s very common. And this man sitting next to me realized that this Swami didn’t want to talk very much, so out of politeness he stayed quiet after one or two questions. (I am repeating what I have already told you in another cassette.) Dinner came. It is one of those rare trains in the world where dinner is served free of charge – dinner or breakfast or lunch or whatever – and he wasn’t there. I finished my dinner, and he came five or ten minutes later, and I spoke to him. I said, “You did not have dinner.” “No, I did not,” he said. “Are you alright?” I asked. Because in a country like India where speaking is a religion, not silence, nobody minds personal questions; people mind not being asked personal questions. I asked, “Why?” He said, “Well, I prefer a non-vegetarian dinner, and I dare not do that in your presence. I’ll eat after we get to Delhi, and I’ll go to a restaurant.” I do not have to ask him. Many of you know that in vegetarian societies just the sight of meat is abhorrent. And people know that. And if you are polite you will not expose a vegetarian to the sight of something that has been killed. It is understood.

So in silence you can have your wishes fulfilled, but not by not speaking. No, no, no no. You will not have your wishes fulfilled by not speaking. You will have your wishes fulfilled by practicing silence. Please understand this. Identifying with the higher-frequency you, the relatively inner layer, and remaining there and operating from there. And since the energy, the force-field there is higher – it is subtler – it is more effective; it has a much higher energy level and it can influence the lesser-frequency layers of your being. And at each level you witness where you are, and the state of silence becomes natural. After a while you do not wish to speak. After a while you find that it is unnecessary to say so much – for without speaking your wishes are fulfilled. Silence can be your wishing stone.

Question: “What role does the breath play in maintaining silence?

The same thing I said about the mantra I would say about the breath. Both are vehicles for going to the interior layers. After a while, in the kevala kumbhaka, which I have translated in Yoga-sutra, Chapter Two, Sutra 51, as “the solo retention.” All effort at retention of breath ceases and the breath first becomes so subtle that it is barely noticeable. Then only the prāṇa force remains. One is at that point totally identified with the prāṇa-maya-koṣa (the casing made of prāṇa) which is much subtler than the anna-maya-koṣa (the casing made of food). And when one identifies with this particular layer, the breath ceases. And it is said by the commentators on the Yoga-sutras that one may not breathe physically for hours, days, months, years. “Incredible! Beyond imagination! Not possible! Scientifically not possible!” No.

Dhruvha is one of names in India of one of the child-sages. There is quite a long list of them. Someday I would like to have someone sit down with me and do a book on the child-sages of India, or the child-sages of the yoga tradition – whatever way you want to put it.

Way back in historical times, Dhruvha’s father, the king, was married twice and had two wives. The present queen is very proud of her station, but has no issue herself, and the child of his other wife makes her utterly jealous. One day Dhruvha comes to the king, as a child would, to sit in his father’s lap. Sitting on his throne, the father picks him up and takes him on lap. The queen snatches the child and pulls him off the father’s lap and says, “To sit in that lap, you have to be born from this womb!” The child goes crying to his mother. His mother says, “You have another father. Go to him.” So the five-year-old Dhruvha (which means “the firm one,” “the steady one,” “the stable one”) walks out and sits in the forest, calling the name of the Lord – calling upon him, calling upon him, calling upon him, with that utter devotion that can only come from a child. And his mind ceases. His breath ceases. And it is said in the Puranas that when Dhruvha ceased breathing and when he went into this natural solo retention, his mind and his prana had so become one with universal mind and the universal pranathat all the living beings, from the denizens under the earth to the celestials in their paradise, began to choke. They could breathe no more. And they went running to Lord Vishnu – “What is this?!” And the Lord Preserver knew that someone had sat in utter devotion and his breath had ceased and his prana had been stilled. And since Dhruvha’s prana was the universal prāṇa, the universe was in danger of dissolution. Lord the Preserver descends and stands before the child devotee, and touches his cheek with his conch shell. (In Indian ritual the conch shell is used to reproduce the cosmic sound in worship. The interior of the conch shell is like the spiraling galaxies. The exterior is the form, and the interior is the sound that remains silent. Like the way you [put a sea shell to your ear] and listen to the ocean, the devotees of India listen to the cosmic sound, for the conch shell of one the sacred objects that Vishnu holds in his hands.) He touches the child’s cheek with his conch shell that contains the silences of the universe. And when one is touched by Lord the Preserver’s conch shell, which contains all the silences of the universe, hymns come flowing forth – once again, silence is not silence of speech – and Dhruvha’s utterances melt Lord the Preserver’s heart and he grants him anything he will wish for. Dhruvha, the child, the silent sage, the silent child sage, standing on his one leg uttering the hymns, says, “Lord, I seek nothing, but that whenever I remember you, you should come before me.”

This is a long story, cut very, very short. Some other time, some other day I’ll tell you the whole story and recite Dhurvha’s hymns. So now, changing the topic a little . . . .

Question: “Is there a specific practice to counter talking too much – the inner pressure to speak?”

This is the same type of question as to whether there some type of practice to stop over eating. Talking too much or overeating are repressions of an interior emptiness. We have a common proverb in India: “A half-empty vessel makes a lot of splashing noise.” A full vessel when carried does not make a sound. If it’s half empty or three-fourths empty or has just a little bit of water or any other liquid in it, then can hear it splashing inside as you carry it. Whenever we see someone talking too much, we say, “Empty vessel makes a lot of noise.” Yes, there is a way. Fill yourself. If your mind is full, you will not try to fill it by filling the stomach, which is already overfilled. But the mind is not fulfilled and so you keep trying to overfill the stomach. If you cannot desist from speaking, you have not been loved enough. “Yeah! Ah yes! I knew that! Ah! I know. Nobody loves me.” So, what to do? Is there some kind of a begging bowl you can carry that people will fill with love because you talk too much? You think you are getting attention, ah? But very soon people turn away. You don’t get the attention you want. Why? Because you are not giving the attention except to what is in your mind, in the conscious mind, in the voluble part, the lower-frequency mind. Fill your mind. No, the practice of total silence is not for you, but try it for half an hour. As I have said before, refraining from speech is no silence. Japa is silence. Fill your mind with meditation. Fill your mind with contemplation. Fill your mind with witnessing. Fill your mind with self-observation. Fill your mind with the higher-frequency energy and forces until they overflow and become love that goes out of you into the begging bowls of those who today are as sorry for themselves as you were before you were filled.

I wish you much filling and much fulfilling.
I wish you the Wishing Stone of Silence.
God Bless You!

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Editor’s Note

Answers to questions on silence sent to sadhakas in Calgary, Canada. Recorded at Sadhana Mandir on 9th June 1995 and transcribed.

Always try to find opportunities to make yourself small. Always try to find opportunities to make yourself small before others in humility – mental humility – not always trying to assert your bigness, not always asserting your thought that “I am right!” Say, “I’m wrong,” and then you will grow. “Yes, I’m wrong, my mistake, my fault. Yes, it’s my fault.” And sometimes do it even if it is not your fault.

There is the story of an Indian king, a Mogul king. He was one of those kings who never took anything for himself from the treasury. So, though he ruled over whole empire, he made his living by copying manuscripts. In those days there were no printing presses, so books were just manuscripts, and you used the art of calligraphy to copy them.

One day he sat in the court, copying manuscripts, and a great scholar came. The scholar picked up the book that the king was copying, and he started looking over the manuscript and said, “Oh, excuse me, Sir, this passage here shouldn’t be this way; it should be this way. So the king picked up the correcting fluid that they used at that time, that was very essential for calligraphy, and he corrected the passage. The scholar was very happy that he had corrected the king and went his way.

After the scholar left, the king picked the manuscript back up, put correcting fluid over the scholar’s passage and replaced it with the original. It didn’t harm him at all, and it made somebody happy.

It is a fine art to find the opportunities of making yourself small – provided thereby that you are not going to do any harm to anyone – or to do something philanthropic, or to do something that is for the good of others.

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Editor’s Note

This is a transcription from Swami Veda’s Guidelines for Spiritual Living: Yoga in Daily Life, 1976.

The ultimate aim of meditation is liberation.

It is not a hard mind, it is a strong mind. Something hard breaks easily. Something strong is resilient and can take a great many blows without being destroyed, without being bent, without losing its shape and without breaking. The ultimate aim of meditation is what we call moksha, or liberation, total freedom, swadantrya, total self dependence, kaivalya, aloneness, uniqueness, nirvana, blowing out of the externals, setting to light an inner illumination.

And when the ancient meditators performed any rituals of worship, the first thing they did was to kindle a light and shout in unison, light, light, light. And they savoured the taste of the experience of this light and called it honey, sweet. If you read some of the ancient chants from the Vedas words like these appear over and over, so sweet, so sweet, so sweet, so beautiful. They thought of the fire as light, they thought of the sun as light because their minds were filled with an illumination of the kind that is not seen on earth. And they thought of liberation, freedom from all darkness, freedom from all delusion, when there is neither pride nor confusion, where all pollution arising from attachment vanishes; they walked in that illumination, they walked in that light, and wherever they walked if there was darkness, there was suddenly light.

Become a luminous, self-shining personality.

To find that kind of a luminous self-shining, resplendent, splendorous personality and beyond the personality, the trans-personal being, is the aim of meditation. But as I have said earlier, there has to be in your mind a desire, a will to search for this luminosity, to believe that such a light exists, that is so honeyed, so sweet, that when you have that light, the lights of television screens, cinema screens are nothing, that no snow, no storm, no rain, no sun can prevent you from reaching out for it, going for it, searching for it, finding it. There has to be this natural will to grow, to desire, to want, “yes, I’m not sitting here just listening to somebody’s words about this light, I would like to taste, I would like to see this sweet light, this luminousness, so that wherever I walk, I walk as a luminous being with no darkness in me, no doubts left in me, nothing left to conquer. And unless you have set that goal of personal spiritual growth for yourself, your meditation will not prosper.

A person who has set herself or himself such a goal, looks for a company where he can share that goal, looks for those of like mind, goes to what we call a satsanga, a company of the like-minded, kindred souls who are going for reality, who are searching for reality. When he sits down in the company of others, he has no other thing to talk about but this luminous light. He sits, she sits down in that company and talks about the beauty of God and what would it be like to be so liberated. “Don’t you think so?  What are your views on it?  Have you come ever close enough to say that you have experienced a minute or two, or half a minute, or a few seconds of such luminosity?  Tell me of you.”  He’s reluctant to talk of his own light but he’s anxious to hear of other’s light.

A person who has set themselves the goal of spiritual liberation has conquered six enemies.

He has conquered six enemies, Parishadvarga, a gang of six enemies:  strong passion, strong anger, greed and possessiveness, a confusion of the mind, jealousy, and frenzy of any emotion, so that one mark of a man of spirituality is the stillness of emotions. One mark of a great man of spirituality is evenness of character and temperament. Such a person’s eating, his playing, are all in harmony. His movements of the body are harmonious, do not exhibit jagged edges of the mind. His waking and sleeping are all controlled. He is neither an insomniac nor oversleeping, neither a glutton, nor fasting every day, a person of even character who has evened out the jagged edges of emotion so that in his life you do not find all the commotion you see in others. When we pray to God, “God make me an instrument of your peace,” it means then, that in us there should walk this luminous peace, wherever we walk. Wherever we are, let us observe ourselves and calm down.  You say, “I cannot calm down, I would like to, I try to, but I do not succeed.”  And my answer is, that you do not try. It is possible for you, that as soon as the jagged edges of emotions start cutting through your heart, as soon as you realize you are carrying a burden, immediately for you to cease carrying that burden. It is possible immediately for you to switch your mind to something different. It is possible for you, immediately, to shift your attention, to switch your emotion.

Six requirements for true liberation

1. Shama: tranquillity

If you want true liberation, there are six requirements. They are called in the Vedanta philosophy shama, dama, uparity, tatiksha, shraddha, vairagya. Shama is quietness, calmness, tranquility of character, not indulging things that agitate, not indulging in emotions or fancies, or fantasies that leave you emotionally exhausted after a frenzy of excitation and agitation. Keep away from those and have shama, which is the same as shanti, tranquility. When you relax your body, you have tranquility of the muscles and nerves, when you relax your mind you have tranquility of the mind and out of that the tranquility of thought and emotion. And you make that your twenty-four hour character by cultivating it mentally, by doing what we call the bhavana, continuous repetition of going into a state of evenness, continually cultivating it by that thoughtfulness, that mindfulness which is the key to your strengthening any particular attributes that you want to develop in yourself.

2. Dama: control

The second prerequisite is known as dama, which means control. You observe yourself and find that you are being drawn to excitations. You are being drawn to agitations. You observe that your desires are getting the better of you. Immediately find the right switches in your luminous mind and switch off the wrong one, switch on the right one. This is known as dama, control. Control over yourself. Getting a good hold of yourself. Keeping your mind on a leash at all times. This does not mean that you become an emotionless automaton. It simply means that you know the switches of your robot, the switches of your machine. What switch to turn on, which to turn off, to what particular end.

3. Uparati: natural turning away

Gradually you come to the third stage known as uparati, a natural turning away. In the second stage you had to impose a regulatory discipline on yourself. In the third stage, uparati, your inclination has changed.  You know I have always talked of this, that I never practice a discipline. Anything feels like a discipline, I just don’t do it. I run like all of you more than a thousand miles away from any discipline. I do absolutely really whatever I feel inclined to do. Whatever I desire to do. I do whatever I enjoy. I do my meditation because I enjoy it. That’s my only pleasure. Over the years, perhaps over the incarnations, through continuous practice of right bhavana I have cultivated certain inclinations by thinking about it over and over. By aspiring for it. By renewing the resolve after each failure. By recognizing the failure and saying, “now that I have failed, I’m not going to sit down, I’m going to weave a fresh thread like a spider whose web breaks, making the web again. One of these days I will wake up on time for my meditation.”  Keep thinking about it. “Oh, I over ate again today. I don’t think I am going to give up. I the spirit of consciousness am definitely much stronger than my taste buds and my stomach. Sooner or later I’m going to use my strength.”  By cultivating this kind of thought and renewed resolve over and over again, you develop the third attribute, the third prerequisite, then it is a natural turning point, you no longer feel inclined towards things that you had to previously control.

4. Titiksha: fortitude

Then you come to the fourth requisite that is known as titiksha. Titiksha means a kind of fortitude, a forbearance, ability to withstand an onslaught, an onslaught of any kind. It may be someone standing at your doorstep and cursing you. There is a story of a great saint, a devote of God who every morning walked to the river outside the village for his morning ablutions and, as we do in India, after taking the morning bath, sitting to meditate and having said the morning prayers, he headed back home. There was one man in the village who didn’t like him, so this man took some water and climbed up and sat at the top of a tree hiding in the leaves, and as the saintly man passed under the tree he took a good big mouthful of water and squirted it on the saint’s body. The saint looked up gave him a smile and went on his way home. It is said about this particular saint that he passed under that tree after his morning bath for 108 days, and for 108 days he received a squirt of the mouthful of water from the man sitting hidden in the leaves of the tree. And each time he looked up and gave him a nice good morning smile, “there you are again, my friend, at it.”  On the 108th day after the 108th squirt on the part of one and the 108th smile on the part of the other, the man came down from the tree and fell at the saint’s feet. This saintly quality is known as titiksha. A gentle fortitude, a strength to keep smiling and keep giving love and remaining unaffected, not out of a hardness, but out of a gentleness. A saintly man who is after liberation in life deals with life and all his relationships and all the people around him as a mother holds a baby, firmly and gently. And each time the baby wets its clothes, the mother smilingly and lovingly changes it. And that is titiksha. There is the story of the cousin of a great acharya named Rama Nuja. Rama Nuja watched him from a distance one day, watched him hold poisonous snake, believe it or not, putting his fingers into the snake’s mouth. The great acharya came to his cousin and said, what are you doing?  By now the man had put the snake down on the ground and the snake was disappearing. “The snake had bitten into something and it had swallowed a piece of gold that was stuck in its mouth. It was choking and gasping for life. Could I just walk away, seeing the poor creature struggling and gasping for life?  I put my finger into the snake’s mouth, removed the gold and put the snake down.”  This is titiksha. It shows itself in many ways. I remember I went to India. Each time it was in summer. After having lived in England, Europe and Minnesota you get used to cold climate. I got to India in middle of summer and it was 110 degrees of heat. My teacher and I were sitting in a car and I was trying to save my temples from the touch of hot wind, hot dry wind. He was sitting in the front seat of the car and he looked back at me and said, “what are you doing?  Have you no titiksha?”   And for the rest of my trip in India I did not worry about the heat. To be able to stand in a hot place and not feel it burning. To be in a cold place and not feel it cold. Sanskrit. Alike in heat and cold, alike in pain and pleasure, alike in honor and dishonor. That quality is known as titiksha. And there are times when a great teacher creates dishonorable conditions for his disciples, creates insulting conditions in his disciples and sees the disciples come through it unaffected. Sometimes a great yogi even creates dishonorable conditions for himself, such great dishonorable conditions he would create for himself that you wouldn’t believe it and comes through it unhindered and untouched because it is said in the scriptures, “love dishonor like a drink of immortality, shun honor like a cup of poison and thank your enemies who give you the drink of immortality, be suspicious of the friends who give you the cup of poison called honor. All of these attitudes are included in titiksha, the fourth requirement.

5. Shraddha: humble faith

The fifth requirement is shraddha . Shraddha is a humble faith, a faith that makes you want to bow down, to hold on to your truths. After repeated failures you may have found a little glimpse of light. To maintain that glimpse, even when there is reason to doubt is shraddha. Not a blind faith, but a faith born of your personal experience. Born of what you have received, what you have found which gives you humility, which gives you modesty, which makes you want to be small and makes you never want to be big.

6. Vairagya: turning away from the desires and pleasures of the world

And the sixth stage is vairagya. Vairagya is finally turning away from the desires and pleasures of the world. This vairagya can be of two kinds, a temporary vairagya: because you do not have a girlfriend you want to be a celibate; because you are not finding a husband you come to panditji and say, give me vows; because you cannot make money you say self-imposed poverty is the greatest virtue. There is a kind of dispassion, vairagya, in India that we call the cemetery dispassion. You walk with a beloved one to the cemetery and you say, “what is this world ultimately?  All of us have to go this way, better that we spend some time searching for God, gathering the treasures of heaven. From today I’m going to go to church every day; I’m going to go to confession every day; I’m going to meditate every day; I’ll take flowers to the temple every day.” You say something or other like this. I used to, in my teens, go to a cremation ground to meditate and watch the corpses burning. In India we cremate. The Hindus cremate. The Muslims and Christians of course bury. These cremation grounds are ideal places for meditation. The whole attachment to the body goes. You no longer think of yourself as beautiful youth or this or that.

There is a story of a great 16th century sage in India named Kabir. One day someone came to meet Kabir and so he came to his home. The people there told him that he had gone to a funeral procession. There will be so many people at the funeral procession, how will I know who he is?  He carries a feather on his hat. The story is a sort of a parable, not necessarily historical. So he went to the funeral procession because he had really urgent business with Kabir. When he got there he was amazed to see that everybody had a feather on his hat. He was confused, did not know who was Kabir the saint. But as the people started walking away from the funeral procession he saw that as people turned away, in a few steps their feather disappeared. But that was miraculous. He saw another person who walked about ten steps and his feather disappeared. As he walked behind the crowd of people who were leaving after the funeral procession, he saw somebody’s feather disappear after ten yards, somebody’s feather disappear after twenty yards. Some saintly souls kept the feather going for half a mile. Naturally the person whose feather remained intact was going to be Kabir. So a person who has vairagya carries this feather in his hat, this great quality of dispassion, disinterest in things of the world, what is going on and what quarrel is none of his business except out of compassion to remove that quarrel. When things of the world no longer interest him, then he has the permanent vairagya, freedom from the colours of the world that have been colouring his mind so.

When these six attributes have been internalized into the personality then a person is ready to become one with Brahman. So you should start out your meditative philosophy and see what sort of a personality you are looking for yourself, what sort of a company you are looking for yourself, what you are aspiring for.

I have received a question from a spiritually advanced friend who has a following of his own:

“I have one question in mind. A person decides to go to a world-famous Meditation Centre (Ashram) in South India, for 10 days. Supposing that the person, while leaving the city finds family person seriously ill, but continues with journey to that Ashram, will it be fair? Especially if the ill person at home has no one by his/her side and needs emotional support, more than anything?

Attachment or no attachment, should the person heal the family member and necessarily postpone it till problem at home is over OR carry on with the programme?”

My brief reply was:

“If meditation does not teach compassion, love and service to be rendered to the ill, poor and the bereaved, it is not a meditation; it is escapism.

Non-attachment does not mean neglect of those who are suffering.”

 This simple answer should not need any elaborate commentary but, still, here are a few thoughts to share.

The meditative mind is a pleasant mind, a stabilized mind. That state is called chitta-prasadana in Yoga-sutra 1.33. According to the sutra, such a state is obtained though the practice of

• Maîtri: Universal love towards those who are happy

• Karuna: Compassion towards those who are in suffering

• Mudita: Joyfulness at seeing others virtuous

• Upeksha: Indifference towards the evil in others

Without these practices the mind will never stabilize in meditation. The karmic debts we have not yet paid off will continue to disturb the meditation. While one is sitting with eyes closed, the mind will keep racing in all different directions.

Therefore, even to have undisturbed meditation, one is advised to

• Pay off one’s karmic debts

• Not incur any more debts (such as one incurred by leaving a sick person untended, in order to go sit in meditation!)

• Do one’s LOVING DUTIES, and

• Dedicate oneself to acts of compassion and selfless service.

• It is the selflessness in service that constitutes nonattachment.

Here, I would like to quote two stories with a single theme.

One of these stories occurs in Prayaga-mahatmya (the text extolling the sacred importance of the holy place called Prayaga) as far as I can remember as I do not have the book with me. Here is a paraphrase:

Shiva and Parvati were looking down on the holy land of Prayaga at the time of a great mela (like Kumbha, or some other). Shiva was expressing to Parvati his disappointment about how no one had made the pilgrimage. Parvati, looking down from Kailasha, disputed with Shiva, saying how many millions are there and why Shiva could not see them?

Shiva and Parvati decided to test how many pilgrims there were. They came down and sat in a corner disguised as a couple suffering from leprosy, begging.

Of millions who thronged, no one paid the leper couple any attention.

Finally one person stopped and gave the couple the last morsel of food he was carrying for himself and washed the couple’s wounds.

Shiva said to Parvati, “See, as I told you, at this holy occasion only one person has come to make the pilgrimage”.

There are stories with the same theme in many different religions. Here an Islamic story, also paraphrased:

Allah sat on his throne in heaven, expressing to archangel Jibrael (Gabriel) great disappointment about humanity because ‘this year no one has yet come to make the Haj pilgrimage.

Jibrael protested. ‘But, Lord, there are millions who do the circumambulation in the holy Qaba’. The Lord could see no one.

A very poor man in Damishq (modern Damascus) had a lifelong wish to undertake the Haj pilgrimage to Makkaa-sharif (Meccah). He laboured hard and saved from his meagre earnings the requisite amount needed to make the pilgrimage.

But his neighbour, even poorer than himself, fell ill and needed medicine and nutrition just as the man from Damishq was about to leave for the Haj. He saw how his neighbour needed his savings and, furthermore, needed to be tended in his acute illness.

He gave his life savings to the needy neighbour and stayed back to tend to the sick man.

Allah said to Jibrael: Oh yes, I do see one man, only one man, who has made the Haj pilgrimage this year.

I have a principle that if anyone asks for admission to my Ashram, I ask him/her about his/her family. Any parents who need service in their old age? Unless I am satisfied that the person is not just using the Ashram as an escape from his/her duties, I do not admit them. But, I must confess, many do manage to fool me; alas.

If you had planned to go to an Ashram but someone needed to be served, serve the needy while silently, secretly, keeping on with your mantra-japa; that is spiritually more meritorious than leaving someone untended, unloved, and ‘becoming holy’ by going to an Ashram or a pilgrimage.

One benefit of making the wise choice to render selfless service is that the Divine Guru is keeping His eye on you. As your karmic debt is paid off, the circumstances will unexpectedly present themselves so that you can actually go to your Ashram or your intended pilgrimage. It will happen without an effort of your own. I have seen it happen many times.

Remember, the true Ashram is in a selfless loving heart.

This is a transcript of the last lecture of the Adhyatma Retreat, Rishikesh, India (March 2002).

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I’ll take a few more minutes on the topic that we have been discussing, on the Marks of Spiritual Progress.

I briefly mentioned the attitudes to illness. I find illness to be a time of very great blessing because I am free from all the other duties and responsibilities, and I can lie in bed, or sit in bed, and I have a perfect excuse for not seeing people and can use that God-given time for God, to go in the interior, to stay in the interior, during the time of illness, to do my japa, and what ever else I do for the deepening of my spiritual experience. So that, illness becomes a time of blessing.

By going deep into the self during the illness, I derive two benefits, or three. One benefit is that from the depth of my mind, I can look at my body; and it is through illness, in those moments of meditation during acute illnesses, that I have learned about anatomy and physiology, that, from within I can examine my body, I can look at my body, I can understand my metabolism, I can understand what changes are taking place in me, what is happening inside my body and how I can monitor those changes and gradually, slowly, modulate them.

Now, on this last point “modulate them,” that means that the time of illness, for me, it is a time for monitoring the changes happening in the body. It becomes a time of modulating, which means self-healing. Self-healing in two ways: by sending the commands to the body to heal itself, and along with that, just another aspect or expansion of that, that through the presence of a becalmed and unwrinkled mind, the prana warps are soothed out, the prana knots are loosened, so that the prana energy flows through the body, unhindered, unobstructed.

And, that then leads to quicker healing. And, in the process, I learn what I need to do with my body. And the third benefit I derive is a spiritual benefit. And, that is of having unimpeded, undistracted time for days upon days to remain in the self.

In the common languages of India, in all the languages of India, the word for someone in good health is sva-stha, and the word for health is svaasthya. Sva-staha: someone who is dwelling within sva, within one’s Self, within one’s own nature, and, then that condition, the abstract noun, which comes from that adjective is svaasthya, “health.”

So, for illness to be changed to a healthier condition, this mental condition of being sva-stha, dwelling within one’s Self, in one’s true nature, not the alterations of nature, dwelling within That. And, I would say a fourth benefit, which is incidental, which simply happens, is that one goes beyond the surface pains. One understands the nature of pain, without having to study basic neurology.

What exactly is physical pain? It’s simply a message from the outposts of the body, to the headquarters that there is an invasion, or there’s a breakdown, a breakdown caused by an external invasion, or breakdown caused by something internal to the body.

So, from that particular area of the outer wall of the fortress, the outer wall of the city, you send a message to the headquarters. And, the message goes in the form of chemical and electrical signals. Now, it is for the headquarters, for your consciousness principle to say “Message received. Thank you. Don’t keep sending me the same message over and over. Stop it!” That’s what we fail to do, when we just dwell on our pain. “Send me that message again. Come on, come on! Make it clearer, more intense.” We are absolutely in love with our pains.

The same applies to our emotional pains. We love to go alone and lie down in a corner, and bury our head in a pillow, and now: “What was that favorite emotional pain of mine? Let me capture it again. It’s so comforting!” So, once you have received the message, your brain and your mind have received the message, that’s it, cut it off!

I was sitting with a very wise disciple of Swami Rama – and, those who know my physical condition, that I have to take several injections during the day. I take it anywhere – and, I put the injection needle in and took it out and put it back, and he looked at me and said, “You give an injection like you are injecting somebody else’s body.” I have no emotional reaction to it.

So, one learns in this way, two things. One, that the Bhagavad Gita speaks of samaha sukha dukhayahu, being, “even-minded in pleasure and in pain,” so that, both the pleasures of the senses, and the pains of the senses and the body are perceived as happening only on the surface. They are happening only on the peripheries of your city.

You have a stomach problem. The rest of your body is just fine, enjoy that! You had a fractional heart failure, one part of the heart is not working. Well, 75 percent of your heart muscle is still working. Well, work with that. You have a pain in the fingertip. We run around to the whole world, “Mummy, mummy, it’s hurting, it’s hurting. Come, give me some sympathy.” That is not the way of a sadhaka, of one on a spiritual path.

So, on one hand, one learns to be even minded about these peripheral, (which to you at that time appear to be very deep), peripheral pleasures and pains. And, you learn to go deeper than that periphery. And, by going deeper than the periphery, that you avoid your consciousness crossing the paths of those messages, and you dwell in that part of pure consciousness, non-physical consciousness, non-physical mind, non-physical chetana, where these chemical and electrical messages do not penetrate.

So, your attitude towards pain undergoes a change. Your attitude towards illness undergoes a change. When I go and consult my doctors about my physical ailments, and I like to tell you, in 1992, my doctor’s in Germany said “if this man sits in an airplane, he’s dead”. Well, I take two or three round the world trips every year. Obviously, I am not dead yet!

By resorting to these interior strategies, by using illness as an opportunity for my spiritual development, and for improving my knowledge of the body, and my doctors tell me “We have nothing to tell you”. “We have nothing to advise you”. “You are already doing what we would have advised you to do”. I was in hospital, for my triple bypass in Germany, in 1991, and the doctors sent their diabetes expert, and they said “Well, how do you control your diabetes?”, and I told them what and what I did, and how I do it. And he said “Who taught you and where did you learn that? And I said, “No one taught me; I worked out the systems.” He said, “It’s not possible, these are our most latest, most up to date systems. Somebody must have taught you.” I showed them my graphs which I make for myself. So, now they have nothing to tell me. Saves me money! <laughs>.

I was giving somebody a foot massage. I charge $100 per hour for a foot massage, OK? And, they said, “I’d like to read the book where you learned the foot massage.”, and I said that I don’t read the book, I read the foot. I read my foot.

So, coming back, you rise above your, shall I say, “addiction” to pain. And, your addiction to pleasures, because the two are one and the same. They are addictions to body sensations. That is not to say you become insensitive. But, you are in control. Sometimes I teach people, people who are close to me have seen, how to use one sip of orange juice, for going into deep meditation. One sip of orange juice. One touch on the finger tip. With concentration, with total absorption. You people, you have never tasted orange juice. No one here has tasted orange juice. No one here has tasted milk. No one here has tasted anything. You don’t know how to enjoy your food, because you are not concentrated.

Emotional pains are caused by our attachment to our psychological conditioning. “I am an introvert. I have great difficulty in talking to people.” “I am an extrovert. If I don’t have somebody to talk to, I suffer greatly.” “I have a psychological identification with the small stature of my body. I’m small, and I’m scared of tall people.” I have seen a lot of tall people walk bent. I’ve seen this in all cultures. A lot of tall people walk bent, because they are so conscious of being tall.

These are all psychological conditionings. They are our mental habits. “The way my mother and father treated each other conditioned my mind. The way my mother and father treated me. What happened with me at that time has conditioned me. And, I am divided. On one hand. I do not like what they have done, when I am conscious of it. But, at the same time, I find myself doing the same thing to my children.”

These are all psychological handicaps. They prevent your progress; they prevent you from rising above your present spiritual station. So, a person who is on the spiritual path, who is a sadhaka, gradually, slowly, by constant self-observation, dis-identifies with his or her psychological conditioning.

Every event can have many interpretations. We give each event in our life, the kind of interpretation that we choose. And, thereby, either enjoy a pleasure, or we suffer a pain. I always tell people. This time, I haven’t read any of my poems to you. A person is in solitary confinement in a prison, being given bread and water. A person is in a solitary cell in a monastery, being given bread and water. What a pain! What a pleasure!

What’s the difference? Both are in the same six by six cell. Both are living on bread and water. For one, it is a punishment; for the other, it is the reward. If I lock you up in your room, and I say, “Now, you are not allowed to leave this room for seven days.” Well, there will be a rebellion. You’ll pack up from here in the next hour. Out you’ll go. You’ll call your own taxi.

Sometimes I stay in my room, in my cottage, two weeks at a time, month at a time, even here. Coming out of there is a chore. It’s a disturbance, copic(?) kind. [Note: the transciptionist could not make out the word where “copic” is written.]

People come here, they want to go here, they want to go there, they want to see this, they want to see that. They’ve come for sadhana. And, when the body is in one place, the mind is going here, the mind is going there.

A person is hungry because someone has deprived him of food. A person is hungry because he is taking a fast on a sacred day. What’s the difference? So, it’s the difference between the tiredness of a tourist and the tiredness of a pilgrim.

So, you reinterpret the events of your body, of your mind, of your relationships. So, nowadays, I see in the courts, I don’t know how it is in India, but I see it in the USA, and perhaps in Europe. The attorney argues in the court “Your lordship, this person has abused his children, because you see how his childhood history was, how badly he was abused.” And, that serves as an excuse. I don’t give a penny for that kind of a thought.

If someone, let us say your parents, have abused you, you have two options. You see, we work on the knowledge, on the basis of the knowledge, that Atman is the abode of freedom of will. It takes whichever option it wishes to take. That freedom of will is filtered into our mind frame. So, the mind also has the same freedom, to take this option, or to take that option. Whether I take to the solitary cell in a prison, or I take to the solitary cell in a monastery, makes no difference whatsoever.

So, “I was abused as a child”, you say. Well, you have two options. One is to choose to be vengeful. “Someday, I am going to take it out on somebody.” And, who do you take it out on? Your own children.

Or, if you have a sattvic mind, you take the option, and you say “My, it was so painful. I shall never inflict this on somebody else.”

That choice is entirely yours. How that particular event, or series of events conditions your mind, and what reaction it brings from you, that is where your freedom of will, freedom of mind, which is infused with the spiritual force, comes in.

Another thing that happens, along with that, is that you learn to take your psychological experiences, your mind experiences, your experiences of events, which, looked at in one way, would be difficult ones. You realize one principle. Since divinity is all pervading, all weakness (this I have said many times before), all weakness is a weakening of some strength. All weakness is a weakening of some strength!

All evil is a warping of some good, twisting of some good. A person who is a sadhaka, who wants to change his peer group and sit along with the saints, which is the only ambition worth having, worth cultivating, such a person looks at that, some source of dissatisfaction, some source of pain, mental one at this time, and finds “of which particular pleasure principle, of particular drop of ananda, divine cosmic bliss, is this a warping, is this a knotting”, and he unknots that.

So, someone who has missed the love of the mother in childhood can go around the rest of his life, crying, looking for women, if he is a man. Or, he can convert that pain into some creativity.

There’s an artist in India, a world famous artist, the top artists. For those who are not familiar with the constitution of India, the Indian parliament is two houses, the lower house, and the upper house. The upper house is elected from the lower house, where the lower house is elected direct from the people. And then there are some nominations to the upper house. And there are eight seats in the upper house of Indian parliament, which are assigned by the President. Someone who is a top poet, or top artist, or top scholar. And there are eight seats like that. This artist I am talking about, Husain, has been, I don’t know if he still is, a member of the upper house of parliament because of his achievements in art. He’s world famous.

And, he repeatedly, repeatedly in his paintings, brings out women, in all different forms of divinity. And, in some places, in his paintings, there is a figure of a woman, who is empty, just a figure, just a configuration. When he was small, in some village… You know sometimes women in India put their babies in a basket, and keep the basket on the back, tie it on the shoulder. The mother went out to some marketplace in some village, and this, while she was busy with something, this three-year-old climbed out of the basket and wandered off. And never saw his mother again. Got lost and never saw his mother again.

He says, in all of these female figures, “It’s my mother that I paint.” “Was it like this?” “Maybe I’ll paint her this way. Was she like that? Maybe I’ll paint her that way. And, sometimes, I’ve left just the configuration.”

That pain has been made into a source of his art, his creativity. Others spend their lifetimes crying over their orphan state, and don’t know what to do with it. Some choose to worship the mother divine, and then identify with the mother divine.

So the person on spiritual path rises above his psychological personality. This is the most important point. He does not remain confined to his psychological conditioning. And that is how his reaction changes.

Towards the same things that used to make him angry he changes his conditioning. And, what does he see when an angry person comes in his presence? He does not see it as that person attacking him. An angry person who is attacking you, he is not attacking you. You just happen to be by. You just happen to be there. It has nothing to do with you, unless you have really done something to offend. But, if you are really clear in your mind, if you know that you have done something to cause offense, then don’t react to anger with anger, but react with humility, and ask for forgiveness. Gently, lovingly, sincerely. Have that element of repentance in you. But, if you know that you have really caused no offense, and the person is unreasonably angry, please understand that the anger is not – very seldom is our anger about the particular event or about the particular person. Anger simply is. That’s all. From other sources, from other causes, built up from the way you have chosen to interpret your experiences from the very childhood. And, this particular event, and this particular person simply triggers that.

This has been explained in the Sutras, in chapter II. You can read my commentary on Sutra 4 of chapter II. “It was there in you, upon finding something to react to, you reacted.”

So, the angry person is suffering from some kind of pain, and he does not know how to overcome that pain, the pain expresses itself in the form of that anger. And, if you understand that, you will understand why your mother was unfair with you, why your father was getting angry so often. And, you will go back, and you will look for that pain. If that can be assuaged, fine. If it cannot be assuaged, then you have an understanding. And then, that suffering, caused by your father’s unjustified anger will not make you suffer.

One rises above one’s psychological conditioning by applying one’s spiritual insight. Then, the spiritual insight grows, and the same things that you used to get you angry, or defensive, or self-protective, those very situations will trigger a very different, and a very positive response from you. You see the person coming, and your first reaction to the angry person is “I wonder what the best way is to soothe him?”

You look at the person, and now that your mind is a sattvic mind, it can see through the person. You may not understand the details, you may not know all the details that has lead to his generally angry condition in his mind, but you would know how to soothe him, and he will go away smiling. And, you have one more notch in your series of conquests of the universe.

You know, the religion in India called “Jaina“?

Not many people know about this religion. They are not people who go out and propagate. It is the most ascetic religion in the world. And, one branch of that religion, the monks, stay absolutely naked; walk absolutely naked.

There was one monk who came to visit, and they do not ride vehicles. Because vehicles crush insects. So they walk. We had the presence of a monk of that tradition here in Rishikesh some years back, and I took the people from here, and I was a little bit apprehensive. The people here in India know about it, so it’s OK, but I was a little bit apprehensive with our American and European ladies, how they would react.

And, I asked them later, “Did you feel you were in the presence of a naked man?” And, they said “No.”. Because of that purity. To reach that position you have to go through so much sadhana! Even in the winter of Rishikesh, they are not allowed to cover themselves with a sheet in the night.

And, their title, for one who has reached perfection is “Jina”, which means “the conqueror”. That is the real conquest! Conquest of the lesser parts of our psychological personality makeup. And, changing your psychological personality so that it becomes something much more elevated, beyond your identification as a male, as a female, as a tall person, as a short person, as a fat person, as a lean person, as an ugly person, as a hansom person, as an attractive, charming young lady, or being rich, or being poor, or having had to struggle all your life. Or having been unfortunate in never having the mother’s love. Or having been betrayed, so often! The person who has made the conquest, it’s not as though those events are not there in his memory, but they are not the source of his reaction anymore. He is still tall, he hasn’t operated on his femur, his thigh, to make him shorter, or stretched himself from short into tall. But, he has changed his mind. That is the core of this phrase that we constantly pronounce in our fire offerings. Those who have participated in them namah, “not mine”.

Mr. Raghavan here recites these verses so beautifully, perhaps on Shiva Ratri night we’ll ask him to recite. We uncultured North Indians, we can’t recite with the correct intonation.

One last point about the marks of spiritual progress.

This last part is the most difficult that I have said: to rise above one’s own personality and change it. So that you are neither an introvert, nor an extrovert. Whatever is needed at any given time to help others, you are that! And, to someone who needs father, there is father. And someone who needs a mother, there is mother. And, then, someone who needs a slap, you can give a slap without incurring any bad karma. I assure you of that.

My master, Swami Rama of the Himalayas, so gentle, so forgiving, so loving. He’ll give you a hug, you just got lost in infinity. Those who have had his love will tell you. And, Savitri will tell you about the first time she got a hug. That we can’t, we can’t match that!

Such infinity in that pure love he would confer on you. And, one glare purified you immediately. Made you realize something. Two men walked into the Himalayan Institute. I don’t know how many of you were there in those days. I only heard about it. Two men walked in there, thinking there are lots of single women living in the area, and they started bothering the receptionist. She was called Kamala and said “go and tell Swami Rama”, and he came down.

Now, he had this ability to look short or tall, or this way or that way. And he was a Kung Fu master, among other things. Let Ingo tell you about that. With one flick he threw Ingo on that sidewalk there.

And, so he came down looking tall like a mountain, and held the two together by the neck and hit their two heads together and threw them out. And, then walks away as though nothing happened.

The sutra, chapter 4, sutra 7. “The yogi’s action is non-white and non-black”. That’s not in this volume. The Yogi’s action, the yogi’s karma, ashukla, akrishna, non-white, non-black.

Of others it is three kinds, white, black, and mixed. Mostly mixed.

When you are not acting from psychological conditioning, but from the essence as to what is needed for the most benefit, then you do not incur karma. Only the actions you perform from your psychological conditioning become karma. But, when you rise above your karmas, sanskaras, and vasanas, then you are free. Then you can walk down and hold two people by the necks, and hit their two heads together, and throw them out, and walk away as though nothing happened to something.

And, along with that comes the vow of Boddhisattva. In my own life, that vow has played the most part. The vow of a Boddhisattva. You reach a point where there is not one single selfish thought. Where there is not one single thing that is just for one’s own pleasure or satisfaction. And, every thought, every sensation of your body, every movement, every act, every word, every tone, every glance is only for removing the pain and ignorance of others.

I never asked my guru for moksha, and I have no desire for moksha, liberation, not to be born again. My prayer is to be born again and again, as a liberated being.

I’ll read you two of my poems. They are not just poems, they are my real prayers. For myself, that is my prayer.

I seek liberation, because someone who is bound cannot liberate others. If my hands are tied, and there is a whole crowd around whose hands are tied, one of us has to say “come on, let me remove my bonds, so I can remove everyone else’s bonds and ropes.” That is the only reason for seeking moksha, not because you are seeking escape from your pains.

So that I may loosen my bonds, and since you have been working on them and working on them while others have been sitting there and saying “what can we do, we are tied, we are bound?”

And, you are now about at a point, maybe in this life, or maybe in the next life, your knots will open, and then you are free.

Then what? You walk away? People ask yogis, spiritual teachers, “Why do you work so hard?” “Swami, you are not well, why don’t you stop?” It just doesn’t occur, the thought doesn’t occur. Your baby is crying, you are a mother, you are sleeping. The baby is sick. Does anyone ever say “Why don’t you go to sleep?” A person who is making spiritual progress becomes the mother to the whole universe, and sees everyone crying in pain. There’s no time to sleep.

That is the vow of a Boddhisattva. There are, in the Buddhist tradition, names of Boddhisattvas who have chosen to live in Hell. They have the freedom to choose Heaven or Hell. They have chosen to live in Hell, to soothe the pains of those who are there involuntarily, as the result of their actions. I don’t know if there is a place called Hell. That’s also a condition of cosmic mind.

This little piece was written back in 1954, in London. It was originally written in Hindi, and later was translated. By the way, The Light of 10,000 Suns now has an Indian edition, so it’s not as expensive as it once was, available in India.

Many have asked for the joy of a moment in the chambers of heavenly maidens, and many have prayed for the privilege of sipping but a drop of the drink of immortals. They have given up their comforts, forsaken their gardens, and smeared their limbs with the ashes of penance today, hoping for a morrow of reclining under the shades of the Parijata, the heavenly tree, and of weaving a garment of dreaming moments.

But, I, I shall not beg for those heavenly fruits when the day of my release comes. I am saving up my joys, so that I may carry a coffer full of them to scatter among those who have known none.

And, I am filling up my pouch with the healing breezes of ungiven love, so that I may release them, to soothe the wounds of those who endure the endless tortures of the lower world.

Send me not to heaven when I take leave of my leaking shelter of a hermit.

Oh guardian of the scales of my action, write not many good deeds of my name in the book of memory, for I wish not to have my salty tears of compassion choked to death by the laughter of a sweet flowered youth of paradise.

If you wish to grant me a favor, command thy messengers to Hell, where I may change the cries of piercing agonies into happy smiles.

That is the ambition of a person on the spiritual path. There is another one, a long one, “Songs of Silent Worship”. I’ve read it many times. I’ll only read one paragraph from it.

God grant me this wish, that I enroll as a soldier in some tyrant’s army. He gives an order to start a march of conquest. I salute him, along with the rest of soldiers company. His glance accidentally falling on me, a white dove flutters in his heart. He calls a halt to the march and sends a message of peace to the weak neighbor land. Never knowing me as the cause, he disbands all his battalions, and I enroll in another tyrant’s army. Oh God, may it be so.

Then, there is this paragraph:

God, grant me this wish, may I become flesh in endless rebirths, only in the most difficult of centuries. And I, unknown, ease the century into a time of comfort, then ease myself out of my flesh, to dwell in you, until the next difficult times. Oh God, may it be so.

Enough for today. I promise one lecture on the sutras, OK?

You can take these cassettes, and listen to them back home, make notes for yourself. They will serve you as a philosophy for your personal life. And, that is the purpose of these. They are not given for the sake of a lecture.

Maybe someone can translate then in Hindi. I need Hindi translators here. Anyone who is good at translating from English to Hindi, I can use.

We have. Tomorrow we have announced a lecture for the public, so it will be more general. And, day after tomorrow, is Shiva Ratri? On the twelfth is the night.

What is this Shiva?

I would like to recommend one book to you. I have done this many times before. Especially for people from the West. It’s titled The Presence of Shiva, by a lady named Stella Kramrisch. ISBN 0-691-01930-4, Princeton Paperbacks. It’s more suitable for the Western mind, but English speaking people can read it. I don’t know if it’s available in India.

Stella Kramrisch was one of those very, very few Western academicians who lead a spiritual life and gave the tradition spiritual interpretation of the texts and the tradition, without loosing her academic position, but rather enhancing it. Must have required quite a magic to do that. It’s not easy to do that in the Western academic world. People like myself and people like Anne, we’re refugees from that world. We cannot do both.

She was an Austrian artist, a dancer. In Vienna, Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet, saw her, and invited her to India. She came to Tagore’s institution, “Shanti Niketan” and then came the war, and as a German she was caught here, in the sense of not being able to go back, which was just a godsend for her.

And, she has written some of the most authentic works on the spiritual meanings of Indian art. She was living in Calcutta, and had met a tantric master. Begged him to initiate [her]. “Yes, I’ll initiate you.” But, these masters, they have a very cruel habit of dangling the carrot in front of you for a very long time. “It’s yours, it’s yours, you can have it…” “Yes, you will have it. Here, take it.” So, “Yes, yes, I will initiate you, of course. Who else? You are very worthy.” And, you try to tie them down, and they disappear. You can’t tie them down. They are waiting for something. Something to happen inside of you. Till then, nothing.

So … I’ll tell you of my experience with my master. So, she waited.

I was very fortunate, I got everything the easy way actually. Everything from my master the very easy way. The first time I asked him, the first time that I met him, within a week or to I realized my guru had come, and I said “Swamiji, what do I have to do to be worthy of the adhikara of a yoga diksha?” “You are ready.” Then, I didn’t ask more. Thank God I had the good sense to not ask “so, when?”!

I didn’t ask. I just waited. Didn’t say anything. This conversation was sometime in the end of December, 1969, just a few months after I went to Mauritius the first time. Actually, the waves of Swami Rama had begun to touch my while I was in Mauritius. I still remember that trip. I cannot describe those waves. When we speak here, it is those waves that speak.

So, anyway, on the 25th of February I get a phone call. “I am calling for Swami Rama, and he is coming to initiate you tomorrow morning.”

“Where is he?”

“I am not at liberty to tell you.”

So, I received the easy way, I didn’t’ have to wait. Everything that has been given to me has been an act of infinite grace.

One day I was driving him in the city of Minneapolis, and I said “Swamiji, your disciples are back in the mountains, sitting there, doing their sadhana and doing all there… and here I am running around the cities, driving cars. When am I going to have my chance to go and do my sadhana?”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“Well, same reason you’re other disciples are doing it.”

He says, “I’ve done it all for you. I have already [this was in 1971] transferred you the fruit of 10,000 gayatris. Did you not feel it?”

I said “Yes”

“So, what are you complaining about?”

So, then I stopped asking. He said, “This is our tradition. I was taken through a lot of hard times by my master”. “It’s a tradition that the next one gets the easy way, and the following one gets the hard way. The one you will give to, you will really give them a hard time.”

Me, give somebody a hard time? I am now learning. What I am learning now is how to give a hard time to my students. That is the next step in my sadhana. I learned to give smiles, now I have to learn to give slaps. That’s very hard.

So, Stella Kramrish. So, one morning the master knocks at her door, and says “Come with me.” You don’t ask where. She picks herself up and walks behind him, through the streets here, there, wherever. I don’t remember the exact which one, which cremation ground. I don’t know if you people have been to an Indian cremation ground. If not, it’s an experience. Where we put logs of wood, and we put the body, and cover it with logs, some sandalwoods, some ghee, some fragrant herbs, camphor, and set it alight. And, you see the logs burning.

So, he took her to a cremation ground, where he had this funeral pyre ready. Logs lying ready for burning somebody. So he says, “Climb up”. So, she climbs up. “Sit down”, so she sits down. “Go into meditation”. And, he lit the pyre. And, the flames began to rise, and she sat, unflinching she sat. And so, “Alright, give me your hand, come down. I’ll initiate you.”

So, what she has written is from that personal experience. So, The Presence of Shiva is the best book for a Westerner to understand what this concept of Shiva is.

Simply, for those on the path of Yoga, the divinity meditating within you is named “Shiva”. The divinity that is in the state of meditation, in you, at all times. Sitting on the mount Kailasa, is Shiva. And, that’s why we sing “Shivo’ham, Shivo’ham”, “I am Shiva.”

So, Shiva Ratri the Shiva night is the night of worship of that aspect of God, that aspect of divinity. Pandit Dabral will instruct you. We will have worship here, 6:00-9:00 here, and then we will move to Sadhaka Grama, and we will have worship there. Better take a little sleep during the day because the way the Indian time divisions divide the day and the night, it’s divided into “praharas”. Three hour watches, as it were. There’s a worship, four times, at three hour intervals. And, people sit, and keep the vigil, all night, recite, chant, meditate. And, normally, have a very, very good time. So, we’ll have the Shiva Ratri celibration.

Many people fast until the next mornings worship, but we’ll not enforce that. You’re not used to it, and it becomes sort of a 24 hour fast. Don’t force your body. Do take a little sleep during the day.

 

Dear Million-string Harp,

Each day the sun is born a new

Each soul has a new dawn upon waking from sleep

Each mind is born to new realities every moment

Each turning of the atom is an infinite span in which

your consciousness has taken births as many times as

your atoms have turned in all bodies of all your incarnations – and mine.

All this truth came bubbling, gurgling, spilling, streaming, flooding my heart and mind as I received your ‘happy birthday’ wishes for me.

Each time a Lily withers, drops, mingles with dust and is re-born, all the leaves of the forests all sing to her a ‘happy birthday’ ——–so have you, a beautiful phenomenon of Nature, sung to me.

And all the Ashramites gathered in my meditation room upstairs reciting ‘tryambakam…amrtaat’ ‘tryambakam…amrtaat’ ‘tryambakam…amrtaat’

and the fruits I shared around to all afterwards

were fruits that all my friends’ wishes have borne for me in the 77 years and nine months of the current body.

Would that I could remember here in my autumn the names of all those en-formed amities I have been loved by in these 28375 days, but I will remember yours fondly

because you have reminded me of Lilies’ recurrent re-births, adding beauty to my heart and mind and balm to whatever might ever ail me.

May each day, too, be a happy birthday to you in which ever new melodies of the music of wisdom are born again and again  —  in you who are one of the harps angels hold to their bosoms and play the Vedic hymns on into the rishi ears.

May you celebrate your own birthdays with you hearing you who are eternal and uncountable melody-lilies.

Swami Veda Bharati

Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama

Rishikesh

24th March 2010

I have some spiritual advice for this group also. Would you like me to give it? I’ll give the advice only if there are enough people to follow it – or even if there is one person to follow it all the way through. There are in all disciplines little practices which help you gauge the depth of your other practices. I’ll give you some of these very simple things.

One: Take half a day of total silence every week. Total silence means also mental silence. Half a day of silence a week.

Two: intentionally skipping a meal once a week – not for pregnant women. Intentionally skipping. not because you are too busy, but doing it on a pre-planned basis.

Each one of these things are done on a pre-planned basis, not because of external circumstances. When you do it because of external circumstances, that is like giving a donation to The Meditation Center to get a tax deduction – which is not a donation; it is a convenience. See. So, half a day of silence once a week, and skipping one meal once a week.

Three: setting for yourself a special time once a week dedicated to extra meditation or japa.

Four: omitting from your life some one item of comfort. It could be a soft bed. It could be a pillow. It could be a plate – anything. Not omitting something without which would make you sick, but omitting something that you can omit, that you can leave out. So omitting from your life some one source of comfort, some one item of comfort.

Five: Set at least one night in the week when you definitely will not have sexual thought. Wednesday night is good for that because Thursday morning you come here for meditation – those who do. And I didn’t say “sex,” I said sexual thought.

Six: Once a month, take a day of only fruits and juices.

Seven: Check on your habits, and drop one unnecessary habit by a firm resolve. And when you no longer have that habit, then go back to it. That way you will not become a fanatic. I did that with coffee. I like coffee. I don’t like tea. One morning suddenly the ashram people said, “No coffee? Today you didn’t ask for coffee.” I said, “No, I don’t need it.” Now I take it, or don’t take it; it doesn’t matter. So take one habit and drop it. Watch yourself for a while, and then go back to it without a habit. It could be a habit of speech. It could be a certain manner. It could be a habit of thought. It could be a certain type of emotional reaction that you are used to – any kind.

Eight: Resolve for one year to learn to control one of your emotions, and watch it with care. For that one year you work on that one, and after you have succeeded, go back to it as a tool. After you have succeeded in controlling it, then go back to it as a tool which is under your control. Well, if it’s really a bad habit, then you have no reason to go back to it. But no habit is altogether bad. Let us say anger, you see. You stop learning to bite, but you don’t stop hissing – if you are a snake. You know the story?

Once upon a time there was a snake, and the snake used to go around biting everybody in the village. So one great saint, sadhu, yogi, came wandering into the village as they do and saw that everybody very morose and worried and so on. He said, “What’s the matter?” They said, “Sir, we have a snake in this village who goes about biting everybody in the night.” So the saint said, “Oh, that’s nothing. That’s alright; we’ll take care of that.” So by his mental power he called the snake. In India they have special mantras by which snake poison is controlled. It is so. It’s known.

So he called the snake up and petted the snake on the head and said, “Snake, it’s no good. You shouldn’t bite” – like St. Francis telling the wolf. So the snake went his way and bit no one.

The saint was returning back to his ashram after nine months, and this time this miserable looking creature of a snake comes crawling up to the saint’s feet. And the saint sees his body, bruised and broken and bleeding, and he says, “Snake, what happened?” He said, “Sir, what happened? I took your advice and that’s what happened, see. After you went away, everybody said, ‘This snake doesn’t bite.’ So all the little kids of the street, they pick me up and they wrap me around their necks, and they pull me, and they make little balls of me, and throw me against the walls. And this is what you have done to me.” So the saint said, “What did I do? What did I tell you?” He said, “You told me not to bite, so I don’t bite anymore.” “So,” the saint said, “but Snake, did I ever tell you not to hiss?”

So you watch your habits.

Nine: Keep a diary. Now there are three kinds of diaries people keep:

1. Diaries of events relating to others. Some people keep those kinds of diaries: “Someone did this today.” “Someone did that today,” and “The roses are blooming, nice.” It’s fine. Those diaries-of-interest are of interest to your great grandchildren once they get into the attic after many, many, many years – “Hey, grandmother’s diary! Let’s see what she did.” “Oh, the roses were blooming nice.” “They are blooming nice even now.”

2. The second type of diaries people keep are the diaries of their emotions, those are the diaries of lonely people. How I felt, how I felt miserable: “Dear Diary, I have no one to talk to, so I talk to you, dear Diary.” “When is my misery going to end?” “Today for a change, I felt a slight happiness, but it wasn’t long lasting.”

[Responding to a comment.] Yes, those are also the patients of Dr. Rudolph Ballentine. Those diaries are advised to be kept for therapeutic value – that you write them down and then destroy them. Those are letters written to yourself, to bring out your emotions and say, “Okay here.” I have been talking about that kind of diary in the psychology course that I’ve started.

3. Then there is a third kind of diary, and that is the diary of a sadhaka, a spiritual aspirant. Do you know this word sadhaka? A sadhaka is one who is practicing sadhana. And one who has finished practicing sadhana becomes a siddha, a master. So a sadhaka is an aspiring practitioner of sadhana, an intense devoted practice of anything. It could be sadhana of archery. It could be the sadhana of a mantra. A sadhaka is one who is aspiring to perfect it and is putting his whole being into it. And when he has done it, then he is a siddha, an accomplished, adept, a master. So the third kind of diary is the diary of a sadhaka. And the diary of a sadhaka is a careful record of his progress, his failures and his successes in his spiritual and emotional progress. It is called the diary of introspection. It is called the diary of self-examination. And every person who has the long range goal of self-realization and self-improvement should keep such a diary. And you watch yourself, and you learn to recognize all the hidden motivations – where your ego is active, where you did something good apparently outwardly, completely unselfishly, but where deep in your mind you know it did not bring the desired result, it did not bring a positive response because somewhere in your mind there was a hidden motive. Or that you had resolved to do something or that you had resolved to overcome a certain habit, but here you have not succeeded.

From time to time you may declare your weaknesses to others. As a result, when you write your diary, you try to find your own ways of how you may improve. One of the ways is to expose your weaknesses deliberately to others, to declare your weaknesses deliberately to others. They will take advantage of it. You do that with that knowledge, and you leave yourself defenseless. That is one of the ways of karmic expiation.

There are many other ways. I have a friend, a very, very close friend. He’s just like a brother. I have no brother, but from my teenage years he has been like a brother to me – by only one year’s difference of age. We are completely opposite in temperament, but are still very fast friends. He is a total atheist, and I am totally devoted to God, but we are still the closest friends That’s possible in the world because he is completely honest – and atheists are the most honest people I have ever met in my life. I have great respect for an atheist. Not for an agnostic. For an atheist I have a great respect, and I have always had that respect – and then I heard my Master say that too. He said, “I have great respect for an atheist. He has some firm belief and is honest about it.” And they are! Atheists in their personal lives are very honest people.

So anyway, you know every language has curse words. Now in India an owl, unlike in the west, is regarded as a symbol of foolishness because he can’t see in the light. The Goddess of Wealth is said to have the vehicle called the owl – She can’t see whom she goes to, deserving or undeserving. So to call somebody “the son of an owl,” would be like you’d like to call somebody “the son of a donkey” or something here.

So my friend, this young man formed the habit of just using this curse word, “son of an owl” – “Where is the tape recorder? Son-of-an-owl!” And he and I used to speak from the same platform. He used to live in a building much larger than this, which was a place of worship. And one day in the middle of a lecture he used that word, and everybody was shocked! And he came upstairs, and I said, “What are you doing? Why don’t’ you drop this habit?”

So he used to write the diary too, and I used to write my diary also. I wrote a regular diary up to the age of twenty-three, but then after that, I didn’t feel the need for it. So he said, “Alright, I’m going to drop this habit. And every time this word comes out of my mouth I’m going to slap myself.” So he watched himself carefully, and next time, next Sunday he sits down on that stage and he is giving a lecture, and in the middle of the lecture he says “son of an owl,” and he suddenly slaps himself, and everybody looked. “What happened?” But he never used that word after that. So there are all sorts of ways. If you have basic humility, you have no problem overcoming your bad habits or your ego. You always learn to compensate for your ego by some special honest act of humility and modesty.

Ten: japa. There is nothing like japa – and people are avoiding japa. People are avoiding to undertake the 125,000 repetitions of the mantra. They are avoiding it. They have no knowledge of their own strength. They have no recognition of their own strength. They are avoiding it – not aspiring for that which will come after. If you cannot undertake 125,000 initially, start with 11,000, or 15,000, or 21,000, or 25,000, or 27,000, or 33,000 or 41,000, or 51,000. Give yourself a chance. Set a date, make a resolve, take a good morning shower, practice the previous night celibacy, and say to yourself truthfully, “For my purification and for the pleasure of my guru, seeking no other benefits, I undertake this resolve.” And when you have completed that resolve, you will find that “Hey, I did it, and it was good, and I have completed it.” Give yourself a little time, and then undertake a bigger resolve. Go to it slowly if you don’t want to jump at it.

You will come across rebellions of the mind at different stages of the resolve to do japa. You will come across these rebellions of the mind – all kinds of emotions arising, all kinds of thoughts arising, the desire to get up. If you have undertaken japa of 11,000, by the time you have completed 1,000, you will say, “Ah well, it’s not doing me any good. How much of the mala is left?”

Treat your mind like a child that is having a tantrum. People ask me at times what should we do to bring forth a beautiful, aspiring, spiritually developing child? For pregnant mothers, all the other exercises are very difficult, but japa, japa, japa – see? My mother, when I was expected, did fifty malas of Gayatri every day.

So japa is the secret of purity. Japa is the secret of aspiration. Leave out all other techniques. Do nothing. No relaxations are necessary. No concentrations are necessary. Perfect your japa and you’ve got everything, you see. All the other things should be helpful, but japa is the core. And you perfect your japa to a degree where each heartbeat is mantra. I counted this way for five minutes tonight. I just counted my heartbeats – each heartbeat a mantra, each heartbeat a mantra. When you have done five minutes of that unbroken mantra with the heartbeat, you have done five times 72 repetitions of your mantra. So, I said, “Everyone here has done over 450 repetitions, see. So, do it with a resolve, do it with an undertaking.

You can count this as the eleventh step or you can count this as the first step, with all the rest after – you do them with a resolve declared to yourself beforehand, not at random, because at random you will not follow through. It will not give you recognition of your strength. Do you follow? And that is one thing. Set the date, set the time. You understand? Set the date, set the time, and keep to it. On the other hand, don’t’ be a fanatic. But on the other hand, don’t try to find excuses for your laziness.

So there is a careful balance of personality. When your child is falling down the steps, are you sitting doing japa?! Your husband has driven for twelve hours coming from out of town. He’s hungry and tired, and you are sitting doing your japa?!

So, balance it. Watch it. A little failure is not bad. Remember that. A little failure is not bad. And only one who can break a rule gracefully can observe the rule gracefully. Only someone who can break a rule gracefully can observe the rule gracefully. Otherwise you become guilt-ridden. That is always a problem. And you will have all these ten rules in front of you, and then you will say, “Panditji told me to do this!” – and all the harm that comes from fanaticism, all the harm that comes from legalism will come to you. Do you follow? So don’t do it with fanaticism, don’t do it with guilt, don’t do it with legalism, but do it.

Do you want me to give you some more general thoughts in life? These things I have said before, but I’ll repeat for you.

[A question is asked.] Okay, what’s the breakdown on 125,000? How many a day? Watch your capacity. You decide how long, how many months you want to take. You sit down and do a mala and see how long it takes you.

Now you might want to watch the mala on three different levels. You do a mala with the breath. Exhale the mantra, inhale the mantra, and watch how long that takes. Then you do a mala with the ordinary repetition that you do; many people do it somewhere between the mouth and the mind. Do it on that level. Then try doing it at the deepest possible level where mantra and the heartbeat are one, mantra and the pulse beat are one. Work out how long it takes you to do the mala at all those three levels. And then you decide at which level it is most convenient for you and how much time you have available every day. So if you have one hour available and it takes you fifteen minutes to do a mala with the breath, you are only able to do four malas a day. See. On the other hand, with the heartbeat or something, it takes you – what? – one and a half minutes to do a mala? So you decide how much time you have available every day, and then how many months it will take you to do. Alright? Traditionally we start these kinds of good observances on Mondays or Thursdays, the day of the Moon or the day of Jupiter.

[A question is asked.] Okay, how do you count 125,000? You count one mala as one hundred, and forget the eight. Those eight you give away because you are likely to skip a bead somewhere … at least one. The mind wanders off. Before you know, eight or ten repetitions are gone, and you haven’t repeated the mantra, you’ve only moved your hand. See? So, give away eight. At least eight you just don’t count.

[A question is asked.] Okay, the question asked is this: “Sometimes the repetition gets so fast that the hand won’t move fast enough; so can we count three or four repetitions for one bead?” The answer for a very good reason is “No,” although at times everyone goes to a finer level in the mind where the hand cannot move fast enough. Those occasions are few and far between, or at least are not regular. And what we do – and I’m saying this from experience. I had this problem myself at a certain time, and then I found that it was best if I did it on a slightly slower speed and firmed that up and made that my plateau so that that would become absolutely natural. See? Later on someday you will rise from that plateau to a higher ground. So, firm that up. It’s fine! It’s good to do it that way.

Now, do not count the malas that you do while traveling around, sitting around doing other things. When you do japa as part of the resolve, you do it sitting down at a fixed time and a fixed place. Okay?

Now you should remember also that you should not go home tonight and suddenly sit down and say, “I resolve, number one this, number two this, number three that, number four, number five, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, resolves all at once,” and next Thursday, next Wednesday morning you say, “I haven’t been able to keep that up. I don’t think I’ll go to The Meditation Center this Thursday night.” It’s unfair to you. Start with something that you can easily handle. Put this in the first page of your diary: You may do it one at a time – even one resolve a year.” Firm that one up, complete that, perfect that – See? – and when you find that you are able to handle more, then you add. Don’t over extend your psychic strength, don’t over extend your psychological power; work slowly. Whatever you choose to work with, work with that perfectly. And once again I’ll repeat, a little failure is not bad. Let it go. Give that one away too, gracefully give it away. But don’t keep giving it away, you know; keep coming back to the right thing.

There are other things also which are not part of this kind of a discipline, but the beauty of a spiritual person lives in the joy from within here. Just surging joy, happiness for no reason whatsoever. His happiness does not seek a reason. Just be happy here, arise from in here inside. “What are you happy about?” What do you mean? If I had to have something to be happy about, I would never be happy because there’s always something missing. Happiness is from in here. It’s a joy, a surging joy – ananda, which has no antonym. There’s no reason at all in the world to be unhappy. The problems you have those are over there in the outside world; handle them there. Don’t bring them in here. And one more principle: this is happiness here; this is just surging joy from the heart for no reason whatsoever. You see? Laugh! Sing!

And always try to find opportunities to make yourself small. Always try to find opportunities to make yourself small before others in humility, mental humility – not always trying to assert your bigness, not always trying to assert your thought that “I am right!” Say, “I’m wrong.” Then you will grow. “Yes, I’m wrong, my mistake, my fault. Yes, my fault.” And sometimes say this even if it is not your fault.

There is the story of an Indian king, a mogul king who was one of those people who never took anything for himself from the treasury. So, even though he ruled over a whole empire, he made his living by copying manuscripts. In those days there was no printing press, so books were just manuscripts. And so you used all the art of calligraphy to copy them.

And one day he was sitting in the court and a great scholar came. And the great scholar came and picked up the book he was writing in. You know, people have a habit of coming in and just picking up something on your table and looking – can’t keep their hands to themselves. So he started looking and said, “Oh, excuse me, Sir, this passage here. It shouldn’t be this way; it should be this way.”

So the king picked up the correcting fluid that they used at that time – that was very essential for calligraphy – and he corrected the passage.

And the scholar was very happy – he has corrected the king! The scholar went his way, and the king picked up the book, put the correcting fluid there, and replaced the scholar’s correction with the original.

Doing that didn’t harm him any – and it made somebody else happy. That is a fine art. So find the opportunities of making yourself small provided thereby you are not going to do any harm to anyone.

Or you can do something philanthropic or something that is for the good of others. See. Another principle is give away ten percent of your time, or wealth, or resources, or strength, or money, or words, or something – ten percent, give it away. Give it away in such a manner that you derive no income tax deductions from it. That alone is giving. The rest is not giving. Do you understand? And I don’t mean give money to The Meditation Center. But give somewhere.

Another principle: if someone is present, do not eat without offering food, even if you have to live on half of what you need. Do not eat if someone is present. Do not eat without offering, sharing beforehand – or, if someone is likely to be there, save some food for him or her. And then leave it and be happy – and forget it. Do you follow? Be happy about it and forget it. Forget that you did it. Forget that you didn’t eat enough because you have to leave food for somebody else. This also applies to other things of comfort in your life. You have only one comfortable mattress and the other is a lumpy one. Use the lumpy one for yourself, and give the comfortable one to the other person, and you will be happy. And don’t make the other person feel that you did it. And you can work out other similar principles. Watch around you. What needs to be done for someone? Forget about this: “My growth, my knowledge, my improvement, my success.”

Okay, we didn’t go into deep Vedanta philosophy. I had promised to teach you various techniques of the art and science of contemplation. Shall we postpone that for the next time? This is not time wasted, is it? And whatever we have done here, watch. Do it slowly. Absorb it. Assimilate it. Understand the reasons for it, and then move towards it.

And don’t be afraid of discomfort and pain in life. Don’t be afraid of discomfort and pain. The majority of your emotional problems arise because you are running away from discomfort and pain. Face your discomforts fairly and squarely, and go through them. It’s like meeting a ghost at night. You know, people see a ghost – “Ghost! Ghost! A spirit!” – so they run. They turn their back, and they think the spirit is following them. But you go towards it, and all there is is some cloth hanging. So go towards it. Examine the cause of fear.

Fear is nothing but weakness in the energy-field called the mind. Do you understand what I am saying? Mind is an energy-field. When it is not tuned up, then it says, “I am not capable of handling this,” so I run away; I am afraid. So people are afraid of responsibility. People are afraid of taking the blame. People are afraid of failure. People are afraid of guilt. People are afraid of all kinds of imaginary things from others – all the paranoia!

People are afraid of death. You know I told you that I just understood, about two years ago, that there was a thing called a guilt complex. And this last week Wednesday I understood that there is such a thing as really fear of death. It was at this class that I just finished teaching at the Minneapolis Athletic Club. And a week before that, I just mentioned in passing that meditation is also like sleep, and that it is also like death. “Ah!” The reactions!!! I don’t know who was more shocked, I or they. I never realized that the word “death” could bring such a response. I suppose in a system of beliefs were there’s only one life, it must be a horrible thing to die – and it’s like people hide away from death. But how can you hide away from it? It’s there all the time. You are going towards it. Every minute that is passing you are going towards it. So people are afraid of death. They have all kinds of fears, imaginary fears.

When you have an object of fear, walk towards it. When you have a discomfort coming, walk towards it. Choose it with your own right hand, and juggle with it, and watch yourself juggling with it, and get the feel of it, and handle it. A conflict, a crisis, a difficulty, a difficulty with a relationship, a difficulty with a process – handle it, juggle it, go to it, examine it: “What is in it that is scaring me? What is in it that is frightening me.” Go and throw it away, and you will march happy. You’ll be surprised. Once you have handled this kind of discomfort or pain or conflict or difficulty in your life that you were going to run away from, once you’ve handled it, your expertise, your skill in handling those things increases. See. Next time another discomfort comes, another pain comes, you don’t run away from it. Now you have greater confidence, and you know you can handle it. See?

So consider these principles of life. Consider them, go over them in your mind over and over think about them. Really think about them. See what you can assimilate. Don’t leave it here – “Oh, I attended an initiate meeting, and it was a nice lecture.” That’s not the idea. Then there’s no point to giving all these lectures. Giving lectures – once I sat down to count all the lectures I’ve given in my life. If you count thirty five years, on the average of one lecture a day, what’s the use of all of those words, verbosity unless somebody picks up an idea and uses it. Okay?

I can’t suggest a book on this subject but consider, consider. You see this is karma yoga; this is the yoga of action. And pick a few things at a time

You don’t have to remember all the meditations conducted. But I will say do three things.

One is be regular with your meditations.

Two, is to watch – if you follow nothing else. No technique is necessary. No relaxations are necessary. They are useful. They are helpful. Do them. And don’t say tomorrow “Well, Panditji said not to do anymore relaxations.” That’s not what I am saying. But all the techniques come under one heading, and that is – watch. Learn to watch yourself. Watch. What are you watching now? What is more there to watch? What is there to watch? What is it you are not watching? Search out what you are not watching in yourself, find that. If you are watching your outer skin, are you also watching your blood flow? If you are watching your blood flow, are you also watching the state of your skeleton? If you are watching the state of your skeleton, are you also watching the state of your stomach? Are you watching your digestive tract? Are you watching the taste in your mouth? Are you watching the smell in your nostril? Are you watching the state of your eyeballs? Are you watching the brain, what is happening in the brain? Are you watching your diaphragm? There is always more to watch. This body is a galaxy. There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the galaxy. And some cells are dying. And some cells are being reborn … by billions right now at this moment. Watching is no easy matter.

So watch more and more and more. And that watching alone will take you to the mantra. When you are doing the mantra watch yourself doing it, watch your mind doing it. So do the japa. Let the japa come that’s the third thing. Do the japa. Let the japa come through that watchfulness. Okay! So just watch yourself.

And God bless you all. Thank you.

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Editor’s Note

A transcript from the Series: “Training on the Spiritual Path I,” The Meditation Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. 1976. This talk was given as Pandit Usharbudh Arya before Pandit Arya became Swami Veda Bharati.

To make inquiries about recordings of Swami Veda Bharati’s talks, contact Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust at info@yogapublications.org

Thank you to Michael Smith. We are also grateful to the members of the Transcription Team and the work they have been doing over the years.

A disciple waited on the guru for twelve long years but received no secret knowledge. Impatient, finally, he protested and threw a tantrum. The Guru agreed to teach him some serious and deep mystery.

One astrologically auspicious morning, the guru whispered into the disciple’s ear the mantra whereby the latter may call a giant to serve him on command. The disciple was overjoyed at having gained such power as a reward for his services to the Master. “But”, said the Master, “do not rush to use the mantra yet, not until I have taught you all the controls. Do promise”.

The disciple promised not to use the mantra until the Master gives his final consent. The Master said: “It can be very dangerous to use the mantra without the controls.”

But the disciple could not wait. As soon as the Master left his forest cottage on some errand, the disciple recited the mantra and evoked the giant’s promised presence.

The giant appeared and bowed deeply, “I am at your command, my Master” – said the giant.

The disciple was ever so elated. “Controls-shuntrols, ungh! What danger? The giant is under my command” – thought the disciple.

The disciple ordered the giant to take him on his shoulder and transport him in a few strides to his village home. The giant obeyed.

Soon a series of commands followed. Cook my food; serve the food. Clean up my house and garden. The giant obeyed the commands in short order.

Finally, the disciple ordered his bed made which was done in a few seconds flat. “Well, it has been quite a day, giant; I am tired and will rest. Why don’t you, too, take some rest now?” – suggested the errant disciple.

“What, Master? Me? Rest? I don’t rest. I exist only to carry out my master’s tasks,” – replied the giant.

“Well, I will, however, rest; you are free for a while” – the disciple told the giant.

“But,” said the giant, “your Master must have told you the terms on which I am called to serve one who evokes my mantra. I have to be kept constantly occupied with my master’s chores. Whenever I have nothing to do, I get dreadfully hungry and usually eat my master. Sorry, master, I cannot help it. That is how the Nature has made me. In fact, I am now getting very very hungry and must eat you”.

At that, the disciple panicked. Imagine the scene. The disciple running towards his master’s hut and the giant confidently striding behind with his mouth wide open to swallow the disciple.

“Help, help, Master!” – shouted the disciple as he approached the Master’s hut.

The master came out and saw what was happening.

“Hmm! So you did do what I forbade !” – the Master scolded.

“I am so sorry, Master. Forgive me this once. I will implicitly obey you in the future. Just save me this once, please!”, and he fell at the Master’s feet.

The Master relented; whispered another secret into the disciple’s ear. The latter beamed. Turned around and told the giant, “Giant, I do have something for you to do”.

The giant bowed deeply again. “Thank you, master; that is all I wanted. I did not mean any harm, really”.

Well, a second time, the disciple was transported to his village home on the giant’s shoulder.

“Okay, Giant, go into the forest, strip the tallest and sturdiest tree of all leaves and branches and bring me the post.” The giant obeyed and was back in just a short while, lightly lugging the heaviest of the smooth logs he could create.

“Fine, Giant, dig a hole in the ground and set this tree trunk therein to be firm and steady”. The giant did so in a few seconds.

“Okay. Shake it to see if it is truly firm and unshakeable”. The giant pushed against the post a few times and found it to be very firm.

“Right, now bring the strongest sturdiest rope you can make or find.” The giant produced one.

“Tie it to the top of the trunk and do fasten it well.” The giant obeyed.

“Hold the lower end of the rope” – the giant held it.

“Now climb up”. The giant climbed up.

“Now, come down” – the giant came down.
“Up again,” – the giant went up.

“Down again” – the giant came down.

“Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down! Keep doing so until I have something else for you to do.”

So did the disciple bring the giant under control.

Mind is the giant. It will eat us if we give it no commands.

The spine is the tree trunk firmly placed in a meditation posture.

The breath is the rope.

The mind and the breath ascending and descending along the path of the kundalini in the spine is the meditation exercise that brings the mind-giant under full control.

That is one truth of the story. The other is: do not be in a rush to use half-baked spiritual powers or they will destroy you.

2011

abhayaṃ naḥ karaty antarikṣam abhayaṃ
dyāvā-pṛthivī ubhe ime
abhayaṃ paścād abhayaṃ purastāduttarād
udharād abhayaṃ no astu
abhayaṃ mitrād abhayaṃ amitrād
abhayaṃ jñātād abhayaṃ parokṣāt
abhayaṃ naktam abhayaṃ divā naḥ
sarvā āśā mama mitraṃ bhavantu
oṃ
dṛte dṛṃha mā mitrasya mā cakṣuṣā
sarvāṇi bhūtāni samīkṣantāṁ
mitrasyāhaṃ cakṣuṣā sarvāṇi bhūtāni samīkṣe
mitrasya cakṣuṣā samīkṣāmahe
oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ

Abhayaṃ means no fear because there is no danger. If all are friends to me and I am friends to all, from whom have I any danger? Whom may I have cause to fear?

May the sky grant us abhayaṃ.

May the heaven and earth both grant us abhayaṃ.

May I have abhayaṃ from behind.

Abhayaṃ from the front.

From above and below, may there be abhayaṃ for us.

Abhayaṃ from the friend,

Abhayaṃ from the foe.

Abhayaṃ from what is known to me.

Abhayaṃ from what is beyond the eyes.

Abhayaṃ in the night.  Abhayaṃ in the day.

May all directions, all quarters, be friends unto me.

O Divine Mother, upholder of the universe, grant me strength that I may see all beings with the eyes of a friend.
May all beings look at me with the eyes of a friend.

May they all, all of us living beings, look at each other with the eyes of a friend.

For when all is friend, there is abhayaṃ.

Om.  Peace. Peace. Peace.

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Editor’s Note

(Audio can be downloaded here approximately 3.6 mb)