As a student it is your duty to acquire knowledge and wisdom. It’s your duty to do sadhana. It is your duty to undertake meditation. Because when you become masters, when you have become well-educated, you can educate others also. You can definitely help others. That is the path of the dharma, your duty. So when you have become an enlightened soul, then you can definitely help others. But remember, undertaking meditation is certainly not selfishness. Some people have asked me also, whether meditation is hypnotizing oneself –  “Is it not that you are going to hypnotize your own self ? ” I say certainly it is not so. Your mind’s imagination is bondage. You have hypnotized yourself by thinking, defining everything as the mind has willed it. Thus you have hypnotized yourself. So, the world is sitting in your mind. By meditating you are trying to liberate yourself. In fact, if you meditate perfectly, you will be liberating yourself from the hypnotizing efforts of your mental imaginations.

Every imagination of the mind is bondage – illusion. Because the mind recognizes, it analyzes, it judges, it comes to a conclusion, and that thing sits in the mind. Then the mind thinks that as the real one. But the truth can be something else. That’s why in meditation when you are initiated, you are told not to imagine anything. The truth can be something else. And that is also the reason, when many people keep asking me, “I have been meditating for so many years and I have not yet obtained any experience. I have not obtained any lights.” Nothing is required. Experiences means, not that you are going to have visions, not that you are going to have lights or currents. The actual experience in meditation is that, if a mind shall start losing all the imaginations, it shall stop absorbing the worldly things from the universe.

You see it is, after all, the brain that has given you the consciousness of this universe. ‘You’ means – when I address you as ‘You’ – it is Soul, you the Immortal Soul. The brain is an organ in this body. It is in touch with the universe through the nervous system and sensory organs – the eyes, nose, ears, touch, smell, taste, and so on. Through this process, the brain receives all the messages, and vice versa. It orders back. During this process, the brain reflects. When it reflects and it is active, the mind is attracted to the brain. The mind is your conscious energy, the soul’s consciousness. The mind gets applied on the brain and the brain, in turn, gets activated more and more. So in the process, a type of circling takes place, just like a hen coming out of an egg and the egg coming out of the hen. The circle goes on, goes on and a never-ending illusory process takes place. So the mind catches the illusiory reflections of the brain, and in the process, it takes the shape of the same imaginations and it runs and runs.

It is just like this – You are watching a movie; biologically, technically, in any way, you are not at all involved with the movie. It’s only a cinema that’s going on, on the screen. You are watching. But gradually as you go on watching, your concentration gets sucked into it. Thus your mind, your consciousness, also gets sucked into it and you start imagining yourself in the movie. You start imagining all the happiness and unhappiness, everything that happens in the movie, as your own. Gradually you forget that you have been watching a movie. You experience everything and you start thinking that you are experiencing everything. Thus an illusion starts and you forget. A long illusion starts. In the same way, mysteriously and peculiarly, the soul’s consciousness, after watching the movie of the cinema, has gotten involved mentally.

Well it is ultimately a mystery, whether the hen came first or the egg came first, whether the brain got wired up like this by the energy of the Divine. This you experience only in Samadhi, that everything came from the Divine – the Ultimate Truth that simply exists as an all-pervading Spirit, the energetic, Supreme Consciousness. However, this cannot be simply explained and told through theories. This cannot be demonstrated. An individual will have to experience. So thus the mind gets hypnotized. Now the sadhana, meditation, is taught so that the soul can liberate itself from the effects of this illusion. Gradually you are taught to control the mind. See, in the technique of meditation, unknown to you, your consciousness is getting turned back to your own Self. Thus you are trying to go back to the Self.


excerpt from “My Master Taught Thus”


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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS



Question:

With this technique of meditation, will it take you through the 8 levels of jhana meditation?

Babaji:

With this technique, there is no need to worry about different stages. It is all taken care of automatically.


Question:

Can You give any clue or hint as to how we can recognize our thoughts as imaginations?

Babaji:

Whatever is in the mind is only imaginations. Because the mind exists only when it imagines! The pure existence of the Self is peaceful. Anything else is imaginations – because the mind cannot exist without thoughts. The only real experience is Peace. But the mind cannot remain even on one thought. It constantly recognizes and makes judgments. When all this stops, then you experience your Existence.


Question:

You told me to focus attention on the spontaneous image of light that used to come very often during meditation. Recently there is little or no image of light. It feels like the light was quite blissful and has calmed down and disappeared. It reminds me of the change from piti (a thrilling sort of rapture) to sukha (a more peaceful bliss) from the 2nd to the 3rd jhanas. When there is no light or anything much else, what should I focus on?

Babaji:

It is fine if the image of light no longer appears, just focus on the Consciousness of Existence. If you just keep looking the front portion or, if possible, in between eyebrows, that will take care of Consciousness of Existence.


Question:

The Lord Buddha described how nirodha (extinction) is the ultimate happiness, nirvana. During all of the jhanas there is some awareness. Even in the 8th jhana (neither perception nor non-perception) there is supposed to be a very subtle awareness. Isn’t that awareness what allows us to feel the supreme peace and deep happiness? If in nirodha there is no awareness at all, how can it feel so good? Wouldn’t it be like being deep in sleep, with no feelings at all?

Babaji:

There could be some misunderstanding on what exactly Buddha wanted to convey. Extinction means that of the mind which is always aware of such things which it imagines. Awareness of the Self would be there in Enlightenment but without any thoughts of “I” or “this” or “that”. It is beyond all imaginations and neither awareness nor extinction. There is Supreme Peace. If Buddha says that in extinction there is Supreme Peace, who is the one who experiences this Supreme Peace? Without existence of the Self there will be nobody to experience this Supreme Peace. So, ‘there is Supreme Peace’ means it has to be for the Self, which exists and experiences.

Question:

Babaji, in meditation I often drift off into nothingness, like I’ve been somewhere. I feel separate from my body as if in a void.

Babaji:

The soul never really travels anywhere. It remains intact and is all pervading. When we meditate and we gain more concentration, the mind loses its imaginations and tries to lift body consciousness upwards, this body consciousness is called kundalini. This kundalini consciousness is the same substance as the mind is. Before attaining Samadhi, the kundalini rising can create certain sensations like a feeling of lightness, being out of the body, increase in body temperature, the illusion of travelling through space, etcetera. It is only the mind which has gone somewhere in its imagination. If our aim is Self-Realisation and Divinity, we must understand that all such experiences are illusions. The mind and kundalini get de-linked from the brain, then later we proceed to Samadhi. What you’re experiencing is a sign of progress, just don’t analyse what is happening, otherwise the mind comes into existence and gets involved.


Question:

It recently became very hard to look at the space between the eyes. Then in frustration, I alternated it with I AM or I … meditation, learned indirectly, years ago, from books on Ramana Maharshi. Quickly the two meditations merged, until now, I feel looking into the space between the eyebrows, that I AM, God, in fact everything I desire, is in that space, and I am able to merge there much faster and sustain there. Is my process alright? Is this an example of being guided from within meditation, or something else?

Babaji:

Your progress in meditation and understanding is fine. That is what is required. Keep going until the mind becomes effortlessly quiet and remains as such, totally contented.


© 2005 SRBY.  All rights reserved.