0:00 Introduction from Babaji
2:02 The three thought processes that occur whenever we apply our mind on something
6:39 How and why does a judgment create an imprint?
16:14 With meditation practice, is it possible in daily life to make a judgment without absorbing an imprint?
18:24 Does the brain still behave with tendencies even when the mind is purified?
25:58 Is it only due to acquired habits that we are unaware of the Self?
28:48 Withdrawing the mind’s attention from the thoughts in meditation
32:28 Why generally do people not want to correct their bad habits?
37:59 Does a person take up meditation due to being born to certain parents?
39:55 Why do two people, i.e. a couple who are both on the spiritual path die at different times?
41:42 Can purification ceremonies like baptism or sweat lodge be good?
43:30 Is the opening of the heart chakra a glimpse of god?
44:37 Can one inherit imprints from parents?

Discourse: Thus Spake Babaji – online Q and A No. 124
The Acquired Habits Of The Mind
Recorded: 21 January 2023 with worldwide participants

 Babaji Commences:

It is the mind which needs to become quiet.   That is the mantra you have to remember.   It is the mind which needs to become quiet.   That means it is you who have to become quiet.   You as the consciousness of existence, you as that mind, all these things you have assumed different forms.   You as That have to remain quiet so that you are in That only, the ultimate truth.   Just you have to watch in between eyebrows.   And any thoughts or visions appearing, do not have to bother, must not bother.   Just watch.   Don’t try to call anybody good or anybody bad. Don’t call anything to this world, good or bad during meditation, then you see the wonder of how you can remain quiet.  

   Ready, prepare yourself, relax and forget the outside world.   There is an inside world that you have to deal with, that which you had imagined in your mind and you have to quieten this mind.   That is the challenge.   And it becomes simple when you accept the challenge and you sportively with all enthusiasm, you want to do it.   You simply have to watch it.  

Start of Questions and Answers

Question:   So, today’s Q&A theme is ‘The acquired habits of the mind’.   So, first question – Babaji has said that whenever we apply our mind on something, so whenever we perceive something, there are three thought processes that occur in quick succession.   Could Babaji please explain what these thought processes are, please?

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah.   So, mind recognizes an existence.   Then it analyzes, like “What is this?  This is mine or not mine or somebody else.   I would need this or not”, like that.  And then makes a judgment.   Like, “Yes, this is mango.   This is apple,” like that.   For every item of this world, it names and then that is absorbed as an imprint.   That is what we call that becomes the attitude of the mind.   In psychological circles, ‘subconscious state’ has been mentioned.   So, this is what I talk about in different terminologies because it is nowhere there; mind is infinite.   It is not holding in a box or a folder.   It is infinite form, just like the space.   But it is there as a habit.   That is the problem.   So that gives the mind an attitude, like whenever it comes across that fruit, that thing, it instantly recognizes it as a fruit and the fruit’s name is apple.   That is it.   Even then, suppose, if a yogi like me comes and tell, “This is not just apple, this is Divinity because the same Divinity is all pervaded,” it may not be acceptable until one doesn’t experience the truth that is hidden inside the consciousness that is spread all over once this judgment is made. So this is what we call acquired habits of the mind, which induces you into a certain type of behavioral structure.   So, these things may also continue when you recognize a thing, if it is either positive or it can be negative also.   And negative recognition and analyzations and judgment might create negative behavioral structures or thinking, attitude like what we call as the six enemies of human mind.   Any one thing it can raise a greed or it can raise an anger, vengeful anger and it can make you stingy, “No, I need this.   I should not allow anybody else to have it.”   So, this cannot happen.   That is what the thing.   And false pride, jealousy, “Why should others have?  I must have this.”   

Like if you all remember the story of happiness I have told – in the beginning of creation God gave happiness to everybody’s hands and told, “This will work if you give it to the other”.   So, they were giving it to each other.   So, everybody in the world was happy, but one person thought with a negative attitude, “Why should I give this happiness to somebody else?  I need this.   I will keep it for me.”   The moment he thought, that happiness lost its power to be happy at all – how can it give happiness to somebody else?  So, like this, when you develop an attitude, acquire that as a habit, that will also induce you into a certain type of behavior, behavioral structure what we call.   So, that is how either a person becomes positive or negative, a good or a bad, right or wrong.   So, these are all the acquired habits.   It is a very wide subject.   I’m just trying to give a basic definition of how these things happen.   So, we practice meditation, then we can get rid of this and keep our mind to ourselves.   And just for sake of understanding only behave in this world a little bit, but we don’t become a victim of that behavioral attitude.   

Question:   Thank You, Babaji.   Just to go into a little bit of detail in what Babaji has just spoken about – can Babaji explain the technology by which a judgment is absorbed by the mind, creating an imprint?  Because the judgment is made, but it doesn’t just go away, it is imprinted and it’s stored.   Why does that happen, Babaji?  How does it happen?  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, when we recognize, that is the first mistake we try to do by getting involved into that object, mentally; that itself gives an imagination that this object or this thing is existing.   Then we further analyze, we give more habits to the mind to analyze; the mind, whatever it is habitual, it will start thinking, good or bad, right or wrong, like this.   And in an infinite way that is absorbed as an imprint also.   Imprint here means that will remain as a habit.   Like I told, how that technology works, means how it has absorbed means whenever it comes across that, whether it is a foe, an enemy or a fruit, it will recognize that in that way only.   Suppose a person has become our enemy, we recognized in that way and judged, “Yeah, this is a foe for me, enemy.”  Whenever we come across that person, our mind automatically tends to think, “This is an enemy, we have to be careful like that”.  Whereas it may not be so, but the mind has acquired habits.   So, that is how these things happen in an infinite way.  That is the technology, because mind has this power to get applied to a particular thing and get awareness of that existence and it has the ability to be creative, imagination.   So, it imagines what it is.   So, when it has the imaginary ability, then it may lose control over itself of what it is going to create.   So, this is how it happens.   

Often in this world, human beings, we might have, apart from discovering, might have invented also.   From a raw material, we might have invented a weapon system or some such thing.   Once it is invented, then it goes out of our control.   If we lose the control over that button, then that might be dangerous or disastrous to humanity, to this world, any such weapon system.   Thus, we would have lost our control.   Say, we make an engine, railway engine – we build it, we have invented and discovered all the benefits.   Once it becomes, so we cannot stand in front of the engine if it is fast moving, it will crush us into pieces, smash us into chutney – type.   We need to have a control over that.   If we lose control, that is dangerous.   So here also, at times we may have to decide we need to be careful, “A person is trying to attack us.   He is an enemy.   We need to defend ourselves.”   But all the time we need not entertain, “O, we have an enemy like this, we have an enemy like this.”  No need.   Then we will lose our peace also.   That is what, if we need to stop, we need to undertake spiritual exercises like meditation.   Because these things are not visible, how it absorbs.   It simply absorbs as a habit.   Mind itself is infinite.   You cannot see; there is no vision or a thought that is coming.   “This is happening and like this it is absorbing” – no.   No such thing can be done.   Many things of the computer, it is happening in an infinite way.   But however, we have created some graphics and it can be showing, “O, it is flickering, flickering, coming and it is taking, it is taking,” like that.   So, like that something can be drawn, but this is infinite; nobody can see.   But one has to be careful.  Like that, you learn to keep the mind quiet by the practice of meditation.   Otherwise, it happens.   Suddenly it happens.   When it makes an analyzation, it makes a judgment also.   It ends up doing that.   Then it can become a stubbornly little bit egoistic.   That is what is known as rajasic nature of a person’s mind.   That means, once it decides “This is a foe”, the mind becomes stubborn like a king.   “This is foe.”   “Why is he foe?  He need not be a foe, maybe something else, maybe a friend, or maybe just nothing.   Why are you thinking?”  “I am telling and he is a foe.  How dare you tell that he is not a foe?”  Like that it becomes egoistic.   So, that is how it absorbs all these things.   

All this happens finally if we do not take care of the health of the mind and keep it under our control.   Like I told, railway engine, we need to keep it under our control.   If we lose that control, that can be dangerous or disastrous, whoever is in or out, whatever, anything it can create, that energetic force.   The same way, human mind also, it becomes violent and it can become… such a person can become dangerous to others, disastrous to one’s own self.   Though he will have to consider, like if somebody is attacking our country, we will have to defend.   We will have to be taking defense and be alert always.   But we don’t have to spoil our head all the time thinking of that enemy only.   Instead of thinking of that enemy, we need to be alert and ready to defend if anybody attacks.   So, this is how we have to be ready with the mind also, not allow it to pick up that as a habit.   Once it becomes habitual, it can carry on long time.   That’s what can be carried on life after life also.   Because when these habits are sitting in the mind, based on this only when death happens, when brain dies, mind gets detached from the reflections of the brain, but it is holding all the habits in an infinite way.   Based on that it assumes its next incarnation; it may create its own world, spinning.   At the same place, there itself, we might be imagining, “Where is that person, has he been reborn again in this world?”  It need not be.   Because this is an illusory creation, not necessary.  He would have lost all connection with this dimension of world or any creation, would have created separate world for itself in a separate life.   Like fifty thousand lives you would have again, again born and dead.   You may not remember anything, but if you remember you will go mad, which world, which place you are there?  It’s simply an illusion because it was never there actually.   So, you can never locate.  What people of this world talk, behave, play, it is all false, unnecessary, mythical things which does not really exist.   When people are ready to accept, they will tell any lies, “O, you were born like this, you were like this in the previous life.”   Scientifically these things have really no meaning, yet it was there.   Based on that, the behavioral structure has come.   Simply, the mind has absorbed.  That’s what a person’s basic nature also builds up.   

   We need to overcome all this to go back to the ultimate truth, the Self or the Divinity.   That’s what the practice of meditation when we repeatedly keep telling, ‘just to watch.’   Do not bother if any thought or visions come.   They are all the previous acquired habits.   Don’t even keep wondering “When did I do this, how did I acquire this?”  Because it is in infinite form, you can never locate or make out “How did it happen”.   Just like that it has absorbed because of its energy and consciousness combination force.   So, it happens like that.   If you let loose the mind, so it absorbs the imprints.   If you don’t lose that one, if you have control over your mind, then you can avoid absorbing such imprint.   You can fight a foe, you can defend your country, institution, anything, but that person need not be in your mind all the time.   We don’t have to carry him.   So, these are some of the truths of the mind, its technologies, how it absorbs imprints, how we can get rid of that one, keep the mind as pure consciousness all the time. In spite of the fact that we may have to behave in this world, sometimes with bad people, wrong people, but we don’t have to become bad in our mind.   

Question:   Thank You, Babaji.   So, the ultimate goal as Babaji is saying in meditation with our practice is to purify the mind of all the acquired habits finally once and for all.   But Babaji, is it possible in daily life to make judgments without absorbing imprints then?  

Babaji Maharaj:   If you are regularly, strongly with the correct technology practicing meditation even for one hour.  Means in that one hour, your mind must not move or spin – just keep watching, must not recognize any existence, any thoughts or visions that are coming, anything that would have happened previously or anything that might be going to happen we don’t have to imagine any such things. Totally just watching – that is the meditation when you are able to keep it silent for one hour.  Then you get up and you work as a normal person, you think, you make a judgment, you analyze, you act upon, but you will see that your mind will not absorb it as an imprint.   Once the job is over, you will feel very peaceful and free and that is not sitting there, that won’t be playing.   So that’s how I can watch.   My consciousness is always silent, it doesn’t dramatize.   Many times, I even try to watch a movie also a little bit, just check my mind.   It’s such an amazing thing, it doesn’t reverberate in the mind and it doesn’t play it at all, it doesn’t remember – as if you write on a white paper and it instantly gets erased.   That’s what the experience I have seen within my own consciousness; it comes, but it gets erased.   But it never troubles me, it doesn’t give me any particular behavioral structure.   It doesn’t induce me to behave in that way all the time, I don’t become habitual to keep fighting all the time.   Like that.   

Question:   Thank You, Babaji.   So once the mind is totally purified of its acquired habits, the brain still acts with particular tendencies.   Can we say that, Babaji?

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, because one reason, brain would be holding its own habits. As the mind also acquires habits, we are able to purify the mind, we may not be able to purify the brain.   It is a biological organ, it is not infinite, it is an existence that we can see through.   So that’s why it shall be holding.   Simply, through meditation, and if possible, for anyone to do tapas, we can hold the mind into the quietness of Supreme Consciousness, not bother about the brain, not touch the brain.   Instead, now you will start using the brain.   Brain is vast, its capacities are amazing.   So let those habits be there in some folder.   It is prohibited to open that folder for the mind now.   You have become Self-realized.   You don’t have to.   You use the brain for teaching the Self-awareness, for teaching good behavior, peace, harmony, tranquility, consideration to each other, that type of noble things.   You can use the brain to bring out these thoughts and teach people about these things.   And thus, you can remain unaffected, but whatever is in the folder of the brain previously, you would not open it, you would not touch it, you would not try to tap that one, because you are under your control.   Madly, you will not get applied on to the brain.   You have learned to use the brain now.   Till then, it’s very difficult.   Generally, human beings, they would not be using the brains.   Often, they get applied on to the brain and become a victim of the brain.   That’s what is my experience.   Only when you are able to control the mind, keep it under purified condition of pure consciousness…  this long-time meditation and if one can do tapas, so that is possible one day.   Slowly and slowly you have to raise this level.   You should not try to jump in one go, you might fall down.   You don’t have to worry at all.   If you understand the technique, this is how you can do this.   Means, by silencing the mind, first, and also you are getting rid of all thoughts, means all acquired habits of the mind.   When you maintain that silence in the mind just by watching and not doing anything else mentally during meditation, you can get rid of all those acquired habits first, all the thoughts and visions.   It may be troublesome watching that; many people may wonder, “I never thought about these things.   From where did these things come to me?”   It was there as a habit in the brain, in the mind.   Now the mind gets purified, it gives up everything.   So, you are not bothering about it, you don’t recognize it.   Then it disappears, it won’t stand there in any way.   So that’s what happens.  Like in this world also, sometimes we tell, when you undertake a task, when you want to achieve, go on a noble path like spirituality, in the beginning, some people might make fun of you.   You don’t bother, you keep going.   Then they will try to trouble you, create trouble for you.   They might throw some stones, anything they will try to do to stop you from going.   “How dare this person is going on the spirituality, it is totally nonsense.   He must also come and be with us in the world and enjoy the world, do everything in the world, he has to do this.”   And they will also try to put doubts.   “What is the use, you will meditate only for yourself, you are selfish.   Come and help the world, come and do some service to the others.”   All these things can be done.   I have been asked a question.  When you went academically to gain knowledge and wisdom, attended schools and colleges, was it a selfishness?  If you are well-educated, you can be a better matured person.   You won’t get carried away by somebody trying to brainwash you.   You will have the ability to think, to verify, “How can this be?  Let me see.   When I see, it doesn’t look like so.  That somebody for personal gains must have tried to brainwash me.”   You will gain this thinking capacity if you are well really educated culturally and with all such characteristic things this is possible, this keeps happening.   Otherwise, the mind becomes a victim.  And then you go on meditating, keep your mind purified.   It will never absorb any imprints.   Hundred thousand times, hundred thousand people, even God, Brahma tries to brainwash us, we don’t get worried.   It’s okay, we will watch it.   No problem.   No problem.   Because we know the truth.   The truth itself, nothing exists really.   It’s all that person’s imagination.   We will watch a person.   

That’s how I keep telling.  Also, another point.   Say, you know me for fifteen years or twenty years.   Somebody else comes and tries to tell you, “O, Babaji is not this thing, he is not Self-realized.”   Will you listen?  You don’t know what is me.   Does somebody else have to tell you now after twenty years who am I, what is my character, what’s my behavior?  Even after twenty years, you could not know what I am really, what Ambaji is really, what anybody else is really.   So, that is the thing we have to be matured and think.   “I know, Ambaji – thirty-two years she has been with me.   Do I need somebody else to tell me what Ambaji is?”   Like this.  This is just a general example I am giving that how the mind can work tricks.   Using this only others can exploit.   But if you are practicing that meditation, just watching, you are controlling yourself, restraining yourself, you are keeping yourself quiet, then the mind, your consciousness is under your control.   Automatically, you won’t allow anything to be absorbed as a habit.   You may have to deal in this world in a particular way, but you will not become habitual to that.   Only this strongest meditation, and if you can do tapas one day, you would have overcome totally automatically.   Automatically, your mind will not absorb anything.   Nothing will reverberate because you know the truth of existence about the Self.   It is the purest form.   It exists in the purest form of Supreme Consciousness.   

Question:   Thank You, Babaji.   So, can it be said that our individual identity, our ego, this feeling that we exist as this individual body, human being, this is due simply to acquired habits?  If it wasn’t for the acquired habits, then we would be aware of the Self.   Is that correct, Babaji?

Babaji Maharaj:   Exactly.  These acquired habits only has clouded your understanding, your awareness into thinking about yourself as this body and whatever the brain reflects, you are becoming a victim of that one.   Brain is a wonderful organ, we all agree.   Simply, you have to use it.   It should be your servant or assistant; you should be the master.   The brain becomes master, like if the computer becomes master and you are not the one who is handling it, the computer starts handling you, it can simply destroy you.   It will show all the nonsense things that it wants.   Whatever it is programmed to, it will bring up all such things.   It is your wisdom, your discrimination whether you want to see such wrong things on the screen, you want to take it out, you don’t want to get influenced, it is yours.   If you have your consciousness under your control, you won’t become a victim of the computer, you will use the computer for wonderful things that you can achieve in this world.   In the same way, use the brain to be in this world and achieve such things.

  Like, now I am able to use my brain, travel around, teach what the truth is.   Hundred thousand times people come and they try to come again and again with the mythical things, “This is happening, that is happening, this loka, that loka”, I insist, “Quieten your mind.   Then you will know the truth of your real existence.”   And when you practice this quietening of meditation, you will know the secrets of your own consciousness that is your own mind.   How it has been fooling you because you did not keep it under your control.   You let loose that one.  Life after life, you are simply… through this body, you are getting born, you are getting dead, all these things have been happening, happening, whereas nothing was happening to you.  You are never born and you are never going to die.   Simply, you are experiencing in an illusory consciousness.   So that ‘I’, that ‘me’ is the ego.   So that identification of ourselves with something else that which we are not actually.   

Question:   Thank You Babaji.   Just to go into the meditation again a little more to ask for some more detail.  Babaji explains that when we are not bothering about the thoughts – when they come, we don’t bother about them – by not bothering, they disappear and finally the acquired habits, they all evaporate.   Can Babaji explain how this happens and is it really when we apply the mind, we are fueling these habits?   So, by taking the mind away, is that how they disappear?

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah.   For this also the technology I have explained. When your mind thinks, means you think, a thought appears within you.   Watching that, you as the mind forgets “this thought is there simply because I imagined”, otherwise it wouldn’t have been there at all.   “This is a foe because I am imagining her to be my foe”.   She may not have anything in her mind, in her consciousness, she may simply be loving you, but you are thinking, that’s why it is appearing to you in that way.   That’s why the mind visualizes, mind holds on to that thought.   “Ah, yeah, this is a reality.”   Then that thought is there, then you create another thought.   “Yes, really she is a foe.   Ah, this lady, as long as this lady exists, I cannot catch hold of the powers and all such things.”   Anything that might be coming to anybody’s mind.   So then, “This lady is the foe”.   I hold on.   I have created already three, four thoughts more.   “Yes, she is a foe.   Yes, she is bad.   Yes, she is this, she is that.   She can…”  I add just to justify myself.  Mental, that is the mental habits for people to do all these things.   So, “Just why I am going away?  This is the reason and this is the reason”.  Like that.   So, like this, they spoil their own consciousness and become corrupted. Thought after thought, thought after thought goes on being there; they will not be able to get rid of those thoughts because they are adding thoughts.   Also, I have told in between these two thoughts, there is a gap.   That gap, that space is the supreme consciousness.   But because our attention is on the thoughts, we seldom notice this space.   That’s what we try to teach, “Just watch”.   Don’t bother about it.   Any thought is coming, don’t bother just now.   That’s not the job.   Your job is to keep quiet.   If you are watching, then your attention is drawn to that gap.   As you are able to watch that gap, that gap increases because all other thoughts all start disappearing.   There is no thought at all, no judgment about anything, then the gap widens and your attention is on the Self automatically.   So that’s why the technology is repeatedly taught by the Master, “Just watch”.   One mantra I hold on.  “I told you just watch”, it tries to run away, “No, just watch”. [laughs]

Question:   Thank You, Babaji.   So, one more question Babaji before we open it up to all participants, if that’s okay, Babaji.   So, just to ask, even when we realize we have bad habits, we have wrong habits, why generally do people not want to change and correct themselves?  

Babaji Maharaj:   That’s again, ego of ‘me and mine’.   Amba has a comment to make on this question.   

Maa Ambaji:   I’ll just say, “I know the best.   Nobody knows best, I know the best.   And when I know the best, how can any be better than me?” 

Babaji Maharaj:   So, that is the basic reason – that ego of ‘I’, ‘me and mine’, ‘I know it.’   This ‘I’ wants to have this as a habit.   That person is calling this habit as a bad habit.   I don’t consider it a bad habit.   This is my weapon; this is my strength.   I need to be shrewd.

Maa Ambaji:  Any alcoholic – they know that it will destroy them, but they still again and again go.

Babaji Maharaj:   Because they don’t know anything else in life.   That’s what, for majority of, particularly human beings or creatures, anybody, if a person has become habitual to be shrewd, telling lies and doing wrong things, then they don’t know anything else to do in life.   They would like to use the same things and they start considering that to be a great quality of them.   I have seen many people who are habitual to telling lies.   They tell, “Come on, you have to tell a lie.   Otherwise, how can you live in this world?  You need to tell.  I would like to teach my children also to tell lies.   Because otherwise, they cannot live in this world.”   That’s all they know.   They don’t know anything else.  If you get well educated, I have told them, “If you had got well educated, if you could have earned a little bit of money for you with hard and honest work, you wouldn’t have needed this lie, lying habits.  That’s what you didn’t get educated, you neglected yourself.”   That’s why we all need to get educated properly.   Not by getting degree certificates or engineering, doctor certificates.   This comes, this wisdom by the teaching of a Guru who is the knower of that truth, who is an expert in this subject of the mind, its acquired habits, what it can fool you, what it can help you to get rid of the things, how it can make you aware of the truth of existence, how it can keep you under the cloud of untruth of existence always.   So, this is all the ego.   I don’t know anything else.   Like for now, I don’t know anything else.   I can talk about meditation.   I can talk about mind, I can talk about consciousness, about Divinity, about character, culture, human values.   Other than this, I don’t know anything else.  If you ask me to talk about other things, geology, and other worlds and astronomy, I may not know.   So, the same way, one person knows only to tell lies, he’s habitual and he doesn’t want to give up also.   If one wants to give up and change one’s own self, it is possible.   By meditating you gain control over yourself.   Your mind is under your control.   You realize your mistakes and try to rectify that and try to be a good, mature personality, but people don’t want.   This can be the eighth wonder of the world.   

Question:   Thank You, Baba.   So, somehow some humility needs to come upon such a person.   

Babaji Maharaj:   It is necessary.   Humility is the world, definitely.   A person needs to be humble, must be ready to realize one’s own mistakes; “I am wrong here, I must rectify myself.”   That’s what Swamiji always told.   “Those people who can find their own faults can become great people,” He said.   We always spend time finding fault with others.   We should try to find our own faults.   Every time something happened, I try to ponder over myself where was I weak, where I didn’t notice this, why I didn’t properly handle this situation.   “Now I need to learn.   Next time I should be able to think”, like this one.   

   Anyway, wonderful.   Now we will take some questions, of course.   Please know that when I was answering, it was not for any true event or against any personality or group of individuals.   Just for sake of education, whatever the questions came, just like that the answers came out of me, giving as an example.   Sometimes I might have used Ambaji as an example, my own self as an example, but I don’t mean anything against anybody or any such thing.   So, now we will take some questions for some ten, fifteen minutes.   

Question:   Pranaam Babaji.   Thank You for the session.   Babaji, someone was saying that – is it so that a person who is born to a certain set of parents, only he or she is likely to take this spiritual path?  Does that matter?

Babaji Maharaj:   First thing, if he is bringing since previous lives, if he has done good sadhanas, on this path there was inclination for some truths of existence, then automatically such a person is born to such parents.   And there he gets such samskaaras, means acquired habits and he will get such circumstances.   So many things are involved.   First, to be born to such parents; if both are pious and matured human beings, then they will be able to teach the children.   And because of your previous sadhanas, you will also be able to learn quickly such good things.   You will listen to such good things.   You won’t brush aside and try to be your own.   And then after we get exposed to the world, we might come across friends, so many other things.   In the midst of friends also, we will be strongly defending our own mind, our consciousness, our culture, our character, everything.   We need not get carried away.   So that’s what it is.   That’s why during retreats and meditations I always tell, “Observe mauna, be silent.   Don’t allow anybody to talk to you and you don’t talk to anybody.   Unless it’s absolutely necessary, don’t get into gossips.”   This is very important and that’s how this thing happens.   

Same Questioner:   Babaji, one more question.  Say two people are in a relationship, a married couple both on spiritual path, but sometimes it does happen that they die at different times.   Why does that happen? One may die early, one may die later, it is not even related in any way?   

Babaji Maharaj:   Everybody is bringing their own prarabdha.   For a coincidence, there was some connection you get connected in this world.   As long as the bodies are there, every relationship, every story, everything matters so much – once that is gone, it’s over.   Suppose, example – that’s what easily I tell you, you would have been born and died fifty times.   So, do you remember any relationship?  Do you get emotional for any mother, father, wife, husband, anything?  You have forgotten, that’s over.   So, look forward.   Only some habits should be sitting in your mind, making you to behave in such a way.   But otherwise, you won’t remember, you won’t be brooding or be anxious, any such thing.   Only whatever is in this life, so that’s how things happen.   Everybody carries their prarabdha, their own things they are bringing, basic natures, basic timings.  Sometimes they might be born together as twins, we might tell and claim.   But even though they die, they won’t go together.   They won’t catch their hands and give up the body and go into other world.  Such a thing doesn’t happen.   It’s over.   

Same Questioner:   Thank You Babaji.   

Question:   Thank You for the opportunity to do this meditation every week.  Much appreciated.   My question was when you were talking about the folder in the brain, putting it away, my question came up, do you have any views on purification ceremonies, for example, like baptism and sweat lodges, you know, like some traditions purify through doing a sweat lodge or there’s baptism with water to make it cleansed for good?

Babaji Maharaj:   See, that can give you an inspiration; to certain extent the purification can come, but simply by such outside things which belongs to the matter of this world, total purification of the consciousness doesn’t happen.   You have to take an inner exercise like meditation, prayer or worship, music.   These things can act like therapies for your mind to get purified.   So, these types of things can be helpful.   In my opinion, amongst them, meditation in silence is the highest which can give total purification.   So, like that, it depends. Little, little, that is not good enough.  To feel inspired, you can get baptized, it’s no problem.  Then you have to work, start working.   Baptizing, all these things; like your father gives you a hundred dollars so that you start a business.   Then you have to do the business and increase the funds or your earnings.   You cannot simply depend on that hundred dollars, is not good enough.   Like that, example.   

Same Questioner:   Yeah, thank You.   

Question:   Pranaams Babaji.   Babaji, my question is, in scriptures, it is said that God resides in your heart.   So, I want to ask, the opening of the heart chakra, the anahata chakra as it is written in yoga, is it what is the first glimpse of God?  Is it what is known as …?

Babaji Maharaj:   No, no, you see they are all used symbolically, symbolically used terminology.   So much of myths and misunderstandings have happened.   God is not a person or a piece or a peanut type that He exists only in the heart.   And where is that heart?  Has it been mentioned?  Simply, somewhere here.  Nobody has seen that in naked eyes.   He is simply all pervaded.   In that heart means you overcome all your emotions; you purify your mind.   So, that is when your body consciousness also rises.   Whenever your mind becomes silent, that is the glimpse of the Divinity.   

Same Questioner:   Thank You Babaji.   

Question:   Babaji, thank You for making this possible for us to do this meditation especially online and for giving Your time.   I would like to ask, when people get these imprints on the mind, is it possible to either inherit from parents their imprints or to pass them on to our children through our DNA or whatever?

Babaji Maharaj:   See, only whatever is in the brain only can come out.   People can catch with the DNA or any such thing whatever is in the brain.   People may not have studied that also completely.   It is though inconclusive.   But whatever remains in the mind, that gives you a reincarnation based on the intensity of thoughts for the next life.   That is how it happens.   Whatever is in the mind you cannot catch through DNA or any such things; will not be possible.   Perhaps whatever is in the brain, one day might be possible if people do a lot of research on that subject.   

Same Questioner:   So, it is just through teaching then that parents pass on these traits and these familial traits that sometimes people have.   

Babaji Maharaj:   Yes.   

End of Questions and Answers

End of Session