Question: I’ve been reading some of the Upanishads and one of them talks about contemplating on Om and that is one of the highest things that you can do to help with Self Realization. Can you talk a little bit about that?

    Babaji: Contemplating on Om you should try to understand this is based on one of the techniques that the ancient Sages decodified this Om as the concept of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the protector and Shiva the withdrawer. Sometimes Shiva is called the destroyer, but I would like to call it withdrawer.
    If you see your own lips when you try to chant Om your lips lift upwards, like “Ooooo” and it is continuous. Then when you come to ‘Mmmmm’ these lips get closed again. That is how through creativity things come into existence, are sustained then finally finished. That is how they have given this concept. To contemplate you can try to understand the entire appearance of the universe including your own physical body has come into existence and is being sustained but it is impermanent. At one time it is going to be finished, it will be withdrawn. So you should try to go for the highest existence, eternal, beyond this, that is the concept that is necessary.
    Otherwise you can try to chant so the mind remains focused on that. More than this you should not try to go into too many meanings because different teachers using their own imaginations try to give so many other meanings. Technically this is the right meaning which was given in the Rig Vedic era, the Om as the Trimurthi concept – the creation, sustenance and withdrawal.

    Question: Can you speak a bit about dreams, for instance if we dream of a loved one who is no longer with us in the physical body. Some people say there are symbols in dreams. I wonder if you have thoughts on that?

    Babaji: Technically dreams are an impermanent vision that is produced, which is to be considered as an illusion, meaning a thing which does not really exist. However sometimes it could be connected to your mental resolutions or mental habits, of a past or a visualization of a future. These things also can happen.
    Also, if you see, sometimes the picture is very solid and so strong, then you won’t forget it for a long time, it really happened in the dream. Sometimes the picture could be very vague. By the time you get up in the morning you would have forgotten, only “I saw something.” This is the technical point. Other than that, some mysterious things also can happen, a connection to the Divinity or your own previous resolutions, these things might come. Finally, I would say it is the status of your mind. At the most you use it for focusing the mind, because when you are practicing meditation the highest goal should be Self Realization and you need to ignore everything else. It is advised not to get too involved into the meaning of dreams because it can be a bit mind-boggling and it can suck you back into its illusion of stories and chatterbox habits that the mind gets involved into.

    Question: The intensity of your dreams, the intensity of the manifestation you have, is that related to your capacity to focus?

    Babaji: Sometimes it can be like a fifty-fifty thing. It could be connected to this life of this dimension or it could be of something else. Or it could be of a previous life, or it could be of anything. You try to avoid connecting that to any of the other things, consider it as a dream. If at all it is useful it should be useful for you to focus your mind’s concentration. That is all you have to use, more than that you should not worry about any other meanings. Otherwise it can drag you into the spinning of your own mind further. You have to be careful of that.

    Same questioner: So when you are experiencing an intense or unpleasant dream you just watch it and it will dissolve?

    Babaji: Yes, just watch and don’t try to go into the facts of those dreams or any other imagination. Ignore and just watch. Another funny thing is so many characters that appear in the dream the raw material is all your own consciousness, nothing other than you, that exists there. You see yourself as so many characters and a big story, time and space increases, like an illusion, like on a cinema screen hundreds of men running can be shown. That type of thing keeps happening in a dream.
    You should try to focus on the one who is watching that dream. That is the reality, the one who is watching. Try to shift your attention onto that.

    Question: So, I could be watching the TV and I could bring my awareness back that I am watching the TV. Like watching or the awareness of the Self?

    Babaji: Yes, exactly. When you try to watch if you mentally get involved your own consciousness starts moving amongst those characters and they become those characters. Instead you bring it back and remain in the awareness that you are watching, because you are watching, that is the reality. Whatever you are watching is not the reality.

    Same questioner: In meditation there could the awareness of the focusing of the eyes or the attention on the watcher, which seems a different thing. Are there two different ways?

    Babaji: It’s the same. That’s how the attention shifts back to itself again. You have been watching and getting involved. You simply watch and then your attention shifts to your Self, so you settle into your Self. Whenever you need you can simply watch and you can shift to your Self. In the same way, whatever you had been watching, that scene doesn’t matter for you anymore, you simply watch it because you are not getting involved in the dualities. In the same way you will become a witness to this universe also, eventually, if this appears it appears, if it doesn’t appear it doesn’t appear. You’re not going to bother about it. You simply watch.

    Same questioner: So when I’m meditating, if that shift happens I can let go of focusing the eyeballs?

    Babaji: Yes. You can let go of that because now the attention has shifted to the Self so you may not need the eyeballs focusing. When eyeballs are focusing it is in front. It helps you only in the beginning when you needed to focus and the separation that had been created by imagination, once that separation is over you don’t need to focus the eyeballs also. The eyeballs could be moving, still you are unaffected because your attention would be onto the watcher and to the ‘seer’. So the ‘seer’ and ‘seen’ both disappear and you are simply there. That practice has to continue so effortlessly it is there into that.

    Same questioner: Isn’t the concept of you watching also a product of the mind?

    Babaji: Yes, that will also have to vanish. You start with just watching, once that watching is over then the attention shifts to the Self so you watching something also disappears. Instead of getting involved into so many other thoughts you just try to stick to one thought, that you are only watching. Then finally that will also disappear. That is the final ego of ‘you’ and ‘I’. That will also disappear. When the ‘I’ disappears everything else disappears, the ‘I’ watching and the ‘I’ being watched, all these end there. You will understand they were all the products of the mind and its imagination only.

    Same questioner: That’s the end though, right, to get to that point?

    Babaji: Yes.