Question:    During Tapas when the mind just stays focused on one thing without imaginations, is the main purpose of Tapas to eliminate all the samskaras, all the impressions, everything that created the original idea?

    Babaji: Everything, totally. All definitions, all samskaras.

    Same questioner:    And eventually the ego just vanishes?

    Babaji:    It goes, vanishes. Finally that ‘I’ also vanishes. Until then the ‘I’ is the thing that is holding everything. So then once it gives up all the things that it is holding, then it itself gets dropped.

    Same questioner:    Is the ‘I’ the seed of the mind, that very first wakening, ‘I am’? No thoughts happen, just ‘I am’?

    Babaji:    That’s when the trouble starts. ‘Me’ and ‘mine’. The moment ‘me’ comes, ‘mine’ also happens. So once either of the thing is given, ‘mine’ is given up, then ‘me’ also finishes, ‘I’ also finishes.

    Same questioner: So what happens to the mind? You have the best mind of everyone I’ve known, and yet in a way, the mind merged back in and the ‘I’ dissolved. How does the mind work after Nirvikalpa Samadhi?

    Babaji:    There’s total awareness that every time I’m going on to the stage I’m simply enacting the role and I’m not that role entity. That awareness is there. As I told, even if you are writing on the white paper the awareness that is there is nothing, it gets erased immediately. The mind will not hold onto that entity as the ‘I’. So, for a while it can become mind also. But if it becomes mind it’s not going to be holding on. It remains as a mind for everyone, because it holds onto that mind as an entity. It simply gives up. It does and it gives up, does and gives up. That’s what yesterday as I told, even if necessary to defend, suppose we live in an ashram, we need to defend that ashram. We would defend that one. But I’m not going to hold onto that entity that there is an ashram and there is an enemy of the ashram and I have to liberate, all these entities are not there. Simply at that time the job is done, and that’s finished.

    Same questioner:    OK, but does the mind just manifest out of consciousness when it needs to do something? Like the ocean all of a sudden has a wave?

    Babaji:    Consciousness Itself comes. Just like the wave comes from the ocean and the wave is not different from the ocean and the wave really doesn’t exist. What exists is the ocean. Temporarily it comes, and then we call it as a wave, that is all.

    Same questioner:    One time you said the mind is just in stillness and when you need to use the mind it’s like the car, you take it out of the garage, you used it for any purpose you need and then it goes back in the garage.

    Babaji:    Back. That’s what happens once the thought is given.

    Question:    When a bird is chirping or a car door slamming I am able to keep watching. But other times thoughts come, I get involved then go back to watching. So is that due to habits of mind?

    Babaji:    Yes, that’s like the mind gets involved into further thoughts. If a bird comes and goes, then thoughts like,  ‘this bird is mine, what is this bird?’ Or if a car sound comes, then you start imagining other cars and which brand of the car you need to own, then you get involved. If you don’t get involved, simply the car comes and the car goes away, that’s it, finished. You are there, you are not imagining anything.

    Same questioner:    But the mind thinks, ‘oh the bird, that’s me’ because the bird seems to be outside, the thought seems to be inside. But I guess I’m trying to distinguish between the thoughts that you follow and the thoughts you don’t follow.

    Babaji:    Yes. Actually if you watch, neither the bird is outside not is it inside and everything is happening within only. The thought and the bird and the bird and the thought about the bird are happening within. It is the same consciousness which has created the bird also, the same consciousness which creates another thought to recognise that thought of the bird. If you simply just watch it then the bird also recedes and the thought doesn’t come up at all. So nothing else is there, simply you exist. So that’s what you have to concentrate on in meditation finally. When the thought comes, let it come, it comes and goes, comes and goes, it comes and goes, you don’t analyze. So a dual existence should not come up. Then that loses it’s existence value, it simply gets dropped. That’s what the watching effect means.