Question: I’ve heard you say in the past that you’re here to remove our doubts. I’m taking that to be any concepts or ideas that we have that are not who we are.

Babaji: To remove them, they are all the subtle bodies that are also known as ego in other words, to remove all those things.

    Same questioner: And if we ask a question and we understand? Does that actually remove that?

    Babaji: Yes. If you follow those instructions, take it in good faith, that will remove the ego, that peace will descend. It’s like you are holding it and crying, “Oh, it’s an electric shock, an electric shock is coming.” All I’m trying to get you to do is to give up that. Give up your grip and there’s no more electric shock there, you are all right. You are holding it, that is the ego you are holding. Just give it up, all my effort is in this direction. That’s the ego, give up ego, finish.

    Question: Babaji, it seems that in the consciousness of existence the imagination is always in conflict with the withdrawal of imagination. It seems from a practical point of view there’s a subtle decision that you make that I’m now going to go for emphasizing withdrawing imagination.

    Babaji: Exactly, that is what is needed, but the acquired habits already picked up prevents this, that’s what you have to be alert to. A previous habit if it is much stronger then it prevents it from happening so it doesn’t allow it to happen. You want it to happen, then that habit can be strong, that is what is very important. That’s how the real ego troubles everyone. Those acquired habits I keep talking of. That’s what has to happen.

    Same questioner: And this is why the association with Self Realized souls and people of noble character is so important to keep giving us that impulse to go for the truth?

    Babaji: Yes, you see today when you read Nisargadatta Maharaj’s book it’s so wonderful. One time He sat in a body in a simple shop, even smoking, this, that but He spoke that truth, the plain truth He spoke about what had happened to Him. Today that is big knowledge in a book but His body is not there.
    So like this, today you all have the privilege to sit with this body and listen to this. After fifty years somebody might be reading a book of Baba, “Baba lived like this. He used to talk like this. He used to say this.” They will be discussing somewhere what happened.

    Question: Babaji, do I understand then that we must dissolve or evaporate our accumulated, karmic impressions before we awaken?

    Babaji: Yes.

    Same questioner: So should my focus be on the stalk of those impressions, the samskaras or whatever the word is as opposed to focusing on the light or the awakened state, that will happen automatically?

    Babaji: Exactly. That’s what we repeatedly try to tell. When you close the eyes, anything that appears just watch and do not bother about it. There’s two different things. You start bothering about it then mentally you get involved, but you simply watch. Then it will simply disappear, it will go away. Those karmic things will all disappear. Karmic things are what I called the acquired habits.

    Question: So I have an acquired habit that sometimes I feel I’m powerless over. Say on a work day if my work is very busy and I’m the owner so I feel very responsible for what happens but I always face this moment where I feel this urgency to get up from my morning meditation and go to work, sometimes the whirling goes so much. How do I face that urge? I understand I created this situation from all my resolutions but at that moment I lose sometimes.

    Babaji: I fully understand because we all have gone through this. Myself has gone through, like when in 1974 Swamiji was sending me to Dehradun, He just said one sentence, “Take care of the Ashram.” That was because all my consciousness one hundred percent had fallen on Him. I had fallen in love with Him so much. Anything that He uttered was like a Veda for me. So that became my ego. So that went on until 2011 so then the Divine worked out to remove that finally. Things happened, I went there, I was sitting there I was getting involved. Suddenly with a jerk it occurred, “For what am I doing this, for what am I struggling? If this has to happen it will happen. If it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen. If this place is not there then I will sit under a tree and give my devotees answers and teachings that I have to give them, from anywhere I can teach. So this body going around and teaching this awareness is much more important than anything else, than a cement wall.” So that type of thing the Divine will work out and Grace upon you one time. You carry on with this, do it as a duty and as a responsibility. 

    We practice this, Swamiji taught this, I do not carry it with me. Say I am in Dehradun I will also be working. At 3:30am I get up and will be working the whole day. Once I come out of the Dehradun Ashram I go somewhere else I leave it there, I don’t carry it in my mind that I have to do these things. After two months I go back and it will all be there again and I will be working. Now it has simply become mechanical. It doesn’t bother because I do not exist and I’m not doing anything. Simply one day that will come. We go on like this.

    Question: Babaji, you were describing how Swamiji’s imagination created Shiva initiating Him through the Jangama Sage but He didn’t know that was when He was going to sit for Tapas. So my question is, all the sadhana that has happened in our past, the karmas we have accumulated how do they manifest into such an amazing event that occurred for Swamiji?

    Babaji: When the time is ripe. It is the same thing, my attachment to the Ashram or His attachment to the family where He was working from the age of five wanting to do business to help the family and develop self-respect, all these things He faced, with other relatives who were rich and who looked down on them, so He felt very bad about self-respect, all these things had made Him but His destiny, His previous resolutions, He would have been doing a lot of sadhana in His previous lives. Those things enabled a manifestation of the Jangama Sage appearing, touching Him in between eyebrows and Him going into Samadhi, He Realized after twelve years of Tapas. As long as the body was there He went on helping the family, they were all there, they were working but that He did with total detachment. Previously He was doing with attachment.
    So previously to the Ashram I was doing with attachment now, same thing, I work but with total detachment. If it goes on and on, or if one day it suddenly collapses then it collapses, goes, finished. That ego has also gone. Like that it happens, the Divine’s Grace will descend, you just hold on to the faith, keep praying, faith, keep praying and ponder how much you really love your Guru, everybody. So then the sooner you realize how much you love, the sooner the caning will happen [laughter] and the awakening will come.