1982 Audio Satsang with Gurudev

Part I

 

 

Transcript:

For the last few days, you have been listening to me. I don’t think I have anything new to say today. What you have already heard, I will try to summarise it, so that when you go back to your country, you can continue with your sādhana, honestly and sincerely as you have been doing here.

We have been talking that the Divine is here and now, available to you, always available to you. But due to some obstacles you are not able to feel His presence. Essentially there is no difference between the spirit and the Divine; they are essentially one. But due to certain impurities of your mind you are not able to feel His presence. In a sense, your mind is broken; it is broken into many fragments; you are not one. As you are now, you are only a crowd; there is no centre in you. You are just a sort of rotary club, changing; there is no one chairman. So now you are a crowd; at one time one part of your mind comes to the surface, at another time the other part of your mind comes to the surface. There is no harmony in you, you are not one, you are a crowd.

So, the first thing is that you have to create a centre in you. There should be harmony in you and for that you have to follow a certain discipline. The purpose of discipline is to create an order in you. Now there is a complete chaos in you. If you look into your mind, you will find that there is no harmony. There are many desires which are paradoxical to each other. One desire is pulling you on one side, the other desire is pulling you on the other side. There is complete chaos in you. If you look into your mind, you will find it. But if you are always occupied with outer engagements, then you won’t be able to see what is in your mind. You are escaping yourself. Because when you see and look into your mind, you find there is disorder. You are pained to see it. You cannot face your mind. You want to forget it because there is no harmony. When you look into your mind, you find that there is misery, there is fear, there is attachment, there is infatuation and to escape your mind, you keep yourself engaged in outer activities. It is a sort of escape. But if you sit down and look into your mind, you will find that there is no harmony.

So, the first step is that you have to create harmony in your mind. The purpose of discipline is to create an order within you. You have to follow certain rules, you have to follow certain principles, you have to break the old patterns in which your mind is flowing. You have to break the old habits and for that, continuous, conscious effort is needed. Sādhana means the conscious effort to change yourself. If you don’t make any effort, then you won’t be able to overcome your old habits. For many, many past lives, you have been drifting in this world, living a mechanical life, pursuing happiness in the world and your mind is full of impressions. You are doing a certain action again and again; and that action creates certain impression in your mind. And your mind is full of impressions, many impressions. They are, as it were, tendencies which move you, which is a greater force. And that is moving you. Your actions are not free. That force of samskāras ‒ those past impressions ‒ that force is working in your life, and you are being taken away by that force; you are not free.

So, the first thing is that you have to break the old patterns and for that a very conscious effort is needed. You have to follow certain rules, certain principles; you have to make conscious effort to break that old pattern. And then, slowly, and gradually, you can create an order in your mind. Now there is complete chaos and when you look into your mind, you will find there are many, many layers of your mind. There are good samskāras, there are bad samskāras; there are good desires, there are evil desires also. And you are being swept, taken away forcibly by those desires into the world; you have no freedom at this time. Discipline will enable you first to create an order in your mind. And then you will come to understand that desire is the cause of all your fears; it is the cause of all misery. And then you will make a conscious effort to destroy the desire, the seeds of desire. So long as there is desire in your mind, your mind will not be silent. And if your mind is not silent, you won’t be able to see your real nature; you won’t be able to realize the identity of your spirit with the Divine. The Divine is here and now. But due to the impurities of your mind and due to the flickering nature of the mind, you are not able to feel the presence of the Divine.

The Practice of Witnessing

So, what you have to do ... I have told you many methods. How can you pacify your mind? The most powerful method is that you sit down and watch your mind, be a witness. Don’t do anything with the mind. The thoughts will come up ‒ they will subside. Don’t identify yourself with any thought. Then what will happen? If you don’t cooperate with your mind, if you become a witness to your mind, the thoughts come up and subside for some time mechanically due to past momentum. But if you don’t cooperate, slowly and gradually the mind will become silent, the thoughts will subside. If you can remain a witness, the mind loses all its power because the power of the mind is due to your identification with the mind. And when you become a witness of your mind, the identification is broken. Mind loses its power. For some time, the thoughts will come up mechanically, due to past momentum, but if you don’t cooperate, if you remain as a witness, the thoughts will subside. It will not be a thinking process. Now what happens is when a thought comes up, and you get that thought, and you start working upon that thought, then other thoughts, which are correlated with the first thought, also come and a thinking process starts. Then there is a chain of thoughts, correlated with each other and there is a thinking process, and you forget yourself and you are also thinking; you have no separate existence from the mind. So, once you become a witness, your mind will become slow. It will move due to past momentum for a while, for some minutes, but if you could remain a witness, only a witness, only a seer, only an observer, then slowly and gradually the mind will calm down and all the thoughts will subside. This is one of the methods. You can practise it daily.

Japa

And with it you can also supplement, as I have already told you, the practice of the divine name. Whatever name you have taken, or you are interested in, or you like most, you recite that name, chant that name with love and devotion. Sit down, chant that name in your heart, and at the same time hear that name being chanted. This is the method, how you have to practise the name. You have to divide your mind in two parts: one part will chant the name, and the other part will hear the name being chanted. You understand me? So, this is the method, how you have to recite the name and at that time, you have to focus your attention on the heart centre, because that is the place for the name, for the word. You have to imagine that the chanting is being done at the heart centre, this is the centre in the middle of the chest. In Physiology they call it the cardiac centre. So, you have to imagine that that word is being chanted at the heart centre. You are chanting it and at the same time you are hearing it. That is the method how you have to practise the name. It will purify your mind because through that name you come in contact with the Divine. The name is the symbol of the Divine. Just as you say, "this chair"…. now "chair", the word "chair" is a symbol through which you come to know the thing which you call chair. The word is only a symbol. Similarly, the name of the Divine is the symbol of the Divine. Through that symbol you come to remember the Divine. So when you are remembering the Divine again and again, your mind becomes purified; it will purify your mind ‒ because the Divine is all purity. The Divine is absolute purity and whatever you think, that you become. This is the rule. So, if you remember the Divine through the name, slowly and gradually your mind will become pure, more and more pure. Your mind is like a mirror. You need a mirror to see your face. Similarly, you need a mind to see the Divine. But if the mind is impure, if the mirror is dirty, you cannot see your face in it. If your mind is impure, if it is full of worldly desires, full of hatred, full of infatuation, full of fear ‒ then it doesn’t reflect the light of the Divine. So, to purify your mind, you have to remember the Divine. And through chanting the name of the Divine, slowly and gradually your mind becomes purified. So along with the method of watching your mind, you can also supplement this method.

Company of Saints and Sages

So, there is contemplation, then there is japa, and the third thing is that you should, periodically, keep meeting with the saints there [in your country]. If any saint comes there, or there is a holy person, or if there is a seer aspirant, go to him periodically, talk about the Divine, talk about your experiences ‒ that is a sort of holy association. That is also very much needed. It gives you incentive. It gives you inspiration. It is just like that you plant a seed somewhere and then you have to water it. If you don’t water it, it will not sprout and even if it sprouts and becomes a plant, up to a certain period you have to water it. So long as the roots don’t go very deep into the earth and the tree doesn’t get water from the earth itself, you have to water the tree. Similarly, unless and until you reach such a stage that you don’t need any inspiration from outside, you have to meet the people who are inspired. That is the true satsang. Satsang doesn’t mean that you go and hear discourses. Satsang means to live in closeness with someone who is inspired. Just go and sit beside him, beside any holy person and you will feel something, you will get inspiration. That is the third part of sādhana.

Reading Holy Scriptures and Biographies of Saints

The first part is contemplation, the second part of sādhana is japa, the chanting of the Lord’s name or any mantra, the third part of sādhana is the association with saints, with holy persons, with honest and sincere aspirants. And the fourth part is that we should also read the holy scriptures ‒ any holy book which inspires you. You can read the Bible, you can read the Gita, you can read the Upanishads, you can read the life stories of saints. It will give you inspiration. It will make you know how they were panting for the Divine, how honestly and sincerely they were working for years and years together to find the Divine. Then you can make a comparison between what you are doing and what those people have done to see the Divine. You have read Ramakrishna, you have read Rama Tirtha. For many, many years they were panting for the Divine, weeping, and very honestly and sincerely, day and night working for the spiritual unfoldment. So, if you read the holy books or the life stories of different saints, it will also give you inspiration.

Deep Conscious Breathing

The fifth part, which is also very important and which I have told you many times, is that you can practise deep breathing also. That is also very, very useful because you have a special pattern of breathing.  Everybody has a special pattern of breathing. A disturbed man who is very, very worried ‒ his breathing will have a different pattern. A man who is calm and quiet ‒ his pattern of breathing will be different. So, as I told you that day, you can make an experiment: that when you are very calm and quiet ‒ sometimes you are very calm and quiet ‒ at that time you note the pattern of your breathing. How many seconds does it take to breathe out when you are calm and quiet? How many seconds does it take to breathe in? You note it down, write it down. That will be a special pattern, you know. And then when you are very worried or disquiet or you are very much disturbed, at that time you do conscious breathing with that pattern that you have already noted down, you understand me? You have noted down the pattern of your breathing when you are calm and quiet. And now you are disturbed, and you will feel that your pattern will be different. Now you breathe according to that pattern in which you are calm and quiet. You inhale the breath in that pattern which you have noted down, and you will come to know, you will find that your mind will become quiet, calm and quiet. Because that is a different pattern. So, when you do conscious breathing, the pattern of your breathing changes and there is a very deep relation between breathing and the state of your mind. When you are very worried, your breathing becomes very fast. When you are in a state of fear, your breathing becomes fast. When you are calm and quiet, your mind is silent, when you are composed, then your breathing becomes slow and regular. So, if you practise conscious breathing and deep breathing, it will make your mind calm and quiet. This is also very important; you can practise it.

You can divide your time. For one hour you can sit in meditation. You know, in the morning, meditation is very helpful, because your mind is very fresh, and in the evening, you can practise japa. Because all day you are working, your body is somewhat exhausted, your mind also, in the evening you have a sleeping tendency so at that time if you sit in meditation, then you will go to sleep. Because when you see your mind and you become completely inactive, then there is a tendency to go to sleep. You understand me? And if you are doing something … now japa is a doing something, it’s an activity, you are not completely passive, you are doing something. So, it will be better in the evening to practise japa. In the morning you just watch your mind. And in the daytime also, you can practise japa ‒ when you are washing clothes, when you are sweeping your room, when you are cooking your food, when you are walking, when you are sitting ‒ in your heart you can keep on reciting the mantra. In the morning you can practise this method just to sit and watch your mind. Because in that method you have to be very, very passive; you have not to do anything, you have just to watch. And if you are not doing anything, in ordinary practice ... You are accustomed only with three states, you know? Either you do something, or you go to sleep. In the waking state you are doing something. When you are dreaming ‒ in that state also you are doing something. And when you are in deep sleep state, you are doing nothing. So only with two states you are familiar. The one state is that you are doing something; and the other state is that you go into a slumber. You have not seen such a state in which you are waking, but you are not doing anything. So, when you watch your mind ‒ watching is not doing anything, watching is not a doing ‒ you must understand it: Watching is not doing, it’s not an activity. But when you are practising the Lord’s name, when you are chanting it, it’s a doing, it’s an activity. So, when you are just watching your mind, there will be a tendency to go to sleep. And if you practise it in the evening, then you will fall asleep. In the morning your mind is very fresh, your body is fresh, because you have taken rest in the night. There is more alertness, provided you have taken appropriate sleep, proper sleep. You know everybody needs a certain quantity of sleep. There’s no fixed rule how much, how long we should sleep. A child, when it’s born, it sleeps all the 24 hours. Children need more sleep because when you are sleeping, there is growth in the body and children are growing, they need more sleep. But when you grow up, and you are over 50 or over 40, then not so much sleep is needed. So, everybody needs a certain quantity of sleep. And if you sleep properly, you don’t dream or your sleep is not disturbed and you have a proper sleep, then when you wake up you will feel very refreshed, your body, your mind also will be very refreshed, fresh. So, at that time, early in the morning you can practise this watching; just watch your mind. In the evening you can practise japa. In the daytime, you can also practise japa while doing something ‒ you are cutting grapes, you are cutting cherries. In your mind you can recite the Lord’s name. So, these are the five parts of sādhana and every part is important. There is contemplation ... [recording ends].