Thus Spake Babaji - online Q and A, No. 49

Thus Spake Babaji - online Q and A, No.49
A live online Q and A session, recorded on 12 September 2021, with US participants 

Register to join the live online meditation and Q&A with Babaji at https://www.shivarudrabalayogi.org/en/online-satsang

In this session Shri Babaji gives guidance on the following:

0:00 Introduction
0:07 Jangama meditation technique of focusing the mind between the eyebrows
4:02 To have the consciousness of existence do you need the body?
6:01 Fixing the eyeballs in between eyebrows in meditation
8:30 How to remember the consciousness of existence outside of meditation
15:06 Some advice for a newcomer on how to go on the spiritual path
17:18 Does meditation increase detachment to the world?
19:05 What is the difference between watching and concentration?
20:04 The mind unable to stay still when trying to concentrate on an object
22:3 Can we say that the watcher and the watched disappear and finally watching remains?
25:10 Is there a difference between the third eye chakra and the space between the eyebrows?
27:00 How to silence the auditory component of thoughts
27:52 After how many months of tapas did it take to achieve thoughtlessness?
29:39 What would bring you out of deep meditation?
30:09 How to be content and grateful and avoid fear of poverty in your practice
32:31 Is Jangama dhyana in line with Patanjali yogi sutras or non-duality meditation?
33:22 Mental chatter that comes in meditation
34:47 Is it ok to be attracted to chanting mantras?  Does cleansing of the mind occur during chanting?
36:39 How sadhana affects our actions in daily life and visa versa.
38:12 Are we going back to being a child as the mind becomes purified?
39:46 Joy when dancing
40:55 How to avoid the body jerking during meditation
42:03 How to cope with getting older as we experience more physical problems
47:03 How many thoughts would Swamiji have had when in tapas for 12 years?

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Website: http://www.srby.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shivarudrabalayogi
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SRBYmission
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shivarudrabalayogi/

Transcript

Discourse: Thus Spake Babaji - online Q and A No. 49
You tube Link: https://youtu.be/JsM8Fvq0Iko 

Recorded: 12 September 2021 with US participants

Start of Questions and Answers

Question:   One of the defining things about the Jangama Dhyana that You teach is that we focus our attention between the eyebrows.  It seems to have a very powerful effect of kind of shutting off other thoughts, extraneous thoughts, minimizing those, and also keeping our attention from wandering off onto those thoughts.  Exactly what is it about focusing between the eyebrows that has a powerful effect? 

Babaji Maharaj:   One is the eyeballs.  Eyes are one of the strongest sensory organs.  If you can fix the eyeballs steadily into one place, not allowing it to move - as it generally keeps moving parallelly- then it can strongly withhold the mind also there.  That's what the watching means.  You watch through the eyes and then eventually you realize you are watching yourself.  You are not actually watching anything through the eyes or not even the eyes or no object.  That's why no anchor is given.  So, straight [clicks fingers], like this you go to yourself.  So, if only one can understand the technique, just fix it and just focus, then the distance can merge into the single pointedness.  Just like sometimes I have explained, in some drawings when they have drawn the road, it's wide in the beginning this side, by the time it comes to the other end, it becomes closer and it comes to one single point.  So, that's how the drawing is done for a road.  So, in the same way, though eyeballs are two, slowly as it comes to one place, then it gives that oneness to the mind and that mind stays here, powerfully.  And it can get rid of all other thoughts and visions and it can get rid of its own habit of thinking and visualizing.  That's how it achieves just the watching, and eventually you'll realize that you are watching yourself because nothing else is there.  People tend to think it as blank sometimes, as black, as anything, such thing.  Nothing.  That's why at that place I try to recommend you are watching the consciousness of existence - that is your real Self.  

Question:   So, in the beginning, you actually focus your eyeballs between the eyebrows, but then that can dissolve into this mind's eye where you're just seeing but without the eyes.  The face and the eyes all disappear but you're still seeing. That mental space or that mind's eye, that's just a more refined, more pure form of awareness? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah.  Like the word I use, consciousness of existence - that's what is the awareness you are talking.  That's actually awareness.  You gain that awareness because mind has regained its pure form of consciousness and is simply aware; it gets into that awareness.  

Question:   But in the past, did You say that the consciousness of existence - to have that you had to have a body or a mind? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah.  Until that stage, the body is necessary.  Using the body only you start meditating; they start the things. And you experience that you exist also.  Still until this point also there is a little bit of separation there.  That's why you are able to experience that awareness, an existence.  

Question:   But eventually you transcend even that consciousness of existence.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, this also; when the merger happens, everything disappears.  All attributions, experiences, definitions, everything disappears, simply.  

Question:   So, the ‘I’ vanishes. The illusion of being a separate individual person vanishes.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Disappears, vanishes.

Question:   So that was always an illusion?  We never were an individual?

Babaji Maharaj:   That's how you realize that that was simply an illusion which never existed.  It was only in the imagination.  Due to imagination it had manifested itself into a solid position which actually did not exist ever.  

Question:   So, it's like pure consciousness manifested in an object and then got lost in the object.  And then it rediscovered itself and finished, the illusion was finished.    

Babaji Maharaj:   So, after this experience only a yogi learns that the entire universe also disappears, dissolves into the space when you reach that consciousness, merge with that Ultimate Consciousness which has created this universe.  

Question:   Baba, just back to the original question about the technique.  You know, on the meditation app there's a couple of versions of Your instruction.  The one we played earlier this morning, You specifically said, "Focus your eyeballs between the eyebrows."  You don't always say that.  That's a very specific thing for the eyes.  You have to cross, eyes have to cross to do that.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, trying to elaborately explain when I say “Concentrate your mind and sight”.  ‘Sight’ means fix your eyeballs there, bring both eyeballs together.  That's what I mean by ‘sight’ here.  So, then you fix it and then you will see the wonders that will happen.  

Question:   Could you do the same thing… there's a point where if you try to hold on to that thought of eyeballs that you kind of thwart the meditation from going deeper. There's a point where that idea of eyeballs and eyeballs and face, you have to kind of gradually let go as the awareness starts expanding and then just be the watcher.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, because when you fix the eyeballs, you must not go on thinking that you have fixed the eyeballs and you are watching through the eyeballs.  These both vanish there. In the beginning, it appears to be you are watching through the eyes, but actually you are watching yourself.  Because all the other thoughts are washed off, when it dissolves, then its attention turns introvert towards itself.  It is not extrovert outside as compared to the beginning.  In the beginning its attention is on to the outside, outside the eyeballs.  So, that's why, ‘through the eyeballs’.  By then it would come inside the eyeball and its attention has gone into itself thus creating the awareness of the Self.  Holding on to that for a long time is what is meditation and tapas eventually, which will make it thorough and perfect and naturally remaining like that contented.  

Same Questioner:   Okay, Baba, thank You.  

Question:   So, my question really is about not when we’re meditating, but how to truly practice and go to that place of remembering the consciousness of existence.  So, I'm going to share with You my daily walks and I want to give You three different things that I've seen and I want You to clarify something for me because I don't want to be going into my imagination.  I want to be doing the right practice of how to be in beingness and I'm assuming that consciousness of existence I'm kind of calling is also ‘being’, to just be.  

So, when I'm walking, there is one level of being in the now moment.  I'm present, but it's more outward.  I see a tree.  I see the trail.  I see the grass.  I'm not letting my mind go into thoughts.  I'm right in the now moment, but that feels very outer to me.  Then there's a way of just watching without naming and I'm just walking and being watching without naming, but it feels very diffused.  It's like I'm there, I’m in silence as much as I can be, I can come back to just watching and walking.  But I've been noticing there's another thing that's been happening where I become aware of the awareness of the watcher.  It's not like I'm saying it's me; “Oh, I'm watching”, but it feels like it's a little bit more concentrated, that I'm aware of awareness of watching and I'm still just watching without words as much as possible.  So, my question is, is there really a difference between walking and watching without words, kind of just being as much as possible or shifting and being a little bit more aware of the being aware of the watching?  Am I imagining this and is this the wrong path? 

Babaji Maharaj:   In all this, one important thing is the mind doesn't jump into any type of imagination, means it enjoys the stillness of the surroundings also.  All the surroundings, tree or even the leaves, even the wind, nothing appears to be moving when that stage comes, that means your mind is now quiet and is just into itself that is the consciousness of existence.  Till then it tries to imagine “O, a wind is blowing; tree has leaves, leaves are moving,” something like that always tries to come back.  If that is not coming, then there is stillness.  There is the watching of the inner consciousness of existence, that is what is happening.  That's what has to happen.  If that is happening to you, that is wonderful.  If you are not experiencing any movement of the universe, surroundings - everything must appear still.  So, then there is no further imagination; it is all dissolved and at that moment you are able to enjoy the stillness, then that blissfulness comes.  

Same Questioner:   Well, I am not to that point yet, but there is a silence, there is a watching.  So, Baba, please give us something like a technique - in our daily lives, how to remember the consciousness of existence so that we can practice it?  Is it just coming back to silence? Is there any imagining that we are one with the existence? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, you see, if you watch the mind, mind has a tendency just to imagine even a little bit of a thing it sees; if it sees the tree or if it gets to see anything.  The day that you see the tree, but your mind doesn't say it is a tree, then you are there, that is the technique.  So, that's what you have to practice.  You seeing a tree is no problem, but you try not to imagine it as a tree.  Simply, that oneness.  Try to see the space there; the space is holding and that is there.  So, then it becomes still.  So then that consciousness of existence, it comes up, that comes up giving back all other things.  It is on the path to dissolving, disappearing.  So that is what is needed.  That's what you have to do while walking.  Try to remember the consciousness of existence.  That is the most wondrous of wondrous things.  Nothing else is as wondrous as that it is.  Not even a beautiful mountain, not even the Swiss Alps, not even the trees, not even the gardens.  Nothing is so wonderful, one day when that happens. That has to happen.  So, you have to remember that consciousness of existence even while walking, even if your eyes are open you should be able to do that one.  That is the technique.  

Same Questioner:   So just to be clear, so it's not about being aware of witnessing.  It's just being silent and being in the oneness.  Is that what You would say at this point to do? Oneness and silence, just keep going there, going there, going there, going there. 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yes, and this is what actually to be a witness means.  What you just now said is what is the actual witness.  Witness means you might be witnessing an existence outside like a tree or a garden or a door or anything, but you are not imagining what it is.  So, then you are into the awareness.  

Same Questioner:   Okay, Baba, thank You so much.  

Question:   Today I am with my sister Maria and she doesn't know English, but if You can give her some advice to go in the spiritual path, in the spiritual way and Your blessings to her to be able to do it.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, convey my blessings to her. Also to go on the spiritual path, its basic subject we have to take up is the mind because the mind is continuously into its own imaginations which get converted into cravings which gives rise to happiness, unhappiness, good and bad, all types of dualities sucking one into the world, making one to lose the real supreme peace.  One is looking for peace and happiness.  So, you have to get rid of these dualities by practicing meditation.  The technique as we teach is thus - you sit into any comfortable posture and gently closing the eyes, concentrate your mind and sight in between eyebrows by fixing the eyeballs; concentration of sight means, and just keep watching there.  Do not imagine any mantra, do not repeat and do not imagine any definition about the thoughts whether it is good or bad, right or wrong, whether it is there or not there, whether it is blank or filled, white or black, nothing; just watch.  So, you explain to her these basic points then it will help her to know her real Self that she is beyond the birth and death of the physical body.  She is that immortal soul, that eternal entity, that infinite form.  One day she will be able to realize if she goes on practicing like this and she will realize that she is an eternal entity, not the birth or death entity.  

Question:   Pranaams Babaji.  So, my question is, if I go and meditate more than the prescribed one hour and I try to do more sadhana, I feel like I am disinterested in everything else.  So how to differentiate between vairagya which is genuine and tamas?

Babaji Maharaj:   Vairagya is the alertness that everything is impermanent including your own physical body and the entire universe.  Everything may have its own time, the human body may have eighty years, hundred years or so.  A mountain may have its own time, Earth has its own time; like that, it is impermanent.  So, by remembering this you get the vairagya and understanding that you cannot depend on any of this for a permanent happiness.  See, you have to visualize and understand, a permanent happiness means once a happiness comes then you must be able to relax; it is not going to go away.  But if you are not like that then when the happiness comes then you are worried, “O, nobody should snatch this happiness, I do not want any unhappiness.”  You become anxious about that one.  Like that, dualities are there.  So, to get rid of these dualities, this vairagya understanding is what is the important thing which will help you to overcome the tamas also.  Tamas is the understanding of the things that are in front of us, that it is impermanent.  We must try to see which one is important and permanent.  

Question:   So vairagya means non-attachment?  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yes.  

Question:   Namaste Babaji.  I just had the same question as Agastya, actually.  So, You have already discussed quite a bit on it, but I also wanted some clarity.  So, first of all what is the difference between watching and concentration?  Is it the same?  

Babaji Maharaj:   You concentrate your mind and sight and then watch – it’s followed by watching. Means, concentrating here means you bring your eyeballs here and fix it there; make them steadily stand there and with that you, your mind, through the eyes start watching.  Until then you are trying to concentrate your mind and sight.  You got it?  Once you have concentrated, then you start watching.  

Same Questioner:   So, my problem is that even when I am not meditating and I am trying to concentrate on something, any task that I am doing, my mind just runs in ten different directions and then I become aware that my concentration is not strong.  So, I’m like, “I need to improve on my concentration”.  

Babaji Maharaj:    Watching means here… I’ll clarify. You see, when you concentrate also your mind runs, then you lose that concentration also.  But after concentrating, suppose you concentrate on an object, on a book on an almirah, anything, so, then you start watching there without thinking.  

Same Questioner:   So, can I practice an external object to concentrate and then go in to watching?  Or do I have to close my eyes and concentrate here? 

Babaji Maharaj:   For a short while you can practice watching to fix the concentration.  So, like any photo of any Divinity, Divine that you love, you watch that for a while.  Even as a young child I used to practice like that.  After I met my Guru Shivabalayogi – like I had fallen in love with Him -  I had a photo and during night times when I had to go to bed, I used to just fix my concentration on Swamiji’s photo, and then switch off the light.  Then that used to sit on the mind, then I would be watching that and used to go to bed and sleep like that.  So, like that you can practice any of the items.  

Same Questioner:   Okay.  So, I was thinking of concentrating on a candle maybe, but that's flickering a lot.  But I'm finding the same problem when I'm closing my eyes and following Your instructions that even though I am watching, there are like clouds taking different shapes.  Even though I'm watching in the middle and there is no image as such, I'm seeing like clouds forming different shapes, and that is also distracting me.  

Babaji Maharaj:   I suggest try to watch some photo that is dearer to you, a Divine figure or whichever one is appealing to you.  So, that would be much better because that is still; photo is always a stillness.  So, that would be helpful to you.  

Same Questioner:   So, earlier Victoria was talking about watcher, watching and the watched.   So, it's triputi.  So, can we say that the watcher and the watched disappears and only watching remains and that's what you find yourself to be? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yes.  One thing, oneness remains.  Both seer and the seen disappear.  

Same Questioner:   So, could we say that… I find that consciousness of existence gives me a feeling of expansion of consciousness and awareness.  In the sense that it becomes broader because existence is everywhere.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah.  That's what you have to see, the oneness - the same thing is everywhere.  You will experience that the same Self which is inside you is there in everything as everything also.  So, you visualize, you keep looking like that; that will be very helpful for you to go deeper in the meditation of silencing.  

Same Questioner:   Because I find that when I sit for half hour to forty-five minutes like this, it's only like five minutes I really feel that inner joy.  

Babaji Maharaj:   That's great.  Five minutes is good enough to begin with; it's not a small thing.  So, eventually you will have the upper hand.  One day you will see that forty minutes you will be able to feel that only, ten, fifteen minutes you get disturbed a little bit.  So, you will increase slowly.  

Same Questioner:   Okay.  Thank You so much.  

Question:   Baba, just could You make a quick comment on something that Usha brought up - the seer, seeing and the seen.  You said that the seer and the seen disappear.  So, that means only the seeing is real? 

Babaji Maharaj:   That seen, that is real because when the seer disappears, nobody to identify the seen as seen.  In another words, the droplet disappears, dissolves into the ocean and there is no droplet to identify the ocean as ocean.  That is how to say both droplet and ocean disappears.  But ocean is going to be there, but not as ocean because nobody to recognize it as ocean.  That is how the individual-imagined self merges with the Self.  

Same Questioner:   Thank You, Baba.  

Question:   Namaskar, Babaji.  I want to go back again to Agastya.  I think it is very interesting.  I had the same things.  Now is there a difference between the third-eye chakra and the space in which you would meditate, because I do tend to find myself kind of sitting a little higher.  Is that something I should remediate and come lower?  What is the difference there?  Is there a difference, and is it important to make a distinction? 

Babaji Maharaj:   No, actually. Because chakra is only a symbolic word that is mentioned, no chakra exists.  So, this place [points to the space in-between eyebrows] like Agna chakra is ‘commanding circle’.  Means, if all the mind gathers here, so then you become the master of your mind.  You are able to hold on to that for longer time, go into a tapas, and make it to go introvert into samadhi.  So that is what is the bhrikuti or the third eye.  There is no eye there.  When the mind comes there, that mind, now blossomed and purified as pure consciousness, is the third eye.  Because, you see, you have two physical eyes and the third eye is that you.  You see through these two eyes.  So that is how the ‘third eye, third eye’ is being told.  So generally, the ancient technique is to focus, fix the eyeballs and concentrate here.  Then that eyesight dissolves - only one-ness you will see.  That is the truth.  Space, in fact.  

Same Questioner:   So, if it is a little higher than smack dab in the middle, it is not going to make a whole lot of difference as long as I am finding my focus, I am finding the concentration and I am finding the peace.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yes.  

Question:   So, thought usually has two components.  One is the visual component and one is the auditory component to any thought.  So, what I have seen is focusing and closing the eyes, the visual component goes away, but the voice component is still kind of active.  So, does that same focusing take care of that eventually, or can we block our ears to probably dampen the auditory component of thought? 

Babaji Maharaj:   No, no need.  The same meditation will take care of the silencing of the auditory component also eventually.  You just have to watch.  You just do not analyze whatever you get to hear or a thought that comes.  Just continue watching, that will also dissolve eventually.  

Same Questioner:   So, Babaji, after how many months of Your tapas did You first experience a state where there was no thought for even a minute? 

Babaji Maharaj:   No, because before that sitting for five years of tapas, I used to meditate for six to seven hours for twenty years.  Even if not every day, like whenever my Guru was there, all the day we used to be working and serving, running.  But when He used to go away from this Ashram, then many days after attending to my morning chores of the regular work of the Ashram, cleaning, puja, everything - like I have told I used to make a few chapatis and go behind.  There were lot of bushes, mango trees.  Under a mango tree I used to sit down, contemplate for some time and then try to meditate.  So, that had given me a lot of peace and the stillness of the mind.  So, during the five years I could experience the quietness of the mind, thoughtlessness state very soon.  But then when the concentration came and the journey towards samadhi was happening, so then all the previous… whatever remained in the consciousness had to come out.  So, it all started coming out as a mental projection or as a manifested form.  Manifested means, as physical as this universe you get to see.  So that's how I experienced.  

Same Questioner:   So, at the end of the day when you are deep in meditation, what would bring You out of it?  Was it somebody else who had to tell You or Your own mind is aware to that extent? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Generally, my Guru had taught so that I used to keep a glass of water and I used to think once, “O, I have to drink this water.”  So, that used to bring me out of samadhi.

Same Questioner:   Okay, I got it.  Thank You.  

Question:   Hi Babaji.  Thank You very much.  I've been told and I've heard many times to be silent, but for some reason Your words and Your voice cut through so I'm forever grateful to You for that.  Thank You.  My question is and I think my last bowling pin is a hook comes and it's the hook of the fear of poverty and it takes me on that mystery tour.  I jump back into the brain and when it starts I can’t stop it.  Can You talk to my brain a little bit about being content and gratefulness please?  Thank You so much.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, when you go spiritual onto the spiritual journey, tremendous amount of courage…  Like for example, when my Master made me to sit for tapas, all the voice that I heard was “Either you come out as a yogi from this room or your dead body must come out.”  That means you must not abandon the technique, the practice, the method, anything.  So, that gave me a lot of courage; “Either I will do it or if I am unable to do, I will die.  Till the last breath of life, I will have the satisfaction that I have tried my best, if I die.”  So, that gave me enormous amount of courage and that confidence to go ahead, not to worry for any vision, any manifestation, anything that happened.  “So, after all, this might cause a death, that's all.”  So, when you think like that, when you are ready to die…  So, that's what since childhood also we learned from a school teacher who used to tell, “If anything happens in your, life think that “After all my head is going to be cut, that's all.”  After that nobody can trouble you. Until your head is there, they can trouble you always, threaten you, do all these things.  So, when you think about these things and gain that confidence and courage then you won't bother to look back; you will go ahead, “Let this kill me.  No problem, I must be achieving my results.”  

Same Questioner:   Wonderful, thank You very much.  

Question:   Hello Babaji, how are You? 

Babaji Maharaj:   I am good.  

Same Questioner:   So, this Jangama dhyana, is this more in line with the Patanjali yoga sutra or is more like Advaita vedantic non-dual meditation? 

Babaji Maharaj:   You can call it a non-duality meditation, on the non-duality, on the oneness; Patanjali has taught this method also.  This used to be practiced in ancient India long, long ago as one of the highest methods but the same technique was given to my Master by Jangama Sage who appeared from a fruit.  So, this is in line with that only.  Silent - silent watching, and in that process you silence the mind also.  

Same Questioner:   One thing I am seeing after following this is there is a mental chatter that's going on in my mind.  The visual images I am not that much worried about; I see something like a smoke kind of thing, like a night vision.  Let's say like army night vision glasses you would see like a kind of phosphorus green color thing in the night vision.  I see something like it, but I am not bothered about it, but sometimes there is this mental chatter that comes which says, "I should be watching it, I should be watching it, I should be watching it."  Sometimes, I let it go but then it comes back.  Sometimes I hear like a song that I heard like a Shankaracharya’s Annapoorna Stotra; that keeps playing in my mind.  I say, "I should not be hearing it, I should be silent” but I keeps hearing it. So, I should not worry about all that, right?  I just keep watching?

Babaji Maharaj:   No problem, no problem.  When it comes, just watch.  Try not to think about it, don't bother if it is coming.  There is a thin edge of difference when it appears and you start thinking about it.  So, once you apply a little bit of willpower, just watch that and don't bother what it is; forget whether it is yellow or blue or red or cloud or what it is.  Just watch, then it will dissolve and disappear.  It will happen.  

Same Questioner:   Okay, thank You.  

Question:   Babaji, I just wanted to say I am aware that the ultimate goal is to silence the mind through meditation and I love whatever little bit of practice I do of meditation., I simply enjoy.  But however, I feel very, very attracted to chanting of stotrams like Lalita Sahasranaamam, Devi Mahatmyam.  Somehow I am so drawn there, I don't know why that is, but I am so blissful when I am in that chanting.  And I wanted to ask the question of the cleansing process in meditation, as You mentioned that our acquired habits of the mind get cleansed over time.  Is there any cleansing that occurs when we are doing and absorbed in the chanting process? 

Babaji Maharaj:   So, one thing, it is no problem if you want to chant, if you are attracted.  Perhaps, in India being born in Hindu culture we were all brought up through the chants only.  That is how our minds became non-violent, more purified.  So, you can chant first and then do the meditation silently.  The example I can give – you have a carpet that is very dirty.  The chant can cleanse the carpet, but it cannot make the carpet disappear.  The meditation will make the carpet dissolve and disappear and there you are.  

Same Questioner:   That is so beautiful Babaji.  I just seek your blessings that that might happen.  Thank You so much.  

Question:   Babaji, I am jump starting my sadhana again.  I have a few thoughts.  One is that what we do through the day seems to determine our sadhana, the quality, and the sadhana, the meditation we do early in the morning seems to determine also how we conduct ourselves through the day.  It is like a kind of loop?

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, definitely it helps.  So, morning, the meditation, how much you have understood the technique, how much you are able to adopt that technique of just watching and then the silence that you are able to achieve makes you behave the whole day, how maturedly, with a broad-mindedness, always for a larger cause; all these things happen, and that can continue.  Like one hour of meditation in the morning can continue for the whole day helping you to mentally keep quiet and just keep watching all the things that is happening.  You go on doing anything and you won't bother much, you won't jump into the future or past but you will just watch; you remain focused when you are trying to do it and as the results, as the day passes by, everything your mind simply accepts.  So, that is how things happen if you start the day with the best of the things.  

Same Questioner:   Babaji, I had a question too.  Several actually came to mind as we are talking.  The meditation is purifying the mind.  Is it what we are doing, we are purifying the mind?

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah.  

Same Questioner:   Now it looks like we are going back to being a child.  When the other person was giving that wonderful example of the walk and the trees, as a child we just looked without naming, we just saw the space and the object.  Is that what we are doing going back to being a child? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, the difference is, you must understand when a child is innocent, it is innocent because it doesn't know anything of the outside world. But the same innocence can turn into ignorance and it can get molded by a wrong teaching or a right teaching.  That is what the danger of childhood there.  If they get the proper guidance from the elders, from the parents, they can learn the best and the right things,  otherwise they can be learning wrong things also.  But in spirituality when you undertake the journey and practice sadhana and when you achieve the innocence of the mind, you are now clever.  Nobody can fool you.  Nobody can teach you wrong things, you are mature.  So that is what the childhood you achieve again by practicing meditation and sadhana.  

Question:   Babaji, when I dance, I have this experience of tremendous joy, of a oneness which almost has tears coming into my eyes.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, this thing that happens, I would like to call it as a blissfulness that is good, not bad, but eventually it is the meditation which helps the mind to settle down, become composed.  That is the Supreme Peace.  Because the blissfulness can make you jump back to the world, getting excited or something else can happen; you need to be very careful.  It gives a temporary experience of blissfulness, that is when you experience the joy.  So, because you will start depending on the dance only for your enjoyment or happiness.  A happiness must be there at all times without needing any anchor or any such exercise, any such object, subject, anything.  It is there all the time.  So that is the meditation.  

Same Questioner:   Now, when we meditate, like we were meditating now, the body sometimes is jerking and then you would come back.  And I can't sit on the ground anymore cross-legged, so is there any way to tell the body not to do that? 

Babaji Maharaj:   You can sit on a chair - try to keep the back and neck straight.  If necessary, you keep a pillow or a cushion backside onto the wall or onto the sofa so that your body is straight; that is important.  Then when you sit for meditation, your body should be light, you should have taken sufficient rest also, and also after taking the food, you should give some time, a couple of hours for it to get digested so that you don't feel sleepy or tired.  If you avoid all these things, then you will be able to keep the body steady and to the point, straight.  

Same Questioner:   OK Babaji, thank You.

Question:   Thank You Babaji.  I am like for considerable periods of time able to go into silence and experience even that consciousness of existence, little glimpses of it, total peace and solitude, a serenity, but then the body with its conditions throws you off balance.  Like the current example is the cough, but it can happen with a particular condition that we may have.  So, I want to ask You that as we grow older and we have more bodily conditions, how do we try to… and it's inevitable.  Yesterday, You said it's the process of ageing.  And probably I'm one of the oldest in your Zoom meeting today, but I try to be positive.  I have faith in You and meditation, but how do I prevent that?  And then the question is, do yogis ultimately have perfect health or do they also suffer but have transcended?  So, how do you keep that balance? 

Babaji Maharaj:   One thing, you see, whether it's a yogi or a God or anybody who has come in the human body may have to suffer.  Body has its own limitations.  One might try to keep the body as healthy as possible by proper diet and proper exercises, walking, etc., keeping the mind also under control all the time; that might be helpful to keep the body a little stronger for a little longer time.  But ultimately, the body will fall ill.  It can become ill anytime - weather conditions, all the time the right type of food may not be available; anything can be the reason.  And sometimes devotees forcing a yogi to eat certain things which is not healthy also.  So, this time, doctor when I was in Bangalore, doctor was giving me a lecture, “You need to become more tough.  You are very smiling and soft.  You should not be with the devotees.  Make a serious face and tell that You cannot eat any such thing.  And otherwise, they will feed you all sorts of things.”  So, generally, often this is what happens in a country like India for Mahatmas.  The devotees feeding all sorts of things can create illness.  It is not immortal.  Body is not eternal.  It will have to go one day.  What one has achieved through the tapas is the Self-realization, the mind’s silence.  Like I have told, even if I am gossiping, my inner consciousness is totally silent and at peace, Supreme Peace.  It is only a witness to the outside world.  It does not visualize or picturize anything.  That is the Self-realization that one would have achieved.  So, this is about yogi.  

   Now about the ageing process.  I understand the pain will always be there.  So, as much as possible, you try to practice and along with that practice more patience also.  More and more patience.  Try to be sweet to all the people around you and exercise patience, even if there is pain in the body.  So, that should become your nature.  Then that will be helpful in meditation.  You relax.  In any position, you relax your body, that is necessary to feel comfortable and then slowly in a relaxed way gently close your eyes, try to feel yourself.  Like that you practice, whatever that is possible.  It is worth it till the last breath of life.  

Same Questioner:   Babaji, I want to just clarify.  Luckily, in my case, absolutely no pain and I bless the Divine for that.  No pain.  But, little episodes like that which unexpectedly occur, but I see what You mean is to have that awareness and to develop that total sense of peace and silence.  And be one with that consciousness which in a way I do feel through my work.  

Babaji Maharaj:   Yes, it is fine.  You can feel through your work.  You can feel that God is everywhere, in everything, as everything.  He is in your work also, in you also; like that you feel.  

Same Questioner:   Yes, in relationships with people, all the time. And no malice towards anyone, not a single individual.  So, give Your blessings Babaji.

Question:   Babaji, it is good to see You as always.  Thank You so much.  I have a picture of Swamiji that I am very fond of.  He is a very young boy at the time, probably after He just started going into the tapas.  And when I look at that picture, I almost always have the same thought which is, He sat in samadhi for twelve years watching, just watching, being a witness.  And so, what comes to mind is, I wonder how many thoughts are in your mind that you would have to sit for hours after hours, days and months and years.  How much thought is there that you would have to sit there for twelve years and just watch all that.  

Babaji Maharaj:   You see, He didn't have much of the thoughts,  He used to say.  He used to say, “The Jangama sage touched in-between eyebrows and asked me to gently close the eyes, keep watching in-between eyebrows, don't need to repeat anything, don't imagine anything and I just did that and samadhi came.”  As simple as that He used to say. “I went on watching simply”.  You see, now I have told, when you are able to simply watch silently without bothering about any thought or vision, when it becomes silent, for one hour when you are able to keep like that, that is meditation. For ten hours when you are able to keep like that, that is the tapas that starts.  So, He could keep because He had some inborn qualities - determination, ‘hang on to it’, do or die or attitude.  So, He never bothered anything, anything that came.  Few thoughts might have come, or manifestations might have happened a little bit, not much was there.  So, He was quite innocent at the age of fourteen.  He was just in His village, wanted to do business and develop His family.  He didn't have all the gadgets of televisions and mobile phones or computers to get exposed to the outside world.  He was very innocent.  Just this technique was given and He went on watching it.  

Same Questioner:   Yeah, I understand that, but why is He spending, during all those hours and all those years?  What exactly is He watching?  

Babaji Maharaj:   He didn't watch anything.  

Same Questioner:   He's just sitting there being and it takes that long for the soul to develop? 

Babaji Maharaj:   Yeah, He just kept quiet.  Mentally He was quiet.  He was just watching Himself.  And He was lost in samadhi.  He achieved samadhi, nirvikalpa samadhi, eventually.  Some of the points and clues He told, “When you achieve nirvikalpa samadhi, you are there and you are not there.”  That's what He was doing.  

Same Questioner:   Okay, well thank You.    

End of Questions and Answers

Babaji Maharaj now concludes the session.

 Wonderful.  I deeply appreciate all your participation and taking out your precious time.  All of our love and blessings. May you all be blessed by Swamiji our Guru.

End of Session