Restoring our Balance.
(Talk on 19th Jan. 2010)
My dear associates in the Path,
1. My humble salutation at the feet of all the holy
ones gathered here on this auspicious occasion of the Basanth celebrations commemorating the 138th birthday of
our Great Master Lalaji Maharaj of Fategarh. More
appropriately I should say we are commemorating the
birth of a New Era in human life. Even when we are
seasoned travelers on the journey to heal our inner
selves, there is always more to understand. The
unconscious, sub conscious and super conscious can
spring surprise lessons from deep within at any time.
These surprises which are positive as well as negative
need not scare us. However we should remember that we
are on a journey to Infinity or wholeness and in the
process pick quite a few jewels which are in fact our
own parts or as Master calls them Knots.
2. These parts of our being or consciousness called as Viveka, Vairagya, Bhakti, Saranatva, Prapanna, Prabhu
and Prapanna Prabhu have to be recognized as our jewels
and we should start owning them to gain the much awaited
passport to higher realms of divine being. An exciting
point of view is that life, at whatever stage-childhood,
youth, adult or old age is always creative and never a
closed chapter. So there is always more to learn about
ourselves as we heal, grow, and integrate all aspects of
ourselves. The more integrated we are the better we are
able to participate in creative evolution of life. Life
I would rather say is a creative balancing sport. When
spirituality is intertwined with life the act of
balancing is more interesting and lively. When we
appreciate the role of the Master in His spiritual
splendor in our individual game of life, it gains a
greater meaning.
3. Master while expressing his longing to get fellow
associates in the path to reach the Destination
poetically states that “... will surely come to the
conclusion that you are sailing towards your own Home,
wherefrom you have been snatched away by the Irony of
fate.” Elaborating further he states that ‘when we use
the phrase of ‘irony of fate’ the idea of unbalanced
character presents itself to our memory. So long as
there was the Balanced state, we had no form of our own.
We have simply to unfold ourselves and restore our own
Balance which we had lost.” Rather than getting off
track and being seduced into the highs or lows of life,
we live with courage, confidence and faith in the Master
as life unfolds, ready to meet new experiences, all the
time dwelling in the immediate presence of the Master
deep within our hearts where it beats. The rhyme and
rhythm of the heart beats we hear during our meditations
is the splendor of divine play within us and lending our
ears to it we enter deep states of Samadhi as if we are
entertained with a lullaby.
4. One of the helpful ways to become aware of our
imbalanced states is to learn as to how we got lost
disconnecting our parts: as Rev. Babuji puts it is that
‘irony of fate’. We can learn this only through
meditation and diary writing. When the song of the
divine is not heard and we hear the trumpets and drums
of internal strife and external war we find ourselves
thrown in noise and tempest as it were. Watching our
thoughts and feelings going amuck and none of the
individual thoughts and feelings lasting more than a few
seconds we start learning how temporary and transient
the thoughts are. We remember the Master and relax and
let go and do nothing with the thoughts and feelings.
This is the internal Vairagya we develop. Once this is
established we find we are in a state of Surrender to
the moment and immediately the thought of the Master
flashes and along with it we start feeling reverence and
devotion. Thus by being detached and observing the
immediate presence of the Master we feel very simply the
most fundamental and basic state of our being. This is
really the ‘ground’ of our being. It is then we can say
we are in the state we seek for in the fourth part of
our prayer “Thou are the only God and Power to bring us
up to that stage”.
5. The logic behind this is the power of thought.
Thought has divine origin and in its pristine purity is
simple consciousness where awareness itself is not
there. And more than anything else it has enormous power
in a latent state. Master says” When one resolves to do
a thing, the connecting link between the thought and the
work becomes intensified, and one begins to draw power
from the real source in accordance with the strength of
his thought. (Reference: BWS 125)” So during our
meditation if we keep the thought of the prayer imbedded
in our hearts it grants us the power to be in His
thought undisturbed by any alien or extraneous feelings
and thoughts. One of the thoughts that disturb the
abhyasis relates to the physical posture. Classic
sitting is a vital part of our meditation technique.
Somehow the approach that demands the aspirant to sit
motionless for hours on end, as if becoming a frozen
human statue is the key to enlightenment, has got deep
rooted in some and this has been one of their
undesirable thoughts. Masters’ path suggests a more
scientific approach of not making the human body as our
enemy but rather works with our natural physiology to
allow more intense meditation with less effort and
discomfort. If the aspirant is clear about this concept
he may not gloat around with an idea that he is as
stable as a rock during meditation or suffer a feeling
of incapacity to be such a rock. Surely masochism is not
an effective path to self-realization.
6. It is the general principle that we keep our place
of meditation lit. It is because meditating in a
darkened room presents fundamental physiological
problems. When we sit quietly with our eyes closed in
darkness, our brain interprets this situation as a
signal to start shutting itself down for sleep. We are
informed by scientists that sleep inducing hormones such
as melatonin are released at the same time our heart
rate and circulation are reduced due to lack of
movement. We feel swept away on a sea of quiet
relaxation. This pleasant experience may be a type of
hypnosis and should not be construed as meditation at
all. If the aspirant were to bend the head such that it
glares the stomach it would induce sleep like state more
easily. Meditation means that we are relaxed as if
sleeping, but our consciousness has to be fully and
intensely awake. Therefore, it is a general principle
that when we meditate closing our eyes, the room should
be lit so that significant amount of light passes
through our eyelids.
7. The prayer of our system is very vast in scope and
needs to be understood carefully. Surely seeking desires
and wants is a part of family life. There is always the
primary need to exist so that we can do our duty. To
feel our existence and assure ourselves of our identity
we want to survive, create, procreate and build our
families and wealth and develop our ideas and ideals.
Thus keeping in view the ideal of preserving human race
on this planet seeking or wanting is prima facie a good
thing. Therefore the sentence “we are yet but slaves of
our wishes putting bar to our advancement” in the prayer
needs careful examination. If our sadhana is directed to
being an awakened Buddha the sentence would make sense,
in the manner in which the recluses think. But then we
are committed to realise in the family life itself and
have no desire (is that a desire?) to become a recluse
even if it were to be an enlightened recluse.
8. Desire creates duality- the person who desires and
the object of desire. Buddhism taught that desire is a
root cause of suffering and advocated the abolition of
wanting mechanism entirely. Rev. Babuji instead
suggested balancing our craving and needs. Further he
advocated that every thought of ours be taken as an
injunction from the Master and develop a detached
perspective as to the outcome of efforts of need
gratification. We are not slaves of desires and wishes
as such but slaves to the results of our action leading
to satisfaction of desires. In the philosophy of
recluses ‘not wanting’ means not wanting anything, not
just dropping the desire for sex, money, and power, but
also dropping the desire for justice, family, and
nation. It is not what we want that matters, it is the
wanting mechanism itself that is the barrier and
according to them has to be abolished. This will not
apply in a family set up. Whatever may be the merits of
deep meditation, reason and norms of society cannot be
dispensed with in a civilized world. The half naked
fakirs and totally naked jains are not specimens of
human perfection. The call for such abdication given by
the orders of renunciation is not acceptable to a
rational being. Ending the wanting mechanism brings time
to a halt, annihilates the future and the past, and
plays no part in His expression.
9. The Natural Path wants us to be responsible persons
committed to common good and welfare of the society.
Deep meditation is a giant leap beyond our petty wishes
and desires and not of logic and the norms of society.
It is dissolving into infinity to become aware of our
insignificance and is a state into which we enter and
come back wiser and cohesive and we see the grandeur of
His manifestation called in tradition as Leela. Though
we get into such a state due to the blessings of the
Master to remain in that state requires a total
commitment and dedication to the divine and our
developing a capacity to view all that is in creation
with the point of view of the ‘monas monadum.’(God) It
is true that very few humans have been able to manage
that radical transformation totally, but the possibility
of every human being reaching that condition is what the
Natural Path promises provided one follows the system in
letter and spirit.
10. We have an uncanny method of cheating ourselves of
the chosen objective of life. Infinite are the methods
by which we try to cheat our conscience. A sincere
aspirant once wrote to me ‘during morning meditation,
thoughts related to having second child for service to
the Master and betterment of humanity. Felt like someone
begging, pleading to have birth and quite surprised with
experience.’ What a way to conceal the carnality? What
a mischievous way of bringing in the Master into the
picture? I felt a bit dazed and much more puzzled when I
read the letter of the aspirant. And this during the
morning meditation? The importance of the timing to
offer our prayer stated by the Master must be remembered
and its implication well appreciated. He stated that ‘
Performing of Sandhya before sunrise is stressed upon
for the reason that the external heat and other
influences, which have been driven out of the body, may
not creep in again by the effect of the sun which would
prevent our deriving the best advantage of the
time.’ (Reference: BWS 125)
11. For sure we are all serious that we should get
enlightened and we are doing our sadhana and with the
help of Pranahuti are progressing in the path. But it is
necessary that though the goal of our life is most
desirable thing to be achieved there is a catch. While
we want enlightenment, we should realise that our
wanting mechanism is still active and thoughts relating
to the wants and desires will persist during meditation.
We need to understand our thoughts are all governed by
the wants and desires. At some point in our practice of
meditation we may clearly realise that wanting is a
barrier to further progress. Only when we can perceive
this very clearly should we try to step back from the
wanting mechanism, otherwise we will suppress desires
and lead a false life. Stepping back from the wanting
mechanism is a form of intense self-observation and not
suppression. The repeated influx of Pranahuti which
grants us comfort in deep silence and safe and smooth
passage into Void also concomitantly and certainly
ensures the reduction of wants. We find comfort and
safety in the Void, its certainty and indestructibility
is all through palpable. It is something we should wait
for in patience and perseverance. We are left with our
only option and that is to pray to the Master. The
fulcrum of the balance which we seek is the Master
Himself and this is one of the primary realizations we
have in the Path.
12. I encourage myself and implore you all ‘to pray so
that we pray and continue to pray so that prayer may
continue.’ What else is the goal of human life and its
perfection?
