My Salutations to all Pious Souls…… Practising Yoga asanas is not ‘Yoga’. But a kind of suppleness is created in our bodies if we practise ‘Yoga asanas’ and learn to have ‘control’ over our body. Then later on we get this benefit whilst performing ‘dhyanyog’ (meditation). The initial 20 minutes of meditation are spent in bringing our body under control. And it will be good for meditation if we learn to have control over our body by performing yoga asanas. If you do not have control over your body, you start coughing or yawning, have flatulence or start itching – all this happens if you don’t have control over your body; and the sadhak has great difficulty in controlling this. Thereafter, the ‘mind’ starts getting different types of thoughts. Man’s body has been structured in such a way that when the body is preoccupied with some work he doesn’t get any thoughts in his ‘mind’. But the moment the body is inactive, the mind gets activated, and the body gets into this habit. This habit of both the body and the ‘mind’ itself is the second largest obstacle while performing ‘dhyanyog’. And if you are not able to get into a meditative state, this obstacle will also suggest to you that if you are not getting meditation, you should get up; your ‘intellect’ will start enumerating what work is still pending and needs to be completed – this task is of utmost importance, it needs to be completed right now, so get up now! And in this way, the intellect stops the sadhaks from performing ‘dhyanyog’. Then the sadhak gets up from meditation, and after getting up the sadhak does not even remember the extremely important work for which he had got up. Actually, that work is not all that important. The important work is to make you get up from meditation, because you are going against the system of the body and mind and are trying to meditate. There is no such system in the body, where the body remains idle and at the same time the mind too does not get any thoughts. The mind’s play commences with thoughts – and we get only two types of thoughts – one, thoughts of the past, meaning the days of our life that we have already spent; we get thoughts continuously about some bad person or bad incident that had happened. Just as several ripples are formed on the water when you throw a stone into it, similarly we experience waves of past incidents in our life. The ‘mind’ arouses thoughts in the mind and the ‘chitta’ carries us to that place. Then we begin to visualise that place and scene in our past, and the chitta starts absorbing the good or bad energy from that place too. Just recently I was coming again to give a discourse at the Ahmedabad Medical College, when an ambulance passed us on the opposite side and a feeling arose in my mind and I prayed that the patient in the Ambulance should obtain Salvation; meaning, that I had come to know that that patient was going to die. Now I wondered how I could know that he was going to die, and I realised that I was getting indications of death from the honking of the Ambulance. The horn of the Ambulance was spreading the same state that was present in the Ambulance through the medium of sound. And I caught the waves of death that were arising through the sound of the horn and came to know that that patient was going to die. Hence the prayer that he should obtain Salvation arose within myself. If he was going to be cured then the prayer that he should get well soon would have arisen inside me. This means that a strong chitta always takes the (existing) state forward, but it does not change the direction of that state. The existing state of a place spreads to the surrounding environment through the medium of sound waves. And this is why our ‘mind’ feels happy when we hear the ringing of bells in the Temple or in a Church. All this happens, but we are not able to understand it. In the same way, we absorb good or bad energy from the place where we put our chitta. We will absorb good energy if we put our chitta on the good events of our past, and if we put our chitta on the bad (past) events, then we will absorb bad energy from the bad events. This means that everything depends on where we are putting our chitta. When we get thoughts of the past, they take our chitta into the past too; similarly, we also get thoughts of the future and the mind makes us visualise dreams through the chitta. We lose our energy in both these situations. However, there is a state of thoughtlessness in which no thoughts are present at all. But generally this state cannot be obtained. It is possible to obtain it for a few moments if some method is practised systematically with full feelings and concentration; for example, performing puja step by step in a systematic manner with complete faith and feelings, or singing a song or performing a dance with full feeling and emotion. But this is possible only when you are fully desirous of performing that task and your feelings at the physical level have ended. Once the physical feelings end, then your thoughts also come to an end, because it is only due to the physical feelings that you get thoughts. All problems of humans are related to the body and feelings of the physical body; and in order to end these physical feelings, many sages and ascetics start destroying their body itself by torturing it in different ways or by ‘fasting’, which is not appropriate either. If they are asked why they are fasting, they answer that it is for purification of the chitta. I ask them – do you get thoughts when you are fasting? They answer – yes, we get thoughts, mainly about food. So I told them, thoughts are the food for your chitta. If you get thoughts after fasting, then it means that the chitta is surely getting its food; so how will the chitta get purified? It is possible that your digestive system may improve through fasting, but it doesn’t seem possible for the chitta to get purified due to fasting. It does not seem appropriate to reduce your physical body itself in order to reduce physical feelings. The path to reduce your physical feelings is available in Samarpan Dhyanyog - you should draw a longer line of inner-soul feelings in front of the (symbolic line of) physical feelings. Then the physical feelings will decrease automatically. Spiritual progress is not possible without the physical body as it is the instrument, the tool. How will progress be possible if it is not present? In Yoga, only having control over the body is not enough; it is also the journey of control over the soul. Control over the ‘mind’ is just a halting place on that path. When we practise Yoga asanas, we also study how to control our breathing along with it – this asana has to be practised while breathing in and we have to breathe out at this place – meaning, that breathing also needs to be practised along with the asanas. We focus our minds on our breath and then for some moments we manage to have control over our body as well as our ‘mind’. And whilst performing the ‘Yoga asana’ our thoughts also stop and the body and mind are in the same state. It is not possible to control the mind only through the body; in order to have control over the mind, it is necessary to reduce the physical feelings completely. This decrease can be achieved by increasing the inner-soul feelings, and inner-soul feelings can be increased in Paramatma’s proximity. By ‘Paramatma’ I refer to the collective energy of pure and holy souls. When your soul gets connected to the collectivity of such pure souls, then the awareness of your soul will increase; and when the awareness increases, then the inner-soul feelings will also increase. Then when the inner-soul feeling increases in the body, the physical feelings will reduce automatically. Such a large collectivity can be obtained only in the ‘Satguru’s’ proximity, because the ‘Satguru’ assumes (the covering layer of) a physical body, but He is not a physical body. Lakhs of pure souls are connected to Him, and His soul is connected to lakhs of pure souls through inner-soul feeling. And this is why our inner-soul feeling increases after getting connected to Him in collectivity, and our physical feelings are reduced. Then our thoughts also reduce automatically, because thoughts are related to the physical body. This means that the mind-body problem can be resolved by obtaining a ‘Satguru’. Now how can one search for a Satguru in such a large world? You can reach a living Satguru by praying to a Samadhist (enshrined) Guru. Secondly, after obtaining a Satguru our quest for Paramatma comes to an end and one gets the complete ‘satisfaction’ in one’s life that - I have attained ‘Paramatma’. This is my personal experience. Every soul has the same goal – to attain ‘Paramatma’ and nothing more remains to be obtained in one’s life after attaining this greatest goal. Then only desire to give, and give more and more remains. May all you Pious Souls attain the goal of your life, this is my prayer to Paramatma. Lots of love to all of you, Yours Baba Swami 7/6/2015 By: Rupali Pawar
