by Gurani Anjali
Namaste, Om shanti.
Let us now begin this meditation with the Devi mantra. Compose yourself first. Settle in your breath, feel the vital powers within you. Each vital power within us has a significant role to play in our lives. Each of these vital powers must be respected and must be upheld. They must be glorified. They must be magnified in our actions and our reactions. We are to give them the acknowledgement before we commence doing anything.
(All chant the Devi Mantra.)
Om ya devi sarvabutesu sakti-rupena samsthitah
Namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namah
Om shanti, shanti, shanti.Mother, your power resides in all beings
and all forms. I am one with that.
I bow to you, I bow to you, I bow to you.
That was very beautiful. When it comes from the depth of your being, the praises and the glorification of life, it is very beautiful. We are here in this world to uphold the world, and we are the world. Very important to remember that. Our actions and our reactions must be pure. Purity comes not by feeling guilty, or by thinking of how well we are doing, or even by reflecting on the truths of whatever we are doing. Purity comes from that place of spontaneous involvement, to be spontaneous in our undertakings. In order to be spontaneous we have to live in the present. There’s no tomorrow and yesterday is just a dream. Yesterday does not exist anymore. The yogi must live in the present, live in that frame of mind all the time.
When we live in the present spontaneously, it is very natural. It is difficult to live like that because of samskaras (past habit patterns). Samskaras are prevalent and they are very heightened in daily life. So it makes the individual struggle. This struggling must be recognized by the aspirant, the one that is seeking liberation. And we must all the time bring to mind that there is a struggle. There is that struggle. We must not become overwhelmed by the struggle or defend ourselves against that which we fear. We are afraid of suffering. We are afraid of not being perfect and we must not defend ourselves against either fear.
In order to do that we do sadhana (yoga practice), daily practice. The more we remember to practice daily, the more we are brought into that place of non-duality. That place where we experience the present, the present that is everything. So life does demand our spontaneous involvement. Spontaneous! Spontaneous without afflictions. Spontaneous without greed. Spontaneous without wanting. Spontaneous without desire. To be beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond the senses. Occasionally you do experience that. That’s why you cannot be moved away from the spiritual path because you do experience that spontaneity and because the thrill of that spontaneity keeps you afloat, doesn’t allow you to drown in this great illusion that is cast around you. You know what I mean, right? You know what I mean. It keeps us afloat. But often we get caught in the tangles of afflictions that shatter our equilibrium and so we become displaced. Energy becomes depleted, and we feel like we’re drowning, but we don’t drown. We keep coming up and we remain afloat. Know that and take courage from those experiences that have given you the ability to avoid totally submerging yourself in the afflictions of life. That’s how I’m doing it, because I have had those experiences. They will never stop. They will continue. They will continue as long as there is this world. There are the plays of cause and effect, but the yogi uses discrimination. Use pratipaksa bhavanam (cultivation/repetition of opposite thoughts). Use the gunas (qualities of being: lightness, activity and inertia). Uses the vital forces. Stay firm in the atma (Self).
Anyone present at this meditation may now express himself, so each one will be inspired. Come let us make this meditation an experience to be remembered. Anyone, share an experience, talk about your perseverance. Talk about your pain, your affliction that you overcame. Talk about the courage. Talk about the challenges in life.
An Aspirant Speaks:
“Traveling on the Yoga Path there are times when resolution is weak and times when it is very strong. You mentioned sadhana as a way of living spontaneously and overcoming the heaviness of life, and that is certainly true because when resolution weakens, my sadhana becomes more intense; nothing is more painful than living without resolution. Sadhana is a means to sustaining resolution and strength. So I thank you for your reminder. Namaste.”
Come, talk a little. We all know each other very well. Let’s take each other into the heights of meditation. So speak. The obstacles at times seem real, seem frightening. Accept the challenges, take them on. The challenges will continue, but the obstacles do not remain. Remember when you’re speaking, you’re speaking through your mouth and the vital force there is vac (speech). It’s carried on prana, the breath. Breath is the vital force. The power of the breath is in the speech. The speech is important because it enters bodies and it moves circumstances, therefore it is vital. The senses are vital. What we have to do is just allow the flow to occur with the realization that we want the change to occur. So that all may feel and live in the ecstasy of anandam (bliss), of nirvana (liberation), of nirodha (restraint of mental modifications).
See it is so wonderful to speak. To speak with discrimination, with realization, with responsibility, when you’re speaking not to yourself. That you’re speaking and your words are entering bodies. So come, speak.
An Aspirant Speaks:
“It’s quite …I find it difficult at this moment to speak. This place called life is overwhelming. The day to day changes. This great play, it’s hard to fathom. The mind constantly tries to understand what’s happening and it just doesn’t seem to be able to. It’s too small an instrument and surrender is not easy, but it must take place. We say with the mind that surrender is not easy and with the mind we also say that we have no choice but to surrender. We have no choice in that matter. We are living. The same mind can say it can’t be and it can be. Ultimately, there’s no choice. What is, is. Namaste.”
Another Speaks:
“I can particularly relate when you speak about struggle because to me that has been the most prevalent part of the Yoga Path. Especially in the past year, I feel like a magnet with my head against an iron wall, and as everyone knows that will get you nothing but headaches. I think when you go through a lot of suffering you try to simplify things, and I think the best way I’ve been able to simplify is to note that there always seems to be two opposing desires operating. There is the desire of the personal self. The ego, asmita (I-amness), the one who wants things, the one who’s looking for fruits of actions. Then there’s the desire of the atma, of the rta (flow of life), and sometimes it all seems very simple. It’s just one of those two things you’re going to finally allow to operate in your life and one brings you suffering and the other brings you release. Namaste.”
The suffering and the struggle occurs when there is no understanding and there is no surrender. There is extreme pain. It’s like going to the doctor, and the doctor has to give you an inoculation and you know you have no choice. You have a dreaded disease, you have to take that shot and the more you struggle, the more tense you become and the more pain you feel. But the minute you just put your arm out and you relax, all the nerves and muscles loosen up and in a second or two the serum is in you and all is well. You see, in life, the more we struggle against life, the more we tighten our whole body, and mind. So we feel the pain. Until we surrender and say, “Who am I to struggle, who am I?” It’s not, “Why should I struggle?” but “Who am I that thinks that I am struggling?” You see, you think you are struggling, therefore you are struggling. This is where pratipaksa bhavanam comes in. So you think you’re struggling, therefore you struggle, you struggle internally and you struggle externally with your fellow associations and the struggle never ends. The struggle internally must be settled once and for all and then the struggle externally becomes a matter of playing chess. You know how to play chess. Learn it if you don’t. Play chess. Watch the gunas. You watch for the right moment. Watch your moods, watch everything and then shift the pieces accordingly. It’s very easy. We make life difficult. Life is not difficult. We make it difficult because we think we are something and yet when you come right down to it, you don’t know what that something is. I am something, I am somebody. I am something. You want to fix yourself. If we were to be fixed in this world, we would have been like a tree settled in one place, fixed. But we are not fixed. We can move. We can move our feet. With our hands and through our mouths we do a lot of moving. With our mouth, we move ourselves, and we move the bodies around us through what we say and how we say it.
So just let it be, don’t fight anymore. Live one day at a time and see your way through. Move bodies around you and move your own body. You have no choice. You have a soul, the atma. That is a fact. You have a body. That is a fact. What is this body? Why do you have a body? All this you have learned. Live in it, move in it, multiply in it. Magnify in it. Above all, praise it. You can’t do enough praising, glorifying this existence, this body. You must praise it. Be thankful to it. Pay homage to it. Your hands do so much for you all day. Your legs do so much for you all day. Caress them gently sometimes and say “thank you” for seeing me through this day. There is no struggle except if you think there is. If you think there is no struggle, you will begin to realize that really, there is no struggle. The struggle comes when opposition is met. Like when you go for a job, and they say you’re too qualified or you’re not qualified enough. Or they say they don’t need you, or they’ll call you back, and you begin to feel a struggle, an opposition. But then you practice pratipaksa bhavanam and let the mind free the mind from that struggle and say, “Well, if one door is closed to me, I’ll try another.” Try again. It gets perfect you know.
It begins to change, but don’t stop the movement. The rta is something that is already the case. It is the case and we just have to move in it, allow it to flow. The rta is. It’s a movement, you know. Night follows day, day follows night, right? Changes in the atmosphere occur. The movement is a fascinating thing in life and we have no choice but to see it. In order to see the rta, you must step out of the rta. You must step out of the wheel of life in order to see it. It’s like when you’re on the train or when you’re in a car. When you’re driving in your car, do you see your car? No. You feel the motor going, you feel the movement, but you don’t see the car. The car is moving. In order to see the car, you have to get out of the car. The minute you turn the ignition off, you can get out and you say, “This is the car I traveled in.” Life is like that. You have to step out of it a little and that comes from a moment of experience in Samadhi (completion, absorption). You’re able to do that. When you sit in meditation, you stop all activity. You’re sitting there, and you begin to realize a glimpse into reality. You will experience and you will see the movement, but you’re not in it. You’re in meditation and you’re watching this world go by. Just because you’re sitting in meditation, you think everyone else is sitting still? No, they are moving. See the cars going by. Movement is happening but we are sitting still here. Not moving our bodies. Our bodies are very still right now.
When you go into meditation, you begin to lose the surrounding place that you’re in during the time of meditation, and you get caught up in another realm. You begin to see that you have no choice. As long as you have a body, as long as you have life, you must keep the wheels of life in motion without being attached to anything. Keep the wheel of life in motion. That means your body. Your body must be kept in motion. Which you do of course. You attend to it’s natural functions. You eat, you sleep. You feed it. You clothe it, right? You bathe the body. Now if you didn’t eat, and you didn’t drink, and you didn’t attend to your natural functions, your body would collapse. The life must be kept in motion. Which is you, which is me. Keep the wheel of life in motion without being attached to it, by surrendering it up to the Mahapurusa (Great Seer). Say, “This body, it knows only pain but oh, my soul (Self) remain in bliss.” It’s a beautiful life.
You don’t like the pain, but the pain helps you to realize and experience the ecstasy. You must have both. A little pain and a little pleasure. It keeps you centered. It doesn’t off-balance you. So when you get a little pain and when you get a little pleasure, you begin to walk in the middle road. If you just have pleasure, you’ll become lopsided. So the pain and the pleasure, they come. They center you and focus you and stick you in the middle. Don’t get overwhelmed by the extremes of life. For life must move on. Therefore, we have to stay in the middle. A little pain from time to time and a little pleasure from time to time is fine, but you cannot stay in either. You’ve got to stay in the middle road to keep flowing, to keep going, to keep moving on. Interesting, right? Interesting. So we get the pain, we get the pleasure. We get it equally from time to time. We get overwhelmed from time to time also by the pain and by the pleasure but they both don’t remain. The desire to keep on creating more pleasure for ourselves keeps us in bondage. In life as a yogi, you must not look for pain or pleasure. They are natural courses in life. They will come when you need them. When you need them, they come. You don’t have to look for them. The yogi must keep moving with a great difference in life. Not an indifference. We must feel the difference, not the indifference.
A yogi cannot live with the thought of “So what, it’s fine with me.” Who’s the “me”? A yogi cannot claim asmita. Who’s the “me”? What “me” are you talking about? The “me” that is now or the “me” that was five minutes ago. Which “me”? We are overwhelmed in life by the expressions of life. We are constantly expressing the inexpressible. Look at that and take great joy in what you see because these fleeting moments of expressions fade away very quickly. So when you take pleasure in it, look at it. The expressions can also be very painful. They could be sorrowful, they can be tired-looking. They can be very disturbing in appearance, yet it is just an expression. It is not going to last, so in the moment, for that moment, acknowledge that expression when it comes with a face in front of you. That face could be your own face reflecting in the mirror. It could come in the face of your best friend, your mother, your father, your husband, your child, your close acquaintance. But this face expresses so many expressions. What does it express? Pain and pleasure. Pain and pleasure. A desire to be, a need to be known. Penetrate that. Penetrate that.
Sometimes you’ll stand in front of someone and the person will just look at you with a far away look. I think you know how that looks, right? It’s a far away look and they’re looking at you, but they’re not there. They’re far away, but you have to try to get to that far away place that is expressed in that moment to aid in the changes of life. To aid in the changes of life. Not to possess. We are here to be merely the occasion, you see. Therefore we have to remember these golden words that we have heard from time to time and become merely the occasion in the individual’s life so we may aid in the preservation of life, in the ecstasy of life, in the joy of life. So the rta is sacrifice and struggle.
Okay, thank you for what you said. You brought a lot out of me. I couldn’t stop talking. There’s so much to say on those few words that you mentioned. Anyone else? Yes?
An Aspirant Speaks:
“I don’t have anything to say about courage or struggle but I’m glad I’m here and I’m glad I can move to delve deeper into life, rather than just be content to cater to the whims of asmita. Namaste.”
That’s very interesting, catering to the “whims of asmita.” That’s a good one. I’m glad you’re recognizing that as the whims of asmita. I’m glad you’re here, too. Anyone else? Yes?
An Aspirant Speaks:
“At the start of meditation, you spoke of spontaneity and it seems that spontaneity is something that we all inherently have, but it is frequently blocked by notions that keep going through our heads. Who and what we are. Basically, what keeps everyone here is having you for an example of spontaneity in action all the time. I’ve never in the many years that I’ve been here, seen you read anything for meditation, or do anything that was in any way rehearsed or contrived. It’s life you’re totally relying on and faith in the Yoga Dharma (Path or Way of Yoga), which has survived for thousands of years. It’s terrific to see that in action because otherwise this would all mean very little. Namaste.”
Thank you. Anyone else? Come on, we all know each other. Silence is golden, you know. That’s a form of speaking also. I wonder what you’re saying inside yourself. I wonder if the one sitting near you can hear what you’re saying? There’s so much to say and then there is nothing to say. Don’t you feel there’s something racing inside you? Like the motor’s running, the wheels are turning, don’t you feel that way? You’re ready to take off some place. You’re dying to speed away, right? Take off on a Boeing 707. There is that exhilarating feeling inside that at any moment you’re just going! That’s a very intense feeling we have within us. We are sitting but still we feel we are moving, like we are going. We are sitting but we are moving. That feeling of going, going, gone! That’s why I sometimes say, “Stand up. Face north, face south, face east, face west.” It’s because there is that motion within you to move and once those positions are taken, you feel like you went some place, yet you didn’t go any place. You’re not going any place. You never went any place in a million years, and yet there is this illusion that you’ve got to go. We are pushed from behind, and there is that great feeling of being pushed and we are feeling like we are being pushed all the time and we love to stand up. I could say stand up and go walk around the room and you’ll love that. I could say do some asanas (yoga postures), and you’ll love that, but I know you’re not doing anything. You haven’t moved in a million years, but yet this body is restless. This body is a vehicle and this body is covering the atma. The atma is free, you see, the atma is not going anyplace. The atma is satisfied to sit still. That’s why in the lives of great sages, they sat for hours and hours. That’s pretty good and you’ll feel pretty good too when you settle into that silence. No problem, but in daily life there is that tendency to keep going. Got to get there, got to get there. Get where? You don’t know where. That one that is pushing from behind is not showing its face, so you don’t know where you’re going and so the guru (dispeller of darkness) comes in front of you and says you’re not going anyplace. You’ve got to go internal. But the internal is no place. Yet from behind there are samskaras. The force of past impressions. It’s pushing you. It’s faceless. There’s no face there and if you look at the back, there’s nothing. You can’t see your back but you feel the weight on your back. Also from time to time, you’ll feel like tension building up and you want to move your shoulder because it’s pushing hard. It’s pushing with all its might. Day and night. Even when you’re sleeping, you can’t sleep in one position too long. It’s still pushing, right? How many times you go around in your bed. Quite a few times. You cannot even lie still in bed.
Okay, stand up please. Face south. Face east. Face west. See how wonderful the body feels? The muscles are beginning to get relaxed, the energy is equally distributed. There is a feeling of lightness. Face east. Face north. Face south. Face east. Face west. Face south. As you experience the movement simultaneously experience the unmovement. As you experience the form and the color around, the brightness of the sun, all that is manifest around you, simultaneously experience the unmanifest. Face north. In that moment that you move, there is a splitting of consciousness which the conscious mind embodies. As you move. Every turn you make a splitting effect takes place and the conscious mind is conscious of that. Every time you move that occurs. Face east. Face west. Face south. Face north. Face south. Face east. Face west. Face north. Face east. Face north. Face east. Face west. Face south. Face north. I hope you got what I was saying. You don’t have to go on any trip. You can have one right where you are. Yeah! People take a lot of drugs, you know to get high. They want to hear squirrels when there’s no squirrels around. They hear scratching on the walls when there’s no scratching. They want to have all these experiences and take all those LSD’s and all those fantastic hallucinogens. You don’t need it, just let your mind expand through the breath and allow that to happen and you will see how you can go on any excursion you want. In every turn we take, in every motion there is a splitting. A splitting occurs. You have to be very very quick to catch it. You will catch it only if you’re very observant. See now you’re looking this way but you’re really not conscious of the back. A split has occurred but with the mind you have to bring it to mind that you’re not conscious of the back. The non-existence in the existence.
Face north, face south, face north, face south, face north. Experience non-existence in existence. Look behind you. Look in front of you. In front of you. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look in front of you. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look behind you. Where are you? Om shanti.
Sit down, please. Where I come from, everything is done to release the negative karmas (action) and to create positive karmas, so one acts so to eliminate klesas (afflictions). One will be purified through one’s actions. Over here one’s actions are done for the sake of profit. How much, how much will I get to do this? The using of karmas in a negative way. In life, we are to do everything we can do to purify ourselves. To get past samskaras eliminated so that we can become pure. All actions should be done for that purpose. Whatever you do in life, ask, “Is this going to purify my body so that I may release my soul?” There has to be a reason for activities. There has to be a reason for it. There is a reason for everything in life, but we are dealing with this body. Which is not only a body, but a cosmic body, and therefore we are to work in such a way that whatever we do is going to release the soul. So whatever you do in life say, “Will this bring me sattva (purity, lightness)? Will it create a sattvic body for me? I want to be pure. I don’t want to be in bondage anymore.” Do all things like that. Do all things like that from making your bed, to cleaning your dishes, to cleaning the floors. Everything around you, do it in such a manner that it is going to bring out the purity in everything you do. Whatever you say, whatever you do. Do it in such a way that you’re going to see the sattvic nature coming out. You can’t do it just to get prosperous and have a big name and fame in life and things like that. The game must be sattvic, you see. The action must be sattvic. Fame and popularity and prosperity, if they come and it’s fine, great, let it be, but did it come through sattva ? Make the world in front of you very sattvic. Don’t create anymore bondage. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it! So if you’re going to live in this world, live with a purpose: to be sattvic. Sit up straight please. Breathe in and breathe out. Breathe in and breathe out. (Repeated two more times and then continued.) Now take your right hand and put it over your left hand. Continue breathing and look straight into your hands. Now close your eyes and put your chin up. Focus on the ajna chakra, the eye of intuition in between your eyebrows. Center on your breath. (Meditation)
All chant Om. (Repeated 28 times more). Shanti, shanti, shanti.
Let us end this meditation now with the Brahma mantra. (All chant the Brahma mantra.)
Paramesh vayam vidmahi
paratat vayam dhimahi
tanno brahma prachodyat
Om shanti, shanti, shanti.May we come to know to the ultimate reality
Let our minds stay on the supreme
May the consciousness within us direct us.
Shanti, shanti, shanti. Namaste. Have a very prosperous week. I hope all of you will have a speedy recovery from the attack of the klesas. Namaste.