Meditation Insights

Mohanji gives insights on experiences during meditation
Satsang at The Attic, Connaught Place, New Delhi on 20th August, 2011

Q: In the age of Internet, we tend to look at various things and we follow that for a while, and then move from it. But isn’t it true that it is the faith and not the medium that matters most. Because there have been cases – for example, in the case of Lord Buddha where even he, after the entire stage of meditation, hadn’t found anything. 

Yet the moment he felt he hadn’t found anything, he found everything. So I believe there are cosmic energies in this world. Positive energies are drawn towards positive emotions and positive faith. Shouldn’t that happen, or should we define what the right medium is for us? Or should we just have the right faith?

A: I have understood your question. Whatever we do or whatever we think has limitations. Whatever happens has no limitations, i.e., certain things happen to us – we take birth. From birth till death, we have brought sufficient money to complete the journey, i.e., we have defined our birth and death before we were born. Each person has defined himself in that way.

Now, your question was about the consciousness that moves you, right? If the consciousness that moves you is in an unlimited plane, there cannot be any emotions, nor can there be any detours. You will be walking a straight path till the destination, and you would have the corresponding experiences. 

But what happens is that we get influenced during the journey and we decide to take detours. This may not suit the original agenda of your birth. That is when conflicts happen, disappointments happen and expectations are formed upon detours.

Can you segment your question and ask so it’s easy for me to answer? This is quite interesting for me.

 

Q: First segment – Isn’t it the faith of following a path, rather than the medium that matters most?

A: Faith is the key; faith moves mountains. So when you have firm faith, like faith in Shirdi Sai Baba, no harm can reach you, because the faith itself protects you. Then you can be one hundred per cent sure that you will never fall, depending on the intensity of the faith. Guaranteed!

Q: Second segment – What is that stage when one says I have to take a U-turn? Because, I forget the name of this rishi who meditated for a long time, he practiced the Gayatri Mantra so that he could meet Devi. And just when he thought that it had all gone to waste, he took sannyas. 

The moment he took sannyas, Devi appeared and asked him what he wanted. He said “Look, I don’t need anything now.”

A: Basically when you do something with an expectation, and even if you do it for a purpose, usually what happens is that the intensity may be less at some point in time. Or through doing, you have very very weak limitations. We feel that through our doing, we can achieve a lot, which is not true. By being, you can achieve much more. 

Beingness is intangible, doingness is tangible. That is why by doing, we are often adding another habit to our system which becomes a burden in the end. Once you drop this burden, you see light. So what was preventing us from seeing the light? – The action. It’s like a feverish action because it’s like “I want to see, I want to see, I want to see”. Finally, what happens, is that you see nothing.

So in Buddha’s state, he says that he was meditating and meditating and nothing was happening. And then he dropped everything. See, you can take your kundalini through sadhana (spiritual practice) up to the third eye. Or up to the throat chakra, then the kechari mudra to the third eye. 

But from the third eye to the crown chakra, how do you take the kundalini up? It has to happen – eligibility is the factor. So when Buddha dropped everything, he felt the leaf falling from the tree through his consciousness. And he felt every movement of the leaf. So that is full awareness, 360 degrees. Where you don’t exist, you are one with the whole world. 

A leaf should fall through you, it cannot fall outside of you. Because you are omnipresent. The moment you feel the leaf is falling outside of you, you have not dropped your body consciousness, that’s lost. The bird was singing within you, not outside of you. Likewise everything falls in place, and complete annihilation of the unit happens. Then you are merged with the one consciousness.

How does that happen? Beingness. You can do any sadhana you like, because you like to taste it, or test it. But it is not taking you anywhere. That is why I said that in the spiritual supermarket, there are hundreds of sadhanas prescribed, whether tantric, or yogic or whatever. But you do that for personal satisfaction and not enlightenment.

Enlightenment happens only through beingness. When you drop everything and be with yourself. To achieve that, you need detachment, even from whatever you do. This is the reason why sometimes doingness can’t take you further. But you wouldn’t know unless you do a lot and it’s not happening. But you would have spent a lot of time. 

So what is the detour? The detour is basically your understanding that this is not going anywhere. I have had enough of it, drop it. The moment you drop it, everything falls in place. Then you no longer have any binding.

Helplessness is the other side of ego. If ego is on one side of the coin, helplessness is on the other side. That is why God gives us situations where we are helpless. Then we surrender, so there’s no ego. That is the sign of why we prostrate at the feet of God. Head and heart are in the same line and there’s no ego. When ego is nullified, grace flows. 

Likewise for purity. Satkarma – do good things, then purity automatically develops within you. And then automatically you get lifted. And then you won’t want to do anything, or say anything. There’s nothing to express. You feel that you are fine as you are. You were always fine, but something, i.e., your mind, was telling you that you were not fine. Now however, the mind can no longer talk.

Now I’ll give you a very simple practice. If you can follow this, in a year’s time, you’ll see the progress. First of all, whatever binds you – even this meditation if it binds you – drop it. If words are binding you, drop it. If you feel that you are getting addicted to it, drop it. Your soul’s purpose is complete liberation as soon as possible; its interest is in getting back home as early as it can.

So, imagine a cricket ground. There is one door and everyone is rushing in, elbowing and trying to get in. Our thoughts are like that, trying to elbow their way into our mind to express themselves. Just like a policeman watching the crowd. He’s not interfering or doing anything, he’s just watching the crowd.

 What happens? Automatically people will start forming a queue and the rush stops. People know that he could be dangerous, so out of fear or out of awareness, the queue forms and it’s orderly. Slowly, slowly, continue to watch your thoughts – first you watch for 5 minutes a day, next 10 minutes a day and then after 10-15 days, make it 15 minutes a day. 

You are only watching, not doing anything. Then the thoughts will start segregating. Right now we are terribly worried about the space where there is no activity. However, you will start loving that space after some time.

Now why we are in a hurry to go around and fill our space up? Because we are worried about the vacuum, the empty spaces within our mind. And mind stops existing if there are a lot of empty spaces. But why should mind be there? So we will start falling in love with that empty space, and that space expands further and further. 

If it goes further and further, mind itself dissolves. Then karma dissolves – there is no karma to express through the mind. Then what happens – shanti, complete peace. This is possible, just by watching, just by being a witness.

Q: This is my first session. For the last couple of months, I have been attending, but not on a regular basis. I was not at all a firm believer of meditation. I used to laugh when people went for it. My friends are sitting here only, and they forced me to give it a try once. 

In my first experience, I felt a very strange thing that has never happened to me before. I felt that I got connected with my father, with the divine light of my father who passed away two years ago. I felt that the soul of my father entered my body, the top of my skull actually – I felt that it was vibrating vigorously and then it went away. 

Now after that, whenever I do meditation, I do it in anticipation that I will surely get the same connection. But the same thing has never happened again. And in the middle of the meditation, I feel very restless and uncomfortable. 

So many thoughts keep hovering in my mind that I lost my father very early, when I was just a small kid. And I could not perform the duties which I should have done for my father. So this makes me very uncomfortable and very restless. I request you to guide me.

A: The first was true. He actually conveyed this to you. You reached a level of vibration where he could actually convey a message, which was not possible in the normal run because we are in a mode of activity and thoughts where no messages of a subtle nature can reach you.

Now, you can’t go back to the past and reverse anything. What you could possibly do to still express gratitude and honour your father is the pitru-karmas, shraadh rite. If you do that, that automatically elevates the soul. When we cry for a departed one, it pulls the soul back, which is not good. This is because it has its own agenda and you are preventing that. 

However the moment you start expressing through shraadh, that I am happy with you and thank you very much, I couldn’t do much for you but this is the best I can do for you now, that would be gratefully accepted in the other realm. And definitely it happens. 

There are amazing results. I don’t have time to explain, but some people have conveyed amazing results by just performing the shraadh rite, which I had guided them to do. This connectivity is important. That way, you will evolve and he will evolve. But he conveyed his message.

When you express yourself in the form of an entity, such as a body, residue remains. And the residue has a power to convey. So you have got the message and this is the right message. He blesses you and loves you. You could convey back the same through the shraadh. Then you will see the grace flowing in your life. 

That is why I make it extremely important for taking blessings in this communion, first from the parents. Matha – Pitha – Guru – Deivam. Mother – Father – Teacher – God. Then everywhere you are patching up, and grace flows abundantly. Conflicts dissolve. Otherwise we always have regrets, guilt, we have fears and these things prevent our progress.

And do not expect the same result twice, because that will not happen. Like, if I tell you, on the 20th, at 10am, come for the meditation. Next week, I cannot tell you the same thing because it’s another date, another situation. So we are moving as per a time-space juncture. 

At a particular time, a particular event happens to a particular person. We are moving according to that and we cannot change that. Tomorrow, or in the next moment, it may not be the same. The same person may not experience the same thing, so life has to continue like that.

Yes, it was a real connection. That is why I said that you should own your experiences. In this meditation, whatever experience you have is real. I’ll give you an example to clarify this point further. One person who has never meditated before came to the meditation. His father had died when he was 11 years old. Now he’s 38. And ever since, he had never been able to find the documents of his property. 

They had searched everywhere and couldn’t find them. So he and his relatives could not even partition the property. In the meditation, his parents came, blessed him and told him “We are very happy with you. You are a very pure son of ours. By the way, you have been looking for this document; search in this particular place and you’ll find it.” 

And they found it. Sometimes tangible results happen. You have to own it. Understand that it is real. Otherwise you cannot progress further. Mind will always say – you are imagining. You have to differentiate between imagination and reality.

Q: Sometimes other people come back with comments. I have shared a lot of my experiences in my articles and I have a lot of brickbats coming back to me.
A: That is because another person cannot understand your constitution or consciousness. What you experience is completely personal or different than another person’s. Whatever you’ve experienced in your life so far is your personal experience. It’s not the same for another person. 

If somebody else cannot see, it only shows that person’s level of consciousness – it could be higher or it could be lower. So do not expect another person to understand you. But if you write it down, it will tell you where you are travelling. That is why I recommend writing down your experiences. Once you are confident about saying that you experienced it, conviction happens.

Conviction leads to faith; that will automatically take you higher. Once there is faith, every door opens. If there is lack of faith, nothing happens. Others may feel that your experience is imagination, good enough. That is not your concern. We talk about other people; that is not at all required. 

Likewise, we are always concerned about what other people say about us. That is also nonsense because they can say anything. So if we can avoid these two things, life becomes easier.

Q: Many times, I feel that God wants to convey some message to me, but I am not able to understand. And I feel restless many times. Initially, when I used to come to the meditation two years ago, I sometimes dreamed of Lord Shiva and it was a very uncomfortable kind of thing. 

And after coming to meditation, I had a very similar dream of Lord Shiva. And during meditation, I felt some discomfort. There was a time when I felt a divine light and like a current through my body. 

That really scared me, and then I left meditations and all other things. Then I again started this and felt that life has become soothing again. But I am often scared of meditations when I am alone.

A: The more you can move to your spine, the more your fears will disappear. Fears are all in the emotion and mind plane. With consistency and faith, you will automatically shift to the spine. Whatever the impression, whether it is a good feeling or bad, continue with it. 

And walk the path. As I always say, do not try to walk north first, then east, then west and so on. Keep walking to whatever destination you have set, till the end of the road. It doesn’t matter which guru you follow, as all gurus are the same, or which path you follow. That consistency will erase the bad effects.

Once the clarity increases, the awareness increases, you will see everything more clearly. It’s like climbing up a hill – from down below, it seems like a very high hill and very difficult to climb. But when you reach the top, you see everything very clearly. So like that, you keep climbing. 

Once you start walking the steps, you will be fully protected, one hundred per cent guaranteed, and guidance will come to you. If a message from a higher consciousness has to reach you, they will make sure they reach you. And if something is not coming to you at a particular time, you do not need it then. 

If it had to come to you at that particular time, it would have come.
Your experiences all exist within your consciousness. They come out at an appropriate time. When you are ready for it, it will come to you. If you put a seed in the soil during the summer and don’t water it, it will not germinate. Maybe the seed will stay dormant though and come out when the rains come.

Like that, in a particular environment and at a particular time, things will happen for you. But you should not hang on or cling on to any of these impressions. Keep moving, and do it in a consistent way so that automatically things start clearing. Faith is very important – whichever God you believe, have full faith in him. And that itself will eradicate all issues.

Q: What does the stiffness of spine signify during the meditation?

A: Actually, the activity is happening through the spine and it can create an effect that suits your constitution. So when the spine is stiff, it means some movement has happened. 

Some energy has shifted and it has created the effect of stiffness. It will go back to normalcy once this leaves completely. For some people, it was perspiration in that area. For some, it was heat. That is their constitution. But the bottom line is that it had an effect.

Transcribed by Madhusudan Rajagopalan