THE MASTER ANSWERS PART 9, Mysticism, reading, forums, Numerology, Sun Signs, Divination

Posts: 5115 · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 11:10 am

Q What qualifies as meditation? Does spiritual reading and then thinking on the truths represented by the writing --- does that qualify as part of the meditation?

A No. Meditation is giving proper time to the practice as taught by the Masters. But all the other things help us in preparation for meditation. If we read Sant Mat literature it helps to remove our doubts, it creates in us devotion and faith, and builds that atmosphere of meditation around us ; it helps in that way. It is a means and not the end in itself. The real meditation is the time that we devote to our usual daily practice. That is real meditation.

All of these things definitely help us. They lead towards this thing, as does also the seva (service), as I explained earlier in the morning. But the main thing is that we should have no doubts in us. We should sit for meditation with an absolutely relaxed mind, and not with any excitement or any doubts in us. And all these group meetings, the reading of the literature and getting our doubts cleared, all help us to build that atmosphere of meditation around us.

Q Maharaj Ji, to many of the questions we ask we can find the answers in the literature. What can we satsangis in America do to propel us on our spiritual path, What do we need here in America to help us on our spiritual path?

A You are right, brother. There is hardly any question which I have answered, since I came here, to which an answer cannot be found in the books. Rather, they are answered in the books in a much more elaborate way. They have been written, and I am speaking. That is the only difference. But I have nothing particular for Americans to do. The meditation is the same, but some people have different circumstances, different environments where they have been placed. Meditation is not different for Americans or for others. Some people have a greater instinct of possession, they are more possessive. They have to realize that and rise above such things. As I said this morning, like a spider we weave our own web, and soon we find that the web is complete, and we are caught in it. We are imprisoned in a net of our own making and cannot get out of it. We create desires and cravings and work hard for the material achievements and possessions, and when we get them ultimately, we find that we re being possessed by them. We have become prisoners of them. That is the way I find Americans today.

These things of the world are meant for our use; we are not meant for their use. We should possess them; they should not possess us. What I feel, from what I have been able to see, the very objects of possession are possessing us now. We have become so much their slave that we have forgotten the object of our birth, the object of our coming into human form. We have lost the end or goal and have become involved in the means. We have to rise above these things. We have to realize that these things are meant for us ; we are not meant for them. All these scientific inventions are for our convenience, to have more leisure, to enjoy ourselves and be happy. If we cannot find leisure and happiness as a result of all these scientific achievements which are today to our credit, I think our purpose in achieving them is no good, of no use at all. We have to see whether these things have made us happy or have they, on the other hand, just made us more frustrated and more unhappy in which case we should realize how to overcome this, how to possess them and not be possessed by them.

For example, what people used to do with their hands in ten hours, now our modern machinery does perhaps in two or three minutes. All this was done to save that nine hours and fifty-seven minutes. But after inventing that machinery, where today is that extra nine hours and fifty-seven minutes? It is nowhere. We have invented all these devices to save time, to have more leisure for ourselves so that we can think about our self and think about the Lord. That is good. I am not against it, but we must have that leisure for which we have worked so hard to achieve these inventions -- these so called time-savers. We have forgotten that object, that purpose for which we have worked so hard. That has been absolutely forgotten. We have become just like a prisoner in a spider's web. We have beutifully woven it and ultimately we find we are prisoner of it, and cannot get out of it, so we have to work harder to get rid of this net now. The means by which we can get rid of it is nothing but meditation.

So, whatever you do, keep your destination and purpose in view. Keep your Home in view and try to achieve it. Do not forget your destination. Do not forget the purpose of human birth. That we should always keep in view. Work in this world, live in this world and enjoy yourself in this world, but never forget that destination nor leave the path which we have to tread in order to get there. Where we want to go, that goal should always be there in front of us. Keeping that goal in view, going towards that goal, do not become a slave of worldly achievements and forget your real Home. That is the only thing I can say.

Q Master, is it not a fact that before mankind can act like true, sincere disciples, we first have to see the light of God and be in communion with the holy Word or Shabd, then we can be that example that He wants us to be among His subjects?

A You mean, brothers, that to be on the path we have to see the Light and hear the Sound?

Q Inside, I mean.

A That is right, that is the purpose of being on the path -- to merge into that Light and into that Sound, and ultimately into Him.

Q What are the penalties when on misses a day of meditation?

A The penalty is that you have missed the opportunity. There are no penalties in Sant Mat. There are no penalties in devotion. There are no penalties in the way of Love. We have missed the opportunity. What greater penalty can there be? When a lover misses the beloved, that in itself is a penalty, and to a real lover, it is the greatest penalty not to be able to be with the beloved.

We should all attempt to sit in meditation every day, regularly and punctually, because this human form is given to us for that very purpose. So, if we do not make use of this opportunity, we are losing something that we should not lose, because we may not get this opportunity so easily again. It is not that if we miss one or two meditation periods we will be penalized or go backwards. That is an absolutely wrong notion about it. We should try sincerely to give proper time every day, punctually and regularly. If you miss it some day due to some unavoidable circumstances or for any reason, try to make up this deficiency at some other time. The object is that we should get into the habit of doing meditation every day. The question of penalty does not arise on this path.

Q Would there, at any time,be a valid excuse for missing one's meditation?

A If we start justifying our missing the daily meditation period, then there will be no end to it. So, I do not want you to find any justification for missing it. We have to put forth all our efforts to give our time every day, but if somehow we miss it, we just miss, but we have missed something that is too valuable to miss. That is all.

Q I was informed that if we miss one day's meditation, we are taken back twenty-four or thirty days. So, if we miss say five days that would be equal to not doing any meditation in a whole year.

A Well, you are living at least thousands of miles away from me. So, many things can reach you in a different way by the time they reach you here. (Laughter) Such wrong statements are usually traced to what I call "Guest-house gossip" at the Dera, where the guests get together and express their opinions and ideas, and then one of them comes back here and says that is what he or she heard at the Dera. You see, if you try to do a certain thing every day, you get into the habit of doing it. If you neglect it and leave it for some other time or period, you postpone it, you get out of the habit of meditation, if you lose this habit, you again have to work hard to get back into it. So, that is your own loss. Unless we get into the habit of meditation, we will not achieve any results. When we lose time from daily meditation, we are missing something that we should not miss. But there are no personal penalties.

Q Does the Sound Current actually change one's personality? By that I mean is one able to analyze a person's reaction to something that happened a long time ago in the past, in a previous life, that reaction, subconscious though it is?

A It is not a question of reaction. By spiritual practice we rise so high that we can meet anything, we can know anything. We advance spiritually, Our mind becomes refined, matured, and we can know anything. That is how spirituality should help us, in developing within our selves. It must make us a better person. If it does not, then it is not spirituality. When spirituality, that is devotion to Shabd, Nam or the Word grows within us, all the other good qualities of a human being come in us like cream in milk. We do not have to fight in order to learn or to develop those qualities. They come automatically within us. When we have the devotion of the Lord within us, that devotion, that love, brings all the qualities within us, that devotion, that love, brings all the qualities within us. It just transforms us; our whole outlook is changed. The more we go near to Him the more we find ourselves close to each other and the more we love one another. The more we find peace within, the more we find peace outside. It makes us true humans. We then try to understand each other on human level, and not merely on political, social or economic levels; not on religious, national, caste or creed levels just on human, real human level. But only the devotion of the Lord and nothing else brings these qualities within us.

Q I have found that being a satsangi one gets a feeling of selfishness, when on the path?

A By meditation or by our devotion to the Lord we become self-centered or concentrated to that side and try to ignore the other side. Is that what you mean?

Q Yes, we forget a lot of things?

A No brother. I do not agree with you. I feel that the more time we give to meditation, the nearer we are to the Lord and the closer we are to our destination, so we go higher and higher. The higher we go, the more space we are covering to look down upon. Rather, we are expanding ourselves; from a part, we are becoming the whole. When we merge into the Lord, we become the Lord. And when we become the Lord, we become everybody. I would say that now, as long as we are slaves of the senses, we are self-centred. And we are self-centred as long as we try to fulfill our desires for anything except to merge back into Him. As we go nearer to the Lord, our vision becomes broader and broader, and we belong to more and more people. I mean we get the love of more humanity as we go nearer to the Lord. When we love Him, we automatically love His creation, and then we belong to everybody. When we belong to Him who belongs to everybody, we then also belong to everybody. It is a very wrong conception to thing that our meditation will lead us to selfishness.

What is selfishness? To think about yourself? Everything about himself or herself. Do we think we are selfish when we have clothes while many other people do not have clothes to wear? Are we not then thinking about ourselves? We have houses to live in and many people do not have a roof over their head. We have cars to ride other people are walking. Are we not selfish from that point of view? You see, from that point of view, everybody in this world is selfish. But when we start our devotion to the Lord, when we are going nearer to our Home, we are getting out of this selfishness. We are then coming into the whole; our vision becomes much broader, and we know that we long to everybody. We then realize that unnecessarily we were attaching ourselves to a few, and when we belong to the Lord who belongs to everybody, we also belong to everybody. I think we are getting rid of this selfishness by our devotion to the Lord.

Q If we attain the highest bliss, how can we humans be happy if we know that our dear ones, or even humanity as a whole, is still suffering? When we still remember such horrible things, how can we be happy?

A Well, sister, are we happy without achieving that highest bliss? Now we see the suffering of humanity right and left; everywhere we see people suffering terribly; they are miserable. Are we happy? No. When we go back to the highest bliss we will be happy. At least then we will have something to share with others, and we can help them to get rid of their suffering. So, when we are happy, we make them also happy. But when we do not have anything within us we cannot share anything with them. And if we do try to help them before we are able to rise above these things, then instead of helping them we only succeed in sharing their miseries and worries, which helps neither them nor us. We only make ourselves miserable and torture ourselves, but if we make spiritual progress and rise above all and have the real devotion and bliss of the Lord, we are in a position to help them and we are also happy. In other words, we merge into the Lord and become the Lord.

Now you may say, how can the Lord be happy when the whole world is suffering? This world has to go on like that. When it becomes perfect, it will cease to exist. We may thing that people are suffering unjustly, but they are all reaping the fruits of their own karmas. How can we be happy when so many of our fellow brothers are in prison houses? We do not feel concerned about them at all because we think they have done something for which they must pay. But we would like to improve them so that they may not do these things again and may not have to go to the prison house again. So we help them from a practical point of view. Similarly, when we get the bliss of the Lord, at least we will be happy and then we can also share our happiness with others and make them happy. We can lead them to the path of bliss, of wisdom, and they also can become happy.

Q Master, we seem to have high periods and low periods of spirituality. Is this a trick of the mind or is it part of the development?

A Sister, ups and downs in meditation do come. You call them high activity or low activity. Our meditation, our spiritual practice, is never smooth. Sometimes we fell that we have gone up, we have made progress. Sometimes we feel that we fell down. Ups and downs always come in meditation. That is due also, sometimes, to our past karmas and so many other things pulling us which we do not consciously realize. Unconsciously they are affecting us. So, we should not worry about the ups and downs. Gradually we have to steer upward.

Q I seem to have such a time. I wondered if I was missing the right approach; but sometimes it seemed to me that I was there. I seemed to have a direct contact with the Power, and at other times I seem so disturbed that it is hard to live with myself.

A That is right. One gets such feelings, but one should not feel worried about it. We should just do our duty and give our time to meditation. Then we do overcome such feelings.

Q The main thing was that I have just wanted to hear you say that I was doing right?

A Oh, yes. You are definitely dong right. The Sound is within everyone of us, irrespective of anyone, so we need only concentrate at the eye center, the thinking center, to be in touch with that Sound.

Q One just knows that eventually everything will be all right and one will understand?

A Yes, that is right. We should never sit in meditation with some excitement or with longing to see something at once, for then the mind gets frustrated and runs out. We should attend to meditation with an absolutely relaxed mind and just do our duty. When it comes, it just comes. Our excitement or our anxiety does not bring anything. It is the concentration that brings it, concentration with love and longing, and His grace, bring it. So, when it has to come, it comes automatically.

Q Maharaj Ji, if a person is very interested in spiritual growth and his environment is such that he is constantly attacking a hurdle and is constantly, from what he recognizes, pushing, in that he is trying to get around in every honorable, possible way, and he himself has digressions; if this environment is constantly holding one back, what must one do to overcome this?

A Brother, we are all struggling souls in this world. When we have our destination in view, we know the path leading to the destination and we travel on that. There are falls---we fall, we get up and again we run. There are no failures on the path. One who does not make a start at all, has no chance of falling, but then he is not getting anywhere. One who runs, has a chance of falling, but he only falls to get up and run again. Pitfalls here and there do pull us back, but as long as we try to overcome those weaknesses, we again get up and again go ahead. We have to do our best under the circumstances. When we are sincere, the Lord comes to our aid and nature also helps us in our environment, in our atmosphere, in our circumstances. The Lord's guiding hand is always there, whether we are conscious of it or not. We should never lose heart when we have pitfalls or when we have fallen, or think that we are being driven out of the path. No, He never leaves us. Momentarily we may feel that we have left the path and at another time we feel that we are again on the path. We explain to ourselves that we have left it. Actually we do not leave it; we cannot leave it. We are so strongly bound, so strongly got hold of that we cannot leave it, we cannot go astray. But naturally it takes time to learn to walk and then to run; so we should not try to analyze too much. We should do our duties while living in this world, try to give our time to meditation, try to live to the best of our ability, and then slowly but surely, with His grace, we become successful in our endeavor.