Experiences of the higher worlds

Part I: Meditation: the ABC's

Question: Guru, you mention meditation. What does it mean to meditate?

Question: Why do we meditate?

If you wish to develop your talents or increase your capacity in any field, then I wish to say that it is obligatory to follow some inner discipline. If you are a singer but you wish to sing infinitely better, if you aspire, I tell you, your voice will become far better. There is nothing on earth that cannot be improved through spirituality and meditation.

If you want to simplify your life, meditation is the answer. If you want to fulfil your life, meditation is the answer. If you want to have joy and offer joy to the world at large, then meditation is the only answer.

If you meditate to forget your suffering or to forget your difficulties, then you are not meditating for the right reason. But if you are meditating only to please God and fulfil God in His own Way, then your meditation is correct. When God is pleased, and God is fulfilled in your meditation, then it is God’s business to take away your sufferings and difficulties. But if you meditate to escape from the world or to challenge the world and stand against the world, then you are doing the wrong thing.

Question: How can one still one's mind in meditation?

Then, imagine something very vast, and calm and quiet. When you start meditating, feel that inside you is a vast ocean and that you have dived deep within. There at the bottom it is all tranquility, tranquility’s flood.

The most important thing is practice. Today your mind acts like a monkey. This restless mind is knocking all the time at your heart’s door and disturbing the poise of the heart. In this world everybody has pride, vanity and self-esteem. So if you keep your heart’s door closed each time the mind comes, if you do not pay any attention to the mind, then after some time the mind will find it beneath its dignity to bother you. I have seen where my disciples did not open their heart’s door when the mind started knocking. They did not give a response from the heart, and the heart remained unperturbed. The heart opened its door wide only to the soul’s Light, and listened only to the dictates of the soul.

Thought is from the mental world. But you also have the heart, the identification-world. When you remain in the heart, that means that you are identifying yourself with the soul. The soul is beyond ideas, beyond thought. Instead of concentrating on the mind proper, if you can focus all your concentration on the heart, then the reality that looms large inside the heart automatically gives you an access to the soul. If you concentrate and meditate on the reality that is inside the heart, this reality comes forward.

Question: How do people meditate on your path?

So, when you meditate, you try to open the heart and the entire being. Sometimes you open the heart and keep the door open, and when the guest is about to enter, at that time you close the door. The amount of Peace, Light and Bliss that the inner vessel receives is measured. The vessel has its own consciousness. You may leave the vessel empty, but also it has to aspire to receive. Only then can you really have a good meditation.

Our progress will be faster if we meditate on the heart. When we meditate on the mind or inside the mind, we feel that already we know so much about the spiritual life. But when we go deep within, we come to learn that we know next to nothing about the spiritual life. Only we have gathered earthly information in our minds — information and nothing else. But when we meditate on the heart, we feel that we are like children who really want to learn everything fresh from the mother or from the father. The child feels that he does not know anything, but he wants to learn everything in a proper way.

Question: Would you please be a little more specific when you say 'meditate on the heart'? Do you mean to meditate on the physical heart or on the spiritual centre?

Question: Is there any specific technique that you teach?

Question: How often should we meditate?

Some people meditate three times, four times, six times a day. But I wish to say the number is of no consequence. If you feel really inspired, meditate twenty times. But if you don’t feel any inspiration, then you are wasting your precious time and just deceiving yourself. Each time you meditate you have to offer your heart’s breath and your soul’s light that you are bringing to the fore. Only then is it worth meditating. Otherwise, you are just insulting your soul’s possibilities. Please feel the necessity of meditating, even if it is for only one minute once a day. If it is done wholeheartedly, even if it is for a fleeting minute, then it is worthwhile.

If inspiration is there, then meditate. That means that you have got the sanction from the Supreme. If it is the call of the Supreme, then you shall run fast, very fast, because He is the leader inside you.

Question: Is a Master mandatory for proper meditation?

Question: How do you teach us to meditate?

In the spiritual life also, all of you are not of the same standard. Some are beginners, some are more advanced. In school, a teacher may have ten children who are not of the same standard, but unfortunately he has to teach them the same lesson. Now you may say that I am doing the same thing. When I am here, I give lessons, I give talks, I answer questions. This is the way I teach you.

But in the morning or during the day when I meditate on each individual whom I consider to be my disciple, at that time the consciousness that I give to you I do not give to somebody else. I will enter into you according to your capacity and you will receive from me according to your receptivity. I motivate and I inspire each individual disciple of mine according to his acceptance of me, according to his capacity to receive the light and according to his capacity to manifest the light. I do this only if someone is my disciple; otherwise, a seeker’s own Master will do it for him. Outwardly I have given meditations to only a few; but inwardly I have given meditations to many, many disciples. How do I give meditations? I enter into each soul and I tell the soul what it should do in its outer life. The soul may take one day, ten days, fifteen days or three months to convince the physical mind how to meditate and why to meditate.

If I had very few disciples, today I could give you a specific meditation, tomorrow I could give one to somebody else. In that way I could teach. But if there are many, how can I give each of them a meditation outwardly? It is impossible. So I have to enter into each person’s consciousness and soul individually and see what that particular person needs most, or how he wants to manifest the Divinity within himself.

We are all seekers. Your soul may want you to realise the Truth and manifest the Truth through Power. By power I mean divine Power, not the human power that wants to destroy, wound and kill. Again, somebody else sitting beside you may want to manifest God through love, devotion and surrender. So I can give a meditation only by knowing first what the soul wants. A spiritual Master knows what the individual soul needs and wants. Then he says inwardly to the individual, “You follow this rule.” He may not be able to tell him outwardly, but inwardly he says, “This is the way you have to realise and manifest the Truth.”

Part II: Prayer, mantra and invocation

Question: Sometimes when I am walking down the street I feel like chanting to myself. Is this a form of withdrawal?

Question: Are rituals and invocations really important for meditation? Sometimes we feel that because you are not physically with us that we have to invoke your presence.

Question: How can one pick a mantra?

Question: How can we avoid having expectation during our prayer or meditation?

Part III — Meditation and the guru

Question: Why do you sometimes ask that I look at you when I meditate?

Question: What can I do if sometimes I don't feel like meditating on your picture?

Perhaps you are displeased with me in your mind, but it is not affecting your physical. At that time, if your physical wants to work, it should work devotedly. Suppose you are working at the restaurant, at Dipti Nivas. Your mind may be angry with me, but if the physical has to clean the dishes at that time, then your boss will catch you if you do not do your job. When you work, your physical meditation is taking place. Mental meditation is not taking place because you are displeased with me for something. Your boss will not be able to catch you there because she cannot read your mind. But on the physical plane, when you don’t clean the restaurant, you are caught. So you see, when you work for the mission, at that time you are doing meditation in the physical.

Question: Does our restlessness affect the peace that you have in meditation?

Question: Guru, when I start aspiring to meditate, I feel your compassion coming down and I feel your smile. Should I stop and surrender or should I try to keep on aspiring during the meditation and go higher?

Question: If we set a specific time for our morning meditation, do you feel disappointed if we sometimes oversleep?

All problems will be over when each individual consciously feels that God loves him infinitely more than he loves himself. Humanity should know and believe that the Creator loves His creation more than He loves Himself. You may say, “How can it be possible?” But you have to know what value the creation has. When you think of the mother and child, in so many instances you will see that when the child is very sick and near death, the mother sincerely prays to God, “Take me, take me. Let my son stay here. He is young and he has to do so much work.” Her creation is her son, and she wants her son to stay on earth.

So here you see that the Creator loves His creation more than Himself. My spiritual disciples are my creations. Physically your parents brought you into the world. But when I gave you the message of the soul, the day I kindled the flame of aspiration within you and accepted you as my disciple, on that day you became my child. He whose inner flame I have kindled is my child, my spiritual child. When I kindle the flame of aspiration within someone, I give birth to a spiritual soul; I create life and aspiration, which is going to be transformed into realisation in the future. So naturally I will have boundless concern for my disciples, because I know what God’s Vision is for them and I know how God’s Capacity will flow through them. But what I created need not know this until the last moment, because the Vision of God is with the Master, not with the disciple. God’s Vision is also with the disciple, but he cannot always see it. But the Master’s third eye is open and he knows how far God wants to take an individual in this incarnation.

So if you are not up meditating at your specific time, I will be sad, but only in a human way. In a divine way I will not be sad, because I know that sadness does not serve any purpose. You have made friendship with ignorance. So I will try at that time to have more conscious power to awaken you and illumine you. In everything human there is always success and failure. But in the divine way, where is success and where is failure? They are nothing. In the human life, every second is either success or failure, and what we call success this moment may seem to us like failure the next moment.

This moment I am painting and in a human way I am successful. My human mind will say, “I am painting and I am enjoying it here with so many people listening to me and admiring me. I am such a lucky fellow.” Then again, the same stupid mind will say, “Look at this. My friend, another God-realised soul, is now in silence. He is meditating and enjoying the delight of Brahman and I am here with a bunch of ignorant human beings.” This moment my mind has told me how lucky I am that you people are adoring me, and the next moment my mind can tell me that all this is worthless because someone else is enjoying his transcendental trance.

Question: How can we find our Inner Pilot and listen to it?

In school you have a teacher who is teaching you and offering his wisdom-light to you through language. In the spiritual life also, the teacher teaches through language. But the language of the spiritual teacher is meditation. Meditation is the inner language, and the teacher teaches meditation through silence. It would not be easy for your professor to teach through silence, and for the student also it would not be easy to learn through silence. But a spiritual teacher will meditate for five minutes in silence and during his meditation he will offer peace, light and bliss. He can instruct you to meditate either by giving you specific instructions or through his silent gaze. But most of the time the spiritual teacher teaches through silence, because that way is most effective.

Question: A couple of times a year you give marks for your disciples' meditation. Why do you do this?

Part IV: Experiences of the higher worlds

Question: Sometimes I'll get a real high sound in my ear, even though I am not meditating. I'll just be sitting and all of a sudden I'll get this sound. Could you explain it to me?

Question: Sometimes when I meditate, I notice a vibration or a stress. What is it?

Question: How can I recognise a spiritual experience as such?

Do not feel that you are happy because the result is satisfactory. No, immediately separate yourself from your action. Then you will see that the joy you are having is from a feeling of oneness — oneness with the universal Consciousness or cosmic Consciousness or your own consciousness.

Spirituality is always natural. Anything that is unnatural can never be spiritual. Right now, you are not seeing truth as your birthright. Truth is something unnatural; somebody else possesses the truth, but you do not possess it. But when you are in the spiritual life, you see that spirituality is everybody’s property.

Question: When I meditate I often feel a split in my consciousness. Part of my consciousness is in a deep meditation while another part of my consciousness is observing and carrying a running commentary on what is being experienced. I would like to know how this can be overcome.

There are three stages of meditation. The first stage is where your particular experience takes place. In spite of having a very good, high, deep, sublime meditation, you feel that your whole existence is not there. You can separate your existence part by part. If your whole inner existence were there, then you could not separate it; the body, vital, mind, heart and soul would go together. Although in your psychic consciousness you are having a very high meditation, it will not be totally fruitful because all the members of your inner family are not participating.

In the second, or higher stage of meditation, you will see that you have become totally one with your consciousness. Now we are just using the term “consciousness,” but in that stage you will actually be able to see and feel what consciousness is. At every moment you will be able to see the divine streak of light, the all-pervading light inside you which has united you with the Highest. In this stage of meditation, you have become the connecting link between earth and Heaven.

Then there is the third state, the highest state of meditation. In that state, you will be able to feel or see yourself as both the meditator and the meditation itself. Here the seer and the seen come together. This happens only in the highest transcendental Consciousness, when you go beyond nature’s dance. All the disciples will one day have that realisation because all will have to rise above the dance of nature. The dance of nature means here temptation, frustration, anxiety, fear, failure, success and all that.

Question: When I have a good meditation, why is the photo of you in your transcendental consciousness always smiling?

Question: I had an experience in which I felt the purity of God and the feeling of Eternity and Power.

The Supreme in the Master can show you what He has. He will say, “This is all for you. But right now you are a child. First you have to grow up.” The father can bring the child right in front of the safe and show him all his wealth. Then he says, “Look, I have millions of dollars. It is all for you, but you have to work for it. You have to grow up properly. You have to please me. Then this wealth is yours.”

Question: What is the significance of seeing glowing white light or a point of white light in meditation?

Question: Sometimes when I have been meditating, my head starts to breathe on its own.

Question: In my meditation, several times I have had the experience that I was free; I felt the freedom of my existence. But then I had to go back to my regular life, and I felt very tired and very drained.

Question: I also feel very sad when I come down.

Part V: Questions and answers on meditation

Question: Is it important to meditate only at our shrine at home, or can we try to meditate wherever we are?

When we are just beginning to follow a spiritual path, we should meditate at home, alone, in front of a shrine. If we have a Master, we should keep the Master’s picture on the shrine, and also candles and flowers to purify our consciousness. Also we should burn incense for purity. And if we have a Master, we will come and meditate with the other disciples of our Master. Then only will we gain strength.

But after we have meditated very sincerely for several years, we will develop some inner strength. At that time, while we are walking along the street or riding in the subway, our inner being will be strong, unimaginably strong so that we will not be affected at all. If we are advanced, while we are driving the car we will be able to meditate. Nothing will distract us. While we are in the subway, there will be thousands of people around us, but we will not be affected.

Question: Can you ever tell if you are going to have a good meditation before you start meditating?

Question: Is it bad for someone to fall asleep after meditation if he is meditating at three or four in the morning?

Question: Is it possible to reach your goal just by contemplating your own thoughts?

Question: Is there any way to determine what our level of mind is?

Question: I saw a picture of you with your hands folded like this. What does that mean?

Inside me is the consciousness of all the disciples. The consciousness of the disciples within me is like a mounting cry rising to the Highest. So when I invoke the Supreme with folded hands, the aspiring consciousness which I have with the disciples goes up and the realised consciousness which I have with the Supreme comes down and they meet together.

Question: Does the fact that we are meditating mean that during the day our consciousness will be higher than it used to be when we were not meditating?

Question: What is the difference between meditating in the normal way and offering gratitude?

Question: I would like to know the best and the most effective way to raise one's consciousness and to maintain that level.

Question: How are we supposed to meditate?

For a beginner it is better to start with concentration. Otherwise, the moment you start meditating, millions of uncomely thoughts will enter into your mind. You will not be able to meditate for one second, whereas if you concentrate, you challenge the wrong thoughts entering into you.