You hear some good news and a little later, you hear some sad news. Sometime after that you hear harsh and abusive words. Your ears heard all words of praise and blame alike. But when happy news was told, your heart felt elated, and it shrunk when sad news was heard. The same heart got enraged when the ears heard harsh words and was filled with joy when it heard words of praise! The ears by themselves are incapable of any reaction; they merely transmit the message. Thus the senses by themselves are not conscious, they are inconscient (Jada). Then how can the operations of these senses and the experiences resulting from them be deemed as Truth or Reality (Sathya)? Understand clearly that as the senses are unreliable, the reactions produced by them are also equally unreliable. If you enquire along these lines, you will develop discrimination and can easily overcome sorrow.
Baba (thought for the day)
In these words and the meaning of it we get deeper if we think it over and how can we do it? Maybe we are not at all interested in it first or sometimes I get impatient, because we do not understand it just like that but in thinking it over. Listen, think it over and absorb. (Baba)
First reading it I was seeing my first impression and it was in one sentence and like that we began already trying to put it in our life, that means we take what comes up in the mind and try to understand it and writing about it helps, because first there was no inclination in my mind to go deeper into it, but when we begin to see it in our life we get another connection to the words and by writing about it we get deeper into it, until it began to get clear that it is about discrimination and that is when my mind was hooked, because that is always challenging and interesting.
The question is what is coming up in the mind in seeing it in our own life? That is called Tapas: First discrimination; second seeing it in our own life; third going on no matter what obstacles are there. Tapas is spiritual work and we can ask, why is it spiritual work and how do we get to the right conclusion?
These words begin to grow on me because it is about discrimination, so it is directly related to Tapas and we will see how we get to the right conclusion.
So first reading it, even if we didn’t feel like thinking it over only when realizing that it was something we always found interesting, it got my attention and that is how we get into it. After reading just the first sentence what came in my head was that there is a big difference to remember the Darshan with Swami and the joy we experienced or when we remember things which are less enjoyable.
But it was easy to see that it is the same heart, because our ears do not react and also the mind does not react, it is the heart. It is the heart that feels elated and it is the heart that shrinks when it hears bad news and it is on the level of the heart that we feel happy, but it is still good to know that it is the heart. So some seem to think that we should only keep good news to please the heart? It looks like some think it works that way, but it doesn’t really. We cannot just think positive and everything is done, that is no discrimination that is just positive thinking.
Even if positivity is what we want to get, it has to be real. If it is not right discrimination, it is just mood making, assuming that we know how to be positive or we use a short cut and think everything is positive. It is very easy, but that has not much to do with reality. There are different experiences and we can see how the heart reacts on it. It is not only what we listen to and hear with our ears, it is also in our memories and the past experiences that have an effect on our heart and maybe also things in our past which are not yet finished or what we have troubles and open issues with it.
The same heart got enraged when the ears heard harsh words and was filled with joy when it heard words of praise! The ears by themselves are incapable of any reaction; they merely transmit the message. Thus the senses by themselves are not conscious, they are inconscient (Jada). Then how can the operations of these senses and the experiences resulting from them be deemed as Truth or Reality (Sathya)?
We all know how it feels to be in a relationship with someone who is constantly finding faults and just blaming it certainly no joy for the heart. Baba always said, ABC, always be careful.
How can we live ABC and care or be careful if we meet someone who pretends to care, but he doesn’t really care at all?
We have to be careful about decisions and people. Often people gave Baba a letter to know they did their best and tried to be careful. It means we should be caring, but taking care is another word for love.
If we do not care, it means it is the opposite and we will not enjoy the feeling of the heart, we will try to avoid it if it is painful, if it is about shame, abuse or sadness. Some people I knew gave even fatherhood to Baba and tell, he can take care. Do you think that person is careful?
He doesn’t take care, but he gives it to Baba, it means Baba has to take care for him. Do you think that is right? Or some are not enquiring and think it doesn’t matter to understand it, do you think that is careful? Someone said, I would never help anybody, do you think that is careful? Even if someone is telling me, you should lead a Bhajan, whatever reason she said that, isn’t it my choice to sing or not to sing and is she really careful or is she just too imposing?
Advice which is not welcome we should not give, but they do that all the time and why, maybe it is just not knowing better. That is how the thought for the day is growing on us and there is more stuff coming up and seeing it in our life and why we get finally to discrimination. How do we have to understand it?
Someone said, that I am interpreting Baba and I wondered why he got to that conclusion. Talking with that person I didn’t know what it was, only after thinking it over we got aware of why he thought it was interpretation. It means he does think that in thinking over Baba’s words we can interpret it?
It is about a principle, the Atman Tatwa. We cannot interpret a principle, we can think it over in all possible situations and in all different ways, if it is about a principle it will not change and that is the main thing we have to get aware about. As long as we think we can interpret it, we have not understood it and we do not even dare to think it over.
What is ‘Tapas’? Why do some get to the conclusion that ‘we know’? That is the worst obstacle in the mind, if we think we know and there is nothing to do, everything is already done. That will not make us think it over, because we think we know it already. And we will not go on seeing it in our own life, because we think there is no use to do that and we know already how to do it, so some are only singing and telling other to be a leader singer and it is for them the result thinking it over. It is our choice and if we don’t want to do that it is also our choice, we have enough singers already.
If we do not get aware of the obstacles in the mind, we get stuck in it.
If we think we know already what it is all about, we do not listen, we do not read it carefully and we do not get the deeper meaning of it. It means we do think that we do not need that and it is done before we even begin and that is just arrogance, it is not right discrimination. And why is it not?
If we get aware that we don’t know and that ‘he is the knower’, it means he is there and he will be present in the right conclusion. He is only present when it is done, not before and not as long as we get to a not right conclusion. If I get to a wrong mind conclusion, it is done, but only for the mind and not for our own truth and as long as it is mind only it is not a right conclusion.
If it is about discrimination, it is about right and wrong. And we have to know what a not right conclusion is, we have to know the difference.
It is the heart that feels enraged, because it was too dangerous and not possible how the heart felt about it, because the energy had to be kept low. In that relationship I didn’t talk about Baba and divinity, I talked about him to keep the energy under control. There was a Baba dream and we went down with him the escalator and he transformed into a prince and we got married, but on the end of the escalator was just a big check. So what did that dream tell me? For me it was clear, the prince did make me feel better and waited for that experience or that the dream would get clear, but it took a long time. It took that much time that everything became negative.
It was with Baba we went down the escalator, it was not with the prince. It felt good even if I was thinking that I was too old to believe in the prince. He changed and became a prince and on the end of the escalator was a big check and that felt later like nothing but wrong promises.
I was just waiting for that dream to make sense and a long time it seemed nearly impossible, but actually it felt the same than now, only the insight was different. It was in that time in the ashram I began to notice that it was possible to get answers, but didn’t know really how yet, but somehow I wanted ‘that’. I had been waiting for a long time for answers and hoped I would understand the higher self and why it was in the dream and in a Darshan it had been in the air above Baba, it said ‘I am that’.
So I had met ‘that’ and after I met someone who said that we should be in the ashram and look at it together and he made it look that ideal, we had not to worry about anything else and it felt even real in the presence of Baba. But as we went down the escalator, it was all a dream only, it was all based on illusion, what is also a lesson, but not such an easy lesson. Nothing what he had said was right, he just took advantage of it and that was again inner view and to realize what that meant came only after the dream became clear and only afterwards we realized the trap.
So first it was all about that dream only and meeting that reality of the prince again, even if I wondered if I was not too old to wait for the prince charming, I had no choice. Baba was later in the inner view a king and therefore, it was normal that we were waiting for the prince, it had to do with him.
It was just about ‘that’ and not about my ex who send us to him to go and make peace with him, for whatever reason. It was his dream and not mine. And one day in Darshan there he was the prince and it was the difference between mind and present. With Baba we lived in the present and with him it was mind again.
With one we were in the presence of it and with the other we were waiting for the prince, but because I went in like that, there was no way out. So he tells us in that thought for the day that there is no suffering if we have right discrimination. How do we get to the right discrimination?
We have to see it in our own life. So there was that prince reality in the present and the mind with future and past and we lived either in one or the other. Only the heart didn’t feel very good about it, because he took only advantage of it, as it turned out there was no love and nothing what he had said was real and it began to feel like enraged.
So how do we see it? It is the same heart that felt joy in Baba’s presence and it is the same heart that felt enraged and it was not a good energy level. So I didn’t talk about Baba as other devotees did, I talked about him to keep the energy low to be able to survive.
We felt like in prison with someone who took only advantage of it and got us like that in a relationship which was no real. So it was just to keep the suppressed energy down and that was not really a level of devotion, but a level of abuse. But I didn’t realize how bad it was, because whatever happened I was waiting for that dream to make sense again, it was like the key to it. I knew if I would understand it, I would not be in it anymore and I didn’t know how we got into it.
That was the dream and the key. We went down the escalator with Baba, half way down he transformed into a prince and all the way down there was a big check of false promises. In thinking it over and writing we get a different feeling about it. It even being to make sense why it felt like being a prisoner, even if we tried to make the best out of it, that was anyhow with Baba we went down the escalator and even if it was not at all good. I didn’t think it was that bad, but after all it brings up only negative experiences and the worst of all. That was the waiting, but what was not okay about it was not the waiting, but how long it took and how it felt. It was like being caught in a Baba dream, we had to wait for the prince, that was the deal, but I was not aware how I got into it and why and I didn’t wanted that at all, but there was no way out once we were in it and that turned into feeling in prison.
Even if it was only about dreams, as the insight is not alone but there is also a following step, it began with that prince and we had to go back to the prince again, because that was it what change. Baba had turned into a worldly role and a ruler, but it was all not real. He said, life is a dream, dream it, but it was also difficult, because the dream felt like a prison. And the prince was in him walking around during Darshan and that made it clear, the waiting had an end, I thought. The dream had been answered and that felt good, and we didn’t go back, because he said that he doesn’t know what he is doing and he is destroying himself and if we would go back his daughter would be destroyed as well. We had no choice in that sense and we also didn’t wanted to go back, and it felt good and like hope, but not for long. Only afterwards we began to realize in what type of relationship we had been in waiting for the prince. And it was also in the dream that we didn’t listen and we had to get a divorce.
So that is when I began to realize the type of relationship we had been in. I told him about the dream expecting Baba’s inner views to be respected and he ignored it. That is how we came back to earth and realized what it really had been and as we had to expect, we waited again in that endless timeless state of mind for years until he finally signed it.
We were not only caught in a dream, we were caught in a time game and a waiting state and that made it really heavy. So it was not a short cut, but after all we got us out of it, but always in being careful, because we always could have understood it wrong and the trap would have closed for good. It felt great to be out of it.
It was about living in the present and not on the mind and if we think it over after some time we even get aware of it and begin to understand it. With Baba in the everyday Darshan we lived in the present only and not in the future and the past, but with that person taking advantage of it and again ignoring it, he didn’t live inner view, he was in the mind and that was like light and dark such a difference.
That is why when we thought it was finished, it began again as a waiting state and it seemed to get endless. It was projecting it in the future, it all happened in the past. We learn from it, but it is not a funny way to learn and it is difficult to grateful and okay.
The dreams are insights and in understanding it on a certain level it got difficult, it get us out of it, because we were waiting for the following step of Baba.
But in it there were times we thought we would never get out of it again. It made us wide awake what was good and we began to ask questions and to look at everything. The mind was an obstacle, but the mind is always the obstacle, we have to know how to live it and how to recognize it.
The feeling of ‘time’ turned into agony, it seems it had to do with God in stone, it results in pain. It was in the inner view first as a statue of stone in a desert and not long ago was the air around the statue of liberty nothing but stone. It means not flexible.
Baba told us we should not put God in stone, but between hearing it and understanding it is a big gap and it takes time to get aware of it. If the senses are unreliable, how do we look at it?
The insight is not sense-knowledge, it is a dream, it is a vision and it needs an answer. He is the insight and he is the following step. When writing it down we try to understand it and we get there by doing it, we have a better feeling of it. It is not about the intellect, because the following step makes that it is no issue afterwards, but we have to realize the obstacle and the mind game.
Nevertheless, it takes time to realize it and to get aware of it, but the teaching is about the difference between mind and our truth and how we experience that truth.
If we go on no matter what obstacles are there, we get stuck if we do not get aware of the obstacle in the mind, but they are not the same. The lesson with that prince and the difference between present and reality and the mind and just thinking of it that was a big lesson I guess.
If I would listen to that devotee who wanted us to lead Bhajans we could get to the conclusion that all obstacles and problems are solved only with singing or we can get to the conclusion that it is for her like that, but certainly not for us.
We think that she got to that conclusion already years ago and it is repeated, she is like caught in that pattern. She will probably always get to the same conclusion again. So that could be true to her way of compensation and avoiding feeling the frustration of her marriage, but it shows for sure that she doesn’t understand it another way and that her thoughts are in a pattern.
Why does she see a problem? She is projecting a problem, but where did it come from? I get to the conclusion that the problem is in her. She solves her own pain and frustration like that and she is thinking that it could be as well for us if we have and issue and most of them think the same. But for me it is it not so, because it is about right discrimination and Baba doesn’t tells us here that we should sing, but he tells us to develop discrimination.
Then how can the operations of these senses and the experiences resulting from them be deemed as Truth or Reality (Sathya)? Understand clearly that as the senses are unreliable, the reactions produced by them are also equally unreliable. If you enquire along these lines, you will develop discrimination and can easily overcome sorrow.
He talks about developing discrimination. Singing is certainly a means to it, but not the only one and not for everyone the solution to all problems, it feels much more like compensation. And she should not give good advice if we do not ask for it and I didn’t ask for advice. But how do we get to the right understanding, not in affirmations, but in negation.
It is ‘not that’, the sense-knowledge is unreliable, therefore, we have to discriminate between sense-knowledge and true knowledge, our own truth. What is sense-knowledge is what results in our senses and truth is beyond it and not changing. If we are in the senses, we are not beyond the senses and how do we go beyond it, it could be easier if we understand with meditation, we have to transcend it and it is not about ignoring it. If we ignore pain, shame and fear, we do not go beyond it, we cannot just give it to Baba and avoid it that is not how we give it to Baba.
Giving it to him means getting aware of the difference between him and the sense-knowledge. If we think that he is sense-knowledge, it is not right, because he cannot be it. What is true knowledge, there is only one word for it, ‘that’, everything else it ‘not that’. It is the principle of ‘that’, it is a transcendental principle. That is how we get to discrimination; we get the knowledge about ‘I am that’.
If we have discrimination, we can overcome sorrow.
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