Samadhi and Meditation

Meditation does not mean simply sitting with eyes closed, contemplating on a Form. You may close your eyes, and focus on the form. But if there is some fickleness in the mind while meditating, then it becomes concentration and not contemplation. When the fickle-mindedness fades away, then your concentration becomes steady and turns into contemplation and slowly, you forget both yourself and the Form, and attain Samadhi. Ultimately, there will be no Form – hence it is called Atma. People give it different names. Don't worry if you are worshipping one Form over another – it is not the end; this is not concentration. Persist and focus on the Form and see that it becomes steady. As you proceed further on the path, your focus becomes fully steady and contemplation blossoms into meditation.

Baba (Thought for the day) 

Meditation was actually a simply way to think a mantra, we repeated it in our thoughts and those thoughts were part of it. As the attention wavers after I while we noticed that thoughts are there and we allow them to come, but whenever we get aware of it that we were in thoughts and not anymore with the mantra, we began again to think the mantra. It is an effortless method with eyes closed, sitting comfortably and it is done for about twenty minutes morning and evening.

In the beginning I had some troubles to do it for twenty minutes, because I felt waves of energy coming up and I wanted to go into action and afterwards there was a time I always felt tired and I was glad to lie down and rest. But also that was okay; we just finished that rest with 5 minutes of meditation and counted it as meditation.

With time it became a settled feeling and usually I enjoyed doing it, because it felt good.

We didn't focus on the form, we just focused in the mantra, but if I would focus on the form, it would be the same, as we cannot keep the focus always on one form or mantra only we notice what Baba calls here fickleness in the mind and there are thoughts, we also get back to the form again to keep our mind in meditation and not just in thoughts, if we begin to watch the thoughts it becomes contemplation. It is by regular exercising that the fickle-mindedness fades away and the mind gets more calm and that is how our concentration grows and becomes steady and that is also the state of mind when we are open for spiritual matters, because the mind is settled enough and not just directed towards worldly stuff.

What Baba tells us here is if the mind is that calm and settled, we forget both ourselves and the form or the mantra and attain Samadhi. If we meditate with a mantra we know that there is no form, because we have never been focused on the form. But we can do it as we like best. I always preferred the mantra and Soham, the meaning is 'I am That', 'I am He'.

With the form I felt always somehow too aware that it was not possible to keep the focus and with the mantra that didn't matter, it was just like a thought flow, if it was not the mantra there were thoughts and when we get aware of it, we go back to the mantra. I am certain that will also happen with the form if we meditate constantly with it, but I meditate with my mantra.

That way it felt like I had not to bother about form or no form, it was just the mantra, but the meaning in the mantra and that should be realized by inner view, inner seeing and for that I had to follow the insights and writing is in that process of more help than just meditation.

During meditation the thoughts don't matter, but when it is about 'insights' and thinking it over, it does matter, it has to make sense.

We have to see the wisdom in our own life and go on no matter what obstacles are there and that way we talk about Tapas, spiritual work and not only meditation, which calms down the thought process. In that sense it takes care of the fickleness of the mind and it is possible to keep the focus, but Tapas is listening, thinking it over and absorb. It is about understanding the 'I am that' and to get the experience of it – that is insight, we are it, we don't understand it until we have experienced it. And there is the inner guide and we follow our own inner master.

Baba said once to us in the interview room, "Follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game." And he also asked, "why are you here?"

Nobody was able to give the right answer, so Baba said, "Self-realization".

 I had that feeling of self-realization I was about sixteen and I was amazed by it and that is all I wanted and then it was gone and not to be found again, wherever I looked, it seemed to be gone. So I went on looking for it, but it seemed that far away in the meantime and here I was in the present of the Lord and he told me that I was with him because of self-realization. It felt good, because he confirmed that I was at the right place.

And I began to follow the inner master, because I noticed that it always should have been there and the question was why not?

In the dream Baba was holding up a book, so I began to write. In the beginning I didn't know what to write, I just wrote to do it, to practice, I had to get into it, I wrote like I meditated, we just do it, we do not think about it, we just do it.

That is what I did with sixteen with my dairy and I liked the focus and watched feelings and thoughts and I was trying to find my way and the feeling of 'self-realization' was what I wanted. Afterwards it was just about job and work etc. and it felt like it was nowhere to be found again what I really wanted.

So when Baba said 'self-realization' and I began to write, it was just about doing it and he began to give advice in the inner view, he guided from inside. So he said I should use his words, so I began to be focused on his wisdom.

When we look at his words and look at it a second time and begin to see it in our own life, the words transform into an all different meaning, it begins to make sense and is helping us to get closer to it, the wisdom will be absorbed.

And Baba also said he is the insight and the following step and it was about understanding it.

It means if we see the word 'self-realization' and know that is what we want and we go for it, the following step of doing it is also 'He'.

The aim is to get aware that we are not the body and not the mind. With the mantra 'Soham' every breath tells, 'I am That' and twenty-four hours a day. It is possible to get enlightened only in listening to the breath and getting aware of its sound, because it tells So when we inhale and it tells Ham when we exhale and it also keeps going during the night, but the So and the Ham melt and are in the dream present in the sound OM. If we reach that state, we are constantly around the clock in that state of awareness and that is called enlightenment. Therefore, it is possible to reach that state in just focusing on the mantra.

I had learnt to meditate regularly with a mantra and I went on with mantra that was the way I liked best. In the beginning though I also had done some exercises to keep the form in my mind and when I was even younger and still in my parents' house, I listened to music and was focused on the third eye constantly trying to keep my attention on the third eye to stop thinking.

Actually, I felt somehow troubled in my parent's house and I tried to know where those troubles came from. I wanted to get rid of the fickleness of the mind and stay in my focus with what mattered in life. I usually noticed after a certain time it became all calm and settled and then the thoughts seemed still to be there, but they had become very small and looked like they came from far away actually from outside. I read in an Osho book about meditation that there are 108 different ways to meditate and he tried it all.  

I liked to do it regularly but after some time that had become a routine and such that it began to replaced thinking and enquiring and it was kind of hard to get out of that routine, but in the meantime I keep it regularly in the morning, the evening is open, but there have been other activities like singing, dancing, writing, thinking it over to finally become able to absorb the wisdom, to get the mind in a state of calmness and peace is only possible if we understand the insights. And it is also open to TV, or whatever, after all living a normal life.

Last night we had study circle and one participant mentioned that she was shopping and there was an older man and he was upset that he couldn't find a product anymore and he was just talking to her and she didn't know what to do first, but finally she just listened.

She took the time to listen, she didn't answer or said that he was right, je just listened and in the end he wished her a good day and left and it was a good feeling.

And we were reflecting on the fact that it would be all different if she would not have been calm and in that way handling it. If we are calm and settled in the mind we do not get upset and it was probably the best she could do. She didn't go into negativity and finally it ended as a good experience and he was happy he had someone who had listened. If it would have been someone younger and impatient and maybe upset from work, that could have ended all differently and he could have even insulted that old man for talking to him or being upset because of nothing.

 We remembered that Baba had said that Veda has three steps, the first step is action and consequence, if the mind is upset, we meet probably others upset in the mind and notice that the echo is coming back fast, in the end we find everybody upset in the mind because of nothing. It can be offending to feel upset, even if it has nothing to do with the person listening.

The second step is divine law. We were reading a text about love and that we should watch our thoughts and that felt like a good example. The lady who mentioned that example was not sure about it, she had just done what she could do, but that was just a good example. We get often in such situations, don't know really what it was, but if we have a choice we try to do our best and finally the third level of Veda is the divine principle, Atman, 'I am That'.

If that level is realized I guess we know what is right and wrong and should have enough self-realization to neutralize the effects in the mind or to transform it and not only in our mind, but in the mind in general.  

We are part of the mind, people around us are part of the mind and self-realization means in that sense also that we have a different relationship with the mind and others.