The Watchman

All of you are pilgrims in the journey towards the city of liberation. Every life is but a stage in the journey, your body is a rest-house for a short stay during the pilgrimage. The mind is the caretaker in the place of our rest. Do not treat the Mind as a Master or Owner, but take care of it so that the house we are privileged to occupy is not damaged or polluted. We must treat the watchman politely and not destroy its interiors.

A restless mind is an important source of ill-health. Many are constantly afflicted with some source of worry or other, never free from anxiety. Why? Because they are identifying themselves with the body! One acquires their body, through their past activities and deeds, caused by the twin pulls of love and hate. You can escape from this cycle, if you realize the Oneness of the Divine being present in you and in everyone.

Baba (thought for the day)

  

All of us are pilgrims in the journey towards liberation; Baba calls it here the city of liberation.

On the way we are helped or handicapped by the antics of the mind.

Our life is a journey and we should see the mind as caretaker, but if our place of rest is not taken care properly, it will be a handicapped journey.

How do we know if we treat the Mind as the Master or Owner?

And how do we take care of it that the house we are privileged to occupy is not damaged or polluted?

We must treat the watchman politely and not destroy its interiors.

With these words Baba describes the insight and the meaning of it when my ex was standing in the ruin of that house, there were big holes in the floor and the walls had crumbles and there was no roof and he said that is all I could get in garage sales. That was his hobby to go to garage sales and when I tried to tell him that it was not okay, he began to argue. That is how that house looked after we left and we didn't go back.

If we do not listen to Baba's words and think it over, we can get to a wrong conclusion as it was at the beginning, I thought it was a dream and I even told him about the dream and he said, sorry … He didn't get the importance of it as he never did. There was no sorry for that ruin of a spiritual house we should take care that it would not be damaged, it was a ruin.

Do not treat the Mind as a Master or Owner, but take care of it so that the house we are privileged to occupy is not damaged or polluted.  

When I told him, he began to argue and I went on with meditation, but it got always worse and not better.

We must treat the watchman politely and not destroy its interiors.

I remember when I decided to watch, I was in my twenties. It was an important decision, because I never could stop again to watch and it felt also like that, important and it was joyful in the beginning and it felt special, but after watching for I don't know how long, after all, it was in the dream and it was an 'insight' of the higher self. So first there had been a decision and then there was time involved and work, we went in that direction and had to focus on something and it began with the watcher and it extended to God and in direction of self-realization.

That was important to make it real we need a purpose (focus), a decision, time and work involved.

It made such an incredible impression on me. It was an 'insight', but there was lots of waiting involved and focus and going on and not talking with others about it. I kept silence to not disturb it by others and that was just because of that big house that it would not get damaged and polluted.

That was the watchman and we tried to treat him politely but it was all in vain with my ex, he argued about it and as it was not possible to do the same without treating the watchman in an improper way, I usually said, Baba will take care of it, I didn't say anything anymore.

Whenever I just tried to tell him that it couldn't possibly work out like that, he began to argue. It was impossible to talk to him, with time it felt like talking against a wall.

As a pilgrim, you are helped or handicapped by the antics of the mind. The mind has as its warp and woof, desire or thirst for something or the other, getting some gain or avoiding some loss. Desire arises from attachment, which is a consequence of delusion. Desire distorts and denigrates the mind, and keeps it incessantly agitated. No sheet of water can be calm when stones drop on it, and if there is a perpetual shower of desires, it will be pitifully restless.

When I met that reflection of the watchman the first time, it was just white light and of such splendor, it was amazing that 'insight', it was such that I knew it was all I wanted. It was of such beauty there was nothing but love.

The body was dark and sleeping and the 'I' was in the body, but at the same time I was aware that it didn't belong there. The light body of the higher self was separate from the resting body and there was a gap in between. In that gap was a ribbon and it was of blue color and in it was written 'self'.  That is what I wanted. But it didn't tell me how that had happened and why in watching I had met the higher self.

And it took a long time until I began to get some answers. It was the watchman and I tried to get it somehow, why it was a reflection and how that had become real and why we don't know anything about it in our age of ignorance. That were all open questions and I was looking for a spiritual master who would help me to understand it right and not wrong.

And we do get right answers if we listen to his words, we plunge deep into his wisdom and get absorbed in it, that is how we get the answers from the inside. He is the knower and we get the answer from him it is in his wisdom.

We cannot grasp that higher reality which is beyond the mind and the body with our mind or even with the intellect. The intellect is discrimination, he has to know the difference between mind and Atman, between right answers and 'insights' and not right answers and dreams.

So I had that watchman we went on watching and realized it was impossible to talk about it with my ex without that he began to argue about it.

We must treat the watchman politely and not destroy its interiors.

I hoped in keeping silence or in not talking about it and going into arguing I would be able to keep it okay, but that didn't work.

So I watched and waited until the action came out of the inner self and that was when Baba was in the dream of my ex and told him that I had to come to him and make peace with him.

He was even about that arguing and he made fun of me that I was that stupid and had to go and make peace with a Sai Baba, it sounded ridiculous, but at that time I felt that in shock realizing that state of mind and he didn't treat the watchman politely, he was not aware of the watchman at all.

He blamed me for everything and it was fun to blame others as it seemed, only not himself.

So after we left and went to Baba and he said in many ways that we should not go back to him, because he was destroying himself and stupid and doesn't know what he is doing and in the daughter dream he said, if she goes back to him, he will destroy her too.

So we couldn't go back and when Baba left the body he said in my dream, 'no more husband, nothing left but an empty Western shoe'.

He expected us to go back. Before we left a day or two before he had another Baba dream and in that dream Baba said to me, 'go back to your lovely husband'. Baba is always on the heart level, but ex was not on the heart level. But he expected us anyhow to go back, even if Baba said we should not go back. In the ashram in the 'insight' it was clear that we didn't listen and we had to get a divorce'. I told him, he still didn't listen, he ignored it.

So after seven years I had the divorce agreement with me and one day by hazard we met I Prasanthi and because of Baba's presence what harmonized it, he signed the paper and that is why we are divorced, probably otherwise, it would be still not done yet.

It was for me a kind of shock to get aware what type of person or mind I got into meeting that guy in the ashram with Baba.

So I thought it was a dream also when he was standing in the ruin dressed with a red skirt and a black fur jacket and he said to me that is all I could get in garage sales.

That is the reflection of the object and 'insight'. As Baba said, he is the 'insight' and the following step. So it was not just clear and understood.

After I went to Baba I was convinced to be on the right path and because he said one day I will give inner view, not interview … I hoped to get closer to it as it was all about insights.

We thought he didn't tell us how to do it, but that was wrong, we just didn't know how to listen.

He always said that we should listen to his words, think it over and absorb.

We just do not hear it or we do not understand it or we do not know how to listen.

There were always lots of people; we had to learn how to listen to his words. And if we listen and think it over, he will be there in the answer and if it is not okay, he is present in the dream and leads from the inside to the right conclusion.

Once it had happened in Darshan, I sat in the first row and was thinking about illusion and how to understand it. When my father had planned the house in Spain he was going to build, he said to me that he will build the most beautiful house. It sounded good, but above in the air was 'illusion' and I didn't know what to do about it. I had been let down by them, the house could not make it okay. I didn't know what it was, but the illusion above his head told me that it would not work the way he expected it to be. It was an illusion.

It was also not possible to talk about it or to tell him that it felt like 'illusion' to me, nothing of that was possible. But when I was thinking about 'illusion' in the Darshan, Baba was just about walking back to the mandir, above Baba was big in the air, 'I am real'.

So I thought I had to hold on what is real and not to the illusion. But later we were living in that house and we enjoyed it with the kids and Baba who was real, after we came back from the US we couldn't even go to him anymore, as always let down by the family.

I couldn't leave the daughter alone, she had only more than two weeks school holiday during summer and it was just too little time to go for fourteen days to India and in the summer holiday we went to see the parents, because they were also alone in Spain in their big house.

So the time when I could be for a longer time with Baba in the ashram was over and nobody cared or asked if we would like to go to Prasanthi.

It was like gone, what we had experienced in the ashram before, just gone.

Nobody saw it, nobody asked, nobody wanted to know, there was just nobody, no help, the father of the child cared only about him and he didn't care if his daughter was able to go and see Baba or his wife, what he called wife, not once he asked if we could meet in the ashram, it was like he didn't exist or only to create troubles and to handicap our journey.

If I wrote him, we got only stupid answers back.

The time I had lived with Baba before we had a daughter was gone and with that not working marriage, everything was gone.

I was back in society and had to take care of the child, work and I couldn't go and see him really anymore and with the time I got that tired of it, I didn't want to see him anymore because it was too painful.

I hated my life and how it had turned out and that stupid guy I had met in the ashram and he had promised I don't know what and nothing turned out as he had said it would be, nothing was true, everything was a dream, to share a dream which lead into ruin, because he had probably never before had heard that there is a watchman and that we should take care of the watchman.

It was just frustrating and sickening.

After we came back from the US Baba was holding up a book in the insight. Baba is the man coming in our dreams to awake us. So I began to write that book and that is how I began to write and to forget that I was frustrated and that I couldn't go and see him as I would have liked etc.

So that was the illusion and we were like immersed in it and only when I began to write and he said in the dream that I should use his words, I began to use the thought for the day and by doing that it began to grow. He was in the dream answering and so I went on.

And that is how I realized by thinking it over in his text that answers came but not by me, but by him and therefore, we have to take his words, because he is the knower.

We have to think it over to get deep into the words and the wisdom in those words to be able to get absorbed in it and in that light the 'insights' begin to make sense and we get answers.

He is the knower. He is the ocean of light. He is the sun and in us we get aware in the watchman of the reflection of the sunlight and in looking inside in our own self, we can recognize it, the watchman gets aware of it and our awareness grows.

It means we have to listen to his words; otherwise, we cannot get aware that the same light is reflected in us and recognize that 'I am that'.

If we don't listen, we might have experiences, we are not even aware of it. Like with my ex, he had Baba dreams and he was not aware that they have been there to awake him and not to blame me for it. He found always a reason to blame, to abuse, to insult and he didn't care about the watchman.

It is possible that he is present as watchman, but we think it is a dream only; therefore, we have to use discrimination. Only when we listen to his words and dive deep into the wisdom we will get the answer and know the difference from only a dream and an 'insight'.

As my ex was also six months at the time in the ashram, he had also Baba dreams and he didn't realize that it was the watchman and it was the level of 'insights' and he lived it like a dream only. It means his mind abused it to blame others instead of getting aware of the watchman.  

Baba said he is the 'insight' and the following step.

As long as we are not aware of the difference between dream and 'insight', we have not realized it that it is an 'insight' and that it is the man in the dream who is there to awake us and as long as we are not aware of it, we live a dream only, we think it is a nightmare or like my ex, he had a Baba dream and he said that I had to go and make peace with Baba and he blamed me for it, when in reality it said that he put everything in question, even what Baba had said in the interviews in the meantime and therefore, I had to go and make peace with Baba in his mind. It was a wake-up call for him and he thought that I had to go and make peace with Baba.

He didn't get aware that it was a call for him to wake up and I am sure he is still not aware of it; he never seems to think that far.

He goes on dreaming with open eyes and he doesn't know what he is doing. He missed it totally that it was a wake-up call and that we should be polite with the watchman and the and not destroy its interiors.

Do not treat the Mind as a Master or Owner, but take care of it so that the house we are privileged to occupy is not damaged or polluted.  

The words of Baba tell us now, in that very moment, that the ruin he lived in was the house we were privileged to occupy and that is how he cared to not damage and pollute it.

It was only a ruin left of that house and that is why I had to go and make peace with Baba in his mind and it was the end of that disturbed and perverted relationship and the result of him taking only advantage of it. But he really expected us to come back, even against Baba's advice to not go back and that he would destroy us. He was not able to listen at all.

Everybody else was wrong, never he … I wondered what he did in that ashram. He went there because he followed his wealth former boss and he was in his room and he followed in the footsteps of the boss and not Baba and he went there because he was worshipping wealth and not divinity, and we get aware of it all in 'insights' and by listening to his words and thinking it over he tells us what it is from the inside. Baba said he was only taking advantage of it and also that I should send him the bill. 

There was nothing left of the interiors of that house, the interiors didn't exist at all and of the house was only a ruin left and that way Baba gives us that answer and tells us why there was a ruin and the meaning of that ruin, why there was only a ruin left.