First Spiritual Practice

If your minds revel in external objects and in purposeless observation and criticism of the outside world, how then can it be trained to be steadfast? Ask yourself this question: ‘Great souls (mahatmas) and sages were also people like me. If they could attain perfection, so can I if I follow their method. What profit do I get spending my time in discovering the faults and weakness of others?’ Thus the first spiritual practice (sadhana) is to search for the faults and weaknesses within yourself, and to strive to correct them and become perfect. The unceasing toil of each succeeding day has as its aim and justification this consummation: to make one’s last days sweet and pleasant. But each day also has its evening. If the day is spent in good deeds, then the evening blesses us with deep sleep, invigorating refreshing sleep, the sleep which is said to be akin to samadhi.

If we summarize what we thought over, we recognize that Baba is talking about the mind and it makes the mind in us react. 

If the mind is strong we will react on the mind level. If we don’t listen to him, we listen to our mind and it sounds kind of like that probably: 'But I revel in external objects and in purposeless observation and criticism of the outside world, how can I be steadfast? 

The ‘I’ is not the mind, but we hear anyhow that I do it and the mind thinks, if I don’t talk and keep silence I don’t do all that.

That is a mind conclusion and a mind reaction, it is mind resistance and that strong that it is not possible to listen and it is the mind telling; only love and all is done.

With other words, we do not listen.

It is impossible to go beyond the mind and the body and the negative reaction in the mind if we do not listen.

What profit do I get spending my time in discovering the faults and weakness of others?’

The sage could attain perfection, so can I if I follow their method. 

What he is telling us is that it is the mind that is spending time in discovering faults and weakness in others, an the I is not the mind, so what profit can I get from it?

He makes a difference between 'I' and the mind and he is the divine, universal ‘I’ and that I is in all of us, but only he knows it, as we are in the mind, we think we agree, but there is mind resistance and therefore, we are not able to listen and get to a wrong conclusion.

 Baba is making a difference between the I and the mind. 

The mind is looking for faults and weakness in others, but the ‘I’ doesn’t profit from it, but the mind wouldn’t do it if it would not think it profits from it.

So how do we think it over and see it in our own life?

Do you know? In thinking it over we go through it like it would actually happen and by that we get aware of the difference in Baba’s words between ‘I’ and the mind.

Thus the first spiritual practice (sadhana) is to search for the faults and weaknesses within yourself, and to strive to correct them and become perfect.

Here Baba doesn’t mention the ‘I’ because he or the universal 'I' doesn’t have to do that, but we have to do it, we have to practice and get aware of faults and weaknesses in the mind, because we are in the mind and that is the first step to go beyond the mind. 

Watch, observe and realize the self. 

For us 'ourselve' is identified with the mind and body and therefore, we have to find faults and weaknesses in it to get aware of the light of the perfect, pure and divine higher self. And we should strive to correct them to become perfect and that will be his level of ‘I’ and also our level. There is only one and it is in all of us the same higher self and divine, pure love.

Before he talked about ‘I’ and it was the universal ‘I’, divinity and the difference to the mind, now he talks about ourselves and that is not the universal I, but the mind.

If we do not listen we do not get aware of those differences in his words. He is actually challenging our mind in making it come up.  

The unceasing toil of each succeeding day has as its aim and justification this consummation: to make one’s last days sweet and pleasant. But each day also has its evening. If the day is spent in good deeds, then the evening blesses us with deep sleep, invigorating refreshing sleep, the sleep which is said to be akin to samadhi.

We should never stop the toil. 

I had problems to understand that it has its aim and justification in this consummation, The English was here a problem, that expression the ‘justification of this consummation’. The meaning of it if consummation is used in that manner probably telling that we should constantly strive for it unceasingly and each day has its light and its night and evening and that are probably the ups and downs or rest and activity.

How would you see it out of your meditation experience?

If the day is spent in good deeds, at day time is light and we are aware of it, the evening will be blessed by good sleep or rest, refreshing and that is said to be akin to samadhi. 

In those words we recognize the rest and activity we know from meditation and we get more rest and make better use of our mental potential and if we spend our daily activities in purifying the mind there will be a different level of rest, the state of transcendence or inner being is an awakening and it is expanding consciousness and after all not different from Samadhi.

Not easy to understand, isn't it? 

Let's think it over maybe we find a way to see it in our own life. 

Enlightenment is being 360° awake, the state of Samadhi or transcendental awareness is coexistent with the waking-, dream and sleep state.    

In doing our Sadhana, spiritual work, we get closer to Samadhi and that is undisturbed silence in the mind and we know it from our meditation, but still even if we are thinking it over it is difficult to understand and we have to look for the right translation and right understanding to know it in the light of our own experience that Samadhi is meant as the forth state of consciousness existing together with the three level of consciousness we know as waking, dream, and sleep state and even if we relate it to past experiences to get to the right conclusion, we have to somehow know more about the Samadhi to understand it.