Difference between Form and Formless

The Gopikas did not concern themselves with the question whether the Divine was attributeless or full of attributes. They preferred to worship the Divine in the form of Krishna and they wanted their forms to merge in the Divine. "Thereby we shall be formless," they declared. It is when we forget our form that we can merge in the Formless. The Divine cannot be experienced through Dhyana (meditation) or Japa (recitation); this is a delusion. These practices may give momentary peace of mind. To experience permanent joy, develop your Divine nature. For this, your environment must be congenial and have pure and Divine vibrations. It is not necessary to go to a forest to concentrate on the Divine Atma dwelling within your heart. The key to inner peace is within you and not outside. In the atmosphere of a sacred divine presence, you can promote your quest for peace more effectively.

Baba (thought for the day)

If the Gopikas did not concern themselves with the question whether the Divine was attributeless or full of attributes, they also didn't question if there was a difference between non-conceptual and conceptual really, but nevertheless, they had to use discrimination.

As Baba is telling us that they preferred to worship the divine in the form of Krishna and they wanted to merge with the divine. And they said that they will be formless and the discrimination was about form and no form. How do we get to the formless if we just have a desire to merge? If we don't question that attributes, but it is still the difference between form and formless, there is actually a big difference and the question is how we get into a relationship with the formless.

Love is in our imagination usually directed towards a person or a form, we have to go over a form to get to the level when it is formless.

The Gopikas did not concern themselves with the question whether the Divine was attributeless or full of attributes. They preferred to worship the Divine in the form of Krishna and they wanted their forms to merge in the Divine. "Thereby we shall be formless," they declared. It is when we forget our form that we can merge in the Formless. The Divine cannot be experienced through Dhyana (meditation) or Japa (recitation); this is a delusion.

In our everyday mind reality we listen to it and hear first that they were not concerned about the divine being attributeless or full of attributes, but if we don't listen carefully our mind clad to not make a difference thinks, good we don't have to – so I know and I don't have to bother about it any further and it just feels good, we hear only 'love', but we don't hear 'pure love'.

To know what attributes the divine has or if it doesn't have any is not really our concern in the West, we rather ask if the Divine exists at all, that is the concern in the West and if it is love, there is just the question about love and nothing else.

That means we also are not concerned about the divine attributes, but we also don't question how to merge.

The Divine cannot be experienced through Dhyana (meditation) or Japa (recitation); this is a delusion. These practices may give momentary peace of mind. To experience permanent joy, develop your Divine nature. For this, your environment must be congenial and have pure and Divine vibrations. It is not necessary to go to a forest to concentrate on the Divine Atma dwelling within your heart. The key to inner peace is within you and not outside. In the atmosphere of a sacred divine presence, you can promote your quest for peace more effectively.

We go on listening to Baba without going deep into the meaning of his words and we hear, no need to meditate and with Japa it also cannot be reached, only love … who knows how that works, maybe one day we will know, maybe never and he always said, 'wait, wait, wait', so we go on waiting and got used to that.

We meditate and feel great and afterwards we don't and forget it, so we meditate next day, but with time if we do it regularly we believe in our meditation and that it will go on feeling great like that.

In his divine presence we experienced the joy and in that joy it is possible to develop our Divine nature and I wondered sometimes why it felt like that in his presence and there was 'only love' and when coming back even if I meditated, I could not go on with it. Coming back it was gone again, but I also knew I couldn't stay there forever, so it was also not permanent. As long as it is not realized in our own self, it is only temporary that experience.

Like many other I would have liked to stay there forever, because in his presence he took care of it and I had been already meditating years before and I also liked it and somehow I couldn't get back to that experience, when I was here something was missing and I went back to him, because with him it was there.

To experience permanent joy, develop your Divine nature. For this, your environment must be congenial and have pure and Divine vibrations.

That is why it was not present here, there was no environment congenial to have pure and divine vibrations and when I met a guy in the ashram who said that I was the wife, Baba sent him, I thought who knows, we can create a congenial environment together. I thought Baba would take care of it, he said 'wait, wait, wait' and I would have done anything to be able to stop that waiting and to do something about it to get there a bit faster, so I was meditating a lot. He also said that we should never give up our Sadhana, I kept the mediation and stopped the Sutras, but I had to go on meditating and we waited until I met that guy who said, 'you belong to me'. I have asked Baba for a wife and I thought we could create that good environment together as we don't find it otherwise anywhere.  If I had to stay back in the West and there was no ashram, there was no way to keep those pure and divine vibrations alone and my family as he said in the inside had let me down and I was not even aware of it. I thought I had to be nice to them as mother and father is God and when I came back from Paris years before the younger brother began with meditation and the sister and the father. They had no problems with that, but it was not same coming back from India and Baba and as I went into that relationship with that American guy I had met in the ashram, nobody was at my side.

Not long ago I had the Maharishi in my dream and we sat in Seelisberg outdoors and ate tuna and he said to me, 'funny that we are vegetarians, but we eat meat to just not be different from the others'.

A former TM-teacher who has been for a long time no more with TM was with us in the study circle and I told him about the dream. He is one of those who had been at the beginning with the Maharishi in Seelisberg and I don't know what happened to him later on. But I told him that before our study circle and he said, 'but we ate tuna at the beginning with the Maharishi in Seelisberg'. It was a wonderful time.

Maybe now I understand it. At that time I had not been let down by the family and I tried with all means to get earlier an answer because I would have liked to get out of that waiting state.

I had that experience of 'pure love' already with the Maharishi after becoming a TM-teacher, but we didn't know why and to get aware why, we had to listen and we didn't get it, we didn't understand it.

The Divine cannot be experienced through Dhyana (meditation) or Japa (recitation); this is a delusion.

But we had a great time during that Dhyana (meditation) together and we didn't realize that it was 'that', but the pure love was nevertheless there.

If we meditate we clean the mind and we reach a state of pure being, pure consciousness, it is a pure state of mind, or it was also called transcendental awareness or we reached silence and a good feeling, a state of perfect orderliness, perfect health etc. and we could go on like that, but it was not about divinity?

These practices may give momentary peace of mind. To experience permanent joy, develop your Divine nature. For this, your environment must be congenial and have pure and Divine vibrations.

So we went into that relationship so that the environment should be congenial and have pure and divine vibrations, but it didn't work. It was still much better to have a good meditation and momentary peace of mind, as we got in a habit of it, we believe that in time we will get permanent peace of mind and divinity is a permanent state of being, therefore, it has to be permanent present and not changing.

He had asked me in the interview room how I felt and I said, 'good Swami', and I really felt good in that very moment and he said that is not true, up and down. It didn't occur to me that it was just about not being permanent present, I thought something was wrong with my state of mind.

During meditation it was peaceful and great and after meditation it was different. It felt like nothing really made sense anymore. If I felt good in my meditation, sometimes even very good and in his presence in the interview room I also felt good and I thought that would go on like that and he said it is not true, it was not yet permanent. He had no other words for it but not true and that put about everything in question, not just the level of discrimination.  

And after being in that relationship I had to get aware why there was falsehood and why it turned into violence and it had rather to do with attachment and hatred and not with 'pure love'.

All that to get aware of 'that', 'pure love' I had experienced already with the Maharishi and I had forgotten it, because he said it was not the right path, but not how to understand it, he just said it is very difficult to understand.

If we listen to Baba's words we get aware of it in the 'reflection' of it, we have to listen carefully and think it over as I do in writing it down. I went on with my ex believing it was a Baba Lila and it resulted in a disaster. We didn't listen, we didn't know how to listen and it didn't make sense. There was no peace and listening to Baba we get aware that we have to understand peace and that is what we did with meditation, we worked and meditated for world peace and for the enlightenment of the world and Baba said that he took only advantage of it, he said that in my dream and everything what was about frustration and what didn't work came up by it until I got aware that the mind takes advantage of it, it is the natural tendency of the mind or what we call ignorance to feel self-elevated and to just make himself feel good. I had felt with my meditation much better before and most of all more integrated in my everyday life and that society. After I went to him and I came back I felt actually not good, but awful. Of course it was because of that body friend I had in that time and it never was okay anymore, because I couldn't understand those experiences. He was on the top of the movement in the insight it was about a pyramid and nobody could really pass him, that is also why all turned into enemies, but it was not better with Baba, that guy also disturbed everything in no time and now also the meditation was no more good and it was not about negative experiences, but it was much worse, it was about ruin. In the insight a light ball took removed the national leader from the scene and I enjoyed it, because he created only problems, but it was not better with my ex and after that I had no more energy to go on, I also didn't make it to Baba anymore.

I had been a TM-teacher before and that was all gone, just gone. Only in listening to Baba's words the experience I had with the Maharishi and that there was 'pure love' came up again and not in that light as reflection it began to make sense, it seems like before I didn't understand a word what Baba had said. I knew we had to meditate to purify the mind, so why he said we cannot reach divinity with meditation, to whom was he actually talking?

It felt like when I felt good, he said that it was not true and when I didn't feel good, I should feel good, nothing made sense and it was an awful state of being.

If we don't use discrimination and we just want to merge and make that permanent joy and we have to develop our divine nature, so how do we develop our divine nature?

It was like he confirmed in the dream that it was good and when he said something he did the opposite, it was all not okay and it just didn't make sense. So I went on meditating and the mind, the outside world had still more power than the dream, we had to live a normal life and I didn't know anymore how to live it. I didn't forget about the dreams, but I couldn't find any answer and since he had said that it was very difficult to understand, we had to get an answer no matter what and before he left the body about five years ago he began to be more often in the dream and as it had not been possible to talk with my ex once really sense, he 'engaged' me with someone else and that is how we went into thinking over the thought for the day.

It was about truth and not just merging, but we were not concerned about the attributes of the divine, but there are that many aspects of the divine in India, it makes sense when we look at it from that side, there is the question of the attributes of the divine.

We always prayed lead us from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality. So what was truth? To make it true it has to be permanent.

It was not always possible to be in a state of meditation, we have also to live our life and it made totally sense that we did it regularly and when we were not in meditation, we were not thinking about it. When he said 'up and down' and naughty mind, I thought everything was wrong, but I went on with mediation, it was the only thing I could do.  

With TM all broke in pieces, but it was due to the national leader and it happened in only a few years' time, what had been established by the Maharishi before, because he didn't know what he was doing and I had to understand it, so that was the result of it. The hand was no there who had made the puppets, that was information, not only about the puppets, but also about the master not being there. That image said that the master who had made the puppets was not there and if we don't hold puppets, they don't know how to walk alone. The information was that – they were puppets, he had made puppets out of them and that he was not there and that something went wrong, it broke in pieces, but the question was what broke in pieces. And Baba gave the answer in a thought for the day. He said if we separate right action and peace there are only pieces left.

And finally all turned into enemies and that was the real shock, how should I feel part of it if they all turned into enemies, but of course, it had to do with the role play of the national leader, he was in the insight only actor and there was that pyramid and he was the top of it and if the top is not okay, the rest falls with it and the master was not present. But to see that reflected on the top of society, I worked for a lawyer and he worked for the Russians and helped them in illegal means to get into the Swiss industry, it also didn't make sense, actually everything what happened in the last thirty years or so began only with writing and very slowly to make sense.

But after TM I got a book with vibuthi and I took it in my meditation and it transformed into love and there was a small dark-blue form and it was God in the heart. It was a great insight and an even greater experience. So how should I not feel okay? It was great, it felt good and right, but I didn't understand what had happened and why it broke into pieces and that was it why Baba said it was very difficult to understand.  

I went to Baba and when we had interview, I was already a few months with him in the ashram, I wanted to do the right thing and asked about my 'boyfriend', as it was that upside down I just wanted to do the right thing. And when Baba asked me 'what do you want', I said, 'my friend is now with the Maharishi in New Delhi and I am with you and that is my problem'. Someone had to repeat it and Baba said, 'who is your friend, is the Maharishi your friend or is your friend with the Maharishi' and it was the last part I thought the friend was with the Maharishi and I knew it was wrong when he answered, that 'this is very difficult to understand, that I should think of God only and that TM is not the right path'. In that moment I knew nothing was as I thought it should be and nothing made sense anymore and it was like that for a long, long time.

Many call themselves devotees, but this claim means nothing by itself. When you write a letter, unless it is acknowledged by the recipient, you cannot be sure of where you stand. Likewise, whether one is a devotee or not should be declared by the Lord Himself. Arjuna did not say to Krishna: "I am Your devotee." Nor was Lord Krishna content in announcing: "Arjuna, you are my devotee." Why did Lord Krishna choose to say: "You are My friend and devotee", instead of calling Arjuna either a 'friend' or a 'devotee?' There is a profound spiritual significance in this declaration, which will become clear only when you practice the spiritual life. If Krishna were to say to Arjuna, "You are My friend", Arjuna's ego will be inflated and he will take undue liberties with Krishna. If He were to say, "You are my devotee," Arjuna will become extremely submissive. Hence Lord Krishna declared, "Arjuna, you are My devotee and friend."