All Mantras are Okay

You must be careful even in matters relating to the realisation of God. Whatever inconveniences one may encounter, one must try to carry on spiritual practices without any break or modification in the disciplines. One should not be changing the name that one has loved, cherished and selected for remembrance (smarana). Concentration is impossible if the name is changed once every few days. The mind won’t attain one-pointedness. All spiritual discipline has this one-pointedness as its ultimate aim. Therefore, avoid constant adoption and rejection of names and forms of the Lord. One single name must be used throughout for repetition of the name (japa) and meditation. One has also to get the strong conviction that all the Lord’s names and forms are but the name and form that one is repeating. Your chosen name and form must not give the slightest feeling of dislike or disaffection.

Baba (thought for the day)

Love only, Baba said.
We also notice that there are all types of love, but we seem to rarely understand it right and why not? If we would understand it right we would know about ‘pure love’.
Baba tells us, if we want to experience pure love, we have to understand peace and we have to accept truth and when we accept the path of truth, we have to accept right action and only if we have those three things, truth, right action and peace, we are able to make the experience of pure love.

That are the human values, we have five human values, truth, right action, peace, love and non-violence.

We don’t know and how can we know it, if we don’t listen to his words?

Everybody tells love only, but do we know how to make the experience of ‘pure love’?

You must be careful even in matters relating to the realisation of God. Whatever inconveniences one may encounter, one must try to carry on spiritual practices without any break or modification in the disciplines.

Love only and we think we know love, but that is an illusion, it is not the type of love Baba is talking about. It is not pure or divine love, it is just love and that is a different type of love.

If we listen to Swami’s words. We must be careful, ABC, always be careful.

Why do you think he is wording it in that way?
We must be careful even in matters relating to the realization of God. We know we should be careful in matters relating to the mind, don’t we, but even in matters relating to the realization of God he tells us to be careful.

And he goes on and explains it.
We can encounter difficulties and when he said to me that TM was not the right path that was just one of those difficulties. We had a program we did every day in the morning and in the evening and it was all together three hours. We were used to it as we did it like a technique and now we went to Baba and he told us that it is not the right path. What did you do, did you stop using that mantra?

I didn’t stop using that mantra and he said once in an interview that all mantras are okay, but I stopped the Siddhis program, the repetition of the Patanjali Sutras and I had been a TM-teacher and we had lectures and we initiated people into TM, so I also stopped that and that was all part of our spiritual practice and it was just not possible to go on without break or without modification of the discipline.
As we have to follow his words, I went on with the mediation and I never tried to change my mantra, today when I meditate I don’t even know if I think the mantra and what mantra, I am that used to it, it is not present as mantra, it is mostly present as just the idea of it.

It was not done when he said, that it was not the right path and I should only think about God. I didn’t know how and we grew into it. For me thinking about God is thinking over his words. If we do it we are in constant contemplation of the divine, the word is God.

As the bible is stated, first was the word and the word is with God and the word is God.

Love is my form, truth is my breath, bliss is my food. (Baba)

Only love we think and we don’t know how actually, so we don’t do anything and not even meditation and that is not how it should be understood.
Love is his form, the form is in the waking stage and truth is his breath and we know truth is indirect. We have direct and that was our experience that love is his form and we have the indirect level that is the dream stage and that is truth, truth is always indirect, we cannot see the truth with our mind, we have to use self-enquiry to get to truth. And we have the third level, it is the sleep state for us as it is only temporary merging and when it is the turiya stage it is constant and not anymore changing and that is why it is bliss.

Baba explained when talking about the different stages that omniscience is gained when waking stage and dream stage merge and that means for us we have all three together, love, truth and bliss.

Do we know now how to get there?

One should not be changing the name that one has loved, cherished and selected for remembrance (smarana).

It means if we got a mediation practice and we did it for years, even if he is telling us that it is not the right path, we go on with it.
But it was difficult, because knowing that it was not the right path there were doubts and we went on and one day he said in our interview that all mantras are okay, and that made it easier, but when we listen to the thought for day or his words and we think it over, we also know just because we listen to his words, we know what is right, he is telling it again and again in many different ways and after a certain time listening and thinking it over, we just know. There is also love in a mantra when we have used it for so long regularly twice a day and if we would stop with it, we would betray that love and on another place I read that we deceive our own higher self if we stop the spiritual practice we did before.

 Concentration is impossible if the name is changed once every few days. The mind won’t attain one-pointedness. All spiritual discipline has this one-pointedness as its ultimate aim.

And Swami is explaining why and that it is a matter of one-pointedness, so actually not the mantra matters, but our focus had to be one-pointed, he is telling us even that it is the ultimate aim. We think, only love, but if we don’t know how to reach that love, what are we doing, waiting to get it sometimes?
Today I send the text of the study circle away and I mentioned that we can make only the experience if we practice and if we do it, when Baba is telling us that the first step is ‘you and I are we’ and the second step is ‘we and he is I’.

There are usually not so many participating in the study circle and if we are not doing it, we don’t get the experience of ‘we and he is I’, because we can do it only in the group.

There are other ways how we can experience, ‘we and He is I’, but the study circle is one way of it. We listen to his words and we think it over and we is the group or the circle.

Therefore, avoid constant adoption and rejection of names and forms of the Lord. One single name must be used throughout for repetition of the name (japa) and meditation. One has also to get the strong conviction that all the Lord’s names and forms are but the name and form that one is repeating. Your chosen name and form must not give the slightest feeling of dislike or disaffection

Whatever mantra we started with when we went into mediation and whatever the difficulties coming up when we had to face the reality when he said it was a not right path, it was not easy and the contemplation about it finally means also to follow the master, fight to the end and finish the game.
First it had to be understood what was okay and what not and we had to practice it in listening to Baba’s words and after all we had to get aware of it and that is only possible in thinking it over again and again and seeing it in our own life. As Baba is telling us, first discrimination, second see it in our own life and third go on no matter what obstacles are there.

You must be careful even in matters relating to the realisation of God. Whatever inconveniences one may encounter, one must try to carry on spiritual practices without any break or modification in the disciplines. One should not be changing the name that one has loved, cherished and selected for remembrance (smarana). Concentration is impossible if the name is changed once every few days. The mind won’t attain one-pointedness. All spiritual discipline has this one-pointedness as its ultimate aim.

After thinking it over we can question ourselves, what did we change in our spiritual practice and why did we change it and what is the outcome of changing it?
Why we didn’t listen to him and why is it that difficult that we probably stopped that meditation as we had been used to it and how did we replace it or what replaced the understanding that the mind gets purified with meditation? Where are we now in our spiritual practice?

I kept on my meditation and today it is not anymore an issue, because it is anyhow only a faint idea of it and in the meantime I have been listening to his words and I was thinking it over about meditation, but also about affirmations and that were the sutras and by doing it the qualities of the sutras where all in him actually, so it is all about the Atma only.

But before I began to think over Swami’s words it was constantly an issue.
Even if I kept the mantra from time to time I was also just meditating with the breath and Soham and it needed quite a lot of self-enquiry to get aware that Baba had been in all those experiences and affirmations, it was not easy at all to get to that insight and afterwards it was no more an issue. It is He and it is all about the Lord and he is eternal and alone existing.

But there was still that flying sutra and that was projected on the body level, but also that needed to be thought over again and again in our own life to understand that Baba said in the insight, ‘I wanted to fly’, because it was projected by the mind on the body level during the exercise and right understood it means actually not ‘you and I but we’ and that is only the first step followed by ‘we and he is I’, if Baba tell us that, ‘I wanted to fly’ it means we projected it both on the body level, we both have been doing that program and wanted to fly and in reality it is not the body, but the Atma or divine level and we get that way to the right conclusion, ‘he wanted to fly’. It is a matter of Atma and not the body.

And after all we have to look at our life and what happened with a not right path and if we are still going on in the old habits, what have we changed or transformed and what not?

Do we understand Baba’s words right?
Do we know the difference between right and not right and do we realize that we have to face the challenge of knowing just that difference to be able to discriminate between what had been not right and what is right?

Only love, but that doesn’t answers all those questions and we meditate since a long time, so how did that love present as the right path replace what we think was not right?

Baba said in the first interview that it is very difficult to understand and it took such a long time to even get closer to it and to find the right answers.

Today we know it is indeed very difficult to understand. What we thought was easy turned out to be the opposite, very difficult. And as we have the experience of both levels, we have to understand it if we like it or not. And maybe we just think that it is too difficult and we rather would like to make it easier for us, only love doesn’t sound that difficult, does it?

But after all it is not the love we think it is, it is a different type of love and if we make it easy to us and we avoid all those questions, we will never get the experience of that pure love. In avoiding it or making it easier we avoid truth. Only if those three things are there, truth, peace and right action we are able to experience ‘pure love’.