How do get to one-pointedness?
When I began to watch, I was just focused on that and in time there was one-pointedness, only I didn't know what I was really doing and I didn't know what would come out by it, it was all uncertain. After a while I gave it a name, I thought that I had to take it as it comes until it would be there. What? It was about self-experience, the true self is the seer.
It was during that time in Geneva and I hardly remember the room, there was a bed and a dresser and I didn't do much with it, I was focused on watching and I didn't know how long I would stay there, but what I remember like it would have been yesterday is the watcher and it was in the dream stage. It was a car and in the dream it felt like I was around that car. The car was actually outdoors in the street and there was something happening with that car and it scared me. That was the dream, I was around that car and that car began to honk. It was that loud and in the midst of night it was awaking everybody living in that surrounding.
That were the type of experiences it was difficult to understand right, what had really happened and why had I seen it in the dream in that way. That was the question. Today we know. We were around the car it means we are in his whereabouts and there was something wrong, it began to sound the horn in the midst of the night, it woke me up at night.
But the other question was why did I get aware of that car. Today we know it had to do with watching. We watch an object, everything that is outside of us and here we watched something else, the transition is also an object, the car didn't drive, the car began to make noise at a time we didn't expect it.
What happened on the watcher level from that moment on the attention was on the transition state, we got aware of the situation in the dream, it began to reflect.
It felt like it didn't make sense that I got aware of it, because I forgot that I was watching. As I got more into it, the watcher shifted to a subtler state. It was actually simple, it means I was around it and near enough to get scared by the loud noise in the mist of the night, but I forgot that I was watching, the answer was on the watcher level and that is why I wondered why. I was watching, I wanted to make the experience of the watcher.
But on the level of watcher it was a sign that the watcher began to watch the transition level that is also an object. When reading the Patanjali sutras there was the answer.
First we watch our thoughts and then we begin to watch our feelings and emotions and after all it began to watch the transition state, it is the moods in the air.
The reason why it happened was the focus on the watcher, that the object came into focus was because something happened with that object and I was watching my feeling and the reaction in my feelings. I was scared actually not only by the noise, but be the fact that I didn't know how to understand it and what happened in the watcher, that was scary.
What happened with the car scared me and I was sitting in the bed when the noise began and I wondered about that dream, I didn't understand it. That felt strange it was with the watcher and I had no idea how to get the right answer and that was scary.
Watching is in itself progressing to more subtle levels and later the attention of the observer was not anymore on the object, but the transition of the object, what is also a thought and an object. Some time later it began to show that people working in the same place had something in common, it was like a same body and the same I and that felt even more confusing and in that way I witnessed in the dream stage the intention of suicide of a manager, as he worked in the same place, in the insight was no difference on the I am level and that felt really scary.
What happened is that I lost trust in the place I was actually and I had to change and the first thing was to quit that job and look for something else still going on with watching.
The job is dictating our life and therefore, there was a relationship and on the outside level that felt real strange and it didn't make any sense, as I didn't know him, but in the meantime I got used to it, but if I see the same glass house and it feels like the same body, I know that we work at the same place and we can even feel like it is the same body, the same problem, the same dictation and mind control by our job. We don't live in our own body, we live in the body of the firm.
When I left that place it all was real and very touching telling goodbye and there was a person who was not able to leave that place, by leaving he fell death, because he had not realized that this has become his body, that was the glass house and when he tried to get out of the door he fell death.
That is the same I had experienced with the manager who committed suicide and that was the reason why there was no difference on the 'I' level, the job had become the body and dictated our life, not only his, but mine as well, but that was scary, we had signed a contract and we were committed to our job and he went out of in committing suicide. And I just decided to quit and to leave alive.
That is the level of wrong identification, we are not even aware that we don't live in our own body. We are in the wind blown around and we have no idea what is really happening to us and what is the right thing to do and what is not right.
As Swami said he is the man coming in our dreams to awake us, we can see it as the man coming in our dream to awake us and it was a shock to realize that this man had no way out anymore of that business. He killed himself instead of just quitting the job like a normal person, the firm had become his body and that we experience on the mind level and usually when coming back I felt that exhausted and tired it took me some time to feel myself again.
With the Patanjali sutras we get the answer to the dream, it was not anymore about the object, but it began to witness the motion of the object, the transition and my inner reaction to it. It scared me, it was part of the experience, in reality I had no idea what happened in my inner awareness and I had no spiritual master who told me how to look at it. I was also scared in that moment when I noticed that I saw the car and that something happened with that car. I just got aware of the watcher, it influenced my feeling level and it scared me, but not only that I had the dream, but that I didn't understand it right that ignorance of what happened inside that was even more scary.
It was an insights, an awaking dream, but understanding was far away, but now we begin to understand it, we read it in the sutras and there it is explained.
We find the explanation in the Patanjali Sutras, it is about thoughts and those thoughts have transitions and the rest of the insight had to do with the watcher and the transition we began to watch.
The transition is also an object, the true self is beyond it and stands apart from any movement, as it is unchanging and always the same, the unchanging reality. What was in the dreams and the inner view was transition, the relationship and the reality of what we were living and that was not really funny, it was scary.
The sutras 'friendliness and compassion' have the aim to get us beyond the heavy influence of the mind.
The mind is outside; it is as Swami tells us what the others think. We focus on 'friendliness', it means not only that we are friendly, but we see the environment in such a way as 'friendliness', it is both ways and that also creates peace of mind. That way we get rid of the heavy influence of the social conditioning. That is peace, it was strong enough to keep us focused on the program and it helped, we didn't get lost anymore in the job as it had been before.
The sutra 'friendliness' gets rid of the disturbance in the mind and the sutra 'compassion' takes care of the heaviness in the mind and what had been experienced as 'lethargy', it was part of the mind.
The truth is threefold, we also find it in the mind.
We had the first two sutras to go beyond the mind and that is what Patanjali is telling us if we listen. The third sutra was 'bliss' and Swami said when we left the interview room, 'wherever bliss is, there is God'.
The fourth sutra is the 'strength of an elephant'. We left the mind behind and we get to bliss and what we think we are, I loved those sutras, but we didn't understand it, we did it as program and that was the problem.
If we listen to Patanjali and think it over the sutras take form, we realize that they got us out of the mind and kept the mind under control and then we began with the inner journey.
As we did it as program only, it was not possible to develop any self-awareness or self-confidence with it. Even if it was in the Darshan as the strength of an elephant and it said, 'you have the strength of an elephant', I had no idea about it and as it seems much too much time involved a whole program with meditation and sutras, it took about one and a half hour, we stopped with the sutras.
Baba said TM is not the right path, I went on with meditation, as he always said we should not stop, but I forgot the Patanjali sutras and the memory came back in reading Patanjali.
A sutras has to be used in Samyama, that are three states in one, we begin with focus on one sutra or quality like 'friendliness' it gets to the state of meditation when it is repeated or we integrate it in our own life and third it becomes part of our own self, it is experienced and absorbed that is the Samadhi state.
When I see it as Patanjali it has actually not much to do with TM, because it was a program and a program we begin and a program we end and it never really became part of myself and after Baba said that it is not the right path, I stopped with it. So the sutras became part of myself really, but the program never will.
The first sutra is friendliness and if we focus on 'friendliness' on a certain level we transcend it and that is how it gets absorbed, it is also on three level, focus, meditation and Samadhi. Samadhi is absorbing it, actually it is experience, it means being it.
The first focus is on the listening level, we listen to truth and the second meditation is repeating it or thinking it over internalizing it and the third the Samadhi level is being it, it has turned into experience and actually the Patanjali sutras tell us that it is possible with the focus on the Om and divinity to realize that highest truth with divine grace, that is what Sai Baba is telling us.
We need not experience all the stages: Even though the subtle states naturally come forward in a systematic order, it is not essential that we seek out and experience each and every one of the stages. If one is practicing the higher practices, such as with AUM and Ishvara, it is not necessary to seek out the lower practices, such as the psychic powers from the subtle realm. The sage Vyasa explains that samyama may not be needed on all of the stages because proficiency might be attained through the gift of grace. He points out that, "Yoga is to be known by Yoga, and Yoga itself leads to Yoga." Through the higher practices, along with grace or gift of higher consciousness, God, or guru, both the lower and higher revelations may come without going step by step through the subtle stages. (Yoga Sutras)
But we did it as program and I had repeated friendliness and compassion always first as it is the beginning and then came the bliss, but we had not idea that it kept us out of the heavy states of the mind, like disturbance and heaviness. I always liked the sutras and coming back from Paris I used them to get over of the relationship which didn't work anymore. As it was new we were building up and we only looked at it as a gift, because it was really possible to keep on a certain level with the sutras and to start new again, but it was a program. Whatever was done when we came back from Paris was gone and like lost, no memory of it anymore.
The sutras had become part of myself, but in the big understanding of it they were just a program we did as long as it was okay and we didn't do when it was not anymore the right path, so the self-experience of that time was gone.
Only in listening to Patanjali the sutras are actually not TM, but Patanjali the wisdom is still alive and it comes back and now also the memory how we came back from Paris with the sutras is again alive.
The sutras took care of it that our life felt less disturbed and for me it was like a lifeboat. In that time I really got out of the influence the job had, the social conditioning and I tried with the sutras to stay out of it, but I forgot it afterwards.
In Swami's presence I met a guy and he said that he knew that I was the right wife for him and that it was Swami and I thought that maybe one day I would know it too, it was a wish fulfilling dream and we went back in the mind. In the insight I went with Swami down the escalator and the influence of the sutras was gone.
Now that was hard to accept and moreover we didn't know what went wrong really and by listening to Swami we get aware that it is not as we thought it was and when reading the Patanjali sutras this time, we got aware of it. The sutras we had used before as program became awake again, not as program, this time as part of our own self.
It was the thought that it was just a program that we didn't do it anymore, but when we read Patanjali we know 'the divine is in Patanjali' and the wisdom gets enlivened and the sutras are not a program, but the Patanjali sutras, that is wisdom, that is yoga, that are holy scriptures and every word of it is higher wisdom of the unchanging Atma, the divine principle.
The problem is TM after all, the wisdom is great and it is Patanjali, but TM is no teaching it in the name of the Maharishi Patanjali, but as technique and as programs.
We didn't learn the rest of Patanjali and that we control the mind with it, we did it just as program, we experienced some of it, but we didn't get aware of it, we got lost in it.
We controlled the mind with it, but we didn't know what we did really, but if we listen to Patanjali he explains it.
So it can be enough to get there with the OM as Swami told us and with divine grace, we find it confirmed by the sutra and Patanjali, but as we have the experience of the Patanjali sutras, we still have to get aware of it.
What is important is not the acquisition of argumentativeness but the acquisition of single-mindedness, equanimity, and freedom from likes and dislikes. Why does one undertake these spiritual disciplines, this chanting, meditation, devotional singing, etc.? Isn't it for acquiring single-mindedness and one-pointedness?
That one-pointedness results in Samadhi if we keep it in the mind.We always were focused on one-pointedness, the problem was not the one-pointedness, but that it didn't make sense, the essence of what we did for years got lost, there seemed no possibility to get back to it as we couldn't do it as program anymore. We had to listen, think it over and absorb and we find it in the Patanjali sutras, it is not a program, it is just a sutra and wisdom and we use it to control the mind.
If we stop with it and the sutras kept us on a higher consciousness level when we stop, the normal mind states are back, we should not stop with the Patanjali sutras if we have used them or we should at least enjoy to see what they did in our life and how we got in a higher level of awareness using the sutras and in the moment we stop, the mind is back.
We should use the wisdom, get aware of it, enjoy it, but not like a program, but like something very precious and a gift of Patanjali,then the positive influence of the sutra will be back.
So actually I began to remember again the sutras, but only those I have a relationship with now the first ones more or less, the others are more for inside travelling and I will get there again, but I just allow it to happen without getting into programs anymore and effortlessly, it has to be part of our own self.
Years ago when coming back from Paris and I just began with the Siddhis program I made it part of my own self, I loved it, I was constantly remembering the Sutras and we didn't do the program anymore, because it was a program and Swami said that TM was not the right path, it took a while, but the mind came back and it was very difficult to take that the mind was back actually. It was painful, it was a struggle and constantly that awarness that we didn't know what we were doing, we did it as program only and in that we got lost, because we didn't get aware that it became part of our own self and we were no aware that we control the mind with it.
It is normal, if we stop to practice, the mind is the mind and either we have mind control and we know how to apply the sutras helping us to control the mind or we are in the mind and probably the mind as it was controlled before, got only worse and worse really, it felt like the worst came up after all, because we didn't know or we didn't realize what we were doing.
It is like using a lifeboat to get to the other shore and not being able to swim and when we reached the other shore, someone tells us that it is not the right path to use a life boat and we try to reach the shore without lifeboat and we drawn, because we actually still don't know how to swim, we had to learn to swim and we did it in swimming actually and in drowning.
Once that one-pointedness has been earned, human effort becomes unnecessary; the inner significance of life gets revealed. So those eager to become spiritual aspirants, should not yield to arguments and counterarguments.
We focus on one sutra like a mantra and usually not only with repetition as it is not a mantra, but with self-enquiry and listening to Patanjali we get aware of it, but we have to become it, but as program it is never getting that much absorbed or internalized in our life that we get aware of it, the work of internalizing is not there, we just do it and when we stop with a program, we just stop and we don't know what we have internalized and what not.
If we use it on a feeling level as I did it was internalized, but I was not aware of it. There is nothing wrong using it as a lifeboat, but we should know what we are doing and not just practice it as a program and then we get rid of it and we get lost. If we pray to God and that helps us in a difficult situation we know we prayed to God and that prayer helped us to get over it, if we would do prayer as a program and when we end the program we also would get lost because we don't know how we helped ourselves in that moment. We forget it, we forget the feelings we had, the thoughts and everything is forgotten. As Swami said, ABC, always be careful.
We have to be careful if we intergrate wisdom for self-realization, it is afterwards part of our own self and if we just do it mechanically for some time and we forget about it because it was a program only, we actually have to get lost.
That is the best way for us to get lost, first we make it part of our own self and then we forget about it, because it was only a program, if that happens and that is what happened with TM, we feel totally lost and have the feeling nothing makes any sense anymore afterwards, we cheated ourselves, we made it part of ourselves and we thought it was safe and okay and we have no master who is there and takes care of it. It needs the words spoken or written of a self-realized authority.
I can always do it as long as it last and then we forget about it and after all it is only a program and we get lost as we have made it already part of our own self. We just forget it because we were not aware of it how important it was for us how safe it felt in the inner self in that new divine quality and helping us to get on a different mind level, that was all great, but when we don't know what we are doing it is less great.
If we have the one-pointedness, we have to internalize it and as it was technical, mechanical, we don't get aware of it, it was at the outside mindlevel as technical and not part of our self and that is why it is dangerous and actually not safe.
If we listen to Swami's words, we think it should be easy, but as others didn't have the sutra 'friendliness and compassion' and the mind is not transformed into friendliness and compassion, we find everything but not that.
They have to get there with character, we know it is compassion, but the focus is not the same. They focus on right action and love and singing and the mantra OM.
They should not be enticed by the wiles of bad feeling. They should see their own faults and not repeat them again. They should guard and protect the one-pointedness they have acquired, with their eyes fixed on the goal they are after, dismissing as trash whatever difficulties, defeats, and disturbances they encounter on their path. They must dwell on subjects that would give enthusiasm and joy, and not waste valuable time building up doubts regarding all things, big and small.
It is on the individual level, the problems are usually in the movement and in the mind and not on the individual level.
If people focus on results instead of insights and it is misunderstood, there are lots of argumentation actually, we cannot really avoid it and I am really someone who always tries by all means to avoid argumentation.
If we do what he tells us here on the individual level, some feel under pressure as it is the mind to achieve something and it is about perfect organization and there is no more right action really.
It is no more his doing, but their doing. Hardly nobody seems to be aware that it is all structured in the way centers work, as they don't go in the depth of his words and they don't do any effort to understand it, they like to do all kinds of things additionally, but what we should do is not done properly.
Only with one pointed focus we can feel his presence and last time I felt sick and it was not possible to focus and it just got worse and worse, but the memory of it afterwards anyhow kept me in balance really, it was after work and all those insights, for a moment it was just a moment I had to keep the inner balance, after it was present as glass house after all and a person dropping dead in getting out of it again the same insight I had already years ago, when people are too identified with the job, they are actually not living really in their body, but they live in the job body.
I came back and felt that exhausted and it took a while to feel normal again, the way I feel now I see as normal actually.
I have tried to never see my job as body again, but the others are in it and the reflection has to do with what the others and the social conditioning and what they live as real is also part of us if we like it or not.
We keep the focus and go on. There are some people they are identified that much with their job, they will have troubles getting out of that glasshouse and especially people who have lived for all life in it.
With Swami we get to that one-pointedness.
We are not anymore just in a program and if we listen with the same one-pointed focus to the words of Patanjali, it also needs a certain focus to understand it.
They must dwell on subjects that would give enthusiasm and joy, and not waste valuable time building up doubts regarding all things, big and small.
It is about elevation and not levitation. Nothing was done consciously really, we had no idea what we did really as it was just a program. We didn't do the sutras anymore, we didn't understand it.
At the beginning we were building up and of course it is no problem. I came back from Paris and the sutras were new and we focused on it and it helped a lot actually and who would think that we would later not do it anymore?
It felt good and safe and I still hoped to get more wisdom about Patanjali and went for the teacher's training. It was all secret, so we went for the next level hoping to get more wisdom and we learnt about puja and checking points and how to initiate people into meditation, but we didn't learn anything about mantras or sutras or Patanjali and when that course was finished, it was still not what I was looking for.
The understanding what we are doing when using the sutras and how they work, like it is explained that 'friendliness and compassion' a sutra is repeated after a meditation a few times to become an object of identification. We focus on it and the self gets aware of the object and the mind wraps itself around it and then we think we are it. That is what happens if we have one-pointed focus. It is a good identification. As soon as we stop or forget it the mind is back, the mind is the mind and the tendencies in the mind are always the same.
The next step was the leader he had master contact and I thought it was possible to learn with him, and then the whole thing broke in pieces and in the meditation was a black hole and as everything broke in pieces, we were on the level of the mind again with the fears we knew already on three levels, the relationship was a black hole, a not really existing identity and not a relationship as it should have been with the master, who was not present and they were all puppets on a string and we have to just accept what we cannot change, but that part was hard to accept that we stopped with the sutras to get aware of it now that if we stop we get lost. As we have the man in our dreams who is there to awake us we get from his side feedback what makes us aware what is actually okay and what not.
When that broke in pieces I had also Osho in the dream who said I should come to him he would give me power, what I tried later one and then there was Swami again who said that he understands that I went there, but that his path doesn't work because old age needs more safety.
Moving through space: By Samyama on the relationship between the body and space (akasha) and by concentrating on the lightness of cotton, passage through space can be attained. While sutra 3.40 described levitation, this sutra describes moving through space.
It is about elevation and not levitation, the body is heavy and the mind takes the color of it and it made it lighter and it was some activity on the body level hopping around what was seen as yogic flying, it seems about no matter what served the purpose as long we just believe in it and the Western mind was eager to go for it.
And as the man coming in our dream to awake us said, 'I wanted to fly' that is how he got us into internalize the wisdom of Patanjali and the sutras and the quality is changing when we read Patanjali as he is the father of yoga.
I was looking at that Patanjali sutras before, now they start to really make sense and it feels closer than other things I wrote before, no wonder, we have some experience with it and also the experience is not gone, we just have to remember it and it is present again. TM doesn't matter in that sense, it is anyhow Patanjali and we should focus on that wisdom as he tells us in detail what happened. It is great to read and study them.
With the man coming in our dreams to awake us we get the answers as he is the knower. He is present in the Patanjali sutras.
With TM we got into habits and we thought we were the doer and we could do it with a program and that has been that established in our inner ways of thinking, it can easily get solidified and it results in stone. We got to wrong conclusions that we are doing it in repeating the programs and that means people are more and more meditating, but only getting lost as they don't know what they are doing and it has nothing to do with Patanjali.
The wrong conclusions, the habits are stronger and became solidified.
The conclusions we have from TM are not right, they are build on habits and the believe that we are the doer and that we can do it and that is not right knowledge, He is the doer and He is the knower, Patanjali is the knower.
Just think clearly and it is obvious. We know the sutras from him, we would never be able to have such insights that with the sutra 'friendliness and compassion' we can get out of the first two and worst negative mind states and it will be much easier to go beyond the mind from there and to transcend. We don't know the mind, we probably will never know the mind states and even less those keeping us down. We don't have those insights, they belong to a deeply enlightened being only. We do what he tell us as it helps to control the mind and to transcend the mind.
We get the right answers in listening to him. We have to internalize it otherwise, it is all a lie and on the level of theoretical wisdom only and that is a burden.
What is our doing?
We just do it because we realize that he knows and that with his help we are able to do it better than we ever would be able to. We don't know the mind good enough and we don't know God as well. We don't know anything really, so what can we achieve in repeating the sutras if it is all his doing and his wisdom?
It is wrong understanding and a wrong conclusion if we think we are the doer ... because we repeat it we get to the wrong notion that we are the doer and that means we are back in illusion, we develop a spiritual ego and that is much worse than any ego we had before and we are a bit nuts to think that we are really the doer and the knower.
We lose the right feeling for it and thinks we are someone we are actually not.
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