Sat or not Sat that is the Question

Company of the pious (Satsanga) leads you to gradually withdraw from entangling worldly activities. When a bit of cold coal is placed in the midst of glowing cinders and when the fire is fanned, the coal too glows with fire. Fire of Wisdom (Jnana agni) operates similarly. Individual effort and Divine Grace are both interdependent. Without effort, there will be no conferment of grace; without grace there can be no taste in the effort. To win that precious Grace from the Lord, all you need is only faith and virtues. You need not praise Him to win His favour. Praise feeds the fire of egoism and fogs genuine faith. God does not like mere external verbal praise and offerings of kind. He is yours and you are His. The entire mankind is God's family. Knock with faith: the doors of Grace will open. Open your door! The Sun's rays waiting outside will flow silently in and flood your room with light.

It is great getting aware of it that the company of the pious, the Satsanga, leads us gradually withdraw from entangling in worldly activities.
It was said that before, the main thing is the satsang. the good company and we know by the man coming in our dreams to awaken that it is Swami and not the mind, it is the only place the mind cannot manipulate it when it is in the dream stage, but we can misunderstand it. 

The 4 F’s: Follow the Master. Fight to the End. Finish the Game

You should make your own conscience secure, and you should have confidence in yourself. Your conscience is your guide and it should dictate your behavior. Either for the good or for the bad, it is your conscience that is responsible. The guilt in you causes the bad; the strength and confidence in you should, therefore, do such things which will promote your confidence in your own self. That is why I have repeatedly told you, that you should follow the four F’s. “Follow the Master” and that is your conscience. The second thing is to “Face the devil”. The third is “Fight to the end”. Then you should “Finish the game”. If you remember all these four injunctions such that they are resounding every moment in you, there can be nothing more sacred than this in your life.  

Today was the question about a Satsang. 

It all began when someone said I should not blame him, but he was just the person to be blamed as he made me go into distance, I didn't want to be part of it,  something terrible had happened in the past. As I got an email from him, I used the moment to answer and to bring the issue up.

I made him responsible for it and why, there was a dream afterwards and it was kind of terrible. We know it is the master coming in our dreams to awaken and we listen to it and we get used those types of dreams and the man coming in our dream to awaken said that he was because of that reason in the wheelchair.

Baba had been in the wheelchair, but probably nobody knows really why, but that is what it said in the dream stage.

The dream stage is a dream, it cannot be interpreted by the mind as it is a dream, if we use the mind it will always be wrong.

How did that happen? It was about a study circle and that person arrived and thought he had to find faults and I was not even sure about it. But it got difficult beyond words, it went on the whole evening as the program was not yet finished, it was just the beginning of it.

No matter what was the reason for his attitude, if he had a reason or not, it was not the right place and not the right time and the other people were already sitting there and had to listen to it. It was in the presence of the circle. 

It is difficult if we have the feeling we talk on one level and the other person is somewhere else really.

We try to make sense, but the other doesn't get it. We try to find words, but no matter what we tell it is wrong or he doesn't get it of he sees something else in it.

The Beneficial and the Pleasant

People today suffer intensely from the fever of the senses and try the quack remedies of recreations, pleasures, vacations, picnics, banquets, dances, etc. only to find that the fever abates but returns after an interval – it does not subside. All the varieties in taste, colour, smell of the various food delicacies, when you consider fairly and squarely, are a mere drug to cure the illness of hunger. All the drinks that people have invented are but drugs to alleviate the illness of thirst. What you term luxury (bhoga) today, is a thing that drags people into excitement and insane pursuits. A fever will go away only when the hidden virus is rendered ineffective. So too, the virus or illness of your mind will die only when the rays of wisdom (Jnana) falls upon it. Discern and always try to prefer the beneficial (hitha) to the pleasant (priya), for the pleasant might lead you down the sliding path into the bottomless pit.

We know it from meditation, we sit down, close the eyes and take a mantra and get refreshed with meditation. 

If we practice every day, it is no more about taking a break, it is part of the day like cleaning teeth, we sit up and meditate for about a half an hour.

What does Swami tell us exactly with those words? 
Suffering the fever of the senses we think it is normal. Whatever we do with the remedies of pleasures, we will just find that the fever returns after an interval and it does not subside, but it doesn't feel like a fever rather like something refreshing. 

So Swami doesn't talk about a time out, he talks about a mental conditioning that turned into sickness and we have to look at it like a fever, but we should not forget that this seems for us normal and not sick, after a certain time we just go for the same pleasure or urge for vacation or dance again to get that break and to feel refreshed and if we do it with mediation, it takes care of it every morning that we start new again, but I guess that is not the same, meditation is the remedy for that sickness. 

People today suffer intensely from the fever of the senses and try the quack remedies of recreations, pleasures, vacations, picnics, banquets, dances, etc. only to find that the fever abates but returns after an interval – it does not subside. All the varieties in taste, colour, smell of the various food delicacies, when you consider fairly and squarely, are a mere drug to cure the illness of hunger. All the drinks that people have invented are but drugs to alleviate the illness of thirst. 

Inner Concentration vs. Outer Distraction

Of the 24 hours in a day, use six for earning and spending, six for contemplation of God, six for sleep and six for service to others. Most of you don't even have five minutes to truly contemplate on the Lord, and you are not ashamed. What a tragedy! Ponder over your present condition (sthiti), the direction you are heading (gathi), your capabilities (shakthi) and your inclinations and tendencies (mathi). Then enter upon the path of spiritual practice, step by step, so you approach the goal steadily and swiftly, day by day. Indian culture advises the control of the senses, not catering to them. The car is driven by means of a wheel which is inside it, so that when the inner steering wheel is turned, the outer wheels move. Trying to move the outer-wheels alone is a sign of ignorance! Inner concentration must be developed in preference to outer distraction. Cultivate quietness, simplicity, and humility, instead of noise, complexity and conceit.

Meditation is part of the six hours contemplation. 
We are back from New York and I am still tired. Writing takes time as well, but six hours seems a lot for people with a job and a normal life style, we are not living in an ashram here and our focus is not uphold and controlled by a strict ashram routine. We live in the world and society and we have to work without the nice comforting upholding and sathvic ashram structure in India and that is an all different reality, but usually after being here for some months as I meditated always morning and evening regularly when returning to the ashram I had the feeling I never left, only at that time I didn't understand it, the feeling was not the same, even if the focus was the same as it seems.   

Of the 24 hours in a day, use six for earning and spending, six for contemplation of God, six for sleep and six for service to others. Most of you don't even have five minutes to truly contemplate on the Lord, and you are not ashamed. What a tragedy!