Bulletin No: 2018.17 - Sunday, 15 April 2018
Travels and Conversations with Daaji, 25 – 31 March 2018
Also available at http://daaji.org/travels-conversations-daaji-25-31march-2018/
A long journey in short hops
Daaji started from Kanha Shantivanam near Hyderabad on 25 March 2018. His plan was to avoid air travel due to giddiness, and while the car journey suited him, longer travels were not encouraged. So he took a long road trip made up of short journeys, visiting Kurnool, Anantapur and Bangalore.
He visited CREST Bangalore in order to see the renovation efforts going on, and he was able to rest there. Then came the appeal from the Hosur abhyasis, who were hardly an hour’s drive away, and so he visited Hosur and the newly constructed Meditation Hall. Then came the loving pressure from the Salem abhyasis, who were only two hours from Hosur! Thus the journey extended to Salem and beyond, to Erode and to Tiruppur. He later thought of visiting either Aluva or Chennai, having come so far, and had to make a difficult choice between Aluva and Chennai. He chose Aluva, this being his first visit to Kerala, with the confidence that the Chennai abhyasis would understand the situation.
Below are some vignettes from various sessions in the centers he visited.
The quality of sittings is determined by the recipients
“I really don’t have many words to share today. The sitting was of a different level, thanks to you all. In general, the quality of a sitting is decided by the recipients. In this case, we all participated in such a way and received the Transmission, and received the Grace in doses according to our capacities. It was a marvelous sitting for me personally, and I am sure it must have been for all of you as well.
“I was supposed to go back to Hyderabad, but it is good news that it is holding me here. I am going to become a grandfather. So, our granddaughter will be arriving today, I hope, and we named her Devki last night.”
Daaji conducted satsangh and it ended with the good news of the arrival of the new family member. One abhyasi said, “Now Daaji is Dadaji!”
Grace
“Pujya Babuji Maharaj used to say that what hundreds of transmissions cannot do, one single flow of Grace can achieve. That means we need to ask: how to invoke Grace? If you know the mechanism of how to invoke Grace, then you know how to tap into the Infinite. Pujya Babuji already gave us the hint – when Masters are happy Grace descends; they pour themselves into us. It’s not a flow of drop by drop by drop. It is their entire being that they are downloading into us. At that time, we should be immensely grateful and also go with the flow: open your heart more, accommodate, create more space within. Now don’t ask me how to create that space also!”
Q & A
Q: How to observe the condition?
Daaji: Pujya Babuji Maharaj often used to say that the answer is hidden in the question itself. How to observe the condition? Observe. It sounds very funny, but it is not really so funny, as it is a fact. You can appreciate the condition only when you observe it. And why would you observe? What interest do you have that you are attracted towards observing it? And what is the attraction behind preserving it? Because we value it. We have worked for it. Somebody has gifted it with a lot of love and blessings.
One should not take conditions as free gifts, as if given by a very rich uncle. It’s not like that. Instead, appreciate them very deeply. This appreciation, this valuing of them, will make one more interested in the conditions that are coming from the heavens. And only then I think will one be more prepared to receive even more, retain more, and allow it to expand even further.
I had shared this beautiful observation on the condition, and there is a secret also in the description that Pujya Babuji Maharaj gives while narrating the spiritual condition at point 1. From that passage I picked up ‘A E I O U’. Acquire the condition. How do you acquire it? Meditate. Then the remaining E I O U can happen only when we have a keen interest in ourselves, in our true spiritual growth. Then everything will fall into place. If we are casual about it, then it will not happen. It is like the rain that is threatening – when it rains, it falls on stones and on fertile land alike. It can become a beautiful green oasis. When it pours on barren and stony areas, it is so stony that water may fall but nothing will grow. Are our hearts like that or are they prepared like fertile soil, so that every sankalpa our Guru makes on our behalf will germinate from that seed eventually into a giant spiritual tree? Are we providing that atmosphere in our hearts? Then that magic can happen.
Q: As we evolve consciousness expands. Where should our attention be?
Daaji: Always on the heart. Our attention should always be towards the feelings that arise in our heart.
Q: (inaudible)
Daaji: I do believe in one profound thing: Our soul chooses our parents before birth – these are my parents, these are the circumstances under which my evolution is assured if I take birth – so the soul is attracted towards parentage like iron filings to a magnet; it just fits like lock and key without any problems. Likewise, the vibratory level of our soul at the moment of death finds a corresponding dimension because of who we are. If the vibrations are heavier, the soul cannot travel to a greater dimension and it will have to settle at a lower dimension. If it is very refined, then it will go to that world which is as refined. So we are our destiny makers; no one else can do it for us. Tapasya here, sacrifices here, will prepare our soul.
Q: In the Whispers messages, so many times it is written, “What must be will be.” Please explain.
Daaji: [laughs] What I must explain, I must not explain! Just leave it like that. It is very simple. What must happen will happen. But it is also not fully true. Pujya Babuji Maharaj is a very tricky old man. He uses certain sentences under certain situations. We believe that our life is guided by our past actions, our samskaras, and that the baggage of samskaras prepares us for the future. But that is also not completely true. It does prepare our future, but we can always interfere and either make it worse or better. So, destiny is there, but we can also influence and change our destiny. That is the message of Sahaj Marg actually; we are not slaves to the destiny that is already etched in our fortune. It can be changed.
Q: How to develop interest?
Daaji: That’s a tough one. I can’t help you with that. It is like when you talk to children and say, “Thoda padh lo na [how about you read a little].” How do we actually do that? We have to play with them, and we may have to bribe them. So many things are done. It happens slowly.
A good prescription is to pretend that you are interested; that is the old man’s prescription. Pujya Babuji Maharaj used to say that if you pretend to be like a mad man, you are sure to go mad one day. So, artificially we should try at least. If real craving is not there, if the cry for God is not coming from the heart – “My God, I am not able to cry for you,” – at least put that much of submission and see what happens?
Q: What is the spiritual entity?
Daaji: It is of relevance to very few people actually. Most of us need not worry about ‘S.E.’ because even when it happens we will not know it has happened. That too requires some level of sensitivity. If you read Reality at Dawn very carefully, Pujya Babuji Saheb says that many people appreciate the love of the mother, very few understand and appreciate the love of the Guru, and even rarer are those who appreciate the love of God. Then he goes on to say that the mother takes the baby in her womb for nine months, and the Guru too retains the spiritual entity of the disciple in his mental womb for seven months until it is later delivered in the Brighter World. But the person whose spiritual entity has been born in the Brighter World remains alive here. When that person passes on later, the soul will merge with the spiritual entity. It happens in most cases of those who are saintly, who are liberated and have gone beyond.
In Sahaj Marg many souls are liberated, but they may not have a spiritual entity. It’s a different matter altogether. Someone may have attained liberation, but when a liberated soul merges with its own spiritual entity then we call it mahasamadhi.
Q; How do we see God?
Daaji: We will definitely experience God’s presence. The moment we say ‘seeing’ God, it means form or akar. But every philosophy, whether we are a vaishnavite or shaivite, dvaita, advaita or beyond, says that though we start with akar we end with nirakar and beyond.
So if we are travelling on the path towards formlessness and beyond, we cannot return back to the form and say, “Oh! Where is the form?” Then it is limiting. We cannot swing the Infinite to a point and say, “Oh, this is God.” It cannot happen. It may be there in the Shastras or holy scriptures but not in reality.
Idol worship is up to us. It is for children. As children we also worshipped. Our parents taught us do this namaskaram and all kinds of things. It is good. Afterwards, though, a time must come where we graduate from form to formlessness, from akar to nirakar. There is nothing wrong with form, but we must move out and understand, feel and transcend.
What is the purpose of religion? Religion has a certain belief system in which knowledge is given to children that God is this, and God is that. When we come to a spiritual path like the Heartfulness Way, we start experiencing the nature of God, starting with whatever we see, like calmness. When we are meditating, we feel closely associated with this feeling; we feel immensely peaceful. We feel courageous. There is some unparalleled courage that develops in our heart; there are good qualities.
What are the great qualities of Hanuman? He had two great qualities, and one was immense courage: “Nothing can go wrong as long as I am with my Lord.” The second was humility. He was playing with two opposites. His utter humility gave him his name itself; ‘Hanu’ means ‘without’ and ‘man’ means ‘honor’. One whose life doesn’t attract any honor from anyone except his own Lord is the essence of it. So we have to know and learn all these things and make them happen in our lives.
The next step after spirituality is Reality. In Reality, what happens? There we see things as they are. For example when we experience something in our day-to-day life, it always happens through feelings. There is a difference in the mental approach and the heartfelt approach. Feeling is always superior to thinking. When we are moving into the field of Reality, where we perceive things as they are, neither thinking nor feeling but direct perception is there, so we don’t waste much time. We have to arrive at such a state. Now the true feeling will emerge, for example, when we talk of Hanuman and describe him as one who craves for nothing, he doesn’t crave for any honor and at the same time he is not calling for any disrespect either.
Let us say you are so angry and a few minutes later you want to meditate. Can you meditate? You have to have some prerequisite inner environment before you can invite God into your heart. So what do you learn? You cannot become angry when you want to meditate. So ‘becoming’ is important.
Now, in another scenario you are so peaceful and calm and then you meditate. You watch your condition. You have become calm and peaceful and you invite God. In yet another scenario, you become restless with so much love: “Oh Lord, where are you? I would like to experience you.” You are so restless that you cannot live without him. That experience will be different. Another experience is when you are feeling absolutely nothing. When you have invited this condition, which Pujya Babuji used to call Abudiyat, the subdued state for which he used to say that hundreds of transmissions are given, you become something else.
From all this, we learn that if you become something, your experience is related. So now you are focusing on becoming. You are no longer focused on religious knowledge, you are no longer worried about spiritual experiences, you are only worried about becoming your true self in Reality. You have become insignificant, you have become so humble, and your experiences are just super. They become better and better. Then what? The finest experience will come when you are nothing. Zapped. Then true bliss will come. And to such a seeker, when true bliss comes, it will be felt as heavy, in the absence of ‘I’. If I am interested in my Lord, where ‘I’ is absent, even bliss will have to go. So this is the journey in Sahaj Marg, the Heartfulness Way.
God is always there. He is eagerly waiting. It is not a discovery. Experience. If you feel no need to be afraid of God then you do no need to offer prayer. You have arrived home. I only say increase the level of craving in your heart so much that you become. Don’t just experience God, become divine yourself.
To be continued …