Summary: Instructs on the importance of being regular in the daily Ashram rhythm and one’s sadhana, as discipline is a great help in eliminating wrong movements. Explains the formation of personality through repeated behaviour; further that there is a universal mind and through our identifications and expressions we individualise it. Teaches that the sadhak has to always choose the side of light, despite all resistances, and that the guidance of a Guru is indispensable on so difficult a journey.

F. reading sentence of the day: ‘To be able to be regular is a great force, one becomes master of one’s time and one’s movement.’ – Sri Aurobindo

Yes, do you understand? D., tell me – you especially! (D. is an eleven-year-old boy from Italy, who has been coming to the Ashram for the last seven years). To keep to the daily Ashram rhythm as regularly as possible: waking up at the right time, coming here at the right time, doing the âsanas, prâṇâyâma, meditation, works, play – for us that is what is meant. Being regular in sadhana, and for that matter in anything and everything, for example music, art, craft, studies, sports, skills, works, etc. Because initially of course there is resistance in the body, there is resistance in the mind, because we are used to being irregular – we are regular in being irregular, you see? And then usually we say, “This is how I feel, so why should I do it?” Or like S. will say, “I am not a machine, my body is not a machine.” And of course we have our incapacities unique to each one of us.

In a way the body is a machine, and you are the master of that machine. It is just that now the body and the mind rule over you – then you become the machine. Why? Because the body and the mind decide for you, to almost a hundred per cent. There may be a very little percentage where you start to decide. That is why it is a mastery; you have to overcome your mind, you have to be more than your mind and more than your body. It is a progressive thing of course, no doubt – but you must understand this!

You have to be regular so that you get a mastery over your own life – and life means body and mind. These are the instruments of your life, they are your instruments. Your pencil, for example, is an instrument to write – you write with the pencil, the pencil does not write you; sometimes I do wonder though with the way the world of humans is! It is an instrument, you are not the instrument, you are more than the instrument, and the instrument is there for writing, right? This instrument you write with – of course you can do many other things with it also! You can clean your ears – people do! K. does, Pb. too. More creative! That is why I do not take anybody’s pencil because they may have used the same instrument for other things, as a toothpick for example, if there are any teeth left of course depending on the age, with saliva running down the whole of its length. Sometimes, yes, I can accept some creativity but not all types! You can do creative writing, you can do creative drawing with the pencil, but this ‘creative’ cleaning of the ear, cleaning of the nose, using it as a toothpick, is beyond even me! So it is the same thing one has to understand in and about life and the instruments you use to live, including and especially your mind and body.

Consider therefore what you do with your time, what you do with your movement, what you do with your life, what you do with your body, what you do with your mind. Now, in the mind there are many things working, it thinks of many things, lots of things are there. Some are good, some are not necessarily good. It is just mind, untrained and undisciplined mind. Sometimes the mind is in light, sometimes the mind is in darkness. And you can see this out there in the world: it is the expression of the collective mind. There is the good, but when there is the bad and there is the ugly we say, “It is not in me, it is in the other.” No! It is a collective, universal mind getting individualised, that is all, and it can enter and manifest in you just as it can in another – it is a universal phenomenon. Yes, as an individual personality you may have worked out something through the past, so some things may not exist in you, but it is ultimately a universal phenomenon.

That is why you can pick things up from each other also. And you know, scientists checked a group of monkeys in Africa and a group of monkeys in Indonesia, and found that when dealing with the same situation they came up with the same idea even though they were not in contact in any way – you understand? There is a universal mind and within that any and every thought and idea exists. So, when people say, “This is my thought,” yes, it seems so, but ultimately you discover that somebody else can have the same thought independently. A group of monkeys in Africa and a group of monkeys in Indonesia, they are separated with so much distance, oceans and land mass. They have never been in contact with each other, but in a given situation, in a given moment, they have expressed the same ideas. So ultimately that is why we watch everything: we watch the mind to go beyond the mind.

Of course we are used to doing things and thinking in a certain way, so we have created a personality. We have a certain development of our capacities from the past and we have incapacities, and these need to be developed. But that is where all the resistances and the complaints come, from where the changes have to be made, where the increase has to be made, where new things have to be brought about and where old things have to be put out. That is why it is a transforming process: additions, subtractions, all this has to continually happen. That is why sadhana is not easy because it is a remake of yourself, remake of your personality, introduction of new things and discarding of the old. You keep what is appropriate and discard what is not – this is a continuous process. So, that is why if you are regular with something you get a mastery over that thing, you increasingly get mastery over yourself; you get mastery because regularity is a force in itself, and you, through your application, are the generator of that force. It is so with everything. If you observe this is how you have developed many things in your life – even when you give in to your mind, repeatedly. When you give in to your way of thinking, way of behaving, it makes for behaviour patterns and fixations and personality formations.

There is a compulsion in what comes up in your mind – for or against – therefore you think in a certain way. Or it can be because of the environment or upbringing. The mind suggests something, you give in once, you give in again, you become regular with it, then it becomes difficult to change. Addictions begin like this – alcohol addiction, tobacco addiction, any addiction – even addiction to each other! Yes, everything is an addiction at one level. Then when there is some obstacle to that addiction there is suffering. Even love is an addiction now. Can love be free? What I mean is to be able to offer your love freely, without any expectation. All things are like addictions, that is why our personality formation becomes fixed – right or wrong, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Sadhana means changing all that. Even the body structure will change when you start to do meditation and take to sadhana for transformation. The shape of your body will change because the shape of your mind will change. That is why certain Masters can judge people by their physical looks, physical attributes and by the way they walk. These are insights that come to you through meditation and because you have seen it in yourself. Everything about you is written in your body, everything. It is there in your every cell. That is why in olden times they had these skills where they could look at a person’s face or forehead and predict about their life. Ramakrishna could just hold someone’s elbow and know whether the person was hypocritical or not. The kind of thinking, your actions and expressions start to bring changes in your body. That is why Kabir also says that we ourselves through our actions and our thought processes have made this life and this body. Mostly it is unconsciously done, on the compulsion of the mind, feeling, emotion, passion. But as a sadhak and a seeker now you have to become conscious, so that you make your body and mind, and therefore your life. You are not helpless under the rule of your mind and body. Some people have a weak body and that compels them to live a weak life. It happens. If you are not healthy for example then you are limited in your living. So also with the mind. If you have a certain way of thinking developed it may prevent you to be open to certain things. If you have a weak mind you will not have strength for certain things. That will need to be taken care of. This meditation, this transformation is sadhana, whatever the reason that may have initially brought you to it. Ultimately you have to understand this and therefore be regular.

It is a progression, of course. There are moments when you would like to be by yourself and just give it a rest. That is okay. There is a time to play and a time to rest. But I have to push you also, just to make sure that you are not taking it a little too easy, that is all. That is my job. It is a hard job because it is not a very likeable job, to try to keep pushing people! You may sometimes say, ‘He is always pushing, he is always watching, he is always telling us things.’ It is a bad job! That is why I have no friends. I have to be regular with you and keep pushing. You do not like the regularity of that pushing! Well, ultimately your soul will be thankful, and somewhere your soul is thankful. It is only the outer surface, the outer being and the personality and the incapacities from where the resistance comes.

So, this is the way. And it is a way to eliminate things also: you stay with the discipline, start to do something else and ignore the wrong movement – it will then fall away over time. This is karmic law, law of regularity – because action, thought, and thinking is all karma. You do actions not only with your body, you do actions with your mind too and act in the mind before you do so with the body. It is just that you are never aware of it, you just do it impulsively, instinctively – that is why you do not see the process. It first comes up in your subtle consciousness, your mental consciousness. Everything goes through your mind, even a feeling – that is why you are aware of it – but you do not think much about it and you just express it, you just do it. Even if you do not express it physically, if you are thinking it, it is also karma, for it is a force, it is energy. You make for mental karma. What you think you become. It is a force, so you create impressions and that is why it is called in the Indian tradition, saṃskâra. Saṃskâra means impressions – mental impressions, also bodily impressions. That is why the body takes shape according to that: your aura, even your bone structure will form according to that. This is a science, this is the ultimate science, that is why it is called Mahâvidyâ, the Greatest Wisdom – because it deals with the ultimate Reality which is you, which is everything. You are not helpless in the way you look. Your physical body will take on a beauty of its own, because of the beauty from within. The inner light, the inner beauty will start to affect your body – the inner shine – and it will reflect in your every action, in your every step. It is a complete remake of yourself, a transmutation of yourself from the human to the Divine.

So the regularity of sadhana. If you keep your sadhana regular you will see for example when the time for sitting comes something in you will get a little restless: ‘I want to sit, I want to sit, I want to sit…’ because now it has its own force and momentum and memory. And the environment where you do it also helps – initially it is very important. That is why tradition has always said initially you must have a space for sitting, a space that should be only for that. Then once you are very advanced like D., you can do it anywhere, even on a tree like a monkey.

This is the principle and the vision behind your sadhana. The more you become conscious of this, the more you walk towards it, the more it becomes the guide of your life, the easier it becomes – and the realisation of it really dawns upon you and then you value it so much more. You are unique, you are individuals, but at the same time your individuality should transform, transmute itself in the light of God – and so also your actions, expressions, your relations, everything. This means your entire life – inner, outer. This is the whole meditation, this is sadhana and you are working towards this. There will be moments when you may return to the old ways and digress – it happens. Finally it is and must be a progression and you must continue to develop this sadhana. You must start to offer your entire life to it. That means all your thoughts, all your expressions, the entire living – it should become the rhythm of your life.

That is why we have our programme. I call it Ashram rhythm. I do not want to use the word discipline because nowadays everybody gets very scared of discipline! But disciple comes from discipline. If you look up Latin both ‘discipline’ and ‘disciple’ have the same root. And discipline means ‘regular’. Of course it is a progression, we understand that. My job is to continue to push; your job of course is to see, introspect and see what is good for you, and make those right choices – trying to be as regular as you can. The more you put into it, the more regular it becomes, the more this will enter into your consciousness; it will become a way of life for you. It has to become a way of life, it has to become your life. Otherwise as long as you are within the gate of the Ashram it is all very regular, but you go out of the gate and ‘Yeah, freedom’ and all the regularity goes out of the window!

Of course, there are moments when I too would like to have some ‘freedom’ but I do not get a chance to get out of this gate even for a little walk, just so that I can make your sadhana regular! Only two days back I went out, just took a little walk. What a sense of freedom I tell you! But I have to come back. The regularity of your meditation, the regularity of your sadhana generates its own momentum and force and then it becomes a guide and engine. It is like the flywheel, initially. Have you seen old generators and engines? They have a flywheel. There is this heavy wheel – first you crank it using a lot of weight, muscle and effort, and then, once it starts, it just works by itself.

So can we read it again? (F. reads)

(Addressing D.) That is why I get you to come in the morning, sit and meditate at a certain time, then you study and it becomes your way of life – do you understand? There is an individual rhythm and there is the Ashram rhythm. We participate in both and that force will continue to propel you on. All this is going to your merit, in existence this is all ‘written down’. That existence is within your own being – it is in your consciousness, it is in your body, it is in your cells, it is in your mind, it is in your soul. It is even in the hair of the beard, although you don’t have one as yet – every hair has it! Remember the Old Testament story of how Samson ends up losing all his strength and energy when Delilah cuts off his hair while he sleeps. You know, people keep the relics of great Masters. And it has been done through historical times amongst all peoples of the world. They do that because their energy and atmosphere and ‘connect’ is present in every part of their body too. They keep their hair, parts of their body, and things they have used. Buddha’s relics are kept in various places and so too Christ’s – that cloth supposedly in which he was wrapped after they brought him down from the cross. And so it is of many Masters and Gurus: the presence and energy felt through the relics is not felt only by human beings – in fact because human beings have the mind and can be distracted they do not manage at times to feel and be in tune – but more so by the animals, the trees and the earth and the innocent.

That is why one should not allow for a negative atmosphere like depression because then you create a personality of depression and you generate that kind of energy and it can become a habit. You should be joyful and cheerful without being flippant; there has to be depth. When there is laughter – great, but you must also grow in depth. Then your presence carries all that with you wherever you are and others will also feel and respond in that way: because you are a living entity, you are a force in yourself, you are the generator of energy now.

There is a story of one of Ramakrishna’s disciples, Baburam. Once as a parivrâjaka, a roaming mendicant, he ended up in Calcutta, West Bengal, where he came to know from people about a certain house, abandoned because an evil spirit had taken up residence there. He thought, being a disciple of Ramakrishna, nothing could harm and frighten him, so he decided to spend the night in that house and in that particular room where this being emerged at midnight. He went there before sunset, made his place in that room, put out his blanket and sat in meditation, waiting, quite relaxed. But just before midnight he started to sense something horrible emerging and felt tremendous fear coming up in him. Then Ramakrishna appeared – even though he had already left his body – and told him to get out of there right away as it was too dangerous for him to be there, that he could not handle the situation for the evil being was too strong for him. Baburam had to run from there. That spirit had a very developed dark evil energy and atmosphere, being and force. It was darkness and evil manifesting being and force. So what it expresses that is the atmosphere it carries: it is its presence, it is its being. While people with light, in light, beings of light, they will carry the presence of light, the atmosphere of light, force of light, and so you will experience that kind of energy and atmosphere in their presence. This being must have developed that kind of energy and force, and personality if you can call it that, and now it has become its entire atmosphere – through thought, through the consciousness, and therefore its being – or it may have been born as such, ‘readymade’.

Ultimately we create our own individualised atmosphere through our actions, through our thoughts, through our feelings and emotions, by becoming them – otherwise they are just universal movements of forces and energies. You as the soul and master can decide one way or the other what to express and what not to, what to become and what not to become. Some things are ordinary human behaviour and can be bad, but not like this being: this is evil; that is why I was giving an extreme example to differentiate, but humans too can descend to such levels if they perpetuate evil. That being is also part of creation but it is manifesting an evil force, a dark energy. So this being must have become ‘regular’ in expressing an evil force and energy and now that darkness has taken over completely, lives only darkness and so abhors light.

With Ramakrishna too there is a story. Of course Baburam cannot match Ramakrishna. Baburam is a disciple and Ramakrishna is the Guru and not an ordinary Guru at that. He was invited by one of his devotees, Golap Ma, to her house for a meal. While she was preparing the food He was roaming around the area and saw this old, dilapidated, broken down abandoned house which he entered. On entering He could see these two beings of darkness hovering in the corner, and they were afraid of him because of his light. Darkness does not, cannot bear light, so beings like that will not be able to bear the presence of one like Ramakrishna. So they asked to be left alone and begged for Him to leave because it was too painful for them to be in his presence for they could not bear his light. And He left out of compassion – even towards these beings he had compassion!

What I am saying is that even within us there are parts that need light and, because of the way we have gone about in our past and developed, there are parts that will oppose the light and the transformation – the transformation that is required for the Divine manifestation. That is why the importance of this work and also the difficulties involved cannot be emphasised enough – difficulties because you will be confronted with your own self, your old self; the resistances all come from within, the incapacities – all are there within. Ultimately if you understand this then it becomes easy because you have understood. Then it is only a matter of working it out. But when there is resistance and not the will to overcome then it is difficult and a struggle.

Ramakrishna talks about that moment in his sadhana when he actually saw in a vision a dark being emerge from his own body as it were, a very dark and ugly looking being, and then a being of light emerged, and the being of light killed that dark being. It means that finally all the darkness in His being had been eliminated. That was the culmination of His sadhana – there was no darkness left in him! Otherwise you can have combinations, mixtures, and then sometimes even falls. That is why you can have Lucifer. He is a fallen angel. Angel means there was light, but not complete, and ultimately the dark being took over. Lucifer the angel allowed it to happen and was lost to darkness. That is why Aurobindo says that the vital transformation is the most difficult because that is where most of the struggle is with all sorts of forces and even beings. This has to be observed in oneself as one goes through one’s meditation, sadhana. That is why I keep saying, “Whatever comes up, learn to see it for what it is: observe, watch, inquire, question. You must start to learn to see all that and open yourself to light and light alone. Keep to the right side of light and not the wrong side! Let the Divine be your guiding light and none else.”

It is not just about reaching some space – that is how in their usual ignorant hurry and casual mindset people take it to be. This journey is not so simple, and that is why the insistence on discipline and regularity. Even with little things regularity is important, it makes you master of your life. Irregularity and lack of diligence is one of the openings where the adverse forces of darkness too can come in – not initially maybe, but as you progress. They will exploit any chink in your armour; especially when you advance further it gets even more subtle – that is why the Guide is so important, one who has made the journey and knows the way and knows all its difficulties and pitfalls having gone through it himself. That is why it is so farcical when people think that just by doing a few techniques which they get from here and there they can succeed. They in their foolishness do not understand the importance and value of the place of the Guru, the Guide and Master. That is why in the books of the East they give such an indispensable place to the Master; he is first even before God – because without him it is impossible to get to God otherwise. Christ confirms this when he says, as the Master, “I am the Way. Through Me you will reach.” Therefore you need the Guide outside so that you may be guided, because you are not capable to guide yourself. The value of the Guide and the Master cannot be emphasised enough. Kabir too confirms this when he says that all the praise and service that can be given is not enough to equal what the Guru is and gives.

Time is precious, one needs to remember, otherwise we waste our time – we can easily do so – and before you know it the whole life is gone. Nay, many a lifetime! So you must value time. You may be seeking the Timeless, but first for finding and reaching the Timeless you have to respect time. You must become the master of time before you can reach the Timeless. Ultimately time is Timeless, Timeless is time. Know that and be Free.

Arya Vihar

4 Aug 2010