Class-Stop Meditation & Discrimination
In this video, Sat talks in detail about Stop Meditation & guides the group in how to apply the usage of the invisible Sword of Truth.
-After the first Stop Meditation that the class has begun with, someone in the class talks about trying to push their thoughts away during the meditation.
Sathyam: This is not good. Do not push the thoughts away. The thoughts are happening here (demonstrates with putting one of Her hands up on Her right side, and waving it back and forth), but your gaze is on the candle. This is just a symbolic demonstration. When you find yourself involved with the thoughts, don’t look at them; bring your gaze back to the silence. If you learn how to do this meditation and practice it, knowing what kind of an effect it has, you would be flying and screaming with joy right now. I know because I have used it and it is just good.
By pushing the thoughts away, you are just making them come back faster, and that is why I wanted you to do it with your eyes fully open, or half way open. When you gaze at something, the point of concentration is on it. I found Myself getting involved a few times throughout the meditation and I just stopped. I didn’t make a conscious effort to Stop, it just did [stop] automatically.
How was it for you? (Sathyam asks one of the women in the class.)
-She talks about how she wants to be “still” during her meditation.
Sathyam: Let go of “I want to be still.” That is the mind telling the mind to do something, and then the contradiction begins. The same mind that tells you to be silent, tells you to jump from one thought to another. Again, that is why we practice, because it is very hard to get it the first few times. Once you have gotten it though and it is practiced, it is freedom, freedom, freedom! It really, really is and I promise you that.
How was it for you? (Sathyam asks another woman in the class.)
She replies: The thoughts would come, but they had no grip or impact on me.
Sathyam: Good, the mind will think, but you are not of it. You see, when we say that we are not of this world, what does it really mean? The world is a mental world anyway. When we are not of it, it means that we are not involved with the mind; that is being in the world but not of it.
How was it for you? (Sathyam asks another woman in the class.)
She replies: It was very good, but I had difficulty keeping my eyes open, since it is a habit to close the eyes.
Sathyam: Can anyone say why I ask you to keep your eyes half open?
-No one answers.
It is because we are living in society; we do not live in a cave, isolated from the day-to-day world. We have to learn to meditate with our eyes open. We have all meditated for years; it is high time that we don’t rely on the comfort of that cave. We need to be able to zoom outwardly and not be of it. This is why this meditation is so important. I cannot even begin to tell you what this does once practiced!
How was it for you? (Sathyam asks another woman in the class.)
She replies: I think I was in a deep meditation and then if a thought passed through my mind, it brought me back.
Sathyam: This is exactly what I am saying; we do not want to go into a state of deep meditation. We are conscious of here and now, yet we are not of it. Do you see the difference? It is very easy to fall back into a deep meditation, because it is our habit to do that. However, the purpose of this type of sitting is to be here and now, to stay in the present unwavering.
The same woman says: I did meditate with my eyes open, and was conscious of the room. I did not look at the light, because I had to turn my head to see the light.
Sathyam: So, are you conscious of your mind thinking, but you are not going with it?
She replies: No.
Another man asks: I have a question about how open the eyes have to be. I can still see, but not everything in this room. I can see around what I focus my eyes on.
Sathyam: Absolutely. It has to be around where your focus is, and it has to be the sharpest consciously being present as you can ever get. This is not about having a meditation with the eyes closed; this is about being here and now (in this moment) and yet not of it whatsoever. This moment gives us a taste of the Totality.
The same man says: The thoughts did show up and then they would go away.
Sathyam: Why would they go away?
He replies: I wouldn’t converse with them.
Sathyam: You didn’t look at them. What this practice does is it gives us a method to use in the midst of chaos. A couple of nights ago, I was bombarded with a lot of unpleasant things going on around Me. It was not a situation where I could have just closed My eyes to meditate and even if I could have done that, I chose not to do it and instead I did this practice. This is because once I would open My eyes, the entire scenario would be back all over again. This is the training that will work- if you have faith in it.
How was it for you? (Sathyam asks one of the men in the class.)
-He begins to talk about how hard it was for him to make it to class, and because of all the chaos he experienced just getting there, he had a tough time in his meditation.
Sathyam: O.k., your second meditation will be a lot better.
-The same man talks about how distracted he was by having his eyes open, therefore taking notice of everything that was going on before his eyes. He also talks about how he had a struggle with his mind to not go with it.
Sathyam: This is actually very good, because this is the beginner stage. After a while, you will be able to focus even on a stream of running water and your eyes will not follow it. In order to pierce the Truth, you have to be extremely one-pointed. So, the best thing for you to do is to put the candle right in front of you, keep your eyes half open and not care about what happens or what you see. Totally surrender to the silence. This is our natural state that we are going back to!
-Sathyam talks to a few other people about their meditation.
Let’s do it again, so we can have a little bit of proficiency with it. After a while, just close your eyes and go into your meditation, in any way that you want to. Just sit comfortably, it is not like we are making any effort, we are just going back to our nature. Just BE!
Meditation takes place for a few minutes.
Sathyam: When we are not involved with our thoughts, we are in the State of our Being. When we are in our State of Being, we are one with God. When we don’t follow the mind, we are not trying to become somebody or something. We are not trying to jump like a mad monkey from one tree branch to another. We are staying on the ground of our Being. When we are staying on the ground of our Being, we are actually living.
Unless we are thirsty, even if there is a fountain of water available here, we would be reluctant to drink from it. Unless we are absolutely starving, even if we had a feast here, we would say “No thank you, I am full.” When we come here, we have to be thirsty and hungry to absorb everything that is being said, everything that is being experienced. You cannot feed or even force-feed someone who is not hungry. How many of you looked forward to coming here tonight?
-Most people raise their hands.
You are in the right place. Unless we look forward to getting fed and to being here with all of our heart, there will be no penetration, whatsoever! This path that we travel is very much a single path walkway; you cannot carry other people with you. You can do it until you get to the gate of self-realization, but you cannot enter it with someone else. You can join religious groups and take friends and relatives with you to these gatherings. However, once you decide to know your Self, the crowd stops at the gate.
My Teacher gives an example to demonstrate this. He says that there once was a king. The king had a constant companion who was very vigilant; he wanted to know why, where and how [about everything], so the king would call him a fool for asking too many questions. After a few years, the king got very ill and none of the doctors were able to help him. He was sure that he was going to die, so he called his friend over and told him that he wanted to say his farewells to him, since he was now ready to leave the kingdom. The friend thought that the king was going on a journey, so he told him “You are too weak to travel; I am going to order a chariot for you.” The king says “No, thank you; where I am going, I cannot go with a chariot.” He then offered a horse for the king to travel on, and the king says, “No, thank you; where I am going, a horse cannot enter.” The friend says “OK then, I shall carry you there.” The king becomes sad; he says, “My dear friend, one has to go alone to that place, when one's time has come. No companion can be taken.” At this point, the companion was very confused and finally asked the king “Where are you going?” The king responds “I don’t know.” The man says “You know so much about the place, even which things can and cannot go there, but you do not know where it is, and still you are going there soon! It seems the title of “fool” fits you more than I!”
This story was used to illustrate this life of ours; we are living it yet we are clueless about it. The reason we are clueless is because we did not ask the first three very important questions. These questions are “Who am I? Where did I come from and where am I going?” These three questions have been neglected and instead of asking them, we have piled up this temporary knowledge that has added up to having a roof on our head, a modern car and our nerves breaking for keeping it all together.
This brings us to our topic for tonight, which we have talked about a lot before, but we are just going to reemphasize it again tonight. I assume all of us who are sitting here tonight would like to know the wisdom of who we are. One of the main things in this lifetime and for this path in particular is discrimination. Can anyone say what kind of discrimination we are talking about? You all know it very well, maybe not the way I phrased it, but you all know it very well.
A woman says: Knowing the difference between what is temporary and what is not.
Sathyam: Yes and using the “Sword.” When we eliminate what is temporary, we have eliminated everything that is seen, heard, touched, tasted and gathered by the mind. This is how it happens: when we are oblivious to the Truth of the temporariness of this world, we take everything seriously. We take everything that our kids do, everything that happens to our home, everything that happens to us at work, and even everything that happens to our dog seriously. Why? It is because we don’t know it is temporary, we do not know that it is here for one minute and gone the next.
The reason we get together in places like this, or wherever else we may go is because we have become frustrated with this. We ask ourselves, “O.K., what will be the end of this? I clean up one mess and another one comes up!” Some people are immune to their mess and you cannot help them. They are so used to cleaning up messes and there will be no end to it in this lifetime. But if by the grace of God we don’t have immunity and we are sensitive, it is a blessing, because the sensitivity helps you not withstand it as long as your neighbor does. What happens then is that you say to yourself “I have had enough, what is the meaning of this life, what is the meaning of all this accumulating, this searching and seeking and giving and receiving?”
At that time you are ready to begin to discriminate between what is real and what is not. By doing that, we begin to throw away a hell of a lot of thoughts, because every thought that passes by, no longer has a grip on us and it no longer tempts or infatuates us. We know the nature of it and we say to it such things as “I know who you are, you cannot come with me, therefore why should I give you as much love as you have needed?” By love, I am referring to the attachment to the thoughts in this case. This is the Jhani or “enlightened” mind. This is the mind that has already discriminated, taken away the false and kept to the Truth, which is only One.
I will give you an example from My country, or some other countries, which are not very technically advanced: prior to preparing rice, it has to be cleaned and it is therefore placed on a big tray. This is because the rice usually has some dirt and small pebbles with it. Someone will go through the entire tray and take out all the dust, dirt and pebbles, until it is completely devoid of all these extras. They then cook it for the family. Isn’t it beautiful that just like this example, by using discrimination in our individual lives, we do not allow the garbage to sit on us?
We had a gathering at our house this past Sunday, and one of the ladies who had joined us asked, “What do we do with all the junk and chaos that is happening in this world?” Well, she was not cleaning her own rice; had she cleaned her rice, she would understand that there is only good rice in there. She had not done her homework of discriminating and realizing that whatever is happening in this world and whatever is happening to Mother Nature is not “our doing,” and it is not “not our doing” either. Do you understand what I am saying? Some of you may not agree with what I am saying and if it does not fit you, you can just throw it away.
What I have realized is that this creation goes through evolution, back and forth again and again, only to give the chance to discriminate and get out of the wheel of cause and effect. It is here for those few at a time, who wish to be awakened, who are thrown out of this wheel that continuously goes around and around in cycles.
Is it o.k. to be careless with nature? Absolutely not! Is it good to advocate for clean air and water? Absolutely! However, if one takes his job of such advocacy too seriously, thinking he is the Doer, he is going to seriously fall in that hole as he is doing his job. It is wonderful to serve, but to think that you are serving to save the world, I have news for you: you clean up right here and it gets dirty over there and so on and so forth. There is absolutely no end to your cleaning up. In reality, cleaning up means cleaning ourselves (meaning discriminating between the temporary and the permanent) and releasing ourselves.
Now, why do I talk this way? I talk this way to emphasize the very importance of how unimportant everything is. It is very important to realize how unimportant it is. Yet we can play the game by becoming the most fantastic actors and actresses, who could even receive Oscars in the end. However, we need to know that we are simply acting. Otherwise, we become a Doer and a Doer has karma, reincarnation and millions and millions of laws of creation upon itself. Someone who thinks they are the Doer becomes more and more limited, until their bones are being crushed under all of these restrictions. This is good news; it was good news, wasn’t it? (Laughs wholeheartedly)
The “Sword of Discrimination,” which is a tool that I talked about in this class many years ago, and some of you picked it up and benefited from it immediately, is an invisible sword; it is the Sword of Truth. And we need to use it; it is not enough for us to just have it in our hands. We need to use it in our thoughts, words and deeds. We can use the Sword with everything that takes too much time in our minds; everything that is negative and is dragging us down. This sword can be applied by using Discrimination and Stop. Discriminate whether something is real or not and then do not go with it. However, if we do not discriminate to begin with, how do we know when to Stop and when not to Stop?
Any comments or questions on that part?
-A man asks a question about Stop Meditation and talks about how throughout his meditation, all of his focus was on his breathing. He asks Sathyam if that was a good experience for him.
Sathyam: You tell me; it seems to me that you had a great experience.
-The same man asks again if he did it correctly.
Sathyam: Once you Stop correctly, then whatever you experience is tailor-made for you. Tonight we are working on Stop Meditation, which has come to Me from a deep place. This is why I like to stay solely with Stop Meditation.
For you specifically (referring to the man with the last comment), as long as you don’t fall back into the closed-eye meditation that you usually do, you are doing it right. (This person tends to transcend during his meditations.)
If however, you fall back into that comfort zone of [transcendental] meditation, then you are missing the point of being here and now very vigilantly. In that vigilance, the world might disappear, but you remain vigilant, you do not lose your vigilance!
How was the second meditation? Did you find it easier? Was it easier for you to stay grounded? That is a good accomplishment, because again, it is the Art of Living [in Truth] that we emphasize here. This way it is very easy to accomplish on your own, when you are in solitude.
We are trying to bring about the merging or the marriage between spiritual practice on our own, and being in the world and not of it, where for example, you can be around your children, but yet you are not of it. You can be very vigilant about what they are doing, and yet you are not sucked into their world of activity.
This same way of living applies when you are at work, on vacation, or involved in any other part of your life; otherwise, things begin to appear very calamitous. This is because we have not fed that State of Being and we are living by putting an emphasis on the region of the mind only. That can make everything appear out of proportion, as if it is under a magnifying glass. You know how if you put a magnifying glass under the sun, it can burn whatever is under it? Just imagine if your concentration is on the mind what it can burn, by that energy? When the concentration is on the heart as we practiced tonight, it can burn the thoughts.
-Sathyam remains silent for several moments.
Was tonight the first time you were able to see the light with your eyes open? (Sathyam asks one of the men in the class.)
He replies: Yes.
Sathyam: The very first meditation we gave in this room was the Light Meditation. I used to tell everyone “Even though you are imagining the light, believe Me, it is everywhere!” Incidentally, this is a great practice for children.
Now we know that with the eyes open, when we concentrate on the Truth, the Truth becomes visible. This can be experienced anywhere; we can even have this experience when we are diving under the water, as I have many times in Lake Tahoe.
One of the other men says: We had two intense meditations tonight, and I am just coming back right now. When we first started with our eyes half open, I started on a fixed point and my eyes began to water and I thought to myself that this is not working. It seemed like a split second before You asked us to open our eyes; I closed mine, calmed down, got quiet, and opened my eyes just a little bit. I did not have a focus point, but then when You began talking, I was able to be focused and hear everything, but still be disconnected from it all. I can see how this is a huge tool for everyday living.
Sathyam: Absolutely, it is there for you, anytime you choose to be in that state. That is the most permanent state and you don’t have to imitate what happened here tonight. All you have to do is remember that this is not only possible, but that you are ready for it, that you are ready to receive it and run with it.
There is a ton of variety of knowledge in the world: there is math, there is science, there is medicine, etc., etc. But in the Truth, there is only one knowledge, which has to be continuously repeated. Each person’s consciousness becomes ripened at different times. The more satsang they have or the more they keep the company of the Truth, the easier it will penetrate. That way it will begin to penetrate more and more. And the next thing you know (snaps Her finger) it is like somebody flipped the switch and turned on the light!
I have had people who have come to this class as a pastime, and who are truly clueless when they walk in here, but through the repetition and through the demonstration of the same Truth from different angles, which like a diamond looks different from each angle, they begin to unfold that lotus of understanding. They can absorb it and then they can run with it.
A woman says: I was recently watching the DVD called Two Cups from last week, where You have one cup that has all kinds of drawings on the outside and another cup, which doesn’t have any drawings, but is full of water.
Last week what You explained about the cups was a little vague for me, because we talked about seeing the Divinity in all, and You explained how we have to drop that too. So I was a bit confused and thought to myself, “Well, what am I to do?” Will You please explain that a little more?
Sathyam: Thank you for mentioning that, because that is a very good point to review.
There have been numerous times when each one of us has been tempted by something temporary and more colorful, which never quenches our thirst. This is because the water is invisible; you just have to develop a true thirst for it and not just a temporary thirst. This brings us back to the beginning of this class, “Are you truly thirsty?” Were you forced to come to this class or did you come voluntarily, with lots of enthusiasm?
-A man talks about not having a regular meditation practice, but that after a long night of working on the computer, when he had some time in the morning, he sat down in a different room and was able to immediately get into a good meditation, which he was confused by.
Sathyam: Your mind does not know [what was going on], but you do. Your mind doesn’t know, because it goes by a file from past experiences that it brings out, a reference point, you might say. When that peace comes, the mind says to itself “I have to do something about this, what does this mean? Should I go sit down and meditate?” The best way to do it is to just stay with that peace, wherever you may be. You did not even have to change rooms; that was an invitation from who you really are, without the mind’s interference! You just sit there and then you are in your natural state; as soon as you want to become anxious about it and ask yourself, “I don’t meditate regularly, what should I do about this?” then the body identification comes in and interferes. In your case, it did not bother the peace, but in other cases it will take the taste out of it.
To be completely honest with you, this is a blessing that you got from the Inner Guru; this is due to your interest and your desire for freedom, even though your mind doesn’t want it. Something in you wants it and that is enough for the Inner Guru to pay attention to you now, particularly the more your path is right, the more invitations you will receive.
-The same man talks about the experience bringing up painful emotional experiences for him from the past.
Sathyam: This is because the mind was not in existence when the invitation happened and then when it does come back, sometimes it has a tendency to come back with a vengeance. It is threatened that it may not exist!
Now we know why we did the Stop Meditation tonight. Stop Meditation, when done regularly, can help you, so when the mind comes back with a vengeance, you are prepared for it. You are not going to look at this scarecrow and think that it is a real ghost! It is simply a scarecrow. It is something that we gave attention to over and over and over and now it is haunting us.
What I would like you to do is to rent the movie, The Little Buddha and see what Buddha did, sitting under the banyan tree, with the eyes half open. The mind came as a beautiful woman, he did not move. It became a monster, he did not move. It became a group of soldiers, he did not move. They evaporated into nothingness and turned into leaves, he did not move. These scenes depict the nothingness of the thoughts. Then it presented itself as his Guru, he did not move. He just did not move! That is the “Buddha” or “Christ mind,” we have been talking about here for the past six years.
So, your experience is normal and you are not alone at all. Anyone who has believed his or her thoughts as good and bad is under the umbrella of this scarecrow that is not even real. You have nothing to worry about. When you do go to a very deep state and you come out too soon or you have gone too deep, the mind says, “Ah oh, he is not paying any attention to me, I better do something to get his attention.” However, something in you knows better; somehow you always come out on top. Otherwise, you would not have had that invitation.
-The same man talks about coming out of his meditation because of some loud noises in the house.
Sathyam: That shakes the nervous system. First of all, know that this type of thing will happen because the mind is nonexistent and it suddenly comes back to existence with a lot of force to exist. This creates too much of a contrast in the body; it is temporary but not comfortable at all.
So, what you do is either the Stop Meditation or some kind of physical exercise, or you could take a hot shower. You just stand your ground and avoid allowing it to think that it is permanent, too scary or too much. You just stand your ground!
-The same man talks about how the thoughts kept coming and told him to do some yoga.
Sathyam: Then do it- that is your inner voice talking.
-The same man talks about how the mind kept interfering and scaring him with the feelings he was having.
Sathyam: Do you know why that was? It was because the fear is so big that you just cringe and it makes you just want to hide and not do anything. That was your conscious voice, if you do follow your conscious voice, which you kept hearing, know that it was an invitation from the Inner Guru. You are actually lucky that you had that and when you have that, do it. Do the yoga, even if you are having fear, do it with fear, but do it! And then do the Stop Meditation as prevention.
In other words, if you have not been practicing this Stop Meditation regularly, it will be absolutely useless at an urgent moment. You will be way too far gone; you have to do it as a daily prevention. You do it daily when your mind is kind to you, so you become an expert at it during the time of need.
-The same man expresses confusion over Stop Meditation and thinks he needs to stop himself in his meditation.
Sathyam: No it is not that; forget about “meditation,” it is just STOP! First of all, what I am talking about does not refer to being in a state of emergency (if you do not have the mastery of this tool yet). If you are in that state, do what your inner voice tells you to do, such as yoga or running around the block.
But for prevention, we can all spend about twenty minutes a day in our day to day life to practice the Stop Meditation. This could perhaps be ten minutes in the morning, and ten minutes in the afternoon or evening, whatever time you can afford to do this practice.
Now, this is the only explanation I can give you: the thoughts are going on over here, (demonstrates by moving Her fingers all over, without looking at them directly or paying any attention to them). I am not pushing them away, I am not looking at them, I am not pulling them towards me, I am not fearing them, I am not hating them, nor am I loving them. I let the mind do what the mind does, the mind thinks, as the heart beats!
-A woman talks about how it takes practice and concentration.
Sathyam: Yes, it takes a lot of practice. This is a prevention tactic. Do not think you can become an expert at it overnight!
I will give you an example of this. In India, a lot of holy men say that if you can remember God at the time of death, you are liberated. They never tell you that you can’t just think of God at that last moment. In order to remember to do it then, you have to have thought about it all of your life.
There is a story of a merchant in India who could not be detached, so he decided to take a shortcut. He names all of his seven sons the various names of God. He thinks to himself, “When I am dying, I will be calling out at least one of their names, so then I will be free.” The time of his death arrives, and he begins to call each of his sons one by one, who were already at his bedside. He gets to the seventh son and he is still alive. As he takes his last breath and he has run out of sons to call on, he asks, “If you are all here, who is taking care of the shop?” And he dies immediately thereafter. His mind was on the money, so how could he remember God at that final moment? He could have had twenty five sons with different names of God, and he would have ended up the same. Therefore prevention, prevention, prevention, is the key!
At the time of an emergency, like you had (talking to that same man who shared his experience), you will have had to have many months of prevention behind you, to be able to get through that situation. If not, just listen to your conscious voice. If you do not want to do the Stop Meditation, then just listen to the conscious voice- that is the true Guru. It is because of the Inner Guru that the outer teacher shows up, and that is the truth.
For Me, Sai Baba is a Teacher; I am not a teacher. I am just somebody who shows up; do not look at Me as a teacher, I am just sharing. But, Sai Baba showed up because My “inner” knew that I needed help outwardly.
Follow that voice, if it says “Do yoga,” do it with a force (referring to the same man), follow Its guidance. Also, make sure that you come out of meditation slowly, and if that doesn’t happen at times, it is not the end of the world. You come back again, don’t worry about it; you go through your shaking, etc. and you come back again.
I would now like to sing a song in Sanskrit, which I like very much and dedicate it to the owner of this health store, where we meet weekly.
Jai Jai Jai Gana Nayaka
Jai Jai Vigna Vinashaka
He Shuba Mangala Dayaka, Vidya Buddhi Pradayaka
Gaja Vadana Gauri Nandana
Gaja Vadan Gauri Nandana
Ganga Dara Shiva Shambo Nandana
Ganga Dara Shiva Shambo Nandana
Namaste
CLASS
Stop MEDITATION & Discrimination
October 4, 2005