Prabhaker

Self-inquiry is mainly known today through the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. It is an ancient method of meditation, but full of dangers. Unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray by the method rather than to the right goal. Raman used to give a technique to his disciples: they were just to enquire, “Who am I?” If you want to go rightly into the method, then the question has not to be verbally asked. “Who am I?” has not to be repeated verbally. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head. You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst. Not that “I am thirsty,”—can you see the difference? When you are thirsty, you feel the thirst. And if you are in a desert, you feel the thirst in every fiber of your body. You don’t say, “I am thirsty, I am thirsty.” It is no longer a linguistic question, it is existential. If “Who am I?” is an existential question, if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. Then it is none of the mind’s business. Now you are entering an innocent space. You will not get the answer. You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell. As you go deeper, you will be filled more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence… a tremendous benediction.

@Dodoster Be concerned with meditation and not with kundalini. And when you are aware, things will begin to happen in you. Buddha never talked about kundalini. It is not that there was no kundalini in his body, but the passage was so clear that there was no resistance. Thus, he never felt it. Meditation as such is not really concerned with kundalini at all. If kundalini comes, that is another thing - but meditation has nothing to do with it. Meditation can be explained without even mentioning kundalini; there is no need. And by mentioning kundalini it creates even more conflicts to explain the thing. Meditation can be explained directly; you need not bother about chakras, you begin with meditation. If the passage is blocked you may come to feel kundalini, and chakras will be there, but that is completely nonvoluntary. You must remember that it is nonvoluntary; your volition is not needed at all.

@mr lenny @MIA.RIVEL The Zen people say just sit, don’t do anything. The most difficult thing in the world is just to sit doing nothing. But once you have the knack of it, if you can go on sitting for a few months doing nothing for a few hours every day, slowly, slowly, many things will happen. You will feel sleepy, you will dream. Many thoughts will crowd your mind, many things. The mind will say, ‘Why are you wasting your time? You could have earned a little money. At least you could have gone to a film, entertained yourself, or you could have relaxed & gossiped. You could have watched TV or listened to the radio or at least you could have read the newspaper you have not seen. Why are you wasting your time?’ mind will give you a thousand & one arguments, but if you just go on listening without being bothered by the mind....it will do all kinds of tricks; it will hallucinate, it will dream, it will become sleepy. It will do all that is possible to drag you out of sitting. But if you go on, if you persevere, one day the sun rises. One day it happens, you are not feeling sleepy, the mind has become tired of you, is fed up with you, has dropped the idea that you can be trapped, is simply finished with you! There is no sleep, no hallucination, no dream, no thought. You are simply sitting there, doing nothing....& all is silence & all is peace & all is bliss.

Meditation brings you to the real experience, and drug gives you just a hallucination, a dream-like experience but very similar. To meditate is difficult. The drug is cheap. But the attraction for drugs is spiritual. This is the reason that drugs have attracted man since the very beginning. And they have at least given him a temporary relief. Only few people tried meditation. And my own understanding is, these people also tried meditation because drugs at a point become useless. You become immune. In the beginning they give you tremendous experiences, but soon they become almost part of your body chemistry. Then if you don’t take them you are in trouble. Your whole chemistry wants them. If you take them, you gain nothing. You go on increasing the doses. I am against drugs because they can become addictive and they can prevent your spiritual growth. You can start thinking that you have achieved what you were seeking, and your hands are empty. You are just dreaming.

I love an ancient Indian story: Narada, the great Indian mystic, is going to see God. Playing on his VEENA, he passes a forest, and comes across a very old sage sitting under a tree. The old sage says to Narada, “You are going to God — please ask one question from me. I have been making all kinds of efforts for three lives, now how much more is needed? How much longer do I have to wait? When is my liberation going to happen? You just ask him!” Narada laughed and said, “Okay.” As he progressed, just by the side, under another tree, a young man was dancing with his EKTARA, singing, dancing — very young. May have been only thirty. Jokingly, Narada asked the young man, “Would you also like any question to be asked of God — I am going. The old man, your neighbor, has asked.” The young man did not reply. He continued his dance — as if he had not listened at all, as if he was not there at all. After a few days, Narada came back. He told the old man, “I asked God. He said three lives more.” The old man was doing his JAPA on his beads. He threw the beads. He was in a rage. He threw the scriptures that he was keeping with him, and he said, “This is absolutely unjust! Three lives more?!” Narada moved to the young man who was again dancing, and he said, “Although you had not answered, and you had not asked, just by the way I asked God about you too. But now I am afraid — whether to tell it to you or not? Seeing the rage of the old man, I am hesitating.” But the young man did not say anything; he continued to dance. Narada told him; “When I asked, God said, ‘Tell the young man that he will have to be born AS many times as there are leaves on the tree under which he is dancing.'” And the young man started dancing even more ecstatically, and he said, “So fast?! There are so many trees in the world and so many leaves… only this much? Only these leaves? Only this many lives? I have already attained! When you go next, thank him.” And it is said the man became liberated that very moment. That very moment he became liberated! If there is such test, such totality of trust, time is not needed. If there is no trust, then even three lives are not enough.

@comp13 You simply fall into sleep as if it is a sort of absence. It is not – it has its own presence. Sleep is not only negation of waking. Sleep is not like darkness, absence of light, no. Sleep has its own positivity. It exists, and it exists as much as your waking time. Sleep is not just rest from waking, it is a different kind of activity, hence dreams. When you fall into sleep, the mind that was functioning the whole day is tired, exhausted. It is a very tiny mind, one-tenth compared to the unconscious, which is nine times bigger and greater and powerful. Compared to the unconscious, the conscious is very small. It gets tired, it needs rest to be recharged. The conscious goes off; tremendous activity starts in sleep, which is dreaming. Because mind has been trained to be identified with the conscious, so you think that you are no more in sleep. That’s why sleep looks just like a small death. The moment your conscious mind goes off, that faint awareness disappears like a small ripple. It has no energy; it is very, very faint, just a flicker, just a zero-voltage phenomenon. You have to bring more energy to it, so much energy that when the conscious mind goes off, awareness continues on its own – and you fall asleep with awareness. This can happen if you do other activities with awareness – walking, eating, sleeping, taking your bath.

@ishaq Every child is born with a fresh brain but not with a fresh mind. Mind is a layer of conditioning around the consciousness. You will not remember it; that is why there is a discontinuity. … Mind has no beginning; it has been always there with you. Then at a certain moment you drop it. The end of the mind is enlightenment. Then enlightenment continues. It has a beginning but no end. Together they cover the whole eternity, from the past to the future. But the brain is born every time you enter a body and it dies every time you leave the body. But its content — that is the mind — does not die; it remains with the consciousness. That’s why it is possible to remember your past lives. All those minds are still with you. But because psychology makes no distinction between mind and brain, and science accepts no distinction… in the English language mind and brain are almost synonymous. In each life when a person dies the brain dies, but the mind is released from the brain and becomes a layer on the consciousness. It is nonmaterial; it is just a certain vibe. So on our consciousness there are thousands of layers.

@FrogfuciusWork meditatively Consciousness means living with a witness; unconsciousness means living without a witness. Aware of your actions, your body, your mind, your heart. Walking, you should walk with awareness. Moving your hand, you should move with awareness, knowing perfectly that you are moving the hand. You can move it without any consciousness, like a mechanical thing…you are on a morning walk; you can go on walking without being aware of your feet. Be alert of the movements of your body. While eating, be alert to the movements that are needed for eating. Taking a shower, be alert to the coolness that is coming to you, the water falling on you and the tremendous joy of it ― just be alert. It should not go on happening in an unconscious state. And the same about your mind. Whatever thought passes on the screen of your mind, just be a watcher. Whatever emotion passes on the screen of your heart, just remain a witness ― don’t get involved, don’t get identified, don’t evaluate what is good, what is bad; that is not part of your meditation. If you feel that it is not enough to be meditative in all your activities, then it is perfectly good to have some small time just for meditation. But if you feel that you have the same joy, the same silence when you are doing your work meditatively as when you are sitting especially for meditation, then there is no need. Ultimately, there should be no need. For the beginners I am saying, at your convenience. But finally, your whole life should be nothing but a meditation. Whatever you do should be a meditation. And there should be no separate, particularly structured timetable. That is for the beginners.

If you are a beginner, unless you go through great catharsis you will have to pass through many clouds. It will be tiring, and you may be so impatient that you may turn back into the world. In Buddha's time it was not so needed because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive live -- uncivilized, spontaneous lives.

It depends on the individual, it works on the person who is not waiting for results. How it can be ‘do nothing technique’ if you are looking for some results instead of doing nothing? You have missed the whole point! It is very difficult to sit silently; thoughts go on coming. So let them come! Don't fight with thoughts and you will not need any energy. Just let them come ― what can you do? Clouds come and clouds go; let the thoughts come and let them go whenever they want to go. Don't be on guard, and don't be in a certain attitude that thoughts should come or. should not come ― don't be judgmental. Let them come, and let them go whenever they want. You be utterly empty. Thoughts will pass, they will come and go, and slowly, slowly you will see that you remain unaffected by their coming and going. And when you are unaffected by their coming and going, they start disappearing, they evaporate... Not by your effort, but by your cool, calm emptiness, your relaxed state.

@David1 The last words of Gautama the Buddha on the earth were: Be a light unto yourself. Do not follow others, do not imitate, because imitation, following, creates stupidity. You are born with a tremendous possibility of intelligence. You are born with a light within you. Listen to the still, small voice within, and that will guide you. Nobody else can guide you, nobody else can become a model for your life, because you are unique. Nobody has there been ever who was exactly like you, and nobody is ever going to be there again who will be exactly like you. By following others you can cultivate a beautiful character, but you cannot have a beautiful consciousness, and unless you have a beautiful consciousness you can never be free. You can go on changing your prisons, you can go on changing your bondages, your slaveries. You can be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Buddhist -- that is not going to help you. To be a Buddhist means to follow Buddha as the model. Now, there is nobody who is like Buddha or ever can be. Following Buddha you will become a false entity. You will lose all reality, you will lose all sincerity, you will be untrue to yourself. You will become artificial, unnatural, and to be artificial, to be unnatural, is the way of the mediocre, the stupid, the fool.

If you can just sit, doing nothing with your body and nothing with your mind, it becomes meditation; but it is difficult. You can sit very easily when you are doing something else but the moment you are just sitting and doing nothing, it becomes a problem. Begin from where beginning is easy, otherwise you will begin to feel many things unnecessarily ¯ things that are not there. If you begin with sitting, you will feel much disturbance inside. The more you try to just sit, the more disturbance will be felt; you will become aware only of your insane mind and nothing else. It will create depression, you will feel frustrated. You will not feel blissful; rather, you will begin to feel that you are insane. And sometimes you may really go insane.

@David1 Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity. Now there is no need for everybody to discover it again and again and again. That would be foolish. Inner growth is a totally different phenomenon. A Gautam Buddha may become enlightened, but that does not mean that everybody else becomes enlightened. Each individual has to find the truth by himself. So whatsoever happens on the outside goes on accumulating, piling up; all scientific progress goes on piling up. Each scientist is standing on the shoulders of other scientists. But the evolution of consciousness does not follow the same law. Each individual has to discover it by himself; he cannot stand upon the shoulders of somebody else.

@David1 To be intellectual is to be phony; it is a pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours; it is borrowed. Intelligence is the growth of inner consciousness. It has nothing to do with knowledge, it has something to do with meditativeness. An intelligent person does not function out of his past experience; he functions in the present. He does not react, he responds. Hence he is always unpredictable; one can never be certain what he is going to do. A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were talking to a friend who said he had just been given six months to live. "What would you do," he asked the Catholic, "if your doctor gave you six months to live?" "Ah!" said the Catholic. "I would give all my belongings to the Church, take communion every Sunday, and say my 'Hail Marys' regularly." "And you?" he asked the Protestant. "I would sell up everything and go on a world cruise and have a great time!" "And you?" he said to the Jew. "Me? I would see another doctor." That is intelligence!

@Sick Boy Laughter brings inner energy to the fore. When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together. When you really laugh, suddenly, the mind disappears. And the whole Zen methodology is how to get into no-mind.

@David1 People are afraid of the unknown, people feel insecure with the unknown. They don’t want to go beyond the familiar; hence they have created a false, plastic substitute for intelligence – they call it intellect. Intellect is only a mental game. It cannot be creative. Intelligence creates a Picasso, a Van Gogh, a Mozart, a Beethoven. Intelligence is a totally different dimension.

To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world. Just watch yourself. It hurts very much, it is painful to accept that you are not extraordinary. Watch when you accept the idea that you are ordinary. A great burden is relieved. Suddenly you are in the open space, natural, just the way you are.

Whenever you are depressed, wait for the moment that the depression goes. Nothing lasts forever; the depression will go. And when it leaves you, wait – be aware and alert – because after the depression, after the night, there will be a dawn and the sun will rise. If you can be alert in that moment. you will he happy that you were depressed. You will be grateful that you are depressed because only through your depression was this mint of happiness possible But what do we do? We move in an infinite regression We get depressed. Then we get depressed because of the depression: a second depression follows. If you are depressed. that′s okay! – nothing is wrong in it. It is beautiful because through it you will learn and mature. But then you feel badly. "Why do I get depressed? I should not get depressed." Then you start fighting with the depression. The first depression is good, but the second depression is unreal. And this unreal depression will cloud your mind. You will miss the moment that would have followed the real depression. When depressed, be depressed. Simply be depressed. Don′t get depressed about your depression. When depressed, simply be depressed. Don′t fight it, don′t create any diversion, don′t force it to go. Just allow it to happen; it will go by itself. Life is a flux; nothing remains the same. You are not needed; the river moves by itself, you don′t have to push it. If you are trying to push it, you are simply foolish. The river flows by itself. Allow it to flow. When depression is there, allow it to be. Don′t get depressed about it. If you want to remove it sooner, you will get depressed. If you fight it, you will create a secondary depression that is dangerous. The first depression is beautiful, God-given. The second depression is your own. It is not God-given; it is mental. Then you will move in mental grooves. They are infinite. If you get depressed, be happy that you are depressed and allow the depression to be. Then suddenly the depression will disappear and there will be a breakthrough. No clouds will be there and the sky will be clear. For a single moment, heaven opens for you. If you are not depressed about your depression you can contact, you can commune, you can enter this heavenly gate. And once you know it, you have learned one of the ultimate laws of life: that life uses the opposite as a teacher, as a back-ground.

Allow the fear. Tremble with it, let it shake your foundations – and enjoy it as a deep experience of stirring. You are already on guard, already escaping, running away. In a very subtle way you have broken yourself away from it. Just watch the feeling of it, the way it is.

Too much memory is not a good sign; it simply says that you have a very mechanical mind. It is not a sign of intelligence. Hence you hear so many stories of absent-mindedness about great scientists, philosophers. They are people of great memory, and great intelligence has nothing to do with great memory. Memory is mechanical, intelligence is non-mechanical -- they are totally different. So don't be worried. It is good. The memory is relaxing, many things will disappear, space will be created in you. And in that space you will be able to become more brilliant, more intelligent, more understanding. Intelligence means understanding; memory means a quality, a mechanical quality of repetition. Parrots have good memories. Don't be worried about your memory. In the beginning it happens: you have accumulated much rubbish and when you meditate that rubbish starts disappearing, falling away.

Pranayama English | Baba Ramdev Yoga

@FeelFree With matter, no freedom is possible. Matter means that which cannot be free. It must flow in the chain of cause and effect. Once someone has achieved consciousness, enlightenment, he is completely out of the realm of cause and effect. Whatever is physical in you, material, whatever is mental, is predetermined. But something in you constantly remains undetermined, unpredictable. That something is your consciousness.

If you hurry, become impatient, it means you have not accepted suffering and are eager to be done with it. In that case you have not understood the glory of suffering. You do not know that as you suffer you are being cleansed and purified and absolved from all that is worthless and useless. You have not recognized suffering as a friend yet. It is only at that point that you attain to self-restraint. He who recognizes suffering as a friend is in no hurry. He can maintain his patience, and enlightenment is attained only through patience - infinite patience. To attain enlightenment is not a paltry thing to be instantly attained.

@Nickinicki343 Food cannot make you spiritual, but if you are spiritual your food habits will change. Eating anything will not make much difference. You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving. If you meditate you are going to grow new perceptivity, new sensitivity, and you cannot kill animals.

@Raquel There are many, many layers, many planes of love. It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung. Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes. At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political. And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics – the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination. And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated. You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously – you are not that conscious yet. You cannot do it deliberately; it is an unconscious mechanism. Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released – but only at the highest peak. At the lowest, love is just a political relationship. At the highest, love is a religious state of consciousness. Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return. Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known.