Swamiji gives meditation advice and tips on changing habits. Disc 143 track 7.

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When you’re going to meditate, all the scriptures say do so, in a calm, clean place. Before meditation, one should either sing a hymn or recite a few mantras. Do pranayama [yogic breathing] and after pranayama, recite some peace mantras. You can do shanti paath if you like. The best one is Om sarvesham mangalam bhavatu, wishing everybody, then slowly feel your Deity [Ishta Devata] taking its seat in your heart, or in your forehead, where the eye of intuition is or the eye of knowledge, or here [Swamiji indicates the heart [anahata] chakra on his body] the heart. The secret is this, that you mustn’t think of your Deity with a dull figure [appearance]. It must have a figure, a form, which is self-effulgent [luminous or glowing].

Shiva has helped me a great deal as far as self-effulgent goes. If you close your eyes you can actually make out how he’s blueeee [Swamiji stretches the last vowel]. That itself is effulgent. The blue colour – effulgent light. And then, as you go deeper in meditation you find that it actually becomes the light of the moon, that is self-effulgent.

You can have your own. Have him seated in the sun or have an aura around it [the image]. Imagine. Imagination is a great help in sadhana [spiritual practise]. The greatest help really, in my experience. Through imagination you write essays. Through imagination you become a poet, and behind the imagination is inspiration. So you watch [observe] the deity surrounded by the sun or aura it’s got, or self-effulgent. Meditate on that. Repeat the [deity’s] name as long as you can. And feel it expanding. And it expands through your body and expands right until it encompasses the whole universe. When that happens, then think either you are a very minute part of that, or you are lost [merged] in it. You are nobody. It is everything. And slowly withdraw that, and bring it back into the space of meditation. Again, pray for purity, pray for love, knowledge. Don’t ask for anything worldly. You’re funny people, you know? You ask for wealth, you ask for health. Don’t ask. He will give all that.

Swamiji relates a story about Swami Ranganathananda who jokingly told Christians in America that they, in ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, ask for daily bread. Which they already have. Ask for something you don’t have, but need, he said, like a parking space! 😉 Jokingly said, but there’s a deep thought behind it. [Don’t pray thoughtlessly, mechanically or irrationally.]

Says Swamiji: Because what you’ve already got [food] why are you asking for that? I’m sure all of you people will have health and other things, but spiritual enlightenment you don’t get, so ask him [God] for spiritual enlightenment. And say [the Maha Mrityunjaya mantra] ‘OM tryambakam’. Om Tryambakam is a mantra that is blessing the whole universe, taking away sickness and making it healthy. So when you pray for the whole universe, you are part of that universe. You automatically become healthy instead of just concentrating selfishly on yourself. You understand?

Don’t wake up [get up suddenly] after meditation. The greatest mistake you make is when you wake up [get up abruptly] after meditation, then and there. You must sit calmly and think about the glories of God. Like I have got the idea about thinking of the glories of God, I think about Shiva, so I think about how Shiva Bhagavan drank the poison. I think how great he is in that sense. Then I think again how he gave darshana [his vision]  to Ramachandra [Lord Rama] Bhagavan. How he described the pig [boar], and Arjuna and himself fighting. I get all immersed in seeing the glory. How he blessed Ravana and how Ravana, being not self-controlled, he used God’s power. I think like that, of his glories. How Shiva Bhagavan saved Ravana by sending Rama there to destroy him. Because when Rama’s arrow touched him, he became all pure. So it was the grace of Shiva again that descended on him, as Rama. Like that you must glorify your deity. Think about it. And after again a few mantras, pray if you like, Or sing a bhajan and slowly, wherever you’re going, you must have [keep] this feeling.

The example given here in our scriptures is that if a doctor gives you an injection now or you take a tablet, does the reaction start straightaway? [indistinct, so it could be something else that Swamiji said]. It lasts for a couple of hours, a couple of days or a couple of months. So at least meditating on your deity must make you drunk [spiritually uplifted] for the whole day. In the evening you go back and inject yourself again with the same spirit. What you do in the evening, that must carry you, subconsciously, even in deep sleep, through to the next morning. Like that, your life will be so well attuned with God that you yourself will become an emanation of that Supreme Being.

The trouble most of us have, is that we think one deity is separate from the other deity. Someone says, ‘Well, I must say Ramakrishna, I must say Vivekananda, now I must say Sarada Devi, now Mother Kali, now Durga. I found that same thought within myself. Truly. It puzzled me for a long, long time and I couldn’t get hold of that. Until one day, by sheer will power, I said ‘Nothing doing! You are everything! I’m worshipping you, and just like Krishna Bhagavan ate the food and it went into the stomachs of all the Rishis. If it can go into the stomachs of all the Rishis, why can’t you, who are seated in everyone’s heart? You are the omnipresent, omniscient and omnipresent, O Lord. By giving you love, I’m giving love to the Universe, including all the deities.’ By sheer will. No doubt at all comes. Your Ishta Devata is that same omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. The only thing is that in another man’s heart, he has taken a different form because of his [the other man’s] temperament and his attitude in life.

The man who is not inclined to meditate, he must now reason. And say, ‘My mind does not want to take medicine. And I am suffering from a sickness called forgetfulness. Now what am I to do? Will it do me any good?’ So, by sheer will again, you must do it, even if doesn’t give you the taste. Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi said, when someone asked, ‘Look, Ma, I am not inclined to do japa [repetition of a mantra, sacred sound or one of the many names attributed to God], if I don’t love to do japa but if I do it, will I get any benefit? The example Mother gave was, ‘If you jump in the water, will you get wet?’ He said, ‘Yes’. Mother: ‘If someone pushes you by force into the water, will you get wet?’ He said, ‘Yes.’  Mother said, ‘Alright, even if you don’t like it, you’ll still get the benefit.’

Now, my guru [Swami Nischalananda Puri]  told me differently. I asked the same question. Don’t think I was high and mighty. I also had the same difficulty. So my guru put faith in me by saying, ‘Look here, if you take these two fingers and keep [push] them in [down] your throat, what do you think will happen? I said, ‘I’ll spew [vomit] sooner or later.’ He said, ‘The first time you did it, you didn’t spew? What happened?’ He said, ‘Just like that, even if you don’t like it, it’s [metaphorically] the same with Japa. You keep putting your fingers down your throat. You must do it. Let it get [become] habit.’

I’ll give you a small example. My guru was very funny in this respect. He used to make us laugh. He’ll ask us, ‘You get up in the morning, what do you do?’ Someone answered, ‘Go to the lobby [toilet].’ Gurudev said, ‘Oh. What time do you get up?’ Answer: About half past seven. He said, ‘Get up early morning. If anything [whatever] happens, don’t get up after five.’ So, right, we get up five o’clock.

After a couple of weeks, he’ll ask you ‘You get up in the morning, what do you do?’ We say, ‘Go and have a bath and meditate.’ He asked, ‘Did you go to the lobby [toilet] first?’ It’s very funny. You’ll laugh at what the gurus do with us. ‘You must get up and go [to the toilet] at that time.’ First day nothing, second day nothing, and after a couple of days, true, the habit [routine] came away [developed] there. You go to the lobby, you have a bath, then you sit for meditation. And yet before that we felt that we couldn’t, we were still used to the half past seven [routine and sequence]. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m trying to tell you how our guru drew our notice towards something. That it’s possible to train your mind to do what you want it to do.

Then he gave us an example: Like we used to complain that we’ve got no clock and [used that as excuse for not getting up on time]. He said, ‘You sleep, you imagine a clock. Look at it [showing] exactly five o’clock. Look at it.’ One or two days go, and we forgot to do it … and he’ll ask again, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ We say, ‘No clock.’ Gurudev: ‘Come on. Look at five o’clock’ [on the imaginary clock face]. So it’s alright, we do once or twice. One day we fail, one day we succeed. It’s a natural thing. Adjust it there. Got it, see a clock. Adjust it. Keep it [concentrate on it] for two or three minutes, slowly repeat God’s name, and then go to sleep. You’ll be surprised what happens. If anything’s late it’ll be [just] fifteen minutes this way or that but….you’ll get up. You can try it. But you see what happens?

You can rule the mind; there’s no two ways about it. You can rule it. One thing that I find, a lot of people get tired when they get up early. Those kinds of people, you don’t blame them, they must have a little rest during the day. They mustn’t wreck the body as it were, or destroy it.

The free-to-read, 396 page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography is available by clicking HERE.

These recordings were made from the 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.