Swamiji shares high-level, subtle meditation techniques. Disc 143 track 8.

To listen to Swamiji speaking, please fully open the post and then click on the link below.

[When meditating on the deity’s form, with mantra] …Japa…where does it come in? Spontaneous both are. You must look at the deity [Ishta Devata] – like I say ‘apple’. I see [visualise] the apple and then say the word. Or I say ‘apple’ and then see the form. Isn’t it? [namarupa – ‘name and form’ cannot be separated] So when you are repeating that name, look at that deity – imagine the deity. Let’s put it that way. You understand?

But the gurus tell us we must start from the feet. Then slowly, slowly [gradually] you work upwards. Feet, then the body, then the head. Then we work downwards again, and then upwards again, until we take in the whole form. Look at the whole form. So meditation, seeing the form – the gurus say you must meditate and repeat the mantra at the same time. So when it constantly goes on like that, japa [repetition of the name] will be forgotten, and your mind will be one-pointed [concentrated] only.

I’ll give you an example. Like you close your eyes and look at say, Narayan [Lord Vishnu]. OM, Narayanaya namah. OM Narayanaya namah – you see, I’m imagining his feet. OM Narayanaya namah – then you go up, OM Narayanaya namah, OM Narayanaya namah, then see the whole form, then OM Narayanaya namah. OM Narayanaya namah.

If you don’t see the form there, you’ll say OM Narayanaya namah, you don’t even hear the name, your mind will be thinking, ‘The [school] inspector is supposed to come today.’ So he’s telling ‘Narayanaya namah’, but he’s thinking the inspector’s going to come. The inspector has to come, because God’s name is calling him. [Swamiji and congregation laughing]. It has to happen. You sent the message for him. This is true what I’m saying. If I want you to come, you’ll come. If I don’t want you to come, you’ll never come. There is a thing [power] like that. Easy to understand.

Tell [repeat] the mantra a couple of good times and wish whatever you want to wish for. But that’s a very bad thing [secret] I’m telling you, because you may start wishing for the wrong things. Tell the mantra completely, with concentration. Let the vibration be in full swing. That’s why in the scriptures they say, write the yantra [geometric, visual representation of the mantra] out and say this, twelve thousand times. Twelve thousand times means you imagine a vibration and then suddenly you’ll know what the yantra means. Or what it’ll fulfil. So the vibration goes towards that and accomplishes it. And some people create the yantra and say, ‘I did the yantra – and nothing happened.’ You fool, if you go and see nicely, your mind was not concentrated on it. When thinking about the yantra and the mantra you were thinking about something else. So that thing [energy] has gone somewhere else. That’s a leakage. Don’t let it be leakage.

My guru [Swami Nischalananda Puri] started me meditating. I used to do my own meditation and when he started me meditating, he did some funny things. He said, ‘Open your eyes and see nothing.’ How can I see nothing? So the idea got hold of me, open your eyes and see nothing. So I opened my eyes but I imagined my own eyes – but that I see nothing. Just my own eyes. And then he says, look at the tip of your nose. One day he’s talking to me, and there’s no [nose] tip there. There’s things here [Swamiji chuckling] that I’ll look at it. Very funny things happen in meditation, you see. This thing, you mustn’t think it’s not going to happen. It happens.

So I go to him and say, ‘There’s no tip [on the nose] – I can’t see the tip. He says, where are you looking? I say here. He says not here, you fool, look here! So I look here now. [Swamiji would start off some people by getting them to look at the tip of their nose to develop concentration. Then after a time, he’d ask them to lift their focus to the root of the nose – between the eyebrows. It sounds like Gurudev was doing the same or a similar thing, to the premonastic Inder.]

You see, they will take you step by step. Instead of doing this, you look there now. This goes [moves to] there. So then he said, ‘You close your eyes and look at Shiva.’ I close my eyes and look at Shiva. He asked: Where are your eyes? They’re still down [at the tip of the nose], I’m imagining it. He says ‘Look at Shiva. You must turn your eyes upwards now.’ You do all those things, not that it’s easy, that you think it just happens. There is a kind of meditation where, when you’re doing the japa [repetition of the name] and when you come to [regular awareness again], you find your tongue has gone [turned] upside down. But you never [didn’t] put your tongue upside down.

You must have a photo of a deity in the bedroom. It’s a constant reminder and regulator in your life. Even when you get up and [first] open your eyes, it’s there. You must have a photo, and commonly they keep Krishna’s photo. Krishna, gopis and things like that, commonly they have that. But you can have any image that uplifts your mind. I personally would go for Ganesha’s photo. Which I’ve got. Now don’t ask me why Ganesha, because it’s so many aspects. I think of him in Omkara, Hanuman’s strength through fighting, and I like that as such.

Speaking about the deity, Swamiji says: You must squeal [complain] to him, you must speak to him, you must make him ‘living’. He must not be a dead thing. He must be living. Like I get up in the morning, I straightaway start with Ramakrishna. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got today for me, I don’t know what you’re going to make me do. You think I’m your servant? I’m not your servant. I’m a glorified being myself. Who are you?’ Then I go a little bit and pass by [Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi] Mother, then I come back to Ramakrishna [and say]. ‘I was only joking with you!’ Then I say all the good [appropriate] mantras. Now you may think it’s very silly, but to me it gives me an idea of ‘livingness’ [of the deity being alive]. There’s nothing wrong about it. Provided you don’t do it venomously. Do it with a joke and in a jovial manner. Then sometimes I squeal [complain] to Hanumanji. And make some trouble with him. I’ll call Rama, then I’ll call his [indistinct audio …and then something about Mother Sita, so it looks like the Aryans didn’t have any jet that time…?]

It carries on like that. You must make it ‘living’, you must play with it. And then go to a serious level, later. But if you’re going to think, hey no man, this thing is just a photo, it’s going to remain a photo. If you start taking it ‘livingly’ [as alive] there, you’ll even dream that that thing [the photo] is living. If nothing else, in the dream you’ll have a darshan [vision] of the deity. Living!

Like one time I was very, very disheartened about certain things. I prayed to Master [Sri Ramakrishna] at night-time. I said, No I can’t [continue?]…. the next morning, early morning, this thing that’s here – Andrew’s [Andrew Walford, the artist and master potter who made the first murti of Master for the Ramakrishna Centre] murti, the other one, that’s kept in the shrine, and that thing burst through, cracked, and the old boy [Master] is there, ‘And now what do you want from me?’ The first question, just like every time I ask him for something. The whole day I’m very upset with him, you know. I’m asking him to do things for himself, and he’s asking me, ‘And now what do you want from me?’  So these are good feelings. It’s living. And the whole day really, you feel that thing [state/emotion].

Swamiji asks the congregation: How many of you have dreamt of a living deity? In a dream. Talking or walking? [the recording sadly fades out]. [People doing so much…?] Sadhana but they didn’t even see anything in a dream yet. [Indistinct – sound fades again.] You mustn’t mind me sitting here and talking [like this] with you. Because sometimes I’ll tell you the worst things. Because I trust you. That’s the idea. [If] I don’t trust, [then] I don’t tell.

Once Vivekanandaji said to the westerners – now please, I am a westerner, just remember that – to the westerners, that ‘You people, what you’re doing here in America and elsewhere, if you did that in India, you people would be destroyed.’ So the people asked him, ‘What [things]?’  He said that when you look at women you pass compliments. You pass compliments on ‘how beautiful you are’. And ‘how nice you’re looking’ and ‘how slim you are and how fat you are’ [indistinct…]. And he [Vivekananda] said, this is taboo [unacceptable] to the Indian man, leave the Indian sannyasi aside. Taboo! You are not supposed to do that.  

Now this may sound very funny [peculiar] in the western world. What is wrong with that? But we are not supposed to draw people to body-consciousness. And therefore, when a sannyasi [monk or nun] looks at someone else, or you look at someone else, you must always think about the spirit, your deity that you meditate on, must be sitting there. So you’re not looking at the body. No sooner than you look at the body and pass a compliment on the body, then you are a physical, sensual man or woman. Just remember that.

Swami Shivananda Mahapurushji was so particular that when you went to him and you asked him, ‘How’s your health?’, he used to get very, very disappointed with his chelas [disciples]. He’d say, ‘Why don’t you ask me something about God?  Why are you asking about my [bodily] health? The health will be there. Why are you worrying about that?’ There too, they thought about the physical plane. If you ask about someone’s health, what happens?  I’m talking about an extreme case here, where Mahapurushji was on a different plane. He didn’t even want you to ask about his [bodily] health. But later on, if people kept on forcing [persisting], then he’d answer them accordingly. So we must watch very carefully, what we’re doing, what we’re speaking [about], what we’re commenting [on]. So if you find a sannyasi or a brahmachari or brahmacharini drawing attention to your body level, just put your head down and walk away.  Now this I am not saying, my param-param-guru [Swami] Vivekananda himself said it. [Recording fades…]

Yesterday I actually felt like eating fish. [Congregation laughs]. On enquiry, I found that someone ate fish and came to the ashram [chuckles from the congregation]. True! So whatever impressions you have, you pass it on. And a fool is a sannyasi that will just mix up with anything and anyone. He’s a fool. He’s the biggest fool that I ever saw. [Sound fades]

One time, I asked Mary [Mary Jibodh, one of our dear, extremely hard-working guru bhens] to cook fish. She cooked the fish. No, Mummy I asked. Mary or Mummy? I’m sorry – [it was] Mummy [Sri Jayanti Devi Mataji, our deeply loved and revered ashram ‘Mummy’]. I asked Mummy to cook the fish. At that time, I had some sort of notion that I must offer Master fish. [Sri Ramakrishna did occasionally eat fish, as did and still do, many Bengali monks]. She cooked the fish, we got in the car, and I thought I’ll go and offer it at the river. I had no intention of eating it, that I must tell you, truly. I wanted to offer it to Master.

He [Master] ate fish, maybe he would like the fish, you see? So I said alright, but what happened, we cooked the fish, we went as far as that mosque, you know that one near Gurudev’s cave on top, to offer it there. By the time we went to the mosque, we started fighting [laughter] – I don’t know what for [devotees laughing]. And we turned the car and came back. Up to this day I don’t know what happened with the fish. [Laughter]. So I dare not think of giving Master fish!

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.