Dharma, Sadhana, & Spiritual Life

We should not have to seek for a path; it should be present for us at birth.  So much time is wasted looking for the path, and also debating whether God exists or not.  God is existence.  Realize It and live in It thereafter, forevermore.

 

At the start of yearning for Enlightenment, everything rises to get in your way.  The confluence of opinions will rise to thwart you.  Even family does not want you free; they only want you bound with them.  What is behind this yearning?  The desire to find the Source.  One often experiences exhilaration and desolation in turns; this is the result of having one foot in spiritual life and one in the world.

 

Jnana and dhyana, study of revealed Truth and meditation — put these two together and youwill make progress.  Just do the practice and the results will come.

 

People who live in the present are only living through a series of experiences.  They never know the experiencer.  The present is only a phase of time.  What we want is to live in the eternal moment.  All stops there — thought, action, etc.  One becomes perfectly stable – unmoving – and everything moves about and around one.  The world conspires to stop us from doing this.  How?  Via rounds of mundane human convention.  We think we are progressing, but it is all illusory.  God is inactive.  If we want to realize Him, are we not going to have to become unmoving?

 

The eternal moment equals Asparsha (non-touch) Yoga, also called Advaita Yoga.  Any sadhana can be pedantic.  So call on shakti, on sattva, on devotion.  Let there be spontaneity that allows for consciousness to flow, and a willingness of mind to push through dry periods.  You can always wait them out, but that is less than ideal.

 

Why are we not to accept gifts?  Not just because of strings attached, as they say, but because doing so places one's focus on matter.  If our focus is on matter, then we will not see our prior lifetimes and remember our eternal nature.

 

Yoga is all about getting back one's power.  It would help if one had mastered prana in a previous lifetime, and then one would have plenty.  Even if one experiences dry periods, that is merely prana going up and down; one need not go down with it.  An uninspired period is a blockage of upward moving prana.  Throw out the sandbags and the hot air balloon will rise of its own.

 

The whole practice of sadhana is to get one to the place where dawns the realization that one has always been free.

 

Alambanas, objects utilized for meditation, reveal Brahman.

 

"Kundalini shakti loves to sport in the Puryastaka body." (Lord Vasishtha), but She will not do so if that eight-fold body is impure.  What makes it impure?  Not that it is just lower nature and has passions, but that a person takes it as real and uses it for impure ends.

 

What do you mean by a "pure mind?"  Can one really purify the mind?  Does anyone really realize just how much psychic muck is in there?  Everything is in the mind.  So to purify the mind means to control and transcend it, to transcend dualities.  Dualities are also impurities.  It is in the nature of mind to be dual; but one cannot let it all out indiscriminately.

 

Renounce things, and space begins to diminish.  Then one enters more subtle spaces.

 

Student: Sri Ramakrishna says you can still fall below the heart chakra unless you reach the vishuddha (throat) chakra.  So if one reaches the heart, are they really free of rebirth in ignorance?

Babaji: There is always a chance of falling out of Yoga as long as the mind has not had nondual samadhi.  Existence at the heart chakra is more known for being attended by devotional bhavas, not nondual samadhi.  The chakras at the throat and third eye, then, must be awakened, opened — at least for those who court Formless Reality.