Q&A: Meditation

I find your meditations very hard for me. I come in feeling beautiful. Then I feel all this pain coming into my heart and into my head. Why does this happen?

It is not any negative force that is entering into you. Your difficulty is that when you come to our meditations, you try to pull far beyond your capacity. When I am on stage, the whole stage is flooded with light. When you sit and look at me, you try to pull this light. It is as if you are in a shop and you see all sorts of most beautiful things. Like a greedy fellow you want to buy everything, but you have in your pocket only five cents. When you try to pull beyond the capacity of your receptivity, at that time you get pain in your head or your heart.

Q&A: Meditation

When you meditate and you cry for something, should you also make an effort to achieve it, or just let it take place naturally?

At the beginning you have to make a personal effort; later it becomes spontaneous. Unless and until it becomes spontaneous, you have to make the personal effort. When a sprinter starts a race, his hands make such a vigorous movement. In the beginning he consciously moves his arms and hands very fast. He is making strong personal effort. But after fifty or sixty metres, when he is going at top speed, everything becomes spontaneous. At that time he is not striving to move his arms. But at the start, he did.

It is like sailing a boat. Before you start you move this thing and adjust that thing. You have to do all kinds of things at the beginning. While you are getting ready, you are very dynamic. But that is only your preparation. Still the boat is near the shore. It is only when you are actually well on your way that the boat can sail without your constant personal effort. In your meditation this spontaneous movement is an act of Grace from above.

If you are sincere, then you will say that at the very beginning of your journey God's Grace also descended. Otherwise, you would not have been inspired even to enter into the boat. But when you start out, you feel that you are making a tremendous personal effort. But there comes a time when you realise that this personal effort is nothing other than Compassion from above. Why are you getting up early to pray and meditate, whereas your friends are still wallowing in the pleasures of lethargy? It is because God's Grace has descended into you. So the deeper you go, the clearer it becomes that God's Grace enables you to make progress through your personal effort. Either God is pleased with you, or out of His infinite Compassion He is helping you.

Personal effort is of paramount importance at the beginning, because at that time we don't feel that God is our unconditional friend. As human beings, we always say that if I give you something, then you will give me something in return. But if I don't give you anything, then you are under no obligation to give me anything. But God is not like that. God gives unconditionally, whether we claim Him as our own or not. This moment I may pray to God to fulfil my desire. But the next moment, after He fulfils my desire, immediately I will say, "Oh, I don't need You. I don't want to be Your child." But God cannot do that. God always claims us as His own no matter how bad we are, because He sees that in hundreds or thousands or millions of years, He will make us perfect. A child, at his sweet will, can leave his parents; but can the parents leave the child? Impossible! Similarly, I can disown God, my eternal Father, because I am angry with Him or because He has not fulfilled my desires. But He will never disown me, because I am His child.

Self-effort is necessary. God's Grace is indispensable.

So personal effort is necessary because we do not feel that God is constantly loving us and blessing us unconditionally. Once we can feel that He is doing everything for us unconditionally, then personal effort is not necessary. Just because we don't have that kind of feeling, so-called personal effort is of paramount importance. But when we become sincere, when we become humble, and especially when we become pure, at that time we will feel that it is God who has inspired us to exercise our personal effort. So credit goes to God from the beginning to the end. In the beginning we give 50 percent of the credit to ourselves, because we got up to pray and meditate, and 50 percent to God, because He responded to our prayers and inspired us during our meditation. But if we are sincere, devoted and absolutely pure, then we will say that 100 percent of the credit goes to God.

Q&A: Meditation

I often find that the quality of my meditation goes up and down. I always hope that I will not fall down again, but it happens constantly.

In the beginning everybody experiences ups and downs in the spiritual life. When a child is learning to walk, in the beginning he stumbles and falls again and again. But after a while he learns to walk properly, and finally to run. Eventually he can run as fast as his capacity will allow. But a small child cannot expect to run as fast as his father does, because his father has much more capacity.

You experience ups and downs in your meditation. When you are up, you have to feel that you are getting a glimpse of your eventual capacity. When you are down, you should simply feel that this is only a temporary incapacity. Just because you see that those who are more advanced than you in the spiritual life are running, you must not be discouraged. Once upon a time they also stumbled.

Right now the sky may be full of clouds, but a day will come when the sun will shine again with its full effulgence. When you experience low moments of fear, of doubt, of lack of aspiration, you should feel that these won't last forever. Like a child who has fallen, you must try to stand up again. Someday you will be able to walk, then run, and finally run the fastest without falling.

Q&A: Meditation

When I was meditating I felt really tense. My head was hurting and I felt I was pulling. What should I do in a case like that?

If you get that kind of tense feeling, immediately breathe in and out very quickly. When the rhythm of your breathing increases, the tension goes away. Try to feel that you are climbing up a flight of stairs or a ladder that has many rungs. As you climb up you are breathing in. If you feel this ascent, then tension goes away. Tension comes when you are stuck at one place. But when you are climbing, you are like a bird flying up into the sky. When the bird is soaring, where is the tension? Similarly, if you are climbing up, there will be no tension.

Q&A: Meditation

How to conquer fear? With oneness within and oneness without. In oneness-light there can be no fear,

When I try to meditate, there is something that holds me back.

The thing that holds you back is fear. If you want the wealth which is deep inside you, then you have to dive within bravely. Only if you have inner courage can you receive the inner wealth. Fear of the unknown and the unknowable prevents you from diving deep within. But what is unknowable today becomes merely unknown tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow it becomes known.

The vastness of truth will never harm you. It will only embrace and fulfil you. You feel afraid of something because you do not feel that that particular thing is part of you. But through meditation you establish your conscious oneness with the infinite Vast. At that time you see and feel that everything is part of you. So why should you be afraid?

Q&A: Meditation

When I meditate I lose energy and get tired. Is it because I meditate too much?

No. If you are losing energy while meditating, it means that your meditation is incorrect. If you meditate well, you will gain energy. Meditation is the way to gain infinite energy, light and bliss. But if the particular method you are using is wrong, then you will lose energy instead of gaining it.

Q&A: Meditation

I shall tolerate the world, I shall. Only by tolerating the world shall I be able to help my mind to ascend and my heart to transcend.

When I get upset with someone who does something to me, I can't meditate the way I want to. How can I overcome this?

When you are upset, naturally you cannot tare. You cannot welcome a friend and an enemy into your house at the same time. Your enemy is your agitation and anger, and your friend is meditation. Suppose someone does something to you and you become angry with him. Even when several hours have elapsed and you have forgotten your anger, it can still pull you down. You have forgotten, but you have not forgiven. Unless you have forgiven, you have not illumined your anger. Sometimes you will quarrel with the members of your family and then go to sleep. The next morning you will find that you cannot meditate. You have totally forgotten the incident, but while you were sleeping the strength and velocity of your anger have increased. So it is always better to illumine the anger immediately.

When somebody does something wrong to you, try to feel that it is an extended part of your own consciousness that has made this deplorable mistake. Enlarge your heart and feel that it is you yourself who have done wrong. In that way you won't become upset. What you have to do is stop thinking of others and think only of perfecting yourself. That does not mean that you are ignoring the world's problems. No. Your own perfection will help others. When you achieve something, you will see that very thing in a small measure in others. Similarly, if you see something wrong in others, tomorrow you will see that very thing in yourself. And if you see something good in someone else but not in yourself, that particular thing will soon develop in you. If you see a person who is sincere and you are not sincere, just because you are conscious of his sincerity, your own inner sincerity will come to the fore. Your inner being will try to communicate with the sincerity of that particular person and, like a magnet, it will draw sincerity from that person or from the Supreme, who is the Source.

From now on, try to perfect your own nature instead of looking around to see whose imperfections are standing in your way. Pay all attention to your own self-discovery. When you have perfected yourself, you will see that everybody on earth will gain in perfection through you.

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