Written Messages

Varanasi,

5 March 2023

“A disciple was talking to the Guru as I came to the Guru’s presence. He was seeking the Guru’s blessings for his daughter’s marriage. The Guru responded with blessings and some instructions. My mind immediately jumped to the thought that I too should seek Guru’s blessings for my son-in-law who has been un-employed now for long. The mind was in utter turmoil and sorrow over the plight of my daughter and her family.

But then again, the mind was saying that blessings are never sought. They are drawn from a Guru by a Satshishya.

By grace it was seen that the sentence “blessings are never sought etc.” was just a mental concept in the body and was the result of a “higher” mind talking.

However, in spite of this seeing, the turmoil and sorrow remained.

While my mind was thus grieving, the Guru made calls to two more kriyabans, showering blessings on them and the mind became even more miserable - and even jealous!

Just then, down below in the temple, the evening prayers were over and the joyful – even playful – ringing of the bells during the ceremony called Aarati (which is the concluding part of the worship) began.

There was a strange quietness in the mind as the bells continued to ring and the body listened. Awareness was complete.

As the bells fell silent at the end of the Aarati, a lady, deeply troubled by her son’s behaviour, came up to the Guru and sought his blessings. He listened, smiled and became quiet. Then his utterance came “For everything under the sun, there is a remedy – or none”.

As this body heard the utterance while in its own meditative state, peace and equanimity returned. As the meditation continued, there was a realization that perhaps for the first time, I was seeing how vicious and sordid the mind-process is.

Perceptions:

1.    The Guru says, ritual is the container and spirituality (which is emptiness) is the content. However, sometimes there is some ‘water’ in the container and that is OK. The Guru never discourages anyone from seeking blessings, but the blessings, when they come, are from the other dimension and not mental consolations.

2.    The joy and playfulness of the temple bell is directly connected with the Life Process and that is why perhaps its sound naturally leads to a meditative state in a body that is then in the energy of understanding.

3.    Equanimity is fragile. The mental process is tireless and relentless in its effort to break equanimity and it requires the gathering of tremendous energy (without any ‘gatherer’) to see these machinations.

4.    Kriya with Swadhyay restores equanimity when it is broken as it provides the energy of understanding and awareness necessary for the seeing to happen. The ‘dhara process’ (The centrifugal movement of mind) then becomes the ‘radha process’ (the centripetal Life-awareness that enables the Seeing)

5.    The relentless pounding of ocean waves erode the hardest of rocks.Thus too, the constant subversive activities of the mind can erode the energy of understanding and replace it with a concept of it. Repeating phrases like ‘corridor of opposites’, ‘energy of understanding’ etc mechanically – without looking at them with awareness each time – result in all these phrases becoming mere images and concepts. May the grace enable the seeing of this always!

Jai Swadhyay with Kriya