Q: How to throw out confusion? A: (with smile) You don't (can't) throw out confusion. Bring in discrimination. You see, how to dispel the darkness is the question. I say, you don't drive away the darkness, but you bring a light, the darkness goes away automatically. There is a story about this. Some people were asking, "Which is more powerful, darkness or lights" Finally one wise man said, "Light. Because when you bring light darkness goes away." Again, another example. A small boy goes into a dark room, he finds something and comes out shouting in fear, "There is some devil in that room." The father goes into the room with a torch and sees nothing in that room. Why? He has a torch in his hand and the darkness is gone. There are some people, who take a torch in their hands, but never use it. The feeling that they have a 'torch' itself is enough for them. It gives them confidence. Similarly the feeling, "I have the Divine Light (God Himself) in my heart," should give you confidence. You have to think this always. That is why Master has said that we should meditate in the heart, on the Divine Light. Confusion comes only when you brood over anything. My Master has said, "Brooding over, is the worst sin." That is why you should have constant remembrance. Whenever you get an evil thought or negative thought, that such and such a person would die etc., immediately think of Master and remove it. It will automatically go. You can sit for two minutes and do cleaning. In this way, you can avoid negative thinking by counteracting with the positive thought of Master. You see, a person sends his child to school. He tells the child, "Go carefully this way... on the platform... turn that way," etc. In the evening he waits for the child, worrying, whether the child would come safely or he would have been run over by a bus, etc., and thus he has 'fear' in his mind. When he enters the room, he is ready to receive a phone call that his son is dead. You see, this is negative thinking. If you surrender to the Master and leave everything to him, you need not worry at all. Q:How are the impressions (samskaras) formed? A: By 'brooding over.' My Master says, "Brooding over is the worst sin." You see a thing and get attracted by it. You form the picture of the thing. It goes deep into your heart as you think over it again and again. You see this floor, you touch it, then feel that is very smooth, cool and attractive. You think of some other thing like this and the impressions are formed deep in your heart. That is why you should have constant remembrance of the Master. In this way, one can avoid all the impressions and also negative thinking. This means surrender. You leave everything to Him. Q: I suddenly got angry today. A: You don't get angry, but anger comes out! You should be able to overcome all the emotion. That is yoga. Yoga is defined by Patanjali, Yogah chitta vratti nirodhah. "Yoga is cessation of mental tendencies." You should have control over them. You see, man controls many machines etc., but he cannot control himself. He predicts about machine capacity etc., but about his own self, he cannot predict. You don't know when anger will come. It is the burst from the mind. A volcano does not know when it will erupt. This is also like that. That is why you should control them, regulate them. Q:In Sahaj Marg we don't use the word 'control' but 'regulation' of the mind? A: It is only regulation and not control. Control means force. Force is artificial and for every force there is equally an opposite force. This is the theory of Isaac Newton. So you have to regulate your mind. If you say, or feel that you are doing, then you form impressions (samskaras). It is where you have to be careful. You should be alert in not forming impressions. If you have 'awareness' of your doing anything then you form an impression. So you should do things without awareness of them. Q: [There was a question about samskaras, and how to be rid of them.] A: The systematic practice of the daily cleaning is the only way. It is a pity that many abhyasis do not practice it as directed. Q: We do! A: I believe it. When I said that many do not do it, I did not refer to you. But it is also a fact that a large number, a majority of them, do not do the evening cleaning. Many say they have no time. Q:We do it regularly. But how can we be sure that we do it correctly? Please clarify this. A: It is good that you are doing it. Don't worry about whether you are doing it properly or not. It is necessary to do it regularly. Master says that so long as we do what is expected of us, He takes care of the results! Where can we get a Master like that! It is the same thing for the preceptors, too. He has said that the preceptors are expected to do their work, and not to worry about the results. "The work is theirs; the results are mine!" Master has told me this several times. Our duty is to give the sittings, and to leave the results to Him. But many do not want to work. What are we to do? Q: I do it regularly, but I do not feel it is finished. A: It is never finished! It can never be finished! You see, there are two things we have to understand. The first is that we have come with the samskaras of all the past. Even if Master cleans us every day, it will take years to clean them off. Force cannot be used, because that may cause damage. The second point is that a human being cannot be totally samskara-less. Then he would cease to exist. The third thing is that we are living in such a way that we are going on creating more and more samskaras all the time. So the burden never gets reduced, even with all the cleaning that we practise, and that the preceptors do when we go to them for sittings. So life has to be molded, as our Master says, in such a way that we live without forming samskaras, then only can a situation come about that the burden of samskara begins to be reduced, and to approach a situation where there are practically no samskaras. Do you follow this? But Master has said that if the abhyasi does his part, and if the cleaning is done regularly, and if he co-operates fully with the Master, then a stage can be reached where you can say that the samskaras are almost gone. And then you begin to live in such a way that no further samskaras are formed. The problem is that all the old samskaras are not going, and we are adding more and more by our incorrect ways of thinking and acting in this life. So it is like a bottomless well! Q:Negative thoughts are big samskaras? A: Yes, negative thoughts are very bad. In fact they are very bad because they lead to negative actions in turn, and that leads to negative results. It is said that the actions of the body do not matter so much, because they are at the grosser level. Whereas the thought level is very subtle, and therefore the effect of such thoughts is also at the subtle level. The grossness arising from wrong actions is comparatively easy to remove, it being on the gross level. But the grossness at the level of the mind is more difficult to remove! This is what the Master has taught. The mind originates all things. If the grossness creeps in even at that level, then everything which follows gets corrupted, and this is the reason why in Sahaj Marg regulation of the mind is the thing that is to be achieved. This is the main thing sought. Sins of the body are easier to correct, but not the negative tendencies and the thoughts in the mind. Perhaps that is why we see so-called sinners are able to turn so easily to become saints, once they are able to turn their mind away from the present direction to the one in which it must go! Hypocrisy, which we can call as mental sin, though the word sin is never used in Sahaj Marg, is therefore the worst thing, as it produces at the subtlest level, and is therefore the most difficult to clean, to remove. Q: What should we think about a man who makes always bad sins, say for instance like Hitler? A: It is all samskaras which are responsible. He had probably desired power with great intensity in the past, may be in his past life, and so he became what he became. Q: Perhaps in the next life he could become a saint? A: It is always possible. We cannot say anything with certainty. I have sometimes felt that in each life a person has what can be called his or her grand passion. It may be a passion for power; it may be passion for wealth; it may be a passionate longing for love; it may be an overpowering passion for political or military power. It may be any of these things. Then when he achieves what he wants, he generally finds that it brought him neither peace, nor happiness, and often not even the minimum satisfaction that such an achievement should produce. More often it has the opposite effect of making the person wish that he had never got the thing he desired so ardently! He curses himself for his foolishness in having had such foolish desires, as he now calls them. The experiences of the life make him hate the very thing that he desired, and it is my idea that in this way we get rid of one grand passion in one life. Of course this is too simple a way of looking at it, but I am trying to give you just an idea, because we see so many persons who have a hatred and fear of wealth. Others have a similar hatred and fear of power, while others have the most obsessive fear of pleasures of the most innocent type! This is perhaps one way of explaining this phenomenon. In this way we may finally come to a life when we have no desire for anything whatsoever, except to reach our Original Home! We have so many stories of the temptations that saints have faced, when the devil, or his counterpart in the other religions, offered the aspirant things like dominion over the world, unlimited worldly pleasures, unlimited wealth, and so on. They never succumbed to this temptation, because perhaps they had seen the futility of having these things in their past lives. We have the story of a rishi who was performing a particular sacrifice, in which he had to give away all that he possessed. He had a young son who was about eight years old. This little boy was watching the father performing the sacrifice, and thinking himself to be also one of his father's possessions, he asked his father, "Father, to whom are you giving me?" He asked this once, he asked it a second time, and the father kept quiet. When he asked the same question a third time, the father became angry, and said, "I give you to death!" On hearing this the young son promptly went alone to the kingdom of death. The Lord of death was away, and the little boy had to wait three days for his return. After three days, Yama, the Lord of death, returned to his kingdom, and found the young boy waiting for him. Yama asked to be excused for his absence, and offered the boy three boons, one for each day that he had to wait. The first boon the boy asked was that his father's anger against him should disappear. Yama granted it. The second boon was about the details of some religious sacrifice, which Yama explained. The third boon the young boy asked was, "Lord, what is it that lies beyond death? I wish you to explain this and to teach me all about it!" Yama was startled by this question. He had not expected such a question from the young boy. He told him to ask for anything else: for a long life, for a life full of all the pleasures of the higher worlds, things like that. The boy said he wanted only an answer to his question. Yama said, "Ask me for a life of 10,000 years, and for sons and grandsons who shall also live 10,000 years. It shall be granted. Ask for celestial wealth and pleasures such as no mortal person can ever dream about, and I shall grant them to you. But don't insist on knowing what even the gods do not know." The young boy said, "Lord, you yourself say that the gods even do not know this thing. Then it is all the more important that I should ask for the answer from you. Please tell me this great secret." Yama tried his best to wriggle out of the situation, but the little son of the sage was steadfast in his resolve. You see the one-pointedness of the boy. He was after the real knowledge, and did not give way to any temptation. The abhyasis should be all like that, unswerving in their devotion, with total dedication to the purpose of the sadhana, with their eyes fixed permanently on the goal. That is why I am telling you this story. (Excerpts from Constant Remembrance, April 1989 and October 1992)
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