I think I must point out one possibility in nature, that there is never anything to make up. A man may not sleep for sixteen nights or days altogether, yet one night's sleep is enough. But this does not apply in spirituality. In spirituality we have to do everyday. If you miss one day, you cannot make up for it again. Because in spirituality there is no cumulative effect. It is moving on from one state to another state, and if I get stuck at one state, I lose time, and time gone is gone forever. We cannot recall the time and say, "Well, today I will run in spirituality." There is no running, there is no sleeping, there is no walking to be made up. Here that is not possible. Who is to take you too fast? So, if you are sensible and you proceed from there, the time lost is forever lost.

So, actually, what we are dealing with in Sahaj Marg, this wonderful spiritual system of ours, is time utilisation. If I lose one meditation - I know many abhyasis who come for these gatherings and try to make up for all the lost time by taking sixteen sittings in one day from sixteen different preceptors, hoping against hope that, somehow all the lost time will be made up - it is not possible. An empty tank can only be filled up once. It has to be consumed before you can fill it up again. You cannot go on allowing the tap to be opened and saying, "Twenty-four hours I will fill the tank;" it will only overflow. This is what happens when we don't do our regular sadhana and we go to preceptors who, perhaps unwisely, though kindly, give us more sittings. Babuji says, "It is useless." It is all flowing out. In many cases it just goes and bounces back, the transmission.

In fact, meditation is a process of digestion. Babuji Maharaj always used to say, "I give this much, but they don't digest it." "How do I digest?" I asked Babuji. He said, "Meditate." While there is a restriction on not meditating more than one hour at a time, there is no restriction on the number of times you can meditate. During meditation, the system absorbs all the transmission that He has given to us. The heart becomes capable of receiving more, and He is transmitting more. So it is advisable that we meditate as often as we can.

In fact, I know abhyasis who have come up in Master's estimation and have made very fast progress beyond all expectation, who used to meditate in trains and planes and cars. After all, when Master gives us so many facilities, deservingly or undeservingly, we must put them to the best possible use. Babuji prescribes one hour in the morning. The other meditations you can do even for ten minutes, twenty minutes, forty minutes, but not more than one hour at a time.

So, meditation is a process of digesting the spiritual sustenance that our Master pours into us. Therefore the more we meditate, the faster we progress. Meditation becomes a habit, meditation becomes an activity which we not only cannot stop but which we start enjoying so much that we prefer it to everything else. Then comes a time when your friend may say, "Why don't you go to the beach?" "No, I would prefer to meditate." And everybody else thinks you are a bit crazy. Perhaps we are. It doesn't matter, you see. If a crazy man can get to the goal, why not be a little crazy! Babuji has always said that a spiritual path is a path of madness. One who cannot develop this madness for the beloved, will surely lose in the battle for love.

We must be able to do our daily sadhana, especially the cleaning in the evening, do it systematically, do it with dedication, do it with a sense of purpose that, "I have to remove from my system those things which are doing harm to me, which are sort of blocking my path." I hear many people come up and tell me, "Sir, even during cleaning I have these thoughts." Ignore thoughts. Of course, when you bathe, the water flowing off your body will be a little dirtier than the water which flows on to you. But wait till clean water flows off you. That is the time to stop your bath.

There are persons who do devoted service at the various celebrations such as selling books, looking after the kitchen, serving food, clearing the premises and so on. But if they do not meditate regularly and do not develop devotion and eventually love for the Master, then their progress virtually stops. My Master has clarified that while service is no doubt good and necessary too, nevertheless, without sadhana a person cannot really progress in spirituality.

There are cases of persons who do the sadhana with obvious seriousness and with visible regularity too. In most cases there has been lack of progress and my Master has once again been gracious enough to clarify that sadhana without love for the Master has no meaning, and added in His typically gentle manner, "But I give them some crumbs of spirituality since no one can be permitted to go away with empty hands after coming to me."

So we cannot stop the sadhana. We have to do it. We have to meditate very rigorously, with great dedication to the path. We have to do the cleaning systematically, every evening. No human being has a right to think that he is too clean and he does not need cleaning. Even emperors have to bathe. It's not only the labourer in the fields who has to bathe, even emperors have to bathe.

This is the importance of sustained sadhana. A man who can bring his mind under his regulation, still it, and then go into that bliss, that ecstasy of diving into himself, only he knows what it is worth.

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