Raja yoga means the king of yogas. In raja yoga we generally start with meditation. There is a great underlying philosophy in it. People may ask why it is necessary to proceed with meditation at the first stage of raja yoga . The answer is quite plain and simple. We are now gathering ourselves at one point so that our individual mind may leave its habit of wandering about, which it has formed. By this practice we set our individual mind on the right path because it is now metamorphosing its habit. When this is done our thoughts naturally do not go astray.

Under Sahaj Marg system of training we start from dhyan, the seventh step of Patanjali yoga, fixing our mind on one point in order to practice meditation. The previous steps are not taken up separately but they automatically come into practice as we proceed on with meditation. Thus much of our time and labour are saved.

Meditation may be defined as the continuous thinking of something, or about something. In a sense, therefore, anybody who is thinking continuously of something may be said to be involved in meditation. Ancient teachers, both in the East and the West, have taught that as one meditates so one becomes. It therefore follows that what we meditate upon we get or become and, inverting this formula, if we want to become something we must meditate upon that and nothing else. Therefore if our aim is Realisation or the attainment of oneness with the Ultimate, the object of meditation must be that Ultimate and nothing else.

PLACE FOR MEDITATION: Have a special place for meditation, have a special asan (posture), have a special time. It is creating an environment into which, as you come, automatically we get into the meditative, contemplative mood. So, that particular spot, that we reserve for meditation, you can say, is an ashram too.

POSTURE: Sit in an easy posture for an hour in the morning in quite a natural way. Posture must always be the same. The reason is that in this way he gets himself associated with the great power, the very thing he takes up in the beginning for the attainment of his particular objective. Thus the form which is associated with Reality helps him a good deal in his primary initiation.

The upright position of the backbone, neck and head in an erect straight line during meditation has been thought to be most advantageous from very ancient times, because the flow of Divine Grace is believed to descend straight upon the abhyasi in that posture. In our way or practice, however, this is not insisted upon. I advise the abhyasis generally to sit in a natural, easy posture. Moreover, even those who assume a tight straight pose, are found to give way automatically to a suppliant, slightly forward drooping posture, as the state of blissful absorbency sets in. As such, it may be considered to be more natural even for the purpose of an ascent into higher states of consciousness. In fact a controversy over a point of comparatively lesser significance seems irrelevant.

TIME FOR MEDITATION: It is better to sit in the grey of the morning for meditation, or when that is not possible, at any fixed hour convenient to the abhyasi. Do not feel disturbed with the outer things but remain engaged with your own work thinking that they are in a away helping you to feel the necessity for greater absorption in your practice. It is good to meditate between 2 and 4 A.M. because that's the best time during the 24 hours.

WHY SHOULD WE MEDITATE FOR ONE HOUR? In the beginning, when we start meditation, it is possible that you may not be able to really meditate, even for one minute in that one hour. And progressively we are able to meditate, really meditate, for longer and longer and longer times. Because when we start, much time is wasted in adjusting ourselves to the situation, trying to gain control over our own minds, putting it on the object of meditation and keeping it there.
First we have to make the body comfortable; and very often you will find that people are not able to do that even during the whole period of meditation. They are twisting and turning and trying to find a comfortable position. After that, we have to start marshaling the forces of the mind, the senses.

So if you think over these things, you will really appreciate that to meditate properly takes a great deal of time. And it is only from the time that we really start meditating that our progress begins. So that is the problem with meditation, that while it holds out an enormous promise, it depends on us, how we do it. And therefore the Master said, "Meditate every day." Because by doing it again and again, we progressively increase our ability to take command of the situation.
So meditate every day, and he has clarified, it must be at the same time, in the same place, because then the mind automatically becomes attuned to what it has to do. So it is advisable to have these practices ordered and in a regulated manner. Because then we automatically slip into meditation at the right time. You know, when cows are being milked at the right time, the milk starts dropping automatically. See, that is the value of regularity.

CAN WE MEDITATE FOR MORE THAN ONE HOUR AT A TIME? We should not. We have to exercise some sort of discriminatory control over our meditation time. It can happen occasionally that we meditate for more than an hour. But if it is a regular affair, then we should perhaps keep an alarm clock and get out of it. Because in Sahaj Marg too much meditation puts a pressure on the brain - at one sitting. Because Babuji has said we can meditate for one hour at a time, as many times as you have time for, in the day, but not more than one hour at a time.
It is quite possible for a one hour sitting to look as if it lasted for five minutes, and for a five minutes sitting to look as if it was one hour. It has nothing to do with the quality of the transmission. It only shows that there is a change in our perception of temporality as we understand it.

WHY SHOULD WE CLOSE OUR EYES WHEN WE MEDITATE? When we open the eyes we see the external world. When we close the eyes, we can divert our attention to our own inner self. Therefore in meditation we have always to close our eyes.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MEDITATION? Meditation is a process. It is a process which we undertake to reach a destined goal, a predetermined goal. I don't say, "Well, this train is going; let me go wherever it goes! I will end up in Howrah, instead of Vijayawada, and there also I will get down only because the train has reached a junction or a terminus."

Meditation is a training to apply the mind for the purpose of regulating the mind by our efforts. If it is automatically regulating itself, why should we meditate? We are already rishis! As Babuji said, the whole purpose of meditation is to make a reversal in this fact of life that the mind is our Master. We have to become the Master of our mind. It is only this much, just reverse it. But this we have to do, you know. It is like riding a horse. You have to ride it and train it. You cannot show a book and say, "Allow me to ride you properly. This is what a good horse should be!" You have to ride, you have to risk being thrown a few times, you have to ride it gently, but with total control over its reigns. You must be kind, yet you must be firm.

The mind should be regulated by our sadhana; and this can be possible only by the initial discipline of applying it to meditation. This means that a little discipline is first necessary to bring about the bigger discipline and the ultimate discipline. So, this little discipline is what we need, first physically, that little discipline of coming to meditate first; mentally, that little discipline of trying to meditate on what we should be meditating upon; thereby achieving greater and greater regulatory control over our own mind; which leads to greater and greater physical discipline resulting out of that. Because it is the mind which feeds into the body its actions, its desires.

Therefore, meditation is the most important activity, if we want to discipline ourselves. Because initially, it makes mental discipline possible; that makes physical discipline possible, regulating our lives; bringing order into it; generating more and more mental discipline; resulting in a self-sustaining cycle - you know some sort of cycle which sustains itself which makes our goal achievable. Therefore, without this little discipline, the goal cannot be achieved. So the goal is possible as long as we have some discipline within us.

If there is no mental discipline, physical discipline cannot exist. That is why we meditate; to achieve regulation over the mind, make it disciplined, make it possible for us to apply the mind where we choose, apply it, not use it, apply it - and thereby achieve a 100% strength of the mind, which makes possible that promise of yoga , that a yogi will be skillful in anything he does.

WHY WE DON'T MEDITATE ON OTHER POINTS? The point between the eyebrows - at this point there is a plexus, a yogic centre located which is responsible for distributing power through the system, the power of existence - shakti as we call it in Sanskrit. When one meditates here, one has the ability or one achieves the ability to control shakti as such. The same reasoning applies to meditation on the point of the nose, where we are told, you can acquire certain different sidhis, for instance the ability to see things which you don't see with the eyes, smell things which you don't smell with the nose.

In Sahaj Marg , power has nothing to do with spiritual evolution. In fact one evolves to the highest and one has, one day, to slip out of one's body into the hereafter. All power, all other achievements are left behind here. So what does one do with power? Power is something that one uses so long as one is in this temporal world, temporal existence and it falls off.

WHY WE DO NOT MEDITATE ON OTHER OBJECTS AND FORMS? How do I meditate on the Divine? My Master says, "So long as you meditate on limited forms, limited names, there is a limitation. The moment you say Shiva, he is only a Shiva, may be, with Trishul and this and that and the snake around the neck. The moment you say Vishnu, he is only a Vishnu." So my Master says, "Go beyond these forms, they are only functionaries of Nature. One is the God of creation, one is the God of preservation, one is the God of destruction. They are functionaries. The ultimate principle is that which you call the PARA which has no names, no forms no attributes." He has no form; so, we don't have a form. He has no name, so, we don't have a 'mantra' in our system.

When we try to meditate with two systems, or two gurus, or two different warring things in our mind, even if one is good in itself, we are damaging ourselves. Therefore, bear in mind, meditation only according to the system - which ever system you adopt. If you want to take to Sahaj Marg meditation you should take to it completely, fully, to the exclusion of everything else. We cannot have two Gods; we cannot have two methods; we cannot have two concurrent currents in the mind. It is like trying to create vegetarian beef. It's not possible.

WHY DO WE MEDITATE ON THE HEART?

1. It is the seat of Divinity. So when you want to approach Divinity through your system, you approach Him by His presence in your heart. The Lord says in the Gita: "I am in the heart of every created being.
2. It is that by which the human life, the human character is defined.
3. It is that which governs life, in that if it is there, we exist, if it stops we cease to exist.
4. It is the point from which the blood circulation starts and stops. You know blood is a very vital constituent of the human system because it is that which carries nourishment to every part of the body, brings back the waste products of existence, circulates it through the lungs, purifies and then re-circulates it all over again through the system.
   

So the heart and blood form a very vital part or component of our existence and if the purification is carried out here, it is pervading throughout the system. And therefore we purify the heart, put love into the heart, which is what we try to do in Sahaj Marg . It is, in a sense, trying to make pervasive the application of a unique force, the power of love, the power of the Master's spiritual attainment into the heart, from where it spreads through the whole system.

The Master puts himself, his seed, into the heart and therefore if we receive that seed in the way we should receive it, the miracle happens that each one of us becomes a child of the Master in every sense of the word.

We have to unsolidify our heart, make that rock become fluid again, soft. What is the first sign of this softness coming into you? It is tears! These people meditate, and they start weeping without knowing why tears come into the eyes! It is the first sign that the heart is beginning to melt. Once this rocklike hardness of the heart is gone and it has become soft and pliable, the Master moulds it into what He wishes.

Sahaj Marg deals with the heart, Sahaj Marg works on the heart, Sahaj Marg works by the heart. We transmit from the heart to the heart. It is heart that we transform. What is the human being but the heart? That is how a human being is described - kindhearted, goodhearted, evil-hearted, cruel-hearted, cold-hearted etc. This is how we describe human beings.

Today, we do not understand ourselves, how can you understand anybody else? He who understands himself, understands everybody. One who has not understood himself or herself, can understand nothing. How to get this understanding? Sit and meditate. Focus your attention on the heart, and then see for yourself the enormously beautiful, wonderful mysteries that are there.

MIND TRANSFORMED AS HEART: By meditation I clear this instrument of my perception, the mind. "The ultimate instrument," as Babuji said, "for your destruction and for your elevation." Nothing can destroy you so totally as your mind if it goes wrong, nothing can serve to raise you to Divinity as your mind can. Therefore, in the raja yoga technique, it is the mind that we use, it is the mind that we master, it is the mind that we apply. But having done that, the entire thing is transferred to the heart. As we say in yogic psychological terminology: the heart now becomes the mind. We think with the heart, we see with the heart, we hear with the heart, we speak with the heart, the heart becomes me.

That is the miracle of spirituality you see, that we make the entire existence by regulating the mind, by gaining the absolute control or regulation of the mind. We are now able to recognize the wisdom of having to transfer the entire cognitive, perceptive apparatus into the heart. Then begins true spirituality.

MEDITATION IS WAITING. Empty your mind. Clean it of all its contents - good, bad, desirable, undesirable - everything. Open the door. Be patient. Wait. The samskaras are very much within you. Don't worry about them. You stop creating them. I will remove what is inside you, and make you fit as vehicle for that which is to be put into you, to emerge and occupy its rightful position - your heart.

Clean your heart, purify it, have everything ready and wait for the appearance of the Master. Waiting really means allowing a process to complete itself. You initiate a process, and then wait. Like you sow a seed, and then you wait. You water the plant, and you wait. You put the potatoes in the cooker, put it on the fire, and then wait. Waiting reveals an understanding of many things. A man who can wait is the man who has faith, and therefore has the patience to wait. He has faith because he knows that what has been begun must end. It cannot stop. Therefore the faith element comes in. Faith is what is behind the ability to wait. Faith is that which moves mountains. When I have faith in Him, His power has to flow. It is as if there is vacuum, and His power is pulled towards me.

Waiting has no limit. Therefore waiting takes on, or partakes of, the character of infinity. Whereas doing consumes moments of time in small bits, discrete bits, which we call seconds, minutes, hours. So one who waits is able to be in infinity to that extent. Therefore the Master is one who can eternally wait.

So the ability to wait shows patience and faith. Ability to wait for long periods shows greater and greater faith. Ability to wait infinitely shows infinite faith. So this is the capacity we must develop. Please understand that life is waiting. If we mistake the activity to be life, we are more stupid than the animals. Waiting is the law. Achieving is not yours. When we wait - He gives.

We are really making things happen without doing anything. I don't call God into myself. He is already there. I don't even have to clean myself. The preceptors and the Master will do it. Only I have to submit. I have to be patient. I have to be receptive. The only way of making things happen without doing anything, is by meditation.

THE OBJECT AND METHOD OF MEDITATION. In our system the abhyasi is advised to meditate on the heart thinking of the divine light there. But he is directed not to view light in any form or shape like that of an electric bulb or a candle, etc. In that case the light appearing therein will not be real, but one projected by his own creative speculation. An abhyasi is advised to proceed with a mere supposition of light with the thought of Divinity at the bottom. What happens then is that we meditate upon the subtlest which is to be attained.

The method of meditation on the heart is to think of Godly light within it. When you begin meditating in this way please think only that Godly light within is attracting you. Do not mind if extraneous ideas haunt you during meditation. Let them come but go on with your own work. Treat your thoughts and ideas as uninvited guests. If even then they trouble you think they are Master's, not yours. This process of meditation is very effective, and can never fail in bringing about the desired result.

You should only meditate. You should not struggle with your ideas which generally come during meditation. Concentration is the automatic and natural result of meditation. Those who insist on concentration in place of meditation, and force their mind to it, generally meet with failure.

Meditate upon the light in the heart, as the light of the God Himself, who is present in the heart. Think of Him more and more. Think of Him until you can think of Him continuously, because as you think so you become. In this system, meditation is on the abstract ultimate alone, because meditation on lesser objects can only lead to lesser achievements or accomplishments, falling short of the established goal.

My Master recognises that the abstract Ultimate as an object of meditation is a very difficult one for beginners. He, therefore, specifies light as initial object, the method being to imagine that the heart is illuminated from inside by the presence of the divine who resides therein. I must stress that this is only the beginning, and in fact we are advised not to meditate on light as a source of light, which would lead to wrong results. It is like the diving board in swimming pool where the board enables the diver to get sufficient momentum to take off, and after the diver has taken off, the board has no further use for him.

WHAT DO YOU EXPERIENCE IN MEDITATION? Meditation can be defined as an activity, which is to effect some sort of communion with the Almighty. We meditate on the abstract, the formless, the nameless, because the Ultimate has no form and no name; nor has it any qualities or attributes. Therefore, one of the important teachings of my Master is that God can only be experienced by His presence. And His presence is what we try to experience during our meditation. And, it is said that, as we meditate with our eyes closed, we are able to imbibe more and more of the essence of that Divinity for which we are aspiring, and elevate ourselves progressively, until a day comes, by His Grace, by His blessings, we are almost like Him.
Light in the heart is the most abstract concept that you can have. It has no form, it has no substance, it has no weight. So from that as the starting point, as our meditation goes deeper and deeper, it reveals to us from within ourselves - by the Grace of the Almighty and by our efforts, it is a conglomerate of two things - who God is or what true Divinity means. And, there must be a time, when one day we can say, "I have an inkling of what it is, not because I have seen it, or touched it but because I have felt it."

This is the most transcendental experience of all, that I feel Divine, because I am Divine. So Divinity - God - cannot be the object of knowledge, cannot be the object of perception, cannot be revealed by perception. But as my Master said, when we meditate, and the meditation is right and successful as it must be, we progressively draw whatever we can from the Divine Source, by progressively divinising ourselves; yet at no stage can that person say, "I am God". You may be like God in every way, in every quality, in everything that you can imagine; yet God is God and you continue to be the humble devotee - no doubt divinised to the highest possible extent - nevertheless, "He is what He is, I am what I am!"

Always try to be alert to what is happening, and sensitivity will develop. Many people meditate. But I am sorry to say many of them don't know what is going on in the system during meditation. Because they do not watch for what is going on. One has to be alert to the transmission and its action on the system. Then the real joy of meditation begins. Whether a person has experience or not, the transmission will work and complete the job. But the real happiness comes when we know what we have got.

IS IT COMMON TO GET HEADACHE, ANGER, INTENSE SLEEPINESS IMMEDIATELY AFTER MEDITATION? It is not common, but it can happen sometimes. There can be sleepiness if you go very deep into meditation. When we go deep into meditation, the life of the soul takes over. And so we want to be inactive, and therefore, we like to lie down and sleep, and things like that.

I also have had for many years severe headache after meditation. The deeper the meditation, the stronger the headache. If headache comes, we put up with it.
Anger also comes sometimes because of the same reason as the sleepiness, or lethargy. Because following on a good meditation, we wish to relax and be quiet, and when our friends, relations they come and disturb us, we get annoyed. They are all in a sense related to the same cause. But we should not be bothered by them.

WAYS OF MEDITATION: There are three ways of meditating. One we sit as abhyasis and meditate on the light in the heart. The second is the higher stage when we think, I mean when we sit in meditation, and meditate on the form of the Master, the form of the Master in the heart. There is a third stage, it is when the Master begins to meditate on the abhyasi . And that is a very rare occurrence. You see, such a person should be born, and such a Master is blessed when he gets a disciple upon whom He has to meditate!

CAN WE DO MEDITATION ON MASTER'S FORM? Meditation on the Master's form is supposed to begin only when the form appears spontaneously before us, and it must be natural. If you try to force the form upon yourself for meditation, it is unnatural. Of course, Babuji started meditating on His Master's form from day one. For others, like us, we have to wait till our devotion to the Master is so much, our love for Him is so much, that when we look for the light in the heart, we see Him there.

The second thing is when the form appears, we must meditate on the full from, not just on the face. That is from the foot up to the top of the head, everything must be there. Now when it is artificial, and people take the form of the Master for meditation, they take only face. For the Master, Babuji, it was possible, because the moment he saw Him he developed a hundred per cent devotion for Him. Therefore he could start to do meditation on the form of his Master. It doesn't apply for all of us.

There is a third stage. And that is when the form also disappears from the heart. And I think we come to the stage which Master calls light without luminosity. So we have the first stage which is light in the heart, when people sometimes see the light itself as a luminous thing. As we advance it becomes light without any features, just the idea of light is there.

So in the first stage we have a sort of refinement from the grosser light to the subtle light. Then the idea of devotion brings the Master into the heart. And for most, if not all abhyasis it stops with that. I mean the idea of the Master in the heart; the presence of the Master goes on and on, you see.

The third stage, when the form also disappears, there is nothing in the heart, no light, no form, nothing. That I think is a very difficult and very rare condition. It is also very difficult, because to have to meditate on nothing or nothingness is almost impossible. The other difficulty is we become attached in an emotional way to the form of the Master, and we are not willing to give it up. I think the third stage is possible only when we can love the Master without loving his form itself. I would suggest that that is the requirement of all love; that the love of the form is transferred to the love of the essence which has no form.

WHAT DO WE ACHIEVE BY MEDITATION? The first step of the yoga of Sahaj Marg is, "Try to bring the mind together into one solid beam and focus it." And the meditative activity is supposed to achieve this. We try to meditate on one object, and hold the mind there by an effort of will, thus strengthening the mind by the application of the will. And the repeated application of the will strengthens the will itself to greater performance. And when we have been able to achieve this, we have a mind which has a solid focussable beam behind it; and then it becomes the instrument of revelation in the sense that on whatever you apply it, reveals itself.
By mastering the ability to think continuously of some thing, I gain a regulatory control over my own mind. I have now the possibility of applying that mind where I choose. It is able to reveal to me the truth of whatever I seek. So at its peak, meditation can do nothing but serve as an instrument of revelation, because the mind is perfected, the mind is regulated, and the mind becomes one-pointed and now I can use it for everything except to know God. Because God, not being an object, cannot be the object of concentration. Therefore, no concentration can ever reveal the presence of God. Concentration can do nothing but reveal that which is in its true colours.

In meditation we go in towards the centre, look into the heart. To make this possible, we say, "Imagine a divine light," the presence of light there. It is a mere supposition. Because it is something on which to focus my attention, and train my mind to look in. And when I have trained my mind to look in, it can plunge into the eternity without seeking an object. Because there is no object. The centre is not a place. It is not a thing. It is not a location in space or time. So how to search for it? How to look for it? How to seek it? When? How? Why? All this is simple when we sit in meditation.

EVERY MEDITATION IS A TRAINING IN DYING

In Hinduism, we have this idea that the moment a child is born, it has begun to die. I mean, it's a fact. It is not going to die 60 years later or 100 years later. It has already begun to die. It is like when you wind up a clock, it has already begun to unwind itself.

So, when is death? It is the moment you are born. Effectively this is death. Birth is death. Of course it may take time. That is all it takes. There is nothing else. It may take 60 years, it may take 3 days, it may take 17 years, it may take 124 years. But death is over. The moment you are born, you are literally dead. But, we think this is life. Now, per contra, the moment I am dead, my life has begun. So, that we are afraid of, this we are happy about. Now how foolish it is, you see.

We are born because we have certain samskaras which make it necessary for us to come and exist again, and learn the lessons that we have to learn again. The mistakes we have made in the past on our way, our evolutionary path, we have to correct.

So, in this life there comes a point when we cannot learn any more, when we are saturated as it were. So the soul in its infinite wisdom says, "Enough. Now I have to change." It vacates this body, and if it has to come back again to learn its lessons again, it chooses its next environment, its next body, everything that is necessary. So it is our choice. We choose how long we shall live, where we shall live, to whom we shall be born. The soul chooses everything.

But what happens? After we are born, again this blessed world takes hold of us. Again the desires start flourishing, temptations start rising, and the course that has been charted out is missed, and we are now going on the wrong track. So the lesson of the life is not learned. Our living becomes futile. In that sense, our dying was futile, because we died only to live again. We died so that we could build for ourselves a fresh opportunity to evolve. And that opportunity we are destroying ourselves.

If we think of death in the right way, we should say to ourselves, "We have wasted our life, let us not waste our death." This should be our last thought you see. Because what I could not achieve in life, I can surely achieve in death again, if I know what I'm doing. Therefore at the moment of death, it is necessary to be at least 'be conscious of our purpose and die.'

To ensure that we have the right thought at the moment of oblivion is all this problem that we are facing - Meditation, Constant Remembrance, developing love for the Master. So that if we have established it as a continuing truth in our existence, it cannot depart from us at the moment of death. We shall die with this thought, with this condition.

And therefore, there is no more question of being reborn and of not being liberated. Hinduism says, even if you are not able to do this, if at the end of your life, at that moment you are able to think of God in His Absolute Form which is formless, attributeless, nameless existence, then too this is possible.

Death doesn't exist you see. If I take off my shirt and put it in the wash basket it doesn't mean it is dead, not does it mean that I am dead. Both are still there, the only thing is they are not together. The shirt is somewhere, I am still somewhere. What is there to worry about? What is there to be afraid about?
As long as we are afraid to die, we will not be liberated, but we will continue to be imprisoned within that cycle of birth and death of which we are so afraid. That means one who is afraid of death will have to die again and again until he loses his fear of it.

Every Meditation is a training in dying. Because when you go really deep into yourself, and you come out after it and say, "I was absorbed. I don't know where I was. I didn't even know whether I was sleeping or meditating," you have literally been not there. In a sense you were dead to this existence. Therefore meditation is training in dying. And if we have done it correctly, we should be masters of death, masters of the act of dying; one who can die when he wishes, one who can die when he chooses, coming back again and again if he wishes, so that his death is not really a death.

"THAT which never was, shall never be; THAT which is today must have been and will ever exist," says an ancient Upanishad. The soul is eternal. It is part of the Divine Essence, the Ultimate, the Infinite, the Godhead.

God is not born, He does not die. Therefore, I am not born, I cannot die. All that I see and experience of birth and death are my problems imposed upon myself by my observing people being born and people being dead. Therefore I think I was born and I am going to die. The truth is that my body came into existence and will cease to be. I am eternal.