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How is Cleaning Done?
In the evening, after one's daily routine of life is completed, sit
with eyes closed, in the same posture (as in meditation) for half an
hour and imagine that the day's accumulation of impressions, impurities,
complexities, grossness etc., are melting away and going out of the
back in the form of smoke or vapour and that in its place the sacred
current of the Divine is entering into your heart from the Master's
heart. Meticulous practice of this technique ensures that the individual
is not adding to the burdens of the past which the Master is quietly
cleaning away by his own spiritual power. We are therefore able to progress
unimpaired by fresh accumulation of impressions.
A bottle which contained oil can be cleaned comparatively easily to
become a milk-container. But how does one clean a scratched gramophone
record? However much we may wipe it, or clean it with detergents, it
still continues to play the same jarring tune. Of such scratches and
deep cuts is our life composed - scratches of disappointment! Deeper
grooves of failure, shame and misery! The deepest grooves of degradation
and corruption! Is it then any matter for wonder that the needles of
our individual destinies run but in those same worn grooves, repeating
everlastingly the same disappointments, the same failures and misery,
and the same degradation and corruption? The cleaning here has to go
deeper. It involves a remoulding of the system to re-create a new record
capable of playing the sublime music that the Master had originally
impressed upon its unblemished surface.
WHEN SHOULD THE CLEANING BE DONE? Do the cleaning when your
day's work is over. For men it means when they come back from their
work. They should have a wash, and sit and do their cleaning. For women,
well, if they are cooking they should finish the cooking, or if they
are working girls, they should come back from work and the same thing
applies to them.
This process of cleaning is to be repeated for about five minutes before
meditational practice in the morning as well.
If you are not able to do the cleaning in the evening because you come
at nine o'clock, then you are too tired, combine both (cleaning and
prayer-meditation) before you go to bed. But this is an exception for
one or two occasions when you are really tired, but people begin to
adopt it as a continuous thing all the year round because it suits them.
I have never found that any serious abhyasi had any problem about doing
the meditation at the specified time or the cleaning at the specified
time. So it only means that until our interest in our own spiritual
development is established, we have these problems.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO IN CLEANING? I find that many people
meditate instead of cleaning themselves. Here I want to emphasize something
which I found many people haven't understood, that in the cleaning
process one has to apply one's will. In meditation we don't apply
our will at all. In meditation it is a question of fixing our attention
on the object on which we are meditating. Now this is perhaps why many
people find that instead of doing the cleaning they are meditating,
because if the will is not applied, it becomes something of a farce.
But because we sit in the aspect of meditation, in the attitude, or
in the posture we normally adopt, the mind having become used to meditation,
it slips into meditation. So my Master, Babuji, used to always emphasize
that when we sit for cleaning, we should apply the will. And He used
to make a gesture, you know, as if you are putting your hand into your
heart and throwing out things, like this, from behind. That is the correct
way of doing the cleaning.
DURING CLEANING, SHOULD WE REMEMBER EVERY EVENT OF THE DAY AND TRY
TO CLEAR ITS IMPRESSIONS? No. When we have a bath
do we remember every dirty thing that we touched and try to clean
it away? It is a general thing you see.
HOW LONG THIS NEED FOR CLEANING WOULD EXIST? Master laughed
and said, This depends on you. If there is complete cooperation, then
the work is easy. Suppose I go on cleaning and the abhyasi goes on adding
more grossness, then what can I do? So abhyasi must cooperate too. He
must modify his life in such a way that it is helpful to his progress.
To remove past accumulations is the Master's work. But the abhyasi should
be alert that he does not add more grossness by his own thoughts and
actions. So this alertness is necessary. And if the daily process of
self-cleaning is followed, then by Lalaji's grace, a stage can be reached
when the formation of impressions no longer takes place, and samskara
formation stops. Once samskara formation stops, then the goal is in
sight. The past accumulations may be there, some residue of it, but
that is Master's responsibility. But as long as we are in this body,
some grossness will always be there.
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