Understanding the Self: Insights from Babaji

Thus Spake Babaji, Online Q&A, No.169 – ‘Consciousness, the Mind and Meditation’.
Recorded on 14 January 2024 for US participants

Introduction from Babaji
It’s an opportunity for you to stop your mind, to become quiet. You, yourself try to become quiet mentally. Enough of the chatterbox that life after life, life after life, so many lives you have been doing. Now you want to see the Divine, your Real Self? It’s time to become quiet.

Question: Normally people think of themselves as a body and a mind. They rarely think of themselves as the consciousness of existence. You think of the body and the mind as this solid thing, but in reality, the Self is the only thing that’s really solid. It’s abstract in that it’s not physical or mental. But it’s the only thing that’s always there and never changes. Everything that’s not the Self comes and goes, appears, disappears, changes, things like that.

And one of the key things that Shiva said to Swamiji has stuck with me, and You keep repeating it in Your own way too. And that is that people have forgotten how they exist as the consciousness of eternal existence. And Your teaching is basically that consciousness can be on thoughts and the world, or it can be on the Self. But if it’s on the world, and on anything really that’s in the mind, since it’s impermanent, it will never find contentment. The mind will always be looking, trying to find permanent fulfilment, and that’s only found with quieting the mind. And you started today, it was beautiful, so simple, You said, if you want to see the Divine yourself, you must become quiet. It’s so beautiful, it’s the whole teaching. And the meditation is just the technique to silence the mind and to know yourself. You’ll never find it in knowledge. No matter how many books you’ve read, how many gurus you go to see, you’re never going to find the truth of your existence there. You’ll only find it when the mind becomes quiet. Would You talk about that whole subject?

Babaji: Yeah, it’s simple – you see, when you’re watching a movie, either your attention is on the movie, or your attention is on yourself, that you are sitting and watching the movie. And when you’re watching the movie, it will not stop into one character, or one thought, or one type of thing because so many characters, matters, everything has been imagined. So the story keeps changing, the mind keeps jumping and spinning. The world also is like that. Either your mind is in the world with its own imaginations, preoccupied watching those imaginations, so thus is unable to watch itself, is not aware of itself.

Another thing I had told, between every thought there is a gap. That gap goes unnoticed. Everybody notices the thought. When you enter the room, nobody notices the space also that is there. But everybody notices the matter; there is a sofa, there is a fan, there is a wall, there is a pillar, there are people sitting, and so on and on, like that. So now you have to turn your attention towards the Truth, because nobody knows where the Truth is. The Truth appears as if it is not there. That is the greatest wonder. It is there, and it is not there. It is full, absolute, and it is zero, void. That’s how it looks like.

If you compare with the matter, the Ultimate Truth appears to be void simply, because the matter keeps moving in that matter of voidness of the consciousness, or the Ultimate Truth. But that is the Truth. Simply, in other words, we need to start thinking positively. If the matter is moving and existing in the space, that means space is very special. Space has allowed any matter to pass through its surface. And also space has allowed any matter to exist in its surface, whereas seldom any other matter-object may have any such capacity to allow anything else to exist, any other matter to exist in that freely – just like you exist in the space. So now the attention needs to be turned to itself. Means, your attention needs to be turned to yourself. So as long as you are preoccupied on one thing, you are unable to watch yourself. So first you need to stop watching the thoughts, watching the visual effects, anything. So you begin with just watching. You might wonder, what Baba telling you must stop watching the thoughts means? Means, it should not be visible to you. To that extent, you just have to become quiet.

Now, let us keep the watching aside for a while and just talk this. You are not quiet. You are thinking, you are visualizing, and that is why thoughts are appearing. That means you are imagining and the thoughts are appearing to you, visions are appearing, a world is appearing, matter is appearing. And the more solidly that you are becoming obsessed with that imagination, matter appears to be solid. Whereas if you slowly see, if you try to withdraw your attention, your thinking, then you will see that matter is not at all solid, it was only an appearance, which can very quickly disappear. So that is what is happening. That’s why I told, you have to stop watching.

Earlier we told and we keep telling during meditation, “You just have to watch in between eyebrows”. So there you just have to watch, means you just have to watch the thoughts and visions that are in the mind which the mind had imagined earlier. But now, if you can understand that you have to become quiet, you need to stop watching the thoughts also. But how can you stop watching the thoughts? As long as there are thoughts, you are forced to watch. But when you stop thinking, the thoughts and visions will also disappear. So that’s what you need to understand.

The third point in the meditation instructions, “Do not imagine about anything”. You are imagining about the things that appear within your mind. Stop imagining about them. Means, don’t try to think whether it is good or bad what is in your mind. About the world also, I have told, if you think this world is very good, then also your mind gets involved. You think this world is very bad, then also your mind gets involved. Either way you stop thinking. You have to raise your consciousness above the dualities of this world, good or bad, then the world disappears. Because either of the two has to be there. If both are not there; you don’t recognize either the hero or the villain, the cinema disappears, finished.

So that’s what you have to do precisely. Now stop watching any thoughts or visions. Means, you stop thinking. That’s what you need to understand when you are watching, means you are stopping to think. You are trying to stop to think, that you understand. And then you stop to think, and watching also stops. You won’t watch anything. There is nothing else. When there is nothing, there is nothing for you to watch. So that’s all that has to happen in the sadhana of meditation.