Spiritual Advancement and Its Obstacles

Spiritual Advancement and Its Obstacles with Babaji, No.186
Recorded: 26 May 2024 with US participants

Agastya
What’s the main obstacle for people advancing spiritually and attaining Self-realization?

Baba
The main obstacle is suddenly getting confused with any experiences or visions or thoughts or manifestations, any such things. And inability to have a firm conviction about the impermanence of the universe, the appearances, so this is it. When you get confused, a person loses inspiration or enthusiasm and tries to postpone such things (that advance you spiritually), they are the main base for an obstacle. From that only, other things arise and you get attracted to the scene of the universe, more than is necessary. You can attend to your daily, day to day life, it is no problem, but you get too much sucked into it so you don’t find time, and you keep postponing, and after coming so far, suddenly you give up the practice. So these are all obstacles.

Agastya
What would you say is the ultimate goal of meditation?

Baba
To settle back into the Self, in Consciousness, in the Awareness, because from there the consciousness has come a long way, to the extent of forgetting the Self. “Who am I” as some teachers taught. Swamiji taught, know your Self. (You) totally don’t know “who I am”. Swamiji also said, you do or you want to do everything for yourself only, means the first step is for your happiness. If you are not going to be happy, you don’t want to do that one. Even if it is a charity, if you are going to be happy doing the charity, you would like to do it. Otherwise, you won’t like to do it, you will become quiet. So like that, you want to do everything for yourself, but it’s better you know your Self first. You are thinking about yourself, which is not yourself; you are assuming something other than yourself as your Self, and are trying to do everything for that. So everything goes wrong, heywire.  You are not doing the right thing because you don’t know about your Self. You are assuming something else as you. So for that all the things you do might be wrong. That is what you need to become aware of – who really you are. That should be the ultimate aim. Meditation’s ultimate aim is that.  To be clear of all your thoughts and visions. In the beginning we just talk about the thoughts and visions, but as you progress the mentally projected things and the manifested things, they all appear because they are deeply rooted in the deepest subconscious state of the mind as acquired habits, as tendencies. They are all there. You may not even know what is in your mind’s deepest layers. They all need to be taken out and burned. That is why the tapas word is used. Tapas means you burn it out. Burn all such habits. You cook it properly. When the vegetables are burned, means not to the extent of becoming black or burnt, they are cooked properly, that is the meaning. So then the vegetables are ready to eat. You have to prepare yourself mentally by silencing it (mind), then that awareness automatically comes, the secret of your real Self is revealed.

Agastya

Yeah, Baba, that’s been the real core of your teaching. The most essential part I guess, is that through the practice of meditation we gain or regain our true identity. We expand our identity from being an individual, a person, to being universal. Ultimately realizing we really aren’t a person, but rather universal existence, consciousness.

Baba
Definitely, it is like a droplet realizes it’s one with the ocean. It’s actually the ocean. It doesn’t become a ocean, but it merges with the ocean mainstream. In the same way a person, like a human, who would be thinking the body is me and a personality, then he realizes he is the all pervaded space. That space is supreme consciousness. It is not simply a void place that exists. It’s an existence of supreme consciousness. That is the day you Realize (obtain Self Realization) in Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Then you become a yogi, meaning you have achieved reunion with your real Self.

Agastya
Our commitments and our beliefs tend to manifest into our reality. Spirituality, what is spirituality? Getting beyond our everyday beliefs. We’re taught this or that is going to bring us fulfillment and happiness. What you’re teaching is basically anything that’s in the mind or the world is impermanent, so it can’t possibly bring us to a state of contentment, and ultimately what is watching the whole thing is the Truth. That which is there (present) all the time. When the movie ends, we are still there, only the movie ends. That sense of I and me and a person is part of the movie. It’s it is the movie.

Baba
It’s all done. So you are there still, nothing has happened to you.  In the movie, when you are watching the movie, you are thinking that you might meet an accident, and that (person) is you. You (come to) realize that was not you at all, you are simply imagining about yourself, and you are safe sitting and just watching. You are that watcher. You are that Self. That’s what you will realize eventually. That’s what is needed. That is the recommended goal. That’s where the meditation will take you eventually, when you pursue on the path,

Agastya
You become aware of the watcher. Baba, can you explain the difference between watching and witnessing, between consciousness and awareness, watching and witnessing?

Baba
When you are witness, you just witness an existence, a scene, an appearance, this world or universe. But when you are watching, you will make that appearance disappear, and you become aware that one single self is simply watching. You reach that watcher, you realize yourself. You don’t go on simply witnessing. When you witness an existence is there and you just become a witness, you don’t bother anything about that appearance. So that is the precise difference between witnessing and watching.

Agastya
There’s no sense of I in the witness, and in the watcher there is a sense of I or me?

Baba
See, in the witness there can be a sense of you getting to see something, but simply you don’t want to get involved. You know that is impermanent.  But in watching, you don’t even think that you are watching and don’t even think that you are watching anything. That’s what suddenly you realize, You are there. Because right from beginning nothing was given to you to watch; you were simply asked to watch. This is very, very important to understand, theoretically, if you want to. No target has been given, not even told that you have to watch in between eyebrows, just sit. Do you have to watch the place that is in between eyebrows, or what you have to watch is not given. Because when you try to watch in between eyebrows, you will watch all the thoughts and visions that you have acquired in your mind. As you just watch, you don’t simply remain a witness. Just watch and you will see they all dissolve. And you watch the matter silently, and they all dissolve. Then suddenly you realize that you are you. No other definition is there.

Agastya
Turn off the distraction, your mind. So, Baba, Excuse me,

Baba
That’s what Self Realization, I told.

Agastya
Which one of those witnessing or watching equates with Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

Baba
Watching will take you.

Agastya
It will take you there. And is that the state?

Baba
Because it will remove everything else, other than the Self. That means all Vikalpa will be removed, finished, it will be burned. But with witnessing a vikalpa is there in front of you, without getting mentally involved, you are only witnessing.

Agastya
So that would be like savikalpa samadhi, more like witnessing.

Baba
You can tell that as a Savikalpa Samadhi.

Agastya
You’re not witnessing anything but universal existence. But there’s a sense of, I am. There’s some little duality there still.

Baba
Yes,  they all have to disappear. That’s when only one single Self, the non-duality,

Agastya
It seems like a lot more, Saints or Sadhakas have obtained that state than Nirvikalpa. Is Nirvikalpa Samadhi much harder to achieve than Savikalpa Samadhi?

Baba
Yes, to remove everything from the mind and make it regain the consciousness and again go back to that ultimate Truth, which is there and which is not there. Which is the truth and which is not the truth, that type of thing.  That’s where you reach. You become one with it.

Agastya
So Baba, regarding meditation practice, can a person become lazy while practicing meditation. Allowing themselves to engage in thoughts too much and not be vigilant about returning to watching?

Baba
Yeah definitely, when you start watching, a person is likely to become casual and get attracted to a thought and then get absorbed into the thought and consider that thought as a reality. Then he will become totally lazy in meditation. The process he will not be doing in meditation.  Means the flame is trying to cook the vegetables, but the flame suddenly becomes quiet and gets attracted to the vegetables, but does stop cooking.

Agastya
So is that why some people practice meditation for a long time and don’t seem to get too far with it. They become like the lady that was supposedly doing tapas with Shiva Bala Yogi. I mean, could you just be kind of spending a lot of time in a mental state and not really being vigilant about watching?

Baba
Not giving up the idea of marrying Swamiji. You see when you sit down and close your eyes, others may get to see that. You continue like that for 40 years, but others really do not know what you are doing inside your mind, sitting like that for hours. Simply sitting bodily, you have achieved that, but mentally you fail to achieve remaining quiet. You are busy analyzing. You are busy making judgments.

Agastya
Yeah, boy, you know you really have to be vigilant all the time. I mean, I’ve been meditating for 55 years every day, and I still have to remind myself to get right with it. That’s why I repeat the instruction, even though it’s just automatic when I close my eyes, it just starts. I still make myself repeat it just to get me focused, to keep me on the job at hand.

Baba
Yeah, you see when you come across the thoughts you are watching and at the same moment you need to realize that you have to become quiet, then you can try to become quiet. As you try to become quiet, those thoughts disappear and there is nothing for you to think at all.

Agastya
Baba, conversely, can a person be too vigilant during meditation? Always thinking they need to keep watching and as a result they don’t actually get into the job of observing or just watching. Can you be too busy trying to meditate.

Baba
Such people end up thinking something else. They end up thinking or analyzing or making judgments, and they get involved with what others are doing. Like this they end up and they don’t stop their thoughts at all. They don’t become quiet. This is what too vigilant means. That is why spirituality has told  the mind or the Self is an infinite form. Some teachers have mentioned it as a spirit form. Spirit form means that which cannot be seen with the naked eyes, yet it is there. This you can feel only in the mind, the consciousness of existence of which I have spoken. So when that happens, instead of getting serious into the job, you keep analyzing, “Oh, what is this one?”  “What is this one?” “What will happen after?” A person who was meditating a long time, suddenly one day asked me, while I was doing tapas. He said, Yes, I have wondered, we keep watching in between eyebrows, we achieve watching between the eyebrows and then what? Then I tried to tell him, if at all you achieve just watching in between eyebrows, then you don’t have to do anything else. That is all your job. The rest will automatically be taken care of, like you said. Okay, I sit and I start the engine of the car, I press the accelerator, and then what? You don’t have to ask anything then.  Once you press the accelerator, the vehicle starts moving. Simply, you have to be alert that you don’t meet with an accident on the road. So until Nirvikalpa Samadhi you have to carry on. Simply be vigilant, that is all.

Agastya
Thank you Baba. Baba, what would you say life is? How would you define life? And is there a purpose to life?

Baba
See, purpose you have to add, imagine some purpose, otherwise a thing that appears and disappears really doesn’t have any purpose. That’s what Shri Rama asked Vasistha in the Yoga Vasistha. It seems everybody in this world is struggling to fill up their bellies, their stomach, they need to.  See the fun? If we don’t give food to our body we will die. Thinking we are going to live, that we need to live, we go on giving food, then one day we die. What is this fun, Shri Rama asked Vasishta. So then the purpose gets defeated. In the beginning you think you have a purpose to earn some livelihood, to sustain your physical body. You need to survive in this world. You need to get food, and that becomes a big priority for you. But then when it ends, you look back, (and ask) what was the fun of all these days I was doing? What have I achieved? The same worries are there, the same problems are there, the same mind is there and I don’t know what’s going to happen next when death happens to the body. Like that, one can be confused. So thus, life as we call it, with the appearance of the body in this world, until the end of the body, that time in between we call it a life. But we fail to realize that life, (our life) often we are forced to live. It is an imposition on us, whether we like it or not. When you are hungry, whether you like it or not, you have to eat.  When you are sleepy, whether you like it or not, you have to sleep, like everything you have to. Once you adopt certain things in life, a particular way of life, then whether you like it or not, you have to fulfill the responsibility. You have to carry on. You cannot simply say, today I’m not going to do this. I won’t eat for four days, because I don’t like, I just want to relax. Not possible, you have to eat.

Agastya
At some point we just become conscious. Like a baby, you are born and at some point, you become aware, conscious that you’re existing. You didn’t ask for it or anything, but here you are. And then you start to develop all the beliefs, your reality. You build your reality.

Baba

Did you ever ask your parents before they got married, please get married, I want to be born to you. See, such is the fun, Sri Rama talking to Vashista (in the Yoga Vashista). That’s what it is. Everybody in the world is so busy. World is so busy. Whether it is burning heat, they have to go out and they have to drive down, the traffic jam has to happen and the busy roads and the traffic, traffic, traffic. Everybody has so much of busy because they all have imagined and adopted a way of life, and that has become the purpose for them.

Agastya
So consciousness has imagined that. The truth being, what you’re saying is, there’s no real purpose, because the Self is already full and complete. There is nothing that can be added.

Baba
Now they have to come to the infinite. Thinking they have adopted such a life and responsibilities, or whatever it is, and the purpose they are thinking. Infinitely (ultimately?), it is for their own happiness. They wanted to be happy, and they want to be happy. Now, next question one has to ask, can any of this in the world, in the universe, including our own physical body give a permanent happiness, 24 hours, 12 months. Once for all, it must be there, no fluctuation. Sometimes you feel an excitement. Sometimes you feel you are happy. Suddenly you become tense and you don’t know why this has happened. You have to face some tension and fear and panicking, so many things are happening. (Life) Doesn’t allow. Rama, Lakshmana, Sita, they were just happy moving around (during exile from their kingdom). There was no job, no kingdom to look after, no court to attend. Nothing was there. He was moving around with his wife and brother, meeting sages, discussing about the Self, mind, consciousness, all these things, spirituality. But then suddenly one lady came from out of the blue, wanted Rama to marry her. Then wanted Lakshmana to marry her. She became the troubleshooter, and everyone connected to her came to fight with Rama and wanted to take away Sita. The next one year was miserable conditions, after that also it was always miserable. The world wouldn’t keep quiet. The world will talk nonsense. It will comment. It will torture. If you care for the world, it will never allow you to sit peacefully, to settle down peacefully. Then again, you do some mistakes and you are miserable again. And finally, you want to end your life. Enough, let me go and give up the body. You feel tired,so the purpose ends. But (for) the purpose of finding a permanent happiness, when you find your real Self, then everything can happen. We don’t tell that you have to give up the world, and you don’t have to adopt any way of life. You adopt any way of life. You adopt any responsibility, discipline, all these things are needed. Fine, but if you know your Self you can keep yourself unaffected by this world, under any circumstances. In any situation, whatever happens or doesn’t happen, your happiness is not disturbed at all. Your peace, which is your existence right, is not at all disturbed. You are there.

Agastya
You’re at peace, not just indifferent to the world?. It’s because

Baba
Yes, just to achieve peace, doesn’t mean you are indifferent to the world. Like even Vashista tells and we see in my life also, for a while, I might appear indifferent to the world. But if anybody prays for a blessing, or they come for some problem, suddenly a yogi’s consciousness can become compassionate. They bless, they pray for them, so this thing happens, yet we don’t get involved into the results (the divine will handle).

Agastya
Baba is that just the nature of the Divine? The Divine seems to always be loving.

Baba
Yeah definitely. That is why, in the devotional path and the spiritual path also, prayers are taught. Prayers can be very effective if you concentrate, and with all your total faith, you pray. Then your mind touches the Divine introverted, and the grace of the Divine flows automatically. Swamiji used to talk, when you pray and have faith in the Guru, the Guru is helpless. He will have to bless you. Means that is an automatic divine activity, that is the nature of the Divine.

Agastya
Baba, last question and then we’ll take a few questions. I see there’s three hands up, Baba, how would you define right meditation or correct meditation?

Baba
Understanding the technique, and the purpose. Technique and the purpose, both are equally important. So adopting such technique, then the purpose will be served. You can achieve the purpose. So you understand the purpose of the meditation is to silence your mind, first you have to achieve. Until the mind is silenced you are unable to become aware of your real Self or the mind, what its real formation is, what the Consciousness of Existence means, what Atman means. You cannot know because your mind is preoccupied with its own imaginations. As long as it is imagining, it cannot give any truth at all. It gives only what it imagines. So it is just like you end up measuring the space. Instead of measuring, you need to realize that you have to become space. To measure the space, you have to become all pervaded just like the space. Only then have you caught hold of the space, not until then. Anything else cannot catch the space as it is. That’s how as it is. Ultimately, you cannot measure anything, this purpose needs to be understood. For that purpose only, silencing the mind is important. For silencing the mind understand the technique. This is the very rarest of rare, unique technique, perhaps practiced in very, very ancient times of the  Rig Vedic era. Those great sages like Vasistha, who achieved the Nirvikalpa Samadhi, they all practiced. That technique, you very rarely get to see in the present age. Just silently watch in between the eyebrows. Then you have to understand the need and feel confident that you are doing the right thing. You just have to watch. When the command is given to just watch in between your eyebrows, in your consciousness it must register or strike, that your job is just to watch and not do anything else. When I watch this (Baba holds up his finger), it’s not my job to think, what is this? I just have to watch. I should not think whether this is my finger or your finger or whose finger. What is it or what it is not, that is not the job. Watching means just watching. I am watching my finger, somebody comes, what are you doing? I am watching. What are you trying to achieve by just watching? I don’t know. My master asked me to watch. I am just watching. Perhaps I will know it after some time. We did watch like that and then we came to know, Oh God, this is the idea of watching. The mind is trying to watch itself. You got it. So that’s how (to practice meditation), the purpose and the technique, these two things. Once you understand, you will exclaim, Eureka,

Agastya
thank you, Baba. Are you ready to take some other questions?

Baba
Yes, okay, Doctor Raguji, please unmute and ask your question, if you have still have.  Your screen is dark,

Agastya
He doesn’t have a mic, looks like Baba. Ah. Ah, oh, he can write me a question in chat,

Baba
yeah, if you are unable to unmute or ask if you want to write on chat to Mr Agastya of your question. Okay, I hope you are there, because we can see only the hand

Agastya
We’ll take Chris’s.

Baba
Okay, we’ll take yours. Chris, please come in.

Chris
Hello, Babaji. My question is, thank you for being here. Is enlightenment a recognition that we’re connected to the Divine, and if so, why is it so easy to forget. I think of the analogy of my cell phone every night I don’t forget to plug it into the power source, and every day, it functions at a high level.If I remember to plug in my cell phone, how come I can’t always connect to the Divine and function at 100,000 times (potency) like you talked about before? Thank you.

Baba
You see, you keep your cell phone plugged into charging every day. Generally, you don’t tend to forget this. You don’t tend to forget this because you are used to your practice to do that one. This practice is what you had forgotten. That’s why you are unable to remember your Self. So if you are used to practice every moment every day, then you wouldn’t have forgotten at all in the first place. Instead of being aware of yourself, you got attracted to something else. So instead of remembering that you need to put your cell phone into charging, you got attracted to some other gossip, and you forgot to put your cell phone into charging. The next day, you forgot again. You became used to gossiping something else, and you got addicted to gossiping something else, and gradually you forgot that you have a cell phone at all. So like that, habits, use, practices, habitual things. So somewhere, like for this another example I have given. Suppose sometime you had a sound sleep, and you get up in the morning, you are fresh, very refreshing. You feel that peace. But sometimes, somewhere unknown to you, your mind starts thinking. When it thinks in the beginning, it thinks of some pleasant things only. Nobody wants unpleasantness. But as the day passes by, as you become habitual to keep thinking, you have forgotten that you need to keep quiet. Instead, you start enjoying that you are thinking of good things, let me enjoy this. But your mind slips into thinking bad things, thinking good things, thinking pleasant things, thinking unpleasant things. Thus it gets involved into the duality. It becomes habitual. One day it happens, another day it happens and you forget that you are supposed to remain quiet. You had promised yourself you will remain quiet, and instead you got involved. Like that, years, lives can simply pass by. So that is the reason.  To bring you back to that habit only. We are trying to teach meditation so that you catch up your habit to remain in the awareness of your Self.

Chris
Thank you Babaji, thank you

Baba
Nikki. Come please come in.

Nikki
So sometimes when I’m sitting and pondering the truth of reality, I’ll have this realization, and it helps to strengthen my belief in the the non dual truth of reality and the illusory nature of the world. Tell me if this is correct. I’ve noticed that throughout my life, a lot of the relationships, the people that have come in and out of my life, and even situations, it seems they’re all an aspect of my mind, or they’ve all started with a thought.  I’ve been at a time in my life where my mind is very hectic and has a lot of unwanted, negative desires. It seems like people will appear in my life to tempt me with these desires in the past. And as my focus has turned from those to something else, they disappear out of my life; or if I’m far away from home and missing the guidance of a mother or a father, suddenly a motherly figure will appear in my life, and then maybe they’ll leave once I connect back with my real mother or something. Is this right, that everything starts with a thought and our lives are a manifestation of those thoughts?

Baba
Yes, they begin with the thought, and with that thought, the idea of the I, me, and then mine. That me wants some anchor, some support in this world. So it starts thinking of importance. This person is very important to me. This person is very important, this thing, this property, this position, this status, like that you are setting. Go on setting important, important, important, and forget that you are the most important. You forget about your Self. So that is how with the thoughts these things have happened. So to take you back you need to get rid of the thoughts first. So that’s the practice of meditation. Got it?

Nikki
It seems that as I need less things, there’s less, there’s less people, just less everything in general. Less problems. The need for a teacher arose in my mind and you appeared. Exactly Okay. Thank you for confirming that.

Baba
Baba, Alexa, come in please.

Alex
Baba, I get a lot of pleasure out of the world. Pleasure? I mean, I enjoy the material world a lot. At the same time, I’m at a place in my life right now where, if I wanted to, I could devote everything, my entire life I could devote to meditation. So my question for you is, if a person were to just meditate, the the watching that you described, do those desires for worldly things drop just automatically? So the real question I’m asking, is it required to make a choice? I am going to put the world to the side and just devote my time to meditation. Or the other part of that would be, if I just focus on meditation while I’m meditating, will it happen automatically?

Baba
You see its important, you don’t have to leave anything. Don’t have to take any choice, because you see you have an inclination. You tell that you derive pleasure from thinking of the world. Also, you are okay to meditate. So you do. You meditate for some time and think about the world for some time. Every day, meditate for some time, think about the world for some time. Then whichever one picks up for you, it will be your choice. You want to meditate more, you can meditate more, or you want to keep thinking about the world, you can keep thinking. One thing I would like to alert is, today, sitting here, you claim that you derive pleasure from the world, but I would say you are telling a lie. You don’t derive pleasure all the time, whatever age is yours now, maybe you are 60 years, let us suppose. In these 60 years, if you look back, how much you derived pleasure, how much you derived unpleasantness also. Have you ever experienced unpleasantness in life, tension, fear or scary, any such things? Or for all the 60 years are you only deriving pleasure, you are happy only? Don’t tell me lie. Talk to your conscience.

Alex
Yeah, I mean, I understand what you’re saying, that lasting and permanent and true happiness comes from letting go of the world and the self that you are imagining living in the world. Anyways, I thank you so much for your response.

Welcome. You got it.

Baba
Welcome. You got it. Gross, Ryan please come in.

Ryan
Yes. Pranams Babaji. Thank you so much for these sessions. My question is somewhat similar to Nick’s, in that one thing that motivates me is just the knowledge that all of this is a projection or not real. And a great quote, that I found from Nisargadatta, was basically saying, we’re making a mistake, we take the inner world for the outer and the outer for the inner. In other words, like the mind and the feelings is sort of that outer world that we’re confusing while  we take the outside world to be outside, but really it’s just inside of ourselves or a projection. Can you speak a little bit more about that? Is everything (of) the world actually our mind, and when we meditate, what’s the difference between going inside or the external world.

Baba
See, important first you need to attend to the world that is inside, that which is troubling you, giving you unpleasantness, unacceptance, so that you have to attend. Let the outside world be in its place. So by the time you attend to your inside world, you would realize one thing, the outside world is impermanent. That is all you need to understand. You don’t have to give up anything. Today, it is like this. Tomorrow, it may not be like this. Today, we have an earth. All the species are there on the earth, and human beings are all there. Tomorrow, the earth may not be there, and species may not be there. That is how it can go on for billion years, also. Nobody really knows what it is. If this realization occurs, then you will simply accept whatever is happening outside. Inside, because you have the contentment, you have the peace, that peace is what you have to achieve inside. That’s what Nisargadatta Maharaj also meant. You don’t have to give up anything. You just understand, in the outside world everything doesn’t happen according to your wishes. You get or you may not get. You have this, you don’t have, But it is important, you can attend the inside world. You can get rid of that which is troubling you unnecessarily, because they are all born out of imagination only, thoughts as we were discussing.

Questioner
My question is, I have random thoughts, constant visions, things that I see, and I try to do the third eye, but when I do it my thoughts continue to ramble. How do I stop that? So that I can focus?

Baba
Slowly practice in the technical way that we taught you, if you had sat for the meditation today, the third eye that you are mentioning is what we ask you to close the eyes and just watch in between eyebrows. That is where the third eye is, that is the mind, that needs to be cleansed and blossomed. Opening of the Third Eye means, that is what it is. That will take you to the Divinity eventually, slowly and slowly practice without losing heart. Have always a positive hope. Though it is very difficult, it is not impossible and you can do it. Every day try to sit for one hour and just watch in between eyebrows without bothering about the thoughts. If it is there, let it be. It will go on its own. You don’t have to do any other tricks, or take any rope or take any stick to beat it. If you just watch in between eyebrows, the thoughts will slowly, slowly disappear. It will happen. I’ll pray for you. God bless you. Thank you. Bless you too.. Viraji, please come in.

Speaker 2
Thank you Babaji for these wonderful sessions that you give us. First of all, I just like to respond to SugarTea that I had a mind like hers, but with Babaji’s techniques, I have been able to achieve a lot of peace and calm and emptiness. So just want to tell you that Babaji’s technique is wonderful. Carry on and you will see the great difference.  Now, my actual question, Babaji is, you mentioned a little while ago. I wasn’t going to ask you a question, but the thought arises, since it was asked about praying to God, and God will definitely respond to you. No other option that God has, but as we go up the spiritual path, do we pray for ourselves, or do we pray more for others. As you become a seeker, and you become more empty and all that, to what extent can we ask for ourselves, but more, let’s say for world peace and the relief of suffering for others?

Baba
You see, I’ll tell you, I’ll answer your question. It’s very nice. Slowly, as you get elevated in your prayers, in the beginning, you may have a problem. You want to get rid of that problem, and you can pray, no problem. When you pray, you need to concentrate your mind and pray. Gradually, when your mind gets more purified and elevated, you will understand that you belong to the whole world, entire universe, entire space. Thus when you pray, you pray that every member of your house be happy. See in the house, if everybody is happy, you are also automatically happy. You don’t have to pray separately for you, you will realize. That is the loka samastha, sukhino bhavanto prayer, that we were taught. May all beings in all worlds be happy. If you can pray for that, nothing like that, because you are also there. May all beings, you are also one of all the beings. If all beings can be happy, you are also happy. The highest prayer is, May all beings be happy, in all the worlds.

Speaker 2
Yeah, that we do, definitely. I’m saying that constantly, but the question just arose between the special petition that I may make to God for me, as opposed to the whole. Do we need to give up ourselves and not ask things for ourselves as we go at the evolution?

Baba
Please listen, that was what I was trying to tell. For any person we don’t teach that you don’t have to pray for yourself, pray for everybody else, that is not proper. Slowly, psychologically, we support them and teach them to get elevated. First, you get admitted to the primary school, nursery school, primary school, middle, high school, and then come to college. Like that we teach. If you have any problem, you can always pray for yourself, but gradually, as you elevate, you realize a whole world is there which may be suffering. You don’t want anybody to suffer. So then you pray to God that all sufferings may come to an end of all of the people. Then you will realize you are also there. That’s what you have to pray eventually, May all beings be happy in all the worlds. You pray for others. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have to be happy. You need to be happy. Then only you will pray for all others. If you are unhappy, if you are depressed, you don’t feel like praying for anybody at all. You need to be happy, then you pray for everybody else. Oh, God, you have given me this happiness. May this happiness come to everybody else. So like that, you pray, and you get elevated to a higher level.