1. UK 78- 53 Gururaj. Children in the crèche - ah such fun. Oh Sammy. Lovely boy. Beautiful. Lovely isn't he? Thank you Sammy. I wonder if anyone has got a pen. Oh, people don't carry pens around. Never mind, so I'll keep it in here. Sorry. Questions. Questioner. Guruji, could you just clear up a point about experiences in meditation which we started yesterday? What do we tell people who have very violent experiences in meditation and extraordinary visions? Gururaj. Well, lovely question. Now let us first, let us first think about what an experience is, who is the experiencer, what constitutes an experience, and why one has an experience? Good. Firstly, an experience is an accumulation of things that has happened to oneself, not necessarily in this life but perhaps many, many ages ago. Now experiences have no tangible value, it is something intangible and contained within the mind of man as impressions. There comes a time because of association of ideas or by any other form of stimuli that these experiences can come to the fore. And when experiences come to the fore or comes to the conscious level of the mind then a recognition occurs. Now an experience is not necessarily a recognition, rather in ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine of cases, it is a recognition of things that had already happened. Now an experience, because of the association of ideas or other forms of stimuli can take many forms. There could be diverse experiences which could come together and form a third experience, like hydrogen and oxygen, two different elements altogether and the combination of which creates a third element which we know as water. So many people attach some importance to an experience, which is quite natural. Now experiences could be intense and experiences could be not so intense. But in the experience that is stirred up and that is brought to the conscious level of the mind, it necessarily has to stem from the subconscious level of the mind, where those experiences exist in seed form. In other words, the experience exists in the subconscious mind in a seed form and when it comes to the conscious mind, it comes in the grown form. What this means that the experience has been there all the time in an involved state and when it comes to the conscious level, it is in an evolved state. Fine. Now the validity of an experience lies in how we can recognise it and correlate it with other experiences we might have had. The reason why you recognise a dog as a dog, is because you have known a dog before, association of ideas. And because of its similarity or smilar-ness you say, 'This is a dog,' 'This is a cat', observing the dog or the cat. And I believe there is a parrot here too. Goes to show that you have known a dog, you have known a cat, and you have known a parrot. Now if you had not known any of these things, be they tangible or intangible, your conscious mind would be incapable of interpreting it to be what it is. For a person that might be living, a primitive person that might be living, say

2. UK 78- 53 somewhere in Central Africa, to him - if you read that lovely book, which I did as a schoolboy, 'King Solomon's Mines' - you remember the incidences where a person is destroyed from a distance by means of a gun and to them it was a miracle because they had not known it before. It was beyond their range of past experiences. Or the removal of a false eye and putting it down there to make the workers work saying 'Look, this eye it is watching you people'. Okay. Now those primitive people, not having had any knowledge or any experience of that, naturally for them it is something new, until they start understanding it. So what this implies is that experience is preceded by some form of knowledge. You know about a thing even if it is in your subconscious mind and then when it is translated to the level of the conscious mind, you have the recognition of what it is. Now the conscious mind of man is associated always and invariably with his senses, seeing, touching, smelling, feeling, hearing. So when the experience of whatever subtle nature it is, comes to the conscious level, it is also at the same time connected with one of his senses. So in the experience the mind has, it would experience pain. And if it experiences pain, the sense of touch is more dominant. When it experiences a vision, the sense of sight is more dominant. Now when I say the senses, it is not only the outer senses that I mean, not the instruments, but the five senses of man. The five instruments, ear, eye, hand etc. also has its subtler counterpart, which are the organs. And these organs - firstly an outside stimuli is sent to the instrument, the instrument passes it on to the organ and the organ in turn passes it further on to the Buddhi or the evaluator of the experience received from the environment or the observation made. That in turn after evaluation, takes those very impulses still further back. And going further back, it goes to the 'i' in man, the small 'i'. And the small eye will compare it with what is stored within itself, in other words its ego self and when the comparison takes place then only the recognition occurs. So this goes to show that every experience man has, is already within himself. Now this applies to every area of man's life. During meditation, during meditation when people have experiences, what does it mean? It means a very simple factor that by diving deeper into one's subconscious mind, or rather subtler levels of the mind, we are bringing to the fore or to the conscious mind experiences which already exist. Now when these experiences come to the conscious mind, it is not necessary for it to be reported there as a film. A motion picture would project itself on the screen because whatever is in the frame or on the film would be reproduced exactly as it is in a larger scale on the cinema screen. The mind does not work that way. Because of all the various kinds of experiences that constitutes man's ego self, or the 'i' within oneself and because of the intellect that has the weighing ability, it can take a particular experience and project it on the conscious mind in a totally different way. Say a man has the experience of being bitten by a dog. Now when that experience or that impression of the bite of the dog, that pain, when it is transmitted

3. UK 78- 53 to the conscious mind, it would necessarily not be transmitted in the form of a dog biting you. What is transmitted to the conscious mind is the pain that is felt, the impression of the pain that is stored within, that is transmitted. Now that pain that is felt by the dog biting you, can go on the screen of the conscious mind in various different ways, depending upon which impressions or associations of ideas are at that moment to the fore. So that bite of the dog, that pain, can be experienced as something burning you. So what is transmitted, and this is to be remembered, is not the actual happening, but the impression that is left by the happening, be it pain or pleasure, be it love or hate, or any of those things which colour the transmittance of the experience. And the coloration or disfiguration or sublimation of that past experience is very dependent upon the present state of a man's mind. So when a person has, say, a very beautiful vision, like one of our initiates at the first time of initiation, having been for a lifetime associated with the Catholic religion, at her first initiation she experienced and saw a vision, very vividly of the Madonna and Child. Fine. Now her entire experience in this lifetime, or perhaps previous lifetimes have been connected to that kind of worship. And the vision seen was a picturised translation of the emotion that was felt, or the impression that was within the ego self of this person. Good. Now let us assume that this very person was not in the circumstances she is now in as a nun. Say for example, she was doing something else, now that very impression could be projected in vision form of herself cuddling her own child, very lovingly. So what I am trying to ill ustrate is this, that the impression that is deep seated within oneself can manifest itself in different forms according to your present situation and environment. So if a person now has a horrific vision or experience, it does not matter. The beautiful experience is just as valid as the ugly experience. What is brought to the fore is but the impression. Now the conscious mind, as we always say is such a cunning animal, that it could turn a past good experience and project it to the conscious level of thinking into an ugly experience. Good. Say you have a vision of a demon chasing you, you have a vision of a demon chasing you in this experience. If you are capable of going to the root cause of that experience, it might well have been that a robber was chasing a person to rob that person and you witnessed that scene. You witnessed that scene, you might have participated in stopping the robber robbing the man, but whatever the case might have been, it had left a deep impression upon your mind. And because of that deep impression and unfathoming the deeper layers of the mind, it manifested itself as if the demon is chasing you. In other words, a bad force is chasing you. You see how simple it is how the mind associates itself with the various factors involved within the particular situation.

4. UK 78- 53 If you are going through a period where you are feeling very, very fearful of something, that very fear, the impression of that fear that one has stored up within oneself, can be experienced through dream or vision or whatever in a fearful situation which would have nothing to do with the original impression. So the mind, the ego self of man acts as a negative of the picture, but this negative of the picture does not reproduce itself as it is, but it is disfigured, perhaps discoloured or enhanced or sublimated according to the present circumstances man is in. Good. Now this is the basis of all the visions, the colours, the horrific experiences and various things that a person experiences and they are not important. They have no importance at all. The beautiful pleasurable feeling you have in meditation, it is only caused by diving to a certain level of the mind where the impressions of pleasurable experiences are stored. And that is just being projected to the conscious level and you feel very pleasant about it. Good. You have an experience which is not nice, the same procedure is happening, where after you come to the surface, you say, 'Oh that was not a nice experience'. Good. Now what is important is this, not the good or bad experience, that is not important at all, the important thing is this that you ar e withdrawing from your egoself the good as well as the bad. You are cleansing that egoself of all those impressions and by cleansing, ridding the mind of all those impressions, good or bad, you are refining the individual self and that is how man reaches the universal self. It is good to have these experiences during meditation. It is good in the sense without suffering you are getting rid of the impressions instead of having to live out those experiences in practical daily life where it could become so, so painful. So meditation is the easy way of cleansing oneself of Samskaras, of all those impressions that have gathered there in the egoself of man. It is like performing an operation, but first using an anaesthetic, so it does not hurt. But if the operati on were performed without the use of an anaesthetic, the cut would be very, very painful. So we are glad, we are glad to be able to meditate, whereby the dirt of the mind, the dirt in the ego self is cleansed away in a most painless way. So once we come out of meditation, we feel that 'Well, I had the experience but it was unreal. It does not affect my daily living' . Now as these experiences come out and as these things are dissolved, life becomes more and more lighter. The burden that one carries becomes lighter and lighter. And therefore I always say 'The path to joyousness is also joyful' if man recognises that 'I'm washing away the dirt, I’m washing away the dirt.' Good. And you do it by yourself, you do not need to go to the Laundromat. You see the mechanics of it. So whatever experience one has during meditation, is not important enough to worry about, but it is important enough to feel happy about, for a beautiful cleansing is taking place and in spite of the horrific experience you might have had, you still feel a beautiful lightness in you because you recognise, you understand, you have the perspective to understand that I have cleaned some dirt away.

5. UK 78- 53 Now good experiences or bad experiences in meditation could be compared to dreaming and any psychologist will tell you that dreaming is very important in man's life. It is a release, it is a release mechanism. The nightmares are just as important as pleasant dreams. But those nightmares and dreams, although also regulated, remain beyond our control. In meditation there is some measure of control, because in meditation the vibration is set up within us, the sound we use, our mantra we use, which is based entirely upon our own vibration, will tackle the area which needs to be tackled most. It goes to the spot, to the proper spot of the problem and starts treating the mind at where it should be treated. In other words, proper direct, correct diagnosis takes place and with the shedding off of that which is unnecessary to the ego self, one progresses on the path of evolution. Now some people see beautiful colours, radiant colours, luminous colours, those colours that could never be seen by the eyes. The luminosity is so intense that you just feel within yourself that you are viewing those colours from a different dimension. They belong to a different dimension. Fine. What has happened there, that you have reached certain deeper levels of the mind where the subtle energies exist or can be cognised by our conscious mind only in the form of colour. So they are valuable, they are reassuring to some people that they have reached certain deeper levels of the mind where these experiences are had. Same thing applies with sound. As you continue with your mantra, - I have explained this before, but it's worth explaining again - I'm speaking to Teachers. Good. Now the mantra is conceived of, c onceived at a very, very subtle level, the subtlest level that constitutes you. That is the area where the sound is heard by the Teacher. Now it is not heard by his ordinary ears - ordinary ears are incapable of hearing them - but these sounds are heard by his subtle self. And that subtle self in the process of meditation reaches the most subtlest level of himself as well as, because he has focussed his attention upon a particular person, his, the Guru's subtle self reaches the area of the subtlest level of the Initiate and there the impulse is heard. But now this has to be brought to the grosser level. So we go back to the analogy of the ice cream cone, where the sound, the vibration, the impulse is picked up at that fine level and brought to the grosser level, where the mantra can become speakable and audible. So when that mantra is given to your Initiate, that Initiate will necessarily have to start at the grosser level of his vibrations and as he becomes more and more established in his meditation then the meditator will feel the subtler and subtler aspects of his mantra. And as he begins to feel the subtler and subtler aspects of his mantra, it means that he is reaching the subtler and subtler and deeper and deeper levels of his mind, until the time comes when the mind does not exist anymore and he exists in being. Now many could have glimpses of this, but the whole idea is to make this a constant reality. And when man reaches that state of constant reality, not glimpses of reality, of constant reality, when he lives that, then he becomes a self-realised man. Then he becomes a self-realised man. Good. So the mantra is taken at its grossest level and

6. UK 78- 53 steadily, surely, and very safely he reaches the deeper level of himself. And the deeper he goes, the more profound his experience becomes, because at the deeper level of the mind, at the more and more subtler level of the mind, the greater joy there is, real joy, bliss. I am not talking of pleasure, I'm talking of bliss which is something that exists by itself. Pleasure has to have a stimulus. Pleasure has to be stimulated from the inside or from the outside. Bliss is self-existent and as man keeps on with his meditation with regularity, he goes deeper and deeper and reaches the area of greater and greater and greater bliss until he becomes the bliss himself. For the ego self has now become totally transparent and all the dirt has been washed away through this very simple scientific process. Now experience of these various things in meditation, these flashy experiences are not necessary at all. These flashy experiences are not necessary at all because the progress is still being made. With the continual use of the mantra, you are going to deeper and deeper levels of the mind. It is like dreaming. Every person except the realised man dreams every night. Everyone dreams every night and there are dreams upon dreams upon dreams. And it has been proven by Scientists in R.E.M sleep that if these dreams are disturbed when they observe the movement of the eyes and wake up the person, if these dreams are continually disturbed over a period of time, that person could be led to insanity. So therefore as I have said before that dreams are release mechanisms. So every person dreams to release some of the impressions that the person has gathered and that is part and parcel of his evolution. Man cannot stand still. Even while he is sleeping, there is a part of him that is forever wanting, striving, forcing itself to go further and further and further. Now although every person dreams every night, it is not all people that could remember their dreams. We say 'Oh, I did not dream last night', but you have. The thing is that they were not vivid enough for you to remember them. The sam e thing happens in meditation, that if you, while you are meditating and going to the deeper levels of the mind and those experiences do not come to the conscious level, it does not mean you have not reached the deeper levels. Like in dream, you do not remember the dream, so, likewise in meditation, going to the deeper levels of the mind, you do not remember the experiences because they have not been brought to the conscious level. So when a person does not have any experience during meditation, he must never feel that no progress has been made, the progress is there. Now how does one measure that some progress has been made? It is not the half an hour in the morning or the half an hour in the evening, the one hour of meditation or hour and a half of meditation that is so important as far as one's practical living is concerned. These are devices, techniques, instruments to make the twenty-three hours better in our daily living. That is important.

7. UK 78- 53 A man came to our centre in Cape Town, I don't know if I quoted this story. He says 'Guruji, I sit down meditating morning and evening, but just nothing seems to happen, nothing happens'. So we started talking. And if any of you do come to Capetown, please do come, a personal invitation to all of you. Okay. The first thing we do is, the first thing we do is, oh, sit down and even here those who have seen me and they would sit on the edge of their chairs and I would say 'Come, come, relax, sit back'. So you know, we sit down and relax. And of course one of the girls makes a cup of tea. We have tea together and while sipping, we chat because the relationship between guru and chela is not the relationship between doctor and patient. No. no, no, no. No, that's too stiff and starchy collars. No here is a deep relationship, a friendship, a flow from heart to heart. So we sit down, sipping tea and he says 'Guruji, I, I, you know, I meditate everyday and I have no experiences at all in my meditation. And as we chat, the subject was led from one point to the other. I say 'How are things at home, how's the Missus’ He says 'Oh, she's fine now, you know.' I say 'Good. What do you mean by that?' He says 'Oh, you know I used to get so irritable with her. And she used to get so irritable with me but now it just doesn't seem to matter and the irritation is normally turned into laughter'. I said 'Lovely. Children?' He says 'Y ou know before, we manage to reach home with the radio blaring and what you call those new style records, jazz', - something like that. They call it songs, I call it noise - 'that used to disturb me so much. But here I come home from the office so tired and I walk into the home and I hear all he noise'. I say 'Have they stopped playing that? He says 'No, they still keep on playing it, but I don't take any notice of it anymore'. I say 'How's things at work?' He says - now this is a selling organisation, importers, distributors, and he is a assistant sales manager - he says 'You know that sales manager of mine, there was not a single morning when I did not feel like punching him in the nose, always finding fault and I work so bloomin hard. But now you know he might shout, I let him shout. I think that well it's his nature to shout. I will just do my duty, the best I can and that's that. So it doesn't affect me any more.' I asked him 'What about your sales force?' He says 'Oh, I used to get wild with m, you know, if they don't bring in their quotas. Everyone has a quota and he's got to fulfil his quota. If one salesman does not fulfil his quota then I call him in and I have a nice chat instead of shouting, you know, it doesn't help'. 'Ah,' I say 'Some realisation has dawned'. 'It doesn't help shouting, so I call him in and have a nice chat and we examine the area. We go through the charts and look at - A B C Stores, you know last year in July you know bought five thousand Rands worth of goods and this year we got three thousand Rand order for the month, two thousand less. I try and examine why. Is there a competitor offering at a cheaper price or is the competitor giving better service perhaps? Or perhaps are you lax or, not really pushing the product properly? Things like that.

8. UK 78- 53 And then like that I discuss with my sales force. Any everyone is happy and my sales have gone up.' Then I say to him - I nearly said you bloody fool (General laughter) but I didn't want to use the words - so I say ‘Is meditation helping you really?' We examined so many areas of your life, your work, your children, your wife. Then we talked about his friends, associates, his clubs, all those things we discussed and in every area there was some improvement. And the reason why there was some improvement because there was some improvement within himself, through meditation. So experiences are not necessary. So when you have people, your Initiates coming to you and discussing their experiences, listen to them and give the explanation that is necessary that there is something happening within you, something very beautiful is happening within you, where all this dirt is being dissolved, not stirred up. That is what some other organisations do. They beat the carpet and the dust settles back on the carpet. What a waste of time. We dissolve, yes, we use our powerful solvent. Good. Is that what it’s called? Give these explanations and they will know what the value is of our system of meditation, which is personalised, individualised, based on your own vibration. And that very given to your Initiates come with great spiritual force and power, great spiritual force and power that is timeless and ageless, limitless. Use it well, that's all the guru can say, for your happiness is my happiness. What do I live for? What do I need anything for? I live to bring this word of love and joy, and you as Teachers are helping to spread the word of Divinity. I am only a channel, a bag of flesh, bones and blood. The place where I come from there's differences in blood, red blood, white blood, black blood, that's not important. That's not important. What is important is humanity, and the more we can bring joy, the better the understanding you can bring to people, the better it is for us too. Oh yes. Like our old analogy, that when you water the garden, the water firsts cleanses the hosepipe before the water reaches the flowers, before the water reaches the garden. Yes. So in helping, we are helped ourselves. We evolve faster by giving people this understanding. Does Mr. Wood think that we are schoolchildren? Yes, that's how it works. So the Teacher's dharma, - where is - dharma - so it is our dharma as Teachers to teach and if we do not teach we are not fulfilling our dharma. Now no one is asked to chuck up their jobs or run away from the wife and children, shift away from the responsibilities, no one is asked to do that. No one is asked to do that. Live a beautiful, normal harmonious householder's life and spare an hour or two to spread the message of love. If you give just sermons and teachings - the only reason I talk is to give some understanding of things - so what we do in our organisation, is not only give understanding but also the tool, the practical tool. You can explain a person how to remove that six inch nail from the floor, you can explain all the mechanics of it, how it is wedged there and the grain in the wood and the stronger the wood you know the, the difficult would the nail will be to take out. That's fine, theory is fine, explain that, but give him the hammer, the crowbar so that he can pull out the nail.

9. UK 78- 53 So that is what we do in our organisation, practice and theory. So we teach the practical part of it, how to meditate and the proper kinds of meditation that are required. What is the use of a goldsmith that makes these beautiful earrings and ornaments - he can't use a blacksmith’s hammer. For the goldsmith, he needs that little delicate tool and the blacksmith needs his kinds of tools. So we give to each and everyone the kind of tool that is required for them, for their personal upliftment, integration, joy, happiness, realisation, so that they could meet their maker and become one with their maker. So we, as Teachers have to do our dharma. Firstly, if it was not your dharma you would not have taken the Teaching Course. There was something within you that compelled you to take the Teacher's Course. You took the Teacher's Course to fulfil a certain dharma. So a Teacher teaches, a sweeper sweeps, a plumber plumbs. (Gururaj laughs) Yes. Yes, so if we all do, if we all pull our weight, we can to a certain measure, bring some little joy in someone's little life. You can do it, it's easy really. It's not as difficult as you think. Good. Anything else the Teachers would like to know because most of you are going home today. And I could only, what can I say, what can I say. You are going home, not alone. I am going with you, always and forever. Once a bond is made, that bond will forever exist even if either of us discards this body. That bond can never be discarded because it is not a physical bond, it is not a mental bond, it is an eternal spiritual bond. That is what brings a chela and a guru together, a spiritual bond. And with many, many of you, this is just a reliving of an age-old bond that stretches way back. So all my love to you, all blessings and may you have the strength to perform your dharma. You know it is beautiful the way Hugh articulates his words because I know very well that the Sanskrit terms are very difficult to articulate. Your tongue has to be trained from childhood to be able to do it and Hugh does it very well, terribly well, because he has the disadvantage of having been taught by Sanskrit Professors who are not from the East. Just imagine, and yet to achieve that, it’s very beautiful. Nevertheless, there we are talking about Hugh. He is a wonderful teacher incidentally. So well, that's that for now. And of course when am I supposed to come back to England? April. In April I'm sure we'll all meet again and discuss various topics, various subjects. So, Mr. Wood and his kitchen staff are waiting. Can we end off with a prayer? From the point of light within the mind of God Let light stream forth into the minds of men

10. UK 78- 53 Let light descend on earth. . From the point of love within the heart of God Let love stream forth into the hearts of men. May Divinity return to earth. From the centre Where the will of God is known Let purpose guide the little wills of men The purpose which the Masters know and serve. From the centre which we call the race of men Let the plan of love and light work out And may it seal the door where evil dwells. Let light and love and power restore the plan on earth. Amen. END