Sadhana Jewels - An Essay on Amrit Vela
The whole world may give you support....but if your own mind does not support you, you will not be in a position to do anything in life. Your own mind cannot be controlled and guided and give you the support until it is brought to a discipline. That word which brings a mind to a discipline to support you is called "Mantra". Man-Tra...to bring discipline to the mind. That is why we do Japa (Repetition of Mantra/Bani). Japa creates the heat. That is called Tapa; Tapa, that heat burns the karma. Out of the karma grows the kindness and it becomes Dharma. Out of that it grows the compassion. That is called "Sidhi", that is called "power". From that comes the word "Sadhu" who has controlled himself through the all aspect of life and that is what we call "sadhana". Which you do not normally want to do. How many of you are doing regular sadhana?" (June 25, 1987 Summer Solstice) Submitted by: Jot Singh
Why do we get up for morning sadhana? Because we have to face the whole day, and we cannot face the day without a constant level of energy. People love you for three things only: wisdom, commitment, and consistency. Wisdom is the intuitive nature that allows you to give the right answer by listening within the question that is asked. For every question there is an answer in it. Commitment is the ability for your whole self to sustain its status in projected reality of action. Then people can trust you. Otherwise, it is like building a cozy bungalow on the top of a volcano. If you act like an earthquake or volcano, who will build upon you? Consistency is steadiness through time. Sadhana gives us sensitivity to know, to feel, and to touch. It gives us intuition to touch reality. The methods are three-fold: jappa, tappa, sanjam. Jappa is repetition. Tappa is the heat of central impulsation. Sanjam is merger through simran - meditation on a very slow, conscious breath.
It is said about sadhana: "Once sadhana is done, nothing should happen to you. I said, "No, when sadhana happens, everything should happen to you, and you should come out as a winner, you should come out victorious!" That is what sadhana gives you. It doesn't give you a written guarantee from God. The one who does sadhana builds himself such a powerful personality, he can conquer anything! That is why I do my own sadhana. I have been doing it for years. I do it even now. Some people ask me, "You are a Master, why do you do sadhana?" I say, "To remain a Master!"
Why repeat the Name of God? So that it enters our subconscious memory. Why do sadhana? So that our conscious memory can subconsciously relate to the Supreme Consciousness. These are acts for the Self; they are extremely selfish acts. July 11, 1982
That is the highest sadhana, that your presence should remind people of God. What bigger and more powerful miracle than that can there be, that by your very presence you can invoke Godhood in people.
Meditation is for your self. Meditation is not for somebody else. When you come for sadhana, you come for yourself. When you pray, you pray for yourself. Therefore, it is useless asking in prayer, `Get me a car.' That's not prayer. That is projecting a desire. `God, give me a car.' Don't ask it. Just say `God, God, God.' And if God appears, then say, `What kind of God are you? Don't you know what I am asking for?' I mean, if God doesn't know what you need, who knows?
The radiance of your spirit can be measured according to how the name of God vibrates within you and around you. If your sadhana is perfect, your spirit will be high. If you have forgotten to chant the name of God, you will be in the doldrums. If you become low and depressed, it is only because you have not warmed up your machine in the morning; you have not done your spiritual practice. In the Western world where there is such a criss-cross of mental thought patterns, you must find a way to bring your mind under control. You must learn to bring the level of yourself to zero, whenever you like. This is practiced in sadhana. Remember, you are you and you are not you. You are you in the frame of the defined finite, but you are not you, in the frame of the infinite.
Sadhana is a test of self-grit. If your sadhana is more important than your neurosis, you are fine. If your neurosis is more important than your sadhana you are not. Doesn't matter how saintly you are, nobody wants to get up in the ambrosial hours. Why you still do it is a mystery. At that time, between 3 and 6 o'clock, the rays of the sun pass at 60 degrees and you want to feel relaxed. You take a cold shower, wake up and meditate. Why do you repeat the mantra hundreds of times? To create a stamina, an absolute mental stamina. Without that there is no chance for the life to be smooth. If somebody refuses to exercise, nobody can force him. But at that one moment in life when that person needs physical stamina, it won't be there. Sadhana is what your mental stamina requires. Love is what your spiritual stamina requires.
Sadhana (daily practice) would render us immune from external control. Meditation, too, would help us find our bliss, as Joseph Campbell said.
When I tell you to get up and meditate in the ambrosial hours, it seems odd. Why should you get up at 3:30 am? Because you require those two hours to work out your own mind, so that the rest of the day you can work out your life. Amrit vela naam jaap. Rise in the ambrosial hours and meditate. Be with God. Whenever your mind will be in duality, you will be in trouble. There is no way you can function. `Should I go north? Should I go south?' If you can't decide which way you are going to go, you are going to sit right there. You'll neither go north nor south. That's called duality. Life is a gift of God, and duality is a waste of that life. It doesn't matter who you are. You may be the President of the United States, or a beggar in the street. Whenever you have duality, you will be in trouble. That's the law. Nobody can change it. To have no duality and to have oneness and clarity of mind, you have to keep your mind clean, smart, and healthy.
Everybody has God's light and it must be lit by a person's own discipline. And the glass to keep it lit and shining should be kept by the person's own courage, strength and grit. I believe it. I believe this is the love. I believe everybody has the chance to love one's soul and every soul has the right to shine and every shine has to bring light and brightness, beauty and bountifulness to all, generation after generation.
"What is sadhana? It is a process which you do every day to grow, to be. There is a fight in this lifetime: to be or not to be. Nobody can destroy you. . ..You destroy yourself by not being yourself"
The very thought of getting up at the ambrosial hour is dreadful. Now, we feel guilty if we don't. All right, if we have not achieved anything in fifteen years, at least we have this conscious feeling "Guru has guided us early in the morning to stand before that cold shower and we all get exalted and resurrected". Then we do our sadhana. It's a conscious living. We discipline ourselves for the day "Guru has promised if you walk unto him with one step he walks thousands of steps unto you."
Sadhana means spiritual practice. It is the 10% of our time that we give to God in the ambrosial hours of the morning.
Sadhana will definitely change you. It will correct your emotional imbalances in spite of what they are. You have a sweeper; if you sweep the whole house, it will be clean. That's automatic.
What is sadhana? Sadhana is to get up at 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock, take a cold shower. That's a first condition of sadhana. Why cold shower? Because your capillaries get clogged up, and disease can start, and when we put cold shower, right out of the bed, you go before the firing squad of the cold shower. It opens your entire capillaries, because the entire blood has got to run out to protect the temperature, and thus all capillaries get opened up. Therefore, when the capillaries get opened up there cannot be any clogging, and all the impurities come to the lungs. Lungs get loaded, fine. You start meditating, you start breath of fire, and you clean out the lungs. Thus, you take your disease off that day forever!
Sadhana gives fearlessness and a sense of self, as well as denomination, domination, projection, polarity combination, equilibrium, respectability, totality, internal and external knowledge, purity, dignity, divinity, and grace. In addition, it gives you radiance, pranic and auric Shakti. Finally, it gives you a quality of metal which is ever shining and you become a metallically living grace. This quality is embodied in "loh", iron, which can absorb all the heat. "Sarab loh" means that log which absorbs the entire heat and cold of all the universe, and still remains neutral. That is what Sadhana gives you. When you want to be beautiful, do Sadhana.
When I call on my Infinity, I can come through anything.
Then I shall never be handicapped...
That is how we shall enter the Age of Aquarius.
This is the Age of Aquarius,
in which we worship God through our own soul.
This is the sole purpose of this life.
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