Student Notebook
From Babaji's Mainland Classes

San Francisco Satsangs
[The following are salient points from Babaji's evening discourses and answers to peoples' questions.]:

Some luminaries teach only the upper crust of humanity, but Avatar befriends all, not just the wise.  Sri Ramakrishna has the greatest compassion for the suffering masses.

Here, in Bhurloka, the physical realm, we are working against the odds.  That is why people come here -- to become masters of freedom.  "If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere"...."it" meaning gain your freedom, moksha/mukti.

If one only reminds the soul about its true nature from time to time, one may be surprised how fast it catches on.  But you also have to work at it from various angles.

The more resistance you can place against Maya, the more forward power and impetus you will have to utilize when it falls finally away.

All this - all that we perceive - is nothing but Brahman.  So what is all this change and flux, when Brahman is unchanging?  Like the ocean at peace in its depths, what we are seeing here is only the surface waves of consciousness, what the ancient rishis saw as the "manifest Brahman."  One only knows all is Brahman if one loves Brahman; otherwise this manifest Brahman is Maya.

As soon as the mind is cleared, everything residing subtly in the unmanifested is available too.

Self-inquiry must lead from "Who am I" to "I am Brahman."  Otherwise it is not self-inquiry at all, but only further self-deception.

If you are being affected by pleasure and pain, then your ego is at the reins of your chariot.  You need to fire the ego and hire the Witness, telling it, "Be my driver."

That which is called the Brahman Effulgence, the Light radiating off of Brahman, is Om.  Om is not Brahman Itself, but is the virtual simulacrum of It, being the closest principle in proximity.

In the same way that all of time is one moment, all of mind is one Soul.  It should take no time at all for one to partake of the Cosmic Mind.  In such inner communion, one can leave subtle markers for returning to the individual state so as to help others.  This is why they say that the Divine Mother is faster than the fastest.  That is, faster than the speed of sound is the speed of light, and faster than the speed of light, by far, is the speed of mind and its thought.  But the speed of thought, even at its most refined and profound, is nothing next to the swiftness of Shakti.

There is one indivisible Consciousness; It has the power to project form and can dissolve it back into Itself as well, all without anything ever really happening.  This is the realmless realm where vyapaka, all-pervasiveness, and aparinama, nontransformation, intersect and coincide.

Sadhana, spiritual discipline, is the man-making program.  This is how one cuts the self in the image of God.

[Speaking on Chitta Nirodha as a path to Peace:]
Renunciation is not condemnation, it is deification.  What are you going to renounce, anyway? Everything is in your mind.  So stop thinking about things, even acting on them, and merely see them as projections.   In other words, perceive everything as it is, then think and act.

The Four Yogas are described as a bird.  The bird's body is Karma Yoga; its tail is meditation (because Holy Mother said that meditation is the rudder); and naturally, Jnana and Bhakti Yogas are the two wings.  Swami Vivekananda has said that the spiritual adepts of the future will be masterful in all of the yogas.  But first you have to know what each one is and how it is to be practiced.