Class Notes from Babaji’s classes in Oregon and in the prisons
October, 2010
The Way of the Rishis
These beings, rishis, came, lived, struggled and survived, and did not find fault with the teachings or the world. How is this possible when there are so many imperfections here? This is what they realized:
The Self is Ever Free
One of the tenets of Indian Philosophy is that there is no actual birth and death. The appearance and disappearance of beings is like the rise and fall of waves on the ocean. By gauging things via outer perception only, i.e., the senses, souls fall into this trap, calling manifestation and nonmanifestation by the names birth and death. This is "passing strange.” That is why Indian traditions state that the fear of death is as silly as a snake living in fear of a frog.
Time, space, and causation have been the three strands of the rope that have bound us to embodiment since time immemorial.
Ego is really a line drawn on water, marking an apparent distinction between matter and Spirit.
You have to go to the Divine couple, and the Divine Word, to enter nonduality.
Be the Witness of all phenomena, not the victim of it. It is the only way to live for young and old alike.
Maya and Mahamaya
Over the long efflux of time scriptures get heavily interpolated. Then, teachings meant to be symbolic are taken literally by weak minds with no vision who have somehow gotten in charge, and religion loses its way.
Maya has three grades: thick, refined, and Mahamaya. Thick is the impenetrable density of ignorance; refined is the intellect and all that it offers; Mahamaya represents and holds the spiritual teachings which liberate a man from rounds of birth and death in ignorance and intellectualism. The Isha Upanisad refers to these three as attachment to ritualism, knowledge of ritualism, and Atman. The first is a dark hell; the second is a deeper hell; the last is the only option for wise beings who seek Truth.
There is a difference between salvation and liberation. Salvation is good. It is the inner peace that is the spring board to higher things. Liberation is something completely other. There is no separate God there, or, as the kids say, "Tag! You’re it!"
Love without love of dharma is not love at all.
In all the various lineages of India they have their Ishvara form they love; but then they also have the Ultimate Reality designated as "Maha," great, or "Para," supreme, like Paramasiva and Mahavishnu. So there is form, then there is the Son through whom we get to the Father, and then there is the ultimate, formless Reality Itself.
Singing and dancing will not net you much realization. But we feel that when you marry devotion with Wisdom via the practice of discrimination, you have a great power for realization.
Some Kundalini Yoga Teachings
If you have control of desire or prana then you control your thoughts. If you don't, then your thoughts control you, and karmas accrue.
A yogi does not react to any disease, and this is on all levels: physical, mental, and spiritual.
You have to be very careful with "unripe egos," or “fair faces and false hearts,” as Swami Vivekananda described it. One of the tests of the authentic teacher is whether he or she does not inflate or buckle under praise or blame. Such a one is steady, sthithi prajnasya.
Most sages/seers want you to start your work at the mental level, but Vasishtha and Patanjala turned some of their light on the pranamaya and annamayakoshas. The Yoga Kundalini Upanisad says that the chitta (mind's thoughts) vibrates due to prana and desire. If one of these two is controlled, then both are controlled. Remember that in Kundalini Yoga there is what is called "shakti chala," will. We are to use our will to get a hold of the prana so as to control it. Otherwise it flows everywhere, taking the mind with it to some very unsavory places. That is the fate of those with no control, thus no discrimination/discernment.
How is it that we only put sunglasses on in the presence of those who radiate tejas (spiritual radiance)? Rather, we also have to be mirrors for each other — but these mirrors need to be wiped clean.
The aspiring yogi, the urdhvaretoyogi, sublimates energy. If mukhyaprana (energy from pure food) is flowing well, then you feel good. If it is not flowing well, your eyes, brain, and other senses do not function well and your mood weakens or falls into states of rajas and tamas. Further, when a man feels good and healthy, that is the time for spiritual practice, not for relaxation and entertainment. As Holy Mother has said, "Those who come to us are not interested in fun."
By the time people are ready to awaken the Kundalini Shakti, it has already arrived at the manipura chakra, having awakened unbeknownst to them and risen from the muladhara and svadhisthana via various experiences.
God is not a creator. God is an immovable substratum.
If you take the body and its nerves as physical only, then you miss the whole symbology of the "Kingdom of Heaven.” The physical is simply a representation of what is within.
How real can the world be when it disappears in deep sleep, death, and Samadhi? Even in a deep state of nondual meditation it goes away. These are the four most important states of relative experience. The formless Reality lies beyond these, in Turiya.
On all the bulletin boards today you see people touting that statement that we make our own reality -- that we are really in charge, that all of this is all our own manifestation. But if you attend one of those programs you find that they just want to route you back into maya via work, money, relationships, etc. These are not real. Why shouldn't my mind partake of my Soul instead of nature only? It takes fearlessness. So be fearless.
The Kundalini is a great power compressed within us. She wants to uncoil! It will not take much: a little study, a little devotion, a little understanding, a little faith in your Self.
Reality and relativity
The girls and boys of the Vedic period learned the Truth of Reality long before they turned their hand toward an occupation. As a result, their society did not suffer the usual, even exacerbated problems to the great extent that ours does.
A good spouse, job, home, kids — for some, this scenario can be worse than an immoral life. It is so hypnotic, this conventional living. Buddha states that the rust of monasteries is nonrecitation of scriptures, but the rust of households is lack of spiritual practice. Sometimes, by going down an evil path, we can see our error and recitfy it. But a superficial life of mundane convention freezes the soul, possibly for lifetimes, into a permenant state of stagnation. As Sri Krishna states in the Gita, “...those fixed in tamas go down, but those fixed in rajas remain fixed, endlessly revolving there.”
Seers prefer the ease of Consciousness to the dis-ease of worldliness.
Brooding upon death, fear, doubt -- these are the actual constituents of the veil of ignorance, also called nescience. That heavy curtain keeps a man in ignorance when he enters deep sleep, and keeps him from remembering it when he awakes.
You cannot get further out than the embodied state. That is outer space.
We are all natural meditators. Each night we go into the formless state. Formlessness is at the hub of everything in Vedanta. It is the mind which turns the world off and on...and off again.
The awakening soul is like a hailstone falling toward the ocean. "Oh my God," the hailstone says, "there before me is my Essence. I'm going to have to give up form and be one with that Essence, of which I consist."
Brahman is all-pervasive. It does not have to move because It is already everywhere.
Seers and sages? They come tumbling out of India. What has America produced? A few geniuses at best, and these only want to make a utopia out of maya? Good luck with that.....
Veda and Tantra
Vedanta is the revelation of the tattva jnan (knowledge of cosmic principles and the Ultimate Principle). Tantra is upasana-dhyan (the worship of and meditation upon deities). When you put these two together it is exceedingly powerful. Shankara and Gaudapada were Advaitists, and underneath were also Samayachara Tantracists.
Everything in this realm is food. You need to get a hold of the energy of food and do noble things with it. That, if anything, is the real purification of food.
Siva is one with Brahman, and represents Kula, the aspiring family guided by a living family tradition.
Inside is tattva jnan and outside are material principles. But from the Infinite the finite has come...so all is tattva jnan.
By propitiating Shakti one comes to realize the Atman to be pure and Sentient, and Nature to be pure and insentient.
Kundalini courses inward, not upward. The physical spine is only symbolic. They asked me, "Is Kundalini energy in the spine?" I told them, "No, only marrow and such."
Prana connects everything together, outside and inside.
Fasting is not considered a high austerity. In the scriptures it is not even listed as an austerity of the body. Worship is the real austerity of the body. So declares Sri Krishna.
Sanctified food redeems the body.
Kundalini is always present. You are only becoming aware of Her because you have gotten a hold of the energy in food.
I often go into the prisons to give classes on Vedanta and spirituality. The return rate of former inmates back to prison after they have been released is called “recidivism.” But I cannot help but note the recidivism rate of souls released from the prison of this body, this world -- millions of souls returning here again and again. Lord Buddha stated, "Architect of maya, I have seen you. Now I will not build anymore houses -- not of wood, or stone, or flesh and bone, nor of clever conception."
Getting A Hold Of Prana
Get a hold of the thread of food, tie that to the string of mukhyaprana, and tie the mukhyaprana to the rope of subtle prana. Then pull up that rope and use it to escape from your self-constructed tower of bondage and ignorance called the restless mental complex.
It would be good to start with pure food, but the purity of your own mind is the most essential element.
When your moods are consistently bad, and you have karmas coming up that you cannot fathom, then begin at the starting point: begin with your food and with its conscious ingestion.
1. take food consciously and bless it with mantra.
2. use that energy to start and continue a spiritual practice.
By degrees this practice will take you to "I and my Father are One." This is classic yoga. You want to get a hold of your prana. You have so many nerves in your body that, tied together, they could stretch around the world. But inside those nerves are subtle nerves that doctors and scientists cannot detect. It is through these that we can raise our arms, raise our thoughts, etc. Tie these together and they will reach from here to Vaikuntha and back!
Prana is food-based, then mind-based. You want to control this? Then you have to figure out the cause of your thought. It is desire. So either transcend the desire, fulfill it, or squelch it, as per your abilities.
Listen to the teachings with an attitude that all words are sacred. Take notes and then take them back home and contemplate them. Raise your consciousness to a higher level in this practice by activating your real understanding. Do not leave it only at the intellectual level. Raise Mother (manifesting as prana and Intelligence) up to higher and higher centers; then this energy turns into tejas. Listen to a story that makes this all simple and humorous:
A man imprisoned in a high tower by a king got a message to his wife instructing her to bring a long thread, string, and a rope, along with a beetle and some honey. He then told her to tie the thread to the leg of the beetle and spread honey on its antennae, then place it facing straight up to the man's window at the top of the tower. The beetle followed the scent of the honey and thus carried the thread to the man. Next, he told his wife to tie the string to her end of the thread. He pulled the thread until he reached the string. She tied the rope to the string, and he pulled on the string until he reached the rope. Attaining the rope, he liberated himself.
Kundalini Shakti is very subtle, and we have forgotten Her. The thread is one's food. Westerners have not gotten a sense of the sacredness of food yet. A few of them think it means organics, or fasting, etc. Those are minor steps. Bringing one’s focused awareness to all that one eats by the concentrated mind steeped in spiritual practice is the first major step. And food means what is taken in through the mouth, to be sure, but also what is ingested into the mind.