ADI DA SAMRAJ: But you have to do more than just be in the company of the object of meditation. You have to do more than know of my existence. Do more than think of me. Do more than keep my picture in your house. You see, you must practice this resort. Meditation is tapas. You know, in the egoic mental point of view. (laughter)
You want to just get drunk or something. You want to go going to a trip, you want to close your eyes and think all kinds of pleasantries. You see, this isn’t meditation. Meditation is tapas. Meditation is concentration. Meditation is a concentrated effort, if you will, or counter effort that eliminates limitations; that releases self contraction.
So meditation is a form of tapas, real meditation. It’s not lazy. It’s not just sitting there feeling good, whatever, feeling the natural energies that happen to be good this morning of joys and bliss in the body that come rather easily that time having visions or sitting there like this and thinking for an hour and a half (laughter) while you pretend to be meditating, you see?
If you’re meditating, you’re involved in an action, a concentrated action, tapas then, heat, discipline. It’s purifying to use the old simile. It’s like taking the raw material from which gold is made and putting it in the fire, purifying it, reducing it to that clarity, that golden clarity that is valued. You see, it’s a useful enough metaphor for practice generally and for meditation in particular.
So if it isn’t that, it’s not meditation. Likewise, if tapas isn’t a characteristic or whatever you’re doing at the moment, it’s very possibly not true sadhana, unless you have entered into a unique fullness in the moment which carries you away, then there’s an extraordinary effortless depth. But otherwise, the process is always one of concentration, tapas, heat, self-overcoming, and the principle that makes it happy and even a lot easier, even in some fundamental sense, easy I would say is your relationship to me, your access to me, the fundamental principle, simple principle of contemplation of me, rather than work to purify yourself. If you enter into this contemplation, you will be by virtue of that purified.
There’s a profound difference between contemplation and self-forgetting, and thereby being purified and being concerned, analytical, struggling to get rid of things, struggling to purify yourself by self effort. All of that becomes more and more self-involved. Also, there’s another tendency that people animate us to want. As I was suggesting earlier when I was showing you what people like in meditation only that I just want to sort of bliss out you. It’s like nursing on a universal trip. You see oozing with pleasure and sweetness and mommy-ness, the mother’s side, and not wanting the father’s side, not wanting the demand of the tapas, the requirement to grow and so on. And both sides are in fact necessary in the balance, in the dynamic process of real growth in sadhana.
And this response to the demanding side, the demand for self-transcendence is a difficult one, it seems for people to establish in their practice. This is very much true of Westerners. It’s true of everyone though. And the sooner you can get beyond the struggle with self-discipline, the better. All the time you spend allowing yourself the argument to be self-indulgent rather than disciplined is life lost, wasted in the practice of karma-making. On the other hand, to become a dry stick in the process of self-discipline and not resorting to the grace of fullness is also a symptom that prevents growth. Analytical, mental, rather solid tendency and so forth, prevents growth, even though it may seem to be serious. So you can’t win. (laughter) You see, sadhana not about winning. Sadhana is about resort, surrender, receiving of gifts, responding to them. It’s an ordeal. It becomes more and more artful. It is its own reward. In other words, it is self-authenticating. It authenticates itself.