It was a very misty morning in Kanha with a cold breeze all over. Around 9 am all the Koreans reached Daaji’s home to get the final preparatory sitting from Daaji. Daaji conducted the meditation from 9 am to 9.22 am. He then distributed prasad to all of them present there and then the certificates to the newly made preceptors. He then asked if there were any questions and answered a couple of questions from them. After the Q&A Daaji then distributed gifts to all the Koreans present there

After the session, Daaji went to his office with a couple of practitioners. Little later he had a call with Elizabeth Denley to discuss the upcoming book. After the call, Daaji came and sat on the swing. Ragini Khanjee had just arrived with lots of plants. Daaji instructed Jeyabal to put each plant in a pot and water them with plasma water to start. Daaji then had tea and went for a walk with everyone. They all joined Daaji for lunch. One Kanha Coaching Centre student, Deepika, came and showed Daaji a school magazine that she had created and requested Daaji if He could meet all the KCC students for dinner. 

In the evening, he went for his regular walk which ended in the cricket ground to meet all the Kahna Coaching Center students gathered there to have dinner with Daaji. They had a question-and-answer session with him.

Q. How was your first experience in meditation and what was the initial change you felt?

A. How will that help you? You have to experience it yourself. How will anyone else’s experience help you? The first sitting for me was the best one. No other sitting has ever come close to it. The moment my preceptor Draupadi Devi said please start, I was immediately and entirely lost. I was completely zapped in a good way as if I was suspended, levitating. And when she said that’s all I did not hear it. She told me I had good potential and told me to keep going on this path.

I used to adore Ramakrishna Paramhansa. I had started reading his gospel at the age of 11 or 12. I suggest that you read this book when you are free from your schoolwork. It is fascinating to read, how he could produce such disciples like Swami Vivekananda. He was incredibly simple and courageous. I often used to cry that I too wanted a guru like him in this life. At the time I lamented that why was I not born in his time? In that first meditation, I had a vision of Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Somehow I saw a vision filled with golden light and his hand raised in blessing me conveying that you are on the right path, continue. I have never looked back. I don't regret that I never had that kind of experience in meditation ever again. Some people keep looking for similar experiences, especially when they have had a good one. If you don't have any experience you are discouraged so the Masters give you some experience so that you can hang on to the practice. Keep your heart open. Don't be in haste to judge the system. Millions of people are following it. So if you are not practicing it as it should be done because perhaps you are lazy, then you cannot say Sahaj Marg doesn't work.

Q. Sometimes even when we try very hard we don't achieve the results. What to do?

A. I remember when I was a student, I would always tackle the tough subject to learn first. I used to stay in a hostel when I was your age. From school to hostel I would often walk back and forth four times in a day. The forty minutes of walking each way, used to be times when I brooded over the subjects learnt in school. That helped me a lot. 

At that time when I walked to school and back, the streets were rather noisy. Here you can walk around Kanha where there is a lot of quiet but you must walk alone. Do not go with a friend with whom you will start discussing, gossiping, and debating. This exercise needs to be done in solitude.

Learn to understand the subjects on your own while brooding as you dissect the subject in your mind. Write down different headings of the lesson on a small piece of paper so that you do not forget the sequence as you walk around. And now you have phones so you can record your chapters in your own voice and go for walks while listening to them. 

You have nice technology so make use of it. Even if people think you are listening to music. But you are all responsible so I am sure you won’t play around with yourself.

This technique of contemplation - holding a difficult subject in your mind for a considerable time and brooding over it will work. When you are not able to solve something, try brooding over it and when you wake up the next morning, you'll see that it has been resolved. Like when you play sudoku when you are not able to solve the puzzle, take a break. And when you come back things just click in place. Do that with all your studies. Say there are about 20 chapters in biology or physics. You can finish it off in twenty days. I could finish four chapters in one day. I used to do four walks of forty minutes with one for each chapter. I could do a lot of work while I walked. Take a walk in the morning and a walk in the evening. It will do a lot of good. That is how the subconscious operates.

Q How can we balance pursuing spiritual progress and materialistic wishes and what is your opinion on spirits and souls?

A. There is a lot of interest at your age in trying to understand ghosts. There is atman (soul), jiva, and what we call ghosts. 

Do ghosts really exist? Yes. They do. 

When the soul supports a physical body it is called Jiva. Once we die, we call it Atman and not Jiva. Spirits do exist. They reflect the lifestyle they had before their death. Unfulfilled desires bring them back as ghosts. They simply take a different form of life. It is an energetic life. They may have a good purpose or a bad one. If you are willing to help them they will not trouble you. 

Many times Babuji Maharaj had to work with these spirits. He was very bold and very courageous. There are some very strong-willed spirits who come together to hurt others. Especially the people who had great ritualist practices while they were alive, such as priests. 

One of our senior abhyasis from Chennai faced such a terrible phenomenon. He had asked me to help him. His bed would be shaken at night by the ghost making him very terrified. So I told him that when it happens next time, tell the ghost to go to see Kamlesh bhai. 

That night around 1 am in the morning the ghost came and sat near my cot where I was sleeping next to the Master's room. I had been, at that time, declared as his successor and was living there in Chennai. The ghost told me, what can you do for me? I simply transmitted it to him and after one dose of transmission, he went away. I told him whenever you want you can come back for this. So you see love can change the equation. Transmission is nothing but love. Spirits are like nasty children who throw tantrums. They need to be pacified. 

One such instance occurred with Babuji Maharaj. He was travelling in the state of Karnataka and was in Raichur. Sister Kasturi was travelling with him. She was sleeping in a room and a ghost came and sat on her bed. She was ultra-sensitive; she could feel it was a male spirit. So the next day she mentioned it to Babuji. He went to that room and invited this male ghost to meet him. Babuji scolded him how dare you approach a lady in this manner. He told Babuji “What can I do? She is sleeping on my bed. I am used to lying down here every night”. So Babuji said, “Don't worry. I will install a light above this house and you can take benefit from it and move on. You will get what you want from it and there will be no need to come down into the house then”. So whenever you need them, If you pray and install the light on the house they will not come and disturb you anymore. Or if they disturb you send them to me. Tell them “Go to Daaji”. 

Q. How to become successful in life and how to maintain consistency in life?

A. Take one step at a time. Recently I saw a beautiful painting. There was a ladder and a little fellow was climbing up and is shown to have reached the top of the ladder because he is taking small steps. Another giant of a fellow is trying to climb but the rungs are too far apart on his ladder and he cannot climb up.

We have a tendency to leave things incomplete. Be it friendship, biology, or maths. If you did something wrong and did not apologise to your parents, do so. This puts an end to the whole thing. I had a terrible dream a few days earlier. I was going for an exam and I was in a rickshaw. In my dream, I went near the examination hall and I was terrified because I had not brought a pencil and pen to write the exam. It was so frustrating. I must have done something like that at some point in my life and it came back to haunt me. So try to do whatever you do with a sense of perfection. Put your whole heart into it. Put the Master into the picture and dedicate it to him. When you cook food, read books, play, work, whatever you do, do it meditatively. You'll be able to do it faster. Do everything with a mind which is in poise. Some people just brush things through. It is better to do one page even if you spend an hour on it. But don’t move on till you have thoroughly understood it.

If you are travelling by train or a flight, how much can you see? Can you see the details? If you are bicycling you can see a bit more but the details will be missing. If you are walking you can admire more things but the details will be still missing. When you are standing and are still in your mind you can see things better. Tachyon particles are hypothetical particles that travel faster than light. The mind is faster than even Tachyon particles. So it has to be brought to a stillness. From friend to friend, from subject to subject, from problem to problem. Try to solve one problem at a time. It can happen only in the spiritual world. The main problem is understanding the role of the Master in our life. Once we understand it then all our problems are solved.

We have a lot of Korean abhyasis here currently. A question they asked me was how to tackle their adolescent children. I asked them if they listened to their parents when they were teenagers. Differences will always be there and they are healthy too. But we become adventurous with unhealthy things such as novels, games, sex, drugs etc. and that is when trouble starts. I suggested a solution to the Koreans please tell your teenagers to imagine for a while that they are old and grandparents in their own turn. Tell them to imagine that they have young grandchildren who are indulging in such substance abuse or wild lifestyles. What advice would they give their imaginary future grandchildren? Would they allow them to behave in the way they are doing today as teenagers themselves? Would it not hurt them to see their grandchildren behave in these destructive ways? Would they give them their credit card to go to parties and buy drugs? Then ask the teenagers that if the answer to those questions is no, then why are they doing it to their parents and hurting them? I also suggested to the Korean abhyasis that it is better to be friendly with their children and not to go preach to them all the time. 

Q. I wanted to ask that while studying how to stay in constant remembrance.

A. Constant remembrance is the product of a well-done meditation, otherwise, what are you going to remember? There is a difference between thinking and remembering.

When we meditate a special condition arises in our heart, be it tranquillity, stillness, or peace. Hold on to that after you have finished your meditation and try to recall it several times in the day. Appreciate that condition. If you are reading your science textbook, simply connect yourself with that innermost condition you had in the morning. If you change the topic then connect yourself again.

When a little child learns to ride a bicycle he falls often but a time comes when he rides the bike and is pedalling, singing, thinking of something, and can even let go with his hands. The main thing is that he continues pedalling otherwise the bike would stop, right? So are you aware that you are pedalling? No.

Because of all the effort he makes to learn riding the bicycle, it has now become a reflex action. It conditions the subconscious. A lot of effort makes it effortless in the end. When you learn to ride a car the same thing will happen. Once you learn how to drive and have been doing it for a while you do more than seven to eight things at a time. While studying you attend to only one thing so how can constant remembrance be so difficult? Constant remembrance should become like the act of pedalling a bicycle. Then you can do whatever else you like and you are still in constant remembrance. 

Q. How to overcome emotions?

A. It depends. We are all human beings and have certain emotions. They won't simply disappear. We are happy with certain emotions which are positive. We also have negative emotions such as a fear of what will happen to us if we don’t succeed.  

Don’t try to keep your emotions bottled up inside for long. You know well that energy can never be destroyed. Energy can be transmuted or transformed in the case of electricity. 

There is no point in carrying negative energy within ourselves. It does not mean we lash out at someone in anger. Hold on to it and try to let it filter through your heart. And through that filtration, your energy will change if you wait with understanding and patience. That anger energy will change into a lot of compassion. You will feel pity for others. You will feel sorry for them about what would have happened if you had lashed out at them in anger. So getting angry does not help.

Becoming emotionally disturbed does not help either. Wait patiently so that it can be transformed. Pyotr Ouspenskii would quote his father’s example whose advice at the moment of death was, ‘Postpone your anger as much as you can’. Wait for at least 24 hours before you lash out. In those 24 hours you would get to understand why you were angry and was it worthwhile to get angry. It will give you a lot of understanding and you will be able to maintain a good relationship with others. Anger, even if it is justified, is never good for you. 

The ventral vagus nerve is the most affected during mediation. When you are angry the sympathetic nervous system gets activated and it sends blood to the limbs for flight or fight and to the hindbrain or amphibian part of the brain. The eyes widen because you need to perceive things better to save the body because the mind has now perceived a threat to the system. And blood rushes to the eyes and they become red. The jaws and shoulders tighten up. If you have the strength you can punch someone in anger. If you are weak, the sympathetic system will induce you to run. 

When there is a diminished blood flow to the frontal precortex as is the case when the sympathetic nervous system is triggered you lose the ability to think. That is why a person in a state of anger cannot think correctly. When you are emotionally charged all these things happen. Is it worth it? It is not worth it. 

I often quote the example from the book of Dr Bruce Lipton called The Biology of Belief where he demonstrates how badly stress in certain bad and violent neighbourhoods affects mothers-to-be. The foetus is affected by the neurotransmitters in the blood of the pregnant mother. Stress causes diminished blood flow and nourishment to the vital organs and the frontal cortex of the foetus. Children born in such violent families don't think much. Their digestive system remains weak. In harmonious families where mothers are peaceful, babies grow normally. That is why in India we send the mother-to-be to her own mother’s home so that she is in great peace. We used to be an agrarian society by and large here in India and the pregnant mother would keep feeling guilty about not doing her bit by working on the farm with the family. If she was sent home to her mother and father’s home, she could relax to the advantage of the foetus. Our Indian traditions are backed by scientific reasons.  When we meditate this ventral vagus nerve gets activated which makes us feel centred, peaceful and tranquil and those neurotransmitters will reach out to the embryo.

Emotions are good but when they are bad just wait for some time they will be transmuted. Let me share an incident regarding this with you.

I was a pharmacist working in New York City.  I used to have a lot of interns coming to us from college to work, especially from Andhra Pradesh which included Telangana in those days. I had two or three boys working for us. By 5 o'clock in the afternoon, they would come to the pharmacy to work after college. They would deliver the medicines to the patient’s home or to the nurses in the hospitals. One of them went home to India to get married and after coming back to the US, in a month or so he fell in love with a nurse in a hospital. His wife was still in India. This nurse gave him a key to her apartment saying it was soon going to be Valentine’s Day, and that he could use it. 

And he came back so happy and excited. I reminded him that he was married. But he found that nurse completely irresistible. He was not able to get a handle on the emotion and asked for my advice. He asked if our Master could help him. So I sent a fax to the Master. In the middle of the night, Master responded saying please request that person to do cleaning for two minutes. I told him to go to the basement to do his cleaning while making a Sankalpa. All these things that are attacking you and confusing you are leaving your system.

The key is to be really willing to get transformed and to see what is coming in the way of this transformation. Filter it out. If you can't do it, submit it at the feet of your Guru. It is a very simple solution but you have to be sincere and authentic about your desire to change. You cannot just say I want this then that you want something else. That will not do. Most people don't know what they want. Their energy application is not diffused enough.

Once I was with Babuji in Shahjahanpur during winter in the month of November. I was sitting quietly a little away from him so as to not disturb him and he said, come here. I went respectfully towards him and sat with my knees on the ground. He showed me the back with his hand and lightly scratched a line on it with his nail. It became a dry scratch as it was winter and our skins would become rather dry in that cold, dry weather. Then he said, “Look this is a water canal”. I said, “Yes Babuji”. It was just like a make-believe game when we talk to children. Then he drew another line going off from that line into another direction and said, “Now the water force is reduced 50%. Do you understand?”. I said, “No, Babuji”. Then he drew a third line going off from the main line. He said, “Now the force is much less. Do you understand now?” I said. “Yes, Babuji.” 

You all understand what I am trying to say now I think. Your energy focus, and your investment of attention, should be in one direction. While studying you are not supposed to think of other things, or other people, etc. When you get married you must avoid thinking about various irrelevant things which can occur, and focus on the main thing. In a family life, your focus should be on relationships and harmony. If an argument is going to create a problem, why bother with it? I have recently received a painting which I will send to KCC. I have sent it to get framed. It is an alligator trying to climb a ladder but his mouth is stuck in between the ladder. You understand the meaning of it. The mouth creates a lot of problems. It won't let you get any further. As long as you remain critical of people and things it will not help. People say I need love but no one can give you love except God who is within you. You must distribute love. If you expect it from someone it will fail you all the time.

After this Daaji spontaneously decided that it was enough interaction for this time and he ended the session promising to meet them in little groups in the very near future. He announced the launch of the first souvenir of the KCC requesting the gathered students to contribute to it if they wanted. 

After dinner, two girls Prakriti and Angira from the northern state of Jammu met Daaji. They had come for the first time to Kanha. They asked Daaji, what to do if you felt sleepy during meditation.

Daaji replied, that we could take the following steps:

1.⁠ ⁠Restart by taking a deep breath and then you will be able to do it.

2.⁠ ⁠You can close your eyes tightly and then gently open your eyes and then start again.

3.⁠ ⁠Stand up, walk for a while, and drink water. After this, if you feel like meditating start again.

Daaji also told them that they could always read a paragraph or a page from "The Heartfulness Way '' and then start meditating. It will create the right mood. Lastly, Daaji also emphasised taking regular sittings from a preceptor. Much to their delight he invited them to join him for breakfast the next day.

On the way back Umakant Kondapure who is the chief coordinator of the Kanha Coaching Centre, introduced Shabumon Subramanyan and Aqeelur Rahaman Khan Asif, who are now working as part of the administration team of Kanha Coaching Centre to Daaji.