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There is no need to fight with the mind. There is a smooth relaxed way. Thoughts mostly have to be tackled with thoughts first. When you watch your thoughts do not put too much concentration between the eyebrows. Just relax. In a relaxed attitude you will watch your thoughts more easily and correctly. What is the use of this? Because the Real and unreal are connected and inseparable. The awakened state called Consciousness is the very basis of our unconsciousness.

Fear comes in because you do not want to lose your favorite ideas, not because these are valuable but because you are familiar with them. That is why any fear of loss is fictitious, without exception, but we still fear losing because we have been identified with those things, grasping and possessing. There is no compromise in this. If you succeed at doing this to some extent for days, weeks or months, you will be pleasantly surprised. You will get a better understanding. This is the cream of Vedanta—Brahma Satyam Jagat Mithya. Reality exists; the world is illusory. Illusion and Brahma, the Reality, are inseparable. You are leaving none, separating none, fighting none.

Faith gives you humility and the courage to persist. If you are persisting intellectually you will give up after ten days, but if you start with faith your persistence will be more stable and you will carry on. And at one point, all of a sudden, you may hit upon insight. Then in normal life you will see and understand things better. What is achieved on the inside will be achieved on the outside, in perfect proportion. Whatever degree of peace you achieve within you will experience everywhere.

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If you are genuine, prayer is a link between you and your God, between you and your Spirit. Prayer is not intricate; it is not complex or a high philosophy so that one could say, “I don’t know what prayer is.” Everyone knows prayer, even children.

God is your own, and if you believe and see it that way, if you see Divine Mother as your own Being, you will ask in a very normal way, not a remembered prayer or written recitation, but what you naturally feel. God and Divine Mother are more near and dear and intimate than anyone. Just ask—not out of pride or arrogance but in your own humble way—and God will hear.

You may have done great things and had adventures, but let me ask a simple question: What is the state of your mind now? The results will show what you have been doing. If your mind is restless, sad, disturbed, worried, tension-ridden or vengeful, you have not done much. You have been, as if, digging a well a few feet here and there, but not found any water.

Your very mind, which is disturbed or ambitious, restless or noisy, has the capacity within it to relax and be placid, peaceful. Once you exhaust your mind through various methods, purifications and austerities, the Light shines forth. God appears.

—Swami Amar Jyoti

Featured Satsang in Light of Consciousness—Journal of Spiritual Awakening, Vol 13#3, Autumn 2001.

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Why are spiritual practices necessary? Through practices you become master of your own mind. Then your mind is no longer ruling you. You created your mind with your will and now it is like a computer filled with the data you have put there. You are under the sway of your mental modifications, your choices. You allow yourself to drift into a chain reaction from the choices you have made, the habits you have created, and their results. This feels easy because it is recorded like grooves—the roads and paths you walk with your mind. These grooves in Sanskrit are called samskars.

What you are not seeing is that because of these samskars you are losing your renewal and refreshment, getting into monotony and boredom, doing the same things over and over again throughout your life. Practices give control of the mind and more control over your destiny. Not only so, looking back you will see how you made your own destiny and that you can remake it again. According to Raja Yoga, discipline of mind is called samyam. Through a disciplined mind your will becomes conscious action. Practices, sadhana, make you siddha, perfected. When you are consciously willing, consciously acting and consciously designing your life, you are a yogi.

Without practices you would not even think of your True Self; intellect alone cannot do this. Practices make that very craving for Self Realization crop up naturally. Then you will see that Enlightenment is the goal for which all these practices were necessary. Practices are simply to counter-effect the degeneration that we have accumulated during the course of desires and karmas. When practices have served their purpose, when they have freed us from degeneration, misery and sorrow, they are no longer needed.

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