You see one of the main factors about healing is to give people a lot of space. Our camps/Satsangs here are very intense. When I do, I do it with you very intense meditation. You have a lot of free space in the afternoon to fly around, you know and then again you come and we sharpen and it becomes intense till the time you sleep. Your mind is very focal, thinking on the blue of the GOD. Don’t fritter away the energies of the mind. Don’t waste them. They are precious and I tell you do not be disappointed; sometimes you try to meditate and chant “OM NAMAH SHIVAY” but everything else but the thought of “OM NAMAH SHIVAY” comes in your mind. You are thrown about. How many of you have had this experience that in spite of you trying to meditate other thoughts which you do not want sweep you aside. How many of you have had this? So all of you are sincere meditators. Those who have not had this they are telling a lie, don’t believe them don’t keep their company b’coz they are too perfect! So a person who sits on the horse is bound to fall. If you are learning how to ride you are bound to get injured. If you learning how to meditate you are bound to come across these difficulties. These are scars of an old warrior, which shows that you been trying through thick and thin and I tell people the worst the meditation, the more the rejoicing you should have. Rejoice………and if that’s what I am saying, then you ask me Gurunath that means we should rejoice every day, every meditation gets screwed up at one point or the other. But this is bound to happen b’coz you are swimming upstream. You know there are only handfuls of people in America who are practicing in depth meditation. There is only a hand full of you. One in 10 million who is practicing this in-depth meditation. Therefore, you are bound to come across these difficulties. But the good news is this that if you are meditating, you are trying to do the japa of “OM NAMAH SHIVAY” and while you are doing the “OM NAMAH SHIVAY”, a picture of the goddess Saraswati comes; now you think she is also a goddess, she is also divine but still for the subtler and higher meditation you should only meditate on the subject of your focus. Your mind substance should gel and somehow try as we may, the American word is, we cannot gel the mind. Gel is the word! Gel means when it’s a liquid before you form jelly, it’s all like liquid. When you put it in the fridge or whatever, then it comes like a slice; it’s gelled. So yoga is , in American Language, yoga is the practice to gel the mind. And if your mind can gel only on “SHIVA” and nothing else, only on “Shiva”. (Showing a picture…) This is “SHIVA” , here is “PARVATI”. Very correct proportion. “SHIVA” is nothing “PARVATI “ is everything She is creating galaxies in a regular sequence, just bailing them out like this you know; just making diwali sweets you know, just making ladoos throwing them out . But then when are focusing on HIM(SHIVA) , suddenly you focus on her, then you focus on the galaxies, then you say oh, which one could be mine, milky way, this is the Andromeda, this is the milky way and in the milky way galaxy, how small are you and then your thoughts get distracted step by step and then you see you have gone far from SHIVA , b’coz then you have located your little solar system, your planet, your house in the bay area, house in san Francisco and LA and in your house is your little dog and you say ooooppps! Where have I gone; from SHIVA to my dog, I have gone from SHIVA to my little dog, what’s the name of your little dog, say it all at once, Samadhi, Nirvan, Bhakti, Shakti, Puja.
You see what I am trying to tell you is that when you go to advanced meditation, when you try to bind your mind substance on a particular object.. well, what is concentration? Concentration is binding your mind substance upon a single object. And the mind wanders again and is brought back to the single object. It wanders again and is brought back to the single object. This is called the effort of concentration to bring your mind again and again and bind it to the single object of your meditation. Is this description simple enough or you want me to simplify it more? Who cannot understand it? To whom is this description new? Raise your hands! I have not learnt it, its new to me myself so I would raise my hands; b’coz concentration is usually defined as, concentration is the faculty of exclusive attention. Who has heard of this? Raise your hands! This is concentration but this you have not heard of that concentration is BINDING THE WHOLE OF YOUR MIND SUBSTANCE UPON A SINGLE OBJECT AND BRINGING IT BACK AGAIN AND AGAIN TO THAT OBJECT EACH TIME IT GETS DISTRACTED . This is very deep, you have not heard of this, right? Because you do not know that mind substance is a vast ocean, your mind is like a storm, like the hurricane Katrina, it’s not organized it’s not gelled. Your mind is like the hurricane Katrina. No mind is organized or gelled. That’s why we have what is called Satsang; sitting in the company of a Master where he sits and you are looking at him, you have a connection with the master , an empathy, a unity with the master and when you look at him eye to eye and goes into his still consciousness, and your mind stills with his mind, your mind stills into his consciousness, so in one minute, in fraction of a second he has done with your years of practice, which you cannot get with years of practice, you get it in a flash. Now when you practice concentration; concentration is not only focusing your mind on one object, concentration includes your mind wandering from that object and the effort to bring it back to the focal point of your concentration. This is what you have not heard and known; this is never told to you by your teachers. Firstly in western education they do not tell you what is concentration. They say come here and pay attention! They just say that, right! That’s what you know about Concentration. Then you concentration is focusing on a single object, but that is not concentration alone. Concentration is bringing the mind back, bringing the wandering mind back again and again and again like a traught child bringing it back to the object of your attention. When the mind is totally not wandering and on the object of attention, it is flowing effortlessly, that is called Meditation. Is the distinction clear to you? Even I thought concentration was when mind flows on a single object without distraction. So meditation is a deeper concentration.