This lecture was delivered on September 2, 2019 as part of the Labor Day Vedanta Retreat held in the Olema Vedanta Retreat.

1. Real Faith

-Holy Mother: “Is faith so cheap, my child? Faith is the last word. If one has faith, the goal is practically reached."

-There is faith at the beginning in spiritual life. There is also real faith, the end of spiritual life, which is the same as experience or is based on experience.

2. Sincere Prayer and Sincere Recognition of Grace: A Guaranteed Method

-"Pray to God with tears in your eyes whenever you want illumination or find yourself faced with any doubt or difficulty. The Lord will remove all your impurities, remove your mental anguish, and give you enlightenment. Open your grief-stricken heart to the Lord. Weep and sincerely pray, "Oh Lord, draw me towards you. Give me peace of mind." By doing so constantly you will gradually attain peace of mind. One who makes a habit of prayer will easily overcome all difficulties and remain calm and unruffled in the midst of the trials of life. God cannot be realized without love, your sincere love. Even the impossible becomes possible through devotion."

-Prayer is a guaranteed method for spiritual life. Intensity and integrity and sacredness and sanctity are the preconditions for prayer in Vedanta. Then, it becomes a reality. We evolve from praying for something, to praying to surrender to God. We also need to learn to recognize God's grace as God's grace. Seekers may interpret the answer of the prayer as an accident. We need to evolve a mind that can interpret and recognize grace as grace.

3. Prayer for Worldly Needs Eventually Leads to Spiritual Wisdom, If We Pray with Complete Sincerity.

-Four categories of seekers are there: seekers of wealth, seekers under distress, seekers of knowledge, and the wise (Bhagavad Gita 7.16). All of them are ‘udara,’ noble-hearted (Bhagavad Gita 7.18). God will fulfill your worldly desires, then he will give you the wisdom to go beyond those desires. Mother grants our needs, devotion, and knowledge. You should not think that you cannot pray for worldly things. It is better to pray to God for our desires than to resort to other means. Mother manifests in the homes of noble-minded people as ‘Sri,’ prosperity. We get sanctity, sense of sacredness, and ‘lajja’ – a sense that we should not do something that does not befit us.

4. Channeling the Restless Mind

-Holy Mother: "The mind is by nature restless. Therefore, at the outset, to make the mind steady, one may practice meditation by regulating the breathing a little. That helps to steady the mind. But one must not overdo it. You may talk of the vision of God or meditation but remember the mind is everything. One gets everything when the mind becomes steady."

-Disciple: "Is it of any use to be merely repeating his name without intense devotion?"

-Holy Mother: "Whether you jump into water or are pushed into water, your clothes will be drenched, is it not so? Meditate every day as your mind is yet immature. Constant meditation will make your mind one-pointed."

-At the beginning, mind becomes especially restless when we try to withdraw it inward. Divert the mind and senses towards good things to keep them out of mischief. Examples from Yoga-Vasishta and Vivekachudamani are given. We should always leave a little bit of time for our own spiritual life.

5. Sublimating Your Desires

-A disciple asked if all men or women can get rid of desires. Mother replied: "How can they? If they could the creation would come to an end. The world is going on because not all can become free of desires. People with desires are born and born again. As long as a man has desires, there is no end to his transmigration. It is desires alone that make him take one body after another."

-One common misconception is that we can be like Buddha or Christ overnight. We can become Buddhas, but it may take a few thousand life cycles. Right now we have desire. We should sublimate it towards something much higher. We should not analyze our negative thought currents. We should ignore them because we know that the mind will naturally project thoughts from previous life cycles. We should not give them undue importance. Remain indifferent, do not befriend or antagonize them. This idea can be understood as the philosophy of ‘sākshi,’ the witness. Buddha has also given a discourse on how to keep the mind in a state of perpetual awareness.

6. Transitoriness of Human Relationships

-Holy Mother: "If you love a human being you will have to suffer for it. He is blessed indeed who can love God alone. There is no suffering in loving God. Always do your duty but love you must give only to God. Worldly love always brings in its wake untold misery."

-Even while doing good for everybody, there is an inherent problem in expecting gratitude. All earthly relations are temporary. Remember that and do good.

Question and Answer

Q1 - Indifference needs to be practiced towards negative thoughts and negative human relationships.

Q2 - Spiritual feminism: the motherhood dimension

Q3 – The concept of ‘Lajja’ should be taken out of the immediate scriptural context: we should not do that of which we will have to repent later.

Q4 - Those who have reached a highly exalted stage will have only desires that are naturally good for all. Before that, we should cultivate some higher desires and ideals.

Q5 - Holy Mother: "I am your true mother. A mother not by virtue of being your Guru's wife, not because of any assumed relationships, not by way of empty talk but truly your mother."

Q6 - Bodily problems can only be permanently solved at the mental level. Mental problems can only be permanently solved at the spiritual level. One needs to evolve.

Q7 - Carl Jung: All psychological problems have a root in unfulfilled spiritual yearning.