12 Mar 2022
[Mr. Juan Rodriguez asked: Dear Shri Datta Swami, I have a question about meditation and meditative practices. I may not be worthy to receive the answer from God, but I must ask. I currently practice a meditative practice from a Guru that initiated me into a Meditative Yogic Lineage, I will not say which one as I do have much respect for the practice and do not want to give the wrong impression of it as it may serve well for some. But my mind asks, in this practice I am told to mentally say Om at each Chakra and to focus on my breathing. In another practice I learned, I was told to visualize white light coming into my body from my Crown Chakra. I feel that these practices are psychological props to evoke belief and a tool to have faith in. I think this because as a Spirit in a body, these practices involve the mind, the mind saying OM, the mind focusing on breath, the mind visualizing the light etc. Isn't the mind a part of maya in this world? How is it that my soul will achieve liberation by imagining sounds of OM and imagining peace and imagining stillness? Or by drawing out my breath and holding my breath and by releasing it at a tempo twice as long as when I breath in? If God is love, shouldn't evoking and living a life of compassion, loving devotion towards humanity and God, seeking peace and non-violence be a more soul-liberating expression with my body and its faculties than by becoming an expert in a practice? What is the way to practice? Is it to still the mind and not create any vibrations in order to receive the God frequency/vibration? Which is the way for a soul’s liberation? Juan Rodriguez]
Swami Replied: - Liberation or salvation of soul means dropping out of all the worldly bonds due to the attraction in the bond with God. Cutting the worldly bonds by force is not salvation. The worldly bonds shall drop spontaneously without any effort for it. It is just like the dropping of all the worldly drinks on drinking the divine nectar. There is no effort in cutting the worldly bonds because the worldly bonds are dropped in a natural way. You can experiment various ways by which alone, the tremendous attraction towards God results by which all other bonds disappear by themselves without a trace of any effort. The breathing exercise is good for health and has nothing to do with the devotion to God or with the salvation from the worldly bonds. You can yourself find out the way by which such divine result is achieved. I feel, what your consciousness speaks is perfectly correct.
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