BABA STOPS MY MIND

 
At Mahabaleshwar, Baba asked me what I was doing at Bheraghat, and I replied that I was telling people about Him, reading out the discourses and messages given by Him, and also sang devotional Bhajans, the latter being chorused by some of them. But Baba insisted on knowing more about my activities, and then I had to tell him that besides all this I was also practising the silence of the mind, which made Baba look at me quizzically and ask me to explain....

I would not detail out the conversation that turned out to be rather ludicrous when Baba said to me that it was my mind which was saying that I was above mind, below mind and the mind was not me. It sounded like reduction ad absurdum and I was rather crestfallen. It was enough for me to give up that practice as it was bound to be crowned with failure.

But as always, Baba had taken pity on my Don Quixotic essays on spiritual practices, and one day He, without the least vestige of doubt, demonstrated to me the fact that silence of mind and halting of the brain were possible only if His grace descended on the aspirant.

I was sitting in Guruprasad hall, Poona, amidst a crowd of some hundred other devotees of Beloved Baba, as usual looking at His beautiful face, as I know that most of the people did the same. Suddenly Baba looked straight into my eyes, and kept looking at me. That very moment my mind stopped working and the process lasted for I do not know how many minutes.

Yes, there were no thoughts arising in my mind and not even the thought that I was not thinking about anything. It was the total halt of the activity of brain without loss of consciousness. You may describe it as consciousness without any thought, but that would also be a feeble description of the actual experience. Then Baba turned away His eyes from mine, and the first thought rose in my mind, and a host of others.

The mind had resumed working as it was wont to do. And then I understood that that day in my future lifetime when Baba wills it, He will stop my mind for good, and till then it would be wiser not to try doing it by my own pitiable efforts but completely leave it to His compassionate grace, His whim or Divine mood.