Love and remembrance

SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES FOR MODERN LIVING

DAAJI is in conversation with APOORVA PATEL about Constant Remembrance and love, how they are both expressions of each other, and the role they play in our spiritual evolution.

AP: Can you share with us the relationship between remembrance and love? What is their context in our spiritual practice?

Daaji: Well, I think love is the guiding force behind remembering someone. Even when it is not love, even if you hate someone, you remember that person so often! Now, the remembrance of the Beloved carries a different level of vibration in your heart. It’s almost like you are in a state of absorbency while thinking of that person. I’m deliberately using this word “thinking,” though there is a vast difference between thinking and remembering. Where thinking is about your head, your mind especially, remembrance is from the heart. When you think about a particular sloka from the Bhagavad Gita, you are ruminating on it. What does Lord Krishna mean to say by, “Sarva-dharman parityajya, mam ekam sarva-dharm vraja"? [Abandon all varieties of dharma and surrender to me alone. I shall liberate you from all sinful reactions; do not fear.] You keep thinking, contemplating… what is he trying to convey to me? There is the mind’s involvement. But when you go into a different dimension, when you remember Krishna or this verse, it is felt in your heart.

AP: Feeling it rather than analyzing it.

Daaji: Yes. You feel the presence. You begin to have some shift in your awareness because of this remembrance. So, I would say love is the product, and remembrance is the beginning. According to Babuji Maharaj, even when you reverse this equation, when you love someone, you remember. As God is an unknown entity, we don’t really know how to love, so we begin by remembering and end up with love. This accelerates the journey, because why would you remember someone with whom you do not want to merge, with whom you do not want to become one? So remembrance is a great catalyst for this.

AP: Is there a way that we can cultivate remembrance?

Daaji: It’s very, very easy. For example, when you remember someone or something, why do you remember that person or that particular moment? It strikes your heart. You are so impressed by that event or by that person, and you remain grateful.

So now, how does it apply in the spiritual realm? When we meditate, and arrive at a certain spiritual state, we are overwhelmed by that particular state and say, “Wow, do I deserve this?” A kind of gratefulness begins in the heart and then because of this gratefulness, we start wondering about who is this giver; be it our Guru or be it God. Then we begin to think, to remember, and then we remain absorbed in remembrance with gratefulness. So there is incremental refinement in our remembrance. So meditating on this person, on the guru, will also help.

AP: What about in other traditions? For example, in Sufism they have Dhikr, and I am wondering if this is the same thing or similar to what we call Constant Remembrance.

Daaji: It is the same thing, just a different word. It is also there in other traditions. Constant Remembrance is the continuous remembrance of the Beloved. Any moment that passes without remembering, is cause for regret: “Why did I, how did I, how could I forget my Beloved?”

AP: Babuji said that remembrance is capable of clearing everything from the spiritual path and it keeps us constantly charged from the Divine. Is this something that happens only after a certain point in our Yatra?

Daaji: There are actually three questions in one here. The first is about removal of unnecessary things. The second is about infusing us with charge. And the third is: When in the journey does remembrance truly begin? 

Whenever we remember, we are immediately in osmosis with the Beloved, and we begin to draw grace (the power, the love) transmitted from such a person into our heart. So that sort of remembrance, where you are imbued with Divinity constantly is a love-filled invitation. There is absolute Sharanagati. It’s not that you have surrendered in a defeated way. You have lovingly surrendered to your Beloved, with full trust and respect.

Second, what sort of things are cleaned? Whenever we remember such a great personality as Guruji or God or Krishna or the Prophet, peace be upon him, there is an immediate shift in our awareness. Whenever we remember such great personalities, our hearts move tremendously. If we are about to do the wrong thing, this remembrance will prevent it. “How can I do such a thing while I am also thinking of my Beloved?” If we are still interested in doing things despite remembering, it means we don’t have true love.

When it comes to remembering, slowly, as we develop the ability to remain in osmosis through remembrance, there will be a qualitative change in us. In chemistry and physics, the process of osmosis is well-explained. In biology and physiology, also, without osmosis we cannot exist at a physiological level. Similarly, at the psychological, emotional, and spiritual levels there is also some level of osmosis between our subtle body and that of the universal body of God. There is osmosis.

Whenever we remember, 
we are immediately in osmosis with the Beloved, 
and we begin to draw grace (the power, the love) 
transmitted from such a person into our heart.

Until that moment is reached where our level of purity and His level of purity become equal, osmosis will continue. That is the purpose of yoga, of meditation, of bhakti, and of worshipping God—to trigger this osmosis and attain the state of godliness.

AP: You have mentioned that “meditation is the mother of remembrance.” Can this mean that for those who have not yet made it a part of them, regular meditation can bring them closer to remembering the Beloved in such a way that it is a part of their being?

Daaji: It was a famous statement by Babuji Maharaj that “Meditation is the mother of Constant Remembrance.” And I do appreciate this statement because it explains the entire essence of our spiritual practice. Whether you practice X system or Y system, fundamentally, whoever be your guide or the being you worship, how can you remember them unless you become so grateful? And what drives this gratefulness? It's your own experiments with the processes they share with you. They say, “Okay, meditate like this.” So you go through the process and see in your own heart how it affects you at a consciousness level. If you like it, you become more appreciative, more grateful, and you will continue to remember.

This is why I say, and I cannot appreciate more than this, that it’s a magical thing to meditate and arrive at such a refined state.

AP: Is there ever a time when the Master is remembering his disciple?

Daaji: It is always the case. Masters remember individuals under many categories actually. For example, those who are in trouble, and those who are advancing very fast and attain a very high level spiritually. So you cannot say Master does not remember you, because we all fall into one of those categories. Either we are so advanced or we are always so in need. But is his remembering of his disciples specific, or by choice, or is he conscious of it? What you mean to ask is this: is he consciously remembering some individuals? I would say yes. There are moments when he consciously remembers the people he has met, and so often he remembers people he has never met also! This sounds paradoxical, but it’s a fact.

Both those who are in need and those who do not need have vibrations with the Master. They are picked up somehow. But from a Master’s perspective, engaging the conscious mind, that conscious remembering happens very rarely, if at all. If there is a critical moment in a disciple's life, he would pick up on it, for example, if someone is about to die, generally he would notice. Or if someone is about to experience an accident, he would perhaps feel it. More often than critical moments are those when the disciple is transitioning from one level to another level spiritually, or when that disciple’s mind and heart are constantly calling the Master with lots of love. They also pull the attention of the Master at a conscious level.

AP: Can you tell us something about those great saints who were known to be in remembrance of their Beloved and how it defined their own life?

Daaji: Imagine how it was for a personality like Radha. She is the epitome of remembrance. It is said that whenever she was in the remembrance of Lord Krishna, she would be so absorbed in his memory that she would find herself reciting “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna.” The moment came when she herself became Krishna and finally she was reciting, “Radhe, Radhe, Radhe.” One of the most classical examples is Radha. There are so many more, like Meera, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Swami Vivekananda, our Babuji Maharaj and Lalaji Saheb. There are many personalities like these who devoted their entire life to the remembrance of God, and they were famous for that throughout history.