Guidelines For Program Participants

Tarun Pradhaan

*This content is taken from Pure Experiences Online Satsang Session 63*
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Recently, somebody asked me if I need to do something special in order to join the program. Are there any do's and don'ts? Do I need to follow a specific lifestyle to qualify for this program that we have started? And you can see the reason behind this question is that when you join an ashram or when you join some programs like this, the spiritual training, there are always some rules. You will get up at this time in the morning and you will do this kind of practice in the morning. Then you will stay silent for one hour. And there are restrictions on the diet, you will not eat this and you will eat this. And there are more restrictions, even some of them are going to prescribe what clothes you should wear, what kind of shoes you should wear. So it is obvious that people will ask me the same thing. And I have few recommendations if you want to make it effective.

You are putting a lot of effort in this program, so if you want to make it totally effective, you can adopt a few things. But there are no restrictions about what you should eat or when you should sleep and when you should get up. And obviously there are no specific practices that are necessary in order for you to join this program. You are free to do whatever you do. If you're working, you can continue working. And this is focused mostly on intellect. So what I can recommend is stop pouring that which is totally unnecessary into your intellect for the duration of the program. Stop reading other books because it is just another load on the intellect. That much material is ingested in the mind and now it needs to process that also. You are already getting a heavy dose of philosophy from the videos. Now if you're reading some other book, probably there will be a mixture of it. Probably you will understand one and won't understand the other. And it is also possible that the terminology and the contents of the book that you're reading will conflict with whatever I'm saying. So that is to simplify this study that you are doing. And I would also recommend that you stop listening to the other videos or lectures while you are doing this so that your mind is saturated by what was said here.

We have a strange issue with the memory here that the latest content is kept. Whatever came before the latest is forgotten. You know this very well that if you memorize a list of words or your to-do list, you will remember the last one. The first 10 or 20, they will be dropped. And that is because our short-term memory is limited. My recommendation is taking notes. They are the extension of our short-term memory, that's all. That is why so much importance is given to writing. Write down whatever you hear, write it down instantly at the same time, just after listening or even while listening you can pause the video, write it down, that helps to remember things. If after listening to the video you switch to some other video from some other channel or you read something else which is totally unrelated to this, what will happen is that path of knowledge program will be overwritten by whatever you have just listened to. The latest will be retained in the memory more than the earlier things. So now it is a waste of time for you. You listen to me for half an hour and even for five minutes if you listen to something else, well the half an hour content is gone. It's replaced by something else. You don't do this as long as you have this job of retaining the content.

There are more ways to train the intellect. When you speak, you speak in awareness. The knowledge that you're getting from the video should be reflected in the speech. So when you form a question, it should be done in complete awareness. By awareness, I mean don't let the habitual stuff come in again. For example, the questions should be mostly about the content that you heard and it should not be like this that I am going through your series but I have these and these problems. My mind is like this or I'm not happy in my life. I don't know what jobs to do and all. It means it is not coming from awareness, it means the old memory is repeating here. The new is not being absorbed. So as soon as the old thoughts start coming, you should become aware, take a look, become the witness of these thoughts and then do not express them. Let them come and go. There is no need to take any action on these thoughts, especially in the satsang. Now it does not mean that you do not do your regular jobs and do not think your regular thoughts, you can. There is no avoiding them. You need to live your life and anything that is important for life should be handled, should be processed and then back to the content.

Now if you're doing one video per day, you will see that the content is very less but as soon as you start thinking about it you will see that there is hours and hours of information condensed in the 20 or 30 minutes video. You can go on writing but you can fill up many pages on the same topic without drifting away from the topic. For example, you must have done your introspection on the truth, the topic of the truth. Now a lot has been condensed in the one video. You can go on expanding on it in your mind on your paper in your writing. So I am recommending that you simply think about it. There is no need to note down all those things, you can note down only the main points. There is no need to write 20 pages on truth because you see it is like a string. You pull one end of the string and the whole string comes out with it. So what we do is, we keep the main points in memory and the rest is derived from it. There is no need to remember everything, if you remember the main points.

If you think more about it, you will see that it becomes your second nature to think like this now once you know what is true. You are not going to think in your old ways now. You are not going to think that the truth is that which was told to me by my parents. So this old stuff should be erased. Now that can happen only when you have absorbed the teaching. Now the new ideas are not new ideas for you, they have become the only ideas for you. The new ideas are not extra things that you know in addition to what you already know, they should replace the past. They should replace the old indoctrination that happened in our childhood. And if that happens, you will find that your speech is naturally changed. Now you are not going to talk about the old so much. It is possible but it has happened because you thought about it for the whole day or for one or two days. You were engrossed in these thoughts about what is truth and why it has been defined like this, why it holds like this. Cross-check it, test it, verify. If you want you can verify things as you listen to them.

Step number three is there where I will ask the questions, not you. That will be the test that you have verified it, otherwise I'm not going to know whether you know the truth of the statements that are given in the video or whether you have simply accepted them uncritically without thinking. So for that there is step number three. If you can prove some things to me which are key concepts that will be enough. That means you have thought about it, that means you have verified it.

So there are no restrictions on eating or sleeping but you see these restrictions are prescribed for those who are doing something and that involves the body and the energies especially. That is why all these restrictions are there. Why are they told to not drink tea or coffee or eat a specific kind of diet which is very light, easy to digest? Because the body is involved in the practice, because the energies, whatever you call them, activity of the life forces in the body, they are involved in the practice. So we need to maintain its purity, it needs to be purified. On the path of knowledge the body is not involved but you still need to keep the body healthy and do not eat too much, do not sleep too much and do not talk too much because they are draining, they reduce the intelligence. And yes if you are taking intoxicating drinks or materials then they are going to degrade the intellect in the long term so they should be stopped completely. If there are some diets which are totally made in a factory that contain a kg of sugar in one piece of the food they should be stopped completely. Cook your own food and you will see the change, you will see that the intellect is very sharp now, it is able to absorb new things and it is able to spend more energy there on the teachings instead of spending the energy in unnecessary things.

Our goal is to become aware through knowledge and if we are doing something which is opposing this goal then the result will be zero the net will come out to be zero and we'll have this delusion that I know so many things now but these things are just floating in the memory they do not take root, they do not change you, they do not change your speech or behavior and then you do not abide in the knowledge. Abidance is necessary. I come to know all this sitting here. I come to know all this simply by the way you talk. Speech is your door to the intellect, it is like a window into the intellect.