Question: Babaji, can you please explain what is happening to the mind and brain during meditation. How does it work?

Babaji:

The brain is in touch with the Universe through the nervous system and sensory organs. It receives messages and passes orders to other organs of the body to perform actions. In the process, this brain reflects like cinema visual effects, and thought processes are all decodified. Just like if you have a pain in the stomach, it is the brain which will tell you whether you are hungry, whether you are in pain, whether you are full; whatever it is. When the brain reflects, only the mind is able to catch. So whatever the brain reflects, the mind catches. Mind recognizes the existence, it analyses good and bad, and makes a judgment, like "this is it, this is mine, this is not mine, this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad," and in the process absorbs an imprint and that sits in the subconscious state. So that's what we call the acquired habits of the mind. It's also known as samskaram  in Sanskrit.

So from time immemorial, mind would have acquired all such habits, since so many lives perhaps, nobody knows really exactly. Since childhood also so many things you would have come across, and all would be sitting unknown to you. Suppose you just think about a particular thing, "this is a clock," and that imprint goes into the mind. "This is mine," and that sits into the mind. "This is not mine," that also sits into the mind. "This is good," that sits into the mind. "This is bad..." with everything the mind absorbs an imprint.

So, through meditation and the satsanga that is taught, the idea is to cleanse this mind of all these imprints. When you try to meditate, when you close your eyes, all the thought processes in the mind start getting evaporated. How it happens, what we observed, is that the mind gets sucked into the brain. Brain is like the tape recorder, and mind is the tape which has acquired imprints. So when it is sucked into it, all the thought processes and visual effects, they all get evaporated.

But because of the nature of the brain, it decodifies and shows everything as a visual effect and as a thought process. What happens in meditation, when you see a thought or a vision, your mind again analyzes. It cannot keep quiet. It has picked up this tendency, this habit. When it analyzes again, it absorbs further imprints. So you get involved into a whirlpool of "hen from the egg, egg from the hen"; that's what goes on happening, and you can never get rid of this thing.

That is why this is taught: the greatest secret of meditation is if both the eyeballs can come here [to the point in between the eyebrows], it can instantly withdraw the mind with an amazing effect, and it can stop the thought processes and visual effects. Or, if you can, try to exercise some will power when the first thought or a vision appears, do not bother to think what it is. Whether it is a bad, whether it is a good, whether it is God, whether it is a demon, just watch it. Use it for concentration. Then it gets evaporated. As it gets evaporated, when the mind has no job to analyze or make judgments, it gets withdrawn and gets concentrated and recedes, going introverted.

So whereas in this world you require judgments, analyzing, every proper thing, but during meditation, if you do not do it, then the meditation properly happens, mind gets cleansed. Afterwards you can be a normal person, you can practice thinking. By thinking you can live in this world a normal life, but your mind would not be absorbing imprints. That's how it happens to a Yogi. Even if a Yogi  is gossiping and would be talking and moving like any ordinary person, His mind would not be absorbing any further imprints. Like you write on a white paper and it gets instantly erased. So that's how the process happens.

Question: So Baba, every thought - and that means whatever we think - every thought is an impression; leaves an impression.

Babaji:

It leaves an impression. That is why it is told, "What you think, you become that."

Question: So, when we have thoughts, we just observe that thought, but not recognize that thought?

Babaji:

Yes, that's a very thin-edged difference in between this. You need to practice this skill to make the meditation more successful. That is what the Guru repeatedly teaches. In every initiation time we tell, "Do not imagine anything. Don't imagine. Just keep watching." So that's what the first important thing for a meditator to achieve is the intense concentration of the mind. That's what it is, and nothing else, not to bother about anything else during meditation. Then the meditation becomes successful.