Chapter 6, 7 Harmony of Existence, Personality Rehabilitation

Today we started our class with Gurustotram and 5 minutes of meditation.

After the meditation, everyone shared their experiences. Some said they had thoughts coming in but they tried to bring their attention back to meditation, while others said they could hear someone talking , someone opening the door etc. Some people said they could hear the sounds of distraction but were trying to visualize god’s picture and were trying to meditate.

Later on Meena ji suggested few things about meditation 1) If a person has more rajas, they should try doing japa. Chanting of mantras and counting of beads will help them focus and concentrate their mind. 2)If we have thoughts during meditation we need to observe them like a witness or 'sakshi'   instead of curbing them. Later, we must analyze and introspect to see where these thoughts are coming from.

We did a quick recap of our previous chapters and discussed in greater detail the concept of the dual path of Shreyas and Preyas since we have to face these choices in every decision.

On this discussion Meena ji gave us a acronym  

SMILE which if helps us when we take any decisions. In this S for Shreyas 

M is happiness to maximum people, I is the decision that is taken with a clear and sharp Intellect,  rather than being swayed by emotions.

L is thinking about the decision whether it will be right in the long term and E am I evolving towards my ultimate goal.

Later, we progressed with our 6 th chapter and discussed that the experiencer is constructed of 4 different personalities one is physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual and of it spiritual is the highest and as we aim high the needs of all other lower personalities will be negated.

In  Chapter 7, Personality Rehabilitation we discuss that a man contacts the world with his body, mind, intellect and consciousness. Of these, the body and consciousness are almost same in every person so the only variable factor in man is mind and intellect.On this note we discussed an example about a CEO giving the option to their employees if they could take a salary cut or would prefer losing their jobs. We saw another example of the four personality layers with the bachelor, married couple and parents and how the lower personality needs are satisfied when we are operating at the higher level.
We stopped after paragraph 4 of chapter 7. Next week Swamiji will be coming and we will attend his pravachan. Hari Om!

Contributed by YM