Did Gururaj teach what today is termed “mindfulness”?

Recently there has been diverse opinions about the question of mindfulness and Gururaj Ananda Yogi teachings. Many people today feel an attraction to the word MINDFULNESS and want to learn about it, and they Google 'mindfulness' and expect to get websites to get in touch with people that can teach it. The people that coined such term are Jon Kabat Zinn and Siegel, both of them main names in the scientific approach to meditation and disciples of Buddhist teachers.

 

Now the question is if Gururaj taught mindfulness. Not if we teach it the same way others teach it, but if we can fulfil with our own particular method designed by Gururaj what is termed today as mindfulness meditation.  To begin  with, we need to know what is called mindfulness. According to the definition that you can find in the web (see also webster english dictionary):

“Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.”

 

Paying attention to your thoughts without judging them has to do with what is called non-discrimination, related to the  concept “equanimity” of which I will give a few examples at the end of this article, and  basically; what a person develops with the  techniques and teachings we impart. (i.e. the meditation techniques and spiritual practices we term Path of Unfoldment will expand the student’s awareness, and mindfulness is to be aware.)

 

As in the definition above, and as in the following quote of Gururaj:

“The mind is weighing pros and cons all the time. What I say to you is this: lose the mind and enter the area of no mind; and yet having no mind, be mindful to observe yourself. And when you can observe the mechanism of the mind, you can stand apart from the mind and watch it and watch how it works. For you now have become the observer of the workings of the mind and all its pros and cons. For the mind can never exist without pros and cons because the mind is forever in conflict because the various impressions implanted there in the mind are forever clashing with each other, and that very clash is the conflicts in your mind and those very conflicts in your mind makes you suffer. And when you go through these conflicts and find these sufferings you become miserable; and if you are miserable, how can you be compassionate?” 

 

The state of no mind is also a classical concept of Buddhist teachings, also present in the advanced versions of what people teach under mindfulness meditation.

 

Within the actual protocols, that  the different groups that present themselves teaching mindfulness meditation use, you have all sorts of variations, but all of them teach (amongst other techniques) what in the previous definition of mindfulness above was stated as: “to be aware of body sensations”.

 

In fact, the technique most mindfulness teachers teach to develop this awareness is called “Body Scan”. A practice done lying down in which you go step by step perceiving your body from toes to head. It is part of the recipe of the MBSR protocol. The same technique was taught by Gururaj in many satsangs around the globe. To put just one example:

 

Guided Body Awareness Talk US84051

A mildly edited transcript of Gururaj’s live guidance lesson given at a workshop in 1984 in the U.S.A.

He added a later comment that breathing should be normal, not deep – more shallow and quiet – and that a good exhalation should precede moving on to each new area of awareness.

 

“In this exercise of your body awareness, we stretch our legs and we centre our minds to every part of our body.  Now, take your mind down your toes. (There’s no difference between your toes and your mind you know).

Now down, down.  I am aware of my toes, (repeat) I am aware of my toes and my awareness is moving up, up, through the soles of my feet, to the top of my feet, and up and up and up up, up, - and I am now the ankles of my two left feet (Joke).
Up around the ankles, your awareness is proceeding up and up and up and up over your calves and shins - all over your shins and around your calves. Focus purely on the calves and shins - everything else is not there, but just your calves and your shins.  Then, up the attention goes, up it goes, behind the knees and over the knees.  You’re nowhere else, not even in your nose! (Joke) You’re nowhere else, but at back of your knees and over your knees; nothing else exists - nothing else exists right now.

Now up to your thigh and do the same thing – linger at the thighs and be nowhere else in your mind

Then up to your buttocks, on which you sit, they call it brains sometimes (Joke). No movement, just awareness of this area.

Then up and up, up, up you go, up you go, and you’re becoming aware of your abdomen, your abdomen – do the same here - and further up the lower back, you are not aware of anything else but the area you focus on – one at a time progressively up. 
You are at your abdomen and your lower back and proceeding higher, higher, up your back, up your back. Now, to your chest, and you’re aware only of the chest, the rest of the body is dead (so to speak).

Only your chest is alive, your back is alive, feel the pulsation in your chest, the breathing moves in and out and in and out. (Spend a little time there; focus on nothing else, no other body part).

Then up, up, up, up, to your throat, to your throat – do the same again. Then on to your shoulders, your awareness is on your shoulders, your awareness is on your shoulders, your body is dead. Dead. Your awareness is on your shoulders until you move on down your arms, moving down your arms, through the biceps down, down, down and down, down and down to your forearms - and so on - to your forearms, and still further down at your wrists.

At your wrists, at your wrists, at your wrists, your awareness is at your wrists. Then down, down, down, down through your palms, through your palms, the back of your hands, your awareness is just there, it is nowhere else and down, down, down‑ then the fingers, down the fingers to the finger‑tips, to the finger‑tips, to the finger‑tips.
You are feeling now a tinkling in the finger‑tips, your awareness is on the tingling of your finger‑tips, finger‑tips - tingles - your awareness makes it tingle there; and up, up, up again, up your forearms, up your forearms, up your forearms, you are now conscious of your elbows (stay there a while) and up you go, up you go, up you go through your upper arms and up you go, to your shoulders.  Up you go to your shoulders and you feel your awareness at your shoulders.  And up it goes, up the throat now the throat, the throat, the throat and then around the neck, your awareness us up the throat and around the neck.

Your awareness is creeping up, bit by bit; your body is dead!  Your body is now totally centred around your neck and throat.  And up, up, up, up, through the back of the head, and up, up, through the back of the head, your awareness flows up up, up and it is centred now in the middle of your skull.

Your whole body is dead!  Your awareness is in the centre of your skull; it is centred at your skull. Now it is going over your forehead, over your forehead and down your eyebrows, and over your eyes.  Down your eyebrows, and over your eyes.  Over your cheeks, over your cheeks, over your cheeks, down, down over your nose. Your awareness, moving, moving, moving - (slight bit at a time from place to place) - you are nowhere else but over your nose now. And  then your upper lip and down, down, down, over your lips, over your lips, and down, down, over the chin, and going down, over the throat again, over the throat and further down. Your awareness is nowhere else; just at the points you focus on (that I’ll mention) and down, down, down, in the centre of the chest, in the centre of the chest, your whole body is dead, your whole body is dead, your awareness, is in the centre of the chest.

Feel that pulsation in your chest.  Feel the pressure.  Feel your heart pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, feel the chest, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating; you just feel the chest, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, pulsating, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac, tac‑tac ......

You are in the centre of your chest, and move up those energies the awareness to your mind; move up those energies to your mind – allow you mind to be flushed full through with the awareness.  Ahhh!  Allow the mind to feel the fullness of that, throughout your body.  Throughout your body; each area throughout your body. 

And to (warm down) decentralizing it now.  Your awareness is not in one place anymore:  Actually as the energy was moving throughout your body, you were becoming unaware of yourself, unaware of your ‘little me’. The energies floating away from the mind to the entire parts of the body; through the entire body. 

[Long pause]  Now slowly and gently stand up:  Do not be in hurry; just stand up; slowly, slowly, slowly….  Arms are stretched, move back; and front again; right.  Now, for the second time, try and find a point you could see and move back to……. Good, now you’ll find in doing it the second time, the third time and all, you’ll find your tension will be moving further back, than the place you have been pointed.  [Long pause]  And the other way… Do you find a further spot?  Eh?  You did!  Just shows how aware you are.  Sit down."
"The awareness of the body is not only limited to the body, the awareness of the body could be extended to the entire universe.  For your limitation is to the entirety of the universe. I say that to be a limitation, yet there is a field still further into the impersonal God which is beyond the personal God, which has its limitation.  And you are the personal God.  (Ed: And the impersonal is absoluteness).”

 

[Workshop finishes: “This exercise in awareness, this demonstration we have done, we could carry it on for two hours you know!  But the great purpose of this is for your physical health.  If you feel a pain in your knee, take your attention, your mind, to that area, which is painful.  Could be your knee, your calf, your backside, whatever side, it means the same.  Now, if you try this, you can also rid yourself of pains (the better you become at doing it).  By focusing your attention upon the area of pain; because the origin of pain is not in your calf or your knee or your big toe, the origin is in the mind.  So if we shift the attention and lead the mind to the place, like backache, you’ll find your own personal energies, your own personal vibrations will take the pain away immediately!  I talk to you of personal experience."] US84-51

 

 

The answer is yes, Gururaj taught mindfulness as it is defined today. Gururaj taught mindfulness better than any other teacher and probably with a better method, (when we demonstrate it with our own example); and his trained teachers (i.e. us of his chelas that teach) are probably the best mindfulness teachers today (although most of the chelas don’t teach proactively).

 

"Our method is different, and according to my experience, the one I know and teach; because I only teach what I practice, and of what I have a direct experience of."  ... In this case, my experience is that the method and teachings that could be named Path of Unfoldment have the possibility of becoming a very good universal meditation and mindfulness method to teach human beings, but this plant may grow very slowly and we will probably not enjoy the results of it.

 

We teach a different method than other schools, the method that Gururaj taught, (Ed:the method of absoluteness) but our method includes everything is taught today under the term mindfulness plus many other things. I have a good knowledge about why our method is more powerful. Amongst these “whys” is that we introduce the concept of Grace or Gurushakti, which other mindfulness meditation teachers don’t introduce. And that is the 60/70% of the recipe.

 

We call our method Path of Unfoldment, but it includes everything necessary towards providing the student with the tools to live what they call a mindful life, which is what they are seeking to come to your meditation classes. And I will do what is required to get people finding our webs if they are looking for mindfulness or meditation, whatever they want to call it, I don’t care. We use the proper language for the times (also a teaching of Gururaj).

 

Coming back to the definition of mindfulness above. To begin with, it has to do with the concept “moment by moment” and the statement from the definition: “when we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.

 

In the words of Gururaj:

“To be able to learn to live in the present, moment by moment and let every moment be joyous because every moment is joyous.  Every moment is an eternity in itself.  Nothing else exists but this very moment.  The past has gone, the future might never come but now is now.  Now is now.  When we can really learn to live in the present, moment by moment, then that is life, that is existence.  And that is what helps one to love.  Where does hatred come from?  Hatred only comes from past remembrances.”   It is by the acceptance of oneself, fine, that one can look deeper within oneself.  It is by acceptance of oneself that one can truly analyse oneself.  It is by the acceptance of oneself that one can truly feel oneself.  How many of us really feel ourselves?" UK77-17

 

"You are holding onto a conception which you have formulated in your mind:  a conception that I am this or I am that.  And that conception in the mind is the cause of bondage. So in reality there is no bondage.  There is no letting go.  But what you have to let go is the misconception you have formulated in your mind, and the very word “misconception” presupposes the word “conception.” UK82046  

 

"To realize that what I have to let go of is my conceptions, misconceptions, conditionings, patternings that forms this little ego self of that which I call “me!”UK82046

 

Finally, I will come back to the concept of being aware of your thoughts without judging them, which is an essential component of mindfulness meditation as they teach it in the MBSR protocol developed by Kabat Zin. So that you do not allow them to make you think about what goes right or goes wrong. This comes from the concept from Buddhist teachings called non-discrimination, which leads eventually to the concept of no mind, which is based on not trying to make sense of anything, of not attaching value to the thought, that is the outcome of non-judging your thoughts. (i.e. you assume most of the time your thoughts are bullshit).

 

The same principle, explained by one of the most known representatives of mindfulness meditation Thich Nhat Hanh, which in reality is just a term used today, because in reality it is Teravada Buddhism:

Speaking about the preparatory technique, Gururaj explains:

 

Firstly, you are lying down in an Asana, which is specially made for relaxation.  You aid relaxation more by the tensing of your limbs a few times and thirdly, the relaxation is aided further by taking one’s attention to the breathing, which inevitably and without fail, slows down.  So when the metabolic rate drops, as any scientist would tell you, it signifies a rest of the entire organism.  When the physical organism relaxes then naturally the mind would follow suit because the mind and body are not two things apart.  The body is composed of matter and so is the mind composed of matter.  The body of course is of grosser matter, while the mind is of subtler matter.  So here we are starting a process from the external to the internal.  When you receive the Full Techniques, you’d be shown a process where you start from the internal and go to the external.  In the preparatory stage, you are taken from the external to the internal where the body relaxes and as the body relaxes, the mind also relaxes.

 

So we teach both directions also, from the external to the internal, and from the internal to the external.

 

"You do not become emotionally involved in thought.  Now if you do not become emotionally involved in the thought, then the mind could be led or spontaneously the mind goes to still a deeper level of rest because what stirs the mind more than thought, is the emotional self of the person.  Thought is like fire and the emotions that well up with the thought, is fuel added to the fire. So what we do is this, we allow the thoughts to come and to go.  They could be pleasant or unpleasant, that is not important.  The important thing is, you observe those thoughts." UK7816