The Master’s Discipline

Right after my morning meditation, either at 3:00 or 3:30 or 4:00 – it depends on my meditation – I sing the Invocation, accompanying myself on my big tote-a-tune, and then I sing “My Lord Beloved Supreme.” After that, I do ten different exercises on various machines, followed by stretching exercises and lifting heavy weights.

Then I do 20 pages of bird drawings. Each page has four birds. In another book, I fill a whole page writing down ‘Supreme’, and in a third book, I write out the Invocation. I also write 10 poems or aphorisms for Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, and compose one Bengali song and one English song. Then I read spiritual books for 15 or 20 minutes. Needless to say, I like Bengali books very much, so I have Bengali books about Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and others. I do all this upstairs.

Then I come downstairs. For two or three minutes, I pray and meditate. Then I take one, two, three exercises on a machine. Five days a week, I do a seated calf-lift of 1400 pounds. Some days I do 1500 pounds. Then for three days, I add a bench-press of 1100 pounds. Nowadays, I have started practising 1400 pounds. Before I used to practise 1300 pounds. Last year I showed 1100 pounds for the public. But now, this year, without any difficulty, I will be able to show 1200 pounds – if not 1300 pounds.

My morning schedule continues with playing the sitar. At the end of this year, I will be observing the second anniversary of my sitar playing. Then I play the Chinese instrument, the erhu, and about 14 other instruments. I play five or six songs only once on each instrument. It takes at least an hour. Then I take all kinds of hand and leg exercises.

This is how my morning starts. Regularity and I are inseparable. Most of the days I am also punctual, but I am always regular. If there is regularity, then we can accomplish quite a few things in life. The very first thing I do is serious meditation. Then all the other things I do in a meditative consciousness. If I can be active and dynamic at 74 years of age, if your Master can be so disciplined at this age, hopefully it will inspire my spiritual children.

If you usually get up at 5:30 or 6 a.m., and one day you are getting up at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., you have to feel that you are responsible for shortening your day, which is God’s day. God is not responsible, you are responsible, fully responsible for shortening God’s day. You have shortened God’s day by getting up at 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock. If you can get up earlier, then you are lengthening the day. Then during that one hour or two hours you can accomplish so many things. But if you get up late, you are shortening the day. Then how can you accomplish the things you are supposed to do?

Again, before you go to bed – before you feel that the Goddess of Sleep is entering into you – please, please, at least for five minutes, if not ten minutes, even while lying down in bed, meditate or only repeat “Supreme, Supreme, Supreme.” For the last five minutes, before you go to sleep, put aside your newspaper or your book, or turn off the television. The last five minutes should be only between you and your God, the Supreme. Do not fall asleep while reading the news or watching television. That is no good, no good, no good. The last five minutes at least, should be only you and your God, you and the Supreme. Meditate sitting up, or even while lying down you can repeat “Supreme, Supreme, Supreme.” Please, the very last five minutes, before you go to sleep, should be between you and your God and nobody else, and nothing else.

13 May 2005, San Diego Centre