Meditating at a fixed hour

It is of paramount importance to have a fixed time for your meditation. Even a child will cry for his mother’s milk at a particular hour, at a fixed time. You work in a store. When you go to your store, if you always open the door at nine o’clock, then others will have confidence that they can come at nine o’clock and you will really be open. Everything has its own hour. The inner being, the Inner Pilot, the Supreme, always observes. He expects that a particular hour is His time. If you stick to this hour, then the Supreme has confidence in you. The Supreme says, “At this hour he is not loitering around; he is doing his meditation.” There has to be regularity plus punctuality. Regularity helps a lot. But if you want to get the utmost from regularity, then there should also be punctuality.In the ordinary life, if you eat twenty-four hours a day, you will become extremely fat and die. In the spiritual world it is not like that. While you are meditating, you are eating Light. The more you eat, the more capacity you get. Once you learn how to meditate well, you start taking more and more inner food: Peace, Light and Bliss. In the ordinary life, you may increase your capacity for a few days or for a month or two. Then there comes a time when, although you still have the eagerness to eat, you don’t have the capacity. After taking ten pieces of bread, you are eager to take more, but you don’t have the capacity; your stomach won’t hold more. In the spiritual life it is not like that, because you are dealing with Infinity.

Suppose you want to meditate at six-thirty. This is your hour. Then, if you get up at seven, what will happen? Your own lethargy, your idleness, will ruin all your possibilities. On the one hand, your lethargy acts like an enemy and does not allow you to get up at the same hour every day. On the other hand, it justifies itself. It secretly enters into your subconscious mind and justifies itself. It will say, “Oh, I came home from meditation late; that is why I could not get up.” Or it will say, “For the last six days I got up every day at six-thirty. God is all kindness; so for today He will forgive me.” There are so many ways that you can justify getting up late. If you say, “I came home late,” it is true. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t do the first thing first. The first thing is meditation; the first thing is God. If you meditate at six-thirty, at your usual hour, then your second thing will be your breakfast or your reading, or mixing with friends and all that.

If you do not keep moving towards your goal, then you are lost. At that time, the hostile forces, the undivine forces, will say, “Oh, he is a useless fellow. I know that he does not have the perseverance, the inner need to reach the goal. So let me give him a little liberty. He will just go one step ahead and then tomorrow he will come back.” When an insincere seeker wants to go forward, the hostile forces say, “We know your capacity. It is all only self-deception and pretence. It is all relaxation. A backwards march you will do.” If a sincere seeker is not regular, if he is not punctual, then he is doomed. Because of his sincerity, he runs very fast and the hostile forces think, “Since he is sincere, he will very soon reach the goal.” So if a sincere seeker takes rest after running a short way, the hostile forces will say, “Oh, we must be more careful. Today he is taking rest, but tomorrow he will try to cover a great length. The best thing is to pull him back and make him start his journey again.”

Once you start your journey, if you stop at one place and think, “Today I am tired, but tomorrow again I will start from here and go on,” you have to know that ignorance is more alert than your own aspiration. When you started justifying your lethargy by saying, “I did not get up this morning because I worked so hard yesterday,” already your ignorance was operating.

Regularity can tell you that God is there, but still He is far away. Punctuality will tell you that you are approaching God, no matter how far away He is. Regularity will tell you that the goal is there. But if you are punctual, immediately a kind of dynamism, a kind of movement is there. Regularly you are meditating, true. But when there is punctuality, at that time it is like a motor in action. The motor is your regularity, because you know that at any time you can drive. But when you turn the key and start the motor, that is your punctuality. There the action has already started. With regularity you get only a vague idea that you will do it. But when punctuality starts, you actually do it.