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Questioner:
I must confess I came today in a rebellious mood. I got a raw deal at the
airlines office. When faced with such situations everything seems doubtful,
everything seems useless.
Maharaj:
This is a very useful mood. Doubting all, refusing all, unwilling to learn
through another. It is the fruit of your long sadhana. After all one
does not study for ever.
Q: Enough of it. It took me nowhere.
M: Don't say 'nowhere'. It took you where you
are -- now.
Q: It is again the child and its tantrums. I
have not moved an inch from where I was.
M: You began as a child and you will end as a
child. Whatever you have acquired in the meantime you must lose and start at
the beginning.
Q: But the child kicks. When it is unhappy or
denied anything it kicks.
M: Let it kick. Just look at the kicking. And if
you are too afraid of the society to kick convincingly look at that too. I know
it is a painful business. But there is no remedy -- except one -- the search for
remedies must cease.
If you are angry or in pain, separate
yourself from anger and pain and watch them. Externalisation is the first step
to liberation. Step away and look. The physical events will go on happening,
but by themselves they have no importance. It is the mind alone that matters.
Whatever happens, you cannot kick and scream in an airline office or in a Bank.
Society does not allow it. If you do not like their ways, or are not prepared
to endure them, don't fly or carry money. Walk, and if you cannot walk, don't
travel. If you deal with society you must accept its ways, for its ways are
your ways. Your needs and demands have created them. Your desires are so
complex and contradictory -- no wonder the society you create is also complex
and contradictory.
Q: I do see and admit that the outer chaos is
merely a reflection of my own inner disharmony. But what is the remedy?
M: Don't seek remedies.
Q: Sometimes one is in a 'state of grace' and
life is happy and harmonious. But such a state does not last! The mood changes
and all goes wrong.
M: If you could only keep quiet, clear of
memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern
of events. It is your restlessness that causes chaos.
Q: For full three hours that I spent in the
airline office I was practising patience and forbearance. It did not speed up
matters.
M: At least it did not slow them down, as your
kicking would have surely done! You want immediate results! We do not dispense
magic here. Everybody does the same mistake: refusing the means, but wanting
the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in
yourself. Follow my advice implicitly and you will not be disappointed. I
cannot solve your problem by mere words. You have to act on what I told you and
persevere. It is not the right advice that liberates, but the action based on
it. Just like a doctor, after giving the patient an injection, tells him: 'Now,
keep quiet. Do nothing more, just keep quiet,' I am telling you: you have got
your 'injection', now keep quiet, just keep quiet. You have nothing else to do.
My Guru did the same. He would tell me something and then said: 'Now keep
quiet. Don't go on ruminating all the time. Stop. Be silent'.
Q: I can keep quiet for an hour in the morning.
But the day is long and many things happen that throw me out of balance. It is
easy to say 'be silent', but to be silent when all is screaming in me and round
me -- please tell me how it is done.
M: All that needs doing can be done in peace and
silence. There is no need to get upset.
Q: It is all theory which does not fit the
facts. I am returning to Europe with nothing to do there. My life is completely
empty.
M: If you just try to keep quiet, all will come
-- the work, the strength for work, the right motive. Must you know everything
beforehand? Don't be anxious about your future -- be quiet now and all will fall
in place. The unexpected is bound to happen, while the anticipated may never
come. Don't tell me you cannot control your nature. You need not control it.
Throw it overboard. Have no nature to fight, or to submit to. No experience
will hurt you, provided you don't make it into a habit. Of the entire universe
you are the subtle cause. All is because you are. Grasp this point firmly and
deeply and dwell on it repeatedly. To realize this as absolutely true, is
liberation.
Q: If I am the seed of my universe, then a
rotten seed I am! By the fruit the seed is known.
M: What is wrong with your world that you swear
at it?
Q: It is full of pain.
M: Nature is neither pleasant nor painful. It is
all intelligence and beauty. Pain and pleasure are in the mind. Change your
scale of values and all will change. Pleasure and pain are mere disturbances of
the senses; treat them equally and there will be only bliss. And the world is,
what you make it; by all means make it happy. Only contentment can make you
happy -- desires fulfilled breed more desires. Keeping away from all desires and
contentment in what comes by itself is a very fruitful state -- a precondition
to the state of fullness. Don't distrust its apparent sterility and emptiness.
Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that breeds misery. Freedom from
desires is bliss.
Q: There are things we need.
M: What you need will come to you, if you do not
ask for what you do not need. Yet only few people reach this state of complete
dispassion and detachment. It is a very high state, the very threshold of
liberation.
Q: I have been barren for the last two years,
desolate and empty and often was I praying for death to come.
M: Well, with your coming here events have
started rolling. Let things happen as they happen -- they will sort themselves
out nicely in the end. You need not strain towards the future -- the future will
come to you on its own. For some time longer you will remain sleep-walking, as
you do now, bereft of meaning and assurance; but this period will end and you
will find your work both fruitful and easy. There are always moments when one
feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable for it means the
soul had cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is
detachment -- when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are
afraid, the state may be distressing; but there is really nothing to be afraid
of. Remember the instruction: whatever you come across -- go beyond.
Q: The Buddhas rule: to remember what needs to
be remembered. But I find it so difficult to remember the right thing at the
right moment. With me forgetting seems to be the rule!
M: It is not easy to remember when every
situation brings up a storm of desires and fears. Craving born of memory is
also the destroyer of memory.
Q: How am I to fight desire? There is nothing
stronger.
M: The waters of life are thundering over the
rocks of objects -- desirable or hateful. Remove the rocks by insight and
detachment and the same waters will flow deep and silent and swift, in greater
volume and with greater power. Don't be theoretical about it, give time to
thought and consideration; if you desire to be free, neglect not the nearest
step to freedom. It is like climbing a mountain: not a step can be missed. One
step less -- and the summit is not reached.
