I AM THAT: WHAT MAKES ONE EARNEST

[Guest guest]

M: You are never without a Guru, for he is timelessly present in your

heart. Sometimes he externalizes himself and comes to you as an

uplifting and reforming factor in your life, a mother, a wife, a

teacher; or he remains as an inner urge towards righteousness and

perfection. All you have to do is to obey him and self-awareness,

self-control, self-surrender. It may seem arduous, but it is easy if

you are earnest. And quite impossible if you are not. Earnestness is

both necessary and sufficient. Everything yields to earnestness. 433

 

Q: What makes one earnest?

M: Compassion is the foundation of earnestness. Compassion for

yourself and others, born of suffering, your own and of others. 433

 

Q: Must I suffer to be earnest?

M: You need not, if you are sensitive and respond to the sorrows of

others, as Buddha did. But if you are callous and without pity, your

own suffering will make you ask the inevitable questions.

 

Q: I find myself suffering, but not enough. Life is unpleasant, but

bearable. My little pleasures compensate me for my small pains and on

the whole I am better off than most of the people I know. I know that

my condition is precious, that a calamity can overtake me any moment.

Must I wait for a crisis to put me on my way to truth?

 

M: The moment you have seen how fragile is your condition, you are

already alert. Now, keep alert, give attention, inquire, investigate,

discover your mistakes of mind and body and abandon them.

Q: Where is the energy to come from? I am like a paralyzed man in a

burning house.

M: Even paralyzed man sometimes find their leg in a moment of danger!

But you are not paralyzed, you merely imagine so. Make the first step

and you will be on your way. 434

 

Q: I feel that my hold on the body is so strong that I just cannot

give up the idea that I am the body. It will cling to me as long as

the body lasts. There are people who maintain that no realization is

possible while alive and I feel inclined to agree with them.

 

M: Before you agree or disagree, why not investigate the very idea of

a body? Does the mind appear in the body or the body in the mind?

Surely there must be a mind to conceive the `I-am-the-body' idea. A

body without a mind cannot be `my body'. `My body' is invariably

absent when the mind is in abeyance. It is also absent when the mind

is deeply engaged in thoughts and feelings. Once you realized that

the body depends on the mind, and the mind depends on consciousness,

and consciousness on awareness and not the other way round, your

question about waiting for self-realization till you die is answered.

It is not that you must be free from `I-am-the-body' idea first, and

then realized the self. It is definitely the other way round – you

cling to the false, because you do not know the true. Earnestness,

not perfection, is a precondition to self-realization. Virtues and

powers come with realization, not before. 434