I am That

[Guest guest]

Desires fulfilled, breed more desires

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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. I is the fruit of your long sadhana. After all,

one does not study for ever.

 

Q: Enough of it. It took me nowhere.

 

M: Done say nowhere, It took you to 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 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 airlines office or in a bank. Society does not allow

it. If you do not like their ways, or are not prepared to endure it, don’t

fly or carry money. Walk, and if you cannot walk, do not 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 stae 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 the full three hours that I spent in the airlines 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 surely have

done. You want immediate results! We do not dispense magic here. Everybody

commits 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

problems 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. I is easy to say ‘be silent’,

but to be silent when all is screaming in me and around me, 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 realise this as absolutely true, is

liberation.

 

Q: If I am the seed og 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 makes you happy –

desires fulfilled, breeds more desires. Keeping away from all desires and

contentment in what comes by itself is a very frutiful 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 I

was 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 sometime longer, you will remain sleep-walking, as you do now, bereft of

meaning and assurance; but this period will end and you will find 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

maybe distressing; but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the

instruction – whatever you come across – go beyond.

 

Q: The Buddha’s 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 through 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. One step less – and the summit is not yet reached.

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Swami