Go Deep into Yourself

by Chariji, November 09, 2009, Kharagpur, India.

Many years ago, when I was with Babuji Maharaj in Germany and we were leaving most of the sister abhyasis were in tears, and they said to Babuji, “Oh, you are going so far away. When will we meet again?” Babuji put on his smile, very loving, and said, “I am telling you, it is very easy. Think that Germany is in India.” And it worked like magic. I think that thought of his has today, after many years, maybe thirty years, brought Africa to India. [Laughs]

I am happy that all of you are here. I don’t have to welcome you because you are like the children of the Master coming back home. And I hope that you will find that your stay here is one filled with love, harmony, and inner peace and contentment. That is what spiritual growth is about. We seem to identify spiritual growth as something quite divorced from our human life, and we consequently suffer because we are looking all the time: where is this spiritual growth? It is like that ancient axiom, you know, that if you mix oil and water they will never mix.

So when you think of spirituality as different from life, it is difficult to conceive of something which is fundamental to our existence and not being able to find it, because you can’t find something which is fundamental from outside yourself. You have to go deep into yourself. If you want to see whether water is in the well, you have to look into the well, not outside.

So we have to learn how to look inside — that is what we are all doing now in meditation. Think that your heart is filled with divine light; just imagine it is there and see where it takes you. I mean this is nothing new. We have said all this so many times before. You have heard it from me. You have heard it from other prefects. You have also heard it long ago from the horse’s mouth (Babuji’s mouth). But it is a sad thing that something which should have been grasped instantly has to be repeated so often and so many times. It only shows that we are not paying attention, or we are questioning what we are listening to or hearing, and trying to find the truth of what we are hearing, ourselves. Which, in essence, means we don’t want to profit by the Master’s experience from which his teaching evolves, but like true modern human beings we want to test everything. That is the curse that Occidental knowledge has bestowed on us — to test everything. In India, we say, “Experience.” Outside India they say, “Test.”

You know, science is only testing again and again and again to prove the validity of some assumptions which they call hypotheses. In spirituality, there is no hypothetical knowledge. There is only the experiential knowledge that the gurus and the Masters, our parampara, Sahaj Marg parampara (what we call the hierarchy today), which they have garnered, both by instruction from their gurus, as well as revelation when they have come to sufficiently high levels to have direct access, which they pass on to us. The first step in wisdom is to listen to it, absorb it and act by it. Are we doing it? Or are we saying, “No, no, no, that is all right. He was a great Master. It was possible for him. It is not possible for us. We are living in the modern world.” What is the modern world except a world full of experimentation, destruction, lack of love, and forebodings for the future? That is what modern life is all about, isn’t it? (We hear the planes going up and down. We have an airbase near us on the left.)

Today the world is full of airbases, supersonic (and I don’t know what else) aircraft, weapons of mass destruction (WMD as the Americans call them), hatred, frontiers, boundaries — difficult to cross. And sometimes if you cross you are not able to come back, like the chakravyuha [wheel-shaped battle formation] of the Mahabharata: you can go in but not come out. The real chakravyuha is here in spirituality. You know the rings of Babuji Maharaj’s book (rings of grossness, rings of whatever it is, rings of splendour), and the very centre into which we go not to come back again, the true chakravyuha, the true place from which we don’t come [back]. Lord Krishna describes in the Bhagavad Gita: yad gatvaa na nivartante, tad dhaama paramam mama — that region where you have gone and from which you don’t return, that is my divine abode, says Lord Krishna. That is the only place from which you cannot return, you must not return, and your aim should be never to return. Everywhere else — you come from Africa, you have to return to Africa. You come from Timbuktu, you have to go back to Timbuktu. You come from France, you have to go back to France. Isn’t it?

Here [the heart], this is where our centre lies. And really speaking, if you go into it, as the ancient tradition says, and you meditate properly, the first time should be the last time for meditation. You should never meditate again. In fact, you won’t come out of it to meditate again. You are there permanently. That is what people are afraid of. That is why they say, “I went in, Chariji, and then I came out again. I found I was back in this world.” You did not find yourself back in this world. You came back into this world to find out that you are still here and not in the arms of some limbo called death, in whatever region that is.

So, you see, it is our fear which makes us incapable, which makes us impotent, and which while permitting us to go a little, draws us back into what we think is the safety of our permanent place here. It is like children, very little children, three years, four years. They go out into the garden and come back rushing, “Mummy, Mummy!” Every mother knows this. So why do we do this? Why are we afraid of something which we want so very passionately? The only reason I can think of is, we are unable to do it because we are trying to escape from this life, from all the problems of this life, from its misery, from its pains, from its frustration, from its hatred, rather than to evolve out of it into something much finer, much nobler, much subtler — a divine place where it is full of nothing but love because God is love.

So if you are trying to escape from here to there, you are frightened, like a man who escapes out of prison is frightened. He wants to get out of prison, but before he plans, before he executes, he is terrified because if he is caught escaping, he will be shot. ‘Shot while escaping’ — you know that? That is the police formula. This is what keeps us here — we want, but we don’t want. We want, but we are afraid of what we want, and because God is love and because we are afraid of God, we are afraid of love. In any situation in life, including marriage, we are afraid of love. We are afraid to give love. We only want love. Therefore, today marriages are fraught with failure, with suspicion, often with hatred.

So, dear brothers and sisters, if you want to make this journey, the first thing you have to pray for is, “Lord, rid me of this fear of freedom.” We are afraid of freedom because we don’t know how to handle it. I have read long ago that what destroys American values in American society is their inability to handle leisure. When they were working six days a week, they were comparatively better off. Five days a week, they don’t know what to do with a two-day weekend. Four days a week…

So, you see, first of all cleaning means removal of fear. We are only afraid of so-called grossness and samskara. There is physical grossness, mental grossness, moral grossness, all sorts of grossness. The subtler the grossness, the worse it is. Now fear is an emotion. You cannot just sweep it away like taking dirt off of the floor with a broom. It requires much more effort. You know, if you have smoke filling the room, you have to open the window and let it out, because a similar force of the same order of subtlety must take it out. You cannot wave a stick and remove the smoke, isn’t it? — similar subtlety.

So here, to remove fear I have to take the help of my Master, my prefects, take sittings, open myself. Because unless I open windows, the wind will not blow through the house. If you keep the windows closed and say, “Smoke, smoke, go away,” where will it go? Only into your lungs. So openness only will create confidence, going into faith. If I am closed all the time, nothing will work.

I have repeated so often, this is my personal finding, my research if you would like to call it, that it is faith that works, not God, not guru. Their powers are limited by this unfortunately very strong force which opposes that force, which is lack of faith, which is suspicion, which is doubt. As Babuji said, doubt is the poison of the soul. Why is it the poison of the soul? Because it prevents every healing aspect of divine shakti or power to come into me and to heal me. No doubts, as Babuji said — inquiry (spelt with ‘i’, not enquiry spelt with ‘e’). Inquiry means going deeper and deeper into the subject; and here the subject is myself. I am the object of experimentation, I am the doer of the experiment and all that I use from outside myself is the divine power of the Master. Remember what Babuji said about transmission: it is the use of divine power for the transformation of man.

So we have to put into practice what we preach, what we learn, what we study, and not remain like the modern Western scholars for whom philosophy is a subject and not a way of life. Indians’ philosophy, Arabs’ philosophy, Hebrew philosophy, and they remain in their sanctified library bookshelves. We get degrees and that remains here [head] and doesn’t go here [heart]. Today I found a newspaper article where something that was said in the courts of England has raised a question, “Who or what is a Jew?” I suppose something every Jew knows, the courts are unable to decide!

Medical people know that we are unable to fix the moment of death. When is a person really dead? Heart stops, brain death, nails stop growing, hair stops growing — when? Arbitrarily we have a convention by which we abide. So you see, all human knowledge is very arbitrary, assumptive, in that we assume things about which we know nothing because an assumption only means I don’t know reality.

So all this, please remember. Brood over what Babuji said. After every meditation sit silently for some minutes; brood over your condition, he said. That means put your mind into your condition and see what it says to you. Most of you have heard Babuji saying, “The condition speaks to me.” When I have a headache, it speaks to me; I don’t look for it. Isn’t it? When I have indigestion, it speaks to me. Why on earth will my spiritual condition not speak to me? Because I don’t listen; I think it is something which, like water out of a bottle, I put in myself — not part of me. I don’t think, like headache can give me pain, this condition can give me bliss, harmony, peace of mind. I have never expected it, I have never thought about it. Babuji Maharaj says, “Oh, I see.” What do I see? Nothing, because I still don’t look into myself and see what Babuji Maharaj said is true.

So please learn to sit in meditation. After meditation, sit for some time patiently, five minutes, ten minutes. Brood over your condition like the period of rest after a meal. Allow it to digest. Are we digesting what we have received? These are very important aspects of your sadhana to which we have to refer again and again. And I take the liberty of repeating it now today to you after so many years, decades, because as Babuji says in many of his messages in Whispers, I am repeating myself but there is no harm in repeating what is good. Like you eat a second rasgulla [a sweet] which is not good for you really, you see. Isn’t it? Like you try to go to the same place for a holiday and you find it — it is not there, what you saw the first time. People who are celebrating their shashti-abda-purthi (sixtieth birthday or sixty-first birthday), going back to the place where they had their honeymoon — and finding what? Because the spirit is gone.

So never try to repeat an experience because no experience ever can be repeated; whether it is sorrowful, or joyful, it cannot be repeated. Each time, each moment is unique. This is a big lesson of Babuji Maharaj that no second is repeated in another instant. (People say, “No, no, I have already meditated in the morning. Let me go shopping in the evening.”) Babuji Maharaj said, talking of seminars like this where we have seven days, three days, five days, he said each meditation adds to the previous meditation, and if there is a gap, it is like a staircase in which two steps are missing. You can’t climb up. That is what Babuji Maharaj has said.

So when you attend these seminars, attendance at every meditation is absolutely essential; you cannot say morning, and tomorrow… Now! Which means, like floating in water, you have to be in this sort of atmosphere; keep it throughout life. Not from moment to moment, not from sitting to sitting but continuously keep that in your heart, in your experience, and that is what constant remembrance really is.

Constant remembrance is not a trick of memory. It is a trick you have to develop of looking into yourself and seeing the divinity there eternally present. That is what gives continuing bliss, continuing health, continuing harmony without a break, echoing Babuji’s statement that, “He who is happy under all circumstances is the really happy person.” I pray that you will all realize this, bring it into your lives, show it to others — because it must show. What is in you must show; it cannot be hidden. Joy must be showing. Why are we so expert at showing our sorrows, our pains, our hatred, and unable to show our inner happiness, our love?

We come back to that first point: we are afraid. We are afraid to love because we are afraid of being exploited. You know, like rich men are afraid of people coming to them because they are afraid that they will ask for some money or some favours. Babuji says, if you have, it is given to you to give; not to keep. So you should welcome people who come to you and relieve you of this. But fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your mood of the moment), you will find that what you have given away is replaced by the Divine. Give. And Babuji said, starting from a weak straw that you suck juice through, if you become that, the more you allow to pass out of you to others’ hearts, this keeps growing and growing and growing until, as Babuji said, it becomes like a huge water pipe, six feet wide, twelve feet wide. And that cannot be stopped, because nature is always looking for a giver, not for a taker. Everyone can take us for rides, as we say. Are you a giver? If you are a giver, give. Don’t think of deservingness. You are not here to judge who is deserving or not. He decides. You still give; what the other person or the society or the atmosphere receives will depend on his deservingness, depending on His judgement. Our duty is to give, give, give; without fear, without restraint, without fear of loss.

So ladies and gentleman, sisters and brothers: I would like to say that we have a beautiful facility here. You are the first group coming. We have an excellent library. Don’t waste your time in the canteen or in the dormitories, chit-chatting, gossiping. There is a limited number of books, but a very select library for our purpose. I am sorry you cannot take books out of the library, but you are welcome to read, make notes, profit by it. This facility is created for your benefit. Use it. Use it wisely, use it lovingly, and use it well.

Thank you.