Summary: A sadhak has shown carelessness in driving with punctured spare tyres. Giridharji emphasises the need for sadhana to go deeper and also reflect in one’s outer activities; stresses that transient good spaces are not the objective but rather a permanent inner and outer change. Explains that all outer activities carried out in the Ashram are meant as much for sadhana as is the inner activity of meditation.

You never go to war unprepared and without weapons. You will get killed. As a sadhak you have to be equally prepared, alert and aware. Anticipation of what is required for the sadhana should be there. Each day is a battle, of course not to beat each other up, which you do anyway – sadhana or no sadhana! You should be ready and prepared. It is reflective of one’s sadhana as well. If you think you can just place yourselves anywhere and do a technique or two and the rest does not matter… that may be all right on the surface as a beginner, but that is not really sadhana – rather as you take to serious sadhana and go deeper it will get even more difficult because you will deal with every part of your being, every part of your consciousness, and there you will have to get very sharp and alert so that you are not diverted from your path or even fall into a hole. Very few people go the full journey. That is why ‘The Teacher is superfluous’ is a total naive understanding. He or she is indispensable. Otherwise this is the usual understanding these days: do some technique to meditate, have some ‘imagined’ space and you become the Buddha. No way! That truly is a pipedream.

Sadhana is not a whim and fancy game and so it should reflect in your external life also. That is also indicative of how your sadhana is progressing. You may have the spaces, you may feel the energy and even satori, but it is not enough for our sadhana. It is not! It is all right as a way station but do you think the sadhana is finished then? For most people this could be the objective. But this is not the end and one day it will go. Just as one passes into death, this will also disappear and the journey will stop there and go no further.

Therefore the transformation process is an ongoing one. It must be seen in your everyday activity, otherwise what is the idea, what is the use? You live a dichotomy otherwise; it does not come forth in your daily activity. You get used to this space where you feel good, but then what happens the moment you are put to the test in your outward activity, the moment you are seen outwardly – even in simple things, the way you behave, the way you speak – everything?

All of yourself has to be taken up and go through change and a transformation, otherwise you continue to be as you have been. Sadhana therefore has not reached your external being and existence. That is why I have always said from the very beginning that sadhana is an ongoing process with no end. Even I am progressing. I have said so. You think I am so stupid as to believe that I have come to an end? (Laughs) Then I would be a very small reality. The Reality is infinite and so is the sadhana. It is another matter that I am very far ahead and you will never catch up even though I have stopped myself for a while. You will never catch me, that is for sure, because I will always be ahead – for by the time you will arrive to where I am now I will have moved on, and in leaps and bounds compared to your snail pace! This too is the reality.

Incidents like the one we are discussing right now – driving in the hills without being prepared for a flat tyre – reflects what I am trying to convey of your lack of awareness. And so you can see how you can fall into unawareness so easily even though you may experience good and great spaces of awareness, energy and satori when you sit for meditation but there is no extension of it in your daily external living even in simple things. Another humorous example is when you yourself have taken the rice for dehusking to the roadside and then driven past completely oblivious. An occasional incident here and there is understandable since you are in transit, but if it happens repeatedly… well, it explains what I am saying of sadhana. It seems senile for it usually happens to old people. Old people do that, they are wearing glasses and they are looking for the glasses. If it happens to meditators like you then should you not reflect and inquire of yourself? How come the meditative space and awareness is lost, say when you are cooking or when you are interacting externally? So really it is very transient. It has not become you. It is just some space. It has not brought about that permanence. So then the idea or objective becomes: ‘Let me not do anything which will disturb this space.’ Then it is very fragile. It is not yet real. That means it has not as yet percolated and permeated down to the other levels of your consciousness and in the external.

That is why I say progression. Finally it has to be there in the very pores of your body. While in meditation with closed eyes you may have the space but the moment you come out it is gone, you do not know where, and you are back to being your usual self. Or at the most it can be managed only within the field of certain activities or non-activities – as long as the outer circumstances are conducive and non-disturbing – but this is a limitation and cannot be the finish. This is not how it is to be. That is why it is a progression.

You can be buffeted by the winds of life and its situations badly and yet progressively and finally you should be so established in your meditation and consciousness and being that you are not overwhelmed, rather increasingly and progressively face, meet and deal with it in your stride. Then you will see it has become your daily awareness, activity or no activity. You will anticipate things in and with the sharpness of awareness. Otherwise it means for daily living it is not there. You have one space for daily living and activity and another for your meditation. Two different spaces and beings unintegrated and poles apart. But for us it is to be one being and life, integral and whole, with increasing manifestation of the Divine in life and life in the Divine. So the old life-mind-being has to be replaced and transformed.

And so we say that it should bring a progressive change in life and it should show. It is good to be inside but what about the outside? The inside should reflect in the outside too. You should start to touch it, you should start to feel it, you should start to think it. It should reflect in what you are doing even in your moment of haste and hurry. That is why I have been saying this from the very beginning: there is no such thing as instant enlightenment. You can have an ‘instant space’ but to arrive at that instant space also requires a lot of working: somebody’s grace, somebody’s presence may bring it about, but then it is gone in no time and you have no control; it is foreign to you. Somebody else is the cause of it, somebody’s atmosphere creates it, but then it is gone. It was never yours. If it is yours it should be there under any condition, in any situation – then it is truly yours, then you have got it. But even that is not the end, just one of the many way stations on the soul’s long journey of sadhana in progress. It is not that now you can sit on your easy chair and go to sleep. No, there is so much of the soul’s discovery and journey yet to be made. I have always talked about it.

So we involve ourselves in outer activities and required practical things to take a measure of our meditation and sadhana and for the manifestation that is to be. Simply, why do we need to build houses, why do we need to build paths, why do we need an ashram? Well, that is very obvious: you all need some place to do your sadhana, and therefore we do all required activity in the spirit of sadhana – under guidance. Any and every sensible work can be taken up in this way which helps you grow in the outside too and finally for the inner and outer to become one, integral and whole.

Sadhana is not an easy thing. Wanting it is one thing and working for it is another. You want so many things in life. But are you ready for it? Are you qualified for it? For that qualification to happen it requires a lot of work. Otherwise we can fool ourselves, we can fool each other, we can sound very good, we can have this therapy and that – it is okay. That is the human world. But if you want to rise to the Divine it is something else. It is not meant for everybody. It can be for everybody but then they have to make that kind of investment of time, effort and attitude. One has to have the will and the willingness to go the whole journey whatever it entails and however long. Just to want to become a guru or a therapist will not work. A real Master who has worked for it knows what it entails. He is not going to fool around because he is no fool. And it is not always easy and pleasant to be with Him, not at all. He is not here for that – to spin you some yarn of a pleasure story. He has only one agenda, one objective: to stay true to what he is and to That. He has no other obligation, whether he stays by himself alone or in and with the crowd. That is how He is. That is how His soul is. That is why you have to be in tune with that. It is a slow walk. He is ready to walk with you. At every step He is going to point a finger at you. If you accept this it means that you have the attitude to accept every moment to be endorsed. That is what you do every time. Inherent in that is this attitude: I do not know, I need to learn it from You. This is the inherent attitude. However great the spaces you may have, however great the satoris you may have, however great the intelligence you may have this must be the attitude, then you will go far and keep advancing. That is why I talk to you of Ramakrishna. He may seem a simpleton to you, but you cannot even imagine what he contains in himself in terms of his realisations, devotions and enlightenment. You cannot imagine. You have to go a long, long way in your sadhana before you can even start to get a little feel of it.

You have reduced life only to the inner life and that too to a very small part. You have not mapped, measured the entire inner life anyway, and besides it is a great achievement – and a required one at that – if it comes into the outer life. You will see it, it is a special quality, you will feel something special has now come into the outer living, where you can really know the pulse of things, where anticipations of life and its situations are easily seen revealing their secrets. You start to know things before they even happen. Then life is a magic unfolding.

It is a long journey, but you must have the right attitude. Attitude is important. Developing this attitude also takes many lifetimes. That is why what you do may not seem very glamorous but this is the way it needs to be done, and anyway glamour has nothing to do with sadhana. This has to be dealt with, there is no other way – it cannot be done otherwise. And here it is an opportunity for you to work this out. Within the framework of this environment, in dealing with your outside you will see these things become so obvious. Not only in convenient situations, not only in situations that you seem to control but even otherwise. Even in the most simple and unglamorous of things you should be able to express and live the Divine. It is not conditioned by any idea of the ego, rather through devotion one reaches and comes to the Truth.

When you become frantic you cannot think. In your activity you cannot go beyond the involvement of the mind, so you cannot be objective with the mind, therefore your intelligence and awareness do not come into play. There are everyday activities for you to reflect upon: what you are and where you are in your sadhana. This is what is meant by: your sadhana should become your actual living in the most mundane of activities. This is called living your meditation. Otherwise this satori, space – it is you but has not actually become you. Involved in outer activity you enter into your other ‘you’ then this ‘space’ is gone.

If you have done your homework well – if you have anticipated all the possible factors, endeavoured to your utmost then it is okay – your sadhana is in its place. That is how you can keep on improving and growing, and if everybody is improved then we would not hand over punctured tyres to the next person. Commonly people do that to each other, passing the buck; if it is not a tyre then it is something else. And also as a community of sadhaks that is how the community has to grow, by improving oneself. It can be done only when you live in a community; it cannot be done in isolation because you can never discover these things. Otherwise life would never have been created. It has intent behind it – for manifestation, for the Reality which is beyond manifestation to also be in manifestation. So you have to take care in your activities and remember this. It is an ongoing thing and a work in progress. So long as you understand this you will continue to progress; time is not the issue.

S.: That is the point. I see it as you speak, this laziness. Yesterday I did think about the conditions of that road being so bad, and thought of our tyres being not so good. At that point I should have been active and checked. That is the point I never manage.

Therefore the need to be sharp, alert and watchful of our states and our mind and its suggestions and the repetitive carelessness, making changes wherever required, not giving in to habitual behaviour. That is going beyond the tamas of the mind and personality. This can only be worked out through actual practical living where it all becomes visible – otherwise how else will it expose itself. Therefore the need to bring meditation into action. This is very much required for the meditation to become dynamic. That sharpness of awareness must come; sharpness to be aware of the other thought ‘to do the right thing’. You will have the right suggestion also available but you tend to take the easy way out. And it is a personality formation. In this way you can change personality. The old personality will resist and will keep trying to suck you in. Not giving into it and making the right changes is to recraft your personality by exercising your will.

Arya Vihar

10 Oct 2010