Spiritual Diary - March

March 1

Serve

In real life, what is extremely important and interesting too is that, in order to live, I need to love and to be loved.
If I am interested in living, I also need to work, I need to serve, I need to be active in this world.
If I do some work in your house for you, while taking leave, I must thank you.
If you had not been there for me to serve, I would not have had this opportunity of exercising my limbs.
I would have wasted away.
Thank you very much for giving me this chance.
This is what our Master used to do.
I need to love, and therefore I do not expect anything in return; when someone does not love me, I do not feel I must return hate.
If I return hate, then I am injecting hate into my own heart, killing myself.
Whatever the attitude of the other person, I have a need to love, I have a need to serve - that is the nature of an enlightened person.
He is an instrument in the hand of God. He functions as an instrument.

March 2

Harmony

Yoga means harmony, union, integration.
There must be an inner harmony, a total harmony within the total being.
The oneness, the harmony that exists amongst the billions of cells in the body, the total continuous, unquestioning, undoubted, supra-national unity - that is what we are looking for.
When all actions that are performed by this body, mind, intellect and ego spring from the cosmic being, the cosmic intelligence, the result is yoga.
If you are totally unselfish, you are not even aware that you are unselfish.
If you are egoless, the ego is not even aware that it is egoless.
Non-volitional activity is where all actions spontaneously spring from this cosmic being.
We have a body, a mind, and an intellect.
If we watch ourselves, it is not difficult to realize that there is no harmony between the three.
Thinking, feeling and willing; they seem to run in different directions.
Integrate them and you have yoga in action.

March 3

Watchful

The most difficult thing in Karma Yoga is to be in contact, in relationship with people, without forgetting that I am not serving another person but myself.
In the initial stages, this involves making sure my own being, me, is whole, and later realizing that he and I are different parts of the same organism.
Karma Yoga is very difficult.
It is real yoga and needs terrible vigilance all the time.
I note that I am calm, peaceful, without jealousy.
Very good.
But can I live in relation with others all the time, and yet be inwardly watchful always?
It requires tremendous effort.
Yet, so long as it needs the effort, please remember that it is still not you.
You are not examining yourself, but examining a reflection, a shadow.
When learning to drive, you need much effort, but when experienced, you drive in your sleep.
As long as self-observation demands effort, it is good to be careful.
The moment you let go, there will be a crash.

March 4

Yoga

What is undivine life?
A life ruled by the petty ego, a life full of selfishness, lust, anger and greed.
A life of ignorance, this is undivine life.
It is not life at all.
It is a living death.
Look - are you alive?
Are you alive to the purpose of life?
Do you know the purpose of life?
Do you even care to know the purpose of life?
Flesh decays, weapons rust, wealth is reduced to dust.
Empires crumble.
The life and death struggles of heroes are dismissed with a few brief sentences in a history book.
Open your eyes and see.
Who is happy in this world?
Deluded man, arise, awake!
Go to the men of God, and learn to walk this straight and narrow path called Yoga.
Yoga is not a mysterious cult.
It is the path of atonement with the Lord here and now.
It leads you to the grand goal of self-realization or God-realization.
It leads you to the realization of God's indwelling Omnipresence.

March 5

Swami-ego

If I see the truth as it is, then there is no suffering at all in life.
There is no suffering in life, because the power that is responsible for what we call creation, preservation and change, is omnipresent.
This Omnipresent power must function for the welfare of all beings; therefore the condition in which one finds oneself, is extremely necessary for each one of us.
Money was stolen from the Ashram in Rishikesh, the secretary was complaining.
Gurudev answered him, "For one moment forget that 'I' is the secretary of the society, and think that 'I' is the cheat. It is the same self that is in you and in him."
This can only be done when the ego is not there at all, when it is not the decision maker, the judge.
The swami-ego condemns as wicked one who smokes and drinks, but if the swami-ego is dropped, we immediately become one, for what is it that stands between you and me? Me.
When that goes, everything that divided us has gone.
There is enlightenment.

March 6

Shakti

What is the soul?
A little caterpillar was sitting on a leaf right in front of us.
With one end on the leaf it stretched out its other end, probing for a foothold on another leaf.
As soon as it had this foothold, it lifted its other end, and passed on to the new leaf.
Even so does the soul.
Neither the soul nor the body was ever born.
They are in a continuous process called recycling.
There is one Shakti (power) which does everything.
It is not as though one God delivers me here, another preserves me and a third carries me away.
One power that sustains me also brings about the change known as death.
There is only one power in the whole universe.
When it functions in a certain manner, there is conception, birth.
Functioning as the multiplication of cells, it is preservation, living.
When its function is disintegration, it is called death, which in reality is merely "going out of sight", for what exists cannot be non-existent.
When this power creates, it is called Brahma Shakti; as the preserver, it is known as Vishnu Shakti, and as the destroyer (redeemer) Siva Shakti.
Electricity, though always the same, performs functions which appear superficially to be contradictory.
Similarly the same Shakti performs different functions, but the power is the same.

March 7

Poverty

Poverty is a curse.
Men have fought against it, religious, political and economic movements have been born of it, and humanity revolts against this universal enemy number one.
Ironically, however, these movements go on, scraping not more than the surf ace of the problem, and leaving the root untouched.
Oriental philosophers endeavored to expose the root of the problem by saving, "It is his Karma. He is a poor man now because he was a miser in the past. If you do charity with what little you have now, you will never taste such poverty later."
Every poor man is his neighbor's responsibility.
Don't say it is his Karma - rather see that it is your Karma that has put you near him, and then do something about it.
Only you can show him the love and sympathy, which he needs, just as much as he needs a loaf of bread.
Poverty is a curse, not so much to the sufferers, but to you and me - everyone.
For, please remember, poverty breeds violence, revolution, crime and irreligion.
Let us all feel "I am my sister's and brother's keeper. In their joy lays mine."

March 8

Inner Light

Man cannot see what is constructive and what is destructive.
The answer to this is deep within him - in his own conscience - and he needs an inner light to read the answer.
With this inner light he will be freed from the shackles of ignorance and worldliness - the lust for power, pleasure and profit.
This light itself is liberation - liberation from darkness.
Yet, we may switch on a flood lamp.
But if our eyes are tightly bandaged, we shall be in darkness and that darkness (bandage) is bondage.
We can take it off, but do we want to?
A vicious circle has been formed.
We were in darkness, and we adapted our lives to it.
Our conscience was in darkness, and we indulged in all the vices that thrive in darkness, and those vices become delectable modes of pleasure.
We like them, and we like the darkness that makes such pleasure possible.
And even if, by the Grace of God, the nature of these vices makes itself felt as suffering or disillusionment, we still try to remedy the suffering without losing the darkness, the source of our pleasure.
Only if we open the inner eye of wisdom, and kindle this inner light in which we are able to perceive the glory of a life of unselfishness, of love and of wisdom, will we realize the suicidal stupidity of selfishness, hatred and worldliness.

March 9

Purusha

The "doer of deeds" in us is Prakriti, and the consciousness in us is Purusha.
The Purusha is normally mixed up with the activities of the Prakriti - which means that you do not know that you are reading this - the awareness of the action is lost in the action itself.
In our every day lives this reduces us to the level of instinctual beings, acting involuntarily and mechanically.
There are many techniques for the cultivation of this inner faculty of self-awareness.
Japa, the repetition of a Mantra, is one.
Vichara or enquiry into the self, is another.
Devotional practices help too.
Different methods suit different temperaments, but there is an extremely simple "exercise", basic to all these - the method of watching the breath.
As you sit watching the breath, you are in effect breathing and watching yourself.
You are breathing and you are aware you are breathing.
Half an hour of this every day enables you to acquire what is known as witness consciousness.
This witness consciousness can then be extended to other activities.
You work and you are aware of the work.
In witness consciousness, there is inward alertness.
This heightens the joy of living and sublimates all your emotions.

March 10

Grace

Divine Grace can do anything.
God is Omnipotent.
The world we live in is a standing monument to His Omnipotence.
The very air we breathe is a miracle.
The functioning of our organs, of our brain, is a miracle.
And the wonder of wonders is that he has ordained that we carry two temples on our shoulders, one on each side.
Don't we call the side of the head the temple?
The Lord obviously dwells within the head - He is our Self, the Consciousness within, and the reality within.
Yet we often need an external agent to turn our attention to this indwelling presence - and that is the mosque, or temple, or church, or other place of worship of the Lord.
When we enter the temple we leave our shoes outside, but we have to carry with us the "leather" which covers the body - the skin.
Should we not at least leave all base thoughts - our animal nature - outside too?
Is not that the animal sacrifice that the Lord requires of us?
The temple is like a savings bank - you draw from it only what you, or someone like you, has put into it.
You can even make an overdraft - if you are of a sinful nature, the purifying atmosphere of the temple will help you to change your nature.
But if the impurity persists, you will soon find the temple an uninteresting place.

March 11

Dynamism

Work is vital, activity is vital, and life involves living.
To live is to do - and that needs no further incentive, no vision, no wisdom, and no understanding of the principles and principals involved.
A plant is active, an animal is active, man is active and, surprisingly, a piece of metal is active.
Does philosophy or religion preach indolence, laziness, poverty, starvation, or ignorance?
On the contrary - dynamism is the message of all religions.
But life, dynamism, activity must be purposeful.
To discover the meaning of life, we study philosophy and this equips us with the necessary discipline of mind and intellect.
Religion equips us with the necessary disciplines of life.
We cannot abolish baking bread, farming and making money - for that would be suicide.
Perhaps we can abolish religion and philosophy, but though the starved soul might not proclaim its debility, the death of wisdom will soon deprive life of its meaning - a suicide too subtle for the materialistic intellect to perceive, and for the most powerful agency to arrest in time.

March 12

Time

What is time but a mental creation?
We value it, trade in it, treat it as a commodity, and convert it into money.
It has no such illusions about us.
Time is itself an illusion - it deludes and cheats us, it kills us.
Hence in Sanskrit "kala" means both time and death.
To catch time we have various devices - the diary, the calendar, and most important of all, the watch.
It watches time pass; yet it is powerless either to halt time or to inspire us with vigilance.
Time has to be conquered by its own best use.
Whether we rush madly around, looking at the watch every five minutes, or we idly let time just slip away, we are still subject to the illusion of time.
Kala, time the killer, will occasionally remind us of its dark side, but if we are non-vigilant even then, Kala the cheat will make us forget the truth and live a life of self-indulgence.
When we lead a life of self-control and, by vigorous self-culture (the great aim of yoga) attain self-realization, we shall have transcended the time barrier, the thought barrier, and reached the realm where the sun of God-realization shines forever.
Time then ceases to exist.
Eternity prevails.

March 13

Freedom

Freedom is the life of the soul of man.
Human pre-history begins with man's rebellion against bondage.
The life in the seed breaks the shell, splits the earth and, peeping above the earth, proclaims its freedom.
The human being rebels even against "the realities of life" by withdrawing into himself, by seeking freedom in reverie, dream or insanity.
In spite of all semblances to the contrary we have not progressed much further than the primitive man.
Our tools have changed, our technique has changed, our terrain has changed - but our motives have remained unchanged - we seek freedom, total freedom, absolute freedom.
And yet we are unwilling to pay the price - self-discipline.
In modern society the freedom of man's spirit is restricted all round, and it seeks to express itself through sex and money - escape valves.
But to escape is not to solve; there are no ready-made solutions here.
Real discipline is self-discipline and everyone has to find his own solution to his own unique problem.
Only when he realizes that, while sex and money provide him with an escape from present limitation, they will ultimately rob him of all freedom, will he discipline himself.
Only then will he surrender his lesser freedom for attaining the greater freedom - freedom from the inner tyrants of lust, anger, and greed.

March 14

Love

The question no longer arises, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
Conscience demands, "Am I not my brother's keeper?" - and does not wait for an answer.
Love is the spontaneous manifestation of the seeing, of the realization of this unity in which we are all knit - whatever our religion, caste, nationality or social status.
Love knows no distinctions, nor does distance matter.
Love flows where it is needed, spontaneously, just as water flows from high to low ground.
The holy Veda declares: "This my hand is God".
The word for both hand and abundance is the same, and the meaning of this is abundantly clear!
Only an immature person looks to another to maintain him.
A mature person, on the other hand, understands his interdependent relationship with all living beings, and thus avoids the pitfall of selfishness into which he might otherwise fall.
Interdependence, like love, is natural, mutual dependence of two or more persons who are psychologically independent and free.
Society composed of such persons is capable of maintaining itself and flourishing.
Only such progress and prosperity as are achieved by such mutual love and service are true and lasting.
And, they are within your arm's reach!

March 15

Idea

Nature is full of blessings.
The light shines externally, but we turn from it, creating darkness in our own lives.
The clouds gather, creating confusion, disorder, pain, and sorrow.
In our frantic effort to get rid of pain and sorrow, we forget that the desire to get rid of pain and sorrow is itself pain and sorrow, and that the effort worsens it.
The effort to create order is itself disorder.
We see this during sleep.
Sleep itself was the "action in non-action".
Whatever enjoyed the sleep, slept without the notion of sleep, without even the awareness of sleep, and without the desire to enjoy the sleep.
In sleep there was no division between the being and the doing, between the intelligence and the action.
At other times the being or intelligence is interfered with by the idea we have of the action.
It is the idea that acts.
The idea itself is the "I".
The "I" creates a motivation, a goal or a reward.
Thus are born the ideas of success and failure, pleasure and pain, and all the rest of the pairs of inseparable opposites.
The mind that sees this truth as truth, and not as an idea, is alert.
The alert mind itself is order, is virtue.
Its powerful gaze does not permit the idea to arise.
In this light, actions happen - actions springing directly from the being or intelligence.
The alert mind itself is meditation.

March 16

Craving

Gurudev Swami Sivananda commanded, "Turn the gaze" in order to recognize that the enemy is within - craving.
Craving itself being "the other side of the coin" of ignorance, it vanishes the moment one's whole attention is focused on it.
Hence, the yogi does not indulge in self-pity or self-condemnation (which in any case is a meaningless and worthless pastime).
If statements like "I pity myself" and "I wish to destroy myself" were based on truth, then the "I" that pities the self is superior and faultless, and the "I" that wishes to destroy the self remains after the "self" is destroyed.
All this is readily seen to be absurd.
When the craving for experience (of pleasure, etc.) ceases, life does not cease.
Pure experiencing goes on, for it is part of the very existence.
In that pure experiencing there is no subject-object relationship - it was the craving for experience that arose as the subject, creating its own object of enjoyment and suffering.
Such a life in which craving for experience ceases, is pure joy.
All else is misery.
Such a life is pure love; all else is pure hypocrisy.
Such a life is divine life.

March 17

Omnipresent

Here is the greatest miracle possible on earth, the silent transformation of the human heart.
It reminds us that we are all parts of the body of God, which is the universe.
It proclaims that however much we try to ignore or run away from our fellow man, however much we try to hate or harm our neighbor, we cannot.
We are unhappy because our hearts have become so narrow that we want only our own happiness.
The good man delights in the happiness of others.
Selfishness is an animal instinct.
The truly unselfish man is a divine being.
We cannot truly serve mankind, unless we feel that all of us together form the body of God.
Hence all the great Saints and Saviors of the world have proclaimed that we should seek God first.
Unless we seek God with all our heart, we shall not be able to experience His Omnipresence.
It is dangerous to pay lip service to this doctrine.
We should sincerely pray to Him, meditate upon Him every day.
We should endeavor every moment to express through loving service of our neighbor, the inner faith that God is Omnipresent.
We should love all, perceiving the light of God shining in all faces.
It is then that we shall truly be human beings.

March 18

Thought

What is sorrow?
Is it in the objects of the world, or is it in ourselves?
Surely, sorrow is experienced by us, within ourselves, by our thinking.
The mind that "thinks" it is miserable is miserable.
This is revealed by the fact that when the mind is asleep and does not think, there is no sorrow.
Thought creates space, thought is space.
When this space is one of pleasure or happiness, you are surrounded by happiness.
When it is one of pain and sorrow, you are surrounded by unhappiness.
How can one avoid this "space"?
By not creating it at all.
Raja Yoga teaches us how to live without hurting others or being hurt by others - that is, without coming into contact with pain.
This is possible only if the psychological space is not created.
If there is no division in the mind, there is no contact with pain at all.
The understanding of the unreality of division is meditation, the very heart of yoga.
Thought tries to grasp the experience, - as a result there is "I" and the "experience" which is subdivided into pleasure and pain, etc.
But what is the real content of "thought"?
Is it not the intelligence inherent in the body and the mind?
This is reality - that that intelligence, which alone is indivisible, alone exists.

March 19

Devotion

Devotion starts with the "I love you" experience.
This experience is in "me", and can therefore be repeated in relation to others.
But then I realize that love is when the "I" is not!
Sage Vasistha points out that between "l" and "you" is the reality, love, bliss or God.
"I" and "you" are conditioned - love that is between them is unconditioned, unlimited and therefore divine.
When this divine love is veiled and the I-consciousness arises again, there is intense anguish in the heart of the devotee - for it is the "I" (ego-sense or selfishness) that is the cause of sorrow.
The devotee who becomes aware of the existence of the division created by the mind and the ego-sense practices bhakti.
Such practice takes the form of ritualistic worship, repetition of a Mantra, singing of hymns, study of scriptures or service of the holy Ones, depending on the nature of the devotee.
Devotion in which division is absent is not for the mind or the ego-sense to "achieve".
Such devotion is also called supreme love, total self-surrender or total absorption.
Self-surrender is itself the supreme practice of bhakti.
Self-surrender is itself liberation.
When the "self" is surrendered, then what is, is God.

March 20

Religion

What is the purpose of life?
The answer is in life itself, not in the intellect, which brings in "convincing logic" to justify itself.
Life is not logical - it has to be lived by one who is alive to it, and not to a purpose invented by the brain, which is polluted by all sorts of ideas.
The pursuit of happiness or peace may lead to a better understanding of the purpose of life than all the philosophies and religious doctrines have been able to generate.
"My" happiness cannot be promoted at the expense of yours - your restlessness will soon engulf me.
In this sense, "I am my brother's keeper".
We discover that a restless man creates restlessness in his society, a person who is divided within himself divides society into warring factions, and this inner division must be removed before the purpose of life can be truly seen as it is.
The purpose of life is the spirit of religion, but the way in which to discover this spirit is to turn one's attention to life itself, without artificial aids - whether political, social, intellectual, emotional, psychological or philosophical.
There is a natural spirit in each one of us which, when freed of all kinds of pollution, will reveal itself as the true spirit of religion.
Life, God, religion and humanity become indistinguishable at that point.

March 21

Identification

I do not know who I am, but somehow I know I am.
This being an impossible position, I seek an identification.
Identifications are available in plenty in this world.
I gather these false labels and somehow they assume the reality of an identity.
Persistent repetition of a lie has the power to make it appear to be real.
Thought lends its power to confirm this as truth.
The "me" who was born as an ignorant enquirer has now come to accept the aggregate of identifications as itself.
The "me" having created the division in the indivisible pretends that it has seen the disaster caused by the division and tries to abolish it!
The "me" only pretends to have seen the problem.
If it truly sees it, the division, will disappear in a moment.
Yoga enables you to see the truth that the "me" is a ghost-like substitute for the ignorance of your identity.
It enables you to realize the indivisibility of truth and the tragedy of division.
It is the "me" that creates the "you", the "other".
The "me" itself being a non-entity and an aggregate of ideas and concepts, it is seen by this indivisible intelligence as a non-entity.
When its real nature is seen, it ceases, and with it ceases the division and all its mischief.
Self-knowledge or yoga unites by abolishing the non-existent division.

March 22

Divine Life

Buddha said: "Be a light unto yourself. Find your own inner light."
That is why my own guru, Swami Sivananda declared: "Within you is hidden God, within you is immortal soul, kill this little 'I', die to live, live the divine life."
Divine life is not just sitting and singing, and reading a few books, and talking about it. No.
No. Kill this little "I"; die to live.
That is divine life.
When the inner light begins to shine, the "I" that is a mere shadow, disappears.
That is freedom, liberation, and salvation.
To attain this you have taken birth here.
This inner light cannot be illuminated by anybody else.
I have to do it myself. How?
Buddha had a lovely illustration: "Live in this world as if you were living with a cobra in the same room."
That is called meditation.
That is called concentration.
If the snake moves, your eyes also move.
Nobody can distract your attention because your life is in danger!
We have not realized that our life is constantly in danger.
We are dying all the time.
There is a lovely couplet in the Bhagavatam: "You have only one constant companion. He was born with you. Death!"
I do not feel it.
I am not aware.
Whatever is born must die.
Our body is dying constantly, but "I" cannot die.
One must find the truth; one must find the inner light while still living in this body.

March 23

Vairagya

In our daily life we are caught by two suggested "opposing" techniques or concepts "either - or".
In all this the central problem is forgotten - the ego and its conditioning.
The truth is that there is attraction and repulsion (hatred, violence and so on) in me, in the mind.
It is not a question of suppressing either the physical or mental expression of dislike or resentment - nor indeed of attraction. The main issue is mental conditioning, the conditioning of the mind.
Whatever our mind sees is colored, and so we divide life into "black" and "white" - "I like this" and "I do not like that".
We must learn to see anew, to de-color the mind.
For this, the sage teaching yoga, introduced vairagya - dispassion.
This is not a discipline leading to suppression on the "either - or" basis.
It recommends neither repressing the desires by running away from them, nor closing the eyes to their existence, nor heroic resistance.
Neither shunning the world and its enjoyments, nor turning the back on places of worship can lead us to truth, to peace.

March 24

Prejudice

Can we go to the source of prejudice - to the source of fear, anger, hate, jealousy, infatuation and pride?
These are all mental aberrations, which do not exist in nature.
If we see that attraction and aversion belong to the realm of electricity and magnetism, of nerve endings and their objects, then they do not have the dreadful connotations we have placed on them, and hence they do not create the sorrow, violence, fear and hate, which dehumanize us.
In nature things happen - there is a going apart, a coming together as with different poles of a magnet, without struggle and emotion.
Is it possible for us, without judging, without condemning or condoning, to see for ourselves where prejudice arises and operates, where it exists in us?
Surely, it is not in the body - even when it appears to be physical, the operation of prejudice is seen to be in the mind, the physical body acting only as a docile tool of the mind.
When you learn to see this, and when you thus observe yourself, you are in meditation.

March 25

Satsang

Religious authorities declare that God is Omnipresent.
If that is truth, then to draw close to that is Satsang - the company of the truth.
Human intelligence loves to discover - hence it first discovers the reality with ideas, concepts, symbols, rites and religious organizations.
To discover, one must see the cover, and not avert one's gaze from it.
One must also have the courage to lift the cover, not be lost in admiration of it, however enchanting we think it may be.
Such a discovery is Satsang.
We draw close to the truth, without either rejecting the encrustation of the false, or getting stuck in it - this is discrimination.
All religions declare that God is everywhere, and yet we do not experience this.
What is it that stands between him and me?
Surely it is the "me".
It is the me that has given rise to all these rites and symbols, concepts and religious organizations.
I must get closer to the reality or God - not by dividing the one into good and evil, divine and undivine, but by lifting the cover, which is "me".
This does not involve division or judgment, but only the realization of oneness through love.

March 26

Prakriti

What is nature?
It is what makes grass green and milk white.
In Sanskrit there are two words to describe nature - prakriti and vikriti.
Prakriti is nature and vikriti is its modification.
Prakriti is the innate tendency, and vikriti is its perversion.
Your prakriti and mine may be different, just as a white canvas is different from a green canvas.
That is natural.
When we see the canvas and desire it to be some other color, we splash paint on it.
This pleases us for a time, but later disappoints us, so we change the pattern again and again.
This is vikriti, modification, perversion.
And it is here that violence, aggression, and all the ugliness of human behavior manifest.
Human nature does not need to be changed.
It is part of the cosmic pattern, and will undergo natural change in God's good time.
What does need change is the perversion of human nature.
This cannot be brought about by a change of pattern on the canvas.
Only when it is washed with a neutral agency does it become clean.
Only when self-knowledge arrives does modification cease, and pure human nature stand revealed.

March 27

Dream

We dream not only at night while asleep, but during the day as well!
Is it possible for us to become aware of this daydreaming, without disturbing its course?
If so, I discover that it is easier to understand this than to understand the dreaming in sleep.
If you and I pay more attention to our daydreams, it is possible to discover the way our mind functions.
It raises hopes to balance the reality of our failures.
It strives to restore some sort of haphazard order by covering our errors and faults with anxieties and fears - then covering these up again with unrealistic visions of the future.
This forms the substance of our daydreams.
Once the dynamics and contents of the daydream state are clearly understood, and once we learn to watch this phenomenon, it is possible that we also discover how to bring about order in the mind, without this blind and ineffectual attempt at dreaming.
Some great yogis believe that true meditation consists in this self-watchfulness, which is ever alert and awake - not only during the day, but also during sleep (both with and without dreams).
For if we see that there is truly no difference between daydream and night-dream, no difference between what we call a premonition, a hunch and a prophetic dream, we arrive at the truth that all this is but a modification of the same mind stuff.

March 28

Silence

Silence is not of speech - silence is of the mind.
In silence one sees the rise and fall of one's own thoughts, order is restored and they perform their proper function, without interfering with life.
When there is order, there is peace within, there is clarity of inner vision.
The observer, who had been silently watching the thoughts, now asks himself, "Who am I, the observer?"
Of course, the observer is a thought too, the very first thought, which attracted to itself impressions of innumerable past experiences and expressions, all of which now sit in judgment over the present.
All this is part of the ever-changing panorama of time.
The same mind divides itself into observer and observed, conscious, super conscious, lower mind and conscience!
When this is clearly seen in the light of profound inner silence, a new creative intelligence functions - the witness of the drama. In it there are no divisions - it is pure experiencing, without subject and object.
This is the inner light, the light that is not the antithesis of darkness, the light that never rises nor sets, and is therefore timeless, the light that dispels the darkness of our ignorance and its inseparable counterpart, the ego.
In it is perfect order, true virtue.
It is the absolute truth.

March 29

Control

For most people virtue or discipline means control, and this control is usually imported from another person, even if not actually imposed by him.
This control has a motive - to attain "enlightenment" or to protect one's reputation.
The fact that discipline needs a source in another person shows the whole of the being does not see the need for it!
The intellect, with its own motive, sees that the "discipline" suggested by someone else is profitable, though the "heart" still clings to the opposite - namely pleasure or profit.
This split in the personality makes a mockery of the discipline - self-control becomes self-deception.
There is no harmony within.
Instead there is conflict between the head and the heart.
Intellectually we assent to a spiritual truth, proclaimed by someone else, but the heart is elsewhere.
How can we heal this split?
Not by subduing one or the other.
The subdued or suppressed person or feeling turns into an enemy!
We can neither suppress this conflict nor can we allow it to pollute our lives.
But when we give the problem all our attention, the ego, realizing its helplessness, dissolves - and with it the conflict.
Then there is order, which has no use for "control".
We live, move and have our being in God!

March 30

Awareness

We have all heard that one should cultivate inner awareness, that we should live in the present, that we should turn to God.
We have tried all this, but nothing seems to have worked, for every hour of our lives is haunted by problems.
When we think we are living in the present, we are only thinking, and not living.
If you have ever stood in the path of an oncoming car, you will know what living in the present really means - you will not be thinking of living in the present, you will leap out of the way.
It is the spontaneous action of inner awareness, and this awareness exists in you all the time, you need not cultivate it.
When this inner awareness functions without being distorted by the rationalizing faculty, there is clear vision.
In that clear vision, we see actual arising of the problems that haunt our lives.
In this clear vision, we see that what we call "the pairs of opposites" are in fact inseparable - our error consists of aspiring to have one of the pair, without the other, because we think they are independent.
When in the light of knowledge there is neither seeking nor avoidance, there is treedom.
In that freedom the inner awareness spontaneously functions "in the present".

March 31

Enquiry

There is a difference between curiosity and enquiry.
Curiosity is either idle or deadly - deadly because it suspends the spirit of enquiry by providing words and labels, which are often mistaken for real knowledge.
For instance, when one knows that fruit falls on account of the gravitational pull of the earth, one's curiosity is satisfied, and the spirit of enquiry is suspended.
But the spirit of enquiry is kept alive by life, which throws up fresh challenges that shatter previous assumptions and concepts.
Life does not accept intellectual cannibalism, which gives birth to a concept, and then feeds on it to satisfy its appetite, called curiosity.
Life revives the spirit of enquiry.
The spirit of enquiry is not an appetite that can be satisfied - it is a fire that consumes the enquirer and the enquiring mind, and shines as illumination or knowledge.
This fire burns all hypocrisy.
Yoga is illumination.
Yoga is self-knowledge.
Yoga is the spirit of unending enquiry.
It is not hostile to what is called science - it can well be its elder brother, cautioning against assumptions, questioning beliefs, setting aside curiosity, and relentlessly fanning the flame of the spirit of enquiry.