Problems! Problems! Are they really problems? part 1

Part I — Attachment

Question: Guru, sometimes when I begin to meditate I feel overwhelmed by the pressure of all my attachments and I feel that my aspiration is dying. Shall I try to surrender them to you or shall I just try to aspire more?

Question: Do you have any suggestions as to how I can be happy doing things I don't want to do?

Part II — Careers

Question: Guru, I used to be very active in my work and I liked it very much. But now I feel that it is taking away from my duties as an aspirant.

You have come into this world to manifest the Supreme. If you have the capacity to dance, the Supreme will use it for His purpose. If you have the capacity to sing, the Supreme will use your voice to manifest Himself in and through you. Now that you have become my disciple, this guidance is my responsibility and my problem. When someone accepts my path, it is my bounden duty to manifest the Supreme in and through him.

Unfortunately, sometimes a person thinks, "In action there is bondage. While acting I can't think of God." This is wrong. While meditating we can serve by offering good will. While working and while doing selfless service, if our consciousness remains in God, then we are also meditating as well as serving the world.

After a disciple has stayed with us for six months, a year or two years, if he wishes, I will tell him what he should do in the outer life. If I see that his soul wants to do something other than what he is doing, then I will tell him. Again, if I see that the soul wants to do what the person is doing, even though my disciple feels no inspiration in his work, I will not ask him to change his job. I will only provide inner and outer guidance.

There are young boys and girls who came into our life as students and we saw that they were brilliant, very brilliant. To some of these students I said, "You don't have to study any more. Your soul does not want you to." Again, there are others to whom I have said, "You should continue going to school." In your case also, when the time comes, I will tell you what you should do in the outer life.

Question: I find that lately I am doing so many things that my outer activities take up most of my energy and I feel that my spiritual life suffers.

Question: I work in a warehouse and the atmosphere is very unspiritual. How can I keep the undivine consciousness from my job and the outside world from interfering with my spiritual growth?

If you were well advanced in the spiritual life and had been meditating for many years and already you had achieved some Peace, Light and Bliss in your outer nature and in your inner life, then I would advise you to act like a lion and not be afraid of anything. With your divine capacity you would face the world bravely. But this is a time of preparation in your life. You are not yet surcharged with inner Light, Peace and Power. The day will dawn, in the near or distant future, when you will be able to stand and fight like a divine soldier, but right now it is necessary to adopt a temporary means of release from unnecessary outer attacks. This is not a permanent escape. Only, at this time you are not ready to wrestle successfully with the worst forces of the outside world. You are not strong enough inwardly. But the day will come when, no matter where you are working or who your associates are, you will be able to stand on your own spiritual strength.

Question: On my job as a tour guide I find it difficult to stay in my best consciousness. I listen to what people are saying and I am affected by what they say. How can I keep my consciousness high in a situation like this?

When you are with people who are not aspiring, feel that they are doing the right thing for them, according to their standard. Do not think that they are inferior and you are superior. Just pay attention to your own life, which is right for you, as theirs is right for them. When you have respect for someone, your own consciousness will not be affected by theirs.

Question: I am studying to be an actor. Is it possible for me to follow a spiritual path and also to have this outside activity?

Again, you have to know what God wants you to do. If you don't fulfil Him, you may stay on earth for sixty, seventy or eighty years but inside you will feel a barren desert. No matter what kind of outer glory you get, what kind of success in the outer life, if you don't satisfy the Supreme even for a fleeting second in His own Way, then your sincerity, your inner cry will make you feel dissatisfied.

Question: I know there are certain professions that are not ideal if you are trying to live the spiritual life. Is acting suitable for an aspirant?

There are many professions on earth. If we want to simplify our life then we should enter a profession that will create as few problems as possible. We have to use our discretion. If we know that there is an easier way to reach God, let us follow it. Why make our life more complicated? But if one is strong enough not to be bothered by temptations, one can enter the acting profession.

Acting is an art; it is not something detestable. But we also have to know what kind of acting we will be doing. If we will be taking the part of some spiritual figure or a role in some religious work, something inspiring, something divine, then this acting will never bring our consciousness down. But if we are going to be involved in Broadway shows and similar things then spirituality will remain a far cry. Even if we are pure and sincere in our life, there will be hundreds and thousands of people who will look at us and throw their undivine, ugly, impure consciousness into us. Then we will unconsciously become a victim of their imperfections, their impurities. Why should we expose ourselves foolishly to others' weaknesses?

Again, if you are very strong inwardly and outwardly you can say, "No, I am like a fort. Nobody will be able to disturb me." If you have that kind of capacity and if you feel that you can really serve God by acting, you can try. But if your life wants to reach God, then you should try to serve those who really want God, not those who want pleasure. The life of pleasure will never give anyone realisation. On the one hand you want to realise God. On the other hand you are encouraging others to remain in the life of pleasure.

If you want to offer a gift of emotional indulgence to other people, then you are not doing them a favour. If there is something that would not contribute to my realisation, I must not encourage anybody else, even indirectly, to do it. If I cry for God privately, secretly and inwardly, while outwardly I create sensation or temptation for mankind, that is hypocrisy on my part. There are hundreds and thousands of actors and actresses on earth. If you don't follow that profession, God's creation will not fail.

A spiritual Master once asked his disciples not to get married. One disciple said, "Master, you ask us not to get married, but if we don't get married, there will be no future generations. Then how can God's creation continue? We have to get married." The Master said, "My child, there are millions and billions of other people on earth to fulfil this task. God does not need you for that. He needs you to remain unmarried. You do not have to worry about the preservation of God's creation."

Part III — Depression

Question: What causes depression?

We have to know what we actually want. If we want light and only light, we have to know where that light is. That light is in our peace of mind, in the tranquillity of our heart. When we unveil our inner peace, we will see that our life is all achievement and fulfilment: achievement in the process of infinite achievement, fulfilment in the process of infinite fulfilment. If we don't do that, we are bound to be the prince of depression.

What causes depression? Our acceptance of ignorance as our very own. We cannot go beyond it: we are caught; we are in the little self of ignorance, so we become depressed. But if we feel that we do not represent ignorance, we are not ignorance, we are not of ignorance and we are not for ignorance, but we are in light and we want to grow into deeper and deepest light, into all-fulfilling Light; then there can be no depression. The light which is the result of our sincere aspiration will immediately burn our depression into ashes, or it will transform our depression into constant aspiration.

Question: I know that frustration and feeling sorry are wrong forces; yet I feel sad quite often.

Now the feeling of sorrow. Suppose we think about a person in our family who has passed away. For a few hours we feel sad because we miss the person who loved us or whom we loved. We feel that in our sad, sorrowful mood we are intensifying our oneness with that particular deceased person. This feeling is not bad because first we are intensifying our oneness and then we can bring down peace, light and bliss. But again, if we can maintain our oneness with that person's soul wherever it is, and feel its presence within us, then we need not feel sad even for one minute.

There is another way in which the spiritual Masters approach this case. When Sri Ramakrishna's nephew passed away, Sri Ramakrishna cried bitterly. Why was he so sad? Sri Ramakrishna felt sorrow not actually for the loss of the person but for the failure of that person to accomplish what he came on earth to accomplish. This soul had something to offer but could not do it because of the intervention of wrong forces.

Very often when we help others, when we become one with others' sorrow, we get a kind of joy. This is a very tricky thing. When somebody is sad or suffering, we try to help that person. But inwardly we may enjoy his suffering and have a glorified inner feeling that we have been of some help to him.

First we feel a little sorry; then we get joy because we feel superior. We think, "I am not suffering he is suffering. I am at the top of the tree and he is at the foot of the tree." This wrong idea very often enters into our mind. If we identify ourselves with someone who is sad and depressed, if we are just enjoying his sadness, we are not helping him at all.

In the Pandava family, Arjuna's mother, Kunti, knew that Lord Krishna was a great spiritual Master. She knew that Sri Krishna was God Himself. So she used to pray to him to give her sorrow and suffering all the time so that she would think only of him. She believed that only if she lived in suffering would she be inspired to think of God. This idea is not good at all. Just to think of God we need not invoke extra suffering. This is a wrong approach to the truth.

The right way to approach the truth is through joy and light. The soul is full of divine joy, and from the soul joy wants to come forward and express itself through the vital. If the vital does not want to become one with the soul's joy, the vital consciously and deliberately resents this joy and stands in its way. At that time this unaspiring vital prefers suffering because it feels that by expressing suffering outwardly it draws the sympathy, affection and concern of the world. Despite the vital's suffering it is actually getting a subtle Joy in a negative way.

Very often we think that if we become a victim to sadness, there will be somebody to console us. This is a wrong idea. God does not approve of this idea. Today we will be sad and our mother or father or friend or somebody will console us. This consolation and attention gives us joy, so tomorrow we will feel sad with the same idea that somebody will come and console us. But tomorrow perhaps others will be tired of consoling us and we will be disappointed. In God's creation there are some people who are always sad because they feel that when somebody comes to console them they will get real joy. They feel that the best way to get attention and affection is to tell the world that it does not care for them or that they are totally lost. But even if they sincerely feel that they are totally lost, the world is not going to take care of them forever if it is not the Will of God. God's Concern always runs in a positive direction.

Question: Guru, how do we free ourselves from depressions?

If we want to climb a mountain that is very tall, we have to know our capacity. If we are weak and we want to climb the mountain all at once, we will be doomed to disappointment. We have to climb up a little and then take rest. Then we climb up a little more and rest again before we go on. If we try to climb the mountain all at once, we may ruin our capacity.

We can either overestimate or underestimate our capacity. When we underestimate ourselves, depression comes. If we have the capacity to climb up three or four miles, but feel, "I cannot do it; I can only climb a little," then we are depressed because we feel that we have no capacity. But when we overestimate our capacity, we also become depressed because we cannot accomplish what we expected to accomplish. It is always better to aim just an inch higher or lower than our capacity. If we expect too much or too little, depression will come.

Question: Will people who are depressed ever realise God?

God is Light, and those who suffer from depression are not accepting God's Light. If they think that by being depressed, they will get more Compassion from God or from their Guru, they are mistaken. God and the Guru may show them infinite Compassion, but it will not be wholehearted Compassion. God and the Guru will know that they are being exploited by the aspirant's constant demands for Compassion.

Question: If we feel elated or depressed and we don't know why, can there be an inner reason for it?

Question: Sometimes when I am very happy because I have had a very good meditation, the next day I get depressed. Why does that happen?

How do these forces attack us? There are various ways. One way is that when somebody has had a significant experience, they come and say, "You have done so many things wrong. You don't deserve what Guru, out of his infinite kindness, has given You." Then the subtle ego inside you says, "It is true. I don't deserve that, so I won't keep it," and you just give it up. Although you have come to me with utmost humility and devoted qualities, these forces are so clever that they convince you that you didn't deserve what you received. In this world nobody wants to be a beggar; nobody wants to be an object of pity. The moment you hear that you didn't deserve it, you don't want it. Instead, you should say, "I worked for three or four hours. I meditated and I was happy. That is why he gave me the capacity to have that experience." The only time these hostile forces can enter is when you allow them. If you are adamant in rejecting them, then they have to leave you.

Another way the hostile forces attack you is by giving you an inferiority complex. If you think that the person who sat beside you had a better meditation than you, that feeling is very bad. In the outer world we compete. "I was defeated by so-and-so or I defeated so-and-so," is what human beings say in the outer world. But in the inner world there is no competition, or at least competition is one-sided: with oneself alone. You will compete with your own doubt, fear, anxiety, jealousy and so forth. In the outer world, you have only two or three competitors and this competition will last for a day. But in the inner world you have many competitors. Fear, doubt, anxiety, depression, worry and many others are all ready to rob you of your joy. They come to you and say, "Yesterday we lost, but today we are here to challenge you again." What happens then? You are not prepared, but they have challenged and with your little ego you say, "All right, I accept your challenge." Then fear comes and runs ahead of you while doubt holds your legs, and jealousy pulls you backwards. If they were fair competitors, before the big race they would agree to run properly, but they don't. Just before you start, anxiety will come and strangle you. So you have to be really ready to run. You must be fully prepared so that when the competition begins, they won't have a chance.

Question: How can I prevent getting upset or depressed over small things, such as a car break-down or a screaming child?

We must always be wise. A wise man will take an unfortunate happening as a challenge, an opportunity to face an unpleasant reality with a cheerful smile. A fool will curse his fate and will curse others. He will feel that this kind of misfortune only happens to him. A wise person will simply say, "Here I have another opportunity to conquer my anger or my depression." Every experience in life can be meaningful and beneficial if we accept it properly.

Question: Guru, do you ever feel depressed?

Part IV — Desire

Question: If we are not able to extinguish our desires, is there any point in trying to meditate?

We have to see our goal. If our goal is God-realisation, and if we start running towards that goal with one-pointed aspiration, then gradually the desires and passions that are holding us back will fall away. We have to know where to place our attention. If we try to pay one hundred percent attention to our meditation, desire will soon leave us. But if we decide that we shall give fifty percent of our attention to desire and fifty percent to aspiration and God-Life, then we will never overcome desire.

If we meditate regularly today, desire may come tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow desire will leave us because, like everything in this world, desire will become jealous of its rival. But if we are unduly disturbed by the presence of desire in our heart or in our mind, then desire will never leave us. If we give more attention to our aspiration, for a while desire will torture us mercilessly. But eventually it will give up and leave us because we are not paying any attention to it. If we make someone feel that we don't need them, they will stop coming to us. So desire will say, "All right, let her go with meditation and aspiration. If she does not need me, I can also do without her."

We should meditate early in the morning and sometime in the evening, without fail. We have to feel that there is a divine child inside us and that is the soul. Just as we take the time to feed our human body three times a day, we must also feed the divine child within us. If we really care for the divine child, the soul, who makes us consciously one with the Absolute, then we have to feed this luminous child within us at least once every day. If we don’t eat, eventually we will die. And if we don’t meditate, our inner life will starve and we will never be consciously one with God.

Question: Is watching TV a hindrance to the spiritual life?

Question: Why do you stress regularity in the spiritual life?

Question: Is pranayama necessary?

Part V — Drugs

Question: What is your opinion about the use of drugs?

I have spoken about drugs hundreds of times and I am tired of the subject. If you want to ruin your life, you are at perfect liberty to do so. But since you have come to me for guidance, I assume that you don't want to ruin your life consciously. When you go to a doctor, you must have faith in the doctor and take his prescribed medicine. Otherwise, the doctor can do nothing for you. You have come to me with the hope that I will cure your spiritual ailments. Now I hope you will give me the chance to help you. You have come to me, but if you don't listen to me, I will be totally helpless. After you give me a chance, and if I cannot transform your life, then you can say it is no good and just leave me.

I have had problems with quite a few hippies, but most of those who decided to accept me are transformed, totally transformed, radically transformed. Again, there are some who could not or would not accept my spiritual guidance, and they have left the Centre with God's Blessing. Our Centres, to be very frank with you, are not for those who are leading a hippie life. If one will give up that life, he can become a disciple of mine. But if he wants to continue his hippie life and at the same time enter into the real spiritual life, then he will have to find some other Master. I cannot accept him. I don't blame him for what he did yesterday, but he must do something else today if he wants my direct spiritual guidance.

For at least fifteen days before anyone comes to my Centre he has to stop taking drugs. Then, if he accepts my path and I accept the responsibility for his God-realisation, he has to give up drugs forever. Otherwise, this acceptance would simply be mutual insincerity. If I accept you, that means I promise to take you back to your eternal Father, and I know I cannot do this if you continue taking drugs. If you accept me and at the same time you take drugs, this means you do not have real faith in my spiritual capacity. If you will listen to me and become one with me, I promise you that one day you will drink the nectar which the cosmic gods drink in abundant measure. If you use drugs you will ruin your consciousness and damage your subtle nerves. At that time I will not be able to help you.

Part VI — Spiritual dryness

Question: Quite often it happens that after I have high experiences, they are followed by the feeling that I am in a spiritual desert.

When something inside you gives you inner joy, whatever you eat will taste delicious even if others say that it is tasteless. But without inner joy, the best food served to you by the best cook will not satisfy you. Experience is your soul's food. Yesterday you got very good food so you were happy. On the following day, even if the food you get is not so good, try to remember that you had a very good meal the day before. If you were in a position to eat it, the Almighty Father would give you a banquet every day. But once you have eaten good food, even after ten or fifteen days you can remember it and say, "I ate something most tasty that day."

If you can maintain the inner joy of those experiences, then they will carry you through the desert. But if you lose the joy for some reason — let us say because doubt or fear or some vital problems have entered into you — then the experience too will be lost. If you can maintain your cheerfulness from the good experiences that you have had, then you can easily pass through the Sahara desert in the inner life.

Every seeker has had high experiences, but everybody's high experience is of a different type. Your experience may be low according to somebody else, but if your high experience has given you enormous joy, that is more than enough. Somebody else's experience may be low in comparison to yours, whereas according to his capacity, that experience is the highest. But if he can carry his life forward with the joy of that experience, then there cannot be any problem for him. I always tell my disciples, "When you are depressed, think of the day when you were happy or when you had a wonderful experience or vision, and of the inner joy it gave you." Unfortunately, you usually allow today's depression to overpower the joyful reality that you experienced yesterday.

Question: I often find that in the spiritual life I go up and down. I always hope that I will not fall down again, but it happens constantly.

You experience ups and downs. When you are up you have to feel that you are getting a glimpse of your eventual capacity. When you are down, you should simply feel that this is only a temporary incapacity. Just because you see that those who are more advanced than you in the spiritual life are running, you must not be discouraged. Once upon a time they also stumbled.

Doubt is our worst enemy. If we are weak and we have allowed doubt to enter into us and poison our inner aspiration, we have to cry from the depth of our heart to be cured. Right now the sky may be full of clouds, but a day will come when the sun will shine again with its full effulgence. When you experience low moments of fear, of doubt, of lack of aspiration, you should feel that this won't last forever. Like a child who has fallen, you must try to stand up again. Some day you will be able to walk, then run, and finally run the fastest without falling.

What is of paramount importance in such cases is to have faith in one's own sincere attempt. No matter how many times you fall, if you are more than ready and eager to stand up again, these so-called failures are no failures at all. As they say, "Failures are the pillars of success." This is absolutely true. In the beginning, everybody is bound to meet with failures.

Nobody ever received God-realisation overnight or without any difficulty. Just to acquire earthly wisdom of the highest standard, we must study and learn for many, many years. And this hard-earned wisdom may disappear after a few years if we don't practise it or continue to study. But God is eternal, infinite and immortal. Spiritual knowledge once gained can never be lost, because it is the soul's knowledge that we have achieved, and we are growing constantly into the soul's highest Light, which is also eternal, infinite and immortal. To get that kind of knowledge, to inundate our outer life with inner wisdom, takes time.

Part VII — Expectation

Question: What can we expect from the spiritual life?

Part VIII — Fear

Question: Can you tell me if I'm meditating correctly?

Part IX — Habits

Question: Is there a spiritual way to break bad habits?

Part X — Impatience

Question: In the beginning of my spiritual life I had a lot of enthusiasm but it has waned. How can I continue to make steady progress?

We must always feel that we have something to achieve and something to give. If we expect abundant peace of mind without self-giving, we are bound to be frustrated. But time is an important factor. We may think with all sincerity, "I am going to realise God tomorrow," but our utmost sincerity won't get us a Master's degree overnight. Sincerity is good, but we must also be wise. We have to know our capacity. If we decide that by such and such a date we have to realise God, then we are doomed to disappointment. We should remember that we are like a child who studies a year, then goes one grade higher. We also have to study, to meditate with greatest enthusiasm, but it is a bad mistake to set a date for the achievement of our goal. If we are sincere, God is bound to give us realisation at His choice Hour.

When a stove is turned on just a little, we may not see the flame at all. When we turn the handle quite far, we see the flame. In the spiritual life also, at first our aspiration is quite small. But gradually we turn a little more and a little more towards God. When we have turned completely to God, our aspiration-flame will burn brightly. In the spiritual life there comes a time, after five or fifteen or even thirty years, depending on God's Will, when meditation is spontaneous. Once everything is spontaneous we no longer experience enthusiasm for five minutes, and then spend the rest of the day in depression because we thought that during those five minutes we would earn millions of spiritual dollars.

Question: Sometimes I feel that if I don't realise God soon, I shall commit suicide.

Part XI - Poems from the first edition

Problem, problem!

Problem, problem!

Problem, problem!

Problem, problem!

Problem, problem!

Protect yourself

Protect yourself

Protect yourself

Protect yourself

Protect yourself

Hopeless, useless and helpless

He is hopeless.

Has corrupted the beauty of his mind.

He is useless.

Has corrupted the lustre of his heart.

He is helpless.

Has corrupted the effulgence of his soul.

Under control

Your fear is under control.

God the omnipotent Power loves you.

Your doubt is under control.

God the transcendental Light loves you.

Your impurity is under control.

God the supreme Pride loves you.

Your insecurity is under control.

God the boundless Delight loves you.

He and his

He and his ego worship each other,

He and his fear torture each other,

He and his perfection reject each other,

No little enemy

There is no little enemy.

Tortures our whole existence.

Devours our entire being.

Destroys our universal oneness.