Both women and men have inner difficulties. Men have millions of defects, but their worst difficulty is ego. For women, their worst difficulty is jealousy. Women’s jealousy binds them and tries to bind others. Jealousy does not want to allow others to grow. Men’s ego is destructive. It says, “This has to be done the way I want it to be done; otherwise, I will destroy it.” Men are breaking, women are binding. Both these characteristics are bad.
In order to destroy, men need courage and strength, so they aspire for power. When they get power, most of the time they use it for the wrong purpose; they use it to destroy. But at least they are aspiring to get it. When women are jealous, they do not aspire for anything. They are jealous because they see that somebody else is surpassing them, but instead of aspiring to surpass the other person, they just want to pull that person back.
If women used the time that they waste in jealousy to cultivate their own inner lives, then they would easily surpass those whom they are jealous of. If one girl plays the piano very well, the other girl who is jealous of her does not practise harder in order to do better. No, she may only pray for hours, “O God, break her fingers.” When men want to exert their ego, they usually aspire for something. When they want something that another person has, they do not think of how they can pull the other person down. Instead, they aspire for strength to break that person. But women do not usually aspire. They just want to hold back those who surpass them.Purusha is man and Prakriti is woman. The very nature of Purusha is to remain silent. Purusha’s function is to remain detached from all that is happening around him, whereas the function of Prakriti is to involve herself in all the activities of the world. Her self-sacrifice for the manifestation is immediately rewarded by the realisation that God has in His Purusha aspect. It has always been seen in India and elsewhere that sacrifice and realisation go together. The very sacrifice that the feminine aspect of God — Prakriti or Shakti — has made for the earth-consciousness is rewarded by the realisation of Purusha. And I wish to say that this realisation is in no way superior to the total, utter, ceaseless sacrifice of the female.
Mother Earth always tries to help us, mould us and guide us; at the same time, consciously or unconsciously Mother Earth tries to bind us. It is just like the affection of the human mother. Especially in India, the mother will always encourage, inspire, help and teach the son, but she will not like him to go outside the boundary of her affection. In the spiritual world, Mother Earth and the feminine aspect of God are united. Aspirants will get all kinds of opportunities in the spiritual life, but when the question of realisation comes, Mother Earth will stand in the way of the aspirant. She will hold all kinds of temptations so the aspirant will be satisfied with the earth-life and not care for actual liberation. Then, when Mother Earth finally sees that the aspirant is very, very sincere and dedicated and will not remain in her confines in spite of all her temptations, then she surrenders to the will of the aspirant.
Then comes the greatest of the tests put by the cosmic gods and goddesses. In the inner world they will bring forward most beautiful women from the vital world, who will start dancing and doing many undivine things in front of the seeker who is about to realise God. At that time the female aspirant is likely to get a kind of satisfaction or familiar feeling towards these apsaras from the vital world, and she does not try to go beyond them. So very often the female aspirants succumb to this temptation which the cosmic gods give them. It is not actually weakness on the part of the women. Only they feel a kind of familiarity or, you can say, emotional oneness with the earth in the vital world and in the inner world, so they do not go beyond. But the male aspirants tend to fight. They say to these beautiful dancing girls, “You women tempted me on earth and now you are tempting me in Heaven! But I am ready to conquer you.” So the men very often succeed in conquering this last temptation. The men are not as likely to be touched by the emotional qualities that are represented by those apsaras. That is why it is possible for more men to attain spiritual liberation.
But I must say in all frankness that when it is a matter of total and integral liberation, woman is absolutely equal to man. That is why in India most of the spiritual Masters found that in order to be integral, they had to accept a feminine counterpart. The really great spiritual Masters have seen that it is not a fault to accept a feminine counterpart. But you have to know where the relation stands. It is on the inner level, the divine level, where one complements the other. One is not inferior to the other. The feminine counterpart becomes the wife or spiritual partner. We call it shakti.
But there have been many spiritual giants and saints in India who were women. In the West also, you have St. Theresa and others. There have been many great spiritual women with the highest realisation. The only difference is the number; there are more men than women. But when it is a matter of realisation, women can have the same highest transcendental Consciousness as men. Four thousand years ago in our Upanishads we got a significant message from a woman. There was a sage who had two wives. In the evening of his life he wanted to retire into the forest, so he said to his wives, “I have tremendous material wealth. I wish you both to share it.” But one of his wives, whose name was Maitreyi, said, “Will it give me Immortality?” He said, “No, no, no. This wealth is all material wealth. For Immortality you have to aspire; you have to meditate.” Immediately Maitreyi said, “What will I do with that which will not make my consciousness immortal? I do not want it. Maitreyi wanted the highest goal in the spiritual life. She meditated and she did realise the Highest.
In India there is a God-realised spiritual Master who is a woman. Her name is Ananda Mayi Ma. She is extremely high; she is a realised soul. I have seen real spirituality in Ananda Mayi Ma, and some of my disciples have also seen her and felt her greatness. Six or seven years ago two eminent philosophers had a great fight about consciousness and Infinity. For hours and hours they argued; then they went to Ananda Mayi Ma. She has read practically nothing, but through her spiritual illumination, her inner illumination she threw light on their problem. In three minutes she summed up everything. She just said a few words and they went home satisfied. So you see, it is entirely possible for a woman to realise God and become a Guru.Also, they think that they embody the capacity of both man and woman. One moment they have the masculine qualities of strength and determination; the next moment they have the feminine qualities of softness and sweetness. This has nothing to do with mental capacity. To say that women are more mental or men are more mental is not true. Mental capacity does not depend on how many books one has read. In Indian villages many people have not read any books, but their minds are clear and sharp. Only these women feel that they can have both masculine and feminine qualities.
Both men and women have their respective roles to play in God’s creation. God has given women the care of household things and children, because very often women have more of the qualities of sweetness and love of beauty. Human beings have not created their roles. Their roles have come from Above. The one who brings the money home is playing his part, and the one who distributes the money properly is playing her part. But if women want to challenge men, all right. If a woman wants to kill herself with an eight-hour job and be in the subway for a few more hours while the husband is working at home, well and good. Let the men accept the challenge. Some men would be frightened at this idea, but they should say, “All right, if you want, you can go outside and work. Let us change jobs.”
I do support the women’s movement, but women should know what kind of freedom they want to bring to the fore. Freedom is a very good thing as long as wisdom goes with freedom. Freedom lies in action, but freedom does not mean that one has to remain in the outside world and prove to the world that one exists. If women challenge men in an undivine way, nothing will improve and nothing will be accomplished.In Indian villages, husbands do not allow their wives to go to work. The reason they give is that it is beneath their dignity to send their wives to work. But others will think, “He doesn’t want his wife to come in contact with men at an office. He is afraid that he will lose his wife.” Now, when the women get the liberation that they are crying for, because of social pressure the husbands will say, “All right. Go and work.” We can say that they are making a sacrifice or that they are taking a risk, because we do not know how much control these women will have over their lives when they have to face the outside world. But when they do face the outside world, these women have to be very brave. They have to be in the world but not be affected by it. They will face temptation. If they are weak, they will be ruined. If they are strong, they will not be ruined.
In any field one wants to enter, there should be an understanding. If women challenge men too much, it will be like jumping into the fire; they will be totally lost. Even if they make the same contribution, they will realise that they have neglected many important things. Women have to draw a line somewhere. They should not compete with men just for the sake of competition. If they do, they will only create more problems for themselves. Suppose the wife runs a restaurant and the husband plays music. If the wife decides to compete with her husband in music, she will neglect her own work. She will say, “Let me go and practise the guitar.” Then, when her restaurant totally fails, who will feel the loss?
If there are two kinds of work, should we not give the same importance to both? Unfortunately, this is not done. That is the trouble. If a woman feels that her work, even if it is only cleaning the house, is less important than her husband’s work, then definitely that is a misconception of truth. Women have, unfortunately, made themselves feel that their work is inferior to men’s work. But this is not true. Take, for example, this yard where we are relaxing now. The husband has done all the heavy work, but without the wife’s effort it would not be so beautiful. The husband may receive all the appreciation when the wife is not here, but the fact remains that she has done much of the work. So many times people are not appreciated the way they want to be appreciated. But where does appreciation go? It goes to the Source. So the real Doer always gets all the appreciation. The real Doer is God. When we appreciate someone, even if we do not outwardly appreciate him, our appreciation goes to God.
So, I wish to tell all my women disciples that freedom is something they want and need in many ways. But there are a few fields where, if they want to compete with men, they will only create problems. Again, there are some fields where it is not good for men to compete with them. There are many, many fields that each one can enter.But Vedanta has been misunderstood. Sri Ramakrishna felt that if we take the Vedanta in that sense, then nobody will work. Everybody will say that the world is an illusion and all will want to go to some isolated place and just meditate. So Ramakrishna advised seekers to take the path of devotion. He always used to tell Vivekananda to practise the inner life, not in the Vedantic way, but in my way,” that is to say, in the path of devotion. He used to pray to Mother Kali that the world would accept the path of love, devotion and surrender.
If the world stays with its sophisticated mind, if it stays with the reasoning mind which has no light, if it stays with the intellectual mind which springs not from the pure intellect but from a very subtle arrogance, then there is no hope of self-discovery or God-realisation. The quickest path is the path of devotion. In the path of devotion there is infinite wisdom.
The present-day world needs heart. Our heart and our soul have infinitely more truth to offer us than the mind that suspects and doubts itself all the time. In the heart there is no doubt; in the soul there is no doubt. The safest and quickest way to God is the path of the heart.
In the householder’s life, the divine attitude is for the wife to feel that the entire success of her husband depends on her devotion, dedication and inspiration. And the husband has to be always grateful to the wife because consciously, constantly and devotedly she is fulfilling him. One complements the other. The role of the husband is silence, and the role of the wife is power. Until silence and power go together, there can be no fulfilment. In a spiritual union the question of inferiority and superiority does not arise at all. You have to play your part successfully and your husband has to play his part successfully. Then only will God’s Blessings shower on both of you.
Husband and wife have to feel as one, but when sometimes they do not feel as one, if the husband tortures the wife, she should immediately remember that her dearest is the Supreme. And if the wife tortures the husband, he should do the same. In that way they are safe. But this is only a temporary measure. At the moment when suffering comes, be clever; when anger comes, when frustration comes, be clever. At that time do not surrender to it; have patience. Without patience you cannot do anything. What you want and need is the transformation of your husband’s nature, or of your wife’s nature, and if you patiently wait for it, the Supreme is bound to give it. But the Supreme has His own time. Your time may be this moment, but His time may be later. If one has patience, one can deal with eternal Time.Some spiritual leaders will say that if you do something wrong, then you have to accept the consequences. I have to say that if you have done something wrong or made a mistake, the bad consequences should be prevented if it is possible. If I have touched fire and burned my finger, immediately I will run cold water on it to remove the pain. Of course, it is better for me not to touch fire and burn my finger, but if I have made a mistake, now a remedy is required. Who will be the sufferers if every family has eight or ten children? Will those who oppose birth control come and take care of the children? They will simply say that if you have done something wrong, then naturally you have to pay the penalty. But in this case, the children will also have to pay the penalty. If I have done something wrong and I know that there is a way to escape, then naturally I will try to escape in order to save myself. Sex life has to be transcended, but it is not necessary or helpful to have dozens of children in order to transcend it.
There are many women in America who want to have children. They are not afraid or ashamed to tell people that their children are illegitimate. On the contrary, they are proud. They simply want to be mothers. They do not care for a husband. They feel that they will be able to give the children the same kind of attention that two parents can. A father’s affection and love they will also give their children. If that is their attitude, I do not condemn them. If they have that kind of bravery, let them have their children.
But what if somebody feels that she has made a mistake? On the spur of the moment she has done something and now she feels miserable. She worries about what her parents will say and what society will say, and she does not want to have the responsibility of raising a child without a father. She realises that she has made a mistake and now she wants to lead a better life. In her case, I say that abortion is certainly permissible.
The only thing is, when a woman knows that she is going to have a child that she does not want, the sooner the abortion takes place the better. The soul of the child can enter into the child at any time from the day of conception to a few hours after birth. If the abortion takes place after the soul has entered into the child’s body, then that particular soul will fly away like a bird. But it will take tremendous revenge. It may torture the mother and father like anything. This may go on even for two or three incarnations. It also happens, if the soul is powerful, that in the future if the parents want to have children, this soul will curse the future children. They may be defective, or the parents may not be able to have children when they want them. So we have to know whether the soul has entered. If the soul has not entered, then the decision about abortion is up to the individual.A spiritual Master was once asked by a very devoted disciple of his, “If you don’t allow us to have children, then how can mankind survive? We have meditated for so many years; we are all spiritual people. If we do not bring more spiritual people into the world, then the world will not make progress.” The Master said, “You don’t have to worry about God’s creation. There are countless millions of people who will think of preserving God’s creation. Right now, God wants you to achieve your illumination. You do the task that He has given you, and do not try to take away the jobs of others. Others will bring down children into this world. That is their job. Your job is to realise God. After your realisation, whenever you want children, you can have them. But right now God is begging you to realise Him first.”
You may say that to look after your children is a divine task, because God is there inside them. Who can deny that? God is inside everyone. But what if God wants you to be totally devoted and dedicated to Him? He is not jealous of your child; far from it. You are both, after all, His children. But He feels that if this child of His has to realise Him totally in this incarnation, then that is a full-time occupation. You may be twenty-eight years old and your daughter may be two or three, but in the Eyes of God you yourself are a child, nothing else. How can a child take care of another child? So God feels that since He wants you to realise Him totally, it is your duty to please Him in His own Way. That is His Vision.
God has countless other people to have children. After the age of sixty or seventy, when you leave the body, God will not ask you about your children. God will just ask you about yourself. “What have you done for Me?” He will ask. He will not say, “You have six or seven children; let Me have some news about your children.” Your relatives will ask you how your children are, but God will just ask you, “Tell Me, how far have you realised Me in My highest Consciousness? How much did you devote your life to Me?” If you say, “I had to think of my children, so I could not think so much of You,” He will say, “Did I give you that task? I gave you the task only to think of Me.”
I really feel that if you have fully accepted a spiritual path, it is not advisable to have children. Of course, if you already have children, then you have to take care of them. But from now on, just change your relationship with your husband or wife. Just become like brother and sister. There is a little difference between the speed of an Indian bullock cart and the speed of a modern jet plane. The joy that your child will give you when he smiles, I cannot deny. But when you think of where your own consciousness was before having the child, and where it is after, if you are sincere, then you will see how much you have fallen. If you say, “No, I can manage it; I am very strong. I can manage with one or two children,” then what am I to say? You have to know how much capacity you have. When it is a question of my own disciples, I tell them not to have even one child, because I know their capacity better than they do. If they start having children, then they will be useless disciples and I will be a helpless Guru. That is why I discourage spiritual aspirants from having children.
There are countless people on earth who are not aspiring, and among those who are aspiring there are many who have not accepted our spiritual path or some other path that also demands constant progress. These people can have as many children as they want. But if any spiritual aspirant has more than two children, he is really making friends with ignorance. The child is not actually the enemy. The only thing is that you have to know what God wants. If God wants you only to please Him, then He will bring a child into your life only if it is absolutely necessary. If it is unnecessary, He will try to convince you in so many ways through your aspiration and meditation not to have children. Having children does delay your spiritual life; I tell you this without the least possible hesitation.
If some individuals say that they have the capacity, in spite of having one or two children, to do well in the spiritual life, I don’t deny their sincerity. But if they say that they can have as many children as they want because they are very highly spiritually developed, I cannot agree with them. It is not possible. Some people say that to look after children — to see whether the child has eaten or whether the child is properly dressed — is as good as meditation. I challenge them; they are absolutely wrong. There are millions of people who have not accepted spiritual life in this incarnation. But they are so concerned about their children: have they eaten, are they properly dressed, have they gone to school? This is their constant concern. But do you think that by taking care of their children they are making good spiritual progress? Far from it.Each time you do something for your child, ask the Supreme inwardly to do the same for you. Each time you show some affection or think of your children, pray to the Supreme to bless you, to guide you, in the same way. The moment you think of your child, your child becomes your lord unless you thought of the Supreme first. Please do not think that if your child gives you a smile, that the whole world is at your feet. Instead, feel that you are the child of the Supreme and when He smiles at you, when He is pleased with you, that is when you get the greatest joy. When you get something from the Supreme, from your prayer and meditation, you have to feel that that is the only thing you need. Once you get it, then you can give it to your children, to your husband, to your near and dear ones. That is the best thing. Everything that you want to get, try to get from the Supreme, and then give it to your dear ones. If you try to get something from your children, you will only bind yourself.
There is a world of difference between praying for your children and then taking care of their earthly necessities, and the case of ordinary unaspiring people, who only take care of their children’s earthly necessities and then think that their task is over. Your real task is prayer and meditation. I am telling all the parents, please do not feel that by meeting with only the outer necessities of your children you are taking proper care of them. And please do not confuse yourself by thinking that if you spend hours with your children, pleasing them most of the time in their own way, that they will accept the spiritual life. You yourself have to be spiritual. You have to pray, you have to meditate and you have to teach your children how to pray and meditate. Anything that is good you have to teach your children.You believe in God; your father believes in something else. Even nothing is a reality. Our Indian philosophy says, Neti, neti — "Not this, not that.” This nothing also comes from the mind and heart. You can tell your father to have faith in that nothing, and he will see your God in this nothing. You can say, “I say ‘everything’. You stick to your nothing. Eventually you will see that inside my everything is your nothing, and inside your nothing is my everything.”
It is inside the finite that God is manifesting His Infinity. Right now an iota of light is everything to us. But when we go high, even Infinity is nothing because God has given us infinite hunger. We are talking about the supreme realisation. Today your father does not understand what we are talking about, but one day he will understand because he is going to realise this very thing himself.
So do not worry about your father. Tell him only to have faith in what he believes and in what he has. If he sticks to his faith, his problems will be solved. Just encourage him to derive satisfaction from what he believes is true in his life. If he is not satisfied, you can say to him, “You are not getting satisfaction from your beliefs, but I am getting satisfaction from mine, so how can you say that I am wrong? Why don’t you try my path?”Some parents were very hostile at first, but they have slowly made a conscious compromise. They are accepting what their children are doing in a clever way, not a sincere way, because they know that they will not see you any more if they do not accept it. Now, why should you be a victim to their deception? When you go see them, in millions of tricky ways they will try to ruin your aspiration. But some parents have accepted the fact that their children have entered the spiritual life, and they also try to be a little spiritual.
There was a time four or five years ago when some parents literally dug my grave every day, but now they speak well of me. Before, they were ignorant. They found fault with us; they were against us. There was a time when parents were embarrassed to speak to relatives about their children because they felt that their children had gone to the dogs by accepting the spiritual life. Now the same parents brag like anything because their children have become good, spiritual, divine. They are not taking drugs or leading an immoral life. Light is shining in their faces. If they are appreciating their children’s qualities and achievements sincerely, then these parents should be accepted. So you have to see how much progress they have made. If they have not made any progress, then it is a hopeless case. But if they are making progress, then go and see them from time to time, even if you cannot keep your aspiration at the highest pinnacle.
But if your parents constantly find fault with you, if they have no sympathy with what you are doing and are only waiting for the opportunity to drag you back into the old family life, then it is a deplorable mistake to visit them. If they are trying to bind you to the ordinary life, then it is not your sincerity that takes you to see them; it is your stupidity. There is a great difference between sincerity and stupidity. If I become very angry, on the spur of the moment I may tell someone that I will kill you. On second thought, I know that it would be sheer stupidity to do so. But if I surrender to my stupidity in the name of sincerity and I do kill you, then I have kept my promise, true. But what will be my karma?
They are your parents, true. But if they deliberately try to create additional confusion in your life, then why should you allow them? Already you have enough insecurity, enough doubt, enough weakness. Why should you drink in more poison just because they happen to be your parents? So you have to see whether they are allowing you to go in your own way or not. If your parents are not progressing, then you are under no obligation to see them. If you listen to the inner dictates of your soul, the Supreme will tell you when to go and visit parents and when it is not advisable to go. If you find it difficult to listen to your soul, just weigh the pros and cons and use your wisdom and common sense.Often I see that if disciples go to visit their parents even for two hours, when they come back they are like totally different people. Their consciousness has fallen to such an extent that it is beyond your imagination. But again, they depend on their parents’ financial assistance. They are students and they cannot support themselves. Since their parents support them, then naturally they are under some obligation. But if someone feels that he is not in any way under an obligation to his parents, and if his parents are discouraging his spiritual life, then why should he continue any unnecessary connection with them?
If they are totally against your spiritual life, then what is the use of mixing with them? What is the difference between an enemy and someone who deliberately tries to prevent you from making spiritual progress? An enemy will always stand against you so that you cannot fulfil your wishes. If your parents also consciously or even unconsciously stand against you, then you have to be very careful. If you know that your parents are dead against your spiritual life, and if you feel that the spiritual life is the only life you want, then you will have to do what you know is best for your spiritual life.Children should be given constant love, constant concern. But here in America, parents often confuse lack of discipline with love and concern. When a child is seven or eight years old, parents try to be very wise. They say to themselves that since America is the land of freedom, their children should have freedom. They do not try to teach their own ideals to their children; they say the children must make up their own minds. But this is a terrible mistake. The parents have themselves made many mistakes in life, and by making mistakes they have come to know to some extent what is good and what is bad. If they really love their children, they will tell their children, “Look, I was also your age once, and I made many, many mistakes. Now I am older and I know what is true and what is false, what is good and what is bad. So I wish you to profit from my experience.”
Human wisdom may say that what is good for the parents may not be good for their children, but here I disagree. When you have a child, you give your child milk, because you know that it is nutritious. You do not say, “I do not know what is good for him, so let me not give him anything. When the time comes, he will make his own choice, his own selection.” By that time your child will die. When it is a matter of physical food for your child, you feed him whatever you feel is best because you do not want him to die. At that time, you do not allow the child to choose what he needs. No, you are wise enough to feed the child what you feel is best.
On the spiritual plane, parents often do not feed their child’s soul. They say that they do not know which path their child will want, which church he needs or what kind of prayer is best for him, so they do not teach him anything. But what the parents feel is best for their own inner lives, they should also feel is good for their children. Unfortunately, here in America, children are not taught enough about the spiritual life. On the physical plane they get a kind of freedom to find their own path. If they need money, they are given money. But when it is a matter of deep love and concern, they do not get it. And when it is a matter of strict spiritual discipline, inner discipline, they are certainly not getting it. The children are not properly moulded with inner or outer discipline. Children must be taught on the spiritual plane as well as on the physical or mental plane.
Freedom is available, but who deserves freedom? He who obeys the inner law. If you obey the inner law, if you listen to the dictates of your inner being, then you can enjoy freedom. You enjoy freedom on the outer plane precisely because you listen to a higher authority, which is your own higher self. When you do not listen to your higher self, you realise that you are totally limited and bound. When you identify yourself with your children, you can feel that since you have more wisdom and experience, you are the higher self of the children. You are part and parcel of their existence, but you are more conscious; therefore, you are in a position to guide them. These same children will one day grow up and then they will be in a position to guide and mould their own children. But when children are given freedom before they have any inner wisdom, this freedom is not good.
We are all spiritual people here. God has given us aspiration. That is why every day we pray to God and offer Him gratitude. Just because we have accepted the spiritual life, we already know what God has given us out of His infinite Bounty, and we are grateful to Him. But in the ordinary world, most of the time people are ungrateful. Children also are ungrateful to their parents. True, if the parents go on, go on pouring love into their children, they will see that in days to come the children will offer them gratitude. But real parents do not care for gratitude. They feel that to love their children is their duty. God is constantly showering His choicest Blessings on us, and He never cares for our gratitude. He cares only for His giving. When He is giving, He is happy. In this world, happiness comes only from giving. Parents should give what they have. If they have money-power, they should give that. But love-power is infinitely more important. The child’s heart and soul do not care for money. Money-power will come and go. The child cares for the mother’s heart, the father’s heart. If he gets love-power from his parents, then he is eternally and divinely bound by his parents and he himself binds his parents in the same way.
Children should constantly be given the love-power, the heart-power. This is the most important thing. And it has to be done unconditionally, not with the feeling of an inner bargain. Children have to be loved unconditionally. If the mother thinks that she will love her child when he is four so that when he is twenty-five years old, he will give her money and bring her material comfort, then I have to say that this kind of bargain in the inner life is absurd. The mother and father should give everything to the child unconditionally. Parents should expect nothing in return for their love. Just give for the sake of giving, and if it is God’s Will, your children will give in return. Even if your children do not give in return, at least one Person will never remain ungrateful and that Person is God. He will try to please the parents in a divine way, in His own Way.
Freedom we are giving to our children because freedom we have. But is this freedom helping them? No, not if they do not know how to discipline their lives. First we have to teach them inner and outer discipline. Parents sometimes act out of false modesty, saying that they do not know what is best for their children. True, in comparison to a spiritual Master or a Yogi, the parents may know nothing. But in comparison to their children, they know much more. This is what they have to feel.
Every day parents should pray to God and meditate on God to illumine them so they will not misguide their children. And the illumination they get, the parents have to offer to the children. When the children grow up, at that time they will have some wisdom to make their own choices. Then they may discard the views of their parents. But if the parents wait for the children to grow up before teaching them anything about the spiritual life, that is wrong. That approach does not work. If children are not properly moulded when they are very tender, then when they grow up, they take to drugs and do many undivine things. At that time it is too late. At that time the parents claim, “I didn’t teach him to do these things.” But unfortunately they gave him the wrong kind of freedom.
Here we are all seekers, we are spiritual people. Spiritual parents immediately have to teach their children their own spiritual philosophy. After ten or fifteen years, when the children have some maturity, then they can change their views.For outer information you have lots of time, but for the inner life you have no time. But I wish to say that the spiritual life can easily be practised along with your outer life. Each day you can give two hours for meditation and one hour for selfless service. Everybody can give this much time. Some people will read all sorts of undivine things when their school work is over. They spend time on films, TV, comics and rubbish from the outer world instead of doing spiritual things.
Practising spirituality is like exercising a muscle or like learning to read. It develops with practice. It must not suffer because of your outer studies. I once had a great friend. He and his brother became disciples of a spiritual Master. The brother used to study seven to ten hours a day, and my friend would study only for two or three hours; then he would just repeat his Guru’s name. He depended on his Guru’s grace to get him through his exams. The brother once asked the Guru which was better, and he said, “It is a matter of faith. You have faith in yourself and your brother has faith in my capacity to help him pass the examination.”
The brother who studied long hours was a fool. The day will come when the outer school life will be over, and then he will have developed only one capacity: to study. But the other brother has all along been developing two capacities: studying and meditating. In the spiritual life we do many things at a time. I do ten or eleven things at the same time. You can study for hours without learning anything, but when your mind is calm and quiet for one hour, you can do what would otherwise take you ten hours to accomplish.Studying need not be an obstruction in the spiritual path; it can be a help. Studying demands discipline. If you want to do well in school, you have to discipline yourself. The capacity that you acquire in a few years of study you can also apply to your spiritual life. Discipline in any walk of life has to be appreciated and admired. Discipline is a divine instrument if it is applied to a divine purpose. Discipline is strength. In your student-life you have an opportunity to develop this strength which will be of great help to you in your spiritual life.
Study itself is a kind of service. From now on you have to take your study as a form of service to God. If you study well, if you get good marks and keep a devoted consciousness, then through your study in that particular field you are pleasing God. Today He wants you to study, and tomorrow He may ask you to do something else. In each field you have to please God in His own Way.What technology offers to the world need never stand against God-realisation. But from technology and science we cannot expect God-realisation. God-realisation is inner oneness with the highest absolute Truth. For that we have to master and go beyond the senses. We have to conquer our senses; we have to have perfect control over the senses. In this way we can transcend our limitations and attain the highest oneness with the Absolute. This oneness with the highest Absolute, technology does not aim at; and this is the problem. But if you want to see the existence of God in technology, I wish to say that it is absolutely possible. God does exist in technology. God exists in everything.
With technology you can have great, greater, greatest success, but that success is not the success of God-realisation. God-realisation is totally different. Neither the self-realised person nor God-realisation itself will ever stand against the achievements of science and technology. At the same time, God-realisation does not expect science and technology to stand in its way. There is no harm if you are interested in technology and science; only you have to know what you expect to get from them. If you are looking for the absolute transcendental Truth, you will not get it there. You have to go deep within yourself for God-discovery. When you have discovered yourself, you have discovered the highest Truth, and that Truth is God.
There is no necessary barrier between a seeker and a technologist, but one has to know what one is aspiring for. Once one has realised one’s conscious oneness with God, there is nothing else to cry for, for then one is self-sufficient. In the case of technology, one may be thoroughly conversant with it, one may get the utmost result from it, but there will still be a cry, an inner cry, for something more. That “something more” will not come from technology. What technology can offer it will certainly offer, but only God-realisation can satisfy that inner cry. In realisation there is no feeling of loss or gain. You do not feel that you have lost something or gained something, but rather that you have become something, that you are one with something.We all need awareness of the mind, but in my philosophy we have to go beyond awareness as well. According to my own understanding of psychology, many psychologists, especially those who follow Carl Jung’s philosophy, feel that awareness is of paramount importance. Now, the spiritual Masters also feel that awareness is absolutely necessary in the spiritual life. But after being aware of something, one has to make a conscious effort to go beyond awareness, that is to say, to have conscious aspiration.
We have nothing to say against the psychologists, but we feel that aspiration is a much higher goal. Spiritual seekers feel that aspiration is one rung above mental awareness. Awareness is a very complicated and big word, true. But conscious aspiration is something deeper and higher than awareness.
Unconsciously everybody knows who God is and where God is: He is either in Heaven or on earth or somewhere else. This is our unconscious awareness. But when we enter into aspiration, we become conscious of God’s existence. At that time we can make much faster progress. How many times have I moved my hands here and there while I was talking to you? But only if I make a conscious effort will I be able to develop my arm muscles. So there has to be awareness, and also there has to be the inner urge to make progress. Awareness alone is not enough. Aspiration must come to our rescue, and we have to make a conscious effort. Aspiration is the most important thing. We start our journey with aspiration and we end our journey with realisation. Today’s aspiration is transformed into tomorrow’s realisation.
Many years ago I studied Freud and Jung, and last year I studied an authority on Jung’s philosophy and psychology. There I found that they have come to the conclusion that awareness is all; they do not go any farther. I agree that awareness is of immense help to an ordinary human being. But spiritual seekers have to go beyond awareness. We have to make a conscious effort; and that conscious effort we call aspiration, inner aspiration. Otherwise, even if we are aware of the truth, the truth will not be of any use to us. I have got a body, true. But if I do not consciously try to improve it, then it will not make any progress.We have to know the needs of the soul and the desires of the body. The body will always remain unconscious of its true needs. The soul will always be conscious of its needs, but if the soul is weak, it will not be able to fulfil its needs. But once the soul is able to fulfil its needs, it will not allow the body to remain unfulfilled. It will compel the body to fulfil its true needs.
It depends entirely on the standard of the country. It is the standard of the country that makes its fate. On the one hand, America has gone very, very fast in the spiritual life. On the other hand, there are now two fruits being offered to it. One fruit is most delicious; the other one is rotten. Just because the two fruits are side by side, after eating the delicious food voraciously, we try to taste the other food. But a wise man will know that only the delicious fruit, only the food that is good, should be eaten.
We want to remain as divine and pure as possible. If we look at marijuana or other destructive drugs with our inner vision, we will see that we have to go beyond them. It is not through experience that we will transcend them, but through aspiration. Millions of experiences which you people have had, I do not have on the ordinary human level. But with my occult and spiritual vision, and with my universal oneness, I can see them, feel them and become one with them. There are people who say that you have to go through the experiences in order to know them. But I do not have to smoke marijuana in order to know what it tastes like or what its effect is. I just identify myself with someone who has done it. When I identify with my soul’s light, I am not at all affected, but I get the experience. Millions of experiences I have gotten from my disciples just on the strength of my identification. Then I have gone far beyond those experiences.
One does not have to go through an experience in order to say, “I know it because I have personal experience.” Personal experience is not like that. On the strength of yogic development, spiritual development, you can have the personal experience of everything you want. So I am telling you that it is not at all necessary for seekers to go through this experience. It is not at all advisable. When you realise God, all experiences are at your disposal. God-realisation is the supreme experience. At the feet of that experience, all the experiences are there. Once you have God-realisation, all the rest of the experiences are at your command.From:Sri Chinmoy,Soul-education for the family-world, Agni Press, 1977
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