Words from the Master

Swamiji, When I want to do good, for eg., when traveling in a bus, I see an old man and I want to offer my seat to him, but I decide against it when I think that I have to stand for the rest of the journey. Whereas, when I want to smoke a cigarette, I get a total concurrence from inside me to go ahead, saying that one cigarette will not ruin my life. Why am I not able to control myself and do what is really correct?

You see, when you take in something with your mind, something that has been told to you from outside, you don’t see its benefits clearly and deeply, although you understand it at the intellectual level. But when you experience something deeply yourself, it becomes your own understanding and so you stand by it without any problem.

The cigarette has merged with your Being. You have experienced it yourself. It is not through someone else’s preaching; it is your own experience. So your heart accepts it.

But the happiness that you get by offering your seat to someone in the bus is something that you have not experienced deeply. You have been told by people that it is good to offer your seat to an elderly person in the bus, that’s all. At the most, you will feel a certain satisfaction at having followed social etiquette, that’s all. In the case of the cigarette, you have become the experience itself.

What you have not experienced for yourself, will not attract or pull you to it. If you had really experienced the joy of helping others, you would have offered the seat to the old man.

For true experience to happen, meditation is the way. When we meditate, our heart, which is as hard as a stone, will flower and become as soft and sensitive as cotton, and we will feel the need to help others.

At present, we either read in some magazine or we have been told by elders that is good to give our seat to elderly people in the bus, that’s all. Instead, what should happen is, that feeling of helping should flower within us and we should offer help.

Sensitivity will become a way of life only if meditation has happened in you, else it will remain just skin deep. To push the preaching received through the mind to the heart requires a drilling machine - that is meditation. Then, justice, honesty and similar virtues taught to us will become a way of life and there will be a certain juice that you will feel when you follow it.

Else, all these virtues will remain as intellectual knowledge without turning into experiential knowledge.

When we get into the real subject this afternoon, you will get a more detailed answer as to why you are acting in an unconscious way in spite of knowing what is right.

Alright, enough for now. We will meet after lunch and get into the subject straightaway.

Thank you.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.