October 2017, Kanha Shanti Vanam.
Wednesday, 25 October, morning.
Maxim 5
Daaji continued to meet the Europeans and interact with them both formally and informally over the coming days.
On the Wednesday morning, he conducted group meditation at 9 am, and after writing in his diary he started his talk by saying, “I am happy that there are almost 35 new preceptors, prepared by our Great Master during the session today,” and then he started his discourse on Maxim 5.
“Always be truthful, accept miseries as coming
from God for your own good and be thankful.
“The earlier translation of Maxim 5 was ‘Be truthful,’ but the first revision since 1947 was done in 2014 by a professional translator, and he said, ‘Babuji does not just say ‘Be truthful,’ he says, ‘Always be truthful’. That changes the intensity of it.”
Then Daaji read Babuji’s commentary aloud, followed by some thoughts: “On the face of it, it looks so controversial or paradoxical: accept miseries and be thankful, thinking they are gifts from God. Why would somebody who is going through hell say, ‘Oh my God, thank you for this hell’? Perhaps only the fires of hell can purify us enough for the goal. Who knows!
“But a lover who goes through this never thinks it’s a misery. Even when such a person is going through miseries, he will have no cognizance of misery. He will have no idea that a fire is being lit underneath. He will just relish and move on. When we have to keep reminding ourselves to take miseries as gifts, enjoy them as gifts from God, they are no longer gifts because we have already become aware of the pain. You understand? When there is pain and we try to convert it into a gift by force, by hook or by crook, it’s challenging for the ordinary human mind. We are all ordinary people.
Expose yourself to the inner Reality
“Another thing that makes me laugh is this statement, ‘Always be truthful’. Why would you tell a man who speaks the truth to always be truthful? Perhaps because he is a liar. Somewhere the lie is hidden or lurking in the heart. Only when the intention of lying is there, does he need a reminder to always be truthful.
“This morning I was discussing with a dear sister about the idea of compassion, empathy, etc. These qualities are great, but to invite them and cultivate them externally, mentally, mindfully, and embellish yourself with such beautiful qualities, is too superficial. No tree, no baby can grow externally. They grow from within, organically. Imagine a tree where you have to put one mango here, one flower there, adding them on! So superficially adding qualities doesn’t help us. Being truthful is great, but why cultivate this quality mindfully instead of allowing the truth to manifest from within, reality from within, compassion from within, on their own? We allow them to manifest because that’s our nature. It is best not to interfere with it; only mindfully can we prevent it.
“Once you become aware of it mindfully, that means you have lost some connection somewhere. You can readjust all these things, but still there is an effort in the wrong direction. The right approach is to expose yourself to the inner Reality, be one with it, be drowned in that inner state. And when you are in osmosis with your inner state, all these other things happen naturally without making such exaggerated efforts, which are unnatural. When the inner nature is allowed to manifest outside, all great qualities spill out on their own.
“When we talk of truthfulness to a child, who doesn’t even understand what lies are, we are instilling wrong seeds. Perhaps at some point she will say, ‘Maybe I can also tell a lie as that is why my Mom teaches me to speak the truth!’ Well anyway that’s a logical argument.
Newton’s laws
“We can also look at this in a totally different way; can reality unveil itself to a liar? Is that the reason why I have to be truthful? And lies have their own trails. You know Newton’s first law of inertia: things in motion remains in motion unless and until there is an external force applied to them, either to change the course of that motion or stop that motion. Or things remain static unless you push them and move them. A liar is always on a trail of lies unless some realization happens and he starts speaking the truth. But in order to speak the truth continuously you don’t need any force at all, so Newton’s law fails in the field of spirituality or where morality is concerned.
“Let us revisit one of Newton’s laws, where he talks about actions and reactions are equal and opposite in direction, but in spirituality and the emotional world it doesn’t apply so well. It happens only in the physical realm. Suppose you are a bit irritated with someone – the usual person is your spouse! Who else will you be angry with? That’s an excuse, actually; it’s our weakness! With a little anger, a little irritation, see the impact it has on your spouse for the entire day. Or think of your younger days, when a girl sitting beside you looks at you very affectionately and you are gone for months! You keep on writing and thinking about her and you want to bring her a rose, but you have to think a million times how to give her a rose. Just a little glance creates an earthquake in your heart that lasts forever.
“So in spirituality, reactions manifest in a different way; not the way they manifest in the physical realm. I think that lies and other wrong things manifest in a similar way to events occurring in the physical world. They have perpetuality, so Newton’s law will apply there. But to spread truthfulness, you don’t need efforts and you don’t need external force. To love someone you don’t need to make efforts, whereas to hate someone you have to think over it. To do rightful things you don’t need to make efforts; to do wrong things you have to make efforts.
“Master was always sharing this aspect of heart-based wisdom. To speak the truth, that ‘I am Kamlesh’ requires no effort, whereas to fabricate lies consumes a lot of energy, and to continue on the path of lies requires even more energy. It never ends.
Where do lies lead?
“I’ll share with you a joke about how logic, justice and truthfulness prevail. It’s about a thief who stole money from a rich man’s house. Later on he went to a shopping centre and started spending the money.
He got caught because the shopkeeper phoned the police to say, ‘He is carrying counterfeit notes.’
So he was presented before the judge and argued, ‘My Lord if I had known that they were counterfeit, do you think I would have stolen them?’
It’s nice logic, no?
“So, the judge said, ‘Yes, I agree with you, you would not have stolen them if you had known it.’
‘So how can you charge me for stealing counterfeit notes?’
he asked.
‘Okay I will not charge you for stealing counterfeit notes, but I will charge you for simple theft.’
“After 2 days he was presented again for stealing and so again the judge wanted to sentenced him.
He said, “No, my lord, you cannot sentence me, because the theft was of currency which has no value. They are counterfeit, so how can you charge me for stealing currency that has no value?’
So, lies and other wrong thinks logically can lead to a crooked mind. When truthfulness is there, as Babuji puts it so simply, ‘It is as it is.’ How can you describe reality more than that?
The final state
“And when it comes to the final Reality, Babuji says here in Maxim 5:
‘We cultivate a habit of truthfulness so that our actions and dealings may be in consonance with the state related above and just as it is in the dealings of Nature.’
“Then later he says that it is impossible to describe that final state of Reality, as no words can express it.
“We always want to compare things to describe them, but there is nothing in the universe as perfect as the inner Reality. That’s why they say in the Upanishads: “Neti, neti, neti,” meaning “Not this, not this, not this.” Babuji puts a positive spin on it and says, “It is what it is; it is as it is; let it be.” Just experience and move on.
“If you love God so much, it really does not matter what happens in your life; there is no time and there is no place for analysis. There is no need to analyze whether what you are going through is good or bad. Should you be even thinking that it is a blessing or heavenly gift from above? No. In this absolute surrender when love is there, there is no further introspection.
Importance of acceptance
“Let’s look further into this aspect of accepting miseries or unfavourable situations. Babuji is asking us, when you think that something is unfavourable, what to do? You don’t have a good enough condition to sail through without noticing the miseries, so now what to do next, once you recognize the miseries? Accept them! There are only two possibilities: accept or reject. Let us say you reject them, will they disappear? They won’t disappear simply by desiring that they disappear. It is only when you accept and move on that it becomes easier. It is not that the misery will go away, but when we accept it something new emerges from inside.
“The first thing that emerges is that once you accept an obstacle or unfavourable situation, you start preparing yourself to surmount it, and you become stronger in the process. Second, you become wiser. You learn a lesson, that ‘I am going through this misery because …’ You start analysing: ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Rather, I should have done something different.’ So, it makes us wiser, better. This is possible only when we accept things. If we don’t accept things, we will still suffer but we don’t learn anything out of it, we don’t become wiser, moreover things won’t change.
“In India there are some yogis or sadhus who go to another extreme; instead of accepting miseries they invite miseries. For what? Even in other traditions, such as older Christians traditions, I have heard they put nails in their shoes and walked, or they would whip themselves on the back until it bled and whoever whips the most was considered to be the most dedicated. Is it true?”
[Audience: Yes]
“Okay.
“So this maxim is not about torturing ourselves. We need not invite miseries – we have enough troubles in life as it is. Simply accept them as and when they come, but don’t invite them. There also we are becoming wiser. When we say, ‘God, please send me some miseries so that I can become better, so that I can express my gratitude to you, so that I can showcase my strength of withstanding pain,’ again it is the ego that comes into the picture. We want to show off how well we can suffer. And when the ego comes, it doesn’t matter how it comes. Now it comes in a negative way, in a different form, ‘I can suffer,’ or ‘I can enjoy.’ So we should not ask for anything, actually. Let it come; if it comes, simply be ready.
“Another note I made about learning from tornados and hurricanes. The safest place in a tornado is the centre, the eye of the tornado or the hurricane. At the periphery it is creating havoc, but in the centre it is extremely poised actually. In our lives, also, you don’t need to pay so much attention to all these troubles at the physical level, mental level, ego level, at the subtle body level. How to divert that attention? By going to the centremost place, go deeper in your heart, go to the innermost depth of your heart. I wish it would happen by call: ‘Okay, I’m going to go to the 12th point, let me visit there.’ I wish we were all able to do that, but it is possible – a little practice, a little involvement will take us there.
Acceptance is an antidote to ego
“This note I like very much. Let’s say we are having a discussion at home with our children or with our spouse. There are times where things become dicey, and when the other is unable to accept we label him or her: ‘Oh, he is so egoistic!’ So we relate non-acceptance with ego: that he or she is unable to accept because he or she is so egoistic. Individuality is flourishing so much, as individual freedom is given so much importance, and then there is no possibility of oneness. If individuality is at the cost of the other then it becomes worse. In this perfect oneness, there is no hurt arising out of ego. In this oneness, selfishness will dissolve. In the absence of oneness, let’s say, there may be two or three intense individuals prevailing. Wherever there is intensity they will never come together. Though each one may be very intelligent, their strong ideas will separate them.
“But the moment we respect the ideas and opinions of others and honour those, then the various differences that we all have can come together, which will only enrich things, though they are different. And we can only respect and harness each other’s talent, different opinions and ideas when the ego is subdued to a large extent. Twos and threes are multi, and all this conflict arises when egos clash in the multiverse. There is a possibility of unification only when we admire each other in a true sense, in an authentic way. So we can say that acceptance is generally an antidote to ego. I am being careful in saying ‘generally’, because there may be an exception.
The Masters
“This last note is about our Masters; both Masters actually, Babuji and Chariji, whom I have known just a little bit. I have only read about Lalaji, our Adiguru, but they all shared the same thing. This is something that came on its own in my heart, so I jotted it down:
Simple in every sense,
pure in every sense,
selfless in every gesture,
caring in every act,
ever-smiling and blissful,
yet my Beloved, my all-in-all, my everything,
suffered all the time.
“Such a wonderful paradox of blessings and sufferings. Thank you. With this we end Maxim 5.”
To be continued …
