2. Listening To Speeches
In listening to lectures, there are two things necessary. The first
one is the discipline and the etiquette, that we should sit and listen when
somebody is talking. And the second one is to be alert, so that we don't miss
anything that may be in it, because we don't know when even a fool will talk
some wise words. So, like everything in life, a thing is to be judged not
by its size or length but by its content. And we cannot judge until we have
heard a lecture fully. So we have to wait patiently.
When devoted people speak about the Master, we seem to
go into some sort of a samadhi state, and I think that is
how the original tradition of speaking, kathakalakshepa,
(Spiritual discourse) arose - one of the ways of inuring
the rest of the people with one's own inner condition, by
reciting that or those qualities which we have fallen in
love with, in the one whom we adore, whom we worship.
This is one of the ways of transmitting, I think. Even
bhakti (devotion), that a bhakta (devotee),
if he speaks in the sole consciousness of his Prabhu
(the Lord), is capable of creating some sort of a similar
condition in those who listen to him, provided they are
attentive. It is like this physics phenomenon of resonance:
something vibrates, and if something else is in harmonious
vibration with it, you strike this and that vibrates.
And the facility with which some of the great speakers
- again I repeat, not just intellectual speakers, because
they don't generally convey much - but those who are able
to speak with the fervour of love that is burning in their
heart, it is amazing how much they can create in the hearts
of a huge multitude, even ten thousand people, a hundred
thousand people. Whereas the intellectual is struggling
to impress, but often fails because he is demanding from
the audience an intellectual reception.
Whereas a man like Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda no
doubt they were intellectuals, but they had thrown away
their intellect as something like a boat with which they
crossed the stream and then they now depended on the inner
fires of their bhakti (devotion), their shraddha
(faith), their love for divinity. And when they spoke, people
heard; people not only heard, they listened. It is as if
something is pulled out of them, their attention is pulled
out of them and hooked onto the speaker like so many intangible
waves of influence. Therefore the bhaktas, the sadhakas,
the great saints have relied on speech. It is, of course,
in a way transmission. Transmission of one's inner condition,
not of the verbal content of what one says, but of what
one has inside.
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