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"He who cannot be himself with
himself
is worse than a slave."
It is the practice or sadhana that prepares the human mind
to accept understanding when it comes. It does this by the
process of cleaning by which all past impressions are wiped
off, transforming the mind into a pure instrument to accept
what comes to it in meditation. A normal human mind rarely
views any fact or phenomenon as an isolated bit of information
input. All judgements [even legal ones] are on the basis
of past precedents - what we normally accept as experience.
It takes a lot of understanding to realise that this so-called
experience, most often acts against us by preconditioning
us to think and feel in intellectual and emotional ruts,
and robs us of the facility of pure action, where each act
is a pure act of creation, guided by the parameters of the
moment alone, and totally untrammelled by the past. This
is what spiritual practice helps us to achieve, thereby
endowing us with the ability and willingness to accept revelation
when it comes. Sadhana is thus merely a means to an end.
Reality is what we have to accept. Now this acceptance
of reality becomes a problem. You understand? So we are
trained to accept reality through meditation. Through perception,
we do not accept reality, we only perceive. And my mind
says, "This is useless, this is stupid, that is nice."
But what is useless about a useless thing? That at this
moment I cannot use it. That is all, isn't it? When I want
a banana, and you give me an apple, I say it's useless,
I don't want it. But by itself it is not useless. That is
its reality. For me it is useless. But it is not useless.
Now where is the deficiency? The deficiency is in me. How
can I say the apple is useless or the banana is useless
or you are useless or she is useless? I don't know how to
use you. If I can perfect myself in such a way that I can
use anything in this universe, and make something of it,
all things are useful to me. Not to me, they are useful,
per se, you see. For such a person, the universe is full
of useful things.
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