I saw this in a lion park in Johannesburg. A fellow in a tractor-trailer was going along and six lions were following him. He jumped off the trailer, took a piece of stone and threw it at the lions and they vanished. Imagine, you know - Simba. And we talk of lions and their pride - the only pride they lose there. You know, the lion and its pride. So we should not have that sort of pride. "I have so many things." "I have so many friends." I have one friend, but He is everything. I have one love, but that love is everything. I have one faithful companion, and He is everything. Why? He is inseparable from me. He has bound himself within me, not letting me go from the dawn of time, and will go on to infinity. And when I have such a One - here outside, it is fickle; today's friend is tomorrow's enemy; tomorrow's enemy is day-before-yesterday's friend. Fickleness, temporary - nothing lasts. But here there is no fickleness. He says, "Whatever you are, whoever you are, whatever you may do, sinful or virtuous, black or white, tall and thin or short and fat - anything, it doesn't matter - I am always there." So when you need, look here [inside]. If you look outside you may find; you may not find. You seek a companion? There is no companion; there is only an exploitation. You want a companion who will be strong? In a moment of danger he runs away. I remember that story in school, where two friends are walking along and suddenly a bear appeared. One fellow climbed up a tree, and the other fellow just lay down flat on the road and pretended to be dead. The bear came and sniffed at him and went away. Then the other guy came down and said, "What did the bear say?" He said, "Beware of this friend who runs up a tree!" This is friendship. We say, "A friend in need is a friend in deed." Have you ever found a friend when you are in need of one? If you have, you have been lucky. They don't exist, because they come to us when they need us. I mean, every time I receive a telephone call, nobody calls me up to say, "Oh, I love you Chari." Everybody calls me up to say, "Oh, I don't have a job. My wife is sick. My uncle is suffering from terminal cancer. Can you do something, Chari-ji?" (The 'ji' comes afterwards!) So, what is this business of friendship and giving my life for you and loving you unto eternity and all this stupid nonsense? It's okay, you know, it's a diversion. We lie to each other; but I cannot lie to myself. And that is the problem, because when we come to spirituality and we have to look inside and we see ourselves as we are, we are frightened, we are ashamed, and then we say, "I am happy as I am. Whatever I may be, it doesn't matter. For Heaven's sake, don't make me look inside." But until you do that... A sense of shame is, again, your own idea, your own evaluation of thoughts, acts, deeds, etc. Who said this is shameful, or that is not shameful? You know, I think if you turn away a hungry man because you don't like him, it is honest. But if you pretend to like him and say, "Friend, brother, come in and eat my food," and then curse him for taking away part of your food, that is shameful. So we have to learn to be what we are and to accept ourselves as what we are, and what we find is good, even though it may be awful. Why? Because I have created myself by my past actions, my past thoughts. If I have created that, surely I can create something else in the future with my Self. You see, what I am, and the acceptance that I am what I am because of what I did with myself, is the greatest proof to me of the possibility of changing myself in the future. If I am what I am, not because of what I did with myself, but because of some external agency, I have no possibility at all of changing myself. For me, it is the ultimate proof that I can change everything that I am to become what I wish to be, because I have done it in the past, and therefore I am here now. If I couldn't change myself, then I cannot change myself - ever. So everything which is bad and looks stupid and awful in me is proof that I did it, and it is also proof that if I want, I can do better, and best and ultimately, divinise myself. It is in me. The whole thing is in me, you see. If you can cook badly, nevertheless you have cooked something! The minute you go into a corner in a huddle, and weep, and say, "Oh, my darling, I have cooked this. It has gone bad..." - so what? Cook again! Buy some more tomatoes and potatoes, and Mr. Chari will be delighted to eat it, too. So what are we ranting and raving about for? About ugly selves and cleaning, and...You know, I never used to clean myself. I never did my evening cleaning. Once Babuji asked me, "Do you do your cleaning?" I said, "No." He said, "Why not?" I said, "I don't find anything dirty in me." I thought he would get very angry, but he was very happy. He said, "This is the attitude I want all abhyasis to develop." You know, a baby is innocent. It can play in its own urine. In India they do, because we don't bundle them up and keep everything hidden away for six hours, then pat them in the back to find out what is inside and change the nappies. We are breeding dirty babies, you know, and they get skin trouble. In India it is all very natural, and they play with their own excreta, tapping on it, splashing in it. What does it consist of - feces and urine? But for us, these are dirty things and they are so dirty that we are ashamed of them, and therefore our toilets have to be sparkling clean. Brushes, special cleaners, blue colour to be put inside, you know? So whenever you try to hide away something, then it means you are ashamed of it. But I don't see how evacuating something from inside you is worse than putting something in through your mouth. If this is dirty, that too is dirty. I am always fond of that beautiful story where a young boy went to find a guru, and somebody said, "He is the greatest Master." He went to him and the guru said, "Come back to me when you have found the most ugly and dirty thing in this world. I need that as my guru dakshina." ('Dakshina' means what you offer to the guru as fees when your training is over.) And this boy searches and searches. "This is useless," and then he finds something worse, and then he finds something worse. One day, he is in the toilet and he says, "Aha! This is the ugliest, dirtiest, filthiest thing because nobody wants to look at it, nobody wants to touch it, nobody wants to smell it." He was about to take up a spoonful of it to take to his prospective guru when a voice came and said, "What do you want to do with me?" He said, "My guru said, 'Find the worst thing in this world,' and I have found it." The voice replied, "Yesterday I was an apple, I was an apricot, I was a pear, a peach, etc., and you, damn fool, touched me and I became this! And you have the cheek to say you have found the worst thing?" Then he became what we call a gyani - a knowledgeable man. He went empty-handed to his guru. The guru said, "My son, you are the same fellow who came three years back?" He said, "Yes, Master." "Have you brought me my guru dakshina, the worst thing in the world?" He said, "Yes, Master," fell at his feet and said, "I am that." We create the ugliness in this world. You are only talking of external pollution - pollution of your air and your water and whatnot. What about the internal pollution that you have created, of which you are so afraid that you cannot face it? That is what we have to face. Any fool can change the outside air, put in air conditioners, create an ozone layer. Who said ozone layers cannot be replenished? If somebody would give the Nobel Prize I would be prepared to try it! But Nobel Prizes don't go to spiritual people. They go to destructive people. A man who created gunpowder, named Mr. Alfred Nobel which has caused enormous misery in this world. He made so much money that he could fund prizes for all eternity. And who gets the prizes today? Cloning, gene splicing - all destructive horrors which we are going to face in the coming decades. Never do we ever see a Buddha get a Nobel prize, or a Christ get a Nobel prize - or any prize, for that matter. They are generally crucified. So if you want to first make your self, see Yourself in your self, change that self, you have to work on your self. That is what we try to do here. Meditation, cleaning, all this is the same. Why should people be afraid of cleaning when they are not afraid of taking a shower? When you take a shower it is implicit in that act that there is something you want to wash off yourself, but you don't feel dirty. Why, when you sit in spiritual cleaning, should you feel dirty? I don't see any reason for it. And if all the muck I wash off from the outside of my body doesn't bother me, why should the cleaning bother me? So here again we are bringing a compartmentalized mind and saying, "Oh, but, you know, these are inner qualities and I am ashamed of them." If I work in the mud, my hands are muddy. I am not ashamed of the mud on my hands; I just wash them off. So the basic need, if I am to be successful in my spiritual pursuit, is first to have the humility to accept myself as I am, knowing that I am what I am because of all that I did and thought, and in this life the immense possibility that, if I could create this which I am now, I can create That which I have to be in the future. So remember, grossness within, and the knowledge that it is I who created that grossness, gives me the satisfaction and the courage to think, "If I could do this, I could do that, too." (Talk given November 12, 1994, Sydney, Australia) |
