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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)
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