Q: I came to India in search of a Yoga
teacher. I am still in search.
M: What kind of Yoga do you want to
practice, the Yoga of getting, or the Yoga of giving up?
Q: Don't they come to the same in the
end?
M: How can they? One enslaves, the
other liberates. The motive matters supremely. Freedom
comes through
renunciation. All possession is bondage.
Q: What I have the strength and the
courage to hold on to, why should I give up? And if I have not
the
strength, how can I give up? I do not understand this need of giving
up. When I want something,
why should I not pursue it? Renunciation
is for the weak.
M: If you do not have the wisdom and
the strength to give up, just look at your possessions. Your
mere
looking will burn them up. If you can stand outside your mind, you
will soon find that total
renunciation of possessions and desires is
the most obviously reasonable thing to do. You create
the world and
then worry about it. Becoming selfish makes you weak. If you think
you have the
strength and courage to desire, it is because you are
young and inexperienced. Invariably the object
of desire destroys
the means of acquiring it and then itself withers away. It is all for
the best,
because it teaches you to shun desire like poison.
Q: How am I to practice
desirelessness?
M: No need of practice. No need of any
acts of renunciation. Just turn your mind away, that is all. Desire is merely the fixation of the
mind on an idea. Get it out of its groove by denying it attention.
Q: That is all?
M: Yes, that is all. Whatever may be
the desire or fear, don't dwell upon it. Try and see for yourself. Here and there you may forget, it does
not matter. Go back to your attempts till the brushing away of every desire and fear, of every
reaction becomes automatic.
Q: How can one live without emotions?
M: You can have all the emotions you
want, but beware of reactions, of induced emotions. Be entirely self-determined and ruled from
within, not from without. Merely giving up a thing to secure a better one is not true relinquishment.
Give it up because you see its valuelessness. As you keep on giving up, you will find that you grow
spontaneously in intelligence and power and inexhaustible love
and joy.
Q: Why so much insistence on
relinquishing all desires and fears? Are they not natural?
M: They are not. They are entirely
mind-made. You have to give up everything to know that you need nothing, not even your body. Your
needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless. You imagine that your possessions protect
you. In reality they make you vulnerable. realise yourself as away from all that can be pointed at as
'this' or 'that'. You are unreachable by any sensory experience or verbal construction. Turn
away from them. Refuse to impersonate.
Q: After I have heard you, what am I to
do?
M: Only hearing will not help you much.
You must keep it in mind and ponder over it and try to understand the state of mind which
makes me say what I say. I speak from truth; stretch your hand and take it. You are not what you think
yourself to be, I assure you. The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely
accidental.
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