"The only freedom is the freedom to do the right."

In the contemplative life, or the life of the mystic, there is a freedom that does not exist at lower levels of existence, but this freedom appears unattractive to most persons, as it carries within itself the need for responsible action by the person. Such a person has to prescribe for himself the ethical and moral values that guide his life. No longer can he merely obey a set of rules often elastically interpreted by his priestly guide. Now the onus of leading a right life is on him, and on him alone.

So the apparent freedom of the spiritual life seems to have hidden within it the greater bondage of self-discipline, self-control and so on, culminating in the principle of self surrender. When this is understood, people seem to prefer the total lack of freedom during a specified period under the ritual life to the apparent freedom of the contemplative.

WILL-POWER:
All that you need to do is to use your intelligence right, know what is right and what is wrong and develop the will power to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. This is all that is necessary. Without motive power the car may go in a wrong direction but it doesn't mean the engine has failed. It is only driven badly, it is only driven wrongly. If you put it in reverse gear, the car will go in reverse. It has no choice, your motive power is still there very active. Without willpower you couldn't lift up a glass of whisky to drink it. Could you? I mean, whether it is glass of whisky or a glass of water makes hardly any difference to my muscular system or my nervous system lifting it.
There is a total need to be alert - alert under all situations, at all times. We cannot afford to take off alertness like the warriors used to take off their armour, for instance; or be alert outside the house and give it up when we come home; or be alert when we are awake and lose the alertness when we are asleep. It is a twenty-four hour business and I assume, that is what Babuji Maharaj meant, when He told me that, "The will must be so trained that the will must work, even when we are asleep." That means even in sleep, the will must be active and must resist all that we have to resist, including for instance, a very mundane thing like oversleeping. It is a well known thing, everybody has experienced this; that if you are determined to get up at a particular time, we are able to get up, a few moments before that. If you want to get up at four, you are able to get up probably five minutes before four o'clock in the morning. It is very easy. It only shows that the will grows, by repeated use. As Babuji said, "It is like an instrument, the more you use the will, the stronger it grows, until it can become almost Divine Will.

This is precisely willpower - that we do what we must, rather than, what we would like to do. And that is not an easy thing, until you begin to do it in a small measure first, then in an increasing measure.

As Babuji said, "Doubt poisons the will." The moment we begin to doubt, the will is lost. After that we cannot sit in meditation. When the mind is doubting the Master? Will He do this or not? Will He give or not? It is a manifestation of their doubt in the Master, in the system.

CRAVING:
Whenever somebody complains of lack of progress, it is due to lack of craving in him. 'Anxiety' we may be having, 'Greed', yes, but there is no craving. We run to Master, touch His feet, push Him down, and do everything else, out of anxiety, greed; these are expressions of animal passion. We are only actuated by greed, to possess something (we don't know what it is either) which others are getting. It is a very low human attitude, not craving. When craving is absent, indiscipline manifests itself in our behaviour. When there is craving, indiscipline goes away; if indiscipline goes, craving will automatically come. It is discipline alone which can brings craving.

What should be the real connection between the Master and the disciple? Well, we blunder into the Marg, we are a human being sitting before another human being trying to receive something, and if that something is what He gives us, and what we have received and we have experienced it to be what it was, then it awakens that craving, latent craving in the heart to get back to the 'original home' as Babuji said, and gratitude comes. And out of gratitude, love comes.

Real craving for God will be found only in one person out of thousands. What is real love for God? It is a state when the trinity of the lover, the beloved and love itself disappear.

RESTLESSNESS:
A firm will supplemented by an ever-increasing impatience or yearning to achieve the object will enhance the force of our effort and we shall thereby remain in constant touch with the same real thing, catching every hint conducive to our spiritual well-being and progress. Impatience or constant restlessness to reach the goal in the shortest possible time is, thus, by far the most important factor which contributes to our speedy success.

We must not rest even for a while till we have gained the real object, the eternal peace and calmness. Intense longing for an object naturally creates restlessness for it and we have no peace till we achieve the desired object. It is, therefore, a very essential thing and must be cultivated by whatever means possible. Thus for gaining the eternal peace we cultivate within us restlessness and impatience at the preliminary stage. It may look strange at the very face of it when I ask you to cultivate the very thing we want to do away with but it is the only way to achieve sure and speedy success.

The restlessness thus created is temporary and different in character from the ordinary restless condition of the mind. It is finer and more pleasant. It creates an inlet in our heart for the divine current to flow in and smoothens our passage to the kingdom of God. If you thrust a man down into the water you find that he makes desperate efforts to free himself from your grip. It is only because his impatience to get out of water at once increases his force of effort and he does not rest till he is out of water. Similarly such desperate efforts caused by extreme impatience to reach the goal at once, will quicken our steps on the path of realization and ensure easy success in the least possible time. That is the easiest and the most efficient means of speedy success.

Satisfaction is bar to progress. So Babuji said, we must always be restless, never satisfied that, "yes, I have achieved." So this going beyond and beyond and beyond, it needs this restlessness, inner restlessness, which Babuji called craving. But it is not there. We want to rest. "Yes, today I have achieved. I have seen Babuji Maharaj, He is in my house." No rest. You understand?

I remember Master's usual way of defining "Restlessness" - very humorous, very penetrating, profound in its meaning. He said, "Restlessness se less-ness nikaal do, tho rest hai' (Remove 'less-ness' from "restlessness", what remains is 'rest')! How is it applicable in my practical life? We are always feeling "lessness": I don't have enough of this, I don't have enough of that; I don't know enough, I have not enough wealth." Who is it that feels? It is "I"! That means, all of us. When we feel lacking we become restless.

Now, how to overcome this feeling of lack? Of course there are the traditional ways, saying, "Be content with what you have, take it as God's gift." That is all O.K. But when we start getting this transmission, which removes our samskaras first, and puts the power of the Almighty in us through the Master's Grace, in some mysterious intangible manner it progressively removes this 'Lessness' from us, and brings us to a peace, to a state of balance. It is not so much a state of peace as a state of balance; because restlessness is really an imbalanced state.

The man's or the human being's restlessness is in some way a reflection of the soul's restlessness. It wants to keep moving and we parallel that longing and ourselves seek peace and satisfaction in continuing motion. Therefore, even children want to go in a car and sit down and ride, move things around, bicycle like mad. Why can't their play be at rest? It is not possible. So the human physical restlessness is only a reflection of the inner soul's restlessness. And when that achieves the stability of its ultimate achievement and peace, this also achieves its ultimate stability of peace. Then the man no longer seeks motion, no longer seeks change, is happy where he is eternally happy.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS:
The fact of unknowing, which Lalaji expressed so simply - "Ignorance is Bliss". When there is a fire and I don't know that there is a fire, I am comparatively happier than if I know there is a fire. This is a very superficial way of looking at ignorance. Spiritual ignorance means not knowing anything about anything, but basking in the presence of Him who is my all. What have I to know? When the dog sits or lies down contentedly at his master's feet, there is a bliss in his whole bearing. You know, it is not just the face. There is that relaxation in his attitude. He is stretched out with his four paws down, his chin on one of the paws and the side glance at his master's face. That is enough for him! That is the only bliss he knows! It is the presence which is the true ignorance of the rest - of knowledge, of unknowing, of vice, of virtue. That it is the true situation in which the "Sukha dukhe same krutva" (Treating alike pain and pleasure) condition can exist.

BE LIKE LIONS:
Look within. Look to the heart. Build your heart. Make it brave, make it strong, make it courageous. Be lions, as Babuji wanted. He said, "One lion is worth more than five hundred sheep." It is not that we do not accept sheep but we accept sheep which are willing to become lions, not sheep which want to stay on as sheep. So let us try to become lions. Let us use this ashram as an arena in which sheep can become lions. An ashram is an arena where without fighting, without quarreling, without jousting, as in the old tradition, we interact in such a way that hearts become stronger, faith becomes evolved, courage evolves out of our inner sheep's hearts into lions' hearts. And what was but a shepherd's pen has now become the jungle in which lions roam freely. This is what we are setting out to achieve.

When Master said 'I want lions and not sheep', obviously He did not want us to go on four feet and grow a mane! He wanted our hearts to be like lions - brave, courageous, capable of discrimination, able to give up everything for the sake of the Master. This is what we have to become like.

WHAT THIS EGO IS ALL ABOUT?
Our egos are fed from childhood. You are a rich man's son, you have your own ego; you are an educated man's son, you have your own ego; you are educated yourself, some more 'E' is borne to this avaricious fire of the ego. We get a job - in this land in which it is very difficult to get a job, it is enough of an ego fulfillment - "I have a job!"

Should we remove the Ego from us? There is no question of dissolving the ego or removing it, because it is part of our existence. The ego is like the engine in a motorcar. As Master once explained very beautifully, "If I say I can lift this, it is my ego which is speaking." So, if the ego did not exist we could not know what we can do or what we cannot do. In fact, we cannot know that we exist at all. It is one of my favourite statements that instead of saying: cogito, ergo sum, we should say: I have an ego - therefore I am. Because even the statement that I think - therefore I am, comes from the ego. So the ego is a very essential thing as long as we have to continue to exist in this body. And like all the other faculties that we have got from nature it has to have its place in our existence, and not more than that.

There is another thing which Babuji once said when somebody asked him about egoism. He said: if you have ever passed, let us say, a medical examination and you say: I am a doctor - it is not egoism. But if you have not passed the examination and you say you have, then it is egoism. I asked this question when he said, that he could spin the universe like a top. So when you can do something and you say you can do it, there is no ego involved.

Ego is said to have been abused by all the present and past writers. The ego gives you strength for all the work. It points out to you that you have got the power to do a certain thing. But we identify ego with the body, instead of with the soul. It is the production of God which you cannot annihilate. You should modify it.

What are the problems of Egoism? It is the problem of the motorcar again. You know, when it is enough to have a twenty horse power motorcar and you have a two hundred horse power motorcar, there is danger every moment on the road. So we come back to the same principle that when there is just enough power, correct dosage, then there is no question of egoism, there is no question of arrogance, but if it is excessive the manifestation is egoism. In religion there have been many ways, they have tried many ways, of controlling the ego, like practicing humility, charity, things like that. But generally they have all failed except to produce superficial changes.

How to deal with the Ego? I think the only proper way is to hand it over to the Master. In the Hindu Yogic literature there is a statement that the eye cannot see itself, though it can see the whole universe. Similarly we cannot deal with the ego ourselves. At the same time the ego is very necessary because it is the thing that takes us across life itself. So we hand it over with affection and devotion to the Master of the ego. It is not a joke. It is like keeping our money in the bank - our ego should be safe but should not run away with itself. So we hand it over to the Master.

We are here, not for our personal aggrandizement. Our growth is for His sake, our ennoblement is for His sake, our spiritual elevation is for His sake, and if at all we are ever going to be divinised, that too is for His sake. So those who will remember this and who take it to their heart, will, I am sure; by His grace, develop very fast. Because those who do it out of personal ego, "I want to be rishi or I want to be a saint" well, Master will help them too! But the first help He has to do to them is to remove their ignorance and their arrogance from their minds.

INDEPENDENCE AND DEPENDENCE:
When we become independent, the whole problem starts. Because now we have to decide for ourselves what is right and what should be done. I think one of the reasons why childhood and youth are so happy, is precisely because we don't have to decide what to do; the decision is taken by others. At that stage the only problem is of obedience; but that is easily solved by a little conflict and it's not very important. So you see, we have a big price to pay for being independent.

Putting it in another way, you can say, one is the situation of the baby, it has no freedom, but it is totally looked after by its mother. At the highest end, you have the Master or the saint, who again has no freedom and is again totally looked after by his Master. The difference between these two states is only one of the consciousness of freedom. The child has no consciousness of its freedom at all, so it is not difficult for it to give up its freedom. But as we grow up, we become more and more conscious of our rights, as we call it, which is only another word for our freedom as we think it should be. That is why it is said, "Be ye as little children and thou shalt enter the kingdom of heaven."

FREEDOM FROM FREEDOM:
Freedom is not something to be enjoyed, but something to be used. I think it is a tragedy of human understanding that freedom is to be enjoyed. I don't know how this stupid idea of freedom ever came into the human mind, because it is the most destructive thought that ever arose in the human mentality. And if you see the drunkards, drug addicts, rapists all around you, it is because of this misuse of the idea of freedom, leading to the misuse of the act of freedom itself.

And what are the consequences of such misuse of our freedom? Loss of freedom. Because even a hospital means loss of freedom. We may not be behind bars; though psychopaths, schizophrenics, they may also find themselves behind bars, and imagine it is not a jail. But the worst prisons are the prisons of our conscience.

All this was created by a false understanding of freedom. I don't think any rational person could possibly controvert this idea. This is what my Master taught. That is, don't have wrong ideas of freedom. Freedom is given to you to achieve yet greater levels of freedom by the right use of freedom.

Really speaking the only freedom is the freedom to do the right. There is no other freedom. A motor car on the street has freedom but only to go where it is permitted. It may not enter a one-way street from the wrong end; it may not exceed speed limits specified; it may park only in areas specifically set aside for this purpose, and so on. Within the framework of these regulations the driver enjoys complete freedom. Why are these rules, restrictive rules, made? They are for the safety of the driver himself. If there was only one car in a city, the rules need not be so rigid. When there are more, then laws get progressively more in number and more and more restrictive too. While on its rails a train is free. If it leaves the rails there is disaster.

It seems clear that at lower levels of activity, the apparent freedom of the individual is greater, while the activity itself seems to need a lesser degree of ability for its performance. As the plane of activity rises, the ability needed for its right performance is more and more, while individual freedom appears to become less and less, and simultaneously the need for stricter obedience increases stage by stage. At the highest levels, the individual's freedom seems to be virtually nonexistent, to have vanished!

To consider this a little further, suppose a person wishes to tell a lie, say about his age. He has considerable freedom in choosing a figure to mention as his age, but to tell the truth there is no freedom whatsoever since the correct figure can be one and one only.

Thus, an orderly existence means discipline. Driving on the right, giving way to traffic, obeying the red lights, in short, a sacrifice of a certain degree of personal freedom to achieve a general order, as a universal measure, for general and universal welfare. And the more the well-being or the greater the degree of well-being that we desire, the greater the sacrifice of personal freedom.

If you extend this line of thinking sufficiently, it follows that one who has totally given up his personal freedom, contributes the most to general welfare; and that is the state of the saint or the Master. Because in the existence of a person like our Master, you find the example of a life sacrificed for the general human welfare by handing over all his personal freedom to his Master: freedom of choice, freedom of action, freedom of thought, everything. And this we call surrender. So it is like a big spectrum, you see, on one side we have total individual freedom with no welfare, and on the other side we have no individual freedom, but total welfare, and in between, we have a mixture of various degrees of this and that.

In examining this idea of freedom we have been led to the conclusion that what we have thought of as loss of freedom is really nothing but a state of surrender to the Master's will. We have not lost freedom in the sense that we have been deprived of it. We have voluntarily, wholeheartedly and devotedly surrendered it to the Master of our Soul. To those who are fortunate enough to arrive at this stage, the Master is no longer a guide for spirituality alone. He has now become the Master of one's life in all its aspects of existence. He becomes the father, the mother, the son, the teacher, the doctor, in fact there is no role that He does not play in the abhyasi's life! He has taken total charge of the abhyasi. So we see that only our surrendering to him can bring about a state where He can take total charge of us!

Analysing this further we find, surprisingly, that a great and unimaginable freedom is now conferred on the abhyasi. It is the freedom from the freedom itself. It is the freedom of invulnerability. We may even say that it is the freedom of invincibility. We are no longer answerable for our actions. We merely obey. The person who issues the orders, the Master, assumes complete responsibility for everything we do. We are no longer vulnerable to the world. Therefore a great calm, a great freedom comes to us. Out of an apparent loss of a previous freedom - largely illusory as we have seen - we now receive as a Divine gift, the true freedom of a spiritual state, a real freedom which some saints have called the "Great Liberation."