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Diary Writing: Part I
It's a very difficult thing to decide, what to write and
what not to write. All the things that you could like to write about,
some of them are unmentionable, I mean literally so. Who wants to bare
his soul in a diary which somebody is likely to read? So I was very,
very careful about my own diary. Just putting down things on paper which
anyone could read, and therefore it was tame, innocuous stuff. Not even
worth reading, or re-reading, even by myself. So when the first volume
of my diary is published you will find it's a record of conversations
and discussions with the eminent personalities of the Mission of those
days, Dr. Varadachari, and people like that. There is not much about
my spiritual progress, my spiritual experiences, precisely because of
this, shall we say vulnerability to the outside world.
But then, in the spiritual arena one has to be totally honest with
oneself. Because who are we afraid of when we start writing a diary?
We are afraid that we will be criticised, somebody will point his finger
at us, or her finger, and say, "Aha, this is you." So, as
long as we continue to be afraid of ourselves, or of the change in opinion
that I am liable to have about myself, we are not going to be able to
maintain a diary as it should be maintained. Honestly! Because we value
the opinion of others as indicating what we think of ourselves. Ultimately
it is what we think of ourselves that matters. Nobody cares a bit about
what other people think of us. It hurts when what they say doesn't reinforce
what we think of ourselves. Therefore, we avoid writing diaries. All
these excuses about not finding time, not knowing what to write, they
are very devious excuses to fool one's own self.
Now if you value your Master's opinion about you then there should
be no problem of writing anything in the diary that you feel or experience,
because whether you write it down or not, He knows about. And after
all, you are supposed to show your diary only to your Master.
I asked Babuji, "what all should we put in the diary?" Of
course, with his innocence and frankness he said, "Everything that
you see." I said, "Everything I see about what?" (laughter)
He said, "About yourself." So I said, "Babuji, that is
the difficulty." He said, "You know, we should not hide anything
from our own selves."
Therefore, the essential fact that we look for or we must have when
we set out to write our diary is fearlessness. "Yes! I have done
it. So what? See in the next page that I have risen a little superior
to it. See on the third page that I am a little yet better than that."
See, it is like the foundation of a house. We have to dig a foundation,
expose a lot of dirty mud, stones, kankar (pebbles), lay a beautiful
course of concrete and then build the house on it. Of course, the foundation
is closed up later on. But in a moral life, it is precisely the exposure
of one's mistakes, weaknesses, imbecilities which culminates in a spiritual
quest of the highest order in that flash of Divine Effulgence which
shows how you can begin and how you can end in the course of your spiritual
quest.
Now if that was not chronicled, people would not understand that even
sinners have a chance. Even the most despicable sinners have a chance,
murderers have a chance, rapists have a chance. So it is not so much
with a view to, shall we say, a self-aggrandising blandishment of one's
failures that we write these things in our diaries, but to say, "Lo
and behold! This I was, this I have become! You too can become. Don't
worry about what you have been. Worry about what you have to be."
Make a chronicle which is absolutely honest, so that not only you today
will benefit from my autobiography, seeing that I have been very human,
seeing that I have all the human foibles, had all the human foibles,
but yet it was possible with the help of my Master to become what I
have become. Surely you are no different from me. At the base of human
beings, at the basic level of human existence, we are all the same.
What is there if I can do differently from another person?
So, what a biographer cannot achieve, an autobiographer achieves for
himself and for the posterity. He makes an absolutely impartial testament
of his existence, and when we ask you all to maintain your diaries,
it is with this essentially preliminary fearlessness, boldness that,
"I have done. Yes! So have you and so will the posterity, the future
generation, because the beginning is always in mud and slime."
You see, when you plant a seed, it is in mud and slime. But when the
tree comes up, it is in the air. When the flower blossoms, it is of
such a fragrance that, as the Upanishad puts it, "How would you
know a good man, a noble man, a divine soul? Yatha vrukshasya samput
pushpatasya doorgyam teva -- as you know where the tree is, by just
following your nose, sniffing your way to it from the fragrance, and
there it is, the tree."
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