Willpower
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 will-power 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.
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