How to Establish Balance?

We all here have excellent education behind us. We all, obviously have good family background, good standing in society. So what is it that makes failures out of such inherently valuable, resourceful raw materials? My Master says, one half is missing; close the gap between this half and that other half, you have a complete person. And by the nature of this completion, there is fulfillment and he is not only full for himself but for society itself. So this is the message of yoga.

Man and Woman: I think essentially it is the female heart which is capable of both devotion and service. Men have to lose their arrogance, their pride, their ego, and create in themselves the finer sentiments and finer qualities, if they are to succeed. For a man his masculinity is a problem because it leads the way to domination, dominance, pride, arrogance, conquering things. So that attitude is not fit for the spiritual life. The female with her love, or a heart capable of love, is submissive. So, even though the male may be capable of love, I doubt it, but let us assume that love exists - if at all it exists, it is dominating, arrogant, possessive, conquest-oriented. You find that even in the love affairs of men, it's conquest after conquest, not love after love. But for the female, this idea of submission, of serving through submission, and the capacity to love, this combination makes a perfect foundation for a spiritual life.

So basically, it is the question of a man becoming feminine, or of acquiring a feminine mentality in some way - feminine qualities, learning to love, becoming capable of submission, without losing the powers of the male such as courage, bravery, the ability to sustain difficulties. And the woman, in some way, has to learn to become a little masculine. She must retain her capacity to love and be submissive, but also learn to face life with courage and faith and take off. I think then the two halves of humanity become balanced. Not by balancing the men with the women, but by creating that balance in each individual self. That is, perhaps, the secret of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Tradition says that he lived as a woman for a few years, totally with the women, all the time, dressing like a woman, cooking, bringing water from the river - the Indian ladies' life. Because until you live like one, you do not know what they are really living like. So, Ramakrishna is said to have had the male and the female principle totally balanced in himself.

Material and spiritual: A person must not neglect either his physical and material existence or his spiritual life. And one important aspect I would like to emphasise is that there is no control of functions, or elimination of any of them. All that is done is to seek to normalise each and every function without atrophy of any of them. Master bases his teaching on God's wisdom. God created the universe. When he created a material universe, He must have had good reason to do so. If the material life is leading us astray and away from our goal, then obviously it is our fault in not living the material life in the appropriate fashion. So all that we have to do to get back on to our path is to restore the proper 'balance' to our life, whereby the two halves of existence are harmonised and in equilibrium. The humanised man can then proceed to evolve to the state of the perfect human being.

Ancient and Modern: Asceticism is not the right way. It is as wrong, and as anti-nature, as a totally materialistic way of life is. They are but two extremes of the scale, and neither can succeed. Then what is the correct way? Master says that the balanced existence; one in which all aspects of human existence are balanced, is the only correct way of life. In such a life material values and spiritual values go side by side, and one should not be neglected for the other. The two sides of life, the material and the spiritual, are both necessary to help us reach our spiritual destination, and the degree to which they can be normalised and balanced will determine the degree of our success.

In today's situation, under today's fantastic technological advance, none of us is safe from our neighbours. And by neighbours I mean from here to the Atlantic, from here to the Pacific. All the more reason why this idea of inner balance, inner perfection, inner morality should be understood. Morality has been unfortunately confined to the field of sex. It is a stupid thing. That is not the only morality. The morality which says that I have this and this and this and I must use it to the best benefit of those who are in this world with me, that is the highest morality.

All this is made possible not by education; I don't mean to decry education because I have the highest regard for it. Without education we can do very little. But the education must be balanced by inner tendencies which must show us how even education can be used. Education is a tool. Intellect is a tool. Physical capacities are tools. It is like a carpenter, who has a chisel and a hammer and a drill and what not. And he must know how to use, when to use and which one to use. That is balance.

Western and Eastern: The going out is science: I want a little fun, I want to look at the outside world, I want to go to the beach. All sense-oriented or intellect-oriented. I want to come back to my house: this is safety, security and love which bring us back. So, essentially, knowledge takes us outside, love brings us inside. Sahaj Marg strikes a wonderful balance here too. The principle of the two wings of the bird: love supported by intellectual balance or whatever it is; science supported by philosophy; material life supported by spiritual life. We need the two things. Therefore, Master says, "Don't neglect the material life for the spiritual life." This message is for the East. And when he comes to the West, He says, "Don't neglect the spiritual life for the material life." This is for the West. If you look at it very sensibly and very directly, don't neglect this for that. Keep both, balance both, both are necessary.

In the East you find everything internal, in the West you find everything external. It does not mean one is right, and one is wrong. The only true attitude to all this is: One has gone to one extreme, the other has gone to other extreme, both are suffering. For the East, preserve your internal beauty, but without neglecting your external beauty too. Keep your inner cleanliness, but don't make your outside a mess as we do in India all the time. Environmental cleanliness is as necessary as inner cleanliness. For the West, it is the opposite message: It's not enough to be externally clean, environmentally clean, clean your inside too. It is not enough to be externally beautiful, the surface of your body is beautiful, make the inside beautiful too. So, that is the importance of Babuji's teaching: bring balance to both.

Pain and Pleasure: The ancient traditions made the mistake of seeking pain; the Western tradition makes the mistake of seeking pleasure; in between comes Babuji and says, "Don't seek either, be balanced, take this when it comes, take that when it comes, thinking of God all the time." Because where there is pleasure there must be pain, they are two sides of the coin. If you take a coin because the head of the queen is beautiful, you cannot say, "Take away the other side and give me only the head," and another person says, "No, no, I'll have the tail side, I don't like the head of the queen," he cannot have that without this.

So my Master said, "Forget both." Happiness and pain or disease or misery are not things which we seek and find, they are things which happen to us. They happen to us! This is another thing which He made His own research and discovered that they happen to us because of our samskaras. It is like a man travelling on a road. There is sometimes sunshine, sometimes there are clouds, sometimes it is raining, sometimes we have a nice road, sometimes it's a bad road. We don't seek these things. On the journey, what we seek is our destination, all the rest is incidental. Similarly on our journey through life Babuji says, "Seek the Goal, forget everything else."

The Inner and the Outer: How are we to allow the inner self and the outer to be balanced? That is a problem. Because, at the moment, the ego has control. It does not want to permit even balance. It says, "I am the boss; I am in the chair; and I don't want to give it up, even if I kill myself." Now what can you do? You know the problem we fear; because I think of God's eternity, shall we say, because the ego knows it has a limited existence - it must know - and within that limited span of existence it does not want to give up its hold. The other thing, the voice of the conscience, the inner voice, whatever you want to call it, the Self, God, He can wait for eternity.

Nowadays, we find that many people are pulled in two directions. There is always this inner call to purity and the truth and the right. And, unfortunately, there is a much more powerful pull from outside, for gratification of the senses, for a comfortable life. And, though it is true that nothing in this universe can counteract the inner pull, the inner inducement to the right life, nevertheless, we find the tragic situation that we are not able to answer that call because it has been so badly neglected that, today, it is too faint for us sometimes to even hear it. This is why my Master called character, the balance of the inner and the outer tendencies of existence.

It is not only in virtue you need a balance, even in vice you need balance. Balance cannot be thrown out. So, all that we do here, instead of taking this transactional analysis as an example, you take yourself as the example. There is in me, the inner self, the higher self. There is me, the human self, the outer self. These two are invariably opposed to each other. What this wants, I don't want. What I want, he says is not right. Integrate! Now, what is integration but bringing the two together into one.

Samadhi: In samadhi you are like a stone. And the Shastra itself describes it as a stone-like state, pashana tulya moksha. Whereas the real state, the divine state, is supposed to be one where we are totally absorbed inside, in what is a samadhi condition, but with one very vital difference - that we are also totally aware of the outer universe. In fact, it is a balancing of two extremes, you see, absolute absorption inside and absolute awareness to the outside. And in yogic literature that is called the state of yoga nidra, the divine state where he is asleep without being asleep.

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