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One Who Obeys, Loves
Obedience is a perfect discipline towards perfection of ourselves.
He who obeys perfectly is the perfect person. Obedience, in the beginning,
is a very difficult thing because it means subservience of our ego,
subjugation of our ego, to a superior person. Therefore the ego rebels.
Disobedience always comes by a rebellion of the ego. But people forget
that when you are obedient you have no more responsibility for anything
that you do, or don't do, under his order. It is the mukti for
which we are all clamoring. It is the liberation from the world. When
I can live and exist, and do and not do, according to his wishes and
be totally free of every atom of responsibility, what more can you expect
by way of liberation? This is liberation while I am alive - I assume.
And I'm convinced in myself that this is jivan mukti.
We obey Him, our responsibility is to Him, and for the rest, well I
don't want to say it, but the devil take the rest. How am I concerned?
It is his problem you see. So it becomes so utterly easy and simple.
Love Him, follow Him, obey Him. The three are interrelated. We won't
follow somebody we cannot love. We can obey people who force us to obey,
but there is always inner rebellion. Therefore even great army commanders
are subject to coups, you know, and they are removed or thrown away
or killed. But in a love-oriented obedience there is no rebellion, there
is no anguish, there is no subjugation of the ego because we have transferred
it to him and said, "This is yours. Keep it."
So you see at one stroke: loving Him, obeying Him, following Him, our
responsibility doesn't exist anymore to anybody. He looks after us as
he looks after everybody else. Therefore, in expressing our limited
humanity, our limitations to love, to obey, to follow, to perform, our
limitations of capacities, this is a supremely simple way. Love one,
obey that one, follow that one and be aquit of everything else. We go
on blithely swimming in the ocean that he calls the Ocean of Bliss.
We must learn to create inner obedience from the heart, and that can
happen only when we love what we do, and we do what we love. So Sahaj
Marg must become something which we must love to do, and which we do
because we love it so much. That is, it must become mine. It
is no longer a system, it is my way of living. That I get up in the
morning, go to the place which I have reserved for this particular activity,
naturally sit in meditation, without being even aware that I am meditating,
and follow the ten maxims, not as if I have to remember. But we must
use the ten maxims to change our life in such a way that we follow them
naturally. Telling the truth becomes natural.
Then what is the problem with obedience? Because we know that if we
don't obey, there is no punishment at all, whereas obedience gives us
the highest goal of human life. So, is it not sensible to obey the Master?
So, I think obedience of the Master really shows that we are very sensible
and that we also love the Master. Now we are only sensible, but I am
always inclined to equate obedience with love. And increasing love
must be reflected in increasing obedience. And when that is absolute,
obedience must be absolute.
So, I always judge an abhyasi's love for the Master by the degree of
obedience that is visible to us. To me it is a direct relationship:
obedience - love; more obedience - more love; highest obedience - highest
love. And how is this possible? Because people can say, "But I
have not the capacity to obey." It is a very great secret but a
very small thing. Because, when you love a person totally, you are constantly
remembering that person. And obedience in his remembrance, in the remembrance
of the Master, gives us his powers therefore we work with his powers.
Therefore, when we are loving the Master and we are remembering him
all the time, we use his powers; whereas when we are not remembering
him and loving him, we use our powers, and therefore we fail. And when
we don't remember the Master, because we don't love him, we are dependent
on our own capacities, and naturally we fail. So, this is the great
secret of obedience.
So you see, obedience is the first law of spirituality. I place it
above love because true obedience comes only with love. We are not talking
of the ritualistic, militaristic obedience where they say, 'shoot' and
you shoot. They say 'sleep' and you sleep. You know that is a sort of
obedience that is different. That is 'survival-oriented obedience.'
To live you have to shoot. And the commander tells you, hopefully at
the right moment, 'Now you shoot.' Till then you have to withhold your
fire. Here, we are not for survival. In Sahaj Marg, survival in this
physical world is not our aim. We have to survive so long as we don't
reach our goal, the least goal being liberation.
It is not easy to love, but it's easy to obey. And it is my experience
that if you just obey and go on and on, it is easier than trying to
love somebody. So my advice to all abhyasis is, please become obedient,
don't think of what is possible or what is impossible for us, because
even in any small work, if you start with a doubt, it is impossible.
As Babuji said, "Doubt poisons the will." You know, if I have
to lift this chair and I say, "Oh, can I lift it?", I cannot
lift it. But if you take it up with confidence then automatically your
power will work, and you will be able to lift it.
We know that in a family where a father tries to control his children
merely through authority or punishment, the family disintegrates very
fast because, when his sons grow up and are as big as the father or
bigger, they say, "O.K. let us have it out, let us see who is stronger.
In fact in Tamil we have a saying that when your son grows beyond your
shoulder, he is your friend, he is no longer your son! So we find that
we develop from a level of obedience, a level of automatic obedience,
automatic love, to a conscious level where we have now to consciously
obey, consciously love, and this conscious obedience of principles of
ethics, of moral ways of living can only come out of love. It cannot
come out of enforcement. If the son really loves the father then he
is prepared to sacrifice many things for the sake of the father. He
cannot do something which the father would not approve of or tolerate.
So the self is no longer the important thing, it is the other to whom
we have given our heart who becomes the most important person. Love
makes this obedience possible. Love makes the achievement of our aim
possible because the son wants to achieve what his father wants
him to achieve. Therefore his co-operation is available. He knows that
his father would not desire for him something that is bad, something
which would not satisfy him.
So it is my growing conviction that the process is given to us as a
matter of discipline, to make us obedient. And as we grow more and more
obedient, it shows an increasing love for the Master. Because we don't
love Him or obey Him because of authoritarian domination by Him, but
because we love the man. And when we love Him absolutely, we obey Him
absolutely. So one sure index of your love for the Master is the degree
of your obedience, there must be absolute love behind it. With absolute
love, there is absolute dependence. With absolute dependence, there
is absolute surrender. Then it is His problem, you see, what to do with
this guy. He won't leave him alone.
When we obey Him, we work for Him, He has to love us. It is not important
whether I love the Master or not. The important thing is whether my
Master loves me. You see, no child, when it is born, loves the mother.
Its existence is ensured because the mother loves the child. Later on,
the child learns to love its mother. The mother loves naturally; the
children have to learn to love by association. Similarly the Master
loves us naturally; we have to learn to love the Master. And when we
obey Him without question, then we find the miraculous unfoldment of
His powers. Because I, being nothing, can yet do everything He says,
because it is His order! You see, how being nothing, He makes us everything,
by the simple act of obedience?
It is love which is praised beyond even effort, beyond even everything
else, because love for the Master alone can give you obedience to the
Master. One who loves, obeys. That one who obeys need not love. There
are servants, policemen, there are military officers who obey rules
without having to love the people who give those rules. But when you
love totally, your obedience is total, that means it is surrender.
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