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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
Last night I was talking about a devotee or an individual changing or rising from one level to the other. And ultimately the last one, deciding to be in the close proximity of the Guru, trying to serve him in all his different types of activities. When you take up such a role, the close disciples, they become part of the whole Guru institution and all the activities that are being performed or pursued by that group. A person in such a situation will have to dissolve his personality and ego and get merged into that aggregate personality of the Guru. In doing so, suppose anybody has difficulty, resentment or anything like that, that becomes the first and last disqualification of a person to be trusted or to be entrusted with a different responsibility.
See, I shall be always happy to look at people and try to get them do the right type of work necessary here. Maybe you have a certain experience, but we may not have an opportunity or a position for utilizing your resources. So whatever is necessary, you should try to fit into that group. If anyone in that aggregate, one of the fingers say, if the little finger feels “I am not as big as the thumb and I am folding inward, thumb is folding opposite to me, so I am no good.”, then that is the one reason why that person cannot be taken from there and given a higher or a different responsibility. I don’t know whether my idea is clear.
The first and last qualification for any such aggregate, member of the aggregate is, wherever he or she is, she must be happy and she must be fulfilling her task in a nice and contented manner. If that contentment doesn’t come and the mind gets comparing and contrasting and makes itself depressed, then such a person cannot be trusted for anything. Let us be very clear about it. If you are discontented where you are, you can make it known to me, “I am discontented”. I will try to find out what can be done about it. But if you think that you have a certain ambition and you have a feeling, misjudgment, “I am not rated properly, I am not valued properly, my Guru has got partiality, he prefers X, he prefers Y.”, I think this is the most sinful thought. Even if the Guru has partiality, assuming that he has, are you going to change your Guru and are you going to scold him for his partiality?
‘B’ Swamiji came here and I was asking him because of my freedom “Please tell us something.”. And I raised a pertinent point in the ashram. He was saying that “When Swami ‘X’ was there, whatever problems I encountered, I could tell him and ‘X’ used to resolve it. But after X’s time, I am encountering difficulty.” And there was a lady there, a limping person. ‘Z’ was depending upon her, quite a lot for her personal service and she started feeling so proud and so possessive about the whole thing that I think ‘B’ Swamiji apparently was sidelined. Something to this effect and he was feeling very bad. But what to do? Maybe ‘Z’ was wrong. There is no question of right and wrong. She was doing what she was doing. Then he said that all such situations by X’s grace were exposed and ‘Z’ corrected and changed her stand point. I think this is the best example for you. You will have to wait but if you start doubting your Guru and judging that he was not right, and he is wrong, maybe he is not right, maybe he is not as good as you think, as efficient as you want him to be, but he is the Guru. Now the question is, will you be able to make yourself happy in the situation? If you are not, I think that is the greatest demerit for any kind of an aggregate member, member of the aggregate. I don’t think this is something very difficult to understand.
Any institution will look for good people. And we are waiting for anybody to be trusted, to be trusted, to be trusted. I will not like C. You know, I have a lot of trust in her. I think she has got some very good perception, point of view. She has so many other negative sides. But I am always telling her that “Why don’t you understand that this is your strong point and why don’t you develop it, develop it?” But poor C because she is constantly focused in others, others, others, her quality is not developed. I would not like her to be involved in our finance affairs. I would not like any brahmachari here to be involved in finance affairs but we have to handle our finances. So, we will try to do it in the best possible manner from our point of view, I say my point of view. I don’t think you can just say ‘Why Swamiji is doing like that?’. Now have you come to handle finance or have you come here to grow as a sadhika or a sadhaka? What is the purpose? Where is the question of comparing your sadhana progress with the responsibility of finance or anything like that? But I am wondering whether you sadhakas will be able to arrive at this kind of a thinking and evolve. That is for you to tell me. I don’t know. I really don’t know.
See, what is meant by greatness of a person? The greatness of a person is in trying to understand these intricacies of human behavior and then elevate oneself, if you can call it an elevation and reach the desired level. So, it is not a question of your doing a job and another doing another job. All these are receding to the background. The primary point is that as a sadhaka, are you able to handle your mind and improve it? It may be related to some situations. Those situations are objective but the actual point to be considered is your mind which is subjective. If you are unhappy in the kitchen, you are going to be unhappy anywhere in the Ashram. If you are going to be unhappy in handling the front office, you are going to be unhappy everywhere.
We had a Christian lady who came here. She gave a big note to Mā saying that “This is the right description of my position. I should be called this. And I am prepared to do this, prepared to do that.” etc. etc. She was expressing dissatisfaction in what she was doing and she said, “I should be this, I should be that.” And finally, it went to the extent of saying – you know such a clumsy thing as I call it, she says that she was expecting us to buy saris for her. I really don’t understand where is the question of our buying saris for her, for what purpose? So, anybody who starts behaving in this manner saying that “I am due for that, I am due for this, I am higher, I am greater.” and all that, it means dissatisfaction. So if primarily, a person is not able to fulfill whatever job he or she is assigned to, how can he be trusted for anything greater or higher? This is a minimum, minimum courtesy of a human behavior. I would like you to think about it. I don’t know whether I have made myself clear. I have said it earlier also but somehow this refuses to get into the minds of the people here.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
