Sharanagati

(from a lecture of Swami Tirtha, 01.10.2017 morning, Sofia)

Question of Tejasvini: Many times I’m making mistakes and I’m not wise enough to realize them, I cannot realize what exactly my mistake was and I repeat it again and again. How can we come to the platform to understand where our shortcomings are?

Swami Tirtha: The elephant is considered a wise animal. And once, while I was traveling, I saw in one small village an elephant scull, dried, in front of a door. A huge scull! In such a huge scull you must have a huge brain. But it was finished. There was only the scull. So even if we have a big brain, it’s not enough. Not enough not only for realizing our mistakes and not to commit them again, what to speak of accomplishing a spiritual journey! Even a wise animal will finish with an empty scull. Death will come. Basically we shall also finish with empty sculls. So it is not our brain content that will save us. It’s something else.

But we are in a learning process. And usually, sorry to say, we are so stupid not to be able to learn even from our mistakes. Because in the old times you didn’t need to go through the experience; if somebody told you ‘don’t do this’, you didn’t do it. Yet today, as we discussed the other day, ‘authority’ means a four-letter word – it’s something to reject, something to break down and something to revolt against. In the old times if an authority would say: “Not like this!”, everybody agreed: “All right, not like that.”

Just to bring one example. I think it was in the ‘40ies or in the ‘30ies, something like this – before the independence of India one internationally acknowledged Indian politician was supposed to visit a conference in England. But you know, to cross the ocean is not so much favorable, so he approached his mother and said: “Please, my mother, give me your blessings to go to this conference.” And the mother said: “No, my dear son, don’t go!” And then this internationally acknowledged politician said: “All right, I won’t go.” That is authority, my dear ones! If the mother says: “No!”, the son will agree: “All right, I accept.” So the voice of a mother has something to say in international politics also.

This is authority. And as we are more limited these days, usually we need the direct experience. And even then we repeat the mistakes many times. But hopefully the day will come when we don’t stupidly repeat the same old patterns. Of course our superiors are fully aware of the story and the situation. They will say: “Don’t touch the fire!”, but if you really want to touch it, they will let it happen. Yet they will always be there with some remedy.

But mostly these problems are on the psyche platform. These are not spiritual problems. And we have to very strongly differentiate between the psyche platform and the spiritual platform. Because many times people think that their impressions coming from the subtle body are spiritual, but they are not. So don’t mistake one for the other. The spiritual starts where the subtle ends.

(to be continued)