Part 3: Six Days To Total Transformation
Oh, God! What have I done! Please forgive this sinner for his act!, he wailed loudly.
Suddenly an even louder wail rose from the sky! The sannyasi was shocked.
What are you weeping for, God?, he asked in surprise. Said the voice from the sky: When you, who fed a thief just one meal, who gave him shelter for just one night, feel so guilty – what will be my position, who has taken care of him every single day of his life!
Be very clear: your guilt is nothing but your ego, working in a subtle, cunning form.
When Parashakti, when Existence accepts us all unconditionally, who are you to impose your two-bit morality upon yourself and others?
Who is society to implant these morals in you? All these social laws are created only for the smooth functioning of society. But we tend to confuse these social laws with our spiritual laws!
Then enters our great enemy – Guilt. In guilt lies the seed of all dukkha.
Actually, Anger has no positive existence – it is like darkness. But when you keep recalling your anger with guilt, you bring it into your awareness. You give it your energy.
Against your will, you give it life.
In the epic Ramayana, there is a character called Vali. It is said that the moment any person stood before Vali, half of that person's energy would instantly go to Vali. Like Vali, these emotions – anger, lust, greed – have a great power to draw all your energy to themselves. But to do that, they need your help – they need your guilt.
Just examine yourself. How many people are sitting inside your head, giving you instructions on how to live?! Your parents. Your children. Your spouse. Your friends. Strangers. Society. Law. All the writers of all the moral books you have read, all the speakers of all the discourses you have listened to! Either exploiting your greed, or exploiting your fear. Your greed for reward, or your fear of punishment. Greed for heaven, or fear of Hell. Our whole life is controlled by these two ropes – greed and fear.
Do you know, a survey was recently conducted on the internet on the most deadly disease of our century. Do you know what that disease is? Can someone tell me? It is not AIDS. Not cancer. Not TB. It is Depression! It is depression. And the root cause of depression is guilt.
Sometimes people come and tell me, I feel depressed for no reason!
The reason is, initially you feel guilty for a certain reason. If you continuously admit guilt inside, it becomes a quality of your Being. Then the guilt arises on its own, even without any external reason – because you don't know any other way of being. And when you feel guilty without being able to find a reason, you classify that feeling as depression.
So how do you drop your guilt?
First of all, throw out all the voices of society that are alive inside you, scolding you, praising you, guiding you. A small story:
A man approached Buddha seeking sannyas.
Buddha told him, First go and kill your father and mother, and then come back to me.
The man was astonished. What did Buddha mean?
Can anyone tell me what he meant?
Was Buddha asking the man to go and physically kill his parents?
NO! What he meant was, Go and kill the voices of your parents which are inside you, continuously instructing and disturbing you. Kill them psychologically, not actually. Remove their influence from your Being.
Another story:
A journalist died and went to Heaven. At the gates of Heaven, St. Peter informed him:
We already have a surplus of journalists here. There isn't enough work for them, and they won't want another one coming in. Because in heaven there's really no news. Everybody eats, sleeps, prays, and sits around being good. All the action
happens in Hell! Why don't you go there instead? The journalist was disappointed – he wanted very badly to be in Heaven. But he was a crafty man. He told St. Peter, Alright, I will do as you say. But give me twenty-four hours' time to spend in Heaven. During that period, if I'm able to convince any of the journalists here to move to Hell, you must allow me to take his place.
This seemed like a reasonable idea to St. Peter, and he agreed.
The journalist entered Heaven, and quietly started a rumour that a new magazine was being launched in Hell, and they were on the lookout for journalists there. The work was exciting, and on top of that they would be highly paid! Twenty-four hours later, St.Peter was shocked to find the journalist rushing out of the pearly gates.
Hey, you!, he cried. Where are you going? Thanks to your stupid rumour, all the other journalists have left Heaven already. Now you're the only journalist we have here. I can't let you go!
I have to go, said the journalist*. Haven't you heard about the new magazine in Hell?*
You idiot, you are the one who started that story!, cried St. Peter*. The journalist replied: Yes, I know. But now that so many people believe in it, I feel there must be some truth in the story. I have to go there and verify!*
This is the way we all operate! When we have no confidence in our own ideas, we look for external support for them. In our customs, in our social life, in every step we take, we always look around for approval from others. When thousands of people follow something, it is automatically taken to be the correct thing. Hitler says beautifully in his autobiography: A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.
So every time you follow something, first measure it with your inner scale, with your Intelligence.
Are you doing it because one thousand other people are doing it?
Are you believing in something because it is the socially approved idea?
Test every philosophy with which you are presented. Test everything.
And when I say everything, I include myself.
Use this scale and test whether I am also in the process of creating ten thousand followers! Don't believe blindly.
When you sharpen your knife on a piece of wood, you can test its sharpness on the same wood. In the same way, use this scale I give you to test me also.
If I can live up to your test, well and good. But if you find that I am not able to live up to your scale - drop me, not your scale.
Be very clear.
Place your trust in principles, not in personalities.
That is why the Sanatana Dharma, the Vedas are apourushya.
They don't depend on the words or ideas of any single person. Today, if historians were to prove that no such person as Krishna ever existed, it will make no difference to the relevance of the Bhagavad Gita. Because the Gita lives on the strength of its own principles, not on the personal appeal of the person who uttered the words.
Shall we move to the last chakra?