Light Inside – In Gita Verse 9.12 Those who are thus bewildered are attracted by demonic and atheistic views. In that deluded condition, their hopes for liberation, their fruitive activities, and their culture of knowledge are all defeated.
Krishna says a person who is in a hurry to achieve, focuses on his greed and goal. They are always bewildered.
When we ourselves are in the grip of greed and adamant for the result, then in that moment how arrogant we are. Even we forget our own politeness. We become rude. Become aware of your arrogance after reading this verse. We need to understand our arrogance.
One thing you have to understand, for yourself: you cannot imagine silence; that is not in the nature of things. You can imagine all kinds of thoughts, but you cannot imagine thoughtlessness. Nobody has ever been able to do it, it is almost impossible. You cannot imagine blissfulness. You don’t have any idea, how can you imagine it? Imagination needs some kind of experience; then you can project it. But blissfulness you don’t know.
You can imagine misery perfectly well. You are so deeply rooted in misery that there is no problem. You know it, you can imagine it, you can exaggerate it, you can magnify it a thousandfold; it is in your hands. But blissfulness you don’t know. Anything that you don’t know is not possible for you to imagine.
So if you are feeling silence, peace, bliss; if you are feeling changes happening in you, in your consciousness, it is not imagination.
Secondly, you are worried that it may be some kind of arrogance in disguise. One who is aware that his experiences may be some kind of arrogance, has really gone beyond arrogance, because arrogance never recognizes itself. The egoist never recognizes that he is egoistic; the arrogant cannot even think that he is arrogant.
To be worried that perhaps it may be arrogance is part of humbleness. Only a humble person becomes concerned that he should not say anything, he should not do anything that may bring arrogance from the back door. He knows the misery of arrogance, he knows the pain and the anguish of arrogance. He does not want to get into that trap again. But if you are aware, arrogance cannot come close to you, just as when you have light in your house, darkness cannot come in.
Gautam Buddha used to say, “You should be like a house which has light inside. When the house, its doors, its windows, are showing light, thieves don’t come close. But when the house is dark and there is no light, it is an opportunity for thieves.” And by thieves he means all that destroys your beauty, your grandeur, all that takes away your treasures. Arrogance, ego, aggressiveness, superiority, the idea of being special – all are destroying you and your peace; they are destroying your nobodiness.
You cannot imagine nobodiness. It is almost like…a beggar can dream of being a king – in fact beggars always dream, and in their dreams they fulfill the desires which they cannot fulfill in their actual waking lives. But nobody has ever heard of a king dreaming about himself being a beggar; that is unknown. Why should one dream of being a beggar? The hungry person can dream that he has been invited to a royal party; he can dream about delicious food – he has to, just to hide his hunger. But the man who is living in the palace and eating delicious food is not going to dream that he is hungry; that is just illogical, un-psychological.
We dream only of things which we don’t have; we imagine things only which we don’t have. But once you start having real experiences, those experiences start changing your lifestyle, your responses to situations; you can start feeling constantly within you a coolness, a grace, a gratitude toward existence, and out of this peacefulness, silence, beauty, all your actions arise…they also have something of it. Your words come out from the silences of your heart; they also have some music from their original source.
TRUTH IS TRUTH. It is neither arrogant, nor humble. IT HAS TO BE DECLARED AS IT IS. It can appear humble to you if you understand; it will appear arrogant to you if you don’t understand.
Let me give you an example of Jesus – It is a well-known fact: a man like Jesus was uneducated, but no rabbi in the whole history of Judaism, four thousand years – and Jewish rabbis are great scholars, unparalleled in any other religion – but no Jewish rabbi has spoken the way an uneducated carpenter’s son, Jesus, spoke. And he knew nothing of scripture, he knew nothing of the art of oratory. Even those who were not in agreement with him had to say, “One thing we cannot deny: nobody has ever spoken the way he speaks.”
And he is using simple words, ordinary words used by common people, but on his lips those ordinary words have a changed quality. They are coming from a depth; they are bringing some fragrance with them, they are bringing some authority to his experience.
The same words are available…all the Christian missionaries are repeating the same words every day. But you don’t feel any impact, you don’t see…Why the difference?
The difference is that Jesus was speaking out of experience, and these people are speaking only out of their education. For Jesus, it was his life. For these missionaries, it is their salary; it is their livelihood, not their life. For Jesus, what he was saying was so important that he was ready to sacrifice his life, but not to compromise on any ground.
Krishna says that One who is aware that his experiences may be some kind of arrogance, has really gone beyond arrogance, because arrogance never recognizes itself. Once he has gone beyond arrogance then immediately he will become silent and drop his hurriness.
Tags: Light Inside
