CHANGE OF ATTITUDE
ALL IS WORTHY
An injunction from the scriptures says, “Lord, I am not worthy to gather the crumbs from under Thy table.”
No man, woman or child is unworthy, and Divinity regards no one to be unworthy. Divinity itself, the neutral force, knows of no unworthiness. He is like the rain that would fall on fertile fields or barren ground or the rocks or rivers and in oceans where water is not even required. So, who is unworthy? None is unworthy.
But this injunction has some meaning to it, and the purpose is to make man realise that he lives with an inflated ego, and that inflated ego has to be clarified. This inflation has to be deflated. Nevertheless, there is meaning in that teaching there that I am so unworthy. It means total deflation of one’s ego. It means a form of surrender to something higher.
That unworthiness, that feeling of insignificance in the presence of the Lord, is something good, because that one has to become insignificant, reach rock bottom. Then the upward turn comes where you feel all significance. For then, you have understood and realised the meaning of what life is: that “His” life is my life, my life is “His” life. We are one, and I am just as significant as my maker. For that which is made is non-apart from the maker, and that oneness is formed.
But this outstanding teaching has also brought about things that are not good for people. The way this is interpreted today has produced so much guilt in people’s minds, and guilt, you know yourself, is the greatest malady – the most significant illness, for you keep on dwelling in that guilty feeling as if you are in a whirlpool. You cannot get out into the vastness of the ocean.
Theologies, unfortunately, have been so, so misinterpreted. Most of these injunctions have profound meanings. Therefore true masters always are meticulous in what knowledge they give to whom. Is the recipient ready enough to understand what is said?
There is a passage in a Sanskrit work that was written about three or four thousand years ago, and it is said that if a person of low understanding hears a sacred word, then lead should be poured into his ears. As a child, I found this to be terrible. I did not understand. I said, “How can this be? If something is sacred, let each and everyone hear it, from the saint to the sinner.” But later, I started discovering what it truly meant. What it meant was this, that deep, mystical, esoteric knowledge given to undeveloped minds can be used wrongly. For certain kinds of knowledge can release within oneself a very deep force, a very deep power, and if you are not sufficiently evolved, you can use the power in a destructive way. Hitler is an example. He was a brilliant man. He must have been brilliant to command what he had commanded and took over practically all of Europe until he lost the war. That power was misused – destructive power. That happens in all theologies, and it is the duty of teachers to bring clarification of truths as they were originally meant.
THE GIFT OF FORGETFULNESS
The process of deflating the ego means one has to work with one’s samskaras. But how can you work with your samskaras when you do not know them. Man is in certain circumstances now, and the present circumstances are only the total of all previous existences. Man does not know his samskaras, and he does not need to know them. What man needs to know is where he is today? He does not need to analyse all these various samskaras, impressions, and experiences he has gained over many lifetimes. So, what does one do? One does spiritual practices.
The greatest gift given to mankind is the gift of being able to forget. If you have to remember or remember all previous existences, your life would be very sorry. You might have been a murderer. You might have been a thief. You might have been a rapist. You might have been all kinds of things. The lessons of which has brought you to this stage now to become spiritual seekers in the path of the Lord. If you had to remember all those things, you would dwell on them all the time, and you would feel guilty: Oh, I was a murderer. I am unworthy to even feed on the crumbs under the table.
THE PAST IS THE PAST
So why can we not use that with the knowledge that we have of ourselves today?
The primary precept to accept that I am worthy, not unworthy. We start from strength. If you say, I am sick, and I am sick, I am sick, you are going to become ill. If you say to yourself, I am strong, and I am strong, I am strong, you are going to become strong. Although this functions entirely on the mind level. But the functioning is necessary. The mind is essential, for it is not apart from the Spirit, and neither is this body apart from the Spirit.
For example, if one starts with the affirmation that I am worthy, for there is nothing in this entire manifestation of the universe which is unworthy? Everything emanates from that Divine Force, and anything emanating from something worthy has to be worthy. Let us get rid of this sickness that makes you sick: guilt. I did not treat my mother too well; I did not treat my father well, or they have not treated me well; I have done this to my boss; I have done that. That is the past! Seeing that you have realised that it is the past, the cure has begun. That is the proper diagnosis. The correct diagnosis is half the cure.
THERE SHOULD BE A PROPER UNDERSTANDING
These injunctions have to be correctly understood. It is not so easy. It could just be words playing around in the mind saying, I am worthy, I am worthy, I am worthy. It could inflate the ego more. There should be a proper understanding that in this vast scheme of things, my worthiness is there, and in the path of worthiness, I am humble. For when the realisation comes that I am worthy, automatically, you will feel the humility. It is not the opposite. Humility and unworthiness or worthiness are not two opposite things. They are two aspects of the same thing. When a person feels worthy, he feels good. When you feel good, you automatically feel humble. It is only when you do not feel good that you want to exert yourself. It is only people with an inferiority complex that try to exert themselves more. They try to express themselves in the opposite way, in a superior way. You find this every day – you will find people that are basically shy, they always try to become the life of the party, and they really are not.
On the spiritual path, the first precept should be, I am worthy. If I were not worthy, I would not be in the world of Divinity. I am worthy, not because I think I am worthy. I am worthy because I know I am worthy. Beauty can only come from beauty. I am the expression of that beauty, and therefore I am beautiful. Having that, you will rid yourself of that guilt, and to repeat again – you will become more humble because in that very knowing yourself to be worthy, you will, at the same time, find the great worth of this expression, this manifestation, this creation. You will observe, feel, see its vastness, and then you will become humble. You will become happy that you are part and parcel of this grand scheme. So, where does the question of the crumbs come? Are the crumbs not, also, of the bread? Do crumbs not form part of the bread, be they under the table or above the table? What is the difference? After all, who invented tables? You did. In olden times we all ate from the floor.
What is up, what is down; what is on the left, what is on the right? Nothing! It is how you view it—your attitude in how you view this. But people find it so difficult. They dig these holes, and they do not know. They dig these holes for themselves -they dig these holes of guilt, and they do not know how to fill them.
There was this one government employee; he was digging a hole. When you dig a hole, naturally, the dirt is thrown out. Dirt becomes loose. And after laying the pipes or whatever, he had to refill the hole. He then came upon a problem that he filled the hole, yet there was so much over because the dirt was loose. When it was in the ground, it was very compact. So, he called his supervisor, and he told his supervisor, this is my problem, I cannot get it all back in. So, the supervisor told him, “Dig the hole deeper.”
That is what we are doing. We are digging the hole deeper through our feelings of guilt, thinking that we are going to bury the guilt. That does not work out. Rather, no guilt. Why regret?
Whatever has been done in this world by us through the circumstances we are in because of our creations. With this humility, one becomes more responsible. It dawns on you, the sense of responsibility dawns, and you have an obligation to fill the hole. You will stamp the loose ground, so you do not need to dig the hole of guilt deeper, for that is not the way. The way is compressing it, burying it. Bury the feelings of guilt and have the beautiful ground on top to plant your seeds for beautiful flowers. That is joy.
DIVINITY WANTS YOU TO BREAK BREAD WITH HIM
Why worry about crumbs when the Lord offers you the whole loaf? Why creep under the table to pick up the crumbs? Sit beside Him and share His bread, for is that not what Divinity wants? He wants to break bread with you, and you go seeking crumbs. Why? There is not one valid reason anyone can give me. Break bread with Him. Be in communion with Him, and this is very easily attained by spiritual practices: Gurushakti, for one. Very easily attained. Where you do not sit at the feet of the Lord, but you sit with Him at His side. Then even that ceases; you sit on His lap, and even that ceases, and you sit in Him. For then, you eat the bread with His mouth. Do you understand that to eat the bread of life through His mouth? To eat the bread of life through “His” mouth. To live this life in “His” life. It is beautiful – so beautiful. This is so easy, so simple. We build these mental barriers around us just with the mind, and they become walls of steel because you think they are walls of steel. But they are not. It is an illusion you are creating. There are no walls at all.
CAREFREE AND YET SO CARE FULL
You have never been separated from Divinity, and you never will be separated from Divinity. You have always been one with Him through eternity, for you to are eternal. You do not think of the eternity and the vastness of the ocean; your emphasis is on the wave only. Just a change of perspective, looking in a different direction to see the ocean. Yet, at the same time, you do not lose sight of the wave, and that is called awareness. The development or the unfolding of awareness, where the ocean and the wave are seen together in its proper context that I, the wave, He, the ocean, are not apart. He, the ocean, makes me dance on His lap. How beautiful to dance on the lap of the gods? But, no, we do not do that. We just see the turbulence, the storm, the rise and the fall and the rise and the fall of the waves, and we say, “Oh, what a stormy, choppy sea.” Yet we go a little higher up in an aeroplane. Just go up in a plane, and the sea seems so calm down there. So calm. Be in the air, as light in the air. Float with the clouds, carefree and yet so care full. Let not your cloud’s waterfall on barren ground, but on fertile ground. On the fertile ground of your mind and be cleansed! A lovely shower that is!
EVERY ATTITUDE YOU HAVE IS A PATH
To start off from the point of view of total insignificance, unworthiness is also a path. Every way a person thinks is a path. Every attitude you have is a path. You do not even need to feel guilty about that. But how am I going to use the path now? With what perspective am I going to view the path? Feel insignificant, feel unworthy, and become a bhakta, become a devotee. Then you elevate, sublimate that unworthiness into something beautiful, into the sublime. There is a beautiful poem by Mirabai, a great Indian poetess who lived about four hundred years ago.
She sings in her song in her poem, “Oh, Lord, I do not want to merge into Thee. But let me be born again and again and again so I would have the joy of worshiping at Thy feet.”
That stemmed from the sense of unworthiness, from the sense of insignificance, but turned into bhakti, and bhakti is joy; bhakti is love, devotion and love not apart. If you love me, you are automatically devoted to me. If I love you, I am automatically devoted to you. For in my love and devotion for you, I would wash your feet. If you were ill, I would clean your backside because of love. That sense of unworthiness disappears then.
But start! Start anywhere. Start anywhere, for all roads lead but there, like rivers from different directions merging into the same ocean. Make the path smoother for yourself by just a simple change of attitude by only a simple understanding.
THE TOUCH OF THE MASTER
When I come to have Satsangs with you in England or America or Spain or Denmark, wherever it is to help you to look at things from a different perspective, that is one thing. The second thing I do is being a channel. I allow His energies to pour to you, and that is called “The Touch of the Master.”
Who is the Master? Not this little bag of bones and blood. That is the Master. He touches you through me. I am grateful through His channel. I am grateful. The abstract expressed through a concrete form does that.
There is so much electricity in the water in the river, but to make the electricity in the water functional, you have got to have that generator, the machine, in between tangible object – electricity, an intangible – tangible generator that draws the electricity into this hydro plant, so that we could have light around us. Divine light, God’s light, functions in the same way. Therefore, the saying, “What is down here is up there. What is up there is down here.” In different ways, in various forms, but it is all Divine. It is all Divine.
YOU ARE ON A CERTAIN PATH OF EVOLUTION
Attitude, how one does things, is the most important thing in life. Nothing else can make a man happy or unhappy except his attitude, perspectives, and angles from which he views things.
No sense of guilt. But just an innocence to accept what is and not what has been. No crumbs are necessary. You are worthy and not worthless. You are valuable and invaluable. No price can be set upon you, despite all your quirks and fancies and whatever. They are just judgments of the world. Have you ever thought, and this is also a great failing among people, “What will so-and-so say?” It takes all the naturalness out of you.
You are on a specific path of evolution. Certain things must happen in your life to bypass it, surpass it, or go straight through it. But the thought strikes, “Oh, what will people say?” Have you analysed this? How many people do you know? Ten? Twelve? Twenty? A hundred people that know you? And how many are very close to you? Three? Four? Five? That is all. If you are a well-known person doing civic work or other kinds of work, you will have a more considerable amount of people knowing you, perhaps. But the ordinary man, about a hundred people, knows him, or two hundred people know him. So, he will sacrifice his entire soul for two hundred people, perhaps, that will say something wrong of him. Yet there are four thousand million people in this world that have never heard of you or that does not even know where America is. Many people here in America ask me about South Africa. And they say, “Oh, it must be a terrible place. You have lions, you know, and tigers are roaming around in the streets. And yet it is such a modern, industrialised country, just like America. Johannesburg, for example, is like New York. Perhaps the buildings are only fifty stories high instead of a hundred and three and a hundred and twenty – so high-rise buildings, skyscrapers. So, how many people have heard of you? How many people really know you? Very few. And you sacrifice your entire naturalness.
CHANGE OF ATTITUDE
Just be natural. Just be yourself, and forever being in yourself has the remembrance of Divine, for you too are Divine. You are Divine in part, and you are Divine in the wholeness of things. You are the part, and you are the whole. No separation. No reforms are required. What reforms are required? Which great reformer in this world has ever succeeded in reforming? He has succeeded in deforming, not reforming.
Yes, so here Nasradin gets up. He is quite a talker, you know. He babbles on and on and on, you know. He talks and talks and talks. So, he says, “We must have land reform. We must have education reform. We must reform the entire medical system. There must be Social Security reform.” And one person at the back of the audience was so bored he said, “Yes, and chloroform.”
Reformation comes from within oneself. You reform your attitudes, have a different perspective on life. All is, and all is well. Then you will find health, mental health, physical health. All kinds of health that you can imagine. Attitude.
A man goes and applies for a job, and in his mind, he says to himself, “Oh, I am not going to get it.” Then he sets off such a vibration around him that he will not get that job. But if you want to find a job, have that attitude, “Yes, I am going to get it,” and you will.
You create the atmosphere around you. The occultists talk of auras and that; we talk of emanations. We emanate. You think what you are and what you are; that is what makes you think what you think. Defeatism, down with that. Feelings of guilt, down with that. Unworthiness, down with that. No. All are worthy; all is well, all is Divine, all is love, all is beautiful. Only one thing exists, and that is Divinity. Nothing else exists. These are the things of Divinity. It is only Divinity that matters and not this little, transient ego-self that thinks that it is the centre of the universe.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1981 – 07