GOOD AND BAD VS. TOTAL STILLNESS
In the relative field of life there are always opposing forces. The greater the spirituality that comes in this world, the greater the resistance. The purpose of great resistance is to make you push harder. Even spiritual masters can also take a nap sometimes – they too have to make an effort to be alert all the time to carry out their work, their dharma.
Where I live in South Africa, you will always find that if you have six or seven days of sunshine, you can be sure that you will have rain, because the sun has evaporated enough water to form clouds, which have to be dispersed in the form of rain. In the relative world there will always be this expansion and contraction.
There will always be this push and pull, and resistance will always be there. In the face of this, how must we act? Various moral laws are necessary, for one purpose only, to bring about a certain stability in society so that society can run smoothly. (This, of course, is an assumption, because I have seen no society in the world anywhere that really runs smoothly).
The greatest moralists are the greatest sinners in the world. Those that preach morality know more about immorality than you and I know. What brings them to the idea of certain kinds of immorality? They make it their business to know what immorality is all about. If their minds were pure enough, then those thoughts would not even exist for them.
It is always the one side that brings on the other side.
We are involved in the law of opposites all the time. You have a high one week; the next week you will see there is a low. How then, does a person proceed? He has to bring about a balance: to accept that which is good, and to accept that which is so-called bad. When you rise above both, you are in the state of balance where there is no such thing as good or bad.
FINDING THE BALANCE BEYOND POLARITIES
Until you have risen above them, the denial of good or bad could be like James Bond’s 007 – a license to kill; that is wrong. But when the human being has risen above the polarities, then all actions, good or bad, are non-binding to him. He knows their apparent goodness or badness to be just judgments of others, projections of the minds of others. He is unaffected. His actions do not create any samskaras or any bondage whatsoever.
What the human being is trying to find is total stillness. Goodness produces motion and badness also produces motion – so both are bondage.
When it comes to goodness, if you force yourself to be good, what are you achieving? Do you think you are achieving a great deal? No. A bit, yes; it gives you a little satisfaction of the mind – because good and bad are products of the mind, nothing more.
Doing good acts, while having a good motivation, which is also a product of the mind, brings about a certain amount of mental peace. This is your reward. The motivation has to be correct; the motivation has to be good; the action does not matter, and even once the motivation is good, it will still create a samskara, an impression of the mind, which will have to be worked out. But in working out that samskara, there is far greater pleasure than with any action not harmonious with nature. For an action not condusive to the flow of nature also creates an impression in the mind, a samskara; and working that out will cause pain.
You are still in the relative field of the mind with pleasure and pain – still involved in the law of opposites. With spiritual practices and meditation, one transcends the law of opposites; but one cannot live in the transcendental state all the time. That state is an energizing field that one contacts, just as when your battery starts running down you plug it in the socket to recharge it. That is what happens.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: “From Darkness to Light.”