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<title>-022_Are not th e Ascetic Means Helpful at Times.htm</title>
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<p class="paracenter">ARE NOT THE ASCETIC MEANS HELPFUL AT TIMES?
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I do not think. You cure nothing in that way. You give yourself the illusion that you are progressing, but you are really freed of nothing. The proof is that as soon as you stop the practices, the old things come back violently with a vengeance.
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But naturally all depends upon the meaning you attach to the word. If it means not yielding to your desires, then it is not asceticism, it is common sense, it is good sense. By asceticism people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other. That gives you only self-importance or spiritual egoism, nothing more. You acquire no true control or mastery in this way. People do it because it is so simple and easy, because it satisfied your vanity. You make a show of your ascetic virtues and under the guise hide many other things.
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It is much more difficult, however, to master one's impulses quietly, deliberately, prevent them from bursting out instead of mortifying the body with ascetic feats. It is much more difficult not to be attached to things that one possesses than to possess nothing. Yet
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-76</p>
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<p class="para">it is a simple truth that has been recognised through ages. To be without possessions or to reduce one's possession to a minimum is easy: difficult it is not to be attached to whatever you happen to possess. It means a higher degree of moral value. Try to do this simply and you will know what it costs: when a thing comes to you, accept it and use it and if it goes away, for some reason or other, let it go, without regret, without trying to hold it back; not to refuse it when it comes, not to regret when it leaves—naturally, I speak of material objects, things required for use in life.
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Physical asceticism does not cure. For the defects are within. You are afraid of contacts from outside and you go to caves and jungles and hilltops, to live all by yourself. But you need no borrowing from others; you carry a sufficient load yourself. In fact if they were not in you, you would not have even detected them in others. You catch the infection from outside, simply because you carry the germs inside. Great waves of passion, one can say with much truth, roll through men, they are not generated in them. But if there is anyone perfectly pure, with no possibility of any passion in him, then such waves may be passing across for centuries together, he will not be affected or touched by them. He may see them, look at them as they pass, like a storm across the sky, but he will not feel.
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When there is an answering vibration in us to the vibration outside, it means that the vibration is already there within, otherwise no outside vibration can enter
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-77</p>
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<p class="para">or make an impression. The explanation of a panic —a general fear entering into each and every one of a crowd—lies there. A panic, however, can be stopped, if there were one or two who can resist, who are not touched, who are outside the vibrations. Such individuals can save the situation and prevent the stampede. The thing has happened often. A movement, a vibration, a force is contagious, because the ground of contagion is already there.
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<i>Why does not the effort towards progress come always spontaneously, especially for us who are here in the Ashram ?</i>
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It is because the physical nature in man is usually tamasic. Effort is natural to the vital. But the vital generally makes the effort for its own satisfaction. I do not think that the physical nature left to itself moves spontaneously in the direction of effort; it needs some activity but of a subdued kind.
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Here the thing is somewhat different. The principle of education or training followed here is that of liberty. Life is organised on the basis of maximum freedom; in other words, rules and regulations, injunctions and prohibitions are reduced to a minimum. If you compare our way with that followed by parents in the world with their constant admonitions: don't do this, that is forbidden, must do this but not that etc., etc., you will find the difference. At the school and the college, everywhere, there are rules infinitely more strict than are found here.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-78</p>
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<p class="para">So, because no absolute conditions are put upon you for your progress, you do it when it pleases you and you don't do when it does not please you; you take things quite easily.
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Of course there are some who do make the effort spontaneously. And that from the spiritual point of view has an infinitely greater value. You make the progress, because you feel within you the need to do so, because it is an impulse that wells up from your depths, not because you are driven by a compelling force outside. What you do spontaneously and sincerely of your own accord is something part and grain of yourself. You do a thing not because if you do it you will be rewarded and if you do not do you will be punished. It might happen however sometimes that something comes to you or into you and gives you the impression that your effort is appreciated, but the effort is not due to that. Indeed, things are arranged in such a way here that the satisfaction of having done and done well is the best reward one has and one punishes oneself thoroughly by doing badly or not doing; no other punishment can be more real or more concrete. All this is immensely significant and valuable from the standpoint of spiritual growth, much more than things produced by external regulation and pressure.
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<i>What is exactly a spiritual experience?</i>
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It is something which puts you in contact with a consciousness higher than that you have ordinarily. You five
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-79</p>
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<p class="para">in a certain state and you do not even know what it is like. That is the ordinary consciousness. Suddenly you become conscious within you of something very different and much superior — that is a spiritual experience, whatever it may be. You may formulate it in a mental idea or you might not, you may explain it or you may not, it may last or it may not, it may be quite momentary. But if there is this difference in the essential quality of the consciousness, signifying something coming from above, from a greater height, something pure and true, purer and truer than anything you normally experience, that I call spiritual experience, although there are a thousand things that belong to that category.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-80</p>
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