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<p class="paracenter">SADHANA MUST BE DONE IN THE BODY
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There are people who are disgusted with life. They want to go away in the hope that it will be better the next time. But we tell you: It is no use running away from your body, it will not be easier without a body. On the contrary, it will be much more difficult. The body is meant for you to do Yoga. We are upon earth here and it is precisely during the period of our life upon earth that we can make progress.
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You cannot progress outside the life on earth. The terrestrial life, the material life is essentially the life for progress. It is here that we develop and advance. Outside the earthly life you take rest, otherwise you remain unconscious. You can have this period of assimilation, period of rest or period of inconscience elsewhere. But for periods of progress you must come to the earth and in the body.
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So when you take a body it is for making progress and when you leave it the period of progress ends. Now true progress means Sadhana, in other words the most conscious and the most rapid progress. Otherwise there is a progress with the march of Nature and that takes centuries and centuries, hundreds of centuries to move just a little forward.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-89</p>
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True progress is done by Sadhana. By Yoga you can do a thing in a brief space that would otherwise take a long, interminable period. But it is always upon earth and with the body that this can be done, not elsewhere. So that is why while you are in the body you must profit by it, not to lose time, not to say, 'later on, later on'. It is much better to do the thing forthwith. Years that you pass without making progress are years wasted, you can only regret for it afterwards.
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<p class="paracenter">* 
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Every human being here upon earth, whoever he is and whatever he is, has within him a psychic being, only in various degrees of evolution. An embodied person possesses many other things e.g. states and forms of consciousness. His task upon earth is to transform these elements which form as it were, the part of universe given to him for his work of transformation. And even if he has a vaster mission beyond his own person, he cannot do that unless he has done the personal work first. You cannot change the outside world unless you have begun changing your own self. It is the first and indispensable condition and it is true for all, young or old, small or big. It is for this reason that life has been given to the psychic being: it is man's opportunity for progress. The span of earthly life is the time for progress. Outside earthly life there is no progress. The possibility and the means for the progress are only there in earthly life.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-90</p>
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<p class="para">So one must begin with oneself. When the work has been done with regard to oneself then only one can begin elsewhere. But first, work at home.
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You go to kill yourself when you are a coward. The psychic comes with a definite aim to gather a certain sum of experiences, to learn, to make progress. If you go away before the work is done, you have to come back and do it over again but in circumstances much more difficult than before. Whatever you avoided in one life, you will find reappearing in a more difficult form. Without going very far, take for example this small difficulty in your life, the examination you have to pass. If you do not go through it, if you turn your back, you will have to pass it another time and that time it will be more difficult.
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Men are so ignorant. They think that there is life and that there is death, life is a bundle of troubles, death brings about peace. But it is not at all like that. Generally when one goes out unnaturally, in a fit of ignorant and obscure passion, one enters straight into a vital world, made of all these passions and ignorant movements. The trouble they want to avoid they meet again but without having the protection that the body gives them. For if ever you had a nightmare i.e. a bold promenade into the vital world, you know that you come out of it by waking up, in other words, by rushing into your body. But when you have wilfully destroyed the body, you have lost your protective armour. You have to live in a continual nightmare. It is not very pleasant.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-91</p>
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To avoid a nightmare you have to be in your psychic consciousness; for when you are in that consciousness nothing troubles you or brings you anxiety. It is only when you are in a movement of ignorance that you do not have the courage or the strength to face a danger.
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<i>What is the source of cowardice?</i>
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Ignorance is the source. Ignorance is the cause of all evil. I think, however, that one becomes a coward when one is tamasic i.e. one fears to make an effort.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-92</p>
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