There is a Law

There is a peculiar law to the form of sadhana I teach. It is quite different from the traditional forms of sadhana and from the usual worldly forms of action. How is traditional sadhana created? A person lives, and he finds that something is wrong; life becomes problematic, difficult. Traditionally, once an individual has discovered this in one way or another, he does something about it. He performs some action whose purpose it is to do away with that problematic awareness, that difficulty. All traditional paths and methods are forms of action which are determined to quiet or eliminate the mind, raise the kundalini, make you realize God, or decondition you. All traditional and usual human actions are forms of “doing something about it.” They are reactions, in other words, to some conceived difficulty or problem.

Examine this principle. It cannot work. There is a law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. How can you perform some action that will fundamentally transform your condition? All you can do is create changes. You cannot undermine the principle that you are suffering through any kind of action. All of the life difficulties, the mentality, the obsessions, the tendencies that you suffer and call your problems are the manifestations of a strategy or principle of life which I have described through the imagery of Narcissus. The avoidance of relationship has created everything that you suffer. Narcissus is the principle of your suffering and all the forms of your suffering are its expressions. To merely react to the forms of your suffering in order to change them, to do away with them, is false. It can never do anything to the principle upon which it rests. It only creates modifications based on the same principle.

The sadhana I teach is of an entirely different kind. There is another law:

Whatever is not used becomes obsolete. I teach a sadhana that is not a matter of doing anything about your troubles. It is not a matter of performing action with concern for any experience, any difficulty, any aspect of your life. It is a matter of living another principle. It is not by “trying not to avoid relationship” that you cease to be Narcissus. It is by not being Narcissus that you cease to be Narcissus. A principle other than that of Narcissus must awaken in an individual’s life. When this other principle is lived, all the qualities that were created by his previous principle of living become obsolete. They begin to weaken and fall away. But what is this other principle? It is Satsang, the prior condition, the radical condition of relationship. Satsang is not “trying not to avoid relationship” or “trying to be in relationship.” Satsang is simply relationship. Considering the words of the Guru you begin to become aware that relationship is your condition. It is not something you must try to create. It is not something that, in any sense, has been disturbed by your previous action. It is simply the case. In every moment of real intelligence you fall into that prior Condition, without effort, without struggle, without problem. So the principle of sadhana is Satsang, not any approach to your problems or to your qualities or tendencies.

Nevertheless, when you begin to live in Satsang with the Guru, the sense of dilemma is not magically destroyed. Satsang is the principle that is Truth. It is not magic. Living in Satsang does not mean that your tendencies have disappeared or that you have some means for making them disappear. Quite the contrary, to live in Satsang is to become, at times, profoundly sensitive to your apparent difficulties and tendencies. I have described this through the image of the sun moving over a well. At noon, when the sunlight passes down into the well, all of these creeps that lived in the dark begin to slither up the sides and pass out into the landscape. But when the sun is not directly overhead, they stay inside in the dark. This is the quality of Satsang. It is like high noon. So your apparent difficulties and problems do not disappear simply by virtue of contacting the Guru. They may seem to be intensified. A real process has been engaged.

From a practical point of view what is the nature of sadhana from day to day? It is continuous, unbroken, surrender of self to the Guru. The discipline of Satsang is to live in the form of relationship under all conditions and not to be concerned at any moment for what arises. So if you sit in meditation, and the mind is active, full of desires and tendencies, this is not to become the ground for some sensed problem or a demand for relief. Your sadhana is not properly concerned for these things that arise. Regardless of what arises you must live in Satsang. You must maintain yourself in the discipline of relationship under all conditions, in the form of all relationships. In other words, you must live this principle. Rather than the principle of Narcissus, you must live the principle of Satsang.

Secondarily, over time, you will observe that the force of your inner experience is becoming less apparently problematic. But the principle of sadhana is not to make the inner life quiet and problem free. That is not the goal, or the intention, or the principle, or the method of spiritual life. Just secondarily, you observe it. Because this principle of Satsang is the principle of your life, everything that is created by Narcissus is undermined. In other words, the principle is removed. It is not used. And everything supported by Narcissus begins to dissolve because it has no ground, no support. Without concern for the problems that arise, you live Satsang and the discipline of all relationships, and you do this not willfully, not as a method, but because you have found the Guru, because you have heard the Guru, because in some functional, practical, ordinary way the insight upon which sadhana rests has begun to live in you.