Just completely separated so this is how the mind can take it, you know. Share of pain – if I cannot sleep well I cannot get up, if I cannot get up then I cannot meditate. If I don’t meditate mind is rebellious and there is more of passion and prejudice in the mind, restlessness. If there is more restlessness one fine morning “what am I doing in this monastery? What am I doing in this place? Go away or I can’t meditate.
Those who are at home they tell us constantly this. For several days they try and try. No, somehow the period of meditation seems to be the most annoying thing and so they say “well I don’t sit anymore, I don’t try at all, I have given up. What was the attitude of the direct disciples? The Guru, that extremely loving he said, “here is an aspiring one, he has a desire for God but he will not have the strength to face the initial obstructions. The troubles, the pains of the initial days of meditation, let me help you, let me take all the care. Such great love comes from unselfishness and that you feel you live with them. You feel it.
The second quality that you feel is what actually holds you enthralled and that is perfect mastery of the Guru on the passions of the body. Physically, mentally he is a master, complete self-control. Self-mastery under all circumstances. Any temptation, anything, he is a master and that was tested in the case of Swami Vivekananda when he came to this country. He was handsome and wonderful looking and someone who wanted to be his disciples actually tested him.
They said if this young and handsome man, so powerful and with so many men and women around him, if he can resist being a victim of name fame, glory and lust then we know him to be a real spiritual teacher. Can he? We will watch and they did watch. And that amazing self-mastery, complete control. That is the second quality you see in the teacher.
And the third is also another which is important and very important to you and me who are wanting to be disciples. Suppose the qualities he must inspire confidence in you then only you can make spiritual progress not on the first day or the second day till the last day of your life or his life. He must inspire your confidence otherwise you give up, you don’t care. The first day or the second day anybody can inspire confidence. It happens the third day you don’t care for him. Something else you see in him and you lose confidence then you give up, no more progress possible. No, the Guru will see to it that he holds your confidence day after day.
It need not increase. Don’t wait for quality and quantity in spiritual life just do what the Guru tells you to do that is your side of it. But you must feel confident, in other words, like a child and the mother and the father. Complete confidence, safety, so the child gives itself up to the parents – protection, safety. I know they are my parents or the other attitude – a patient and a doctor. A patient helpless, suffering, sick and a doctor in whom he has confidence, says “please I commit myself to you do something and relieve me of this pain. I am prepared to go anywhere.” Complete confidence.
And what the spiritual aspirant has is in the Guru confidence – “take my soul, take my whole person.” Now that is the confidence that you feel. The teacher will take care of all these things. What does the disciple have to do? By effort, you know what I mean by effort in spiritual life. There is also a thing called effortlessness.
Sometimes there are articles published called the Yoga. Effortlessness which means to some do nothing – I am spiritual by my very nature, the Lord does everything, the Guru has taken away all my Karma, so i am saved and the Lord takes care of the rest. So I am to do nothing. No, the effort, mental mainly, not so much physical. The mind has to be kept. You see, constantly thinking, that is a constant thought of God, is the effort, nothing else. You do something else. Your mind is taken away from the Lord again back to the Lord – that is all the effort. They want thought of God memory and that is the effort that we have to do.