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Ambitions and faithfulness

Ambition prevents success and destroys the fruit of spiritual practice. Without a Guru's grace and true faithfulness, efforts yield no result. Faithfulness is now lost, as minds ask "What do I get?" and thus miss its golden benefit. An unsteady, ambitious mind cannot achieve perfection.

A story illustrates this. A being sought immortality from Śiva but was refused. He then requested a power: whoever's head he touched would burn. Granted this, he immediately tried to use it on Śiva himself. Śiva fled. Viṣṇu, appearing as a dancer, tricked the being into a dance where he imitated her movements and placed his hand on his own head, burning himself. His own ambition destroyed him.

Therefore, proceed step by step. Be faithful to your practice, your friends, yourself, your master, and your disciples. Direct experience, like that of spiritual energies, is beyond intellect. It is like blind men describing an elephant—each touches a different part and claims a different truth. All are right from their limited experience, and none grasp the whole.

"Ambition will burn us and will not help us to be successful."

"Every individual has different experiences."

Filming location: Prague, Czech Republic

It is very important that one does not create ambition. The person who creates ambition is never successful. You can plant a tree; the tree will grow, but it will not bear fruit. You can buy a cow, but you will not have milk. So you may do some exercises, some sādhanās, but the result of that will be very far off if there is no Guru Kṛpā and if there is ambition. We need a Guru’s kṛpā. This grace is very hard to understand, especially for the Western mind. What we call faithfulness is lost nowadays from people’s minds. People do not understand at all what faithfulness means. They ask themselves, "What do I get from this?" or "Why should I be faithful?" And then everything is lost. The beauty and the golden benefit of faithfulness cannot be experienced, just as a blind person cannot experience colors. Because their mind is not steady, they have ambitions. And when the mind is unsteady and ambition is present, there is no perfection. There is a story about Lord Śiva and a Rākṣasa, a devil. The devil wanted to become immortal, so that he would never die and no one could kill him. He came to Lord Śiva and said, "Lord, I am your great devotee. Please bless me with immortality." Śiva said, "That is not possible. You cannot get immortality in this way; you do not even know what immortality is. You cannot be physically immortal." The Rākṣasa then requested, "Then please bless me with one siddhi: whoever's head I place my hand upon shall burn." Śiva said, "Okay, I can give you that because you have been practicing tapasyā for so long." And so Śiva blessed him. The Rākṣasa then said, "Now I want to test if you have truly given me the siddhi or not." Seeing no one else around, he said, "I have to try it on you." He now wanted to kill Śiva. Śiva left from there; he escaped. It was his own power which he had given. This power could destroy him, too. Your own words, your own promises, your own kind days can also disturb you. Śiva ran away, and the Rākṣasa chased him through the Himālaya, up and down, through the hills. Suddenly, there was a beautiful cave. Śiva ran into it, and Viṣṇu was sitting there. Viṣṇu stood up and greeted Śiva, saying, "My Lord, how gracious I am, how fortunate I am that you have come and given me your darśan. But, my Lord, you look a little nervous today." Śiva replied, "Yes, my Lord Viṣṇu, it is I." You see, the Īśa Devatā of Viṣṇu is Śiva, and the Īśa Devatā of Śiva is Viṣṇu. There is no difference between them. Some people think Viṣṇu is the highest; others are semi-gods. There is no "semi." God is God. Fire is fire, whether it is a volcano or a small flame. Fire is fire. God is God. A human is a human. An animal is an animal. The soul is the soul. Life is life. Śiva told the story to Viṣṇu. Viṣṇu said, "Oh, well, Lord, no problem. I will solve this. You relax and drink tea. I am coming." Viṣṇu went out and dematerialized into the form of a beautiful girl, a dancer dressed as such, dancing on a rock. The Rākṣasa, whose lungs were not strong, was running and suddenly saw a girl dancing. He stopped for a few minutes to rest and asked, "Have you seen Śiva? Which direction did he run?" She said, "I do not know Śiva. Śiva does not interest me. But I have a great interest in you. You look beautiful. Would you like to dance with me?" The Rākṣasa thought, "Oh, let poor Śiva go. I will enjoy the dance with her." He came near to dance. She asked, "Do you know how to dance?" He said no. She instructed, "Then you stand on that rock, and I will stand on this rock. I will show you, and you will learn what I am doing." She began to move like this, and he imitated her, like this and like that. As they continued—like this, and like that; like this, and like this—the Rākṣasa placed his hand upon his own head, and he burned. He destroyed himself. The boon was that it did not matter upon whose head he placed his hand; it would burn and explode. If he put his hand on anyone's head, that person would burn to ashes. And so he burned to ashes. Ambition will burn us and will not help us to be successful. Therefore, proceed slowly, step by step, and be faithful. Be faithful to your sādhanā. Be faithful to your friends. Be faithful to yourself. Be faithful to your master. And be faithful to your disciples. There is something in between all this that is indescribable. The intellect will not understand it; intellect cannot describe it. It is a matter of feeling the functions and that it functions within. Therefore, Kuṇḍalinī and Cakra energies are such that you cannot describe them, because everyone has different experiences with this. Everyone has different feelings, and every individual has different visions. Now, which is right? Five blind people went to see an elephant. A man had brought an elephant to a village, and all the people went to see how it looked. Five blind people also went. One came and touched the legs and said, "The elephant means pillars." Another touched the trunk and, feeling the breath from it, said, "The elephant is a warm water hose." The third was touching the tail and said, "The elephant means a rope." The fourth was touching the big belly and said, "It is a tank. An elephant is a tank." The fifth came to the ear and said, "Oh, it is something like a big plate." They returned to the village. People were talking about the elephant—how beautiful and nice it was, what it is. The blind people said, "That is not the truth. What are you saying? An elephant is nothing but pillars." The second said, "Only a water hose." The third said, "You are wrong; it is only a rope." The fourth said, "No, no, it is a big tank." All of them were right, and none of them was right. Every individual has different experiences.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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