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for you; all that you are doing there can be used as a device.
If one is not watchful then the army can create a zombie of one. In doing the same routine every day, continuously, year in, year out, there is no need to be watchful, there is no need to be alert; one can go on doing those things without being alert. One has become perfectly skilful in doing them. One can do them even while asleep. A perfect army man is one who, if you shout 'Attention !' while he is asleep, will jump up and will immediately be at attention. Not that he needs to be awake to do it, even in sleep it will function. It is just a mechanism: it triggers off the response.
I have heard that a general's wife was very disturbed because whenever her husband slept on his left side he would snore. It was very difficult because if she asked him to turn to the right his sleep would be disturbed; and he was a very angry man. So she asked the army doctor. He said, 'Don't do anything -- simply say in his ear "Right turn !" And it worked!
So just be watchful in whatsoever you do . You can choose any method from the 'Book of the Secrets', but be watchful. And in your army work also, be watchful. Do those same things but not like a routine, not like a dead ritual that you have to do. Keep the light burning inside. Go into each movement, become involved and committed, and slowly slowly see that your army life has become your religious life. Any life, any pattern of life can be turned into a religious life.
[The soldier says: I'd just like to ask what exactly it means to be watchful. As far as my profession's concerned, when I go about doing my duty, do I watch everything as a separate entity, being aware that I'm not the person doing it?]
Yes, exactly that. You just think of yourself as a watcher, spectator; the body is doing the act.
This hand is moving, mm?
The hand is moving, you are watching it -- not only from the outside but from the inside too. You are separate, that witness is separate. It is unidentified with anything that we know of. It is identical only with God but we don't know anything about God. That witness is God.
When you become a
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