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so willing and ready to hear me, my heart is impelled to pour itself out to you. In these peaceful surroundings, when your minds are perfectly calm as well, I shall certainly be able to say what it is I wish to say to all of you. It often happens that I must refrain from speaking when I see deaf hearts before me. Doesn't light remain outside when it find the doors of your house closed? In the same way I often stand outside many a house. But it is a good sign that your doors are open. It is a good beginning.
We shall start the five-day program of this Sadhana Camp tomorrow morning and by way of introduction I would now like to say a few things.
For one's sadhana, for the realization of truth, the mind has to be prepared in the way one prepares the soil for the cultivation of flowers. And so, I would like you to bear a few maxims in mind.
The first maxim is: live in the present. During the Camp do not be carried away by your habit of thinking about the past and the future. If you allow yourself to be carried away, the living moment, the really important thing will be wasted and will pass away uselessly. Neither the past nor the future exists. The past in only memory; the future, imagination. Only the present is real and alive. And if the truth is to be known it can only be known through the present.
During the Camp, please keep yourselves aloof from the past as well as from the future. Accept that they do not exist. Only the moment you are in exists. Only the moment in which you are exists and nothing else. You have to live in it and to live it completely. Sleep as soundly tonight as if your whole past has been cut adrift. Die to the past. And in the morning get up as a new man, because it is a new morning. Let him who went to bed not awaken. Let him go to sleep for good. Let him who is ever-new and ever-fresh arise.
To live in the present, keep remembering -- and stay on guard twenty-four hours every day to see that mechanical thinking about the past and future does not start up again. Watching is enough. If you watch, it won't start up again. Watching and awareness break the habit.
The second maxim is: live naturally. Man's
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