|
Main Index
|
| |
| |
|
| |
achieve. Now this does not mean you make no effort, but don't put too much faith in your prowess. Try you must, but remember that the outcome will happen only through His grace.
This is very, very important. If you rely only on your own labors, you will strengthen your ego. Therefore it is easy for a yogi to be proud, because he begins to believe that things are happening because of him.
Once this ego develops it is very difficult to be rid of it. It is easier to be rid of the arrogance of wealth, it is not difficult to renounce the pride of position, but it is very difficult to be rid of the ego of one's own endeavors. There is every possibility of the seeker feeling that whatever is happening is because of him; the I becomes primary and God secondary. Because of this danger, Mahavir, Patanjali, Gorakh and others who follow this path lay great stress on the annihilation of the ego.
Make the effort, put your all into it, but renounce your ego is what they stress so emphatically. If the ego functions along with the effort, it will get stronger and stronger. Then you feel in whatever you do, I am doing it: I have done japa, I have done penance, I have attained occult powers. And if this arrogance is not eradicated in good time, you will have opened many doors but not the last. All your efforts will have been in vain.
Therefore, Nanak says: Try with all your might, but remember, His grace alone can bring about the happening. With this precaution, the risk in the method of resolve is removed. But there is a different risk in the path of surrender, which arises at the very beginning.
The danger is in feeling that there is no need to do anything. If the happening occurs only through His grace, what can we do? It becomes an excuse for not doing anything. So you remain involved in all the useless daily activities of life. You may assume it is not yet His will that you should set out on this path -- and so you wait. Meanwhile you indulge in all that is most contemptible in life; you wander in the maze of the material world. Thus the danger in the path of surrender lies at the very onset -- you might become lost in laziness and inertia.
So
|
|
|
|
| |