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| | | Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 10 | Previous Next | |
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creating a state which has to be maintained. It is not naturally spontaneous. If you don't maintain it for a few days, it will disappear. So, that too is not a growth.
Once a Sufi visited me. For thirty years he had been doing a Sufi mantra, and had done it really sincerely. He was full of vibrations -- very alive, very happy, almost ecstatic the whole day, as if in samadhi... drunk. His disciples brought him to me. He stayed with me for three days. I told him, "Do one thing: for thirty years you have been doing a certain chanting; stop for three days." He said, "Why?" I said, "Just to know whether it has happened to you yet or not. If you go on chanting you will never know. You may be creating this drunkenness by chanting continuously. You drop it for three days and just see." He became a little afraid, but he understood the point.
Because unless something becomes so natural that you need not do it, you have not attained to it.
Just within three days, everything disappeared; just within three days! A thirty-year effort, and after the third day the man started crying and he said, "What have you done? You have destroyed my whole SADHANA!" I said, "I have not destroyed anything; you can start again. But now remember, if you repeat for thirty lives even, you will not attain. This is not the way. After thirty years, you cannot go for a three-day holiday? That seems to be a bondage, and it has not yet become spontaneous. It has not yet become part of you; you have not grown. These three days have revealed to you that for thirty years the whole effort has been in the wrong direction. Now it is up to you. If you want to continue, continue. But remember, now don't forget that any day it can disappear; it is a dream that you are holding through continuous chanting. It is a certain vibration that you are holding, but it is not arising there. It is cultivated, nurtured; it is not yet your nature."
The third way is by austerities, by changing your way of life, not hankering for comfort, convenience: for food, for sleep, for sex; dropping all that the mind naturally desires and doing just the opposite. That is still a little higher than mantras. If
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