Speaker: The question is, ‘does conditioning bring peace of mind?’ Different types of people go to temple, or worship at home. They seem to be peaceful, but after a few minutes, they are back to the chaos of their nature. So, where is peace of mind?
See, thought of pleasure is not peace. Being silent is one thing and being happy is another thing. You do not go to a temple to get rid of your sadness. You go to a temple so that you can know, realize, both happiness and sadness. If you want to use the word ‘get rid of’, then let me put it this way. You do not go to the temple to get rid of sadness. You go to the temple to get rid of both, happiness and sadness. And as long as you are going there to get rid of just sadness, nothing will happen. Peace is not happiness. Happiness is as much of a burden upon the mind as is sadness. It is just that time lies in between. You cannot see sadness coming. In the moments of happiness, because sadness is still a few moments away, time is there, so you don’t see it coming, or you do not want to see it coming.
You don’t go to a temple to be selective about one end of duality. You go to the temple so that in both ends, in everything, you can see the source and that is ‘silence’. That is not pleasure, that is not happiness, that is silence. That silence from where all sounds emerge. That nothingness from where everything arises. Temple is that. Temple is not where your wishes are fulfilled. Temple is the place where only one wish is fulfilled- the wish behind all wishes. So, those who go to temple just for wishes, will always return empty handed, and those who go to the temple with ‘The Wish’ will find that it has already been granted. The Wish. And what is that wish? To be what I am. And you are the source itself. You are not prostrating in front of a deity; you are the deity. That is temple.
मन्नत माँगने की जगह नहीं है मन्दिर (speaks in Hindi). For that, there are so many other places. If you still have something to ask, you are not yet in a temple. And along with that, wherever you do not feel like not asking anything, that place is a temple. Wherever you feel silent, that is a temple. And if you can be such that silence- your nature- you start living in that, then you are the temple, you are a walking temple. What does not bring you to silence, is not a temple. Peace is not the fulfillment of wishes. Peace is freedom from wishes, not fulfillment of wishes. Nobody ever got peace because his wishes were fulfilled. You get peace, when you are no more identified with the wish. Any day when you approach the divine with your littleness, you must know that the divine does not like it. It knows itself through you, and if you are searching for the wrong man, you will not get him. The divine searches for itself through you, and by thinking yourself to be little, you are searching for the wrong man. You will not get him, because he is not little. You are entering the wrong password. D-E-S-I-R-E can never be the password. If the temple has a gate and the gate has a password, DESIRE can never be that password. That complete, that total, can be known only by being like that complete, that total. There is only one way to approach the divine, by being like him; Total, complete.
Listener: The limited cannot know the unlimited.
Speaker: Yes. The limited will know the limited and will create of the unlimited in his limited ways and he will know.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/OqtiXlFq4j0