Ego and a Rude Shock

Egoism is the most dangerous illusion that has to be exploded and destroyed. Even Arjuna had it! One day, after the battle when Krishna brought the chariot back to camp, he wanted that like all charioteers, Krishna should get down first! The Master must get down later, after the charioteer opened the door for him, isn’t it? Krishna refused, and insisted that Arjuna should alight before He Himself did. At last, Krishna won. Arjuna got down and then as soon as Krishna left His seat and touched the ground, the chariot went up in flames! If only Krishna had got down first! The fact was that the various fiery arrows that had the power of burning the chariot had hit the target, but due to the presence of Krishna, their powers could not manifest themselves. Seeing this Arjuna was humbled; his egoism received a rude shock. He realised that every action of the Lord was full of significance.

Baba (thought for the day)

If our dear Lord tells us we have to destroy the dangerous illusion and the faults within because the result is a faulty vision, we have to listen to him. If we think that he will give all the nice things for sense-gratification we are in the mind and it is the fault within.

He doesn’t give it to us for sense-enjoyment, he gives it to us to get aware of him and he is not the ego and if we get to the wrong conclusion that it is all about gifts for pleasure of the mind we are not on the level of meditation, but the level of the senses.

The first is the waking stage and in that stage we are with the help of the senses directed outwards into the senses and that is not meditation.

Meditation is directing the attention inside and we go with the help of the mantra inside and not outside, also the dream stage is in-faced and always self-contained, it is not the same stage, we cannot get answers in the dream with the mind.

If we fight in the dream a tiger, we cannot go on the waking stage and take a gun to shoot the tiger, we have to shoot the tiger with a dream gun.

But if we try with the mind to understand the waking stage and we get into mind conclusions, we do exactly that, we try with the waking gun to shoot the tiger we had met in the dream stage and that doesn’t work.

We are on a wrong level. 

On the waking stage we listen to our own mind and we listen to the senses, in the dream stage we listen to Baba’s words and that is why we have to listen, to contemplate about it to be able to absorb. Baba is in his words on both stages, the waking stage where he is talking and the dream stage which is reflected as Atma.

If we listen to Baba’s words and think it over we get able to absorb the wisdom, if we don’t do that, we stay in the mind and project divinity on the mind level and that is the waking stage of our consciousness. If Baba gives us a lot it is that we love him to find that pure love, but we have to be able to accept truth, if we think it is for the pleasure of the mind outside of mediation in the waking stage and that is the wrong stage. We have to accept truth and the fault within and that it is not for the pleasure of the mind, only meditation is for the pleasure of the mind and mediation is directing the attention inwards and we are not on the waking stage, but was on the level of the dream stage, it is in-faced as Baba said and always self-contained. We have to accept truth and that is our mind and the fault within, the mind gets to the conclusion that it is for the pleasure of the mind and that is not meditation and wrong understood. It is because of the fault within and our faulty vision of the world.

Most of time we don’t listen to his words, we just read it and as it was with the center leader when I said we had to listen to Baba, he thought it was inside only and that people get different inside information and I had to tell him that it was not listening on that level only, but listening actually to his words. It seems people don’t know how to listen to him. Just reading his words it not listening to him and if we listen, we get aware of the reflection in his words of our dreams.

How do we know the difference between listening and just reading it?

Egoism is the most dangerous illusion that has to be exploded and destroyed.

Who knows exactly what is meant by egoism? And how do we know that it is the most dangerous illusion, the fault within, in knowing why it is the fault within and that is growing on us if we listen to his words, we get aware of the fault within.

If we don’t listen our mind it thinks that there is nothing like that and everything is fine and it avoids to think about the fault within. Illusion is dangerous as he is telling us here and if we don’t get aware of it, we don’t accept truth and if we accept the fault within as truth we can get out of delusion.

Even Arjuna had it! One day, after the battle when Krishna brought the chariot back to camp, he wanted that like all charioteers, Krishna should get down first! The Master must get down later, after the charioteer opened the door for him, isn’t it?

Arjuna is the story of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is his charioteer and the story tells that the charioteer had to go down first from the chariot to open the door for his master inside the chariot, that is what we know as custom, as habits, as tradition, even as duty, it is what is done and what we have to do if we have that ‘job’ of being the charioteer of someone.

The master is the chariot and not the charioteer, therefore, Krishna is serving actually Arjuna with that job and he is watching over him that nothing happens to him and that Dharma is hold up and that right action will win and not the enemy on the other side of the battle field.

The master is sitting in the back and Krishna is the driver and even if he is divinity, he takes here that job to counsel Arjuna to help him to go through the battle between good and evil.

Usually the master must get down later and the charioteer has to open the door for him, that is his job we would tell and some master if we imagine being in a limousine and the chauffeur is Krishna and he stops the car and instead of going out of the limousine he sits there and tells the master to go out first, if that would happen in a business most likely the chauffeur would be fired and lose his job, but actually the master would not have the time to do that, because in the moment the chauffeur gets out of the car, the whole thing explodes and gets into a blast of fire.

Krishna refused, and insisted that Arjuna should alight before He Himself did. At last, Krishna won.

We can see that it was not without discussion that Krishna won and he could convince Arjuna to get out of the chariot first. Even more so if people think in duties and someone takes the job of being the charioteer we insist on it that it should be done as duty, don’t we?

Arjuna got down and then as soon as Krishna left His seat and touched the ground, the chariot went up in flames! If only Krishna had got down first! The fact was that the various fiery arrows that had the power of burning the chariot had hit the target, but due to the presence of Krishna, their powers could not manifest themselves. Seeing this Arjuna was humbled; his egoism received a rude shock. He realised that every action of the Lord was full of significance.

But as soon as Krishna set his foot down on the ground, the chariot went up in flames and after that Arjuna new why he was asked to get out first, if we would not have listened to Krishna Arjuna would have been in the chariot when it went up in the flames. Krishna’s presence was his protection and why was Arjuna humbled? 
Arjuna probably thought like we would that Krishna should do his job right, that he should do his duty and not have strange manners and that he was insulted that it was a shame to has such a charioteer who didn’t even open the door for his master, all that went through his head and it is based on ego.

So ego tell us it has to be like that, because we have to do our duty and ego is in that sense the mirror of the dangerous illusion in our mind and it has to be destroyed and how is it destroyed, by listening to Krishna or the charioteer and he had to jump over his own ego and go out without that the charioteer had opened the door for him and all the others were watching and wondering what happened to Arjuna and his charioteer and why Arjuna came out all by himself and the charioteer was actually so insolent to sit in the chariot and to not move and to wait until his master had left all by himself and only after the charioteer left that chariot like he would actually be the master and not Arjuna.

Seeing this Arjuna was humbled; his egoism received a rude shock. He realised that every action of the Lord was full of significance.

And then the whole thing went up in fire and everybody realized that the master had been saved by the charioteer and what happened was actually a gift and not an insult and against the law of commitment to his duty as commons sense would tell us.

He realised that every action of the Lord was full of significance.

We have to see it like that in our life, every action of the Lord is full of significance and not on the level of the mind and ego that is telling us that it doesn’t make any sense. And if we do that we are like Arjuna actually putting in question Krishna’s decision telling him that he has to get out first.

Every action is full of significance and we have to get aware of it.

If we are like Arjuna who was humbled by it, we would actually think we know and that truth is in our job in the duty of that job etc. and not going out without that Krishna is doing a good job and he is the charioteer, but here it is different, in this moment Krishna is God and who he really is and he tells the master to go out fast because it is dangerous and when he goes out after the master the chariot explodes in fire.

We have to accept truth and that is true, we have to accept that Krishna knows and we don’t know what means we cannot find the answer on the level of dream stages in the mind and shoot the tiger with a waking stage gun, we have to listen to Baba as he reflects as well the dream stage as he is the man who is in our dream to awake us.

If we listen to his words, we recognize the reflection of our dreams in his words.

We think he is our charioteer and he has the job to open the door for us and we get even more arrogant and think that he doesn’t do a good job if he doesn’t open the door and that is the ego, it is as Baba tells us here dangerous and it is illusion and it is a fault within and because of that fault within we have a faulty vision of the world and that is why the war in the Bhagavad-Gita is actually happening, because of the faulty vision of the Kauravas and their greed and crookedness and there is no Dharma, but Adharma and Arjuna has to fight to uphold Dharma and Krishna is at his side as the charioteer to uphold Dharma and to protect him.

We cannot accept truth if we don’t know what is true and in listening to Baba’s words we realize that truth, he is talking about truth, he tells us, love is my form, truth is my breath, bliss is my food. 
In listening to his words we get aware of truth and in listening to his words we get able to accept that truth and if we are able to accept truth, we have to also accept right action. It is not a choice, we have to accept right action and we have to understand peace and only if we have those three things, truth, right action and peace, we can get the experience of ‘pure love’ and that is the treasure of a devotee.

The ego is based on ‘you and I’ consciousness, we get only beyond the mind if there is ‘we’ and ‘He’ is I.

If we see that on the battlefield it is not only Arjuna and Krishna, but also the Pandava brothers fighting with him that was against the evil, 'we' is in that sense the five brothers and as Baba always tells like he five fingers of one hand. 
We also have the five human values, truth, right action, peace, love and non-violence, but they had to anyhow fight the war against adharma and here the bad cousins.

As Baba said in the interview room the first step is, ‘you and I are we’ on the level of ‘we’ we can go beyond the mind and the body to get to the right insight of the universal level of the divine. 
We have to not only get out of the ego and the mind, but we also have to get the right experience, the experience of ‘pure love’ and the experience of, who am I?

To be able to go beyond the ego identification in the body, we have to get it that ‘you and I are we’, we together can go beyond it, not alone and it is always ‘we’ first.

If we don’t do that, we stay in the ego and in the mind.

We have to listen to our beloved Lord and we have to see think about that ‘we’ and He is I’.

We have to realize that we are One with the universe and that there is only One.

That is how we get to that insight and to that realization that He is that, we are that, all are that – Tat Tvam Asi or Aham Brahasmi, there is no other way but getting aware of it and for that we have to accept truth, whatever that truth is, we have to accept it because usually we are in the mind and the mind keeps us on a level where it thinks that it knows all and that we know what is true and that is the fault within and we have to get aware of it and that is why we have to accept truth and if we don’t know how to listen to him and we don’t know that it is right action, we don’t do it, but if we go for it and there is the understanding about peace, we have all three things, truth, right action and peace and we can get the experience of ‘pure love’. 
And with pure love we are the water taps and now we have the connection what is needed to get in touch with the grace of the Lord what Baba compares to a tank of divine grace. We need also three things, we need water taps, the devotee has to be ready and we need pure love, to be able to join the tank of the Lord's grace and that the water can flow through the water tap, that is pure love and grace.