28 August 2014 - QA 3

When and how can we achieve complete control on the five senses? Is total vairagya possible?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Your experience and maturity shows. You don’t have to exercise control. You didn’t have to exercise any control to let go of cotton candies or lollipops. As you grew up, your interest in lollipops vanished.
In young people there is a lot of craving for sugar, in youth, there is a craving for company of friends, but as an adult you don’t crave for any such thing. As the mind or the consciousness matures, automatically these things don’t interest you. That is vairagya and it is a spontaneous thing. You don’t have to make an effort.

See when the sunlight has come, you don’t need to put off the candle. Even if the candle is there, it just loses its significance. The candle light has significance only as long as the sun has not come up. So when the inner joy wells up in you, you don’t need to exercise control. It is a spontaneous happening.