28 Dec 2011 - QA 6

Dearest Guruji, what are the signs that I am growing on the path? I did my first course 10 years back. I have done 10 advanced courses and I am a teacher. However, I still get angry. Sometimes I feel people who don’t do any practices are better when compared to my behavior. Please guide.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You got it all wrong. You think that just meditation is going to do it all for you.
You are just enjoying meditation.
Why would you get upset if you are deeply soaked in knowledge? You think keeping quiet for sometime is going to do everything for you and you forget the knowledge and wisdom.
Knowledge is glaring on your face saying, ‘accept situations and people as they are’, and you are not doing it.
I have said so many times, anger is a sign of attachment to perfection. If you are dispassionate why would you get so upset?
Listen, you may do ten advanced courses and you may be just hearing things, but if you don’t take it in then it is not the fault of the course or the meditation or the knowledge or wisdom.
It is like one of those rubber suits that people who go for scuba diving wear when they go into the ocean. You may get in to the water, but when you come out of it you are dry. Not a drop of water has gotten into your body because you are in that wet suit.
In the same way, you may do ten or twelve advance courses but if you don’t have dispassion, which you hear so many times then you are bound to get angry.
Discrimination and dispassion; the second pillar of knowledge. If that is not there, then you are bound to be angry and upset, you are bound to be possessive and jealous. No dispassion.
I have said so many times, ‘So Hum, and So What!’
You haven’t heard ‘So What’.
Many times you take it for granted. ‘Oh! So what, I have heard it, okay.’ For now you just sit and meditate, and then you go and never remember.
Recollect, let it soak into you. It is not the wisdom that is to be blamed. It is your inability to live it, to take it in and soak it into your soul.
Do you see what I am saying? You can’t say, ‘I have all this attachment and still I am going to be spiritual’, no!
Spirituality is to relieve one from the obsession of perfection. Spirituality is being centered.
In spite of ten advance courses you are getting angry. Just imagine if you had not done any advance courses, what would have been your status. My dear, please see that!
Why are you coming back again if the advance course is not effective on you? Why do you keep coming back? Why did you do then? You should have done one and said it doesn’t work, finished! If you are coming back again and again, it must be working somewhere. You must be benefiting from it.
And imagine if you had not done any of this, what a havoc it would have been.
You should sit and think about it. ‘Suppose, I had never done the basic course or never done any meditation, what would have been my status?’