Harvest of a Quiet Mind

THE MASTER SAID:-

1.) A student once confided to the Master that he feared he could not continue on the spiritual path because his bad habits were so strong it wore him out fighting them. “I’m too caught up in mistakes to make any progress,” he said sadly. And the Master said, “Will you be better able to fight tomorrow than today? You have to turn to God some time, so isn’t it better to do it now? Just give yourself to
Him and say, ‘Lord, naughty or good I am Thy child. Thou must take care of me.’ If you keep on and don’t stop trying you will change. A saint is a sinner who never gave up.”

2.) To a young devotee seeking his advice the Master said, “The world creates bad habits in you, but the world will not stand responsible for your actions springing from those habits. Then why give all your time to the world? Reserve even an hour a day for actual scientific soul-exploration. Doesn’t the Giver of the world itself, of your family, money, and everything, deserve one twenty-fourth part of your time?”

3.) The Master often stressed the need for balance between activity and meditation on the spiritual path. “When you work for God, not self, it is just as good as meditation. The work helps your meditation and meditation helps your work.

4.) One disciple, greatly distressed because a fellow-disciple seemed to be making greater spiritual progress than he, complained to the Master about God’s seeming lack of cooperation with his own efforts. And the Master said: “You too much keep your eyes on the platter instead of on your own dish, thinking of what you didn’t get instead of what has been given you.”

5.) To a student who complained that he was too busy to meditate the Master succinctly remarked, “Suppose God were too busy to look after you?”

6.) One of the students overheard someone criticize the Master and was very displeased. He told the story to the Master, who said, “One does not do good without being criticized. But what of it? Those who love God don’t take their eyes from Him. In pleasure and pain, sickness and health, success and failure, they are unshaken. That is how you must be. What is said won’t affect what I am unless I am weak and let in the negative thoughts of criticism. You see, it is not others who make us suffer, but ourselves. Why listen to negative things? You are concerned with God.”

7.) The Master was returning late one night to Mount Washington,* after a visit to his desert retreat. Seeing a quiet park as he passed through a small town, he asked that the car be stopped, and then requested everyone to get out and take a little exercise. A number of passers-by were obviously curious about the little group taking its exercise at such an odd hour, and the exercisers felt slightly uncomfortable at being a part of this exhibition. But the Master said, “They think it is unusual only because they don’t do it.”

Paramhansa Yoganand