Humility

God is great because He alone embodies perfect humility. God is greater because He reveals humility on earthly soil through our climbing aspiration. God is the greatest of all because He has not separated His Transcendental Glory from His most humble creation, the blade of grass!

In the spiritual life, there can be nothing greater than humility. True inner wisdom lies in humility. One has to be humble to whom? One has to be humble to the one whom he has accepted as a Guide or Pilot in his inner life.

Now some people are humble only in the inner life; in the outer life they are very rude; they know everything. When it is a matter of aspiration, they are humble to their Master; when it is a matter of worldly wisdom, they think that they know infinitely more than the Master. The Master is then helpless. I wish to say that a spiritual Master, even in the outer world, is more capable of seeing the Truth than a worldly trained person because the Master is in constant touch with the Highest, the Supreme.

Very often someone's doctor tells him something, and I tell him something else. Now I am not an M.D. I do not have a doctor's qualifications. But I wish to tell you that I enter into the patient's body infinitely faster than the X-ray machine. Then if the Supreme wants me to tell the disciple what he should do, I tell him. Naturally, at that time, the disciple should listen to me and not to the doctor. Again, I am humble to doctors because they are also doing God's work and are fulfilling God in their own way. But when there is a conflict between the doctor and a spiritual person, between the medical doctor and the spiritual doctor, I wish my disciples to understand that I go to the ultimate Source and then I tell them the absolute Truth.

It is not only in the case of your illnesses but in all aspects of your lives. When I tell you something about your outer life, your family life, your business life, your office life, I wish you to feel that I am telling you this from the Highest Source. But if you feel, "No, you don't understand, because you haven't met such-and-such a person, or learned such-and-such a skill," then I am not ready to help you. Even where you have had forty or fifty years of experience in practising some profession or dealing with some situation, if I say, "Do this!" then you should be wise and humble and listen to me. The outer results may be temporarily painful or hurtful or even apparently harmful, but inside the process is being worked out and fulfilled in accordance with God's Plan, and almost immediately the problems will be solved.

Beyond the physical is the spiritual and it is in the spiritual that the real Truth lies. It is from the spiritual, from the subtle physical, that one can most effectively change the physical. So when it is a matter of action in the physical world, I wish to tell those of you who have really accepted me that if you take a true humble attitude, then I can act. At that time I can run and I can make you run speedily. If you have the inner conviction that what the Master is saying is absolutely correct, if you feel this with full sincerity and with the spontaneous joy of acceptance, then you are my true disciple and your life can be a song of freedom and oneness with me.

Very often my disciples listen to me either when it suits their purpose or when I tell them to do what they themselves want to do and they are delighted. Or after they have tried everything on their own without asking my advice and find that there is no way out and they are blocked, this becomes the time to offer their deep humility or surrender and they call me up. I must not feel sad, but I feel that I am not given the proper chance, not given the full opportunity to act with or through these disciples.

If there is no constant humility on the disciple's part, then the Master is really digging in a barren field. I am a farmer, a sincere farmer; I cultivate and cultivate, but from some disciples I do not get any crop, not to speak of a bumper crop. Why? Because what I want to give is very rarely accepted with humility.

Humility is the real secret of the spiritual life. If you want to make immediate progress, you have to be humble, not only in the inner life, but also in the outer life. Then only will you realise God sooner than you expect. Otherwise I am working, concentrating and meditating in vain. Something else is necessary along with my action and that is a real, spiritual attitude on your part. And what is the real spiritual attitude? It is humility.

If we knock at God's door without humility, God's door will never open. So let us go and knock as humbly as possible at the door of the Supreme, Him to realise, Him to fulfil.