A Blend of Reason

Swami Satyananda Saraswati

If sometimes your teacher is not able to satisfy you, you should not mind it. Maybe the teacher is not efficient, or maybe you have a fat ego. It can be anything or it can be both, because many times a man who has a fat ego considers the other person to be an idiot. So you have to come to a point of compromise with yourself and with your acceptance. Taking it for granted that your teacher is inefficient and that you have a fat ego, what should you do? It is better and safer to think, “I am egoistic and he is not inefficient.”

This is the approach to rational humility. Anybody who claims to be rational should also know how to be humble. By a rational process you can create humility in yourself. Humility is not inferiority. I am repeating it, humility is not inferiority, especially rational humility; it is a noble quality. A man who can think and analyse, if he can become aware of his rational limitations, he can accept that he has rational limitations. If he can accept, if he can believe that he also has rational limitations, he can become humble. “I can think very well, I know many things,” that is one way, called rational conviction. “But I don’t know everything, there are many things which I don’t know,” that is called rational humility. Rational conviction and rational humility must be blended together, then you become softer and more flexible.

16 May 1984, satsang at Hotel Nepheli, Thessaloniki, published in History of Satyananda Yoga in Greece, Volume One