Self-control and discipline are good things, but they are cruel acts on one’s own personality and sometimes they can even obstruct the progress of one’s consciousness. Take for example the yamas – satya, ahimsa, brahmacharya, asteya, aparigraha. If you tell me to practise this as much as I can, I can agree, but people will say, ‘No, you have to practise these things absolutely.’ If you have to be a celibate, you have to be an absolute celibate, and if you do not practise that, you develop a guilt complex. That again has a repercussion on your personality.
Our consciousness and our state of mind is not ready to practise yama and niyama directly. Therefore, practise shatkarma first, asana and pranayama next. Then find out if you are ready to practise yama and niyama. I still feel that talking too much about yama and niyama makes people more sick. It is better if you do not talk to people about yama and niyama. There are thousands of mental cases in the mental hospitals and these mental cases are mainly due to the puritanism that we have pressed on man.
Man is a product of natural evolution, both of body and mind. Social laws and religious principles cannot create that state of evolution. You cannot change me. You can make me act better, but that will be my social personality. I am what I am. If progress is to take place, it has to take place in the inner recesses of my mind. Many times you feel that you are getting better; you are improving, but it is your intellect which is improving. It is your conscious mind which is improving. In the depth of your personality, there is another man and that is what you are. You cannot change him. No social law, no religious principles, no government laws can change that man. You cannot even touch him.
Right from the beginning, you are told, ‘Don’t tell lies, don’t tell lies, don’t tell lies.’ I call it indoctrination, brainwashing. What does it do? You only produce a culture. You produce an intellectual behaviour. As a result, you have a good society, no doubt, but it is a hypocritical society, comprised of people whose inner mind is completely different to their outer expressions.
I know people do not like to hear these things and therefore I do not talk too much about it, but I still feel it is much better not to speak about self-control and self-discipline. Instead, you can try to improve the level of your awareness so that your external life will become an expression of what you are. In the case of most people, their external life is not an expression of their internal consciousness. You, I and all of us are expressions of all that has been taught to us. We are expressions of our parents, our society, our government, our religion and the environment around us.
17 April, 1982, Otterburn Hall, Manchester, UK