Must we give up all attachments to become self realized?
Must we give up all attachments to become self realized 1
ROOPA: Dropping the cymbals, eh? All the symbols. This is a question from Nirmala which she didn’t get to ask on the last course. To attain permanent liberation in this life, must we give up all attachments to person, including ego, to place, to experience, to position, to things, even to pets, so we have no love object whatsoever and live a dull, restricted life of non‑ attachment, maybe even apathy? Is this a way to learn to express the overwhelming love of which we are supposed to be composed? If we become totally desireless, of what use is creativity?
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GURURAJ: The total concept is wrong. No one asks you to become desireless. No one asks you be totally non‑attached, because your very nature in such that even the enlightened man must have that two percent attachment. Otherwise he would not be able to exist in a body. But there is something that one has to remember: that although you’re attached to this flower or to your beloved one, the craving is not there. And any form of craving produces problems within you. So while living in this relative world, you could never be non‑attached. And if you want to become detached, then you go away into some forest and escape from yourself. That’s detachment.
Non‑attachment contains a beauty of its own. The philosophies of the world, especially the Eastern ones, tell us to be non‑attached, non‑attached, non‑attached. So must you not have love for your loved ones, even your pets? You must have that, because that quality of love within you will bring you to realizations of divinity. And we all keep on saying God is love, love is God. So if you detach yourself from love, or become non‑attached from love, you automatically become non‑attached from God. So where is the sense of it?
So have all the attachments you want to have. And I’ve said this many times, if you have a five room house, there is nothing wrong in having a ten room house. But are you hankering for it, for the ten room house? Are you craving it? Is it going to do something for your ego self? That I drive a better Cadillac than the Volkswagen my neighbor drives. Or I wear a better suit than my pal, Jim?
So what is happening here? The mechanics are these: that you are bolstering your ego and creating unnecessary wants within yourself, and the very creation of unnecessary wants brings you suffering and misery. So have all the attachments you want to have, but it must be devoid of hankering. It must be devoid of the sense of bolstering up your ego, because what would happen then, is that you would not be living within yourself. You’d be living in your ego self, which is none else but composed of thought formations. And what reality, what tangibility, is there in thought forms, which are forever changing all the time?
So you put on a blue shirt this morning, and then you decided, «Oh, let me take off that blue shirt and let me put on a white one.» Changing, changing, changing all the time. So if I have put on a blue shirt, I’m going to wear my blue shirt. Why must I change it to a white one? Is it going to make your Gururaj a different person if he has a white shirt or a green shirt or a blue shirt? He will still remain the same.
And that is the idea a person has to develop, that I am forever the same.
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