Private
International Self-preparation Group
Message from Krishnaji VII
The principal requirement for the Path, with its
many variations and constant changes, is discrimination. If you would assimilate
every experience and understand every step, you must develop discrimination,
and you have to use this faculty constantly in guiding yourself along the
Path. You must gain judgment and common sense, by learning to distinguish
between right and wrong, between the true and the false; by developing a
sane balance between your feelings, your thoughts and your actions.
On the Path you must have a balanced mind,
able to distinguish right from wrong, the beautiful from the ugly, the useful
from the useless. All the time, as you follow the Path, there are new views,
new appearances, new ideas presenting themselves to the mind; and you must
be able to choose rightly between them all.
That man cannot walk swiftly on the Path who
makes the wrong choice, either on the physical plane with regard to material
things, or on the spiritual plane with regard to teachings and teachers
whom he follows. If he chooses wrongly in lesser things, he will choose
the wrong shrine at which to worship. Everything is important in life, but
discrimination comes first; and if we use it properly, it becomes very simple
and we develop common sense.
Even when people take a walk, their attitude
differs. Some people are attracted by the right thing, by beauty of form
or colour, by a beautiful view, by the lovely trees, by the flowers and the
sky. Another person's attention will be attracted by something else, and
the beauty disappears and he sees only one small ugly thing. It is all a
question of training.
You often hear the phrase used of a person:
"He has got good taste." This does not only mean that he has got good taste
in clothes, but in his feelings and general outlook; he may be trusted to
behave in a certain manner under difficult circumstances, he is not easily
upset by flattery, by admiration, by the glories of the world. Such a person
is reliable, and will be really useful to the world, to the Path and to the
Masters. If, on the contrary, a man of bad taste is placed in a certain position,
he is easily upset, his imagination is captured by the world, and he forgets
the demands of the Path.
You cannot imagine a Master having bad taste.
Whatever He does, whether He takes a step in the mere exercise of His body
or whether He lectures or talks, there will be perfect dignity, absolute
command of Himself; whatever He does will be done in the must perfect taste,
with the highest beauty. Whereas with us, there is always the doubt as to
whether we shall do the right thing, whether, we shall appreciate beauty or
not, whether we shall discriminate rightly between the ugly and the beautiful.
These things may seem trivial, and yet they are the biggest things in life.
It is this power of discrimination which constitutes
the difference between the aristocrat and the boor. Personally, I believe
a great deal in the idea of aristocracy, that is, in the true aristocracy;
not in the person who possesses a title and gives himself airs, but in the
aristocrat who instinctively has the right feeling at any given moment and
in any circumstances. In the ordinary phrase, he is a gentleman. If we make
that idea into a bigger thing, carried on to another plane, the gentleman
becomes spiritual. The aristocrat has been trained for ages, not only in
this life but in past lives. He has submitted to restrictions here, made efforts
there, till it has become instinctive with him to do the right thing wherever
he is, whether he be in a cottage or in a palace, whether he be in the poor
man's house or in the ashrama of the Master. Years of training have taught
him to maintain certain standards, whereas the boor will be clumsy and by
his clumsiness he will upset others. Because he has not had the training,
he is incapable of discrimination between right and wrong, between the beautiful
and the ugly, and to him it is all a mass of confused ideas. It is these
things which stamp a person for what he is.
On the Path both can exist, the bourgeois and
the aristocrat, but the aristocrat always goes ahead because he feels that
he has a duty to perform as an example, and this gives him an essential nobility.
It should make him eager to turn round and help others and not feel that
his nobility makes him proudly distinctive or superior. After all, that feeling
of superiority only comes from ignorance and will vanish when he learns
that the Path is endless, that there are millions ahead of him on that Path
as there are millions behind him.
In this manner we have to create a new aristocracy.
The distinctions will be between those who know and those who do not know,
those who doubt and those who believe. When the Teacher comes, as He has
come, and when He speaks certain people will understand at once and others
will not, some will misjudge and other will recognise the Truth.
If you have practised discrimination rightly,
you will know what it is to be superior to everything that happens, in the
right sense of the word. Events pass you by and leave you untouched. If they
are great, you go along with them; if they are noble, you feel more nobly.
If they are small, you let them pass you by. If you are excited, it is only
in a balanced way. You use your excitement to make yourself big, to walk
a little further. It is the power of discrimination which distinguishes the
saint and the sage from the savage. When the savage has to make his choice
between two ugly things, he will probably choose the uglier one; but the
sage chooses between the beautiful and the still more beautiful, because
his power of perception and of discrimination has grown by exercise. He no
longer has to make his choice between little things; he is detached from
them, he is above them.
You should be striding from mountain top to
mountain top, not keeping at the same level, but always climbing higher and
higher and never slipping back. When you are walking up a mountain, if you
slip it means that you have to make a greater effort to gain the level which
you had reached before. If you want to get to the top, you must continue,
you must not rest, you must not relax your efforts. You may take time, but
you must not slip back.
To gain discrimination, you must take time
and work at it deliberately and with patience. You can act swiftly and suddenly
when you have reached a certain stage, because you have been trained to right
action; but in the early stages you must take time and weigh your motives,
your actions, your feelings. Take the case of a musician; for many years
he practises in private before he dares to come out before the public. It
is the same with those who are treading the Path; they must have training,
and show meticulous care in the choice of the things which are set before
them; because the further you go along, the greater will be the demand for
common sense, the greater the demand for discrimination of the right kind.
Do not narrow down this particular quality,
because if you have acquired this, you will also attain all other qualities.
If you are the embodiment, the essence, of discrimination, you need have
no other quality in the world, because in that all is included. If you have
this quality in its perfect essence, you use your intelligence, your emotions,
your whole body, to create a new atmosphere. It is because we do not have
it that we are continually struggling. Once you have gained it, nothing in
the world can touch you. And then begins the real happiness, the real glory
of thinking, feeling, acting, and living.
J. Krishnamurti