You keep dreaming, though hoping, but hoping is
part of the mind. Hoping is not a spiritual quality—faith is. Hoping has
doubt ingrained in it. Therefore belief, when it matures, becomes faith.
Belief has its own limits; it cannot lead you to the Goal. If the belief is
wrong, at some point it will shatter. That will make you rethink and go
forward. Every coin has two sides, every thought has two sides, and so has
belief. Where it is genuine, it fulfills you. Sometimes your belief shatters
because ego does not get what it wants. That is self-delusion, an ego trip.
But genuine belief leads you to a certain juncture where you can pick up the
thread further to faith and from faith to Realization, to Enlightenment.
Therefore in between you can see that distraction, dissipation and doubt
have no meaning. So if a belief shatters you, it does not matter. You will
come to know at that point what is right and what is not. And that itself is
a great experience. Let’s say you are traveling somewhere thinking that a
particular spot is over this mountain. You climb and it’s tiring, it’s hard
work. And when you reach the other side of the mountain the thing you
believed in is not there. Now since you have traveled some distance on the
path, though you didn’t find what you wanted, at the same time you have
grown from that experience and you begin to search further. The question
sometimes comes up: “I could have saved that time and energy if I knew this
thing wasn’t there.” The reply is that you were to travel toward the goal
anyway. You set your own yardstick, your own promises to fulfill. That was
your mind’s conjecture and no one else’s responsibility. In Raja Yoga there
is a clear-cut answer: do not set your own goals in between; just travel.
Your own milestones may or may not flourish because those are your
projections. God promises you the Promised Land. He does not set your minor
goals. In Raja Yoga there is process called neti, neti—“not this, not
this.” You are setting the goal but not goals in between. Whatever
comes, just go on climbing and traveling until the goal is reached. There is
an aphorism from the Vedas that was a favorite of Swami Vivekananda:
Utishtha jagrata prapya varun nibodhata— “Arise, awake, and stop not
till the goal is reached.” Until you realize, do not stop. To rest is okay;
to drink water is okay; have your machinery kept in trim. But beyond that a
good seeker will not sleep. He will not change his faith. He will keep his
focus on his goal and there cannot be more than one goal, whichever goal you
choose.
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Do your duties but do not deceive yourself to be diverted from the goal in
the name of duties or try to use the goal for your needs on the way. This we
have termed spiritual materialism. What is the difference between
materialism and spiritual materialism?
Seeker: One uses worldly things to satisfy the ego. The other
uses spiritual things to try and satisfy the ego.
Swamiji: You are right. Are
both materialism and spiritual materialism equal or is one more dangerous
than the other?
Seeker: Spiritual materialism is worse. Materialism exists as
an ego play, but spirituality should point to higher things. If you divert
that, everything is lost, not only the material but also the spiritual.
Swamiji: Right. Material
things are on their own dimension and you are already doing what exists on
that plane. But if you use the higher values of spiritual things for
material purposes you are losing both. So you understand that a spiritual
materialist is a worse culprit than a materialist. The focus has to be on
the goal for its own sake.
Whatever goal you set, whatever path or belief you choose, the tendencies in
your mind will project out. To be happy when we get things or unhappy when
we don’t is a materialistic outlook. But when you apply that to a spiritual
Master or Guru or God or Spirit, that is spiritual materialism and you are
damaging your spiritual path. Such souls sooner or later come to a very
frustrated situation. They get depressed. They become very negative, even
rebellious, hysterical or betraying. In my own humble experience, whenever I
have tried to understand or analyze the betrayer nature in anyone, I have
always found that person to be a spiritual materialist. A simple materialist
never betrays; he is simply ambitious. It was not a materialist who betrayed
Jesus, it was a spiritual materialist: Judas. You can see how spiritual
materialism is more damaging than simple materialism. There are stories and
stories on this in the Indian epics, in the Koran, and we all know about
Lucifer. Spiritual materialists lose both worlds. They cannot enjoy earth
and they have been disqualified from heaven. They cannot enjoy materialism,
and even if they enjoy it a little, it is like chewing gum. It tires the
teeth and does not give anything. Materialists may seem to enjoy for the
time being, but that is very limited and transitory.
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