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Opening to the Divine You are to
open yourself to the Divine and receive Him. Usually you open yourself in all
directions to everything and everybody in the world. You open your surface
being and receive there all sorts of influences from all quarters. So inside
you there-comes about what we can call a hotch-potch of all contrary and contradictory
movements: and that creates difficulties without number. Now instead of that,
live away from the surface, from the outside and open up to the Divine and
receive nothing hut the Divine force. If you can do that all difficulties
practically disappear. But, of course, the trouble is there. Unless one is
alchemically conditioned, it is an impossibility to have relations with people,
to talk to them, to deal with them, have interchanges with them and yet not
absorb something out of them. If one can surround oneself with an atmosphere
that acts as a filter, then all that come from outside are checked and sifted
before they reach you or touch you. That needs a good training and a large
experience. That is why people in ancient days who wanted an easier path took
to solitude, into the depths of the forest, on the top of a hill or under a
cave so that they might not have to deal with people-for that naturally reduces
undesirable interchanges. Only, it has also been found that such people begin
to take an enormous interest in the life of animals and plants instead of men:
for it is indeed difficult to do without interchange with something or other.
So the best thing would be to face the problem squarely, to clothe yourself
with an atmosphere totally concentrated on the Divine so that whatever passes
across is filtered in its passage. And further, there is the question of food.
The body is obliged to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it would
therefore absorb at the same time a fair quantity of inert and unconscious
forces or that of some not
Page – 94 very desirable consciousness. I once spoke to you of the consciousness that one absorbs with food, there is also unconsciousness that one absorbs in the same way. That is why in many systems of Yoga you are advised to offer first to the Divine your food and then eat it: it means calling down the Divine into your food before absorbing it. Offering means putting in contact: the food is put in contact with type Divine, i.e. put under His influence. This is a very good, a very useful procedure; if you knew how to do it, it would diminish very much the labour of the inner transformation that one has to do. For in the world we live in solidarity with all others. You cannot take in a single breath of air without absorbing the vibrations, the numberless vibrations that come from all kinds of movements and all kinds of people. So if you want to keep yourself intact, you must, as I have said, maintain yourself in the condition of a filter allowing nothing undesirable to enter. Or put on a mask as one does when crossing an infected and poisoned locality, or do something similar. One
must have around oneself an atmosphere so condensed, condensed in a spirit of
total surrender, that nothing can enter without being automatically filtered.
There are wicked thoughts, evil will about you, harmful formations sent out by
bad people. The air pullulates with these: dark noisome bacilli. It is so
troublesome to be always on the look-out, at every step to be on one's guard,
to move slowly with care and caution and precautions; even then one is not
sure. But if you cover yourself with the cloak of light, the light of a happy,
sincere surrender, and aspiration, that is a wonderful filter, that gives you
automatic protection. The undesirable forces not only cannot enter, they are
thrown back upon their originator, the attackers themselves become their own
victims.
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