Mysteries of Mind

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Today and Tomorrows Book Agency

Page 96

:9:
AWARENESS OF RESPONSIBILITY
One who takes to self-exertion and endeavours to attain full consciousness and awakening has to take great responsibilities. These responsibilities are the greatest responsibilities in the world. They are greater than those of a monarch who rules and administers a vast empire. How does a practitioner who leads the life of a recluse and looks within himself only shoulder such responsibilities? This appears to be unbelievable and strange.
The life of sādhanā is not a life of thinking and reasoning. It is a life of experiences and a life of practising perception and knowledge. Let me elaborate this point.
We always make others responsible for the joys and sorrows we experience. It is natural for us to shift our responsibilities on others. We would never try to find fault with ourselves. We always try to save our own skin. But the practitioner who has achieved an awakened state of mind holds himself responsible for all the acts he has done. He holds that it is because of his own fault that others have become his enemies. This is a great thing. He alone who has experienced the world of the spirit can have this courage. Generally people do not do so. When a political regime changes, its successor finds all kinds of faults with its predecessor. This is because man's life has always been confined to the external world. The spiritual practitioner's life, on the other hand, is a life of the spirit; he dwells within himself. That is why he never finds fault with others. The first achievement of self-exertion is the courage to find fault with one's own self rather than with others.
The first and the foremost thing which a spiritual practitioner does is to remove his own misunderstandings and doubts.