What counts most in the path of truth is self-discipline, and without this our studies and practices cannot produce great results. This self-discipline can be distinguished in many different aspects. By studying the lives of the ascetics who lived in mountains and forests, in the wilderness, we learn that those who have really searched after truth have done their utmost to practice self-discipline; without it no soul in the world has ever arrived at the realization of truth. No doubt it frightens people accustomed to the life of the world even to think of self-discipline and, when they think of it, they imagine it in its extreme forms. It is not necessary for us to go to the caves in the mountains, the forest, or the wilderness in order to practice self-discipline. In our everyday life we can do so.

The different ways in which self-discipline is practiced are chiefly four.

1. Position

One way is the physical way: the practice of standing in the same position, of sitting in the same posture for a certain time. When one begins to do it one will find that it is not so easy as it appears to be. A person may sit in a same posture or stand in a same position without knowing it, but as soon as he begins to practice it, he finds great difficulty in doing so. When this is achieved then there are different positions of holding hands or legs or eyes or head; these practices develop the power of self-discipline.

2. Eating and Drinking

Then there is another aspect of self-discipline which is connected with eating and drinking: to avoid certain things in one's everyday food or drink, and to make a practice of being able to live without them, especially things that one feels one cannot live without. So you will see that there are adepts who live on a fruitarian or vegetarian diet without certain things that one is accustomed to drink, and are without these for days or weeks or months.

3. Thinking and Forgetting

Another aspect of self-discipline is the habit of thinking and forgetting: to be able to think of the same thing of which one wishes to think, to continue to think of it, to hold that thought - and to practice to forget things, that the thoughts may not get a hold over one's mind. By doing so one becomes the master of one's mind, in the same way trying to check thoughts of agitation, anger, depression, prejudice, hatred. This gives moral discipline.

4. Free of the Environment

After one has practiced these three aspects of discipline, one is able to arrive at the fourth aspect which is greater; it is greater, because in this way one arrives at spiritual experience. That discipline intends to free one's consciousness from one's environment. This is the experience of the adepts who have worked at it for a long time in order to achieve it. In the old schools of the Sufis, and even to-day, there is the custom that, when they arrive in the room of meditation, or when they go out of it, one of them is there to suggest this idea in words. He says, "Solitude in the crowd", which means: when you are in the midst of the crowd, even then you can hold your tranquillity, your peace; you are not disturbed by the environments. It is this which enables one to live in the midst of the world and yet progress spiritually. It takes away that necessity which compelled many souls in ancient times to go to the wilderness in order to develop spiritually.

It is difficult no doubt, yet at the same time it is simple and in a small way everyone experiences it, but automatically. A person engaged in something that interests him most or that occupies his mind altogether, often is not conscious of his environment. A poet, a writer, a composer, a thinker, when he is entirely absorbed in something he does, is for that moment not conscious of his environment. It happens very often that one is so absorbed in something one is doing or thinking about, that one is not conscious of one's own body or one's own self. Only that which a person is conscious of, that alone, exists, not even his self. This is the stage which is termed by Sufis fana. The word nirvana, of which so much has been spoken, is simply to be understood in this manner: it is only an experience of consciousness. In other words it is freedom of the soul, it is being able to arrive at a stage where one is not thinking about oneself, where one is not thinking about environments that surround one.

One might ask: is this not dangerous in any way? And many may think so. But I should say: everything is dangerous in this world. If we think of it, there could be a danger every moment: in eating, in drinking, in going out and coming in. It is dangerous to go into the water, but when you can swim, that acts against it. It is even dangerous to walk in the street, but if you can walk and run, that acts against it. It is in being able to meditate and to raise the consciousness above environments that lies the secret of spiritual development.

Complaints Cease

The practice of self-discipline no doubt will seem difficult in the beginning, but later it becomes easier and, once a person is accustomed to it, it does not take long to experience its beautiful results. It is a complaint of everyone that the person who stands by his side does not listen to him. Every soul complains, "The others do not listen to me." One rises above this complaint, because one begins to realize that "it is myself who does not listen to me." Then the thief is caught, one finds the mischief-maker; it was not the other person, it was the self.

Mastery Over One's Kingdom

As one begins to get power over the self one begins to feel a great mastery, a mastery over one's kingdom. It is a feeling of kingship. Then, naturally, one begins to experience in life this phenomenon that little by little all things begin to be easy.

Vol. 8, Health and Order of Body and Mind

Self-Discipline

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