A time comes when we have to give a reply to it. It is a point which we reach, where a
final settlement has to be made with this ego. Either we want it, or we do not want it.
We cannot have a half-way deal with this ego. When we came to this point of
requiring the ego to eliminate itself totally from the very root, we are facing our best
friend. What can be a worse thing to conceive than to encounter and to face our own
dearest friend? Up to this time we were going hand in hand, walking and speaking
very pleasantly with him, and today we say, “My dear friend, I’ll cut your throat.” Our
friend will say, “What has happened to you?” This is what happens lastly, and this is
what we cannot do! The dearest object of our mind and emotions—that which we
regard as most inseparable from us—will stand before us as the greatest
impediment.
That which we love the most is our greatest enemy. This is what we will realise at the
last moment, when we come face to face with the crucial point in yoga. It is very
strange—our own beloved thing is the opposite of what we think it is. That which we
love the most is our greatest enemy. How can we reconcile this idea? The very fact
that we love it is the indication that it is going to stand against us, because no
bondage can be greater than love. Though it is regarded by people as a very pleasant
thing which liberates people from the thraldom of social tension, it is far from it.
Love or affection is a bondage of consciousness in respect of an object which is other
than itself. It is this otherness of the object that we want to sever at the time of our
communion with the object. And as long as this otherness is not maintained, love
cannot be there; and, as long as this otherness is maintained, samadhi cannot be
there. So, which do we want now? Here is, therefore, a great battle, a struggle—and it
is an arduous struggle indeed. Patanjali does not go into the details of this
psychological struggle which a seeker has to pass through.
This has to be known. These things have to be studied by recourse to the lives of
saints. I would like you to read, if you have access to it, the life of Saint Theresa of
Avila, a great mastermind who passed through the seven gates of mystic experience,
as she calls it. She has written a book, The Interior Castle. The whole of mystical
experience is compared to a castle which she had a vision of at one moment, and she
compares the stages of the ascent as entry into the castle through seven gates. At
each step we have some experience; we will start seeing varieties of things. It is only
at the last moment that we can have a glimpse of God. It is only at the seventh gate
that we can see the rays emanating from the Eternal. So, what I mean to say is, these
are all very subtle things, difficult to explain, and more difficult to understand. But
some inclination towards this can be aroused in our mind, and the difficulty about it
can be mitigated to a large extent if we read the lives of saints who have led this path,
who have trodden this way and had these experiences.
How can one explain everything in a book? It is difficult, just as we cannot explain
the taste of a nice meal to a friend who asks us how the meal was. We can only reply,
“You yourself have to have the lunch, and you will see what the taste is.” Or, we
cannot explain the tortures we underwent when there was a harrowing experience.
We cannot explain it to others; they have to undergo it themselves. Extreme joy and
extreme sorrow cannot be explained in any language. So also is this extreme
difficulty we have to face, which cannot be explained through any language. Hence,
the point that we come to is that our sense of being, or asmita, or egoism, or self-
affirmative attitude is not such a simple thing as we may take it to be. It is a devil of
the first water; and we ourselves are that, not somebody else. It is very strange. We