THE BONDS OF ACTION AND REACTION

 
The West differs from the East in its ideal of perfection. The West believes perfection to signify the possession and use of psychic powers. A yogi can do all kinds of juggling by using psychic powers. He can abstain from food, go without sleep, leave the body at will, or stop breathing, etc.

Spiritually considered, a simple, human, good man who works in the world selflessly for others is much better and stands higher than many yogis with all their powers of performing miracles, which are nothing but juggling without any spiritual importance at all; because whatever a yogi does is for his own individual self and hence he is not selfless. He overcomes one illusion by creating another illusion, which differs fundamentally from the teaching and work of a Perfect Master.

A Perfect Master who has to take upon himself the burdens of the world, to absorb them, must necessarily have physical reactions and consequently must suffer physically like an ordinary human being.

Krishna, Mohammed and Jesus were perfect. By submitting themselves to the law of action and reaction they established that law and were selflessly and willingly subject to it. But in spite of subjecting themselves to this law, they stand above the law. They could in a second have cured themselves or rid themselves from action and reaction.

Perfect Masters absorb the dual effect of the universal illusion by taking humanity out of the illusion through liberating mankind from the bonds of action and reaction.

The Perfect Master absorbs duality in his true existence in order to sublimate it.

Ramakrishna had cancer and He could in one instant have cured it with His infinite powers. Jesus several times fainted on the cross which He could have avoided, but it was a necessary demonstration for the good of humanity.

Baba has abstained from fish, eggs and meat not for His benefit but to create and impress on humanity an example which later, when He speaks, will become an established law.