THE DUST YOU WERE NOT EVEN CONSCIOUS OF

 
Reality needs illusion in order to point out that this is illusion. Baba once gave us a good example of why this is so. We were up north, near the Himalayas. It was very, very cold. We did not have heaters or any such thing and we lived in a small room. We were there for more than a month. Baba used this room and our circumstances for his example.

We had our beddings spread on the floor, and we were as neat and tidy as we could be but there was never time to really sweep or clean the room. Baba kept us too busy for that. One day Baba was trying to bring home to us the nature of Maya and he used our room as an example. He gestured, "Now suppose, in this room, I point out to you the dustiness, the uncleanliness of the room. You hear me, but you remain complacent and uncaring. You say to me, 'Yes,' but you do not rise to the occasion and really feel that it is so dirty. So you continue to live in this room.

"Then I tell you again and again but you do not take any notice. You say you are very cozy, very comfortable and that there is nothing wrong in the situation. Now suppose I take a broom and begin sweeping and all the dust that has accumulated for so long fills the air. You can't breathe, you become choked and you rush out of the room. That experience of choking dust gives you the conviction that the room you were living in was indeed a dirty room."

This is the way we live our lives in the world. We are so engrossed in whatever it is we are doing that we never have time to clean our dust. We are not even aware that dust has accumulated. Then the time is ripe for Baba the Awakener to come as sweeper and enter out lives. He begins to sweep and, in doing so, raises the dust you were not even conscious of. That dust is like the buried attitudes and tendencies of the individual.