WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW

 
You already know what you should be doing, everyone knows this. You do not need someone else to tell you. You have heard me tell stories so many times about how Baba would correct His lovers. He would not say, "You should do this and this and this," or "Never do that, or that or that." God has already given us such rules, that is what the ten commandments are. Isn't that so? For what else are they but rules of conduct?

But Baba said the ten commandments are merely the outward form of inner rules which are inherent in all people. It is not that God came to Moses and handed him a tablet with these rules on them. God has inscribed these rules on the tablet of every person's heart. That is the real significance of the story of the ten commandments. But just as the Israelis gave themselves up to drunken orgies and idol worship and Moses broke the tablets, so too we give ourselves up to our lower selves and we break the tablets, as it were, in our hearts. We know what is right, but we don't do it.

But the knowing gets stronger and stronger with our determination to be His, and eventually it becomes impossible for us to disobey any longer, and then, and only then, do we change our behavior. Not because someone told us to change, but because within ourselves we no longer could ignore what we know to be right.

Baba has said in the Discourses something to the effect that it is not a question of teaching anyone anything, but of helping them uncover what they already know. And how do we do that? That is where we must use our intelligence.