Tenacity

An individual has to be tenacious enough to become enlightened.

Everyone lives down at the bottom of the hill, in the city - in India everybody lives in these huge cities or off in the country, but whatever it is, it's all a fairly low auric level, with certain exceptions, Benares, things like that. But even that's kind of the costume jewelry of enlightenment.

But way up on top of the hills - this is how it was a while back if we can use geography as kind of a symbolic representation of the mind - there are the Himalayas, up top, snowy ranges, way up top. And people are living down in the city. And the cities are hot and crowded and they're filled with the thoughts, feelings and desires of humanity. We could even go so far, perhaps, as to say that the cities are representative of the human condition. In other words, you might say, "Well God, these cities that we have, they're so crowded, there are slums, there are nice neighborhoods, there are..." They're all just reflections of the human psyche. They didn't just occur at random. These are the by-products, these are the auras, the creations of human beings. The earth in its current state reflects the consciousness of humanity. It's an imprint of their evolution. What else could it be?

There are some individuals who are born, like we all are, in a city - be it the city, the farm, but down at the low altitudes of mind. They lead their lives like everyone else does until one day, they just sort of look around. You look around yourself and you know that this isn't it, and thus the spiritual quest begins. Oh, I'm sure in past lives the person did the same thing, all that sort of stuff. But - the spiritual quest begins.

A person then has to be very tenacious if they're going to overcome it, because the entire world they know - it's like everybody subscribes to the same magazines and everybody gains their view of the world from the same magazines. But suddenly one day, you've been reading these same magazines and they've always been very entertaining. You've been watching the television shows, you have all the props of humanity - the families, the friends, the things to look forward to, the things to dread, the good times, the bad times, the menu-driven world of humanity. Then something in you one day just looks around and goes, "Oop! This is not it!" It's been it up until now but suddenly it doesn't feel right anymore; it just doesn't feel good. In the old days in the Far East, such a person would then want to get away from the crowds because they felt something, an awareness, a feeling, that was very difficult to pin down in words, but it certainly would be very hard to experience in those cities or on the farms around people. It's real hard to experience it around people.

So the individual would then leave the cities. They'd leave the family, and probably they'd be shocked by what they were saying, "Mom, Dad, I'm out of here."

"Well, what's going to happen? We need you to take care of the farm, or run the business, or you're supposed to get married to Susie," or whatever.

"Sorry, I just gotta go. I just gotta go. I just can't handle this. It's not me, you didn't do anything wrong, or maybe you did. But in any case, I'm out of here. It's been OK, adios!"

So, suddenly an individual finds themselves doing that. It doesn't necessarily happen in a day. It's a long process, but a day finally comes when it hits you. You just can't do this anymore. You just can't do it because it doesn't mean anything to you anymore. It doesn't have a pull. You watch all these other people who are obviously very, very much engaged in living the human life. They seem to be having a good time with it all, or a bad time. But whatever it is, it drives them. And you're just looking at it. And one day you look at it and it just doesn't make any sense to you. We're not discussing whether it's qualitatively good or bad, it's just, you're looking at it and saying, "Wait a minute, what a - what is this? I watch TV and I don't enjoy it. I go to the places I'm supposed to go, I dress the way I'm supposed to dress, I do all the things, but I don't - these other people seem to get off on it, but it's just not doing it for me this week."