Thirst For Inner Growth

This article was excerpted from a talk that Rudi gave in the spring of 1973:

The Miracle of our existence is the fact that we as people sit together in incredible, abysmal ignorance of our potential. We have nothing in us that can understand how deep creativity is and how infinite the capacity is for every human being to grow. It isn’t until we pass through the doorway of one dimension and go into another that we have a sense of rebirth and a sense of the difference. And so we play like animals in a mudhole, throwing at each other these little things that exist on one level. But growing is reaching from where you are into a totally different universe with different energies and different rules and, certainly, a different consciousness. And it is allowing yourself to take the nourishment from there. Growing is only that. It’s only the taking in of nourishment, the feeling from inside yourself the same connection that is felt between a mother and child. It’s an umbilical cord through which you draw in sustenance. This is basically what it is.

A State of Being

The real product of life is the ability to take our creative force and raise it to a higher level continually. And so we live in an organic and very natural way, any change that takes place doesn’t take place from your mind, it takes place strictly from this churning of your creative energy as you bring it around and around and around endlessly. From that you create, eventually, what is a state of being. It is only when you get involved in the need to think, and the need to rationalize and emotionalize, that you really begin to understand the limitation of a person and you learn to understand the remarkable quality of a state of being. It is. And we continually try to understand something which is in the mind or in the emotions or somewhere within our physical body. But it is this detached energy, this state of being that really is remarkable. This state of being is really the first stepping stone into the cosmos because it allows you to remove yourself from everything of the earth and take in nourishment. From that you can then begin to attract on all of these higher levels.

There is nothing rational about spiritual work because spiritual work does not exist in its true form on the earth. Its nature is that of a lighter and more refined energy. It has a different density; it exists in a different world completely. The only way you understand it is by the result that you have in your life, by the feeling you have of a connection that nourishes you and feeds you. You are not working correctly when you succumb to all of these tensions in your mind, all of the talking, all of the things in you that are trying to mutilate the energy. But to leave it alone, to work and drink it in and continually rise above yourself, that is the advantage of a state of being or a state of spiritual energy that is moving. Either we rise with it or we remain underneath it, stuck in the tensions of this physical life.

Fighting

When you fight then you are fighting inside yourself to not allow this energy in, to not allow it to be assimilated so that it can render from your being, you. And it is you who are the conflict; it is you who are really against your own growth. It is your ego, trying to fight for its existence, which makes a million stupid reasons. This is what allows you to attract a theater date on the night that you should come to class. Or that allows you to express your energy fighting with somebody because you will not open and absorb that energy and rise above the situation. There is nothing rational about fighting, because fighting and tensions only destroy creative energy. And the ability to fight, the inclination to fight, is only the unconsciousness in a human being who will not draw in the energy and rise above it. The same energy that is wasted externally, when drawn in and internalized, will raise you above the situation. Then you look and see that the situation is ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous that we use our energy in any way except as nourishment and as growth.

It is only your work, it is only longevity, it is only the wish within you that qualifies you to grow. I lived with many, many saints in different parts of the world. I sat with them for weeks and months, doubting myself. And I’d look at them, and I’d think, “Who asked a question today? Who wanted?” Nobody. Nobody. And you can sit in temples all over the world, in Japan or in India or in China or anywhere, and you can hear the stupidity that goes on on a day-by-day basis. Nobody comes who has a wish inside. Nobody has their heart tearing apart within them because of their desire to find the growth that is available. It is only through that that you qualify; it is only through that that you express your wish. I am going to be forty-five years old in two weeks, and I’m still burning inside. I still have this wish. It drives me crazy, this thirst inside to grow. And I can qualify. I can stand next to anyone, but who wants to measure oneself against anyone else? The only one to be measured by is God and the only thing to work towards is to get there.

Destroying the Past

It breaks my heart when I see people not wanting to grow, not reaching for that growth. Every day for me is a burning that I really in my heart and soul never wish to inflict on anyone else. But for me to serve, I have to completely destroy today everything that exists within myself from yesterday, and tomorrow everything from today, so that I don’t crystallize, so that I don’t become secure and think I’ve gone far enough to qualify for what somebody else calls enlightenment. I don’t want that. I want to die open, and I want to go up. All of the intelligence, all of the crystallization, all of the intellectualism, all of the everything else can stay here and be eaten by those people who want to eat, like jackals, the truth of yesterday. It is only a dead truth.

Truth is the continual destruction within yourself of everything that existed one moment before. And if you have a need in yourself to hold onto anything, then you will not only not have realization, but you will not have within yourself the sense of service to other people. You will be a person who is offering death to other people because you don’t have the capacity to go through the cycle of rebirth and death in yourself continually. Either you want to grow in such a depth that you feel the cycle of death and rebirth in you at all times, or you don’t qualify to really do this work.

We have undoubtedly the most difficult spiritual work that is available. And you have to make up your mind whether you really wish to grow, whether you really wish to surrender you, or you wish to hold on to six million extraneous things which haven’t nourished anybody for ten thousand years. It is not the past that is needed, it is the moment that is needed, it is the capacity within you to assimilate the energy as it comes into the universe fresh. This energy has to go into you and root out everything in you that existed, not only in this life, but in every past life. The only thing I promise you is an extraordinary life, a very remarkable life. You will see, in yourself and in the connection that you have with other people, a very living and creative experience. It will break your heart thousands of times as you see, no matter how deeply people say they’re looking, how extraordinary they are in their creative capacity to avoid finding. Most creative capacity in human beings is expressed by their unconscious ability to not find what they say they are looking for. It is unbelievable how people can make a stream that is a million miles long of coincidence to get them out of doing, and they can’t cross the street to do. And that is what has continually destroyed people who say they wish to grow. They stop growing because they don’t have within themselves the energy to sustain their search and their evolvement. It is really a dedication within yourself to reach towards this endlessness which has to do with our creative capacity.

We have to be like any other organic thing that lives. We have to live fresh every day. Not try to live in the past, but really open and allow this energy to come into us and allow ourselves to burn out whatever was. We take in this energy and loosen up deeply within ourselves. We free ourselves from this unconsciousness that’s so strongly embedded within us, and we find that we can breathe. And we find that these chakras that we have are not limited to our physical body, but they really reach out into infinity and we can draw from thousands of years and millions of miles the energy that we need. Spirituality should not be so many words, it should be a living reality within ourselves that we can come to every single day. We can see our world expand, we can feel every muscle within us open and it becomes a nourishment which frees us. It frees our heart, it frees our eyes, it frees our mind, it frees every chakra within us so that we’re not the slave of these organs. We really are free to feed them and have them expand and have them flow one to the other and bring us the nourishment which allows us to get above the earth.

The Power of a Wish

The best way to not be attached is to do exactly what I do: go into your heart and open, and any hurt or any attachment that you have burns out. You take a breath inside and you say, “I really wish to transcend that attachment.” You keep doing that and you will feel inside you whatever it is suddenly start to take fire and burn out. See, a wish in a human being is extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary property. It is so fine that it can soak through anything. It’s so very fine, it can go through bone, it can go through skin, it can go through steel. It has a penetration like a laser beam. And you keep wishing and wishing, and you cut right through into the deepest part of you. So that anything you’re attached to, you can burn out completely, and then it’ll reform without the attachment. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have, it means that you won’t be attached.

When you have an experience, it means you have finally worked something to a point where it is beginning to chemically change. Then you should take it from first base to second base to third base and take it home. Why limit it? Why limit it at that point? We never work deep enough, we never work long enough, we never carry it to where it can do us good. If it is only in your heart, then when a shark comes your heart closes and all of it is wasted. You have to start all over again. It’s as if you were mining and every time you want to get a handful of gold or silver you’ve got to dig a whole trench. But if you take the time to make a structure, you can go down any time you want and take out what you wish. Any experience is only as good as your conscious ability to do it at will. You have to take the energy, bring it all the way down, and use it to nourish your whole system. What we do is react to situations, which is our body, our mind, our emotions telling us what is going on. Only a fool follows his mind. Only a fool follows his emotions. If you go the other way, you become free. And it’s not to go towards anything except towards nourishment and growth, so that you feel that these things are your limitations. Then you work above it and you can encompass the limitations and you can burn the whole thing.