Pitfalls In Sadhana: Three Sat-Sang Talks, February 1987

All of us are admittedly interested in Sadhana, which for us means a dedicated pursuit of the divine in our daily life. You might ask why there should be pitfalls, let alone downfalls, in a quest of this type. After all, it is something very sacred, a purposeful moving towards God, and there is no reason why there should be pitfalls. A very legitimate question, but the facts are that this world, the whole universe in fact, is organised at present on a basis of ignorance and its extreme consequence, falsehood. We are in the mid-stage of the evolutionary movement and emerging as we have done from Inconscience, Unconsciousness, there is a great hold of Ignorance and its brood over us. And Nature, by which we mean Nature in Ignorance, takes good care to see that her creatures do no go beyond her. Nature has implanted in everyone certain qualities, habits, which stand in the way of exceeding her, going beyond her reign as it stands. These are called sentinels of Nature. All around us there are these sentinels guarding this territory for the forces of Ignorance, blocking the onward, upward movement. For instance, take conservatism.