How should we consciously identify things that provoke us, and learn how to safeguard ourselves? Bhagawan lovingly guides us today.
At the gates of liberation (moksha) and Self-realisation (sakshatkara), three guards are posted to validate your credentials. They are peace or mental equilibrium, joy or contentment, and inquiry or discrimination (shanti, santosha, and vichara). Even if one of the guards is made to become friendly, the others will facilitate your entry. First in the series is peace. If you make peace yours, contentment is yours! Contentment is the highest source of joy and the most valuable possession. It is as much as an empire. Without contentment, desire (kama) and greed (lobha) attain dangerous proportions and will overwhelm the power of discrimination itself. Desire easily becomes greed, and greed degenerates into miserliness and lust, which make you flirt from object to object in mad pursuit of the evanescent sensual joy. How can people with such qualities develop the faculty of concentration? And without the capacity to concentrate, how can they engage in meditation? And without meditation (Dhyana), no one can get Godhead (Daivam).
– Dhyana Vahini, Ch 14.
