Question: How can I give my hundred percent to studies?
Speaker: This hundred percent, is a state of being. You cannot be selective in giving hundred percent to something. It is your own totality. We often ask these questions: ‘How can I give my hundred percent to a particular sport? How can I give my hundred percent to a particular relationship? How can I give my hundred percent to studies?’
How can you give your hundred percent to one thing when you are never hundred percent? Right now see how attentively you are looking at me, there is a deep desire on your part to give your hundred percent to listening to this answer but, chances are that it would not happen because you are the same person who was outside this door a while back, and you are the same person who would be listening to me now.
Understand this. Right now I am responding to your question. A little while back you were outside this door, not in this room, and a little while from now in the future I would be responding to somebody else’s question. Do you ask me, sir when I am outside this room how can I be hundred percent in doing what I am doing? You don’t ask that and you don’t ask me sir when you would be responding to somebody else’s question, how can I be hundred percent in listening even then? You don’t want that, all you want is when you are listening to me than you should be listening hundred percent. Similarly, you do not ask, ‘When I am eating, how can I eat hundred percent? When I am playing, how can I play hundred percent? When I am sleeping, how can I sleep hundred percent? I am watching a movie, how can I watch the movie hundred percent?’ You don’t ask that. All you ask is a very limited question.
Now, this is very impossible. You will not be able to do this because it is the same person who was standing outside this door. Or are you somebody else right now? You are carrying the same mind. Fundamentally, your mind is the same as that of the person who was standing outside the door. If outside he was distracted, how can he suddenly get into attention here? It is possible but very difficult. All your life you are practicing distraction but in one particular task you want attention. How will that happen? All your life you are practicing fear, but in one particular situation you want fearlessness. How can that happen? All your life you are thirty percent, forty percent, fifty percent but when you sit down to study you want hundred percent. How is that possible?
A man who is hundred percent is hundred percent, hundred percent. He is hundred percent in totality. If he eats; he eats hundred percent. When he is painting; he is hundred percent into the painting. When he is singing; he is hundred percent into singing. So if you want to give your hundred percent to the studies, learn to be hundred percent in life. Learn to walk hundred percent, learn to think hundred percent, learn to be silent hundred percent and then whatever you will do, you will have a hundred percent stamp upon it. Are you understanding this? Then you will be Mr. Hundred percent. Are you getting this? This hundred percent cannot be achieved in fragments, it cannot be achieved as just a part of your life. The entire life must be hundred percent, a complete multidimensional hundred percent life.
The one who is mediocre at home, will also be mediocre in office, in workplace. The one who is afraid on the street, will also be afraid within his room. It may not be apparent but deep within the mind fear will still be there. The one who is confused while walking in the corridor, will be confused while sitting in the boardroom. If you want to remove confusion, you cannot ask me that how not to be confused while speaking to somebody. It is not possible. Confusion is a spillover, it will invariably come. Your very mind is the confusion, and it cannot just go away in one particular situation. It has to go away in totality. Are you getting it?
Often our hundred percent is at the cost of something else. You know what do you say? ‘These days I want to give my hundred percent to studies, so I am ignoring sports’. Don’t you say that? ‘I want to give hundred percent to a particular examination, so I am cutting down on movies, I am not talking to my friends, I am not reading anything except a few text books’. This is a great mistake. Hundred percent means everything is hundred percent. If you want to study hundred percent, then watch movies hundred percent. If you want to be hundred percent in the classroom, then be hundred percent in the playground. But you are not hundred percent in the playground, and you are not hundred percent in the classroom. Mistakenly you had understood that if I want to be full here, I have to a half somewhere else. False! This cannot happen. To be full here you have to have fullness there as well. Full here; full there. Fullness is not compartmentalized; fullness is not at the cost of another fullness.
The Upanishads says something tremendously beautiful about ‘Fullness’. Have you heard that?
“oṃ pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidam pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate”.
Very few of you would have heard about it. You know what it means? It says,”This is full, that is full. Fullness comes forth from fullness.’ Only if life is full, then a fragment of life will also be full. Out of your inner fullness comes fullness in your actions. And then they say something even more remarkable. They say,”Fullness is taken away from fullness, even then fullness remains.’ Of course, they don’t mean ‘taken away’ in the form of separation. They mean that fullness gives rise to fullness and yet remains full. Inner fullness gives rise to all kinds of fullness. The one who is full in the mind, the one who really understands, the one whose intelligence is awakened; all his actions are hundred percent. He is hundred percent in everything. As I said that he is Mr. Hundred percent. Who has known that which is real full? The real full is your intelligence, that real full is the ‘real you’. Know that and everything will be full. You will be a full son, you will be a full husband, you will be a full professional, and you will be a full sportsperson. Every step you take will be a complete step, step of a master. Tremendous. Is that not? That’s what you call a real all-rounder. Whatever he is doing, he is a master in that. He breathes as if he is a specialist in breathing. He eats as if he is a specialist in eating, and he lives as if he has learned the art of living. All that fullness, all that tremendous hundred percent will always come from your inner fullness. Are you getting it?
Your inner fullness, find out that inner fullness and everything will be just hundred percent, completely hundred percent. How to find out that which is already hundred percent within us? What is already hundred percent within you?
You! Are you not hundred percent? You are hundred percent. Unfortunately in spite of being hundred percent, we think we are not hundred percent. We think that there is something missing in us and we keep on trying to fill that missing part. That allows others to control over us. ‘I am not hundred percent, I am just twenty percent’, so remaining eighty percent will come from society, from books, from religion, from past and you fill yourself up. Now this is a very funny situation. In spite of being complete you have convinced yourself that you are incomplete. And what you are doing with that incompleteness?
You are inviting all kinds of influences to fill your assumed incompleteness which is just false, which is not there, just imaginary, you are assuming it and you are allowing everybody to come and fill it up. You are like a man who is having a diamond in his pocket and still he is roaming around as if he has nothing, as if he is incomplete. He already has hundred percent, the diamond is priceless but still he is asking everybody to give him something. ‘What should I do? How should I make my career? Can you give me some advice? Can you give me some love? Can you give me some company?’ He is just begging and trying to be hundred percent. You are already hundred percent, find out that hundred percent and then everything will be hundred percent. Then you will not ask me that how to be hundred percent in studies, then everything will be hundred percent at the same time. Is the answer making some sense?
Do not seek excellence in one area. You will not be able to achieve that. Seek the root of all excellence. The root of all excellence is your intelligence. You are asking that how can one particular branch have a healthy fruit. You tell me that when the root is diseased, when you are not looking at the root, not caring for it, how can the fruit be good. And when the root gets healthy, do you have healthy fruit in only one branch or in every branch?
Listeners(everyone): Every branch.
Speaker: So take care of the roots and fruit in every branch will be healthy. Whatever you will do, will be excellent and you will celebrate it, you will love it. And when you don’t do anything then you will love it all the more. What is that root?
Your being, your intelligence, you ability to understand. Take care of that, give it nourishment, remove the barriers to attention and then all the fruits will be wonderful. You are asking for very little, you will get so much. You will get so much that it will be unimaginable for you. You will only feel grateful with folded hands. You will say, ‘I didn’t ask for so much, why I received so much? I asked for hundred percent in one limited area but now I am Mr. Hundred percent.’ What do you want, to be hundred percent in one area or to have a full and complete life? One area?
Listeners(everyone): No, Sir.
Speaker: How many of you are interested in having a completely full life? ‘Whatever I do is full, hundred percent.’
(Everyone raises their hands).
Good! then we know that we have to look at root. Take care of the root, forget the fruit. It will come on its own.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
