Question: What is inner completeness of a person?
Speaker: Monica is asking, ‘What is inner completeness?’ Monica does ‘the complete one’ ask this question? Who is asking this question? We ask this question. We ask this question because we sense that we are incomplete. So this question is coming from our incompleteness. Do we understand what is this incompleteness? You are asking that what is it to be complete. I am asking, ‘Can an incomplete mind understand completeness?’ But there is surely one thing that is available to us to understand. What is that? This life, this mind. All the imperfections, all the incompleteness can clearly be seen, and when you look at them, when you look at incompleteness, of course you cannot understand them by being incomplete. Something else happens then. When you understand the imperfections, you move little beyond the imperfections. When you pay attention to the incompleteness, you move a little beyond that incompleteness. You ask me, ‘what is it to be complete?’ Whatever answer I will give will fall upon an incomplete mind. Would it not? You will hear it with an incomplete mind and the complete cannot be understood by an incomplete mind. So, the answer will not be useful. We would do better to just look at what we call as incompleteness, because if you are asking what is it to be complete, surely you are sensing some incompleteness somewhere. Right? That is why I asked you that does the complete ask this question. No the complete does not ask this question. The healthy man doesn’t ask, ‘what is health?’ It is the sick man who seeks health. And what is the way of seeking health? To enquire into the sickness. Right? When you enquire into the sickness, when you see what sickness is all about, then you can move beyond the sickness. So enquire into incompleteness.
Now there is this life that we live, our daily life. What all do you see incomplete in this? Everything. Is there anything complete in this life? But do we ever look at it? Do we ever understand this? Does this realization ever strike us? Because if this realization strikes you, then life will change. That whatever I have is incomplete and the horror is that it will always be incomplete right till my death. That’s the horror, it is not complete today and there is not even any hope of completion. I may entertain myself with false hopes, the entire world entertains itself with false hopes, but the fact is there is no completion. Nothing ever comes to a point where it is total, comprehensive, holistic. There is always so much remaining.
That is the story of our life. The movie starts and you are made to leave the theater even before the movie is complete. All the movies are like that, they are never completed. They start but they never get completed and we are rushing from one theater to another, without any movie ever getting completed because if even one thing is completed, everything else will be completed. We know no completion. There are illusions of completion sometimes but very soon time breaks them, very soon time destroys the sense of completion. ‘I am the happiest man today, I have a degree’, soon you find it is not sufficient, need to do something more. ‘I am the happiest man today, I have the most beautiful wife’, soon you find it is not sufficient. Nothing is ever completed. Can you hence just look at the incompleteness and ask yourself that what is this incompleteness?’
When every thing in life is happening out of desire, it is bound to remain incomplete. When everything is happening so that there is some benefit from it, so that I get some result out of it, it is bound to remain incomplete. When everything is done for the future, it is bound to remain incomplete and we are leading our life in that way: for the future, for a benefit, after calculating our profit, for the sake of the result, then there will be nothing but the deep suffering of incompleteness. Wherever there will be a purpose, a motive, a desire, an end, a result, a future and an expectation, there would always be incompleteness, always. But we are so cunning that we make that incompleteness itself as our engine. We say because everything is incomplete so keep running. Can one be more stupid than this? Because everything is anyway always incomplete so keep running. For what? Why not just stand where you are and dance. Instead of running here and there; dance. It is the punishment of the mind that is attached to incompleteness, that it can run here and there, it can walk, it can chase, it can sprint, but it cannot dance, and that is such a heavy punishment. You cannot dance, there will be no music in your life, because if you are incomplete, you will only run to complete.
‘I am always feeling incomplete, can I have a one more degree? Can you give me bit of love? May I have pleasure of spending one hour with you little bit please, for God’s sake? Sir, please give me this job’. In the temple, ‘Lord one more house please. Lord my fifth car please. Lord may his secretary die, my love is incomplete because that woman is interfering’. Everything is always incomplete. You are living in this incompleteness. Why are we talking of completion? Look at your incompleteness first, because that is your life, your present life. Look at that, there is nothing that you are sure of to be complete. Everything is incomplete, hence doubtful, everything is doubtful, everything is under scanner.
Whatever news is given to you with conviction, you are bound to accept it. If someone comes and gives you a particular news today, let us say that someone comes and says, ‘You know what, mark sheets are re-evaluated and you are failed in all subjects’, you will not say that I don’t care to enquire, my conviction is complete, rather you will be alarmed. ‘Who is doing all this?’
People sing songs in praise of their country as if country is everything and then countries break up in no time, and when they break up the same people who were singing patriotic songs are now citizens of another country, because everything is so incomplete, everything is bound to change, and so you are afraid that it can change. It appears so nice but it cannot be the same always. It will change, it will go away, it will disappear like a dream, vanish, gone. Where? Don’t know.
In the middle of the night at 2:30 a.m., your phone rings and you are alarmed at your mother’s call at that time. ‘Has something happen to Papa?’ When does that not happen? ‘My God! Why is this phone coming at this time?’, and thoughts of mishap come to you. Have you not seen that happen? You are never sure. You know it will disappear, time will take it away and this fear is always there. You are shivering from inside. You may be laughing from outside, but you are trembling from inside. You cannot love because when you are afraid you cannot love, and that is why there is no love in our life, only fear. Your boyfriend comes to you and says, ‘Let us sit across the table, there is something I want to talk to you’, and you start crying. He has not said anything. All that he has said is let us sit across the table, and you would think that he is breaking up. The poor fellow does not even have that in his mind but you will start crying. ‘Why you are doing this to me? Whom are you seeing these days?’ Isn’t that bad? Isn’t that horrible? That anything can shake us up. Is that not horrible? That is incompleteness and that arises from nowhere. That arises because you have assumed yourself to be incomplete. It is a very silly thing.
That incompleteness actually has no reason, that incompleteness is just an assumption. You have a conditioned assumption that there is something missing in me, that there is something to be obtained in the future, that is what is that incompleteness. Give up that assumption, get rid of that assumption and there is completeness, fullness. You have been continuously told that you are imperfect, inadequate. You have been compared to others, you have been told to become like somebody else, you have been told to get this and that achievement. And that kind of conditioning is coming from family, media, religion, everywhere. ‘Look at uncle’s son, you are not good enough. You characterless woman, you are always in hunt of a partner, you are not good enough. You are incomplete, there is something wrong with you, go achieve something so that you may be worthy enough to become a human being. You are an idiot, unless you bring some good results, some good percentage. These kinds of stupid comments have totally corrupted your mind and have made you believe that you are incomplete. ‘Unless you have a good husband you are incomplete. After marriage, if you don’t become a mother, your life is incomplete. Only one kid, you must have two kids, then your life is complete. Oh! This small two-bedroom apartment is not good enough, go get a bigger house then life would be complete’. When the TV and radio are all the time drilling in you that your life is incomplete, there is no wonder that you have that incompleteness, that there is something missing in me. You are dark-skinned? ‘Here is this for you to apply, then your face will be fair, and then you will be complete. Today your life is worthless, why don’t you have a proper hair cut? Don’t you see what the TV is telling you all the time? ‘Have this new car, life will be complete. Anti-dandruff shampoo, life will be complete. New toothpaste, life will be complete.
Wonderful! This is what makes life complete: new pair of shoes, new nail cutter, jewelry from AP jewelers. Isn’t that? Have you not seen that advertisement of a garment manufacturer who says that you are a complete man only when you wear clothes manufactured by them. ‘The complete man’, have you not seen that? When they are telling you that only when you wear clothes manufactured by them, then you will be complete, then obviously they are telling you that you are incomplete now. Wear our suit and you are complete. So wear a suit, now you are complete. And all your life you are only chasing that completeness. Incompleteness is only your deep assumption. Why are you holding on to that assumption? What makes you stay there? Throw it away. That is what an intelligent life is. ‘I will not accept this stupidity. What are these advertisements telling me? What are the family and society telling me? I am perfect as I am. Perfection is my nature. I may not be skilled, yet I am perfect. I may be at the bottom of the table, yet I am perfect. My language may not be good, I am still perfect. In comparison, I may not look as attractive as others, I am still perfect’. Hold on to this, this is completeness.
The source does not produce imperfect goods. The one from whom you are coming, he does not produce anything imperfect. All of you, I assure, are beautiful, perfect, complete and divine. There is nobody here who has anything wrong with him or her. Accept yourself unconditionally. Do not have grudges against yourself. Do not impose conditions upon yourself. Do not tell yourself that how can I rest till I achieve that or this. You are wonderful as you are; just realize your nature. Just live in your nature of perfection. Yes? Your only fault is that you do not live in your nature. You have created an assumption and you have now started living in that assumption, and that is the reason you suffer. Live in your nature; you are perfect. Reject everything, everybody and every medium that tells you that there is something wrong with you. No, there is nothing wrong with you, there can be nothing wrong with you. You may be the worst sinner, you may have broken the law a thousand times, yet you are perfect. Always, already, unconditionally; you are complete. Walk in that faith, live in that faith and laugh when somebody wants to give you some other message. That person may have some self-interest. Before you love anybody else, love yourself unconditionally. You are beautiful! Fall in love with yourself. Go buy a card and two weeks later give it to yourself. Tell yourself, ‘I am complete, already, always’.
Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.
