Page 20 - All India Magazine Mar-2024
P. 20
ing! I won’t go any farther. If you don’t give me the sustenance I
need, excitement, enthusiasm, desire, even passion, I prefer not
to move and I won’t do anything any longer.” So there the prob-
lem becomes a little more delicate and perhaps even more difficult
still; for surely, to fall from excitement into inertia is very far from
being a progress! One must never mistake inertia or a somnolent
passivity for calm.
Quietude is a very positive state; there is a positive peace
which is not the opposite of conflict—an active peace, contagious,
powerful, which controls and calms, which puts everything in or-
der, organises. It is of this I am speaking; when I tell someone, “Be
calm”, I don’t mean to say “Go and sleep, be inert and passive,
and don’t do anything”, far from it!... True quietude is a very great
force, a very great strength. In fact one can say, looking at the
problem from the other side, that all those who are really strong,
powerful, are always very calm. It is only the weak who are agi-
tated; as soon as one becomes truly strong, one is peaceful, calm,
quiet, and one has the power of endurance to face the adverse
waves which come rushing from outside in the hope of disturbing
one. This true quietude is always a sign of force. Calmness belongs
to the strong.
And this is true even in the physical field. I don’t know if you
have observed animals like lions, tigers, elephants, but it is a fact
that when they are not in action, they are always so perfectly still.
A lion sitting and looking at you always seems to be telling you,
“Oh, how fidgety you are!” It looks at you with such a peaceful air
of wisdom! And all its power, energy, physical strength are there,
gathered, collected, concentrated and — without a shadow of agi-
tation — ready for action when the order is given.
I have seen people, many people, who could not sit still for
half an hour without fidgeting. They had to move a foot or a leg,
or an arm or their head; they had to stir restlessly all the time, for
they did not have the power or the strength to remain quiet.
20 All India Magazine, March 2024