In our studies of the Gita in evening satsang we are not on the subject of peace, and our speaker has been describing a state where a person can be absolutely steady amidst all desires. Desires flow into him like rivers into an ocean. He is totally unaffected by them.

We hear these teachings and perhaps think “Yes, that is the ideal, I should not be touched by desires.” But we shouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of attaining a state like this. Indeed a person who can have desires flowing into them and not move is a person who has already entered into the peace that passeth understanding.

What do we mean by the peace that passeth understanding? In some ways it is not a good question to ask, because if it passeth understanding how can we describe it? But basically the saints will tell us that it is a state where we see nothing except ourselves, nothing is outside of us. Therefore, there is nothing separate from ourselves to desire. So it is a state that is beyond understanding and gives us a peace that is beyond understanding.

But this does not get away from the main point that is being made. Our problem and what keeps us from peace is the desires of our heart. And it is important to recognise that these desires are all in our heart. When we talk about controlling the sense desires, we must recognise that just like the desire for name and fame or the desire for wealth, sense desires are also in our mind or, more accurately, in our heart; they are buried in our heart. It is simply that they are stimulated by the senses. How then are we able to tackle these desires—the desire for sense satisfaction, the desire for wealth and the desire for name and fame?

In the Western monastic tradition, they have three vows: the vow of chastity, the vow of poverty and the vow of obedience. The vow of chastity is aimed at our desire for sense satisfaction. Control the desire for sex, the desire for physical contact, and you can control all the rest of the senses. The vow of poverty, of course, is to control the desire for wealth. And finally the vow of obedience is to control our desire for name and fame. If we put ourselves under obedience, it controls our desire to be special.

In the Eastern tradition that obedience is normally given to a guru. Even this is quite difficult to do, otherwise Gurudev wouldn’t say: “Obedience is better than reverence.” Because a guru gets lots of reverence. He gets reverence from people who want something from him, he gets reverence from others who just love him for what he is, and he also gets reverence from people who are in awe of him. All that is reverence. But none of that is obedience.

Obedience is a mental prostration to the guru and to the teachings of the guru. It is a determination to sacrifice all our desires and our ego to the guru, to obey the guru instead of expressing our own desires. It is a recognition that desires are spiritual death and that our salvation is in eliminating them. So finally, obedience is the most difficult thing of all, and it is the most necessary thing of all, and it is the rarest thing of all.

But something even more difficult than obeying the guru is just obedience itself. In some ways it is easy to obey a guru because we have such reverence for him. But in the Western tradition obedience is given to the superior, not because the superior is necessarily superior to you in any way from a spiritual point of view, but just because he is your superior. And so you accept his authority as God’s will for you.

This is real obedience and real humility, and this obedience can also be applied in an ashram. If we are asked to come to satsang, if we are asked to come to morning meditation, and we would rather not but we do it out of obedience, then that is humility, that is denying ourselves, that is wearing away our ego.

This is real sadhana. To crush our ego is the whole purpose of the spiritual life. Ego means doing what we want to do. Obedience means sacrificing our ego for our highest spiritual welfare.