Chapter 309 July

This brief talk was given to the children as an exception on a Tuesday before the meditation.

We said that we were going to prepare ourselves methodically for the sadhana.... There is one point on which I have already insisted strongly, but unfortunately without much result among you all. And I thought that perhaps it would be good to begin with that to prepare you for a future sadhana.

So, the subject of our meditation this evening will be this: “On the harm done by incontinence of speech.”

Very often I have told you that every word spoken uselessly is dangerous chatter. But here, the situation has reached the very limit — there are things which have been said, said over and over again, repeated by all those who have tried to perfect humanity, unfortunately without much result — it is a question of malicious gossip... of slander, of that pleasure taken in speaking ill of others. Anyone who indulges in this kind of incontinence de-bases his consciousness, and when to this incontinence is added the habit of vulgar quarrelling, expressed in coarse language, then that amounts to suicide, spiritual suicide within oneself.

I stress this point and insist that you take it very seriously.

(Meditation)