What should a householder do if he feels no further attachments and deeply longs to devote himself to spiritual practices?
How can you tell that he is a householder? When you have a wife, children, relatives, family responsibilities, bills to pay, that is called a householder, grihastha. If you have no bills to pay, no wife, no children, no relatives, nothing, then you must step out of the portals of your home, find a guru for yourself, live with him, serve him, do karma yoga. Don’t ask him anything, don’t say, ‘Guruji, give me samadhi.’ When you come to my shop, I know you have come to purchase something. It is understood when an aspirant goes to a guru, he does not go for anything else but spiritual life.
Don’t ask, ‘Guru, give me moksha,’ ‘Give me samadhi,’ or ‘Give me benedictions.’ Just stay with him, don’t even think that he is going to give you a meditation or kundalini technique. The guru will only tell you to practise karma yoga, to exhaust the last remnants of karma; then the light will shine by itself. You do not have to bring the light. How can you bring the light? The light is shining all the time, but blind as we are, we do not see it. We cannot see it.
You do not have to bring light for a blind mind, you have to give him eyes. In the same way, when you go to the guru you do not have to think or imagine or wish for the light; it is in you. The cover of avidya, ignorance, constituted by the mind and by samskaras must be rent asunder, then light will come by itself. If you do not do it, then even though you do not have the responsibilities of a householder, you will still be regressing on the spiritual path day after day, because after all, what are you going to do? That is my suggestion to you.
6 April 1982, London, UK