Service Kannan, Fiesch, 18 September 2002 For two days you have been listening patiently to my speech, in which I tried to express about the Master's work at the human level, and the result of that work, namely transformation, on which I spoke briefly yesterday because it is a very vast subject. As I was telling, the Master is doing the work, Master has been doing the work, and the result is seen in all of us within and without, but what is expected of us? What should we do for it? Master said in one of the lectures, ''If you want to realise the Master or the Ultimate, there is only one thing and that is: you be it. How to be it? You have to become it. How to become it? You have to go to that one, who has already become that." And having gone there, if He asks us to do something for our own benefit, our common sense says, our wisdom says, our conviction says, our experience says, that we should follow Him. All our sadhana, all our practice lies within these two: becoming and being. This gap between becoming and being is the period of our sadhana, which looks very lengthy for us. In fact in the yoga tradition, the word abhyas is defined as a practice to keep our mind in a state of balance, and this requires a practice for a long time and efforts for a long time, which come from the mind. It is not enough if one practises for one day, two days, one year, two years, because we don't know; but in the case of only one personality it has come instantaneously. And Master said - it was His Master Babuji Maharaj - He said, once when Babuji Maharaj was going from the kitchen of his house to the pumping place - you know we used to have a pump in Shahjahanpur - a deep craving came into his heart that He should become one with his Master, Lalaji Maharaj. And as He put his one step forward, He heard the voice of Lalaji Maharaj, ''Ram Chandra you have already become one with me.'' So in his case, the process of becoming and being became synonym. There was no gap. I have tried myself to develop such a craving, but it's really impossible. That it is impossible does not mean we should not try for it. Our practice is only for it. In the ancient days the disciples used to go to the guru only for that purpose. To become, to be, what the guru is. You go to a person to know what you already do not know. Master says, if I know something already, I don't go to that place or a person who will teach the same thing. If I do not know chemistry, I will go to a chemistry teacher. The very reason that we are here, that we go to the Master, is that we do not know what spirituality is, we do not know what God is, we do not know what our evolution means. Therefore, we have to accept that we do not know, therefore we are going to the Master. Therefore in the yogic tradition - and Babuji Maharaj also writes in the book 'Efficacy of Raja Yoga in the light of Sahaj Marg', ''In the real sense, only God is the guru, only God is the Master, because only God is perfect.'' However high a human being may be, there is the element of uncertainty no one can call a human being as perfect. So 1
Babuji Maharaj writes very clearly, ''Only God is perfect.'' To achieve this perfection within this lifetime, we go to a person who is perfect, who is one with the God, whom Babuji Maharaj says, with the example in the book 'Efficacy of Raja Yoga', ''If a = b, and b = c, then a = c." Therefore we have to get attached with the Master who has already attached himself with the divinity, with God, whatever it is. Now the problem comes precisely here: most of us are having attachment with the Master; many of us claim that we love the Master. Master also says Babuji Maharaj has said many times, ''I know my abhyasis love me, but it is only skin deep. It does not go into my heart.'' So what is the difference? What is the difference between attachment and love? Master said once, ''When you have attachment, you have the feeling to gain something from the person. When you love the person for your sake, it is attachment. When you love the person for his sake, it is love.'' So we have to feel within ourselves, we have to ask this question within ourselves: are we here for the Master, or are we here for our own personal evolution, our own personal achievement, our own personal spiritual progress? If the answer is yes, we do not love the Master. If I can say boldly that I go to the ashram, I go to Master for Master's sake, then I can say I love the Master. Somebody asked Master once, in Chennai, in his house, after the maha samadhi of Babuji Maharaj. The question was, ''Chari, how did you see the Master?" And then Master gave this wonderful reply, He said, "The moment I saw Him, I always saw Him for Himself. I went to Him for Himself." Never in his life as an abhyasi or as a preceptor He did anything for his own sake. In fact, Babuji Maharaj has gone on the record to say that He was the only person who had the Mission and the Master in his mind, not any other person in the Mission. That was the real love. But when we go to the Master, we do have some expectations, we have some own personal things to gain from the Master. Therefore even our sadhana can be elevated when we do the sadhana for Master's sake. That is why the day before yesterday, I said, "Why are we doing the sadhana, why should I do meditation, cleaning and prayer and all these things?" It is not for my personal evolution. Because the Master says that you have to do it, we are doing it. Master writes in the book 'My Master', that the Master, Babuji Maharaj, can place anybody from any position to any position. It is just like picking up one bottle from a lower shelf to the higher shelf. So it is not a difficult task for the Master, but are we interested in our progress? Are we interested in helping the Master? In Master's goal? And what is that goal of the Master? Now the purpose of our Mission - his whole life is for the sake of the Mission. Just before we started from Chennai, Master told me, "You people hereafter should be more concerned about the Mission." Even in his dream, He always thinks of the Mission, because the Mission is that which He inherited from his Master. He does not find any difference between the Mission and the Master. Therefore for Him any work for the Master is the work for the Mission, and any work for the Mission is the work for the Master. But we differentiate, you know. When we do service to others we think we are helping the other person, but Sahaj Marg says, the aim of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission is to serve the humanity. And what do we mean by saying serving the humanity? Many people, many organisations are there, the United Nations Organisation, there are so many organisations. But Babuji Maharaj says the real service is to bring calmness and peace to the mind of a disturbed person. That is what Master is doing to all of us. And more than that, the better service to the humanity, or the best service to the humanity, is what Master is doing, that is He is transforming the individual persons, one by one, one by one, one by one. And we are the proof for it. This is the best service that one can do. But what happens generally when we serve, we have some sort of selfishness 2
in our heart, in our mind. But when the Master serves, He does not have any selfish purpose. When we serve in the remembrance of Master, He gives the power behind it. He makes us work; we work because of Him, not because of me or you or her or him. I remember, in 1981, in Shahjahanpur, when the dining hall was being constructed - till then it was open space - there was only two days left. And all the abhyasis were going to the roof; there was absolutely, no structure, there were only iron rods there. And many abhyasis, in the cool weather, in the chilly weather, they were climbing there, and one by one, these big sheets of iron were pushed from behind, from below, from the earth, and these people worked so much and the work was over in one day. And then, Babuji Maharaj came there and He was very happy and He said, "Is the work over now?" And then the next question was so wonderful; He said, "Shall I withdraw my power from them now?" So this is the proof: who is doing the work? Who is serving whom? Again, in Manapakkam, most of you, I think, would have seen the way the ashram came, the way each and every block was built in our ashram. When the library hall was being constructed, we were all on the top - it was pouring rain at that time - we had to put a lot of cement and other things. And Master was sitting below and holding one umbrella; He was sitting all along. And had He not been there, the work would not have been done. Each and every brick in the ashram, whether it is Manapakkam, whether it is anywhere, it is His service to the Master. So when we serve, we have to do so in the remembrance of the Master, because Master says that if we do that then it becomes sacred, it becomes holy, it becomes Master's work. Otherwise it becomes my work and subsequently the desired result is not achieved. Whether we are preceptors, whether we are abhyasis, as Brother Ajay was telling this morning, we are all participating in Master's work. There is absolutely no question of any distinction whatsoever in this. Babuji Maharaj writes many times in the book 'Autobiography of Ram Chandra, Vol. 2', how He went to many places, transmitting. Master used to tell me, when He came to South India, for the first time in 1945, He did not have any friends, He did not have any relations, did not know any local language, He did not know the locations. He just came, He put his entire luggage in one place in the cloakroom, He hired one small vehicle, drawn by the horses. He went around Chennai, transmitting. This is how He illumined places after places, the result is seen now. There are so many people in each place where Babuji Maharaj went and transmitted. The problem comes, we want the result to be known immediately. Whereas Master says, "You have to wait for the result, because the result is not in your hands." I remember, Master said once that Babuji Maharaj gave him the cosmic work for the first time and Master started doing the work. He started transmitting and then after some time He felt, the work was over. Again He transmitted and then He felt the work was over. So, He did it two or three times, and said to Babuji Maharaj, "This is what I feel, what should I do? I feel the work is over." And then Babuji Maharaj did not reply. And the second time our Master wrote to Babuji Maharaj and He did not get any reply. So, when He went to Shahjahanpur, He asked him, "Babuji, I wrote a letter to you, two letters, you did not reply." And then Babuji told him, "What reply will satisfy you? If your heart says that the work is over, you have to believe your heart." So, it is a very good proof, a very strong proof, because the Master is the Heart itself. That is what Master says. We believe Master is in the heart, but Master says, "The Heart itself is the Master." He said it in 1990 in Jaïpur, during Babuji's birthday 3
celebrations. He said, the Master Himself is the Heart, the Heart itself is the Master. Therefore we have to keep this place very clean, pure. Therefore we do the sadhana. Not for my personal progress, not for my personal evolution, because it is the seat of divinity, because it is the seat of the Master, because He has to live there comfortably, we have to keep that place. You know, when we come here - we are treated as royal guests here, we are so happy, but every place is kept very clean. What an amount of effort, what an amount of care is being taken to entertain the guests. So should we not do it in our heart for the sake of the Master, who is going to be there all the 24 hours? And Master said, "It is not your place, it is the place of the divinity, it is the place of the Master." If anybody says, "I allow the Master to come into my heart," Master says, it is ignorance, it is arrogance. Because it is just like the gatekeeper, telling, "I allow the owner of the house to enter into the house." The house belongs to the owner, not to the gatekeeper. If you want to remain as the gatekeeper, ok, you will remain there itself, you cannot get into it. That is another beautiful aspect of our Sahaj Marg. You know, Master said once, if you just pray in the way of a beggar, you won't receive anything. You have to stop that. I asked him, "How?" He said, you know Babuji's famous words: "Meditation is having, prayer is begging." So Master said, you see, when a beggar comes to your house, what is his limit? He stops at the door and then starts begging, but when your friend comes, he comes up to your hall or your drawing room. But if it is your wife, she has got every liberty to go everywhere in your house, because the relationship is built with love. Therefore if you beg, if you just stop with mere prayer, you have to stop at the gate. But if you allow the Master, if you really feel that this is the heart, this is the seat of divinity, this is the seat of the Master, and for that I am doing this meditation, cleaning and prayer, then Master is there. And you will see remarkable change. I mean, we will see the remarkable change in us, because once I allow the Master to expand in me then I expand. It is just like as Master used to say, if you blow a balloon from inside, when the balloon blows, the space inside the balloon blows and the whole balloon becomes full. You know it occupies more space. So, if you allow the Master to do the work with full freedom in your heart, He expands with the result that you also expand, provided there is no resistance. If I blow the iron pipe, I cannot expand it, because there is resistance. Therefore if we do not resist Master's work, He expands. Not that He expands physically, He does not expand, nor does He shrink. For the Master of calibre, there is no progress, there is no regress, there is no expansion, there is no contraction. He just exists, but it is for us, for our benefit, for our understanding, for our knowledge, for our gaining the faith, for own strength, for confirming our progress. These things are necessary. Therefore we have to practise the sadhana, in the sense that it has been given by the Master to realise Him, for helping Him and for achieving His goal and not my goal. When my goal becomes one with His goal, then that is the real yoga. Otherwise we remain where we are, He remains where He is. Master says, if you die after some progress and go back to God, and God says, "What have you done?" And you say, " God, You know, You did all these things good to me, I am so happy, I have come to see You." And God - these are Master's words - "Chee, for this I created you?" So the spirituality says, Nature says, we have to expand, we have to multiply. Master has stressed so many times on the aspect of change and transformation. He says change is inevitable, but we human beings can arrest change willingly in our arrogance. It is just like if I keep a packet of seeds in a box and lock it in a drawer and say, "I am Master of the situation, these seeds will not germinate." And Master says, "You are a fool! Because you have not locked merely the seeds, you have locked yourself." That you can effectively lock the seeds from germinating into a tree proves that you are the same fool, when you were born, and you die as the same fool. You can do that to yourself and even God cannot 4
help. Therefore Master says so many times, if you don't help yourself, God will not help you. "God helps those who help themselves." It's a very famous quotation, you know. Master repeats many times, "God helps those who help themselves." Therefore we have to do all this sadhana - morning meditation, cleaning, prayer. When we read the ten maxims given by Babuji Maharaj, the first three maxims talk of the meditation and the Goal. But anybody can do meditation. Anybody can get up before dawn and fix a goal - God or whatever it is - and do meditation. But the fourth maxim is also very important, it says - "We should be plain and simple to be with the Nature." If we see the life of Master, if we see the life of Lalaji Maharaj or Babuji Maharaj, one thing is very striking: it is the simplicity. When the book 'My Master' was published, there was lot of criticism that that book was very simple. All the abhyasis throughout the world liked this book for one reason, because it is simple and because it is full of love. Love and simplicity always go together. So when there was opposition to this book and some people went to Babuji Maharaj and said, "What is so great about this book? Even a fool can understand this book, it is so simple." And Babuji said, "That is why I like this book. To achieve simplicity is very difficult and I am so happy that Parthasarathi is able to achieve it in a short time." So if Master could do it, we should also do it. Master says Sahaj Marg is simple. Babuji Maharaj has written that Sahaj Marg is simple. We make it complex by thinking in so many ways, by using our intellect, whether I can do this or this, this way or that way. These are all irrelevant. Master says, "Do this"- no questions - do this. Master says many times, "Don't question the Master, because you don't have the intelligence to question the Master". Once He said about one incident: Babuji Maharaj blessed one sister abhyasi with a child. After three months that lady died, even before she could deliver the child. And Master was so shocked He questioned Babuji Maharaj two, three times, and there He says that He questioned the divinity of his Master, and then Babuji Maharaj did not reply at all. And then when He went to Shahjahanpur, He asked Babuji Maharaj, "You did not reply to my letter?" And Babuji Maharaj asked him, "Parthasarathi, what answer will satisfy you?" See, the message is very clear - if you want mental satisfaction, then Master can answer. And when Babuji asked this, Master understood the message - and the message was very clear: "It is between me and my disciple. Who are you to come in between? If I choose to give her, or bless her with a child, it is my business - if I choose to take away her life and put her in some other world, it is again my business. Who are you to ask?" So Master says, from that moment He stopped questioning Babuji Maharaj. He says, "Many times I did have difference of opinion, but I never disobeyed my Master." So these ten maxims are given for us to obey. This is also the service that we are doing. By participating in Master's work on me, I am serving the Master. Because Master said many times, any fool can do the lower service. It is easy to bring a stick to the Master or the shoes for the Master, or water for the Master, of course this is also service. And He says, "You can cut the grass in the Ashram, you can clean a place - which is also a service for the Master." At a the higher level we have to understand Sahaj Marg better, and talk to people, tell the people, impress the people, that this is a divine system available for the betterment of humanity. That is a better service. And the best service Master says is this: that we have to become that, which He wants us to become in the shortest possible time. That is the best service that any abhyasi can do for the Master. Because, this meditation, cleaning and prayer are ultimately to 5
serve the Master, without which, we will not have proof for ourselves. The Master can choose any person without any meditation, He can put anybody anywhere, as our brother Ajay was telling this morning. But these things, Master has given in his divine intelligence, his divine wisdom for us to have some more faith, some more belief, some more understanding, so that we will participate effectively in the Master's work. And when we read the ten maxims, the five, six, seven, eight - these stress on one aspect - that is the acceptance. We have to accept the miseries as divine gifts, one maxim says. And are we doing it? Master says, many a time, we only project our problems to the Master. And Babuji Maharaj used to say, "I too have problems." If somebody went and told Babuji, "I have a headache." Babuji would say, "I also have headache." And another answer which Babuji Maharaj said, "Where can you find the matchless rishis of India who prayed for the miseries of the whole world to come to them?" Compared to that, our problem is nothing. So acceptance is very important. When we accept a person, we accept it because the Master has said it. And Master says there are three levels of acceptance. At the first level, we accept because it is good to me. Because Master says, Master does something, and so I accept. And ultimately I feel it is for my good. At the second level, I accept because I feel I have to obey the Master and, you know there is nothing good or bad. Simply accept the Master. And at the third level, you don't have the feeling of acceptance at all; we just do it, and remain aloof, and the rest of the thing Master takes care. So at three levels our acceptance is there. So Master says, if you accept you have to go to Him. Master used to say the words of one Sufi saint, "If you accept me, come to me. If you come to me, love me. If you love me, follow me. If you follow me, obey me." These four sentences, Master said that all abhyasis should follow. Because this is the gist of Sahaj Marg: when we say we love the Master, we have to go to Him, we have to accept Him, we have to serve Him, and we have to obey Him. But unfortunately we put our own preferences, our own ideas, we think we are more intelligent than the Master in accepting a person's authority, or in accepting Master's own words. Therefore we put resistance. Babuji Maharaj says, that even when you are eating, you know you have to take the food in the remembrance of the Master. That is another maxim. And in the ninth maxim He talks of the relationship with the people who are around us. And how to bring about all these things? And Master says, I mean Babuji Maharaj has given the tenth maxim: during the bedtime, we should offer the prayer in a supplicant mood, and we should repent - beautiful words of Babuji Maharaj, we have to repent for the wrongs committed. How many of us repent? And then He writes, "resolving not to do the same thing in the future." But we have been doing the same thing again and again. Master says, no lawgiver on earth gives you a second chance. You will be penalised. But again and again, we are committing mistakes and Master is forgiving us again and again. And we are making use of His affection, of His love, of His compassion. And why should He have compassion? Master said once, "Because the Master sees you, as His own reflection." He puts Himself in our heart, therefore wherever He sees a person, He sees himself, there in the heart. Therefore He says, if an abhyasi fails, the Master fails, if an abhyasi falls, the Master falls. Of course, how much of agony He would undergo! So we should feel that we should not fall, we should not fail. We should live in such way that Master should not fail, Master should not fall. So this is the role that He is doing. He gave the wonderful example of a person who is shaving before an infinite number of mirrors, and if the razor cuts the chin, He gets the blood in all the images, and not only that: He feels the pain in all the images. Therefore Master says, if anybody of us has the pain, please be reassured that 6
there is one person to share our pain - that is the Master. Even the wife or the husband, I am sorry to say, will not be a part and parcel of our pain. Therefore the story of the great saint Valmiki - he is considered as the first poet in India. He was a hunter, and he used to kill animals, he used to rob from the people, and with that money, he was protecting his big family. And one day, in the forest, the great seven saints were coming. So he wanted to rob them. And then they told him one thing, "All these things you are doing for whom? For your family. And you know how much sin you have been committing? Go and ask your family members, whether they are prepared to accept the parts of your sin, because they have been accepting the benefits of your robbery." So he said, "OK, I will go and ask them." He went and asked them; nobody was prepared to accept his sin, the result of the sin. And he came back, and told the saints, "You are right. What should I do?" And then the saints said, "OK, you practise meditation. You just sit in this place, and start meditation." And he did meditation till those saints returned after so many years, and a big anthill was built on his body. And those saints could not even recognise that there was a person meditating. So when they dug up, this person came out. Therefore he is known as the Valmiki in Sanskrit, because the word means "anthill" in Sanskrit. So you can ask - because the general tendency of the people is to participate when we are happy, when we are doing something good for them, when we are saying something pleasant about them. When we criticise some other people, or when we get back some criticism from others, it is difficult to accept it. And that is what Master gives us - the example: He is accepting all these things. Even though He is undergoing all these pains by tolerating, by being with us in so many ways. Therefore we should be prepared to undergo all these things if we really want to serve the Master, if we really say that we love the Master. And Babuji Maharaj's life is an example, how at the advanced age and with his fragile health, He could visit so many people. And our Master, even though He is not well so many times, He goes to so many places, eats so many things which people give with affection. This is the way they accept whatever is given. And when we do our sadhana, it is mainly because we accept the words of the Master. And when we pray to Master for anything, Master says most of us pray for selfish purpose, not for the sake of others. All of our prayer is because of selfish purpose. Even when Babuji Maharaj was in the hospital, Master said, many of the senior preceptors sent their children before Babuji and said, "Please pray for your spiritual progress." And then Master said, "What amount of agony Babuji would have felt? He would have felt there would be somebody who would come next to me, He would give me the Central region and all these things. You don't want me, therefore I am going from this place." Therefore, Master says, your prayer should be without any selfish purpose. And number two: most of the time when we pray, we don't know for which we are praying. And Master says, we have to pray for Him and Him alone, and not for the things that He can give us. Most of you would have read in the book 'Yatra', the story that He gives of Duryodhana and Arjuna. Arjuna prayed for Lord Krishna in the Mahabaratha battle, and Duryodhana got all the army of Lord Krishna. And who won in the end? We know, because, the moral says, where there is divinity, there is victory. It is not merely the divinity, but where there is divinity and individual Soul. It is not enough if only the Master is there, the disciple has to be there also. And when both these things join together, we get the grandeur, that is the real yoga. Otherwise Master can be 7
there anywhere. Left to Himself, Master says - Babuji has said, "I would have gone to Brighter World long back." So He needs disciple. As I was telling yesterday, the purpose of the Master's work is to create masters, and not disciples, because we sow a seed to get back many seeds. So, that is the service that He is doing, but in our ignorance, we have a limited knowledge, we have a limited perspective, we have a limited goal. Babuji Maharaj says, if we fix the Goal, all the work is over. The work is not over precisely because even now we have not fixed our Goal. The maxim says, we have to fix our Goal. But we have not fixed our Goal. Therefore we are stuck, we are where we are, not up to the expected level of the Master. So many people have so many goals, you know. And when we feel our goal is one with Master's Goal, that day we will feel the difference. So Master says, His goal is to serve the whole humanity, not merely the abhyasi. What is the use of talking "abhyasi" and "non-abhyasi"? Master says, if we take from the moment of creation of this world, I have been an abhyasi for 25 years, you have been an abhyasi for 50 years. So what great difference does it make? A. For lakhs of years both of us were non-abhyasis. The idea of abhyasi and non-abhyasi does not enter into His heart. He says, especially to the preceptors, they should not enter the thought of a non-abhyasi about any person. If a preceptor entertains the thought of non-abhyasi, that person will never become an abhyasi. This is what Babuji told one preceptor in Denmark. So there is no distinction in the Master's work, in the service that Master offers to the humanity. Whereas when we do some work, we see the benefit or we serve in such a way that we will serve only some people or for some purpose. But the Master said once to me, "Swami Vivekananda says give love unto God. It is a beautiful quotation, give love unto God. Swami Vivekananda is a great personality, he is a very wise man. You know the meaning of this sentence?" Then He told me, "Even to God, we give, we don't receive. After giving, where is the question of receiving? Therefore the service should be to give, not to receive." Then He said, "Spirituality is only giving, spirituality is a charitable work. And the Master goes on giving, whether you deserve or not." Then Master said, "Strictly speaking, we do not deserve spirituality. The Master out of His love, out of His compassion goes on giving us, whether we deserve or not." So we have to deserve that is why Babuji said many times, "We have to deserve, and then desire." Unfortunately we are all doing the opposite. We want, we desire. We do not deserve. Therefore Babuji in his infinite wisdom says, "We have to deserve and then desire." There is a lot of meaning in it, there are so many people whom Babuji or Master has placed in a very high level, but many people fell down. Master has told about some of them. Why does it happen? The goal is not clear. The purpose of our sadhana is not clear. They wanted to receive something from the Master, whether it is post, position, power, name, fame, anything. But they were not prepared to give themselves to the Master. That is why the fall takes place. The Master told me once the reason: what happens in our meditation? What happens in the satsangh? What happens when we take individual sittings? Our heart becomes progressively vacuumed, and if we put there anything else other than the Master, then it explodes and we fall. And then Master gave the two examples: in a chemical factory, if you allow the carbon dioxide to pass through the vacuum chamber, the boiler explodes. And the whole factory collapses. Similarly, if we have anything else other than the Master in our heart, then there is no place for the Master. It explodes. And then you don't get the 100% result of it. And the second and common example - all of us know: 8
if there is a pure white sheet of paper and you put a black dot in it. All of us will see only the black dot, because it is very much visible. Therefore Master says, in Sahaj Marg, the higher and higher you go, you become more and more dependant on the Master, no other system says this. All the systems say, when you progress or you become high in spirituality or the people say that you are high in spirituality, you become a guru, and you start preaching. But in Sahaj Marg the higher and higher you go, you become more and more dependent on the Master. At the highest level there is 100% dependency on the Master. There the question of freedom does not come at all. The concept of freedom itself is confusing, because nobody has absolute freedom. We are all working with limited freedom. I cannot go on the road in whatever way I like and say I am a free person. There are laws, there are rules and regulations, and nobody is ever free. But at the highest level, as Master says, when a person is travelling in a rocket to the moon, everything is controlled from here. They will say you have to eat at this time, they will say you have to sleep at that time. So higher and higher you go, you become more and more dependent on the Master. And more humility, more and more humility, we develop in our work. Therefore whatever work we do, whatever service we do, it is for achieving the goal of the Master, not for our personal evolution, whether it is my sadhana, whether it is working as a volunteer. I heard many times Master telling, there is no need for a separate volunteer sitting, because they are participating in Master's work. They get more than what the abhyasis get. And when one abhyasi insisted on a volunteer sitting, Master said, " If for the sake of formality, you want to sit and close your eyes, just do it. You will receive it." So there is no belief, you know. If Master says, you have to do it, do the work in the remembrance of the Master. Do the service in the consciousness of the Master. He receives it. That is all we know. Master explained how He offers prasad. When I give a sweet, it doesn't become prasad. Not all sweets become prasad. Even if we offer it to Master and take it back, I mean offer it at his photo - it does not become prasad. Master says, When He offers that in the consciousness of His Master the whole thing is charged and when you take it in the consciousness of the Master, it becomes divine. It becomes one with your body, it becomes one with your system. And then we feel the benefit of it. And therefore in whatever He does, He always puts his Master behind it. But whatever work we do, generally we put the 'I' behind it. I used to tell this joke to the young abhyasis in Manapakkam. You know, we put the word 'to let' in our house, when some portion is vacant, we want somebody to come and occupy. And Master says, "You have to put the word 'to let' in your heart, so that the Master comes and occupies. But we add an 'I' to it, and it becomes not 'to let', it becomes 'toilet'. Therefore it becomes very difficult for the Master to come and occupy it. He says, there are places, where you don't want two people, where you want only one person. We have to engage in all the activities, which He wants us to be engaged. And we will get the result, which He wants us to receive. So this is the essence of spirituality. As far Sahaj Marg is concerned, everything else is secondary that we are participating in the activities of the Mission, in the spiritual sadhana of our own personal practice, only for the sake of the Master. If we have any other thought, then we will be where we are and Master will be where he is. He says very clearly, "What is the purpose of attending such celebrations?" Babuji Maharaj says, "People come to see me, but, you know, when they go back, they leave me here." And Master asked him once, "Babuji Maharaj, I don't understand what you say. Please explain to me." And Babuji told 9
him, "Parthasarathi, how can I explain it myself?" Then Master said, "What should we do?" And then Babuji Maharaj said, "When you come from your house, to the celebration, seminars like this, you should bring yourself and then come here. When you leave the seminar, when you leave the celebration, you should take the Master with you. "But what do we do? We come here with all the problems of our home, office and everything. And we leave the Master where He is and we don't get the full benefit of the seminar. And Master says, "If we don't give ourselves to Him when we go from the seminar, if we don't give our heart to the Master when we go from the celebration, then we have to practise years and years and then still we will be what we are. The main difference between the Master and the disciple is this: Babuji Maharaj expressed in beautiful way, in just two sentences: "you are what you are, I am what I ought to be." Are we prepared to be what we ought to be? That is what Master wants us to become, and that is what Master asks for. Just leave ourselves to the Master totally, so that whatever He wants to make of us, He would make, and that will be certainly better than what we would make out of ourselves. Left to myself I will make a mess of myself, and if I give myself to the Master, He'll make me a gem. He'll make me the highest or whatever it is for His purpose, not for my purpose. And with this - I think - all of us will work together with the feeling that it is for the Master that we are partipating in all these things, it is for the Master that we are doing all these things, it is for the sake of the Master that we are participating in our personal sadhana so that His wish is achieved, He becomes happy, He becomes joyful, wherever He is. And His dream is this: when a person goes on the road, somebody sees him and says, "Oh how much glow this person has, whose disciple are you?" And somebody says, "He is Ram Chandra's disciple." And that day Babuji says, "is the best day in my life." And for that to happen, it is in our hands, because from His side He has been giving, from our side we have to give. That is what spirituality is all about. I think I should stop here and give you some time to ponder over and some time to rest. Thank you very much for your patient hearing. 10