1. Smt. Dipti Joshi

Namaste to all my brothers and sisters.

This sentence by the Rev. Master is taken from His message, “Simplified System of Spirituality’ delivered on the eve of His 79th birthday celebrations at Bangalore on 30th April 1978.

Let us first understand the context in which Rev. Master has made this statement.

At the beginning of the message itself Rev. Master states that He belongs not to India alone but to the whole world. That shows the all-inclusive love He has for all. That is the state that He wants us to reach. So He has put the goal before us right at the beginning of the message. He further says that He wants all to taste the beauty hidden in the love for the Ultimate.

When we think to ourselves, usually the love for God or towards our fellow beings is not the first thing that comes to our mind. That itself shows that our understanding about the goal or life is not what it is supposed to be.

How did we end up like this is a question that can come up for each one of us?

Rev. Master has stated on many occasions that before the creation was manifested, we were all in our Homeland and were in a balanced state. When all of the creation was manifested, we too were created. Gradually we have formed our own likes and dislikes that are our veils which we hold on to for dear life as we identify ourselves with these veils that we have accumulated over a period of several lives ever since we took form. If we would have lived conforming to Divinity then this problem would not have come up. However, over a period of time, we have forgotten that we are all a part of that divinity ourselves. We have hidden that divinity and have formed our own separate identities.

In other words, we have formed our own ideas and notions of right and wrong and are very content in thinking that our version of right and wrong is the only correct version. Thinking this way we do not accept any other person’s version easily. That is the major block for all of us. This separatist attitude has given rise to intolerance and impatience of the highest degree.

This attitude of ours has not given us any peace and happiness as we had thought. In order to have peace and happiness in our lives, the only way out of this situation as suggested by Masters is to annihilate our individual creation and live in the domain of the Divinity. To reach our homeland should be our primary duty; this is the call of our dear Masters.

Rev. Master in the same message further guides us on how to live life. He reminds us that life is a state of being which should remain permanently, as long as we live, thoroughly in contact with the Being, smelling at each step the fragrance of the Being.

What is the great Master asking us to do here? He is exhorting us to be constantly in touch with the awareness of that Divinity in each one of us.

It is this understanding that we are supposed to have and as of now, we do not have this understanding.

Rev. Master says that the changeless state is always within us. Like a cocoon that grain of Divinity is within all of us. The veils that we have formed around that Divinity prevent us from feeling that subtle state within. He says, ‘It is we who attach ourselves with the changeable. We take interest in it or reject it; and both of these are the links for bondage’.

In our system, Rev Master has stated that as we proceed on this path of spirituality, there comes a day when the real spirit of inner and outer begins to dawn.

To have the inner and outer spirit the same, we have to get rid of our accumulated veils so that we may reach the same state that we had at the beginning of creation. Master has stated that our method brings out these results if we practice it with interest.

With a little sincerity and a little faith if we start on the path, we are given some imperiences which strengthen our faith and give us clarity about the goal.

In our system Rev. Master has said that the past samskaras that we have accumulated get fried up and come up for bhoga and in this life itself we can rid ourselves of our veils and reach that subtle state that we had before.

We do not know the type of samskaras that we have accumulated. So the question that comes up for each practicant of the path is what is the kind of attitude that we should have to go through these samskaras that come up for bhoga. Rev. Master has given us the ten commandments that have come to Him in His superfine state of super consciousness. He has asked us all to live our lives by these commandments. These commandments guide us in different situations of our life and if we follow them assiduously then we can reach the state that Rev. Master has promised us.

In the beginning our understanding of the commandments is very rudimentary. Even so if we follow the commandments sincerely, our ideas and notions get shattered one by one and clarity steps in up to that extent.

It is imperative that we follow the commandments sincerely. As we start following the commandments, gradually our understanding also gets refined. Let us take an example.

The commandment seven says “Be not revengeful for the wrongs done by others”. It has more to it but we can understand at least this much at the beginning so let us take this as an example. We need not go to the extent of saying, when somebody hurts us or harms us in the office or house we should not be revengeful. We have formed so many veils that our mind fools us into changing mundane events in the home or office into something where great damage has been done to us and so it becomes very hard for us to follow the commandment. In such a situation the first thing that you can do in following the commandment is not retaliate. That itself is a very big challenge for people in today’s society who have never been taught not to retaliate. So we will fail in the following of that commandment for quite some time till the wisdom dawns that doing so is taking us nowhere. During this time however we should not stop practicing the methods given in the system thinking that this system does not work for me. That would defeat the whole purpose and nobody but we would be the ones who will not know what it would have been had we followed the Master assiduously. So we are losing out on the chance of finding out what is the state that the Master has promised us. As our dear guide has said on many occasions, we may falter many times and fall but we have to get up and continue without brooding about it.

Our bedtime prayer gives us an excellent opportunity to beg forgiveness from Rev. Master when our efforts fall short of the mark. It also strengthens our resolve in not repeating the same mistakes again and again.

Each time a lesson comes up for learning, whether we succeed in following the commandment up to some extent or not, it leaves us always a little bit wiser.

Gradually, the understanding of the 7th commandment like other commandments, gets better and one may be in the position to say that he/she is not revengeful for the wrongs done by others or might be moving towards this understanding. That means now the abhyasi understands that not being revengeful means one is not revengeful in action, word and thought. Further he/she can move over to understanding the next part of the commandment that says, ‘Take them (wrongs done by others) with gratitude as heavenly gifts’. Initially the whole idea of taking wrongs done by others to us as heavenly gifts and that too with gratitude is a completely conflicting thought. But only after undergoing sufficient bhoga, can one understand the value of this sentence. It is a well known fact that we all generally remember God only when we are in trouble. Now when we are going through the bhoga of our past samskaras and we are following the first part of this commandment; the only way we knew how to react to such a situation was to retaliate, but now since we are somewhat able to follow the first part of the commandment, we do not know what else to do as the only path that we knew we have closed it. So we read Masters’ works to find out how should one behave in situations that have the potential of escalating into a big conflict in our minds and hearts. This way unawares we are trying to be in His thoughts.

After the situation has passed, when we look back, we see that the event that we thought was bothersome to us is no longer painful and we were a lot calmer than we would have been because during that time we were in His thoughts and not thinking about how some person or event has hurt us. This cements the fact in our mind and heart that when we were in His thoughts, the phase passed off easily than it would normally have. So we understand how the event rather than doing something bad to us has actually helped us in remembering the great Master.

We can further understand a little of the gratitude that Master is talking about, that we need to have towards wrongs done by others. Initially we are just able to understand the meaning of the words in the commandment. However with assiduous sadhana, gradually, following the commandment in its true spirit will become second nature to us and we will not have to remind ourselves of how we are supposed to follow the commandment during such situations.

Therefore as we can see, every time our understanding becomes clearer to some extent till we are in a position to follow the Master in true essence.

The understanding that we get, therefore, helps in channeling our path towards the goal. The lessons are taught well so that the understanding can then be not clouded again.

However, many times we see that the understanding got by the samskaras coming to bhoga, is lost and we have to relearn the lesson. This is so because of our insincerity and sloth towards the task that we have taken up.

Many of us join this system without knowing the high degree of sincerity that is required from us. Before joining the system each of us is busy with our own tasks. At the beginning we feel that the meditational practices are just a couple of more things on our to-do list. Therefore initially we are insincere and slothful in doing the meditational practices. The Master is kind enough to tolerate our insincerity and He waits till proper understanding comes for each of us abhyasis. That means our sincerity is supposed to pick up and our sloth is supposed to become less and less as we move along the path. We all get inputs on how to better ourselves and mould ourselves so that we can be what He wants us to be. There are some of us who assiduously follow the Master. So they are very prompt in moulding themselves according to the suggestions received during the sittings and satsangs. However there are some of us who try to ignore these suggestions because our baggage is dearer to us. It is those of us who take their time to mould.

Our baggage mainly comprises of our attachments to our people, attachments to a particular way of living and fear of changing a lot more than one wanted to.

To reduce this baggage, Rev. Master has given further hints in the same message on how to lead the life as Nature wants us to live.

He says that the hidden dictum of Nature is that every soul must live a happy and restful life. We are spoiling His (God’s) world if we do otherwise. We being family people, we must be moderate in all our dealings. He gives the example of the coots and ducks in water. The coots and ducks have a fine layer of oil on their feathers which prevents them from getting wet in the water. He says we should be like those coots and ducks meaning that we have to live a grihastha life but not get attached to it. So we should love all those who are in our care but not get attached to them. Treading the fine line between loving our family members and not getting attached is learned the hard way. He therefore says that life in a family is a life worth having because in it we learn how to love others.

We in the beginning put more faith in our relatives. This is the basic thing which makes us differentiate between people. As we proceed along the path, there comes a point where we have to drop off our superfluous relations. The pain that accompanies that situation makes us know who our real relation is. We understand then that the experiences that we get from our own relatives are no different than what we would get from somebody who is not related to us. Further we still have to do our duty towards our own family members in spite of their behavior. Understanding this and behaving accordingly with due attachment gets us a bit closer to the non-attachment attachment that Rev. Master is talking about.

Now when you look at it the whole basis of differentiation between our people and others vanishes. So why not treat others as your own and do your duty towards them as well. This aspect can greatly help smoothen our path towards the goal and save us a whole lot of problems. Unless we go through some rough experiences in this aspect it will be very hard to understand the non-attachment attachment that Rev. Master is referring to.

For those of us who are attached to a particular way of life or who have a fear of change, Master gives us imperiences time and again during our sittings and satsangs on how our orientation should be. If we mould accordingly it is fine. However some of us do not want to change. For those of us, situations come to help us along the path. As we go through these situations, we are taught very valuable and helpful lessons. It is very tough to go through situations where we are moulded against our wish as they demand changes for which there is a lot of resistance from within.

From my personal experience I can say that it is futile to resist change. The samskaras that come to fruition follow the theory of karma. The ones (samskaras) whose bhoga is pleasing to us, we do not mind but the ones where we are made to change pinch us the most. However during this phase of bhoga, we have to be cautious and not give in to self-pity. Self-pity presents a very big trap and can keep us in its clutches for as long as possible. We have to follow the commandments and keep our faith, however fragile it is, in Master, thinking all the while that He will not give us anything that we cannot handle and that this too shall pass.

When we are in self-pity we know that we should not be so but even after knowing this, the wisdom to come out of self-pity is not there as we just know the words and do not have the necessary wisdom. As our Rev. Master states, “For every grain of knowledge the wisdom required must be at least ten times greater. If that much of wisdom is there, the goal shall definitely be in our view and we shall be inspired more and more to proceed on into the sphere of Reality”. (SS-38) About self-pity, our Rev. Guide has said that self-pity is the play of our ego and we are fighting with shadows. The moment we realize that we are unnecessarily fighting the situation, we should let go, and just do what the situation demands from us at that time. We should desist from thinking and analyzing during such crucial phase because it is our mind itself that has gotten us into this problem. We should just do our meditational practices and continue doing what is expected from us; in other words – do our duty towards home and office. In other words we have to yield to the situation and to Rev. Master and only then we are able to go through that situation. After the situation has passed and it does, the wisdom that Rev. Master is talking about would be ours. Such an incident would leave us definitely wiser and make us one step closer to what He wants us to be. It is only by such incidents that we as abhyasis are honed and moulded.

Our dear Master says, “People do not try to overcome their wrong habits because they would then have to put themselves to effort or a bit of inconvenience. Never mind; be it so. But if they only adopt the right course for the realisation of their object and are prompted by intense longing for it, none of these things shall then stand in their way, but shall drop down like dead leaves. (SS-71, 72)

The right course we have adopted, the intensity for reaching the goal varies from time to time. But if in troubled times we remind our self that the promise of Rev. Master is a better life than we are living right now, not in any material terms but in terms of more contentment, more happiness all around then we will not lose heart and it will give us strength to go though the situation.

One thing to be remembered is that Rev. Master has never said that we will be without worry or nervousness. We have to deal with these two and move on. Masters have stated many times that this is a path of pain. They themselves have gone through this path of pain. This fact itself can give us some confidence that if they have gone through this path have emerged clearer then there is nothing for us to worry about and we can stay put on the path. Even then when situations become hard if we take refuge in the Master then path will become smoother.

In conclusion, following the commandments sincerely, and yielding to the great Master if we continue doing our sadhana then gradually as our samskaras get cleared, our understanding will get matured and we will move further on towards the goal.

I thank you all for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with you.

Namaste.