“Whatever act you do, do it in the thought “It is the Divine’s command and therefore it is my duty to do so”

- Dr. Madhava

My dear brothers and sisters,

My humble Pranams to all of you.

The topic of the seminar is very important from the practical point of view.

As Rev Babuji Himself had said teachings of Natural path are of the highest because it teaches the maintenance in view of one’s final goal. What is the final goal? Final goal is negation of self or individual self-dissolution or pralaya.

But when we observe life in us or amongst our brethren we notice that the psychic force works in favour of self-preservation and self-propagation. That is why man jealously and with full force at his command tries to preserve his self and all things associated with his self like wife, wealth, and children and secondarily his ideas about these things or any thing connected with self. That is why if any body criticizes us we feel upset and angry because we feel our self is under threat. This is the gross state of man’s mind and how he descended into such a gross state from a pure and subtle divine state has been beautifully described by Rev Master in His commentary on 4th commandment.

From this powerful psychic direction towards selfishness we have to achieve an about turn in the direction, i.e. deep within our heart we have to feel that Master and His consciousness is more valuable than our self. We should become prepared to sacrifice our selfish interest for a more meaningful and valuable goal. This is the beginning of love for Master which has the power to take us to the goal.

Without the generation of this love for Master it is impossible to reach the goal. To quote the Master again “Through thinking of the Divine, devotion and love develop. I will certainly say this development of attachment is your job, and your very important duty. If you do not do this, you do not carry out the duty imposed on every service minded abhyasi and the characteristic of a Fakir and of man consists in this, that your duty discharge gets completed.”

And the topic of our seminar directly addresses the question how to develop love.

By maintaining a feeling of Divine presence in our thought continuously we can develop love for Master.

Mind is a wonderful, pliable and mouldable thing. God has given us the freedom and capacity and will to generate thoughts.

Though it is true that our thoughts are a result of affects of past impressions, still God has given us freedom to change our destiny. Every single thought about Master will mould the mind towards our goal. Each thought is associated with a feeling. The more we dwell on a particular thought or idea the strength of the feeling increases and the more pronounced effect it has on the consciousness. As Master himself stated there is heat in the thought and any thought associated with Him ignites the love hidden deep in the consciousness for Him. I often have experiences of profound peace and complete forgetfulness and total loss of awareness while trying to contemplate and dwell on the thoughts of Master.

This, I feel, is a universal law, any body getting in touch with Sri Ramchandra’s consciousness and trying to dwell prayerfully in his remembrance will feel profound peace.

As more and more peace and calmness percolates in to our consciousness and our practice of constant remembrance acquires a life of its own and it is no more a ritual but as Rev Master puts it is a luscious all absorbing activity.

Practicing meditation, purification, bed time prayer, points A & B meditations, 9 PM prayer, following ten commandments in letter and spirit where there is opportunity for continuous refinement and movement towards perfection, the life of an abhyasi is busy, exciting and challenging and added to this if we seriously try to put into practice of what is said in today’s seminar, our final goal will be ever in view and we march on our path successfully.

This advise of Master about how to develop love is a powerful tool for developing Viveka, because obviously we can not have an attitude ‘It is the divine command and therefore it is my duty to do so’ when seeing a movie, or reading trash or indulging in gossip or irrelevant or banal talk. We will be impelled to move in the correct direction of living in the present and turn our vision inwards towards the presence of Master in our heart.

I have used this advice and it is a powerful technique to mould our mind and which also helps us in getting rid of the doer ship feeling.