The understanding comes when the seed at the bottom is fried up -- Sri. K.C. Narayana      1. This sentence of the Master in the message called "Simplified system of spirituality" delivered at Bangalore on 30th April 1978 informs that the understanding of the real nature of man comes only after the seed at the bottom is fried up. Master in this message at the outset makes a statement that "As a burning flame of His everlasting splendour, I donot belong to India alone but to the whole world." This affirmation enables us to understand that without the Masters' assistance it will well neigh be impossible to fry our seeds and arrive at our real nature. 2. Transiency is the nature of all that exists is clearly stated when he said in the same article "Things come and go but what lies in between these two is our real condition. Things arise or take birth and things perish or die and what is in between is life and that is the changeless condition. Life continues inspite of the process of death or birth and being lively is the real condition". This state he compared with Blankness. To be lively is not the much imagined jumping and shouting but to be in an unperturbed state of mind. Explaining this condition Master states in this message that "The subtle state of being can only be felt when you become subtle yourself, feeling is there but it is difficult to put in words. A man should have the desire of drinking the whole river of spirituality." The moment we read this those of us seeped in Hindu mythology immediately associate the condition with sage Agasthya. It is the associations of such things as these in our mind that is the cause for our missing the true nature of the spiritual states we have during meditations and in daily life, ofcourse as a gift from the Master. Master continues "Then comes a day when the real spirit of inner and outer begins to dawn. We feel what we aspire for. The understanding comes when the seed at the bottom is fried up." 3. It is to be understood in our spiritual life that there is no outer and inner and infact it is all a single whole. As Dr. K.C.V. puts it "The whole is not merely greater than the sum of its parts but is that which controls and sustains and utilises all parts for its own purposes. (Ref: Vol. II Complete works of Dr. K.C.V. pg 121). The outer exists for expressing the inner and the outer is always many. The whole is always there and it is our attachment to some parts of it that is the cause of the defects in vision and consequent bondages. The parts have their own allurements and when one tries to see a part as independent of the whole and give it some precedence over other parts prejudices starts and that is the origin of the initial seeds of our apparent individuality. That is the origin of our creation. Having created our individuality which in fact never exists apart from the whole we take up the task of knowing the whole through our creation. The activity of chasing the mirage starts and some time some how we feel we were getting fooled. 4. It is then a deep yearning is felt for that which is true, enduring, and trustworthy. We become concerned after repeated failures whether this is after all possible for us. It is obvious that we should live above our own perceptions and leave our habits of either taking interest or rejecting the changeable. This attitude is the crux of Viveka and Vairagya. Master states emphatically that "we should rise above all these if we want to live life." He further states that "Our method brings out these results if we practice it with interest. It is my observation that it is perhaps more attainable now than at any other time in the history of humanity. 5. Transformational consciousness until recently has been a luxury on the planet. A few individuals here and there underwent transformation but never on a large scale. It was not necessary for the planet. Neither the survival of humanity nor of the planet was threatened before now, although there already existed the insanity inherent in the human mind. By human mind in this context I mean the rational and human centred mind, and not the deeper consciousness. This madness has been going on for a long time, but it has never threatened the survival of humanity as much as it does now. It is only when science and technology arrived on the scene which made humanity take the path of materiality with a vengeance that this threat began. The tools of science and technology helped us amplify the effect of the madness of the egotistic mind. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote "The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." So the survival of the planet began to be threatened, and with it the survival of humanity. The planet will not survive another hundred years of the same state of consciousness that produced the external effects of recent history. 6. Spirituality is no longer a question of the luxury of a few individuals here and there becoming liberated. It has become a necessity. Master in the message under consideration states that "People do not know the value of spirituality, because such things are not infused in them by the society or parents. However, the present day circumstances will mould them to come under the banner of spirituality. We should try to give them real peace; that is our duty and our business. A time will come when they will be forced to come to the proper path by Nature herself. It is will be for their own good." This is something that will dawn on us only when we gain proper and correct understanding after we fry seeds of our creation. 7. Humanity as a species must change dramatically and radically or our survival is at stake. The hedonistic values that we seem to accept totally have to be given up. The Kama Dagdh has to happen and it should be a collective endeavour - man shall rise above the animality. This is the seed at the bottom that needs to be fried. The happy aspect in this otherwise gloomy prospect is the path of the Master in which" Reality is infused at the first stroke of will which serves as the seed in the long run (SS291)" The seeds of our creation promoting bestiality needs to be fried and the seed of divinity sown in through Pranahuti in this system has to be nourished and nurtured so that human beings transform themselves first as real men and later as divine beings. 8. The divine being that is being contemplated is not something that we know at present. The best version perhaps is that of Sri Aurobindo. "It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness, and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater or lesser extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform mind and life and body." 9. We see that things are both getting better and getting worse. The madness is accelerating but an acceleration of the new consciousness is also there. However, this latter development is less apparent when we listen to the media. The media still mostly reflects only about what is happening in the sphere of the old human consciousness. We are now bond in the chains of our own narrow thought forms. As Dr. K.C.V. puts it "As it is said of law, that the letter killeth the spirit, so too habit killeth subtleness and freedom." It is the habit of the media to view with its own peculiar pair of blue glasses that kills its freedom. 10. We find in actual life that despair and suffering can sometimes catalyze enlightenment. Many people know this from their own lives, especially if they have gone through intense suffering or great loss, or faced death in one way or another either their own physical death, a psychological death, or the death of somebody very close to them. It is obvious that some form of suffering often brings about a readiness for enlightenment. Some seeds are fried and there is liberation from the bonds. One can say the shock cracks open the shell of the egotistic mind with which many identify with their "me." Spiritual Life cracks open the shell and a tough and committed teacher will ensure the crack in the shell and then the real understanding seeps in. 11. Once that crack is there, then the aspirant is reached more easily by spiritual teaching. This is what happens in the path of Rev. Babuji where the transmission of the Pranasya Pranah or the essence of Reality is infused at the first stroke of will which serves as the seed in the long run. The crack on the shell is an opening or entrance available for the universal to enter into the shell and convert it into the universe. We are suddenly open to it, because it reaches the deeper levels of our being. Something from within not from our conditioned mind but from the deeper level of unconditioned consciousness responds immediately. Often all that is needed to evoke this response is to have an open mind and receive the Pranahuti from an authorized person. That works much better than listening to lectures of the modern day masters and their avowed statements of Truth. 12. We all recognize this Pranasya Pranah that unfolds our being mainly because the original seeds are also within us. That is the divine will. It is true we have created our own creation and those seeds are to be fried. Because we all carry the Ultimate Truth within us as our essence, we recognize and respond to the Pranahuti immediately. This has been substantially proved by the ISRC through its studies on the subject. When we say the seeds are to be fried we are stating that there should be death of the individual network based on the offshoots of the seeds. The subject of death still is to a large extent taboo, inspite of our understanding of the nature of life through the sciences of medicine and related subjects. It is considered something dreadful that should not be happening. It is usually denied. The fact of death is not faced. What we do not realize is that death has a redemptive dimension. There is another side to death. Whether death happens through an act of violence to a large number of people or to an individual, whether death comes prematurely through illness or accident, or whether death comes through old age, death is always an opening to some great opportunity that comes whenever we face death of any kind. I had dealt about this subject in my book PAM and After Life and therefore do not intend to dilate on that here. 13. In the case of transformation of human consciousness what happens is we die to the notions and thinking patterns to which we were accustomed and become alive to new ideas and refreshingly free mental sphere. To name the new mental atmosphere or new thought patterns is to make them old and this is one of the fallacies of persons who are on the verge of transformation. By sticking to the old they delay the process of transformation. When someone dies to old ideas, there is a psychological death. Thought-forms with which one had identified as "me" the egotistic identity suddenly collapses. And when the Thought-Form (notion of our self- an idea- where we grant permanency to the ever changing form) dissolves, always something shines through which hitherto had been obscured by the form. This is the formless One Life, the formless One Consciousness. 14. Death, it should be understood is the moment of form dissolving. When that dissolving is not resisted, an opening appears into the dimension of the sacred, into the one formless, unmanifested Life. This is the Beej Dagdh. This is the death about which Master talks about in the case of persons who are living dead. This is why death is such an incredible opportunity. This is when we really understand our true nature. There is no transformation of human consciousness or real understanding with out this process. It is when Ego is transcended and our true self is seen and understood as one with the Real. As Master has put it, this is beyond words and I can add feelings too. 15. In a lighter vein I may say this is the stage when we can say "The King is dead! Long live the King!" It may appear an oxymoron but the feeling is similar to this as also the apparently contradictory statements like a "deafening silence." It is clear to all of us that what is meant is that the old king has just died and he has been succeeded by the heir to the throne. So, the second part of the message, "Long live the King," refers to the new king. Similarly the old king in us "Ego thought form" is dead and the "Universal Self" has got itself enthroned. That is the time when the understanding is whole, transpersonal, holistic, and cosmic and para cosmic- an opportunity every one has and should strive to achieve. When we arrive at this condition when the individual ego is totally transcended it is common to assume that our will is in tune with His will. The whole problem is that there is no He in the sense of a person sitting up above the sky there in the heavens- heaven knows what it means. 16. As Dr.K.C.V. puts it "The personality of God is unverifiable in the sense of knowing Him as any other sensory object. In fact all law is impersonal, and the world is governed by laws. The question of there being a person behind all laws is a misapplication of the analogy of state-laws and their making. Man's demand that God should be like man leads to the conception of personal God, and it is a kind of human arrogance. A human God is no God. Lastly the concept of personality is not an ultimate concept as inclusive of all other concepts or as most valuable. In fact there have been as many saints and seers who have accepted that the Ultimate is transcendent to personality or person." If that is so what is the understanding we gain after all this effort at annihilating ourself. How then His will becomes ours? 17. The much abused methods of Guru worship are slowly giving way to the way of cooperation and service even as our Master willed. The old concept of Gurudom is based upon the idea of hierarchies of power and control. The system of hierarchy was developed in medieval times when the leaders were those who had, basically, slaughtered their way to the top and then created a hierarchical class/ caste system in order to choke off the competition and exploit as many innocents as possible. Today, hierarchy, as a concept, is becoming rapidly redundant. In the New Era of our Master I am sure the concept of Gurudom will collapse. But I am not sure whether the need for the same in education and training can be dispensed with soon. 18. When the understanding arises the guru is born. Such a guru is now to be understood as a facilitator or a catalyst. This understanding should emerge in the persons who gain access to universal consciousness. This aspect I tried to explain else where particularly more so in the context of preparing spiritual teachers. A facilitator is a specialist who helps us achieve a specialized goal in education and spiritual development. Their task is to provide us with the resources that we need. Once we have gained the desired knowledge and/or skill, there is no need to remain with the facilitator because the task is now complete. That is when one is ready to be a master or guru so that the eternal stream of divine will and divine understanding flows perennially. I plead with all that it is not enough to have a dip in the holy divine stream of Pranahuti but we should all aspire to carry the stream with and through us wherever we go, what ever we think and do. My Master used to say that we should be walking temples but I prefer to say we should be moving, torrential currents of the divine sweeping our way through humanity removing all the dirt and debris we have all gathered and washing it off in the vast ocean of purity where impurity is not a fact of existence. That is where all impurities get purified and the divine ocean will be sweeter than the milky ocean conceived by our ancestors. It is then we understand what our Master said about himself that "he is the blessing splendour". Such an understanding is what we gain when the seeds are fried and the question of inner and outer does not arise and then all (?) is One. Then the perfect understanding as stated by the Master "As a matter of fact the universe is the manifestation of time or avakasa and God that of Akasa or space. The inner circle led to the creation of God and the outer to the creation of the Universe…If the outer covering gets dissolved along with the intermediary portion as it happens at the time of Maha Pralaya only Akasa or space remains. That is to say that the identity transforms into Akasa or in other words the identity itself Akasa."(SS 311) This is the real understanding that we gain after all sadhana though the prospects of having this condition comes to aspirants very early. Pranam.