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Talk delivered on the occasion of Pujya Babuji Maharaj Birthday Celebrations 6th May 2007
My dear associates in the path,
1. It is 24 years that is 2*12 years (the
importance of the Jovian cycle is well known to
spiritual persons) since our beloved Master has
left his mortal coil and is guiding us from the
astral plane where he is enthroned to stay for a
millennia even as stated by him. His work of
transforming human consciousness continues and
we can effectively participate in the same
process only when we are clear about our goal.
When we understand that ultimate condition in
this system is Nothingness it naturally follows
that his third commandment can only mean that we
can become one with God by our acquiring a stage
of total Nothingness. Master has however
asserted that total vacuum is an impossibility.
It should be clear that man has to go beyond all
his individual creations and shall live in total
consonance and coherence with the divine
archetype to which he/she belongs. Master stated
that “When all my associates gather at one spot
it becomes a temple for me and it is their duty
to make their hearts as the temple themselves.”
(SDG117)
2. It is obvious that only the temple of God can
receive God, namely, a soul predisposed by
grace, grounded in the Path, purified of all
blemishes of ego centricity, transformed in
will, established in virtue which are all made
possible in this path with the aid of Pranahuti.
It has been clarified that Pranahuti works
effectively only when there is adequate
individual effort to receive the grace of God.
It is because of our natural appetitive
instincts, that result in our fallen nature we
are fixed upon the world and then we need the
help more. Without a determined effort,
spiritual inspiration, and direction, one cannot
hope to interrupt the centrifugal tendency which
drags us down and delays the process of our
integration. Thus it is, we have the admonition:
"Gird up your loins”. We have to make ourselves
the temples of God and when such temples gather,
the shrine starts emitting the fragrance and
brilliance and the temples get further
sanctified with the Master in the sanctum
sanctorum. Such is the occasion we are now
having when we gathered together to worship our
lord.
3. Many aspirants feel over joyed when their
minds are calm and silent during meditations.
But it must be noted with caution that the
emptying of the mind also clearly allows for
negative forces and influences to enter and
dominate the thinking of the aspirant. The rush
of thoughts not at all relevant for spiritual
progress immediately after meditation are not
sought to be discussed here. Suffice it mention
that these negative feelings such as violence
are damaging to life whether we act upon them
ourselves or cause or condone them in others.
They are born out of greed, anger or delusion
and may be slight, moderate or intense. Their
fruit is endless ignorance and suffering. We
should remember the Master before, during and
after meditation if we want to come out of these
states of mind. Remembrance of the opposites
suggested in tradition does little good. But
what is more important to understand is that
there are certain seemingly spiritual states
which are in fact negative.
For example when individuals who after
such mediation proclaim that they are one with
Master or God or that they have had Laya with
Brahm. It is true that the feeling of such an
identity with the cosmic spirit arrives in the
case of all serious aspirants at advanced stages
but this condition is stated many a time
prematurely by the uncleansed mind, manas and
intellect. I am only trying to stress the point
that the negative forces are ever waiting to
enter our psyche that is not purified. It
becomes then difficult to guide the aspirant as
he is in no state of mind to accept the real
condition; then work of the trainer becomes
tough and tiring.
4. It is in fact true that we are all born
temples of God as the Divine is enshrined in our
hearts. The awareness of this condition should
make everyone endeavour to keep the temple
premises pure and crystal clear. Our
determination to purify our psyche needs to be
established and then we feel a deep yearning for
that which is true, enduring, and trustworthy or
what our Master said a pinching restlessness to
reach the goal. We feel thanks to Pranahuti that
the realisation of our true nature is more
attainable now than at any other earlier time in
the past. We feel more encouraged when we
remember this promise of the Master.
5. It is no longer only a question of
individuals becoming liberated from the dictates
of the forces of ignorance, greed and aggression
(or anger), as symbolized by the pig, cockerel
and snake. These negative mental impulses
obscure our limitless potential and are the root
cause of our frustrations during meditations and
we understand as the sadhana advances are the
causes of our births and rebirths. Recognizing
these three 'mind poisons' in their subtlest
forms provides insight into the origins of all
spiritual disease and acknowledging their
influence is the first step in developing wisdom
or Viveka. We have tried to present this problem
in a pictorial fashion when we released our Game
of Life. That game has to be made more popular
among the children and youth so that higher
values get enshrined in their hearts. It has
become a necessity for the entire humanity to
liberate itself from the clutches of the
illusory egotistic possessiveness and arrogance
and work globally and cosmically.
6. On the throes of a new Era there is need for
a radical reassessment of the human situation
especially concerning those basic values that
give life some satisfactory meaning. We need
something that will supply in our times what was
supplied formerly by our traditional stories of
religions. If we are to achieve this purpose, we
must begin where everything begins in human
affairs with the basic story, our narrative of
how things came to be, how they came to be as
they are, and how the future generations can be
given some satisfying direction. We need a story
that will educate us, a story that will heal,
guide and discipline us.
7. Our present predicament is that we are in
between two stories. The old Puranic stories
which gave us the account of how the world came
to be and how we fit into it provided by the
religions, is no longer effective. But we have
not got any new story. Our traditional story of
the universe created by God sustained us for a
long period of time. It shaped our emotional
attitudes, provided us with life purposes, and
energized action. It gave some meaning to our
suffering and helped us gain integrated
knowledge. We could answer the questions of our
children. We could identify the roots of crime
and also punish transgressors. The traditional
story of our roots did not necessarily make us
good, nor did it take away the pains and
stupidities of life or helped us in developing
unfailing warmth in various kinds of human
associations. However it did provide a context
in which life could function in a meaningful
manner.
8. But the traditional story has become
dysfunctional in its larger social dimensions
even though some believe in it firmly even now
and act according to its guidance. On an earlier
occasion we have tried to understand the various
stages where the aspirants get stuck namely the
Magical, Power Gods, The conformist, The
explorers, The sensitive seekers and the
holistic super conscious men. The stories of
each of these categories of persons are
different but there is something of a thread
that unites all these and that is why the
society is still in some shape. A few days back
my grand daughter Sriya asked why we are not
celebrating the birthday of Sita the consort of
Rama. I have no answer and those whom I asked
also could not give one. She was in rage that
there is so much of discrimination and she is
just 9 years old! It is a fact that the old
story did accommodate for this type of sex
discrimination however much we try to defend our
elders. Though we know that the Vedic wisdom is
not the same as that of our puranas, our ethics
based on this wisdom is something that is not
clear. Aware of this problem our Master Rev.
Babuji Maharaj has carefully dealt with the
principles behind many aspects of the old story
( refer his articles on Sati, Sita and her
parrot, Bharata, Hanuman, Ravana etc., stories)
and it is necessary that such understanding
should develop in every one of us. There may be
certain amount of similarities among religions.
But it must be recognised that Hinduism
emphasized the ultimacy of the spirit, more
extensively, more persistently and more
intensively than other cultures. Our Master has
stressed this aspect of our tradition where the
supremacy of the spirit is the key to understand
its episodes of religion. There is need for us
to work on this more and help the coming
generations gain an integral understanding of
life where the spirit is the centre.
9. Aware of the dysfunctional aspects of the
traditional story, some persons have moved on
into different orientations, which have
consistently proved equally ineffective in
dealing with our present life situation. Even
with advanced science and technology, with
superb techniques in manufacturing and commerce,
in communications and computation, our secular
society remains without satisfactory social
discipline needed for a life leading to
emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual fulfillment.
Because of this lack of satisfaction many
persons are returning to a religious
fundamentalism. The number of Babas, masters and
avatars being born every alternative day to meet
this requirement is enough proof of this
phenomenon. But we find that this phenomenon has
developed its own problems and in most of them
it is irrationality that runs the roost. In the
old story as well as in the stories that are
being created by these new masters and Babas we
find the elements of magical and mystical
notions of the traditions coming back with a
vengeance and these unhealthy alternatives are
not likely to survive long.
10. The currently popular story of the
evolutionary universe among the rational
thinkers is based on the discoveries largely in
the last three centuries in the realms of
geology and paleontology, indicating that there
was a time sequence in the very formation of the
earth and of all life forms upon the earth. The
earth was not the eternal, fixed, abiding
reality that it had been thought to be. It
suddenly dawned upon us that earlier life forms
were of a simpler nature than later life forms
and that the later forms were derived from the
earlier forms. The complex of life manifestation
had not existed from the beginning by some
external divine creative act setting all things
in their place. The Earth in all its parts,
especially in its life forms was in a state of
continuing transformation. The evolutionary
story has been vastly extended to include the
beginning, the great flaring forth of primal
radiation, sometimes called the Big Bang. The
story of our Master which states that all
existence emanated from the original stir or
Kshob is nearer to this version than those
provided by other traditional stories. In fact
this is similar to the version of Sankhya and
Yoga systems of Indian Darshanas.
11. Without being aware of what was happening,
during the rule of Britishers and other
westerners we found that because our education
was adapted to suit the rulers requirements we
learned attitudes and adopted philosophical and
religious assumptions that directly contributed
to our alienation from the spirit of our ancient
tradition based on spirit. Instead of the
dynamic interplay of the Purusha and Prakrti we
accepted the common assumption of the dualism of
matter and spirit, and the associated radical
scientific materialism that suggests that we
live in a meaningless, random universe. The
great danger of this dualism, placing God
outside the natural world and outside the
person, is that the natural world and the human
being is denuded of value and has become an
object of commercial exploitation. The presence
of the Divine light in the heart of all living
beings is totally ignored and sought to be
annihilated. Sanctity of life thus being lost
now there are no restraints on exploitation.
This resulted in tragic consequences where the
individual person is denied intrinsic power,
creativity, and value, leading to the loss of
psychic energy and zest for life. The divine
resource in us is totally ignored and any
meaningful educational system has to restore
this human dignity of being a temple of God.
This is what we have been stressing when we were
talking about divine resource development.
12. The modern culture whatever those words
might mean has the inherent capacity to
reinforce the illusions that the world consists
of inert stuff out there and that we are the
active agents of change whose role is to get
that inert stuff into some order. This is the
assumption on which most modern education has
been based, an education aimed at giving us the
tools to exercise dominion over the earth. It is
misfortune that our children who were taught to
respect and revere the Mother Earth thanks to
the Old story now due to the dualistic notion of
the Earth being alien to us do not experience
any luminous aspect in their study of Earth and
related subjects. The excitement of existence is
diminished. If this fascination, this
entrancement, with life is not evoked, the
children will not have the psychic energies
needed to sustain the sorrow inherent in the
human condition. They might never discover their
true place in the vast world of time and space.
Teaching children about the natural world should
be treated as one of the most important events
in their lives.
13. Master has stated that the ultimate
condition that we have is that of nothingness.
Here I find that the teachers have a great role
in establishing a deeper understanding of the
spiritual dynamics of the universe as revealed
through our own empirical insights into the
mysteries of its functioning. Quantum physicists
state this dramatically when they tell us that
the wave/particles are so small that things made
of matter, including ourselves, are
proportionally as void as galactic space. Yet
this very “emptiness,” we are told, is full
rather than empty; it is only referred to as
empty because it is empty of measurable things.
The scientists give us the elementary
perspective that; “the root foundation of
anything or any being is not the matter out of
which it is composed so much as the matter
together with the power that gives rise to
matter.” It is crucial for us to teach our
children that what we call matter has an inside
so to speak. It has to be conceived not as tiny
particulate pieces, like very small grains of
sand, but rather as a mysterious, generative
emptiness within which there are interconnected,
minute wave/particles of energy/matter. The
unity has to be understood as the deepest level
of reality and that is the ground of the vacuum
or emptiness or nothingness.
14. It is only when we understand from deep
within that there is only One and duality or
separation are illusions it is possible to live
according to great values of Life and Spirit.
The Natural Path provides for such a realisation
and living in God, by God and for God through a
strict adherence to the Ten Commandments of the
Master. As early birds we need to sing and call
other souls to this great mission of the Master.
Pranam.
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