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Everyone endeavours hard for it, but only he whom
God ordains is successful.
Sri. M.S. Balachander
The topic for the Seminar has been taken from
Master’s First Message wherein he indicates how he
was chosen to undertake Nature’s work. True, Nature
is an open book; but it opens up at those times and
reveals to that extent required and decidedly to
those who are blessed to receive. Great men are not
born accidentally. They are born when the world
waits for them in eager expectation. No logic, no
scriptural knowledge, no spiritual seniority or not
even the rigorous self-effort or excellence in any
other acceptable spiritual attainment alone can be a
passport for the conferment of Godly work on the
seeker for ‘Inscrutable are the ways of Providence’.
The higher one moves in the path, the higher are his
responsibilities and there is no place for personal
interests, and attitudes and hence less independent
one becomes. This is echoed when Master says that
‘He cannot move even an inch nor take a drop of
water without the Master’s permission’. “ we know
that our Master was structured by his master; this
is half the truth. Our beloved Master has by his
merit of zeroing himself has become the cynosure of
the eyes of the masters of the past and all streams
of Divine consciousness have merged in him and thus
making him a Special Personality is the other part
of the truth” (BP.P.53/Vol. V) It is the total void
and absence of any mask or personality that makes
Him the Special Personality. It is not that all
masters are special personalities; Nature has chosen
Him to take up Godly work and as per the will of
God, Lalaji has shaped him and many masters have
backed him and all streams of divine Consciousness
have merged in Him.
At the back of every thought, there should be a firm
conviction that things happen as per the ordains of
the Divine and we are yet but tools in His hands.
This does not imply that one should remain idle and
take refuge under the fatalistic belief. We have to
strive hard to do our duty sincerely, devotedly and
with determination and leave the results to God. We
have to wait for his grace to dawn. If we keep the
windows open, we may or may not get the breeze; but
if we do not keep the window open at all, even if
there be a gale outside, we cannot certainly feel
the breeze. So keeping window open is our job.
Waiting is an essential attitude in spirituality.
Whether breeze comes or not depends on our
deservancy and will of God. In the prayer given to
us we take to God both as the Upaya and the Upeya-
means as also the end- “God’s grace sets into motion
for him who makes himself deserving of it.” (SS 158)
When such a blessed Special Personality has made an
emphatic statement that ‘I do not make disciples
but masters’ and made a fervent appeal to and
through Dr.KCV that the ‘gurudakshina’ required is
to mould such abhyasis to participate in His work,
what is it that we have to do and how then to get at
that deservancy? What is that we have to endeavor
hard to get at?
1. Every one endeavors hard for it
In our system, Master has given us a method, a
practice, a goal, a road map to reach the goal, a
prayer, a system of ‘Upasana’-with an object of
meditation, timing and duration of meditation- and
unique purification process- with direction and
duration- and a way of living.
The system provides for meditation in the heart on
the Divine Light or ‘Light without luminosity’ with
a heart full of devotion for spiritual elevation.
The object of meditation is the subtlest known so
far. There is an inability to comprehend this object
as it is non-sensory, and supra-mental thus creating
a feeling of helplessness or ‘Kripanathwa’ making
one to submit to the will of the Divine. This
naturally makes one to yield and give space to Him
in our heart so that He will fully manifest. Babuji
tells us “I am there only when you are not there.”
It is for us to hide ourselves only to reveal Him as
Lalaji advises. The ‘hide and seek’ which we play,
makes us to accept whatever He offers as Prasad, and
proceed with an awareness that ‘this too shall pass’
and patiently wait for Him. Yielding calls for
humility, and helplessness. As Babuji puts it “we
know to the extent we do not know.” The more we know
of Him, the more is the awe for His Grandeur, and
obviously the more is the lowliness we may feel and
the more intense is the feeling of dependency. This
yielding makes us to cooperate with Him; this
experience of feeling Him makes us to love Him and
remain devoted; this devotion enables us to
surrender- offer our heart wholly and fully such
that we do not have a distinct work as our own and
everything that we do is as per the Divine’s command
and hence our sacred duty. This makes us perfect in
whatever we do, and makes us conscious of ‘due
attachment’ to people we move with. This constant
awareness of the presence of the Divine, makes us
attached to the Divine single-pointedly, and makes
us sensitive to feel the continuity of His presence
in every living species, and gives us an
understanding that “I am Brahman; All are Brahman;
and all are from Brahman” thus enabling us to pray
for the spiritual up-liftment of fellow human beings
through the Universal Prayer. It provides two
dimensional spiritual growth- a vertical growth
through the Zig-Zag path given in the System and a
horizontal growth through sharing and service to the
fellow travelers on the path.
1.1 What is the Method?
We are asked to start our puja by fixing our goal as
one of oneness with the Divine. This is not a fixed
goal but a receding goal. Our Vedas talk about this
as Neti, Neti. That is why presumably the religious
God could easily evoke love in relation to a
Personal God as against the love for a principle, or
love for consciousness which are less enchanting and
more difficult to comprehend. Dr. KCV eloquently
bridges the gap by clarifying that in loving a
principle we begin to love the author and many times
correlate the Personality with the Principle for
which He stands. Lord Rama is no longer a person
with a bow and an arrow, but one who stands for ‘Satyaparipalana’.
This smoothens the logical flow of thought and hence
we could love our Master and through Him the
Ultimate consciousness since He is the one who is
well connected to the Center and who has measured
the distance to the final destination. “Do not try
to approach Lalaji Maharaj directly; do not attend
to Vasudeva or Lord Krishna directly because it is
said that ‘Vasudevam Sarvamidham’. It will not work.
Do not try to distinguish between them. It is
‘Ashreya Virodhatva’. There is no duality. We must
understand the base and the expression are
inseparable one. “(BP.255-258/Vol.I) Our Master
categorically says the he loved his Master and
Master alone and practiced meditation on the form of
the Master. Let us be clear about the method we have
to practice. It is the method of meditation on the
Divine Light and not on the form of the Master.
Tradition speaks “Do what Lord Krishna preached”.
Nobody is asked to practice what Lord Krishna
practiced because it would be impossible to follow
what the great Avatar practiced and so we have to go
by what He preached. The same logic holds good here
also.
1.2 Purity of thought and content
ISRC strives hard to reiterate the need to follow
the method in its purity of thought and content.
“Even the slightest variation of change can have the
dire consequences… all saw the lake and get
attracted to it that none had a single thought for
the ocean.. By the grace of the Sat guru they did
get the Ocean, but by their ignorance they lost the
Ocean”. (SDG. P.178-181). We are nobody to dilute
the system, to reinterpret by adding our own
personal ideas, and not to venture on some ‘cut and
paste’ techniques from our limited understanding of
tradition. Our job is to maintain the system in its
pristine purity and pass on to the next generation.
When Master asks us to meditate for one hour in the
early hours of the day, we are not there to suggest
concessions only to make it apparently more
appealing. As Dr.KCV puts it “we are no better than
our Master.”
1.3 How to Love God?
As Swami Vivekananda puts it “if I want to be a
hunter, I will hunt the rhinoceros; if I want to be
a robber, I will rob the king’s treasure; What is
the use of robbing beggars and hunting ants ! If you
want to love anybody, love God” (PP20/ Vol. IV) In
our day-to-day life, we have a corrupted version of
love. We love others for getting some favor from
somebody. We are tempted to apply this style to God
as well and hence we have a whole lot of praises,
appeals, petitions and a long list of unfulfilled
desires seeking favor from God and this is
proclaimed as the popular version of Bhakti. This
is only a love of a beggar or a trader. Firstly,
one has to remove the brokenness of love. One has to
love for love’s sake- love not as means but as an
end by itself, an unalloyed love for the Master. We
inculcate the habit of loving Him who loves all and
as a corollary love all seeing Him immanent in each
one of us. In this process, there would be
naturalness and genuineness in love and there would
be universality of its application. 9 O’clock
prayer and message through the 6th
Commandment pave way for this. Dr.KCV nicely
explains the change in attitude if we could feel the
love of the Divine. He loves us so much that every
opportunity is provided for us to grow. ..when we
ask for wisdom, He gives problem to solve. The way
of the Lord is difficult to understand and when we
understand the joy of awareness has no bounds”
(BP.P.269/ Vol.III)
2. What is the Grace we get?
Given us a comprehensive system, in one of the
weaker moments, one may be tempted to think that by
his own efforts he can march ahead. “Realization
cannot be achieved by mere abhyas for the reason
that at higher stage the conditions are such that
even if we are ascending a bit by self-effort he
quickly slips down because of the strong push from
the above. Here Master’s help is indispensable.”
(WU. P63). The fulcrum of the system lies in
Master’s support through the offer of life energy to
rejuvenate and bring in a spiritual renaissance.
Spiritual history is replete with instances that he
requires to be constantly and continuously backed by
the will of the Divine; nurtured and enlivened by
the offer of Divine effulgence. Divine grace is
flowing and is available to all as God is a
‘Samavarthi’ and ‘Samadrishti’. He has no reason to
distinguish amongst us, or be partial to some. Do we
then feel the Grace? As Babuji puts, there is a
Persian Proverb which runs as “if a bat cannot see
the Sun in the day time, it is not due to any fault
of the Sun” (SS. P212)
2.1 How we get the Grace?
”The inflow of Divine grace is possible through the
medium of Master alone”. The Divine Grace is
directed towards the Abhyasi through the process of
Pranahuti or transmission.” (SDG. P 20) It is here
the Pranahuti helps the abhyasi to taste the
fragrance of Reality because it is focused, because
it is a selfless service to a fellow abhyasi and
being so, it is backed by the will of the Divine.
The system provides for infusing of Divine energy or
offering of Prana in the nature of ‘pure thought’,
to cleanse the mind, to remove the complexities and
grossness and sow the seed of Divine thought through
the process of transmission to the ‘Astral body’ of
the Abhyasi and allow sufficient time for it to
naturally sprout and grow thus bringing in a
metamorphosis in the inner psyche and aid in the
process of Divinization of man. The need for waiting
is a must. Master can impart the whole of spiritual
knowledge to us in one go and can open all the
centers and continuously transmit to us. Our
nervous system should not get shattered if the high
voltage current is passed on; We must remain stable
and be geared up to receive the Grace; we must be
sensitive to receive; our hearts must be
sufficiently empty to receive the Grace; we must
know its value and treasure it and not veil it or
corrupt it by non-divine thoughts. There is a time
for everything. “The dormant energies of the centers
and sub-centers are awakened so as to enable them to
function properly. When higher centers are awakened
they shed their effect upon the lower centers, and
when they come into contact with the Divine, the
lower ones get merged in them and higher centers
take charge of the lower centers.”(SDG P.92) The
Universal consciousness or purity consciousness
percolates into our system enlivening our life,
providing freshness and life energy, generating
hope, purifying our energy centers, ennobling our
thought process and lifting up our consciousness
from Pinda to Brahmanda and beyond to satisfy the
inner craving of the soul to taste the fragrance of
Reality. This offer of Pranahuti- for any number of
times we attend the ‘Satang’ or take individual
sitting from the trainer-has been one of the
marvelous gifts of Nature provided to humanity by
our Grand Master Rev. Lalaji Maharaj which was
unheard of in the spiritual history of the world.
2.2 What help do we get?
Since man is overburdened with worldly thoughts and
has become less sensitive to subtle Divine thought,
the system provides for diversion of the flow of
Divine energy from the Lower Heart to the Upper
Heart more as a fraternal obligation to uplift the
spiritual condition of the fellow abhyasi thus
enabling him to get the taste of Reality in the
introductory sitting itself. When Master says that
control of mind is my responsibility, he only
implies this advantage in-built in the system. This
diversion of flow is regularly attempted at every
sitting so that one is enabled to transcend the
animal consciousness and permanently station himself
in ‘Human Consciousness’. In daily practice this is
further facilitated by lessening of desires through
meditation on Points A and B. Meditation on these
two psychic Points is the unique discovery of our
Master. They aid in purification, in purging out
carnal desires, and in developing fraternal
feelings. This enables one to bid farewell to
desires. This leads one to naturally move away from
the wants, become a lesser slave to wishes putting
bar to advancement, takes him away from activity,
from too much of socialization and enabling him to
develop ‘due attachment’ with the world and anchor
on the Divine with constant remembrance with the
thought that He is the doer and we are all just
instruments in His hands. The changes in the
thought pattern, the texture and density of our
temporal thoughts, review and removal of unwanted
thoughts through the purification process and
through the influx of Pranahuti, and a whole lot of
thought identification and purification is a part of
load shedding. This calls for our willingness to
offload, our acceptance to lose the individuality
and preparedness to travel light. In the vacuum thus
created, Divine language sinks in. The Silence we
imperience, speaks more loudly and more clearly than
words. But we are enchanted with glamour of words.
If we could go beyond the words, we have the truth
of silence. Silence reveals what we are not and what
remains then becomes clear. The problem with the
mind is that mind takes silence, or void, or
nothingness and turn it into an object and then
start evaluating the same (from BP. Vol. IV-P.
11-12) and Babuji puts it as “ silence is itself the
seat on which silence stands”(Sruti. P269). It is
this silence which when imperienced takes us nearer
to Him. We do taste this Divine fragrance, feel this
breeze but mostly ignore due lack of sensitivity,
and our attraction for the maze of colorful words.
Instead of feeling happy with what has been offered
to us, many times one complains of what he has not
got, by comparing with his fellow travelers. Each
flower has to grow to its own right standard and we
should feel grateful to what has been left with. If
we do our part of the job devotedly, surely Divinity
will not be failing us as ‘the center is yawning
towards the circumference’.
Pranams.
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