CHAPTER X
Mai insists on Rationalization of Religion and Religionization of Rationalism on Constitutional Basis
Jay Mai Jay Mai Jay Mai
582. Religion has, therefore, to be as constitutionally tackled as any modern movement and with no haphazard ways of financing and defraying expenses and no extremities of recklessness on either side. The first thing that I would like to introduce is a license to preach religion with a view to stop all underhand mischief and exploitation. Let there be a religious congregation with all the well-known saints therein, who are interested in raising the general public trend of morality and religiosity by constitutional methods. Let there be a Divinity college as well, where all religions are taught and examinations are held. So much mischief in the name of religion, through playing upon superstitious and mysticisms, will disappear. Such rumors, as that a certain saint rises five feet above ground in the air or that a serpent spreads its hood when another saint goes to sleep or that a certain necklace in the neck of a saint being given as a present by Lord Shiva constantly revolves, will be once for all dealt with, and each saint concerned with the rumor will be respectfully asked, how much in the rumor is truth. If they deny, such denials will be broadcasted to remove people's superstitious follies or tricks of exploitation, or they will be put to tests by such congregations and will be blown up if found to be humbugs. We must have a BUVA BAJI NISHEDHAK BRANCH.
583. It is high time, a distinction should be introduced as " Hindus" and "Hinduistic", the former conveying merely the Hindu parentage and the latter, acceptance of the broadest principles of Hinduism, which should be de novo laid down in so many concrete unambiguous qualifying definitions. The present hotchpotch of believers and non-believers, Easterners and Westerners, Sanatanists (orthodox) and Sudhaaraks (social reformers) has created a great anarchy and chaos. Let all Government legal measures of making a certain type of Hindus happier, be made applicable, to that particular class after a classification is made. That is that true sense of independence and liberty. The rest is only oppression. A particular society has to decide what is best for itself. If you are sleeping and snoring like a paralytic populace, there is little to blame for others, if they take you to be the piece and parcel of the whole huge mass, regarding your beliefs aims and objects and the final goal of your life and living.
The whole essence of my exertions in religious life and preaching, has at the end brought me to a conclusion , the religious preacher in the modern age have simply wasted their life, to fill up a certain site with waters to form a beautiful lake, whereas others have desired to have a dry rocky foundation for massive building of pleasure-hose, on the very site. After all, our exertions are over, we have found that the very fundamental beliefs and opinions and decisions and judgments have been different and even contradictory. What a hopeless wastefulness of life it is, to be consuming one's everything over them that have been holding just the contradictory beliefs !!, on a general assumption that all persons born as Hindus, have certain beliefs of morality and religion !!!
Welcome every family to express his religious and social views in open declarations and help each one to take up one's place in the class where he and his family would be in natural waters, with men, environments and atmosphere suitable for all ambitions, experiences, progress and evolution. Let there be a clear-cut arrangement of each in the matter of his either following or leaving a particular definite organisation of certain principles, beliefs and customs. No dabbling thereafter. If for instance there is one society that believes in the happiness of this life, don't be ridiculing and shouting against a woman thereof, that changes her husband on every birth-date. Nor on the other hand that society should be permitted to cry out cruelty on the ground of enforced life-long sexual abstinence, in the case of a window that has not even once seen connubial happiness, of the other society that believes in mortification of flash and a happy future life. Outsiders have surely no right to impose their opinions. Let each society decide its outlooks, ways of living and practical measures.
Come out of this long labyrinth, so that your efforts may not be lost and your energies be better utilised to enrich the deserving and those needing your guidance. Let that presumption now go, viz., that every Hindu believes in certain fundamentals. Teach your highest mathematics to students of mathematics alone. Don't go on holding tours of mathematics -lecturing to every college, every high school and every boy or girl that comes to you or you can run to and have an access to. Don't exert your whole self over unworkable wooden blocks, which are best fitted to serve as fuel. Make sure first about the Divine or Democratic nature of your disciple before you begin teaching your Geetaa. That haphazard thinking way of "Those that are craving for religious uplift, will take it up." won't work well now. Don't forget that one corroded mango spoils the whole warehouse of best mangoes.
There is a wholesale change in the fundamentals themselves. When one man thinks it is a treachery to be in bad connection with the friend's wife or sister, another believes everyone must have full liberty of sexual pleasure ; when one man believes there is nothing wrong in robbing the rich another refuses to accept any money obtained by foul means , ho can you ameliorate such a society of chaotic and contradictory beliefs ? and how anyone can maintain the equilibrium? There must be some fundamental principles, truths, customs and prescribed ways of living to which each one of society bows one's head, trying one's best to abide by the rules and regulations of the society.
Let all saints and saintly persons and religious minded interested eminent persons, once sit together, with their best mettle, to chalk out some way to save Religion. two saints meeting together to-day, for the said express purpose of saving Hinduism, with the whole Hindu world as a unit, and the general preservation only as a unit, with absolutely no consideration of detailed differences of philosophies, sects, and sub-sects etc., and with no individual axe to grind or chosen people of one's own fold, to form an all year standing Institute will find twenty to co-operate and work with them tomorrow. It is high to make some such beginning of an Institute, with a permanent standing interest of a fully constitutional All India Organisation , with the all year round running activity, with the exclusive specific aim and object of ameliorating and preserving morality and religion, maintaining the culture and caliber and the general standard of the whole nation.
Once such a beginning is made in, however, a poorly a way, it is sure to do its work most efficaciously after some time, because after all Religion is the very backbone of the Hindus, their flesh and blood. Hindus are the descendants of Rishis and sages of unparalleled religiosity. Please don't forget the fact , that none has worked in a constitutional manner, with the whole Hinduism and Hindu nation as the units, in their wholesale outlook , without folds and philosophies and followers and in the manner suitable to the new age , in which new mentalities, new considerations and new situations are fully considered, in a spirit of sympathy, consultation and cooperation.
Please note one extremely subtle point. This sort of work, none can begin except saints. Here, the best worldly householders can do very little. They can only help saints, but the initiative can be taken by saints alone, who have risen above self-interest, are under no infatuations of personal attachments and are universal-minded, especially as it is an upstream task against the natural mass flow and because it requires for its success God's Grace obtainable by living life of Love, Service, Devotion and Self-surrender .
We require ministry of saints, an assembly of family heads and a council of individuals, with volunteers of both sexes to work methodically and constitutionally for Hinduism as a whole and Hindu nation as a whole.
584. Summarising the whole religious situation, this book has been written with a view to give all important information about what Mai-movement is. What are the tenets of Mai-ism, what beliefs the Founder has been holding, what he has to suggest, how far his experiences have approached and mastered the Absolute Truth, how has he worked and tried to increase the religiosity of the world, etc?
In the first place, the Founder is strongly of opinion that the world, any nation, community, family or an individual cannot be happy without religion. Of course, the word "religion" has to be very widely interpreted in a much wider sense than what we have till now. It should not mean any individual religion, nor should even the belief in a God be an indispensable qualification of a religious man.
It should be enough if he loves and serves mankind with a universal mind. The belief of God's existence may dawn later. A belief by itself is nothing unless it prompts and controls you to be acting best with your brothers and sisters, or rather Mother's children.
Exemption from the belief of the existence is only a compromise and a concession. That there is an Invisible world, a life after death, a providential arrangement of Invisible helpers and help etc., that there is the final most Beneficent Divine Mother who helps guides and saves Her devotees - is the personal experience of the Founder which he has narrated. It is an experience which has come down to us since the world began, actually to so many blessed few, who have tried with that conviction to set the world straight. They have well-nigh succeeded. The process of regeneration and degeneration of the world is constantly at work, just as any house since the time it is constructed gets dirty from time to time and has to be cleared by efficient well wishing philanthropic able workers.
585. The Founder wants to make the first exterior form of a religion, to be as simple as can be acceptable by any beginner, so that, to start with, everyone has an admission at someone stage or another, and is not left to be groping in the dark. Subtleties may follow, as the aspirant shows his worth and solid progress. Like the primary education; whether you have an aptitude for study or not, whether you are dull or bright, whether you love mechanical, artistic, or scientific training, you must have been admitted into some school. It does not matter if the work in the primary class is simply eating sugar pills and gradually learning the counting of their number. Lower the depth from which you begin cement filling, surer is your foundation and safer is your whole costliest construction thereon.
The highest emphasis that the Founder has to lay upon is " Nothing can be achieved or attained unless you die for it." None can eat for you to satisfy your hunger. There he is a bit different from the usual routine mentality of hand-folded sitting. He says, prefer being worn out, to being rusted. Even a failure or a defeat is more glorious than the luke-warm deadness and inactivity, expecting others to do what you yourself can do. The Founder is not a pessimist or a fatalist. He is extremely optimistic and believer of Mother's Grace which can overturn the whole working of the world, if She desires. But here too, there is the difference of belief and a reminding is necessary. God and Guru will help you. Without their Grace, you can not move an inch, but it is you who have to lay brick over brick to construct your own sheltering place.
The Founder is extremely hard on this point. Granting that it is God who does everything, and you too believe like that, even then, you are not to sit hand-folded.
Even if you are a worthless head clerk, and your boss works your things, he expects you to be busy at least making an appearance that you are helping him to work and remain in his presence.
While God is doing something for you, you must be in his waiting, and gratefully, and with a true humility which shows you are sorry at heart that you are putting Mother to trouble, because of your incapacity. "Work is worship", the Founder says, " You have to be active willing hands and feet and head and heart of God. "
Founder begs to differ from the general Hindu religious mentality here.
586. Further, the Founder is for slow and steady progress in quite a rationalistic way, just as you master any art and any science. He hates mischiefs in the name of mysticism. He asks: What sort of people and of what stuff are we? If in order to be appreciating a high soul, who has mastered his mind and has attained control over his Indriyas, etc., we need a fool's impossible or impracticable stories!! Even if there be truth in any of these accounts, do not set a high value to these cock and bull stories. It merely shows the absence of the faculty of discrimination and appreciation, as to what is best in a man or what in a man should be considered as best. Mai-ism, he says, is rationalisation of religion and religionization of rationalism.
587. All humbugs in the name of " Choo mantar" should go. There is no higher supernatural power than one that can be attained by repetition of pure and simple name of " JAYA MAI " day and night while living the life of love, service, devotion and unconditional cheerful self-surrender.
588. He is for doing even a little, rather than doing nothing on one hand; and just reversely, for doing nothing, rather than doing anything insincerely and hypocritically without the heart, desire and faith. He prefers a little religion, to " no religion " on the ground that religion cannot be fulfilled in a prescribed satisfactory manner; and irreligion, to a "sham religion". Says he," Refuse to leave on rotten crumbs and Mother will surely supply you the most dainty wholesome dish."
589. He gives greater importance to the inter-dealing between man and man than a man to God. " Be first a man, then a brother, and thereafter alone, a religious man." He gives much greater importance to the formation of character than the versatility in sacred lores and Divine Knowledge. His constant cry is that our preliminary grounding is extremely poor. He takes your practical life and living to be the deciding factor, as to the rung of the spiritual ladder on which you stand.
590. He recommends practice and practice of the smallest things under the guidance of Grace of Guru and Mother's mercy. He quotes so many practical instances of himself, wherein he has been a failure to do a certain most mechanical thing for which he has no practice.
591. When motor buses were first introduced in a big city; it took more than three years to arrive at a stage of no stopping halfway, inconveniencing all passengers just for a want of a carefulness in seeing that there was enough water and petrol while starting. If such simplest and mechanical things require a long practice of years, what about the higher practices of self-control etc. In a word, spiritual progress is impossible for them who are mere talkers and boasters, who overvalue their capacities ten times, who are tired of repetition and who impatiently expect fruits in hand before they have finished the utterance of the last syllable of their desire. Practice with patience and perseverance alone can make you perfect. No choo-mantar can help you there.
592. Founder has studied the whole question of religiosity most ardently and minutely. "Why do we fail, where is our flow " is the most anxious inquiry subject. Where is the hitch? What is wrong? How can it be remedied?
This is the viewpoint with which the Founder has approached the subject of religion. Not like a college professor confined to his teaching subject, but in addition thereto as the college proprietor, anxious about the thinning and thriving of the college itself. He is not for tom-tomming the greatness of Vedas and Geeta or studying the various formulae by heart or for singing the same gramophone records. He is for the original impartial free thinking in Religion.
593. There are certain misunderstandings which are responsible for our inability to profit most, although we have the highest invaluable. To be fair to Hinduism, Hinduism can be made to be the highest religion, provided its preachers give due importance to practice and to the practical impossibility of making any progress without the guidance and grace of a Guru and Mother's Mercy. Everyone speak about it, everyone has heard about it, but the sacrifice and the value is absent.
There are certain truths which are required to be hammered on the minds of genuine religious aspirants. You have the nail, you are putting it in the wall hole, but you are not hammering it in. The nail must go deep, so much deep that one can not take it out. That action is absent. Hammering is entirely conspicuously absent. Hammering, practice after practice, repetition, repetition after repetition till mastery is attained, that is the thing which is hopelessly absent these days.
594. Why is it absent? Because Guru-shishya relationship is gone and people have a rotten belief of "Choo-Mantar ". All that rottenness must go. You go to a Mahatma with some two plantains and three oranges. You expect that your going there and making the offering of things worth less than a rupee will give you a Goa lottery of ten thousand rupees. This mischief which is the most prevalent evil with Hindus must once for all go. It is there because people do not want to approach God or Guru or Religion unless they are materially benefited and that too, to an unimaginable degree. Most of them go for material benefits only. More than these are to be blamed the Gurus, the Saints, the Mahatmas. They never dis-illusion them. The very notion and powerful definition of Religion needs a change. Let Mai-ists begin with the simplest definitions "Religion means selflessness", " Progress in religion means diminution of selflessness.
595. Founder says," Whenever there is any misunderstanding regarding me, which is surely profitable to my credit, but which is an untruth, I immediately disillusion them. If people had such a notion or talk regarding me that a necklace in my neck is constantly revolving, or that I rise two feet in air , or a serpent spreads its hood over me when I sleep, I would have myself bombarded them. I would not have been tempted to let the things to go on, which adds to the spread of my greatness without my committing myself anywhere. " So long as we are not the originator of such talks, let them go on.", "we have not started the story", "where can we go to stop people's mouth ?" - such silent attitude of some of the saints has resulted in greatest invisible harmfulness, to Hinduism and to religion as a whole. If ten birds are drawn in, hundreds fly away, with hatred, from even abstract religion itself.
Someone approached the Founder and said, " I hear, Mother is taking food with you actually sitting by your side, especially on Fridays after midnight ?" "Is it true? " The Founder scoldingly said," Are you a fool? Do you think Mother has no other business to do ?" I have actually seen Mother so often. To that extent, people are right. She loves me. She would as far as possible never displease me setting aside my demand. She will do anything for me. But this talk of dining together is again the evil of the devilish Choo Mantar mentality of people. Better go to a Hindu saint and his followers, if you are fond of imaginary pampering." " You will be overfilled there and happy. " Mai-ism is only a rationalistic religion."
596. Founder says, don't be wrongly thinking that my preachings and teachings ( because they are of the most child-like simple facts and principles and truths ) are drawn from the low strata of society. It is my greater blessedness to talk simplest things.I consider that I have to preach, things which are of the most ridiculously trivial nature, but which I have found hopelessly missing in the persons of the highest plan and education, while understanding sacred lore, religious exercises, etc., and which have an invisible most important influence on results.I am solderer of leakages in buckets. I am for them who can not do without a bucket and yet have no money to purchase a new bucket."
597. The above is only regarding misunderstanding and honest difference. There is, however, a class of mischievous elements, as well. There are people who think, they serve their Gurus and saints by spreading their fame with such nonsensical rumours. And the worst thing is that there are many religious personages who simply live on the superstition of people and exploitation of their credulity hopes and fears.Muslims condemns nothing so much as rumours of untrue mysticism, the devil of "Choo-Mantar."
598. This mentality of a belief in happenings, entirely out of proportion with reason, is harmful, in so many ways. First thing is, it makes you indolent and indifferent. The second thing is, it makes you less grateful. The third thing is, a failure creates a destructive reaction. The fourth thing is, your ideal as also the evolutionary progress gets stuck up in the materialistic mud. To explain this in details: when an incurable disease, or a dangerous illness case is undertaken, Founder has seen even doctors themselves entirely out of proportion regarding the time required to cure. There was a doctor of good repute who was suffering from an alternate day fever, for years together. He came to Founder. In spite of his repeated telling about the said human blunder, he expressed his surprise because he had a fever after he left Founder. He was then asked to keep a chart etc. He was cured within nine weeks. Similarly, in so many cases, Founder has found that whereas patient's people will run to the doctor and phone to the doctor and be dancing with joy at the smallest symptom of the improvement, say, abatement of fever temperature by one degree, here, they expect the disease or calamity to disappear, as a straw will disappear on a slight breathe-blowing.
599. Further again, there is somehow a human tendency which values anything with reference to its cost price. If the cost price is nothing in people's eyes because people have no standard of weighing prices which are not in terms of rupees, "what does the benefactor lose? Nothing" - is the people's logic. People get gradually so low in their mentality that not only do they expect things to take place at the snip of fingers, (first thing), not only do they feel nothing like gratefulness, (second thing), but they get habituated to think most mechanically, that things must take place on doing certain things. They dispense with Mother's Mercy, and gratefulness to Guru also becomes only a matter of courtesy and a lip-service. When there is a failure in the fulfilment of a desire, there is a strong reaction. Motives are then attributed, and the Guru immediately falls low, much lower than even ordinary persons in the eyes of people, (third thing). The final result is, the man simply commercialises religion, uses religion and devotion simply for his material benefits. He does not rise higher than a desire to have maximum worldly and material happiness and minimum misery. He gets stuck up there.
600. Founder says, religious path is only a one-foot wide by-path between a valley on one side, and a steep hillock on the other with huge stones gone loose, and with no-knowing when they fall on the head of passers-by. You slip one step one side, you may go into the valley bottom. You go one step another side, a hanging huge stone may crush you.
Founder says I have seen this. Let wise people with much higher brains, studies, sacred lores, find out their own way. My way is to ask Mother, to take me catching my hand and carrying me, step by step, slowly and steadily to the destination, without being crushed under the stone or falling into pieces into the valley.
601. Now about the valley and the loose stone hillock experienced in my life. If we do not show the greatness of God and mercifulness of Mother, the world goes on degenerating at the most surprising speed. I thought to myself, let us be stooping to meet halfway. Once or twice let people have the experience of Mother's mercy at the smallest approach and the faintest prayer. For some time, it appeared as if that was the right way to pull the world from the materialistic infatuation. I put honey over the bread for the sick child but the child licked away the honey and left the bread untouched. My experience of the world showed me that the world crowded around the man who turned a copper coin into a rupee. Not one began to think of the Great Power, and how to secure that Power and that Power's Grace. Everyone went to his house to collect copper coins to get them turned into a rupee.B y the time juggler bent down to raise the dish to collect donations, on raising up the dish, he was surprised to find out not a single soul was there.
602. Founder says: I have failed in this experiment of showing wonderful results of conversions and transformations, but, anyway, Sahara desert has been moistened with rains which have not gone in vain. If one values his labours as zero, any the smallest harvest makes him dance with joy, although the world may laugh at him as trying to squeeze out oil from sand.
603. The world's greatest blunder is here again. If water is to be pumped out from a well 60 feet deep and each stroke rises the water by one foot, people make the greatest blunder of considering all previous workers that bring the water to 59 feet, as hopeless ones. The last man touches the pump and with one stroke, water flows out. People call the last man a hero, who brought the water but they have no sense to see through the invisible working of water having being raised to 59 feet from zero.
During the time period between two Incarnate saints, there are so many smaller saints of comparatively smaller capacities, but it is there work mainly that helps the future saint to do his work, the best. The greatest human blinder is this. People absolutely forget that they are indebted to workers in the past and they have begun their exertions not from a Zero, but from where their predecessors had left the mountainous work.
604. It is not a small thing that people with absolutely no idea of God, Guru or Religion, get a conviction that there is some Higher power which can rule the destiny of the world and which on propitiation can help one come out of his calamities. Let them go to the Guru, only when they are under calamity and let them disappear as soon as it is over. A time surely comes when people will have sense enough to see," We are going in some hardship or another; why not then have a continued relationship with Mother ?? "
605. Such people may be worldly wise and intelligent , but in the religious realm, they are like savage like people, who go earn one day, most frugally pass certain days with what little they have earned, starve for two or three meals, and then again, go to work, abusing their families, themselves and their masters. A time comes when higher faculty opens up and like a citizen, they get an automatic idea that they must earn, that they must be in some service continuously. Each one begins to realise that obligatory duty has nothing to do with whether he has sufficient foodstuff and money in the house to eat and spend or not. Thus, from the forester's mentality, there is an improvement, and people try to establish a permanent relationship with God, Guru and Religion. And that is the true understanding about what Hindus called," Nitya Karma", like the Sandhyaa or a temple going of a Vaishnava or a Jain, or the "namaaz" of a Muslim or a Sunday prayer of a Christian.
606. People will laugh when I talk childlike things.I will not talk like big guns. It is not that I do not know talking which would immediately cow down my audience and create an awful reverence, but I am fully aware that it leads to nothing practical., except raising oneself to a high pedestal.
607. Founder says," It is easy for a motor or an aeroplane, to round the whole city or the whole en-route circuit, but in the night, it is in the garage or an aerodrome. Not a foot out of its very same resting points." If you speak 90 lies instead of the former 100, it is a gain - a positive and solid gain. If you get wild only 5 times a month, instead of the former 10 times, it is a gain. If you now cheat 10 customers in a day instead of the former 20, you have achieved an improvement. You have made yourself and the world happier, at least nobler; but how does your subtle most understanding about the different philosophies help you, except to give you some intellectual satisfaction, and a little reverence and name and fame??, if that does not help you to be or to make any better man ??
608. Children always want in a drama, kings and queens, armies and fights, gunshots, gaudy dresses, brilliant robes, loud voices and claps of "once more ". Digest for the daily diet is a symptom of internal disease. You can not protect your fields from animals, by sitting over a hillock of an unimaginable height at a distance, furlongs away. You must be in the midst of the field itself, watching every happening in any corner and taking away necessary measure. If you want to repair your motor, you have to lie flat under your motor and if you want to satisfy hunger, you have to blacken your hands with coals and soil and even burn your fingers to prepare your food. None else can do that for you while remaining stiff and unbent. If the smallest thing of the worldly nature is not achieved without the necessary humility, instruction and the mastering of smallest details, without a determination and the persistent effect, how can religiosity, a bit whereof would save us from so many miseries permanently and perpetually, be attained without necessary care, anxiety and labour ??
609. Take it that for a true aspirant, going to any seemingly worthless details is sometimes necessary and even indispensable. I ask worldly people this thing. When a doctor with a rich car and finest suit and having a lucrative practice comes to you (a patient) and he says " I shall examine your urine ", and that to be talked of and examined by such a big man !! getting thousands of rupee per month !! The answer is, we are worldly-wise, but religiously idiots.
610. When there is illness, even a boy of twelve, goes on telling everything to the visiting doctor, till the doctor courteously silences him. He is ready for getting instructions, he is prepared to willingly submit to any discipline. If the doctor enforces ten things, he is prepared to observe twenty things. On the other hand, even the best so-called disciples, almost 90 people out of 100 worldly people, do not reveal one true word of the real facts to their Guru !! In the religious world, people shout out and take medicine for stomach-ache while they know they are suffering from a headache. There is no sincerity and no detailed rational working, no confiding in the doctor and no faith in the efficacy of the medicine itself.
611. Well then, remove all your muddle about religion and Guru. Under Mai-ism, there should be no haziness, and religion is a pure and simple thing, a science of Divine laws, more perfect, systematic, regular and effective and disciplinary that the medical science. Let there be no cloudiness- let it be a clear-cut notion. Religion is the science of mental cure and removing the soul-disease, soul-weakness, soul-impurity. It is more than enough if you have one-tenth of the serenity and preparedness and honesty of purpose, that you have with a doctor when you fall ill, while you approach religion or your Guru.
612. Founder is so much tired of the absence of this requirement, that he emphatically says: " Better no religion than sham religion; better " nothing " than mere deceitful lukewarmness and tepidity; let us not worry about God and Religion till we get thirsty and determined to have them. Let us not be whiling away our time about the Queen and Kind and the Penal Code, till we have some acquaintance with the Queen's and King's Attendants, and till we first know living as true citizens."
613. Let animal-man look and be known as an animal without the religious garb. That animal will sooner or later, someday begin to hate itself and become a man, but that lukewarmness and hypocrisy and self-deception shall never be remedied, even by best of men.
614. A soul-doctor id however much more than the body-doctor. He is something like a mother-doctor. The body-doctor has with you the relationship of money. Here, your being "better"- is a sufficient remuneration.
615. What a pity! I have to be talking about the importance and requirements of the relationship of Guru to Guru !! Even music, a subject of pleasure, and even in some cases leading to immorality, begins with " Guru Bina Kon Batave Gyan." " Without Guru, who would show you the way of wisdom?" But, I judge people from what they are today, in actual life and living, and not by what they know, speak and make exhibition of. There, the whole difference comes. I do not judge a student's cleverness by his fuss of school attendance, his troubling the parents with hundred requirements, with an intimidation of " have you got an idea ?" "your days are gone," how many hours he makes a show of reading, how many notebooks he consumes, how many books he purchases. I will judge him by the rank he obtains in the examination. If he fails, I will give him the very same books and the very same lessons. He must master the first lesson before he goes to the second. He must show, at least, pass-ability with grace marks.
616. Applying the smallest tests, you know where an average man of today is in the realm of religiosity. Only yesterday, a child of a motor possessing man, about 5 or six years old, came to me early morning, and told me," Babaji, see I have these four rupees, may I place them before Mother? " A hot blast passed in my brain. He was seated by my side at about 6 a.m. in my bed. " What has Satya Yuga reappeared? Am I alone a madman to be thinking in deprecating terms about the world? How religious and charitable the parents of this child must have been ?" I was thinking whether I should accept the gift of the child, without informing the parents. The child was told," You come with your papa and mummy. " The child said so very sweetly," Daddy gives me money like this, to play, I can do anything and I like to give it to Mother." I am going to Mother and putting these four rupees there. " I was very joyfully surprised at such inborn religiosity of a charitable disposition. The child went there. I did not accompany. He placed four rupees and removed the silver Padukas worth Rs. 30. He had seen the Padukas previous night. The modern child of an extremely fertile brain found out a scheme in the night and came up as soon as it got up. This one instance is typical of the "Kite -snail world" that is and that is going to be. I laughed and spoke to Mother: " You have given me assurance, there is every justification for me to start with an alpha of Religion and go on teaching the trivial most things.I must go on, even though people may attack me," What new things you are telling us ?"
617. It is necessary for someone to say," You millionaires !! Please teach your boys - removing silver Padukas worth Rs. 30 from a temple and cheating the worshipper with your donation of Rs 4, is a bad thing !! "
618. One whom does this duty and responsibility rest? Who has to teach the posterity, the fundamentals of good manners, humanity, morality, and religiosity? Only like forest seeds, has it to grow ?? The father is busy with black market earning, the mother on getting suddenly rich has taken the fancy of being pampered by relations, friends and doctors as "always sickly "- the richest woman in the neighbourhood, but unfortunately always sickly." She is busy with creating herself to be the central point with a topic of "her richness but misfortune of constant illness", in the neighbourhood and the relevant society. She loves to live in the people's tongues on calling doctors and paying tomtommable fees The eldest sister has fallen in love with her brother's friend, remaining in the house, practically as an adopted son of the father, and she is busy planning running away with him and registering the marriage and returning to sit with her husband on the head of her parents. The eldest brother who considers his father to be an idiot has been trying hard to prove his intellectual superiority by getting richer than his father, on playing in the Race Course, and in American Features, and by trying to solve some crosswords puzzles. he is always out of temper, being mostly a loser, though he thinks himself the cleverest man of all that he knows. What little cool minded thinking-ness, has remained, has been clouded with the allurement of a neighbour girl, who has nothing but a rich husband in him with a motor, in which she has often accompanied him. The parents' friends, if they at any time gently hint about something wrong with children, lose all favour, and practically the doors are shut out against them. The school-teacher says, he has nothing to do, except lessons with his pupils, regarding their character and that the pupils are only for a few hours with him. The teacher further says that he is simply in the midst of many others like them, making an individual attention impossible. Parents complain, or rather, excuse themselves, with " they never sit us for even a few minutes in a day." There is nothing like a small family-worship in the house, to suggest anything higher than self-seeking; there is no family-Guru, as in olden days, who may even just breathe some word of morality or good advice repeating some old shlokas. There is very little now even as kathas of Puranas, and temple going, even for pensioners, widows and widowers. Coming to young boys and girls, their sexual innocence? Brother-sister relation? and straightforwardness - is more and much earlier known to the taxi drivers, hotel-keepers, garden goers and outsiders than to the parents themselves. The youngsters are sometimes unaware about the situation of the office where their fathers are toiling day and night to maintain their luxuries, but they know the marriage registration office unfailingly. Youngsters do not know the name of their grandfathers, but they know the smallest details of a cinema star. The ill-disposition of a Star causes greater consternation than the actual passing away of Saints like Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi or Arbindo Ghosh.
619. One great peculiarity of this age is that the principle of heredity in the matter of vices and virtues, tendencies and inclinations, good and bad points of character, has been denied. Below that denial, there is not any great study of facts. The greater strength under the reason for denial is " we don't want the talk of heredity, the talk of our fathers and our forefathers. We disbelieve it. We hate it". Heredity is studied with great precision by race-goers about the horses, but in respect of man, the principle is, in toto and flatly, denied.
If anyone undertakes a minute study as they do in the laboratories, he will very likely arrive at some truth regarding the principle of heredity, in the above-said matters of qualities of head and heart.
I am reminded of a comic story. One gentleman suddenly got rich overnight, had a son delivered by his wife. The boy had, however, very, unfortunately, his right hand fisted up. The child grew up with one hand fisted up. So many doctors tried bandages and applications and so many remedies, but the fist won't open and remained closed. Finally, the parents began to consult religious saints. One of the Mahatmas undertook to cure the fist and took the family in full confidence, began to ask the whole family history and even the true family-history. It was that his forefathers were well-known robbers, of whom the whole area remained terrified. The Mahatma one day had a flash of the remedy. He suggested that he be supplied with a purely golden bright and shining pocket watch with a pearl necklace having the most pleasant tick-tick sound. A watch of the said requirement was soon got specially made. The son was made to lie on a table, and the Mahatma bent over the child, with the eye-catching watch hanging loose, between them both and just before the son's eyes. The fisted hand immediately opened up and snatched the watch, and down fell a golden ring. On the ring was engraved the name of the nurse that was engaged for the delivery. The first thing that the baby had done on beginning its life, was the snatching out of the nurse's ring, and keeping it ever closed in his never-open-able fist !! That is heredity !!! If you scratch out, deeper and deeper, the outer artificially-created thickened covering, you will find a Brahmin is a Brahmin, a non-Brahmin is a non-Brahmin, and so on. Only thing is your examination now should be much subtler, than in the past age of natural living. Heredity is as true in mental, moral, religious and spiritual qualities as in physical qualities, bodily stature, disease, facial expression, etc.
620. Re : the greatest need for the spiritual aspirant, of humility and most serious thinking, over the trivial most facts of life that go to affect the spiritual living : The Founder quotes a funny experience of a quarrel between a mother and a son, 65 and 48 years old respectively, both in finality, dear-most to each other. The son complained to the Founder, " This old dame gone over sixty has lost all sense. She insults me downright in the presence of my wife and sons' wives, and daughters; husbands." Founder said, " That is surely bad. I will suggest to her not to be so rude." Founder talked to the old mother. She narrated her part: "Every time he goes out he does not remain without running to a hotel. He will eat curds and pungent things and will be coughing the whole night and falling ill. Whenever he goes out, I tell him, 'for my sake, don't go to a hotel,' in his ears only, or extremely slowly, but sometimes, I am unable to run to him. So I shout ' don't go to a hotel, for my sake'; and that turns his head, because of all the family-people laugh. There is absolutely nothing else for quarrelling between us."
This is the whole story. People are big cyphers. They cannot control themselves. They cannot act wisely. The Founder tried to illuminate the son. " Mother is, after all, a mother. Her heart burns. It is she that is waking and sitting by your side when you go on coughing by night. It is that burning which shouts the warnings. But, what sort of fools we moderners are, that we cannot realise that a mother who has created us and served us all her life has at least some right on us? It is no insult. If you feel humiliated, leave off the hotel-habit."
621. This is then what I call extremely poor preliminary grounding. Not to talk about our Puranic Hindu literature and actually seen relations of true Guru and a true Shishya even today. I have read of an instance in the West, where a master asked his disciple to do a certain thing apparently senseless and useless work. " Go and cut a trench of a particular size in a particular forest. ." The disciple patiently did it and went to the master for the next command. "Go, fill up that trench." was the next command. Extreme patience, Worthlessness and practice and test.
622. The East-West modern Hindu has neither the Eastern religious importance nor the Western psychological importance of a teacher. Hindu Scriptures say," The son that expect praises and honour from his parents, and the disciple from his teacher, are bound up for hell. "The modern-er has neither the fear of God, or religion or hell or society nor the subtle acumen of a psychologist. He knows only that fear, which is the most immediately visible and of results surely to follow.
Everything is there but there is a misplacement. The most frequent error is that of a jumble of the two mentalities. The modern Hindu is a saint in midst of worldly people and a worldly man in midst of saints. Founder quotes a funny worldly instance in " Mai Ananya Guru Bhakti." Once a son and a father began to abuse their mother and wife respectively in hot haste while going to the school and office respectively. Each one could not find his shoes aright. Both shoes of each of them were unequal, one large and one small. One foot of each would get in but the foot found the other shoe either too big or too small. She too quarrels and wept" as if I am for taking care of even your shoes!! go to the nearest shop and purchase another new pair; what can I do ?" Their Guru came up by chance, learned the history of the quarrel, asked them all to sit in their places for a few minutes. They were all joyful when they returned to the place and found both the shoes suitable for both of them and laughed heartily. A case of mere misplacement !!
623.Founder says," When I give such simple talks, people think I have no higher culture or taste or higher society. But, I am necessarily talking most comment every day experienced matters. Just have my eyes and see how much misery the world is suffering from because of this folly of mis-placement !! I am seeing the world's of havoc."
Just imagine, if instead of the capitalists saying it is due to them that the poor have their maintenance and the poor saying it is due to them that the rich become richer, the mentalities were the reverse, how happy the world would have been !!
624. If instead of exasperating the world with the teaching of snatching rights by bitterness and bloodshed, high souls had preached efficient performance of duty to all mankind., duties of the high towards the poor and the poor towards the rich !! The whole civilisation after the French Revolution has been a deplorable instance of the said type of a misplacement. there is nothing so superb and splendid as fraternity, liberty and equality, but the whole preaching was applied in the wrong and the reverse way. People should have been taught to extend these to others. They were taught to snatch these as their right from others, while they themselves maintaining their own non-feelingness, restarintful respectfulness and superiority - etc. to their juniors. This was the most injurious plantation of a "misplacement" - It meant "the survival of the fittest". the stronger winning and driving the weaker to the wall."
625. There are certain blunders, in respect of which a spiritual aspirant has to be very careful, as they not only retard the progress but often creates delusions. These are blunders, with misunderstanding and delusions, about everyone speaks wisely, only scatteringly though, Everyone sees so very clearly the smallest mole in the case of others; and especially in them , whom he dislikes , envies or competes with, but is blind about huge blunders in his own life , which have the volume of a huge mountain. Here an extremely subtle point of understanding. When a man is censuring another, although most apparently it is bad, he is actually training himself to be thinking of good and bad points of living, although very naturally he has begun his studies about outside persons and things. That is also a stage in the advancement of a soul. Such a man is on the much higher plan than one who is so self-centred that he does not allow any other to enter, even in the realm of his consciousness. Saints have blessed their slanderers.
He judges others instead of judging himself. He looks for help and consolation and relief outside, instead of inside. He mistakes himself to be the body instead of the soul. He wants to sit at the centre of on the circumference. He goes in for temporary nearer immediate benefit, foregoing more distant permanent gain. He sleeps where he ought to be awake and is minutely focusing his eyes, where he should use his eye-lids. He mistakes his inaction, idleness and his lowest Tamas to be the supreme state of actionless-ness and a proof of highest Sattwick-ness. Things which are shadowed by his "I and Mine". he sees, studded in gold. He begins in Vedantin and Adwaitism when he should act a precise sense of duty and strict observance of fundamental requirements of morality and religion and prevalent social customs. Whereas he should be deriving indomitable strength form Adwaitism, to bear sufferings like a lion, he picks up only the wrong use thereof, of irresponsibility, swollen headedness and looking down upon others with a slight.
Whereas a man should derive consolation and humility from devotion, he imbibes weakness, license, blind faith, irregularity, indolence and silliness. From Divine knowledge, he picks up not long-sighted-ness, but lameness. From Devotion, he squeezes out not the high pure and sanctified imaginativeness and poetic devotional flight of joy, but dullness and blindness. Whenever he should be girding his loins for Purushartha, he sits weeping over his Prarabdha, he drowns himself in the sea of misery and painfulness like a worldly atheist.
He is theoretically aware of every shade of philosophy, and Divine Knowledge and of every emotional spray of the highest Devotion, but he does not know the art of making the right use thereof, in practical life, by proper suitable adjustments. In case he knows it, he is unwilling to be foregoing his worldly benefits and pleasures, as he has to retract his mind, from the sources of worldly pleasures and sense enjoyments.
Further, what he does for others is worth millions. What others do for him is not worth a farthing. He is for showing to others, their vices, faults and wrong judgments and actions, whereas he himself can't tolerate even the distant-most reference to his own vices, faults and wrong actions.
There are again smaller, but daily repeated, errors. For instance, mistaking weakness for goodness, and vice versa, ignorance for self-satisfaction, indifference for tolerance, dullness for inwardness, inefficiency for saintliness, one's own axe-grinding for benevolence, personal cause for a public cause, and callousness in respect of all beings except one's self and one's family, for impartiality and universal-minded-ness. When we think in a wrong way, our actions are in the wrong directions and of a wrong nature. The above are all cases of a misunderstanding or delusion. With difficulty, they can be remedied, but much worse than both is the stubborn insistence.
You know a certain belief or understanding to be wrong, but you stick to it because you have passed so many years with it. Your ability to overcome the continued habit is another thing, but the bigotry is a greater handicap to the spiritual progress. Yet, still worse is the passion which is more harmful than the delusion, misunderstanding or stubbornness. Passions from within prompt you and drag you to do things, which you know to be wrong. Here and in all the above cases, only Abhyasa and Vairagya i.e., repeated practice and creation of relishlessness alone can help. Each wicked weed has to be uprooted.
We wrongly believe, we can flout Divine Laws and Justice with our scheming intellects and well-planned moves. We believe, we can always escape from an emergency by inventing falsehoods. We imagine we can command happiness through riches obtainable by some fair or foul tricks. We consider morality and religion is for faddists, who have not tasted varied pleasures, and are unable to make their way ahead, in the world without crutches. We assume things are going to be better for the whole world, and individually for ourselves. We think as if our sun has never to set. We expect all around us to pull us out from miseries, although we have never helped others, even in our best days.
We do not stop improving our lots and conditions of happiness and enjoyment. We want active possession of positions and persons. We want not only Ananda (joy) but Aishvarya (Supremacy), the Suzerainty and Mastery. Our hearts and heads are consumed in the scheminess of squeezing out the maximum benefit. If everyone is after being God Himself, how can there be peace and happiness? What else can be the cumulative result, except mountains of miseries, even in midst of abundance showered on the world by Most Merciful Mother, or most bountiful Nature?
626. Everything is there. Find ample leisure by accepting a plain-living simple life. Don't make a dustbin of your brains, by allowing all your neighbours to put the dirtiest refuse therein. Let your passion of being considered clever and update-informed, go. You don't mind if you are ignorant about so many worthless subjects. Just open the lid of your brain's box. What do you find therein? Is there anything worth keeping there forever? How many shoes and shaving-brushes, torn pants and dirty collars are there? And the different prices of richest shares and motorcars which your forefathers never purchased and neither the pauper of yourself nor your sons are going to purchase? Think of things only when you have to deal with them actually, not by way of a ready material to show yourself off as a great man in society. Why are you so very anxious to be valued at a much higher value than what you really are ?? Think of the ancient wisdom, most impartially, most sympathetically. Start with an assumption, where you differ, that you may be in the wrong being inexperienced. Where your mind conflicts with the said things, approach you, Guru, place your doubts respectfully, humbly and servilely.
The highest huge-most wholesale blunder of the modern Hindu world is that it has failed to see, the depth of the Hindu wisdom behind so many practices and customs and traditions of the past Hindu culture and civilization. All these details were based and laid out for being followed, on three assumptions, viz., (1) that every Hindu lives his life for spiritual evolution (2) that every Hindu has faith and readiness to follow the religious instructions (3) that each one is prepared to sacrifice his personal advantage for the benefit of the whole society, and to act his own part most nobly. When most of the Hindus have themselves changed, it is no wonder that many things designed with highest practical wisdom, with a particular goal for a particular type of people, with a particular type of belief and faith and living, would be found, felt and proved to be most unsuitable and would look ridiculous. What a great modern double blindness, and impudence!!! We are unable to see that our eyes have changed and that we have been transformed. We have now become individualistic, selfish, with every lustful craving for materialistic happiness, and for all kinds of happiness, without the consideration of our future, worth, or any justice. We blame the old practices and customs and condemn the underlying wisdom, spirit and the goal. We do not realise " It is we that have changed, and degenerated." Don't make a finality of political dependence or independence. Are we human beings or animals or satans ?- is a many times more important question. That is the end, to which the former is only one of the means.
627. Gradually rise from the stage of periodical Guru approach-er under calamities to a continued contact seeking disciple and then, like a caste dinner cook having hundred small dishes to prepare , go on finishing one after another, with the satisfaction of ," 10 done, 90 remains; 90 done 10 remains, all done nothing remains. Start with " I lose nothing on trying. Let me at least fail." " I failed, but now if I put in a little more care and hardihood, I may succeed. " " if I have succeeded once, why should I not succeed ever? " " If I have succeeded in one matter, why should I not succeed in others ?" and so on, till you become the master.
628. The Founder says," I have explained as much as I can, the smallest details of errors and misunderstandings and delusions and bigotry and passion. A huge ocean, within oneself and one's life and living, of all fundamental perversions. What is a man to gain by living in or leaving the world? Or by artificial creation of a disgust for Worldliness, Woman or Wealth?? What is required is the Sadhana of self-improve meant.
Let there be no misunderstandings about theses three W's for a Mai-ist each of them though generally condemned by one and all who talk about Religion, is indispensable for every betterment and spiritual progress itself. The secret of success and the wisdom lies in the most judicious use of theirs and in being the master and not a slave to them. There are certain universal never failing Divine Laws and principles of Living which can teach us the judicious use and the art of mastery.
Founder asks, Is there no immediate attitude between infatuation and condemnation ?? Greediness, lustfulness and darkest ignorance about the Final most Soul-knowledge and God-knowledge are responsible. We get infatuated because of our greediness, lustfulness and nescience. The infatuation makes us miserable and we vent our spite by condemnation. The condemnation has against its reaction. Condemnation results in antagonism disquietude and starvation. Starvation again leads you to insatiable hunger. Have we not heard of long durated austerities-full celibacy periods of deities, immediately followed by astounding excesses?? How can you escape after condemnation of extremely powerful eternal elements? By very condemnation itself, you arouse the maximum infatuating power in your infatuators. Mai-ism says neither condemn them nor be infatuated with them. Maintain your midway -line equilibrium. There is a good deal of hypocrisy in outward condemnation. People never fail to secure the greatest enjoyment on one side and yet to constantly condemn them, in words at least, on the other side. That hypocrisy, any non - Hindu foreigner would be surprised to find in so many Hindus religion professing men. The greediest Hindu is not a Hindu if he does not say "money is only a dirt of man's hand" or that " "even dogs do not smell gold and silver", or "money is poison and source of every debasement". The same thing regarding women and the world. I am not talking of the highest Saints, but some saints would go on abusing wealth, and their followers will raise to skies their talk about their saint not touching coins, although people could see with their open eyes, that their disciples leave no opportunity to make every provision for the saint's comforts, properties and future requirements. The indirect utilisation and direct condemnation; internal infatuation and external condemnation, is a hypocrisy, about which, every spiritual aspirant should be extremely watchful.
A Mai-ist is extremely moderate. He is the follower of Mother, who in virtue of Her conceptional sex is a woman, who in one of Her aspects is Lakshmi (wealth), and who is the world or Universe itself as Vishva -Rupini. A Mai-sit is the worshipper of the Most Merciful Mother, who had received even the burnt up Cupid after Shiva in His wrathfulness had turned to ashes. Mai-ism advises: " No infatuation and no condemnation." Everything ha sits best uses. Raise yourself, by making best religious moral and judicious use, and develop the control of your mind, thought, desire and action, which gives you the mastery and proofness by sadhana and with the Grace of God or Mother and Guru.
Founder asks " Has this condemnation resulted in any solid results ?" "No". The right remedies lie in quarters quite different from those spoken of, talked over or preached in popular strains and terms. There is no other remedy, so very efficacious as Sadhana under the Grace of God and Guru.
The Founder lays highest emphasis in quite a different direction. He makes and insists on the sharpest distinction of wealth righteously and religiously earned and used, and its reverse. Simultaneously with the former, non-attachment should be developed. Inwardly, there should be a practice, which gives you a preparedness for throwing off wealth and materialistic happiness at any moment, and at no time, there should be a forgetfulness of the truth that the desire for materialistic happiness catches your throat after a long-continued period of its enjoyment. You must determinedly and designedly manage for some breaks in the continuities of comforts and happiness, even if they automatically come to you, unexerted for and unsolicited.
The Founder is equally meek-hearted, soft, mild and tender-minded regarding even materialistic happiness, so cruelly condemned by all religionists. Says he "what would be the joy for the sustenance of life for them, that have not been trained to, and have not tasted, the higher joys and happiness of emotional, mental, spiritual and devotional nature ?? Under the scorching triple fires of worldliness, why do you grudge and blame them for indulging in their own only avenues of joy, so long as they don't leave their, righteousness and harmlessness ?? Don't forget they are incapable of enjoying higher joys, and that joyfulness is indispensable for the sustenance of life. Says Mai-ism " Let every one be happy and have the joy of one's own natural worth stage and plane, righteously and religiously. Let the cat have her natural food of a rat. A highly devotional Vaishnavite king, born as a pig with all consciousness of the past life, refused to be killed to return to the human life because he was quite happy with his she-pig and kids and filth-foods.
Act most constructively. Don't be a teacher whose highest efficiency proceeds only from severe caning. Train disciples, followers and people, to seek joy and have the relishfulness of the higher sources. When they have seen and got the silver coin, they will automatically throw away the copper coin. Spontaneity and Sadhana with patience and perseverance is the soul and secret word of Mai-istic Improvement. Lay your highest stress and insistence on wealth being earned and used righteously and religiously, on charity and magnanimity, and keeping virtue, humility, justice, truth, innocence, purity, harmlessness and helpfulness, for all.
The classification of rich and poor is most unstable and mischievous. Let the consideration of your sympathy co-operation and help be on the lines ad basis of a discrimination, as between vice and virtue, immorality and morality, irreligiosity and religiosity, badness and goodness, wickedness and righteousness, etc.
Teach the world to be seeking relief, from other than money-purchasable sources of innocent joys and pleasures, which are so many and with which the world had pulled on for centuries before the advent of the western materialism. Righteously and religiously-earned and used wealth, with non-attachment and preparedness for the dispensability of money-purchasable pleasures, is an extremely valuable asset by itself, in the scale pans of Mai-ism.
If corruption, fraudulence and cheating go, the world will be thrice happier than now, even if it stops temple-going or prostration to Maharajas and Sannyasins or reciting Geeta or going Benares or Rameshvaram.
629. What can save the Hindu nation at this stage is neither the scriptures, nor temple-going, nor prostrations. Neither Divine knowledge nor Devotion, as although immensely efficacious, all these go to help the individualistic spiritual improvement. All these things are best for peaceful periods, and not when inimical torrents of rank materialism are over toppling all our small and big barges. What we want now is agitation and action, shelving all theories and philosophies. Dynamos must be set up to dart forth currents overcurrents. A strong religious machinery, with the most gigantic constitutional and consolidated and continued effort of religious universal minded men, in an organised form, with all the necessary equipment of men, money and material, must be planted. Religious education with practical demonstrations in the lives themselves of the living great can do a lot. Collectively, if saints, family-heads and religious persons rise above folds, factions and frictions and if their units are "the wholesale Hinduism " and " the wholesale Hindu Nation ", success, with peace, prosperity and happiness is in the waiting in a much lesser period than that required by an arms-less nation to throw off the yoke of one of the biggest world-powers, say, at the most, fifty years.
The locomotive driver may let loose his maximum speed, but, if he sees the bridge in front of him broken? There, there, there, the rub comes in. Platform preachers can be of no help. Right sort of work alone can be successful; only if undertaken with head and heart, by saints, sannyasins, Maharajas and spiritually strong devotional souls, as they alone can invoke and command God's Grace, (so very indispensable at the present stage).
630. Coming to the subject of the individual self-improvement, don't have the royalty of having the highest man as your Guru. Such Gurus will have hundreds of disciples like you. " You can't have the benefit of individual personal attention. What are you going to gain by simple hearing " Narayan Narayan " ??
He must be a dullard who requires the highest London-Degree-teacher for studying primer. What comes in his way is his swollen headed egoism. To remove this false notion, just see how Guru Dattatray, the Guru of Gurus made his Gurus. Your Guru need not be perfect. You will never get one, nor will such one accept you in the real sense of the word. It is enough if he is spiritually superior to you and has your spiritual and temporal welfare at his heart if you find that you can confide in him regarding your defects, weaknesses and secrets. Mother help you. You have to cook your hundred dishes, one after another, yourself, and finish off.
631. For acquiring your worth of earning a few chips, how much lost and absorbed you have been with your schools and colleges, your books and notes, your professors and demonstrators? You constantly think and talk about these things alone. You have a love for your professor and you feel there is none equal to him. The home-matters stand practically banished. You act only as a hireling in the house, leaving practically everything to others and not minding at all the trifling inconveniences to you, due to your not taking active interest. What your home, its economy and its details were to you in your college days, let that be your family life, when you are determined to make a great stride in the religious realm. Be prepared to be laughed at by the world. Illiterate people used to call college students "parrot." Let them have their own joy. Why should you have both the joys ??- the spiritual joy and the worldly tom tom of being a great or a good man?
632. Let that mischievous notion of " No Guru and No authority" go. Our life moves with faith. You continue sitting under your house-roof while the rainy storms are there because you have the faith that the Engineer has built it strong enough. You have never seen the Engineer nor gone to study his wall-beam and roof-calculations. You take food prepared by your mother because you have faith she will never poison you. You take medicine from a doctor because you have a faith the doctor would not commit a blunder. You fly in the aeroplane because you have faith in the pilot. You can't move an inch without taking so many things as granted, with faith. What is this newly imported nonsense ?? of " I don't believe things I have not seen ?" You pass your whole life in the belief that your name is Mr. so and so; you identify yourself with that name. Is that itself of your own independent making? Is that not ridiculous enough that, while on one hand, you are vehemently opposed to any acceptance of anything imposed on you by anyone else, in reality, you have identified yourself for your whole life with the name which your parents in their fancy gave you?; purely as a matter of faith. The real thing is, you bring in such arguments of believing only "eye-seen things" or "following things decided by oneself alone " whenever they suit your purpose. And how often, what you actually see turns out to be wrong? Are these two moons in the sky as you see when you press your eye with a finger? Should these eyes, which can go out of order in no time, be a dictator to you about truths and untruths, in their absolute acceptance or rejection?
You may qualify your faith if you like It should not be a blind faith or a credulous faith or irrational faith. You must be free to change your Guru when you find you are in the wrong, but you can't proceed without faith. Service, Faith and Love are very important factors. You keep your practical chemistry book always with you, while you experiment in the laboratory. You refer to it. Why? You have faith in the results and tests narrated therein.
With ample leisure, with a fresh and unoccupied brain, which has been preserved and most jealously guarded against being made a dustbin, with the vital energy of celibacy (to the extent possible if you are married, and to the full extent if otherwise), start on.
Never think how much remains to be done. There is no end. Always keep in mind how much you have progressed, to keep yourself cheerful. Every step that you rise makes you a better man more fitted to claim and command happiness, not only for one life but for lives and lives. A permanent and perpetual gain till you attain salvation. Although the path is long enough, it is this Providential arrangement which keeps up courage, patience and perseverance. It is as it were getting wages not only at the end of the day instead of a month but at the close of every sub work during even a single day. A single step climbed or a single atom acquired in the religious progress is never lost or in vain.
633. Why so much cry against Guru-acceptance?No doubt, there may be some few cases of confidence being betrayed, but the main reason is the absence of humility, overestimate of one's self and greatest reluctance to pay the price in terms of love and service, devotion and surrender to the Guru. When you associate with others, you have the pleasure of being worshipped if others are inferior to you. On the other hand, you have to be worshippers when they are superiors. You are in search of worshippers and therefore the superiority of Guru pinches you. Here to, I have observed my usual observation. People lose their common sense when they enter the realm of religion. One of the Founder's intimate acquaintances, a high-class Government officer, once told him " I hate the very idea of seeing Gurus garlanded. It is a cruel murdering of the principle of equality. My head turns at the idea, a disciple should garland a Guru". Once that friend talked over to the Founder, on returning from the place of long tour of several official visits. The in charges of some places garlanded this hater of Guru-garlanding. he said to his friend," There are very few men of my staff who know what is gratefulness. Such few alone garlanded me during my tour and did their duty. Other people, I hate. They never once thought where they would have been, but for my raising them from pay to pay and post to post." Should they not even do such a simple nominal thing as garlanding their bared-giver, when he goes to them for an official visit??"
The Founder has recorded this instance in his memory."People can't think as clearly and rationally when they deal with religion as they do with their worldly matters." On the one hand, the worldly man hated the man who showed gratitude in the case of Guru's disciple and on the other, he hated all men to show gratitude in the other case. Thinking and judging by parallels is absent. The reason is this. The presence or absence of " I and mine " makes an earth-sky difference of viewing things and holding opinions; the I-blindness, the selfish-blindness and so many types of blindness, rush in most furiously in the religious realm.
This is all the devilish result of "Choo-Mantar" mentality. So much over-awe-strikingness has been created round everything that even the distant-most relation with religion, that it results in people leaving their common sense at the boundary, while they enter the border and in their mostly returning with hatred when they leave religion, perpetually ingrained in them. This is that natural reaction.
634. having ample leisure with fresh, unoccupied or at least occupied brains, celibate vital energy, and the Guru; with faith and humility, proceed on first to secure Mother's Mercy through the Guru. It is not your experience in this world that a multi-millionaire sets rights all wrongs, with money? - his own incapacities, vices, wickedness, uncongenialities around him, bitterness of brothers, rebelliousness of servants, illness, bad-blood, even criminality and sinfulness (through religious costly sacrifices) etc.? As a multi-millionaire can do anything with the worldly wealth, so the devotee with the spiritual wealth attained on practising devotion can do anything in the spiritual world.
635. For the time being, close your eyes to what you are. First concentrate on securing Mother’s Mercy through the Guru. Nothing is so powerful as the repetition of the sacred name of your deity, be it Mother, Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Shakti, Surya, Ganesh or Allah or Christ, whoever he be, getting the Mantra from your Guru. Fire on day and night, whenever and wherever you find leisure. You will come to a stage. Be serving your Guru and worshipping deity in different ways, most concentratedly, at least for some time. One hour daily for about six months will assure you, there is an appreciable change in your outlook.
636. Here much depends on the intrinsic value of your Guru, to put it in the simplest language, the intensity of love between the Guru and the worshipped and the love between the Guru and the worshipped, and the love between the Guru and Shishya and the intrinsic worth of the Guru and the disciple.
Founder quotes an interesting instance in “Mai Guru Ananya Bhakti”.
There was a Madrasi devotee whom the Founder met in a train. He was repeating Shodashakshari highest Mantra of Mantras. He had decided to finish one lac (100,000) repetitions. His one lac repetitions finished on Belgaum station. Founder also got into the second class where that Madrasi devotee was the only passenger (in olden days). Founder was in the English dress and Madrasi with sacred ashes smeared all over his body. One was to all appearance in Mlechchha and the other a Mahadev. The devotee got suddenly an idea that the foretelling of his own Guru viz. that he will meet a great devotee of Tripura Sundari on his finishing one lac, was perhaps to be true in meeting this new man, the Founder. He tried to enter into religious conversation with the Founder, but the Founder curtly replied and began to answer like an irreligious man who had no soft corner whatsoever for religion itself.
On the next halting station, the devotee got down and changed his compartment. On the further stopping station, a man with a decent Rumal turban in coat and pant, collar and neck-tie, entered Founder's compartment and sat by Founder's side. Founder looked in his face and astonishingly asked him," Please excuse me. I think I have seen you somewhere." That man smiled and prostrated to him while saying," Yes, on the Belgaum station". Founder saw he was the same man and before he completely prostrated, lifted him up and embraced him most fervently. Said that man with a smile," Bhaktaraj? Now at least you will talk with me heart to heart. I am no longer that fanatic orthodox Brahmin you thought me to be. No?? ". The Founder attaches small value to the ceremonial part. He thought of giving the devotee an additional experience and pleasure. He began to sing the very Shodashakshari Mantra in Khamacha tune. The gentleman got the proof. Both enjoyed spiritual ecstasy.
637. The point here to be emphasised is that there is an inviolable connection between the completion of a certain number of Japams if done with devotion and single-mindedly, and some happening which immediately assures you about the efficiency of the Mantra repetition. If there is no result, take it, there is something wrong with you; continue till you have convincing proof.
638. When you reach this stage, you have a current account in an International Bank. You can move in any part of the world, with only a chequebook, taking care to see that you do not overdraw and you go on depositing.
639. You are the owner of a boat in the ocean of this worldliness. You have the most favourable wind of Mother’s Mercy. At the helm, sits your Guru, and you are busy rowing on both sides – the Purushaartha of this life and the Praarabdha of the past lives. Many commit blunders here. Many think they have achieved the goal, on getting a good practice of Mantra repetitions. As a matter of fact, this is only securing an equipage, for further journey. The aspirant has simply secured the Mother's Armour and Guru's Shield. The fight he has yet to be launched in.
640. He has to fight a hard fight on the one hand and keep himself fully invigorated with Deity's devotion and Guru's service, on the other.
The Founder gives a beautiful traditional popular instance of a serpent and a mongoose fight in a forest. The mungoose strikes his nail and serpent blows his poison and seeks opportunity to bite. Whenever the mungoose gets giddy on being poisoned, he runs into a deep hole, wherein there is some motherly herbage, which removes the poison and gives him a redoubled energy. After repeated alternate fights and meditations, etc., the mongoose kills the serpent.
Jay Mai Jay Mai Jay Mai Jay Mai Jay Mai
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