"Spirituality is the science and the art of remembrance."

The mind is the thing that troubles all of us, now going this way and now that way, wandering where it will. But we should not be sorry for this, because without this wandering of the mind there would have been no evolution. It is the wandering mind that makes evolution possible. So the mind must be there, but its working must be regulated. But it must not be forced or blocked, as that will not help us. Only, we must give the mind work, to keep it occupied, so that it does not wander. And what is the best thing the mind can be occupied with? It is the thought of the Divine. When it constantly thinks of the Divine, then we have what in our Sanstha we call Constant Remembrance.

WHAT IS CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE?
Remembering is not thinking about. Unfortunately, there is this confusion between remembering and thinking about a thing. They are supposed to be synonymous, but they are not. I can think of food without even being hungry, but when I am hungry my stomach remembers my food. That is what hunger really is. I can think of my wife, but do I remember my wife? I think of my Master, but am I remembering Him? So you see, when there is too much talk of Babuji, there is too little remembering of Babuji. Remembrance is a silent activity. Something which goes on inside, which is simmering inside like water simmering on the fire, and boils. This creates longing, craving, and that gives us the motivating force which becomes the gravity which will push me towards Him.

Apart from meditation, we need other processes like cleaning and constant remembrance, to make it possible that meditation succeeds, eventually, in our plunging into ourselves, and finding out that my Self is much more immense than any cosmic universe, or super-cosmic universe outside me. The cleaning removes what I have created for myself as samskaras, which have been pushing me and pulling me here and there, and makes me now do things by myself. Constant remembrance is to keep the mind employed so that it doesn't wander.

So constant remembrance is only a practice to keep Him whom I remember, close to me! Close, in what sense? It is not physical, It is not mental. It is not the memory of the person. It has to be His Essence. Now, the Essence is what every time the Master transmits to us. He transmits His Prana!

THE METHOD FOR CULTIVATING CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE:
Constant Remembrance of God is a special feature in spirituality. The method for cultivating constant remembrance is to think with firm conviction during your leisure hours whether in office or at home, in the street or in the market that God is pervading all over and everywhere and you are thinking of Him. Try to remain in the same thought as long as you can.

We must remain in touch with the idea of God in all phases of our mental and physical activities. We must feel ourselves connected with the Supreme Power every moment with an unbroken chain of thought during all our activities. It can be easily accomplished if we treat all our actions and work to be a part of divine duty, entrusted to us by the Great Master whom we are to serve as best as we can.

The idea of Guru as the Supreme Divine force is very helpful in spiritual pursuit. You depend upon his guidance thinking him to be a superhuman being. If you go on with your busy routine of life dedicating everything to your Master, imagine what good will it bring to you in the long run. While doing a thing think that you are not doing it for yourself but for your Master, rather think that Master himself is doing it for himself. While at the breakfast table, you must think that your Master is breaking his fast. When you go to the office, think that your Master is doing it all. While returning from the office, suppose you see an attractive dance on the way. Your eyes are caught by the charming appearance of the dancer. Then also think that your Master, and not you, is seeing the dance. You will at once lose curiosity for it because your Master's power will begin to flow in, to relieve you of the temptation. When you come back from office, your children rejoice to see you after so many hours. You too enjoy the merriment and it is but natural. Your attention for a while is diverted towards them, and you feel a bit away from the sacred thought. What you are to do then is to think that your Master within is himself enjoying and you shall be in touch with the same sacred thought again. Even during your meditation, if you cultivate this feeling and maintain the outlook that your Master is doing everything in your place, you shall not only be in constant remembrance all the while, but your actions will cause no impression whatsoever, and so you will cease making further samskaras.

Who is it who is following me all my life? If I am afraid, I think it is death. If I am a devotee, I think it is my Master. Master said, "Think the Master is behind you in everything that you are doing. On the stray occasions when you are afraid - for instance, when you are going to a new place in the darkness - think the Master is going in front of you." So, fear puts the Master in front. Devotion put Him just behind. In both cases he must be with us - in fear, during temptation, in confidence. Without the Master we are nothing. Either He must be in front of me, or He must be behind me. Preferably He should be all around me, surrounding me like the praetorian guard around the emperor.

HOW CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE WILL GET ESTABLISHED?
We have meditation at the first step; through meditation we are reminded of our goal, because we meditate on the divine light in the heart. The more we meditate, the more the remembrance of what my Master calls the Original Home is reinforced and the reinforcement of that memory creates a longing in us to go back to that home. So meditation essentially is a technique to create a remembrance of what we come from, where we have descended from - our home, our parents. So remembrance is the result of meditation. Now this remembrance itself has to be reinforced in the sense that from a spasmodic or an occasional remembrance of the home, one must have it in a constant way present, ever present in one's mind which becomes constant remembrance.

What is dedication? Dedication is the state in which our commitment to an ideal becomes total. In the beginning a sense of commitment is lacking. As we progress along the path, the sense of involvement increases and becomes a commitment to the effort, to the fulfillment of the purpose. We begin to remember the purpose of this existence. We begin to remember Him more and more, and as our commitment increases, or rather as it deepens, the remembrance becomes more and more frequent, until it culminates in what our Divine Master has called Constant Remembrance. It is thus seen that dedication is reflected in constant remembrance. The greater the degree of remembrance, the greater the degree of dedication it reveals!

What do we work for? We work for those things that we love. We work for our children, because we love them. Why do we love them? Because they are ours. So we find that we love everything that we feel to be ours. We work for those whom we love. Dedication increases because our remembrance of those whom we love keeps our nose to the grinding wheel, as the saying goes. The greater the effort, the greater the success. I may say that constant remembrance becomes possible only when we take the Master as our very own, without any reservation, and love Him with all our heart and soul. The way then becomes smooth and easy, and the Goal is reached in the shortest possible time.

The correct way of meditation is to get into the condition which our Divine Master grants us by the power of his transmission, and try to prolong this "condition" and by thus slowly prolonging it to ensure that the "condition" is maintained throughout the 24 hours. At this stage constant remembrance may be said to begin.

So, attach your mind, your thought, to that which is eternal and unchanging, which is so captivating, so beautiful, so brilliant - I mean it is an embodiment of every virtue, beauty, blessing that you can think of - then your mind cannot stray from that constant remembrance.

THE EFFICACY OF CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE:
The powers of the mind are to be harnessed in the effort to achieve a state of permanent remembrance which is called constant remembrance and then by remembering constantly we find miraculous development springing in our hearts that we begin to love Him whom we remember. Therefore constant remembrance is a potent, very exact and a very miraculously effective technique of creating in our hearts, love for Him whom we must love, if you are to achieve the spiritual success, the spiritual goal that we are endeavouring to achieve here. So this is the importance that the technique of constant remembrance plays in our spiritual life, in our spiritual sadhana.

Without the riverbed there is no river. So the riverbed is nothing but a channel on which the water can flow. Similarly we have the constant remembrance embedded within our minds as a permanent stream of consciousness flowing from Him to us or from us to Him, over which the rest of our consciousness glides very smoothly, very unobtrusively, without friction, thus ensuring a harmonious, peaceful existence between ourselves and the rest of the universe. So it forms the foundation of our existence. He becomes the goal. We are eventually striving to become something like a sandwich, where I am between my Master below me and my Master above me, totally protected by Him as if a pearl is within the shell of the oyster that is enclosing it.

Meditation is only a process. Constant remembrance is superior to meditation. If one can be involved in constant remembrance, then there is no need to meditate. Now, even constant remembrance has a purpose - to create love for the Master. Once you love Him so much that there is nothing else in the universe you can possibly love, even constant remembrance becomes unnecessary, because now love has taken its place. Then we obey Him, His principles, His teachings - not because it is some imposition of the Lord or some authority that He has established Himself to be, but because we love Him. We wish to please Him with everything that we do. We wish to become what He is, or what He wants us to become. Therefore surrender comes naturally. From meditation, to constant remembrance, to love, to surrender - these are the four stages of our evolution.

MANIFESTATION OF CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE :
When I first read "Truth Eternal" I was chagrined or shocked to see how much Lalaji praised the state of ignorance! But I have now understood what that ignorance refers to, because very often I speak and I am ignorant of what I have spoken. So it is not ignorance per se that they praised but ignorance of what we do, what we say, what we speak, even the work that we do. That is, it refers to a state of consciousness in which we must be when we do all these things. Having done them, we are not even aware of having done them, having spoken we are not aware of what we have said, having eaten, we are not aware of what we have eaten. It refers, in my understanding, to a state of absorbency in the Master's memory or remembrance. So it is really a state of constant remembrance in which we know nothing - having done everything we know nothing. And that is perhaps a state in which the 'kartrutva' as they say, or the doership disappears, because that of which I am not aware of having done or said, I cannot be held responsible for it. Responsibility attends on the concept of doership.

You have to depersonalize. In your consciousness, you must be nothing. This can happen in two ways: you think of everybody else except yourself, that means the self-centeredness gone; or centre the self in your Self, which is constant remembrance. So these two ways you find in society: people like Mother Teresa, selfless service, not thinking of herself, but thinking of the poor people of Calcutta, the refugees, the lepers, helping them - in one way, achieving this depersonalization. Whether it is spiritual or not you must decide. The other is to centre the self in your Self.

In bringing the centre into yourself, you achieve the much more magnificent possibility of now looking only inside, and yet looking outside. Because as Babuji said, by loving Him who loves all, you really love all, through Him. By looking towards Him, strengthening His presence in myself, becoming more and more conscious of His presence in me, until I am so identified with Him that I am no more and He is all, now I can help the universe through only this centre in myself - not self-centredness but the centre in me which has grown to such immense proportions that the universe is embraced by it. This is the spiritual possibility that is available to all of us without exception.

BENEFITS OF BEING IN CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE:
Tendency relates to behaviour. Like we say, he has a tendency to be upset. What creates the tendency is the grossness. A man gets angry; he gets, let us say, an impression, a big impression. This impression colours his next activity, and it comes again without his knowing. The impression is made stronger. The third time he erupts. That comes to the stage where you are what you are, without your even knowing what you are. If you are in constant remembrance, there is no problem.

The moment you are in constant remembrance, the tendency is gone. The two cannot exist side by side. It is only when we slip out of remembrance that this world grasps us. It is like a man, you know, as long as he is in the train, he is not on the ground. The moment he is on the ground, he is not in the train. He cannot be in both. So slip out of remembrance, this world catches you. Get into remembrance, this world loses its hold, absolutely! Clean system and constant remembrance. If the two are there, instant Saint!

When we remember the Master, we forget ourselves. We don't have to make an effort to forget ourselves, you just remember him and the whole problem is solved. We have all seen this with Babuji hundreds of times. He used to suffer but he was not aware of it. His body was suffering. Suddenly somebody would remind him, "How is your stomach ache?" He would say, "Now you have reminded me, I feel the pain." And his technique was the same, he was in remembrance of Lalaji. So he had no problem, in the sense that the problems did not affect him.

Now, we want to have no problems at all. This is not possible. Because we have the samskaras of the past, some of them we have to undergo even though 90%,98% is removed by cleaning. But by teaching this technique of constant remembrance, He makes it possible for us not to undergo the effect of the bhoga even. Then comes the stage when we can suffer without suffering, enjoy without enjoying, we are not conscious of these things.

So this is the secret of constant remembrance. It makes us forget ourselves. When we forget ourselves, we forget our problems, our pains, our sufferings. And at the same time, because of our remembering him, love for him grows. Love becomes established and surrender becomes possible. When surrender is established there is nothing left to do. So remembering him gives us double benefit. Removes our suffering and makes surrender possible.

As we develop, our inputs have to match our existing level of subtlety. In thoughts, in words, and deeds. Our thoughts must be so subtle, even what we take in through our senses must be subtle - we should not hear nonsense; we should not read nonsense; we should not see nonsensical things. So you see, there is the need for total awareness - "What am I thinking now? Is it right? Is it good for me? Am I thinking a thought, which would perhaps convert my high spiritual state to a lower one, by transforming me into another gross level? Let me beware of this." Saints are not consciously thinking of anything, you see. This is the greatest benefit of constant remembrance of Master. My mind cannot think of anything else. If it cannot think of anything else, there is nothing good or bad about it.

So you see, the sole and only totally effective practice to keep us on the straight and narrow path without deviation, without problems arising, without any embarrassing situation being created, is constant remembrance. Because the mind is better occupied, it cannot wander here and there. It is constant remembrance which can prevent my grossness being acquired.

If you work for the Master 24 hours of the day, it becomes his duty to look after you. Now, I cannot think of a better bargain than this, you see. My stupid human brain, my weak human body, my corrupt human heart, with these I work for Him and He looks after me with His Divine Love, Divine Heart, Divine Protection. Can you ever get a better offer anywhere? So this is the secret of working for the Master.

One who aspires to reach the Goal must be vigilant lest his feet stray off the path. How to be vigilant? Is it possible to be in the permanent state of alertness? It is possible. It is constant remembrance. One in remembrance of the Master keeps his mind on Him and Him alone, and this automatically and effectively prevents everything else from coming to the abhyasi's awareness. This is the only sure way of avoiding all distractions and diversions, and thus of keeping one's feet surely on the path of progress following in the Divine footsteps of Great Master.

What you have done in the past, you cannot change, absolutely. It is finished. But I have a right to change my life in such a way that the past has no effect upon me - through cleaning, through meditation. Cleaning gets rid of the past, meditation creates the future, remembrance now prevents me from indulging myself in my fancies. In His remembrance what I do is always right.

The lover sees only the beloved, the Master; listens only to the Master; reads only what the Master writes; follows only the Master. So when you are in constant remembrance, you are only with the beloved, and nobody else. Not even in your thought, because all mischief begins with the thought. So, when the thought is regulated and directed towards the beloved, it is like floating on the river - no right, no left. I am following Him whom I love. He cannot mislead me, because His interest is in me, in my growth, and in my evolution.

If Babuji could work with absolute mastery, it was because he worked in the memory of his Master, with total faith and dedication. If I am ever able to duplicate his faith in and his devotion to his Master, then my work will also be as masterly. So what we do and how masterly it is depends on our devotion to the Master and our remembrance of the Master.

There is a gradation from the Vedic to the Gita, to the Master's teachings. The Vedic is purely mechanical and seems to recommend faithless individual human effort. The Gita says, "Work as a human being, forget the result." My Master says, "You have to work, but forget you are a human being; think of the Master and then He begins to work through you; forget you are a human being, work in His remembrance, then the miracle happens that His power works through you."

THE PURPOSE OF CONSTANT REMEMBRANCE:
One who cannot accept oneself, how do we expect the Master to accept him? Here lies the greatest generosity of Divinity, that it says, "Forget what you are! Remember Me! This is the only trick that I have to teach you. In remembering Me, you forget yourself; in remembering Me, you see all that I am and forget all that you are; in remembering Me you know what you have to become and forget what you have become; in remembering Me you see the glory of the universe, the ultimate or the supremacy of the Being itself which you can become, because I am here to show you that you can become THIS."

So the more we remember Him, the more we forget ourselves, the more His thoughts come into us, the more His way of communication comes into us, our thoughts become purer and purer and more divine; our way of communication becomes more and more silent. Ultimately, we reach that stage where there is no more speech, it's all silence.

Now many people have thought, many of our abhyasis have thought that constant remembrance is a goal itself. This is a mistake because like meditation is a process leading to remembrance, we have to cultivate constant remembrance as a technique, as a practice, to achieve a result in itself. And my Master put this very beautifully when He said, "We remember that which we love, now when you want to love something remember it." So it is a question of reversing the equation; it is a reversible equation. For instance we love a child which is newly born in the family. I love it because it is mine. I love my wife because she is mine. So love comes when there is the mineness associated with that, which we are loving. Now we have to love the Master. How to learn to love the Master? My Master says, "Well! remember Him. Remember Him constantly." So Constant Remembrance is a technique of developing within oneself the love for that which one is remembering. And only through constant remembrance does love develop, and it is love which finally propels you towards the beloved.

"Constant remembrance is better than
constant presence with Him."