"Our daily life must be conducted in such fashion that
we are perpetually sunk in the condition
granted to us by the Master."

Sahaj Marg is to be looked at, as a road that the Master has laid for us. We can say it is a royal road through life. A journey is nothing but travel from the starting point to the destination and all that we see on the way is nothing but scenery, some good scenery, some bad, some difficult, some easy. Similarly life should be looked upon as nothing but a field of events and circumstances through which we pass, and if there is an easy road, accessible to all, that life can have as little impact or difficulty for us as when we motor on the autobahn from one place to the other.

So what is life? Because some people say, "Life is difficult," some people say, "Life is easy," some people say, "Life is enjoyable." Life can be all this, but life need not be any of this. Life is difficult or easy depending on whether you walk across it or run across it. And wisdom says take the easiest way through it. And the difficulty starts when we get out of our cars and start wandering around, taking a swim, plunging into the depths. Then, we find that life is a mixture.

You have seen school boys sometimes, in villages, going to school. In India they walk, of course, sometimes five, six kilometres. Some never reach school because there are the mango trees, the tamarind trees, every little distraction stops them on the way, and most children reach school only after lunch time; but inevitably when coming home, they rush fast, because it will be dark. So that is another lesson for us, you see, that if we are going to be distracted by every small thing which is on the way, we are never going to reach our destination.

So if we look at life as a fixed scene of events, circumstances, hurdles, then we will see that they really have no attraction. It is we who endow them with attraction. Nature has nothing beautiful or ugly. That is why you can see sometimes four people traveling together in one car: one becomes crazy when he sees a lake, another becomes crazy when he sees a mountain, the fourth becomes crazy when he sees a restaurant, etc. Which of these are really attractive nobody can say, because it is how we react to these scenes that makes it attractive, or non-attractive.

SET PRIORITIES:
We have several types of problems. What we mean by problem is where moral issues are involved, generally. I don't mean what we understand normally by moral situations, but where there is a conflict between two interests, between two choices. And this can be quite confusing, because even in small things like whether we should attend a party or go to a sitting for meditation this sort of choice can arise. Problems don't have to be big to defeat us. They can be even small ones.

So if you analyse this sort of situation, we find it is generally the conflict between an external fulfillment and an internal fulfillment. The difficulty is that the external fulfillment is easy and we see it before our eyes, we can feel it, touch it sometimes - the inner things like growth, like spiritual development, they are so intangible, and we cannot see them or feel them. Therefore we find this conflict starts even from childhood. Because children, for instance, have this problem of whether to go to school or to play. But when we are young, and even when we are in our youth, fortunately we have the guidance of those who are older and wiser than ourselves, and generally all that is necessary is to be obedient.

But when we become independent, the whole problem starts. Because now we have to decide for ourselves what is right and what should be done. I think one of the reasons why childhood and youth are so happy, is precisely because we don't have to decide what to do; the decision is taken by others. When we grow up, then starts the dilemma.

So you see, we have a big price to pay for being independent. Therefore, growing up is a process of maturity - mental maturity, emotional maturity, both. And of course, if these two are there, and we are blessed by a good education and by a good family background of training, then the probability of a moral maturity is much more than otherwise. That is why the right training, the right environment in childhood and youth, are so important. And if the proper emotional and educational atmosphere is given to us at that stage of life, our inner equipment becomes so sound and perfect that we have no problems, or very little problems.

HOW TO PERFORM OUR DUTIES IN OUR OFFICES?
Most people, go to office, what they cannot solve, they put off: "We will look after it later. Let us solve all the easy problems first - easier files, easier papers." What happens is, the hard ones always remain at the table; tomorrow it becomes harder, the day after tomorrow it becomes almost impossible to do it.

After I came to Master in 1964, I was able to do more and yet I had more time on my hands. It's from my personal experience that I am telling you this. What is the secret you know? I have evolved a method that I take up the most difficult piece of work first in the morning. Everybody does the opposite. They start with the easiest, and by the time they have finished ten items of work, they are too tired, "Oh, oh, this is too difficult for today, we will take it tomorrow." Tomorrow, it's even more difficult, you see.

Behaviour towards the higher officers should be such that he does not feel the principle of subordination being violated. Whatever is available in return should be considered as coming from God.

SHOULD WE NOT MAKE MONEY?
We have to fly on two wings - which is the Master's instructions - we cannot give up this life. Nor can we ever give it up because, you may not earn money, but you still have to eat and eating is a part of this life, defecating is part of this life, procreating is part of this life. Well, who is going to stop all these things? We minimise it to the necessary level, optimum level, as we call it.

Please remember the poor man is punished with poverty and the rich man is punished with riches. Both are bhoga of their respective samskaras. You are a slave of your riches as he is a slave of his poverty. You have no choice! Can you stop making money?
Make money, by all means. Make it honestly. It doesn't matter if you make a million crores but, for yourself, you shall only keep as much as you need; let the rest flow. This is the ultimate law of handling of resources.

So you see, we must now come to the question or rather the wisdom of acquiring just enough for our purpose, whether it be of power, or knowledge, or wealth, anything. "Do I have enough? Do I have enough of intelligence to go through my life, so that I can earn enough money to live a life in which I can meditate and progress on my spiritual path?" If the answer is yes, then stop all other activities.

So, God does not want us to become paupers to reach Him; He wants us to be honest to reach him. He does not want us to be hypocrites to reach Him; He wants us to be loving to reach Him. You must treat wealth like a river. Take as much of it as you need, and then use the rest for the benefit of your brothers and sisters. That is the right way.

There is no harm in earning money, being a king, being an emperor, so long as your morals, your right living, your right conduct, are established in you, and then your destiny makes you a king or an emperor and at the same time you are a saint. Raja Janaka was perhaps only example of that sort of existence, a Raja Rishi where the two meet - the material excellence and the spiritual excellence or eminence.

DONATIONS:
You should not donate even one naya-paisa if you cannot afford it. Because the duty to yourself, to your family is of paramount importance. And anyone who beggars himself or his family on the stupid assumption that Dharma is the most important, is denying that Dharma to his own family. Charity begins essentially at home, always at home, inevitably at home. So in the Sahaj Marg tradition there is no call, no permission of the Master to deny yourself and donate to the Mission. Please remember this. Abhyasis should also bear this in mind. And in those days, Babuji had somehow made a rule that nobody's donation will be accepted which is in excess of one percent of his income and, in some cases where he knew people were really rich, he said six percent, no more.

The idea that we are donating for a Mission and for an Ashram is a bad idea. You set yourself apart as a giver to the Mission, which is dependent upon you and you make your Master into some sort of a beggar, however elevated He may be spiritually - a saintly beggar. If you think that it is your Mission, it is your Master, it is His plant, therefore it is yours, then there is no sacrifice, there is no giving. You are only watering your own plant. Who should give you credit for it?

To think that my Master depends on me, on my donation could very possibly be a sin. Masters exist in a dimension where money does not play any part. Whenever he makes us donate something, he does it to lighten our burdens. Our contributions to our Master's work is perhaps of the same proportion as the squirrel's contribution to Lord Rama's work. What ennobled their work was that they did it with love for the Lord, not out of a sense of helping him. Who are we to help the Lord? But they did it out of a sense of participation, like children participating in the work. Out of love, you see, participation out of love.

If he allows us to participate, it is out of His magnanimity, His love for us, to make us participate, so that, by participating, we become welded into one, we become His family by participation. We have to become children of the Master. The right way of giving is not to give but to participate. We don't ask for money; but everybody contributes.

DESIRES LEAD TO SELF-DESTRUCTION:
Our prayer says, "Our desires are putting bar to our advancement" because every desire is a hold we have on life - not on the present life but on the future life. We have enough holds from the past - our samskaras. We have created enough holds in the present as a result of those samskaras. What is a wish? It is the most dangerous thing because I am creating a hold over the future. So, not being satisfied with the past and the present, I am creating a burden for the future. It is like mortgaging my land or my house; some day that fellow is going to come and put a noose around my neck.

So, experience teaches us that the more we indulge, the more we want to indulge. In the Oriental philosophies we say it is like adding oil to a fire. One cannot put out a fire by pouring more petrol on it. To put it very bluntly, desire feeds on desire. Or you can say, desire is the fuel for more desires. So there is no such thing as finishing with desires once and for all, you see, it doesn't happen. And if you go by the experience of many old people who have been disillusioned by this very sort of approach to life, they will tell you that all their life they have indulged in their desires, but it has not stopped. And the funny thing is that even then desire persists. This is not profound truth, everybody knows this.

In the Gita, you know, we have a famous quartet which puts this in a very beautiful, small way. It says; when we are not alert, desire comes up; and when desire is not fulfilled, anger comes from it; when the anger exceeds its limits, the human being loses his power of reasoning; and when that happens, that is, when the power of reasoning is lost, he or she destroys himself or herself. So if you shorten the equation; desire leads to self-destruction; if desire is not fulfilled, it leads to loss of intelligence, loss of the ability to discriminate, and we destroy ourselves. So, do not have wishes. Because wishes lead to action, action leads to result, and that leads to another samskara.

Some people ask, "Is not the desire for spiritual growth a desire?" My Master gave two answers. At one place he said, "It is the only desire which is permitted." In another place he said, "It is not a desire, because growth is a natural thing and a natural law." So it cannot be a bad thing to desire growth, because we are following Nature in that.
"Desire is like fire - it demands more and more fuel to keep itself burning."

NEEDS AND WANTS:
Many have a need, as they imagine, for money or power or position. For all these things they look below and the consequences are tragic. We delude ourselves with the idea of greatness, or power, or position, and remain here as merely human beings with the lowest of aspirations, searching for them in lowest of planes of existence.

My Master teaches, "It is He, and He alone, the Master of calibre, who can grant us what we need to cross this ocean of human existence and reach the other shore safely". Therefore, it is wisdom to look to Him, and to Him alone for needs. Our wants lead us astray. We have to distinguish between "needs" and "wants", He provides our needs. We have to give up our desires which must be abandoned in our aspiration for the higher life, in our progress towards the goal.

HABITS ENSLAVE US:
A man who gets drunk and goes on getting drunk is a slave to his drink, he is not free. That is why habits enslave us. As I used to say jokingly to Babuji Maharaj, "I am a slave of good habits. I wake up at five. I cannot wake up at seven, you see, unless I am sick, "So I am a slave of a good habit, somebody is a slave of a bad habit, so habits per se enslave us.

So Babuji had no habits, except his one habit which he told me himself, of the hookah. He said, "That is my only habit." He didn't say, "bad habit" or "good habit" and that was good, you see, because when everything enslaves us, how can a good habit be good if I am going to be a slave of it? So there are no things such as good habits and bad habits, there are only habits. And all habits make us slaves.

THOUGHTS - POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE:
Thought is the rust of reality. The basis of words is thought alone. If thoughts are pure, the words will be pure and effective.

If I choose to think that I am a pig, I am a pig. If I choose to think I am God, I am God - in a sense. At this level of human being, we are what we are, or we are what we think we are. Therefore the power of thought. Babuji Maharaj always emphasised the need for positive thought, completely eschewing the negative side. That is the way of building ourselves by the power of thought.

When you are always afraid, that which you are afraid of is coming nearer and nearer to you. A man who is afraid of dogs and is walking on the street, every dog in the neighbourhood barks at him. I mean, this is a very true thing. Anybody can observe it. If you are not afraid, they don't bother about you. It is because you are transmitting your fear, and when you are transmitting your fear, there is something which receives it and responds. So you see, it is absolutely important, necessary, not to broadcast negative thoughts because we are inviting these negative elements into our life.

I remember once, Master made one man a preceptor, and that fellow started drinking and acquiring so many other vices, and Babuji once asked him, "I understand you are doing these wrong things." He said, "No, no, how can they be wrong? Even the idea of drinking, only Babuji must give me." So Babuji said, "Suppose you murder somebody, even that idea Babuji gives you?" He said, "Yes." Babuji said, "You are a fool because God cannot give you wrong thoughts. God cannot give you wrong actions. God cannot give you wrong samskaras. God will not give you any samskara. Anything which comes from the Master must be pure, must be divine."

What comes to us as base desires, base actions, base thoughts, come from our samskaras, hidden inside us in our heart. This is what leads to baseness of thought, baseness of action, baseness of attitude and corrupts us into thinking that, everything that comes to us is from the Master. I beg to tell you, that until we reach a certain level of Divinisation, nothing comes from above.

If you want to proceed peacefully, effectively, swiftly towards destination, you must stop thinking.

WORRY:
Worry is misdirected thought. For instance, worry - it is also a thought. Because you find a man who is worried often thinks much more than a man who is thinking of a problem. See, this is oriented, this is directional towards a particular goal; the other one has no goal, it is just worry, worry. About what - sometimes even we don't know! So worry is misdirected thought, which means that thought has to be given a direction.

FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS:
I will give an example from Master's life. Master was once in Madras and he was leaving for Shahjahanpur by the afternoon train. About 60 to 70 abhyasis were on the station to see him off. Many were openly weeping, and many were trying very manfully not to weep. But Master was sitting next to the window just looking straight, nothing on his face, nothing in his behaviour. I went to the Master and asked him, "Babuji, so many people are weeping because you are going, don't you have any emotions or feelings?" He said, "What I have in my heart now is feeling - what they are all having is emotion." And then He said, "Emotion in the beginning when we start sadhana is a good sign. It means that the heart is becoming softer, but it must stop with that. If it continues it can actually harm spiritual progress."

TEMPTATION:
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. If we accept this as true, a beautiful object exists only for one who sees it as beautiful. So what is real beauty? There is no such thing. Therefore there is no such thing as attractiveness. It is attractive to the one who is attracted by it. Similarly food, it is tasty to the one who finds it tasty. This brings us to the consideration of the fact that nothing in these terms of value exists in an object, except what we put into them. Let us deal with a subject like temptation for example! The normal tendency is to say, "Oh, so and so tempted me" or "Such and such a thing tempted me," but wisdom says, "the temptation was in me," in the from of samskaras which had been already created by an earlier action of mine or thought of mine, and which now responds in some mysterious way to another object which it finds attractive. Now if this is a fact, one who has advanced spiritually, whose tendencies, whose samskaras have been cleaned off, he will be able to develop within himself the ability to see or perceive totally, objectively.

The second thing is for such a person there can be no such thing like attraction or repulsion, nor can there be such a thing as temptation, because there is nothing in him to react to anything outside. If you respond, don't forget, you cannot have control over the response, because the response is because of a samskara. So my Master always said, "Our life is our samskaras unfolding in front of us. That is, we carry our life within us, it is not outside."

Temptation is not in the object, but in yourself, because no two persons are tempted by the same thing. Six of us walk on the streets, one man sees a bar and walks off into it. The other five are not affected by the bar. Another sees a beautiful girl, and he whistles and goes after her. Now four are left going. Why did this man go into the bar and not after the girl, and why did this man go after this girl and not into the bar? And why did the other four not go after either? So, you see, temptation is not in the object, temptation is in us.

WHAT ARE THE ATTITUDES WE HAVE TO DEVELOP?
Our ten maxims have stated this very clearly. We have to have, basically and essentially, an attitude of humanness, we have to try to maintain this attitude, recognizing the fact that we may not already have it but we are trying to develop it. I say this because Babuji has told us that we start life as animal human beings, and then we have to develop to normal human beings, and then we have to go on to Divinisation. The greatest benefit of the meditation in the morning is that it trains us to regulate our minds. As Babuji Maharaj put it, instead of our being the slaves of our mind, we have to become the Masters of our minds.

RIGHTNESS IS RIGHTNESS:
I have known Master refusing a beggar five paise. I have known Master castigating our foreign abhyasis when they came and paid the rikshawwala ten rupees when his standard fare was three rupees. He was not generous. He was always right. Rightness does not mean generosity, rightness does not mean honesty, it does not mean anything. Rightness is rightness, what you call in modern language, appropriate.

Babuji was always saying, "Speak what you mean and mean what you say. Say what you mean and mean what you say." Now, this is only possible when we speak from the heart, because the head, unfortunately, is like a computer. If it is to your benefit, you will say anything that is right or what you think for that moment is right. What is of benefit to us may not be right. The brain will play tricks with us because we program it: "Everybody is telling lies; why should I not tell lies?" The brain says, Yes, why not?" "Everybody is making money by corrupt practices; why not I?" The brain says, "Yes, way not?" It is logical. The brain gives logical answers, no ethical answers, by no means moral answers. That is why Babuji said, "When in doubt, refer to your heart."

HUMILITY:
Humility does not mean shyness or self-effacement. Even in India we find, at least in some of the old houses, you know, they used to have doorsteps four feet tall, so that you had to stoop to go under them. That was supposed to be humility. But my Master used to say that if you are having faith in Him, if you have courage in yourself, confidence in the work and absolute unshakable will power, in some way they operate like the four fingers of the hand, you see, the fifth being the Master Himself. Then there is this attitude that we can walk erect, head held proudly up, proudly in the sense, not stooping in this false idea of humility. And that is a perfect expression of the real inner attitude of humility.

Unfortunately I think all the great religions have combined, or conspired, to give us a wrong idea of humility. I do not see how a worker can efface himself. All that he can try is to project the work as his master's work, and then he doesn't exist anymore. So that is the real essence of humility: that anything that we do, if we do in the consciousness that this is the Master who is working, we don't exist and therefore there can be no arrogance, no pride, nothing is 'us'. If we work in the consciousness that it is the Master who is working, we cease to exist. Then how can you be proud or humble? So we achieve that state where we transcend both the opposites. So, of such a person you cannot say that he is humble or he is proud. He is what he is. And that is what his Master made him.

SIMPLICITY:
Sahaj Marg says, "Live a simple life in tune with nature," and that is common to everybody. Nature is common to everybody, you see, simplicity is common to everybody. Simplicity does not mean suffering. Simplicity does not mean enjoyment. Simplicity means reduction of our needs to the minimum possible. A complex life is one where we need many things. A simple life is where we don't need so many things. So we have to try to become simple in our attitudes, simple in our needs, simple in our life and simple in our approach to even our system of practice.

When one lives a simple life one has few needs. One who has few needs, needs not much money - that is easily acquired, morally acquired, acquired with a certain dignity which goes with rightful earning - one need not be afraid of the police, the income tax man, or even of one's own conscience. Then we find this miraculous feature that now there is enough or more time than we need to meditate, to do our cleaning, to practice constant remembrance etc.

Always remember that while the minimum facilities should be provided, we should not give more than is necessary. What Master meant was adherence to simplicity. Babuji says, "Be simple and in tune with Nature." What for? Because eventually when you return again to the simplicity you must be at home there, as you were, before you acquired all these paraphernalia of existence. All excessive luxuries, excessive attachments to comforts, they take us away from the main goal of spiritual purpose and spiritual achievement. And in someway we get bogged down in the mire of material achievement where we have no possibility of raising. It is like one of these quick sands where the man sinks deeper and deeper and one day finds that he is lost.

Simple people cannot tell lies. You rarely find a farmer or a cowherd capable of telling a lie. Even if he decides to tell a lie, he won't be able to tell it when he is faced with the situation. He will blurt out the truth. So the more sophisticated a society, the more lies in it. It is an unfortunate, shall we say, parallelism, that the higher we advance in the intellectual level, the more sophistication we achieve, the more we become liars, cheats, to others and to ourselves. The more we become simple, in tune with nature, the more truthful we become.

It was Babuji's teaching that unless one is simple one cannot be sensitive. I mean it is quite obvious to us because if you are wearing a woolen suit and get into the water, you cannot feel anything, you have to expose as much of yourself as you can. If you want to feel the air that is blowing, you should take off your jacket at least. If you are going to be in an iron suit and expect to feel the air around you to be felt, it is impossible.

Simplicity means two things. One simplicity we are aware of: that a machine works with a hundred parts, then the same machine is designed with fifty parts - it is less complicated. The same machine designed with twenty-five parts - it is even more simple. Ultimately, we design the machine with just one part - it's the simplest. And if that machine can be like that sun - you know, the solar sun, which is generating its own fuel in a fantastically simple chain of atomic activity; it burns itself, and in its process generates its own fuel all the time, you see, and throws out immense quantities of energy - when it can be a self-sustaining thing, it is absolutely the simplest.

Now I think the perfect level of that, the perfection of that simplicity is God - who was neither created, nor sustains himself with food, doesn't need exercise, doesn't need existence, therefore cannot die. We were born, therefore we shall die. Now I would imagine the simplest, most perfect example of the ultimate simplicity, that which was never created, which is indestructible, which is self-sustaining, which has no parts, no movement, no speech, no language, no thoughts therefore no organism to express any of this: God.

So when we try to get into the simplicity, simplification of our existence, as Babuji said, "Be simple and in tune with Nature," we are only trying to go away from this complexity of the created thing to the simplicity and the eternity of the uncreated; therefore immortal, eternal, transcending time, space, causation, everything else.

Simplicity is a sign of total self-contentedness. Such an individual needs no protection from any thing. He needs no support from any culture. He needs no authority from any religion. He is himself his own authority for his existence, for this preachings, for his way of life, for everything.

BE SOFT AND GENTLE:
I have always been fascinated by the roots of the tree. You know at the meeting point where the root emerges out of the trunk, it is thick, hard, almost ossification has set in. But if you see the tiny hair-like roots which are the things which are really penetrating into the soil, between rocks, which is really what is drawing the sustenance, it is so fine that sometimes you can hardly see it, but it supports the whole tree's existence, you see. It is what penetrates where a tree cannot penetrate. It can break up soil, it can break up rocks, the tiniest fracture in the rock this root will go in and then harden itself, expand it and the rock is thrust aside. Yet if you just put a little pressure, it is broken, it is destroyed. What is the miracle, you see, that the softest thing can penetrate the deepest, hardest substance known? Whereas a hard thing can only break up a hard thing.

And we have also, in our fairy tales, that when the wind blew, all the hard trees which would not bend were just blown down, and the soft things which were willing to bend, bent almost to the earth, but recovered. It is the soft which wins the battle always. Not the hard, you see, the hard is broken. It survives until it meets something harder than itself. But the soft, nothing in the universe can destroy it. All of you know that a drop of water, you know, falling on rock, drop after drop, bores a hole through the rock. But rocks cannot bore holes through water.

So Sahaj Marg teaches us, be soft, be gentle, be loving, be kind, even at the risk of being exploited. What is exploitation? Exploitation is having something and being afraid that it is being taken away. Give it. Give it before it is asked of you. I will replace it. Then when we find this miracle, you know, that for one who is willing to open his arms and say, "Take," the taker cannot take at all. Therefore, my Master could say with impunity, without any fear, 'Loot me." Nobody could do it. Because who can exhaust the inexhaustible?

So you see, we have to unsolidify our heart, make that rock become fluid again, soft. Now what is the first sign of this softness coming into you. It is tears! These people meditate, and they start weeping without knowing why tears come into the eyes! You know, it is the first sign that the heart is beginning to melt. And once this rocklike hardness of the heart is gone and it has become soft and pliable, the Master moulds it into what He wishes.

HELP YOURSELF:
"God helps those who help themselves". If I fall and I cannot rise, but I try to rise, somebody will pull me up. But if I am just lying on the street, nobody will pull me up. So the trial to rise is all that I have to put in. There should be effort to make that trial - if I fall into a well, at least I must shout.

You know one night recently, in my house, we all woke up thinking there was a burglar, because there was a lot of splashing - water splashing. And I thought somebody had fallen into our well. True enough, when we went to the well, there was a cat! Somehow it had jumped and fallen into the well, and it had made such a tremendous splash, we heard it in our bedroom, probably 40 yards away. And then of course we put in a rope and a bucket. It took us half an hour to pull that poor thing out. Now what happened you see; the cat was suspicious of the very rope and bucket that was let in for it and it would not scramble into the bucket.

So like that, we are suspicious of the Master - "What is this fellow trying to do to us? Why is He talking of morals? Why is He disciplining us?" Where is He taking us? Why? Can I not do it by myself? So we rebel against the very force that is going to pull us up, rescue us first from this mire, from this sand into which we have sunk and make us into something that we should be.

So progress means, (1) willingness to become what I have to become, (2) subjecting myself to the forces that are going to help me, (3) avoiding all that is going to pull me back.

DO WE HAVE A NEED FOR PAIN? SHOULD WE WELCOME OR SOMEHOW SEEK PAIN?
We should not make the mistake of looking for pain. You know the old ascetics in India used to sleep on a bed of nails and things like that, but that is not what Master means. The pain Master refers to is the pain of suffering, not physical pain so much as the suffering of the heart resulting from sympathy and compassion for other human beings. Master has clarified this Himself when He said that there were saints in India in the past who used to pray that all the suffering of humanity should come to them. So it is a total suffering, not an individual one like your headache or your stomachache, not like that.

Physical ailment is really meant for the cure of spiritual diseases because thereby it consumes some of the samskaras and increases the power of endurance as well. One proceeding in the proper manner will find his spiritual condition much improved by the effect of illness. Besides, continued thinking of God during the period of illness will offer him a happy pastime as well.

The value of pain is when we suffer it as quickly as possible and forget it. Then we can wait for the next dose of pain. But if you are sticking to the first dose of pain, like a leech, you are not getting rid of it, and it goes on and on. And all the rest of the pain we have to suffer is still there. Therefore, one life is not enough. So you see, we must embrace pain, give it a big kiss, crush it like that (hugging gesture with arms) and throw it away. "Next!" Now, from such a man, pain will run away. So you see, pain is something to be quickly finished.

The next point is that even one of the principles; maxims of Sahaj Marg says, 'accept sufferings as a Gift of God'. The most important reason for this is that when we are happy, when we are enjoying ourselves, we don't think of God or the Master, but when we are suffering we always think of God or Master. So constant remembrance is impossible when you are happy, healthy and contented.

To amplify this there is one more reference in Lalaji's works where He says: a saint has to have three qualities or three aspects of life. There must be permanent illness, there must be a certain degree of poverty, and such a person must always have critics. In the old Arabic it is called: "Illat", "Killat" and "Zillat". I used to wonder why this was necessary for a saint. When your health is a little below normal we don't do so many things as when we are healthy. When there is a little illness all indulgences become impossible. A slightly sick person is a sensible person. And as I said earlier it promotes constant remembrance. Coming to "Killat", which is a little poverty; when you have less money than you should have, you are expending sensibly and you are careful not to waste resources. We can see the evils of a consumption-orientated society right in front of us. The third one that we should always have critics, makes us look at ourselves; gives us humility, and makes us very careful in our behaviour, in our actions. So whereas a worldly person looks for health, wealth, good name, fame, position; the saint looks for ill-health, poverty and critical attitude from all the world. But I have to repeat the caution that we are not supposed to seek physical mortification as was done in the religious way, but to accept pain as something to do with the heart and not so much with the body.

The only way in which pain can cease to exist, is while its opposite, pleasure also ceases to exist. You can't have one and not the other. The only time when light can cease to exist, is when darkness ceases to exist. Both must go.

TOLERANCE:
Master's culture is so profound that it will not permit any undue or wanton criticism of other ways of life. To Master, everything has a place in the universal hierarchy. He teaches that other teachers are also doing God's work, each one at his own level. Tolerance, as taught by Master, is not a virtue but a definite duty enjoined on the abhyasi. No system can ascribe to itself exclusively either total importance or total effectiveness. If a mountain has a summit, it is because it has a base to support it!

Tolerance must be extended to all facets of one's life. After many years of close personal association with my Master, I have come to the conclusion that tolerance is perhaps the most important spiritual quality as it seems to embrace, and emanate out of itself, the other virtues such as understanding, charity, and even love itself. I have often been told that love begets tolerance but, perhaps, the reverse that tolerance begets love, is true.

In the widest understanding of the word, tolerance implies that everything has a place in the universal hierarchy, and it is the understanding of this basic truth of creation that tolerance reveals. Tolerance thus reveals the correct perspective in the universal scheme of things. We have been taught that good and evil coexist, that they are nothing but different facets of the same reality. Tolerance can give us that quantum of time which will permit us to probe below the surface and see the underlying truth. This is a minimum benefit that tolerance confers - time to study and understanding things.

There is a tremendous difference in Master's outlook and the outlook of the older, the ancient teachings of the seers. They said, "Don't react"; He said, "Absorb." When you don't react, you become hard. The heart becomes like stone, now you can kick it, pummel it, punch it, nothing happens to it. But when He says absorb, the heart has to be so soft that even the tiniest prick, the tiniest barbs of hate, you have to absorb them very much like the black holes of space. Everything goes in and nothing comes out.

When we let the heart be free of all values, because essentially bearing something means, don't have a value judgement that this is good, this is bad. This is good so I accept it; that is bad so I reject it. He is a good man so I welcome him; she is a stupid woman so I reject her even at the gate. This man is a saint, I must touch his feet; that man is a sinner, I must shoot him. When all these value judgements bid good-bye, automatically our heart accepts anything. It is like an open window. Can the open window say that this is good breeze that is coming, this is warm breeze, let me shut myself, this is stench from the stinking gutters, let me now stop the movement altogether? It is open to everything. No value judgement. Once we stop thinking, once we stop judging, everything is Divine.

So when we learn to bear everything, learn to put up with everything, tolerate everything, we should not be conscious of what we are putting up with. Because if the consciousness is there, then I am still discriminating between good and bad, and priding myself on my sort of resistance which I am building up, I am becoming more and more egotist. Master never said, "I put up with everything," though He put up with everything. We all know. We have all been at one time or the other, guilty of enforcing our views, our actions, our situations, our prayers even on the Master. He accepted everything because it was His nature. He was a window into eternity. He was eternity itself.

So my heart must eventually grow and grow in His heart, which being infinite, as big as the Universe, can contain not one heart, but many hearts growing within itself. And one day if the miracle is permitted to happen, there is no distinction between His heart and the abhyasi's. All this is possible only by tolerance. The tolerance of the child which does not know that 'I am tolerating anything.' It is innocent of everything. It glories in its own existence. For it, everything is a marvel, everything is a blessing, everything is a joy.

BE AN EXAMPLE:
If you want your Master's name held up high in the world, Sahaj Marg be thought of well all over the world, and practiced by the rest of humanity everywhere, you have to be examples of that tradition, by your behaviour not only in satsangh, but everywhere, at night in your beds also, in your offices, in your business activities. There is no point in a business man saying, "Sir, business cannot be done except with the corrupt practices." Then don't do business. If you have faith in Master, He will continue to clothe you and feed you. After all we are saying from rooftops, that Babuji had Lalaji's permission or Lord Krishna's guarantee that a real abhyasi of Sahaj Marg will never go hungry or unclothed. You have that guarantee from the Yuga Purusha, you see.

So there is no use trying to justify our corruption by society's corruption. The society is corrupt because we are corrupt. So this is the opportunity that is given to us of correcting ourselves, and each one showing himself, for what Sahaj Marg can produce. That is Master's greatness. And if we continue to live as we are living - corrupt lives, inhuman lives, lying lives, cheating lives; cheating ourselves and cheating everybody else, it is a shameful repayment of Master's generosity and love. And it will be an unfortunate betrayal of His teachings, of His practice, and of all that He loved for, suffered for and died for. So I would request you all to remember that we, a few thousands of abhyasis of today should consider ourselves - each of us - the flag bearers, the standard bearers of Sahaj Marg and remember we have an enormous responsibility and if we have to die for it, we must be prepared to die for it.

It is the duty of every abhyasi of the Mission to create an example, by his actions, by his thoughts, by his deeds, by the way he behaves in society, in his house. People should look at him and say, "What is it that you are, that you have become like this? What are you doing?" So the first need of all of us who are abhyasis of the Mission, is to become living examples of the Master's teachings, even before this transformation can take place; by acquiring this craving; by creating in ourselves this craving to be like Him; because, that is the first step in becoming like Him.

SOME PEARLS TO PICK:

• Abhyasis should have control over little things of the daily routine. If not, how can they expect to have control/command over big things?
• Do not purchase a new thing if you can manage to carry on with your old belongings.
• Chaste-life should be preferred at all costs. There should be moderation in all matters. Chastity and moderation bespeak the character of a person.
• Abhyasi should try to maintain economy in all matters. Whether one spends five rupees or five thousand, it matters little; but it should not be spent unnecessarily.
• One should avoid laziness. Great empires in the past saw their decline due to the laziness of the rulers.
• Some respectable distance should be maintained between male and female abhyasis. They should not mix very freely as they do with the members of their own sex.