"Make out of your grihastha life, a temple of love."

Master is the living example of this way of life. He is a householder who has married and shouldered the arduous responsibilities of family life. He has experienced all the joys of love, and sorrows and miseries of separation that we suffer in our own narrower lives. It is surely a matter for wonder that he has so completely lived the life of the householder while simultaneously developing in himself the divine capacity to be a Master of spirituality too. His life is centred naturally around his own family. But whereas the centre and the circumference of our own lives have both merged into one single point which rests in the family, for Master the centre is the family while the circumference embraces the whole universe. This is the difference between His life and ours.

When Master, by his divine transmission, helps us to 'expand' into cosmic levels and super-cosmic levels of existence, he separates the shrunken circumference free, or liberating it, so that it can expand wider and wider until it, in turn, is afforded the possibility of becoming universal. Thus, progressively, the individual self-centred human soul and consciousness develops and expands until it becomes a universal person possessing a universal consciousness similar to the Master himself.

There are perhaps only a few among the masses who have ever given any serious consideration to the problem of life. Generally they take a very narrow view of it. The only problem before them is to secure a decent living, well provided with the desired comforts. In other words, to them the object of life is only to achieve the greatest possible comfort and prominence in the world. If they are able to achieve it, they think their life to be a success, otherwise not. They may, however, pass on as great men, philosophers, scientists or politicians and acquire worldwide fame and riches, but their problem of life still remains unsolved.

A HOUSE HOLDER - WHO LOVES AND SACRIFICES:
A SANYASI - WHO HAS RUN AWAY FROM THE BURDENS OF FAMILY:
The Adi Guru of our system has said one very great thing. He said, "It is only in the Grihasthashrama that we learn two things - love and sacrifice." A sanyasi may think he has sacrificed but my Master says, "No. Few sanyasis have ever sacrificed anything. They are better off economically, they have more name, more honour, more publicity in the press and they are better looked after by their devotees. In addition, they get badam and milk, things which they could never have afforded in family life!

In contrast, in family life you have to think of your wife and your children. With what little you earn, you have to make sacrifices at every stage. You don't have new clothes for Diwali, but your children must have them. You think that you are not educated, as your father being a farmer, could not afford it; but you certainly feel that your son must have education. So instead of being self-centred, we start thinking of others and their welfare. We teach ourselves such things in the family life." Therefore, in Sahaj Marg it is said that without Grihastha life we cannot really achieve anything.

Grihastha life has been recommended by the Master not for the pleasures and the joys that it promises so much as for the idea of love that it creates in you - the real love - and for the sacrifice that it helps you to make. We see families suffering before us, our own and others; neighbours, relations, precisely because these two elements are in most cases lacking. They have not been able to generate love sufficiently to overcome their problems, and they have not been able to make sacrifices enough to assure harmonious existence, and that should be a lesson. It should be an eye-opener to the younger generation that it is not marriage per se which is at fault, it is not grihastha life which is at fault, it is the way that life is handled, which is at fault. It is like a man saying, "Every time I take out a knife, I cut my fingers with it. So we should abolish all knives." There is a right way of using a knife. You have got to learn to handle the element in which you have been put. So what is it that we have to do in grihastha life? Learn to live a grihastha life as it was meant to be lived - which is to try to generate love.

What is the real vairagya? One should lead a simple and pious life absorbed in constant Divine consciousness, discharging properly, at the same time all his worldly responsibilities and duties. There is not the least justification for anyone to flee away from home in utter disregard of his worldly duties, and wander about without any definite aim or purpose. As a matter of fact, even in that state of so-called vairagya, one is seldom free from feelings of worldliness. If a grihastha who has ignored God can be presumed to be deceiving God, the so-called vairagi will prove a worse sinner. Saint Kabir has aptly remarked:--

"God remains twenty paces away from a brahmachari
and thirty paces away from a sanyasi;
whereas He resides within a grihastha
who entertains him in his heart."

We should really try to be with God, and in God all the time, and never be away from Him even for a moment. When we come up to this state we are all the time in a state of vairagya. Thus, attachment with God results in detachment from the world, and that is true vairagya.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE:
The first law of spirituality is, "You are entitled to your daily bread, give enough time for that." What should I do with the rest of the time? Master said, "Think of God." Because that is your main purpose of existence. If it was merely to live and to earn and to fill your stomach and to satisfy your urge for security and go on amassing wealth, God would have surely made you a honey bee or an ant or perhaps a squirrel. But when He made you a human being and gave you the intellect, and the willpower and the idea that there is something superior to you which has created you and which is beckoning you on to Himself, that is your true purpose.

MARRIED LIFE:
Vedic lore laid so much stress, gave so much importance, to the proper choice of a mate. It was not the senses that was to be involved in choosing one's mate; it was not education; it was not culture; it was not wealth; it was, in a sense, the spiritual blood line which one is marrying into. And I was able to understand the profound wisdom of our ancients, of our forefathers - that a mate must be selected from considerations and criteria other than those which we normally apply - health, wealth, education, family traditions etc.

Marriage is the only opportunity we get of looking into another person at such a close range that we can really see the heart. You marry for a face and a figure, but later on you must love that which is contained in the face and figure, the heart, and admire the qualities that the heart reflects. Love what you see inside, the qualities of the heart - this is what the grihastha life is expected to develop into.

In grihastha life there is the power of love, nothing but a simple man's simple love for simple woman, creating a simple family in simple circumstances with unbeatable bliss, unbeatable contentment. The essence is, "Seek a simple life, don't look for ecstasies, it doesn't exist." If life is lived naturally, there are no peaks, no depressions. There is only blissful calm, a sort of a level curve - it is not a curve any more. It is a straight line. So this is what we have to expect.

A man or a woman, when they marry, they marry because of love, they have children because of love, and then when you have a family, it is natural to give up even your own needs for the sake of the children, so sacrifice develops. So that's why a family life is so necessary, according to our Sahaj Marg principles. Family means two people committed to each other's welfare, loving each other, prepared to die for each other. That is, the last one - prepared to die for each other - is precisely the growth of sacrifice, the development of sacrifice.

The modern form of relationship is a human creation. It only satisfies desire and lust. It doesn't fulfill the requirement of love, anger and sacrifice. So when we accept love as a divine attribute, and we have understood that the highest expression of love is the highest sacrifice that we can possibly make, then we will understand that any form of expression of love which has no bearing on sacrifice is not that divine love. If it is not divine, it is human.

Lalaji wanted that abhyasis should marry among themselves, widows should be remarried. We talk about this as Lalaji's greatness and Babuji's greatness. But when it comes to following these things we are still money minded, commercial and have no idea of the happiness of the couple who are to be married. We just barter and sell, as if we are bartering cattle or ox. We are always preaching but never practicing. So Babuji used to say, "Say what you mean and mean what you say."

There can be a marriage of spiritual persons. And that makes the biggest difference to a marriage. When brutes get married, the marriage will be a brutal one. There will be nothing in it but lust and passion and violence. When spiritual persons marry, spiritually elevated persons, then that life in all aspects - not just marriage - in all aspects it will become progressively divinised.

WHY PEOPLE WANT TO BE MARRIED IN OUR SATSANGH?
Even couples who have been married already, they come to me and say, "I would like to be married again, in the spiritual way." So the difference is the idea of holiness. One is a very profane type of marriage. Here it is a holy marriage. So this idea of holiness is something I would like to talk about, because it is a feeling, it is a spirit, it is an attitude we should cultivate.

The idea of holiness - that there are certain things which are holy, then there are certain places which are holy, people who are holy - we have to bring back into our everyday life and not just reserve them for our churches and our temples, and for special occasions. What is holy is always holy.

In marriages, most of all we should try to re-inculcate this principle of holiness. That is why it is called, in the language of the church, holy matrimony. It must be made holy. The partners to the marriage must understand, must accept, must feel that this is a holy alliance of two people. Marriage is not something just legalizing two people going to bed together. That is the modern idea.

If there is a holy feeling about love, it cannot be profanized until that holiness has become an established fact between two people. And in that holy atmosphere, they involve themselves in matrimonial life, in all its aspects. Then, in the holy spirit, whatever is done is holy. The fruits of those actions are holy.

This must be an established fact in marriage, that the husband's sole concern must be his wife - not himself. He must be giving, not receiving. The wife's sole concern must be her husband. She must be giving all the time, not receiving. Now imagine the magnificence of such a union, you see, where each is only concerned with giving himself and herself- totally! What bliss can result out of such a marriage.

When there is love between two persons, whether husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, friends, guru and disciple - if this real love is there between the two, there will automatically develop a mutual respect, a mutual regard, even a mutual admiration, perhaps, even a mutual worship. Because friendship must ripen into love, love must ripen into adoration. Adoration must ripen into worship, into surrender and then into the extinction of the self.

ACCEPT FAMILY LIFE AND CULTIVATE NON-ATTACHMENT:
One of the primary teachings of Sahaj Marg is that we have a duty to perform and we cannot throw away that duty in the selfish interest of our personal self. Any man who is married owes a duty to his family, to his wife, to his children. He has to protect them and see that they are brought up in the right way.

Once a person has accepted certain responsibilities like wife, children etc., he is duty-bound to discharge these responsibilities, and Master indeed teaches that to run away from home and family is a sign often of cowardice and selfishness. So under the Sahaj Marg system there is no place for this traditional interpretation of renunciation. What then does Master teach? He says we must cultivate an attitude of "non-attachment attachment," that is, we perform our duties, discharge our obligations in all spheres of our existence, while remaining unattached to all these. The Raja Rishis like Janaka are stated to be examples of this ideal of human living.

Master's most important teaching is that to 'give up' creates strain and enormous tensions. So we are not required to 'give up' but to create an attachment to higher values and purposes, when automatically and naturally the unnecessary things of life drop off. That is, detachment has to be created by developing attachment in a different direction. When we attach ourselves to the Divine, the world falls off. We are no longer part of it though of it. We are in it, living in it. This may be the condition of "the living dead" that Master refers to. We are alive while we are really dead to this existence.

BE A TRUSTEE IN YOUR FAMILY:
Master gives a hint. He says, "Don't think your family is your family. They are God's children entrusted to you. They are in your trust. Look upon them as you would any other trust." Suppose I give a million dollars to somebody and say, "Create a trust and administer it." You administer it. That is all. But when we become attached then the trust becomes something else. Distrust perhaps comes into it; mutual differences come into it and very often we go to the extremes of separation and things like that. But if we can discharge our duties by treating them merely as trusts which the Divine has put upon us, everything becomes easy.

My Master used to say "instead of going to the jungle and remembering your wife and children, stay at home and remember the jungle." And that is very easy because, especially today, under the pressures that we face in life, there are few people who don't wish they were in the jungle. That means we are thinking of the jungle all the time. Few people don't want to leave their wives and go away. They say what is this misery that I have got into! But it is not a misery; it is a training ground.

FAMILY FIRST, CHARITY NEXT:
No person has a right to indulge in charity until his family needs are fully satisfied. No person has a right to give away money or gifts until he has made absolutely sure that such gifts are coming out of available surplus in the family's means of existence. Otherwise it is merely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. On superficial examination this looks to be a very very selfish approach.

I had a long discussion with Master on this once. Master said, "Look! Suppose you want to give away a sum of money as charity, and your family will suffer because of it, can you call this charity? I would only call it foolishness. What is your duty as a grihastha? When you married and accepted the responsibilities of a family existence, you accepted to fulfill certain duties by the family. These duties are totally obligatory. Therefore, if your gift is going to make the family suffer, then it is not a gift at all, it is not charity. You are really robbing your own family. Look here! How can this robbery be called charity?"

I then asked Master whether such an act of charity would be justified if the other members of the family agreed to it. Master answered, "No! It cannot make it right. Which Hindu wife will go against her husband's wishes? And in the case of religious performances or ceremonies they will not oppose it. It is for you to decide what is your duty, and then it is your duty to follow that correctly. If you consult others you are only trying to shift the blame and responsibility on others."

It is well known that when you give charity in ostentatious manner, it ceases to be a charity. It makes the recipient a beggar. All the greatness attributed to Jesus Christ, "Let not the right hand know what the left hand is doing." It has two purposes; when you give ostentatiously you make the other man squirm under your generosity and your friendship. He hates you for that. And if the left hand knows what the right hand is giving which means, I know what I am giving to someone. It makes the giver arrogant, prideful, boastful, 'I', 'I'. And I help so and so. It harms two people at one time - the giver and the receiver.

HOW DO WE INVITE TROUBLE IN OUR FAMILIES?
Many couple have problems because the husband comes for Sahaj Marg, he does not bring his wife in the beginning. He says, "I should not impose. She should come." After some time she refuses to come. She says, "You were never interested in me. Why didn't you take me? What is good for you, is it not good for me?" Then you cannot say, "No, no, you know, I did not want to impose." Are you not imposing everything else? How will you answer that wife? So, the right time is the beginning. And if you had done that and said, "Come, let us go," like we are going anywhere else, there also we go, there is no problem. But if you let it lie, after six months, eight months, one year, you cannot make her come at all. Then she starts rebelling against Sahaj Marg.

EACH ONE SHOULD BECOME A MODEL:
When we become acceptable only, our families will not rebel. They will not protest. In fact they will say, "If this is what you have become, why not you take me?" You are self-centred. I would love to see a time when a wife would tell her meditating husband, "you have been married to me. You call me wife and you don't have the love (you protest that you have) to take me with you. We are supposed to be companions for life. Doing everything together. What about meditation? Why do you leave me here?" There are many people here who have this problem, who have have faced it and successfully surmounted it. There are many who are still struggling here. Because this is the only reason, you never introspect with truth. You never think, 'Am I the same person I was last year when my wife objected, or my husband objected. And if so, if the answer is 'yes', happy; 'if it is no, what am I doing about it? When will my wife change? She will change, when I change. There is no real change in most husbands who are afraid of their wives, and there is no real change in women abhyasis who are afraid that their husbands will leave them because they don't like the woman meditating.

ROLE OF SEX:
Once, I remember, in the West somebody asked Babuji about the role of sex. My Master said, "God is not a fool to have created two sexes if one was enough." It is like saying 'why were the trees made to bear fruits and seeds - for propagation. So there is a right way of using everything. There is an indulgent way; there is also a devoted and dedicated way. So Nature has given us this system which was designed to be perfect by a Creator, who cannot create any imperfect thing.

We should be happy with what we have been blessed with, in the confidence that we have got what we earned in our past lives, by our own thoughts, our own samskaras. It could not be worse, it could not be better. For the future, yes. I am not talking about husbands, incidentally - future. A husband is for life, a wife is for life; but the husband can become a better husband. You don't have to change husbands to have a better husband. You can make the same husband a better husband. Like when the fire is dying down, you put in a few more logs, and it burns brighter, you see. You don't change your fire.

THE NEED TO HAVE CHILDREN:
One of the functions of existence is self-propagation. You know, some males conveniently imagine that childbearing is only the function of the woman, and therefore, if they have no children, the men don't lose anything. This is a very convenient male chauvinist idea. Because a couple having children leads to, in some intangible way, the emotional fulfillment of both, the human being becoming a complete person, you see. And I think that is why nature made it a cooperative effort. So this we should remember, that a child in a family is necessary for both - the man and the woman. In some way, a childless couple is an incomplete entity.

THE DESIRABILITY OF HAVING CHILDREN:
This relates more to economic desirability than otherwise. That is, balancing the budget; child or a car, a child or a house, a child or a pacific holiday - things like that. But if you wait long enough without having children, I am yet to meet a woman who has not felt sorry that she didn't have a child. It is not that men don't feel sorry. They are able mask their feelings better. But for a woman it is an essential and vital need, and in a greater measure, a need for self-fulfillment. So the need and the desirability are mixed up in such a way that you need not try to separate them.

Some people have brought forth some very specious arguments, devious arguments, that we should not add to the world population, that we should not bring in children into a polluted atmosphere. I mean these are virtually lies - lying to themselves first. Because when we want to have a child, we don't think of the world population and the current level of pollution in the atmosphere. People living in deserts have children, and Eskimos in the Arctic Circle have children too. So at the base of this unwillingness to have children, is selfishness. We have a good thing. Why spoil it by bringing in a brawling brat, who needs attention, care, and love?

It is not that we are worried about the expense. Because I have seen in America, couples wasting hundreds and thousands of dollars of toys on their kids. I mean the kids in America have more toys than the adults have books to read, for instance. All this expense on toys is to cover up their guilt - for the love that they are not able to give, for the time that they are not able to give, for the attention they are not able to give their children.

Essentially, selfishness means that the love and attention that we should give to others, we are sort of turning it upon ourselves. So the first prerequisite to even think of having children is that we should love children. We should love the idea of having children, with all that it involves - sacrifice of time, of convenience, of money, of your personal pleasures.

In the third world, economic penury is a blessing, because it keeps the family together. You don't have money to go and get drunk, or to go and sow your wild oats. So we stay at home, and one or two kids more makes not much difference, when you are already on the borderline of starvation. And it is amazing with what enormous love in the heart, and genuine generosity, such borderline families exist.

In a selfish, self-centered, pleasure-oriented culture, even the thought arises, should we have a child? I mean in Oriental cultures people would be shocked if a newly-married couple asks such a question. They would say, "Why did you get married, if not to have children?" And it's a well-known fact that if a couple has been married a year, and there is no child, everybody goes frantic. First they go to the doctors. If no solution results, they go to the astrologers. If still nothing comes, temples, pilgrimages, and ultimately a Master. This is the way of life in our Eastern cultures. Why? Because, as they put it very pithily, if you have an apple tree, you expect to have apples out of it. One doesn't grow a tree for fun.

So this is the dramatic difference between these two cultures, and I would suggest for your consideration, that the Eastern way is natural. Here again I would like to say that there is no moral judgement. It is neither right to have children, nor wrong to have children. It is natural to have children. So we are in the Sahaj Marg way, and we say it is the natural way, therefore it is natural to love, natural to get married, natural to have children. These things don't need permission; they don't need sanction. They shouldn't even be thought about. And of course, where, by samskara, some cannot have children, it becomes a very tragic situation.

When we come into being, we bring with us attendant joys and responsibilities. And there is a Vedic couplet, which has a very big pointer to this. It says, the father is reborn in the son. Not in any physical sense, but in the sense of a continuity of existence which he represents. And that is why we say that without a child who can mirror your love and affection, there is no fulfillment in life.

PARALYZING PARENTAL CARE:
Family discipline doesn't exist nowadays. In my days, when I was a child, joint family living was the rule and we had grandparents. We had large number of children living at home; there was a great deal of play. People taught us things in the cradle, taught us the ethics and the moral situations coming from the Ramayan and Mahabharat and things like that. There was a harmonious environment at home, which is lacking today. Now the family is getting bifurcated. Children live alone. They get married, they have their small families, and very often parental care is missing. Unfortunately children tend to evaluate or equate care with love, and when they don't have sufficient care, they think the parents don't love them. And when there is no love in a family or at least as the children think there is no love, they become desperate to find this love elsewhere.

Therefore we find this phenomenon of going to playgrounds and the increasing addiction to friendship. And then they are exposed to an environment which is - at least to my mind - a little alien to the home situation. And then unavoidably, they cannot possibly avoid going to their friends and doing what the friends do, because the children seek acceptance at some level. They want to be part of group; there is security in being part of a group. They think they are loved, they think they are wanted, they feel needed, which, things nowadays under the pressure of existence with which the adults are pressed, the adults can hardly give us.

You know, a father in a metropolitan city often gets home only at nine o'clock. Next morning he has to leave at seven o'clock. What is the time he can give to his children? Forget the wife, how much time has he to give to his children? So the mother is often nowadays the custodian of the child's education, its training in ethics, its training in morality. But according to the Vedas, at least, the mother is the one who gives life to the children; the father has to provide the element of discipline, training in culture, training in social morals. And if father has to go away, the mother has to substitute, I think, with due apologies to the mothers - they are great women of our country, Swami Vivekananda has praised them beyond anything else he has praised. But the mother has to look after the house, she has to cook, she has to wash her clothes and, in addition, look after the children. And not many of the mothers are qualified to look after children: their educational needs, their social problems arising out of interaction with schoolmates and with others.

So you see, we have a situation which is breaking down slowly, little by little, because on one hand we have the parental influences which are diminishing because the parents have to make money, have to fulfill their own goals in society, their own ambitions. On the other side we have the children trying desperately to seek the love and attention they need from the parents and not getting much of it. It is undoubted that the parents love their children, but there is no tangible way of showing this love. So I feel that fundamentally it is the breakdown in the family life, in the family situation, and the corporate or other materialistic goals against which the parents are pitted, which is one of the main reasons for the children's breakdown, first emotionally, next morally.

The first thing that spirituality offers is, "Friends, reorient your goal." Start with the mind, purify the mind, orient it towards the proper goal, train it by meditation and then, you see, if the parents start it, the influence automatically percolates to the family environment. The children benefit from it. They get absorbed in the goals that the parents set for themselves because all children try to emulate their parents. A family in which the parents are harmonious, loving each other, fighting not for materialistic goals but aiming, striving for an inward nobleness to achieve spiritual goals which are eternal, long lasting, influences the children in the right way. Now the children, instead of just respecting their parents, begin to love them, to adore them and perhaps even to worship them.

RELATIONSHIP OF THE PARENT AND THE CHILD:
A child trusts its parents. I have not seen any children distrusting their parents. Instead of seeing our parents in the future as our guides, as our friends, as our philosophers, as somebody who is leading us into the future, they have become the past to us. Why? Because they have done things which have hardened them as images and nothing more. They have ceased to exist for the child. These parents are dead to the children. They have gone against the basic human concepts of what a parent should be to the child. The child has to be afraid, it becomes insecure. And those who should love and cherish it have become ogres of selfishness, wallowing in their own so-called wealth and riches and satisfaction and happiness and pleasure. And the child is abandoned.

So you see, parents must remain in the future of the child, must not slip back into the past of the child. We have always to be ahead, not behind. Think of a mountain guide who is walking at the end of a line of people who are roped together to climb up a precipice covered with ice. He has to be up right in front, you see, then the people following him who have roped themselves to him will have some confidence, He says, "No, no, I will tie myself last. You all climb first." What can such a guide do? So you see, being in front means exposed. Exposed to the good, exposed to the bad such as we see it, exposed to danger. That is why when a child feels danger it goes behind its parent, it hides, but the father or the mother must be present in front, not hide behind the child. "No, no, child, you come to the front. I will stand behind you. I am behind you all the time." A child is not fooled by these things.

So, are we willing to be a sort of shield for the child whom we have raised to protect it against dangers, real and fancied? Which means, are we willing to take upon ourselves any possible danger that may affect my child? If not, such a person does not deserve to be a parent. It is a pity that in human society, we don't use the same care in breeding that we do with our animals and birds. I think there should be a law on the breeding of human beings - are these people fit to be parents, are they bedding just for pleasure or to be parents? I think it's a shame you see, that the care we give to our cows and dogs and chicken we don't give to ourselves, therefore we raise monsters.

When I have a child, it means I have to be its father, my wife has to be its mother. Are we prepared to sacrifice? Are we prepared to suffer? Are we prepared to stand in front of it and protect it from everything? Are we, in short, prepared to be a shield for it, ever in front of it, ever advancing ahead? Nobody holds a shield at the back, the shield is always held in front. If you are that, you are prepared or you are fit to be a parent. Otherwise it is better not to have children, you see, not to indulge in parenthood.

PARENTS SHOULD BE LIVING EXAMPLES:
If we live life in the right way the children automatically lead the life, in the right way. That is the importance of parenthood. That we provide the right environment, the right example. That is why I have always said that it is a big and onerous thing, you know, being a parent. Whether you are the father or mother is not relevant. We have to be alert. What is the use of a father, you know, smoking hash and telling his child, "You should not do it." And then when he starts doing it, the father cannot even muster the courage to tell him, "Do not do it," because he is guilty.

You should show what is right, rather than tell what is right. It is always easy to preach, and to be dogmatic, and to insist. By your living you should show your children what is this, what is that. That is why it is said there are two ways of bringing children: by example and by precept. We always try the precept, because to be an example is difficult.

There is a heavy responsibility cast upon every human being, male and female, and the family is the first step in that direction. One who cannot be a good father or a good mother, cannot be a good abhyasi, leave alone a good teacher or a good master.

That is why in Sahaj Marg the family life is so important. This is not a place for dropouts, for people who have run away from society, people who have abandoned their wives and come in search of spirituality or wives who have abandoned their husbands or both who have abandoned their children. This is not a place for them. This is a place for those warriors of the soul who say, "Yes, I have raised a family." "Have you suffered?" "Not that I am aware of." "Yes, but people tell me you have suffered." "Ah. It was not suffering!" For my child, how can I suffer? What I give for my child is not a sacrifice, it is my Self. How can I give my Self and suffer for it? Can you suffer when you give your love for something? When you take up a bird with a broken wing and take it home and kiss it and feed it its milk, are you suffering? Is that milk a sacrifice? Is it a duty or a pleasure?

So you see, until we have evolved to the level where a sacrifice is no sacrifice, where giving is no more giving but a pleasure, we are not fit to be anything. So it is the duty of everyone of us to take ourselves in our own hands and examine ourselves. Am I what I claim to be? Am I a father, am I a mother? Is this child mine, is it wanted or is it unwanted? Today there are too many children who are unwanted. And they feel it. They feel it from the time they are conceived. I have often advised prospective mothers who are bearing the child in their womb to speak to the child with love. Speak to it as if it is already there. It is there. Welcome it, love it. But on the contrary we have only hatred, attempts at abortion and that child grows up knowing it is unwanted. It is disgraceful. It is hated.

Life is possibility. Life is not complete, life is a process. It is a process in which we make the possible actual. And what is this possibility? That which surrounds us. What is it that surrounds us? Plenitude, beauty, harmony, love, everything is there around us.

So you see, unless we can create in the present all that we wish in the future, there is no future. Therefore the message of spirituality is quite clear - here and now! There is no future in spirituality, the future is here.

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT I CAN TAKE WITH ME?
Master says, 'Yourself!" "But Babuji, is it not something which I am taking with me now when I die?" Then he comes out with the brilliant answer, "No! Because if you were able to take it with you, you wouldn't have to come back." You know, when you leave your keys at home, you come back for the keys. The fact that we keep coming back to this life again and again means we have left something here. And it couldn't be for the body that we come back, or for the yacht in the Mediterranean, or for the girlfriend in Acapulco. It is for myself that I have left behind here, for which I keep returning again and again, you see. And the Master says, "Well if you wish, if you desire it ardently as the only thing that you want, I can help you to go away with yourself this time so that you need never, never return again.

SOME IMPORTANT POINTS:

• Mould your living like a waterfowl. When it comes out of the water, its wings are dry.
• One should engage oneself in the care and upbringing of the children in such a way that it does not affect one's heart, and their love should not result in pain.
• One should develop such relations with the people in the neighbourhood that they would seem to be one's own, and they in turn should consider him so. The same principle should hold good in the case of friends.
• Connections with relatives should be established in such a way that the inner bond should appear severed. However, one should be a partner in their joys and sorrows This should be with everybody.
• Refrain from entering into monetary transactions. When they are in dire need, financial help should be given to the extent that one does not feel sorry if the money is not returned, and relations are not strained.
• One should take service only to the extent that one is able to requite. Force of circumstances is a different matter.
• One should lead a simple and selfless life.
  

Thus Grihastha ashram is not a bar in gaining the real aim of life. I think this is the best ashram in which higher approach is easily possible. I am a grihastha, and my Master was also one. I assure you that a perfect saint may be found in this ashram alone. We perform our duties, and remember Him as Ultimate Reality.