Master is the Highest Goal for the Disciple
My revered Master has said, exhorting all abhyasis to ever keep their attention on the goal - the goal of spiritual growth to the highest levels open to mankind. I may say that perhaps this is one way of looking at constant remembrance too! For one who has the goal ever before him, there is only the Master in his view, for He is the real goal of Sahaj Marg. One who has understood the teachings of my Master knows that the goal is the Master and the Master alone. Those who have as their goal - spiritual states - however high they may be, or liberation, or realisation, etc., my Master used to say of them that their sight is fixed too low to be of any use to them in their sadhana! It is a well-known truth: one must aim high, to achieve always something lower. Set your sights high is the axiom.
We have to understand what the true nature of a disciple's association with the Master has to be. Spiritual goals for me never existed. I mean, to be like the Master is the ultimate spiritual goal. Like for a lover to be with the beloved is the ultimate goal - not to think of a restaurant where we can have dinner, not to think of the diamond that he will buy for you. Being with the beloved is enough. And the ultimate possibility of being with the beloved is, to be one, so that there is no more separation, there is no more any question of distance.
In the person of the Guru, in the person of the Master, you have a person who embodies all that we are striving for. All the abstractions in the process or in the goal of Divinisation as we call it, all the characteristics, all the features, all the 'lakshanas' that we hope to achieve, we find embodied in the Guru. Therefore, even though the goal is an abstraction, indefinable, not locatable in space or time, yet, we have before us a Guru, whom we believe sincerely, wholeheartedly, to be an embodiment of all those virtues and qualities. Therefore, on Him we pin our faith. On him we put our hopes. According to His instructions we practise. And He becomes a sort of a sheet - anchor to divert us away from an abstract goal to a concrete goal, which is the Master, which is the Divinity itself so that this hiatus between that which we aspire for, is removed in one shot, by Divinity itself providing a sort of a surrogate for itself and saying, "THIS is me. Accept this as your Guide, by coming to Him, by loving Him, by becoming like Him, you shall become like Myself."
The prayer states this very beautifully because the first line says: "Thou art the Real Goal," which means you are the real goal, not your powers, not your beauty, not your riches, not even the universe, but you (the beloved) are the real goal.
If one wishes to achieve the Master, i.e., if one wishes to become like
the Master, one has to rigorously leave behind all other aspirations, however
high and mighty they may appear to be to the normal mind, and look to the
Master and the Master alone! Such is the inexorable demand of the spiritual
way. One who wishes to tread the path to the Master has to necessarily see
"Him and Him alone "before him, ever before him, going
ahead of him, guiding him on the path, removing obstacles that lie on the
way, smoothing the way for the one who follows devotedly behind, the gurumat
disciple. Such a one becomes the concern of the Master, and it may not be
an exaggeration to say that the Master too exists for the disciples alone.
They are the reason for His temporal existence. Therefore my Master has
repeatedly said that while it may be an easy thing to find a Master of calibre,
it is extremely difficult to find a true disciple.
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