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We Need the Master, in the Hereafter Too
What will happen when I die? If the Master can help me in
life, He can help me after I am dead. So it makes no difference whether
I am here or not. If I have been connected with Him during life, His
help should be available to me after my so-called death too. And if
I have faith in that, I would rather die sooner than later, for at least
two very important reasons. The first reason is very important: that
every moment I live, I am subjected to pressures, temptations, possible
falls, why should I take that risk? Isn’t it? The second is the suffering
concomitant on life. What is the fun in suffering if I can leave this
body and still receive His help?
So, especially for an abhyasi, it is very stupid to want
to live a long life. In fact, there is that other English saying, “Those
whom the gods love, die young.” There are only two classes of old people.
The large multitude which have to suffer the bhoga of their samskaras,
which needs time, and for them therefore old age is a curse. Therefore
the human being, with all his or her stupidity knows old age to be a
curse. And the other class, in which there may be one or two persons
in several thousands of years, are the saints who have to live to serve.
They have no bhoga, nothing – the saint exists for our service. So,
whichever way you look at it, it is foolish. Let us, of course, not
pray that people should die young, but we should not oppose it when
it happens.
I have heard so many people say, you know, “Oh! I wish he
had lived a few years more!” Now look at this funny sentiment. Why a
few years more, why not many years more? So we want him or her to live
for our sake, not for his or her sake. And at least in India, whenever
somebody dies, we can hear this very often, you see. “What will I do
now?” This is always the cry of the person left behind. Not a concern
for the dead. What is that departed soul doing? Is it wandering in darkness?
Does it have the Master’s guidance? Can it see the light? We are not
concerned with all that, you see. We are only concerned with ourselves.
“What will I do now?”
There is a well-known short story where a man’s wife dies
in the morning. He is miserable, and at night winds up in a brothel,
the justification being that he is utterly lonely without his wife.
He had no time to think of his wife’s loneliness – thrown into the void,
in the dark, no company, where nobody can speak to her, nobody can touch
her. What is she doing? He never thought of it! Many people praise that
novel for its supposed psychological insight into human behaviour. For
me it is a shameful exposition of human selfishness. So, this is the
problem of life and death.
I asked Babuji once, “Why do I need a Master?” All the conventional
answers he gave me. Then I asked Him a question, which He admired very
much. I said, “Will your help be available to me when either I am no
longer here, or you are no longer here?” You know, He was so immensely
happy, He said, “You are the first person in my experience who has asked
me this question.” Now I was amazed. Surely we should be concerned with
what is going to happen to us when we die. Master said, “That is the
tragedy. Even in the spiritual life they think only of this life and
of the Master in this life. Who is there who can think of the life after
this, or what they are going to do there?” And the second more shameful
thing I realized myself later, that we limit the Master’s ability only
to help us in this life, not beyond.
I cannot conceive that a soul can have its identity in a
recognizable form in the hereafter, to know who it is or to know who
is coming across the border. It cannot possibly know this. Now I am
talking of unliberated souls who are going to be reborn, because death
removes this memory from this life. Then who is the child, who is the
wife, who is the mother? And if the soul is liberated it goes to the
brighter world and has no more concern with us. If we understand this
fact correctly, that at my death no other soul of a human being can
be there to receive me, then comes the possibility of my overcoming
this fear of losing my humanness and loving my Master, and surrendering
to Him. Because for Him this barrier of death doesn’t exist, He can
pass through this barrier, or the border between the lives, up and down,
as many times as He chooses. Then comes the faith that when this life
of mine is ending, He, the real beloved will not wait at some abstract
border of life, you know, but He will be at my death bed to take me
away with Him. That is the biggest fear and the biggest promise, both
in one.
Most of us have to go back, “Sorry you cannot cross the border,
next life!” So we need the Master very much to take us across. Because
everyone who is born is going to die, everyone needs the Master. There
can be no exception to this. So now if you love somebody so much, don’t
you think you must bring him or her to the Master at the quickest possible
moment? Because, as Babuji said, “Death is one thing which does not
wait and we cannot know when our life is going to end.” He defined wisdom
as, “Leading life as if we are going to die the next moment.”
But we lead our lives as if we were going to be millionaires the next
moment, or cinema stars, and we waste it. So that is the greatest need.
As Babuji said, “Find the Master and having found Him, bind Him to yourself
in such a way that you can never be separated from Him.”
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