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Messages 1983-1995, p. 30 Recently a thought has been coming to me, off and on, again and again, and it is a refrain from an old song from the Tamil version of the film on Meera Bai, where she sings about Lord Krishna, saying, "Oh! My Heart." I mention this because there are two ways of looking at the divinity that is our Master. One, as the Master who is outside: an adorable person, an all-powerful person, and a fine person, beautiful, handsome, everything. But the other way, and the mystical or the spiritual way, is to think of Him as our heart itself. I would suggest that we should not even think of Him as residing in our heart, but as our heart itself. And then we will understand that as we look after the physical organisation which is our body in which the heart is the most important, and the flow of vital oxygen-bearing blood from inside out, and again into the heart is the most important, and therefore heart care has become the most important thing in the modern life. Similarly, in spiritual practice, we should think that our spiritual heart that is our Master, is the Ultimate person seated in us functioning as our heart, and we should look after it with at least as much care and responsibility as we look after our physical hearts. If you are able to do this, you will find that everything that you do that is good, productive and evolutionary is helping the heart grow stronger and stronger, bigger and bigger, expanding out into the universe. Whereas everything that you do against nature, which means that without thinking of moral and immoral, good and bad, all these opposites - anything that we do against nature becomes restrictive of this heart, makes it solid, makes it enclosed. Eventually the heart may stop beating altogether. So in our spiritual life we should think of the Master himself as the heart, not just as someone who is seated in the heart, or illuminating the heart from inside. I think this is the next stage in our spiritual belief, in our spiritual conviction. And in that way we should look upon the Master not as someone external to ourselves, not even as someone internal to ourselves, but as our very "Self." I pray that by the Master's Grace this sort of development may be blessed upon all of us so that we feel that the Master is there as part of ourselves, not as one separate from us who is to be invoked again and again, who is to be looked to for support, but as our "Selves" within and therefore part of ourselves, remembering that in this context anything that happens to us is from ourself. I think this is a very beneficial way of looking at the Master, because then we have no external authority outside ourselves, or even inside ourselves, who is rewarding us or punishing us. But the onus for the whole performance of our existence, for the conduct of our life, becomes self-oriented, and we become responsible to ourselves for everything that happens to us, for everything that we do, even for our spiritual evolution to the highest. Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume 9, pp. 33-38 You see the tragedy of existence today, that we create things which eventually become our masters. Starting with our books, they become our masters; starting with the money, the money becomes my master; starting with a small drink, just for society, it becomes another master; a day at the race to go with the sambandhi [relative] who is a race-goer, the horse becomes my master. So, man has succeeded only in creating masters outside himself. Nothing we have created has ever been our slave. A car is a master; without the car the man today is lame, you see. "Oh! My car has not come. What shall I do?" His telephone is not working; he is miserable, you see. "My phone is out of order, what shall I do?" What did our grandfathers do? Of course you will say, "My dear friend, on those days we did not have the need to communicate." Well, even today much of the communication is humbug. Eighty percent of all communication channels are blocked off by useless talk. So if you bare down to the bare essentials, we still do not need so much of these technologies and instruments. But that is beside the point. They are our masters. "My air-conditioner is out, I cannot sleep." I am another slave of an air-conditioner. I am a slave of my telephone; I am a slave of my bank account; a slave of my boss. And unfortunately, few egos can accept it. I am also the salve of my workers. They sneeze and I have to pay ten rupees more for them. Those of you who are involved in labour management know this, you see. At a smallest excuse, you have more demands. You are a slave. Who said they are slaves? We are slaves. So Yoga says, give up all this slavery which you have been considering as mastery. You are no more a master than the meanest slave of the street who is begging for his food. He is really a master of his destiny. He can go under the tree and lie down and die you see, if he chooses. You can't. So it says, "Dear friend, forget all these appurtenances of modern science and technology, modern values, things which only build up your ego - and you have a false impression that you are a master when you are a slave of not one thing or two things but of a million things. There is a Master inside you. Whom if you but recognize, whom if you but hand over the reins of authority to, you can be at peace, at harmony. No more shall you be concerned with anything, because now He guides you. He takes over your mind. He takes over your brain, He takes over your physical apparatus. What more can we ask? So, this is what real surrender implies, you see. Messages 1983-1995, p. 42 "You are really that which you have to become" says my divine Master. When we look to the outer world we feel puny, awed by the vastness of the universe, frightened by life with all its awesome responsibilities, weakened by the temptations for desire fulfilment, and anguish and fear envelop us, however manfully we may strive to overcome them. Therefore, the average human person becomes frustrated, and is often defeated even before he begins the task for which he has taken birth as a human being. But if one were to look inwards, into the innermost recesses of his or her own Self, then one can see there the effulgent magnificence of Him who resides there within each and every being. He is the real "I", the Lord and Master of all creation and of every one of us. When this is perceived, then courage is rectored to the one who has seen. The understanding of this vital truth that He is I, and therefore I am no weak, miserable and soul-less person but the divine spark covered and made almost invisible by my own self-created grossness, gives us the courage and the determination to undertake the glorious task of unveiling the Lord and Master residing within, exposing Him and hiding ourselves. Then the miracle takes place, that the weak, bitter and purposeless "I", which has been parading upon the ignoble stage of a worldly existence, drops off and the true "I", the eternal Lord, the Self seated within, emerges, thus bringing our human endeavour to a divinely happy and auspicious culmination. | |
