Message from Rev. Master
“A letter from my heart”
CHENNAI
8th October, 2008
A letter from my heart to sisters and brothers all over the world.
Dear Ones,
My beloved Master, Babuji Maharaj, has repeatedly affirmed that while it was HIS duty to give the abhyasis inner spiritual growth, character formation was, and will always be, the abhyasis personal business. For a quarter of a century since HE left for His Divine abode in the Brighter World, the Mission has continued to abide by this principle, leaving their moral and ethical development to abhyasis, for them to nurture and develop to the highest possible levels by themselves.
My beloved Master has emphasized that the inner and the outer must balance in a developed human being. As inside, so outside, must be the reality of a spiritually developed person. Every abhyasi must ruminate and discover for himself whether this has been established within himself.
As one responsible for the development of abhyasis, I have been observing a slow, but steady, erosion in the values of the external lives of abhyasis during the past twenty-five years. This is a sad observation to make. The world has been plunging headlong into the materialistic mode, with dire and predictable consequences, which, today, all can see. Sadly, within the Mission itself, this degradation in values has been troubling all of us who are sensitive to these issues.
The value-based system of education slowly introduced to willing schools has been effective for children. But what about the adults? And what about the abhyasis especially? In this context, I must confess that I have been wary of introducing anything that even faintly resembles control, based on so-called judgmental attitudes. I feel that I have failed in my duty to you all by not having set before you necessary moral and behavioural codes for your adoption, without ever forcing them down unwilling throats. The essence of a human life is the guarantee of personal freedom to choose one’s path, and mode of life. While guaranteeing this freedom to all, I now feel that it is necessary for the Mission to define the following for the benefit of you all.
- Love, understanding, tolerance and forgiveness, are all necessary, and must be manifested at the individual level in personal interaction.
- A body of universally applicable teaching MUST reflect principles and practices that will be all encompassing, transcending the cultural, religious and behavioural norms laid down for people not involved with personal spiritual development. I affirm that this need is of paramount necessity even in the lives of those leading mundane lives, but the necessity for such codes in the spiritual life cannot be ever sufficiently emphasized. After forty-five years in Sahaj Marg, I now consider it to be vitally necessary.
- I am writing this to you all to assure you that I shall now set my heart towards furthering the education of abhyasis into these principles which may be called higher, or divine, but which are certainly universal. Please cooperate in this adventure, your personal adventure if I may say so, in the spiritual life into which we have all strayed, knowingly or unknowingly, and pray for my Master’s Blessings to promote our total development and welfare, in all the realms of existence: Physical, mental, moral and finally the spiritual.
P. Rajagopalachari
