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True Master and His Mission

When Master-Saints come to the earth plane, people are attracted by the Divine Glow of Their eyes and the soothing radiance They emit from the pores of Their body. At first sight, They appear to be dignified gentlemen. As one comes nearer to Them, one finds something unearthly about Them. Gradually this changes into the light of other-worldliness which in time forms a Divine Halo around Them until They look nothing short of God, for one begins to see the Power of God working in Them. They are then God-in-action, manifestations in flesh of the Absolute God Whom no one has seen or can see.

In a state of Divine Ecstasy, Bhai Nand Lal, a Great Mystic Poet, says:

Here and hereafter I sacrifice at the feet of my fair-faced Beloved.

He goes on to explain as to why He does so:

None of them can compare with the beauty of a single hair of Him.

Hafiz, a Persian mystic, speaks in much the same strain when He says: Should that ravishing beauty of Shiraz (Murshid) accept my suit, I would just for a mole on his check give away the Kingdoms of Smarkand (meaning both worlds here and hereafter) in dower unto Him.

If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired, and got, it was a dream of Thee. 

John Donne

This then is the vein in which the devotees speak of the really Great Saints, for they get from a single glance of Theirs an ecstatic intoxication which even thousands of barrels of the purest wine would not give. They come to serve Divine Vintage to the thirsty by imparting Their own Life-Impulse. The Sacred Books, however great, are mighty bloodless substitutes for life. They constitute a valuable treasure house of the recorded experiences of Their authors, experiences that They had in Their search of Their own Inner Self and of God. They, of course, inspire us and encourage us to emulate the sages and seers of the past, but by themselves, cannot impart the life experience which comes only through the Grace of a Living Competent Master. Spirituality cannot be taught, but It is caught as an infection from a God-infected soul.

I saw Kaaba (house of God) whirling round and round an entrance to an avenue where Lived a Man-of-God; oh God, what type of man is he? Is he really a man or an enchanter practising black magic?

Maulana Rumi

One is really astonished at such strange utterances. But they contain a marvellous truth in them. A Godman is a mouthpiece of God Himself:

God Himself speaks through a Sadh (an Enlightened One). 

Gurbani

When such a Master accepts you, He will never leave you. He is always with you wherever you may be. He becomes a constant friend and companion, a sure and unerring guide in the most unpredictable and bewildering situations, even after the much dreaded physical death that ends all worldly connections. Even before the judgement seat of God, He appears as an intercessor and leads the soul on its upward journey, bypassing all perilous pitfalls and warding off dangers. He never leaves the soul even for an instant until the soul reaches the mansion of the Lord and is safely enthroned there. He is commissioned from God to gather the lost sheep and to bring them to His fold.

After having discharged His commission in one part, Christ went to another remarking:

I have yet to tend many more sheep.

Every Saint, like a good shepherd, has to tend to many a sheep, here, there, and everywhere. From place to place, He moves the world over, administering to the Spiritual Needs of the hungry souls, regardless of personal hardships and privations, public taunts and rivalries, and open persecutions and indignities. All these trials and tribulations He undergoes and to what end? Just to help the helpless, to soothe the lacerated hearts, and to put people on their own feet on the Path of self-knowledge and God-Knowledge.

We can only have a fleeting glimpse of Their Inner Greatness and grandeur, occasionally and in passing as They may drop a hint here and there, just as Kabir did:

Kabir knows fully well the Divine Mysteries, and He has come with a message from God.

Other Saints, too, have spoken likewise. Hazur also gave such like hints:

When we come into the world, we bring our staff with us. When our work is finished at one place, we are commissioned to go elsewhere.

It is His pleasure that He should now reveal Himself to the Americans.

Human birth is a precious privilege. We must make the most of it. First things should come first. Our foremost duty is to realise God. How can we do this? We must make friends with One Who is God-realised so that He may help us to be likewise. God’s Power or the Word of God shines in fullness in One Who has realised Him. What is electricity after all? Can we separate it from the bulb through which it illuminates? If one bulb gets fused, we replace it by another. Electricity itself never dies.

Christ-Power is eternal and shines forth from time to time to meet the needs of the people. Whosoever comes in contact with the Christ-Power, through the agency of God’s Elect, wherever He may be, the Agent never rests until He delivers the goods to His principal – God. Who would not like to find the Elixir of Life and be a living soul forever? The people of the world befriend us so long as we are capable of serving their interests. They leave us one by one when we become helpless on account of poverty and indigence, prolonged sickness and disability, or otherwise when we cannot be of any use to them. Even the so-called nearest and dearest friends and relations whom we proudly claim as our very own may not stand by us till the last moment. They, too, can be of no avail to us when we are in the throes of death and gasping for breath. All that they can do is to pray for our easy and speedy exit from the world. We, therefore, stand in need of such a One Who may be our constant companion here and hereafter and be with us everywhere we may happen to be: in the deepest depths of the sea, on the snow-capped mountain tops, in the burning desert sands, suspended in midair, in wild forests, or even before the judgement seat of God.

Take hold of the garment of a brave soul, One Who moves freely between earth and heaven.

Maulana Rumi

We do need a friend capable of working on all the levels of existence so that we may have the benefit of His instructions and guidance here in this life, as well as in the life hereafter, on realms astral, causal, and spiritual and Who will take us to the home of our Father. Who then can do all this? None else than God Himself and He is the True Guide and Master:

One Who stands supreme from beginning to end, take Him to be our guide and friend. 

Swami Ji also says:

The Lord of the soul graces the earth plane in the garb of a man so as to guide the humanity Godwards.

Once Sahib Ji Maharaj of Agra came to Beas, and for His discourse He took up the hymn beginning with this couplet. He asked Hazur if there were in the Sikh scriptures any verses corresponding to these. Hazur presented several verses with similar connotations, and I give you just one of them:

He Who sent thee here, now calls thee back; return ye to His Eternal Home and live in peace.

Such kindly Souls come from afar, from the very bosom of God Himself. They hold a Divine Mandate. Why do They come? It is His will is the only answer They give. From One proceeds all things according to the Divine Will. When They come to the earth plane, They abide by the laws of the land where They live for the time being. We, too, do likewise here on earth and live accordingly. But here we are the bondage of the karmic law of action and reaction throughout the ages ever since we separated from Him.

When we suffer, and at times we suffer terribly under the heavy load of accumulated karmic burden, we feel helpless to get out of the magic maze of the Lord of this universe and piteously cry for help. When the Father-God within hears our tale of agony and torture, He is stirred to His very depths, takes pity at our woebegone state, and manifests Himself in the form of a Saint to lead us back to Himself. Thus, He Who sent us – from time out of mind – comes to call thee back.

What does He do? He by suitable instructions reminds us of our ancient lineage, gives us a glimpse of the saving lifelines provided by God in each individual. He connects our spirit with them and gradually helps us to untie the Gordian Knot between the body and the soul, until we become free from the body and capable to travel into higher planes along with Him in His radiant form – Divya Sarup. Mind that all this is done by a voluntary process of practical self-analysis under His guidance while living and without total disruption of the silver cord which finally takes place at the time of death – or dissolution of the material body.

A True Saint is the greatest gift of God as much as God is the greatest gift of the Saint.

It is said:

God is All-Wisdom; and when He manifests Himself on a Human Pole, He is known as a Saint.

Can we see God? This is the next question and here is an affirmative answer:

In the company of a Saint one sees the Lord in Himself.

In the holy Gospels, we have:

All things are delivered to me of the Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. 

St Matthew 11:27
St Luke 10:22

Nanak emphatically declares: 

God of Nanak is All-Apparent.

And Christ in no ambiguous terms says:

Behold the Lord.

Guru Arjan tells us:

On land and in the water, He is in His fullness.

He pervades the very fibre of all beings. This is how Guru Arjan sees the All-Pervading Power of God vibrating everywhere. Can we see likewise? Yes, we, too, can by becoming a Gurumukh – i.e. by implicitly following the instructions of a Guru, a God-realised Being.

Is it then possible to see God with the two eyes that we have?

Oh Nanak, the eyes that see God are quite different from what we have.

The eyes of the flesh can only see things of the flesh, for mortal eyes perceive only what is mortal. It is the Inner Eye that can witness the Glory of the Lord. It is Divya Chakshu of the Hindu Saints, Single Eye as termed by Christ and the Nukta-i-Sweda of the Muslim divines. A Master-Saint like an ophthalmic surgeon helps in opening this Inner Eye which is now shuttered.

Shamas-i-Tabrez, a Great Saint, tells us that He provided eyes to thousands of congenitally blind. So far as the experience of God goes, we are all blind. We have all our life been reading of God in Sacred Books and hearing of God from others but never had a personal experience of God. This is how we are blind, leading a blind life in the brain.

Nanak so beautifully defines a blind man:

They are not blind who have no eyes on their faces; but such as are alienated from God are blind indeed.

All the founders of the various religions in the world are one on this point.

We have been gifted with Inner Perception and Audition, independent of the sense organs; for perfect knowledge is an action of the soul. The soul is, however, smothered under the deadweight of mind and matter for myriads of ages, and has never had an opportunity of attending to the Divine Light and the celestial strains of the Inner Music. A Master-Saint helps in lifting the karmic burden and thereby releases the soul, freeing it gradually from the various enveloping koshas or enshrouding veils and different limiting adjuncts until it comes to its own, disengaged of the love of all created things and becomes a disembodied soul, shining in its own luminosity and capable of thinking and acting independently on its own.

St John of the Cross puts it succinctly:

Hence the soul cannot be possessed of the Divine Union until it has divested itself of the love of created beings.

The means for effecting this union are the Light of God and the Voice of God. God is self luminous Light – Swayam Jyoti Swarup –, Father of all Lights as the Christians speak of, and Nurun-ala-Nur – the Light of Lights – of the Muslims. He is also spoken of as the Song of the Soul, the Voice of the Silence, the Music of the Spheres, the Shabd, the Vak, the Word, the Nad – all signifying the same thing. Both these saving life lines are within each individual. We live and move and have our very being in and through them, but like the proverbial fish in water do not know what water is:

God is in the soul and the soul is in God as the sea is in the fish and the fish is in the sea.

These then are the two means whereby the Master takes the soul Godward: the Way of Light – Jyoti Marg – and the Way of Sound – Sruti Marg. All the Great Teachers the world over led Their followers along these Paths that, of course, are not exclusive but complementary to each other, one leading to the other. They come from time to time to lead us back to the mansion of our Father, while we, like the prodigal children, are busy elsewhere, knocking about restlessly from pillar to post, ever a prey to chance winds and waters in the storming sea of life, while our rich heritage in heaven is lying neglected. 

Swami Ji says:

Your crown and sceptre are lying unattended in the Kingdom of God.

Guru Nanak also says:

Oh join ye in the glorious music of bliss, and live eternally absorbed in the Divine.

This Inner Music is the expression of the Power of God working in each one of us. We can by communion with the Word reach the place from where these Celestial Strains are coming.

This is the True Home of the soul now wandering in exile on the earth plane, while the Father-God is looking forward to our homecoming: 

Come ye home, oh friend! Return ye to thy native abode.

This Music is coming down to give us a call back so that we may live in peace and plenty hereafter.

Now that the call has come, answer the call and start on the way back:

With the God-head revealed within, what else remains? Thy labours ended, be ye still like a polestar.

When by the grace of the merciful Master, the Power of God is made manifest within, you come into your own, and see the Reality face to face. You have nothing more to do. That Power now does everything for you and you find yourself but a mere onlooker in a pantomime show of the world. You have to commune with the Holy Word. It will gradually lead you back to your Eternal Home. There will then be one more descent to the earth plane, not, at least, like a prisoner to serve a sentence of life imprisonment under the compulsive force of karmas, but under a Divine Command to fulfil the purpose of God:

With the joyous peals of the Inner Music the Lord Himself shall come to receive thee. 

Gurbani

Just as in the outer world, we play trumpets and drums to express our delight, so also in the Inner World all are greeted by sublime soul – enlivening strains of Celestial Music, when we proceed heavenward in the company of the Guru Dev – the Radiant form of the Guru. To where does all this lead? We are now being led to the Source of all Lights, the Father of Lights, where there is nothing but Eternal Light and Eternal Music, uncreated and fathomless and yet the material and efficient cause of all created things, and as such a veritable connecting link between the Creator and His creation, between heaven and earth. Naam then is the Name for the Power of God, the primal manifestation of the Nameless One, embodying as it does the Holy Light and Holy Choir. This is the only way leading Godward. We may talk as much of it as we may like, but mere philosophy will not help us in getting nearer the Truth. The more we may theorise the further we get away from the Reality. It is the mystic experience within the laboratory of the mind that counts, for it links us directly with the Divinity and this experience we can get with the help and Grace of some Man-of-God.

A Competent Master-Soul may, if He so likes, put even a child on the Sound Current, which serves alike the young and the old, the learned and the ignorant. Everyone can derive benefit by communion with Holy Word, irrespective of caste, colour or creed, age, sex or vocation.

That is not possible in other forms of yogic discipline. Jnana Yoga, for instance, requires a highly developed intellect and skill capable to ratiocinate and deduce conclusions: If Jnana Yoga requires the intellect of Shankara, the Bhakti Yoga calls for the heart of Buddha; and the Karam Yoga, the hand of a warrior like prince Arjuna. With all these accomplishments and arduous disciplines, one still remains in the realm of duality; and until one is able to rise above it, one cannot reach a state of Oneness. In the present age, yoga has come to be associated merely with health and vigour and longevity.

The Surat Shabd Yoga – the Yoga of the Sound Current –, on the other hand, aims at the Highest Union, the union of the Surat or soul current with Shabd or the Sound Current, which is made manifest by a Godman, thus coupling the two in Eternal Relationship. This then is the direct way to God. A Real Godman is capable of giving this marvellous practical experience to any number of people at a single sitting, irrespective of their different religious faiths and beliefs, their social modes of life and their worldly status, and all other types of affiliations. All this He does by just imparting His own Life-Impulse. Once this seed is sown in the heart of an individual, it cannot but fructify in course of time, for no power on earth can render it ineffective:

Who is greater than God to annul His Power (once made manifest in man)? Oh, none.

When a Master-Soul appears on the earth plane, there descends along with Him an irresistible avalanche of Spirituality. The purpose of His descent, as I have been explaining, is to unite all the children of God at one level, the level of the soul in man, and then awaken them to the life of the spirit by revealing in them the Light and Life of God. Such Great Souls have always been very rare, and it is our proud privilege that we were associated with Hazur. Such Souls are never bound down by physical and mental limitations, though They may appear as such. Their Inner Power transcends all that is of the world, for it can work at will, at any level it may choose to do, whether in the Brahmand or even in the beyond into purely Spiritual Realms. Such Power is limitless and eternal. It never dies with the death of the body, but eternally remains working forever and ever, no matter in whose form and from what pole. He is, therefore, not to be taken as a mere human being. The human in Him has been trans-humanised in spite of the human form that He keeps up for the people of the world, for man is to be the teacher of man. Without His teachings and practical guidance here and in Inner Planes, we cannot know of God, much less practise Him, realise Him, and be One with Him. Hence, there is the greatest need to contact a Living Master, wherever He may be:

The Beloved by my side is a guardian angel. He guards me in all odd moments here and hereafter.

Gurbani

He is a never-failing friend and comes to our rescue, wherever we may be, even when we stand before the judgement seat of the Great Judge to render an account of our deeds:

Dharam Rai is obliged to tear the karmic balance sheet, oh Nanak, when the Master squares up the karmic account.

Like a master liquidator, He once and forever liquidates all our karmic debts and liabilities incurred in innumerable ages in the past, and in this life-span lying stocked and stored, heaps upon heaps, for future dispensations. It is not an easy task and none but a karmic free soul can discharge such a Herculean task of making one neh karma or karma free.

To meet a Competent Master is a great blessing indeed. Guru Amar Das, third in succession to Guru Nanak, was able to contact a Satguru, Guru Angad, after a long search of no less than seventy years.

Of His memorable meeting He tells us:

When I grew tired of performing countless deeds, all of a sudden I came across my Master.

When and how does a Great Master-Soul find His way to us, for it is He Who comes our way to help us; and it is not for the blind, as we are, to find our way to the Enlightened One:

Satguru picks us up in the fullness of time, and He attunes our spirit with the Holy Word.

The communion with the Word is the highest and the most natural Way back to God. Everyone, young or old, male or female, can benefit from this. But how? The answer is: Be steady and waver not, and depend upon the words of the Guru.

Those who love the Master and follow His commandments are ever blessed in this world and in the worlds beyond:

Whatever the Guru says, I keep tightly tied in my heart. 

This is why Christ emphatically asked His disciples: 

Be ye the doers of the Word and not the hearers alone.

And again:

Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

I am the vine; ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my Love; […]

St John 15:4,5,7 and 10

We must learn to practise and live up to what the Master says so as to derive the greatest benefit from His teachings. My Master very often used to say:

What is the good of taking a medicine if we do not use it?

By keeping it in the cupboard we cannot cure ourselves of the disease. It may be that the seed of Naam once sown does not perish, and a human birth, in more congenial conditions, is assured in future; yet is it worth our while to come again in the prison house of the world for another round? Why not settle it here for all times to come, rather than to pass through the same process over again:

He who takes refuge in the Satguru, God Himself comes again to his rescue. 

Gurbani 

Man is generally described as an inverted tree, for his roots are in the eye focus, the seat of the soul above, while his limbs and branches are spreading downwards in the world. As it is by the roots that a tree draws its sustenance from the soil, so our roots, the soul currents, draw their food for us from the Sound Current made manifest within. It is thus the Master-Soul that provides us with manna or the Bread of Life and Elixir or the Living Water.

It is by linking the soul current with the Sound Current that a Perfect Master provides the means wherewith the spirit gets its substance and helps to keep the mind and the body under proper control. The more one partakes of this heavenly food, the more one grows from strength to strength, until one becomes a living soul, fully conscious of the Divine Power playing in and around him.

On reaching the court of God, one gets a right royal welcome from the spirits already there. This is how the law of Divine Dispensation works and God fulfils His purpose. When He sees us crying helplessly in the iron grip of toils, troubles, and tribulations with no way out of the giant mill stones of the world, His compassion is stirred to the core, and He hastens the process of deliverance and reveals to us the avenues of escape through His Elect.

Nanak says:

One who gets a Satguru by his side, all his accounts are settled right here and now.

What is stated above is perfectly correct. We, however, delight to take things by halves, as may suit our own convenience and cleverly try to distort the truth by looking at it obliquely. If we on our part do our duty towards the Master by abstaining from the wrongful acts, then alone the Master absolves us from the accumulated sins of past ages. We must, therefore, learn to stand and hold our ground firmly, somewhere, before we can make a beginning for the Inner Journey that lies ahead.

In the time of Hazur, whenever a person got up in the congregation to confess a deviation from the path of rectitude, Hazur used to lift His hand and graciously say:

Thus far and no further.

He exhorted sincere repentance for the past, admonished against future lapses, and strongly advised meditation – communion with the Holy Word – as the sole panacea for all ills of life. It may be possible to cure a person of the poison already taken and in the stomach, provided, of course, no further doses of it are swallowed. What do we do? We cry and cry with convulsions and contortions and yet go on taking more and more of the deleterious matter. This is how Hazur, in such simple words, used to advise all defaulters.

A Master-Soul looks after His jivas more tenderly than any mother would take care of her child. We, like a newborn babe, as we are for the Master, can hardly know and much less realise the loving care He bestows on us and the way He saves us at every step from coming to any harm, and guides us on the Inner Spiritual Path leading to the Kingdom of God.

Strange are His doings,

Nanak glorifies Him. Isn’t it really strange that God Himself sends us into the world and again He Himself – in the garb of a Godman – comes to take us back. His greatness defies all understanding:

Oh Nanak! Satguru opens the Inner Eye. And one begins to see Truth within oneself. 

This then is the secret of God-Realisation. It needs no special qualifications. It is not necessary to leave one’s hearth and home. Live in the world, amidst your kith and kin, make an honest livelihood for yourself, help your friends and relations. Alongside this routine of family life, practise the Holy Word as may have been advised by a Master-Soul. You will, in course of time, become a changed man – totally changed from what you were and see for yourself how God’s Power works for you and does everything for you. You will become altogether free and fearless.

Whenever a Master-Saint comes into the world, He showers His blessings on all alike. We sitting here can hardly do justice to the Glory that was Hazur’s. A Godman like God Himself is Indefinable and Unfathomable. Blessed indeed are they who had an opportunity to see Him and meet Him, came in direct contact with Him, and had the good fortune to be associated with Him.

A faqir, mendicant, once came to Prophet Mohammad. As the Prophet was not at home, the faqir went away disappointed. On his return, the Prophet, when informed by his servant about the faqir, asked him if he, the servant, had met the faqir. The servant said he had only had a glimpse of him as the faqir had by then turned his back and was going away. The Prophet blessed the servant at his good luck of having seen such a sage, even from behind. Such indeed is the Glory of a person who meets a Man-of-God, what to speak of those who met Hazur face to face, sat at His Lotus Feet, and drew inspiration from Him. We must strive to be the worthy children of the worthy Father so that the world may glorify Him. It can be done not by mere acknowledgement, but by actually following and living up to His teachings. Every father wishes that his son should excel him in prowess and prestige. But who can excel the Godman? Should we become Guru-man, this would be quite enough. What I mean to stress is that we may practise the Word and commune with the Word, the living manifestation of the Living God, revealed unto us by the God in man – Hazur.

Hazur was never tired of telling us that the Path of Light and Sound was the basis of all the religions. Socrates spoke of an Ethereal Sound which led him to a wondrous world quite unknown to him before. Goethe referred to It as Music of the Spheres. Pythagoras described It as Light and Music of all harmonies. In the Vedas It is addressed as Vakya and Jyoti. Zoroaster lighted the eternal and unending fires and practised Sraosha. When Sidhartha, the Prince of Peace, witnessed the Light within Him, He truly became the Enlightened One, and the Buddhists to this day worship and adore the unknown and unknowable Power with the words Aum Mani Padme Hum, which means that the Aum shines resplendently like a crest jewel, emitting the sound like that of a distant thunder. 

This then is the most ancient thing that has come down to us through the ages extending back to the hoary past. This is the Great Truth that Hazur placed before us; and with a twinkle in His eyes and a smile on His lips always adding, 

Should you in your search find something nobler than this, please accept it by all means and let me also know of it.

But we have with all our endeavours not yet been able to find anything more sublime than this; and all our research in the realm of religion has revealed that Truth, the manifest Truth is based on the twin principle of Light and Sound. Should we come across a Master of Truth and the latter condescends to enliven our ‘self’ with His own Life-Impulse, what will be the result? This human life will have its fulfilment. How fortunate we are. We did meet a Master of Truth; we sat at His feet; He accepted us and blessed us by revealing in us the Holy Word and by contacting us with this Audible Life-Stream.

The first and foremost task that a really Great Master-Soul sets before Himself is to unite on a common plane all the children of God, no matter to what religious order they owe allegiance.

It was at the behest of Hazur that this forum of Ruhani Satsang came to be established. It is a common meeting place for the people of all religious beliefs and diverse faiths. It is not embellished with sectarian signs and symbols of any one religion or the other. It is just a training ground, or call it a school of Spirituality where Spirituality is preached alike by Mahatmas of all religious orders and practical steps are taken to inculcate the moral and Spiritual Values in the vast congregations of people comprising all shades of religious opinion. Spirituality is the rich heritage of mankind – greatly cherished in all times – and in all climes, but appearing and disappearing like a stream as it meanders in and out of the thick foliage of doubt, suspicion, and mistrust that the people generally have in their work-a-day world which is full of untold anxiety and fears. As and when we lose sight of this priceless human heritage and find ourselves going down in the scales of human values, God in His infinite Mercy provides us with the means to reorientate us by manifesting His own Divinity through the agency of some human being of His own choosing and at a place He thinks best.

In comparatively recent times Swami Ji Maharaj revived this age-old and half forgotten science, and it has come down to us and we are benefiting from it. It behoves us then to make ourselves worthy of this great treasure house which is ours. We must strive to be clean in our thoughts, sweet and courteous in our words, kind and gentle in our deeds, and above all we must regularly devote some substantial time every day to the practice of the Holy Word and thereby equip ourselves for the Kingdom of God within us.

It is all Hazur’s Grace that He accepted us as His very own, contacted us with the Light and Voice of God by revealing the same to us; and we ought to be thankful to Him every moment of our life. Even a hawker when he returns to his hut in the evening takes a count of his earnings for the day. A shopkeeper similarly draws up a balance sheet of his profit and loss account every six months or so, if not oftener. We have to see where we were and where we are now. If we are better than before, it is all right; and, if not, what are the reasons for lagging behind? Are we at least maintaining the capital, the stock-in-trade with which we were provided, the experience of Inner Perception and Inner Audition that He gave us; or have we altogether lost everything by our negligence, carelessness, and maladroitness?

All these questions need our serious consideration. We must see how we can develop and extend that experience with which we started on the first day. We must, if necessary, have a refresher course from some advanced brother-in-faith so that whatever difficulties beset us are overcome and we are enabled to go ahead. The revelation of the Holy Word is a priceless gift of the Great Master and, mind it, It has been given to us freely and fully and on trust, and, therefore, should on no account be allowed to slip through the fingers simply because It has not cost us anything in terms of worldly money. 

I remember, some Americans once wrote to Hazur that they were quite prepared and willing to exchange their temporal wealth that they had in abundance for some of the Spiritual Wealth with Him. Do you know what reply He gave? He told them that He was not in need of their worldly riches for He had in surfeit the Godly Wealth of Naam and that like all other free gifts of God – light, air, and water – He was here to share His Spiritual Treasures with all the children of God wherever they happened to be. Such High Souls come into the world with a Divine Mission to remind the people of their long forgotten heritage, of which we can hardly dream because of the smoke coloured glasses on our eyes: They come into the world for no other purpose but to look after the lost sheep, the morally and spiritually sick, so as to lead them back to the fold.

Let us, therefore, render our grateful thanks to Him – the Great Master – Who has already put us on the Path and is still putting others likewise. It is all His Grace that He is looking after us from the Spiritual Planes within and is ever ready to reveal His radiant form within if we just turn inside towards Him. He is keenly awaiting us at the eye focus to shower His multitudinous blessings upon us. Let us strive our very best to do our part and reach unto Him to enable Him to pull us up and lead us on to His Eternal Home.