Questions answered

The Master receives from devotees queries on various aspects of Spirituality. These may be personal or academic, but the Master’s answers have universal appeal for Spiritual Aspirants. We reproduce here some of the questions and answers from the Master’s book, ‘Spiritual Elixir,’ for the benefit of our readers.

Question: Are the God and Godman – Master – considered one and the same?

Answer: Yes, it is so, but there are very few who can develop this much receptivity and understand this rare phenomenon. The physical plane is a realm of duality where illusion prevails most and only spiritually illumined may testify to such a statement for their own personal conviction as given by some of them; i.e. I and my Father are One and Father and Son have taken the same colours etc.

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Question: Do Masters welcome sinners?

Answer: Yes, soul is of the same essence as that of God and Master looks on all as embodied souls. So all are dear to Him. He wishes them to reach to the True Home of their Father. A repentant sinner coming with a sincere heart is acceptable to Him. We are all sinners and we come to Him to be cleansed.

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Question: How do we obtain True Knowledge of God?

Answer: The Knowledge of God is a definite and a complete science in itself – unchanged since life began on earth. It is only rarely that one may come across this science. It is God-made and not man-made. It has always remained an unrecorded science unwritten and unspoken. There is One God, and there is only One Way to Him. The elementary steps in this direction may be different. This knowledge has both a theoretical and a practical aspect. The theory is quite simple. The Power of Almighty God works on a selected Human Pole who becomes His mouthpiece or His Messiah, to impart His knowledge to those who long for Him and want to be with Him. God is Love, our souls are also endowed with Love and the Way to God is through loving devotion. One has to withdraw his soul-current from the physical body and enter His Kingdom through the guidance and help of a practical Master or Saint, Who is Love Personified and can transcend the body and traverse the Higher Planes. There is a practical side of the science of the soul. The Master-Saint is able to give first-hand experience in the very first sitting to almost all seekers, however small that experience may be – according to one’s receptivity – to have an Inner Vision and Contact with the Inner Sound or the Voice of God, that is Word, the Sound Principle. This ever-existent Inner Voice, the Primal Manifestation of the God-head then becomes the guide of man in the interior of his self. It is the Master in His Radiant Form that accompanies the pilgrim soul and guides him or her at each step on the way. The Master meets and talks and guides the disciple on the way up. Contacting a practical Master is, therefore, a must for those wishing to be on the Way to God.

Telepathy is transference of thought, and thoughts emanate from the mind, and mind has therefore to be stilled; eyes have to be closed from all external views and the ears likewise from all outer sounds. The soul currents of the body have to be withdrawn and collected at one centre, the seat of the soul in the body, and this is done according to the instructions given at the time of initiation.

This in brief is what is called Spirituality, the proper type of meditation, the Science of Para Vidya, which has come down from ancient times and is known today as Sant Mat.

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Question: If I need guidance from the Master and am not able to go up within and contact Him and get a definite answer but yet I pray to Him, how will I know whether what I have decided to do is True Guidance or merely my own mind acting?

Answer: The initiate who contacts the Master within of which the genuineness is tested by the repetition of the charged Names given to him, can have direct reply which will stand true. Until then an initiate in all his affairs – mundane or spiritual – should attend to them carefully and do the best he can; with serene detachment and self-abnegation, attaching no importance to the rewards whatsoever and leave the rest to the Master-Power working overhead.

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Question: Can the disciple see God?

Answer: God is Absolute, Whom so far nobody has seen. When He came into Being, God became Light and Sound Principle. You can see His Light when your eyes become single.

The Light of the body is the eye; therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of Light.

St Luke 2:34

And you can hear His Voice when your Inner Ear is opened. The ABC of the Masters’ teachings start when you rise above the body consciousness. No one can rise above the body consciousness by himself, he needs the Grace of a Competent Master.

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Question: Can all actions undertaken at the level of mind and senses help Spiritual Progress?

Answer: All actions performed at the level of mind and senses however good and virtuous in themselves, cannot per se bring about Spiritual Salvation. They are as binding as evil actions. One is the chain of gold and the other of iron. To do good action are better than to do bad ones, or inaction altogether, but beyond preparing a ground for Spiritual Progress, do not by themselves be of any avail to the spirit which lies far beyond and above the sense plane. But once a person is put on the Spiritual Path, then all his actions automatically flow from him as from any agent working for the principal and as such cease to have any binding effect on him as he has lost all sense of doership, ultimately making him neh karma – actionless. To be neh karma then should be our ideal in life and this means salvation.

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Question: Can you tell us what is Truth?

Answer: Truth in its truest form is the Eternal Permanence. Spirituality and Truth are therefore the essence of the Absolute. When one finds the Source of Truth he finds the Treasure of all Treasures. The teachings of the Masters tell us that Inner Truth is not designed for outward show but Divinety meant to reveal our real self to us and open up to us the glories which God originally placed within us.

The Kingdom of God cometh not with observations; the Kingdom of God is within you.

A True Master can harmoniously disclose to us a direct Path to our True Home. On this Path we may begin our ascent within as far as we permit ourselves to go. Eventually, according to the nature and degree of our own progress, we may move up to the Source of Truth. From this Prime Focus we hear the Spiritual Sound and see the Perfect Light. This Light and Sound sustain the Infinite Universe and all the finite worlds.

To extend our capacities for receiving progressively upraising illumination may not always be easy, but the Master is patient in His wisdom, and from out of His vast Spirituality His assistance remains for ever at hand until we join Him in Sach Khand, the final ever blissful Home of our True Spiritual Being.

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Question: Why have women been regarded and treated throughout as inferior to men and even warned against by some spiritual teachers as the cause of temptation and downfall to men?

Answer: The women are regarded as inferior to men being weaker sex and they are prone to temptation and at times are likely to fall a prey to the environments more than men. The spiritual teachers who banned spiritual development of fair sex might have attributed it to their aforesaid weakness. Both the sexes are equally a cause of temptation and the Masters do not blame either in particular.

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Question: What is intuition?

Answer: Intuition means immediate cognition without the aid of intellect and reasoning. Such feelings, very often, arise all of a sudden, in moments of quietness. There is nothing supramental in it.

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Question: What is the difference between Inner Experience and intuition?

Answer: The Inner Experience of the soul as is granted by the Living Master at the time of initiation is direct conscious contact with Holy Naam – the Divine Sound Current and Light as coming from the right side. Intuition, on the other hand, is just a comprehension without resort to reasoning or analysis.

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Question: In ‘Man, know thyself,’ did you mean we must know ourselves in just this life, or all our past lives?

Answer: ‘Know thyself’ is the most ancient aphorism. We having its equivalents in the Greek and Latin phrases gnothi seauton and nosce teipsum, and all that these words connote is the actually realised experience within of the Life-Impulse apart from mere theoretical knowledge, whereby we live and all other creatures live and the whole universe is being sustained; for it is by knowing this that all else becomes known and nothing else remains to be known. Self-realisation is a stepping stone to God-Realisation. He who has found himself, can never again lose anything in this world.

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Question: If the key-words are had from some body else and one starts meditation on his own, will it not be possible to have Inner Progress?

Answer: You mean to say that if one comes by the keywords from somebody other than an Adept or picks them up from somewhere and then starts meditating on his own, will it bring forth any fruit? Certainly not, for he will then be repeating parrot-like, a mere bunch of words without knowing their significance and without any potency in them. It is the thought transference or personal Life-Impulse from a Perfect Master that charges the words and makes them key-words wherewith to open the mansions of the Lord.

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Question: According to Page 4 of ‘My Submission’: Spirituality is nothing but serving the people. Yet we are told our first duty is to ourselves. Sometimes it wood mean neglecting ourselves to serve others. Please explain.

Answer: ‘Service before self’ is a very good thing. But very often one does not even know the true significance of service and with all his well-meaning intentions actually does disservice instead of the much wanted service of which we so glibly talk. Until we discover the True Self within us we cannot visualise, much less actually realise in others the same self Life-Impulse vibrating in the universe. This is why emphasis is laid in the first instance on self-knowledge, for it paves the why to God-Knowledge and when it dawns, one sees nothing but the Spirit of God working in all harmony, in each creature. ‘Service to others’ now assumes quite a different aspect, becoming a dedication to the Spirit of the universe pervading in and around you, because when one grasps the human in himself he understands all mankind.

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Question: What is the significance of an initiate having terrifying and vivid dreams?

Answer: Dreams are the outcome of past recollections based on hearings, seeings, readings or dreadful thinking. The terrifying dreams generally are attributed to some digestive disorder; a bad stomach which can be cured by simple medication. The vivid dreams denote clarity of Inner Vision when some people can recollect their dreams very clearly whereas others cannot recall them.

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Question: To have good effects from meditation, should one ask forgiveness from the Master daily?

Answer: The loving disciple is always repentant for his or her trespasses and lapses committed consciously or unconsciously during the day and turns many times within in prayer. Prayer is not an outward show, but it is an anguished cry of the soul, which stirs the Divine Grace, and when it is directed and channelled smoothly, it works wonders and the dear initiate is filled with wondrous gratitude with His Grace.