The Master within and without

by Hilde Dressel

In some spiritually interested circles of the western world, particularly in Germany, one infers from the knowledge of the grand fact that every man has the Divinity within himself, that an outer Master is redundant for one has the greatest Master within oneself in such a steady presence and immediate influence the best outer Master were not able to establish. Some disciples in the West will have to get down with this opinion again and again until they will have matured to the realisation that the Master within and without are one and the same – a fact of which, unfortunately, one is hardly conscious of.

What can one say to such a refusal of the Greatest Spiritual Gift as the acceptance by a True Master? He who rejects – for whatever reasons – does so by ignorance of the True Relationship he has not yet found the right Inner Relation to the Living Master. It is not that the refusing person is decisive, but the Master in the sense of the Divine Law. We don’t know, why the Divine Law is determined in such a manner, but we know three co-determining points: He who was accepted by the Living Master, will be put on the Path leading directly back to God. Only few are qualified for this way. He who was accepted by the Master has acquired this gift by karmic merits during his former life. He who was accepted by the Master must bear within himself a yearning back to the Divine Home.

Incapability of understanding the incomparable privilege to have a steady contact to the Living Master points to the fact that one had not yet worked into that direction in former lives. It would be an unkind arrogance to think that such persons were, therefore, less valuable than those being accepted by the Master. May be, they have acquired merits in another direction and are turned still more to the outer life, which everyone has to overcome at first.

But now we shall return to the theory mentioned before that a Living Master is not necessary for salvation.

The ways to the Divinity within us are – symbolically expressed – blocked with rubbish and ashes. As well as other creatures, we have received our life, breath and existence from God – and insofar as there is a natural contact to Divinity – but it becomes only seldom conscious to men and most of them try to restore it consciously only when being in great need or when their physical existence is endangered. That is due to our personal nature. Divinity within us does not participate in our common thoughts and feelings serving to usefulness and egotism, although it knows them on the ground of the karmic law of cause and effect. Such thoughts and feelings don’t help advance to God, not even if they are in the form of prayer.

But what could advance to Him and by what could we draw His attention to us? Only our True Yearning, our Love and humble devotion are able to move God to see about us and to lead us to the Living Master for our help. For all those who don’t bring up these qualities, the locking device seems hardly necessary to be removed.

It is sure, on the other hand, that already every endeavour for Love Mercy and every True Devotion to Divinity becomes exactly noted. Also the ineffably consoling sentence remains true:

If you go one step towards God, He takes thousand steps to meet you.

But this one step on our part and the thousand steps from the other side are by far not enough to free this tunnel, crammed full with ashes between the divine and human consciousness and to transmit the Divine Light so that It becomes conscious to us.

But because our endeavours had been noted and because the sentence quoted above has its validity, we get the great help one day. We will find the relation to a Living Master! Only with His help can our endeavours and efforts to reach God lead to success, for only He knows the right way to God and can lead us this way we don’t find alone.

How and why can only the Living Master do this? Because He is the Living Manifestation of Naam or Shabd – the Divine Light and Sound Principle – also termed the Word or the Holy Ghost, and the Divine Pole of the creative or Christ-Power which has created all that is and exists and works in all creation. But man does not become conscious of It and cannot restore any conscious relation to It by himself, if the Living Master does not connect him with Naam and Shabd at the time of initiation and thus opens the Way to God for him.

After this contact of highest efficacy is established, it is for us to work further exactly according to the instructions of the Master, and the more we do so and keep to the Light and the Sound Current of the Master-Power, the quicker will be our progress, as we get the help and Grace of the Master just in the same measure of our own efforts.

He who thinks that he can be there without the Master has to do at first the small preparing steps to progress, until he has to realise one day that he himself cannot find out the Path and the door to the Path without the Master’s help. But those who make their meditations as disciples under the guidance of the Master, experience steadily how the Divine Powers – Master-Power – pouring on man increase incomparably.

Thus we see that there is only One Master Who – as He is Master-Power Personified – works within as well as without. The term of foreign salvation is, therefore, quite out of place, as no foreigner will redeem us and not from without, but the Master Whose Power is already living within us will save us by direct transmission of His own Life-Impulse and will teach us to transcend body consciousness with the aid of Naam, so that we can rise into cosmic awareness and later on into God-Consciousness. Greatest and steady endeavours of the disciple for purification and over-coming the ego within himself for purity of body, mind and thoughts as well as regular meditations are self-evident prerequisites. How wonderful to know that the Divine Consciousness fully incarnated in the Living Master, intervenes to reunite those brothers and sisters ready with their Divine Original Ground.

It is quite a new fact that the world becomes openly pointed to such a possibility by the books of the Living Master Sant Kirpal Singh Ji.