The Path according to St John

II

Now, Christ goes on further and tells us how to develop this receptivity. 

He says, 

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my Love.

In Love only, you remember someone. What is Love? The one for whom you have Love is constantly in your heart. Always. You may not be expressing it in words, but something is dragging you from within. That constant remembrance is in the heart in which such a state has developed. How can anyone other than him whom he loves abide in that heart? If anyone at all is remembered, it is only for the sake of the one whom he loves. So if we love God, we love others for the sake of God in them, not at the level of forgetting Him and loving someone else.

Christ says, 

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my Love.

How can we abide in His Love? By keeping the commandments you have been given. What does the Master say? He says, 

Don’t think evil of others, even in mind, word, and deed. You must be truthful; never tell lies; never conceal. Don’t usurp others’ rights. Don’t say sarcasms; don’t have something in your mind and something else in your mouth: you say something now and behind the person’s back you say something else. Be true to your own selves. You can deceive others, but not the God in you.

What I always impress is to be true to one’s own self. This is what Love requires. What are other of the Master’s commandments? Be chaste in word, thought, and deed. Live up to what the scriptures say: 

Marriage means taking a companion in life to be with you in weal or woe, and both should help each other to know God.

This is the Highest Aim of a man’s life. Begetting children might be one duty, but it is not one hundred percent of our duties. About this, the Bible says, 

Love thy wives as Christ loved the church.

So, He wants all of us to keep His commandments and live as He says: 

Love God with all thy heart, with all thy strength, with all thy mind; and love thy neighbour.

Other Masters said, 

Love thy God and love all creation. There is no place where God is not.

So love is the thing through which you can have the sweet remembrance and the constant remembrance. You’ll dream of Him. And when you go into a fast sleep, you will reverberate: without knowing it, the same things will be coming out of your mouth. 

Christ says, 

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my Love.

That will give you more love from day to day. 

Even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

He says, 

Follow me. I have lived up to the commandments of my Father; and similarly, you abide by the commandments of the God in me, of the Father in me. 

Reading further: 

These things I have spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

This is how you can have the pleasure of the Master. Take the example of a man who has three or four sons. One son lives according to the commandments of the father, he never disobeys; he simply follows what the father’s intentions are. Some other sons obey only when they are told, and even then, only willy-nilly; and some sons do not obey. Which son would be the best of all? The one who reads the intentions of the father and, without saying, lives up to them. After all, every son knows what his father wants. Every disciple knows what his Master wants. Should we repeat that very same lesson all the time every day? A wise man is one who hears the word of the Master and keeps it in his heart of hearts and lives up to it. If you do that, you will win the pleasure of the Master.

And what does the Master do? When the father – excuse me – leaves the body, what does he do? He gives the keys of the whole thing to the son who is obedient, who lives up to his commandments. 

This is what Guru Nanak said: 

We have come into this world for the purpose of having the Water of Life or the Bread of Life. It is in the hands of the Master. Go to Him. Remain where you are by living a religious way of life. That will prepare the ground for when you surrender your whole self to the Master.

That is why Christ and all other Masters said, 

Leave all and follow me.

What did He mean? By following Him does not mean that you should leave your homes, that everybody should physically leave and follow Him. Excuse me, but how would you provide everyone with accommodations in which to live? To follow Him means to surrender your will to His wishes; not as a slave, mind that, but as a friend. Further, you’ll find this where I opened the Bible: 

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

And what does He further say? 

Greater Love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Love knows service and sacrifice. 

Ye are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known to you.

So whenever Masters come, They do not want to make slaves of you; They address you as friends, so that you may know what They are saying. A slave cannot know a friend; a friend can know a friend better. So Masters do not make slaves of you, but They give you equal rights. 

They say, 

I am a man like you. Here are my words; abide in them. Abide in them, and you abide in me.

Receptivity is developed by living up to what the Masters say and by abiding in the Master. He takes you as an equal, as a friend.

You know what is meant by the Water of Life or the Bread of Life? And how can you partake of It? Only by developing receptivity: As you think, so you become. When He is Word made flesh, then the Word will come in you. You will eat that Word in Him, not the flesh of the body.

These are some things that are given in the form of parables to make you understand what is what. Pure lives are required. Unless you live up to what He says, unless you abide by the words He utters, you cannot have the first step. And you can have the second step only when you learn to abide in Him. 

The Master shows that the whole curtain between us and God is the mind. The soul is of the same nature as that of God; but the soul is under the control of mind, and mind is led away through the outgoing faculties to the outside things; and we are given up to the pleasures of the outside. So, unless the mind is stilled, you cannot have this Bread of Life. You will find it said in the scriptures: 

Be still, physically and in mind – and intellectually.

If you do that and know that ye are God, you will find that the mind is the curtain between us and God. 

One Saint says, 

If you have a mind to know God – if you have made a resolute will to know God – then just put one step on your mind, and that will still it. And, with the next step that you take, you will enter the house of your Father.

So, mind is the curtain or the impediment lying between man and God.

How can we withdraw the mind from the outside? The outgoing faculties of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin are the five organs of sense through which the five senses work: sight, audition, smell, taste, and touch. We are always getting impressions through them from the outside. The subconscious reservoir of our mind is overflowing with these impressions. Even in dreams we see them. We unknowingly reverberate the very same things that are overflowing within us. So, how are we to withdraw the mind from the outgoing faculties? If we know that, we can do it only by stilling it.

To still the mind, there are ways and ways and many ways. So far, we have been seeking God in outside things. But the Kingdom of God cannot be had by observation; it is within you. So long as you are engaged in the pursuits that relate to the outgoing faculties, you cannot find Him. Only by liberating the soul, or analysing the soul from mind, and withdrawing the mind from the outgoing faculties, can you know who you are and what you are. You can come in contact with It. The Elixir of Life or the Water of Life is already within us; and the retarding factor is only the mind. If the mind is directed to the outgoing faculties, we become worldly; if it is directed to the soul above, we become spiritual.

This is what we have to learn on the Way to God. God is the very Soul of our souls. God is the very Power that is controlling us in the body. This is the natural way, according to the character of the mind. If you are sitting in an absorbed state and your attention, which is the expression of the soul in the body, is absorbed or engrossed in something, your outgoing faculties do not work. So these faculties take their strength from the attention when it is attached with the senses. Similarly, the mind also gains its strength from the soul. When you are absorbed, you will find that even your mind does not work: you go into a reverie.

So the mind is the only thing standing in our Way back to God. And the Master says, 

Oh mind, be still! You would like to have a drop of the Water of Life, the Light and Sound Principle of God. You can come in contact with It when you are still, mentally and physically.

It is already within us. The mind is like a parasitical plant that has covered a certain part of a tree, and that portion over which it has spread has become dry. That parasitical plant derives all its life from the branches of the tree on which it has spread. Similarly, the mind takes strength from the soul and has the soul covered up. We are not able to see God.

What are we to do? The Masters tell us just to control our mind. And what will help us on the way to doing this? The Masters say, 

Leave off all infirmities, whatever shortcomings you have in the way of violence, hatred, lies, and other passions.

Instead of that, do what is good: for hatred, have the virtue of Love; for anger, have the virtue of forgiveness; and if you are impure or have lusty thoughts, have the virtue of chastity. Adopt the good things and leave off the harmful ones. 

When Zoroaster was asked, 

What should we do?

He said, 

Join the army of God.

And He was asked,

What qualification is required?

And He said, 

Righteousness.

And they asked, 

What is righteousness?

And He defined it: 

Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.

An ethical life is a stepping-stone to Spirituality. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Live up to the virtues, and leave off all vices. That will help you to control your mind for a while. And whatever wrong you have done, repent. Wash it away with the tears of your eyes of repentance. This is the way prescribed by all Masters Who came in the past, and we should live up to it.

Generally you will find that we are full of passions: greed, lies, deceptions, usurping others’ rights, unchaste thoughts, and thinking evil of others. All the time, all these things are filling up this cabin of the man-body with all their filth and dirt. How can you expect a king to enter a place – a cabin – that is full of dirt and filth? That is why all Masters tell us to have pure hearts. 

You do clean your bodies and wash them on the outside. That is all right: 

Cleanliness is next to godliness. 

But if all this filth and bad odour lies within you, you should also cleanse the body within.

This is what all Masters say. 

Sant Kabir said, 

Even if a fish enters the most sacred river, the Ganges, it cannot lose its bad odour.

What is essential is not the cleanliness of the body outside, but the cleanliness of the heart within. How to get this Inner Cleanliness, I have now laid before you. We use toiletries that cost millions of dollars every year for our bodies. But it is not the outer purity that will draw the attention of God; it is the Inner One. God is after finding any Holy Place – any heart – full of Love, full of His thought; but our hearts are full of worldly thoughts. We are thinking evil of others and doing evil by usurping others rights, by squeezing others’ blood, by having lusty thoughts, and by feeling hatred. We must keep our hearts pure.

What you have to do is what I just read out from the Bible. You should become Gurumukh. The word Gurumukh means: keeping your Master before you. When He initiates you, He gives you a little experience of the Water of Life and the Bread of Life. From that very moment, He resides with you and never leaves you. That is the Christ-Power in Him, the God-Power or the Guru-Power that never dies. He never leaves you. 

Christ said, 

I shall never leave you till the end of the world.

And all Masters said, 

It is God in that Son of man that is the True Master.

When He takes care of someone, He never leaves him until He takes him to the feet of the Father.

Come in contact with God, and always be directed towards Him, like the needle of a compass towards the north. Always be thinking of the Grace of the Master. 

As you think, so you become.

A Master is the God in Him made manifest. We have regard for the Human Pole at Which that Power works. But, all the same, you will find that all Masters differentiated between these two things: the Son of man and the Christ in man.

Live up to what He says and you will find the Truth, the Truth that is clothed in Light, the Truth that is the symphonies of the Music of All-Harmonies, which is the outer aspect of the God-in-Action-Power that is called Word. 

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.

This is the way, and whether you live in one religion or the other makes no difference. Remain there. Man is social, and he must remain in some social body. You are performing good actions there, and you will have the reactions of the good. But to know God is to have the Water of Life and the Bread of Life that will quench your thirst forever and appease your hunger forever. That is coming in contact with the God-Power, which is Light and Sound Principle. That you have as a gift from the Master.

This is today’s subject. I think that will do, if you live up to it. Masters never come to break one religion or to start a new one.

They say, 

Truth is already there. Just live up to it. If you live up to it, everything will be all right.

Thank you.