True Master and His Mission

IV

A Real Godman is God – incarnate in flesh – Word made flesh, as Christ puts it.

Tulsi Sahib has said:

I adore a Satguru Who can lift me above body consciousness in a short time of three hours.

This then is the touchstone for judging a Genuine Master, for otherwise there is no dearth of the so-called masters.

Of the Competent Master, it is affirmed:

It is the magnetic pull of the Guru that can effect a withdrawal of the sensory currents from the body.

Swami Ji

God resides in every heart. His Light shines in and enlivens the body, and we possess the lift-of-life in the Music of the Soul; but have we ever experienced these saving lifelines: the Light of God and the Voice of God, upholding all that exists? A Real Master grants an actual experience of a direct Inner Contact with these saving lifelines.

Who then can effect such a miracle, the miracle of linking us with the Music of the Soul? He alone can do this Who Himself is Word Incarnate for He is filled with the Word from top to toe.

Now let us consider the price that one has to pay:

Surrender thy body, thy riches, and thy mind to the Guru: Follow His instructions implicitly and then shalt thou get.

Gurbani

When Raja Janaka asked for God experience, the Sage Ashtavakra in turn demanded of the royal disciple his ceremonial and customary dues as a preceptor, and laid claim to the king’s body, mind, and all his possessions. The king being anxious for the highest mystic experience readily agreed to do so. Thereupon the sage ordered him to get down from his throne and sit at the far end of the court, right at the place where the shoes of the courtiers were lying. It was too much for the king to do, but as he had stipulated to surrender his body and mind and all to the Guru, he could not help complying with His behests. Not content with this, the sage inquired of the Raja as to where he was sitting, and the latter had to affirm before his court that he was occupying the meanest place. The object of the Guru was to dispel from the mind of his disciple the pride of place and status. Having done this, He commanded Janaka not to interfere in the worldly possessions, riches and wealth, which were now His (Guru’s) – not even by entertaining thought of the same for they were no longer his (Janaka’s) as he had given away the same to his Guru.

Janaka felt perplexed as he looked at his erstwhile pomp and glory and heard the voices of his courtiers. To escape from all these, he shut his eyes and closed his ears. But the force of habit is terrible indeed. In spite of shutting his eyes and ears and his best efforts to keep his thoughts under control, his mind was yet in all those things – palaces, courtiers, and royal pomp and splendour, his queens and children. On being questioned about his mental state, be replied to the Guru that his mind was at that moment just like a bird perched on the mast-staff of a boat on high seas, attempting to fly again and again; but finding no place of rest on the waters, it returned to the mast. The Guru then commanded him to stop all mental vibrations as the mind which projected those thought waves was no longer his (Janaka’s); and he had, therefore, no business to use it.

The words went home and momentarily Janaka felt in him a mental vacuum for the Rishi by His own thought force pulled the disciple’s consciousness from out of his bodily mould into the Great Beyond above the plane of senses. This is what a Real Competent Master does. He gives a practical mystic experience by means of concentration, after gradually weaning the mind of the disciple from the world and all that is worldly, collecting the sensory currents of the body at the eye focus, and retaining them there for some time.

God is where there is nothing. We have to disenfranchise the self in us by stripping it of the person or the marks of the bodily adjuncts of mind and matter before we can get a Spiritual Experience. The Guru does not need your body, mind, and possessions. They all remain with you as ever before, but enriches you a thousand-fold by providing you with subtle Spiritual Riches of inestimable value. We have to forsake the flesh for the spirit, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.

He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it,

declared Christ. 

We have, in fact, to chose between the two: life of the flesh and the life of the spirit. It does not mean that we have to shirk our duties and responsibilities and take to the wilderness. True renunciation means Inner Detachment and making a proper use of everything that God has given us in trust, as any trusted agent will do for his principal.

This is the price for attaining Divinity and it has to be paid without any mental reservation. While in the midst of plenty, consider your all, including your mind and body, as belonging to the Guru and never employ them for gratification of the senses. The more you will empty yourself of the love of the created things, the more will you be filled with the Love of God and verily come into greater communion with the Holy Word.

So when we earnestly implore for Divine Beatification, God in the garb of a Living Master instantly comes to our aid for that is the law.