True Master and His Mission

I

Once Raja Parikshat asked his minister as to why in times of a moral crisis or a calamity God Himself comes to the rescue of His children even when He has innumerable attendants at His beck and call and can direct any of them to do the job for Him. The minister replied that a loving Father as God is cannot help coming down to help His children. The Raja asked the minister to substantiate his statement and the latter promised to do so in course of time.

After some days, the minister made a doll that looked just like the Raja’s son and dressed it in the fashion of the prince. He placed the doll on the bank of a pool in the garden where the Raja used to go for a walk. The doll could be manipulated to move with strings from a distance. When the Raja next went to the garden with his minister, he saw the prince sitting on the bank of the pool. While he was wondering as to how his son was there, he saw the prince taking a plunge into the pool. The Raja could not bear this heart-rending sight and instantaneously jumped into the pool to save his son from drowning. To his great surprise, the Raja found that it was a doll and not his son. The Raja called for an explanation from the minister, who humbly replied that the farce was enacted to substantiate the truth of what he had said sometime ago about God coming down to save His children in critical moments.

We all are children of God, fashioned by Him in His own image. The soul in man is of the same essence as God.

Kabir says:

The soul, though embodied, is but a part and parcel of the All-Pervading essence enlivening the universe.

It is nothing but a drop of the sea of All-Consciousness. Environed on the physical plane by the limiting adjuncts of mind and matter, we have completely identified ourselves with the world and all that is worldly so much so that we have forgotten our truly Divine Origin. The natural result of this forgetfulness is pain and suffering. Physical life is all misery, declared Buddha, the Enlightened One. The ever-loving Father, when He hears the piteous cries of His children for a way out of this magic maze of the world, cannot but descend in the garb of a man to reclaim the lost sheep back to His fold.

God is the Guru of soul, for soul is of the same essence as God. When in agony, it cries for help and God comes down to its rescue. When in deep anguish, one yearns for a way of life, the Word, or the Power of God, materialising in the form of a Godman, call Him what you may. He comes to give all possible help and to lead the world – weary and heavy of heart back to His own Kingdom. We are here in this world on probation. When the time comes, God makes arrangements through His Elect, or the Chosen One, to establish a Spiritual Contact with Himself.

Nanak has drawn a beautiful pen picture of a soul suffering the pangs of separation:

Having forgotten the Real Source of Life, the soul in perpetual delusion is bewailing her lot.

In our descent to the earth plane, we have so wrapped the ‘self’ in us in mantles of mind and matter of varying degrees of density peculiar to the different levels of our existence – causal, mental, and physical – that we are completely lost to the self and are endlessly wandering in delusion in the mighty maze of the world. In spite of brief momentary awakenings, we are prone to go astray by force of habit that has become our nature. Our condition may be likened to a woman who, having been deserted by her husband, goes back to her parents and lives there forgetful of her husband. The husband may still be loving her, but she has no knowledge of it, nor does she try to know her own weaknesses which brought about the forced separation between them. Howsoever the parents may provide her with dainty comforts, yet she is in exile. How different would be the picture if she were to reform herself and render herself worthy of her consort. Most of us are in such a plight.

We all are children of the Father-God, the God of us all; and our souls are essentially at one with the Divine Principle sustaining the universe. The Lord Himself is the consort of all the souls, but how sad it is that, while in exile here on the physical plane, we have altogether forgotten Him and while dwelling with Him in the same body, have not had an opportunity of coming face to face with Him. We are separated from God, have forgotten our True Home, and by constant association with mind and matter are completely lost in the enjoyment of sense pleasures. We are ever a prey to all kinds of deadly sins. Like a spider we are inextricably caught in the web of lust, anger, greed, and attachment, and are obsessed with the ever-assertive ego, all of which conspire to lead us further away from God.

We have two alternative courses before us. There is a class of persons who believe in a life of worldly enjoyment – eat, drink, and be merry. They are even worse than those who are merely ignorant of their True Self and of God and are leading a quiet life of blissful ignorance. The former are in a pitiable condition. They might appear to be enjoying life, but how long will they do it? The pleasures of the world are ephemeral and end in smoke, leaving you a wreck – physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually. The bliss you get from the Love of the Lord, you cannot get from anywhere else, not even from parents and others whom you consider as near and dear ones and on whom you so fondly rely. Should this awakening arise in you, then friends and relations will look like messengers of death. If we are able to create such a state in us, it is but natural that the Lord Who is already within us, befriending and sustaining the soul, will definitely heed our wailings full of pain and anguish.