Real Goal

 

Talk delivered on 12th Feb, 2016 for Pujya Lalaji Birthday Celebrations (Basant Panchami)

 

Dear associates in the Path,

 

It gives me great pleasure to be in your company and bask in the blessings of the Master. I will try to share some thoughts with you. I hope you people have read and contemplated on the message of the Master for today. It has been a ritual with me for a long time, and I have been trying to impress upon you the need for this ritual.

 

Master says: “Our Great Master [that is, Lalaji Maharaj] has boldly asserted

that one can, for sure, attain liberation in this very life, nay, even in a part of it, provided one is really earnest about it and has the fortune of having a proper guide.”

 

There are a few points here that you should understand:

 

We should be clear about our goal. There cannot be a better expression of this clarity than the prayer that Babuji has given to all of us. “O Master! Thou are the real goal of human life.”

 

So what is the goal? The goal is the Master. Master wants us all to be happy, and we can [be] happy only when we are balanced. And the whole path of Satyapad Marg is meant for that - achieving that balance in our life.

 

Master, when we think about him, what are the ideas that come to us? We don't imagine a form of four hands or a million heads, a million legs. We don't imagine any such version of expression of the Divine, which for all that I know, may be true in the case of the people who have given such a description. But that is not what we are asked to meditate upon. And the goal of Master is to see that all of us are oriented towards the Master.

 

What is our goal then? Our goal is to be in His consciousness all the time and think about his great qualities, of compassion. You see the compassion of the person who is behind all this, Lalaji Maharaj. The transmissions coming from him is such a soothing affair that it does not distinguish between you and me - a progressed one and a not progressed one, or a beginner. All feel the presence of the Divine in the heart, and it grants them peace. This equality is the most important aspect of the nature of Master.

 

Master never distinguishes.

 

Jnana, Virya, Bala, Tejas. Some of these things are considered the qualities of God. But what is the quality of our Master then? Apart from this compassion about which a few words I spoke earlier. Master is a great servant. When I say this, you may be wondering how a master can be a servant, and being a perfect servant is the only way to be a Master.

 

Our Master asks us to distinguish between the transient and the temporary and try to fix your goal, as one can attain liberation in this very life. Liberation from what? Liberation from our wishes, our desires. “We are yet but slaves of wishes.” We have got to liberate ourselves from that. What are our wishes about? The wishes relate to the body, relate to the people with whom we are living - mostly of the physical and emotional states in what we are trying to satisfy:

 

I want to satisfy my son or my mother, or my wife or my children, so I'm a slave of their wishes. But then there is a bondage. So the balanced life that we are trying to talk about is not to bother too much about this, but keep the goal in view.

 

Whether it can be achieved? Master says, “yes, you can in this very life do that.” The Sanyasis, the wise men have always said it is impossible in one life, and they wanted several lives of installments, of paying back the debt, as they called it.

 

It is the Master who is behind our existence. It is His power that is what is getting expressed here, either in me or in you. There is nothing other than the Master in the world. It's universal consciousness. It doesn't understand any differentiation or division.

 

Liberation in this very life, is it possible? That is the question and Lalaji Maharaj says, yes it can.

 

How do you do that? By following the Path given by him.

 

Can you help me with the Satya Pathamu latest? In the Satya Pathamu we give in the last page a version of Lalaji Maharaj’s method actually. I wanted to read that. Spare with me for a few seconds.

 

It requires enormous faith in the Master to accept that, as what is generally called the Mahaviswasa. The Mahaviswasa is that we can reach the goal and our Master can help us. Without this faith, you generally don't progress. But if the goal clarity itself is not there, what is the faith about? Clarity about the goal is very important.

 

We have got those goals. Just now I was trying to explain that these goals are related to our wishes. Other goals.

 

Yes. Lalaji asserts: Only the Japa of heart - that is meditation - is done.

 

Heart is kept clear without being influenced by non-believers, bad company and impure people. You have got to avoid these people. Your company is very, very important. If you don't keep aloof from non-believers - atheists, you really don't achieve the goal of liberation or oneness with the Master. You have to eschew their friendship. We have got to ensure that they don't come anywhere near our house.

 

“Then what is the universal brotherhood that you are talking about, Sir?”

 

One is an ideal. To reach that ideal, first you have got to put up this effort. If you meditate for an hour and then immediately get in touch with some person, or some business who may not believe in God and say that all are the same: “Sir, there is no difference. Everything is there.” This type of blah, blah blah is available. I am not particularly criticizing any person. But non-believers, as Lalaji says. Non-believers: non-believers in the goal, non-believers in the Master, non-believers in the path. You have got to keep away from them. Bad company. I don't want to explain this. I think that [is] the only company we have got. We are helplessly presented with them. And impure people. That is people who entertain impious thoughts. I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about impiety, morality.

 

“No, no Sir, it is purely [a] personal affair. Why should we bother about that? Let us meditate and let him meditate or not meditate. What do we care?”

 

And that is not the approach. Lalaji is firm in saying be away from them.

 

Our attention is not diverted to anyone except God. If all the 24 hours to you, if you think about the Master, then you have no more time. You would like to have more time. 24 hours is not enough to think about God, who is the creator of time.

 

There is firm determination always to keep the heart one-pointed and concentrated. Devotion and love to be developed towards Truth and the Master. One completely effaces oneself and gets merged in Him. And one loses one's identity in this action. This is the shortest and surest way to reach the Real Goal.

 

So “Thou art the real goal of human life” would include all these thoughts.

 

We find circumstances in life, which are challenging and many times we find ourselves forced to feel our desperate-ness. Under these circumstances, we try to run from one post to another, one pillar to another, trying to find succor.

 

Do not commit that mistake. Your pillar is always the Master. You must have the confidence that the Master will do justice. Rakshati [save, protect, guard] iti Mahaviswasaha - that is Master will save me under all circumstances. Stress the fact that it is all circumstances.

 

Master will help me in my meditations. Surely He will. That is only a partial truth. In my life that I lead, it is the Master who is a protector. This is a great faith that you should have on the Master. And the same faith you should have on the system.

 

You can't be reading all sorts of stuff and then entertaining those thoughts and confusing that to be similar to or equal to that of this Path. There's nothing wrong in reading other paths. You have got an intellect, therefore you have got to scratch it now and then. It is [an] itching one. OK, do that. But know that they are not [the same]. There are no parallels to this.

 

This is a new system. This is a new Darshana. Trying to find some connections either in the Vedas or the Upanishads or the Puranas or the Bible or in the Quran, saying that “It is the same thing as that, Sir.” Doctorused to tell me that some patients come to him and then say what the Quran says is what they find in the ten commandments. “There's no difference between these two, Sir.”

 

No, there is difference. They appear to be the same.

 

If you read the commentary on 10 commandments given by the Master thoroughly and imbibe the spirit of each line of that book, as Babuji wants us to, then I think you will be in a position to tell others, “No, no, Sir, it is not the same thing.” It is like the modern drama that is being put now. The Venkateswara Swamy Temple is there at Tirupati - the one at Tirumalai. Now we have got the Namuna temples here. Now at present there is one going on in Hyderabad. These Namuna temples are not the same as the original - that everybody knows.

 

Similarly, other systems may be there. They may be similar. They may perhaps much more true than Truth. There are some people who believe that they are more true than Truth itself. What shall we do with them?

 

It is said in an argument with a saint, who was posed with the question of the Nyaya. That is - Nyaya is a system or a doctrine or Darshana where they try to use the logic to know the truth. We don't require a Wittgenstein come and tell that; we know all that. But then somebody [Vedantin saint] was asked: “ThatNyaya fellow is saying like this. What do you say?”

 

The point and discussion was the Ultimate is like the Pashana [stone]. “Pashana Tulyavath [like]” is what that Nyaya fellow had said.

 

This fellow got angry and then said, “No, no, no. It is not that. He is absolutely Ananda. He is not a stone. Satchitananda is the truth and not this Pashana.”

 

The argument went on and finally the Vedantin was losing the game. And when his disciple asked him, “What is it that we can do?”

 

“No, no, no, this fellow will be born as a jackal in the next life.” [said the Vedantin saint]

 

Right? People who try to argue will find themselves in the position of a jackal. [They] Try to throw mud on your [face]. Do you know what jackals do? They kick mud onto our eyes and then run away. And that's what every logician does. When confronted with the problem of truth, the best thing is to throw mud on the other and then go away.

 

Master as the protector under all circumstances is a thought that we have got to maintain. Instead…

 

OK, before that, I'll tell this anecdote which Babuji himself has quoted:

 

Kashiram was involved, unfortunately, or was implicated, let us say, was implicated in a murder case. Kashiram is a close disciple of Babuji. And this happened when he was at Shahjahanpur. At Tinsukia the murder has happened; and somehow the police people implicated him, because the body was found in the premises of his house. [He was] summoned; naturally the moment [he was] accused, he was summoned.

 

And he went to the court, saying that “Master will protect” and then he was standing. He said that, “I am not guilty”, and that's all what he said. And it seems the magistrate, on seeing him, [said] that “this fellow could not have committed this murder”, so he was exonerated. Let him go. He was left [untouched]. This is what Babuji writes.

 

In the context of faith, the amount of faith he must have had: instead of running from one lawyer to another lawyer, accepting the truth, and then placing it before the concerned authority with absolute faith in God or in the Master, he succeeded in his case.  This is not my anecdote. This is the anecdote of Babuji; [it] is there in his writings you can see.

 

So the Rakshati iti Mahaviswasaha is the most important aspect. We know we have entrusted the case to…let us say for surgery. There's no point in running after a few more doctors and then say, “Will it be all right. Do you think it will…?”

 

No, you should have faith. More than that, the best doctor is the Master, and you should have faith in Him. Faith in one and one only.

 

Why I'm saying it is there are so many gods and goddesses parading in the streets of India - I don't know about abroad - where you've got I think a million deities, minimum. There is an interesting question that comes to me often, whether they should do a ritual that is prescribed according to them, what they call a tradition.

 

When we say this is a new Darshana and then say all the past, we are trying to brush it aside and then stick to only one goal.

 

“No, no, why not…Why only K C Narayana, Sir, we will think about Satyanarayana also.”

 

That is no good. You either think about him or the other. Have faith.

 

I have a few more thoughts which we will talk about later. Now it's getting 8 o’clock. We'll break now. Thank you.