Reappraise Yourself

by Chariji, September 14, 2009, Chittoor, India.

I am compelled to speak in English because what I say concerns abhyasis everywhere, not just Chittoor. Of course if somebody is willing to translate tonight, they can read it out tomorrow morning in Telugu.

I am happy to find on my last visit and in this visit that the atmosphere here is good. And I am pleased to say that there must be at least some abhyasis who are growing in devotion and love for the great Master. This morning I was just talking without any intention to speak, and I said meditation does not guarantee spiritual progress. It is only for discipline. Babuji says, do it; we do it. Babuji says, do it for at least one hour; we should try to do it for one hour. We are all old abhyasis, many of you have been here for the last thirty years, and by now I assume that you should be disciplined enough to be able to sit silently in one place every morning and meditate for one hour. That is a matter of discipline — to get your ability to regulate your mind established. The maxims are there by which we shape our conduct, starting with arise at dawn and ending with going to bed with the prayer silently repeated in your mind, right in bed, and going to sleep immediately thereafter.

The important thing is, in spirituality, especially in Sahaj Marg: Is your love for your great Master growing? Do you love Him or do you just say, “Great man, great Babuji, great Lalaji,” you know? Here there is no place for empty praise (mukhastuti). He doesn’t need it. If we indulge in it, it’s a waste — waste of time, and also it smacks of hypocrisy. We say something which we don’t mean. Babuji Maharaj said, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” This is the number one maxim as far as I am concerned. Be inside and outside the same. No hypocrisy. I am one person with one personality, whatever it may be. And when I have that one personality established through spirited practice, obedience and discipline, it is easier to make that one personality into whatever Babuji wants, than if we are a host of personalities inside.

We know every human being is, in the beginning, a multiple personality, perhaps not as psychology defines it, but certainly in practice. You are something to your father; something to your brothers; something to your sisters; something to your wife; something in your office to your boss; something else to your peon. Don’t you think so? So we are all having so many personalities, and trouble comes when the wrong personality appears in a situation. Where you should be respectful, you suddenly become arrogant. This happens in our life. You go to negotiate a big contract or a big business deal and suddenly you become arrogant and you lose the opportunity; whereas if we had only one personality, inside and outside, there is no problem.

So you see, meditation we must do; cleaning is more important, because unless you remove yourself all your samskaras, as much as possible, the prefects have to do their job of cleaning, and of course the Master has to do his job. But I have told you so many times how Babuji wrote to one preceptor in a particular centre from which people were going to Shahjahanpur all the time. He said, “I am happy that you are sending so many people, but I see that you are not doing any cleaning on them before you send them to me. I have to waste two days of their time in cleaning them, before I can do anything further.” So you see, prefects — by rote, they do. Whether they put their hearts into it, I have no idea. When I see people coming to me, I know; I can see what they are — not with the vision that Babuji had but with something that He has given me to assess.

So you see we only fool ourselves when we do, shall I say, not very useful work, which means the prefect is wasting his or her time, the abhyasi’s time, and of course trying to get away with the Master’s approval, saying he is doing something at least.

So whether you are an abhyasi or a prefect, it is time to reappraise yourself — what you are doing. Try to assess by yourself whether you are progressing, if at all; if not, why not? The diary is a very useful instrument, a tool for you to record daily what is happening so that when you read after a year, you know what way it has gone. The crux of the whole thing is absolute honesty with yourself, with the world, and with your Guru.

You must be honest in your work. “I can do only three sittings a day” — do it. We don’t need like marathon runners, you know. “I give forty-six sittings a day” — it’s no use. It’s like what Dr. Natwar told me today. Hundred and fifty patients called: nobody given a proper interview, nobody asked questions, only reports, fees! Because hundred and fifty patients mean a lot of money! Whereas if it is only fifteen with which you can deal properly, efficiently and honestly, you get only ten percent of the income. They have at least the excuse that they are working for money. We are not working for money. So what are we working for? Why does a prefect work? We are not paying them. Obviously, at least initially, they started with the intention to serve. Serve whom? Not the abhyasi — the Master. If you remember you are serving the Master, you will not cheat, you will not lie. If you think you are serving the abhyasi, we make mistakes, we get attached to them, and our connection with the great Master can be eroded slowly.

So we have to learn what to do, why to do it, how to do it, when to do it; whether we should do it at all. If I am not capable of that honesty, of that honest approach to my work, it’s better to tell, and say, “Sir, this is beyond my capacity. Let me be an abhyasi, let me develop to that stage. Then you give me back the job.” It’s honest. There is no harm in saying such a thing.

I don’t know how many of you read Whispers [from the Brighter World] every day. I have told you, you should not read the whole book like a novel. One message every morning, meditate on it. Again and again Babuji says the human being of today… and in so many descriptive terms He describes us as a shame on earth. I mean if we had any heart, we should feel ashamed. We should weep — that will do the cleaning which we are not doing every day. One good weep, weep, is worth a month’s cleaning. But we have too much of this humanness, human ego: “I am a strong man, I never weep.” So such lessons also fall flat on our ears and we are unable to work.

Babuji kept saying again and again in His messages, a new world order is being established. It is not of today, but it is surely coming. In its coming, there will be destruction, disease, cataclysms of nature, wars, pestilence. The only thing we do, if at all we read these messages, is to pray that I should not be affected: “Babuji, please help me,” and then we think of the family and say, “help my family too.” Help is not forthcoming. Under such circumstances of change in the world order, there is no question of helping individuals. There is only the job of selecting the right material to go into the future.

Please don’t think that Nature is going to destroy. Nature does not destroy. Nature fulfils its purpose: the purpose of evolution, God’s purpose. In that purpose, if you are to be selected, you are selected. What about the rest? What do you do when you prepare rice? You take out all the black things, the stones and cook the rice. Suppose I said, “Be kind. Poor things!” What will you say? “Not fit for human consumption.” So Master says, these are not fit to be carried over into the new-coming society, a society of a different nature of human beings, who will be more divinized, more God-conscious: no acquisitiveness, no avarice, no selfishness, no mutual hatred — only love. So if you are reading the Whispers, should we not be going about that job of ensuring that “I will be there for the next step in human evolution”? Not as a prize, not as a gift, but as a matter of my choice for myself, which makes me make of myself that which I have to become.

This is a duty to yourself. Don’t think it is a duty to your prefect, or to the Mission, or to Babuji. It is not. If you fail in this, you fail yourself; if you succeed in this, you are successful to yourself, for yourself. There is no Master, there is no Mission, there is no method coming in this, except to give you this consciousness that I am doing this primarily, solely, honestly for myself, so that I can become what Nature wants me to become, and in this process, these Masters are only there to help me. They don’t make me; they help me. How do they help? By prescribing a method for you to follow, by giving you maxims to obey, by creating the physical facilities in which you can safely and comfortably do your practice, hoping that all these things will awaken you to your own sense of purpose for yourself, to yourself and one day, not very far, He will be able to see, “Oh, so many people! It’s good. Now more will come.” You understand?

So Sahaj Marg is a very serious thing. As I have repeated so many times, it is not only for yourself; it is for society, it is for the world, because each one of you plays your part in what is going to become a future society of divinized, entirely human, human beings, free of selfishness, lust, greed, conscious of only one purpose — of becoming what Nature intended us to become.

I hope you will take this reminder seriously. Don’t waste time in reading Telugu magazines, Kannada magazines, newspaper. Even the newspaper is a waste of time, radio is a waste of time, TV is a waste of time. Read the message, brood over it, try to understand, and do this again and again as the books are published. No message is such that one reading is enough, because as you develop, you will find new meanings coming into it. Love thy neighbour — what is the meaning of love thy neighbour? Does it mean somebody who is living in 36, Santhapet should love 37, Santhapet? Does it mean he can extend it to 40 this side and 31 this side? Does it mean as he grows he will also include neighbours on the opposite side of the road? Does it mean one day it will include other petais [neighbourhoods] in Chittoor? And hopefully, the next towns, villages, and then bloom suddenly into your treating the whole world as your neighbour?

Not merely your human beings, but animals, birds, everything — that is what awakening of consciousness means. Not I and my family. I and my family, I and my family [extends his hand] — it must grow. Otherwise, we remain Andhravaadus [people from Andhra Pradesh] interested only in who is going to be the next Chief Minister. Corruption multiplied, corruption enlarged, corruption manifested, corruption making more and more people corrupt, until there is only a corrupt society. And this cannot be in any way opposed or corrected by you as you are. People must change from inside. You cannot force them to change. A man with twenty thousand crores and five hundred rowdies is not going to change just because you say, please change. He will say, you change and correctly.

So brothers and sisters, I think I have said enough. I don’t like to come and sit here, doing nothing, so I am talking to you. It is time, it has always been the time, but today also is not too late for us to research into ourselves before we go to sleep. What am I? What was I when I started Sahaj Marg? Is there any difference? If not, why not? Babuji’s fault? Cannot be. Method’s fault? Cannot be. Then whose fault? My fault. Then you start thinking what I should do now, so that at least what I am today, I will not be next week. You see, spirituality is as much a step-by-step method, though the progress may look as if we are going like Trivikrama — seven worlds with one leg. These small steps we have to take every instant, and if you are not able to do that, He will give you the ability; if you have no time, He will make the time available. But if you are unwilling to do it — God help you.

Thank you.