Look Only at Him

by Chariji, January 29, 2004, Anand, India.

Dear brothers and sisters, Anand is well-named because here you find a lot of joy. Anand means joy. I hope it is the same in Gujarati.

I want to focus abhyasis' attention on something. Too many people have tried to come into the Mission by looking at abhyasis who may be related to them, who may be their friends. And having come into the Mission, too many have left the Mission because they continue to look at abhyasis and say, "This is all that Sahaj Marg is producing."

Recently I had an experience which reinforced this idea that we should refocus our attention in Sahaj Marg only on two things - yourself and your goal, the goal being the Master according to our system. Look at yourself, look at Him, look at yourself, look at Him - look at Him to see what you have to become and continue on the path. Because if you look around, it is like you find, for instance, today there are 600 - 700 people here. Each one may be at a different level of growth. Each one has his or her own behaviour pattern, their own cultural problems, aspects. Each one has been conditioned by family, by friends, by education, by culture, by nationality - so many things. It is a well-known truism that no two human beings are alike. So how can you judge Sahaj Marg by the effect it has produced? It is impossible. Even more impossible, you don't know what is really their state of evolution by looking at these superficial things. A person may be very well-behaved, very polite, very cultured, and may be totally rotten inside, like a rotten apple. On the contrary, there may be a person who has no good behaviour, who is rude in his speech - inside he may have saintly qualities which we cannot see.

So, if you want to judge Sahaj Marg, you must be able to look into the inside, into the heart of abhyasis, when you will get a true indication of what Sahaj Marg can do. But to develop such a capacity, you would have to be an abhyasi for may be, fifty years, sometimes. It is not easy to develop the vision of looking into the heart of a fellow human being. Even husbands and wives, after fifty years of marriage, don't have this capacity. Even friends of a lifetime don't have this capacity. Superficial desires, superficial aptitudes, likes and dislikes - yes, we know them very well. But what a human being is inside… you know, for instance, you could be a friend for thirty years, and one day, something he does or something he says may show you a nobility of character you never suspected before. On the opposite side, he or she may do something which will shock you by the revelation of what has been inside. I am saying this because too many people have, I repeat, left Sahaj Marg because they say, "My brother has been here," "My uncle has been here," "My chachi [aunt] is here," - "They have not changed at all." We are here in Sahaj Marg not to see what Sahaj Marg can do for others. We are here to see what it can do for us. Like, you don't look in a mirror and say, my sister is ugly, or beautiful. You look in the mirror to see your own face.

So the Master is to be used as an index of what we have to become, and you have to look into yourself and see what Sahaj Marg is doing for you. Then we will continue on the path, we will go serenely, ignoring everything else. I have to reach the goal; the goal is before me. It shows me what I have to become. Looking at myself, I see what else I have to chisel away or add or subtract from myself. That becomes an easy, smooth and convenient journey where the goal can be quickly reached.

So, I exhort all of you - don't look here and there. Go like the horse… in the old days, the tongas [horse-drawn carriages] had horses with blinkers. The blinkers had the sole purpose of keeping the horse looking straight, so that it is not tempted by cabbages on one side and carrots on the other side, nor was it afraid of fire or something else here, but it kept a straight course. In Sahaj Marg, we should all adopt these blinkers - be with everybody but look only at Him.

Thank you.