Awaken to the Truth

by Chariji, July 25, 2009, Tiruppur, India.

I was lost in the bhajan [devotional song] and the mood that it evoked inside; and suddenly I have been asked to say a few words! All that I can say is that daily you see on your computer screen one message from my Master. The frequency of his communication must impress upon our hearts the need for deeper and deeper understanding, more and more dedication in our practice, in our faith, and better and better utilization of the time available to us. When I asked Babuji Maharaj, “What is wisdom?” he said, “Live as if you are going to die the next moment.” Live as if you are going to die the next moment. If that is the sentiment which we adopt in the conduct of our life, we won’t fool around looking for pleasures, diversions, amusements, gratification. We will put our soul into every moment of our existence, and that is the only way to build the future.

So what can I say which my Master is not telling us every morning? We have had two volumes of Whispers from the Brighter World. I am in the process of preparing the third volume. And as they say in Islam, Insha-Allah [God willing] there will be a fourth volume. I look upon these four volumes, when they are eventually produced, as the four Vedas of our Sanatana Dharma, because these are indeed not smriti but shruti (received knowledge, not ‘mentated’, not thought, not intellected). And that is the highest knowledge that we as human beings can receive when we are privileged to have a guru of that stature who can communicate with us from what he calls the Brighter World. And some of these messages, you know, they show us what an unhappy, miserable existence is ours on this earth which we think is the best, of which we think so much, to which we are so much attached, and from which we do not want to depart, all because of the body consciousness that we have, which makes it possible to fool ourselves through the pleasures of the five senses.

You see what an illusory world we live in, what in Sanskrit we call maya (illusion). And to get out of this illusion we must be like a spider. I was thinking early this morning of a spider which weaves a web, beautiful web. If you see a spider’s web on a winter morning with the sun rising behind it, you see its beauty. They are wonderful strands which are traps for everything in life, but from which the spider can escape. It is not caught in its own web. But we are caught in our own web. We weave webs of fancies, webs of desires, webs of ambition, and in these small steps of what we call advancement in this world, whether it be for money or power or position, we are satisfied, we think we are masters of this earth. And because of our attachment, we are doomed to come again and again until this is broken.

These bhandaras [spiritual gatherings] should most of all awaken us to the reality of the situation that we are living in an illusory, unreal world, full of false promises, temptations, traps. And to escape out of this, some sort of teaching is offered, some sort of instruction is given. And in these sessions of meditation that we participate in, we lose ourselves; and suddenly you wake up, when we say, “That’s all,” and often, if you have gone deep enough, you are bewildered as to where you are. You don’t know for some moments where you are, what you are, and why you are here. I hope you all experience such states of being, which show us that the ultimate condition is one of nowhere, not now, not here. Then where? It is in such a condition that we are in a world where there is no time, there is no place, there is no knowledge. In fact that is the divine realm of which Babuji Maharaj calls the Brighter World.

I am happy to see so many of you here. I hope to see more and more in future years because that is the way things must grow. This must spread. I was talking to some young persons this morning of the trap into which religion puts us — every religion, all religions, everywhere in the world. False promises, useless practices; if I may be permitted to say so, unholy loyalties. If a god has to tempt me and promise me things which even God cannot deliver, then what is that religion worth? Why are we addicted to it? Why are we grovelling before false gods? There are false gods, but only one true God. Ekam sat [The Truth is one].

So it is time to say goodbye to religion. As Babuji says, “Where spirituality begins, religion ends.” We don’t give up religion. We don’t preach that we destroy religion. We are not here to break temples or idols. We are here to find the truth, what we call akhlaaq. What is the truth? Where is He? Babuji Maharaj says if He is anywhere, He is in your heart. And he says if He is not here [pointing to heart], for you He is nowhere. Please understand this carefully. If He is not here, He (meaning God) is nowhere for you.

So our only temple, our only place of worship, our only place where we can meet God as a lover is the heart. So Sahaj Marg only talks of the heart, transmission from the heart, love from the heart (not from the head). Because we all think that we love — without loving. We think we love. But when the truth comes, love is never spoken about. There is no grandiose flourish; there are no embellishments; it’s only a look from the eye, you see. As Babuji said, a flower does not broadcast itself and say, “Look here, I am beautiful, I am perfumed.” It is. In a similar way, God is. Other than Him there is nothing. And when we are there, we can say: we are — He and I. This is what the krishna-leelas are all supposed to be about: the Divine dance of existence, of eternal existence, perpetually happy, perpetually moving, perpetually dissolving, perpetually reuniting. With a purpose? Of course. We don’t understand what it is, but He knows.

As Babuji says again and again in many of his messages, they know. What they know, they tell us. What they want us to do, they instruct us. What we need by way of assistance, they give us. Above all, they love us. In the latest message which I read out yesterday, He says that they are working for the elevation of humankind — all of us, everywhere, no prejudice about colour, caste, race, religion, anything. For them we are human beings. But for us, even the unity that God is, we have split up into your god and my god and no god. My god is not your god, your god is not my god. We fight, we kill each other, we have wars. Today’s wars are all about religion. The biggest problem facing humanity today is RELIGION. Capital R, capital E, write it all in capitals. And if you have the ability to do so, like a computer, erase. I have to speak forcefully about this because on one side we see a handful of new abhyasis every year, and we see more and more converts to the other side — the dark side if I may say so of our approach to God — religion.

Please take this to heart. Think over it. You must learn to think even about your [understanding of] God, about your faith, about your belief. Am I believing in the right thing? Can this be God because everybody says this is God? God is everywhere. Not because He is everywhere, because everywhere is His. That is where He is. Like you cannot say of the breeze that it is here and not there. And I repeat, if He is everywhere, He is in my heart. For one in whose heart there is no God, he will die godless, a most tragic situation, because under such a condition if a man leaves this life, Babuji said even God cannot say what his future is going to be.

I pray that all of you will awaken, you see, to this truth that I have been living a life of illusion, of belief in things of which I know nothing, of loyalties to things which don’t deserve my loyalty, of love for things for which there is no possible love. Because today we love ice cream, we love pizza, we love this, we love that. We love everything but God.

So, sisters and brothers, I would like to close this beautiful bhandara by requesting you all to wake up and remember the most important statement I have heard from my Master. Every statement is important, but that which shook me — because I, too, followed a religious way of life till my marriage (not worshipping idols and stones and all that, but believing in many things that were told to me). And this shook me, what Babuji said. He said, “Religion has no God, God has no religion.”

Thank you.