"He who cannot be himself with himself
is worse than a slave."

It is the practice or sadhana that prepares the human mind to accept understanding when it comes. It does this by the process of cleaning by which all past impressions are wiped off, transforming the mind into a pure instrument to accept what comes to it in meditation. A normal human mind rarely views any fact or phenomenon as an isolated bit of information input. All judgements [even legal ones] are on the basis of past precedents - what we normally accept as experience. It takes a lot of understanding to realise that this so-called experience, most often acts against us by preconditioning us to think and feel in intellectual and emotional ruts, and robs us of the facility of pure action, where each act is a pure act of creation, guided by the parameters of the moment alone, and totally untrammelled by the past. This is what spiritual practice helps us to achieve, thereby endowing us with the ability and willingness to accept revelation when it comes. Sadhana is thus merely a means to an end.

Reality is what we have to accept. Now this acceptance of reality becomes a problem. You understand? So we are trained to accept reality through meditation. Through perception, we do not accept reality, we only perceive. And my mind says, "This is useless, this is stupid, that is nice." But what is useless about a useless thing? That at this moment I cannot use it. That is all, isn't it? When I want a banana, and you give me an apple, I say it's useless, I don't want it. But by itself it is not useless. That is its reality. For me it is useless. But it is not useless. Now where is the deficiency? The deficiency is in me. How can I say the apple is useless or the banana is useless or you are useless or she is useless? I don't know how to use you. If I can perfect myself in such a way that I can use anything in this universe, and make something of it, all things are useful to me. Not to me, they are useful, per se, you see. For such a person, the universe is full of useful things.

Accept miseries as gifts
Sadhana confers no distinction on us. We are not doing anything. All that we are doing is not to go against His wishes; not to oppose His will, not to place impediments to the work of His powers but to accept them passively, docilely, with faith, with love, that anything that He does for us is for our good. When a child is born in the family, we think it is a good thing; this is traditional; big hallabulloo is made, cakes are bought, candles are bought, birthday party celebrated. Some years later we regret having had that child because we have no means to support it and it is running like a stray waif on the streets, adding one more goonda to the existing gangs of goondas. So what is good or what is bad, only the end can show, beginning can never show.

Cyclones come; trees are destroyed. Ten days later you find the city is much cleaner, all the dead-wood has been thrown out, all the rubbish has been cleared away. It was a necessary evil. To say that it was a necessary evil even, is wrong. It was something which we interpreted as evil, but which ultimately we found is good. So in the course of our existence, we find things happen to us. Something is lost which we think is a loss. Something is gained which we think is a gain. Days after, weeks after, we find what we thought was a gain is really a loss, and what we thought was a loss is really a gain! So time alone can tell us in what way, in what form a seed is going to grow and what it is going to become.

When I get rich I am not getting rich, riches come to me; when I am getting poor, I am not becoming poor, my money is taken away from me. So it is like, you know, some thin people go on eating like anything and they cannot get fat; some fat people are dieting all their lives and they cannot lose half a kilo. So we are not in any way competent, not empowered, not capable of interfering on our own personal life. There is some force working which is outside our control, which knows what exactly has to become of me and under its guidance I must go on. Today I am fat, very good I am fat; tomorrow I am thin, very good I am thin. Today I have friends, excellent. Tomorrow I am hated and reviled, wonderful. It helps me to remember the Master even better. Because you will find in our ten maxims of the Master, we are taught to accept all these things; miseries and all should be gifts of God; because when we are happy we never think of Him. Diwali comes, Pongal comes, Ugadi comes, we only think of ourselves, our children, of the 'payasam' and 'vadai' [kinds of sweet and savoury] that we make, and of the stray friends who visit us; but let there be an illness in the family, God forbid - a death, then comes the thought of the Master.

So without having to go to extremes, there is a wisdom in God which makes Him keep us on the negative side of the situation; a little poverty, a little ill-health, a little misery. It is always good for us. Because it has several benefits; if a man is a little below the optimum health levels, he does not do all the things that a healthy man does. That arrogance of the health, that pride in the health, that I can do anything and get away with it, he will not indulge. Indulgence is the word. When a man gets Rupees 99/- where he needs 100, he is careful with the money. Let him get Rupees 101/- and he is a debtor. So it is not for nothing that Master or Lalaji has outlined the three principles, the three very great requirements for a person to be a saint - permanent poverty, permanent illness, and permanent criticism. They have very great benefits in keeping us within our limits, within our limits of arrogance, within our limits of pride, within our limits of misuse of the body, the mind, the intellect, they endow us with humility, they endow us with sensible attitudes towards physical life, mental life, moral life and therefore they guide us through the channels into that path which can ultimately lead to perfection which

Master calls 'the saintly path'.
So it is only a fool who will want happiness and a bigger fool who will refuse miseries. The wise man always accepts. For him there is no distinction, because what comes from the lover is a love letter. It is not the contents of the letter which makes a love letter. When a lover writes a letter, it is a love letter.
We should know that when a doctor operates surgically on us, it is not for satisfaction that he is giving us pain. It is to rid us of the disease, to cure us of the disease, to make us whole, well. If a mere doctor can be like that, how much more must be the Master? How much He must weep internally to move even the smallest thing against our wishes? But yet, it has to be done; because otherwise He would be going against the integrity of His own existence. So I can assure everyone of you that if the Master permits us as abhyasis, to undergo certain samskaras which are painful, which are troublesome, which may demean us, which may make us lose those whom we cherish, He weeps much more for us than we could ever weep for ourselves. But we don't see the tears in His eyes. So let us believe that whatever happens to us is for our immediate good, for our ultimate good. There can be nothing which comes from the Master which is even capable of remotely being against our existence.

If we are able to realise this, to understand it with our hearts, not the intellect, then the realisation of the maxims will come, that we will truly, not only accept miseries as gifts, we will pray for miseries. Because, then opens up the possibility of our progress being accelerated. Now we are co-operating. Acceptance is one thing, co-operation is another. So when do we really co-operate? I personally believe that some day, somebody may have to formulate another set of maxims, where Master will not stop at saying "Accept miseries as gifts", but add "Pray for miseries as gifts." Because don't we do everything that will accelerate our progress in the material world? Should we not similarly do everything that is essential to accelerate our progress in the spiritual world? So this is the dawning of divine wisdom for which we have all to pray.

Accept yourself first, Master's acceptance follows
He who cannot be himself with himself is worse than a slave. To what? To the serfdom that material things like position and power and entrapments of culture and sofas and audio equipments put him into. He was the slave of all these things. Therefore it is not for nothing that Babuji says, "Be simple and in tune with Nature." What for? Because eventually when you return again to the simplicity you must be at home there, as you were, before you acquired all these paraphernalia of existence.

There is a beautiful story I often remember in this connection, of the Prime Minister of a famous middle eastern Badshah. He was such a great man. He came up from a very humble beginning, but became the Prime Minister and the Emperor was so pleased with him, he gave him a palace exactly like his, next door to himself. And this man was virtually a king in his own right. He had ruled for 20 years, he made enemies who were jealous - enemies are not because of fights, you see, they are mostly out of jealousy - it is true even today - so they went on putting something into the Badshah's ears; this fellow is doing this, this fellow is doing that, you know he keeps his room locked, what is there inside that he is afraid to show us. So after 20 years of this sort of 'kaan kaatna' as you say in Hindi (ear-biting), one day the emperor decided to see for himself. He became a trifle suspicious. There is no smoke without fire you know, this wonderfully stupid western proverb, which we use even to divorce our wife sometimes, when some people talked about her. The great Ramachandra of Ayodhya did it too, based on a dhobi's [washerman] estimate of his wife - I don't know what sort of a king he was to pack away his wife on what his dhobi said - anyway that is by the way.

So, this emperor decided to look for himself; he demanded the keys. He went around opening all the rooms and everything was in order. But then he came upon a small door in a corner, for which there was no key. He said, 'ahah, this is where this fellow has hidden everything.' So he ordered the P.M. arrested, brought to his presence and he said, "I am arresting you, I am going to behead you. Where is the key of this room?" He said, "Majesty, you will find nothing in it that is yours." He said, "Then why is it so securely locked, and why you did not give the key to me, when I demanded it?" He said, "Everything else in this palace is yours, what is there is mine. You have no right to it." He said, "Search his person." They searched his person and found a tiny key. He opened the door. It was empty, except for a shepherd's crook, and a shepherd's cloak hanging on the nail of the wall. The emperor was flabbergasted. He expected some enormous treasures to be heaped up like today's raids we read. There was nothing except this. So he said, "What is this stupidity? What is that cloak and stick that you were hanging upon the nail and protecting, at the cost of your life?" He said, "Majesty, I was a shepherd boy; and that is the stick and the cloak I had in my childhood. I come here and meditate every day to remind myself that this is what I really am. Thank you for again bringing it to my notice." He took his cloak and stick and walked away.

So we should be prepared to accept ourselves as what we are, for what we are, as the foundation for the future we have to build on ourselves, within ourselves. You see, this is a divine process in which I am the stock, I am the raw material, I am the person who has to work on this raw material and I am that which I have to become too! It is all rolled into one. I am three-in-one you see! What I am, what I have to be and the person who has to make what I am into what I have to be, it is all me! …You are yourself whom you have to make yourself into. What is sadhana about? I have to work upon myself. I have to sit, I have to meditate. I have to do the cleaning. No doubt with His help, under His guidance, with His powers. But for one who does not do his sadhana, what happens? Of course, we can always take refuge under the statement that if God wills, it will be done. Yes, but then we have to wait for the Divine Will to look for us, search for us in this entire universe and take pity on us and raise us. Or wait till Mahapralaya [final dissolution] when everything shall return to Him!

So we have to have an honest approach, you see. And in the beginning, at least in my case, I am telling you from personal experience, I could not have accepted Master, had I not accepted myself. Because, acceptance of myself gave me this possibility of accepting Him. If I can accept myself as I was in those days, why could I not accept another person as he or she is? You see therefore, 'charity begins at home' is a very great statement. And most of us, this is again a psychological truth, we are only projecting our hatred on others, our self-hatred on others in hating them, because we cannot hate ourselves. So this enormous psychological barrier we transcend, we remove, we destroy in one stroke when we say, "He is my Master." His appearances are superficial, the form can change, isn't it? He can choose to have another form if He wishes. It is like a stage drama where one man plays Polonius today, plays Othello the next day and plays something else the day after tomorrow. The man inside is ever the same.

One who cannot accept oneself, how do we expect the Master to accept him? Here lies the greatest generosity of Divinity that it says, "Forget what you are, remember me! That is the only trick that I have to teach you. In remembering me, you forget yourself; in remembering me, you see all that I am and forget all that you are; in remembering me you know what you have to become and forget what you have become; in remembering me you see the glory of the universe, the ultimacy or the supremacy of the Being itself, which you can become, because I am here to show you that you can become THIS. If you remember yourself you are miserable, you are a sinner, you are foolish and you are cursed in your belief and you can only commit suicide. But beware, if you commit suicide you are going deeper and deeper into some hole where even I may not be able to penetrate to pull you up again."

So, this acceptance of the Master really means acceptance of ourselves. Then comes, you know, this possibility, if somebody criticises you, you can say, "So what? My dear friend, I have all that and more. You can never know me as my Master has known me. Do you know all the sins I have committed? You are only seeing the superficial things I am doing in this life. Do you know all my lives of the past which my Master is able to see? And if He can accept me, why not you?" You can ask this question boldly, you see of our peers, of our compatriots, of society itself. And if they say, "Well, your Master is a damned fool. Let Him accept you," you say, "God bless you! Don't forget that someday you might need this generosity of the Master yourself too. Then if you need, come to me." See we become bold, not because we are inherently bold, because the Master gives us that boldness.

So we have to accept the Master, not because the Master wants to be accepted by us but because we need Him. We need Him as we have never needed anything before, as we shall never need anything hereafter too. Having Him, the entire problem of existence is solved. Now that problem of existence is a single problem. If you try to cut it to pieces and say, "Yes, but what about my material life? It has remained unaltered. What about my education? I am still remaining foolish." The Master says, "I took you as a totality, you see, it is for me to decide what you shall become. I know what I have to make of you. You don't know. If you knew it, you would have done it long back." This is the greatest avamanam [disrespect] that we can offer to Master. A potter makes pots, isn't it? A painter makes a painting, whether very well or rather unwell, it doesn't matter. It is his job. It is that for which nature has created him. A Master must make others like himself. Where is the question, you see? A mother creates children, not monsters. We become monsters subsequently. A school is for education, but if you are after a drug, a bit of smoking outside and a bit of flirtation, what can the school do if you came out a bigger fool than when you went into it? It is not the school's fault, it is not the professor's fault, it is your fault. If you are there and allow them to do what they should do to you, surely you will come out as a product that was destined to come out of it.

So let us learn for once to get up. As it is said again and again, "Arise, awake." Awake to what? Arise from what? Arise from the stupor, into which we have fallen, that we are good, that we are right. Awaken from this sense of delusion, that I am already perfect, I am a lover, capable of loving my Master in such a way that even my Master cannot love me like that. Remove these illusions from your mind and heart. That's what that famous Vedic statement says, "Uttistata jaagrata praapya varaan nibodhata." What does it mean? So long as you think you are perfect, you are a lover and capable of love, that you are holy, that you are following the rules and the law, that you are meditating, forget development. If you want to develop and reach the goal, know yourself for what you are. It will be painful, you see. It is going to be an anguished soul that is going to look at itself and say "Chhee! Is this what you are after so many years of abhyas? Heaven help you!" No, Master help you. But to help, you have to surrender.

Acceptance of the Master must be from the inner-self
There are two types of abhyasis: One like the almond which is hard on the outside and soft on the inside; the other like the mango, soft on the outside, hard on the inside. We must accept the master from inside. Everybody keeps on saying, "My Master, My Master! My Master is good! My Master is wonderful! He is divine!" This is all superficial. I don't say it is a lie. But it is a superficial level, like powder on the face. It lasts so long and no more. The abhyasi's acceptance of the Master must come from his inner state; more important, the Master's acceptance of you must come from His inner self. It is a vital point. Because you see, if you understand it properly, this excludes so many anomalous situations, where we think, people who have been very close to Him, are no longer close to Him. Their closeness was a superficial closeness; perhaps they accepted from their superficial self and the Master accepted them from His superficial self.

As long as the two bodies are present, the superficial connection exists. When one body has disappeared, that eternity which it represents - the Master of that eternity which He represented is still here; this loss of inner acceptance makes us blind to that existence. It is like a rudderless ship, every wave, buffeted by every wind. So, if we have to enjoy an eternal connection with the Master, we must start with our heart; the deepest, the innermost secret recesses of the heart must accept Him; and in turn, He must accept us from His inner condition. Then it is an eternal binding, an eternal bondage of love, something which can never be broken through eternity. And then He meets with us in the internal self, we meet with Him from the eternal self. No longer does my death matter to Him, or His death matter to me. Because my inner and His inner are bound. So, this is the thing that we have not achieved. Let us not become self-satisfied, and smug and say, My Master liked me; My Master admired me. He patted me on the back. He praised me, etc."

Yes, this is all at the superficial level. You build a house and He says, "Very nice." You give some clothes and He says, "Very beautiful." And I understood how deceptive it was, when one day in our house He was having food. And according to our sampradayas [tradition], we served Him first. He started eating. And He was praising. Then when I started eating, I found that in one particular dish, there was no salt. Yet He was praising it! So, that is His nature, you see - that He will not criticise, number one; two, He is not interested in the taste of what you give. He is only interested in the love with which it is prepared. So, what is to us a lack or a deficiency, was for Him nothing. Another person would have said, "What is this? you have given this to me without salt. Please add some salt."

So His operation was always from His inner level. We are always operating from the external level. Therefore, we sit for meditation and we think we don't feel anything! Because we are striving for superficial things - experiences, like feeling cold or hot, something crawling on the skin, fear - these are superficial things! You see, they are either at the mental level, or at the mortal level, or even at the physical level. We are not prepared to go in and then see there where it matters: "What is really happening to you?" Then how can we ever raise ourselves to those levels, those highest levels of spirituality He has referred to, where the truth resides, where the true experiences reside, where the true proof of the process resides. We are not willing to dive deep. And Babuji has put this in a beautiful allegory: "If you want pearls, you must dive to the bottom of the ocean."

So the ultimate point is, that if you are really interested in spirituality, anyone really interested in spirituality, anyone really claiming to love the Master, is he prepared to sacrifice his life for that purpose? If the answer is yes, you are an abhyasi. Then His heart accepts you from the innermost level of His being. There is no more any question of reward or punishment. "You are me, I am you." That is what Lalaji said about Babuji: "I am thou, and thou art I; and that no person can now say that there is any difference between you and me."

The life that we put into ourselves is the spiritual life of the Master when we put Him in our hearts by an act of acceptance, by an act of surrender. He becomes the seed which we sow in our own hearts. And then from inside, He germinates, He flowers. And that is us, we become the flowers coming out of the seed that He puts into us.

Accept the Master totally
Master said, "Transmission is the utilization of the Divine energy for the transformation of man." But how does it work? Because, as Master Himself has said, there are cases where even the transmission is reflected back from the man who comes to take the transmission. It is as if it cannot penetrate. So, the important thing even prior to receiving the transmission seems to be the need to accept the Master. One who does not accept the Master does not seem capable of receiving the very transmission which is designed to transform him. And when does this acceptance of the Master begin? When we see Him, when we move with Him, when we are associated with Him, we grow to love Him, to cherish Him, to adore Him, and the desire comes, to be like Him.

When we were reading through the Gita, we found that in that situation of the Mahabharat, there were several categories of people associated with Lord Krishna. Some took Him only as a human being. Some took Him purely as the Divine. Neither achieved the Ultimate. It was only Arjuna who loved Krishna at the human level, and who revered Him in the Divine level after He revealed Himself to him. He accepted Him in both levels, he could love Him in all His levels of Existence - transcendence, Ultimacy - he got.

Similarly in our Mission we find many people approach Master as a human being, forgetting His Divinity; they remain stagnant. There are also unfortunately abhyasis who have taken Him only as the Divine, forgetting His human levels of existence. I don't think they have also proceeded much beyond the others. And what is it that makes you accept one individual both at the human and Divine level? It can only be love! If you love Him as a human being, love leads to reverence. Whereas if you accept Him only as Divinity, there may be fear associated with your acceptance; an awe you see, the distance you create "He is God and I am man, there is always going to be a separation between us!" But if I treat Him only as a man and forget He is God, then I am going to have the problem of proximity, familiarity breeding contempt - "After all he is an old man, toothless, walking with a walking stick!"

So when we dissect Master into His two halves, of His material and His Divine existence, we fall into this error. It is the happy few - I don't know how many there are, perhaps there are many, I am not able to say, but it is those brothers and sisters of our satsang who have been able to merge the Divinity of Master into His humanity or vice versa, who have been able to go to some extent by His grace. And if Master favours them, or apparently favours them, [because Master has said in 'Voice Real' such a Personality has no friend or foe; for Him there is no friend or foe; He cannot have partiality towards one and not towards the other; there can be no selectivity in His approach; He cannot say, "To him I will give, to her I will not give," - such an attitude cannot belong to our Master - it is in His own words! Yet, apparently He has favoured] then in our human minds we think He has favoured so and so, He has not favoured so and so. "It is precisely because this man - he adores me at the human level, serves me at the human level, he loves me as a human being, as a father - he also has accepted and recognised my Divinity. I am the Purnathva." So one who accepts Master as the purnathva, the Purnathva has to accept him - I mean, the Ultimate has no choice!

Babuji used to say, "I cannot even breathe without Lalaji's permission. That is the extent, or shall we say, the completeness of the totality of the Master's all-embracing purpose in our existence. But unfortunately, you know, till we come to a state of enlightenment perhaps, wisdom, we think a Master is only for meditation, for cleaning and occasionally to answer our phone calls when somebody is desperately ill. But that is a very, I would not say it is wrong, but it is a limiting way of looking at the Master, because He can only respond in the way in which we accept Him. When we fragment Him, and accept Him partially, He can only respond partially. When we accept him totally, His responsibility for us becomes total. This is why surrender epitomizes the absolute acceptance of the Master. Then, because we are totally His, He is totally ours, He looks after us totally, every aspect of our existence becomes His responsibility and we can live in that sublime innocence where we are desire-free, where we are fear-free, where we are even need-free because He is looking after us.

"Reality is what we have to accept."