Speech given by Rev.

Master on 12th October 2008 at Hyderabad, India

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

My journeys to Hyderabad are becoming longer because now the airport is very far
away—two hours! Anyway I am happy to be here to do what I can to help you in your
spiritual progress.

There are two aspects to my work: one, I cannot do more than what the Master
permits me to do; two, I must have the strength and will to do what He permits me to
do. The third, and most important, is your cooperation in permitting that work to bear
fruit in you. By cooperation I mean living a life according to the ten maxims of Sahaj
Marg; regularity in practice; discipline—inside and out; discipline—material and
spiritual; discipline—at home and in the outside world; and discipline, most of all, in
regulating your thoughts, because that is where the origin of all problems lies.

Really speaking, as Babuji emphasized several times, it is easy to train animals. Babuji
used an example of a lion. He said you can train a lion in a very short time to keep its
mouth open so that the trainer can put his head into it and take it out alive. He said
the human being is the most difficult to train, and that is a matter of experience.

We all know, all of you know who are parents, how difficult it is to train children. Most
of the children go untrained. They may be educated, but they are not trained.
Therefore, by the time they become adults, they have a fair degree of education, which
means that their heads are crammed with facts necessary to earn their living, but their
hearts are generally empty. They have no courage. They are bewildered when they are
thrown out into the arena of the world. What shall I do? How shall I do it? Where shall
I do it? All these traumas start from the time you send a child to school. Babuji
Maharaj said this is because at home they are not trained at all. He said, “Really
speaking, true training starts with the conception of the child.” But even after the child
is born, there is no training. Children run wild. They neglect everything that they
should do, and do everything that they are not required to do. Kabir has said this
beautifully, “Our childhood we waste in play.”

The next stage of life—the stage of youth, we do even less because now we have
schools, we have our education, we have our mark sheets, our grades. They are our
certificates of, shall we say, advancement in the world, and parents are happy enough
to have a look at your report card and be happy. What you do at school other than
study, nobody looks into.

Today, in modern life, as it is lived now, in this year, I am told that school is really a
school for scandal. (You know there is a novel of that name written in the last century
by a fellow called Sheridan—The School for Scandal. It used to be required reading
when I was in school. I don’t know how many of you have even heard of the title. Of
course it has no connection to what I am speaking about.) The scandalous behaviour
today of our young men, of our young men who have married and entered life with a
seriousness that is not there, of a purpose which is not what it should be. Because
grihastha ashram [life of a householder], properly speaking, is the union of two hearts
who come together in marriage, the worldly purpose being to have children so that the
parampara [lineage] can go on, but the much larger spiritual purpose being to help
each other to walk the spiritual path with the guidance of a guru, so that in this life we
can achieve what has to be achieved.

Parents are unable to do what they have to do because, first, they are too busy in
leading their own lives. Mothers, poor things, are helpless; fathers too busy making
their own money, making their own names, making their own reputation, trying to
make for their children what they call a solid future, which means enough money to
leave behind so that the children will have what we call an assured financial future—
well, that is not all that matters. Children are expected to earn, have their own
income, lead their own lives without depending on parental inheritance. But in India it
is something of a curse that parents spend all their lives earning money which they
never use for themselves, to leave for children to waste, to run amok with, probably to
destroy themselves, too.

So, seeing this happening in our own satsangh—increasingly marriages are getting
troublesome. People get married here by the grace of my Guru, my Master, and they
run into trouble. Some of them, fortunately only a few, the marriage is finished on the
day of the marriage itself. So far we have had three cases. But it is a tragedy for me
because, as Babuji said, even one drop of poison in a big vessel of milk means a big
vessel full of poison. Here we don’t judge spiritual progress by success, we judge it by
failure. And in that sense our marriages have failed too often for my comfort. Though
my boys tell me, “Only three, saab [sir].” Should not have been even one.

So you see, when our people don’t appreciate the sanctity of a spiritual marriage, don’t
understand why they are marrying in a spiritual assembly under a spiritual
atmosphere, with a spiritual purpose, somewhere the teaching has been lost. They
have not imbibed it, they have not appreciated it, and, as in all things in India, all this
is for the others, not for us! Satyam vada [speak the truth]—“Yes, that’s for the
others. I am in business. I can’t possibly exist if I have only to tell the truth.”
Dharmam chara [be righteous]—“Not possible for me. It’s for the others, because if I
was to lead a dharmic [righteous] life, I wouldn’t exist in this world. I would have to
beg.”

So, you see, satyam vada, dharmam chara—all this is gone. Even in spiritual life today
in Sahaj Marg, over the past twenty-five years, there has been a steady fall, a decline
in values, in goals. Our published goal is the goal of realization, of perfection as a
human being. But all of us have other goals: make money, have a good reputation,
enjoy life, so many things, you see, very many diverse goals.

So, it is sad for me to be asked to talk because if I am to speak to you all, I must
speak frankly, which means bluntly, but unfortunately not effectively, because it
doesn’t take me anywhere or you anywhere. You all listen; you don’t apply. A hundred
times in these halls I have requested that in Sahaj Marg there are only human beings:
there are no Reddys, no Naidus, no Iyengars, no Iyers, and please drop all these
suffixes to your name which are meaningless and, much more importantly, they still
serve to divide you by caste, by surname, and so on. How many have done it? How
many are willing to respond again to my reminder of my appeal to you today and say
we are no more Naidus and Reddys? How many of you will be willing? I don’t find any
answer, you see.

So, these are too deep in you, even deeper than samskaras. Samskaras the Master can
clean, but these silly, meaningless, self-destructive, socially destructive cultural norms
that we have created for ourselves, we don’t want to give up. Therefore, we continue
to fight. Naidu votes, Muslim votes, Christian votes. Where is the vote for the right
man? In India it doesn’t exist. First of all, there don’t seem to be any right men and,
much more importantly, the vast mass of humanity that is India doesn’t want right
men. We want our man. ‘Our man’ means what? “Naidu, sir! Manavadulu. [Our man.]”

So, you continue to be misruled by your people, and you pride yourself, you know, and
saying, “Oh, we have a Naidu to rule here, we have a Babu to rule here,” et cetera, et
cetera. Nobody in India can today say we have the right man at the head of affairs, or
the right men. At least when India began its journey as an independent, free nation,
we had idealists leading the country, people with high ideals. Today we have no
idealism. We have only narrow sectarianism, parochialism: Telengana for Telenganas,
Maharashtra for Maharashtrians, Bengal for Bengalis. You see, what has happened—a
beautiful car project has been thrown out of Bengal for no reason, just because one
politician said, “I shall throw it out.” She has proved that she is right. She is powerful
enough. But what happens to Bengal? What happens to the Bengalis? What happens to
industrialization in India?

So, you see, it is sad that in all the world today there is corruption, there is
degradation, there is fall in values. It is sadder that in India it is happening, where it is
supposed to be a land with the culture of our ancient rishis and traditions, and saddest
that it is happening right here in Sahaj Marg.

So, what you are going to do about it, I don’t know. Because for me, I daily pray that I
may not live much longer to see this degradation going more and more, and affecting
my heart. I am happy as I am now and my ardent wish is that now I should go after I
finish this speech. But you are still there. What is going to happen to Sahaj Marg, to
Shri Ram Chandra Mission, to all of you in your thousands? What is going to happen?
Nothing can happen except what you make happen. Only what you want will happen.
Do you want something noble, something wonderful, something glorious to happen?
Or, do you want to continue in this degraded misery of politics and money, priding
yourself like the bandarlog in Rudyard Kipling’s book, “We are happy”? The choice is—
it has always been and will always be—yours.

We have a great parampara of Sahaj Marg. You know, the gurus. We only know about
Lalaji and Babuji. But from Babuji’s messages you must have seen that there is a
hierarchy. Where it begins is only with God, with that enormous parampara through
time, through space, through eternity, helping us, wanting to liberate us, to raise us.
If we do not succeed, it only shows that the human will is more powerful than the
Divine will.
So, I can only say, dear sisters and brothers, with a view to correcting all this, trying
to correct it, I have put out a message in Sahaj Sandesh a few days back. I don’t know
how many of you have read it, how many have had access to it. Please read it, not
once or twice. I would suggest that you give up your paaraayana [recitation of
scriptures] of whatever you are doing, Hanuman Chalisa [verses in praise of
Hanuman], Ramayan Kambha [story of Rama by Kamban], whatever it is and read
Sahaj Marg literature, read this message, and realize that without you trying to help
yourself, nobody can help you, not even God.

I pray you will awaken now, because it is never too late to wake up, but if you
continue to sleep this dreadful sleep, this slothful sleep, this, shall we say,
unwillingness-to-awaken sleep, you are at the misery of your own destructive self.

Thank you.

Message from Rev. Master

CHENNAI
8th October, 2008

A letter from my heart to sisters and brothers all over the world .

Dear Ones,

My beloved Master, Babuji Maharaj, has repeatedly affirmed that while it was HIS duty
to give the abhyasis inner spiritual growth, character formation was, and will always
be, the abhyasis personal business. For a quarter of a century since HE left for His
Divine abode in the Brighter World, the Mission has continued to abide by this
principle, leaving their moral and ethical development to abhyasis, for them to nurture
and develop to the highest possible levels by themselves.

My beloved Master has emphasized that the inner and the outer must balance in a
developed human being. As inside, so outside, must be the reality of a spiritually
developed person. Every abhyasi must ruminate and discover for himself whether this
has been established within himself.

As one responsible for the development of abhyasis, I have been observing a slow, but
steady, erosion in the values of the external lives of abhyasis during the past twenty-
five years. This is a sad observation to make. The world has been plunging headlong
into the materialistic mode, with dire and predictable consequences, which, today, all
can see. Sadly, within the Mission itself, this degradation in values has been troubling
all of us who are sensitive to these issues.

The value-based system of education slowly introduced to willing schools has been
effective for children. But what about the adults? And what about the abhyasis
especially? In this context, I must confess that I have been wary of introducing
anything that even faintly resembles control, based on so-called judgmental attitudes.
I feel that I have failed in my duty to you all by not having set before you necessary
moral and behavioural codes for your adoption, without ever forcing them down
unwilling throats. The essence of a human life is the guarantee of personal freedom to
choose one’s path, and mode of life. While guaranteeing this freedom to all, I now feel
that it is necessary for the Mission to define the following for the benefit of you all.

1. Love, understanding, tolerance and forgiveness, are all necessary, and must be
manifested at the individual level in personal interaction.
2. A body of universally applicable teaching MUST reflect principles and practices
that will be all encompassing, transcending the cultural, religious and
behavioural norms laid down for people not involved with personal spiritual
development. I affirm that this need is of paramount necessity even in the lives
of those leading mundane lives, but the necessity for such codes in the spiritual
life cannot be ever sufficiently emphasized. After forty-five years in Sahaj Marg,
I now consider it to be vitally necessary.
3. I am writing this to you all to assure you that I shall now set my heart towards
furthering the education of abhyasis into these principles which may be called
higher, or divine, but which are certainly universal. Please cooperate in this
adventure, your personal adventure if I may say so, in the spiritual life into
which we have all strayed, knowingly or unknowingly, and pray for my Master’s
Blessings to promote our total development and welfare, in all the realms of
existence: Physical, mental, moral and finally the spiritual.

P. Rajagopalachari