occupation — to earn sufficiently to keep you going.
You may do anything you think proper and profitable to earn a living. Where there is a will there is a way. I am glad to find that Initiation has changed your outlook on life and has given you an aim in life. Our aim is two-fold; Primarily to work hard in meditation, go in and lift our souls up; the secondary object is to maintain our bodily health and earn sufficient income by rightful means, in order to lead a comfortable life.
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64. The Audible Life Stream which we call Shabd is the everlasting form of the Lord and is always within everyone of us. At the eye focus It assumes the Astral Form of the Master and in this physical world It assumes the physical form of the Master.
The function of Shabd is to lift the soul up; but It cannot perform this function until the mind and soul concentrate at the focus of the eyes, and having vacated the physical frame, cross the solar system, that is, the stars, the sun and the moon.
The soul and mind permeate every pore of the physical body, therefore Shabd cannot pull them up. It is by means of Repetition of the five Holy Names — while keeping the attention between the eyes — that the currents of the soul gradually leave the body and collect behind the eyes. When the concentration is complete and the entire body has become numb, then it is easy for the Sound Current to pull up the soul.
Therefore, please work hard upon your Repetition and bring about complete concentration. No external circumstances can obstruct the progress of the soul. It is the lower tendencies of the mind that obstruct the soul's progress. Keep your thoughts pure. It is lust and anger that make the mind impure and prevent spiritual development.
One should never be contented with one's spiritual progress. One should always hunger for the Repetition and hearing the Sound Current.
Yes, what happens with you is happening with all. Sometimes the mind and the soul get easily concentrated and sometimes they are very difficult to concentrate. It is not the same every day. The reason is that when the mind is scattered for any cause, it becomes difficult to bring about concentration. And when the mind is not so scattered, concentration becomes easier and more pleasant.
When you cross the solar system and go beyond, you will find the Master in His Astral Form, waiting for you and ready to take you up to higher regions. It
is up to the disciple to reach that point, and after that it is the Master's duty to take the soul up.
You need not take the trouble of coming over to India. The time is not opportune and, moreover, I do not stay at one place but am always moving about. It is not nesessary for your spiritual progress. Wait for a year.
Regarding the use of contraceptives, if you want good spiritual progress, let there be pure unselfish love between you and your husband, without any admixture of sex. It will keep up your health and give you spiritual advancement without any fear of un- wanted children. If you waste your energies in sex enjoyment, you cannot progress spiritually. Yet, I do not want to interfere in your relations with your husband. You are free to do as you like.
The best service that you can render me is to work hard for your spiritual uplift.
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65. I am sorry to learn that you find little time for your spiritual meditation on account of your various worldly engagements. You should try to give some time to it daily. Your distress is due to-want of meditation. Your husband should know that if he gives up spiritual practice, it is he who will be the loser. He should not give it up in despair of results, as it takes years to make the mind motionless. And one should continue working on this Path up to the end of his life, even if he does not get results to his own satisfaction. It is the only thing that goes with us after death. If he gives this up, he will go empty-handed in the end. Your relationship with him is of this world. If he gives up meditation, you should not do so as everyone
has to account for his own self at death, and get the reward of his own meditation and practice in the other world.
The Master is waiting inside for his pupils to come in and partake of His Grace and Love. It is our fault that we do not reach His Feet in the astral plane, above the eyes.
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66. You can always refer your difficulties and problems to me without hesitation, and I shall try to the best of my abilities to assist you.
The law of the Karmas is very complicated and intricate. Circumstances in which we are to work are created for us according to our Karmas of the past births, and we should try to work under them so far as those circumstances permit.
Yes, the Master is with His diciples, in His Astral Form. You will be able to see and talk to Him when you will go in the astral plane.
Neither — nor — are aware of the Sound Current, and without it nobody can go into the higher spiritual planes. Therefore, their preaching and teaching can- not be complete. They possess no knowledge of the Holy Names or our way of meditation. The result is that your taking part in their work will do no good either to them or to you; instead of that you can study the books by Dr. Johnson and other R.S. literature.
I also could wish that there was a teacher of R.S. Science in your country. You have not given me the full name of— so I cannot know who he is and how far he will be able to hold a Satsang. After Initiation one has generally no need to join any religious or spiritual association. It is a mere waste of time, which can be
more usefully devoted to meditation. But there can be no harm in joining a society aiming at social uplift, etc., if it does not absorb too much time or if it provides a means of livelihood. Only so much time should be devoted to worldly or other work as is necessary to keep us going.
67. In this world it is difficult to find a happy person. One thing or the other is always going wrong, and man finds himself miserable and care-worn. Only he who has taken his attention in and hears the clear Bell Sound is free from worries and cares of this world. Man takes birth here and his destiny comes with him. This destiny cannot be changed. Man has to under- go it. The destiny is of his own making. What he had sown before, he reaps now. Therefore, the wise undergo their destiny with patience and fortitude, while the unwise undergo it all the same, but are dis- satisfied and worried.
Lasting Peace and Happiness are within us. Peace and happiness derived from worldly objects and com- panions are transitory, because they are not lasting. They change and in time vanish. Their attachment leaves behind scars which disfigure life. Therefore, while working for a decent, comfortable life, one should not lose sight of the aim of life — Permanent Peace. By the very nature of things, this is not obtainable in the matter and mind regions, because these are them- selves changeable. As one is going in and up, one is getting independent of the changeables, and finds Peace in Spiritual Regions. Peace is excellent, but is obtained through effort.
68. Man is a wonderful creation. He not only carries his past history with him, but the whole crea- tion — visible and invisible — and the Creator of all are within him, and he has been gifted with the capacity to see all that lies in him and to be one with his Creator. The search is to be made within one's self and it costs nothing. The whole thing lies behind the veil of the mind. When the mind has been made motion- less, that which lies behind the veil becomes visible. The mind, which wanders outward and seldom sticks to its headquarters in the eye center — whether we are awake or asleep — has to be trained to stick to the head- quarters and, instead of running out, is to look inside the eye center. This is not an easy task. But just as other habits are created by practice and perseverance, the mind also is to be put in the new channel by love and faith and perseverance. It is a practical course. It is a fight against the mind. "Slow and steady wins the race"
Regarding your questions about the past life, as I have stated above, you will have firsthand knowledge of it when you will be able to go within yourself. Suffice it to say that the present life is based on the past life. Unfulfilled hopes and desires of one life become the basis of new life and form the framework of the new life. Therefore, the main run of the present life was determined before birth. This cannot be changed and has to be borne, whether we do it patiently or restlessly. But we are free to cast our future.
Sant Mat teaches us how to end this cycle of birth and death and go back to our Eternal Home. The teaching of Sant Mat is the Word which is present in all. We need the help of somebody who himself practises the Word, and it becomes our duty to catch
It and trace It inward. The teacher is there, outside and inside, to give guidance. Therefore, with high aim and faith and perseverance, seek the Word within you and be master of your own house within, instead of wandering out. The richest gold mine is within you. The Word is dearer than all the gold, rubies and diamonds, finding which the mind gives up hankering after the things of this or other worlds.
69. I appreciate your eagerness to take to Simran and Bhajan as much as possible, and I hope you will progressively devote more and more time to them. Your inability to concentrate properly is due to your worldly desires, which must be brought under control till you reach the point when Love of God becomes an all-consuming passion, and you consider it the be- all and end-all of your existence.
You know fully well that nothing is really yours in the world, in the sense that nothing will go with you after death, except "Nam". It alone will take you to the Feet of the Almighty, under the guidance of the Master who is always with His votaries at the time of death and keeps them company throughout the spiritual journey.
He is always with you even now, though you may not see Him with physical eyes. By constant devotion to Bhajan, time may come when you can see within yourself the Radiant Form of the Master, and once you get It, you will be fully planted on the way that leads to God and eternal Salvation.
70. Your karma is all right. It is not to blame for your supposed want of spiritual progress. It is due to
the effect of your sudden bereavement and breaking of family tie. The consequent sorrow and anxiety have weighed down upon your mind and soul. The remedy is to give up all sadness and anxiety, and work hard upon your Repetition. You should give three-fourths of your daily time to Repetition and only one-fourth to hearing the Sound. Take care, please, that during Repetition the mind does not wander out. It will not begin to work inside unless it is still. To make the mind perfectly motionless, requires years of hard labor; therefore, do not expect results in a hurry. When you labor on the "Path" you will succeed. No one has yet gone disappointed from that door.
Following are the answers to your questions: 1 —You should consult the doctors. Usually the soul enters the embryo after three months.
2 —When a baby is born into this world, the number of breaths he is to breathe, till his death, is already fixed, and nobody can increase or decrease it.
3 — Suffering and poverty are also pre-ordained for everyone before his birth, according to the karma of his past birth. They have to be undergone, yet a Master's disciple who raises his soul becomes indifferent to external surroundings.
4 — Material help should not be sought from the Master. It is perishable. Ask for permanent and everlasting objects from Him, such as spiritual uplift, freedom from the cycle of births, and the like.
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71. The Master is always present with His diciples, in His astral form. In order to get more firmly rooted in your spiritual practice you should work hard. The
bluish constellations and stars are at the threshold of the inner world. Try to penetrate within.
1 — Progress does continue even though one's Master may have left the earth plane forever. This is based on experience. My Master initiated a lady, and departed from this life. Several years after that the lady's soul went inside very far.
2 — No one can go into the spiritual planes without Initiation; therefore, you cannot expect to see your relatives who were not initiated, in the other world. If they have gone into the spiritual planes, then you will meet them and talk to them; but not those who have been reborn in this world in some physical form. After death the astral and causal bodies retain the features of the physical body, but there is a vast difference in the materials of the bodies.
3 — If one has to be reborn into the world, the soul will have to go into the mother's womb and take natural time to come out.
72. People on other planes are not much inter- ested in the physical plane. They have their hands full there, in their own doings. The Karmic Law is supreme on the material and the mind planes, and nothing happens of its own accord, spontaneously, so to say. The law governs the planes; therefore, no haphazard happening of events takes place anywhere, whether the events are of microscopic or astronomical dimensions. In peace and in cataclysms or catastro- phes, only they suffer who are destined to suffer.
All that has been created is bound to change and decay. There is dissolution of earth, planets, sun and stars, but at very long intervals — too long for human
conception. Who can say when this present planetary system was created? Prophets, Yogis, and astrono- mers give their estimates, and the latter revise their estimates with every new discovery, but who can say how often this dissolution has been repeated? Only He who creates, knows it. Suffice it to say that for human beings sitting outside the eye center, the time is infinitely long since the creation came into being
and when it will disappear again.
So there is nothing to worry about the next war or the atom bomb; this very kind of loose, vague talk was indulged in during and at the end of Great War I, and is also indulged in after floods, earthquakes, famines and plagues. The worry should be about one's entry into the eye center and meeting the Radiant Form of the Master, so that the Master is our companion, on whom reliance can be placed here and hereafter. He who has been connected with the Word cannot go amiss in catastrophe or peace. He has a place to go to, goes there, and is not lost.
73. I am glad you have received Initiation.. Now it is for you to work your way inward, within you. With love and faith devote time regularly in repeating the Names in the eye center, and see that while doing Repetition the mind does not run out to do something else, and if it does, bring it back again to the eye center and continue the Repetition. By and by the mind will go inward and sit in the eye center, the attention will begin to be withdrawn from the limbs, and in time the whole body will be vacated. Light will appear and the spiritual journey will commence. It is a slow affair in the beginning.
The spiritual power developed by Repetition and concentration of the mind in the eye center, should not be wasted in spiritual healing. This power should be reserved for making further progress inward. If it is used in healing, there is nothing left with the person except a sense of depletion and exhaustion. It is a bad bargain. The spiritual healer takes the karmic load of the patient and thereby himself goes under, and never makes much headway in the journey inward. He lives from hand to mouth, spending what he earns. Youth is wayward. But proper guidance through example and precept goes a long way in keeping it on the right path. You may point out to your daughter the advantages of leading a good healthy life with spiritual uplift and ultimate Salvation as its goal; for human life is a rare gift of God. In the whole creation, man alone has the privilege of meeting his Creator. And the Sound Current, which is present and audible in everybody, is the way to rise up, go back to our Spiritual Home and meet our Lord.
74. I was pained to learn that your husband did not appreciate your love, fidelity and solicitude for him. My advice to you, given at the time of your marriage, was from the point of view of a Hindu wife. Among Hindus, marriage is regarded as a sacrament and a permanent union. I am glad to learn that you have done your best to follow that advice. If he cannot pull on with you, then you can do whatever you think proper. You have done your duty towards him. I