I sat with Chowdrie and others and worried. Chowdrie attacked me, because according to him I am too much on the level of the mind.
I did not react… was praying to Him who is Merciful. So many worries he gives us, being so ill, our dear Guru Maharaj….
At home, went to bed early and could not sleep until three in the morning, worrying and praying. I fear so much that, if I don’t surrender by the time I go, I will end on the wrong path, the path of Shaitan…. Proud I am, like Lucifer, and the self is still strong, and with this hatred in me I am bound to do some wrong if the self does not go completely….
This morning some of us were sitting outside, and about ten Chowdrie asked Satendra to open the door and let us see Bhai Sahib.
Satendra did it, and then called them in. “Yes, you too,” he said to me—I was just about to ask if I too could go in. He was very weak… breathless when trying to speak. I was deeply distressed. Soon everybody had left. I also stood up ready to leave, but he made a movement with his hand for me to sit down, which at first I misunderstood, for I did not expect anything of the sort.
“You can sit down if you like,” he said half audibly. He asked if I knew the date of the Bandhara had been changed. I said, he told me, and I knew. He nodded.
“It will take place one month before I go.”
“Yes, it will be a month.” And then he discussed the money question, the amount which I will get from Push pa now, and later the check from Australia.
“Yesterday I was not in the position to speak to anyone.”
“But you did so to me, and you gave me a beautiful couplet.” He smiled kindly in response, pulling his blanket up to his ears. How radiant his smile in his eyes illumining his face and disappearing into the beard… and sometimes it is like sunshine breaking out from his beard, the eyes half closed. It is then that he looks most Chinese…. But usually the eyes begin to smile first, shining like stars.
Told him that it was not clear to me what he meant when he said that the body of a self~realized Soul becomes stiff. “It is because of the vibrations: they become so strong that the body cannot bear it; at a certain stage of development the body is ill continuously. This is the secret people usually don’t know. They think the more perfect one is, the healthier one becomes. It is so at the beginning, but not at the later stages. We must not forget we have an ordinary body meant to serve us in this world. When we are on the Path, at first we are still able to take care of the body and the mind, but later the body and mind are left behind as quite unimportant.”
I thought that it was an interesting statement. Later he said, when people make cutting remarks about you, don’t answer immediately; tell them later in a nice way. Remember the couplet, if people make cutting remarks about you, give them a place of honor in your garden and treat them as friends. I said that I will remember it.
“What did Chowdrie say when you told him about your experiences?”
“I had the impression that he was jealous; he was not very friendly when I said that I considered myself to be lucky.”
“He thought that I gave him the Tawadje, but I did nothing of the sort yesterday. Only when one is ill and weak, the mind remains in the body and the Soul is very strong. Somehow sitting here he tuned in into the line and went into a deep state.”
He asked me if I was going to have food with Pushpa. I said that I was only going to see if she was here, but will not stay there for lunch; I don’t feel too well; I have been having a vomiting condition for a few days. He nodded.
“It is like this; if I am ill, those who are near to me have to suffer to a certain degree.”
I was glad that I was nearer to him; before I hardly felt anything… sometimes, but not much. I knew that my condition was not due to physical causes, only I thought that it was due to the vibrations. But it is better like this-to be so much part of him that one is affected by his condition even on the physical level.
“You can go now to Pushpa, and half an hour later you will go home and cook something for yourself?” I said that I would. He nodded. “If the door is closed when you come, you just knock, or even better I will send somebody to call you!”
I thought that was good news, and I thanked him.
“I am strict with everybody, with Chowdrie also. For the last seven years or so I realized that I have to be. My Rev. Guru Maharaj was not strict, but as a Teacher he was very much so. And how many people he prepared like himself… it is difficult to prepare even one, and he prepared my uncle, my father, my elder brother to some extent, and his son, and I don’t want to speak of myself…. “
“But you were prepared more than anybody else,” I said, and my heart was very still, but he did not answer.
“He was a great Teacher,” he said at last and went into Samadhi.
I left rather happy. Push pa was not at home, so I went to my place and had some boiled rice and raw tomatoes.
I forgot to write that I told him that my self is still so strong, and that I pray so much that it should go. I pray that it should go before I have to leave… and he looked far away without answering.
“It will go; it will go,” he said after a silence. He also said that when the Soul is realized, it remains ALWAYS with the REAL MASTER, the Almighty, who is Himself part of the Absolute Truth. This is also an important information.
In the evening I sat there for a very long time; everybody went inside, but I was not called in. I was serene. After all, only his will matters; if he calls me, I will be glad; if not, well, it will be for another time….
41 Living with God
14th December
HIS PRESENCE IS CONSTANT. To live with God as a living reality is a new experience. And even if I forget it, as one day I surely will, it will remain with me as a sweet memory, an encouragement never to be forgotten.
Great happiness keeps pervading me when I happen to think that from now on I will do His Will only; finished are the days when I thought I was doing things by myself, deciding things for myself.
Somebody else will decide for me…. Told him this morning. He nodded with one of his softest expressions. “It is easy to realize God: it is enough that one who is addicted to drink gives you the full cup after he touched it with his lips.”
Had a still and peaceful night. Such nearness to Him all the morning: not even nearness-oneness. Bhai Sahib looked very frail.
He spoke for a long time to Sageji and the Sannyasi. He turned to me: “Swamiji speaks very highly of you; he says that you are a first class Bhakta.” I had to laugh.
“The trouble is that I don’t know if it is Bhakti to the Master or Bhakti to God! I am trying to analyze the feeling for the sake of writing it down… seems an impossible task. Sometimes it is you, sometimes it is He, so, I never know if it is He or you separately or both together! Before I seemed to talk to God mentally—a constant mental conversation was going on all of the time; there was still duality; there was I and He in my heart. Now I seem to be part of Him.” He gave me a look for the briefest of seconds.
That’s why I asked him, I remember, if one surrenders to the Master or to God. As I feel it—I may be wrong, of course-one does not surrender to the Master at all, for in reality the surrender is to God THROUGH the Master. The Master is only the focus of attention on the physical plane. In other words the outer Guru points to the Inner Guru, the Self. In the night, for instance, one is resting in God-body, mind, everything. The body is included—this is an important point; it too is resting in Him, and this gives such a feeling of pure physical bliss. It is like relaxing within the endlessness of love…. If one could only tell people: you don’t need alcohol; you don’t need drugs. If they only knew WHAT happiness it is to be with Him, they would not try to reach peace or try to get experiences by artificial means….
“Yes,” he said, “but in order to do so they have to undergo a certain training or discipline, sometimes severe. And who wants such a thing? Who wants Him as badly as that? It is a gift, but it is not given for onese
lf, it is given for others.” He closed his eyes for one moment in infinite tenderness.
“At first love is created; it is not done to everyone.”
“But don’t you create it in the heart of every Shishya?” I asked astonished, because I thought that it is done with everybody.
“Not with everybody.” He shook his head. “Not everyone’s heart is made in such a way that it can be done. It is not for everybody. If there is much feeling quality, love is created. If the person lives on the mental level and there is hardly any feeling, first feeling is awakened and love afterwards. Those who do it, do it well, for the Master is directed. In the ordinary way love comes slowly; in the state of Dhyana, a state of pure being is felt first, then currents of love and bliss. But it is a slow process. It takes time. Things are done according to human beings, according to the necessities of every one of them. No two are alike.
“Surrender, I told you, has to be on all levels, to form a closed circle. If the mind is surrendered, the body is surrendered too, for the mind is the master of the body. So the body is surrendered THROUGH the mind. Completely, everything has to be included; surrender is surrender.”
It seems to be quite a natural state to be with God· all the time…. It may sound incredible, even crazy perhaps, but it is a fact; it is the most natural thing in the world. The simplest thing… you just live with Him all day long, talk to Him mentally all the time, do your housework, your shopping, and all the time the whole of your being is in the Presence of Something so real, so intimately near.
And even sometimes it is more: it just seems that I am home; that there is duality, and sometimes there is none. I look into my heart and… it is there! It is the very core of myself! But this is not always; mostly there is this sweet duality…. I tried to explain it to Pushpa, but she looked quite blank at me. I could not convey the idea to her.
“Why do you say such things to Pushpa?” He looked annoyed.
“She is the public; if she understands, the others will too,” I said.
“She is full of worldly things!”
“But when back in England, I will have to deal with worldly people!”
“Why not tell them only what they can understand, and as far as they can understand? We speak according to the state of evolution of the human being!” He said, looking afar with a bored expression.
The purely physical bliss in the night… the body is so happy.
Every particle, every cell, is perfectly at peace, happy in its own right.
He smiled. “Yes, the surrender begins from the physical leveleverything surrenders. It is a complete circle.”
Told him that the vibrations are of a higher order-how they are quicker. I can feel it, and only in the higher Chakras; I don’t feel anything in the lower Chakras at all. “The frequency is higher; I feel it in the night.”
“One can feel the Chakras sometimes,” he nodded.
“One can notice it clearly; one can watch it actually happen—how the atmosphere becomes charged when several people sit here. As soon as they come through the gate, entering your influence… do you charge the atmosphere deliberately?”
“It is done automatically. Who am I to do something? The atmosphere is prepared for all there who are able to take it.”
“Why is it that I cannot pray on some occasions? Sometimes it goes so well, and at other times it is impossible!”
“Sometimes the food is wrong—food is very important; some times too much talk, so many things can go wrong.”
“Where is Bogroff?” I asked him in conversation. “Do you see him, is he with you?” He had this faraway look.
“He was with me; now he does not need to be with me; he is free.
But he still sees me. It is due to him that his wife is writing to me.
The time comes when one does not need the Master anymore. But reverence and love and gratitude remain always.
“Everything I do or say is for your benefit, never for myselfremember that. My father never punished people. He was so gentle.
That’s why, this is the reason he did not take anybody to a high state.
You have to be hard: be severe with people, otherwise how will they learn? Those who obey are taken to a high state. It is so in our System. It is difficult to obey always. But they are taken to a high state, not immediately, but eventually they are. If you obey the Master, you cannot go wrong.”
“About the Karmas, the question which was bothering me so much: as far as my actual understanding goes, according to your System, Karmas are accepted as a Law of Nature, the Law of Action and Reaction. But God in His infinite Mercy can overrule them at any moment; one need not bother about them; they are not important. The Teacher, by the Order of God, does away with them absolutely.”
He opened his eyes wide while I was speaking, looking at me full in the face; then an infinitely tender smile crept over his tightly closed lips, and he closed his eyes again.
“If the human being comes to me in search of Truth, where are the Karmas?” he said softly, and went in Samadhi.
So it seems that I have hit upon the solution: Karmas are and are not according to how we look at them….
He was telling me about his cousin who keeps losing his temper constantly.
“But why? There must be a reason?”
“Reason there is; he thinks that he knows much, and he is learned and knows better than others. He had eight hundred rupees per month, and now he has only fifteen-he keeps losing faith. He asks me to pray for him; I am praying, then he again loses his faith-so what can I do …. If one loses faith, one can come down from every level, from even the highest stage. But there is a stage when one can never lose faith, like a ball. If one would succeed to throw it high enough, it would never come back, so the Soul at a certain stage will go on and on to God, and one never loses faith.”
“I hope it will be so with me from now on. I have lost my fear; I am not afraid; how can I be, if He is with me all the time?”
“No,” he shook his head slowly, “be not afraid. Never.”
I left happy… he was so kind today. Pushpa was in Allahabad, so I went shopping with Mrs. Ahuja and went with her to see her new flat, not far from where I live; her husband is ill, so I combined the visit and did both things: saw the flat and visited him. We spoke about Sufism, and I told him about my training, and the future he is preparing for me.
What I was doing during the last few afternoons I don’t know. I am with Him constantly, all the time, and I don’t remember a thing. I think I just lie on my tachat and think of Him. In his garden in the afternoon I was alone. Virendra passed by, and I asked him to go and ask his father if I could go in. He came and said that I can. He was lying on the tachat and told me that he had no fever.
“Now I am at the stage my Rev. Guru Maharaj was; he would be ill for a few days, then he would be all right again.”
Later he said: “Let me get well again, and you will come to know many things. I don’t answer questions on God and the like; some things I don’t answer at all. But with you I speak… let me get well… .”
Then I told him my dream: There was a torchlight procession, and I said to someone whom I didn’t know in real life: I’ll go on the roof and see it. I ran up and saw a long procession going up the hill in the distance, winding upwards in the form of the letter S. It was a beautiful sight, all those torches in the completely dark night. From the roof where I was watching I saw many cars parked near the building, and they too were illumined, full of lights. Then I went down and passed an attic with many dusty objects. It was crammed with all sorts of things. Other people get rid of things too, not only myself, I thought, and said to the servant who stood there: “Take what you like-those things may be of use to you.” Then I went down and saw an acquaintance from London; she was pointing to a lovely yellow-golden rose standing in a silver vase, a big beautiful vase of silver.
“Mrs. Tweedie,” she was saying, “tell me how you grow this rose, and what is the name of the var
iety?”
“Her name is Mrs. McGreedy, she is not grown in the earth, but I keep her in a silver vase… can you see?” And because it seemed to me that she did not understand I repeated: “It is in a silver container, can you see?”
“Yes, yes, I can see that,” she said. And I woke up.
“Has this dream a meaning?”
“It has,” he said, ”a very deep meaning. Maybe you will get such a chance one day….”He fell silent. Rose is a symbol of devotion, and golden-yellow, may it be a Sufi rose? And the procession in the form of an S… could it stand for the word “Sufi”?
But he was in deep Samadhi; I knew I should not ask anymore.
Went out soon. Felt he wanted me out.
“Yes, I was just thinking to go inside and have my tea,” he said. I was glad that I anticipated his desire.
16th December
WHAT A LESSON OF SELF-DISCIPLINE it is: to be full of vibrations, dying to be able to speak to him, and it is not possible. For hours on end they discussed all sorts of things; he was so friendly, so kind to everybody; perhaps, I thought, perhaps I will speak to him. But they talked and talked endlessly… the objectionable Brahmin whom I cannot stand, and others. Began to weep silently out of sheer frustration, sending him mental messages that I wanted to speak to him. But more and more people began to come in—clearly I won’t be able to speak to him at all. At last everybody left, but it was already nearly eleven. The wife stormed in; he, with annoyed expression, began to talk to her; she took his singlet from the hook on the wall. I understood that he wanted to change and stood up to go. He hardly acknowledged my greeting, nodded stiffly, and I went. So kind to others… he makes it difficult for me, I reflected not without bitterness. It is Your Will, I thought; I have to learn NEVER to want anything. Without speaking I got the answerI am surrendering to His Will, but I am not completely surrendered; otherwise why would I even want to speak to him? Or be hurt, or cry? No need to talk. If one understands, one gets all the answers.
God Himself is showing to me that I am not at all completely surrendered. It is difficult to size up with the mind what happens to me; now it really is as if I were taken over by God. I say “God,”
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