Coming to the subject of the individual self-improvement, don’t have the royalty of having the highest man as your Guru. Such Gurus will have hundreds of disciples like you. You can’t have the benefit of individual attention. He must be a dullard who requires the highest London-degree-teacher for studying primer. What comes in his way is his swollen-headed egoism. Your Guru need not be perfect.You will never get one , nor will such one will accept you in the real sense of word. It is enough if he is spiritually superior to you and has your spiritual and temporal welfare at his heart, if you find that you can confide in him regarding your defects , weaknesses and secrets.
Let the mischievous notion of ” No Guru and No Authority ” go. Our life moves with faith. You continue under your home-roof while the rainy storms are there, because you have the faith that the Engineer has built it strong enough. You have never seen the Engineer nor gone to study his wall-beam and roof calculations. You take food prepared by your mother, because you have the faith she will never poison you. You take medicine from a doctor because you have a faith the doctor would not commit the blunder. You fly in aeroplane because you have faith in pilot. You can’t move an inch without taking so many things as granted, with faith. What is this newly imported nonsense of “I don’t believe things I have not seen” ? You pass your life in the belief that your name is so and so, you identify yourself with that name. Is that of your own independent making ?
You may qualify your faith if you like. It should not be a blind faith or a credulous faith or irrational faith. You must be free to change your Guru when you find you are in the wrong, but you can’t proceed without your faith. Service , faith and love are important factors.
With ample leisure, with an unoccupied brain, with the vital energy of celibacy ( to the extent possible if you are married and to the full extent otherwise ), start on.Never think how much remain to be done. There is no end. Always keep in mind how you have progressed, to keep yourself cheerful.Every step that you rise makes you better man more fitted to claim and command happiness, not only for one life , but for lives and lives. A permanent and perpetual gain till you gain salvation. Although the path is long enough, it is this providential arrangement which keeps courage , patience and perseverance.A single step climbed or a single atom acquired in the religious progress is never lost.
Why so much cry against Guru-acceptance ? No doubt, there may some few cases of the confidence being being betrayed, but the main reason is absence of humility, over-estimate of one’s self and greatest reluctance to pay the price in terms of love and service , devotion and surrender to Guru. When you associate with others, you have the pleasure of being worshipped if others are inferior to you. On the other hand, you have to be worshippers and therefor the superiority Guru pinches you. People lose their common sense when they enter the realm of religion. One of the Founder’s intimate acquaintances, a high-class Government Officer , once told him, ” I hate the very idea of seeing Gurus garlanded. It is cruel murdering the principle equality. My head turns at the idea, a disciple should garland a Guru.”. Once that friend talked over to the Founder, on returning from a place of his long tour of several official visits . The in-charges of some places garlanded this hater of Guru-garlanding. He said to his friend,” There are very few men of my staff who know what is gratefulness. Such few alone garlanded me during my tour and did their duty. Other people I hate. They never once thought where they would have been but for my raising them from pay to pay and post to post. Should they not even do such a simple nominal thing as garlanding their bread-giver when he goes to them for an official visit ?”
Is it not your experience in this experience in this world that a multi-millionaire sets right all wrongs with money, his own incapacities , vices, weakness etc ? As a multi-millionaire can do any thing with spiritual wealth, so the devotees with the spiritual wealth attained on practising devotion can do anything in the spiritual world.
Nothing is so powerful as the repetition of the sacred name of your deity, be it Mother, Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Shakti, Surya, Ganesh or Allah or Christ, whoever he be , getting the Mantra from your Guru. Fire on day and night, whenever and wherever you find leisure.One hour daily for about six months will assure you, there is an appreciable change in your outlook. Here much depends on the intrinsic value of your Guru, to put it in simplest language , the intensity of love between the Guru and the worshipped and the love between the Guru and the Shishya and the intrinsic worth of the Guru and the disciple.
Founder quotes an interesting instance. There was a Madrasi devotee whom the Founder met in a train. He was repeating Shodashakshari Mantra. He had decided to finish one lakh( 100,000) repetitions. His one lakh repetitions finished on Belgaum station. Founder also got in to the second class where that Madrasi devotee was the only passenger. Founder was in English dress and Madrasi with sacred ashes smeared all over his body. The devotee got suddenly an idea that the foretelling of his own Guru viz. that he will meet a great devotee on his finishing one lakh, was perhaps to be true in meeting this new man, the Founder. He tried to enter in religious conversation with the Founder , but the Founder curtly replied like an irreligious man who had no soft corner for religion itself.
On the next halting station, the devotee got down and changed his compartment. on the further stopping station, a man with a decent Rumal turban in coat and pant, collar and neck-tie , entered Founder’s compartment and sat by Founder’s side. Founder looked in his face and astonishingly asked him,” Please excuse me . I think I have seen you somewhere.” The man smiled and prostrated to him while saying,” Yes, on the Belgaum station”. Founder saw he was the same man and before he completely prostrated , lifted him up and embraced him most fervently. Said that man with a smile ,” Bhaktaraj, Now at least you will talk with me heart to heart. i am no longer that fanatic orthodox Brahmin you thought me to be “. The Founder attaches small value to the ceremonial part. He thought of giving the devotee an additional experience and pleasure. He began to sing the very Shodashakshari Mantra in Khamacha tune. The gentleman got the proof. Both enjoyed spiritual ecstasy.
The point here to be emphasised, is that there is an inviolable connection between the completion of a certain numbers of japams ( mantra repetitions ), if done with devotion and single-mindedly , and some happening which immediately assures you about the efficiency of the Mantra repetition.If there is no result, take it, there is something wrong with you; continue till you have convincing proof.
When you reach this stage , you have a current account in an international Bank. You can move in any part of the world , with only a cheque book, taking care to see that you do not overdraw and you go on depositing.
Many think they have achieved the goal, on getting a good practice of Mantra repetitions. as a matter of fact this is only securing an equipage , for further journey. The aspirant has simply secured the Mother’s Armour and Guru’s Shield . The fight he has yet to be launched in. He has to fight a hard fight on the one hand and keep himself fully invigorated with Deity’s devotion and Guru’s service, on the other.
Jay Mai Jay Mai Jay Mai
EXTRACT FROM : MAI-ISM AUTHOR : MAI SWARUP MAI MARKAND MAI NIWAS, SARASWATI ROAD END, SANTA CRUZ WEST , MUMBAI 400054 INDIA
God as Mother and Father in MAIISM AND HINDUISM 