Doctors' night at the Jharna-Kala Gallery⁶

My dear doctor brothers and my dear young and promising medical students, to you I offer my heart’s deepest love, which is founded upon our inner oneness, and I offer my pure gratitude-heart, for you are doing the same thing that I and my students are doing. You love life and we love life. A doctor is he who loves life, who loves God, the Life Eternal. I and my students also love God the Eternal Life, for we know that if we love God the Eternal Life, then only can we derive satisfaction from within and from without.

We are all sailing in the same boat to the Golden Shore, where there is no bondage, no darkness, no disease, no imperfection, finally, no death. You want to conquer death so that the life eternal can manifest in and through each individual human being. We too want to conquer death, by praying and meditating, so that we can be perfect instruments of God and serve Him in each other in His own way.

The limited life in a human body cannot carry the ultimate message of the Absolute Supreme. This is the discovery made by some of the Indian seekers or Masters. But I do not see eye to eye with them. I see and clearly feel that the eternal Life can and does abide in the physical. This eternal Life passes beyond the so-called death and comes back again through the process of reincarnation.

Each day is a golden opportunity for us to receive and offer light. This light is nothing short of life. Light is the flower of life and life is the fruit of light. Each moment is a golden opportunity for us to bring to the fore our eternal life or to expand our earth-bound life for countless years. But we have to know why we want to stay on earth for a long time, indefinitely. There are villagers in India who are enjoying human life, wallowing in the pleasures of the finite, and they are two hundred, three hundred years old. If we want to remain on earth just for the sake of enjoyment, that is of no avail. We, the seekers of the infinite Truth, want to stay on earth in order to become perfect instruments of God. Each moment of our human life is a golden opportunity for us to pray and meditate soulfully. When we arrive at a certain stage of our inner aspiration we come in contact with our inner boundless light.

You are trying in your own way to lengthen human life. From the outside discoveries you enable us to enter into the inner world by curing the body first. And we do it the other way. We feel that if we can cure the inner life in us, then it becomes infinitely easier for us to cure the outer life. You feel that the building must be kept in perfect condition or why should the occupant stay there? According to our philosophy, the body is the temple. But the temple needs a shrine. We say, what shall we do with the outer structure if there is no soul inside it?

You are perfectly right in your own way, my esteemed brothers, and we are also right in our own illumination. Now let us try to be one, unified, united in our own discoveries. We need the soul, the divine spark within us, in order to illumine the world within and around us. We need the soul in order to realise the Highest. We need the body in order to manifest those divine qualities that we received during our meditation. We need an instrument in order for those divine qualities to flow through us. The body is the perfect channel, the perfect instrument for the soul’s light. We need the body for manifestation. We need the soul for realisation. Both are of paramount importance. Without the body, the soul cannot manifest the highest Reality. Without the soul, the body cannot realise the inner divinity. So both are of equal, paramount importance.

A spiritual Master feels that we must remain eternal students. Like Socrates, he says, “It is only a student who learns; therefore, I want to be an eternal student.” From my own learning I wish to share a few thoughts with my most esteemed doctor friends and promising medical students.

Some doctors are of the opinion that when a patient is about to die, it is advisable to inform the near and dear ones about the imminent death. They feel that it is better to give them time to prepare themselves. They feel that if someone knows beforehand what is going to happen, he will not go into immediate shock. At times they even go to the length of telling the patient himself. Other doctors feel that this is not advisable. They feel that the near and dear ones will suffer unnecessarily in advance if they are informed of the imminent death of their loved ones. They also feel that if the patient comes to know, this will expedite the death of the patient because fear and worry will increase the ailments in the patient. They feel that the patient will come one step nearer to death through fear and worry, and the near and dear ones will suffer unnecessarily through expectation.

A seeker like me has something to offer at this point. He feels that these things should be decided according to God’s Will. A seeker dives deep within. If he is an advanced seeker, he will have a free access to his soul, and he will offer the message of his soul to the doctors or to the patients. A seeker of the highest Truth will always try to know what God’s Will is first. If it is God’s Will that the patient should know, only then will he inform the patient. Why? He will feel that this is the most soulful opportunity for the patient to cry to God either to cure him or to take him to a higher plane of consciousness. A seeker knows that this is not the only world or the only life, and that the last prayer of the patient counts most if it comes from the inmost recesses of his heart. This is a legitimate reason for the seeker to inform the patient.

There can also be another reason for a seeker to inform a patient of his imminent death if so is the Will of God. If the patient knows that there is someone who can come to his rescue when his earth-bound time has elapsed, then that person should be invoked. All others have tried in their own way, but there is somebody else who can come to his rescue, and that is God. If the seeker can induce faith in the patient that there is someone who can save him and that is his Inner Pilot, then the patient gets one last chance to remain on earth a little longer. The seeker here comes as a private tutor, not as a teacher. A teacher tests us and examines us, but a private tutor instructs us and teaches us how to pass the examination. The seeker teaches the patient how to invoke the Supreme Beloved.

I am extremely grateful to each of you for your gracious presence at the Jharna-Kala Gallery. Here we have all become one, doctors and seekers. You as individuals are doctors and I as an individual am a seeker. We are two individuals. Human life is a tug-of-war. On one side is life and on the other side is death. You and I are pulling for life, we represent life. Against us, our enemy is ignorance, which is pulling for death. If you or I alone fight against ignorance, just because there is only one individual on each side, we may not win. But if you and I are together on one side and against us is only one opponent, ignorance, naturally we will win.

Whatever medical science has discovered is of supreme importance to me, and my discoveries are also of supreme necessity to you. Medical science has made tremendous progress. Medical discoveries are now playing a most significant role in the quest for eternal Life on earth.

I am a fellow-traveller along the road of eternal life. I have also discovered something: soulful prayer and meditation. What I stand for is the message of self-giving in the heart of all-growing and becoming. What you stand for is your capacity to prolong life with your new discoveries. Your outer discoveries are your realisation and revelation. My inner discoveries are my realisation and revelation. When your discoveries and my discoveries are put together, we can, without fail, conquer death. Before you offer medicine I say, “Let us meditate for a few minutes, for inside the patient is the Supreme, who can cure all things if so is His Will.” Then your outer capacities are added to my inner capacities. When the outer and the inner, the inner cry and the outer smile, work together and pull against ignorance, immediately they win.

Let us unite our respective discoveries. Let us give due value to each other’s discoveries. Let us place our discoveries at the Feet of the Absolute Supreme. This is the only way we can reach our destined Goal. United we shall reach our destined Goal. Divided, the Goal will remain indefinitely a far cry. Since you are all true lovers of life, and I and my students are also true lovers of life, let us become one, inseparably one. Let us walk along the road of Eternity together and let us become perfect instruments of God for world-transformation and world-perfection, for transformation of the body-consciousness of the world and perfection of the soul-reality in manifested form on earth.

To each of you I offer my soulful joy, love, concern and gratitude.