The spiritual Master and the Inner Pilot

For an absolutely ordinary, unaspiring being, the body is the Inner Pilot. He will eat because his Inner Pilot, the body, has told him to eat food. Then if he becomes a little more advanced, the vital becomes the Inner Pilot. The vital will tell him that he is hungry. If he goes a little deeper, then the mind becomes the Inner Pilot; then the heart and then the soul. As he is growing, as his aspiring consciousness is evolving, he gradually comes up to the standard where the soul becomes the Inner Pilot.

Again, you have to know that he who brought you the message of the Supreme is none other than the Supreme’s own Reality. Spiritual Masters of the highest order are totally one with the Supreme. This is true to such an extent that the fate of the disciple depends entirely on the Master himself. In this case, the Master plays the role of the bridge between the individual seeker’s soul and the Supreme. Again, the dearest and closest disciples of the Master get the Master in a different way. For them, the Master is more than a bridge; he is also the goal. The Supreme tells those souls, “Do not separate your Master from Me.”

So, for the dearest and closest, the Master has to play the role of the Supreme Himself, because at that time the Master is fully responsible for the realisation, perfection and manifestation of those particular souls. The Master becomes absolutely the Inner Pilot for those individual souls who are his very close, very intimate, first class disciples: his inner circle.

How can one become a first class disciple? By serving, serving in every way possible. How do you serve? You serve through aspiration. And how do you get aspiration? In the beginning, if you want to get aspiration, you have to exercise your imagination. Imagination is not a bad thing; on the contrary, it is a very important thing for the scientist, for the poet, for anyone. In any field of life, you have to exercise your imagination. Then you can do something; you can become something. With your imagination, you will try to spread Light, the Light of the Supreme, the Light that I bring down to you.

It is very easy to have a complacent feeling. You are satisfied with me and I am satisfied with you, let us say. But that is not enough. There is no end to your progress. With your imagination, with your aspiration, you can go beyond what you are satisfied with today. Please try to use your imagination and aspiration to become a first class disciple.

For those who are first class disciples, for those who are totally one with me, I know in the inner world what I am for them. Just like a potter I shape their inner life every day. I take the divine clay and I just mould it. There are some disciples who have that kind of connection with me. Their inner progress, their life, their everything, not only in this incarnation, but in all future incarnations will depend on me: not on the human in me but on the Supreme in me. It is not that I want to lord it over them or that I just have more capacity than they do. No! It is they and the Supreme who have wanted me to have that kind of oneness with them. It is through this oneness that the Master is manifested and the disciple is perfected.

To these disciples, the Supreme says, “If I am the top of the tree, then your Master is also the top of the tree. And if I am the foot of the tree, then he is also the foot of the tree.” Now, my highest part, which is one with the Supreme, does not fall and then rise again. No, it is one with the Supreme and remains there in the Highest. One level of my existence is one with the Supreme but, at the same time, another part of me comes down to work here for the disciples. It is not that if one part comes down, the entire being comes down. Suppose the right hand and left hand are lifted up. When the time has come for the left hand to come down to work, the right hand can still remain up. The disciple has to feel that the Master is remaining in the Highest all the time. Although the Master is cutting jokes, scolding, insulting and barking, the real disciple feels, “No, Master’s height is still there.”

So, if you are a true intimate disciple, then for you my oneness with the Supreme is complete on the highest level, on the lowest level, everywhere. But when we use the term ‘Inner Pilot’, let us feel that it signifies the Master on the highest level. For those who have established or will establish that kind of intimacy and oneness with me, I become the Inner Pilot. In other cases, if someone wants to do something and if it is sanctioned by the Supreme, then I will tell that person, “All right, do it.” But if I see that a disciple has offered his entire existence unreservedly to the Supreme in me, then even if he is not asking anything from me, I will tell the soul of that particular disciple what I feel he should do. For these disciples, I am totally, absolutely one with the transcendental Supreme in the sense that if I say something, they can feel that it is the Supreme who is saying it. But for those who are second and third class disciples, when I say something, they have to feel that it is the message of the Supreme that I am bringing down to them as their Master. Again, for the fourth and fifth class disciples, I am only a spiritual man giving them some advice. Finally, for those who are not following our path or who are not aspiring, I am just an ordinary man.

If one says that his Inner Pilot is the Supreme and not the Master, neither his soul nor the Master will feel sorry. If you say that the Supreme is the Inner Pilot, I will have no jealousy, because who has taught you the word ‘Supreme'? It is I. If the elder son sees that his younger brother is going to the father because the elder brother told him where the father is, if the elder is a real son, he will be very happy, very happy that his brother is going to the right place. He will feel, “Oh, I told my younger brother that my father is there. I have shown him the right path. What I want, he also wants. I am so happy that my dearest brother for whom I care so much, also cares for the Supreme.”

So whenever you say, ‘Supreme, Supreme’, never feel, even for a second, that the Master feels sorry that you are not saying ‘Guru’. The Guru has established his oneness with the Supreme. If you say ‘Supreme’, you are calling on my Father, your Father, everybody’s Father. Or if you say ‘Supreme Goddess’, then also I will be the happiest person. So never feel that there is any separation between us. If you say ‘Supreme’, I will be so delighted, so proud, and if you use your Master’s name, if you pray to your Master, then my Father will also be very proud.