Part II — Talks on forgiveness

Forgiveness¹

When I read out my talks, it does not affect you at all. But when I scold you here during the meditation, intensity is there and you have love, devotion and surrender — even if I repeat things again and again and again. When I give a talk, I look to this side and that side. I look at someone and see that that particular person is not paying attention. So I repeat what I have said. Then I look at somebody else and see that he is not paying attention, and I repeat what I have said again. So there is a great difference between what happens when I give a talk and what happens when you read the talk in a book. It is like when I sing my songs on a tape. Many people have better voices than I have, but when you hear my voice, it will have more effect than just looking at the notation. The haunting quality of my heart and soul you won't find in any notation.

Some of you have been with us for many, many years — God knows, from the very beginning of our mission. But you are not satisfied with your progress. You see that you have in front of you more hurdles than before. Why? The immediate answer is because you are not aspiring as you once did. Why are you not aspiring? Because you have done quite a few things wrong over the years. Consciously and unconsciously you have made mistakes, so you have created new difficulty-hurdles to surmount.

Sometimes these hurdles come from the hostile forces. Many times the hostile forces attack seekers for absolutely no rhyme or reason and try to ruin their aspiration. If you have been attacked, you may say, "How is it that God did not protect me?" But God will say, "Were you sincere all the time? Did you care for My Protection all the time?" Unfortunately, the answer is no.

But sometimes the reason you are not making progress is because your own soul is displeased with you. You have to know that there is someone within you who wants your constant perfection, and that is your soul. Some souls are stricter than other souls. These souls want the body, vital, mind and heart to have more perfection, so when the seekers make mistakes, very often their own souls punish them.

I always say that your imperfections are my imperfections, so I struggle this side and that side on your behalf and fight with your souls. I am stronger than your souls and many, many times I have interfered to minimise or diminish the punishment. Again, in many cases I had to surrender to your souls because your crimes were very serious.

So when you make mistakes, you have to be prepared to suffer — not only in the world of aspiration, where your progress is blocked in various ways, but also on the physical plane from sickness, injuries and other problems. You have no idea how often your own souls punish you with all kinds of ailments, which can last for just a few months or for many years. And not only your own souls but also the souls of other disciples punish you. If somebody is most sincerely, devotedly and soulfully aspiring, and if you show your emotional attachment to that person or in some way disturb his or her aspiration, then the soul of that particular person may take revenge on you. It is like entering into somebody else's territory when that person does not want you to enter. Because you are intruding, the other person's soul punishes you.

I cannot say that the people whose aspiration is being disturbed are my best disciples. Far from it! No, in many cases they also have many difficulties. In fact, in the spiritual life they may not be superior at all to those who are disturbing them. But their souls do not want them to descend further than they have already descended. Their souls want them at least to stay where they are. So when others disturb their present standard of aspiration and dedication, the souls get mad.

When you deliberately commit some inner spiritual crime, you may think that nobody knows. But your soul knows and the other person's soul knows. If somebody has committed a theft, he may not get immediate punishment. There will be a trial and this and that. Sometimes only after two or three years he will get the punishment. Similarly, sometimes you don't get the punishment for your inner crimes immediately, so you may think that the crime was not serious or that perhaps you didn't even do anything wrong. But no, the punishment is only waiting. In many cases, after four or five or six or ten years people have started getting punishment in the soul's world. In the meantime, they may have totally forgotten that they had committed a crime in the world of aspiration. But the punishment still comes.

So often I plead with the souls and even threaten them, but they want perfection from you. They don't want to be attacked by the wrong forces of other disciples, or of their own body, vital and mind. I won't be able to tell you openly that this person's soul did this and that person's soul did that, but in general I am telling you how often the boys' souls have punished the girls and the girls souls’ have punished the boys. Then you people suffer like anything in the world of aspiration or on the physical plane. You are suffering not because the hostile forces have attacked you but because you have allowed yourself to cherish wrong forces. Even now the physical, vital and mind of many disciples are still affected.

On the one hand, hostile forces do attack you. Some of those who are suffering are not involved in the emotional world at all. But many of you are also getting punishment from your own souls or from the souls of others whom you have disturbed. You may just be infatuated with this boy or that girl for a short time, and then it goes away. After two or three months you don't even like that person. But while you are disturbing that other person with your emotional thoughts, your souls are recording it and becoming very disgusted. Then later, in so many ways and for so many months or years, they continue punishing you.

So please be very, very careful. If you have emotional thoughts and you allow yourself to enjoy them, after three months or six months or six years you will see what happens. At that time, even if you are leading the purest life, the best life, you will suffer. At that time you may say, "Now I am at the height of my aspiration. Why am I suffering this way physically, vitally and mentally?" You have totally forgotten, but a long time ago you consciously and deliberately sowed the wrong seed, and now the seed has germinated and become a plant and a tree.

So many of you are not making any progress in your spiritual life because of the wrong forces that you have consciously or unconsciously allowed to attack you. During the year you have made most deplorable and destructive mistakes many, many times. You cannot count even the conscious mistakes you have made, let alone the unconscious mistakes. But unconscious mistakes are as dangerous and destructive as conscious ones, so you have to take them very, very seriously. If I touch fire unconsciously, the punishment is the same as if I touch it consciously.

So you cannot care only to be forgiven for your conscious mistakes. Some useless disciples will curse God and say, "O God, why did You allow me to make this mistake? Why did You allow this punishment in my life?" So poor God is to be blamed. But He will tell you, "Why did you have to remain unconscious?" If you have accepted the spiritual life, it is your bounden duty to be conscious all the time. If you become conscious and do not allow yourself to make mistakes, then your progress in the inner life and in the outer life can be faster than the fastest.

When you make a serious mistake, conscious or unconscious, immediately you have to cry for forgiveness. If you do not ask the Supreme for forgiveness, then the hostile or negative forces will increase and increase the power of your crime until it becomes an inner cancer and destroys your whole system. Then your own wrong qualities will intensify and become worse and take the form of arrogance, false pride, callousness and carelessness. So with your aspiration, your prayer-life, your meditation, your dedication-life and your oneness-life with God's Will, you have to ask God to forgive you for all your mistakes, conscious and unconscious. You also have to ask Him to illumine your unconscious mistakes so that you will become aware of them and not make them again. Then God will illumine you so that your unconscious mistakes will come forward and you will say, "This was the thing that I did not take as a mistake or a weakness in my life." Through this kind of illumination you will be able to understand your unconscious mistakes and avoid repeating them.

Unfortunately, many disciples do not believe in forgiveness. But if your mistakes are not forgiven, you will never have purity in your heart, body, vital, mind and you will not be able to receive anything from God. The soul is always receiving from God, because the soul is always pure. But the heart is not always pure and the body, vital and mind are all a dark jungle. So if mistakes are not forgiven, then purification cannot take place in the body, vital, mind and heart. And if purity is not there, then there can be no receptivity in those parts of the being, and the divine forces that you are praying for will never be able to enter permanently into your life. Only if God forgives your mistakes and you do get purity in your entire consciousness will you be able to increase your receptivity and receive God's divine qualities in abundant measure.

If your aspiration is very strong and intense, the Supreme will cherish you, your soul will cherish you and I will cherish you. If you never do anything wrong, then God will only show you the sunlit path. But otherwise, you have to have Forgiveness-Light. So the best thing is every day, before you go to sleep, to pray to the Supreme to forgive you for the things that you have done wrong. This is not the Christian philosophy that says we are all sinners. No, only I am speaking of the conscious or unconscious mistakes that you make in your daily life. You have to ask the Supreme to forgive you for these mistakes. Today in particular [Christmas Day] is a special day. Light in boundless measure has descended today. So pray to the celestial Light, pray to the Supreme, for forgiveness and for the illumination of your unconscious mistakes.

As you know, I have written many songs on forgiveness. But one particular song, Jiban debata, is absolutely of the highest height, like the sacred Sanskrit mantras. If this one song you can sing from the very depths of your heart, you will get not only forgiveness but also real purification and real illumination. Illumination and purification go together; they are inseparable. If there is purification, then illumination comes. If illumination comes, there has to be purification as well. So you have to cry for purification and illumination simultaneously.

Especially when you sing the words daki animesh ["I invoke You sleeplessly"] and jagater tran ["O world's Reality-Salvation"], you have to give your whole heart totally. At that time you have to feel that you are nothing but the heart, the aspiring heart. Feel that throughout the centuries you have been aspiring and now, while you are singing these words, you have become the heart. I am begging you all to sing this song most, most, most soulfully so your Beloved Supreme will forgive you and give you new hope, new inspiration, new aspiration and new dedication.

When you sing my songs, many of you carry the tune perfectly. But if you do not sing soulfully, then you receive next to nothing. Even if someone is an excellent singer, if he doesn't sing soulfully and devotedly, then his divinity is not coming to the fore while he sings and at that time he is nowhere near God. Many famous musicians and singers are nowhere in terms of spirituality. According to their standard, according to their way of understanding or realising music, they play perfect music. But where is the purity, the divinity, the ultimate reality in it?

Some of the Indian pandits chant the Sanskrit mantras like parrots. That is why they are nowhere, nowhere, nowhere near God-realisation! Again, there are some sincere seekers who may mispronounce some of the Sanskrit words, but they chant and sing most soulfully. Those seekers are getting from God His highest Delight and Peace.

Only if you want consciously to make progress and if you feel the constant necessity of progress will you get tremendous joy and real delight from your spiritual life. If a weightlifter can lift today five pounds more than he lifted yesterday, he gets tremendous joy. If now you can sing one song more soulfully than you have done previously, you get tremendous joy. Again, there are some callous disciples who want to stay in the boat but who don't want to make progress. As long as they are in the boat, they feel that it is enough. But they have to know that they will get joy only in making progress — even if it is only an iota of progress. Some excellent disciples feel that they have reached their highest height and can't go any farther in terms of self-giving and aspiration. They become complacent and say, "I have done so much for my Guru. How can I go beyond this?" But that idea is absolutely deplorable. If you are working twenty-four hours a day, then God will give you twenty-five hours each day. No matter how high you have come, your mind has to be convinced that this is not your ultimate goal. The spiritual life is a birthless and deathless journey. I have realised God, and now I am struggling and struggling for God-manifestation. There is no end because the Supreme Himself is constantly increasing His own capacity; His own Eternity, Infinity and Immortality He is increasing. Everything is increasing.

This year [1987] you will be able to make unprecedented progress in the aspiration-world. Even if you have been with us for ten, twelve, fifteen or God knows how many years, in this one year you can make unprecedented progress compared to the progress you have already made. And in terms of manifestation in your life, collectively and individually also you can have unlimited success.

Before the year starts I see with my third eye inwardly what is going to happen. Do not think that what I am saying only applies to me. No, no, nothing applies to me! I don't need unprecedented inner aspiration-progress and unlimited outer manifestation-success. I don't need these things; I don't need anything. If you really participate, if you become part and parcel of my mission and my vision, then what I say definitely applies to you.

I may tell you to get 13,000 people for a concert and to do this or that. But for whose progress? Christ did not give concerts or anything, but his light has spread throughout the length and breadth of the world. It is the same with Krishna, Buddha and other spiritual Masters. But when you set up concerts and do other things to spread your Guru's light, you have the golden opportunity to bring forward your own divinity. You do have divine qualities, and I want them to increase in boundless measure. So by becoming part and parcel of my manifestation, you bring to the fore your own qualities and multiply them astronomically.

I don't have to write one more poem or song or give one more talk. I don't have to do a thing, and still my light will spread. But if I do not encourage you to manifest, you will be worse than you are. So my encouragement is taking this form: I have the wealth; you spread it, spread it, spread it. But if you do not spread it, then others will spread it after I leave this world. If you do not do or cannot do it while I am on earth, then others will do it. But I feel that you can do it. Therefore, I am all the time encouraging you and inspiring you.

If you love your progress and if you get joy from it, then the things that are necessary for progress you have to do. One thing I am telling you to have is enthusiasm, enthusiasm, enthusiasm. As long as you are in the boat, every day you have to increase your enthusiasm, eagerness and determination.

Whenever an idea comes, if you do not act upon that idea, then you are lost. You will say that tomorrow you will get higher and deeper inspiration and more enthusiasm, but you are just fooling yourself. So if you are inspired to do something, do it immediately. And if you are not inspired, you have to create inspiration and enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is receptivity. God's Compassion has acted in and through human beings in the form of enthusiasm. Some disciples used to drive for hours to come to the Centre. At that time there was no wife, no husband, no children, no friends. Their whole life was only to be with their Guru. Now that our meeting place is only a few blocks from their house, all the time they are thinking of their children, their parents, their friends, their relatives. And they are not only just keeping in touch but actually creating more friends and more obligations. So now they have no time for the spiritual life. This is what happens when enthusiasm goes. When there is enthusiasm, there is nothing we cannot do. We are willing to cover the length and breadth of the world for God. Again, when enthusiasm goes, even the smallest effort is too much.

The New Year has started with such tremendous hope, inspiration and aspiration. This is the time for you to regain the enthusiasm that you once had when you just joined the path. And with new enthusiasm and new determination, conquer your weaknesses. Some people surrender after making mistakes because they feel that it will be impossible for them ever to succeed. For them, their spiritual life has ended. But even if you have failed for years and years in one particular thing, don't feel that you are doomed to disappointment. Just because you have failed for so many years in conquering your insecurity or jealousy, or in achieving oneness with God's Will, or anything, you cannot say you will never succeed. Just feel that it is a challenge to conquer your weakness. And once you overcome it, you are bound to succeed again and again and again.

This room, let us say, was unlit for so many years just because it was not lucky enough to have electricity. But when the room finally got electricity, the light came on in a second. In your case, you have a real spiritual Master who is like an electrician. If only you allow me to enter into your unlit room and work there, then one day in a twinkling I will be able to illumine it. But you don't allow me to enter into your heart-room. You don't allow me into your depths; you resist like anything!

Again and again I am telling you to meditate, meditate, meditate and pray for Forgiveness-Light. If your aspiration and receptivity are strong enough, definitely God's Compassion will remove the wrong forces that are causing you so many problems and will increase your soul's light so that it will prevent these forces from attacking you and ruining your aspiration and dedication. Aspiration is your part and Compassion and Forgiveness are God's part. No matter how many mistakes you make, God is eager, eager to forgive you if you give Him the chance and have the enthusiasm and determination to do the right thing and not make the same mistakes over and over again year after year. Once you are forgiven, you will have the sweetest feeling inside your heart and inside this sweetness you will feel real purity. If you have this tremendous sweetness inside your heart, then you will know that God has forgiven you. With this sweet feeling you will have tremendous eagerness and determination to please the Supreme in His own Way, and you will feel that you are only for Him. So once you feel this sweetness and eagerness to please God, you will know that God has forgiven you. Then, once He has forgiven you, you will see how much of the suffering that you have on the physical, vital and mental plane will disappear.

When you make the right decision and care only to please God, your Beloved Supreme, you can feel how much Joy the Supreme gets from you. To please God is what you really want. Just because this is what you really want, God is not fulfilling your earthly desires. God is omnipotent. In the twinkling of an eye He can easily fulfil all your human desires put together. But if He does, it is you who will feel most miserable. Each time He fulfils your desire-life, you move one step further away from Him. So if He listens to you and fulfils your desire-life, you will blame God. It was you who wanted it, but you will say, "O God, if You are so kind and compassionate, why did You grant my desires? Now my aspiration-life is destroyed!" That is why God wants to give you only what your aspiring heart sincerely wants and what your aspiring life inwardly needs.

You may ask how you can distinguish the desire-life or clever human life from the aspiration-life. It is very, very easy. The desire-life is "my" way; the aspiration-life is God's Way. "My" way says: "O God, you please me now, and then one day I will please You in Your own Way. First satisfy me and then, when I am satisfied, I shall start pleasing You." But this is such a stupid way of trying to please God! For when God pleases you in your own way, on that day the little aspiration that you had will be totally destroyed. And those golden days when you are going to please God in His own Way will never come. I tell you, they will not arrive, they will not arrive!

The aspiration-life, which is God's Way, says, "O God, please give me the capacity to please You always in Your own Way. And once I have started pleasing You in Your own Way, never, never allow me to try to please You in my way." So if you have real aspiration, you will say to the Supreme, "You have given me the capacity today to please You in Your own Way. Do give me the capacity to please You every hour of every day in Your own Way."

Unfortunately, the disciples please the Supreme for five seconds or for one hour, and then for the rest of the day or for the next ten days they ask and expect God to please them in their own way. If after you have pleased God for twenty days, you ask Him to please you in your own way for five seconds, He may do it. But while He is pleasing you for five seconds, you will lose all the divine things that you got by pleasing God in His own Way. For twenty days you worked so hard to get something, and in five seconds you can lose it all! Then again you will have to start your journey from the beginning. You gained some money and then you lost it, so again you became a beggar. Every day you can become rich, and by evening you can become poor again.

God is for those who are absolutely sincere and absolutely determined to become His choice instruments. If you are absolutely determined to become His choice instrument, then He will inspire you, help you and guide you to the Highest. So you have to decide what you actually want. The Highest, the Deepest, the Ultimate and the Absolute are not mere words. They are realities, absolute realities, that can be achieved only by pleasing God in God's own Way. True, because you are still on the path, your soul is pleasing God twenty-four hours a day. But it is not enough if just your soul pleases God. No! Your heart, your mind, your vital and your body must also please God.

Most of the time the heart does listen to God, but there are many, many cases in which the heart does not listen to God's Will. Because the vital is near the heart, the vital enters into the heart and takes away the heart's oneness. And it is even more difficult for the mind to receive God's Light than for the vital, since the roguish mind is infinitely worse than the vital. Quite often the vital at first is restless. Then it becomes tired and surrenders to the heart. But the mind always feels that it knows everything and has everything that it needs and wants. The mind feels that it is beneath its dignity to take anything from the heart. So disobedience starts from the mind. The heart obeys the inner divinity and surrenders to God's Will infinitely more than the mind, the vital and the physical consciousness. But even the heart does not always listen to God the way the soul listens.

Again, you have to know that not all souls have the same capacity; some souls are limited. Your soul may not be as developed or advanced as somebody else's soul. But if, according to its capacity, your soul pleases God in His own Way, then because of your unconditional surrender, gradually, gradually your soul will become more developed and be able to please God in a more advanced way.

It is like this. The souls that are not as mature or developed as others are like young children. The father will ask the child to bring him a glass of water, whereas he will ask his grown-up son to bring him something heavy. But if both obey him cheerfully and devotedly, he will be equally pleased with them. The child has only the capacity to bring him a glass of water, but he does it cheerfully, devotedly and unconditionally, so the father is very pleased with the child. But one day this child will become an adult. At that time if the father asks him to bring him something heavy, like a typewriter, he will bring the typewriter. But if the child does not use his capacity to bring the glass of water cheerfully, devotedly and unconditionally, will he ever be able to do something infinitely more difficult?

I am telling you, the soul is not a mental hallucination. When spiritual Masters and others who have realised God talk about the soul, it is more real to them than the body, vital, mind and heart. The awakened part of reality is the soul, and that is the part that is always listening to God. So take your soul very, very seriously at every moment in your life. You cannot see the soul with your eyes because you are not yet trained, but I can see it because I am trained. An expert in any field can do quite a few things that someone else cannot do. A scientist can see quite a few things that I cannot see, but I do not say that these things do not exist. They do exist. So you do have a soul, and you can have free access to your soul the way I have. It is only a matter of development, development, development.

This is the year of unprecedented inner aspiration-progress and unlimited outer manifestation-success. Try to repeat these phrases every day: "Unprecedented inner aspiration-progress, unprecedented inner aspiration-progress, unlimited outer manifestation-success, unlimited outer manifestation-success," and feel their reality, depth and power. In so many ways, known and unknown, you will be helped from the inner world. No matter how many times you have failed in the past, in this year you will get tremendous inner strength. Again, no matter how many years you have succeeded in any field, in this year you will be able to increase your progress strikingly. Even if you have succeeded for years and years in something, there is no end to the progress you can make. Because this year is such an important year, you have the capacity to increase your aspiration and your dedication far beyond your imagination.

I am telling you the positive side, but also there is a negative side. I always say that a knife has the power to kill someone and also it has the power to cut fruits to be shared with someone. Here also the divine Light that is inside us in very small measure has the capacity to give us the fastest progress. Again, if God sees that some children of His are not taking full advantage of this opportunity, He will be disappointed and disgusted and He will withdraw this Light. Then we become a total failure in the spiritual life.

This year you have been given a golden opportunity, so I hope that you will make the fastest progress. You are definitely, definitely chosen by God, so you cannot sleep the way countless other people are sleeping. Ignorance-sleep you cannot have! The divinity, the power, the love and the divine light that you had, you still have. This is what is keeping you on the path. But you have to increase these things, and this year you can easily do it. I have said these things many, many times. But each time I talk, an extra power, an extra force, enters into you. So, dear ones, take me seriously and this year do it, do it, do it!