Khadal's daughter²

"Master, I know that I am not pleasing you, but I am helpless. You want surrender from me. I have made my own surrender to you, but where somebody else is involved I cannot surrender to you. You have been asking me to bring my son and daughter, who are fifteen and sixteen, and to encourage them to follow your path. Now, I am an adult. I have gone through life and I have come to the point where I can make my own decisions. But my son and daughter are still very young. I feel that they should wait until they become more mature and then be allowed to make a choice of their own. They may not care to enter into the spiritual life at all. And even if they choose to do so, it is they who should decide whether to accept your path or somebody else's path."

"Khadal, stop your philosophy. Don't fool yourself by telling me that you have made your own surrender complete. You have not made even a fraction of surrender. I tell you, the freedom that you want to give your son and daughter will simply ruin them. Tell me, you fool, when they were young children, did you wait for them to ask you before you gave them milk or curd or anything else? Did you wait for them to make the selection? Did you give them any freedom? You yourself felt that milk would be nourishing, so you gave them milk. Anything that you felt would be healthy for them to eat you gave them. There are things that you gave your son and daughter to eat during their childhood which they eat even now; and again, there are things which they no longer eat now. Similarly, if you give them our path now and they become dissatisfied with it later in life, they can go to some other path. But they need some kind of spiritual food now. For you not to bring them to our path is an unpardonable spiritual crime. It is like refusing to feed your children anything because they are too young to make their own choice."

"Master, please don't be angry with me. Tomorrow I will bring my son and daughter. But I wish to tell you that I am doing this out of fear, and not out of love for you."

"In that case, I don't need your son and daughter. Let them stay at home. Let them wait until you inspire them to come to me or to some other Master. If you cannot bring them to me soulfully and devotedly right now, then I do not need them. But you have entered into the spiritual life and you are following our path. Naturally I, your spiritual father, am feeding you inwardly. I am sure you like my food, for otherwise you would not have stayed with me for such a long time. Tell me, why do you yourself pray and meditate?"

"I pray and meditate for various reasons, but the main reason is because I feel that I am quite old. I am fifty-nine, and since I do not have much time left on earth, I feel the best thing will be for me to get spiritual Peace, Light and Bliss as soon as possible."

"So you know the importance of time?"

"Master, who does not know the importance of time?"

"Then why don't you allow your son and daughter to come and meditate here with me?"

"But Master, they are quite young. Let them mature, and then they can choose their own path. Oh Master, forgive me. Tomorrow I will bring them."

"I don't want them. Since I can't make you surrender to me spiritually, I don't want your son and daughter. You are a selfish man. You want to eat my spiritual food all by yourself."

"No, Master, never, never! I just thought that since I have gone through ordinary life, vital life, I am now ready for the spiritual path, whereas they are not yet ready."

"You fool! Just because you had to walk along a dark, dirty road, just because you have passed through darkness, do you think that each and every individual has to experience night? No, your son and daughter are innocent. Since the world has not yet captured them, they will run much faster than you. Outwardly you will say that you are not jealous of them, but I definitely know that you would be jealous of their inner progress if they came to me. And another thing I shall tell you: you are a clever man. You want to realise God as soon as possible because you feel that you will soon die. But how do you know that your children will have long lives? They may die before you."

Khadal burst into tears. "Master, Master, don't curse me! Your prophecy always proves true. I don't want to see my dear son and daughter die before I do. That would be simply unbearable. Master, I shall bring them tomorrow and place them at your feet."

"All right, let us see."

The following day Khadal brought his son and daughter to the Master. The daughter, Niti, was full of joy when she saw the Master. She immediately said to him, "How I wish to be your disciple, Master! Please make me your disciple. I will devote my whole life to pleasing you." But her brother told her father, right in front of the Master, "Father, I don't want to come to this man anymore. He may be your Master, but right now I have no interest in the spiritual life whatsoever. Let me go home." So Khadal's son left the Master and went home.

In three short years Niti made the fastest spiritual progress. She became her Master's dearest disciple, and he was extremely proud of her. One day she went with her girlfriends to the sea. She did not know how to swim, alas, and on that day the sea was very rough. The powerful, tumultuous surges swept her away and drowned her in spite of her friends' greatest efforts to rescue her.

Niti's mother had never cared for the spiritual life. On hearing of her daughter's death, she was so deeply shocked and grieved that she went to her husband's Master and insulted him mercilessly. "Look!" she cried, "this is your protection, this is your spirituality."

The Master said, "I am more sorry than you are about Niti's death. Of course, you won't believe this."

But Niti's mother would not listen. Instead, she accused him and threatened him, saying, "I hate you, I hate you! I have lost my only daughter because of you! I shall do something really harmful to you." As his wife ran out of the house Khadal said to his Master, "Master, don't worry. She has lost her only daughter, and she has become insane with grief. Soon, by your grace, she will be all right. But I wish to tell you something, Master. You imposed spirituality on my daughter. If she had not accepted the spiritual life, she would still be on earth today, like my son. So you see, Master, what happens when you impose something on others."

"Khadal, I fully sympathise with your sorrow, for your daughter was extremely close to my heart and soul. But if you have really accepted the spiritual life, as you claim to have done, then tell me which is more desirable: to live on earth indefinitely in an unaspiring, animal way or to live a shorter but higher and more fulfilling life, leaving earth when God's Hour strikes?"

"Master, this is not the time for me to answer your philosophical questions. My loss is my loss, after all. I feel miserable. True, I will not allow my wife to harm you in any way; but today, like my wife, I am also deeply grieved. I don't know who will console me or how we will console each other. I do not know how we can ever be consoled."

"I know this is not the time for me to offer you my supreme philosophy, but once and for all I wish to tell you that I knew perfectly well that your daughter had only a short life ahead of her. That is why I insisted that she meditate with me and become my disciple. In three years' time the progress that Niti made soared far beyond my imagination. In three short years she far surpassed you. When we leave the body God does not ask us how many years we stayed on earth. He wants us to show Him our spiritual progress, divine progress, inner progress, which is the only progress that is necessary in this world. Your son may stay on earth for many, many years, and you may stay on earth and enjoy life for a number of years, but your progress — not to speak of the progress of your undivine son — will never equal your daughter's progress. It is not how many years you stay on earth, but how fast you progress that is of paramount importance. The Christ stayed on earth for only thirty-three years. But look what he achieved during those thirty-three years. You have been on earth for sixty-two years and look what you have achieved!"

"But Master, how can you compare me with the Saviour Christ?"

"Khadal, I do not see anything wrong with that. Like you, Christ was also a son of God; but look how fast he realised the Truth. We are all children of God. Like the Christ, we too will one day be able to say unmistakably that we and our Father are one. Had your daughter stayed on earth without accepting our path, perhaps she would have lived a little longer, but she would not have made any significant progress. In your outer eyes Niti's death is a supreme loss. But in my inner eye and in God's Vision, she is the supreme glory of God. You will see that a life of enjoyment is not and cannot be a life of satisfaction. It is only a spiritual life, an inner life, that can give us abiding satisfaction.

"If it is God's Will that someone accomplish a specific task and he succeeds in accomplishing it, then it is foolishness for that person to stay on earth any longer. The destined hour of departure depends on the individual. At times the Supreme wants an individual to realise something and then give his achievement to the world at large. But in some cases the Supreme says, 'I want you to accomplish only this much in this incarnation and then continue your achievement in your next incarnation.' The Supreme wants these aspirants to go back to the world of rest and return to earth at some later time with the same Peace, Light, Bliss and divine capacities in order to make further progress. There is no hard and fast rule. But it is useless to stay on earth without making any progress. There are many, many people who stay on earth for well over a hundred years, but they are living a useless life, an absolutely useless life. But again, if it is God's Will, one can live a long life in order to give one's aspiration and dedication to Mother Earth."

"Master, I understand your philosophy, but don't you have a father's heart, a mother's heart? We are missing our dearest daughter so badly. Our hearts are broken to pieces. She was our only daughter. This is not the time for me to apply your philosophy in my life."

"I fully realise that, but you gave me the impression that you had accepted the spiritual life wholeheartedly, and that you had surrendered to me in everything. If you had really surrendered, you would not have suffered so much today because you would have felt that it was God's Will that your daughter died today.

"Son, identify yourself with Heaven and earth at once. Feel that as Mother Earth you are mourning the loss of your daughter, and that as Father Heaven you are rejoicing over the glorious arrival of your daughter. Here on earth you are suffering because you have lost your daughter; there in Heaven you are rejoicing because you have gained back your daughter. Now that she has gone back to Heaven, naturally you are sorry; but is it hard for you to believe that when your daughter entered into the earth-consciousness, her dear ones in Heaven also felt sorry?

"Here we are constantly playing the game of hide-and-seek. First we hide in the earth-consciousness, and seek in the Heaven-consciousness, and then vice versa. So you see, if you are really one with earth and Heaven you should feel that before your daughter was on your right hand, and now she has gone to your left hand. Death and life are like two neighbours. You stay with one neighbour for one week, and then the following week you stay with the other neighbour. You don't feel miserable about going from one to the other."

"Master, your philosophy is correct; I don't deny it. But after all, it is my loss."

"All right, you may think it is your loss. But I take it as my gain that what I could not give you in twenty years I was able to give Niti in three years. You are not pleasing me and you are not pleasing Mother Earth. Niti's passing may be your loss, but it is my gain and the gain of the Supreme, for your daughter has gone to the other world to please the Supreme in His own Way."