Part II — Stories

God is your only own

He asked, "What kind of favour?"

She explained, "My husband is unmanageable. I want him to be under my control. I am infinitely wiser than he is, so I want him to listen to me."

The Master said, "I cannot make him do that. It is an impossible task."

The woman became annoyed with the Master. She said to him, "Master, why do you say that you can bring God to us? If you cannot do something as simple as make my husband listen to me, then how can you bring God to us? That is infinitely more difficult! If you cannot do even this small favour for me, if you cannot help me in this small way, then how will you ever be able to show us God? I want my husband to be under my full control. You cannot do that, yet you say you can bring God down to us from Heaven. How can this be? I am sure that if you can bring God down from Heaven, then easily you can make my husband come under my control."

Finally, the woman's tirade came to an end. In a calm and quiet voice, the spiritual Master replied, "I can bring God to you because God is your own, whereas your husband is not your own."

Now the woman became really upset. "What do you mean?" she cried. "We are married legally. And we have been together for so many years! Now you are saying that my husband is not my own. If my husband is not my own, then who else can be mine?"

The woman stood before the Master, moving her arms as she spoke. Her attitude was almost threatening. Nevertheless, the Master continued in the same patient and calm voice, "Look, you want to bring your husband under your control. Your husband also wants to do the same with you. He wants you to be under his control. What am I going to do? I am lost in between two bosses. Here is the proof that you and he are not one. You and he are not thinking the same. You want to be his boss; he wants to be your boss. Neither of you is coming forward to surrender to the other. You are not saying, 'All right, let me surrender to him. If he wants to be my boss, then let me surrender.' And he also is not agreeing to surrender to you. So already you two have differences of opinion. Your desire is to bring your husband under your control. You want to lord it over him. He wants to do the same with you. Your wish he is not fulfilling, and his wish you are not fulfilling. So how can you be one?"

The Master gestured for the woman to sit down. Then he went on, "On the other hand, if you pray to God, 'God, do give me Peace, Love and Bliss,' God immediately listens to your request. So is He not truly your own? As soon as you pray to God to give you inner wealth, God immediately listens. So God is absolutely your own."

The woman jumped up and said, "Master, you stay with your philosophy. Your philosophy is too complicated." Then she left the Master's house quite abruptly.

A few hours later, the husband came to the Master with the same request: he wanted his wife to listen to him. The Master told the husband the same thing that he had told the wife. He said, "God is the only one who is your own because only God listens to your prayers, whereas your wife does not listen to your prayers."

In a voice laden with despair, the husband said, "I have had enough of her. Since we got married, she has destroyed all my peace, all my joy."

"Then go forward on your own," advised the spiritual Master.

The husband cast aside all his complaints against his wife and started praying and meditating with the Master most soulfully. Several hours passed. Meanwhile, the wife did not know where her husband had gone. She arrived at the Master's house to inform him that her husband was missing. She came rushing into the room and said to the Master, "It is late into the night, but my husband has not come home."

All of a sudden she noticed that her husband was sitting on the ground in front of the Master. He was in deep meditation and she saw that her husband's face was full of light. His entire being shone with light.

An inner transformation was taking place inside the wife. She said to herself, "If he can be happy like this, then what is wrong with me? Let me also pray and meditate with the Master and not think about controlling my husband."

So each of them began to follow the spiritual life most sincerely and, in the course of time, each one stopped trying to control the other. They only prayed and prayed. Whenever they had to arrive at an important decision, the husband would say to the wife, "Your way is the only way," and the wife would say to the husband, "Your way is the only way."

This is how they became really happy, peaceful and blissful.