The aspirants return to the ignorance-sea⁶

“Master, I am sad because I have been suffering badly for the last two weeks.”

“Why have you been suffering, my child?”

“Master, I have been suffering because of the ingratitude of some of your ex-disciples. When they came to you they had countless defects in their nature. They were useless. You literally took them out of the gutter and showed them infinite love and compassion, blessingful gratitude and divine pride. They were with you for about ten years and no doubt served you considerably. But after they had made some solid progress, pride, haughtiness and ingratitude took them away from you. Master, I am feeling sorry and sad about this.”

“My child, don’t be sad. Gratitude is not yet born on earth, and God alone knows if it will ever take birth here. God has created all of us, but how many people love God? How many people want to live a spiritual life, a divine life? Out of a hundred people, not even one cares to follow the spiritual life. Poor God! He has done everything for us, but we do not show Him any gratitude. God is infinitely more kind and compassionate than your Master. So if God can remain quite satisfied with the ingratitude of the world, how is it that we cannot accept it? God gives unconditionally everything that He has. We are God’s children, so let us also try to offer our capacity and our light unconditionally to the world, without expecting gratitude or appreciation. As a matter of fact, my son, I wish to say that I am to some extent lucky.”

“In which way are you lucky, Master?”

“Let me make it clear to you. I have often told you that I am a spiritual farmer. You know that a farmer sows thousands of seeds, but only a few hundred germinate. Yet when these few hundred seeds manifest life, the farmer feels that he is well compensated. These seeds grow into a bumper crop, and he gets great satisfaction from his creation.

“Now, for an ordinary farmer, the remaining thousands are all lost, dead, forever ruined; they have produced no life. But in the case of the spiritual farmer, the situation is much better. When a seeker leaves his Master, thinking that the Master is worthless, he may not follow the spiritual life for a few years or even for a few incarnations. But one day that seeker will definitely go to some other spiritual Master, who may be either inferior or superior to his previous one. And one day that seeker is bound to realise God.”

“But Master, you have always told us that time is a crucial factor. If we can realise God today, why should we wait ten years or ten incarnations?”

“My son, you are absolutely right. I always say, ‘First things first.’ If I can realise God today, then tomorrow I can reveal God, the day after I can manifest God, and the following day God and I can perfect His creation. If one wants to realise God, then he must attempt to do so as soon as possible. One has to walk or run to the realisation-tree and then he has to start climbing up. But if he comes right to the tree and then goes back to his old home, ignorance, then he is lost — yes, totally lost — for a few years or for a few incarnations. Now, if someone consciously goes back to ignorance after seeing the Light, what can we do? We can only sympathise with him and remember that he is living in eternal time.

“If I have to tell you the ultimate Truth, nothing is permanently lost in the eternal life of a divine soul. The soul that has gone back to ignorance will one day return to Light. But that soul is an unlucky soul. We pity it for embracing ignorance again after getting ample opportunity to run the fastest towards the Goal. When we know we have the capacity to run the fastest under the guidance of a true spiritual Master, it is a great shame if we again enter into the world’s ignorance and temptation, thinking that perhaps this time the ignorant pleasure-life will satisfy us.

“There are two shores: one is the shore of temptation and the other is the shore of aspiration. Knowing perfectly well that the temptation-shore — where we stayed for twenty, thirty, or forty lives — had failed to satisfy us, we came to the divine shore, the aspiration-shore. We must stay here, for the aspiration-shore is the harbinger of the illumination-shore, the realisation-shore. To go back again to the temptation-shore is a most deplorable mistake, a Himalayan blunder. We must know that if we go back again to the temptation-shore, our punishment will be most severe.

“When a child does something wrong, when he commits a theft, everybody forgives him because he does not know the consequences of theft. But if an adult commits a theft, he is badly punished. Now, when we enter into the spiritual life we are fully mature, we have struggled to come out of desire-life, and only with the greatest difficulty have we succeeded. So if we go back to our temptation-life, to the fulfilment of our desire-life, our punishment becomes extremely severe, for we have already seen the life of aspiration and the shore of God-realisation.

“Before one accepts the spiritual life, one is like an ignorant child. Because of his ignorance, a child wants to play with fire, but when his fingers are burned he does not again go near the fire. In the spiritual life, we come to realise that living a life of desire is as destructive and ignorant as consciously playing with fire. Again, a child eventually comes to realise that, if he remains good, he gets appreciation and admiration from others. Here in the spiritual life, if you remain faithful and devoted to God, no undivine force can dare take you away from the path of Truth and Light.

“So, my son, I wish to tell you that since these people want to make progress slowly, you can do and say nothing. You can only pray, ‘O God, illumine them and make them again run towards Your Goal — towards You, the Goal. Whether they come to You through my Master or through some other Master is immaterial. My fervent prayer to You, O God, is to take them to You in Your Boat, at Your choice Hour, in Your own Way.’”