I am your spiritual father³⁵

Please take everything I have said today as soulfully as possible. This will help you. I have not come into the world to be a disciplinarian — no! I have come into the world to be a lover of God and a lover of mankind and to be a server of God and a server of mankind. Please do not misunderstand me. I am your spiritual father.

There shall come a time when you will be consciously in touch with your soul and your soul will tell you that I have loved you, I love you and I shall forever love you infinitely more than you can ever imagine. Your mind may not believe it. Your mind may say, “How can Guru think of me more than I think of myself? How can he love me more than I love myself?” But once you have a free access to your soul, you will see that what I am saying today is true, absolutely true. It is your soul that has given me this responsibility because your soul knows that spirituality means bringing the soul’s light into the mind, the vital and the physical.

The soul is the only reality that will last. This body-reality, vital-reality and mind-reality will not last. The soul is an eternal portion of God. Believe in the soul! After thirty, forty or fifty years you will be the soul-reality, not the body-reality. Just because you do not see the soul right now, you cannot say the soul does not exist. Just because an Indian villager has no way to come to America, he cannot say, “Oh no, America does not exist.” In spite of hearing about America from people who have come to America, if someone does not want to believe in its existence, who can make that person believe? Again, all the spiritual Masters, if they are really genuine, will definitely speak about the existence of the soul and the supreme importance of the soul.

If you are spiritually developed, you are bound to see the soul and communicate with the soul, with the supreme reality. Only one thing you need and that is the inner cry. As we need outer means, like money-power, to travel to another country, even so, we need the ceaseless inner cry to communicate with the soul.

Just because I do not know about something, it does not mean that very thing does not exist in the world. In exactly the same way, just because you have not seen the soul, just because you have no access to the soul, you cannot deny the existence of the soul. How many people have seen God? If belief in God’s existence has to depend on eye-to-eye contact, then nobody will accept the spiritual life! Just because spiritual Masters have said that God exists and Someone deep within you — your Inner Pilot, who is God — tells you that He does exist, you believe in God. Belief comes from the inner feeling. We have to believe. If believing does not precede seeing, then spirituality is of no value. If you say that you will believe in God only if you see Him face to face, then God will say He has more important things to do than to come and stand before you.

You have to believe — believe in your soul, believe in your own inner existence, believe in your own inner reality. Then you will see. Because you have belief, you pray and meditate. But if you want to see God first, before you start praying and meditating, that is absurd, absurd, absurd. Always we have to have faith in ourselves, faith in God, faith in our Master. If faith is taken away and we only demand proof, then that proof is no proof at all.

There are atheists. They do not believe in God. They challenge the theists, people who believe in God. Now, just because the atheists do not believe in God, is God going to come and stand in front of all these non-believers? No, never! In exactly the same way, just because we are not illumined, we cannot say that illumination does not exist. Just because we are unable to do something, we are unable to become something, we cannot say that it is impossible. Impossibility in the spiritual life does not exist. It is merely a dictionary-word. When it comes to the inner life, impossibility does not exist. Even in the outer life, my mind will never agree that impossibility exists.

I have lifted thousands and thousands of pounds over the years. If I use my ordinary human mind — not the illumined mind — my own mind will be the last one to believe in what I have done. Let us take away my mind of illumination, my mind of oneness with God. My regular mind, my ordinary mind, will be frightened to death to think of lifting up such heavy weights. But if I go beyond the mind, I see that it is possible. It is all the Grace of the Supreme. God says to me, “I want you to inspire people with the message of the spirit in and through your physical body.”

Sri Aurobindo said, “Matter and spirit must go together.” Is it not the message of the spirit that my body is carrying? In the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, I was perhaps the best athlete. There they had a huge gymnasium. Two days a year I went there and lifted twenty pounds only to increase my strength a little for shot put. Now I am lifting thousands of pounds. Why? To convey the message of the spirit. The inner spirit and the outer body must go together.

Why do I give so much importance to physical fitness for my disciples? I am not asking you to be a tennis star or a great football player or a champion athlete. No! I simply want you to keep your body fit. Otherwise, early in the morning you will be afflicted with a headache, stomach upset and other ailments. Kindly take care of the body. Every day set aside one hour for exercise. Out of twenty-four hours, one hour you can give. I spend at least three hours a day! From 4:30 in the morning, I spend a minimum of three hours, believe it or not, on the physical. Stretching exercises I take for about forty-five minutes or more. I do all kinds of stretching exercises. You may call it greed, but I call it wisdom, because I know that if we have to stay on earth, physical fitness is of paramount importance.

Again, if you are not physically well, do not delay. Go to a doctor! Do not wait for six months or three months or even one month. Please, please, if you have pain in your physical, take a doctor’s help. God is also inside the doctor. As God is inside your prayer, so too, He is inside the doctor. God is omnipresent. Be wise! Go to the right person.

Forgive me; I have given a long sermon. I have to be very, very strict with all the disciples. Some of you are doing very well, while others are not disciplined at all. You feel, “Oh, I have done so many things for Guru this week. Now I can be relaxed.” There is no such thing as continuous relaxation. Certainly you can relax for a few minutes or a few hours. But if it continues for days, then it is nothing short of destruction. Please, dear ones, take me seriously.