(May 1960) The subject of the mind’s false ego came up again when L. Neurgaonkar, an engineer of the Poona municipality, saw Baba. He was a learned and religious man, and Baba explained to him:
You have read much of spiritual literature. You are well-known for your lucid expositions. Spiritual understanding takes one nearer the path. But remember well that the experience of the path is quite a different subject. The higher states of consciousness can never be imagined through book-knowledge.
As one traverses the Spiritual Path, one comes across varied experiences such as visions, sweet notes of sounds and delightful scents. In the more advanced state, one can be detached from the physical plane and watch his body moving about.
The many experiences that one has on the path are not lasting, but the Experience in which one becomes what he really IS is perennial. Then, in whatever thoughts or actions such a one may seem to be engaged, Maya cannot touch him. In that state, everything is experienced in its infinite intensity. How can spiritual understanding derived from books imagine this state? Intellect is bound to fail to fathom this Experience.
God is everlasting. God ever was. What does this mean? You may say that billions and trillions of years ago GOD WAS. But how far will you take a backward sweep in the span of time? The result will ever be that God was ever before the time you can imagine. How can you succeed to bring God, Who is beyond time, into the bounds of time? To experience the timeless experience of being God the Infinite, patience and impatience are necessary. How can this be achieved? The first step toward this achievement can be taken by having an ardent aspiration to become like the dust at the feet of the Perfect Master. The more lightweight you become, the higher you get wafted by the ever-blowing breeze of his compassion.
Pointing to Pukar, Baba remarked:
Here is a fat, heavy person. Suppose he wants to fly high in the air – not in an airplane. I am only giving a simile. What should he do? What should he become? If he becomes light, like a dry leaf, then just a breeze is enough to lift him high up in the air. Owing to ego, your life becomes infinitely heavy and bulky. Ego is the obstacle.
This false ego of the mind must be effaced. But it is almost impossible. Removal of the false ego is the end of separate existence.
Ego generally expresses itself as pride. So a man says: “I alone did that work … It is only I who could do that work that way.” Pride nourishes the ego.
The other aspect of the ego is still more subtle. It is connected with your so-called inalienable identification with the body and mind. You feel that it is perfectly natural for you to say: “I am so-and-so. I see, I touch, I smell, I speak, I taste, I dream, I sleep, I am awake,” et cetera. To have the Real Experience, the false ego has to be transformed into the Real “I.”
This is not easy. In this process the false ego, with all its subtlety, wages guerrilla warfare. It tries to deceive one at every step. Keeping company of saints and masters is the remedy. The hard shell of the ego becomes softer and softer in their company, and one becomes courageous enough to face one’s own weaknesses.
By leading a fearless and honest life, hypocrisy gradually gets weakened. When the heart becomes absolutely clean with honesty, hypocrisy is completely wiped off. This is a very long process, not only in terms of years but in terms of lifetimes – reincarnations.
When the false ego is effaced, God manifests and plurality is merged in unity forever. This is the Real Experience. If such a One lives among man as Man and leads a life of God, he is called a Sadguru. He brings Unity into plurality. Try to get a glimpse of the Perfect Master’s infinitude within you. And for this, you have to leave all and follow him alone in the manner he decides for you.
Such dedication is not so easy. Mind stands in your way. It says: “What a hasty decision! Is it good to surrender to the Master? Are you sure that he is the Real One? What are his credentials? He may be a fake.”
Then the heart steps in and says: “Do you not feel yourself to be a changed person in his company? Is such a loving and calm atmosphere experienced elsewhere? Is he not the One whom you were seeking?”
Thus the conflict between the mind and the heart goes on. Particularly when you are away from the Master, the mind begins to play its tricks more powerfully, and the voice of the heart becomes feeble. That is why it is difficult to have unswerving faith in the Master, and still more difficult to become dust at his feet.
Unless I help you, you cannot surrender. The moment your surrender is complete, my grace descends and then, in less than a fraction of a second, the goal of becoming consciously infinite or infinitely conscious is realized.
Tukaram was a Perfect Master. In one of his abhangs (verses of song) he has said:
“The Master, by his grace,
can make the disciple like himself in no time.”
Here, someone may ask: “Why is there this long period of tests and trials? Why the delay in bestowing grace?” On the part of the Master, there is actually no delay. His is the state beyond time. In relation to the creation, only the present moment exists for him. To the illusion-bound beings, Tukaram has also said the following:
“Unless and until the opportune moment arrives,
undue haste is of no avail.”
So ages and ages have to roll on for the arrival of that opportune moment when, by the Master’s grace, one is established in Reality as the Reality of God.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 17, pp. 5744 – 5747.