True knowledge is the possession of only that person who has true knowledge of himself, in the sense of having known the Self within, not himself in the conventional sense of the Delphic oracle, “Know thyself.” No. In the spiritual sense of having known, or rather experienced, the presence of the true Self in me, which is my, what shall I say, prime mover, as we say in engineering. It is he who makes me active, who gives life to me. Either we are run by our samskaras, compelled to think and to act and to suffer or enjoy in a preprogrammed way, or we can become capable of leading a life in which my inner self now guides my existence. One pushes me, compels me; one lovingly guides me. The choice is yours to make, but it has to be a choice not of whims and fancies – not like trying in a buffet dinner where there are sixty-three items, you go along tasting a bit of each and putting them on your plate, not like that – it has to be a permanent commitment because, after all, the Self in you is permanent in the sense that it is eternal, it is indestructable, it was never born, it shall never die.

From Scotland.1 Talk

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When you have understood that it is the play of your mind that is giving you so many problems, you should deal with it adequately by yourself. It is not the mind which has to accept the answers, it is you who have to make the mind accept what you want. This only shows this liberty to the mind, which has to be changed by greater involvement in sadhana.

Spider's Web Vol 1, 8th March 1994, India

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Now, similarly, what you need when you want to climb the spiritual mountain is a great deal of courage that you must reach the top, even if you are going to die in the process. Those who are not willing to die in the process will hardly ever make it. But it is a strange thing that one who is willing to die rarely dies, and one who wants to avoid death is risking death every second. So we must be prepared. Well, there is no toe hold, there is no finger hold, except that fellow going up in front of me; and he looks so skinny, and he doesn't seem to have bathed for three days and he speaks some sort of a patois, which I don't understand. Well, just follow him. He is not giving you instructions. He says, I have tied you to myself, follow. So inevitably, on a path where the goals are set so high, even in ordinary life you know, when a thing is worth achieving, it takes a great deal of trouble to achieve it. Easily achieved things are not very agreeable or worthwhile. So the whole of life's training, in fact, I would say the education should be not to teach us how to do things but how to persevere in doing things. When you feel like stopping, how to go on; when you feel like dropping dead, how to get that last bit of oxygen into your lungs and keep moving. Because at a certain point, there can be no going back. You can only go up.

Heart to Heart Vol 1, p. 52-53

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My Master repeatedly requested abhyasis to take interest in their own spiritual development, for without interest nothing can be done with a will. And where the will is lacking, the effort applied is inadequate, and therefore we fall short of the goal. Interest is therefore the main thing, and we should now strive to take an interest, a sincere and permanent interest, in our spiritual life, as we have been able to do in the case of our material pursuits. If we are able to do this, then our efforts will be solidly backed by a determined will, and then will open before us the wonderful and sublime vistas of spiritual stages which our own effort, coupled with the Master's love and generosity, blesses us with.

The problem arises because people take interest, no doubt, but the interest does not last. That is, their interest is of very short duration, and as soon as they feel that their effort is not being blessed with success, they abandon their efforts. What then is really needed for sure success? I feel that unless the interest is a permanent interest, then all are doomed to this spasmodicity of effort, and therefore of failure. What I feel therefore is that we should now aim at a commitment, which I can probably define as a continuing interest-a dedicated interest, a prolonged interest-or to put it very simply, a permanent interest in one's spiritual evolution. If such a commitment can be made, remembering that after all it is for one's own spiritual welfare and growth that such a commitment is being made, then I may say that success in this endeavour can no longer elude the grasp of the aspiring and struggling sadhak.

Message for Basant Panchami 1991, p. 34; originally published in Constant Remembrance, January 1991

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Commitment means committing oneself to the activity in hand, which one has after all undertaken willingly. It is the hunger or greed for quick results that clouds our understanding and makes us abandon our venture before it has had time to mature into a result-yielding situation. Even rice takes time to cook. When we are churning for butter, we must remember that it takes some time for the butter to rise. The butter does not form bit by bit, so that we can see it forming, and can go on with the job of churning. It rises all together, so that at one moment there was no butter, and at the next there is a vessel full of butter. If one did not have the patience to wait for it, one could have abandoned the effort just a moment before the successful completion of the task.

Spirituality is such a field. Success may or may not come in stages. I of course refer here to success as the abhyasi perceives it. The Master takes the abhyasis up stage by stage, but often the abhyasi experiences his evolution only when a substantial degree of advancement has been achieved. Then there is the more difficult problem that few are there who can experience the subtle condition that Master blesses us with. The abhyasi must not make the tragic mistake of assuming that what he does not feel, or perceive, does not therefore exist! This would be a tragic blunder, which unfortunately most abhyasis commit at least in the beginning stages of their sadhana.

Faith is a very necessary ingredient. I venture to state that without faith there can be no patience, for after all only one who has faith can wait forever if necessary! I believe that commitment to one's future alone can give us these twin attributes of faith and patience. This is what makes success a sure thing. It is therefore a total commitment, committing every thing to this magnificent adventure of the spiritual life, where the fruits of one's commitment may not be visible, but are surely there, as testified to by the great souls, the saints of the past, which can ensure our success.

Message for Basant Panchami 1991, p. 34; originally published in Constant Remembrance, January 1991

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So the lesson of spirituality was condensed by him that when you become an abhyasi, set your direction first. Which direction do you want to go? If you want to be better and better and higher and higher in your career, it would be perhaps at odds to your spiritual aspiration. The faster the car goes in the wrong direction, it goes further and further away from where it should go. “Nay, nay, my car is very fast” yet you are going in the wrong direction. It only means we cannot come to the spiritual life with too many desires – I want to be rich, I want to be powerful, I want to be well taught of, my family must be you know always happy with me, my relatives should not abandon me, I should not ostracized socially for forgetting my bearings, because many people come and say, ‘‘Sir, I have lost my friends. I have lost my taste which I had formerly for life, I had for pleasure, even when I go to a hill resort, I don't feel the beauty of that place. What has Sahaj Marg done to me? They say that with some disappointment. Maybe a feeling of hurt, not knowing that this is what we have to become. When Babuji said, even if you cut off your head and throw it at your guru's feet, is too cheap a price to pay for spirituality. We are still bothered about our relatives, our friends we are losing because you know, if you go away out of the environment of your friends, suppose they are players of cards, and you don't play cards, one day you'll have to quit. What would you do there, sitting among them, gamblers. They'll welcome you for a few times, then they'll say, ‘‘why are you coming here, you don't even play cards anymore?'' And then if you feel sad I‘ve lost their company, what is there to lose? If you had been a drunkard and stopped drinking, obviously you are not going to enjoy the pleasure of the company of drunkards anymore. And then if you bewail this fact and say I have lost my old friends, what are you thinking about? Where is your thinking? How are you utilising your capacity to think? Is it right? You have been a chor and you have lost your friendship of chor and you see Ramu on the street and he just avoids you and says, “Bhai, tum to sant ban gaye. Namaste. ”

So set your direction. Without direction, speed is of no use. Right direction, faster you go, the quicker you are at your destination. Wrong directions, the faster you are, you go in the other way. Are we sensible enough to know what we need? Have we the courage to look for it? And have we the determination to follow until we get it? These are the tings that progress on the path.

Talk given by Rev. Master on 1st May 2003, during Babuji Mahqaraj's 104th Birth Anniversary Celebrations at Hyderabad

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We have always to try and be determined to achieve the goal at all costs. That is what is necessary. It is the PATH itself, and our aspiration itself, that demands that a permanent choice be made as to what is our goal in life, and for us to stick to thatgoal with faith and determination. It will be a tragic deviation from the path, which we have ourselves chosen, if we allow merely mundane objectives to swerve us from the spiritual path; for if we lose it once, we may never find it again for several lives. I request all of you to remember that very important truth that Babuji Maharaj has stated so plainly for all of us: EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO GIVE YOUR HEAD FOR IT, IT WOULD STILL BE TOO CHEAP A PRICE TO PAY FOR SPIRITUALITY. THE GREATEST EMPERORS OF ALL AGES HAVE HAD TO GIVE UP THEIR KINGDOMS FOR THIS SAME THING, AND THEY THOUGHT THEY HAD IT AT A VERY CHEAP PRICE. The time for taking the right decision is NOW!

Message “The Prize”, Augerans, June 21, 1989

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My Master has clarified that meditation is the process and the result is concentration. Now this concentration, by itself, is not of much value in our development because concentration is only the use of a power, and power, by itself, does not lead to evolution. But it is a positive advantage in our daily life because by meditation, when we are able to make the mind concentrate, we are able to exclude thoughts we don't require, or we don't wish to receive. Here I come to one of the most important teachings of my Master. When we have thoughts it is our attention, it is the power of our attention that gives the power to the thought. A thought by itself has no power. It is the attention that we give it that gives the thought its power. By meditation if we are able to exclude such thoughts without fighting with them, without attending to them, then the mind achieves a state—a state of existence, a state of being—where a single thought alone can exist at a time. Thus, the process of meditation gives us the ability to concentrate, or makes the mind come into a state of concentration, which we call one-pointedness.

Meditation must always have a purpose because nothing is purposeless. We are almost always meditating on something or the other. When we are looking for a higher standard of living, or when we are keenly pursuing a better job, we are constantly thinking of it. I say this because the correct definition of meditation is to think constantly of something. Therefore, we have to meditate with a purpose in mind, and when we come into the field of yoga that purpose is evolution, or the fulfillment of human life to its highest perfect condition.

“Purification and Regulation Of the Mindby Sahaj Marg”, Principles Vol. 1, p. 70-75

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So, spirituality is a science and an art, and an activity involving the heart, where you learn to feel by yourself what is in your Self. That is, we establish in the beginning a very sort of weird, tentative connection with what is inside me. Progressively as you meditate, if you do it sincerely, if you do it, as Babuji Maharaj, my Master, used to say, dynamically, with the idea that it is a purposeful activity – not just sitting in idleness with the eyes closed – contact is established deeper and deeper, closer and closer, more and more intimate from day to day.

In the worldly life you are equated with your work: “He built the Eiffel Tower ,” “He built this,” “He built that,” “He created this,” “He invented that.” In the spiritual world, we are identified with being something. “This I am . That thou art.” So one relates to being; one relates to doing, achieving. The world of achieving is one science. The world of being is a vastly different science. Here, we are dealing with the world of being. We deal with the idea that we start off somewhere and progressively become something until we enter a state of being where there is no more change, which is called the changeless state, the changeless condition.

Material life tempts you with the idea of achievement, with the idea of reward. Spiritual life tries to prod you awake, shake you awake occasionally, into an awareness of what you should be doing and what you are not doing. Therefore, in material life there is temptation and punishment, fear and temptation. In spiritual life they are lacking; there is no idea of punishment, there is no idea of reward. You become what you want to become.

From Learn To Feel, Constant Remembrance, April 2001