THE MASTER ANSWERS PART 3, Mysticism, reading, forums, Numerology, Sun Signs, Divination

Posts: 5115 · Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 10:02 am

The difficult problem with the Bible is that Christ himself never wrote it: otherwise we might have had a true interpretation of his teachings. It was most probably written by followers of the apostles and that too not at the same time when he was delivering his lectures --- probably much after he had left, and some of the apostles, besides, were not so fortunate as to have come in personal contact with Christ. Through his disciples they got his teachings which you find in the Bible and these teachings are not complete. Most of them have been suppressed. The teachings of the apostles were written as though of Christ, and they too have come down to us today through so many translations that eighty or ninety percent of them is lost in this process.

If the teachings had been written by Christ, or somebody had taken notes of his teachings, they would have been pure Sant Mat. Those teachings would have been far different from what we have today. For example, you have just heard my discourse. It is only ten minutes since you heard it. If you go to a room to put on paper what you have heard, probably you may be able to reproduce with your best intelligence and efforts only fifty percent of what you have heard, and fifty per cent will be your own wishful thinking, what you think had been said. Then if that discourse is to be translated into many languages, there will be left hardly twenty per cent of it.

The problem with the Bible is that nobody took notes at that time. Christ's teachings were given to the masses and some of them passed them on to others and so on. So many things were suppressed by the church and by interested peoples. Only that much is given to us which can keep us under their hold. As a result, there are so many missing links in the Bible. So, in order to understand the Bible, we have to make a very thorough research to enable us to know the real teachings of Christ. Just by reading the Bible, you will not know the real teachings of Christ. (There are so many missing links which you have to find in order to know his real teaching.) But still , whatever is given to us today, if mystically we try to understand it, we definitely come to the conclusion that there is no difference between Sant Mat and the Bible.

The main theme explained in the Bible is that "I and the Father are One"; the soul has connections with the Lord, "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." We are separated from the Lord and we have got to merge back into the Lord. That Lord is in this body, which is referred to as "The temple of the Living God." So, if the Lord is within us, we have naturally to make research to find the Lord within the body. Then he says, "Strait and narrow is the way" of finding the Lord within your body. "In my Father's house there are many mansions" means so many stages which we have to go through in order to reach our Home. Then he tells us, "Know and it shall be opened unto you." There is a certain door of our house (our body) on which we have to knock within the body, nothing outside, and that door must open before we can cross through these stages. And when that door opens what do we see? "Seek and ye shall find." There we have to seek the path leading to our home. We find what we are seeking.

Christ tells us, "If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light." This does not mean that we have to take our one of our eyes. He is referring to the third eye which we have to open. Call it single eye or third eye, or whatever name you like. That eye is between and behind these two eyes. "We have to open that eye" means that we have to concentrate our attention here, at the eye center, in order to see that inner light.

Christ also refers to the Holy Ghost, to that "Word" which cannot be described, which cannot be 'heard', physically. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not." "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and though hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." Christ also referred to "living water" and "living bread", He said, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of" and, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." He also said, "Ye have ears and ye hear not. Ye have eyes and ye see not." It all refers to that inner music, that Word or Logos, that Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit which cannot be seen with the physical eyes and cannot be heard with the physical ears. These are all mystic terms.

Christ says that is we hear the Holy Ghost (the Word, the Shabd), we get everlasting life. We are all dead because we have forgotten the Lord. As far as the world is concerned, we are living; but as far as the Lord is concerned, we are dead. When we get in touch with that Holy Ghost or Audible Life Stream or Shabd or Nam or Word, or whatever name you give it, then we are resurrected from the dead. That is the real resurrection, and it does not pertain to the physical body at all. It is the liberation of the soul from the clutches of the mind. That means that we have detached ourselves with the help of the Word and we are now "living" as far as the Lord is concerned but "dead" as far as the world is concerned. Then we have real devotion and longing to go back to our home. So from "death" we are brought to "life". We try to explain these things physically, outside, but they are all mystic terms.

When Christ said that we have to get that everlasting water, living water, he meant that nectar which is inside here (in the forehead), that water which will give us life eternal. That is the living water, he meant that nectar which is inside here (in the forehead), that water which will give us life eternal. That is the living water to which will give us life eternal. That is the living water to which he referred. We try these things externally, in the form of rituals and take the external, physical water as "living water", whereas the reference is to something that cannot be seen or heard or tasted with the physical senses. It is all spiritual.

The same mystic terms are used in Sant Mat. Now we are in a better position to understand the teachings of symbols and the same mystic terms in the teachings of the Eastern saints. When we compare these teachings, we find that they are the same and there is absolutely no difference. But we have to fish here and there for the real teachings of Christ. we have to link so many things.

Q When Christ speaks about the camel going through the eye of the needle, would that not be the third eye?

A That is right. 'Camel' means something heavy. It symbolizes our attention, our thoughts which are scattered in the world. We have to concentrate our attention here, in the eye center.Now our consciousness is scattered in the whole world, through the nine aperures of the body; so our mind has become a 'camel'. We have to purify our mind before we can pass through the eye of the needle, and that means that we have to control our mind, concentrate it and subdue it. We have to withdraw our entire attention to this point (the eye centre). Then only can it pierce through.

If you put a fine piece of cloth on a thorny bush and try to pull it off, you will tear the cloth. But if you remove the cloth from the thorns, one thorn after another, you can easily take off the cloth intact. In the same way, our attention is now scattered not only throughout the body, but throughout the whole world, from the nine apertures of the body. In the body, the center of the forehead is the place which is the seat of the soul and the mind knotted together. From here all our thoughts are scattered in the world through our eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth and the lower apertures. Howsoever you may enclose yourself in a dark room, still you find that you are not here, you are in the whole world. Your mind is scattered, so it has become a 'camel'. How can you pass that camel through the needle's eye? We have to withdraw again from these nine apertures and put our attention into one channel. Then only it can pass through that eye, the third eye, the needle's eye. So, we have to close the nine apertures and open the tenth, which is the single eye, the third eye or the eye of the needle.

These are all mystic terms which saints explain to us. You have read in the Bible where Christ said that he spoke in parables. He was right, still they crucified him. He spoke to the seekers in parables, which only the real seekers, not everybody could understand. His teachings were not for everybody who came to him, but only for the few real seekers who were living in his lifetime. How can we understand now, without understanding the mystic meaning of his beautiful teachings?

Christ said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. " Saints do not come into this world to let us live in peace with the world which is our mind has created for itself but to detach us from it and take us out of it; so they give us the sword of Nam or Shabd with which to cut asunder the roots of our attachment from the lower world to enable us to rise to the higher. Christ continued, "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter - in - law against her mother - in - law." Saints do not come to set us against each other. It means, "I have come to detach you from each other." In translation we have lost the real meaning. When we interpret from one language to another and to still another and to still another, we lose the real meaning altogether. What Christ meant was that he came to detach men from all these things. Saints do not come to set one against the other. He simply meant, "I have not come to create peace in this world; I have come only to take you away from this world. I have not come merely to reform this world. " Such is the mission of saints always. They are not concerned with the workings of the world. They are concerned only with our souls, and they want simply to take us back to our Home, and do not bother, about this world at all. So, these are all mystic terms, which we have got to know and understand, before we can really understand the teachings of Christ or any other saint.

Recently I happened to read the modern Bible. Probably the British people have modernized it or something like that. Anyway, about two years ago I read a little of the Bible and now, on my tour, I have read the modern Bible. They say that they have straightened the English of the old version, but in doing so they have lost the meaning. In straightening the English idiom, they have lost the mystic meanings at many places in the Bible. Now after five or six hundred years, when this modern Bible becomes the old Bible, how much mysticism will be left in it? This is how havoc has been played with the Bible -- from one language to another, and whoever liked, suppressed many things. So, just by reading the Bible casually, we cannot understand the teachings of Christ. We have to fish very, very deep for his whole teachings.

Q Maharaj Ji, if you say that Sant Mat and the teachings of Christianity are the same, how would they interpret Christ's miracles, like of the fish?

A What I personally feel is that all these miracles which are attributed to Christ are practically all mystic terms. They are not physical miracles. When he raised the "dead", that means that he awakened the devotion of the Lord in those people who had absolutely forgotten the Lord. He gave sight to the blind. We are all blind in this world, and he gave his followers the sight of that inner eye by which they could see the Lord within. That again refers to the single or the third eye, which has nothing to do with the physical eyes. He made the deaf hear. That means that he opened the inner ear of his followers, to enable them to hear that Sound within. But we try to explain these terms as of the outside physical world, so we call all these things miracles of curing physical ailments.

Saints do not come into this world to perform miracles, but miracles do happen sometimes with them. I do not say that they cannot. Saints are so kind-hearted and soft-hearted that sometimes they do perform them, but they always teach us, and themselves become a living example, how to submit to the Will of the Lord. If Christ's objective was to perform miracles, he would not have gone on the cross. He could have avoided it, but he wanted to show the world that we have to submit to the will of the Lord. So, most of the miracles which are attributed to various saints are actually attributed to them by their disciples to impress upon people the greatness of those saints; but they do not understand what is meant by greatness. The real greatness of a saint is his teachings, the love of the Lord which he inculcates in us, and not these petty miracles.

What was the rest of your question

Q His catching a lot of fish.

A I may mean souls. You see, he may have caught many souls, attracted many souls to the path. The word "fish" may have been a mystic terms for sou. It is very difficult to say how much of what actually happened has been handed down to us, because these things must have been recorded with reference to certain contexts, and if some of that is omitted and only a portion is given to us, we cannot know until we make intensive research to find out what is missing.

Q Does the battle of Armageddon in the Bible refer to the battle of the mind --- the last battle of the soul?

A Sister, actually I do not know much about the Bible. I have read here and there, but mostly I have read Matthew, John, and Luke. from what I have read, I find that about ninety-nine per cent of it tallies with the Sant Mat teachings. To be very frank, I do not know much about the Bible, as I have read only some passages and they practically all tally with Sant Mat teachings and are the means of explaining what Christ really meant, if we understand his mystic terms. So, just now, I cannot explain everything from the Bible.

Q Would Christianity, in the orthodox church which has done so much to confuse and divide the world in a repressive way, what would you feel was their need for Jesus when these teachings were already in this world?

A Sister, it is not only Christianity which has done it, every religion does the same thing. I cannot accuse only Christiniaty. Every religion has, at a certain time, done the same thing as the Christians are doing. The object of the coming of Christ was the same as the object of the coming of other saints into the world. The Lord always sends His sons to inculcate His devotion in the hearts of the true seekers. The world is never without saints. So, Christ was sent also to perform the same mission in his lifetime.

Q Did the other religions do it extensively, like Christianity?

A Well, the Christians may be a little more modern or better organized. They may have a better economic position, a better purse, or they may have a better hold on the masses due to various reasons, but every organized religion wants to do the same thing. What have the Mohammedans done? They did it with the help of the sword. They converted half of the world in the Middle East just with the sword. every religion is doing the same thing. Those religions that have not done it, probably tey could not do it, still they want to do the same. So I do not accuse Christianity. It is the human mind that is doing it. Everybody wants to do the same thing. Some people get the opportunity to do it while others do not; but the teachings of the saints are quite different from their practices.

Q Is your teaching in conflict with Christianity? I am new, you know.

A As you have just heard in my discourse, no saint comes into the world to create any religion, or to divide us, or to bind us to any organization or any particular religion. Saints come only to teach us spirituality.