Q     Regarding animals and our relations to them---Is it detrimental to our own progress to have affection for an individual animal? One satsangi has pointed out that if you enjoy pets you are retrograding to the level of the animal. Does that not also work in the opposite way?

A     Sister, it depends upon the attachment. If you are attached to an animal, naturally, it will pull you down. If the animal is attached to you and you are not attached to theanimal, but you are attached to something much better than the animal, then you may pull that animal up. If we are meditating, we are attached to that Sound so strongly that iis pulling us, and if the animal is attached to us, we will also pull him along with us. If we are not attached to the Sound but to something else, whether man or animal, and he is pulling, we will be pulled down. If a dog is very strong and you have his chain in your hand, he will pull you, but if you are stronger, you will pull him.

All this depends upon the chains of attachment. If we are too much attached to those things, and we ourselves have nothing to hold onto that is stronger than that attachment, then naturally we will be pulled down. If we are tied to something much stronger than these pets and all that, we will pull them to us, ultimately. It is all a matter of attachment.

Q    Master, speaking about attachment, is it attachments at the conscious level that bind us here or is it possible to have an attachments aat the sub-conscious level?

A   Sometimes we have attachments at the sub-conscious level too, of which we are not aware, and we realize those attachments only when we have to face certain situations. But attachments at the conscious level are very clear.

Q   Is it possible to rise to some level where you can negotiate with the mind and these attachments and balance them without actually having to live through the karma? As an example, if a man o them without actually having to live through the karma? As an example, if a man in his normal span had to live three lives, could he reach a certain level and negotiate with the mind and balance these karmas without actually having to live the three lives? Does one physically have to go through the karma, or can one balance the karma mentally at some higher region?

A    We can always burn our karmas. They can always be destroyed. That is the purpose of meditation; otherwise, we would have taken hundreds of lives to fulfill those karmas. But by meditation it can be done in one, or two, or three lives -- and four at the most. The object of meditation is to destroy those karmas, to cleaer those karmas. Kabir says that if you have abig stack of hay, it takes only one match to burn the whole lot. Similarly, one little portion of Nam or Shabd, an atom of it, burns thousands and millions of our karmas. We actually burn or destroy and rise above them, and do not make new ones in the process. These old karmas have relations with our mind. When, with the help of Nam or Shabd, our mind goes back to its origin, these karmas just drop down. However rusty a knife may be, if you hold it against a revolving grindstone, all the rust is removed. The knife again shines like new. It becomes pure. That is the condition of the soul when it leaves the mind after coming in touch with the Nam or Shabd.

Q    Mahraj Ji, can you tell us how we can love our family and fellow men without feeling or being attached to them? How can we love them and at the same time be detached from them?

A    Sister, when we love everybody, we are not attached to anybody. By loving everybody, we mean loving that Power which is in everybody, and not just in certain individuals or in one particular person or creature. We should not try to justify our weaknesses by saying that we are loving His creation. I shall tell you a little portion of a mystic's example, written in his lifetime. He was going down the streeet, followed by some of his disciples. He always used to remain in devotion and love of the Lord, in his own mood. As they were walking, a dancing girl came happily dacing towards them in the street, in her lax manner, and he just kissed her and said, "Oh, how beautiful is the Lord." Because the Master kissed her, his disciples also kissed her and said, "Oh, how beautiful is the Lord." The Master saw that. As he went a little farther, he saw a blacksmith hammering a molten hot plate. The Master went up to that hot plate and kissed it and said, "Oh, how beautiful is the Lord," but the disciples held back. Then he said to them, "Where is your love for the Lord?" Sometimes we just try to justify our weaknesses in this way and we say that we are not loving the person, we are just loving the Lord in that person. For everybody, the real attachment should be Nam or Shabd, for that alone attached us to the Lord.


Q   Is there such a thing as negative attachment to people whoom on edislikes so intensely? Will that bring them back to that situation again?

A   Do you mean hatred?

Q   A negative attachment. We talk about attachment to things we love, but is there such a thing as negative attachment?

A   Hatred is another form of love. When we hate anybody, we are actually in love with him; otherwise, we will never hate him. How could others affect us if we were not concerned about them, if we did not bother about them, if we never thought about them? When you hate a person, you are always thinking about that person. You cannot drive that man out of your mind, you hate him so much. You are not analyzing yourself, for, actually you are in love with him. You have not been able to make him acording to your wishes, so you hate him, but all the time you are in love with him or you would not even be thinking about him. We have to drive that feeling out of us. We are just to forget all about it. Then the question of hatred does not arise in us. By hating anybody, we are attaching ourself to him.

Q   Why would the soul want to come back here from the superior planes, knowing how much suffering and misery is here? Why would the soul want to ccome down again as an individual? Why would the soul want to come back at all?

A   Even now, we do not want to go. We see suffering all around us. If anyone tells you to prepare yourself, you are going to die, are you prepared to die at once? We say, "No, we have so many things to do yet. "Even now we are not prepared to leave, in spite of all the sufferings in this world. We may thinkg we are prepared to die, but realize that we are not, when faced with the situation. The Great Master used to relate to us a very humorous story: There was an old lady whose daughter was very ill, and she was praying to the Lord,"O Lord. Please take away my life. I cannot bear to see the suffering of this poor girl. Let her live. I want to die in her place." Just then a black buffalo came and took some food from a small black utensil which was in the courtyard. As the buffalo put its mouth in the utensil to get the food, its horns got stuck in the utensil and when it raised its head, just then the old lady looked out and all she could see was something black running towards her. So, when that buffalo, running about in fright with the bucket covering its eyes, approached that old mother, she thought that the angel of death had come, and at once she said, "My daughter is in that room."

We may say that we are ready, but when the situation arises, then we know where we stand. Knowing that we are weeping and suffering, knowing that we must have done something in our past birth, that we are so miserable and unhappy, still we are not doing anything to get rid of this condition. We are doing the same things again and again. We are not taking lessons from what deeds we have done in the past birth, for which we are suffering now. We are victims of the senses, just the same as we used to be. We are still doing the same things every day, in our human life. How can we go back Home? We will have to come back here. We are not taking any lessons at all from the past. Nobody does. When the situation arises we do the same thing, and we are again sorry. We repent for what we have done,but when again the situation arises, we do the same thing, and we are again sorry. If this is so in this life, what about our past life: We have forgotten the reason why we are unhappy, and so we are doing, perhaps, the same thing, sowing the same seed every day in our life.

Q   Master, do you believe in retrogression, degeneration of a soul into an animal?

A   Yes, why not? Our own karma also decides that. According to the karma theory, man can merge back into his Source, the Lord from whom he originally came, and he can also go back into a lower species, such as an animal or even below that, to which he may have descended in a previous life and came up to the status of a human being again. The Lord does not find excuses to send us back. He gives us opportunity to improve, to go ahead. But if we refuse to make use of this opportunity, we can go back. Our attachments, our unfulfilled desires, our karmas can pull us down. We do not like to think so, but that is a fact.

Q   Master, in other words, if a man acts like a beast he may have to come back as a beast?

A   He may have been a beast in his last life and is still carrying all those instincts in him. Or, he may come back again as a beast. Why not?

Q   Sir, what is the last step of the ladder in the animal kingdom just below the human status?

A   There are so many species in the same category that one cannot name a particular animal. In the class containing the four elements come the four legged animals, which could be a cow, a horse, an ox, an elephant or any four-legged animal. They are all in the category which is the next one lower than human.

Q   Regarding the different incarnations we may have to go through before we can get back to the Father, the infinite Ocean of Love. I believe that those who are really seeking shall never have to come back again. Is that true?

A   It is the attachment which brings us back, and as long as we are attached to wordly objects and worldly possessions and things, we have to come back here. We have to detach ourselves from them and attch ourselves to the Lord. Then only we will go back to Him. It is through the mind that we are attached to the senses and through the mind that we are attached to the senses and the wordly pleasures. So, we have to detach our mind from the senses and the worldly pleasures and attach it to the devotion of the Lord. The Audible life Stream or Sound Current, whatever you may call it, reverberates within everyone of us here, at the eye center. We have to concentrate our attention back up to the eye center, the thinking center, which is the seat of the mind and the soul knotted together. From here our mind is pulled down through the nine apertures of the body, by the five senses. So, unless we withdraw our attention back up to this point, the eye center, we are not capable of treading this path. Our real spiritual journey begins from here on wards, so we must have something to hold our attention here, and we must have something to pull us back on that path. With the help of Simran and Dhyan we withdraw up to this point and concentrate, to contact the Sound that is reverberating ethere. And when we are attached to that Sound, we are automatically detached from the worldly objects. This is the whole principle of Sant Mat. If we try to fight with the mind in order to detach ourselves from the wordly things, we can never succeed. So, in order to overcome our mind, to subdue it and to take it back to its own origin, we have to give it a pleasure which is greater than the sensual pleasures. And that superior pleasure, the Shabd, the Sound Current, is right here at the eye center ine very one of us. It is here that we have to attach ourselves to that Sound.


Q   In other words, we have to be in love with God before we an detach ourelves from this world?

A    Yes. For example, if you try to stop a flowing river by building a dam, how long can you hold the water? Perhaps a few days. But when the accumulation of water is too great, the dam will break and the pressure will be so great that that water will even flow over the banks, and do more damage. But if you put in a dam and also divert the direction of the flow of the water into a different channel, the dam will be useful and permanent, and the water will flow in a different direction. Similarly, we have to withdraw our scattered thoughts to this point and ddivert the direction of the mind inwards, with the help of the Shabd. When the tendency of the mind is inward and upward, naturally it does not come down to the senses. It is still the same mind, whether we pull it up or take it down.

Q    Is it ever necessary for a satsangi to reincarnate into animal form? That is one who has been initiated by a true Master?

A    Even if his karma was bad, he will not be sent lower than the human birth. It is not necessary for that soul to come back into the animal form. We do not come down. We go up. Such a person may get another human form and in that form he will have to go through all those bad karmas, but he will not go down into a lower species.

Q    If people do wrong, do they not come back as animal?

A    Not initiates. Of course, otherwise, one has to come back according to his karma, into whatever species our karma designates. But you had asked whether it was "necessary" for a satsangi. It is not necessary. He can improve right from there.

Q    Maharaj Ji, when does soul enter a body? Directly after birth, or before?

A    When the life enters the child, it is the same thing. Some call it life, we call it soul. Without the specific order from the Lord or intention of the Lord, no soul will go into anybody at all. Every soul that comes is marked for a particular relationship which brings it here. Actually the soul comes at the time of conception. It comes but is inactive, and it becomes active after the third month.

Q    The world is a place in which we learn. Do you think that is called karma?

A     What do we learn in this world? To feel unhappy? To be a part of this agony? What are we learning? What advantage are we taking now from our experiences in our previous births? Do we remember them? Are we not repeating the same mistakes which we repeated in our last birth? How much have we learned from those mistakes? Nothing. So, how are we learning? We are just reaping the fruit of what we have sown. We even do not learn from our mistkes in this life, not to speak of our past from our mistakes in this life, not to speak of our past lives. This world is a field of karmas. Whatever we have sown, we reap, and whatever we sow now, we reap here in the future. We have come here again and again to fulfill those desires, to reap the fruit of the seeds that we have sown in our previous births, and while reaping we also sow for the next birth, and the excess also increases our stored lot. That is karma.

Q     After one has reached a civilized human level, is it possible for the consciousness to lose all of this and to be born again as a monkey, or something of lesser consciousness?

A     I do not think this modern civilization has made us better humans. Certainly I do not agree with you. Compare ancient history with modern civilization and you cannot say that we do not fight now, or that there are no bad habits in us, or that we do not slander anybody, we do not murder anybody. First, people used to fight with swords, with their hands; now with one bomb you kill thousands. I do not consider that modern civilization has made us better humans at all. We do not have better human qualities because of this civilization. The object of civilization and of better standard of living is to make us happy. That should be the main criteerion of civilization---health and happiness. You cannot say that we are happier and healthier than our forefathers were. They were living just under teh shade of a tree, but perhaps were much healthier and happier than with all this steel and concrete where we are prisoners now.

Q    I would like to understand your logic, Sir, but I am overwhelmed by the number of humans,w ith intellect equal to my own, who prefer the modern progress to the old fashioned peace and happiness.

A    That is what I say, but it is for us to think whether we are improving or are going down. I do not say that they do not prefer it. Everybody likes to be a better human, but whether we are or have become better humans or not, that is what we have to find out. I think the day will come when we will realize that we have to say goodbye to this modern civilization and we will have to go back to the natural way of life to get more peace and better health. I think that consciousness is coming within every one of us that we have reached the top, and now, we feel disillusioned with this civilization. With all this material achievement to our credit, are we happier than  before, healthier than before? Rather, we are so frustrated that it is agony for anyone to analyze one's self.

Q     But I also think that more people are now aware of mysticism or spirituality than in olden times?

A     That is right. You can give credit to the modern civilization for this because this modern civilization has made us more frustrated and unhappy. So, we try to seek peace and lean more towards mysticism, more towards spirituality. In this way you can giv emodern civilisation credit, as it is the cause of our seeking real hapiness now.