Q    Can Kal keep one from going back to the Lord, once he has been initiated by the Master?

A    No.

Q    And the time of going back has been decided?

A    Well, from a higher scale it may have been decided, but we try to take shelter under the pretext that since it has been decided for us, we need not bother to meditate. But it has also been decided that we should make the effort.

Q    Well, say I passed on from this body tonight, and I am not very far along on the path, would I continue to meditate wherever I go?

A    When you leave the body at the time of death, you have nothing to worry about. Death simply means separation of the mind and soul from the body.

Q    Wherever I go my soul goes?

A    The soul is the real 'you', and your soul goes according to your karma.

Q    And will I still remember initiation and these teachings?  

Q    And one can help this through meditation here now?

A    If you comeback into this world, you will not remember. as a human being, you will forget as soon as you take another birth. But if you do not have to come back and go to some higher stages, you will remember, of course.

Q    And one can help this through meditation here now?

A    Meditation is meant for this purpose, that we go high and do not have to come back to this life again.

Q    .....  the temptation, the devil?

A    Temptations are given by the devil, Kal or Satan, whatever name you may give it, because Kal does not want us to go beyond his reach. Therefore, all sorts of temptations are put in our way just to act as a block in our progress.

Q    Maharaj Ji, once we have been initiated, we never lose our association with our Master, do we?

A    No. no.

Q    In our association with animals, can we help their progress? The animals we have, the animals we love, when they die, do they come back because we help them to come towards the path?

A    If a dog is attached to you, you will pull him up provided you are attached to something higher, which will not let you go down; but if you are attached to the dog, you will go to the dog. actually, it is our attachments that bring us back. If the initiate is attached to the Master, he is bound to go up and merge into the Master, and if the dog is attached to that initiate, naturally the dog, after re-incarnating as a human, also comes on the path and gradually travels upwards because of his attachment to his Master.

Q    You mean once we are initiated, "we are always making progress? We are never sliding back even though...?

A    We are always going ahead, never downward.

Q    Never back further than we were before?

A    That is right.

Q    About injustices and merciless treatment, how can you tell whether what happened was an injustice or whether that person was not better off having been killed, or perhaps staying in the concentration camp was the means for him to come to the path? I do not think at our stage of development our visioin is broad enough to tell us whether a thing is for our own benefit? It may seem to be for our benefit and it can be very detrimental to us?

A     The thing is that we can only know whether justice has been done to us or injustice has been done to us if we know what we had done in the past. If we can know what we have sown and what we are reaping now, then only we can determine the difference.

Q     When you did something bad and you know you did something bad, you have a bad conscience and feel guilty. But when you do not feel any problem at all and all of a sudden somebody cuts your head off?

A     As you sow, so shall you reap. That is what it proves.

Q     The individual has no idea of what he did?

A     That is right. He does not know. We are meditating and trying to know what we have sown.

Q     Is not the argument the same, like last week forty-four people got killed in an airplane and as long as we do not know them as long as we were not attached...?

A     That is right. Not to say of that, thousands of insects are killed under our feet every day. When we are breathing, God knows how many souls we are depriving of life. We feel affected only by our own friends and relatives because we are attached to them. But everything belongs to the Lord, so if we analyze like that, we are led nowwhere. Whatever we think, we do not know whether there is justice or injustice. To us, with know whether there is justice or injustice. To us, with our limited intellect, it looks like injustice because in our presence these poor souls never did anything wrong, for which they have been killed. But ours is a limited vision. We do not know what they have done in their past lives, whether an old debt has been paid or a new seed has been sown. Until we have reached that stage where we can know. He alone knows, as far as we are concerned.

Q      So actually there is no injustice, ever?

A      These are the fruits of karma. As we sow so shall we reap.

Q      And is it not that some people in groups, like in an airplane, all taking the same trip, their time calls for being beheaded or killed, and when it comes, they go in groups?

A      That is right. They have some associations from the past, that is the reason they all have to die together; or that some are killed and others survive. It is all karma.

Q      May I ask what makes one  human being comprehend much beter than another human being comprehends? When you talk to somehuman beings, they just look blank, while others comprehend very easily.

A      Their karmas, Call it their destiny or their fate; it is the same thing.

Q      Is this also the reason that in a dream we might see ahead, things which will happen? Does fate sometimes give us a window to see ahead?

A      Sometimes in dreams we know what is going to happen to us. That is right.

Q      All through science we have the principle of cause and effect. Is this also an explanation of karma?

A      That is right. Whether we call it karma, cause and effect, or action and reaction, it is the same thing with a different name. Karma, nobody can escape, whether one believes in it or not.

Code of Condcut, Social Relations


Q      I meet a lot of people who, I think, are very spiritual. I feel very good around them, and they are not satsangis. Still I feel that they are better satsangis than I am. Why are they not satsangis?

A      That is right. Every good person is not necessarily a satsangi. Some people were so nice and sincere in their last life and have been so good to people that they are getting the reward of their good karma.

Q      But these people who are so good and so nice, they may be living out their good karma from their past life, but they are also sowing and seeding good karma for the next life, and I thought -- ?

A      That is right, so they will get its fruit again, but all the same, they will remain in the cycle.

Q      If I am living out of my bad karmas and I am being not as nice as they are, then I will have to come back?

A      Then you should try to be like them. (Laughter)

Q      Well, I think they may be getting ...?

A      They will definitely get the advantage. They may come on the path if they are very sicere in their desire to meet the Lord. When we have a strong desire to meet the Lord and we have real devotion, even if we do not know the path, even if we do not know how to meditate, how to pray for His grace, then the onus is on the Lord to put us on th epath. Our duty is to have a genuine yearning to meet Him. Then we automatically behave in such a way that we find ourselves on the path leading towards Him. That is why it is mentioned in the discourse that you have just heard that only by the grace of the Lord can we meet the Master, and only through the Lord's grace are we on the path. We, by ourselves, can never do anything; but if we are reallly sincere and honest in our search, then, if not now, sometime in the future it will be for the Lord's grace to put us on the path. As Christ said, "Not I, but the Father in me doeth all things"

Q     Why does our ability to do our Bhajan and to follow the principles of Sant Mat vary so much? Sometimes one goes from one feeling, like one is very capable of doing meditation and then, for some unexplainable reason, one just cannot do it?

A     Ups and downs do come everywhere.

Q     Shall we suffer through it, or shall we feel guilty or ---  ?

A     We should never feel guilty at all. We simply should try to put more time in meditation and get through those ugly days.

Q     But ...depressing...unsuccessful?

A     And then to go back to what you said about many people being very nice, though not being satsangis, satsngis probably try to analyze themselves too much, thinking that they have too many bad qualities in them.

If this room is filled with darkness, you do not know how much that darkness covers up, but if a little ray of light comes in , you know instantly that this whole room is filled with small particles. Similarly, when we do not know about or are not on the path, we are not aware of our bad points. Rather, we take pride in our habits. But when we are on the path, that ray of light comes within us. Then we analyze ourselves and find that we have many very bad habits. In fact, the bad habits were there before, but now we are in a position to  to analyze them, to realize them. So, we feel a little guilty about them. Actually, it is a sign that we are improving, because this consciousness has come in us to discriminate what is good and what is bad. That light of discrimination has come in us to show that we are really bad and we are to get rid of these bad habits. Before that, we never knew it and we even took pride in these things. So, one should not feel guilty about it. Rather, we should try to know our weaknesses and then do our best to overcome them.

I always say, when we are conscious of our faults, half the battle is won, because then we begin to do something about them. But when we are unaware of our faults, we deluxe ourselves into thinking that what we are doing is right, which causes us to travel still farther in the opposite direction. We should therefore be grateful that the Lord's grace is enabling us to avoid these pitfalls and travel straight on the path leading back to Him.

Q     Maharaj Ji, what brings us to the path except the grace of the Lord in the sense that nice people doing good for others keep coming back into this world and continue to do good for others, even though they may do it in a pleasant life? But some of us find this desire for theLord and this yearning. What have we done to deerve it? Is it something we have done that the Lord gives us this grace, or are we just lucky?

A     No, no. We have earned it. We have earned it in the sense that we may been very honest in our efforts to meet the Lord, whether we have been trying in a wrong way or in a right way, the longing, the real yearning to meet Him was within us. In whatever way we worship the Lord, that helps us in getting His grace, and He will put us on the path.

Q     Do you think it is a satisfaction we have gotten --external things have to -- this longing -- if we were happy?

A     Whatever the reason may be , there are two ways of coming to the Lord. One is because we have longed to meet Him; another is because we are tired of the world and we want an escape in His love. Some lucky people instinctively love Him. They worship Him only because they want to meet Him. They have no other motive or desire. Other people are being driven to Him because desire. Other people are being driven to Himbecaue they are completely tired of this world. They want an escape into His love and devotion. Both are all right, but the degree oflove in the first type cannot be compared with anything else, as that is the superior type of love.

Q     Maharaj Ji, sometimes we have been asked, what about people who feel that they have a job to do in the world for other people -- to be of help -- not necessarily as their profession, but the desire to be helpful? How does this fit into Sant Mat?

A     Sister, we should always try to be helpful to others. We should not help from the point of view that some day they will also help us. We should help without any intention of getting reward. Generally, what we try to do with the missionary spirit is that if we will behelpful to the other people now, then either later in this liife or in the next life they will be helpful to us. That attitude is not correct, for then we are sowing the seed to return to this world in order to get the reward of what we have done for them. We should be helpful to the public, helpful to society, helpful to everybody in whatever way we can. All this should be doa detached mind.

It should be remembered that we need also to help ourselves in order to be in a position to help others. If actually we do not help ourselves but try to help others, we are deceiving ourselves and we are deceeiving others. So first we must help ourselves and then we should help others.

Q     Something still bothers me mentally. I came originally from Europe. In Europe there were twenty million persons who had to give their lives, innocently -- some very fast and some by slow torture --- seemingly for no reason except becaue they were born in a different religion. I think you are familiar with that. They have been herded into concentration camps, gassed and killed. How can I face my God and say, why did you do a thing like this? To us people down here it looks like a terrific injustice to kill people just like cockroaches.

A     Who is killng? It is the people who are killing each other.

Q     Because God has power over His children even when they say, "Why did you produce me?" I would say you are not being produced by me but by the Almighty, and because you behaved like that, when he hits you back, you feel it. Now stop hitting him, and there will be no such reaction. Now why did somebody not stop all this slaughter in Europe? All these wars?  

A    This is where the karma theory comes in.

Q    You see, I come from the middle of this, so it hurts me deeply.

A    I know. I know the effect on the human mind.

Q    I was saved maybe by you, by some miracle.

A    It mst have been the Lord. This is all due to our individual karmas. What we think as injustice, what we see as injustice; God alone knows whether it is justice or injustice. Besides, is not that same injustice being done every day to millions and milions of cows and other animals that are being killed for the food of human beings?

Q     Yes, in our small way, we are beginning to stop that.

A     In this world, there is nothing ut misery. As long as the creation exists, these things are bound to remain. That is why the saints say. "We come to take you away from this world."

May I ask please is Kal the same as Kali? The Egyptian goddess?

Interesting reading these, thanks

Dear Cascade,

Kal, Devil or Satan are all one and same. They try to pull you down i.e. your mind down for mind is found of pleasures and Kal pulls the mind to pleasures thus separating the mind from the Soul.

Pravin Kumar

No Kali is not the same - without destruction there is no rebuilding

By the way - Hi Pravin, you ok?