Grace

Om Sathguru Sri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

There are many saints, who leaving their houses, stay in forest, caves or hermitage and in solitude, in order to get liberation or salvation for themselves. They do not care for other people and are always self-absorbed.

SathPurushas (the Incarnations of God), are not of such a type. Rare are the sadhus and saints, who, after attaining God-vision, strive for the welfare of the people. SathPurushas mentioned in “Some Sathpurushas”, are the best examples.

“Blessed is the country, blessed is the family and blessed are the chaste parents, where these Extraordinary, Transcendent, precious and pure jewels were born.”

“Better than reading is hearing, and better than hearing is seeing. One understands the scriptures better by hearing them from the lips of the Guru. Then one does not have to think about their non-essential part.”

When Grace comes, the stream of remembrance flows into the mind continuously, and everything necessary is done to maintain the remembrance. The remembrance must be unbroken like a “thaila dhara”, which means the flow of oil. When oil is poured from one vessel to another, you see it flows unbroken. The moment there is a break in the remembrance of God, at once the ego-sense takes possession of us and darkness sets in.

Some people open the windows of their heart to receive Grace while some others keep them closed and they do not get it. But even to keep the windows of the heart open requires some inner aspiration and longing, and that longing can come to us only through the Grace of God. This is true because we see that all do not want to keep the windows open. We keep them shut. The result is we do not enjoy the benefit of Grace.

Therefore, it is not that Grace is not on us, but we are not prepared to receive it.

The ways of Grace are indeed mysterious!!

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Positive Emotions and the focus on the Self

Om Sathguru Sri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

Disciple:

I do not mind giving up greed, lust, and anger, but the positive emotions still attract me.

Master:

To become centered in the Self does not mean that the positive things will be destroyed along with the negative. Love, faith, and happiness will remain in even greater measure than before.

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How do we help the man who sees everything in a negative way?

Om Sathguru Sri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

Disciple:

How do we help the man who sees everything in a negative way?

Master:

By being friends with him, and by giving him your love and approaching him through heart. But first it is necessary for one to totally help oneself-to unfold all the strength there is inside. It is no use trying to help others if you have not helped yourself. What we need to do first is to become stronger ourselves and discover the power of the Self within. Then by means of good will and the inner power, we will be able to help others.

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The Guru and His Sishya

Om Sathguru Shri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

When the Guru in his infinite love rushes to help the devotee, (the helpless human being) the devotee in his turn must trust the Guru completely. He must have the ‘Shraddha’ or faith (Viswas) and abandon himself to the Guru. To put it simply, he must catch hold of the rope if he wants to save himself. How true even at the physical level!

What is Faith?

FAITH, “is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.”

-The Old Testament.

When we serve in a Gurukula, we are able to realize this truth.

That is why, faith is called, the substance of things for and evidence of things not seen; and therefore it is hailed as the greatest miracle.

The Guru is to the Chela (disciple), the manifestation of God Himself. The devotion to the Guru is for him the best help beyond all external and murthi (idol) worship, in his pilgrimage towards Brahman in the transcendence of his non-manifestation.

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JAPA – Chanting the name of God!

Om Sathguru Shri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

The easiest way to attain union with God is through constant repetitive chanting of His name. By chanting the name of God with all faith and devotion, your mind gets thoroughly purified and the God within, reveals Himself in your heart, in all His glory and splendour, and the peace that is hidden within you becomes manifest in all your actions – rather, fills your entire mental and physical being!

To bring out the latent glory and power of the Divine, the easiest way is to chant the holy name of our Lord!. God and His name are not different. Name is just a tag, a nomenclature, – a bridge between God and us!

The ‘name’ takes us to Him, and makes us realize that the name and He are one and the same. When you go on repeating His name, you will find that the name tastes sweeter and sweeter. It is sweeter than nectar. Only those who have chanted it know its power. !

A person who has come from a long distance wants to go to Mumbai, sees the signpost and is happy he has found the way. Suppose he takes a garland of flowers, puts it on the post, sits below it and worships it that cannot take him to Mumbai. This is how people generally act. If they simply sit and worship the Guru/God by so doing they can’t reach goal.

• How does one chant the name of God?

• It should not be with egotism or false pride. If one repeats His name with such a mind-set, one would not get any benefit. If one is humble and meek, then alone will he derive real benefit. There is no difference between the bhakthi path of the Hindus and the Sufis. Bhakthi yoga, refers to a full devotion to God and not mere worshiping.

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Athma – ParamAthma

Om Sathguru Shri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

Your reality is the Athma (God viewed as the particular), a wave of the Paramathma (God viewed as the universal). The one object of this human existence is to visualize that Reality, that Athma, – the relationship between the wave and the sea. All other activities are trivial; you share them with birds and beasts; but this is the unique privilege of man. He has clambered through all levels of animalism, all the steps in the ladder of evolution in order to inherit this high maturity. If his years between birth and death are frittered away in seeking food, shelter, comfort and pleasure as animals do, man is condemning himself to a further life sentence.

FOR, THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE UNIVERSAL ARE ONE; THE WAVE IS THE SEA. MERGING FULFILS. WHEN MERGED, THE EGO IS DISSLOVED; ALL SYMBOLS AND SIGNS OF THE PARTICULAR LIFE, NAME, FORM, CASTE, CREED, NATIONALITY, TEMPLE, CHURCH, MOSQUE, SECT AND THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES CONEQUENT THEREON, WILL FADE.

For such individuals, (Avathars and Sathgurus), who have liberated themselves from the narrowness of individuality, the only task is the upliftment of humanity, the welfare of the world, and the showering of love. Even if they are quiet, the state of bliss in which they exist, will shower bliss on the world. Love is in all, love is of all, and love is all.

When people forget the one and run after the many, Dharma declines; for there can be no love, no sacrifice, and no detachment in human affairs then. So, the Lord takes human form and comes to restore man’s sense of values. This is the Avathar.

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Sayings of Avathar Meher Baba

Om Sathguru Shri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

Sayings of Avathar Meher Baba

• The beginning of real love is obedience, and the highest aspect of this love which surpasses that of love itself is the aspect which culminates into the perfect obedience or supreme resignation to the will and wish of the Beloved. In this love are embodied all yogas known to saints and seekers.

• To those whose hearts are pure and simple, true love comes as a gift through the activating grace of a Perfect Master, and this Divine Love will perform the supreme miracle of bringing God into the hearts of men.

• It is said the Perfect Master appears when one is ready. But how can one be ready for Perfection, and all its ways? Therefore Perfection, in the guise of the Master, must come down to the level of our imperfection, and help us to be the true disciple. That is why at times, the Master often plays the role of the disciple. He shows, not tells, us how to behave, – especially in relation to him.

• Thus it is that God (Lord of Universe) as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avathar, suffers Himself to be prosecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act God’s manifestation in the form of Avathar should, however, indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.

• This Eternal One and the Same Avathar repeats His manifestation from time to time, in different cycles, adopting different human forms and different names, in different places, to reveal Truth in different garbs and different languages, in order to raise humanity from the pit of ignorance and help free it from the bondage of delusions.

• God’s Imagination begets Universal Mind, Universal Energy, and Universal Body in which are contained the individual Minds, individual energies and individual bodies of every thing and being in Creation.

• The masses who try to attain the Truth by following rites and rituals are, as it were, in the goods train which is detained indefinitely at various stations.

• Those who sincerely and devotedly meditate on God or dedicate their lives to the service of humanity are, as it were in the ordinary train which stops at every station according to the time-table.

• But those who seek the company of the Truth-Realized Master and carry out HIS orders in full surrender and faith are, as it were in a special train, which will take them to the goal in the shortest possible time, without halts at intermediate stations.

• God’s TRUTH can’t be ignored. Because men do ignore it, a tremendous adverse reaction is produced and the world finds itself in a cauldron of suffering through hate and conflicting ideologies. Ultimately, when the tide of suffering is at its flood, GOD manifests anew in human form (Avathar) to guide mankind to the destruction of its self created evil and re-establish it on the way to TRUTH.

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The Blessed Devotee

Om Sathguru Shri Seshadri Swamigal Thiruvadikkae

Q) To whom does the Sathpurusha (SathGuru) give the experience of Brahma?

A) It is to him whose mind has become purified and steadfast, one who has a blind faith in God, in any life, past or present. This is the person who receives the Kripa (grace), of his Sathpurusha. He is the one qualified to receive and learn it.

Q) Who is eligible to be a Medium of the SathGuru?

A) There are so many in this world, who need the Sathguru’s help.He helps them through those, who are willing to be the medium of His Love.

To qualify as a medium, the best example to describe the qualities one should posses would be Lord Krishna’s flute, Murali.

If you have the capacity to draw the Lord (Mahan Shri Seshadri Swamigal) to yourself, He will Himself come to you and be with you. Be Like Krishna’s Flute: a hallow reed, straight, light, with no substance to hinder His breathe.

Then, He (Mahan Shri Seshadri Swamigal), will come and pick you up from the ground. He will breathe Divine music through you, playing upon you with delicate touch. He will stick the flute into His sash. He will press His lips on it; he fondles it, favour it and flourishes it. In His hand, the infinitesimal will be transmuted into the infinite; the anu (microcosm) will be transformed into the ghana (heavens).

Here is a story of Lord Krishna’s Flute:

One day Lord Krishna pretended to be fast asleep, with the flute carelessly thrown aside by His side.

Radha approached the fortunate flute and asked it in plaintive terms, “Oh! lucky Murali (Lord Krishna’s Flute), tell me how you earned this great good fortune. What was the vow you observed, the vigil you kept, the pilgrimage you accomplished? What was the mantra you recited, the idol you worshipped?” The Flute spoke, by His grace: “I rid myself of all sensual desire, of envy greed and ego – that is all. I had no feeling of ego left to obstruct the flow of His love through me to all creation.”

While everyone is identical with the divine, few realize it.

Realize your breathe is answering the question correctly and live in the consciousness that you are a wave of the He, that is the infinite consciousness, that is Guru or God.

If you shed your pride and really surrender to a Sathpurusha, then, He can do everything for you and elevate you.

Let your mind have no waves; let it be silent, level, and calm – so that the HAMSA can sport thereon. Then you will become a Medium!

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