He is not for tomtomming the greatness of Vedas and Geeta or studying the various formulas by heart, he is for original impartial thinking in religion

There are certain truths which are required to be hammered on the minds of genuine religious aspirants. You have the nail, you are putting it in the wall-hole, but you are not hammering it in. The nail must go deep, so much deep, that one cannot take it out. That action is absent. Hammering, practice, repetition, repetition after repetition, till mastery is attend, that is the thing which is hopelessly absent these days.

Why is it absent? Because Guru – Shishya relationship is gone and people have a rotten belief of ‘Choo – mantar’. All that rottenness must go. You got a Mahatma with some two plantains and three oranges. You expect that you are going there and making the offerings of things will give a Goa lottery. This mischief must go. It is there, because people do not want to approach God or Guru or Religion, unless they are materially benefited and that too, to an unimaginable degree. Most of them go for material benefits only.

More than these, are to be blamed the Gurus, the Saints, the Mahatmas. They never disillusion them. The very notion and popular notion of ‘religion ‘needs a change. Let Mai-ists begin with the simple definitions, “religion means selflessness “, “Progress in religion means diminution of selfishness.

There are many religious personages who simply live on the superstition of people and exploitation of their credulity, hopes and fears. Mai-ism condemns nothing so much as rumors of untrue mysticism, the devil of ‘Choo – Mantar'. Someone approached Founder and said,” I hear Mother is taking food with you actually sitting by your side, especially on Fridays after midnight. Is that true? “The Founder scoldingly said, “Are you a fool? Do you think Mother has no other business to do? I have actually seen Mother so often. To that extent people are right. She loves me. She would as far as possible never displease me setting aside my demand. She will do anything for me. But this talking of dining together is again the evil of the devilish ‘Choo-Mantar’ mentality of people.

The belief in happenings entirely out of proportion with reason is harmful in so many ways. First thing is it makes you indolent and indifferent. Second thing is it makes you less grateful. Third thing is, a failure creates destructive reaction. Fourth thing is, your ideal as also the evolutionary progress gets stuck up in materialistic mud. To explain this: When an incurable disease or a dangerous illness case is undertaken. Founder has seen even doctors themselves entirely out of proportion regarding the time required to cure. There was a doctor of good repute who was suffering from an alternate day fever, for years together. He came to Founder. In spite of his repeated telling about the said human blunder, he expressed his surprise because he had a fever after he left the Founder. He was then asked to keep a chart. He was cured within nine weeks.

There is a human tendency which values everything with reference to its cost price. If the cost-price is nothing, because people have no standard of weighing prices which are not in terms of rupees, people expect things to take place at the snip of fingers; they feel nothing like gratefulness; they get habitual to think most mechanically, that things must take place on doing certain things.

Religious path is only one-foot wide between a valley on one side and a steep hillock on the other with huge loose stones.Now, about the valley and the loose-stone hillock emergency experienced in my life. If we do not show the greatness of God and mercifulness of Mother, the world goes on degenerating at the most surprising speed. I though to myself, let us be stooping to meet half-way. Once or twice let people have the experience of Mother's Mercy at the smallest approach and the faintest prayer. For some time it appeared as if that was right way to pull the world from the materialistic infatuation. I put honey over the bread for the sick child, but the child liked away the honey and left the bread untouched. I have failed in this experiment, but any way, Sahara desert earth has been moistened with rains which have not gone in vain.

The world's largest blunder is here. If water is to be pumped out from a well 60 feet deep and each stroke raise the water by one foot, people make the blunder of considering all previous workers that bring water to 59 feet as hopeless ones.The last man touches the pump and with one stroke, water falls out. People called the last man hero. During the time period between the two incarnate saints, there are so many saints of comparatively smaller capacities, but it is their work mainly that help the future saint to do his work the best.

It is not a small thing, people with absolutely no idea of God, Guru or Religion, get a conviction that there is some higher power, which can rule the destiny of the world and which on propitiation can help one out of his calamities. Let them go to the Guru, only when they are under calamity and let them disappear as soon as it is over. A time will come when people will have sense enough to see," We are always in some hardship or another; why not then have a continued relationship with Mother? "

Remove all your muddle about religion and Guru. Under Mai-ism there should be no haziness and religion is a pure and simple thing, a science of Divine laws, more perfect, systematic, regular and effective and disciplinary than the medical science. Let there be no cloudiness - let it be a clear-cut notion. Religion is a science of mental cure and removing the soul disease, soul-weakness, soul-impurity. It is more than enough if you have one-tenth of serenity and preparedness and honesty of purpose, that you have with a doctor when you fell ill, while you approach religion or your Guru.

Applying the smallest test, where an average man of today is in the realm of religiosity. Only yesterday a child about 5 or 6 years old came to me early morning and told me, " Babaji, see, I have these four rupees, may I place them before Mother?" A hot blast passed in my brain. " How religious and charitable the parents of a child must have been.". I was thinking whether I should accept the gift of the child, without informing the parent.The child was told," You come with your papa and mommy ". The child said so very sweetly," Daddy gives me the money like this to play, I can do anything and I like to give it to Mother. I am going to Mother and putting these four rupees there ". I was so very joyfully surprised at such inborn religiosity of a charitable disposition. The child went there. I did not accompany. He place the four rupees and removed the silver Paduka worth rupees 30. He had seen the Paduka previous night. The modern child of an extremely fertile brain, found out a scheme in the night and came up as soon as it got up.

There are certain blunders in respect of which a spiritual aspirant has to be very careful. Everyone sees so very clearly the smallest mole in the case of others, and especially in them, whom he dislikes, envies or competes with, but is so blind about huge blunders in his own life. He judges others instead of judging himself.He looks up for help, consolation and relief outside, instead of inside.He mistakes himself to be body instead of soul. He wants to seat in the centre instead of circumference.He sleeps where he ought to be awake and is minutely focusing his eyes, where he should use his eye-lids. He brings in Vedantism and Adwaitism when he should act with a sense of duty and strict observance of the fundamental requirements of morality.From Divine Knowledge, he picks up not long-sightedness, but lameness. From Devotion he squeezes out not the high pure and sanctified imaginativeness and poetic devotional flight of joy but dullness and blindness. He is theoretically aware of every shade of philosophy and Divine Knowledge and of every emotional spray of the highest Devotion, but he does not know the art of making the right use thereof, in practical life, by proper suitable adjustments. Further what he does for others is worth millions. What others do for him is not worth a single farthing.

You know a certain belief or understanding to be wrong but you stick to it because you have passed so many years with it. Your ability to overcome the continued habit is another thing, but the bigotry is the greater handicap to the spiritual progress. Passions from within prompt you and drag you to do things, which you to be wrong. Here and in all the cases above, repeated practice and creation of relishlessness alone can help.

Find ample leisure by accepting a plain-living simple life.Don't make a dustbin of your brains, by allowing all your neighbours to put the dirtiest refuse therein.Let your passion of being considered clever and up-to-date-informed go. Why are you so very anxious to be valued at much higher value than what you really are? Think of the ancient wisdom, most impartially, most sympathetically. start with an assumption, where you differ, that you may be in wrong, being in-experienced. Where your mind conflicts with the said things, approach your Guru, place your doubts respectfully, humbly and servingly.

What is a man to gain by living in or leaving the world? Or by an artificial creation of a disgust for Worldliness, Women or Wealth? Let there be no misunderstanding about these three W-s for a Mai-ist. Each of them though generally condemned, by one and all who talk about Religion, is indispensable for the very betterment and spiritual progress itself.The secret of success and the wisdom lies in the most judicious use of theirs, and in being the master and not a slave to them. There are certain Universal never failing Divine Laws and Principles of Living, which can teach us the judicious use and the art of mastery.

Founder asks, Is there no intermediate attitude between infatuation and condemnation? We get infatuated because of our greediness, lustfulness and ne-science. The infatuation makes us miserable and we vent out to our spite by condemnation. The condemnation again has its reaction. Condemnation results in antagonism, disquietude and starvation. Starvation leads to insatiable hunger.

Some saints - not the highest saints - would go on abusing wealth and their followers will raise to skies about their saint not touching coins, although people could see with their open eyes, that their disciples leave no opportunity to make every provision for the saint's comfort, properties and future requirements. Indirect utilization and direct disconnection; internal infatuation and external condemnation, is a hypocrisy, about which, every spiritual aspirant should be extremely watchful.

A Mai-ist is extremely moderate. He is the follower of Mother who in virtue of Her conceptional sex is a woman. A Mai-ist is the worshipper of the Most Merciful Mother. Mai-ism advises," No Infatuation and No Condemnation ". Every thing has its best uses.Raise yourself, by making the best righteous moral and judicious use and develop the control of your mind, thought, desire and action, which gives you the mastery and proofness by Sadhana with Grace of God or Mother and Guru.

The Founder makes and insists on the sharpest distinction of wealth righteously and religiously earned and used and reverse. Simultaneously with the former, non-attachment should be developed. Inwardly there should be a practice, which gives you a preparedness for the throwing off wealth and materialistic happiness at any moment. At no time there should be a forgetfulness of the truth that the desire for materialistic happiness catches your throat after a long continued period of its enjoyment. You must determinedly and designedly manage some breaks in the continuation of comforts and happiness, even if they automatically come to you unexerted for and unsolicited.

The Founder is tender-hearted regarding even materialistic happiness, so cruelly condemned by all religionists. Says he," What would be joy for sustenance of life for them, that have not been trained to, and have not tasted, the higher joys and happiness of emotional, mental, spiritual, and devotional nature? Under the scorching fires of worldliness, why do you grudge and blame them for indulging in their own avenues of joy, so long as they don't leave their righteousness and harmlessness? Don't forget they are incapable of enjoying higher joys and that joyfulness is indispensable for the sustenance of life ". Let every one be happy and have the joy of one's own natural worth stage and plane, righteously and religiously.

Act most constructively. Don't be a teacher whose highest efficiency proceeds only from sever caning. Train disciples, followers and people to seek joy and have the relishfulness of the higher sources. Spontaneity and Sadhana with patience and perseverance is the soul and secret word of Mai-istic improvement. Lay your highest stress and insistence on wealth being earned and used righteously and religiously, on charity and magnanimity and keeping virtue, humility, justice, truth, innocence, purity, harmlessness and helpful for all.

Teach the world to be seeking relief, from other than money purchasable sources of innocent joys and pleasures, which are so many and with which the world had pulled on for centuries before the advent of western materialism. Righteously and religiously earned and used wealth, with non-attachment and preparedness for the dispensability of money-purchasable pleasures is an extremely valuable asset by itself in the scale-pans of Mai-ism.

What we want now is agitation and action, shelving all theories and philosophies. Dynamos must be set up to dart forth currents after currents. A strong religious machinery with the most gigantic constitutional and consolidated and continued effort of religious universal-minded men in an original form, with all the necessary equipment of men. and money and material must be planted. Religious education with practical demonstrations in the lives themselves of the living great can do a lot.

Coming to the subject of the individual self-improvement, don't have the royalty of having the highest man as your Guru. Such Gurus will have hundreds of disciples like you. You can't have the benefit of individual attention. He must be a dullard who requires the highest London-degree-teacher for studying primer. What comes in his way is his swollen-headed egoism. Your Guru need not be perfect.You will never get one, nor will such one will accept you in the real sense of word. It is enough if he is spiritually superior to you and has your spiritual and temporal welfare at his heart, if you find that you can confide in him regarding your defects, weaknesses and secrets.

Let the mischievous notion of " No Guru and No Authority " go. Our life moves with faith. You continue under your home-roof while the rainy storms are there, because you have the faith that the Engineer has built it strong enough. You have never seen the Engineer nor gone to study his wall-beam and roof calculations. You take food prepared by your mother, because you have the faith she will never poison you. You take medicine from a doctor because you have a faith the doctor would not commit the blunder. You fly in aeroplane because you have faith in pilot. You can't move an inch without taking so many things as granted, with faith. What is this newly imported nonsense of "I don't believe things I have not seen"? You pass your life in the belief that your name is so and so, you identify yourself with that name. Is that of your own independent making?

You may qualify your faith if you like. It should not be a blind faith or a credulous faith or irrational faith. You must be free to change your Guru when you find you are in the wrong, but you can't proceed without your faith. Service, faith and love are important factors.

With ample leisure, with an unoccupied brain, with the vital energy of celibacy (to the extent possible if you are married and to the full extent otherwise), start on.Never think how much remain to be done. There is no end. Always keep in mind how you have progressed, to keep yourself cheerful.Every step that you rise makes you better man more fitted to claim and command happiness, not only for one life, but for lives and lives. A permanent and perpetual gain till you gain salvation. Although the path is long enough, it is this providential arrangement which keeps courage, patience and perseverance. A single step climbed or a single atom acquired in the religious progress is never lost.

Why so much cry against Guru-acceptance? No doubt, there may some few cases of the confidence being being betrayed, but the main reason is absence of humility, over-estimate of one's self and greatest reluctance to pay the price in terms of love and service, devotion and surrender to Guru. When you associate with others, you have the pleasure of being worshipped if others are inferior to you. On the other hand, you have to be worshippers and therefor the superiority Guru pinches you. People lose their common sense when they enter the realm of religion. One of the Founder's intimate acquaintances, a high-class Government Officer, once told him, " I hate the very idea of seeing Gurus garlanded. It is cruel murdering the principle equality. My head turns at the idea, a disciple should garland a Guru.". Once that friend talked over to the Founder, on returning from a place of his long tour of several official visits. The in-charges of some places garlanded this hater of Guru-garlanding. He said to his friend," There are very few men of my staff who know what is gratefulness. Such few alone garlanded me during my tour and did their duty. Other people I hate. They never once thought where they would have been but for my raising them from pay to pay and post to post. Should they not even do such a simple nominal thing as garlanding their bread-giver when he goes to them for an official visit?"

Is it not your experience in this experience in this world that a multi-millionaire sets right all wrongs with money, his own incapacities, vices, weakness etc? As a multi-millionaire can do any thing with spiritual wealth, so the devotees with the spiritual wealth attained on practising devotion can do anything in the spiritual world.

Nothing is so powerful as the repetition of the sacred name of your deity, be it Mother, Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Shakti, Surya, Ganesh or Allah or Christ, whoever he be, getting the Mantra from your Guru. Fire on day and night, whenever and wherever you find leisure.One hour daily for about six months will assure you, there is an appreciable change in your outlook. Here much depends on the intrinsic value of your Guru, to put it in simplest language, the intensity of love between the Guru and the worshipped and the love between the Guru and the Shishya and the intrinsic worth of the Guru and the disciple.

Founder quotes an interesting instance. There was a Madrasi devotee whom the Founder met in a train. He was repeating Shodashakshari Mantra. He had decided to finish one lakh(100,000) repetitions. His one lakh repetitions finished on Belgaum station. Founder also got in to the second class where that Madrasi devotee was the only passenger. Founder was in English dress and Madrasi with sacred ashes smeared all over his body. The devotee got suddenly an idea that the foretelling of his own Guru viz. that he will meet a great devotee on his finishing one lakh, was perhaps to be true in meeting this new man, the Founder. He tried to enter in religious conversation with the Founder, but the Founder curtly replied like an irreligious man who had no soft corner for religion itself.

On the next halting station, the devotee got down and changed his compartment. on the further stopping station, a man with a decent Rumal turban in coat and pant, collar and neck-tie, entered Founder's compartment and sat by Founder's side. Founder looked in his face and astonishingly asked him," Please excuse me. I think I have seen you somewhere." The man smiled and prostrated to him while saying," Yes, on the Belgaum station". Founder saw he was the same man and before he completely prostrated, lifted him up and embraced him most fervently. Said that man with a smile," Bhaktaraj, Now at least you will talk with me heart to heart. i am no longer that fanatic orthodox Brahmin you thought me to be ". The Founder attaches small value to the ceremonial part. He thought of giving the devotee an additional experience and pleasure. He began to sing the very Shodashakshari Mantra in Khamacha tune. The gentleman got the proof. Both enjoyed spiritual ecstasy.

The point here to be emphasised, is that there is an inviolable connection between the completion of a certain numbers of japams (mantra repetitions), if done with devotion and single-mindedly, and some happening which immediately assures you about the efficiency of the Mantra repetition.If there is no result, take it, there is something wrong with you; continue till you have convincing proof.

When you reach this stage, you have a current account in an international Bank. You can move in any part of the world, with only a cheque book, taking care to see that you do not overdraw and you go on depositing.

Many think they have achieved the goal, on getting a good practice of Mantra repetitions. as a matter of fact this is only securing an equipage, for further journey. The aspirant has simply secured the Mother's Armour and Guru's Shield. The fight he has yet to be launched in. He has to fight a hard fight on the one hand and keep himself fully invigorated with Deity's devotion and Guru's service, on the other.