Another Life, Another Movie

I’d like to propose an exercise for you to perform – preferably as you’re waking up. Somehow this works best on a Monday morning. As you’re just becoming conscious, think to yourself “Ahh, it’s Monday already. Whatever happened to the weekend?” (This is normal on a Monday morning, right?)

So what did happen to the weekend? Now it’s Monday morning, and whatever happened on the weekend isn’t there anymore. What happened to it? For that matter, what happened to last week and last month and last year? And we can go back decades, looking at all the joys and tragedies of our lives. Where are they now? What happened to them? No matter how high the highs and how low the lows, none of that exists any more. So was it actually real? It seemed real enough when it happened. So, how can a thing be real one moment and unreal the next?

Reality cannot change from moment to moment. That’s how we define reality: it is that which never changes. Even if we come back after a thousand years, reality will still be identical, unchanged and precisely the same as it has been for all time. So what then does this say about the life we are living and the world in which we are living? It’s a little like an old-time movie, the kind made on a celluloid strip. A sequence of still pictures which, when moved past a very bright light, projects onto the screen what looks like a moving image. The now is that bright frame where we are aware of what seems to be real. But the celluloid strip that moves out of the light and into the dark is the past, moving increasingly into the grey murk of distant memory. The future is the sequence of images approaching the light, of which we may get a vague sense just before it happens. It is as if the future comes lurching out of the grey obscurity of time and for a brief moment appears as our reality, in the now, and then it careens out into the dim distance of history, never to return.

Or does it? Imagine if God had a mischievous sense of humour, and out of our sight and awareness, he joined the ends of our celluloid strip together, chuckling to himself and saying, “I wonder if this poor soul will notice that he’s seen this movie before…!”

This might be a bit of grim humour, but actually it might just be a lot closer to the truth than we’d like it to be! How many lifetimes have we incarnated into this world? More than we can count. Do you imagine that there is anything left that we have not done before? Has history not taught us that we tend to make the same mistakes over and over again? The human race has a very poor record in this regard.

So here we are again, in another life, another movie. What kind of story will our life story be? Will it just be another tale of lost opportunities and repeated mistakes, or will we take a moment to step back from it all and try to get our lives in perspective, try and find a place for ourselves in the greater scheme of things? Baba Ji said once that at one time we insisted on our right to choose. We made bad choices and so we ended up where we are now. Once again, he said, we have the opportunity to choose. So what will we do with this opportunity?

Well, when we are struggling to make sense of the whole thing, when life starts to feel unreal and we start to wonder what it’s really all about, where do we go for answers? How do we find substance and reality? We have tried, time and time again, to find some kind of satisfaction, some sense of belonging in this world, only to be plagued by a persistent dissatisfaction, an inner discontent that we simply cannot shake. We have pursued riches, relationships, name and fame, possessions, sensual pleasures and in fact, pretty much everything that we could think of. What has been the result? We always end up feeling emotionally drained and dissatisfied. We find ourselves with a heavy heart, wondering if we will ever be able to satisfy this nameless need within us that simply will not let us go.

We are driven by forces we do not understand, and when we reach the point where we feel we have tried everything that the world has to offer, we start to explore “the road less travelled”. We have started to explore the various ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’ in the hope that we can find some greater meaning in our lives than the one that popular culture has to offer.

And so it is that one day we came into the orbit of spirituality, and those who pursue it in their various ways. We heard of various religions, yogas, penances, austerities, and so on. There seem to be an almost endless number of different ways that people are adopting to try and find their way back to God. After exhausting ourselves in our efforts to do likewise, we finally realized that this too was leading us nowhere.

And then we came into contact with the Master. This was a landmark event in our lives, because what we heard now was a completely different take on “how it is” – and what it’s going to take for us to get out of this world of shadows that we have been living in for so long, and enter the domain of the true reality.

What do the Masters tell us? From ancient times, the Masters have always advised struggling souls that the only way out of this labyrinth of the creation is to raise the attention to the tenth door or eye centre, and pass beyond. There is no other way. The secret of salvation lies within. This is the only route we can follow to find God – to get to know him.

What is the one characteristic or defining quality of God? The mystics of both past and present are unanimous on this subject: it is love. So how do we approach the One who is all love? Well, there is an old principle in nature, namely, that like attracts like. To approach God, we need to develop love.

And how do we develop love? Well, this is a much misunderstood point. The most important thing to know is that, contrary to common opinion, we all have abundant love within us. What do you think is the driving force that brought us to the path in the first place? What do you think is behind that persistent discontent within us, the one that never entirely goes away? This is the soul’s pain of separation from the Father, and it is born out of nothing but pure love for Him. It is there already – we just need to let it out and embrace it! All these long ages we have been running away from it, trying to distract ourselves from it. But this pain of separation is the most powerful sign of hope that we have. Far from running away from it, we need to realize that it is the key to our spiritual future.

So at the end of the day, when we analyze our situation, when we assess what is our true position, what lies within our inner heart, then we come across certain facts. Firstly, we have an unbridled passion to return to our Father. The fires of separation burn brightly within us. Our whole being yearns with an insatiable desire to return to where we truly belong, and to merge in love and bliss with our Beloved. The other is that we have been granted the inestimable grace of initiation by the perfect living Master of the time.

We cannot overstate what an incredible stroke of good fortune this is. By virtue of this fact alone, the way that was closed for untold centuries and millennia, the pathway that was lost for innumerable ages is now open before us. All that remains is for us to travel upon it.

My only wish is that you try to contact the Radiant Form of the Master within you, so that you may become sure by actual experience of the great truth taught by the Master. This is the greatest service that a disciple can render to his Master.
_{Maharaj Jagat Singh, Science of the Soul}