Nothing but You

A long time ago, as a young and raw initiate of Maharaj Charan Singh, I was blessed with the opportunity of a private interview. During the stay at Dera I had been through some youthful highs and lows, at one point dizzy with happiness and at another deep in self-reproach at various failings.

The interview had been eagerly awaited and now, as Hazur kindly indicated the chair beside him, I took a deep breath and asked my carefully prepared question - a question I was sure he would appreciate:

“How can I be a better person?”

I will always remember Maharaj Ji’s casual response:

“Just be a better person.”

We knew, those of us there in that Dera session - just as anyone who spends time with the Master knows - the feel of his tenderness and interest. So it was not so much the brevity of his reply that perplexed me, but the fact that the choice of topic had clearly fallen flat. I registered at once that it was simply not what interested him, that it did not belong there, was usurping the place of something much more important. Yet I didn’t understand what. A little more was said and presently the time was up. I knew things had not gone as I had wished and went back to my room somewhat subdued.

It is only with hindsight that I see how useless the pursuit of virtue is! How time-wasting, how deceptive it is. The wonderful invitation offered by a true Master is not self-improvement but the opportunity to fall in love with the Master - and that involves forgetting the self, whatever its condition. The American poet Hart Crane said:

Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless -
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Those lines convey something of the still focus of the kind of forgetfulness that is needed. If we can only coast the wind of our thought currents “unwearyingly”, holding our attention always upwards toward the eye centre where our Master can be found, then everything else will fall into place quite automatically. In Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, Maharaj Charan Singh tells a disciple:

If you are in love with the master, you’ll automatically be in love with your brothers and sisters. Love for the master will create love for your other fellow human beings because then you’ll see the master in every disciple.

And again, in The Master Answers:

When love comes in us, all the good qualities of a human being come up, like cream in milk. All that we have to fight for with oneself now in order to be good, to be honest, to behave rightly, to do this or that, will automatically come in us when we feel that devotion within us for the Lord.

Years later, is my mind now “like a bird whose wings are reconciled, outspread and motionless”? No, not yet. But one thing I think I do know. If I’m lucky enough to sit again in the presence of a true master, my own Master’s successor, let me know, let me need to know, nothing but him. Let me forget everything except his beauty and peace - and just enjoy that moment. It’s far too precious to waste in consideration of anything or anyone else.

The Only News

The only news I know
Is bulletins all day
From Immortality;

The only shows I see -
Tomorrow and Today -
Perchance Eternity -

The Only One I meet
Is God - the Only Street -
Existence - This traversed,

If Other News there be - Or Admirabler Show - I’ll tell it You.
_{Emily Dickinson}