On Forgiveness

An Explanation by Maharaj Charan Singh

Unless we learn to forgive others, we cannot expect the Lord to forgive us. We have to forgive others when they have done something against us. The Lord will forgive us if we learn to forgive others for what they have done against us, and we can only get forgiveness from the Lord by meditation.

What is forgiveness? There is a block of karmas between the soul and the Father. That is why we are separated from the Father. That layer of karma doesn’t let the soul go back to the Father. Forgiveness means to forgive us for all those karmas, all those sins which you have collected in the past birth. Whatever seed we have sown, before it comes up, we can uproot it. But once it becomes a plant, we can’t uproot it. Then we have to taste its fruit.

If you hurt another person, if he is still alive he can forgive you and you can forgive him and that karmic relationship is finished. You’ve uprooted the seed. But if the other person leaves the world, you have no opportunity to ask for his forgiveness – then that karma goes to your debit. You have to account for that karma. You will have to come to this world to account for it – you can account for it by meditation, or you can ask the Father to forgive you for that karma. But the Lord will forgive us only if we also forgive others.

Real forgiveness can only come from the Father by meditation. Clearing our karmic account is forgiveness. Eliminating the karmas which stand between us and the Father is all his forgiveness. When he wants to forgive us, he puts us on the path. He brings us into the company of the mystics. He gives us that environment where we can meditate. This is how he forgives us.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}