The Master Answers

A selection of questions and answers with Maharaj Charan Singh

Q: We are told that all things in our life are an illusion or a dream. Is that right?
A: What it means is that what we see has no reality – reality in the sense that nothing will exist, nothing will remain, everything is perishable, and it is not everlasting. Where is Christ now? Where is Nanak now? Where is Moses now? They were all reality when they were in the flesh, but where are they now? Flesh is no more, so flesh is not reality. That spirit in them was real, not the flesh that is made of five elements, that merges back into the five elements and then you cease to exist. Where are those old civilizations now? New civilizations are coming up; old ones are vanishing. What is real here? Everything is perishable, nothing is everlasting. In that sense, it is illusion. Only he is real, whom we do not see, whom we do not know. What we see, what we are supposed to know, what we think we know has no reality at all.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I}

Q: Maharaj Ji, could you tell us the value of seva at home, at our own satsang centres?
A: The greatest reward in seva is the contentment and happiness that you feel within, that you get an opportunity to serve someone. That is the greatest happiness one can ever get, to make someone happy. It doesn’t make you so happy if anybody makes you happy, but it definitely makes you very happy when you are in a position to make someone else happy, and that is the real seva. Seva for any institution, seva for any individual, seva for the masses – in other words, a charitable attitude of helping other people – that is seva. We do seva with our body, we do seva with our mind, we do seva with our money. The base of seva is love and devotion for the Father. Seva is not meant to make one a leader in the community, in the group, or to wield any authority – that is not seva. Seva should create humility in us, should eliminate ego from within us. The more you feel at the level of the earth, the more your mind will go to meditation, to the Father. So seva always has an advantage. That is why you find this missionary spirit in Christianity. That’s the greatest boon Christ taught his disciples – serve one another, help one another, help the needy, serve the needy. That’s the real seva.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}

Q: Even when sitting and meditating without concentrating – the mind may be wandering – does even that have its own value?
A: That has its own value. If we are always frightened that we will never be able to walk, then we will never be able to walk. Even if out of two hours you get only ten minutes of real concentration to your credit, it’s worth having. The next day you may be able to get fifteen minutes of concentration; the third day you may be able to add another ten minutes. Slowly and slowly you will be able to increase your time. If during the first day you sit for two hours and you say, “I don’t concentrate at all,” and from then on you don’t sit in meditation, that is no good. We must give ourproper time to simran and meditation every day.
_{Die to Live}