The Master Answers

A selection of questions and answers with Maharaj Charan Singh

Q: Master, when Christ said that if we had faith we could move mountains, what did he mean by that? He didn’t mean physical mountains, did he?
A: Well, brother, with your faith you can move the Creator of the mountains, what to say of mountains. Who created the universe? Who created the mountains? The Lord. By your faith in him, you can move him. You can become him. If you become him, you can move anything.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II}

Q: Master, does the Master sometimes send us situations to test us, or is this just our own karmas coming to us?
A: Why test us – doesn’t he know us, how strong we are? Doesn’t the professor know the quality of his student? Does he need an examination for that? What is there to test? We are all full of weaknesses, we’re all struggling souls. Christ said, somewhere in the New Testament, that I will not condemn you to my Father because we are already condemned. We are already miserable with our weaknesses. What is there to test us about? Guru Nanak says: If you go on scratching the earth, you will never reach the bottom, no matter how much effort you keep putting in. So similarly, he says, if you go on scratching your weaknesses, there would be no end to it. We live only on the Lord’s grace, on his mercy. If we think that we are ready for the examination or that we have become fit for the examination, that is impossible. So what is there to test us about? The saints help us. Sometimes when we feel quite egoistic about ourselves – then situations arise in which we may realize where we stand. But it’s not that the Master is testing us; he has just made us conscious of where we stand. It’s not that he doesn’t know anything about us. We are all struggling souls.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}

Q: How can we know what our attachments are?
A: At the last moment they come to the surface. Many attachments just fade out – they don’t possess you at all, you are not obsessed by them at all. But many attachments linger on, even in the subconscious mind, and you feel you are being possessed by them. You can’t get rid of them – they have made such a strong groove on your mind. Those attachments definitely will pull you back. Many attachments are just on the surface – they come and go. But some make very deep grooves on the mind, and if you are not able to rise above them, they may pull you back. Meditation definitely helps us to rise above them. They become meaningless to us. Those very faces or things we thought we could not live without, we don’t want to see them, we are not even attached to them.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. I}

Q: Is it okay to talk to the master within when we pray? Should we try to stop doing that, or should we start doing simran?
A: Do meditation. Meditation is nothing but a prayer. Meditation is nothing but knocking at the door of the Giver. Meditation is begging the Father for his grace, for his forgiveness for what stands between us and the Father.

You see, meditation alone can never clear all our karmic accounts. The attitude of the mind which we develop by meditation, that helps us a lot. That fills us with devotion and with love and makes us feel the separation from the Father, and we become restless without him. Our whole attitude towards the world is then changed. If you think that by mere meditation we can ever account for all the karmas we have been committing in previous lives, it is impossible. Nobody can do it. What to say of doing it in four lives, even in twenty lives we could not do it – that’s how much dross we have collected. But when the Father sees our attitude, when he sees the devotion and love within us – which we can only develop by meditation, by living the Sant Mat way of life – that invokes his grace to forgive all that stands between us and the Father.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. II}