The Master Answers

Question and Answer Session with Maharaj Charan Singh

Q: Maharaj Ji.
M: Yes.

Q: Once again, I have no problems, I’m happy, and no questions. In the United States, on December 12th, we celebrate the birthday of our saint, Maharaj Charan Singh and I should like to cordially invite you to your own birthday party. And if Maharaj Ji has previous commitments, we’ll settle for his Radiant Form. So, you please, you come, you are the head of our family, you know, you’re the honored guest.
M: Well, brother, I have never celebrated my birthday, I can assure you. I always try not to be at one place on my birthday, I generally move on and travel on.

Q: I know.
M: So that nobody, I am not at one place at all. And nobody makes a fuss about it.

Q: Especially at that time our thoughts are with you so, please, you know that our thoughts are with you.
M: You see, I can’t understand the celebration, the birthday of an old man who has completed 72. He looks ahead, not backwards. Birthday is for children. You see, I know you are a very advanced nation, how this birthday started, now it has become, you see, now it is commercialized, more or less – cards and so many things, you see, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day. I mean these all are commercializing things – Christ’s birthday and doomsday and God knows how many days are there.

See, parents are always happy when they find their child has started crawling, then they are very happy when they find their child has started standing, child has started stammering, child has started walking, so all those events are associated with the development of the child. So, they celebrate those events, all those years in which the child develops. After six, seven years, when the child has grown and started going to school it is meaningless to celebrate the birth. Still, you can justify it till he stands on his own legs, gets married and settled in his own life and even forgets the parents.

And at my age, when you see, when there is little that’s left to go to the grave and more in the past, what is there to celebrate? Just reminding a person – “Very little is left and if you have forgotten it, please, we have come to remind you.” And don’t worry, I always constantly remind myself. So, I won’t give you opportunity to remind me at all. I don’t need that opportunity.

Q: But, Maharaj Ji, you always, in my eyes, you look so young and youthful, I see no old man. I see a young man, I see …
M: But I have, you see, started standing and running and talking, don’t worry. Standing on my own legs and looking after my own self, so I don’t need any celebration for that at all. But I won’t like to be reminded of my end. I’m quite conscious of it always, don’t worry. Rather I’m looking forward to it.

Q: Let me not be accused of not inviting your grace, you are most cordially invited, most cordially.
M: When my family sometimes try to make a fuss of it, I try to always explain to them and they understand, they don’t make a fuss anymore. In India, people never used to celebrate birthdays, but now they have started copying the West. So, you people also have corrupted our society, rather have commercialized it.

I start getting greeting cards from September till April, can you imagine? Thousands and thousands of dollars are being just wasted. First comes Diwali, in India, it is celebrated, and everybody is fond of sending me the card. I assure you I have never opened them. Professor opens them or not, I don’t know, but I never open any greeting card of anybody. If I have to start that, every day 400 or 500 cards are there in my mail, I don’t know what I’m going to do with them.

And then you see, it starts coming. Guru Nanak’s birthday, then it starts coming my birthday, then Christ’s birthday, you see, then some Valentine’s Day, I don’t know what is that. Then Easter day then comes some Dussehra – I don’t know an Indian festival. And such beautiful cards, you see, sometimes children open them, they play with them, but I say, why waste this money?

I have so many times, I have addressed in the meetings also, I say, “Please, don’t waste your money, don’t waste your energy and time on these things, they are meaningless. We are grown up now, you see, we’re not children, that we have to remind ourselves.”

You see, these celebrations are all right for you people where your daughter is somewhere in Australia and boy is in New Zealand and the third daughter is in Spain, so mother wants to remind the children that I’m still living. Our families are just together, we don’t have to tell each other that you are living or you are dead. You people just meet with these greeting cards, but we have other ways and means to know each other, and very often we meet.

We are all knitted families, joined families, so we don’t waste, you see, we shouldn’t waste money on these things, but still we have also started doing the same thing, like you people.

Q: We do one thing in America, and I think Maharaj Ji will enjoy this. We have padlocks, you know, combination padlocks for locking doors, and we can set the combination to whatever combination we want, and there are four rollers, from one to ten, so everybody sets their padlock automatically without thinking – what’s a good birthday – Maharaj Ji’s birthday – so we set it on 12-12, 1-2-1-2. And I think in thousands of satsangis, I know several hundred, they all set their padlock for Master’s birthday.
M: You will be surprised to know that when I got admission in the school and the gentleman who went with me to the school, to admit me in the school, didn’t know my birthday. The headmaster of the school asked him when I was born. He says, “I don’t know, you can write today.” That very day was written as my birthday, in the school register, when I was admitted in the school.

You can imagine how much importance our family gives to these birthdays. So, my official birthday is that day; my real birthday is very different. On my passport you will find my birthday is somewhere in August. I have to carry that because all my degrees, educational degrees, all mention that very day, of my birthday.

When I passed matric, first time the university gives us certificate of our qualifications that we have passed the matric and certificate. And I was probably the first in the family to pass that school certificate. I took the certificate to the Great Master. He read it. He said, “Your name is wrong, your birthday is wrong.” I was surprised. Because I myself didn’t know. He said, “Your name is not Charan Singh, your name is Harcharan Singh. And your birthday is not in August, your birthday is in December.”

Then he called Mr. Shaadi, who was his most devoted disciple who went to … went with me to the school to register me there. He said, “I… we all call him Chano Chano, so I wrote him Charan Singh.” And, he said, “I didn’t know the birthday so that very day I told him, write.”

So this is the importance given to the name and given to the birthday which you want to celebrate. Then I asked Maharaj Ji, “Should I change all that?” Because it’s a very long process, you see, to change your name in the university, and change your name, birthday in the university once it is registered there.

Then Sardar Bhagat Singh was called. He was our family lawyer and family head and family advisor, you see. Everything Maharaj Ji used to weigh after consulting him. He said, “Maharaj Ji, let it remain now because it’s a very, very long and lengthy process.” So, Maharaj Ji said, “All right, now live with it.” And I am living with that. So, I don’t know which birthday to celebrate now. My education birthday or my real birthday, I don’t know. So, I’m just … my purpose of telling it, how much importance we give to these birthdays.

Q: I just wanted that as an excuse to invite you, Maharaj Ji.
M: But I won’t be here even on that day.

Q: It makes no difference, well you’re invited, that’s all, you’re invited. Thank you.
M: Thank you very much.