Rising in love with the Master

(Swamiji laughs)

When you start falling in love with the Master, the trouble starts! Love makes you vulnerable. When love happens, your conditioning that has been covering you all the while suddenly starts dropping. When this happens, fear starts rising in you. The fear rises because with the disappearing conditioning, the ego suddenly starts losing its grip over you. Your so called societal personality, and everything else that you have known to be you starts to change. So naturally, you feel fear. And so you try to move away.

But even if you try to move away, you will find it impossible, because the pull towards the Master is so intense, the energy binding you is so intense that even if you try to move away, you will find an inexplicable pull to come back. It is because, this pull is neither from your mind nor from your heart. It is from your being! When the being emotes, your intellect becomes powerless! That is the beauty.

One more thing: I am not here to teach you anything. I am here to give you understanding. There is a big difference between a teacher and a Master. A teacher will give you knowledge and information. A Master will do the same thing, but at a deeper level. He will give you all that all your teachers give you and something more! He will simply transform you. To listen to a teacher does not require much; you can simply hear, reproduce, and move on. But with the Master, surrender is needed! The Master will not simply say something and let you go. He will start doing things on you. His is not a class; it is a surgery -

- WAKE UP! -

of your ego! Of your deep ignorance, of your societal conditioning. There will be many ups and downs when you are with the Master, but you simply have to go through it because his work is at the being level. The deeper your conditioning, the more is his work. He will churn you to extricate all the deep illusions of the mind and finally show you your own reality, which is nothing but the reality of the universe!

You should understand one thing very clearly: the Master is here only to transform you. But during transformation, many things happen; there may be pain, there may be happiness, and there may be fear and insecurity. Just the deep trust in the Master is enough to overcome all of these.

A devotee says that she sometimes finds herself to be avoiding swamiji.

Understand: the people who avoid me are the people who will be transformed by me the most! They will try to escape; they will try to create all possible nonsensical excuses to be away. They try to create all this because they have already started sensing that I am taking them to the unknown, to the ultimate truth that they actually seek but are afraid of because it is not familiar to them.

You can try to escape, but I will find you! Actually if you see, the more you try to avoid me, the more you will feel pulled. The more you try to escape, the more you will end up coming back to me. This is why I said that those who escape will be the ones who will be transformed. When I say I will be with you, I mean it! Wherever you go, my presence will surround you!

See, it is easy to escape from me physically, but it is not easy to escape from the pull towards me. The pull comes from within you. Wherever you go, it will be in you. And with passing time, you will become intensely aware of it. Because you go on escaping from the pull, your mind will become more focused on the pull!

Be clear: if you try to avoid something, you are bound to fall back into it. If you try to avoid me and do not want to be around me, understand, you will only be around me! Nothing can be done! Of course, it is for your own good.

WAKE UP! -

Man as of now, is like gold which is yet to be purified by fire. The Master is the fire. He will purify you and once he does, he puts you directly into the ultimate experience. To experience the ultimate, you need to be purified. Your feeling of a deep void, of incompleteness, of an unfathomable gap between you and 'you' is nothing but the need to be purified, the deep yearning to be free from all the conditioning, and realize the great truth. Unless you become one with the truth, you will not feel centered in yourself. And this is what causes the mysterious restlessness in your being whatever you may achieve in the outer world.

It is like gold that has been buried in mud. Because it has been buried in mud, it forgets that it is gold! It thinks that it is mud. Gold can never be mud. It can only be under the delusion that it is mud.

This is exactly what happens within you as well. You have been covered by social conditioning for so long that you forget yourself; you forget your real nature. But be clear, no matter how long you are covered, your essence will always be intact; it will not go away. In the same way that gold remains gold in the mud, your essence, your being, still remains the same.

All of you have your own opinions and knowledge which you have acquired from society. But to set foot on the path to find yourself, you must first drop all these things because they are the things that bind your mind. Actually, to tell you honestly, to put you onto the path, I cannot give you anything, because all that you need is already in you! The gold just has to be dug out that's all. Nothing can be added to the gold itself. It just needs to be dug out. Meditation is your shovel to dig yourself out. Just go deep and dig, and you will find what you are looking for.

So understand: the Master's work is not to give you something. Instead, it is simply to rob you of everything that you have. When a disciple comes to the Master, he thinks that he will get something from the Master. Be very clear: I will take everything that you think you have and leave you to find yourself! This is the ultimate thing that the Master gives you. All that you need is already there; it has only been hidden by all sorts of societal ideas which you have accumulated.

The problem is, over time, you start to feel comfortable with the societal ideas. When the Master starts taking it away from you, it initially hurts. You want to escape from him! But you simply cannot because the being has recognized that he is a Master! There starts the so-called struggle! You start to realize that while you have a certain idea, he has quite another; then you start getting irritated.

You have all sorts of expectations about how an enlightened Master is going to be; how he should fulfill all your dreams. But when you come to me, it is a different experience. Instead of fulfilling your so-called dreams, you find that I only frustrate them! I only frustrate your expectations. I will frustrate your mind until you are finally thrown out of it!

- WAKE UP! -

A newcomer says that he wants swamiji to awaken him. 'I feel like I am in a deep sleep', he says. 'Please awaken me!'

Actually, we are living in a kind of sleep, and we need to be awakened. And this is the Master's work; to hit the disciple so hard on the head that he simply has to wake up! All these meditations that I give you are nothing but my different sticks that slam you on your head to awaken you!

Initially, a little effort is needed to start waking up. Once you start waking up, you have had a glimpse! Then you slowly start remembering how everything might have been before you went to sleep. If you completely wake up even for a moment, then suddenly, all will be remembered!

A disciple can only be with the Master if his love is deep. Because the Master will go on chiseling, and it hurts, unless your love is deep, unless your trust is total, you will not be able to handle it. When the love for the Master is so deep, you will choose love over life itself! The Master's work is a surgery. You have to trust the surgeon and relax your mind before he starts his work. When you allow him, he will make you reborn with your own reality.

The surgeon is always ready. The operation room is always open. All that you need to do is enter!