                           COME BACK, MY CHILDREN
                     Sant Bani Ashram, October 17, 1972

KABIR SAYS, I have not seen any man born who is happy. So Masters say, what
is the reason why we are not happy? The source of happiness is within you,
and you have been seeking it outside all through life, in eating, drinking,
enjoying scenes, music, this and that thing. If you had withdrawn from
outside and risen above body consciousness, you would have found the Source
of Light.

So Masters say that the human body is the highest in all creation. We have
to be in the human body to come in contact with that source of all joy, all
happiness, all wisdom, which is within you. Now, you see, we are all
identified with the body through the outgoing faculties. Our attention is
all identified with it so much so that we have forgotten our Selves. They
say, rise within you, tap inside; and this is in one and all.

How long will this body continue? Few days---few years--after all, we have
to leave the body. So this is the golden opportunity in which we must find
out that Source of happiness which is within us. That can only be had if we
rise above body consciousness. This is what the Masters come and teach us:
first, to rise above body consciousness, withdraw your attention from all
outside. Then, withdraw your attention from the body below. Where does it
go? Up; because the seat of the sou! is at the back of the eyes. And at the
time of death when the soul leaves the body, it withdraws first to the back
of the eyes and then transcends. There the Water of Life is flowing, you
see; is trickling.

So they address all men alike: Well, please withdraw your attention from
the body below, go up; that's the way back to Light. That's the way back to
God. This has been the teaching of all Masters.

This outer life has been given to you for a short time. Make the best use
of it. After all, you have to leave the body; when you have to leave the
body, why not leave slowly, now? Leaving the body means, leaving the body
as at the time of death. A dying man's outer attention is withdrawn. If any
man goes to him, he does not recognize him. Then the soul (the attention)
is withdrawn from the body and the body becomes numb, the eyes are
upturned, and it goes. This is what is called Spirituality: O man, learn to
leave this body. After all, you have to leave this body some day. Sooner or
later: may be tomorrow, may be after leaving this room, may be that you go
to sleep and never rise again. Sleep is called the younger sister of death.

And moreover, you see, we are attached either to the body or the outside
possessions--our family, our contacts, our friendships, our outer
enjoyments. When you repeat a certain action daily then that becomes a
habit, and habit turns into nature---you cannot leave it.

So this is something to be done. You will say, we have come here to enjoy,
and this death question comes in every day! But this is the thing you have
to do. If you are ignorant about it, then what will happen? After all, you
have to leave! This attachment grows more and more; why? You should go into
it. Leave all desires. Leave all desires!--the desires that are attached to
outside, to possessions and everything. Lord Buddha says, Be desireless.
The tenth Guru says, Be desireless. Desire is the thing which at- tracts
you outside from day to day. You will go down--headlong down. The source of
all attachment outside is your desires.

There was one Wali Ram, the prime minister of Akbar the Great. It was the
custom in Akbar's court that when the King arrived, all ministers would
stand up and would not move until the King sat down. On this day, Wali Ram
had a coat in which there was a scorpion and the King was coming so he
could not move, out of respect. It stung him one place, then another, then
three or four times more. He kept quiet. When the King sat down, he said,
"Look here, do you know this scorpion has bitten me so many times and I
have not moved, in obedience to the King? If I take it that I am now prime
minister, I have been given so much high position, only by obedience to the
King here,- if I am obedient to my Lord, what more can I become?" He pulled
off his coat, threw it down, and ran away to the wilderness. The King was
very fond of him; he sent a minister to bring him back. With all his
entreaties, Wali Ram said, "No; I have done that service; now I am taking
the service of God." Then the King himself went to him; he told him, "Look,
Wali Ram, you are my prime minister, the most wise; I respect you and love
you; will you come back?" "No; I have taken another service, a higher
service than yours." He said, "Well, I would offer you anything you like."
And Wali Ram said, "Anything? I would like you to go away from this place."
You see?

So what this desire is that binds us to the outer things--we may be prime
minister, may be King, may be anything -- Man wants to have something, and
to get that, he has to work like anything -- maybe right, or wrong. So
Masters say you cannot leave this body and outer things unless you become
desireless. Please leave off desire. Of course, it is these desires for
outside things that are binding you. If you have a desire to know God, to
become His, you will become unconcerned.

Do you know what happens? Breathing is going on day and night; and -- Thy
days are numbered. Masters in the East say, Thy breaths are numbered. It
must be finished. It goes in, goes out; we are just absorbed in our outer
thoughts, we don't care, we are quite ignorant about this. All the time
life is passing away; time and tide wait for no man. After all, it is
something like a pitcher full of water; drop by drop it is oozing out. Then
what will happen? One day the pitcher will be empty; all the water will be
out. Similarly, these numbers of breaths, or drops of water you might say,
they are dropping out, one by one. We think we are getting old; truly
speaking, we are growing young. A man who is to live fifty years, if he has
passed ten years, he has forty years left; when twenty years have passed,
he has only thirty years left; are you growing older or younger? It is
going down!

So first of all, man should have some aim in life. That's the main thing --
what is your aim? And the highest aim for a man is to know God. And the
time is getting shorter. All of you are sitting here; I think you are
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old. If fifty years have passed
away, you have got only a short time left to yourself. Have you achieved
your purpose?-- and that purpose is knowing God only. Acting and posing
won't do. You are deceiving your own Self and deceiving the God within you.
Have you reached God? Have you seen God? Are you true to Him? If so, that's
good. If not... we should hurry up. In the short time that remains, we
should put in more time, so as to be ready before we leave the body;
because we have to leave the body, when the time is finished. So when the
number of breaths is over--then?

These are very common things, simple things; no exaggeration; hard facts.
You are the best judge of yourself: are you true to your own Self? Are you
honest? Have you come in contact with God? These contacts have been given
to you as a favor, I tell you--grace of God. We have not earned them.
Something has been given; grow further; then it will be better. Do you know
the parable that Christ gave? A rich man came and gave to one man five
talents, another man two talents, a third man one talent. After some time
he came up and asked the man who had been given five talents what he had
done with them: he had made ten. That's all right. The one to whom he had
given two, had made four. But the man who had been given one, he said, "Oh,
I have kept it very safe." So what did he do? He took away the one talent
that he had. You follow me, what I say? Set aside all your intellects, you
see: these are hard facts, what is coming before us. This is a
heart-to-heart talk. Don't you see that way, what I am pressing before you?
Every day, every hour, every minute, every second is bringing you closer to
the end. Our time has been frittered away and we have not achieved the
object. The result will be, we will be bound to the outside and we will
come back. And the cause of binding is only your desires. Desires bring us
back. Worldly desires will bring you back; and the desire for God will take
you to Him. Whatever your ruling passion is at the end of your life, you
will be driven there; that's the law.

I am not giving you any bombastic talk, only simple words; what I have come
to know. And I think it appeals to everyone. I am not saying anything which
is not understandable. Don't you think like that? Then what have we done?
We deceive our Selves, that's the pity. Why does not God approach us?
Because we deceive Him. Two seekers after Truth went to a Saint. He simply
tested them to see which one was fit: he gave them each a pigeon and told
them to "kill it where nobody sees you." So one was very active, very
clever; he went around the side of a wall and killed him and came back in a
few minutes. The other poor fellow went from morn till night and could not
find any place to kill him where nobody was seeing him. He came back in the
evening: "Master, there was no place where I could kill the pigeon." "Why?
.... Well, first the pigeon saw me; then I was seeing." He was fit.

These are simple things; the only thing required is to live up to them,
that's all. If you have an M.A. or a Ph.D., or if you are a King or an
Emperor, no value; you will have to leave the body and you will have to go
where you are attached. Masters do come from time to time to take you out
of the body first. The first lesson, the ABC: the more you are attached
outside, you cannot go up. The diary is meant only for that purpose. Do you
see now? How you develop; how much time you put in; and --- where you are
attached, leave them one by one. We pass the time in ignorance. All the
time God is calling you from within; the Sound Principle, the Music of the
Spheres is coming within you from above. All Masters say so; Tulsi Sahib
says, Sound is coming from the heavens, calling me back. Shamas Tabrez
says, Out of this temple of the body I am hearing a Sound calling me, Come
up. Bell is ringing wildly: Come back, my children, come back. You see? And
we do not listen. This is how Masters see, and this is within you. Light is
given to show you which way to go, and Sound directs you where to go. These
are the two ways back to God; is it not?

So Masters always say, what is all this about, why did it happen? Because
of desire. We are oblivious of our own Self too, we have forgotten
ourselves. This forgetfulness starts from where? From the human body. We
are having the body, we are identified with the body; this is due to that.
When we are working from the level of the body and the body is changing and
the world is changing, we are under a grand delusion. And desires keep us
always given up to the outer world. When you leave the body, then? Where
are the desires of the outer world? Desire for God is better than the
desires for the world.

These are very simple lessons given by the Masters, very simple; even a
child can understand, what to speak of the learned people. But learned
people usually forget all these things in intellectual wrestling. That is
why Masters have great love for you--who? Not the Master; the God in
him--because you are His children. He sends men now and then to bring you
back home.

So for that, what do we have to do? The point is, who can help you in that?
Some Master; call him by any name you like. Someone who is competent; who
rises above body consciousness at his own will and pleasure and traverses
into the Beyond. He appears to be working in the world, but he is
unattached. The boat is in the water, but the water is not in the boat.
What does he do? He always says, "Look here, God is calling you back, He is
within you, you are receiving that thing but you are ignorant, you are
attached outside. You are going under a delusion and never cared for it."
So once you have come across a Master like that, God has sent him for that
very purpose -- because you are children of God, so he has love for you. He
takes pity on us, and looks after our welfare; once we come to the Feet of
the Master, he has to look after us. What does he do? He winds up all
previous actions, he winds up--the word "winding up" I am using--winds up
to pay off all debts, and takes you back home--if simply we keep his
commandments; that's the point. Generally we don't keep his commandments,
we simply modify something which is to our own interests or purposes. We
deceive our own Self, we deceive the God in us, the Master in us. So always
I submit, be true to your own Selves. You deceive the God in you and your
own Self.

After all, you have to leave these outer things, all attachments, all
enjoyments, all possessions. If you now begin to leave off slowly - how?
When you are given a contact with the Naam Power within you, keep in
contact with that, and live up to the commandments of the Master. Slowly
these things will leave you. After all, here we have no rest; outer things
have no bliss, no joy in them. Only when our attention is absorbed in the
outer things, then we feel joy for as long as it remains absorbed. When
that is taken away, or we are withdrawn from that, we feel unhappy. If we
want permanent peace, joy, then we should come in contact with that Power
which is unchanging, which is eternal. God never dies. Outer things leave
you. Masters come to give you a contact with the God-into-Expression Power.
So this is what he says: Slowly leave off.

What does diary mean? Whatever our attachments, points of attachment, may
be due to, leave them off one by one, weed out, and put in time to your
meditation. Meditation means withdrawing our attention from all outside and
coming in contact with that Power which is within you. So Masters say that
in this life you will have permanent peace, permanent joy; you will enjoy
forever, never be unhappy. They request you people, for your good, to come
in contact with that God-into-Expression Power which is all joy, all
happiness, all wisdom, all eternal; then you will have that in your life.
All your miseries are removed, all your outside troubles or disappointments
will end.

Masters only want to give you permanent peace and joy; they want nothing
more. Remain where you are; you have got some labels on your bodies, that
makes no difference. Whatever religion, whatever Master we follow, wants
this to be done. We simply try to go by the rules and regulations fixed up
by us but we should not lose the spirit of them.

So this meditation, you will find how much of a necessity it is! How much
of a necessity is the diary! This applies to one and all, including myself
and everybody. The law does not spare anybody; ignorance of the law is no
excuse. If you say you don't know! No; you have to go; every moment is
passing away; they don't care for you! Time and tide wait for no man. Just
consider calmly. This is a time afforded to you by God to come to your own
Self and see what is happening with you. In the towns you have never dreamt
of these things, is it not? This short time while you are here -- it is
worth more than emeralds and gold and rubies. Forget all your environments
as long as you are here and see to the things in their right perspective,
what they are, what you are doing. Are you going headlong down into the
world to come again and again? Or are you trying to go back? You will get
help. Masters do come up to help you. They give you on the very first day a
demonstration -- how to rise above body consciousness -- and they also take
care of all your deeds -- karmas of the past -- they wind them up. It is a
very onerous duty, you see. Soul is bewildered to think of that duty.

So it is a great blessing to come to the feet of the Master. Who gives it?
God. To whom? Those who are yearning for Him. The more hungry is man, the
quicker he gets. The desire for God will bring you closer to God. If you
take one step, He will take one hundred steps to receive you. And if you
have desire for the world -- diametrically opposite -- you will go down,
that's all.

Mind that, so long as we do not lecture to our own self, no outer lecture
will help us. These things you do know, I am not telling you anything new.
You see, these are the hard facts. Unless you lecture to your own self . .
. you have heard this talk now. Now you have to see to your own self, what
you are doing. You have to understand. Nobody can help you unless you help
yourself.

So consider calmly what I have placed before you. If the ruling passion for
God will remain, all others will subside, and you are sure to go back to
God after leaving the body, and now you will be with Him. God says in the
Koran, Those who remember me, I remember them.

What I have submitted to you, take it home, to your heart, consider over it
calmly. Nobody can help you unless you help yourself. You become the
lecturer to your own self. And the result will be you will have peace, joy,
permanent.

These are heart-to-heart talks, you see, heart to heart -- not lecturing --
no new things. These are hard facts; we have simply been absorbed in other
ways, you see. We have looked to the world so fondly, and not to our own
Self. Unless we look to our own Self, how can we know what our fate is? how
we are going? We are always looking to others outside: "How do the people
think of me?"--that is also looking outside.

So from this moment onward, have the sweet remembrance of God; don't
forget. Have it for three days--two days. Ramakrishna says, If a man has
the sweet remembrance of God continuously for three days, he will see God.
That will become the ruling passion. Continuously for three days, he said;
continuously.

... I don't think you want to leave now. [Laughter] So have the sweet
remembrance of God; that's all right.

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