CHAPTER TWENTY
HOW TO FIND A PERFECT MASTER AND KNOW HIM
TO find a perfect Master is not so easy as it may seem. While living on the plane of the senses all the time, we have not the eyes with which to recognize the human pole from which the power of God works in the world. Yet where there is a will, there is a way. All that is required of an aspirant is the sincerity of purpose, intense longing and a burning passion for the Lord above everything else. Where there is fire, oxygen of itself comes to its aid. The principle of demand and supply works equally alike in all the spheres of life from the physical to the spiritual. There is always food for the hungry and water for the thirsty.
Ask and it shall be given unto you; seek and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
MATTHEW 7:7
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one,
and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
MATTHEW 6:24
For in the Bible we have:
I the LORD thy God am a jealous God...
And in the same way Godman, like God, demands from his lovers an exclusive and unstinted love unto himself and unless one is prepared to sacrifice his all-body, mind, possessions - the way unto Him is not opened; nor can we come near to the God man who makes manifest the way.
When the chela is ready, the Guru appears is the Law of God. How can a blindfolded person reach the ringmaster's cell by himself?
No
man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.
JOHN 6:44
Those whom God wills are of themselves
drawn to the Godman, or the Godman himself finds them out, no matter where
they may be.
Similarly, to know the Godman in his
fullness is not given to man. We can have only such glimpses of his greatness
as he may choose to grant. He alone is the judge of the time and measure
of each advance and reveals to us gradually as much of his spiritual wealth
as he wishes, and this he does by degrees as he qualifies us to grasp and
understand and to hold it safely in trust. As one proceeds along in his
company on the inner spiritual path, one gets to know him more and more
as he sees his power working in all the inner planes from end to end until
in the purely spiritual region (Muqam-i-Haq or Sach Khand), he appears
in his Primal Manifestation (Ek-Ankar). On the physical plane, he
is Word made flesh and dwells among us according to the laws of the earth-plane,
and like any other worldly teacher, he teaches us; not, of course, of this
world, but of a world totally different from this, a world that is self-luminous
and is studded with stars, moons and suns in countless numbers. While apparently
sharing with us our joys and sorrows of the world, he yet remains far above
the pairs of opposites, endlessly imparts to us his spiritual instructions,
both without and within, encouraging us at every step by his words of wisdom
and in countless diverse ways inspires in us the Love of God and exhorts
us to glorify Him.
Though ever kind the Master is, yet none can claim his grace;
his grace flows alike to all, yet each gets his fill as he ordains.
Satguru is Sat Personified and knows one and all;
himself in all, yet he remains above the praise and malice of all.