Continuing from where I left off in my last article, my roller coaster ride continued. Here I had embarked on the Spiritual journey but little did I know what it truly means to travel on the path of the Spiritual. My Master continued to push my limits to see whether or not I would still continue to want to learn from Him, surrendering my Mind, Body and Ego at his feet. Every step I took, there was something awaiting to test my Faith.
This brings to mind one incident – my Master was going to give his first Satsang in Singapore on the Bhagvad Gita. He had extended the invite to my Mom and my friend’s Mom. It was a Saturday in December, 2009 and the Satsang was to begin at 3pm. My friend had decided that she would take us to Science Centre. The plan was that we would be done by noon and would then have enough time to reach the place where the Satsang was to be held before the appointed time.
We decided to take a taxi to ensure our timely arrival and interestingly the taxi we took was a Mercedes Benz. I was super excited that I would be able to reach before time for the Satsang. We must have barely touched the highway when suddenly a truck hit our taxi with great impact from behind! It is with God’s grace nothing happened to any of us except for our heads banging against the roof which was luckily cushioned. It was only a miracle that despite the speeding truck hitting the car with such force, there was not even a scratch on any of us. It just proves that it is only my Krsna’s Grace that saved us that day.
However, this was merely the beginning of the fun. The taxi was now stalled in the middle of the road until the Police arrived. We had to wait while the Policemen sorted all things out. This caused us quite a delay in getting another cab and to be on time now became practically impossible! I was frantically messaging my Master and telling him what had happened. He told me not to panic and rush for the Satsang but to come at the time when I can make it. The next test was ready for me – would I still go for the Satsang as committed or just stay back, given what had befallen us I was finally able to reach for the Satsang but was an hour late. ? Even though I had crossed over this obstacle he still continued to test me!
Now for the next test – He put me into an even more challenging situation, given the kind of personality I have. My Master’s student has a sister and it so happened that during His visit to her place He happened to explain what is to have Unconditional Love and Devotion for the Lord. While He was doing this He used my example to show how much I love Him and crave to be with Him. He showed to her the text messages which I had written to my Master expressing my Love for Him. Now everything that I had written to my Master was Spiritual but when someone reads it from a material perspective, it is definitely going to appear quite scandalizing. Her mind began to wander – how could a young, unmarried woman write such messages to my Master who from the material world’s perspective has a family?
All material people look at the body and its attributes. My Master is not the body. He does not have any material worldly relationships such a wife, children, parents, relatives, etc. He is an ‘Avaduta’. The Master of this entire Universe. Everyone in this Universe is His family. He is the Only One in this Universe who has equal Love for everyone. His devotees and disciples are his dearest and they become his first family. This shows only He can love everyone selflessly, having no bias in this Universe. Everyone gets their own individual experience based on what they offer to Him. What you give is what you will get back, a thousand times and more! For example, if you give love, you will get back love, a thousand-fold. If you give hatred or feel anger, then that is what will come back to you, a thousand-fold. Hence goes the saying ‘As is your faith so are your experiences’.
Just this morning my Master was doing a chapter from the Shrimad Bhagavatam where He explained what it is to have Unconditional Love and Devotion to Krsna and how one needs to surrender the ego unto the Guru’s feet. As a devotee you cannot have conditional love towards Him. The Spiritual relationship does not have a Return on Investment (ROI) – it is Unconditional. Everything in the material world is contractual and is based on likes, dislikes, gives and gets. But in the Spiritual, this Love for the Divine is Unconditional. You just need to be lost in Love for the Lord alone and cannot look into his peripherals.
You must have exclusive Devotion and focus on your relationship with Him, and as the saying goes, do not look into other people’s plates. My Master gave me an example a few days back. He said a material-worldly mother is so attached to her child that she does everything for him/her, sacrificing her own needs. The child is the apple of her eye. But if she were to suddenly be told that the child she was caring for had been switched by error at the hospital and is not the child she had given birth to then what happens? Will she still feel Motherly love towards the child she currently holds? Will she not question her motherhood for the child who she was cuddling, feeding as her own anymore?
That is the difference between Spiritual and Worldly Love. The most Divine relationship is that which is shared by the Master and the Student. It is the Master alone who is the Universal Mother, the one who selflessly loves every child as his own. He shows no differentiation between those around him, nor a bias towards anybody. He appears as an ordinary human being to everyone around him but in reality he is the least ordinary person, without a bias, with all the Love in the Universe. It is how much you yearn and crave from within for the Divine will this Love and Devotion you will see the same reciprocation of something so much beyond that! A word of caution –always remember that if it seems that you are receiving no reciprocation, that you cannot say, “I will not love him since he never showed me love back”. You must Love, that is your test. This is the most important of the teachings – what it is to Love and how to develop this unconditional Love and Devotion to Krsna while surrendering your mind and ego at the feet of the Guru. You must be willing to become clay in the hands of the potter, His hands. It is only once you surrender to Him that He will be able to make you one of the best Sculptures in this Universe.
To complete the story of my Master’s student’s sister – like every normal human being she also construed all wrong meanings possible from my messages to my Master and went ahead and defamed Him amongst her family and friends. But no matter what she did to my Master, He never showed any sign of discomfort nor did He provide any justifications. All He did was be calm and smile all-knowingly at everything that was going around Him. Of course, my test lay in His telling me of this incident – He was testing how I would react – whether I am able to accept such things and still not bother to react or fight. For the first time, I defied my natural personality and did none of this. All I did was to tell Him that it truly does not matter to me what anybody says about who I am to my Master. I will continue to Love Him the most and learn from Him, how to become who I truly am. I passed His test! Since then, by the Grace of my Master, I have been fortunate to continue to pass these beautiful and most interesting challenges which my Master keeps laying in my path to get to Him.
With the grace of my Master I have been able to pen this most wonderful experience in a string of words. Thank you for reading and do watch out for my next write-up about the Test of my Quest for Spiritual Part III.
