The Ways Of The Masters

Masters are absolutely impersonal and universal in their consciousness, but for spiritual purposes– they can limit the scope of their work and also allow their manifested personality to become center of the aspirations of their disciples. They use ‘personal relationships’ as well defined channels to pass on their help to those aspirants who become connected with them.
  The Masters are always on the lookout for those who need and deserve their help, and the faintest gleams of ‘spiritual yearnings’ are not overlooked by them. They foster and promote the advancement of all aspirants in multifarious ways that are unfailingly effective, although they might not necessarily be completely intelligible to others.

The help of a Perfect Master consists in making the ‘spiritual journey’ of the aspirant sure and safe, as well as, in shortening the time he might otherwise take to arrive at the goal. The aspirant may go a long way through independent search, but he is unable to cross the ‘sixth plane’ without the help of a Master.
  Even on the intermediate planes of involution of consciousness, the help of a Master is extremely valuable because He prevents the aspirant from getting stuck on the way and protects him from the ‘pitfalls’ and ‘dangers’ with which the spiritual path is beset.
  Kabir, the Perfect Master, has compared the three stages of the path to the three phases of fire. Just as first there is ‘only smoke and no fire,’ then there is ‘fire enveloped in smoke’ and lastly there is ‘only fire without smoke,’ so–

• the beginnings of the path are enveloped in thick ignorance,
• midway there is confused perception of the goal, and
• finally there is realization of Truth without the slightest alloy of illusion.

Since the path lies through illusions of many kinds, the aspirant is never safe without the guidance of a Master, who knows all the stages of the path and can take him through them.

Before the opening of the inner eye, the mind conceives of the goal as the infinite; and this conception is based upon some symbolic image of infinity, such as the sky or the ocean, which suggests the idea of vastness. Although such a concept of the infinite is clear and well defined, it has to be superseded by direct perception of the Infinite.

The aspirant sees the Self directly when his inner eye of the spirit is opened. When this happens, the mind is dazed by what it sees and is no longer as clear as it was before the opening of this inner eye. Being dazed by the perception of the Self, the mind loses its capacity to think clearly and mistakes the seeing of the self with its being actually realized.

Hence comes the illusion of being at the end of the path when one is still traversing it. In Sufi terms, this particular part of the path is known as muqam-e-afsan, or the ‘abode of delusion.’ It is in such difficult phases of the path that the Master can, through His skillful intervention, give a push to the aspirant, so that he keeps on going instead of getting caught up on the way.

In fact, there is danger of the aspirant being detained on each one of the inner planes, because each in its own way is very alluring and serves as a trap for the aspirant. The Master either takes the aspirant past these planes or through them without unnecessary delay. However, the aspirant has to walk his own way.
  The contribution of the Master consists in confirming and consolidating the previously acquired ‘intuitions’ and ‘perceptions’ of the aspirant, and in precipitating his consciousness into the next stage– which, though unavoidable, is by its nature impossible for the aspirant to anticipate.

The Masters uses Maya to take the disciple out of Maya; and as he is himself beyond good and evil, he may often require things that are unacceptable and even shocking to the ordinary good sense of his disciples. The best thing for the disciple to do is to follow the instructions of the Master, with implicit faith without bringing them to the bar of his limited capacity of judgement. The following famous instances illustrate this point.

• There is the Koranic story of Abraham being called upon to sacrifice his beloved son Ishmael to the Lord. When Abraham, firm in his resolve and faith, was about to slaughter Ishmael, God intervened and accepted the sacrifice of a ram as ransom for the son.
• When Shams-e-Tabriz ordered Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, his disciple, to fetch wine for him, he unflinchingly complied in order to please and win the grace of his Master.
    At the time, the Maulana commanded a large following of Muslim divines because of his reputation as a great theologian in the Islamic world– and wine is religiously prohibited (haram) to the Muslims. Hence, it was a crucial test for the Maulana to carry a jar of wine on his shoulders through the streets, but he did it.
• Ghausali Shah was asked by one of his Masters, who lived in a hut by the side of the river Ganges, to fill a vessel with water for drinking– but only from midstream. It was about midnight, and the river Ganges was in heavy flood because of the monsoon. The disciple hesitated at first but finally gathered courage to attempt the impossible, believing in the omniscience of the Master.
    No sooner had he stepped into the angry waters of the Ganges than he witnessed a wonderful transformation of the scene. Instead of surging waves and floods, the river had turned into a thin stream; and the vessel to be filled almost touched the riverbed. The disciple nearly crossed the river to the opposite bank in search of midstream. While thus occupied, the Master appeared on the scene and asked him the reason for his delay. When Ghausali Shah explained that the mid-current could not be located, the Master allowed him to fill the vessel by handfuls and Himself helped in the process. The Master then left the disciple on some pretext, asking him to follow immediately after filling the vessel.
    When Ghausali Shah returned to the hut with the vessel full of water, he was bewildered to learn from other disciples that the Master had never left the hut for a minute during his absence, but was talking to them all the while about him.

These stories show how the Masters may use their powers on rare occasions to break down the ego of their disciples or help them further along the path. As a rule, the Masters are very sparing in the use of their ‘divine powers’, and they never use them unless it is absolutely necessary for spiritual purposes.
  Ordinarily they secure their purposes through normal, mundane ways. While doing so, they not only exhibit–great understanding, a keen sense of humour, unending patience and consummate tact, but they also take great trouble to help their disciples and adjust themselves in numberless ways to whatever might be entailed by the needs of the situation.

Some of these points are effectively brought out by the story of the great mystic Bahlul. Bahlul wanted to contact certain notables of Persia for reasons of his own. The only way to do this was to go to the prince’s party that was attended by these notables. Unfortunately, Bahlul was bald-headed, and in those days no one without hair was allowed to attend a party given by the prince. The prince had lost all his hair, and to see others without hair reminded him of it and prevented him from enjoying the party. Since the prince was very sensitive on this point, no one bald was allowed to come to the party. So, when bald Bahlul went to the party in his shabby clothes, he was thrown out. The party lasted for three days, however, and on the second day Bahlul borrowed some fine clothes and a wig, disguised himself and again went to the party.
  During the party no one recognized Bahlul and in his fine clothes he made a great impression upon all the notables. He made himself so agreeable that even the prince offered him a warm welcome and invited him to sit near him. No sooner was Bahlul seated than he winked at the prince. The prince did not understand the meaning of his winking, but vaguely felt that such a gesture from an illustrious man like him must mean something important. Thinking that it immediately required a suitable response, he also winked. Those who were nearby saw this exchange of winking and felt impelled to imitate them. They also winked at each other, and soon the winking spread throughout the crowd so that for five minutes the party saw nothing but winking.
  Then Bahlul cried: “Stop, O you wise men! Why do you wink?” And the notables replied, “We are winking because you great men were winking. We only imitate you”. Then immediately Bahlul took off his wig and said, “We two are bald. Imitate us”. The notables then went away, and on the third day they all came with shaved heads. Then Bahlul turned to the prince and said: “We two are permanently bald; these men will have to shave their heads daily in order to remain bald.” Thus through his tactful handling and sense of humour, he secured access to those whom he wanted to help.

The Sadguru takes infinite pains to contact and win over the disciple for spiritual life. Since the progress of the disciple is secured only if his love for the Master is not allowed to dwindle, he takes every care to remove all obstacles that might be standing in the way of the wholehearted devotion of the disciple.

• If sometimes he is seen to humour the individual nature of the disciple, it is only to keep those obstacles from creating a serious impediment in his way.
• Sometimes he might even seem to feed the ego of the disciple, but all this is just allowing full scope to the ignorance of the disciple. It is only a preparation for the final extinguishing of his ego,just as animals to be offered in sacrifice are carefully nurtured before their annihilation.
• The Master is Himself beyond good or evil and is not perturbed by the failings of the disciple. He tolerates them with unfailing patience and infinite capacity to wait, knowing full well that once the disciple gets established on the path, these failings will be swiftly washed away.

Once the Master is satisfied that the disciple is firmly established on the path, he is keen to cleanse the mind of the disciple of all blemishes. Often he achieves this task even at the risk of appearing ruthless, just as when a surgeon, completely disregarding the protests of the patient is active with his knife.
  Ultimately the disciple cannot fail to see that all such measures are really in his interest. Therefore he is never pushed away from his master but is drawn closer to him in the very process of the cleansing that might have appeared irksome or painful.

The usual method of the Master, however, is as sweet and agreeable for the disciple as it is effective.

The Master is very pleased when the disciple shows any real progress in the spiritual life. By conferring well merited praise on the disciple, he confirms in him the spiritual qualities he is in the process of realizing, and arouses in him the confidence that will enable him to cope up with any situation.

• The glow of a noble emotion,
• a gesture of self-denial,
• a heroic sacrifice, or
• an incident revealing extraordinary patience or love or faith

any one of these is sufficient to make the Master happy and evoke His approbation.

The usual method of the Master to encourage the good qualities in the disciple is plain and unconcealed appreciation of his attainments. The disciple soon begins to value the Master’s approval and delights in it more than in anything else. he is ready to resist the greatest of temptations and undergo the most trying ordeals, which would otherwise have seemed impossible to him, if only he knows that this will make Master happy.

Since the Master is, for the aspirant, a symbol of the supreme Self in all, the problem of true adjustment to the Master appears to him to be the same as– ‘realizing his own inner divinity’ and ‘arriving at true adjustment with all other forms of the supreme Self.’
  Through his allegiance to the Master, the aspirant achieves conscious appreciation of the fundamental unity of all these problems. From the psychological point of view, he is in a position to tackle them not as separate problems but as aspects of one problem. Thus he can arrive at true integration, which is different from a temporary compromise between conflicting claims.
  In order to help the disciple achieve this difficult task, the Master has to become the nucleus of all the spiritual idealism of the aspirant, because– intensive concentration of ‘mental energy’ is necessary if the aspirant is to break through the many barriers that lie between him and his goal.

The supreme claim of the Master cannot be challenged or limited, even by the spontaneous reverence that the disciple is bound to feel for masters other than who has accepted him. All Perfect Masters are one in their consciousness, and it is absurd to imagine any grades between them.
  Though one Master is not greater than another, the disciple MUST, for his own purposes, place the claim of his own Master over and above the claims of other Masters, until he transcends the domain of duality and realizes the unity of all life. Mental energy would be dissipated unless there arose a supremely imperative claim among the many conflicting claims of life.