The burning fire of separation and the urge to re-unite with the lord may become a stepping-stone to foot on the first step of the ladder of love. His grace and ever flowing love, is the only way to look up to him for him. It is only with his mercy that we can reach the unreachable. The scriptures and literature is a media to remind us of his teachings and attending sat sang and seminars is like refreshing the memory, a tiny effort to satisfy the thirst for him.

Among the many question answer sessions attended , all said and done and the ones that are reproduced after hearing from mouth to mouth only makes me realize and understand the fact, “The more I learn and understand, the more I more I know as to little I am aware of myself.” A drop of water that does not even identity of separation, with its false ego assumes that it is not more different than the ocean. In different contexts Babaji has answered the questions asked by sangat so spontaneously and relatively that for a fraction of a second the mind deviates from its thinking as to what is said and what is heard! It I sonly he who knows what we are up to and he also knows who needs medicine and who a lollipop. Here is a series of questions that I’ve heard and some narrated to me by my folks:

Q. Babaji I am very nervous to ask you questions?
A. Dear brother, it is I who am very nervous. You know what you want to ask me. It is I who don’t know what you will ask me!!! (Laughter…)

Q.  Babaji I love you! Babaji I love you! Babaji I love you!
A. disciple just said this and Babaji turned around towards the other side so they could ask him questions. This satsangi who was about to sit down, Babaji turned towards him and said:
 “You did not say, “I love you only”.”

Q. An old lady said, “ Babaji I went to this saint and he said so, the second one I went to said this and the next one said so. What is your view about their sayings?
A. Babaji said “Madam it will be nice if you keep me away from your statistics.”

Q. What is the load of karma is great in bhajans?
A. On a mountain, what difference does an ant make.

Q. I am a seeker for nam dam
A. We are all seekers. We have not realized our goal. Now you should survey, listen, understand and know what you have to do after nam. It is not time lost but time well spent.

Q. Can we do dhyan in meditation?
A. Can we see our face in running water? It is has to be still. Try to feel his presence and that should give you confidence in conscience mind.

Q. There are days when I sometimes see light, sometimes I don’t?
A. Everyday is not Sunday. Sometimes it is cloudy, at times raining, sustain the warmth of the sun. You cannot change what is natural, change yourself.

Q. Where should I draw a line for y fantasies? Sometimes the desire is clear, sometimes thorny or rosy?
A. You should have a balanced approach. It is not wrong to see better things in life. Don’t go to extremes. Whatever you have should give you pleasure not pain.

Q. We are humans, how do we over come pain and suffering of our own people, when they don’t listen or try to change.
A. You are bound to feel the pain. You’ll suffer with them for sure. When it is hot… agitated weather is not changing, put on the air conditioner. Stay cool. If you are negative you cannot support them. If you want to support, you have to be positive. Everybody wants to hear the truth. Sometimes tell truth and sometimes keep quiet.

Q. Why there is so much pain through nature?
A. Some things in the realm of lord should not be questioned. Example years ago due to harmful chemicals implanted produces draught after years. Man plays with nature.

Q. My son does not follow the path. How do I put him on the path?
A. Can you teach him spirituality? If so families of saints could follow the same. Create an atmosphere where he learns from examples. Don’t force him.

Q. Babaji I fear more in America as for culture and ideals.
A. Why did you come here? You can’t have the best of both the worlds. You have to accept whatever comes. Create conducive environmental but nothing more you can do. You cannot hold a cigar in the hand and say smoking is bad.

Q. My daughter is 13 yrs old and wants to know the meaning of life. She is curious to know from you.
A. When I make sense to elder people, I will think of the young.

Q. Eat cereal… is it safe is difficult to find.
A. You know what you have to do. In India they don’t label

Q. I meet a lot of people, who, I think, are very spiritual, and they are not satsangis. Still I feel they are better satsangis than I am. Why are they not satsangis?
A. That is right. Every good person is not necessarily a satsangi. Some people were so nice and sincere in their last life and have been so good to people that they are getting the reward of their good karma.

Q. They may be living out their good karma from their past life, but they are also sowing and seeding good karma for the next life, and I thought…?
A. That is right, so they will get its fruit again, but all the same, they will remain in the cycle.

Q. If I am living out my back karmas and I am being not as nice as they are, then I will have to come back?
A -Then you should try to be like them! (Laughter)

Q. Well I think they may be getting…
A. They will definitely get the advantage. They may come in the Path if they are very sincere in their desire to meet the Lord. When we have a strong desire to meet the Lord, and we have real devotion, even if we do not know the Path, even if we do not know how to meditate, how to pray for His grace, then the onus is on the Lord to put us on the Path. Our duty is to have a ‘genuine’ yearning to meet Him Then we automatically behave in such a way that we find ourselves on the Path leading towards Him. By the Grace of the Lord can we meet the Master, and only through the Lord’s grace are we on the Path. We, by ourselves, can never do anything; but if we are really sincere and honest in our search, then, if not now, sometime in the future, it will be for the Lord’s grace to put us on the Path. As Christ said: ‘Not I, but the father in me, doeth all things’.

Q. Why does our ability to do Bhajan and to follow the principles of Sant Mat vary so much? Sometimes one goes from one feeling-like one is very capable of doing meditation- and then, for some unexplainable reason, one just cannot do it?
A. Ups and downs do come everywhere. We do feel ups and downs everywhere.

Q. Shall be suffer through it, or shall we feel guilty, or…
A. We should never feel guilty at all. We should simply try to put more time in meditation and get through those ugly days.

Q. But… depressing…unsuccessful?
A. And then to go back to what you said about many people being very nice though not being satsangis, satsangis probably try to analyze themselves too much, thinking they have too many bad qualities in them.  If this room is filled with darkness, you do not know how much that darkness covers up; but if a little ray of light comes in, you know instantly that the room is filled with small particles. Similarly, when we do not know about or are not on the Path, we are not aware of our bad points. Rather we take pride in our habits. But when we are on the Path, that ray of light comes within us. Then we analyze ourselves and find that we have many very bad habits. In fact, the bad habits were there before, but now we are in a position to analyze them, to realize them. So we feel a little guilty about them. Actually it is a sign we are improving, because this consciousness has come to us to discriminate what is good and what is bad. When we are conscious of our faults, half the battle is won, because then we begin to do something about them.

Q. Maharaj ji what brings us to the Path except the grace of the Lord, in the sense that nice people doing good for others keep coming back into this world and continue to do good for others. But some of us find this desire for the Lord and this yearning. What have we done to deserve it? Is it something we have done that the Lord gives us this grace, or are we just lucky?
A. No, no, we have earned it. We have earned it in the sense that we have been very honest in our efforts to meet the Lord, whether we have been trying in the wrong way, or the right way, the longing, the real yearning to meet Him was within us. In whatever way we worship the Lord, that helps us in getting His grace, and He will put us on the Path.

Q. Do you think it is a satisfaction we have got-external things have to-this longing-if we were happy?
A. Whatever the reason may be there are two ways of coming the Lord. One is because we have longed to meet Him; other is because we are tired of the world and we want to escape in His love. These are two ways: Some lucky people instinctively love Him. They worship Him only because they want to meet Him. They have no other motive or desire. Other people are being driven to Him because they are completely tired of this world. They want an escape into His love and devotion. Both are all right, but the degree of love in the first type cannot be compared with anyone else, as that is the superior type of love.

Q. Maharajji sometimes we have been asked, what about people who feel that they have a job to do in the world for other people-to be of help-not necessarily as their profession, but the desire to be helpful? How does this fit into Sant Mat?
A. Sister, we should always try to be helpful to others. We should not help from the point of view that some day they will also help us. We should help without intention of getting any reward. Generally what we try to do with the missionary spirit is that if we will be helpful to other people now, then either later in this life or in the next life they will be helpful to us. That attitude should not be present, for then we are sowing the seed to return to this world in order to get the reward of what we have done for them. We should be helpful to the public, helpful to everybody; in whatever way we can. All this should be done with a detached mind. It should be remembered that we need also to help ourselves in order to be in a position to help others. Actually if we do not help ourselves, but try to help others, we are deceiving ourselves and we are deceiving others.

Q. Something still bothers me mentally. In Europe there were twenty million people who had to give their lives, innocently, some very fast and some by slow torture-seemingly for no reason except because they were born in a different religion. How can I face my God and say, why did you do a thing like this?
A. Who is killing? It is the people who are killing each other.

Q. How can the Force which has power over people, over humans- let humans act that way?
A. If two brothers are fighting and one brother will go and tell the father, why did you produce him? There was no need to make us, when we are fighting with each other. I am sorry, it does not analyze satisfactorily. We are all children of the same God.

Q. Why did somebody not stop all this slaughter in Europe? All these wars?
A. This is where the karma theory comes in.

Q. You see, I come from the middle of this and it hurts me deeply.
A. I Know. I know the effect on the human mind.

Q. I was saved maybe by You, by some miracle?
A. It must have been the Lord. This is all due to our individual karmas. What we think is justice, what we see as injustice, God alone knows whether it is justice or injustice. Besides, is not that same injustice being done every day to millions and millions of cows and other animals that are being killed for the diet of human beings?

Q. Yes, in a small way, we are beginning to stop that.
A. In this world there is nothing but injustice. As long as the creation exists, these things are bound to happen. That is why the saints say: “We come to take you from this world”

Q. I wanted to ask you, what is the place of prayer in Sant Mat?
A. The real prayer to the Lord is, submitting us to the Lord. What is prayer, as it is ordinarily understood? Our mind creates desires, and we are praying to the Lord to fulfill those desires. We are not explaining to the mind to adjust to the Will of the Lord, but we are trying to explain to the Lord to adjust to the wishes of the mind. Actually we are slave of the mind and not of the Lord. We have to become a slave of the Lord, and then there is really nothing to pray for.  When we are devoted to the Lord, naturally He is not unmindful of what we need. For example a maid works in your house, she does beautiful work and never asks you for anything, you always feel like giving her something, without her asking. If another maid does not work well or even if she works well but is always grumbling and asking for something, you do not feel like giving her anything, and you would even like to dismiss her. So, if we work in the name of the Lord; we are meditating, doing the spiritual practice with love and devotion; we have submitted ourselves to Him. He will give us much more than we can ever dream of. Generally we pray to the Lord for worldly possessions-health, wealth and prosperity for our loved ones and ourselves. In the first place, we do not know what is best for us, and much less, for anyone else. Many things we received from the Lord after praying for four or five years and perhaps have to kneel in prayer for another ten years to petition Him to relieve us of the very thing that we had been praying for. When we ask we do not know what is good for us. When we do not know what is good for us, why not submit ourselves to Him?  He will give us only what is best for us.

Q. Yes I know that the lowest type of prayer is prayer of petition; but when one says, “God Thy Will be done” or, “God give me guidance, I have a difficult decision to make” to help in making that decision?
A. We should always pray to Him for His mercy and guidance. And for that, whether or not you say the spoken word, it is immaterial. Real prayer comes from the heart. No words are required, and no particular time is required for that; in fact a true lover is in constant communion with the Lord. When the heart speaks, He hears, He gives. So we should pray to Him to guide us, to be merciful to us, to redeem us from birth and death, to take us into His own lap; in fact to merge us into Himself. That is real prayer.  However any other prayer is not bad. It makes your will power strong. Whether He gives you or not, when you pray to Him, even your mechanical prayer makes your will power strong, and you can face life a little more boldly. Any type of prayer helps, provided it is sincere. But the best prayer is just to submit to Him, and ask only for His guidance and Grace.