Baba then mentioned those who dabble in Vedanta and theĀ UpanishadsĀ and confuse it with spiritual experience:
In North India, particularly in Rishikesh and Hardwar, there is a regular bazaar of saints, mahatmas and sadhus with their “disciples” of various sects and factions, who fight among themselves to entice seekers from one sect to another. But true spirituality is never to be found in all this. In California, too, there are ashrams andĀ mathsĀ [monasteries, temples, retreats] where lectures are given and yoga practices encouraged. But this is not true spirituality. It is something fundamentally different. Spirituality means dying to one’s self and becoming absolutely insignificant as dust ā dust at the feet of the Perfect Master. To become as dust means to become as nothing. It means to die while continuing to live!
On the Path one has to die. Love and grace are needed on the Path. Love is the gift from God. It is given only when God is pleased with the lover. When it is given, the lover neither lives nor dies. He is like a fish out of water. He is immersed in continual agony, but the agony is such that he does not want to get rid of it. In his longing to be united with the Beloved God, the lover loses everything of this world. Such lovers are calledĀ Mard-e-Khuda. In the whole world, there are only 500 of such Mard-e-Khuda. Hafiz says that out of 100,000 of them, barely one gets Self-Realization after many years.
In a few instances, the lover by his self-efforts enters the first plane. In very few instances, a lover may come up even to the sixth plane by his self-efforts.nbsp;Ā Then, just a glance from a Perfect Master on such a one gives him Realization. If a lover holds fast to the daaman of one of the five Perfect Masters, [the Perfect Master] can give him Realization in a flash. And it is no joke to hold on to a Perfect Master’s daaman.
-www.lordmeher.org, p4897
Dec, 1962; Meherazad