In Baha’s school, the Guru does not teach. He radiates or pours influence. That influence is poured in and absorbed with full benefit by the soul which has completely surrendered itself, and blotted out the self, but is obstructed by the exercise of intelligence by reliance on self-exertion and by every species of self-consciousness and self- assertion.
He did not regard japa and meditation as sufficient for the sishya. These produce in the sadhaka Abhimana or Ahamkara. Unless and until Ahamkara is completely wiped out, the Guru is unable to pour all his influence into the sishya.
Baba, therefore, would tell some devotees, “Be by me and keep quiet and I will do the rest’, that is, ‘secretly or invisibly’. Of course faith in him-absolute faith-is a pre-requisite.
One who was merely seeing him and staying by him for a while got faith. Baba gave experiences to each devotee of his vast powers of looking into his heart, into the distant regions of space and time, past or future, and these infused faith.
One need not swallow things on trust. The solid benefit, temporal or spiritual, reaped by the devotee, and his feeling that he is under the eye and power of Baba always, wherever he may be and whatever he may do, give him an ineradicable basis for his further temporal and spiritual guidance.
Baba’s is the power that controls this world’s goods and our fate here and now, as well as our experience and fate in the future in this world and many unseen worlds.
The college professor Mr.G.G. Kanala concludes that the duty of a devotee under Baba is only to keep himself fit for the Guru’s grace. That is, he should be chaste, pure, simple and virtuous, and he should look trustfully and sincerely to the beloved master to operate on him secretly, and to raise him to various experiences higher and higher In range, tilI he is taken at last to the distant goal.
‘But one step enough for me’ is the proper attitude now. He need not take the trouble to decide complicated metaphysical and philosophical problems about the ultimate destiny. Devote is ill-prepared to solve them now.
The Guru will lift him, and endow him with higher powers, vaster knowledge, and increasing realisation of truth. And the end is safe in the Guru’s hands.
