Baba says, ‘make effort to become a sovereign, not a servant‘. A sovereign has rights, the servant does not. You cannot be a servant and one with all the rights at the same time.

To have rights means to have power, to have control or ownership over something. A servant is trapped in one thing or the other and therefore experiences being bound in chains, powerless. Being a servant is indicated by unhappiness in the mind and it is expressed on my face. A sovereign on the other hand is happy because he is someone with all rights and is a master of the self. He is constantly cheerful in the mind and the body. A servant is always upset. A master of the self is always seated on his throne of self-respect. A servant gets confused over trivial matters in a second, whereas one with all rights will constantly experience himself to be in a state of comfort, that is, in a state of rest.

Let me check myself against these signs to see who I am: a servant or a master of myself? Do adverse situations, people, physical comforts or the environment make me lose my respect? In other words, do they take me away from knowledge, do they cause me distress?

The #1 requirement to being a sovereign is renunciation of body consciousness. Without renunciation, there cannot be sovereignty. Why? Because it means I am still hustling for a place in the old world. I am still courting limited desires of name, fame, approvals. It means I still care about other’s opinions of me, it means that my thoughts, words, feelings and even my attitude are governed by my senses…not by me.

The physical senses are very tiny: the eyes and ears are tiny but they are my windows into the world. When not monitored, they create a very big trap.

The eyes: they see something and I am caught up in it. I didn’t agree with or like what I saw – maybe someone looked at me but didn’t smile. I am incapable of being far sighted, of seeing beyond the apparent, of letting go. Instead, I get stuck in what I saw to such an extent that even when I sit in remembrance, I only see their face in front of my eyes.

My ears: they hear something, I am trapped in it: ‘how could she say that?’, ‘I bet someone told her something about me..’ and so we go.

There is also the bondage of relations or society: ‘what will other think!’. Yes, Baba is telling me to live a certain way but what will my colleagues think of me if I am always peaceful…they might think I am weak, my relatives might think I am irreligious, my friends might think I am boring if I stop going to their parties or don’t eat their food. Because I lack the power to accompany my actions or my changes, I do in fact come across as weak, like I am apologetic for being who I am.

Then there is the constant, relentless chase after wealth- I want more, I need more. The more I have, the more fearful I am of losing it.

Other times, the old sanskars get so ferocious, I am overwhelmed battling them, trying to remove them.

This is the sign of a servant soul – it’s as if I am constantly surrounded by tests. I face one thing and barely catch my breath and there is something else, then a third thing and so on..I am constantly battling situations I create myself. It’s like the spider that gets trapped in it’s own web. No wonder I am unhappy and exhausted!

A soul with all rights, on the other hand, is a boatman who takes his boat across happily through all the waves of tests as though they are games. He is not overwhelmed by them, he doesn’t engage, he simply observes them. He knows how to stay away from expansion and put a full stop. He has died alive from the old world, he has his vision set on his elevated destiny. He follows in the footsteps of the Father and of the Father only into the new world.

That is true liberation because I can actually experience it, I earn it through my effort. I accumulate power, I become someone who owns my destiny. I don’t let anyone or anything control the way I feel. I realize that happiness is my birthright, that freedom is my birthright and I don’t put them up for grabs.

If I am asking Baba to intervene and ‘grant’ me liberation by ‘taking me away from here’, then that’s a cop out. There is no power is becoming peaceful by leaving the playground, by dropping out of the game. That is not the characteristic of a sovereign.

A sovereign stays on the field, figures out the rules (Shrimat), makes the necessary shifts and plays the game. He remains happy while surrounded by everyone and everything else. That’s what God does when He, the Ever Pure, comes to the most impure world to be with His children. I am His child, His heir. I have everything He has. Let me play the game. It’s what makes me a self-sovereign now and a world sovereign in the future.