Baba says, ‘past is past‘. To be able to put a full-stop to whatever has happened until now is to be an intense effort maker.

Baba comes at the end of the cycle when the whole world is degraded. Having forgotten who we are, we fell prey to the vices – our thoughts, words, actions, our very attitude became vicious. The more we operated on the basis of the vices, the more sorrowful, bitter, angry and disheartened we became. We did more wrong things in an effort to get over the sorrow, we were caught in a vicious cycle.

Baba came and reminded us of who we are – pure, peaceful, loveful souls. His children. He told us our story- the beginning, middle and end. We were sovereigns, we lost our sovereignty as we traveled through the cycle until we became completely bankrupt at the end. But, He reminds us, that is how it works. Everything that was new has to become old and then new again.

Now, we are at the point of ‘becoming new again’. As I transform myself through knowledge and remembrance, the world is transformed. You are now at the confluence of the old and the new, He reminds me. You have left the shore of the old and are making your way to the new world. This is what you have to remember, He says.

But we remember that which we must forget and forget that which we must remember.

By continuing to oscillate between soul consciousness and body consciousness, I place one foot in the old world and one in the confluence. I continue to hustle for name, status, role, position in the old world. I continue to attach myself to people and things. Because of not having control on my physical senses, I see things that I shouldn’t and spend time thinking about and analyzing what I saw. I hear things and arrive at judgments. My intellect is so busy in matters of the old world that I forget that I was on my way to the new. Past is past!

Your boat has left the shore but you continue to turn back and look at the old world with a longing, He says. Then, you jump and swim back to it. Yes, I have to live in the old world but says Baba, your intellect must be beyond, connected to the home and the new world. ‘Have the awareness that you are an avatar. You come into the old world for the time that you need to perform a task, then you go home and to the new world’, He says. Practice this and you will not be stuck in the old world.

Sometimes, we remember mistakes we made, sorrow we might have caused to others, incidents that were humiliating or embarrassing and we beat ourselves up over it: ‘I am such a bad person’, ‘why was I so stupid’, ‘wonder what they must think of me’ and on and on. We spiral into shame, guilt and regret and reject ourselves. If I don’t nip this chain of thought in the bud, I can be so overcome by sorrow and depression that I shut myself down. I can no longer hear or experience Baba and His knowledge. I lose precious time and energy, not to mention my peace and happiness. This is carelessness, says Baba. Past is past! I learn what I need to from past mistakes and move on.

Often, we make the mistake of thinking that we are at fault only when we think, speak or do things which cause sorrow to others. At the end of the day, when we write our chart, we say to Baba that we had a good day- no sorrow caused. But we forget the moments through the day that we wasted thinking about the past. Maybe it was just two minutes here and two minutes there but if we were to reflect back, we’d notice how these seemingly few moments makes us feel exhausted. This is because wasteful thoughts often run at a fast speed. They bring my entire stage, that I maintained with attention till then, down in no time. I completely lose sense of time or place or even who I am. It then takes time and effort to re-establish my stage.

You mustn’t come to a standstill anywhere, says Baba. Don’t look around anywhere! Don’t remember the past! Continue to move forward and don’t look back. Continue to face in one direction because only then will your stage become unshakable, stable and immovable, He says.

Whatever has happened so far was in the Drama. It wasn’t good or bad, it was accurate. Let me learn to apply this full-stop. Baba says, ‘you must apply not just a stop, but a full-stop‘. I must remember none of it. Let me make a firm determined thought that I don’t want useless things anymore. When I know that the past has the old, degraded world that I have left behind, that it has stories that bring me sorrow, then why would I want to look back at it?

You must now have just the one elevated desire of going to the land of happiness, He says. When I can do this and apply a full-stop to everything else connected to the land of sorrow, Baba says, that is intense effort. It isn’t about battling old thoughts or sanskars, on the contrary, it is about observing them and deciding not to engage. It is remembering that I am a sovereign of the new world, that I don’t engage with useless things of a different land.