Baba says, ‘you are a spiritual, incognito salvation army‘. You have to salvage the whole world and take the sinking boats across.

This is a spiritual aspect, explains Baba, not a physical one. Everyone’s boat is sinking, in other words, souls are trapped in the swamp of Maya. When souls experience sorrow, we call out: O Boatman, take my boat across. However, Baba says, each one has to go across by making effort for himself. I salvage you by showing you the way to get out of the swamp but you have to make the effort. Then, He says, you also have to show the path to others.

Am I salvaged? Often, I think of and try to get salvation the wrong way.

Some of us think of salvation as access to limited facilities: ‘we’ll do service if we have these facilities’. What is clear though is that the facilities are not for service but for the happiness of the self.  If this were done, then, I’d be able to do a lot of service.  If extra love and regard were given, if there was extra hospitality offered, if my name had been mentioned more often, etc. We continue to make efforts on the basis of such a variety of facilities. And since the foundation is wrong, there is not experience of progress or happiness. 

Sometimes, I look for salvation as being better, smarter…than someone else. ‘She is doing this, I’ll show everyone by doing even more’! ‘He isn’t the only one that is serviceable, I am also serviceable’. ‘I am an incognito effort-maker but no-one recognizes me’. ‘I am much more qualified and experienced than the instrument teacher’. ‘You are uneducated, whereas I am educated’.  By being trapped in the old world sanskars of competition, comparison, jealousy…essentially by keeping the doors of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ open to Maya, I lose my elevated stage, I become weak in opposing Maya and unable to gain true victory.

Sometimes, instead of acknowledging my mistakes and taking accountability for change, I resort to justifying it through quoting the Shrimat like a scripture and correcting – even the Father! ‘So and so who has been on this path for a lot more years also does this…so it’s okay if I do it’ or I take things out of context: ‘In this particular situation, Baba had said such and such, and so I followed the same Shrimat’. That’s what devotees do…they read the epics or the scriptures and without understanding the meaning or significance behind the words, they simply recite it or make it into a ritual.

Each of these limited or wrong kinds of salvation is like a swamp…it is the various manifestations of body consciousness. If I let myself slip, it just drags me in fast and deep. This is where Baba found me when He came – I was stuck and calling out for peace. He is now showing me the way out. He says: consider yourself a soul and remember the Father. Peace is innate to you and happiness is your birthright, He reminds me. It’s because you forgot this truth about who you are that you went looking for it outside and slipped.

He is giving me detailed directions in the Murli every day, let me follow them accurately without mixing within it the dictates of my own mind, without questioning it or correcting it. Check and change yourself, He says. Then, I will be able to pull others out of the swamp too.