Baba says, ‘The meaning of purity is constantly to make the Father your Companion, and always to stay in the Father’s company‘.

A companion means someone who is always with you, someone who fulfills the responsibility of companionship in every act and thought, someone who moves forward matching steps with the One, someone who doesn’t take a single step according to the dictates of their own mind or of others.

Those who fulfill the responsibility of constant companionship experience this to be an easy path because the Father, the elevated Companion, makes this path clear and clean by stepping along it. He is not a Father who simply stays above in the Soul world and inspires nor is He a Father who comes and simply preaches knowledge. He is a very hands-on Father who walks the path and teaches by His practical example. He doesn’t have a body of His own and so He works through the corporeal medium of Brahma to demonstrate the right way to be.

He knows that having wandered for half a cycle, the children have become weary. He makes it easy by practically showing me the path such that all I have to now do is place every step in His step. To make me move, make me go across, fill me with power at every step and remove my tiredness is My duty as your Companion, says Baba. Just pay attention that you don’t place your footsteps anywhere else, He says. In other words, my duty is simply to co-operate.

To place my footstep means to have a thought. Whatever the Companion says, however He makes me move, I move in that way…I don’t mix in dictates of my own head. Sometimes, The Companion models a behavior that feels hard because it means I will lose a prize I had my eye on in this old world. It feels like a sacrifice and so I try to rationalize by saying: ‘Yes, Baba is right but in the real world, I have to be ‘tactful”. That is not what tactful means. And inevitably, I cry out in distress when things go wrong and experience sorrow.

‘Verify every thought‘, He says. ‘Is my thought the same as the Father’s thought?’ Every other path is the path of waste thoughts, the paths of thoughts of iron-aged attractions and weaknesses. By following those paths, I end up in a forest of confusion and get pricked by many different thorns: ‘what will happen?’, ‘why did this happen?’, ‘how did this happen?’, sometimes it is thorns of my own weak sanskars. Then, I call out to the Companion to come and save me. I even remind Him of the fact that He is my Companion and that it is His duty to save me. ‘But‘, asks Baba, ‘why did you go onto another path rather than place your footsteps in Mine? Why do you leave the Companion and go off on your own? The attraction of limited company, of some relationship and an accomplishment attracts you to itself and make that your companion. You let go of the eternal Companion and your support is lost‘.

It isn’t just important to make Him my Companion but it is equally important to constantly stay only in His company. Yes, I do need to serve alongside other souls, I have to interact, fulfill my roles and responsibilities but the company of the intellect should always be only with the Father. Only then will my decisions be accurate, my every thought, word and action be accurate. To be attracted to a person, a thing or a worldly pleasure, to be impressed by them is to divorce the Father in my thoughts for that amount of time, says Baba. It is like Sita in the Ramayan who fulfilled her responsibility of the companion for a temporary period but was easily deceived by the golden deer of temporary attainment.

For half a cycle, I was Sita and chased after limited attainments. For half a cycle, I considered those limited supports – people or things – to be my supports. I have experienced whether they were true supports or quicksand, if they trapped me or enabled me to reach my destination. Do I really want to put myself through that any more? I have experience and so let me not allow myself to be deceived any further. Let me not make myself unfortunate when the Father, the Bestower of Fortune, is showing me the path to become the most fortunate.

Simply remember this one thing constantly, says Baba: I am in the company of the most elevated Companion. When I constantly remember and verify this, I will remain satisfied with myself. Things don’t have to be difficult, so let me not make them so. Life is easy when I simply follow the Companion.