Baba says, ‘you have to have the practice of applying a full-stop‘. Then, you bless yourself with the blessing of happiness.

The personality of Brahmin life is complete purity, Baba teaches. Only when there is complete purity can I be an easy yogi and enjoy this spiritual life. Complete purity, as the term suggests, is beyond just celibacy. It means purity in my thoughts, words, deeds, in my relationships and even in my dreams.

When there is even a little decrease in purity, it makes a huge difference in my experience of happiness. This is no limited happiness that comes from limited attainments. Complete purity gives me the experience of unlimited, eternal happiness that is not dependent on anything physical- be it the senses, or facilities or people. It is based on my ability to experience complete soul consciousness. Indeed, complete purity is the foundation for super-sensuous joy.

After experiencing unlimited sorrow and suffering for half a cycle, I called out to God, to the eternal Father to rescue me, to liberate me. Baba comes and does just that. He rescues me with the blessing: May you be pure, may you be a yogi. If I can claim this blessing, I am home safe. If I don’t, then I am still unhappy.

The thing that gets in the way of my claiming my blessing and thereby my birthright of purity and happiness is carelessness. When I first come to Baba, I am intoxicated. He and the knowledge become my world. That’s all I think about, speak about or care about. Life is bliss! Why didn’t I come to Baba earlier, I wonder, this is what I had been searching for! But as I move along on my journey, I become careless in my thinking, seeing, speaking and doing. I allow myself to become loose- rather than continue to focus on my world of ‘Baba and I’, I let my world expand. I start to see others, at what they are doing, how they behave. Because I let myself see, I now have opinions and questions. I feel I know the knowledge well now, I understand Shrimat, so of course, I have an opinion! While in the past, I only listened to Baba, now I listen to others too. I heard the Shrimat but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. So I consult with others until I hear what I want to hear.

This is root of your troubles, says Baba. You have to stop the expansion.

To stop the expansion is to be able to apply a full-stop to all that is wasteful. For this, I need self-respect and remembrance of the Father. When I step inward and touch base with my destiny, with my true self, I move into the awareness of who I am, of my elevated part of being a world benefactor. I decide I don’t want to have useless things in my life anymore that take me away from my destiny. I realize the importance of this time, the only time in the cycle where I can claim my inheritance, my fortune from the Fortune-maker. When I feel this deep in my bones, when I seat myself firmly in the awareness of who I am, the full-stop is automatic because I let go.

Applying a full-stop does not mean that I come to a stop. If I were driving a car and came up to an obstacle on my path, I apply a brake but then I don’t then just stop there. I then take a detour, go around the obstacle and continue toward my destination. This is the ability to stop and turn. My mind isn’t designed to not think, that would be unnatural. So the goal is not to try to shut it down but instead to train it to think the right kind of thoughts – of Baba, of the knowledge, of the attainments. I give it direction.

Take a week, says Baba, and practice doing this.

When you are in the midst of situation, check if you can apply a full-stop and turn with the right thought. For example, can I stop the upheaval in a second and turn with the thought: ‘the Father is my Protector and Benefactor. He is responsible for me, I am just an instrument’? Can I apply a full-stop and detach myself from service? or does it pull me such that I cannot stay without doing something or the other? I see someone doing something wrong, maybe someone said something rude to me, do I let myself dwell on it, think about it: ‘why did she?’, ‘how could she?’, ‘I knew it!’, ‘I should have, if that had happened…’. No commas, exclamations or question marks, He says. Only a full-stop. Yes, someone else was at fault, but as the driver on my journey, I cannot come to a standstill. I brake and turn, I keep moving forward to my destination.

Something else that helps my practice is every morning at Amritvela and then throughout the day, I practice seeing myself in my various forms. One moment, be corporeal, the next moment, become angelic and the next, incorporeal. This makes my mind and intellect strong, I accumulate the power of silence.

Don’t become careless, Baba cautions, don’t tell yourself that you’ll change at some point. Do it now!

‘I have to change’. That is respecting the self by not being willing to spend another second in anything wasteful. Those who offer themselves in this way receive blessings in three ways. Firstly, you receive blessings from your own self because you experience happiness. Secondly, from the Father, and thirdly, you also receive blessings from the elevated souls of the Brahmin family. 

And all I had to do was apply a dot.