Baba says, ‘By taking refuge with Rama, you will go into happiness, that is, into the kingdom of Rama.’

I take refuge with someone when there is sorrow and suffering where I’m at. To take refuge is to take support. For half a cycle, I was harassed by Ravan or the five vices. Because of the vices, my thinking, words and actions all became corrupted or wrong. The more I thought, spoke or did, the more sorrow and peacelessness I felt. Ravan made me so lost and desperate that I begged for the very things I owned- for respect, for love, for appreciation, for my happiness. And thus, he destroyed all the honor and dignity I had.

Finally, when I’d had enough, I dared to leave the kingdom of Ravan and seek refuge from the Father.

The Father comes when it is time for Ravan’s world to be destroyed and the new world to be established- a world of truth, of righteousness, of virtue. ‘I come to re-establish heaven’, He says, ‘it was the world I had created. You were flowers of heaven, then Maya came and made you into thorns. I come to liberate you from the kingdom of Ravan and once again make you into flowers or the masters of heaven.‘

I come to the Father as a refugee but He adopts me as His own child and makes me an heir. This is the greatness of God! ‘You asked me for refuge on the path of bhakti when you were in the clutches of Ravan’, He reminds me, ‘now, you are My child‘. Children don’t ask for refuge, they are the masters with rights. The Father makes me belong to Him and I make the Father belong to me. This is the great confluence of the Father and child who had been separated for such a long time, for a whole cycle. I now come to take My children back home, He says and return them their kingdom. One is the land of peace and the other is the land of happiness. Since this is where you are going, this is what you should remember, He teaches. You have to forget the land of sorrow through your intellect.

To forget the land of sorrow is to renounce the five vices. The land of happiness is the Father’s property while the land of sorrow is Ravan’s property. There is nothing but sorrow in being trapped by the vices. When you forget the Father, Maya distresses you, He reminds me. When you remember the Father, you remember the inheritance and the mercury of happiness rises. He is my only reference point because only He remains beyond the cycle of birth and death and therefore unadulterated by Ravan. When I remember Him, I remember my own truth. His love gives me the power to fight Ravan by imbibing the virtues. ‘When you were completely virtuous, Bharat was heaven, it was the new world. It is now becoming that again’, He teaches. I make Bharat heaven through following the Father’s Shrimat. He is not just my Father but He is also my Teacher and teaches me Raja Yoga. ‘This is the study to change from human into deity‘, He explains. It covers everything from how to think to eat to live. As long as you follow My Shrimat, Ravan cannot as much as touch you, says Baba. The Shrimat is there to protect me during this process of change as I spiritually mature into a deity. It is only when I step outside the line of Shrimat that Ravan gets a hold of me and tries to drag me back to his world.

You said: ‘Baba, when You come, we will sacrifice ourselves to You; give us refuge, maintain our honor!’, He reminds me. I am here now and so you have to keep your promise. When you follow my Shrimat, I guarantee that you will once again regain your honor and become the masters of heaven. His #1 Shrimat for me is: ‘consider yourself a soul and remember Me alone‘. When I remember the Father with a lot of love, I cleanse myself of all sins and become pure. When I become pure, I radiate peace and happiness to all the world. It was the body consciousness that made you unhappy for half a cycle, He teaches, it robbed you of your health, wealth and wisdom. By reminding you of who you are, the Father makes you soul conscious.

And this study of realizing who I am, of embodying my truth will continue till the very last breath. But this is not a burden, rather it is a great privilege to learn from God Himself, to be sustained by Him and guided by Him. For a whole cycle, in birth after birth, I received a limited inheritance from a corporeal father. This is the only time that I receive an unlimited inheritance from the incorporeal Father that sets me up for the entire new cycle.