Baba says, ‘Baba alone comes and liberates you from Ravan. No one else can liberate you. The Almighty Authority is needed for this. Only He can enable you to conquer Maya. Then, Ravan, the enemy, will not exist in the golden age.‘

At this time in the cycle, souls are trapped by the chains of powerful Maya, Ravan. Not only is Ravan powerful but he is omnipresent at this time. And so the One that would be able to liberate me from his clutches would need to be more powerful than him. Baba says, ‘The Almighty Authority is needed for this’.

Many think that God is called the Almighty Authority because He can bring back people from the dead or make the leaves move. But that is not the case. God is the Almighty because His mere remembrance gives me the power to defeat Ravan and be liberated. In the Mahabharata, it is shown that God never picked up a weapon Himself but enabled the children, the Pandavas, to win the war against evil with His guidance. That is power!

Ravan is the five vices, the forces of evil. He is not a human-being that I can scold or sue and take to court. People burn his effigy every year and pretend that he is dead but he only gets stronger and so they burn him again the next year! The ONLY thing, as it turns out, that can triumph evil, is good. Ravan is the most evil at this time with all five vices in full force in all human-beings and the only One Who is ‘good’ enough or ‘pure’ enough to triumph all that collective/multiplied evil is God. He is Ever Pure where Ravan is ever impure; He is the Ocean of Love where Ravan is the ocean of anger and hate; He is Truth where Ravan is the ocean of disinformation; He is the Ocean of Knowledge where Ravan is the ocean of ignorance.

And so Baba says, ‘only I am the Purifier, only I come and liberate you from Ravan. No one else can liberate you.‘ He comes and gives me knowledge, the truth – about me, about Him, about the world cycle and about Ravan. I have to know the enemy well enough to be able to defeat him. And He teaches me spiritual warfare to defeat Ravan. Just trust Me alone and do good, He says, and you will defeat Ravan.

This is why when someone hurts me, no matter how badly, Baba says, ‘forgive and let it go‘. It’s not because He doesn’t empathize or understand my pain nor is it because He cares more for the other soul, no! He asks me to forgive because that’s how I defeat the real enemy- Ravan- who works through souls to make us hurt each other. This is how he sows division and hate and where is no unity, there is no power. The moment I forgive the other person, therefore, Ravan dies. This is the warfare God teaches me. When I make a mistake, Ravan comes immediately to plant the seed of guilt, shame and regret. He whispers: ‘you’re such a failure, God could never be proud of you, He’s moved on to another child, you better give this up’. Rather than believe his lies, when I respond back with: ‘God loves me unconditionally, He couldn’t possibly love me any more than He does right now. And I have a great future and God, my Father, is going to get me there’, I kill Ravan. Similarly, when I respond to every vice that shows up in me or through others with a virtue; when I love rather than condemn; when I understand rather than judge; I defeat Ravan.

But in order to fight this good fight, I need power, and lots of it. At this time, all souls are weak due to all the conditioning by Ravan over half a cycle. This is why when someone does me wrong, my response is to return the favor- ignore them if they ignored me, hold grudges, try to get them back etc. I store bitterness and resentment within me, blow a fuse at the slightest provocation. All of that takes no power whatsoever, it’s the easiest thing to do because it’s what I’ve practiced for half a cycle. The more I do it, the weaker I become spiritually and the stronger Ravan becomes. The only One Who can fill me with power is the One Who does has lots of it- God. Only God loves me so much, so unconditionally that His love becomes the alchemy that penetrates through all that conditioning and tugs at the dormant truth in me. He wakes me up. No guru, pundit or sanyasi has the knowledge of who Ravan even is, let alone of how to defeat him.

God is not just the Ocean of Knowledge, He is also my Father, my Teacher, my Guide, my Beloved, and my constant Companion. He doesn’t just tell me what to do and leave, He is in the war with me as my Charioteer, guiding me at every step, at every turn and cheering me on. He wants me to win the war and finish off Ravan for good. The only way to do it is to obey His directions- promptly and accurately. This is a war- procrastination or disobedience has consequences in the form of missed opportunities, a stronger enemy the next time etc. Arjuna obeyed and he won, let me do the same.

The Father says: The One who liberates you from him is powerful. I come to take you away from this land of death to the land of immortality. The more powerful I become through God’s help, the more opposition and obstacles Maya tries to bring in front of me. That’s just how war works. The key is to always ONLY listen to my Charioteer and not be distracted by: ‘what I think or how I feel’ or what someone else thinks. This is the co-operation I offer God and the mercy I show myself. Maya will of course try to distract me a great deal and make me forget who I am or what I am doing. ‘But you mustn’t forget’, says Baba. ‘Wake up at Amrit vela and set your foundation for powerful awareness of who you are, who your enemy is and and what you are becoming as you win this war‘, He teaches. Without this foundation, it is easy for Maya to make me forget as I get busy during the day.

The more you remember Me, the more your inheritance of the knowledge, virtues and powers will enter your intellect, says Baba. The more you imbibe, that is, the more of this inheritance you claim, the longer your sovereignty will be- now and in the future. God is my Father and therefore, He loves me and would surely create heaven for me. Why? because Ravan cannot exist in heaven. Everyone in heaven has received their inheritance from the Father, has learnt the truth and changed from thorn into flower, from human into deity and so Ravan doesn’t stand a chance there. He only comes when I forget. And so Baba comes to remind me. He says, ‘Manmanabhav! remember who you are and remember Me’.

This should be your only desire at this time, Baba instructs. This is war, He reminds me, your present and future is at stake. If you get distracted, you lose the war, now and every cycle. By the same token, if I can stay alert and defeat Ravan, I will defeat him every cycle.