Baba says, ‘To sacrifice yourself completely means to keep your intellect in yoga in one direction. Body consciousness has to be broken.’ 

Sacrifice cannot happen in fractions, it has to be complete. I either sacrifice or I don’t; there is no such thing as a partial sacrifice. Like a moth, I have to fly into the flame. That, is sacrifice. To circle around the flame, or to see the flame from a distance is not sacrifice.

All children want to sacrifice themselves to God, otherwise they wouldn’t become Brahmins but then, when it comes to doing it practically, they become numberwise, says Baba. Just as I am about to fly into the flame, the thought comes: ‘what if destruction doesn’t take place?’, ‘what if heaven doesn’t come?’, ‘what if I give everything and I don’t reach the destination?’, ‘what will people say?’ And so I keep moving the hand of the intellect forwards and backwards. ‘This is why‘, Baba says, ‘you can’t make the complete sacrifice.’ I fly to the Flame with courage, with enthusiasm, with love but as soon as I feel a little heat, that is, as soon as I encounter the slightest obstacle, I get afraid and move back.

It was easy, on the path of devotion, to say: ‘O God, when you come, I will sacrifice myself completely to You’ but then, I didn’t know what that means. It just felt nice to sing praise. But now, when it is time to do it practically, I hesitate. ‘Sacrifice’, Baba says, ‘means that your intellect’s yoga in only in one direction.’ That means at every moment, in every thought, in every action, I sacrifice myself. Someone says something rude to me, I sacrifice my urge to get angry or take revenge or say something back or give them the cold shoulder when I see them the next time or any of the other old world ways. Instead, I maintain my good wishes and pure feelings. When someone betrays me, I sacrifice the bitterness and the resentment and instead, I forgive. When that position opens up at work, I resist the urge to hustle for it, to strategize, to elbow my way forward, instead, I ask Baba for His advice. Does He want me to take it? ‘Stay in your households, but have the consciousness that everything belongs to the Father.’, Baba instructs, ‘Take shrimat at every step. The Father is the only One who gives advice. He will not allow you to perform any wrong actions.’

‘You should not have even a single thought of anyone else other than the Father and His task,‘ says Baba. ‘Your every thought should have the significance of sacrificing yourself to the Father.’ If I continue to have such checking, then Maya will not create obstacles and oppose me. In fact, it is this lack of checking that causes body consciousness and carelessness to return, He points out. Most of us sow the right seed of thought- that I want to transform a particular sanskar, that I want to give up anger, that I want to develop patience etc., but then I forget to water the seed and take necessary care of it. ‘You sow the seed and then become careless‘, He says. ‘You think: Now that you have given it to Baba, Baba has to look after it, that it is Baba’s duty now. You don’t sustain it.’ I forget to pay attention to my thoughts and words, I feel that my job is to give the sanskar to Baba and then it will automatically go away. It won’t. Just as a seed doesn’t grow into a plant and bear fruit without water, sunshine and care, similarly, you have to keep revising the seed of your thought, Baba teaches. When I lack this and become free from checking, the sanskar returns.

Without renunciation, there cannot be fortune and to think: ‘Okay, I will do it later’ are not the sanskars of a Brahmin, Baba teaches. Instead, to say: ‘I will definitely do it now’ is the sanskar of a Brahmin. On the path of devotion, I sang praise about sacrificing myself but didn’t. Now, I do it practically by surrendering the consciousness of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. This was the first step Father Brahma took. He surrendered the limited ‘I and mine’, that is, in any situation, instead of ‘I’, he always used the word ‘Father’. He always said: ‘Baba is making me do it’, not that ‘I am doing it’. ‘Baba is making me move’, ‘ I am not saying this, Baba is speaking.’ You are Brahma Kumars and Kumaris and so follow father, says Baba. To have attachment to any limited being or thing is to have the consciousness of ‘mine’. To surrender the consciousness of ‘I and mine’ like the father is called making a sacrifice. In fact, to make this sacrifice is to make the greatest sacrifice. This is the sign of surrendering.