Baba says, ‘completely fulfil the promise you have made to the Father. No matter what happens, never renounce your dharma (religion); this is the highest destination. If you forget your promise and act wrongly, your register is spoilt.’

Religion (dharma) means the art of living an elevated life. This dharna is dharma (religion). ‘All of you‘, Baba reminds me, ‘are dharmatmas (righteous and religious souls) and the souls who perform elevated actions.‘ So check and see: ‘Am I leading a Brahmin life? A Brahmin life means one that is constantly free from thoughts based on vices (nirvikalp), free from obstacles (nrivighan), free from performing sinful actions (nirvikarmi) and to be constantly incorporeal while in the corporeal (nirakari so sakari). This is known as the art of living.

When I come to the Father, the first blessing I receive from Him and therefore, the first promise I make is: ‘Be pure, be Rajayogi’. Purity is foundational for Brahmin life, it is the very breath, the personality of Brahmins. If, after belonging to the Father and making a promise to Him, I don’t remain pure, there will be severe punishment, cautions Baba. He is the Ever Pure one. He comes into an impure world, in an old impure body to purify souls and take them back home. It isn’t as if He punishes me as much as I punish myself when I become impure; I am unable to face the Father anymore, I am unable to face myself anymore when I look in the mirror of my own heart. My stage immediately falls and I lose all the inheritance I had claimed- peace, happiness, contentment…everything, and become bankrupt. There is shame, guilt, regret…a loss of self-worth. In short, I sabotage the self. And so Baba says, ‘have mercy on yourself. Don’t perform wrong action.’

I know all this and so every year, sometimes, every day, I make a promise: ‘I will not do this, I will not do that’…but then, I do it anyway. ‘This is not a real promise‘, says Baba. In Bharat, it is said: even if you die, the promise should not be broken. No matter what I have to renounce, no matter what I have to tolerate, no matter what I have to hear, Baba says, my promise must not be broken. It shouldn’t be that when there are no problems, my promise is fine but when any problems come, the problem becomes powerful and my promise becomes weak. ‘A promise means a promise!‘, says Baba. So you should make a promise with your mind, not simply with words, He says.

Sometimes, I make a promise because I feel compelled or obligated; others asked me to make a promise or everyone else was doing it, so I did it. In this case, I have power but not total power. But when I make a promise in my mind, I make it because I’ve decided for myself and offered it to Baba. ‘To make a promise to Baba and to make it with your mind means to make the mind Manmanabhav‘, says Baba. This mantra of manmanabhav then constantly becomes the weapon for any situation. It should enter my mind: ‘I must not do this’. Instead if the thought in the mind is: ‘I will try, I have to do it. I have to become this. If I don’t, then what will I do! that is why, I better do it’ This, Baba explains, is known as a little bit of compulsion. Those who do it with the mind will never think: ‘it has to be done, it must be done..’, they will instead think that Baba has said it and so it is certain that it has already happened. This is the promise of those of the first number, says Baba. The promise of those who are of the second number, He explains, is: ‘We have to become, we have to do it, but we don’t know when it will happen.’ Baba says, ‘your file of promises is long enough, do you still want to make it longer by thinking about ‘if’ and ‘when’? or will you make your promise real, that is, final?’

There is usually one main reason for a weak promise, says BapDada. It is in fact one word that comes up again and again and makes me weak, He points out. That one word is of body consciousness and it is ‘I‘. This word deceives you, He says. ‘I think this’, ‘I feel this way’, ‘But what I said/did was right’…this is how this word ‘I’ makes my promise weak. Then, when I have broken my promise enough times, I become hopeless and disheartened and think: ‘I am just not a tolerant person’, ‘I am not a humble person after all’, ‘I guess I’m just not a good listener’, ‘this is a difficult path, I just can’t seem to overcome..’. In this way, Baba points out, the consciousness of ‘I’ makes me weak, causes me to break my promise and brings me to a standstill through disheartenment. Baba says, ‘to be Manmanabhav means to belong to just the One in your mind.’, it means I have surrendered my intellect to Him. For half a cycle, I did life based on ‘how I think’ and ‘how I feel’; I made and broke promises routinely as my thinking and feeling changed. Now, God is teaching me to become righteous, to become religious in the true sense of the term. That means, I do life based only on the elevated directions of the one Father. It doesn’t matter how I think or feel, I consciously choose to overrule my own thinking and feeling and follow what God is telling me, I keep the promise I’ve made to Him. When it comes to love, everyone says that they have more than 100% love for the Father and so, Baba says, the proof of love is surrender. It is to renounce the old consciousness of ‘I’ and obey the Father.

No matter what happens, no matter who comes in front of me, I don’t break my promise. That means: even when I see anyone’s weakness or defects, I don’t see them. I don’t listen to or speak of anyone’s weaknesses or defects. I don’t listen to them, I don’t speak of them and I don’t see them either. Sometimes, I blame it on the atmosphere being negative. Baba says, ‘those who are world transformers cannot be colored by the atmosphere or by wrong company. If a transformer themselves get influenced, then what transformation would they bring about?’ And so, He teaches, rather than be extroverted, be introverted. Become a constant spinner of the discus of self-realization, not other-realization. The more I spin this discus, the faster I progress on this pilgrimage of self-transformation which means the faster the transformation of the world takes place.

And so Baba says, ‘check yourself and remain firm on the promise you have made to the Father. Only the one Satguru will take your boat across, everyone else will drown you.’