Baba says, “make effort using the force of 20 nails and claim your full inheritance from the Father.” 

After half a cycle of stumbling, falling and losing everything I had including my dignity and honor, I met the Father. He had come especially for me. He had seen how mercilessly Maya had treated me. She saw that I was searching for my lost peace, true love and happiness. She would promise me love through a relationship, peace through vacations or at the temples, she would promise me happiness through winning medals or through accomplishments. I would try my very best, make effort using the force of 20 nails to claim what I believed was my inheritance from my mother and father, Maya and Ravan. But these parents were different. Despite my best efforts, somehow, I’d always fall short of attaining that peace, love and happiness I was looking for and these parents would mercilessly tell me that I didn’t perform well enough, that I need to try harder, chase harder, run faster. When I fell, rather than help me up, they’d tell me I deserved it for not trying hard enough. I’d hear: ‘loser’, ‘don’t fit here’, ‘no good’ and these parents would tell me that’s true. I lost all my self-worth, my confidence, my dignity, and my honor. My light that was once sparkling brightly was now a dim flicker.

The Father came and poured the oil of knowledge into my lamp: ‘Remember who you are’, He told me. You are not this, and this is not how you are meant to live. You are a pure soul, a deity soul, you are My child, the emperor of heaven. You forgot who you are and Me and this is why you are in so much sorrow. Now, remember. He didn’t just tell me and leave, He stayed. He took me back from Maya nd Ravan and made me His child again, practically, by adopting me through Brahma. He thus sustained me as my Mother and Father but He even didn’t stop there. He also became my Teacher and Satguru. He taught me the knowledge of the beginning, middle and end of the world cycle and helped me understand my story- what and where I was and how I got here. He helped me recognize the present time and its significance. The current cycle now comes to an end. This is the time to reclaim your lost inheritance and return home, He explains. Then, you will come into the new cycle, in the new world.

This is the only time in the whole cycle that I become the child of the Father, practically. This is the only time when He becomes my Teacher and gives me the knowledge of the cycle, practically. This is the only time when I can learn from Him and claim from Maya and Ravan all that they took away from me. By telling me in bhakti that God comes in every age, they made me slack. By telling me that He is omnipresent, they completely deprived me of the relationship of a Father and child and nullified the concept of claiming an inheritance. God comes and gives me His own introduction: I am not omnipresent, He tells me, the vices are. I don’t give you both happiness and sorrow, I only give you constant happiness. It is Maya and Ravan who only give you sorrow. They put a curse on you while I give you an inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.

“Now, make effort using the force of 20 nails and claim your full inheritance from the Father.” I was making full effort even before but it was for the devil’s inheritance. Now, I have to refocus all that effort and energy to claim my Godfatherly birthright of the deity sovereignty for not 1 or 2 births but for 21 births. And this is not a maybe, this is God’s guarantee. He alone is called the Boatman and the Satguru. He takes me from the dirty world, from a life of bondage to liberation-in-life. He does so by purifying me – He removes all alloy of the wrong things Maya and Ravan taught me and returns me to pure gold. But this purification doesn’t happen by Him waving a magic wand over my head, it happens through me making myself belong to the Father and following His directions – fully. It has to be in that sequence because without accepting Him as my Father and considering myself as His child, I will not follow His directions. In fact, I will easily be lured back into the old world by Maya and Ravan.

This is a school, Baba explains, there is no question of mercy in this. So is the Father too not merciful? Of course, He is. His mercy is His knowledge. He shows me the way and promises to walk it with me but I have to place my own steps, He can’t do it for me. In fact, He makes it so easy, I don’t even have to think: ‘should my place my step here or there? is this the right way or is that the right way?’ I simply have to place my footsteps in the Father’s footsteps. I don’t have to take long, dangerous pilgrimages or observe fasts, I simply have to understand and inculcate every point of knowledge I am taught. I have to study. Along the way, I will come face to face with my darkness, I will fail at overcoming that sanskar, I will face opposition…but the key is to never lose faith and to never give up. The Father says, ‘O traveler of the night, don’t become tired. The destination of the dawn is not far…’.

In the worldly study, when someone cannot afford the fees, they stop studying. However, there are those few who are very interested in studying and they apply to the government for financial assistance: ‘I want to study but I don’t have the money.’ They make a request in one way or another to get the funds to pay for their education. Sometimes the government is able to help, sometimes, it denies. But the students still don’t give up- they go to the philanthropists or wealthy people: ‘My parents are poor, but I want to study and work, will you please help me?’ They never give up, they make effort using the force of 20 nails. And that is a study that offers no guarantees of a consistent income and even if they do manage to earn, it is only for this one birth. I am being taught the most elevated study by the best Teacher- for FREE and it guarantees the highest income for not 1 but 21 births. So how much effort must I make for this study? When I keep the reward in my awareness, then I don’t feel tired. It is when I lose sight of the reward and only look at the present scene, the present circumstances, the present sanskars, that I feel like giving up. This is why Baba says, “Become trikaldarshi. You must always have the cycle spinning in your intellect. Then, you will remain constantly happy and cheerful.“

I have stumbled and fallen a lot for half a cycle. Now the Father has come and He comes only once and He is working tirelessly, night and day, to purify me and return me to my original state of pure gold. There is no expense to me in this study, there is no difficulty of going anywhere, just attention and practice. And so let me dare not settle for anything less than my full inheritance; let me go all the way from beggar to prince, from thorn to a fragrant rose, from degraded human to not just a deity but Lakshmi-Narayan, the sovereign of the new world.