Baba says, “In order to become equal to the Father, become those who put right that which has gone wrong.”

To become equal to the Father means to be complete and perfect. Indeed, the qualifications of God’s most elevated creation is: full in all virtues, 16 celestial degrees complete, completely viceless, completely righteous, and non-violent. I have a lot of knowledge, I have remembrance and even teach others the pilgrimage of remembrance, I am very clever at teaching others the right way to be i.e. in the subject of dharna and I have a lot of love for service too. So on the surface, it seems as though I have all my ducks in a row. However, points out Baba, there is still one area where I become careless: In transforming myself from wasteful thinking, seeing, speaking and doing. There is very little if any negative thinking, but there is still significant wastage of my treasures. This is why, even though I seem to be on top of all four subjects of the study, I still lack that supersensuous joy, that lightness, that rest in my life – this is the barometer that helps me gauge how close I am to my goal of being equal to the Father.

Wasteful thoughts lead to wasteful feelings such as bitterness, jealousy, resentment, competitiveness etc. which then quickly affects my attitude, my vision, my words and my actions. Everything becomes wasteful and this wastefulness becomes an obstacle to becoming an embodiment of power similar to the Father; instead, it ties me in bondage and makes me weak. The way to stop wastage is to simply put a full-stop and all it takes is a second to do it. But instead of applying a full-stop, more often than not, I engage with the wasteful thinking and feeling by applying a comma. I know I should stop the thought but it’s too juicy to ignore and I continue with: “Oh, can this too happen!”, “Should it be like this?!”. Or if I hear about something someone said about me, then because of my own body consciousness whereby I place my ego on a pedestal mistaking it to be self-esteem, I think: “He said that about me!!”, “after all I did for them…”, “how can I be expected to stay calm, do you know what they said about me!?”

A full-stop is just a dot, it’s the simplest punctuation but it requires that I have a still hand. If I have a hand that’s shaking vigorously or even a little for that matter, I might try to apply a dot, but it will stretch into something else. Here, the hand is the intellect; it needs to be still. And the intellect can only be still when I am stable in the consciousness of who I truly am– I am a pure soul, a child of God. I am not a role, or a relationship, a position, a title or anything else. As long as I am caught up in any of these many wrong identities, I will struggle to apply a dot. The intellect will be in upheaval because I believe that my child, my spouse, my parent or friend did something to me, or that my subordinate should be paying more respect to me, the ‘boss’ or that I am so talented that I ought to be recognized more. I see someone make a mistake and I judge etc.

I can only apply a dot when I have the awareness that I am a dot, and everyone else is also a dot. When I consider myself a soul, a child of God, I have access to my true identity and my spiritual powers. The ego comes off the pedestal and suddenly, just like that, I no longer have the urge to judge, condemn, criticize, feel disrespected, nor do I have any need for recognition and praise. Having attained God, I have attained everything and now, I bestow like the Father. This is putting right, that which is wrong. Instead, if I remain in body consciousness, then because I don’t have access to any of my powers, rather than transform myself, I try to transform others. Since I don’t have the power to tolerate, or the power to accommodate, I say: “Do I have to die all the time? I have to be the one to change all the time. How much longer do I have to tolerate?” When I am soul conscious, I don’t even view this as dying, I view this as power, I view this as victory. I didn’t engage, I didn’t waste my treasures, I stayed in my self-respect. In the world, people say so-and-so has died and gone to heaven. Of course, they don’t actually go to heaven, they simply take another birth in this old world. Here, I will go to heaven anyway, but when I learn to die alive, I will also attain an elevated seat in heaven. So this isn’t dying, rather, it is claiming my self-sovereignty in heaven.

“So it is good to die alive, is it not?“, asks Baba or do I find it difficult? Do I get stuck in: “But I am not wrong; they are wrong..” If so, then it shows that I don’t know how to put right that which is wrong. “Should the one who is wrong change or the one who is right change?“, He asks. The answer is: both do. In spiritual terms, change means moving forward, change means progress. In the outside world, people change in the wrong way- they avenge, they pay back etc. But here, I change in the right way. When any situation comes, I offer myself first in putting a full-stop in a second: “I have to change.” “Those who offer themselves in this way receive blessings from the self: you experience happiness, second from the Father and third, from the Brahmin family. So this isn’t dying, it is attaining.“, teaches Baba.

So now, He says, don’t see wrong as wrong but think of how you can put right that which is wrong. This is known as benevolent feelings. With your elevated feelings and pure wishes, you will gain victory in transforming your wasteful nature and the wasteful nature of others. So first of all, become victorious over the self, then through your own transformation, become victorious over others and you will then automatically become victorious over nature. The victory of these three will make you into a bead of the rosary of victory.