Baba says, “you have come to the Father in order to reform your characters. You now have to make your characters divine.”

This is a school, the Godly school, explains Baba. You enroll into this school in order to reform your character. People in the world today don’t even understand what a good character is, He points out. Most think that giving to charity or helping the poor, performing devotion and doing other good deeds constitutes a good character. But this study is very high! The One teaching it is God Himself and the definition of a ‘good character’ that He gives me is Lakshmi and Narayan. Deities are human beings too, He teaches me, except they are human beings with divine virtues. They only exist in heaven. Who made them that? God did. When? At this most auspicious confluence age. Every cycle, God comes at this time and takes souls that have become completely degraded and changes them into deities. Where else would deities come from!?

It is the same soul that starts out pure, operating based on it’s original qualities of purity, peace, love, joy, knowledge, spiritual power, and happiness. In other words, the soul was satopradhan. But as the soul takes birth after birth after birth, it loses its level of purity, forgets who it is and becomes overinvolved in physicality. It starts to identify as a name, gender, appearance, nationality, role, status and relationships. In other words, the soul shifts out of its original consciousness of being a pure soul into body consciousness. And therein lies the downfall of the soul. The same soul who was once with a sweet, pure, divine character becomes one with a devilish character, prone to lust, anger, selfishness, greed, attachments, manipulation, competition, jealousy and all the rest. This is why the term ‘Shyam Sundar’ is remembered. This is not a term that applies only to Sri Krishna but to all deity souls. They all start out beautiful (Sundar) and with time, become degraded (Shyam). People think that there are two separate worlds- heaven and hell- and that deities live in heaven while devils live in hell. God comes and clarifies that it is the same world that once was heaven, then becomes hell as a reflection of the quality of the souls living in it. When the souls are deities, the world is heaven. When the souls become impure and descend into becoming devils, the world become devilish as a result; that is, it becomes hell.

When the world was heaven, there was no name or trace of sorrow because everyone was sweet. They were sweet because they were pure, satopradhan. Everyone treated each other with love and respect, naturally. There was no name or trace of fighting or arguing. Everyone appreciated each other’s gifts and talents rather than envy them. There were no feelings of comparison or wanting to ‘win’. There was just love, acceptance, sharing and enjoying each other. Because of this pure attitude of souls, there was no name or trace of stress, worry, anxiety or fear. As a result, there were no physical or mental illnesses. In fact, the very concept did not exist. “Take a look around the world now“, He tells me, “and decide for yourself if you are living in heaven or hell.” If I believe that I am in hell and want the world to become heaven again, then I, the soul, have to become a deity again.

In fact, for the last half cycle, I called out to God saying: “O Purifier, come and make us impure ones pure. Liberate us from this sorrow and take us to a place of rest and comfort.” While I did call out to the Purifier, I also believed that He is omnipresent, that is, in everyone and everything. That wrong belief deprived me of having a relationship with the Purifier because if He is already in me, then whom am I calling out to? Where would He come to and what would He do? Then, I also believed that the Ganges had the ability to purify without once stopping to think how water could possibly cleanse the soul! But then, I had forgotten that I am the soul; I thought I was the body.

God comes and removes the cobwebs. I learn that only the Supreme Father, the Supreme Soul is the Purifier of souls. How so? Because only God is Pure, in fact, He is Ever Pure. That is because He never comes into the cycle of rebirth like I do. He therefore never loses His purity or forgets who He is. He always remembers, He is always soul conscious. He is therefore, at this point in the cycle, my only reference as I make the shift back from body consciousness into soul consciousness. He doesn’t just tell me who I am, give me a map and leave. He comes to this physical plane, adopts me as His child, loves and sustains me, practically. His love becomes the alchemy that heals past wounds and scars, enables me to let go of past habits, the old patterns and helps me to rise above. He becomes my Teacher and teaches me Raja Yoga, the knowledge of how to be the ruler of the self again. He becomes my Guru and coaches me at every step. He becomes my Friend and my constant Companion on my return journey back to true self. This is what it takes to transform the soul from devil to deity. How could a river do this? Sannyasis can’t do this either! Why? because they leave everything and become recluses while deities belong to the family path. Deities are those who live in the world and remain pure while sannyasis blame the world, and move away in order to stay pure. Also, their purity is limited to celibacy while God transforms my entire character. That’s what’s required to be a deity of heaven whose praise is: full of all virtues, 16 celestial degrees complete, completely viceless, always righteous and non-violent.

And so God gives me the great mantra: Manmanabhav! which means: Consider yourself a soul and belong to Me alone. I forgot I was a soul and therefore forgot my values. Now, I have been reminded. When I forgot I am a soul, I forgot whom I belonged to and started following the dictates of my own degraded mind and the dictates of others. In other words, I came under the influence of the vices and changed from deity to devil. Now, I know that I, the soul am a child of God. I now know that only He is my reference for how to be. I now know that He is the only one who can change me back to who I truly am. And therefore, I must only follow His directions for every aspect of my life. When I make myself belong to Him as His child, when I experience all my relationships with Him, following His directions becomes easy. I want to do it because I want nothing more than to be like Him- good, sensible with the most elevated character. “There is a great need for remembrance in this.“, He says, “the characters of those who have good remembrance continue to become good. They continue to become very, very sweet and serviceable.“

I am originally a pure, elevated soul, a deity soul. This is my first faith. Next: my Father, Teacher and Guru is God Himself and He can change anyone; this is my next faith. Let me never think, let alone say things like: “I can never change, this is too hard” when that sanskar feels overwhelming or “so-and-so will never change, they will always be like this…” etc. God can change ANYONE; that’s why He is also called the Magician. Let me believe in the innate goodness of the soul and in Him and see His magic unfold.