THE DEPTH OF THE NEW LIFE

 
I've never been too keen on talking about the New Life. I could not sing the New Life Song even now, perhaps because I have had a momentary glimpse of the depth, the awesome depth, of the New Life. How can I describe it to you? Well, say you are boating on a calm ocean, enjoying floating along, and suddenly you look over the edge of the boat and are granted a sight through the fathomless deep, right down to the ocean floor, and you exclaim, 'Oh, my God, what depth!!' Since being in the New Life I'm always aware of its unfathomable depth.

During the New Life when we were so incredibly bound by its conditions, another feeling I had momentarily was the fabulous sense of freedom. It was not related to freedom from the Old Life, freedom from possessions and responsibilities — no, not that kind of freedom. This was a whiff of that real freedom, which made me exclaim, 'If this is the Freedom that Baba talks about, one would do anything to attain it.'

Baba said the New Life will go on living, it is eternal. It will go on living by itself even if there is no one to live it. It is a force. It has already been lived, and will continue to live because it has been lived by the Avatar. Baba walked the New Life — we simply followed in His footprints. Because He lived the New Life it will go on forever. It is not only relating to the mandali, or to Baba-lovers, not only relating to this country or that one, it is relating to the whole world.

I can feel the New Life walking inexorably forward, soon to catch up with all humanity. No one will be able to escape it, any more than one can escape from an advancing flood. At the moment it may be at a distance, but you can see it advancing in the hopelessness and helplessness around the world felt by individuals, groups, nations — it is catching up, Baba's New Life is catching up.

But Baba has also told us of the time beyond, of the age to come when brotherhood will be a practical reality, when the lion and the lamb will eat together, when humanity will be one family.