GIVE YOUR ALL TO ME

 
Mani: All the time it is Baba who supports us and holds us to him, he who loves us, he who tolerates us. I can talk like this now, but to begin with we too have been raw and hard material. Now we wish we could have been more pliable. We have learned, we have grown — to some extent — but one can never grow enough to meet Baba's love, never.

Don [Stevens]: So the real challenge to the individual is to persist during the tough times. The real challenge is to look for and find that, in fact, Baba's love is there to sustain one, and to work through the necessary problems involved in dissolving one's sanskaras, with Baba's love.

Mani: There's no other way. Baba won't let you avoid experiencing that, once you're in his net. Some may feel afraid that they're lost, but we must remember that while we are holding onto Baba's daaman, he is holding our hand. Baba never makes it easy, but he always makes it possible. He makes it beautifully possible when we rely completely on him. It comes about at that point when you are no longer for your self, but are for Baba. His love equips you to meet life's challenges as you would want to in order to please him.

Don: So you find a new depth of strength to do it?

Mani: Yes. For us to see that Baba was pleased with something we did was absolute paradise. And when we had displeased him in some way....

Don: Absolute hell. Mani, what was hardest for you in the New Life? Eruch said being cheerful at all times was the hardest thing for him.

Mani: Yes, of course, being cheerful meant we had not to complain, we had not to be sad or look glum. The impact was hardest on the men. We had to do it, too, but the brunt was more on the men. I remember once when we had stopped for the night in a little cinema house, of all places. We women were to sleep on the stage, just behind the cinema screen. A light was on and I was throwing shadows on the screen with my fingers, making rabbits and so on. Baba was with the men, hidden from our view, but we could hear Eruch's voice as he was interpreting what Baba was telling them.

One of the things we heard Baba tell was, 'You have to be lords and masters of your faces during the New Life, no matter what happens,' which meant never letting one's face betray any unhappy emotion one might feel. But simply masking your face was not much of a solution either, because Baba could draw out the tiniest waver of emotion that might rise within you. He would detect it and bring it out.

Another voice: You had to be cheerful even if you didn't feel cheerful?

Mani: Cheerful did not mean you had to go about smiling. If you did that at the wrong time it was just as bad, and Baba would reprimand, 'Why are you grinning like that?' We still don't really understand the meaning of the words cheerful, happy. Cheer can be silent — cheer can be absolute silence itself. Happiness is a stillness, not just dancing and singing. It is all something which has still not been developed, which Baba perhaps was molding into us.

Another voice: Like Eruch said, there were moments when you would feel anger. But how can you feel cheerful if Baba is confronting you at that moment, and you're angry at the same time?

Mani: You ask Baba how one can do it!

Don: Pull a curtain down on the anger. Leave it. Pass it by. There's a part in the appendix of Baba's God Speaks on forgetfulness. In it he describes the absolute necessity for the spiritual aspirant to develop a technique for the practice of forgetfulness.

Mani: Forgetfulness of yourself. Or control. When we were with Baba in Bangalore in 1940 Baba referred to that. Elizabeth, Norina, Nadine, Kitty, Margaret and all of the western women were there, too. Something had come up — someone was contrite at having felt angry — and Baba said, 'What's the good if you did not feel angry? I don't want stones around me — how would that help my work? But, to control your anger when you feel it — that's the thing!'

Another voice: It sounds like Baba opens up this new faculty of cheerfulness, and then the energy that was in the anger is directed into the cheerfulness. Is it something like that?

Mani: I don't know, but there were times when Baba would not want us to seem cheerful, times when Baba would say to one or the other of us, 'I am not well, and here you are being so cheerful!' We had to learn to develop that sensitivity to Baba's pleasure at all times. It is not something that one can give a label to, or cut up in squares like taffy. It is something very subtle, like flowing water, and you have to learn the feel of it and to hold it in your hand without letting it run through your fingers — and blessed are you if you can do it.

One thing is certain. With Baba there is no compromise. You may do something which you know will displease him and justify yourself as to why you did it. A thousand reasons come and stand before you, putting out their hands to help you. But that does no good — you would only be fooling yourself. As Baba said, what's important is not whether you're good or bad, but that you are his, that you have surrendered yourself to him. 'Give your all to me. Then it's mine, it's no longer yours.' It was beautiful to watch Baba work on and with our weaknesses, turning our debits into credits.