HOW GURUDEV BECAME WHAT HE WAS

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

35. HOW GURUDEV BECAME WHAT HE WAS
Gurudev was an extraordinary combination of selflessness, service, devotion, divine love,
prayer and worship; an extraordinary combination of discipline, self-control, conquest of the mind,
concentration and deep meditation. He was also an expert hatha yogi, a great tapasvi and a singer of
the Divine Name. Combining all methods, he shone as a bhakta, a jnani, a super karma yogi and as
one who had mastered his mind—a raja yogi. How did this happen? What did he do?
He was like any other person. He was educated in English medium schools, studied
medicine, plied his profession in Malaysia, had a progressive, successful career. What is it that he
did that made him a world figure, and today we are reaping the benefits of his achievements, his
strenuous practice of the spiritual life, his deep meditation, his realisation? Hundreds and thousands
throughout India and the world over have been the beneficiaries of his life and his teachings.
What is it that he did? He was given something by God, and he put it to the best of use. He
carefully cultivated it. In the thirteenth chapter of the Gita, Lord Krishna makes a significant
statement to Arjuna: “This body is known as the field.” A field is a place, an area, which has a
potential to produce, to bring forth, to give you a certain harvest. If you labour, if you do the needful
to arouse this potential, to activate its ability to produce, then it will bring forth many useful things.
By what means does a person with a certain area of land arouse its potential, make it capable
of producing? If it is left as it is, if it is denied water and care, it will produce nothing, even if it has
been sown with seeds likely to produce a rich harvest. They will simply dry up. But if water is
applied to the field a miracle happens. It not only activates the potential of the field to produce, but it
does the same to the seed, the other factor that is involved.
This means that we have to have a deep desire, subheccha, to put whatever we have been
granted to the highest use, to do all that is necessary—unreservedly, without hesitation, without
laziness or lethargy—to labour hard, to provide it with that triggering factor, and to do all that is
necessary to bring out what it is capable of bringing out. And this body, this human personality is a
field capable of producing a rich golden harvest provided we diligently work upon it and put to the
highest and best use whatever it has received.
This should be our objective. But then, we must be fully aware of one significant fact about
this field which our body, mind, intellect and personality constitute and that is that it is neutral, it is
amoral. It is neither good nor bad, neither daivic nor asuric. It is there. It has potential to produce.
What this potential for producing will give you depends upon what you put into it, how you utilise
it, the way in which you deal with it, the way you activate it. It is like your echo. Whatever you call
out, good or bad, comes back to you. Whatever you create is what you have.
The field is there to produce and give you whatever you work for. You are the captain of the
ship of your life. You are the master of your fate. You are the creator of your destiny. In the present,
you create the quality of your future. What are you presently engaged in? What is the quality of your
secret thoughts, seemingly unknown, but known to the Being who indwells you? He knows what
you yourself do not know.

Your future, your destiny, what you produce for yourself and others, depends upon the
quality of your hidden thoughts—hidden from men but not from God—your various sentiments and
motivations and the various attitudes you cultivate towards the world and the things and beings that
are in the world around you. These are the prolific creators of your now and your tomorrow. They
can make you happy or miserable. They can create within you light or darkness, heaven or hell. For
the field is there to give you whatever you produce out of it, depending upon the way that you deal
with it.
Therefore, be wise. Be aware of this fact. Beware of its misuse. Put it to the highest use. Be
your own greatest benefactor. May your right labours, in the right direction, with the right intention
and the right objective be your own greatest benediction, your own greatest blessing.
Out of this, may immense good come to everyone with whom your life has to be lived, and
may immense glory, bliss, peace and illumination accrue to you in the days ahead. Think deeply.
Decide. How will you work? In what way will you labour? What will you bring forth from this field
that God has given you? This the field cannot decide. It is the one that labours there that has to
decide.
If you make the right use of this field of the human personality—the body as well as the
psyche—for the good of all, the happiness of all, and for your own highest, supreme blessedness,
then there is no power on earth that can deny you what is due to you, that can prevent you from
getting what you have worked for.