Every time I sit for channelling, I meet good people who are being trounced by life. Honest, God loving people, being crushed in every possible way, in every aspect of existence. People who wish well for all of creation being thrashed, manipulated, bullied by the world at large. Good people going through hell. Loving parents who have done everything possible for their children, being treated like outcasts by their own very own blood. Kids who virtually worship the ground their parents walk on being treated like castaways by the latter. Decent people who just want to live with dignity being forced to commit suicide or become shadows of their former self, as life, existence, fate, whatever you might want to call it, has violated every ounce of their goodness and dishonoured every breath of their being.

And then you wonder, what God or Master can allow such kind and noble souls, to go through such misery and heart break. Why can’t God take care of His or Her lot?

After years of channelling, I have come to one conclusion. If your God and Master truly love you, by God, you are going to get the shit kicked out of you.

Look around you, and you will see the corrupt thriving and honourable people being trampled by life. God seems to have lost the plot. Masters seem to have abandoned the ship leaving their flock to drown and be overwhelmed in the ocean of existence. It sure does seem this way.

But I have also learnt and realized that more your Master loves you, all He or She is interested in, is to help you clear your pending accounts and become debt free in the balance sheet of Karma. As a parent, I understand this philosophy. I would never want my child to owe anybody anything. I would do whatever possible to help my child pay off his or her debt and start life afresh. Even if that meant going through untold hardships, as a father, I would do everything possible, to help my child clear his or her debt with one and all, as only then, would my child be able to live life, with head held high.

I remember reading about an elderly lady who loved Avtar Meher Baba. She loved Him so much, that each second of her existence was spent in thinking about Him, praying to Him, every moment talking to Him. She lived alone but was never alone. Baba was her constant companion. She loved Meher Baba so much that in every little aspect of her life, Baba was not only present but even involved. When she cooked her meals, she was certain Baba would eat along with her. When she slept, she was sure Baba would be there to sing her a lullaby.

One day, lost in her communication with Baba, some attire she was wearing caught fire. And she got burnt severely. By the time anybody could hear her screams and go and help her, her entire body was charred. She was still alive when one of Meher Baba’s disciple who was very close to Baba, went to meet her. The poor woman was in agonizing pain. All she could whisper was ‘why me’.

Like this woman, I have met innumerable people, who have loved their Master with such intensity that sometimes I feel like asking Baba Sai, ‘what the hell is the matter with You All. Why can’t you take care of Your own?’

Just a few weeks back I got an email where this lady wrote how she had stopped praying to Baba Sai of Shirdi. She wrote to me that she no longer prayed or talked to Baba. Few months back her parents and she lived an idyllic life and Baba was part of that life. Then she got diagnosed with a liver problem that made certain she couldn’t live a normal life any more. Then her father got bankrupt. From a palatial house in south Mumbai, they had to shift to a one bedroom flat in the suburbs. Friends disappeared. So called well-wishers no longer answered their phones. Her father died of a heart attack and a month later her mother died of a broken heart. If that wasn’t enough she got virtually bed ridden and no longer will she be able to move about without constant help and support. All this took place in a matter of seven months. She lives alone. Has nobody. She has only one question, after so much of love and prayers and bonding with Baba, He seems to have left her, on a leaking boat, midway in the rough ocean of life.

I could have told her to have faith. I could have told her Baba knows best. I could have told her be strong. But at such times, words mean nothing. One is seeking for some proof on not being abandoned. One is seeking for answers. Unless you have made your faith unconditional, nothing else is going to make sense. Unless your faith has always been, ‘my Master knows best and whatever is happening to me is happening with my Master’s consent, and if it has my Master’s approval, then all is well’, unless that is your philosophy, nothing else is going to work. Life is going to become hell and all philosophy meaningless.

If your belief is that all my life I have prayed to my God and Master and now where is He, you are going to have your soul wrenched out of your being. Faith is unconditional. You can’t tell your Master, I have faith in You so better not let me down. I know that is human and natural, but trust me, that doesn’t work.

 If your Master or your destiny wants you to walk through the fiery desert of karmic cleansing, not all the prayers in the world will prevent you taking that walk. If you have the umbrella of faith that He knows best and the spring of love flowing through your soul for your Master, then you will make that walk easy for yourself. Or you will burn.

Don’t burn. Trust me. Been there…Done that. Not worth it.

But I think I know the answer that throbs deep within the abyss of my soul.

According to me, the Masters are interested in only thing; to remove all karmic sludge and get you closer to the realization of Oneness.  Everything else is secondary. In reality Their only concern is for you to realize yourself and realize The Oneness that pervades all of creation. Balance sheet, fame, property, family, name, respect, honour, all these things are ancillary. They will use all this, the harsh way to make you focus on Them further, or test you and your devotion, by thrusting all these worldly balms, to see if you get distracted. Both ways, if you aren’t centred within your soul, you and I, my friend, are screwed.

They love you so much, They want you only with Themselves. They love you so much, that They are willing to suffer along with you while you go through the horrific fires of karmic cleansing.

 Look at the lives of our Masters. Jesus The Christ was crucified and slandered. Sri Ram first had to go into exile, then fight Ravana to save Maa Sita, then had to live without Sita, had to fight His own Sons, then watch Maa Sita, disappear into the earth. Prophet Zarathustra was stabbed in the back.

The story of Job too shows how Job was tested and completely finished, to prove his love for God.

More the God and Master love you, after a while you are on your knees screaming, please, please, please, please, love me little less.

I have always believed that the moment your Guru makes His or Her presence felt in your life, your trouble begins; which means it’s time for some good karmic cleansing. I have witnessed it innumerable times in my life. Too many times to now doubt this fact that all the Guru is really interested, and especially if you have that fire of love burning within you, is to clean you up, once and proper, of all karmic sludge.

The little karma left can be taken care of in the spirit plane up there, where everybody seemingly moves about with a smug smile on their spiritual thobdas and also feathers on their astral rears.

One week after Baba Sai of Shirdi made His presence felt in my life, nice and clear, I lost my job as an Editor of Indian Express magazines, all my consultancy work dried up, my friend invested badly in the stock market which left an ugly hole in the non-existent financial balance sheet, and in ten days’ time I was on the street, no money, no job, and no heaviness in the heart too. It was paradoxical. The worst time of my life, financially and yet, it was the best time of my life.

I didn’t get it then but still knew enough to understand that neither Baba nor God had a personal vendetta against me.

I was reading the Robert E Svoboda’s trilogy, The Left Hand of God. It is about his experiences with his Master, who we will call V, who was an Aghora. Now whenever V sat down and met people, a very successful businessman would come and seek blessings and plead that he be introduced to whoever his Guru was. V would always ignore this plea. Eventually Robert after months confronts his Master and wants to understand why the businessman, who was a very decent man, never granted his wish of knowing who his Guru was. V tells Robert, if I allow this man’s Guru to enter his life, this man will be finished where the world and its pleasures are concerned.

Robert informs this to the businessman who is ready for whatever the outcome, but insists on knowing and praying to his Guru. So V very hesitantly whispers the Guru’s name to the businessman. 

Then for months there was no sign of the businessman. A really long time later, when Robert and V were travelling in a car and their car had stopped at a signal, Robert notices a poor man seated on the road. He can’t believe his eyes. He gets out of the car and meets the once upon a time successful businessman.

The man is obviously financially ruined. The man tells V with a smile that soon after he got to know who is Guru was, he lost all his business, his sons duped him, his wife left him, and he was now living off the street.

But he didn’t care, his Master’s presence and energy were always with and within him.

The Guru had entered and wiped the man out financially and socially, but the man was so much in love with the Guru and all he wanted was to merge with the Guru that nothing else mattered.

This is what the Guru’s love can do to you. Annihilate your ego and all that once meant something, make you stand in the rubble of your so called life, but if you are truly in love, trust me, nothing else matters. You apply the ash of your surrender and His grace on your forehead and sigh out His name.

Through channelling, I have been a witness for years to the harshness of God and Master’s love. The paradox of being loved so much that it bloody hurts. 

A very close friend of mine doing very well one day sat down with me and told me to pray for his moksha. He wanted this life to be his last in the physical plane. He said he wanted it so badly that now just living was suffocating him. He wanted to be forever with Baba and Maa in the Spirit plane.

In my prayers, I was told to caution this friend of mine not to get too intense about his need for salvation and let Master and time decide when is the best time for packing bags for ever from the physical cycle of life and death. So I warned him and he still persisted. I could see the writing on the wall and really tried my level best to make him see what he was yearning would lead him to ‘physical, emotional, mental, financial quicksand’.

But then nobody listens to me. Starting from my six year old daughter so to expect grown-ups to listen is bordering on the ridiculous.

A few weeks after his birthday his companies on the Stock Market crashed. Two months later there was a major tax case levied on him. Everybody agreed he was innocent but the rule of law takes no emotion, no reason, no truth into account; it’s all about sticking to the letter of the law. He was virtually on the road by the then. He had to stop most of his work. A man who would fly abroad at the drop of the hat began to think twice going to town in the car, as the cost of fuel would eat into the monthly budget. Then he fell ill. Seriously ill and had to have a surgery. His child after that fell critically ill. He had to sell his office and home in the heart of the city and shift to some unknown part of the suburb. He travels by train or bus. But what I love about him is that he is still jovial, still the same man I knew when he was doing so well. He lives the belief that “my Master knows what is best for me and I am happy to accept whatever He has in store for me and all I pray is that He gives me strength and wisdom to go through whatever is in store for me”.

So if you are seeking closure with the karmic balance sheet, think again. And think again. And best just stick to thinking. Don’t try stunts with Them, as They have a notoriously wicked sense of humour.

There are Mantras where one prays for the karmic laws of cause and effect to expedite so that one is free from the karmic laws of cause and effect. Be careful. What you are really praying is that, Oh Lord, I am ready to now finish off all my karmic debt in one go. So bring it on.

To pray for this, you must be very brave, extremely evolved, completely detached or phenomenally &*^%$# daft.

Now I also have another belief as to why decent people truly suffer.

 Most Perfect Masters, have a deep regard, love and respect for those who are plagued with leprosy. Avtar Meher Baba would wash the feet of those suffering from leprosy and wipe them clean and touch His head to their feet and kiss their feet. Baba Sai’s care taker was plagued by leprosy.

In India, we have this strange notion, that anybody who suffers a lot must have in his or her past lives been a son of a bitch. We assume that this is karma catching up on that individual.

My assumption of those who are suffering miserably is a bit different. Let us take those suffering from leprosy.

I believe that when a soul or a consciousness, cannot bear to be away from his or her Master or to merge with The Great Soul or Great Consciousness, the individual decides that it shall do all that is necessary to clear his or her karmic slate, once and for all, thus moving on in the spiritual journey in the Spirit world.

The physical world has its pitfalls and entrapments. And because we sort of suffer from amnesia of what our soul really desires, which is God Consciousness, every time we occupy a body, we sort of keep screwing up and further increasing our karmic give and take with one and all, which necessitates more journeys back to Mother Earth.

 The individual soul who has decided to finish of his or her karmic give and take in one life time, charts out a life of intense purging. If the karmic cross weighs a ton, instead of lifting just that much, which is humanly possible, the soul decides to lift the entire weight in one life time. The power of free will to decide one’s own karmic journey is immense. So this weight can be lifted in ten life times or five or twenty. The only problem being, the chances of adding more weight to the karmic weighing scale is always immense and thus a few individual souls do not want to take that chance, time and again, and decide to square off their karmic balance sheet in one go, knowing very well that life in that karmic cycle is going to be soul crushing.

Each individual decides how heavy, his or her cross, is going to be, before coming back to Mother Earth. This is the power of free will.

So those suffering intensely, are usually, those who love God and Master so passionately, that they want to clear all their debt in one go. Thus I believe, Lepers, have decided in their soul consciousness, to purge themselves of all their karmic debt in one go. Thus the intense suffering and the Perfect Master realize their love and thus love them so tenderly.

I believe the karmic balance sheet is in our very soul. All accounts are kept by each individual’s soul, updating automatically everything. Nature is a phenomenal accountant and the soul is the keeper of all accounts. The soul hates to carry baggage and thus decides to go through certain experiences to remind oneself of the Ancient Plan. I don’t think God has a personal vendetta against anybody. He wouldn’t be God then.

So first and foremost, I truly believe that our love for God and Master, makes some us go truly nuts, when we are in our Higher Self Consciousness zone, and we decide to carry a weight that is going to break our back but free our soul.

And of course that is because we have sipped from the goblet of God’s love. The love is so intoxicating that in that state nothing else matters but to be in that state of spiritual stupor for all eternity.

That is why I sort of once in a while advise family and friends, that when you pray, don’t get carried away and every now and then, sort of whisper, ‘Dear God, love me, but don’t get carried away please in that love’.

Hey Prabhu, if you don’t mind, Zor ka Dhaka, but please, very dhirayse.

Because I love you so much, I harass you so much. This harassment is my Prasad for you and My grace. It is My real Mercy which descends only on a very few, a select few. These are my friends. They are My lovers to whom I give the gift of sorrow and distress. This gift is only for My beloved children. For My friends; I kill them and it is My highest Mercy on them. We Masters can give a world of gold, happiness and prosperity to others by our blessings. But this rare gift of privations, troubles and suffering is destined only for a select few ~ Avtar Meher Baba