December 7, 2020
There are ancient treasures like Vedic mantras that point out the way and act as maps for the seeker of truth. “When the human being matures sufficiently and begins the search for the truth, they use some references and the mantras are references”, explains Prem Baba, who has always been a profound student of life’s mysteries. Wishing that all beings be happy and that all beings have peace is also a reference.
For Prem Baba, this is only possible when we become love. “It’s not possible to love and serve everyone while you are still feeling isolated and separated, identified with the false self. The false self is an idea of who we are”, adds Prem Baba.
When we mature enough and begin the search for truth, believes Prem Baba, it’s the beginning of a transition from this false idea of myself to the so-called “true self”. To put it better: when we were born, we all received a series of references about who we are. The person receives a name, a religion, a political party, a football team. “They are the foundation of an idea of who that person is,” says Prem Baba. “At some point, they realize that they are not what they were told to be, because they feel insufficient. And that insufficiency opens doors to many types of suffering, such as anxieties, compulsions, shame, inadequacy, fears and revolts”, he explains.
You must be wondering why all this happens. According to Prem Baba, it’s because the person ended up identifying themselves with a character and, invariably, a goal for that character is established throughout life – a goal of achievement, of success. The person spends their life trying to achieve this goal and trying at all costs to validate this idea of identity. “They try to prove to the world and to themselves, at all costs, that they are that name, that story and everything related to it, until at a certain point in this journey, after being repeatedly frustrated, they start to wake up”, highlights Prem Baba.
Awakening means stopping identifying with the idea of identity. “This idea of identity works like colored lenses that distort the perception of reality”, says Prem Baba. For example, if you were born with the stamp that you belong to a certain religion, you will see the world from the perspective of this religion. And there is a tendency to deny the others. If you received a stamp from a political party or an ideal of how a society should structure itself, it works like a lens and makes you interpret reality from what you perceive –and there is a tendency to deny other perceptions.
In his experience, Prem Baba also highlights that another tendency is to believe that our vision is better than the other’s, that it’s the most correct and the most suitable one. “All of these lenses limit the perception of reality and if you move around the world from these limitations, you will inevitably bump into difficult situations. You will enter into disputes, competitions and wars to defend your point of view, because you are led to believe that your truth is better than the other’s”, he highlights.
As long as these conflicts refer to distant friends or family, we are able to manage them and go with it. “Until, at some point in your journey, you fall in love with someone. And that someone thinks differently from you”, adds Prem Baba. “They are a lot like you, so you were attracted. You respect and admire that person, but once you get deeper into the relationship, inevitably some differences will manifest.”
Prem Baba claims to be natural to see yourself dependent on that person and at the same time to see them as a thorn in your side. “They will question your identity, doubt your convictions and make you doubt them too”, guarantees Prem Baba. “It will provoke existential questions: what am I doing with my life? Am I where I should be? Should I be here relating to this person who is challenging and provoking me? ”, exemplifies Prem Baba.
In fact, Prem Baba explains that the role of the other in this journey is to act as a spark in a dry bush, and what will come next is the fire of doubt, triggering a bunch of questioning about the true identity. “This is just a little friction to activate the genie of the lamp. The genie of the lamp is your true identity. This friction increases and once you start looking for answers, it will unfold and start moving on its own, ”says Prem Baba.
From then on, Prem Baba says that this is the so famous journey of the soul, the journey from the false to the real. “This is the most beautiful journey possible. A journey of a fragmented and separate identity. You believed yourself to be a name, to have a religion, a political party, a football team. You believed to be a father, a son, a brother; you believed to be a man or a woman. This is the journey that I am calling the false identity to the real one, where you perceive yourself as a manifestation of divine love”, details Prem Baba. “Someone who loves and serves everyone, because there is no difference between you and the other. This self is indivisible, eternal and immutable”, he adds.
There are some words that are used to characterize this unique and eternal self. Prem Baba says that one of them is Satchitananda, which means existence, awareness and bliss“. This indivisible self lives in nirvana, in heaven, in your heart. The “fragmented self”, which is the cause of disputes, and therefore suffering, lives in the mind and is symbolically tied to the head. We can say that the journey of the soul is a transit from the head to the heart”, he summarizes.
Eventually, Prem Baba ensures that it’s natural for the developing human being to get lost during this journey and therefore it’s very important to count on reliable coordinates. Loving, serving and thanking everyone are reliable coordinates. “I try to simplify it by saying that the goal of life is to love Earth and all its children. When you can do that, you will be free and will have reached nirvana, heaven, and completed your transition. You will have moved from the false to the real”, says Prem Baba. “That’s why, for those of you who are starting to wake up, I have been so insistent on talking about the importance of focusing all your energy on identifying the one in you who prevents you from loving. Focus attention and time to identify the happiness saboteur. Who in you prevents you from being in heaven, in the sky of a loving heart? What keeps you from feeling the joy and ecstasy of loving Earth and all its children? ”
Prem Baba likes to use the analogy of the river running towards the ocean to explain the aspects of the fragmented personality that are, in some way, resisting their destiny, which is to dissolve in the heart. “We have been observing that the personality is complex and then we end up developing forces that are contrary to this destiny. These forces that are contrary to the destiny of dissolving into love are what I call the saboteur of happiness, the saboteur of the good things in life”, analyzes Prem Baba. “These saboteurs have a name: revenge, fear, obstinacy and pride.”
In short, there are several saboteurs and they are energy frequencies that were developed to protect us from shocks of pain. “But we end up identifying ourselves with these frequencies and we forget who we are, we forget the way back,” says Prem Baba.
In this evolution of consciousness, the next step is to reveal your true identity, end suffering and experience satchitananda. However, Prem Baba says that if this is too subjective for you, it’s possible to translate it into health, prosperity, healthy sexuality and constructive relationships. “And then, you feel blessed, in harmony with the law of minimum effort. With a small effort, great things happen, because you are acting out of the universal self. This is only possible when you are loving everyone. This is the simplest, most palpable and objective reference”, he says.
It is worth mentioning how logical and practical this teaching that identifies the difficulty of loving is. So you can look at people and situations that challenge you and because of them you close your heart and put defect on them, you accuse them. That person who challenges you, according to Prem Baba, is trying to get you back on the path of the heart.
“Because I agree that there are people who are difficult to love. There are people who are very nice, very kind. Furthermore, there are people who are too difficult to love because they are irresistibly unpleasant”, admits Prem Baba. “However, it is this person who is showing you where you need to improve, where you need to transform something within you. It is this person or situation that ends up showing open accounts with the past, unfinished business. And, as we know, it’s not possible to enter heaven carrying unfinished business”, remembers Prem Baba.
Prem Baba teaches that what keeps us from loving are our limitations. Another name we give to the “false self” is mask, a very didactic figure of speech. “Are you the mask? No, you are the one who wears the mask. To a masked ball everyone goes to have fun, but in life, why do you wear it? To be accepted and to please. The saboteur of happiness or the saboteur of love is closely related to the need to be accepted”, explains Prem Baba.
The goal is, if you are unable to pray for your brother – and praying for your brother is a figure of speech – to be with an open heart and a channel of blessings.
“This loving presence illuminates the path of the other. If you cannot manifest this, go after this need to please and to be accepted and everything behind it. It’s the aspects of your psychic world that are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny to dissolve yourself into the ocean of love”, says Prem Baba.
