place’ in your heart. Otherwise, who has developed the ability
to examine and establish the guru?
The one who helps you to walk the auspicious path in this
world is the guru, and the one who gives direct moksha is the
Gnani!
[21]
The Purpose of Penance
How much need is there for chanting of mantra (japa),
penance (tapa) or for vrat (taking religious vows)? Do you use
all the medicines from the pharmacy? Only those that are
prescribed for you are the right ones. However, there is no
reason to say that the other medicines are wrong. There are
other ‘patients’ for whom chanting mantra and penance, etc.,
result in binding auspicious karma.
The current time is not one for doing penance through
insistence or even deliberately. This is the time to do penance
that comes naturally before you, and to settle it with equanimity.
For those people who, because of the lack of the effect of merit
karma, when there is a shortage of grain, kerosene, sugar and
milk, they distress over it day and night: what more penance can
there be?
For the Gnani, renunciation or acquisition is not possible.
He will settle with whatever circumstance that may come before
him! The Lord did not say that the renunciation of material things
is renunciation. He has said that the renunciation of intense
attraction (murchha) for material things is renunciation. God will
only see the root cause of the problem!
The one who can do the agiyaras (observance of
fasting done on the eleventh day of the lunar cycle), in
accordance with the revered Dadashri’s instructions and
approval, will definitely attain salvation. True agiyaras is when
the gnanendriya (Five senses; Sense organs of knowledge
40