- Dharmesh Shah

Commandment 1:
Rise before dawn. Offer your prayer and puja at a fixed hour, preferably before sunrise, sitting in one and the same pose. Have a separate place and 'asan' for worship. Purity of mind and body should be specially adhered to.

Master has explained so much in detail and given extreme importance to this commandment that 1/3rd of his book is taken by this. Lets look at this commandment in parts and try to understand the importance of it.

- Rise before dawn. Offer your prayer and puja at a fixed hour, preferably before sunrise.

Here Master talks about the concept of creation, I won't go into detail as I am still trying to understand it. Lets look at the fundamental concept and importance of time.

Spiritual Aspect:
    - The state of world at that time (before dawn) is the closest to that of the creation.
    - That is the state closest to the state which we have to finally arrive at.
This is the beginning, this is the end.

Practical Aspect:
    - From nature's cycle from sunrise to sunset the material heat is descended to the earth and the night time is to cool down its effect and bring back to its original pure state.
    - From human or any living being for that matter, material pursuit starts from the sunrise and ends by sunset. After sunset, he tries to consume, share whatever is gained. Before going to bed thanks God for whatever is given by Him and analyzes and tries to get rid of wrongs done during the day. Sleeping in the company of God. When he wakes up, the state is closest to its original, pure state he started.

- Sitting in one and the same pose. Fixed hour. Separate place and seat for worship.
When we offer prayer we are begging to make us like Him or as Master says, "to bring forth the divinity in us"
"He is within us, are you within Him?" So we need to create an environment for that. By having fixed hour, fixed place, seat, same pose make ourselves available to Him and Him alone - so He doesn't keep looking for us.

Take an example of office, everyone has
    - Fixed place and seat (Table, chair)
    - Fixed hours
    - Fixed phone, email etc.
Why ??
    - Make yourself available for the Boss - so that he doesn't keep looking for you all over office to assign the work.
    - To enable you to do your work - which is to serve the company.

- Purity of Mind and Body.
For anything (human, machine, matter, energy etc.) to give its best results has to be in pure form. I think here purity refers to original state not taking into account the effect of nature/environment on matter. Here body is matter and mind is energy - both have to be pure.

For example,
- The bulb glows the same every time, but the amount of light spread depends on the dirt accumulated on the bulb.
- Consider any machine, it accumulates dirt from the atmosphere and if we don't clean and service, its efficiency goes on reducing and may stop working.
So to maintain purity proper cleaning and tuning is required.

Commandment 2:
Begin your puja with a prayer for spiritual elevation with a heart full of love and devotion.

Every puja begins with the prayer, so lets examine the subtle points on how the prayer should be offered and why.

- Prayer for Spiritual elevation
Master gave 10 commandments for any person to live a spiritual life. So in order to achieve that the prayer should be offered with "One and Only" goal of spiritual elevation.

The hidden thing lying in spiritual elevation and the prayer is "We are yet but slaves of wishes", so the prayer is for the spiritual elevation of the whole world, brahmand, parabrahmand and beyond …
When we pray for "MY" spiritual elevation, it is nothing but Selfishness and Ego. We know that we have to get back to our Homeland and it is of "No Use" to go alone.
"Have you ever gone to a movie alone?" If yes, "Did you enjoy it?" …

- Heart full of Love
Some poet has given definition of Love: "Love is the Union of two hearts".
Here, why should we offer prayer with "Heart full of Love" is because we are seeking union with Masters Heart. As Master says, "It is difficult to imagine the union of two hearts unless one experiences it." Let's examine various stages of love and union.
    1. One tries to think, he loves the Master
    2. One thinks, he loves the Master
    3. One starts loving the Master
    4. One starts feeling His Love
    5. Now the merging/closeness starts to develop exponentially.
    6. One starts loving or in prayer all the time.
    7. Now the idea of love and consciously loving goes away.
    8. One feels union with the Master.
    9. The idea of union goes away with the idea of self, what remains is the "Master". He and he alone

- Devotion
To understand devotion is again very subjective and let us try to relate with practical aspect of life.
When one starts a job in any company, first one gives his presence to the Boss. Now boss knows you are available, so he starts giving you small work. Looking at your devotion, perfection he keeps on giving more work and more responsibilities. Hare we are talking about "The Perfect" world so don't even mention "politics and corruption".
The more dedication and devotion you work, more promotions you get. You start getting closer and closer to the boss. He starts revealing the secrets of the company and your devotion keeps on increasing. The Master mentions about the "mystery" and principle of "invertendo", which is better explained in His book.
Is there a need to explain "Company" and "Boss" ??

Lets examine the Prayer
                                "O Master!
                                Thou art the real goal of human life;
                                we are yet but slaves of wishes
                                putting bar to our advancement
                                Thou art the only God and power to
                                bring us up to that stage"
Master - Ultimate Consciousness
Consider a vast ocean which gets separated into various streams and to the drops. Each drop to realize its value/existence have to merge into the ocean in its pure form. If a drop have to live its own life it gets contaminated with various impurities and assumes a "solid form" which cannot do anything and even forgets its "Original Self".


Commandment 3:
Fix your goal, which should be complete oneness with God. Rest not till the ideal is achieved.

Let's look at the Goal
- Complete oneness with God.

People say God is everywhere and it has neither form or shape. Master says it is "Infinite Absolute".
Lets assume God is infinite, now how do we define infinite, it is something beyond and beyond. Take a mathematical equation.
        1/0 = ? (Infinity)
Now the question is how do we define "Zero", take the smallest of smallest particle and try to make it "Zero", We make it subtle and subtle till it disappears, it becomes "Zero" or in other words, it has become "Infinite". So the principle of invertendo applies here. Zero becomes Infinite and Infinite becomes Zero.
So, God is neither infinite nor zero, but beyond both, which is "inexpressible in words" as Master puts it. Master also says that "Goal should be fixed correctly, if the goal is not set properly we may end up somewhere in the middle and not knowing where to go from there"
What to do ??

Lets go back to zero and infinity. With the principle of science we know that lesser the mass/weight/volume faster will be the speed or velocity. We should make ourselves "Zero" because the distance to travel is "Infinite". When we start making ourselves zero by reducing physical and material mass, followed by removing the burden on soul, which is energy. The lesser the burden, purer the energy and so the speed with which we travel increases.

Now coming back to the equation
        Distance to travel = ? (Infinity)
        Reduce the mass to = 0
        So, Speed will keep on increasing to = ? (Infinity)
        And time required will reduce to = 0
        Distance = Speed * Time
        ? = ? * 0
        So we go to = ? (Infinity) * Zero
        That is beyond both - God

- Fix your Goal
Now having understood the goal however hazy, it may be but the main point to note that it is "The Ultimate" or "Ultimate of The Ultimate" …
Once we fix our thought power on the goal with the strong determination, it's a stepping stone to the "Path to Infinity". Unless we fix our goal as Master says "We are swimming in the sand." Once the goal is fixed our journey in the vast ocean starts and the determination will give the strength to overcome all the obstacles in the path. Another subtle point is "Divine help comes, when …".
Thought Power is the only common link between human being and Divine. One the thought is set on the Ultimate or Divine in its pure form, the Divine help comes and the link is established or in other words now the distance gets known.
"Having joined the System, we all know that
the Link is established, Divine help is already there,
but HAVE WE FIXED OUR GOAL ??"

- Rest not till the ideal is achieved.
Master says "Restlessness should be like that of a drowning man." Here the man is restless because of fear of death, because a man thinks death is end of everything and loves his life or the worldly things enjoying in this human life. If we see that way, we are dying everyday, for small/negligible worldly gains like; this person didn't give me my Rs.5 today, this person is not inviting to his home, he doesn't have any feeling. He is trying to steal my pen etc. What are we striving for is in Masters words "Life beyond life" or the Ultimate life which is the Ultimate happiness, calmness, balanced ness …

So we need to divert all our action in all the planes physical, vital, … towards the goal so the energy or speed increases. At the same time keep on reducing the mass or activities and burden to assume the zero state which will pave the way for the Ultimate.

Commandment 4:
Be plain and simple to be identical with Nature.

This seems to be short and simple commandment, but to get to its depth is very difficult. Lets give it a try.
- to be identical with Nature
As the Master says Nature is the true reflection of "the Ultimate" and it is "plain and simple". Nature as a whole may be difficult to understand and analyze, so lets take an example of nature, human being, which we all know as a true reflection of nature. When man enters in this world for the first time it comes from a dormant state in its pure and naked form, as a representative of divine. His heart is full of divine love and mind is perfectly calm. Take an example of age old rishis and saints, who had power to bring rain by singing "Malhar" and light a fire by singing "Deepak" raga. Even the discovery of the solar system and effect of other planets were known at that time, whereas the scientists with extensive research have found the planets but still trying to understand its effect on earth. There were no calculators and still all the calculations were there and some may be faster than present day calculators/computers.

The point is the amount of power and capacity human being possessed that time and now??

Once you enter the sphere of Maya, one starts developing attachments, which leads to "Moha" or possessiveness by fear of loosing Maya and then tries to think that it is his own creation - "Ahankar". This is what is meant by upward tendencies of mind, which are reverse to the "Divine Will", which is always towards the center or origin.

Another way to look at it is consider mind as an uneven land and pour a water over it, different parts will get different amount of water and with the effect of environment different plants will grow all over, some mango, lotus, rose, cactus etc. The amount of each type and its nature will depend on the land and water it gets and the effect of atmosphere. This is what Master says "Community of thoughts". For each person the 'land' is different, 'water' is age and 'environment' is different which forms different community of thoughts.

Now we know where we started and where we have to go from here - destroy the community of thoughts and go back to the "original thought" which is divine.

The first thing "Master" says is since the task is very difficult and may be beyond the capacity of a common man, one must associate with the personality who has already destroyed his community of thoughts and trying to get back to its original thought or in Masters words "Has enough swimming in the infinite". Having done that with His support need to learn to destroy and divert old thoughts to the divine thought. Once this is done half the work is done. Now the thing that remains is "to be plain and simple" - stop the formation of more communities and divert everything to the divine thought or origin. This is the reason why saints and rishis used to go to Himalayas and take sanyas. But here, as Master says we can achieve this by adopting proper meditation methods to stop the building of future and diverting all our actions and thoughts in that direction.

Another thing to note here is that people wants to get rid of "cactus" but not "lotus, roses or jasmines". Everybody wants to get remove ill feelings, miseries but nobody wants to give up "comfort" and "Ego - own creations" because one likes that.

Unless the feeling and idea of 'comfort' and 'self' is gone it is sheer folly to claim to be identical with nature.

Commandment 5:
Be truthful. Take miseries as Divine Blessings for your own good and be thankful.

- Be truthful

Here the word "Be truthful"doesn't imply only speaking truth. As the Master says it is very difficult to explain this state of "Truthfulness" and He says "It is as it is", which is our original state and the only other word to explain that state is the "Divine".

In this world full of materiality and superfluities it is impossible to give an example of any object, material or feeling to describe the above condition. As the Master says "it should be free from every concept". The only other example one can think of is "Divine light without luminosity", even there one should know the concept of light and luminosity. When one knows the only property of light is luminosity, so you take out light and luminosity from the statement, what remains is the "Divine".

Having fixed our goal in commandment 3 to return to "the Origin" and in commandment 4 to be identical with Nature to achieve the goal, the next thing is to assume the "Original state" or the state of "Truthfulness". How to achieve this state?

- Take miseries as Divine Blessings for your own good and be thankful.

The first step is, start being true to ourselves in all our dealings and actions so that we try to express the Divine. I say here "try to" because we don't know the Divine or we have a concept of divine. The other thing is at this initial stage we have our feelings, concept of good and bad, real and unreal, joy and misery. All these things gets associated with our actions knowingly or unknowingly.

In order to express the Divine, one should do everything with the view that "Master is the doer". When this happens Love and Devotion for the Master develops and all the actions are done more and more as per Masters' will. So far so good, but when something bad happens or something which gives us pain, our faith gets shaken and we start questioning the Master "why this way or that way?" The most difficult part is to take this as a blessing from Him, because we have the concept of good and bad. When our love for the Master is unconditional, we are able to take that as a blessing for our good, because He knows what is good for us. We know His love is "Unconditional". Everyday, when we sit in meditation no matter what time or place He is always there waiting. Even if we miss one day or a few days for some material reasons He is still there waiting…

So when we take everything as coming from the lover, it is always welcomed with gratitude and consider it as a step getting closer to our Beloved.

Take example of "Sita" in "Ramayana". After her return from Lanka, she had to go through "Agni Pariksha". She welcomed it and took it as a blessing because she knew that she would get her "Swami" and she did.

"Are we ready for Agni Pariksha??"

Once this is done the concept of joy and miseries go away and we attain the state of settledness or eternal joy. Since there is settledness there can be unsettledness, so next both of them goes away and what remains is the Reality. Once again when the consciousness has an idea of reality there is something called unreal. So when the idea of reality goes away "It is as it is".