PRODIGAL'S RETURN

 
In attempting to review Baba's redeeming activity in my own life, I find that it falls into two main categories; a cleansing, purging process which has entailed ruthless self-facing and profound changes in mind and body; and a gradual release from constricting habits of thought and emotion, until now a wide-spreading clarity and peace permeate my consciousness.

For a woman who had loved much, whose emotional nature largely controlled her life, to find herself now free of that emotional bondage, yet loving more deeply, more honestly, is an achievement possible only under the guidance of a supreme Master of the soul.

If, in addition, such a woman has, through the Master's grace, been guided out of weakness into strength, out of timidity and self-consciousness into God-assurance and greater power of life-expression, then she knows how merciful has been the Master's activity in her life.

If she has become aware of blinding veils being lifted in her consciousness, of joy which is unmarred by the pin-pricks of daily life, of love which is independent of persons, flooding her soul, then she knows even more deeply how true has been her life-long intuition that it was her destiny to meet again the Christ in the flesh and to become his disciple.

In earlier days, when my life was passing through a maze of kaleidoscopic experiences, so varied, rapid and apparently unrelated, I found it impossible to discover any dominant pattern in it. Again and again the pendulum swung from the sun-lit mountain-top to the darkest valley; both experiences being apparently beyond my conscious control.

With Baba's coming, however, consciousness tended more and more to converge toward the mid-point of balance. No longer is life lived at the extremes, with transports of joy today and chasms of anguish tomorrow.

What formerly seemed like a crazy piece of patchwork is now revealed to me as a life-pattern of tremendous contrasts, held together by the cohesive power of the Master, who, long years before I met him outwardly, had been guiding my life and destiny behind the scenes.

I am inwardly aware that the supernal glimpses of Reality, which came to me from time to time, were gifts from the Altar-room of the Master's consciousness, by which my soul was wooed to return Homeward.

Steadily, surely the Divine Magnet has been drawing me closer to himself in order that he may use me in this life and throughout Eternity for his own ends. Through dark days and light, through weakness and strength, through imperfect forms of love and through divine yearning, he has guided my footsteps lovingly, strongly, patiently, until now my pathway to his heart is clear of rubble and waste.

William Blake sums up in a few lines what I have come to regard as the only possible attitude of the disciple toward the redemptive work which the Master effects in him:

"I will go down to annihilation and death
Lest the last trump sound and find me unannihilate
And I be given unto the judgment of mine own soul."

All souls, whether they are conscious of it or not are seeking God; to aid them in their search the Master Baba now comes as the Perfect Manifestation of that love and wisdom for which the human soul yearns. His words illumine the way:

"The sojourn of the soul is a thrilling divine romance in which the lover — who in the beginning is conscious of nothing but emptiness, frustration, superficiality and the abrasive chains of bondage — gradually attains an increasingly fuller and freer expression of love. Ultimately, his separate self disappears as it merges into the Divine Beloved. In this unity of the lover and the Beloved is realized the supreme and eternal fact of God as Infinite Love."