Dear children,

I never thought I would be addressing children so often. I remember my days in Christ Church [Boys High School], Jabalpur, when we had very little to do with our teachers except in the classroom. Parents never visited us, and nor did we want our parents to visit us. We were always shy. That seems to be still there because my granddaughter went to her college day before yesterday evening and she tried her best to keep her parents away from attending it. Of course, when they grow up they complain that my father never took interest, my mother never took interest, but that is all like a card game. Sometimes you turn up an ace; sometimes you turn up something else – all that is beside the point.

When I was at school it was a great deal of fun mixed with moments of tension, sometimes frustrations with the teachers, with our subjects, very often the feeling that we should run away, I mean, what has school to do in our life? – that is what we used to feel. It is an imposition on childhood and youth was what we used to feel. I am sure you all feel it too. But then, when the day of departure comes, there is always a sadness and nostalgia, because one phase of life is finished forever – forever and ever. You will never be school children again. College is a different kettle of fish. All the discipline that you learnt in school you have to unlearn [laughter], more or less, in college; and if you are not careful you will lose all the discipline that you learnt at school.

So there is the learning period, which is the school – and there is the fighting to retain what we have learnt, which is college education. We have too much freedom [in college], too much indulgence, too much time to yourself, nobody to supervise, nobody to guide. You are left like these ownerless cows and bulls on the streets of Madras, eating the stray things thrown on the streets, banana leaves from Brahmin's houses, plantain skins. So your future has to be one that you have to enter very carefully, walk very carefully, and emerge successfully. Because discipline can be handled; all that you will do is to protest a little, but then you accept, and it is good for you.

In college you have too much freedom, absolutely thrown on your own. So now is the time for you all to be careful because when you leave us, I will not say, "God help you," I will say, "Please help yourselves." Because life is like a river – two banks: the good bank and the bad bank; in between is flowing the river of life. We are not here to look at what is good or what is bad; to keep going straight, swiftly, you swim in the middle. Under the Buddhist way of belief it is called the middle path. We are not concerned with what is good and bad, what is truth and what is a lie – we must be true to ourselves.

My inner Self, my soul, is such a wonderful thing being a spark of God Himself that it cannot have any standards except to be divine. To be divine means, in human terms, be upright, be disciplined, love. Don't obey the truth – love the truth. Don't obey principles – love principles, because they are what guide us. You know what Babuji Maharaj, my guruji said? "Say what you mean and mean what you say." That is the sum and substance of, to my mind, all ethics and morality and everything else. Say what you mean and mean what you say. This is a very important guideline, a precept, and if we follow it, we are also truthful, we are also moral, we are also friendly. Because we will not cheat friends and tell them, "You are my friend, I will not cheat you," and then cheat them. You will not offer, say for instance, a stolen biscuit to your sister or a badly built house to a friend at an exorbitant cost. Say what you mean, mean what you say. The question of profit and loss will never enter into it, because truth cannot have a value set upon it. Decent behaviour has no value set upon it. Love has no value set upon it. Love cannot be bought and sold. Love that is bought and sold is not love; that is sex, that is cheap, that is prostitution.

So these few things remember. And most important of all, remember that wherever you go now, in college, whichever college, we would like you to be known as Omega girls and boys. You must also be proud of Omega, which has brought you through so many years of your life, educated you, looked after you, I hope with love, with sincerity, with honesty. I hope we have given you what you have looked for, what your parents have paid for. And I hope you will be true to those two institutions – the school and your parents – who have spent years of their lives, lot of their money, put all their hopes on you. Remember, you are not going to disappoint one or two but a whole institution. Parentage is an institution, school is an institution. In between you are there, again like a river with two banks: parents, institution. I don't look to this or to that; I flow serenely through the centre and I shall satisfy both. Because both will see me going swiftly along the middle of the river and they will say, "There he goes. God bless him." You understand?

So the future is one not so much of choice, because generally these educationists will tell you, "You have to choose." Choose what? We are not in a time when we can choose. Things are thrust upon us. Time is now to be guided by this [heart], like a gyroscope, like a compass. Set the direction here, like the modern aircraft which have autopilot, what you call fly-by-wire technology. Set it and it goes; instructions from here [heart] – reset. Don't depend on this [head]. This is information gathering – the hard-disk of the body. It will enter and store anything you want to put into it. Now when should you protect a hard-disk from getting rubbish on it? At the time of entry. What are the points of entry in a human body? Eyes, ears, nose, you know the five senses. Be a master of your senses. Indrajit, Ravana's son, he had overcome his senses. The senses were his instruments. It is like a laboratory. When you want a pipette, you have a pipette. When you want a burette, you have the burette. When you want a Bunsen, you have a Bunsen. They are all there for you to use according to the need of the moment.

Remember that old Vedic precept – "Let noble thoughts come to me from everywhere in the universe" – aa no bhadraah kratavo yantu vishvatah. We have to control the points of entry of our system. After this [heart] has probed that, programmed, so that I see only what my heart permits, I hear only what my heart permits; not decide to hear every rubbish and then try to filter it in my mind, which I will not be able to do. You will not able to do it, even sages and saints are not able to do it, because once something enters it is very difficult to put it out again. It has its own field of action, like a virus when it enters into you, it takes time to get it out, and then you destroy something in yourself. You lose your strength, your resilience; progressively you are weakened. So when is the time to stop that? When you eat, when you breathe, when you drink – eat good things, proven things, not for taste, but for goodness. The trouble with modern life is that temptation comes in every form. Previously there were only one or two forms; now there are many. Everything is a temptation. If you can't afford it, a car is a temptation. Isn't it?

So you have to be very, very controlled. Let your heart deal with situations where you are unable to decide, because the brain is incompetent to decide. Let the heart think and it [may] say no. When once it says no, it means no. Let not the ego come and say, "Chhodo, yaar [Leave it], it is always saying no to everything." My Master used to say one thing more, which is very important. He said, "I know my enemies. I am not afraid of them. It is of friends that I have to beware." So drop friendship now. Have friendship in the heart and let the heart decide who is my true friend and who is not. A friend in need is a friend indeed. That applies to you. If you have a friend who needs, he is a friend. He will think you are a friend. Otherwise you fall prey to so many temptations, evils, misbehaviours – corrupting character, corrupting your health, corrupting your education and, most important, corrupting your future. Your future is finished once you make a major blunder in life. And then the rest of your life you are either going downgrade into deeper and deeper avenues of self-destruction, or you spend time brooding over all the chances that you missed, all the advice that you did not take, all that you could have done not to become what you have become.

We don't want you to regret eighty percent of your life for some mistakes which are there to be made. The moment you step out of the portals of the school, they are there waiting, like touts in front of a temple, like pimps in the bazaar. And when you leave here you must be better prepared than a diver who is getting into the ocean. The ocean has only sharks. The human sharks, I am sure even the sharks in the ocean will be afraid of them, if they know what they are.

So you see there is no use trying to fight temptation after being tempted. After being tempted there is no fighting, there is only paying for it. There is only retribution; there is only nemesis as they call it – self-recrimination. I don't want to frighten you because the path is easy once this [heart] is there, and you listen to it. You are all familiar with Sahaj Marg. This school has been set up only to introduce Sahaj Marg into your lives. Even if you don't go out as abhyasis, you go out as ambassadors of not merely Omega but of Sahaj Marg. This school is essentially Sahaj Marg. I hope those who are not abhyasis will become abhyasis and add a big strength to their character and their life. Success is not in terms of money or power or position. Today every chit of a person, whether it is a boy or a girl, is able to start a job on, say, three lakhs a year. In my days there was no three lakhs a year. Nobody earned three lakhs a year. The governor of a state earned three thousand five hundred rupees. The general manager of the Railways earned three thousand five hundred rupees. Today every fool seems to earn a lakh of rupees a month, two lakhs a month.

So don't go after money. I have been telling my moneyed friends, rich people – I said, "Your intelligence did not make you rich. Your business methods made you rich." What is the business method? Adding a little of this to that; adjusting your weighing scale so that where you should give hundred grams you give ninety-five grams – that is what makes money. As they say in an old adage in the English language, there is always crime behind big money. There is no big money without crime behind it. And crime does not necessarily mean murder, though most often there is murder too. There are killings, destructions, because big money involves climbing on dead men's shoulders, and they don't die naturally. Understand?

Please bear all this in mind: Omega, Sahaj Marg, heart – triangle. Okay? Are you agreed? Children: Yes, Master.

PR: Will you live by these principles?

Children: Yes, Master.

PR: And will you be happy to come back to see me without hanging your head?

Children: Yes, Master.

PR: That should be our aim – to walk erect, [as] children of God, not of our parents. Our parents too are children of God. Their parents too are children of God, were children of God. I am, and my children will be, and my grandchildren. So every branch in a tree is part of the tree. A small branch does not say, I am the child of the big branch. I am a child of this tree. But one acorn made me this tree. And that one from which the many came is always God.

After saying all this I must say, in conclusion, that I pray for you all. May you be happy, balanced, fulfilled individuals, who will work for satisfaction, to manifest yourself in the best way you can, not to earn money. That is what we really mean. Be true to yourself – it means, what is in me I must allow to come out of myself in the best possible way. A doctor must be the best doctor, not the richest doctor. A builder must be a good builder, not the richest builder. Today all builders cheat because they want to be rich. They start it with a square foot, which involves the whole flat, then they say carpet area, now it is ... what? Built up? Super built up. Which means, out of a fourteen hundred square feet flat, you get nine hundred square feet or less built up. All the pavings, the landings, the steps, everything is covered and you pay for it with blood.

So don't worry about honesty, truth, all this nonsense. Sail between the two, because even the Veda says, the Gita says, sukhadukhe same krutvaa – treat comfort and discomfort, happiness and unhappiness as the same. Laabhaa alaabhau jaya ajayau – profit and loss, victory and defeat, they are all the same. They are two banks of the same river. Don't worry about the consequences. Worry about the action themselves and let that action speak from your heart; and your heart must tell you when you go to bed, today has been well-lived.

So my blessings to you all, my prayers to my Master, may He guide you, protect you, and nourish you.

Thank you.