I have definitely gone through the different stages of spiritual life, there is no doubt about it, but, at the same time, I have not chosen a mission of my own. I have been given a duty by my guru who had a realization of his own, and he found that I was a very efficient channel for the fulfilment of his awareness and his knowledge. I exist as an instrument or a tool. I do not do very much thinking or planning myself. I have never led a life of ambition. Things come and I participate. As they come, I attend to them. I myself have gone through experiences in my childhood, later when I lived with my guru for a long time and when I moved throughout India and outside, as a beggar, a mendicant, not as a preacher.
I moved right up to Afghanistan, Burma, Ceylon and Pakistan, like an ordinary sadhu. In 1963, on the 13th July, when I was staying in Munger, I received a very clear instruction, and since then I have been receiving instructions. It is as clear as I am talking to you; it is not an hallucination, a dream, vision or whispering. I do not know when it happens to me. I do not know how to get in touch with it, it just happens.
Then, after that I said, ‘Okay.’ I stayed in Munger. I did not even know that the work would grow so much, that yoga awareness would become worldwide. I found myself a very little and very inadequate place, because it was for me and not for a mission. Within a year or so, it was such a tremendous thing that people came from about seventy countries without invitation. Someone said, ‘We received your instructions,’ ‘We received your call,’ ‘You called us in a dream.’ I was surprised because I did not know them. They came from different countries and they lived with me for nine months or a year.
Then they invited me all over the world. And to that at first I said, ‘I am not going anywhere, abroad or elsewhere. As a mendicant I can go only with a jhola.’ But when I went for the first time, there was no organization; there was no planning; there was no secretary. You understand, I was a man of very limited resources and with very limited goals. I went to Singapore, that is all. I went to Hong Kong, Australia, America, South America and to different places. And everywhere it seemed those people had received the news already. I do not know how.
This confirmed me in the conviction that there is something which has to be done and I am only a participant, just a servant. And since then I have been doing things. I don’t care what happens. When ashrams are opening in different countries, they collect a lot of money. I do not get into accounts, I do not look into papers, documents, clauses in the constitutions. If people give me money, I can give it to somebody else, anyone, I do not mind.
I have the mission of a servant, not the mission of a great man, you see, the mission belongs to saints.
27 February 1981, Delhi