transmitted through the mere touch of the physical body of another person. A gross body, even a corpse, can quickly impart numberless impressions to the person who touches it.

Sex contact outside wedlock is the worst form of exposure to heavy and binding impressions of lust. In wedlock, the impressions exchanged are much lighter and less binding. But just as bad and binding impressions can be caught from others, good and emancipatory impressions can also he caught from others. Food or edibles prepared or given by others bring their sanskaras with them. The prasad — some sweet, fruit or drink given as a vehicle of grace by saints and Masters — gives spiritual and emancipatory impressions to the recipient. The custom of touching the feet of the Master with the head is based upon the fact that the spiritual and emancipatory impressions from the Master thereby go to the very mind-heart of the recipient in a fraction of a second.

The Truth-realized Master transmits dynamic impressions of faith and love for God through appropriate spiritual experience. Faith of any kind is, in a way, ultimately based upon intellect There can be no faith without some form of intellectual conviction, which again is founded on experience. Many people say that they believe in God or that they have faith in Him; but though they say this out of conventional fear of God, what they say is far from being true. If they really believed in God, their actions would be different from what they are. They fear God as something unknown, a power which they have been taught to respect and obey through tradition and mythology. They fear Him as one who is supposed to give due rewards to the virtuous and punishments to the wicked. But neither their fear nor their beliefs are deep-rooted or sincere.

If their belief in God were sincere, they would earnestly start to find out what God is. They would want to have God and realize Him; and all their actions would be entirely different. If they were really to take God seriously and want to know what He is, their very first glimpse of divinity would disarm them of all of their unjustified fear. It would reveal to them that God is Love and that His plan for all, including themselves, is to raise them to the highest pinnacle of perfection and bliss, of which the earthly pleasures and even the happiness and joys of the subtle and mental worlds are but poor, faint shadows.

The very first descent of divinity into the heart awakens love for God. When love for God comes, fear of God disappears. Love for God removes all fear and prepares the aspirant to be lost in Him. The intensity of their love unites the aspirants with God. They thus eventually get the supreme "I am God" state. Those who persist until the end get there. Those who get there are, however, very few; though many, without getting there feel tempted to claim that they are God. To be an honest atheist is no fraud. But to claim that one is God before attaining real unity with Him, is definitely a fraud.

There are two types who do not have any use for religion: the materialist, and the one who is Self-realized. There are two who are indifferent to money: the brute and the one who is Self-realized. There are two who are free from lust: the child and the one who has attained Truth. Though the Truth-realized person is, in the above respects, like the materialist, the brute, and the child, he stands completely apart from all these. He has attained unity with the infinite existence of God, while the others have not.

The Master enjoys the Madhur Bhava at will — that is, the sweet mood of Love, where duality is illumined by the realization of the immensity of the One in the duality. Or he enjoys the Maha Bhava, the vast consciousness of unlimited Oneness, which has no room at all for any apprehension of manyness. Maha Bhava, or the vast consciousness of unlimited Oneness, is much rarer than Madhur Bhava. But the Master can enjoy it even when he is engaged in acts like eating, talking and so on. Madhur Bhava can be communicated by imparting suitable spiritual impressions to the disciple. But Maha Bhava, which is essentially beyond all impressions, is incommunicable. In the ripeness of time, it dawns from within.