Valuing spiritual names

There are some parents and husbands and wives who call their dear ones by their original American names and not by their spiritual names. It has happened quite a few times, when I am on the phone, that they totally forget that they are talking to me and they call their husbands and wives by their original names. What they call their children, God alone knows. So to the parents and to the husbands and wives, I wish to say that you are not doing the right thing. People are dying to get spiritual names. A spiritual name means rebirth, rebirth of your consciousness. When we give you a spiritual name out of our infinite love and unconditional concern, it is like a true initiation of an inner existence of yours. The quality that your name embodies, that very thing your soul tries to bring to the fore. In most cases, you have literally begged us inwardly if not outwardly to give you a spiritual name. On very rare occasions, we have given names on our own because we felt that you were ready, even more than ready. Otherwise, in the inner world there is not a single disciple who has not cried for a spiritual name. But what actually happens is that when you get something, you don’t value it. When you don’t get something and others do get that thing, at that time you value it like anything.

Also, some of the disciples have made nicknames or abbreviations out of their spiritual names. They call their husbands or wives by the first letter of their name. This is a terrible insult to me. Please don’t abbreviate the names. On very rare occasions, if you want to cut jokes, you can; but to call your wives or your husbands by an abbreviation or nickname is really terrible. So please don’t do it.

Value your spiritual name. Claim your spiritual name. It is part and parcel of your aspiration. I have told you many times that you don’t have to call the Supreme, you don’t have to chant _Aum_; if you can soulfully chant your spiritual name, you are going to get realisation. Just because you don’t have that kind of faith in your own name, I tell you to chant the Supreme’s Name, or my name, since you have more faith in others than in yourself. But if you have implicit faith in the name you have been given, in that name you will see divinity looming large.

The name that your parents have given you is also your name. But by repeating “Bill” or “Tom” I doubt very much that you will be able to realise God. But by repeating your soul’s name and meditating on your soul’s name, if you feel the necessity and you feel the aspiration, then you are bound to be illumined.

Whenever you do something wrong, God will forgive you, I will forgive you; but there is someone who will not forgive you and that is your soul. For each mistake that you deliberately make, your soul will take time to forgive you. The soul does not forgive so easily because the soul knows that due to this particular mistake, this deliberate mistake, it will have to reincarnate on earth for many more years. It takes so much time for the soul to make you realise and make you reveal and make you manifest, and this will only delay your progress. Each time you make a conscious mistake your soul knows that it is like going a hundred steps backwards. You want to reach your destination and you are given a particular place to start from; but then you are actually starting your journey one hundred metres behind. So naturally you are delaying your journey instead of expediting it. The soul is the eldest brother and it has promised the Supreme Father that the younger members will be taken care of. The soul is fully responsible for your life. When the soul sees that the younger members are not listening and the soul has to account for it, at that time the soul feels miserable.