Love and serve²

Love and serve; serve and love. We love God. We serve God. When we love God, we see. When we serve God, we feel. What do we see? We see God’s Face. What do we feel? We feel God’s Heart. God’s Face inspires us. God’s Heart illumines us. Inspiration has many, many friends. Of all its friends, aspiration is by far the best. Illumination has many, many friends. Of all its friends, perfection is by far the best. A seeker of the absolute Truth loves God and serves God not because God is all-powerful but because God is all goodness.

Aspiration is our heart’s inner cry. Illumination is our life’s outer smile. The inner cry climbs high, higher, highest. It tries to become devotedly, soulfully and unconditionally one with the ever-transcending reality. Life’s smile spreads all around. It tries to manifest divinity, Eternity, Infinity and Immortality.

There are two worlds: the world of desire and the world of aspiration. Before we enter into the world of aspiration we all remain in the world of desire. Desire cries for greatness. Aspiration cries for goodness. When we live in the desire-world, greatness is of paramount importance to us. When we live in the aspiration-world, goodness is of paramount importance to us.

In the aspiration-world there are three things that one has to discover: divine love, divine devotion and divine surrender. Not human love, not human devotion, not human surrender. Today’s human love is tomorrow’s frustration and the day after tomorrow’s destruction. Divine love is today’s illumination, tomorrow’s perfection, and the day after tomorrow’s satisfaction complete and perfect. Human devotion is nothing short of unconscious, unrecognised attachment. Divine devotion is conscious, spontaneous and continuous dedication to one’s own higher existence, to one’s higher reality, to a lofty purpose. Human surrender is the surrender of a slave, a forced surrender. Divine surrender is totally different. In divine surrender the finite recognises and accepts the Infinite; the drop enters into the ocean and becomes the ocean itself. In divine surrender the unlit, the obscure and the impure part of us enters into the illumined and illumining portion of our existence. Our ignorance-world enters into our wisdom-world, the little “i” merges into the infinite “I”, which is the Universal Consciousness, the Transcendental Consciousness.

Desire-world is greatness-world. Aspiration-world is goodness-world. Julius Caesar declared: “Veni, vidi, vici,” “I came, I saw, I conquered.” This is the height of the greatness-world. But the height of the goodness-world will be something totally different. It will come from the inmost recesses of the seeker’s oneness-heart: “I came into the world, I loved the world, I became one with the world.” This is the acceptance of life, not the rejection of life. A true seeker is he who accepts life, transforms life and perfects life so that human life can become a conscious instrument of God here on earth.

True spirituality is the acceptance of earth-life, not the negation of it. True spirituality advocates both God-acceptance and life-acceptance. True spirituality tries to manifest God in and through the life of each individual seeker. A true seeker knows that God-realisation cannot be achieved overnight. It is not like making instant tea or coffee. True spirituality is a slow and steady process. At every moment the seeker makes inner progress and outer progress. Slow and steady wins the inner race. Earth-life is constant thirst, constant hunger. This hunger is the soul’s eternal hunger to become inseparably one with the Highest so that there can be constant God-manifestation on earth. In true spirituality a seeker finds at every moment a sense of satisfaction, and this satisfaction alone can immortalise him.

A seeker of the absolute Truth loves God and offers to God what he has and what he is. What he has is ignorance. What he is is gratitude-heart. When he offers his gratitude-heart, he becomes a chosen instrument of the Supreme. A chosen instrument at times pleases God in his own way, at other times he pleases God in God’s own way. Eventually there comes a time when he is transformed into an unconditionally surrendered instrument. An unconditionally surrendered instrument of God pleases God at every moment in God’s own way.

When we love God, when we serve God, we have to feel at every moment the purity of our heart and the clarity of our mind. A heart of purity and a mind of clarity each seeker must possess in order to accelerate his inner progress and success. In the beginning the seeker needs success. This success inspires him; therefore, he makes friends with success. But the same seeker, when he is advanced, feels the necessity of progress only, for success is a short-lived experience, whereas progress is continually carrying us into the everlasting and ever-transcending Beyond. A true seeker is he who continually wants to grow, glow and flow in the heart of the Absolute Supreme. His progress is continuous progress. He loves God because he knows that without God he does not exist. He serves God because he feels that God does not exist without him.

In the beginning of a seeker’s life, the message of greatness at times looms large. But when he is on the verge of realisation, he sees goodness within and goodness without. On the strength of his goodness, he feels a true satisfaction, an abiding satisfaction. Greatness demands two standards of living: a higher and a lower. He who is great consciously or unconsciously wants to remain an inch higher than the rest of the world. But he who is good wants to remain consciously, soulfully and devotedly one with all human beings, to love and serve the Supreme in them. In this feeling of oneness perfection dawns, and in perfection what looms large is Eternity’s Satisfaction.