IV — Spiritual discipline

Spiritual practice

A progressive self-giving and an absolute confidence in God can easily challenge the strength of impossibility in one’s spiritual journey.

March forward just three steps and God is won. Now what are the three steps? The first step is aspiration. The second step is self-giving. The third step is reliance on the Divine in oneself.

In the early stages of spiritual practice, to leave everything to the Divine and to think that personal effort is unnecessary is to dance before you can walk.

Tapasya [intense or austere discipline] says to the aspirant: “I shall make you see God.” Surrender says to the aspirant: “I shall make God see you.”

Faithfulness is the only key that both tapasya and surrender possess to open God’s Door.

In the ultimate analysis, no distinction can ever be made between tapasya and surrender. Surrender, when complete and effective, is the result of, and nothing other than, the most arduous tapasya.

The more complete the aspirant’s surrender, the brighter the smile of his psychic being.

Surrender is fondly influenced by the psychic being. Knowledge is boldly influenced by the will.

Surrender is the most suitable net to entrap the Divine. It is at once wisdom and power in action.

Spontaneous obedience is the husk. Conscious surrender is the rice.

Demanding surrender says to God: “Father, I am looking at You. Be pleased to look at me. Let us look at each other.” Devoted surrender says to God: “Father, I need not look at You. You just look at me. That will do.”

There are three ways to fulfil the soul’s need: either the aspirant steps forward to see the Divine; or the Divine steps forward to make the aspirant see Him: or both the aspirant and the Divine step forward simultaneously towards each other.

When the aspirant bitterly starves his questioning mind and feeds his surrender sumptuously, God says, “The time is ripe. I come.”

Surrender can never be a one-day achievement. Likewise realisation, when attained, is not a one-day wonder.

Although regularity in spiritual practice may appear mechanical, it is a constant blessing from above and shows the development of some inner strength.

To see God only during your surrender at meditation is to declare that God is absent from you more than He is present.

True meditation has a free access to the inner being, True self-consecration has a free access to the right consciousness and attitude.

When the mind and the vital close their eyes for good, surrender, the inner strength, opens its eyes for good.

The body’s discipline is sex-control.
The vital’s discipline is dynamic aggression-control.
The mind’s discipline is thought-control.
The heart’s discipline is emotion-control.
Man’s discipline and his soul’s divine pride go together.