Identification with the divine

One of India’s great spiritual Masters, Sri Ramakrishna, used to say that if one thinks, “I am a sinner, I have committed a sin,” then he will always be a sinner because he will always be earthbound. The positive approach is to say, “My Father is God; He has created me. I have to be consciously one with Him as He is one with me. I am one with the eternal Truth but I am not yet consciously aware of it.”

You have to reach your Goal with your aspiration, your inner cry, or with the assertion of your own inner will when you say, “I am God’s son.” Either you have to cry for the Goal or you have to feel that you already have the Goal within and you just have to become consciously one with it. There are two ways to reach the Goal. One way is to go to God like a beggar and cry, “Father, give me, give me, give me Your Wealth.” The other way is to feel that your Father is keeping everything inside you. He is keeping a box within you and inside the box is the treasure. The key is also within you. Now if you have a spiritual teacher as your guide, the teacher can show you where the key is, where the box is and how to open it. But if you don’t have a spiritual teacher as your guide and if you want to have an inner experience, a mystical experience, then you have to cry for this inner experience. This cry is the cry of aspiration; it is not like shedding tears when you do the wrong thing.

There is always some time between the planting of the seeds and the harvest. The planting of the seeds is nothing but aspiration and the harvest is nothing but realisation. Without aspiration, realisation can never dawn. Aspiration: what is it? It is both something that we already have and something that we are going to have. If we say that we have had aspiration for some time, then we are right because we live in the everlasting life. And if we say that we do not now have aspiration but we are going to have it, that means we are trying or crying to bring the inner urge of the heart to the fore. This also is correct. When we sit at the feet of Eternity, we realise that aspiration is bound to be followed by realisation. And when we make friends with eternal time, we come to realise that realisation was always there, hidden in our aspiration.