Question: For a long, long time whenever someone says 'God' to me, I hear the word 'God' and then I hear the word 'dog,' and 'dog' stays in my mind. Could you please tell me why this happens?

Sri Chinmoy: 'God' in reverse becomes 'dog.' In your case, when 'God' is replaced by 'dog,' what does it actually mean? Here it means faithfulness. God has all faith in us, in humanity. It is we ungrateful creatures who are wanting in faith in God. He is infinitely better than us in every way, but it is He who has abundant faith in us. A dog, in the spiritual sense — and even here in the field of manifestation — represents infinite faithfulness. A dog is ready to offer its very life to save its master. A dog is ready to offer its very existence at every moment, and what is the dog getting? A piece of bread. In the case of God also, when an aspirant is crying for Light, for self-discovery, for self-realisation, yet all around him ignorance is trying to devour him, it is God who comes and tries to save the person.

Your experience is most significant. When 'God' is uttered and then the word is replaced by 'dog', you have to feel that God wants from you constant and spontaneous faith. You have accepted the spiritual life. For an ordinary person, spirituality means peace of mind for one or two seconds, or spirituality means something that will bring harmony in the family. That is why ordinary people enter into the spiritual life. But a true aspirant enters into the spiritual life with a different motive. For him, spirituality means something that will give him realisation.

Someone can try to get realisation by hook or by crook. In India, many people have tried to realise God within a fixed time — two years, five years or ten years. And if they don't realise God, they commit suicide. But when one wants to realise God, one has to surrender to God's Will. Even the one who is crying for infinite Light must surrender to the Will of God. If one can consciously surrender to the Will of God, that means that one has abundant faith in God's Will in operation.

So, from your experience, I wish to tell you that it is very clear that you have to have faith in your own aspiration. Your spiritual name means divine satisfaction. This satisfaction will come only when you are faithful to the inner cause, and this inner cause is nothing else but God. Every day when you meditate, try to feel that you can satisfy the Supreme only when you have all faith in your life and in God's all-fulfilling cosmic Will for your husband, for your children and for your spiritual brothers and sisters. You must always follow the Light, which is God the aspiration and God the realisation. You are the aspiration today. Tomorrow, on the strength of your faith in your inner divinity, you become God the realisation. So God is faith and dog, the symbol of faith, is God.