Devotion and eagerness, love and faith¹⁷

When I invite you to come and sit on the tennis court, those who can come down to meditate will perhaps receive more. Some people who remain in the bleachers are very sincerely and seriously praying, but there are also some who want to enjoy a comfortable meditation. Comfort and meditation do not rhyme! If you are too old and you cannot sit down on the ground, that is one matter. But if you want to be farther than the farthest and enjoy your meditation in your own way, then you are making a deplorable mistake. When you sit on the ground in front of me, automatically one thing comes to the fore, and that is your devotion. Whether you fold your hands or not, the fact is that you have taken the trouble of coming down and sitting in front of your Master.

In the Vedic eras, this time of day is what we called the twilight hour. Again, when the night is heavily descending, or in the small hours of the morning, these are the best times for meditation. Fortunate are those who try to receive their Master’s blessings, love, concern, joy, gratitude and pride. They will not waste a minute by remaining away from their Master. Each second they value.

I was also a student, like you. For two or three seconds at a time — I do not think it was four seconds — I was fortunate enough to stand in front of my Master. The Mother we saw in the playground with hundreds of people. But Sri Aurobindo we saw four times a year, for three seconds each time — not four seconds. There were two guards who would very gently either push or pull us away after a couple of seconds. Even the first time, when the Mother was introducing me to Sri Aurobindo, it was too long for the two guards. They put their hands on my shoulder, because they wanted me to leave. Now, one of them has disappeared from the earth-scene, and the other is one hundred and four years old.

I am fortunate to have you right in front of me. You are fortunate as well to come and sit in front of me. This is exactly what the Vedic seers of the past used to do. In this present day also, many spiritual Masters have fixed hours when they allow their disciples to meditate and pray in front of them. I am one of those. I try again and again, sincerely, lovingly, blessingfully and gratefully, to be with my spiritual children as often as I can, as long as I can.

Develop, develop, develop the devotion aspect, and develop eagerness, eagerness, eagerness, eagerness. Many disciples come from afar for our Celebrations. If you are wise, then you will take as much as possible from the Master. Your third eye is perhaps still dormant, but the human eyes, if they are aspiring, do receive from me when I enter into a very high, sublime consciousness.

Two things we all badly need: love and faith, love and faith. It is quite easy to love some human beings, but it is not so easy to have faith in them. You have many friends. You like them; you may love them. But when it is a matter of faith, alas, you will be the first person to have no faith in them. Even in outer activities, your faith in those persons perhaps will be next to none. Where is your faith when it is a matter of something spiritual, something serious, something of the inner world? Again, at times we have faith, but we do not love. We enter into a garden, let us say. The garden is very beautiful, with many, many beautiful flowers. In this case, we have faith in the gardener, but we have love for the flowers. The gardener can make the garden beautiful, so we have implicit faith in him. But we love his achievements, the most beautiful flowers. Again, we have tremendous faith in the modern-day science and technology, which can create tremendous destruction in a few moments. But do we love them? I do not think I love the computer and modern technology. I admire the capacities of science, but it is simply impossible for me to love modern technology and scientific achievements.

If we can have faith in our own spiritual life, then our road is very clear, very clear. If we have no faith in ourselves, if we only depend on the Master, that will not do. Your faith and my love must go together: your faith in me and my love for you. My faith in you is also of supreme importance. When you lose faith in me, you descend considerably. But when you lose faith in yourself, that is the end of your spiritual life. If you doubt your Master, you can look around and see that so many people have got such lofty experiences from the Master! That means he is real. But once you feel that you yourself are useless, that you cannot climb up any more inner Himalayas, that becomes the end of your spiritual life.

Love and faith are two different things. They are indispensable spiritual qualities. If we cannot have both love and faith, at that time we are walking with one leg or running with one leg. True, one leg may be stronger than the other. My right leg was stronger when I was a young boy in my adolescent years. When I used to hop with one leg, I was able to cover forty or fifty metres more with my right leg than with my left leg. But again, after covering some distance, I used my left leg also to walk. How long can we go forward with only one leg? We need both the legs, even if one may be considerably weaker or a little weaker. Similarly, our love may be weaker than our faith, or our faith may be weaker than our love, but we need both. But if our faith is strong and our love is strong, then we run the fastest. Please keep both your faith and your love very strong.