God will give you what you actually need
What do you need? You need divine love. How can you get divine love from God? You can get it only when you feel that God is entirely yours, yours forever. If you can have that kind of feeling, you are bound to receive divine love from God.What you need is divine joy. God will give you divine joy when you feel that the entire world is a playground where you can play, sing and dance. In God's playground you sing and dance to fulfil and to manifest God. There is no vital pleasure, no vital excitement in this dance; it is the expression of the individual soul in the cosmos. Each soul plays its part to fulfil the Divine in collectivity.
You badly need peace. God will give you peace only when you feel that you are not indispensable, either to your family or to the world. Only God is indispensable, for God is both the Creator and the creation. But that does not mean that you will neglect your earthly duties. No! But you will regard them as divine duties. When you do this, you will see that God is responsible for the fruit of your actions. He is responsible on the strength of your surrendered will to Him. If you have surrendered to God all that you have and all that you are, then only can you feel that God is responsible for all your activities. If you feel that you are responsible for your children, for your parents, for your friends and if you feel that you have to kindle the flame of aspiration or illumine their unlit nature, then you are mistaken. If you feel that you are responsible for them, you will not get peace for yourself nor will you be able to offer peace to any of God's children on earth. God is responsible; God is indispensable. But you have to work soulfully, devotedly and unconditionally to see God in each human being at every moment. It is through conscious and constant surrender to the Will of God that you will be able to feel this.
God will make you one with Him if you know the meaning of silence and know how to cultivate the bumper crop of silence. You have to work on your inner life in your outer life's silence. No matter how soulful, how divine, how significant or momentous your words, talking will have to surrender to silence. When you don't talk to anyone, when you simply keep your mouth closed, this is the outer silence.
But you also have to practise the inner silence. For inner silence, the mind must not talk either. The mind is constantly producing and receiving thoughts, ideas, fears, doubts and worries. The mind is talking to many persons in the mental world. In order to have inner silence, you have to silence the mind. The mind has to become calm and quiet, a sea of tranquillity. Without this inner silence you cannot make any satisfactory progress in the inner life. There are many people who do not talk for hours; they observe outer silence. This outer silence is good, but it cannot lead you very far unless and until you have established inner silence.
In order to become one with God, you have to consciously start your spiritual journey. Each one has to start without further delay. "Here and now" is the soul's motto. Your soul wants you to start your spiritual journey at this very moment. If you have doubt with regard to God's existence, no harm. Doubt as much as you want. Eventually you will become tired of doubting God. If you doubt the existence of inner peace and bliss, doubt as long as you want. When you act in this way, you will feel the presence of truth and reality just because you are making such a sincere effort to deny them. Denying means trying to prove the truth in your own way. But the ultimate Truth will not allow you to see truth in your own way forever. It will show you its true form in its own way for your own good. So if you have doubts with regard to the spiritual life, the inner life, or God's reality, then it is best to start your inner journey anyway.
If you are curious to know what spirituality is, accept spirituality with your utmost curiosity. See what it is. Is it just superficially fascinating or is it something deep and vast, to which you can devote your entire life? You may start with curiosity, but soon your curiosity will turn into real aspiration. Or if you enter the spiritual life because others have done so, this is also fine. If you see that somebody's life has become peaceful and happy after he has accepted the spiritual life and you try to imitate him so that you can also get peace of mind, there is nothing wrong with that. If somebody sitting beside you is doing a better meditation, please try to do as he is doing. Imitation is not your goal, but from imitation you may receive a little inspiration.
Just by becoming inspired, you will not get all that you want. But you will get all that you want and need from aspiration. Your own aspiration is the answer. It not only solves your problems, but it solves others' problems as well. From the very depths of your heart it climbs up like a mounting flame and touches the highest pinnacle. When the Highest descends into your inner life, you will radiate divine light all around. At that time, there can be no obscurity around you; all will be illumined by your light.
I wish to tell you a favourite story of Sri Ramakrishna's. Once a thief entered into a palace at midnight and overheard a conversation between the King and the Queen. The King said to the Queen: "I wish my youngest daughter to marry a holy man so that she will have some peace. All my other daughters have married kings and generals, but their lives are miserable. The holy men have a very peaceful life, so if she marries one of them her life will be full of peace. Tomorrow, early in the morning, I shall send my ministers to the banks of the Ganges where many holy men meditate. I am sure that one of them will agree to marry my daughter."
The thief overheard the conversation and thought, "My God, a poor monk will get the Princess? Let me go there and meditate with the monks. Who knows, perhaps I may be selected. Now I have to steal in order to get a little money. But if the Princess is satisfied with me, then I will become rich overnight. I will be flooded with material prosperity."
Early the next morning, dressed in the garb of a holy man, the thief went to the Ganges and started meditating with the other monks. Soon the King's ministers arrived and began going from one monk to the next seeking one who would marry the Princess. The monks became furious. "We are crying for infinite Light, infinite Truth, infinite Joy, and you want to bind us to this world again? We don't want the material life; we don't want the material world or material possessions!" they shouted.
The poor ministers got rebukes and scoldings from all the monks. They cared not for the Princess; they cared only for the highest Truth and inner wealth. One by one the monks gave their refusals. Finally when the ministers came to the thief, he agreed to accept the King's daughter. They went back to the King and narrated the whole story.
On hearing that one monk had showed some interest in the Princess, the King was overjoyed. "Tomorrow I shall bring my daughter to the banks of the Ganges where the holy men are praying and meditating," he said.
But during the night a divine thought entered into the mind of the thief. He thought to himself, "I am only pretending to be a holy man. Just by pretending, I am getting the Princess and much wealth and material prosperity. If I really and sincerely become a monk, I am sure that I will get infinite Power, infinite Light, infinite Bliss, infinite Peace, as these genuine monks will also eventually get from God. Why should I be attached to this finite material wealth when I have the opportunity to get infinite Light, Bliss and Power from God's infinite Wealth?"
So the thief changed his mind during the night and when the King approached him the following morning, he showed no respect for the King. He flared up and said, "King, do not bind me to this material world. I want God and God alone. I don't need your daughter." The poor King went back to his palace, and the thief became a sincere holy man.
This story makes it very clear that at any moment we can start our spiritual journey. The thief began with imitation. But he received inspiration when he saw the real holy men crying sincerely for God and God alone. Then from inspiration he entered into aspiration. He was not satisfied with his desire to have money and material wealth because he felt that there was something even greater and more fulfilling than that. When he began crying for infinite Wealth, which is God, he went beyond desire and entered into aspiration.
If you still cherish doubt or curiosity, then start with doubt, start with curiosity. But start! Step by step you will be able to march towards your goal. God is already eager to have you. You may not be eager to have God, but God the eternal Father, God the eternal Mother, is crying for you. You must make the decision that you want God. If you really want God, then start where you are — here and now — and yours is the Goal of conscious oneness with God the infinite Light and infinite Truth. Start now!
