Divine friends and undivine foes⁴

As a beginner in the spiritual life, you have to feel that you are standing inside your room behind a door. It is up to you whom to accept as your friends and whom not to accept. Faith, love, devotion, surrender, courage, will-power: these are your friends. You will allow these persons to come into your room and then bolt the door from inside to keep out your enemies. If you allow your enemies — fear, doubt, anxiety and worry — to enter into you, they will come into your room most gladly. As a matter of fact, they are always there waiting to come in, but you do not allow them.

Once your friends have entered your room and you have bolted the door, you will start conversing with your friends. Each time a devoted friend of yours speaks to you, immediately the particular power or capacity that he has increases inside you. When your friend who is embodying love speaks of love, immediately your love for God increases. You also have another friend sitting beside you: courage. He speaks of inner courage and immediately your own inner courage comes to the fore.

When your friend surrender speaks to you, you will see that spiritual surrender becomes easy, spontaneous. Previously you thought that surrender meant self-extinction. You were afraid of surrender because you thought that your individuality would disappear. But when this friend of yours who embodies surrender tells you what divine surrender is, immediately you are eager to throw yourself into the surrender-sea. In this surrender you are not losing anything. On the contrary, you are becoming the vast Infinite. So when these friends tell you about their own qualities and what these qualities actually represent on earth, immediately you will make the fastest progress.

So a beginner should always make a selection as to whom he is going to establish his friendship with, for a beginner's progress entirely depends on the friendship he has made with divine or undivine qualities. Establishing a friendship with divine qualities is the easiest and the most effective way for a beginner to make the fastest progress. Then, when he becomes advanced, the so-called friends that wanted to enter into him — fear, doubt, anxiety and worry — feel that it is a hopeless case. Once the seeker is advanced, he will never, never make a mistake and allow fear, doubt or other undivine elements to enter into him. And these qualities will feel this.

But right now you are a beginner, so at any moment doubt can assail you. Doubt may make you feel doubting is good, but don't be fooled. If you doubt as much as you can, eventually doubt will fail you. Then, doubt sends its best friend, the reasoning mind. The reasoning mind will come and tell you, "All right, doubt has failed. But if you do this, perhaps you will get this. If you don't do this, you won't get it." The reasoning mind will create all darkness and confusion. But in the spiritual life you have come to know that doubt is only poison and the reasoning mind also is useless.

A spiritual person does not reason; he just gives. A beginner especially should always act like a child. A child, when he comes to his mother, does not use the reasoning mind. He acts as if he has no mind. He just runs to her and gives everything that he has found on his way, whether it is divine or undivine. He gives to his mother gladly, cheerfully and devotedly what he has, and the mother gives him what she has. Naturally, the mother has infinitely more than the child. Then, when the seeker becomes advanced, fear, doubt and other undivine forces come to realise that they are knocking at the wrong door.

So beginners have to feel always that they are standing at their door and that divine forces or undivine forces are all the time trying to enter into their room. You should only allow the divine forces to enter into you. Each time a divine force operates, you gain or achieve that divine quality in yourself. Then gradually, gradually all the divine qualities blossom as a flower, petal by petal; they blossom slowly, steadily and perfectly. Then the beginner seeker will be fully ready to offer himself at the Feet of the Lord Supreme.

There are some forces that will attack you and there are some that will help you. You must always be on the alert; you have to open your eyes and allow only those forces to come in that will elevate your consciousness. When you become advanced, wrong forces will not dare to come near you. Now they dare because you are a beginner, but you won't remain a beginner forever. Once you continue walking along the right path, you become advanced. You make progress and reach your destined goal.