Inner experiences⁷

Dear sisters and brothers, here we are all seekers of the highest transcendental Truth and Light. Just because you have been kind enough to come here today to see the seeker in me, I wish to share with you a few inner experiences of mine.

My first and foremost experience is the discovery of the importance of the spiritual heart. This heart constantly aspires to climb high, higher, highest in order to reach the highest pinnacle of Truth and Light. This heart is the heart of inseparable oneness — oneness with you, with God, with the world at large. Inside this heart, the seeker in me has discovered three most intimate friends and eternal friends: love, devotion and surrender. This love is divine love. This devotion is divine devotion. This surrender is divine surrender.

Human love we all know. It is a song of temptation, a song of frustration, a song of destruction. But divine love is the song of aspiration, the song of realisation, the song of perfection and, finally, the song of Satisfaction supreme here on earth and there in Heaven.

Human devotion is the song of attachment, conscious or unconscious. There is practically no light in the song of attachment. But when we have divine devotion, which is the devotion we offer to the Highest in order to become one with its Light and Delight, the seeker in us becomes the Lover divine. At that time, the seeker in us devotes his entire life and his entire being to a higher, more fulfilling reality, to the Supreme Beloved and the supreme Cause. He is devoted only to the Truth, Light, Beauty and Delight which abound in infinite measure in the heart of the universal Consciousness. His song offers him deepest joy, which he feels in the inmost recesses of his heart. The song of devotion leads him to the sea of Nectar-Bliss.

The third eternal friend that I have discovered inside the heart is divine surrender. This surrender is not imposed; this is not the surrender of a slave to his master, which is founded upon fear. The divine surrender that I am speaking of is the feeling of oneness with the Highest. This surrender is founded upon oneness, inseparable oneness. The unillumined in us is crying to enter into the illumined in us and become totally illumined itself. The finite has become conscious of its own infinite existence on the highest plane of consciousness; therefore, the finite aspires to become consciously one, inseparably one, with its own highest reality: Infinity. This surrender is not being compelled; it is spontaneous, willing and cheerful. Divine surrender has discovered that self-giving to the Divine is nothing other than God-becoming.

The seeker in me has discovered a cosmic tree. This cosmic tree has many, many branches, but the three most significant branches are love, devotion and surrender. When we climb up the tree and try to sit on the love-branch, we see God’s Door, His Heart’s Door, which is immediately opened for us. When we climb up a little higher and sit on the devotion-branch, we see someone inside God’s Room beckoning us to enter. And finally, when we climb up still higher and sit on the surrender-branch, we again see someone beckoning to us. But this time it is not a representative of God; it is God Himself. God Himself comes out and signals us to enter into His Room. He says to us, “My children, now you have seen in Me the perennial Truth, Light and Bliss. Here is My Crown. Here is My Throne. These are all for you. You have been wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance from time immemorial. There was a time when you claimed ignorance as your very own. Now is the time to claim Me, My infinite Light, Peace and Bliss, as your very own. It is time to claim Me as your birthright.”

A life of love divine tells us who God is.
A life of devotion divine tells us where God is.
A life of surrender divine makes us sit on the Throne of God and wear the Crown of God.

The seeker in me has discovered the path of the heart. There is another path — the path of the mind. There are people who want to follow that path, but there one encounters many risks. When one walks along that path, a few so-called friends make his acquaintance: fear, doubt, anxiety and worry. These so-called friends eventually prove to be veritable enemies. In the beginning, doubt makes the seeker feel that if he can doubt everything and everyone in the world, then he can play the role of a supreme judge. The seeker soon comes to realise, however, that his doubting faculty has not made him a chief justice; it has only created a malignant cancer in him.

Fear, in a tricky way, wants to make the seeker feel that it is warning him and cautioning him. But the seeker eventually comes to realise that fear is only blocking his mind and tormenting his entire being. He has not done anything wrong, so why should he be afraid of anything or anyone? Only a criminal, only someone who has done something wrong, need be afraid. So the seeker comes to know that the message of fear has no validity; then fear becomes forceless.

Worries and anxieties make the seeker feel that he needs them in order to keep alert. They make him feel that the reason he is so stricken by worries and anxieties is because he has concern for his outer and inner wants. But alas, there comes a time when the seeker who is following the mental path realises that it is not anxiety or worry that show real concern for his outer and inner wants or for mankind. When we are in the physical, we may say that worries and anxieties show our concern for others. But when we are in the soul, we discover that real concern is the feeling of oneness, the oneness of our expanded, unlimited self with the various parts of our own being and with the rest of the world.

Real concern for ourselves lies in our conscious awareness of our integral oneness with the body, vital, mind, heart and soul. Right now, we have established a physical unity from the soles of our feet to the crown of our head. In all our limbs we feel unity. When our feet and hands hurt, we feel pain all over our body. Similarly, if our brain-power has achieved something, if we have stood first in a university examination, then immediately our entire body-consciousness becomes full of joy, delight and pride. Why? Precisely because our whole body has established inseparable oneness with the mind. This same kind of oneness that exists in the physical we have to establish with all the parts of our being — physical, vital, mind, heart and soul. If we can do this, we will have real concern for our own existence. But if we want to have concern for the world, we have to know that genuine concern has to come from our feeling of inseparable and indispensable oneness with our infinite existence, with our countless brothers and sisters.

When we live in the heart, our road is short. When we live in the mind, the road is long; also there are quite a few hooligans that come to rob us. If we are very brave and powerful and have indomitable will, then we can walk along the path of the mind successfully. But if we walk along the path of the heart, we find that it is at once the safest and the most effective way, for it is the path of divine children. When we follow the path of the heart, we automatically become divine children. When we become divine children, we spontaneously follow the path of the heart. If we follow the path of the mind, we feel that we can accomplish everything all by ourselves; we need very little help or practically no help from above. We feel that we are the doers, that we can do everything. But a child never feels that he is the doer. He always feels that his mother and father will do everything for him. He has the feeling because he has established his oneness with his parents. One smile from the child is enough to give the parents infinite pleasure. In the child’s smile, the Kingdom of Heaven is immediately brought down to earth. One cry from the child is enough to make the parents muster all their love-power, compassion-power and concern-power. It immediately builds a bridge between Heaven and earth. The child cries in the living room and the mother comes running from the kitchen, for she feels that it is her bounden duty to come and please the child. The divine child’s cry has the power of uniting earth and Heaven.

It is children who make constant progress. They live in the world of dreams, and dreams are nothing other than realities in the making. Today’s dreams are tomorrow’s realities. Today’s imperfect human being will be tomorrow’s perfect human being. Today’s weakness is tomorrow’s strength. A child is God’s Dream-Boat today. Tomorrow he will not only reach the Golden Shore, but he will also become the Shore itself. This is the path of the heart which the seeker in me has discovered.

Dear sisters and brothers, I wanted to share with you the experiences that I have had. Now I have offered them to the seeker in each of you with my heart’s deepest love, my soul’s deepest gratitude and with my feeling of inseparable oneness with each of you.