God and love⁴⁵

Dear seekers, dear sisters and brothers, I wish to give a short talk on God and love. God is omniscient. God is omnipotent. God is omnipresent. But knowing this, feeling this, does not satisfy me. Only when I feel that God is all Love, the all-loving Father and Mother, am I most satisfied. His aspect of love pleases me most, enlightens me most and energises me most. Therefore, I would like to say a few things on God and love.

We started our journey from Heaven. There we were fond of God’s Dream. While we were in the soul’s region and not in the gross physical body, we loved God’s Dream, or we can say, we loved God the Dream. Now, what was God’s Dream? His Dream was to become many. He was one and He wanted to become many so that He could divinely enjoy Himself in infinite forms and shapes. In the realm of the soul, we all loved this Dream of God and wanted to become cosmic players so that we could participate in His Cosmic Drama.

Our soul entered into the world arena to become a conscious player in God’s Cosmic Drama. Then, when we entered into the world, we started loving God’s Beauty: God’s Beauty in nature, God’s Beauty in art, God’s Beauty in our life. We started loving God the Beauty. His infinite beautiful Forms we tried to see with our eyes. We appreciate beauty in various forms in our experiences, in our actions, in our realisations. But there is one thing we want to achieve and grow into, and that is God’s Beauty and God the Beauty.

Then we feel the necessity, as we make progress in our spiritual life, of sensing and feeling Infinity. We are finite. We are now in earth-bound time. We are now wallowing in the meshes of ignorance. But we want to free ourselves from the meshes of ignorance. We feel that if we can come out of the finite and enter into the Infinite, then all our problems will be solved, we will have found ourselves. We look for Infinity here, there and everywhere, but we do not even begin to see or feel Infinity. But if we go deep within, if we enter into the inmost recesses of our hearts, we feel Infinity: we feel infinite Peace, Light and Bliss.

In Infinity there is a reality. But what is its source? Its source is Divinity in Immortality and Immortality in Divinity. To see, to feel, to grow into Divinity and Immortality, we enter into God’s Heart. How do we enter into God’s Heart? How do we have a free access to God’s Heart? Only on the strength of our inner cry, which we call aspiration. When our inner aspiration-flame mounts high, we enter into the Supreme, our eternal Pilot.

For an ordinary human being, desire is everything. For a spiritual seeker, aspiration is everything. In the field of aspiration, there comes a time when a seeker becomes consciously aware of the fact that he has to do the first things first. Now what is this ‘first thing’? It is God. ‘First things first’ means that God should come first in our life — not only in our inner life, but also in our daily multifarious activities. It means that God is to be loved first and foremost, both as the Deity and as all human beings. It means that first we have to love God as a personal Being and then as an impersonal Being. It is infinitely easier for us to approach God in His personal aspect than in His impersonal aspect. In His impersonal aspect, God is infinite Peace, infinite Light and infinite Energy; and in His personal aspect, He is a most beautiful Being. He is much more beautiful than the most beautiful youth on earth. He has far more beauty than any human being. So first we go through the personal aspect of God and then to the impersonal, but we love both aspects — the personal and the impersonal.

Sometimes it happens that we accept God and enter into the spiritual life, but after a few years we give up the spiritual life. That is to say, we reject consciously and deliberately God’s Concern, Compassion, Love and Blessings. What does God do then? When we reject Him deliberately, after having accepted the spiritual path, what does He do? God offers us His compassionate Smile. He tells us, “Children, I am ready to wait for you. I shall wait for you to give Me another chance.” He will wait indefinitely. This is how the compassionate Father fulfils Himself in and through us when once we have appreciated God’s Love or God the eternal Love.

In our spiritual life, God comes first, then our self-discovery, then our unconditional surrender to God and then our God-realisation. If we want to have abiding Peace, Light and Bliss in infinite measure in our inner being, then we have to make an unconditional surrender to the Will of the Lord Supreme.

A difficulty arises at this point in our spiritual life when we start to make progress on the strength of our devoted surrender. Quite often, the mind comes forward. The mind right now is in ignorance. It is unillumined. The mind has acquired much outer knowledge, but the mind is enmeshed in the physical and the vital. So what does this knowledge bring? Doubt and suspicion. The mind is constantly doubting. It doubts others, it doubts God and it even doubts its own existence. Doubt is its own authority. There is a constant battle going on between the doubting mind and the surrendering and surrendered heart. The mind tries to destroy the heart’s potentiality. But if we stick to our spiritual life, eventually the heart wins the battle. In the surrendered heart we notice tremendous faith. Faith is our wisdom, our inner wisdom. This inner wisdom tells us that we are of God and we are for God. We came from God and we are going to God the Light and Delight. Here we are consciously and soulfully trying to manifest God on earth. And, at the end of our journey’s close, we shall enter into the infinite Peace, Light and Bliss.

Once we have accepted God, it is up to us to continue loving Him and to accept Him wholeheartedly, or to reject Him. When we enter into the spiritual life, we feel that we have entered consciously into God’s domain. We can make conscious progress, fast progress and fulfilling progress, when we accept God wholeheartedly on the strength of our sincerity, purity, humility and love.

Once we have accepted God wholeheartedly, then God becomes our eternal friend and our eternal slave. At that time, when we pray to God, “God, give me this; God, give me that,” it becomes His bounden duty to please us. Once we offer our very existence to God, it becomes His responsibility to please us and fulfil us in His divine, supreme Way.

When we pray, when we meditate for a number of years, God, out of His infinite Bounty, offers us a passport. If we have this passport, we can enter into Heaven — the higher worlds. There are seven higher worlds and seven lower worlds. If we do not aspire regularly, devotedly, systematically and soulfully, then this passport is confiscated. We lose our free access to the higher worlds, the inner worlds of Peace, Light and Bliss.

But there comes a time when each individual has to possess Peace, Light and Bliss. God’s choice Hour is for everyone. Today God’s Hour has struck for you. Tomorrow for him. The day after tomorrow for her. God will not be satisfied unless and until we all have achieved this Peace, Light and Bliss in boundless measure in our inner beings. He will be pleased only when we have discovered our inner existence and only when we consciously, soulfully and unconditionally take part in His Cosmic Game, fulfilling Him in His own Way. This we shall do only on the strength of our pure love, divine love, devoted and surrendered love to the Will of the Supreme, who is our Inner Pilot.

We are eternal travellers. In Heaven, we were dreamers, and on earth we are travellers along the Road of Eternity. We shall reach our Goal of the Golden Beyond. This Golden Beyond is the eternally transcending Beyond. Today’s goal will be tomorrow’s starting point, just as yesterday’s goal is today’s starting point. There is no end to our realisation. We are always in the process of cosmic evolution, of our nature’s transformation, of our inner illumination and perfection.