Question: How can we perfect our devotion?

Sri Chinmoy: Since you have a spiritual Master, I wish to say that you can perfect your devotion through an intense feeling of oneness with your Master. You can devote your life to the Master only when you see that ultimately you are going to be totally like him in his realisation, in his achievement, in his mission, in his fulfilment. There should be the purest spontaneous intensity on your part to become one with his realisation, one with his achievement, one with his mission and one with his fulfilment. This intensity at times may take the form of love, at times it can take the form of devotion and at times it can take the form of surrender.

If you can have this intense feeling of oneness, then automatically you will devote your entire life — body, mind, heart and soul — to your Guru. Devotion must have its roots in all the spheres of the being. Devotion only in the heart is not enough. Devotion also has to be in the mind, in the vital and in the physical. Only then does the devotion become perfect.

It is easy to express devotion to the Master when the Master is in deepest meditation, when he is in the highest consciousness, but it is difficult when the Master acts like a most ordinary person, when the Master is cutting jokes. But at that time also, behind his jokes and through his jokes, if you can see the light radiating, then you are perfecting your own devotion. The Master may say something very silly, or nasty, but behind that, through that, if you can see the light that is operating, then your devotion is being perfected. So if you want to have devotion in the purest, absolutely purest sense, and if you want to make your devotion totally perfect, then I wish to say that in the physical, in the vital and in the mind you have to bring down your devotion. In your entire being you have to bring down your devotion for the Inner Pilot, for the Master, and only then does it become perfect.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Service-boat and love-boatman, part 2, Agni Press, 1974
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