A true seeker⁵

A true seeker does not make complaints, for he knows that each complaint of his is a blight, a spot, in the Heart of his Beloved Supreme. A true seeker is he who does not criticise the world around him, for he knows that each criticism of his is a blight in the Heart of his Beloved Supreme. A true seeker wants a world of perfection. This world of perfection he will find only through his oneness, his ultimate oneness with the world within him, the world around him. Each time he complains, each time he criticises, he fails in his own purpose. It was his own promise, when he was in the soul’s world, to serve the aspiring mankind. This was the solemn promise he made to the Supreme, the Pilot Absolute. It is not through criticism, not through complaining that he can bring about world peace and world harmony. It is through acceptance of earth-reality as such. It is through constant self-giving, which eventually grows into God-becoming. Today’s self-giving is tomorrow’s God-becoming.

A true seeker does not try to influence the world, for he knows that to influence the world is to ask the world to see the reality the way he himself sees it or the way he wants to see it. A true seeker wants only to inspire the world. When he inspires the world, he feels that he is giving the world ample opportunity to see the reality in its own way. Here there is no imposition. Here there is no direct or indirect insistence that the reality be seen in a certain way.

A true seeker is always ready to serve the Supreme Beloved in each individual. First he tries to serve the Supreme according to the world’s receptivity. Then, after he himself makes considerable progress, he tries to serve the world the way the Supreme wants him to serve the world. While he is a beginner, while he himself is making progress, he feels that it is his bounden duty to help the world accelerate its own progress and success the way the world wants to achieve progress and success. But there comes a time when he feels that he has to see the success and progress of the world the way his Inner Pilot wants him to see it.

A true seeker is nothing short of a lamp-post. This lamp-post offers its glow not only to the fellow travellers who walk along his path, but also to those who walk along other paths. He offers light and travellers walking along other paths are able to receive and achieve the light that he offers. His life is for all; but again, for those who want to be in the same boat he is in, he feels that he has extra responsibility. They are his fellow travellers, journeying to Infinity’s Shore.

A true seeker knows what divine authority is and he knows what divine responsibility is. To him, authority is not the power that lords it over the world; authority is the recognition of the illumining and liberating, transforming and immortalising reality as world-power. To him, responsibility is not an unwanted burden. Each responsibility is an added opportunity to serve the Inner Pilot in an inimitable way, in God’s own Way. He feels that each responsibility is an opportunity to add to his soul’s reality and he knows that he can increase this opportunity. How does he increase it? He increases his opportunity by creating happiness. Happiness increases opportunity. And what is happiness? Happiness is a quality of the soul. This quality of the soul we notice and grow into only when we see that the Vision-world and the reality-world can become one.

The Vision-world is God’s Silence-world; the reality-world is God’s sound-world. The seeker comes to realise that either he has to climb up from the body-consciousness to the soul’s loftiest height or he has to bring the soul’s loftiest height down into the gross physical world. When he climbs up, he lifts up humanity’s consciousness and places humanity’s consciousness in the lap of Divinity. And when he brings down Peace, Light and Bliss from above, he feeds humanity’s age-long hunger. But whether he carries humanity up the tree or brings down the fruits, he offers Divinity the golden opportunity to transform, to shape and to mould humanity’s life-breath the way the Eternal Pilot wants humanity transformed, illumined, perfected and fulfilled.

A true seeker has discovered the truth that his Pilot Supreme is not only the Highest but also the lowest. The magnitude and the infinitude of his Beloved Supreme is the reality precisely because the Supreme’s Love-power has become the Universal Consciousness, the Transcendental Consciousness, the Infinite Consciousness, which is expanding at every moment; and also because He is smaller than the smallest, tinier than the tiniest. The Beloved Supreme is the reality just because He can become Infinity and just because He can become the finite, the infinitesimal drop. The true seeker feels a one-pointed inner urge to see the Infinite in the finite and to see the finite in the Infinite.

When a true seeker aspires, he sees that it is the real in him that aspires. The unreal in him just waits for the opportunity to be transformed at God’s choice Hour. The unreal in him cannot aspire; only the real in him can aspire. What is the real in him? The real in him is happiness, delight. What is the unreal in him? The unreal in him is the suffering that he creates for himself. How does he create suffering? He creates suffering by mixing with the unreal in himself. The unreal is his desire-world; the unreal is his thought-world. Each desire is a world of its own; each thought is a world of its own. The unreal in him is sorrow. When he mixes with sorrow, with desire, with suspicion and doubt, when world-suffering assails him and he identifies himself with world-suffering and with his own suffering, at that time he sees darkness within, without, below, above. But when he identifies himself with inner happiness and outer happiness, at every moment he transcends his own reality. At every moment he dances with the reality of self-transcendence.

Instead of staying in the unreal — in the desire-world, in the thought-world — a true seeker wants to live in the aspiration-world and the will-power-world. His aspiration-world tells him, “Not this, not that, but something beyond this, something beyond that.” And what is it that is beyond this, beyond that? It is his constant inner flame, the flame that at every moment achieves satisfaction. Again, at each level of satisfaction he feels an eternal hunger to achieve higher satisfaction. This hunger is not simply a cry for the world of truth and reality which has given him his present satisfaction; it is a ceaseless cry for Light, abundant Light, infinite Light. A true seeker cries for satisfaction and when satisfaction dawns, he cries for higher satisfaction. He is not like an ordinary human being in the desire-world who can never be satisfied. The seeker is satisfied, but at the same time he still wants to go higher. The true seeker’s satisfaction in crying for a higher world, a higher reality, is his spontaneous inner growth. An iota of satisfaction can please him; but he feels that the greater his satisfaction, the greater the opportunity he will have to manifest the Divinity within him. It is not that from dissatisfaction he is going to satisfaction; but from satisfaction he is growing to higher satisfaction. From God’s aspiration-world he is climbing to God’s realisation-world. And inside the realisation-world he tries to see God’s manifestation-world, God’s Perfection-world.

A true seeker is he whose name is always synonymous with devotion. A true seeker has discovered the truth that it is his devotion that can fulfil the Divine in him, the Supreme in him. In his devotion, God’s perfect Perfection and God’s continuous Satisfaction loom large. His devotion is not the devotion of a man touching somebody else’s feet. His devotion is speed, the fastest speed of his own aspiration-reality and God’s Compassion-Reality. When his aspiration-reality and God’s Compassion-Reality are bridged by his own inner cry, which is nothing else but his devotion, at that time he sees the world of the Eternal Now as his own, very own. He sees that there is no past, no future; there is only one Eternal Now, only one Eternal Life, only one Eternal Love. What he has and what he is, and what God has and what God is, are nothing but the Eternal Now. Here he sows, here he grows. Here he is God the seed; again, here he is God the fruit. In the Eternal Now, God’s Self-Transcendence-Reality and his own life-liberating, life-immortalising reality abide.