Part IV: Discourses

Never give up²

God's creation is nothing other than God's Cosmic Game. From time immemorial God has been playing in and through each human being at every moment. The day God created Time, He became the Owner and the Distributor of Time.

Perhaps all of you know by this time that our simple philosophy is the philosophy of love, devotion and surrender. We have just watched tennis on the video. In tennis everything begins with “love”. There is also "serve" in tennis. Those who play need dedication or devotion to the game, and at the end of the game one party surrenders to the other. So tennis can teach us how to become good seekers.

You have noticed how many of my students fell a number of times while they were playing tennis because of the rainy and wet conditions. In the spiritual life also, many, many, many, if not all, seekers fall or descend. But they get ample opportunity again to stand up and walk, march and run faster than the fastest. As we have seen on the video, the tennis players fell down only to get up. They fell down deplorably, but again stood up courageously to win in the battlefield of life.

In the spiritual life there is no such thing as failure. We may fall, we may descend, we may have the experience of so-called outer failure. But this is not real failure. Real failure is only when we give up and say, "This is an impossible task; no matter how many times I try, I will fail." If I entertain this wrong feeling and give up, then I have accepted failure and become failure itself. I fail only when I give up — never, never before!

Not to give up under any circumstances should be the motto of our life: "I shall try again and again, and I am bound to succeed. There will be obstacles, but I have to defy the obstacles." During the tennis game you saw, it was raining heavily. Let us take this rain as an obstacle that the players defied. Similarly, in the spiritual life, there will be lots of obstacles: fear, doubt, anxiety, worry, insecurity, impurity and so forth. These are all undivine hostile forces that attack us. We have to conquer them. There have been seekers on earth, right from the beginning of creation, who have conquered these forces. They have left behind their divine treasures on earth, and today's seekers have got these treasures as their divine heritage. So if there are obstacles on the way, we shall not give up.

Although the great tennis stars may not be conscious seekers, unconsciously they surrender their results to God. If they are conscious seekers, definitely they offer their results consciously to their Lord Supreme. There is no human being who either unconsciously or consciously does not or cannot surrender the results of his actions to the Supreme. But if we can become conscious seekers, conscious instruments of God, then we need not wait for the results of our actions, for at every moment we derive abundant joy from what we do. The action itself, if it is devoted action, is joy.

The ultimate aim of the spiritual life is enlightenment. But we must not have the wrong notion that enlightenment excludes entertainment. Enlightenment does include entertainment. Real entertainment is not and need not be restless, vital excitement. It can come from an innocent, spontaneous feeling of joy from deep within and be the simple expression of this inner, sweet, tender, soulful feeling. This kind of innocent entertainment gives the rest of the world the same kind of spontaneous, childlike innocent joy. It helps enormously to free us from mental tension and from unforeseen and undivine hostile attacks.

My Guru is the Absolute Supreme, and those who follow my path have the same Guru, the Absolute Supreme. To me, He is everything: He is the creation; He is beyond the creation. He is my Eternity's All. Again, there are cosmic gods and goddesses in Heaven. I know them; I have a free access to them, and they have a free access to me. There is not a single day that passes when there is no divine entertainment in Heaven. Here is the proof that the cosmic gods and goddesses do enjoy entertainment in their own way. Since there is no vital as such in the soul's world, vital excitement is out of the question. It is only the soul's game, the spirit's game, the exchange of sheer psychic delight, the game of ecstasy in the assembly of the cosmic gods and goddesses.

There are seekers who do not find joy in the spiritual life. Why do they not find joy? Precisely because they want to discover something new with the mind. But if they want to discover something new, illumining and fulfilling, then they have to be in the heart, with the heart and for the heart. The heart is all oneness, and this oneness is God's Vision fulfilled in His seekers, servers and lovers. If we live in the heart, with the heart and for the heart, then at every moment there will be newness, and inside newness will be fulness — complete, whole.

The spiritual life is not for the chosen few; it is for all. Some may walk slowly while others may jog. Still others may run fast or even sprint. But we all shall reach the same destination at God's choice Hour, provided we do not stop for good on the way or, what is worse, make a complete turn-around and want to go back to our old life, which is nothing short of an undivine, unaspiring, animal life.

Let us try to run consciously at every moment to our destined Goal. If the hostile forces compel us to descend, then the divine forces are there with their infinite Compassion to lift us once again and help us run the fastest. So do not give up, do not give up! Continue, continue! The Goal is ahead of you. If you do not give up, you are bound to reach your destined Goal.