What I need from God³

When I say, “I need God,” what do I actually mean? God is everything, true, but I need certain aspects of God more than other aspects — at least right now. God is infinite, God is eternal, God is immortal. God is all Power, God is all Light, God is all Justice, God is all Compassion, God is all Forgiveness — God is everything. But for the time being, I need only a few things from God.

To start my spiritual journey, I need God the Forgiveness. First I have to empty myself of my undivine existence. All the undivine thoughts and undivine deeds that are inside me, everything that is unaspiring and uninspiring within me, I have to discard. And for that I need God’s Forgiveness. I have committed Himalayan blunders countless times. If God does not forgive me for the undivine things that I have done over the years, then how can I walk along the spiritual path, the sunlit path? Only if God forgives me can I enter wholeheartedly into the spiritual life. So, to start with, I need God’s Forgiveness.

Then, when I feel that God, out of His infinite Bounty, has forgiven me, at that time I can think of another aspect of God, and that is God’s Compassion. God has forgiven me; now I need His Compassion. I need His Compassion because I am weak, I am ignorant and I am in every way a failure. I fervently desire to do something, to achieve something, to become something, but I do not have the capacity to do what I want to do or to grow into what I want to become. Therefore, I desperately need God’s Compassion. Without God’s Compassion I will not be able to achieve anything, and I will not be able to become anything.

After receiving God’s Forgiveness and Compassion, then I need God’s Blessings. I need God to shower His infinite Blessings on me from above, so that I can succeed in the battlefield of life. Life is a constant battle, and if I am to succeed, then I have to entirely depend on God’s Blessings. If He blesses my devoted head and surrendered heart, only then can I succeed in life and proceed along the spiritual path.

After God has forgiven me, granted me His Compassion and showered His Blessings upon me, then I have to feel at every moment God’s Love. I have to feel that the One who has forgiven me, shown me His Compassion and blessed me, really cares for me. If I feel that God really loves me, then only can I have true and abiding happiness. The Creator is all love for His creation. But the creation quite often does not feel it or realise it. Since I am part of God’s creation, it is my bounden duty to feel God’s Love at every moment. Only then will I try to become good, divine and perfect, and try to please Him in His own Way.

After Love, something very significant and very deep I have to feel, and that is God’s Oneness. Love is not enough. I can love someone or something, but I may not have established my oneness, inseparable oneness, with that person or that thing. So after I have felt God’s Love, I have to develop my conscious, constant and inseparable oneness with Him.

In order to have conscious, constant and inseparable oneness with God, I have to achieve something and become something, and that thing is perfection. How do I become perfect? I become perfect by crying inwardly to receive the things that will uplift me and illumine me, and to conquer the things that torment me and disturb me. When I cry to receive good things and to conquer bad things, God is pleased with me. It is only by pleasing God that I can become perfect.

At every moment I am assailed by bad thoughts or inspired by good thoughts. When I am assailed by a bad thought, I will try to discard it. When I am inspired by a good thought, I will try to develop and enlarge it. When I start meditating early in the morning, if one good thought comes, I will try to enlarge it. Let us say it is a thought of divine love — not the human, emotional love, but divine, universal love — "I love God, I love God’s entire creation.” This thought can be expanded. I can think of love as my ideal, as my ultimate Goal. In this way, if I think of divine Love, universal Love, transcendental Love, then I am identifying myself with the Goal Itself.

Like this, if I expand my good thoughts and throw out my bad thoughts, if I cry to receive divine things and to conquer bad things, then I will feel perfection dawning in my life of aspiration. As perfection dawns, I can begin to establish my oneness with God and achieve abiding satisfaction. Perfection is the harbinger of satisfaction. Before I become perfect, there can be no true satisfaction, no divine satisfaction. But if I am perfect, then God can make me into His choice instrument. Then He can manifest Himself and satisfy Himself in and through me, and that is the true, divine satisfaction.

When my heart’s only cry is to please God in His own Way, then God can manifest Himself in and through me. When my inner cry carries me to God, I say to Him, “O my Beloved Supreme, make me Your perfect instrument.” When God comes to me, He gives me a broad Smile — a wide, soulful, illumining Smile — and says, “My child, I shall make you My perfect instrument and, at the same time, I will manifest Myself in and through you.”

First I need God’s Forgiveness, then God’s Compassion, then His Blessings and then His Love. Only then can perfection dawn in my life. Once perfection dawns in my life, I can become one with God, and God can make me His perfect instrument. At that time, God is satisfied with me and I am satisfied with Him — my life is all satisfaction, illumining and immortalising satisfaction.