June 5

Aspiration-heart is within, dedication-hands are without. Illumination-mind is within, transformation-face is without. Liberation-vital is within, perfection-body is without. Realisation-man is within, satisfaction-life is without.

There are two inseparable and everlasting experience-realities: self-examination and God-manifestation. The more we examine ourselves, the sooner we manifest God within us and the sooner we expedite our God-journey.

Self-examination is a flood of light and God-manifestation is a sea of delight. This is what a seeker feels in the inmost recesses of his heart.

The human in a seeker changes from ignorance-night to knowledge-sun as he succeeds in his outer life and proceeds in his inner life. The seeker has come to realise that unless he sees the world constantly for God today, how can he see the world through God tomorrow?

Unless he acts for God today, how can he act with God tomorrow? Unless he speaks for God the Vision today, how can he speak for God the Reality tomorrow?

A seeker has come to realise that there are only two questions from time immemorial. There have been only two breathless and deathless questions: where is God? Who am I?

Where is God? God abides inside His Heart's Gratitude-Room. God abides inside His Life's Surrender-House.

And who am I? This is another question of paramount importance. Each seeker in his spiritual journey has to answer this question while he walks, marches, runs and sprints along Eternity's Road. And the answer comes from the very depths of his heart, from the immortal receptivity of his heart: I am at once God's eternal instrument and God's infinite music.

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.

My subtle body has visited my disciples all over the world thousands and thousands of times over the years. You do not have to die to use your subtle body! You can easily use your subtle body when you are in the land of the living, at any time, at any given hour. The subtle body can be brought out of the physical body and, believe it or not, it can visit any part of the world. I have done it thousands and thousands of times, and many juicy stories I can tell. Either to your great astonishment or to your great disbelief, even while my doctors are massaging me, I can bring the subtle body to the fore and send it anywhere. I just send it like a messenger boy.

Avatars can do this; spiritual figures can do it. Just because we ourselves cannot do something, we must not say that it cannot be done, it cannot be done. If we stick to that theory, it will be the height of our stupidity. Just because with my physical eyes I cannot see South Africa, let us say, I cannot say that South Africa does not exist. A poor villager somewhere who cannot afford to have a telephone will be apt to say that South Africa or some other country does not exist. For that villager, the world is only his immediate vicinity, the few villages that are around him. Those places are real for him; about the rest of the world he will immediately say, "No, no, no, it does not exist."

Many, many things, countless things we cannot do. Again, there are some exceptional human beings. They are human, but God has blessed them with spiritual power, occult power and intuitive faculties. They can do many things.

My dear children, just because you cannot do something, do not be inclined to disbelieve it. If you say, "Seeing is believing," I wish to say that there are many, many things we have not seen but we believe. The mother says, "This is your father," and the child believes her. Great scientists have ways to see and count the stars. Just because we do not have their capacities and facilities, we may not appreciate their discoveries. In every aspect of life there are so many things to believe or not to believe. But if we believe, then we get tremendous satisfaction. When it is a matter of the subtle body, please take it in that way.

Even right here there are quite a few disciples whom I have visited in my subtle body over the years. Some of you perhaps were at that time fast asleep. Again, some of you will not believe it, because on that particular day you were perhaps not in a high consciousness. When God wants to show us His Compassion, He does not have to wait for our highest consciousness. Yes, He can come to us when we are in our highest consciousness. Again, the same God can come to us when we are in our absolutely lowest consciousness.

We cannot bind God. We cannot say, "Oh, if we are pure, then only God will come. If we are not pure, why should God come?" That is a long-standing theory. But I wish to say that if God wants to visit us, He does not care for our spiritual standard or inner standard. He just does it, and He gets Joy. He has His own Way of accomplishing something, and everything is at His Command.

Out of His infinite Compassion, God wants to give little, little candies to the spiritual Masters so that they can share these candies with the seekers. Sometimes a spiritual Master shares the candies while a seeker is fast asleep. Then the seeker gets up early in the morning and says, "My God, how is it that today's world is so beautiful, so pure, so refreshing? What has happened?" Why is it so? Because early in the morning God came and gave the seeker His Affection and Compassion, like a piece of candy. Then the seeker's world became totally different —- full of joy, full of love, full of satisfaction.

Either God Himself comes to us, or He sends the Master's soul. In so many ways God can give us joy, in top secrecy.