by Anonymous 

We should closely examine ourselves and find out whether we really want God.

If we desire the love and affections of other persons, or the things of the world, we can do without Him. And if we feel quite happy and satisfied when these are granted to us, it is a sure sign that we do not want God.

In such a case we only deserve it if we do not get Him. So every aspirant should ask himself now and then whether it is really God he wants and not something else. And if it is really God he can be sure that He will come to him, for God always comes to the devotee who really seeks Him alone.

Says Sri Ramakrishna,

"If the devotee moves towards God one step, He comes toward him ten steps."

The whole point is that we cannot take all this dream of the phenomenal to be absolutely real, and, at the same time, think of God. This cinema-show we see here is not the Reality. Christ says "He that taketh not up his cross and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that shall lose his life for me shall find it." The way to Divine Realization lies through self-effort and striving. Immortality can be attained only by one who becomes dead to all worldly attachments even while living in the body.

Our whole trouble is that we believe this phenomenal world and all the people we see in it to be intensely real, but two realities cannot have room in us. So, first of all, a void is to be created in the heart of every aspirant, and once this is done, he can fill this void with the Divine.

The true sages and men of knowledge do not trouble themselves about the multiplicity of the world. They see the One alone in the many and they think of and care for the One alone. They find their greatest pleasure in Him, a pleasure never to be had through personal affection or sense-enjoyment. And the cessation of all desire means the realization of Divine Consciousness. When all attachments and love fall away and die, the soul realizes its own eternal Divine Glory.

"With all heart concentrated by Yoga, with the eye of evenness for all things, he beholds the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self.

He who worships Me, dwelling in all beings, being establishes in unity, whatever his mode of life, that Yogi abides in Me."