25 January 1987
GETTING CLOSE TO GOD
Getting close to God is actually an experience. The journey Itself is an experience and finally when you reach Him it. Is another experience. It Is an experience among experiences, the super experience when you become one with God. We must not rush into this. You should not force yourself. It must come to you naturally. When you mentally force yourself to get into this deeply, you encounter a lot of problems
especially mental problems. When people begin to force themselves to this, they become affected mentally, emotionally and physically.
As I have said before, enjoy your journey. Don’t be in a hurry. If you want to go up to Cameron Highlands, you cannot reach there the moment you decide to go. You will have to get yourself into that
journey. I t will take time no matter how you intend to go. No matter how you force yourself or however impatient you are you are not going to reach there immediately. You have to make that journey. So you might as well enjoy it with all the patience you have and with all the expectations. Nobody has achieved it overnight.
How are we going to overcome this problem? I t is a real problem. If you are going to build a building on a weak foundation, no matter how beautiful that building is, no matter how good the materials are, if the
foundation Is weak the building will collapse. Because you are in a big hurry to have that beautiful building you may have built the foundation quickly. It can be built very quickly but the foundation will come down as quickly as you have built it. The foundation has to be very strong.
Then your building will stand for a long time.
In spiritualism also there is this foundation. This foundation, is your relationship with fellow human beings, your fellow sisters and brothers. Many try to reach God through short cuts. They think this is an easy way out. There is no easy way out. There is no short cut. It is easy and very enjoyable when you start to think of the others first. As long as you think of yourself, It is going to be a very painful experience.
Think of the others. They should come first. Your concern should be for the others. Your care and love should be for the others. You come last.
When your relationship with your fellow sisters and brothers is right, then you know that you have a strong foundation. I am not asking you not to take care of yourself. You have to take care of yourself because nobody else is going to take care. But it must not be, “I and I only”.
It must be, “I and they”.
If you think of yourself only there will come a time when nobody else will think of you. If you think of others only there will come a time when there is absolutely nothing left for you. But If you can think of
others as much as you think about yourself, then the whole world Is going to think about you.
A lot of people unknowingly become “thieves”. To a lot of us when I say, “So-and-so is a thief”, the first thought that comes to our mind is, “Maybe he has stolen something”. If I take something from someone
without telling him or without it being given to me, then I have stolen It. There is another kind of stealing. Many people make this mistake. When I take the credit when it is not mine, that is also stealing. If the credit belongs to somebody else I should be the first to say, “It is not mine. I didn’t do it. I didn’t think of It. This Is so-and-so’s”. The credit must be given to the person who deserves it.
This may sound very trivial but In spiritualism all things actually matter. When we were young we learnt a beautiful little verse. “Little drops of water, little grains of sand make the mighty oceans and the
pleasant lands.” That one ocean is made up of billions of drops of water. The pleasant lands that we see are made up of billions of grains of sand.
So do not think anything is too small or trivial. We have to take even the smallest thing very seriously. We have to be spiritually clean and pure. The big faults are very easy to Identify. You also have the
smaller things that are difficult to Identify. You have to be very careful. So in all our thoughts, words and actions we have to be clean and pure.
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