Before this life is snatched away, make the Infinite visible to you now. Don’t put off your search for God until your old age, or hope somehow to reach Him when you die. A thief is a thief before sleep; after sleep he is a thief still. Similarly, we don’t become angels, introduced to God, when we die. We are the same after death as before. Make God visible to you in this visible life. When He comes, you will know such joy, such love, such wisdom, such understanding!
A negative state of desirelessness is not the goal of life. The goal is eternal fulfillment of all desires. The trouble is, you allow lesser desires to prevent you from fulfilling the only lastingly meaningful desire- for God. Once you find Him, all other desires are satisfied.
If you will use your nights for meditation, when everyone else is asleep, you will find God. Never go to bed without making that effort. What of it if you lose a little sleep? The great sleep of death will get you anyway. But it will be worthwhile if you can reach the deathless state before the Grim Reaper catches you.
Seclusion is the price of greatness. To realise God, to see Jesus and the great ones, you must have time to be by yourself. You cannot have divine communion if you mix with people all of the time. But once you have achieved God-contact, then no matter where you are or with whom, you will be drunk with the presence of the Lord.
So, from tonight, get busy! Pray with all the devotion of your heart, and you will see God; you will see Jesus or Krishna or the saints. But you must make the supreme effort to behold Them in meditation, or you will not be able to reach that divine state. I hope that you will try. When a halfhearted man plays the piano, the result is halfhearted, without inspiration. But when an individual who has practised and practised and practised plays the piano, everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful!”
When an ordinary man puts the necessary time and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man. My Master used to say: “The little cat that goes into the jungle becomes the wild cat.” The little man with small thoughts who goes into the jungle of books becomes absorbed in intellectualising about God; he doesn’t find the nectar of God-realisation. But the little man who meditates, who constantly thinks of the joy of God, who constantly pray to Him, becomes one with the Infinite.
When once you have heard the voice of God, you are on the way to the highest states of consciousness. You will know God as immanent and transcendent, personal and impersonal. You will worship Him as Spirit, and love Him in manifest form as the Nearest of the near.
Extract from the book “Divine Romance” by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda
