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Devotion and Self-giving DEVOTION
Devotion: modest and fragrant, it gives itself without seeking for anything in return.
Devotional attitude: moderate and self-effacing, it gives remarkable fruit.
A devotion that keeps concentrated and silent in the depths of the heart but manifests in acts of service and obedience, is more powerful, more true, more divine, than any shouting and weeping devotion.
Sincere devotion is much more effective than the Ganges water.
Worship: the form or outer expression of your devotion. Page ―103 True worship: total and constant without demand or exigence.
Life must blossom like a flower offering itself to the Divine.
The only offering that truly enriches is the one made to the Divine.
Offering: the placing of your entire being, with all its movements true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, before the Divine for transformation.
Offer sincerely to the Divine your obscurities and you will be able to receive the light.
The offering of our being we make to the Divine must be integral and effective. 24 August 1954 Integral offering: the surest road to realisation. Page ― 104 Unconditional integral offering: the joy of offering oneself without asking for anything in return.
Consecration is the consummation, when the Light has illuminated all the parts of your being, with a central will acting on the feelings, impulses, thoughts, emotions, activities, directing them always towards the Divine and when you move no more from darkness to light or from falsehood to truth or from misery to happiness but from light to more light, from truth to greater truth, from happiness to increasing happiness.
It is in a sincere consecration to the Divine that we can find relief from our too human sufferings.
The quiet mind one gets through meditation is indeed of short duration, for as soon as you come out from meditation you come out at the same time from the quietness of mind. The true lasting quietness in the vital and the physical as well as in the mind comes from a complete consecration to the Divine; for when you can no more call anything, not even yourself, yours, when everything, including your body, sensations, feelings and thoughts, belongs to the Divine, the Divine takes the entire responsibility of all and you have nothing more to worry about. Page ― 105 A sincere consecration of all you are and all you do is for the sadhana much more effective than meditation.
True love and consecration lead much quicker to the Divine than an arduous Tapasya. 26 April 1937 Self-giving is true prayer.
Self-giving: by this the whole being gets progressively unified round the central psychic being.
Give yourself up ― it is the best way of finding yourself.
Give yourself, all that you are and what you do, to the Divine, and you will have peace.
Give yourself entirely to the Divine and you will see the end of all your troubles. Page ― 106 It is a sincere self-giving that saves one from all difficulties and dangers.
Never say, “I have nothing to give to the Divine.” There is always something to give, for always you can give yourself in a better and more complete way.
To the Divine you are worth no more than what you have given Him.
To give to the Divine what one has in excess is not an offering. One should give at least something out of what one needs.
If you remember what you have given to the Divine, He will have no need of remembering it Himself; and if you ever mention the gift or speak of it to anybody, it is not to the Divine that you have made the offering but to the demon of your vanity.
Entire self-giving: fully open, clear and pure.
Do not confuse the psychic realisation with the spiritual realisation, Page ― 107 because the psychic realisation will leave you within time and space, within the manifested universe. Whereas the effect of the spiritual realisation will be to project you outside all creation, outside time and space. There is no joy more perfect than to give oneself totally to that which is greater than oneself. God, Supreme Origin, Divine Presence, Absolute Truth ― it doesn’t matter what name we give Him or what aspect we most easily approach Him through ― to forget oneself totally in an integral consecration is the surest path towards Realisation. 13 January 1952 How beautiful, grand, simple and calm everything becomes when our thoughts turn to the Divine and we give ourselves to the Divine! 11 May 1954 We must know how to give our life and also our death, our happiness and also our suffering. 28 December 1954 Three typical modes of total self-giving to the Divine: (1) To prostrate oneself at His feet, giving up all pride in perfect humility. (2) To unfold one’s being before Him, open one’s whole body from head to foot, as one opens a book, exposing one’s centres so as to make all their movements visible in a complete sincerity that allows nothing to remain hidden. (3) To nestle in His arms, to merge in Him in a loving and absolute trust. These movements may be accompanied by three formulas or any one of them according to the case: Page ― 108 (1) Let Thy Will be done and not mine. (2) As Thou willest, as Thou willest. (3) I am Thine for eternity. Generally, when these movements are done in the true way, they are followed by a perfect identification, a dissolution of the ego, giving rise to a sublime felicity.
Three Steps towards the Supreme Identification. Give all you have, this is the beginning. Give all you do, this is the way. Give all you are, this is the fulfilment.
I have read and heard that one should “give oneself” to the Divine. I don’t understand how one should “give oneself”.
With your thought, give your thoughts. With your heart, give your feelings. With your body, give your work. 21 March 1965 Above all words, above all thoughts in the luminous silence of an aspiring faith give yourself totally, unreservedly, absolutely to the Supreme Lord of all existences and He will do of you what He wants you to be. With love and blessings. 5 March 1966 Page ― 109 |