God's Will

God’s Will in an individual is progressive, like a muscle developing—strong, stronger, strongest. God’s Will is to make an individual feel that there is something abiding, lasting, everlasting. When an individual reaches that stage, he will know God’s Will. God’s Will we can know from the sense of abiding satisfaction it gives us.

Anything that is eternal, anything that is immortal, anything that is divine, is God’s Will. Even though God deals with Eternity, He is not indifferent for one second. For it is from one second, two seconds, three seconds that we enter into Infinity and Eternity. Let us try to feel God’s Will in us at every second.

There is a very simple way to know what God’s Will is for us as individuals. Every day when we start our day we build our own world. We make decisions. We feel that things have to be done in a certain way. I have to deal with this person in this way. I have to say this; I have to do this; I have to give this. Everything is I, I, I. If, instead of all this planning, we can make our minds absolutely calm and silent, we can know God’s Will. This silence is not the silence of a dead body; it is the dynamic, progressive silence of receptivity. Through total silence and the ever-increasing receptivity of the mind, God’s Will can be known.

When the human mind works powerfully, the divine Will cannot work. God’s Will works only when the human mind does not work. When the mind becomes a pure vessel, the Supreme can pour into it His infinite Peace, Light and Bliss.

Right now we do not hear God’s Voice. There may be something we hear from within that we feel is God’s Voice, but it may be only a voice coming from our subtle physical or subtle vital or from somewhere else. But when we silence the mind, we can hear a silent voice inside the very depth of our heart or above our head, and that is the Voice of God. Once we hear the Voice of God, we cannot make any mistake in our life. If we listen to its dictates all the time, we will go forward, upward and inward constantly.

We are constantly building and breaking our mental house. But instead of making and breaking the house at our sweet will, if we can empty our mind, make it calm and quiet, then God can build His Temple or His Palace in us in His own way. And when He has built His Abode within us, He will say, “I have built this for you and Me to reside in together. I have built it, but it is not Mine alone. It is also yours. Come in.”

The easiest way for us to know God’s Will is to become the instrument and not the doer. If we become only the instrument for carrying out God’s Plans, God’s Will will act in and through us. God does the acting and He is the action. He is everything. We only observe.

To easily know what God’s Will is, We have to feed the divine in us And illumine the human in us.

How can I know God’s Will in my daily life? You can know God’s Will in your daily life if early in the morning you offer your utmost gratitude to God for what He has already done for you. When you offer your gratitude-heart, then it expands; and when it expands it becomes one with God’s Universal Reality. A gratitude-heart blossoms like a flower. When the flower is fully blossomed, then you appreciate and admire it.

In your case also, when your heart of gratitude blossoms, immediately God is pleased. If you offer gratitude to God for what He has already done for you, then naturally God’s sweet Will will operate in and through you. Early in the morning, before you meditate or do anything else, offer as much gratitude as possible; offer your soulful tears just because you have become what you are now. If you do this, eventually you will become infinitely more than what you are now. Gratitude will be able to make you feel what God’s Will is. God’s Will will act in and through you and God will do everything in and through you, and for you, if you offer gratitude.

How can I know what God wants me to do?

You will know easily if you are not attached to the result or elevated by the result. Before you do something, pray to God: “God, if it is Your Will, then please inspire me to do it well.” While working, tell God, “God, since I have accepted this work with the feeling that You wanted me to do it, please work in and through me so that I can do it well. From Your inspiration I will be able to know that it is Your Will.” At the end of the work, whether the result comes as success or as failure, offer it at the Feet of God with the same joy.

How do I know if I am executing God’s Will or I am fulfilling my own ego?

When you fulfil the demands of the ego, immediately you will feel that you are the lord of the world or that you are going to become the lord of the world. You are bloated with pride, and you feel that the rest of the world is at your feet. Once a desire of yours is fulfilled, immediately you feel, “Oh, my desire is fulfilled: I have become something, and the rest of the world will not achieve what I have.” Always there will be a feeling of superiority when the ego is fulfilled.

When you execute the Will of God, the question of superiority or inferiority does not arise. At that time you feel only your oneness. You feel that God has appointed you or that God has accepted you as His chosen instrument, and that He is acting in and through you. No matter what you achieve, even if it is something very grand, extraordinary, unusual, you will not have any sense of personal pride. On the contrary, you will feel extremely grateful to God that He has chosen to fulfil Himself in and through you. There will be no pride, but only a feeling of expansion.

To execute God’s Will means to achieve something. When you achieve something, you feel an expansion of your consciousness. But when you fulfil the demands of your ego, you feel totally separated from the rest of the world. You are the lord and the rest of creation is at your feet. In this way you can know the difference between the two.

Self-giving to God’s Will Is, without fail, A slow-ripening But most delicious fruit.

Should we pray for something we want or should we just pray for God’s Will to be done?

To pray for God’s Will to be done is the highest form of prayer. But a beginner finds it almost impossible to pray to God sincerely to fulfil him in God’s own way. Early in the morning, a beginner will say to God, “God, I want to be Your unconditionally surrendered child.” Then, the next moment, when jealousy, insecurity or pride enters into him, his self-offering becomes all conditional. At that time the seeker says, “God, early in the morning I prayed to You so sincerely to fulfil Your Will in me, but You did not listen to my prayer. Otherwise, I would have been above jealousy, fear, doubt, anxiety and attachment.”

If the seeker prays for something in the morning and his prayer is not fulfilled in a few hours’ time, immediately he becomes discouraged. Then he stops praying and meditating for six months. For a day he offers his sincere prayer, and then for six months he is ready to enjoy ignorance. So when a seeker is just starting out, it is always advisable for him to pray to God for whatever he feels he needs most, whether it is patience, purity, sincerity, humility or peace. Then God will give him peace, light and bliss, which are the precursors of something infinite that is going to come into his inner being.

Once he has received and achieved some peace, light and bliss and has become established to some extent in his inner being, he will have some confidence in God’s operation and also in his own life of aspiration.

When one is making very fast progress or is a little advanced, he feels that there is a Reality within himself that is not going to disappoint or desert him. He feels that God is fully aware of what he needs and is eager to supply him with the things that he needs, because God wants to fulfil Himself in and through His chosen instrument. At His choice Hour, God will fulfil Himself in and through that particular chosen instrument.

When a seeker feels this kind of confidence within himself, that is the time for the seeker to pray, “Let Thy Will be done.” At that time he can sincerely say, “God, now I want to please You only in Your own way.” At that time he will feel that God wants to manifest Himself in and through him. He will feel that the moment God makes him perfect, he will be able to serve the divinity in humanity.

If a member of one’s immediate family is sick, what is your feeling about praying to God for healing power?

Let us say that your mother is sick. Instead of saying, “Cure my mother, cure my mother,” if you can say, “I place my mother at the Feet of God,” you will be doing the best thing. Your best healing power will be to place your mother at the Feet of God, because He knows what is best.

When you offer your own will to the Will of God, you gain power, and this power will be utilised for God. God Himself will tell you how to utilise it. But if you try to heal on your own, in spite of your best intentions, you may stand against the Will of God.

Suppose you pray and meditate to acquire divine power so that you can cure people and help the world. You say, “I want to be a camel and carry the whole burden of the world on my shoulders.” But if the camel is not illumined, then how can it help others gain illumination?

You are running toward your goal. If you ask God to give you something, then this is just an additional thing that you have to carry, and it may slow you down. If illumination is your goal, think only of your goal and nothing else.

Again, if a remedy for a disease comes spontaneously from within and you do not have to exercise your mental power or will-power, then there is no question of ego, pride or vanity. If in your meditation, all of a sudden you see inner light, and in this light you get a cure for some fatal disease, then naturally you will be able to offer this inner illumination to the world at large. But the best thing is to become illumined first. Then only will you be serving God in His own way. Otherwise at times you will serve God in His own way and at other times you will be feeding your own ego.

How can you tell the difference between the Will of God and wishful thinking?

In order to know God’s Will, one need not be a great spiritual Master or a highly advanced soul. There are very few of these on earth, very few. But one has to be at least a seeker in order to know God’s Will. How can one be a real seeker? One can be a true seeker if he feels that he is not only helpless, but also hopeless, meaningless and useless in every way without God. Without God he is nothing, but with God he is everything. He is aspiration. He is realisation. He is revelation. He is manifestation. If one has that kind of inner feeling about oneself, then one can be a true seeker overnight.

A sincere seeker tries to meditate devotedly each day. One who meditates devotedly each day will soon have a free access to God’s inner Realm and be able to hear the Message of God. Of course, it is easy to say that you have to meditate devotedly, but to actually meditate devotedly may seem as difficult as climbing up Mount Everest. When you start meditating, you have to feel that your very life, your very existence, your very breath, is an offering to the Inner Pilot within you. Only in this way can you meditate devotedly and have a devoted feeling toward God.

During your meditation there comes a time when your mind is absolutely calm and quiet. There is only purity, serenity and profundity in your mind. Purity, sincerity and profundity have one common face, which is called tranquillity. When tranquillity is with them, they are perfect.

When the mind has become calm, quiet, tranquil and vacant, inside your heart you will feel a twinge, or you will feel something very tiny, like a soft bubble. It is a tiny thing, but there in golden letters is written a message. Even if you keep your eyes closed, no harm. Sometimes the message is transferred from the heart to the head, and with your mind you can see that the message has come. But if you have the capacity to go deep within, you will see that the message has already been inscribed in the heart. Just because you cannot see the message there, it has to come to the physical mind to convince you.

Inside the inmost recesses of the heart, where everything is flooded with purity, a message cannot be written by anybody other than God. There no undivine force can enter. This is not true about the mind. In the mind there can always be a mental hallucination, a fabrication or some self- imposed truth that we have created.

But in the inmost recesses of our heart, no disturbing thought, no struggling thought, no strangling thought will ever dare to enter. The depths of our heart are well protected, well shielded by God Himself, because God’s own Wealth and Treasure is there. He Himself is there as a gatekeeper, guarding His Treasure.

When you meditate, please try to feel the necessity of opening your heart fully and closing your physical mind fully. The physical mind is the mind which thinks of your near and dear ones, your friends, the rest of the world. When you bolt the door of your physical mind and open the door of your heart, the mind becomes calm and quiet and the heart becomes all receptivity. When your concentration and meditation are focused on the heart and the heart is receptive, then naturally what the heart treasures, the Message from God, will come to the fore and you will be able to read it and utilise it in your day-to-day life.

Now, it is one thing to hear the Message of God correctly and another thing to listen to it and fulfil it. There are quite a few who can hear God’s Message, but in their outer life they cannot execute it. For that, you need faith in yourself, faith that you are not just a child of God, but a chosen child of God. Everybody is God’s child, but everybody cannot be God’s chosen child because everybody is not consciously aspiring. The chosen are those who really want God here and now, those who feel that they do not exist, cannot exist, without God. Just because you aspire sincerely, you can claim yourself as a chosen child of God.

When your aspiration-dedication-life Is on earth Only for the fulfilment of God’s Will, Then you are bound to feel That your success-life And progress-heart Are nothing other than An effortless effort.

How can I feel more positive about surrendering to God’s Will?

When we surrender to God, we surrender to our highest part, for God is our most illumined part. We cannot separate God from our existence. If we feel that God and we are one, then God is our most illumined part, let us say, and we are right now unillumined. If we are wise and if we know that the One who is all-illumination is part and parcel of our existence, we will go there and receive from Him. If we take surrender in that way, then there is no problem.

But if we take surrender as the surrender of a slave to his master, then we will never be able to feel our oneness. The slave surrenders to his master out of fear. He is afraid that his service will be dispensed with if he does not do his job well. He feels that no matter what he has done, even if he has done everything for the master soulfully, devotedly, even unconditionally, still there is no guarantee that the master will give him what he wants or that the master will really please him. If the master is an ordinary human being and if he has a few slaves, then he will get whatever he wants from his slaves; but when it is a matter of his own self-giving, he may be millions of miles away from their needs.

When we offer our existence to God, we have the feeling of oneness between Father and son or Mother and child. The little child always feels what his father has is his own. His father has a car. The child is only three years old, but he says, “I have a car.” He does not have to say, “My father has a car.” He will only say, “It is our car.”

So if we change our understanding of our relationship with God, then there is no problem. If He has Peace, then we have every right to claim His Peace as our own. He is our Father, so we can inherit it. Because God is our Father, because God is our Mother, we can have that kind of feeling. If we feel that we are God’s slaves and He is our Lord Supreme, that we are at His Feet and we have to do everything for Him, then we have no assurance, no guarantee that He will please us.

But if we have the feeling of oneness between father and son, between mother and child, then we will feel that what the mother or the father has, the child has every right to claim as his very own. A child does not surrender. He only legitimately claims his mother’s wealth or his father’s wealth as his very own.

We do not surrender anything; we only become aware of the fact that we belong to someone who has everything. We just go and claim it at any moment. For the feet to feel their oneness with the head is not at all difficult, because the feet know that the head also very often needs help from the feet.

Similarly, when we aspire, we come to feel that God needs us equally. As we need Him to realise the Highest, the Absolute Truth, so also He needs us for His manifestation. If it is not beneath God’s dignity to take help from ignorant people for His manifestation on earth, then how can it be beneath our dignity to ask God to give us peace, light and bliss?

Once we establish our conscious oneness with God, there is no surrender. It is only mutual give and take. What the feet have to offer, the head takes gladly, and vice versa. We give God our aspiration and He gives us His Realisation. We give Him what we have, and He gives us what He has and is. In this way we do not surrender, we only claim each other as our very own.

Does developing our will-power interfere with our capacity to surrender?

If we have adamantine will-power, then we will get the capacity for unconditional surrender. Again, if we can surrender unconditionally, then we develop will-power. Inner will-power, which is the soul’s light, and surrender, which is the heart’s oneness with the Absolute, go together. There is no difference between the soul’s will-power and unconditional surrender to the Will of the Supreme. Both of them are equally strong. If one can make unconditional surrender to the Will of the Supreme, it is the result of one’s inner will-power, the soul’s light.

Surrender your will to God’s Will. You will see that All your disappointments Will turn into unimaginable strengths.

How can we surrender to the Supreme?

It is very easy to surrender. You have already surrendered to ignorance. You cannot say that you have not surrendered to anybody. So you know the art of surrender. You can surrender to the Supreme in the same way that you have surrendered to ignorance. You have only to change your master. At every moment you have to feel the need of a new teacher. Somebody has taught you everything wrong; now the Supreme is waiting to teach you everything correctly. The one who has taught you is not the real teacher, but you have surrendered to him for hundreds and thousands of years. Now the same surrender you have to make to the Supreme.

If you refuse to surrender To ignorance, Then God will definitely allow you To live inside His Compassion-Harbour. Each life has to become A surrender-river Before it can give what it has And what it is To the satisfaction-sea.