Talk to the Ponce Centre

This is the second time I have come to our Ponce Centre. Seven years ago, in 1966, when we opened up our San Juan Centre, it was our fervent hope, at that time, to have a Centre here in Ponce also. Ponce is known for its beautiful, conservative characteristics. It is a deeply religious city with many fine Catholic universities and institutions. The people of Ponce are also famous for their refinement and especially their civilised manners. The homes are beautiful, the streets are beautiful. Everything is tranquil and traditional in the old Spanish style.

The dream to have a Centre here took almost seven years to become a reality. But I wish to say that it is not when we start but, once we start, whether we are willing to run the fastest. Then God is bound to be most pleased with us. Again, it is my firm, inner conviction, that for each and every one, there is a choice and special hour for our soul's awakening. So when the hour strikes for me, or for anyone, that is absolutely the best time for our soul's awakening. When the same hour strikes for you, that is the best time for you in your soul's awakening.

So when the divine hour strikes, if we dare to come out of ignorance-night and want to live in wisdom-sun, in the soul's light, in the Eternal Light, then we are pleasing God and fulfilling God in His own Way.

In this world, everybody wants satisfaction. There is not a single human being who will say that he does not want or need satisfaction. No, we all need satisfaction, but each one has a different approach to acquiring satisfaction. Some of us feel that satisfaction lies in the fulfilment of desires, while others feel that satisfaction lies only in pleasing and fulfilling God in His own Way. We have already noticed that we have countless desires, and out of these countless desires, some have already been fulfilled. But we thought that when our desires were fulfilled, we would be extremely satisfied. We thought that since our wishes were fulfilled, we would be peaceful and satiated. But alas, to our frustration, satisfaction is not to be found anywhere.

The fulfilment of desire actually creates a tremendous sense of emptiness in us. We want fulfilment, we want to achieve satisfaction, but a time comes when we see that even if all our desires are fulfilled, even our teeming desires, we get no satisfaction, none at all. The fulfilment of desires can never bring about satisfaction. True satisfaction dawns on us only when we pray to God, meditate on God and try to please Him. Why? Because He is All-Satisfaction, both in Heaven and on earth.

So if we want to be satisfied, we have to satisfy the One Person, the One Being, the Almighty Father who is All-Satisfaction. He has Satisfaction; He is Satisfaction. Now in spiritual terms, we call this divine Fulfilment, and it takes place only by manifesting the inner divinity which we embody and which we are supposed to reveal and manifest.

So I wish to tell the followers of our path that if we really want to fulfil ourselves, then we have to fulfil the Supreme within us. It is simply impossible to please ourselves before pleasing the Supreme. Before we can imagine fulfilling ourselves, we have to fulfil God. It is like placing the cart before the horse. You cannot do that. First things first. God has to come first in our lives. By pleasing Him first and fulfilling Him in His own Way, that is, through our prayer and meditation, we will be able to fulfil ourselves.

As you know, our path is the path of love, devotion and surrender. This love is divine love. It is different from human love. With human love, we try to bind others and, to our wide surprise, before we have bound others, we see that they have bound us. We even see that the world has mercilessly bound us.

Now I wish to come to devotion. In the ordinary human life, we are attached to people. We show our tremendous attachment to others. Others, on their part, offer their attachment to us. Now with this attachment, we try to bind each other. We strangle one another with our attachment-power. But devotion is our devoted feeling towards something high, more illumining and more fulfilling than ourselves. This devotion we offer to the Supreme, who is infinitely more divine, more luminous and more fulfilling than any human being. That is why we offer our devotion only to the Absolute Supreme, who is our Inner Pilot.

Now in the ordinary human life the superior lords it over the inferior, like a master and his servant. The servant must always be at the feet of the master. He feels that if he does not satisfy the master, the master will dispense with his job; then he will be totally lost. Here the master holds tremendous power and the servant is helpless. He is as helpless as a little child. Therefore he always feels that he is under obligation to please his master. But in the spiritual life, our relationship to the Supreme is not the relationship of the master to the servant or the slave. Here the Supreme is the fully illumined, fully purified and fully divinised part of one's own obscure and impure part.

We have legs and we have a head. Let us feel that the head is our illumined part and the legs are our unillumined part. However, the legs do not feel that it is beneath their dignity to accept the wisdom of the head. The body has all the limbs and the head; they all go together. It is not beneath the dignity of the legs to be guided by a higher member of its own body. So in this way, we spiritual seekers should go to our highest part, our most illumined part, who is God Himself. Here there is no sense of separativity. It is all unity and oneness. We become wise in doing this. We approach our own highest part and bring down the Light from the Highest in order to transform the lowest in us, which is still unlit, obscure and impure. So in this way, we go to the Highest.

Right now we feel like a tiny drop. Yet if we enter into the mighty ocean, we lose our little earth-bound individuality. We become the vast, infinite ocean. Now we are all finite human beings, but when the finite enters into the Infinite, it loses its own individuality and personality and becomes the Infinite itself.

What is it that we are doing? We are praying to transcend the limitations of our finite existence. We are both finite and infinite, for we eventually enter into and grow into the Infinite, which is our forgotten Reality. We discover our infinite Reality only through our conscious prayer and meditation.

So here the dearest disciples will make the inner promise and the outer promise 24 hours a day that they are ready to leave everything for the Supreme. Naturally they become the brightest jewels in their Master's heart, and they become the highest pride of the Master's highest transcendental Consciousness.