What I need from God1

We are all seekers. That means we all need God, love God and want eventually to grow into the very image of God.

When I say, “I need God,” what do I actually mean? God is everything, true, but I need certain aspects of God more than other aspects, at least right now. God is all Power, God is all Light, God is all Justice, God is all Compassion, God is all Forgiveness, God is everything. But for the time being, I need only a few things from God. God is infinite, God is eternal, God is immortal. But to start my spiritual journey, I need God the Forgiveness first.

First I have to empty myself of my undivine existence. All the undivine thoughts and undivine deeds that are inside me, everything that is unaspiring and uninspiring within me, I have to empty out. And for that I need forgiveness. If God forgives me, then only can I think of the spiritual life. I have committed Himalayan blunders countless times. If God does not forgive me for the undivine things that I have done over the years, then how can I walk along the spiritual path, the sunlit path? So, to start with, I need God’s Forgiveness or God the Forgiveness.

Then, when I feel that God, out of His infinite Bounty, has forgiven me, at that time I can think of another aspect of God, and that is God’s Compassion, or God the Compassion. God has forgiven me; now I need His Compassion. I need His Compassion because I am weak, I am ignorant, I am in every way a failure. I fervently desire to do something, to achieve something, to become something, but I do not have the capacity to do the thing that I want or to grow into the thing that I want. So I desperately need God’s Compassion. Without God’s Compassion I will not be able to achieve anything, and I will not be able to become anything.

After receiving God’s Forgiveness and Compassion, then I need God’s Blessing. If God does not bless me, then I cannot succeed in life. He has to shower on me His infinite Blessings from above, so that I can succeed in the battlefield of life. Life is a constant battle, and if I am to succeed here, then I have to entirely depend on God’s Blessings. If He blesses my devoted head and surrendered heart, only then can I succeed in life and proceed along the spiritual path.

God has forgiven me, God has granted me His Compassion, God has showered His Blessings upon me. Now I have to feel at every moment God’s Love. I have to feel that the One who has forgiven me and shown me His Compassion and blessed me, really cares for me. So now I have to think of God’s Love. If God really loves me, then only can I have true and abiding happiness. The Creator is all love for His creation. But the creation quite often does not feel it or realise it. I am part of God’s creation, and it is my bounden duty to feel God’s Love at every moment. If I feel His Love, only then will I try to become good, divine and perfect, and to please Him in His own Way.

After Love, something very significant and very deep I have to feel, and that is God’s Oneness. Love is not enough. I can love someone, I can love something, but I may not have established my oneness, inseparable oneness, with that person or that thing. So after I have felt God’s Love, I have to develop and feel my conscious, constant and inseparable oneness with Him.

In order to have constant, conscious oneness with God, I have to achieve something and become something, and that thing is perfection. Unless I become perfect, how can I establish my constant, conscious and inseparable oneness with God? It is not possible. So in order to become inseparably one with God, I have to become perfect. How do I become perfect? I become perfect by crying inwardly to receive the things that will uplift me and illumine me, and to conquer the things that torment me and disturb me. When I cry for good things, God is pleased. When I cry to conquer bad things, God is also pleased with me. And it is only by pleasing God that we become perfect.

At every moment we are assailed by bad thoughts or we are inspired by good thoughts. Each thought can act like an atom bomb in our life. When we are assailed by a bad thought, we will try to discard it. When we are assailed by a good thought, we will try to develop and enlarge it. When we start meditating early in the morning, if one good thought comes, let us enlarge it. Let us say it is a thought of divine love — not the human, emotional love but divine, universal love: “I love God, I love God’s entire creation.” Love can be our ideal, love can be our ultimate Goal. So if it is divine love, universal love, transcendental Love, then we are dealing with the Goal itself.

If we start with the thought of divine love, or other good thoughts, and if we throw out bad thoughts, if we cry to get divine things and to conquer bad things, then we will feel perfection dawning in our life of aspiration. As perfection dawns, we begin to establish our oneness with God and achieve abiding satisfaction. So perfection is the harbinger of satisfaction. Before I become perfect, there can be no true satisfaction, no divine satisfaction. But if I am perfect, then God can make me into His choice instrument; He can manifest Himself and satisfy Himself in and through me, and that is the true, divine satisfaction.

I go to God with my heart’s inner delight; my only cry is to please Him in His own Way. God comes to me with a broad smile, for now He can manifest Himself in and through me. When I go to Him, I carry my cry and say, “O my Beloved Supreme, make me Your perfect instrument.” When He comes to me, He gives me a broad smile — a wide, soulful, illumining smile — and says, “My child, I shall make you My perfect instrument and, at the same time, I will manifest Myself in and through you.”

So first I need God’s Forgiveness, then God’s Compassion, then His Blessings and then His Love. Only then can perfection dawn in my life. Once perfection dawns in my life, I can become one with God, and God can make me His perfect instrument. At that time, God is satisfied with me and I am satisfied with Him; my life is all satisfaction, illumining and immortalising satisfaction.


Honolulu, Hawaii, 16 March 1980