Regaining past achievements

In the spiritual life, a seeker should know that he cannot always eat the most delicious food. Once he has eaten something most delicious, he feels that he will be able to eat it every day, at every meal. He can have always delicious food provided he is very, very rich and has an excellent cook. But if he is not rich and if he does not have an excellent cook, then he will never be able to eat most delicious food every day, at every meal.

In the spiritual life it is the same. In order to remain always in the heart, one must feel inside him the presence of a seeker, a seeker of utmost and constant sincerity. People are sincere, in general, when they start their journey. They accept the spiritual life and for five days or five months or five years they are sincere. To be sincere for five years is one thing; but to be sincere at every moment is something else. Let us say you have accepted our path. You say, “I am following Guru’s path.” But every day to have sincerity, every hour to have sincerity, every moment to have sincerity, is a different matter.

We say we are following somebody’s path, and it is true. But how do we actually spend our time? In each day there are twenty-four hours. For seven or eight hours we sleep. Then, four or five hours we waste by talking and mixing with others. On spirituality we spend hardly two or three hours. And even during these two or three hours, sometimes we are not sincere. While we are meditating, perhaps for two minutes we are sincere, and the rest of the time we are daydreaming; we are building castles in the air.

In our spiritual life, there is a constant battle between the heart’s inner cry and the mind’s rejection. When sincerity plays its role constantly in the spiritual life, we remain inside the heart. But sometimes sincerity fails and the heart loses. When the heart loses in the battlefield of life, life becomes a barren desert. But when this happens, we have to feel that the night will last only for a few hours, and then there will be day. Just because we are experiencing the night, we cannot say that there will be no day for us. There will be day. But if we want to remain in day all the time, then we can do two things. The first thing is to use our imagination-power. Imagination is not bad. Imagination is most important in the spiritual life. A scientist who discovers something really great attributes ninety-nine per cent of his achievement to the power of imagination. Today it is imagination, but tomorrow it is inspiration. Then, the day after tomorrow it becomes aspiration and the following day it becomes realisation. For those who are following our path, meditation in the heart centre has taken place many, many times. So if you use your imagination-power and remember how you used to meditate one or two years ago, immediately you will be able to go back and catch the bird that used to fly so well in your heart’s sky, psychic sky. Use your imagination-power and then, right after that, use your gratitude-power. As soon as you feel with your imagination that you have reached the stage where you were two years ago or one year ago, then immediately offer your heart’s gratitude-power. Show your gratitude to the Supreme or even to the heart, which has received Peace, Light and Bliss from above.

So, first use your imagination-power and then use your gratitude-power. In this way you are bound to get back in your day-to-day life the capacity to concentrate, to meditate, to contemplate on your heart. Once you have achieved something and then lost it, rest assured that you are bound to get that thing back again. It is only a matter of time. Again, if you have not got something, that doesn’t mean that you will not get it in the future. You will get it. But once you have already achieved something, it is always infinitely easier to get that thing back. How do you expedite the process? Through your constant, sincere cry and through your imagination-power and gratitude-power.