How Do You Know God Is Here

Today in the day I had a moment. You know, I have had many such moments in my Satsang life where I felt like now that this pointer has come, I don't need to share anything else. It's come many times. When I was a young, naive child who started sharing Satsang by God's grace—I don't know how it happened—but it just came to me that all I need to remind everyone is that we are not to believe our next thought. That's it. And I felt like, what else is needed to be said? You see, then I know now a little more that Maya is not that easy to handle, because it makes a lot of thoughts about not believing our next thought. It says, 'See, I'm still believing a lot of thoughts,' or 'He said don't believe the next thought, but see, now I'm never going to get this, it's never going to happen.' All of these thoughts about believing or not believing... many of you got trapped in that trap.

So then one day, there were many like this. 'Are you aware now?' came one day. Like, all you need to answer is 'Are you aware now?' It came like that, where I felt nothing else needs to be said. Then one day it came—and this really felt like the Shiva meditation—that I'm just going to tell everyone: 'What do you know when you know nothing?' If to know even one thing was to know too much, what do you know when you know nothing? I felt it is so clear, so clear. Stupid of me, very naive of me, of course. I just felt that's it, you see? It has no room for maneuver. You can't get confused about it. Just don't know, and what you know then is the truth that I'm talking about. I felt I'll just say that, that would be enough.

Then many things. So today it came: that unceasing prayer to just be with God constantly. In a way that I say 'Ram, Ram, Ram' and He hears me say 'Ram, Ram, Ram.' And then after a while, it is the Atma itself praying, either in the form of saying the words or praying in silent devotion, and I'm watching this holiness in front of me. So it seemed like sometimes I am the driver of this and sometimes He Himself is the driver of this. And it's subtle. He's always the driver of this—I'm not saying He's not—but I'm talking about what it feels like when we get on this endeavor to be with God. So I am praying—who am I?—and He witnesses this. And then the wonder, the question shifts its place and I'm just watching from there.

Traditionally this process has been given many words: Sadhana, or contemplative prayer, contemplative meditation. All of these terms have been used. But our life shifts into this active seeming prayer and then infused prayer within our heart unceasingly, nirantar. And I just feel like in my heart, by God's grace, another master key has been given to us for us to lead our lives devoted to His presence. So when you take God's name or when you inquire into who you really are, do you notice that that process is being witnessed in your heart? That is God watching you pray in your heart temple.

Going through various stages of practice, it becoming almost automatic seeming in the head is called Ajapa Japa. Then it falling into the heart with some push required. Then it becoming automatic—'automatic' being a bad way to say God Himself, the Atma Himself, is praying—it becomes that way in the heart itself. So you enter the temple and the prayer is infused in the walls of the temple itself and you feel it deeply in your heart. And the rest of it is what happens to our faculties as a result of that. In India we may call it Savikalpa Samadhi, Nirvikalpa Samadhi, things like that. In the West, sages like St. Teresa of Avila have called it the prayer of quiet, prayer of union, divine marriage, divine union. All these gradations have been given to us to inspire us and also to not be scared when these things happen, you see?

But the idea is just to be present to His presence, either in an active way or allowing Him to... like, the Atma loves to pray. The spirit loves to pray and we can just be an audience to that till our whole soul, our whole Antahkarana, is fully imbibed, fully merged into the Atma itself where this apparent seeming division will not seem plausible in the divine union or the God-realization as it is called. But suppose that it never led to any sort of outcome at all; this itself would be worth it for itself. Isn't it? Nothing higher we need to aspire to than to be with God. Then He merges you in. But till then, just to be with Him is, as far as our mind and intellect goes, the point. Not to let what I've said frustrate you in any way, because if only the first part is accessible to you, that itself is enough. If you feel that 'I don't know what he's talking about, God loving to pray or the Atma loving to pray in my heart,' it's okay. We don't have to rush into these things and we don't have to imagine things. For us to invoke His name or to inquire is more than enough.