All that is valuable comes from the Heart as a gift of the Presence of God - 26th September 2025

So what can we do to love God? Simplest is to make yourself available to be loved by Him. Are you available to be loved by Him right now? How to make yourself available? Just like a child would, or just like a beloved would, or a parent would—whatever construct of relationship appeals to you. Because we cannot really construct in our mind the immensity of this relationship we have with God, and God understands this limitation of our intellect. So He allows us to pick whatever construct we want. Like Sri Ramakrishna said, yearn for Him like a little child yearns for the mother. That yearning is crying out to the mother, and also being very confident that in my crying out to the mother, she will pick me up.

Availability, when it deepens more and more, becomes a yearning. What are you most available to receive right now? Are you here to receive knowledge? What is the texture of that knowledge? Is it conceptual knowledge that we are looking for? In a way, conceptual knowledge has a very minor place in the sense that it can point you to the deeper place of true knowledge, which is Atma Gyan. But for the moment, don't be concerned about any conceptual knowledge. Then you may say that I'm here to better my relationship with my outer teacher so that I can be seen by him. Just for the moment, forget about all of that. You're not going to learn anything new. I won't remember you; you won't remember me. Allow yourself to just be empty.

The next part that I'm going to say, you cannot 'do,' but the words may inspire some movement of divine action. As you remain empty, offer your heart fully to God. Belong only to Him in this moment. Your life isn't for anything else. If your mind is distracting you, use your favorite name for God as if it is a call from deep within your heart. You're calling out to the most beloved one. 'I belong only to God right now. There is nothing in my life that is mine. I offer everything at Your feet.' Nothing important is happening in your life except this love relationship with God. And I'm here just to behold You and to be held by You. Silence in my heart is a form of love. Very good.

Did you all experience some emptiness for a few moments at least? It's okay if it was very distracted; then that's also good too. No problem.

But I'm just saying this because we went through the whole process of Advaita Sadhana. We heard the words—that is the Shravana part—to hear the words which are spiritual truths. What are the spiritual truths? That we cannot make sense of ourselves; that we need the Spirit's assistance, the Atma's assistance, to guide us and show us the reality of these words. They have a lot of depth, and because they are spiritual truths, we can rely on them to dive into the Spirit. So hearing or reading the words of the sages is Shravana.

Then what did we do? We heard just the four lines, but then we reflected on them a bit. When you do this process yourself, you will juice them out. You will juice out the words in whatever way appeals to you the most. In that juicing, you may start to taste some sweetness and also some spiritual helplessness. You see, because when you come across a spiritual truth, your mind and intellect feel helpless about it because they cannot make sense of it. Who wants a wound of love which is painful like an arrow? To the mind, it doesn't make sense. But there is something within you that is attracted to those words. Even though these are translations of the words of Kabir Ji, yet something in your heart feels the truth of these words, but your mind feels helpless to meet them.

In that helplessness, we become like that baby who needs the help of the mother and cries out for the mother. So in our Manana, which is to reflect on the words using the mind and intellect, we come to a certain sweetness of the juice and a certain helplessness. That sweetness and helplessness combined brings us to a prayerful state called Sharan. That makes us open to receive. It may arise in the form of a spoken prayer or just communication with God. It may just be 'Help me, God' or 'Thank you, God.'

Then what happens is very beautiful and holy: it is called Nididhyasana or contemplation. Why is it holy? Because it may seem like we are starting the process, but God alone has to finish it. In what way do we start? After we are prayerful, we are just open and receptive and available. You may find that there's just a stillness, a silence, or there's a felt love. Because the mind operates on fear, unless there was love in that silence, we would not leave the mind. This silence is a holy love. It doesn't have to be a felt emotion; the felt emotion could be an outpouring of that. Whether it is felt or it is just silent, that's already the only movement within ourselves.

In this holy recollection, you may have all noticed that at least for a few moments, all your faculties may be emptied out, unconcerned about anything in Maya. It's not a competition; it's not about how many minutes of silence we go. It is just that we made ourselves available to God. But in that silence, it's not the silence which is the absence of everything. It's not a worldly empty silence like an empty glass. It is a full silence. It is full of a holy transmission that is happening now from your heart. Everything that is spiritual is received in this holy transmission. This is the beginning of spirituality, although to the mind it may seem like the end.

To sit in the silent transmission of the Atma within is to begin our love relationship with God and to begin our discipleship of the Atma. Very rarely are we taught in words in this holy place. The mechanics, the mode of teaching here is different. Words need not be spoken, and yet you will be transformed. It is not possible that you sit in these holy rays of love emanating from the Atma at the door of the holy temple of God and not be transformed by them. This is how spiritual transformation happens. This is how we fall in love.

The spiritual truth can be in the form of a question also. The most popular question with all of us because of the influence of Bhagavan is 'Who am I?' Ask yourself this question: 'Who am I?' But don't go to the holy place that we just spoke about yet; just keep it in your mind. Try to solve it in your head. 'I was born in 1975... this is my mother...' But you're not asking for the place of birth or who your parents were. Who are you? You're not asking for your species or your label. Can you solve it? You may know the answer; you may say 'I am the Self' or 'Brahman itself.' But remember that having the concept of something is not to know something.

When you take Bhagavan's advice and you say 'Who witnesses even this thought?', you will find that very soon the mind and intellect give up. When it gives up, where do you go? When the revelation is to be received, where will it be received? It will be in the same holy place. The answer, the revelation, will come in the form of the same silent transmission from the Atma itself. When the silent transmission happens, the modes of teaching are different. You may come to a state where you may not find a sense of a separate 'me' anymore. When we are in the discipleship in the presence of the Atma itself, the mode of teaching can be in the form of spiritual experiences and silent transmission.

Who can take the sense of 'me' away from us? We say 'I did the inquiry,' and we sort of imply that I did the inquiry so well that the sense of me itself was lost, but that's not it. It's not how well I did the inquiry. We must be sincere, but asking a question of just three words does not have the potency to take the sense of 'me' away from us—that which is so intimate to us. It is the gift of God Himself in the form of the Spirit which can bring us to that awakening experience where we say that I am awake, there is no separation left. It'll happen in the same place of receptivity, openness, and love in our heart. Approach with faithfulness, patience, humility.

Whether the content of the contemplation is Bhakti or it is the inquiry, it is the same process of contemplation. We cannot meet God and therefore receive His knowledge or love without going to that same holy place in the heart. Then what happens is we get used to living there and our prayer becomes unceasing. In India, we are told we must do constant remembrance—Nitya Simran. In the West, in Christianity, we are told to pray unceasingly. Now, it's not possible to pray unceasingly in the mind. But the more we get used to applying all our faculties to pray, then even in our daily movements, you find that your prayer doesn't stop because really prayer is to be open and receptive to His holy presence at all times.

Unless our endeavor is to hand over our life, especially our will, to Him, we cannot pray unceasingly because even the work to do should come from Him. Some of us may have this question: 'Once I see that I am Brahman, why do I need to be guided by Him?' That revelation doesn't mean you can leave your servitude. That hasn't come for any sage; that is just an extrapolation from the mind. It's like the spark, being the same as the fire, starts to feel that it can decide what to burn next. This oneness and yet distinction, which is unfathomable to the mind, is our reality. Just that recognition of that oneness and at the same time seeing our helplessness.

Everything that is important in life is still beyond the control of our desire. That will which still continues to litter around has to be brought into the servitude of His will. Otherwise, what will happen? You'll get into Advaita pride. And there is no ego as strong as Advaita pride. The attempt is to give you a sense of the spiritual magic—emptying for God, not remaining just conceptual, but our life transforming in this beautiful way. There's no other reason to come to Satsang.

I stopped putting the poll on the contemplations group because I didn't want us to become either competitive or too quantitative in our approach. But it's very important to spend that time with God. Whether that time is spent with God or not is up to Him, but spend that time in that receptivity with the intention to be with Him. Use the opportunity of the contemplations that happen because somehow in a group it seems easier to devote that time collectively to God. But if you are sitting in the group but you are dwelling on something else, then you're not really being present to His presence. What is the meaning of inward-facing? God, spirituality, Atma—the Spirit—will be found when we are inward-facing. What is inward-facing? Sitting at the door of God, sitting at the door of the heart temple with patience and humility.

With what faculty? It can be attention, it can be... it's very hard to describe which faculty. We are attempting to put the entirety of our soul, our insides, at His door. Every aspect of us must be attuned towards Him. If our attention is in the heart but we are still trying to solve our business problem, some jugglery will happen. Everything should become for God and available to God. One father said in a podcast that if you're sitting with someone but actually you're just texting someone else on the phone, who are you more present with? In that way, our presence must belong to that Presence from where this sense of separate presence comes. You must be present to the Presence.

I read a beautiful quote by Stephanie Malari: 'Everything sacred that wishes to remain sacred clothes itself in mystery.' Beautiful. If there is no mystery in our spirituality, if we think we know it all now, we are in big trouble. The depths of God will not be scaled by even the highest sage. The more you find Him, the more we realize that there is much more to find. If you climb to the top of the mountain and you don't see the next mountain, then you're in trouble. Imagine if there was nothing new to discover, no sweetness left, no depth of insight more to dive into. It would be a very stale spirituality.

When we allow ourselves to taste the mystery, only then will we rely on instruments which are not traditional. We are conditioned to use our mind, intellect, and senses. But the mystery means that to these instruments, the truth is ungraspable. If you think you have figured it out in the primitive instruments, you won't go to the heart instrument—the instrument of intuitive insight. Now, what happens over there? A silent transmission happens. What can the mind make of a silent transmission? It actually doesn't even know that something happened. It can feel like the body went to sleep, but we know that we are not asleep. Contemplation is just one millimeter away from the sleep state, and as it deepens, it comes one millimeter away from even the death state, where the body itself may for some moments not breathe. This is what the sages have reported. As we deepen in our Samadhi, all these things will happen.

The process of reflection must not be a process of thinking 'Now I have solved it.' It must lead to spiritual sweetness and a sense of helplessness of not being able to meet it in the old place where we used to live. We're leaving our old home behind and learning to build a house in the new home, which will be our eternal home. When the great sage Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi said that we must uproot from here and plant there, this is what he's talking about. Uproot all this attachment from the false place. This mystery is very valuable to us. Spiritual contemplation must have some mystery; otherwise, that sense of conceptual helplessness will not come.

What did Kabir Ji attempt to inspire us to do in those simple four lines? Love for God, to give up everything for Him. And yet he instigated us with this sense of mystery that only those who are struck by it will know. We know we cannot resolve it in our old faculties; we must go to the new place. True love will always remain sacred. Can we resolve the mystery of what love is? None of us knows why music does to us what it does. It's a sacred mystery in itself. Especially when you look at devotional music and how it can clean us up and bring us to no-mind and to the heart temple—it is a beautiful mystery which in our mind we can never resolve.

Are you getting a sense of what I mean by Manana—reflecting, meditating—to dive into the wonder of it? If you dive into the wonder more and more, then you are brought to that quiet place where true transmission happens. And if something is not spiritually juicy for you, leave it. There are enough pointers. You don't have to be appealed by the same pointers that appeal here. But what is important is that we don't rush. If you read something in two minutes and think you've understood everything, it's a complete waste. The mystery is very important. Don't get frustrated by the mystery; encourage it. Be happy that you found something that is attractive and yet mysterious.

One student has written in about the recognition of errors, or to use the word which is commonly used in spirituality: 'sin.' It's still a scary word, I know. That's why I also say mistake or error. But if you use a simple definition—that which is an act of love is not a sin, and that which is less loving than it could be is an error—then the taboo and the guilt around the word can be taken away. I start to notice every day in my prayer that there are so many opportunities to love more, but I don't take them because I want what I want. Because we still want what we still want, the project of surrendering our will to God's will is a long-term, lifetime project.

To recognize that I'm still a beginner on this project can only happen truthfully when we notice how much work is still left. Otherwise, it can just be lip service. Unless I know my capacity is limited and I am not using even my capacity to love fully, we cannot truly say we are beginners. If you don't notice our pride, if you don't notice what we can be repentant for, then it is just 'fancy Zen' to say that I am in beginner mode. Beginner mode really means that something humbles us. Sometimes when we look back at our life, we feel humiliated at the way we've been. That humility, with the absence of despair, is the holy beginner's mood.

To be humbled in what is revealed to us is very auspicious. But to go into despair about how we've been is then to have lack of faith in God's ability to lift us up. We must not fall either into pride or into a humility without God. 'Yes, I am foolish, but God is merciful.' That must be remembered. By myself I am foolish, but He lifts me up. This humility then allows us to love our brothers and sisters more unconditionally. It allows us to let go of our grievances more and ask for forgiveness for our lack of love. It adds a lot of integrity into our spiritual project.

I don't feel like we truly know what the orthodox ones say—'open to me the gates of repentance'—until we come to His door. We don't realize what we have to be repentant about. These are holy revelations about how foolish I have been and continue to be. I cannot get into Advaita pride after I see how foolish I am. So the eyes inside that see 'I am That' and the revelation of how foolish I continue to be in my expression in this world allows us to remain in true knowledge and true servitude, true devotion. Of course, the intellect hates this contradiction. The intellect would rather I said, 'Okay, I am just a servant of God,' or 'I am That, everything is happening in God's will, there is no sin.' But don't make the mistake of just taking one end of the spectrum to be true.

Is the analogy of a spark and fire true? No, it isn't. Is the analogy of a flame and fire true? Better, maybe. But we just have to accept that some things we just can't fit into this tiny head of ours. It can only be known in that place that we have been guided to today. The great sage Yajnavalkya, thousands of years back in the Upanishads, was the first one who said one form of spiritual practice is to ask 'Who am I?' But Yajnavalkya as a sage was also involved in a lot of rituals, praying to God. What is it to pray to God? It is to express our servitude to Him, to serve Him in the form of this playful play. It is a playful expression of our servitude and the fact that we belong to Him.

Even Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, without whom the emphasis on this holy question 'Who am I?' would not have come into our lives—he constructed a temple with many gods and goddesses, and to this day there are Artis and Pujas that happen in the ashram. He recognized and taught the world 'I am That,' and yet he continued in his devotion and servitude to God. We must learn from that. Nisargadatta Maharaj used to have two Satsangs every day. What happened in the first Satsang? Only Bhajans. What happened in the second Satsang was 'I am That.' Are they hypocrites? They cannot be; they're great sages. It is just that it is impossible to resolve in our head, and our intellect hates it. We must accept it, because the heart is completely okay. Love you all.