Guidance on Inquiry, Contemplation, Prayer - 12 September 2025
Saar (Essence)
Ananta teaches that all spiritual methods are merely pathways to reach the heart's inner sanctuary. He emphasizes waiting at God's door with humility, patience, and loving attentiveness, rather than seeking conceptual mastery or intellectual enlightenment.
The only true determinant of our spiritual growth is how much love and attentiveness we bring to the heart temple.
All spiritual pointing is about us coming to this spirit and learning to live with him and as him.
The method is only the pathway which allows us to come and sit at His holy gate.
devotional
Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
There's a holy place within us and all of spirituality is only providing access to that holy place. It's not a place which can be identified in an X-ray of the body. And yet within our Antahkarana, within our soul, there's a place where He lives. And He doesn't live there out of some compulsion, but because He loves to live there. So He remains there in the form of the Atma within. All of spiritual pointing, all of spirituality really, is about us coming to this spirit and learning to live with Him and ultimately as Him in that holy place. And just because I said that, we don't need to jump to trying to become as Him. The 'with Him' itself is supremely auspicious and immensely beautiful.
So I was coming to really look at this together and to say, if I ask all of you to join me in asking this question: 'Am I aware now?' and to notice where a question like this takes us. Or if we ask ourselves, 'Who am I?' Or if we ask ourselves, 'What do I know without conceptually having to know or phenomenally having to perceive?' So without relying on thoughts or perceptions, what do I know? Or when we ask, 'Can I stop being?' Or in my case, if I am supposed to say 'Ram,' and you can also use your favorite name of God. Or if I remind everyone to turn inwards, or if I said to you, 'Follow the source of your love,' or I said, 'Whose presence is here?'
Or if you're pointed to deep spiritual truths like the spirit of God, the Atma of God Himself—its favorite pastime is to pray to God. Or when you remember your favorite line of a Bhajan or any devotional song, or if you sit for a few minutes just paying full attention to your breath. Or when you feel deeply touched by kindness and compassion, even when you bow down physically in prayer. When we read the words of a scripture, and when we do our contemplation in a humble, gentle, loving, patient, prayerful way, where do we go? We go to that holy place in our heart where God lives. We go closer and eventually merge into His presence.
Another way to say that is that we leave this world behind even though this body is here, and we enter the gates of heaven. Now, either His presence is fully palpable—in a sense tangible in its nature of both phenomenality and non-phenomenality—or it may seem like it is not yet palpable. Either way, it is important for us to sit there inwardly in a loving attentiveness, knowing fully well that that is the home of the Beloved. It doesn't matter so much if the light of the sanctum sanctorum is turned off or it is turned on, because that is only His business. The only thing that matters is whether we are turned towards Him. So turning towards the Beloved, not merely conceptually resting on a notion that He is always there, but to dive in and make that a living reality for us. That is the point of spirituality.
Many times you may feel that the method that we follow—and we discussed twenty different methods in this short contemplation—we may feel that the method is primary. But the method is only the pathway which allows us to come and sit at His holy door, at His holy gate. And if we have humility, then we will be able to wait here patiently. But if we know too much conceptually, if we think that this is no longer relevant to us, if we take ourselves to be advanced or even intermediate and not beginners, then we will not come to this. And whether we recognize it or not, unless we are able to come to this place and be patient and loving and attentive and faithful and humble in this holy place, if we find ourselves unable to do that, even though we may consider ourselves to be even enlightened, we are just falling for Maya.
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Our accomplishment at the level of method itself or method alone is not a sign of our spiritual growth. The only true determinant of our spiritual growth is how much time and with how much intention and love and attentiveness can we visit this heart temple, this holy place in our heart, unconcerned about the quantity of spiritual experience I'm having there. Yearning is different from concern. Longing is not concern. So to yearn, to long with full love for our Beloved to open the gate to give us His Darshan is the whole point of spirituality. To come to the spirit is spirituality.
So mastery over a method would only mean that the method is well utilized to bring us into His courtyard at least, and then it is only up to Him. We must be humble enough to recognize that what happens once we are in His courtyard, once we are knocking at His door, we don't have the slightest control over what He does after that. It's completely up to Him. So, we have to be humble enough to accept and recognize that. Even the sages have to recognize that, because the sage may recognize their oneness with God, but even a sage does not have control over how the Atma reveals itself and when the Atma reveals itself.
So my beloved brothers and sisters and children, please whatever you may do, know that whatever outer spiritual method we may be following, if our intent is anything other than sitting and waiting at His door, loving Him with all our hearts, then know that our spirituality is no longer spirituality. If our spirituality is no longer about spirit, and there is no other way to meet spirit than what I have just described through all the methods, we have to come to this point of waiting at His door. And if you feel that any truth can be truly recognized without the tutelage, without the discipleship of the Atma itself, then know that it is just not true; it is just not possible.
The sage Thomas Merton said that this what I've just described is to keep a heart awake. And I would go a step further and to say that we must keep our heart aflame. And as St. John of the Cross would tell us, this flame is the flame of loving attentiveness. And all the methods that we described and thousands more are only used so that we can keep our heart aligned in this way. So as we do our contemplation, we must be aware that it is at least as important to make note of things that we do not yet understand. And those are very worthwhile for us to pay attention to because we have the opportunity to transcend the mind and conceptual understanding, recognizing the deeper spiritual truths which can only be recognized at that holy place which we have been talking about.
So make it a point every day, whether this gathering happens or not, to use whatever method you feel helps you to come to His door. Whether He in His mercy reveals Himself to us or in His mercy decides to make us more patient and faithful, know that we cannot skip over, jump over the spirit and dive into the Absolute. That would be a pure mental fallacy. If we feel that we have the recognition of the highest, then we are possibly confusing the highest—the Self, the Absolute, Nirguna Brahman, awareness—we are possibly confusing it with perception.
So don't get frustrated. Be patient. Be humble and allow the Atma, the Holy Spirit, to reveal itself and to keep building your love relationship with the Atma just like you would build a worldly relationship: with time, attention, and patience. And then allow the Atma to show you the highest reality of God. But don't make the mistake of thinking that an awakening to that highest reality of God is some sort of final step in our growth. We must continue to deepen in our love. We must continue to deepen in our humility. And although in the realm of experience that may be the highest, know that in the realm of this life play, as long as we have breath, we can deepen. We can love more.
I just felt to share this today. It came strongly to share that what this process of contemplation that we are doing may seem like a mere process of intellectual understanding and getting to a deeper intellectual knowledge, but actually it is much more holy than that. Because we find the raw material which we can squeeze to take us deep within our hearts and into the embrace of the Holy One. I'm aware that Maya's trick will be to make you all forget the essence of what I'm attempting to guide towards. And therefore this point may need repetition over and over. But by God's grace, in a few days or weeks of repetition, our life's purpose will become clear to us in this way.