The Spiritual Quest is a leap of Faith - 27th October 2025

Let me tell you something very sweet. When you turn towards your insides and if you do it sincerely, don't you find that He has also provided magnetism which pulls us in? Of course, there's gravitation that pulls us out also in the form of Maya. But sincerely turn in. And don't you find a soft magnet, not forcing you but attracting you within you to find it there? This is the silent calling of the Atma from inside wanting you to immerse, wanting you to merge. All we have to do is be careful that at this point the mind will feel threatened. It will want to provide you things to pull you out. But you can see this push and pull because then we can, based on what comes to my attention, then something can be emphasized more or less. This pull from the heart is apparent to all of you. What do you see?

So that's a great gift, isn't it? And when you disconnect, you notice that slight—how do I say these words?—do you notice that it's slight like pulling two magnets apart initially? And then of course you're drawn into the gravity of Maya, then that seems to be the only force. But if you can notice these slight things within ourselves, then the task of remaining with Him becomes simpler. So yes, so just offer yourself to Him, facing inwards in whatever way you want to look at divinity for yourself, to the Holy Spirit. Don't you find a subtle, not forcing but a simple force of attraction within which draws you in somewhere? That somewhere we may call the heart. And notice now that as I'm speaking these words to come out, it may need a little bit of like plucking two magnets apart. Do we notice this or am I on some trip? It feels very clear here but I could be delusional obviously.

But so once we start to notice, not to give in to the attraction from the outside and just allow that heart magnet to just pull us in at its own pace. This is to follow the fragrance of an unforcing love. What is this magnet? It is the love which is calling us. But it is not forcing us. Please don't visualize any magnets. Force of this unconditional, unforcing love, patient, silent love is God's design counteracting the force and the pull of Maya. To the mind, this pull can seem very disorienting or scary. It can feel like you're falling into a limbo and abyss. But it is neither. It is an ocean of love which is beyond the realm of perception.

So I hope you're getting a sense of what sadhana, a spiritual practice, is, which at this stage is collaborative, isn't it? Or at least let's admit that it seems collaborative. Who directs the agency of this 'me'? We'll come to that a little later. For the moment, it seems sufficient to say that I turn inwards. I offer myself, I give my consent for God to take over. I make myself available. And that act of love is reciprocated by the act of love from the Atma, from the heart, which pulls us inwards into the heart itself. How was that? How was that offering of ourselves done? Sometimes in just an inward glance, sometimes in the question, 'Who am I?', sometimes in repetition of a prayer, sometimes with just attention to breath. All the spiritual practices bring us to this point.

This is the process of dissolution. We dissolve in this process and as we are dissolving in this process, the mind will try to make us scared. How many of you feel that? I had this report in satsang in the past that 'this much is all right but I'm not ready for more. I'm a bit scared.' I don't know if I can teach it more than this. You can have that before earlier.

Not in satsang, or when alone we practice, it could be like that.

Know that you have nothing to fear. That which is dissolving is not true anyway. It only seems to be true. They are only obstacles to love. Allowing ourselves to remain in this holy love, to remain in this photo booth of the Atma, to remain in this photosynthesis, in this magnetism. Whichever force we want to draw a parallel to, it is us giving—like a good way to conceptualize it would be us giving permission to God to build His temple in our heart. This permission for Him to build His temple in our heart because we are ourselves incapable of building it. At best, we pretend to offer bricks for the temple through our acts of love.

The only problem is that we can never report about the progress of the temple construction. Why? Because we cannot sense it. Our senses are too small. We cannot conceptualize it. It is beyond sensory and conceptual knowledge. Therefore, we have to rely purely on intuitive insight, on heart knowledge. And that is why in this journey many times it can feel like nothing is happening. It can seem like there is dryness, no sweetness. There is boredom. But if you remain reliant on the heart, He will keep at it in the most patient and courageous way.

Why is it important to have a concept about the inner temple construction? It's a helpful concept because the mind will tell you there is much important work to be done on the outside. Our work has to be fixed. Our money situation has to be fixed. Our relationships have to be fixed. Our body has to be fixed. We need to learn a lot more. So all of this it will tell you is the work that has to be done. What are you doing? It tries to bully us like, 'What are you up to? All this work is going. Your life is passing you by. You're missing every opportunity. And you're not even having fun. You're just sitting here getting bored.'

So when you remember the words that the most important work in your life is to allow your heart to become a temple of God, to allow this construction to happen, so your life itself becomes holy. Your life itself becomes immersed in this light. What greater gift can you give to yourself or to the world than this? So when we hand over ourselves to Him, He does the work in our heart. Is there any way that you can bypass this whole process? Suppose you don't have time and you have a lot of money. Can you go somewhere, give them like a billion dollars and say, 'Just, I'm giving you all this money, just make the temple in my heart'? Can anyone do it? Nobody can do it. Even our teachers, even the sages can only bless this process. Only by His will is every brick in this temple constructed, only on His time.

Father, can anyone deserve this grace? Even the saints and the sages when it comes... can anyone deserve this grace? Is that what it is? Yes. I don't think my audio is um...

No, it's audible now. It's audible. Okay. Does... what is the question?

Can anyone deserve this? Can anyone be worthy of this grace?

Let's start with: can anyone be unworthy? No. Nobody can be unworthy. Do many not find it in themselves to make this inward offer, to give this inner consent to belong to Him, to allow us to be transformed and our lives to be transformed by His will alone? Yes. Most of us, most of our brothers and sisters in the world will find it too scary or too hocus-pocus or too far out or too something for this process to really be allowed by them to have the openness, to have the faith. And that is why the sages have communicated so much to try and break their barriers, break their boundaries. God Himself has come many times and shared beautiful scriptures so that something catches us from within. So really it's not a question of worthiness. I would say it's more a question of ignorance. It's more a question of solidified ignorance.

Okay. You've often said that there's nothing special about this Ananta, and I feel undeniably when you met Guruji, the grace of God became fully available to you. And sometimes I think about these things, whether it will be the same for all of us for the sangha.

It will be the same and yet different in the sense that it is the same process but a different set of events. So what happens is that everybody's life experiences are different.

Okay. You've often said that there's nothing special about this Ananta, and I feel undeniably when you met Guruji, the grace of God became fully available to you. And sometimes I think about these things, whether it will be the same for all of us for the satsang.

It will be the same and yet different in the sense that it is the same process but a different set of events. So what happens is that everybody's life experiences are different. So in my case, completely unworthy of so much grace that I got throughout the spiritual process, that just in that—I don't know what kind of inquiry I was doing, what kind of staying with the 'I am' I was doing, what kind of inner contemplations were happening—but He offered me the presence of His being, the apparency of the presence of His being sitting in an auto rickshaw.

Sitting in a what?

In an auto rickshaw. You know probably you know that story that one day I was just going from my house to work and just having a tantrum with God, saying with Maharaj actually, 'What is this I am? How am I supposed to stay in it? I can't even find it.' You see, all of these kind of things. And it revealed itself to me just purely by His grace. Somehow He had mercy on this foolish one. And then, like you rightly said, sitting on the hot seat in front of Guruji, His grace, God's grace, played out in this most beautiful way. So somehow God just finds ways to get through to us. And I feel it is so true looking at this life that if you make one step towards Him, God makes a hundred towards us. And remember that the proof of the pudding in spirituality is not necessarily just those events. We can get caught in a chasing of an enlightenment or something like that. It is more a question of: how much more can I offer of myself today to God? How much more deeply can I love Him? Yeah.

So I would not say that we must follow this foolish boy and throw tantrums and then the beingness will come. That is not the idea at all. It is just His grace that maybe because at that time I did not have access to satsang, access to a sangha like this, that He had mercy on me in this way. You are blessed to have satsang, are blessed to have somewhere to gather, blessed to have your questions answered. We must just deepen more and more in our self-giving and giving of ourselves to Him as much as we can.

Yeah. And whether our Atma becomes palpable to us apparently in these sudden ways, or whether the highest truth of ourself as awareness itself reveals itself in sudden ways, or it seems to just be like a melting or dissolving in which the recognition just deepens more and more—that is all up to His grace. And I've been sharing—I still don't have the best words to say this—but we must not look at enlightenment as an event. Even after the strongest awakening experiences, some ignorance, some avidya remains. And even after so many years of awakening experiences, ignorance and pride becomes more and more apparent to us. So it's a constant deepening, constant growth. So to become a saint is not a one-time experience. It's a constant, the million acts of love. Yeah.

And there's this like—sorry. Maybe a dualistic or—yeah, go ahead.

Okay. Like a dualistic or a mental way of seeing things where if we can get to the place where we are more worthy of Him, then His grace will become fully available. Something like that.

I feel it's—even if you were to accept that paradigm, what we would have to do to grow in our worthiness is the same process that we discussed today. Yeah. The love—I think love is a better word for this one anyway. Yeah. I think maybe I can replace the worthiness with the love. I think that works better.

Yeah. And it means a lot of faith also because this story of this man might also be discouraging for some of us because it may seem like, 'But this is so unfair. He didn't even know how to do the inquiry properly. He didn't even have a Guru guiding him on a daily basis and yet God gave him this grace.' That sounds very unfair.

No, the idea here is that it's hard for me to believe that there's nothing special about you, about my Father. Is this what you keep saying to us over and over again? I keep finding it hard to believe, to accept.

Well, a part of that is very beautiful and thank you. It's very sweet. It's your love for me. But another part of that can also be the mind's attempt to create some distinction. You see, so the project seems unviable for us. The certainty of God's love for us then seems uncertain because there must be something special about these teachers of God. But really there isn't. And I promise you that every day I feel like there's such a long way to go because the inward journey is like that. I don't feel like the greatest sage can say that I found Him in such a way that there is nowhere deeper to go.

Can you repeat that?

Yes. No, I'm saying that no sage can ever report—I mean they can report that from pride—but really looking at it, what we find inwardly, nobody can say that I've scaled this mountain or come to the highest peak or something like that. Every day we only find that we are just beginning this journey because naturally this inner experience humbles all of us. You see, and the only way to be there anyway is to be in humility. The minute I carry something in my pocket and go inwardly, nothing is met. If I carry my past experiences, if I have my visa and passport and say, 'You know, in 2006 this happened, then 2009 this happened,' I have all this stuff on my passport and I go to court with these credentials, I will not most likely be met with anything, just a block.

So we have to strip ourselves of all of this and that is why it's so beautiful to spend time, actually spend time, because without spending time naked in this way, our pride can catch up with us very fast. This naked humility where you recognize over and over that we are just beggars in front of His door. It's very easy for this idea of enlightenment, of freedom, to be applied personally.

Father, may I ask something? Sometimes it can be scary to know that there is no one in this world who is—I mean, there is no one who has not reached—like everyone is still growing, still deepening. And sometimes it can be scary in the sense that there is no one I can fully trust in this world because maybe they do not know, they haven't gone through what I'm going, or they haven't reached like the end of the road that I am walking on. You know, I don't know how to put it in words right now, but maybe you understand what—

I have a sense. I feel I have a sense and you can correct me. So let's look at it this way: that if you're climbing a mountain, it is true that nobody has reached the top of the mountain, but there could be those who have reached the next stop on the mountain that can help us, you see. So like if you know about Arunachala, you start at Ramanasramam, then you go up to Skandashram, then you go up to what is the Virupaksha cave, then Shiva cave up really high. So those who have gone up to Skandashram and in fact been kind enough to build a road to Skandashram, we cannot say that their guidance or their contribution to our journey is not trustworthy or valuable.

Because our spiritual journey also goes through the same beats, although it has different experiences, but you will come across the same similar obstacles, the similar distractions from the mind, similar games from Maya. So it is very invaluable, it is very priceless to come across guidance on this inner journey because it is so rare to have someone even gone up to those points on the mountain. So we can trust that the next stop that I'm going to, definitely I'm receiving help in this way also. What happens is that a lot of this guidance is not given in words. Just finding yourself devoted to a teacher of God who is truthful, full of integrity, then allows this replica of the inner transmission, the replica of the inner light, to be received from Guru to disciple even in the outer plane, which is unbelievably amazing grace, you see, because it is not a natural process. It is not a phenomenal process. It is something which God has designed so beautifully to take us beyond the natural into the mystical, into the godly. To get a glimpse of that even in the human play is great grace.

So in this way, to find a teacher of God who is able to point us to even the next stop is very, very worthwhile. And the teacher will not leave you till you are at the feet of the only teacher. The Guru will not leave you till you are at the feet of the Atma, who is the only Satguru. You see, and then there is nothing to worry about except the pride which can appear for anyone. So all they can do at that point is to bless you and say, 'May you never become proud and may you always remain at the feet of the Atma, of the Holy Spirit within.' And if we remain as true disciples of that, the Atma itself takes us deeper and deeper, higher and higher. So we are fully helped along this journey in this process.

Thank you. Thank you, Father. Can I ask a question?

Nikico had her hand up, so maybe she can go first.

Thank you so much, Ananta. It is a long time now I didn't speak to you like this and I also forgot the time change and I came an hour later. So thank you for this opportunity, this possibility. The last months I had several pain in my body. It's not constant but it took a lot of energy from me and sometimes it really seems to be not possible to be open and empty for God or to love God or to connect when there is pain in the body. And I know when you were in really much pain and you were writing these so many beautiful messages for us at the same time, and for me it just seems to be not possible to go beyond or transform it or even surrender or offer it. This is the first thing I wanted to say.

And other things: that the last month so many times death, physical death, is coming to my mind—that death sometimes must come sooner or later. And with this, that when you say Guru never leaves us and that He carries our until the end of this journey. But also there is a time when you say use this life because you don't know, it is not a guarantee and there is no insurance about that the next one is going to be graceful like this. What is a little bit contradictory for me because the first gives me more confidence and I like more obviously the thought that somebody's carrying me over other lifetimes as well. And actually that's it and yeah.

Please remind me of the second part if I forget by the time we look at the first one. That's very kind of you to say that when I was in deep pain, I was still writing beautiful messages about God. I don't feel like it was that true actually because I remember that when I had this deep pain, fatigue, brain fog, all of these things, I was mostly not able to put words across. It was mostly maybe those periods of relief that came and by God's grace He provided me lots of relief in the middle. So maybe during those times some of those messages would have come, but mostly in the experience of pain and this debilitating fatigue of the body, I found myself quite quiet, quite—I would love to say inward facing, but I don't really know whether I can report that—but I just found myself not able to express in words so much, not even able to read any books, not able to read any words of the sages, not processing anything on YouTube.

Satsang is that—that's why my feeling now is that every time I have this opportunity to be pain-free and not so foggy in the head, the instrument seems to be collaborating, then I want to use the opportunity to share His light, to share His love. So but my experience would have been quite similar to yours.

I can report that, but I just found myself not able to express in words so much, not even able to read any books, not able to read any words of the sages, not processing anything on YouTube. Satsang is that. That's why my feeling now is that every time I have this opportunity to be pain-free and not so foggy in the head—the instrument seems to be collaborating—then I want to use the opportunity to share His light, to share His love. So, but my experience would have been quite similar to yours. I can relate to what you're saying. When there's so much pain, then it's very difficult to communicate anything about God; to even try and remember or read anything spiritual seems quite difficult. So I can relate to that.

On the second part, let me try and deconstruct that a little bit. So let's say there are two situations. Let's say there are two satsang members. Both are using the opportunity in different ways. So one member is latching on to everything, every pointer, every guidance that is resonating, and they are applying it to their lives. Just applying it, trying to meet it in their heart, trying to follow as much as they can. And recently we had an experience of two of our beautiful satsang members who were applying everything they were hearing so beautifully, but through God's will, by God's will, their lives were only till that point. So I have no doubt that their journey will continue. Their journey will only deepen from this point forward because God is so loving and kind and merciful. I don't see it any other way. It has to only deepen from here.

The warning I give, and many sages at least in India have given this warning, is for those who are not really taking it on. In spite of being in satsang maybe sometimes for many years, we keep ourselves at a safe distance, you see. We don't really take it on, we don't dive in, because we are too scared somewhere or we are too desirous of something in the world somewhere. And the warning that we may not keep getting this opportunity over and over again—like Kabir Ji said that this opportunity will not come over and over again—is only for those who are lacking in application; lacking in maybe not lacking in intent, but lacking in application.

So it is a wakeup call to say: Please, are you praying? Are you inquiring? Are you loving God more and more? Is our spirituality stuck in a lip-service spirituality where there is no risk? And we have to take the risk to hand over our life to God. Or is our spirituality still too safe? "I will not risk anything in my life. I will not give God ten minutes of my day because I have so much important work to do." And it's risky to not even give, not to give God this ten minutes away from what I think I'm working on or what I think is so important in my relationships and the rest of my life. So it is a wakeup call against that kind of mental complacence, mental safety, which is actually the most unsafe, and it is to not recognize the blessings that God has given us in this life.

Ananta Ji, I am really not sure if I take it on that much or if I dive in it that much. And once you shared something on that chat that was so... kill all my spiritual ego, or not maybe all, but it was really humbling me a lot. When you said even if you had the most beautiful insight, there is no any guarantee, and there are so many saints or so many enlightened who never had any insight. And it's really just... but I want to say I don't know. And you say about the checker guy as well. So how can I know if I don't feel anyway? Yeah, I know I am not taking enough time, not enough energy, not enough when everything is all right. I maybe just forget about it. And I don't know, Ananta Ji, for a long time I am with you, with Guru Ji, and still I need to be... I don't know how to say. I know it's not dependent on you, is that? Or yes, I would like to take everything in your hand, Ananta Ji, and carry me all the way. But also I know that I have the part, and I don't feel I do it well enough.

Maybe this is an important guidance for everyone. Remember that this battle between Maya and the Atma is a battle for time. So we don't have to judge the quality of insight. We cannot, in fact, we can't know how much we are deepening or not deepening. Really, we can't know. We can't smell our pride on us. We may be thinking we are very humble, but actually we may still be full of pride. We can't really tell. But one simple thing we can do is: How much time did I give to God today? You see, and it's not too late today, but it will be too late tomorrow.

Yeah.

So just keep that simple measurement: How much of my day belonged to God in a focused way? That I'm not juggling, that I'm, you know, going to watch a movie but I'll say "Ram Ram" every ten minutes. You see, it's okay to watch a movie, but then that is not focused time with God. So in fact, if you're watching a movie and saying "Ram" is the best way to watch a movie, I'm not against that, I'm not saying you must not do that. I'm only saying that really we cannot count like where God is just a side character, you see; He's not getting our full attention.

And a simple way to look at that is to look at it as a human relationship, you see. If you tell your parents or your children or your partner that "I'm going to spend time with you. Let's watch a movie together. I'm going to spend time with you. Let's go for a run together. I'm going to spend time with you. Let's do this together." Yeah, they may say okay, some value, but where is the time which is just one-on-one? Where are we actually communicating? So look at it with the same principle because the principle God has made it simple for us remains the same. How much time are we spending with God?

Now in this case, we don't have to check whether we are proud or not. It's good to check, but if we can't tell, we don't have to see, "Okay, I took myself to be pure awareness." We don't have to say, "I was with..." in the sense, "I am constantly" or not. Did I give one hour to God today? Did I give two hours to God today? You see, did I offer myself completely to God for ten minutes, half an hour, forty-five minutes, one hour? What is that? So that is just... use that as a simple way. And if you keep offering your life to God in this way, because He knows very well how attached to experiences during the waking state we are. So if we close ourselves out from outer experiences and we offer our time and ourselves to God, there's nothing for us to worry. But if we spend our entire time in Maya and then say, "My life belongs to You, God," then He's not going to fall for just words.

Yeah, also sometimes still this checker guy is just watching the results, the effect, the cause-effects. If I offer the time, if I give the time just for God, just to be with God, always there is somebody watching. But what's happened? What did you feel? Is it deep enough? And I just want to let this because you say it doesn't matter, we don't know, we will never know, we'll never see how is... sorry.

I think I got the essence of the question. So suppose that I said to everyone, "Tomorrow when you come to satsang, everybody please have a blindfold on. Everybody please have a blindfold on." And then I tell you the way to progress is to tell me how long my mustache is. You say, "But you said... should we take off the blindfold or what should we do?" You see, now this is the mind trick which tells us, "Okay, what is the outcome of your sadhana? What is the outcome of your practice?" We don't have the eyes to see that. It is a heart-to-heart process. A leaf when it meets the sunlight of the sun cannot possibly explain that this is how the light of the sun is helping me get nourished.

Yes. And I find sometimes even the mind can make this kind of side effects when I... and I ask is it really true and is not true? So I can see I'm really blind with everything, Ananta Ji.

Yes. And we have to trust that, you see. So along the way, in fact at the beginning of satsang, we said that the only problem to the mind actually is that there is no way to tell how much we are progressing. There is no way to tell how much we have progressed. If we just accept that, then our lives will be much simpler.

And Ananta Ji, can I ask something? But it's maybe not really clear for everyone because this checker guy troubles everyone. Look at him, look at the teacher, look at this satsang sister, see this either in a good way or in a proud way. We are always caught up in this. But we must realize that we are blindfolded. When it comes to spiritual progress, we are blindfolded. Maybe others around us may start to say, "But you've become so much more kind. You've become so much more patient. You've become so much meeker, not angry, not irritated." Maybe those are signs which have some credibility coming from the loved ones who are around us. But I would not really rely on them either, except that if they're saying that you've become more angry, then there is definitely something to look at, or you've become more proud or you've become less kind, then that should definitely be a wakeup call for us. But besides that, there's no real way to tell which step are we on. Are we on the first step, the hundredth step, the millionth step? We can't really see. And that is why it needs that innocence of a child and yet the faith of that innocent child in the parent. Like Bhagavan had a beautiful example for this. He said once you've boarded the Guru train, then you don't have to check every station where have you reached.

Yes, Ananta Ji. So we cannot see. But Guru Ji said don't take out the plant because then you cannot always measure the root of the plant when you just... and but Ananta Ji, it just came to me that but you can see. Maybe you can see if we are in a good way, in the good path. Can you see?

When you say "Can you see?" it could have two meanings. One is that: Can this foolish man see? Of course not. Can the One for whom this is an instrument? That One of course knows. That is the Atma itself, the true Satguru itself. But I'm sorry to disappoint all of you; this one doesn't always give me the answers like this. It doesn't always say, "Okay, very good," because it keeps me humble. If I could just... but I don't trust that. If a child is going off track and they present themselves in a very sincere, open way, then I do trust that the Atma will give them the guidance that is needed at that point. But it is not at all like I have no capacity to evaluate. I think all this question is coming from fear of instability or...

Yeah. Yeah. But also I know that just the fact that I am here with you, Ananta Ji, is the most graceful in my life.

Remember that: Give time to God. Give time to...

Thank you so much, Ananta Ji.

Don't worry about what is happening in that time. Don't judge yourself in a good way or a bad way. Just offer yourself. Give God the consent to work on you every day for some time at least. Now what to do with those days when we haven't given time? Don't sit and feel guilty. Take that ten seconds instead of feeling guilty; give that ten seconds to God. So beautifully, Hanuman Ji, these very simple words always stay with me: that if you've fallen down, just get up. Don't think about "How did I fall? Where did I fall? I keep falling. When will I get up?" All of this stuff is a waste of time. Just leave the checker guy is what he's saying, and just get up. Get up means return to God. Okay, you sleep at 12:00 a.m. It is 11:59 and 50 seconds and you haven't prayed for even one moment in the day, and you suddenly remembered you haven't used the ten seconds.

My time is up. I was just going to say, Father, that you passed an hour and a half or more. So thank you. Love you, Ananta Ji. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Father. My questions dissolved. Thank you.