Following God's Will: The Path of True Devotion

And to become a disciple of the Atma is to let go of the discipleship of the mind, let go of the discipleship of 'me'. So may this year be the end of a very convenient conceptual spirituality which is self-serving rather than self-sacrificing. May you vanquish that form of pride in the form of conceptual spiritual knowledge or reliance on past spiritual experiences. May you start every moment as a naked baby, as a full beginner in the light of the holy presence, the holy Atma, the holy spirit. And what is the way? It has been shown to us in the form of Lord Laxman, Lord Bharat, Lord Sita, Lord Hanuman. What is the way? What is special about them? That they learned to follow God's will. Ram's will was the highest for them, you see.

Hanuman Ji would not be Hanuman Ji if he just went on his own way, no? Lord Ram is telling him something, he's saying 'no, you know,' then he would not be Hanuman. Hanuman is Hanuman because Lord Ram just had to say and he was like 'Jai Shri Ram.' So that doubtless devotion which all of them around Lord Ram carry, that is what makes them special. So if we are to come close to the light of the Atma within, we have to learn to follow the will of God. That is the most important. So those around Lord Ram followed his will; that is an embodiment of the same statement. Sri Ramakrishna said that you don't have to worry about your life, you are living next to the Kalpataru which gives you everything that you could ever desire, you see. But he said to get everything in that way, you have to live next to it; you can't be distant from it. So you have to live in God's presence and to live in God's presence you have to follow his will.

Now this path seems very simple to most, but it's not actually. Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi said that most say that Bhakti is simpler than Jnana because it seems to them that Bhakti only means that you have to say 'I surrender, I surrender' and you then go your merry way after saying just with your lips that 'I surrender.' But just saying with our lips 'I surrender' is not enough. We truly have to surrender and live only in God's will. And most people who do this lip-service surrender never meet God's will because they are just too busy after saying 'I surrender' following their own will. They are too busy to live in God's presence to know what his will is. So when Satguru says the same thing, to follow the will of God, the command of God, that is the highest. So let go of yourselves, live in God's presence, then we can know what his will is and then we can try and emulate Sri Hanuman in our lives, you see.