The Choice to Love God or Maya

My inability to... so we said, I said we'll talk about this aspect. We'll talk about this aspect. Everything that happens to us in the world happens only through God's will. So like the Book of Job is a very good example where even the devil had to take God's permission before troubling Job. So Maya cannot hurt us without it being God's will. Yet—and the intellect won't like this because it's not linear—yet God doesn't want our love for Him to be forced.

You see, so if He had made us in a very forced, mechanical way that after the age of whatever, 35, then you will love Me because that is My will, you see, then that is like... I've taken this example, I don't know if you were here, but when my son was in America, if I had enforced on him that you have to call every night at 9:00, then it doesn't give me an indication of his love. But if he calls me and says that, 'I had a very busy day but I felt like talking to you,' you see, then that warms my heart that my son loves me.

So this is the beauty of it: that although everything happens to us in God's will, and everything happens through us to others also only by God's will, yet the choice to love God or to love Maya has been left to us. Now what is the extent of what we can do? To put a long story short, we talked about all these pathways. So to turn inwards towards Him is the extent of our expression of love towards God—that I clearly let go of Maya, let go of grasping, and I turn towards God. That is the extent of what we can do.

The recollection of our faculties becoming one-pointed towards Him, we cannot do; we can only offer them. You see, for the pull to come, you see, for that to happen is only His doing. You see, for us to dissolve into samadhi, only He can do. For us to leave all notion of time and space and all experience of phenomenal appearance, only He can do. So our part is a simple part. If you look at it, we have no way as to how to do it. No. In fact, the minute you start thinking 'I can go into samadhi,' samadhi stops. In that pride, gone. You see, because that is very bad for our spiritual health, to become proud about these things. To take credit for that which only God can do is the worst form of spiritual pride. So thankfully, by God's grace, thankfully it stops.

But that expression of love by turning towards Him away from Maya, we have to do. So you're getting that this part we have to do. We have to do. All the Advaitins can fight with me. Yeah. And I'm happy to debate that topic, but never get into this thing that the turning also He will do. Yeah. One day we can talk about that, like much later. But for now, know that this part—picking up the phone and calling Dad—we have to do. What He does after that is up to Him. What we feel after that is up to Him. We have to make the phone call. You have to cut the line with Maya. Make the phone call to Dad. That part we have to do.