Spiritual Training

But, before reaching the heights of perfect union, there always goes a specific kind of activity, an education which the spiritually stared soul is called for to undertake. The painter, the musician, the poet, however great their natural gifted powers, can hardly dispense with some 'technical' training so, too the spiritual seekers. For unless discipline and slow training of the will, the sudden isolated flashes of inspiration back them will not long avail for the production of great union with the Blissful consciousness. It is the want of such discipline and spiritual drill that is responsible for the mass of vague, ineffectual, and sometimes harmful mysticism that has always existed: a kind of limp spirituality hanging, as it were, on the outskirts of frequent emotional outbursts.


The education Mahamati prescribes for the seekers, consists in the gradual development of an extraordinary faculty of inward concentration, a power of spiritual attention. It is not enough as is commonly held by the intellectuals that one should be 'aware of the Absolute', unless one be able to contemplate on it: just as the mere possession of eyesight by the born-blind needs to be supplemented by trained powers of perception. Mahamati says that so long as we do not wilfully withdraw our interest from the pleasurs of the world, we are not able to make our journey towards the center. The kingdom of God, he says, is within you: seek it, then, in the most secret vault of the innerself.


The devotee has, at first, to learn so to concentrate all his faculties upon the blank silence abiding with his inner self so that the awakening of a faint glimmer of so-called conscience takes place to watch all his activities from morning to night. Brooding upon the sacred words of Tartamya Mantra and contemplating on the attributes of God help the mind to be protected by this holy meditation from the distracting dream of life and the seeker peers out into the spiritual universe.


No sooner does this inner journey commence than a kind of spiritual discontent and anguish takes birth that puts an end to one's fascination for the illusion. His attitude undergoes a change. Like a tourist ready to pack up for his return journey after his sight-seeing, the self-seeking devotee stays in the world always conscious of his backward return. He is no more interested in planning and scheming for any new adventure and just accepts whatever comes in his way without any complaint.