Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash
Leading a spiritual life and experiencing God, at all times, is nothing supernatural. It’s just an ordinary simple thing. You don’t have to fly in the air, swallow nitric acid, or sleep on a bed of nails. I mean, you don’t have to do anything extraordinary.
Physical and mental feats are all gymnastics and they defeat the purpose. That’s not what you call spiritual experience. You might never have a big fantastic vision. Spiritual life is to live a simple, beautiful, ordinary life.
You have never seen me reading minds or floating in the air! If anything has to happen let it happen by itself; you don’t need to try to make things happen. Just lead a clean, good life—a life free from tension, physical and mental. The Bible tells us, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” Keep that as your sacred mantra: purity of heart. All you have to do to experience God within is to keep your heart pure, like the heart of a child. Such a heart is free from tension, from anxiety, from worries. It is free from fears, fear of getting things and then of losing things. If something has to happen, your fear is not going to stop it.
See that every minute, your life is a useful life, that you are doing something for the benefit of somebody. Let your actions be perfect actions. The Bhagavad Gita defines Yoga as perfection in action. A perfect action is one that causes no harm to anyone and at the same time brings some good to someone. This means living a dedicated life: The dedicated ever enjoy supreme peace, is my motto.
We are all looking for peace, and that peace is God. To experience God as peace, life should be filled with dedication. Every minute, see that your actions are dedicated toward the good of somebody or something. Leading a spiritual life is really very simple. You don’t have to read a lot. Even if you feel uncomfortable in your other practices of Hatha Yoga, pranayama, asana and meditation, you can still lead a spiritual life. They are all aids, that’s all. But if you can lead a dedicated life, you don’t even need to have all those things. If you’re healthy, why do you need medicine? Only when you feel sick do you need medicine. So if you see that you are always healthy—always dedicated, selfless—you don’t need any of these practices.
All the Yoga practices are there to undo some of the problems that you have created in your life. They are like medicines. And if you know you have problems, then you should swallow the medicines regularly. So just follow some of these simple practices as remedies, and keep yourself free from tension. God’s experience is always there, waiting to come to the surface when you are ready.
