Dear brothers and sisters, dear spiritual seekers, this morning I wish to give a talk on time.

Time is love.
If we love time,
Then time gives us what we want: pleasure.

Time is love.
If we love time,
Then time gives us what we need: joy.

Time is love.
If we love time,
Then God accepts from us what we have: Ignorance.

Time is love.
If we love time,
Then God gives us what He has: Light.

Pleasure. Pleasure on the physical plane, the vital plane and the mental plane is very short lived, but during its brief span pleasure injures the real in us. The real in us is our cry for God, for Truth, or Light-our cry for Infinity’s heart, Eternity’s body and Immortality’s soul. Today’s pleasure ends in tomorrow’s frustration and destruction. Tomorrow’s frustration and destruction end in the total eclipse of our inner divinity. Therefore, a sincere seeker of the transcendental Truth tries to avoid pleasure.

Joy. In the spiritual life, joy is of paramount importance.

Joy grows, joy flows and joy soars.

God the climbing Tree grows with our joy, our inner joy.

God the dancing River flows with our joy, our fulfilling joy.

God the flying Bird soars with our joy, our illumining joy.

If a spiritual seeker remains in a cheerful frame of mind he makes very fast progress. Joy means confidence in his life of aspiration. Joy is self-discovery and self fulfilment.

Ignorance. When we go deep within, we see that we have nothing to give to God but ignorance. This ignorance God accepts from us most gladly, my devotedly and most unconditionally. Our life of ignorance we offer to God, and in return God offers to us a life of beauty, a life of plenitude, a life of infinitude.

Light. Light is self revelation. Self revelation grows into self manifestation, and self manifestation grows into self perfection. Self perfection and God perfection are one and the same thing, operating on two different levels. We notice self perfection in the heart of the finite. We notice God perfection in the body of the infinite.

Time is our oneness with God, our conscious oneness with God. We establish our conscious oneness with God on the strength of our inner cry. Mother Earth offers us her wealth: patience, sacrifice and compassion. Father Heaven offers us His wealth: love, wisdom and illumination. With the help we get from Mother Earth, we prepare ourselves for salvation. With the help we get from Father Heaven, we prepare ourselves for divine glorification. Salvation we get from earth, and divine glorification we get from Heaven. When we receive salvation, we feel that we are growing into the very image of our Beloved Supreme. When we are offered glorification, we feel that our Beloved Supreme is playing in and through us. In the finite He is singing His Song Celestial, His song of infinite Beauty, Light, Melody and Harmony. The animal in us does not care to know about time. The human in us knows that there exists something called time, but it does not value time. The divine in us utilises time most effectively and divinely. The Supreme in us, the Inner Pilot, fulfils His dream and His reality here on earth through time.

Here on earth a child has no time even to eat his candy. A young boy has no time to study. A young man has no time to think. An old man has no time to rest. But a seeker knows that his God has the time to eat candy, to study, to think, to rest. His God has time for everything. The seeker also knows that God has the time to do everything because He takes the help of time. Only with the cooperation of time can He achieve everything in and through His aspiring, devoted and surrendered children.

Unaspiring human beings do not enlist the help of time. They do not know the value of time They think that achievement is of paramount importance, and not the time required for the achievement. So they do not care for time; they neglect time. They do not realise that time is the bridge that will carry them to the other shore. If they do not use the bridge, they cannot go on to the other shore where there is Light, Peace and Bliss in boundless measure. But the aspiring person, the seeker, appreciates time and utilises it. When it is time to eat, he will eat; when it is time to think, he will think; when it is time to study spiritual books, he will study; and when it is time to rest, he will rest. For him, each day is a new challenge, a new opportunity. He enters into the battlefield of life to conquer darkness, limitation, bondage and death. He has to fight and rest at the appropriate times. He has to do all the things that are necessary to invoke Peace, Light and Bliss from above in infinite measure so that he can bring to the fore his inner divinity and offer it to the world at large.

There are two types of time in the spiritual life: earth time and Heaven time. Earth time is necessity, and Heaven time is reality, while necessity’s reality is God intoxication. The seeker in us feels that it is of supreme necessity for him to see the face of reality. And when he sees the face of reality he becomes a God intoxicated soul. Reality on its part enters into our necessity and fulfils our necessity by illumining us within and without.

A God intoxicated soul comes to realise that he has to achieve the eternal Truth first and then serve the divinity in humanity. First he has to achieve the Highest, the Absolute, and only then can he serve the Absolute in mankind. In this way he will be able to grow into the transcendental reality. God’s Reality, on the other hand, feels that since it already is eternal, it must always serve its own all pervading consciousness. The tree feels that it is its bounden duty to fulfil the needs of the branches, leaves, flowers and fruits. It also knows that it has the capacity to do this. So Reality starts serving its infinite manifestations immediately, for it knows that it has what it requires: consciousness in infinite measure. So the one climbs up the tree and then brings down the fruit to share it with humanity, while the other, who is already seated on the top of the tree, comes down immediately and shares the fruit with the aspiring humanity.

In the spiritual life, a sincere seeker knows that there is a God-appointed hour, a God ordained hour. We call it God’s Hour. This hour we can neither pull towards us nor push aside, but we can expedite it. We can shorten our road to God realisation provided we are ready to sacrifice ourselves, to offer to the Divine at every moment all that we have within us-our ignorant, undivine and unaspiring qualities, as well as our aspiring qualities.

There is one thing in our physical that is unwanted now and forever, and that is lethargy.

In the vital there is something that we have to get rid of, and that is aggression, or the feeling of superiority and supremacy.

In the mind there is something that we must get rid of, and that is doubt. We doubt others and we doubt ourselves. When we doubt others, nothing happens to them. They go on perfecting themselves through their daily experiences. It is we who suffer each time we doubt, for we eclipse our inner sun. This is the sun that is ready to offer us its light in abundant measure; it is ready to kindle the flame of aspiration within us so that we can climb up high, higher, highest into our transcendental Divinity.

In the heart we also have something to get rid of, and that is insecurity. Very often we feel that we are helpless, we are hopeless, we are useless. But this wrong notion we must not cherish. Once we become sincere seekers on the path of Truth and Light, we know that deep within us is the Inner Pilot. It was He who inspired us to walk along the road of Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. If He Himself had not inspired us, we could not have launched into the sea of spirituality. But He did inspire us, and He continues to inspire us every day. So we can never be helpless, we can never be insecure. We know there is Light within us. Just because we do not now have the Light at our disposal, we cannot say that this Light will remain always a far cry. On the contrary, today’s impossibility is tomorrow’s destined achievement. There is simply no such thing as impossibility in our spiritual life.

We know that we are aiming at a Goal, the Goal that has everything divine for us in infinite measure. We are trying to establish our conscious oneness with Someone who is infinite, eternal and immortal-our God. Since He is our Source, since He is our Goal, how can our ultimate achievement be limited? Everything that we want to achieve, everything that we want to grow into, needs time; and our time is determined by God. We shall not pull God’s Hour. We shall not push God’s Hour. We shall simply play our role. We shall pray, we shall meditate the way we feel best from deep within. And God will select His Hour to illumine us so that He can fulfil Himself in and through us. In His fulfilment is our real achievement and real perfection.

January 25th, 1974
Happy Valley Common Room
Marlboro College
Marlboro, Vermont