Progress must be slow and steady, smooth and not in jolts but ever intensifying in one's bid to reach perfection of effort whereupon the end will be attained in due course by the grace of the Lord. But practice must never be relinquished for it is in the daily discipline of routinised work that the road to success is steadily built.
This world is a vast forest and its schools are still the ancient forest schools where the Aranyakas are discovered by preceptor and pupil in quite the selfsame way, although, to the apparent eye things seem to be modernised, mechanised and civilised in urbanised terms. As such, nothing has changed much in so far as the inner development is concerned, the inner evolution requiring the same methodology as before.
Technology has transformed the external world but not much the inner world of man for the better, although, physical comforts having increased, longevity has increased, the rigour of life has decreased in absolute physical terms and leisure has correspondingly increased to allow scope for introspection and cultivate thinking. Along with it the pressures of a burgeoning world population and its concomitant economic and environmental effect has added to the stresses of modern-day living. Thus, the gains and the losses of modernity must be balanced and opportunity eked out to progress in spirituality, slowly but surely.
The first requisite is the aspiration to attain to something noble in life beyond the immediate world of mundane necessity. When the desires of the heart have been met and the spirit chastened into a relative state of quiescence, when one has seen through the vanity of earthly existence and its routine rigmarole culminating in death, when the soul starts hankering for a meaning in this otherwise absurd life of two days, then and then alone does life take a new turn and starts traversing along the return path to its source. And this is called 'renunciation'.
There comes a great restlessness in the soul now as it seeks the solution to the puzzle of the personality and its relation to the equally baffling universe that engulfs it. A search for the 'beyond' now grips the soul as the aspirant desperately attempts the scaling of the walls of his limited self and fails to transcend his bodily bounds. It is like the desperate high jump of a small boy trying to reach the ceiling of his room and eventually resigning himself to the vow that one day when he grows up, he will surely touch the ceiling with his outstretched arm. The aspirant, likewise, now resigns himself to growing spiritually under a preceptor who knows the way out of this finite form and can, out of his unbounded grace, show him the way out too. Thus, the search for the Guru (spiritual preceptor/spiritual master) begins.
The search for truth in its relative aspects leads the soul to the search for the absolute truth of life. A chance hearing of a lecture or the reading of the page of a book or a reference by someone to visit a monastery or a shrine opens up the spiritual path now unexpectedly. As the saying goes, 'when the disciple is ready to receive, the preceptor arrives at his door to give'. What does the preceptor give and what indeed does the disciple receive? Spiritual initiation that sets the disciple onto the broad avenue of godhead and careers him/her unto truth phenomenal, unto Truth transcendental.
Sincerity is an attribute that is the key to success in any sphere of human activity and even in the spiritual path it plays the prime role in the advancement of the aspirant. Purity, patience and perseverance were the three attributes that Swami Vivekananda had stressed on as being the prerequisites for building up of the spiritual life or the formation of character, to give it a wider connotation. To this may I humbly add sincerity as the fourth attribute which will make for the successful operation of all other attributes, for, which enterprise will succeed that has not sincerity as its very backbone? So, the disciple must be pure, patient, persevering and sincere if he is to see the spiritual light through his labour of love.
Thus, the aspirant goes about searching for his Guru in the vast wilds of his life, desperate to get a peep into the vaster unknown that beckons him like the call of the cricket at night. A haunting other-worldliness possesses him as life in its mundane mode seems insipid. He hears a distant melody coming from the remote recesses of his heart but cannot fathom its source and goes about seeking it without in the sacred shrines where he is led as if by an invisible force. The call of the Divine, now loud and clear, now faint and feeble, alternates within his being as he is tormented by its oscillating modes. He meets monks but is restless to discover the mahatma after his heart at whose feet he may seek safe refuge, whose shining visage shall be the beacon in his voyage through terrestrial dreams. And when it seems that life, rudderless and vagrant, is no more bearable, the direction comes. The Guru arrives at the doorstep, ready to receive the restless soul seeking liberation from phenomenal bonds and breathes in his ear the seed sound that burns its way into the deepest recesses of his heart enlivening the being with the fire of the Divine. Thus is the bond set between the godlike Guru and the divine disciple as the twain are eternally bound in a bond of bliss whose fruition shall be the realisation of unity of the Chosen Ideal (Ishta Devata), the spiritual preceptor (Guru) and the disciple (shishya). Then all will be bliss in freedom.
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