Swamiji: That is one kind of ritual that must be having its own meaning. It is a feeling they are expressing—a feeling of love for God and worship of God. You can express your devotion and your worshipful feeling towards God by various gestures. It may be bread, it may be banana, it may be anything; it does not matter. All depends on your social circumstance, cultural background, etc. There is nothing wrong in these. Religion has ritual as a part of it. You can’t be totally free from it. Only, if you feel it is not an expression of yourself, it ceases to have relevance to you; you have, then, another ritual.

Sarah: And why is it so hard to love God—to really love God in this world?

SWAMIJI: Because it is not easy to know what God is. How can you love a thing which you have never seen or thought? You can love that which you see; unseen things, how can you love? That is the problem. We have difficulty in conceiving what God is. That is why the emotions are not going there. That which has a meaning is also an object of love. Meaningless things cannot attract. Know God, first of all.

Sarah: And what is it that is pulling the world away from God? You said that the universe is moving towards the Absolute. But there seems to be a force also in the universe that keeps it from the Absolute. What is it called—entropy—things going down rather than things going up?

SWAMIJI: That is what we have been discussing all along—what keeps you away from It is the affirmation of the part as an independent whole, though segregated from the whole.

Sarah: By affirming that one is an independent whole is making it stop?

SWAMIJI: That’s right, yes.

Sarah: And that’s also stopping loving and moving towards God?

SWAMIJI: Yes, true. But it will also be reclaimed, and once again, even that which is affirming independence will be defeated by the force of the higher whole. This is what they call the war between the gods and the demons in histories of religions. Have you heard of gods and demons fighting in theological epics?

Sarah: Yes.

SWAMIJI: These gods and demons are here before us. The demon is the ego, the god is the universal force, and one day it will demolish the demons and the part will be received back like the prodigal son going back, in the story. We are all the prodigal sons, and God will be very kind to us. He is not against us. Even if you are a renegade, God loves you, because, after all, the whole cannot but love the part. The father has to love the prodigal son also because he is a part of the father. Here is one analogy showing that the whole always integrally includes the part and however much you may try to wrench yourself from it, it will take you back, somehow, some day.

Sarah: But it is so hard; it seems so hard!

SWAMIJI: Because the ego is so hard. It wants to be independent. This is the Lucifer they are talking of in Biblical parlance. He has cut himself off from God, and that is the fall of Satan, and whatever story you have of that kind. We have fallen from that universal whole, and yet there is a hope. There is no eternal damnation, as the part is integrally connected with the whole. Ultimately, there is no damnation. It is going back only, gradually.

Sarah: And to work around the ego? How does one work without it? It seems so strong! It seems to me almost stronger than God, sometimes!

SWAMIJI: Yes, sometimes it looks stronger than God, but only ‘looks’, even as the darkness of night may appear to overpower the brightness of the sun.

Sarah: Anything that you can do?

SWAMIJI: You have already done something by coming to this place. Like that, slowly, it will scrub your ego. Your ego is already scrubbed to a large extent by your being here these few days. Already you are a better person now, don’t you think? So, like that, slowly it will be reclaimed. Reaching God takes time. And your honesty of purpose is also a very important factor. You must be sincere in asking for it and wanting it. You should not take it merely as a theory or an academic question: If it comes, very good; if it doesn’t come, that is also good. It should not be like that. “It has to come—and I shall have it!” You are determined for it, and it must come. The only thing that is required is your asking for it: “Ask and it shall be given.” It has to be given when you ask, but the asking has to arise from the soul. Your soul has to ask, and it shall be given to you, and it must be given—no doubt about it.

It is easier to receive the grace of God than anything from the marketplace. If you want to get something from the shop, you have to walk some distance. But to reach God, you do not have to travel any distance. Only your heart should well up and want to reach Him. There is no condition and no prescription, no other qualification necessary except that you should want it. And when you want it, it has to come. That’s all. No other qualification is necessary for you.

Sarah: But sometimes one feels there is a block. I almost don’t even want to reach God.

SWAMIJI: No block. No one can know what God is and afford not to want it.

Sarah: But I feel sometimes I don’t want it. I’d rather eat or do something easier.

SWAMIJI: Nobody objects to your eating. “Love God, and do whatever you like”—that is an old saying. You can eat jam and biscuit. Nobody objects to that, but under the condition that you love God.

Sarah: But Swamiji, I feel as if there is something that stops me from even wanting God.

SWAMIJI: The consciousness that some obstacle is there is itself an indication that you cannot be identical with the obstacle. The personality is a hard nut to crack.

Sarah: Then it is not true that there is really an obstacle!

SWAMIJI: Otherwise, you would not be conscious that it is an obstacle. It is going, slowly. Be happy—no problem. Thick is the darkness of night two hours before sunrise. Even then it vanishes as if it was never there. You cannot imagine that there would be light at all, a few hours before sunrise. So dense is the mass of darkness, but it goes. How it goes, nobody knows, but it is gone. Like that, all these blunders will vanish. The whole thing will go away. You will be surprised that it has gone. Like a nightmare, it will disappear. But you must want it!

Sarah: What I do is I raise money for charities…

SWAMIJI: You may do whatever you like. Nobody objects to it, provided that your heart is centred in God. And from that point of view, you do whatever work you do in this world.

Sarah: Sometimes, how do I know I am not just wishing that it was in God and making up that this is God, or that it is just ego, an illusion?

SWAMIJI: Even if you wish that you are wanting God, it is good enough, because God is the reality behind even the ego and the illusions you are referring to. To deny God is to deny oneself.

Sarah: Even if it is just an imaginary idea of what God is, an imaginary idea of what it is to love God?

SWAMIJI: A sincere affirmation has to materialise itself, certainly. When you want only one thing and nothing else, it is perfectly right. Wanting God means wanting only one thing; you, then, cannot want two things. You can be sure whether it is God that you want or somebody else by whether you really want only that and nothing else. But if you want something else also, it is not God that you are loving. From that, you can find out the genuineness of the asking. Also, God is an all-pervading thing. Are you asking about an all-pervading thing or only a located thing? If you ask for a localised thing, it is not God; if you ask for a universally existing thing, it is God. You please see whether your asking is for a universally existing being or only some other thing. Thus, you can distinguish between what is, and what is not.

Sarah: And what if I see that it is just a localised thing?

SWAMIJI: Then it is a mistake. You must not ask for it. You would, then, be asking for a limb of the body and not the whole body.

Sarah: Thank you very much.

SWAMIJI: There are about eleven religions in this world, what you may call the major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism. There are minor sects that you need not regard as actual religions. There are subdivisions like Sufism and mystical Christianity. All these have to be studied to understand the multiple patterns of the religious approach of mankind in its struggle to know the Ultimate Reality. All religions are good, but they look very funny when they compare and contrast themselves with others.

The whole point about the religions is that they are like many roads leading to one peak of a mountaintop, where they will all merge into one single spot. If this is accepted, there will be fraternity and brotherly feeling among the religions in the world. But there is an isolated tendency to assert each religion as a complete presentation of reality in itself, which has also the tendency to reject other approaches. Then comes clash and communal skirmish leading to social and political catastrophe. Like many rays of the sun are the many religions in the world. If one ray of the sun were competing with another ray, what would it be like? You have not only to tolerate the validity of another person’s approach, but also accept the justifiability of that effort. Merely tolerating in a condescending manner is no good. You are not reluctantly tolerating the viewpoint of some person. That would make you place yourself in a position of superiority. There is validity in the approach of all. You cannot say that a child is just blabbering nonsense. Rather, it is asking for something that is absolutely necessary for it in the condition in which it is placed at that time. It does not mean that a child is inferior to a genius. Comparison is always odious. Never compare anything and contrast anything. Take everything for what it is.

Larry: Swamiji, what I find so perplexing is that I meet such wise and intelligent people in my own religion and other religions, but I don’t…

Swamiji: You are one of them.

Larry: Thank you, Swamiji. But I do not understand why, for example, within my own religion, which I know best, so many of these people feel that only this approach is the correct approach.

SWAMIJI: That is the whole problem. It is absence of the requisite broadmindedness. Why do you call people ‘children of God’ if one cannot have any consideration for another?

Larry: They have consideration for others, but they feel that because Moses received the word directly from God, this word is absolutely immutable and is the only expression, for a Jew, of God’s will. And my question is, how did that come to be?

SWAMIJI: This attitude is present in all the religions of the West—namely, the Semitic religions. The transcendence of God, which is their concept of God, cuts off the world from God and converts the world into an evil den of Satan, and the earlier you are rid of it, the better for you. That is why extreme asceticism, monasticism, and things of that kind, and a condemnation of oneself arise. Asceticism often goes to such an extent of self-condemnation that the very existence of oneself is considered as an evil, a fall into the realm of demoniac activities. It is an unfortunate thing to imagine that some people are permanently meant for damnation. Even in India, we have certain theological doctrines of this kind.

There are some concepts, even in India, among certain circles of theology, which very funnily have held that there are certain people who are intended for eternal salvation, and others for eternal purgatory, and a third for eternal damnation. It looks very repugnant to hold views of this kind. Their God creates somebody only for hell, somebody only for heaven, somebody only for a cycle of up and down. God does not create three sections like that. It is a travesty of religious approach to think that God created a world of sin and evil and He stands above it uncontaminated—and, then, the way of getting rid of this involvement in evil in the world becomes a great problem. If the soul is really a sinner, it can never be redeemed, and if it is capable of being redeemed, it is not really a sinner. Such theology has an internal discrepancy. They are inadequate religions.

You cannot love God by hating someone else. The whole point in religion is misconstrued. Love God and hate the world. Then, why not love the world and hate God? Even that is good enough for some. There are people who feel that way. There are stages of approach in religion: the transcendental approach, the mystical approach and the universal approach, to which everything has to tend one day or the other. The study of comparative religions is very good and necessary.

Sarah: You say each one is a separate path to the same goal. It is important to follow all the details of each path?

SWAMIJI: All the details necessary for assisting you in your onward movement should be followed.

Sarah: How do you make that determination?

SWAMIJI: Your soul will tell you which is the guide, the seeker and the goal. When you take lunch, you know what are the things you must eat and what you need not eat; don’t you understand? Twenty things are served on the plate. Do you eat all the twenty? You know which of these are necessary for you. Your feelings, your requirements at that moment, will tell you what it is that is essential for you. You are the judge, yourself.

Sarah: Will it not be the ego that is just judging them, choosing what would be easier for it to follow?

SWAMIJI: When you love God as the Universal Being, the ego does not arise. There is no ego there. You must see things in the light of the universality that you are approaching. The ego will not stand before that non-ego. Mentally, you have to place yourself in the context of being in the presence of God Himself, as if the Almighty is looking at you. And, at that time, what will you do? Suppose the Almighty is seeing you just now, and you are sure that He is looking. At that moment, what will you do? Will you commit any mistake, any wrong? Everything will be chosen rightly at that time. So, feel yourself as being in the proximity of God. You are in the presence of God even now. The only thing is that you are not accepting it. With millions of eyes is the Almighty looking at you always; what will you do at that time? Whatever you do at that time is your religion. Religion is that which you do in the presence of God.