Can we progress when we feel sceptical about spirituality?

Guru: You know, I would love you to come to Skanda Vale. None of you needs an invitation from me. Come, spend time, and let us look after you for a change. Let us cook for you, feed you, and accommodate you for free. You just discover yourself, and we will wrap you up with a load of cotton wool called love. That is what you need.

Devotee: You know I’m a great sceptic and I’m very intellectual. In my head I know I can arrange all these [practical] things. I understand you. My problem is how to develop more love. You speak about love a lot and for me it’s…

Guru: Difficult?

Devotee: …I don’t know exactly what to do to love more.

Guru: Right, I am also a great sceptic so that makes two of us. Now having two of us as sceptics, let’s see what you have done with your life and let’s see what I have done with my life, as a sceptic.

For example, when somebody tells me something, if somebody gives me a cake and says it is very tasty, I will say, “Oh come on I’ve tasted so many cakes!” Then they say, “Oh no, this is the best cake of all.” I’ll put my finger in it and then put it straight into my mouth, and say, “Hmm, not bad, I’ll try another piece because I’m willing to try.”

All philosophies are given to people with the hope that they will try them and apply them in their lives. Philosophies are given sometimes without people even trying it out themselves.

We must apply what we learn

I promise you anything that I have said in this room, I have applied, and I have experienced Divinity. I know what I am talking about, it is not what somebody else has handed to me on a plate.

God must think that he has created the biggest buffalo in the world in me, because every time the Lord has appeared to me, I have doubted even his very presence. Not only doubted but questioned, till ultimately the Divine Mother came and gave me ‘shakti’ and turned me upside down.

Now I enjoy scepticism, but that scepticism must be followed by trying out and applying some of the things that you know are true. The mind uses scepticism as a block purely and simply because it’s too much of an effort to change the course of your ship that is used to a certain way of life. Not to change the course of events in your life that have gone on regularly, quietly, complacently because you use the terminology ‘sceptic’, is not good enough.

You know one day you have to turn the ship around. Let us both do it together. Come and spend time with us, find out for yourself whether I have talked a load of rubbish, or whether I do not apply it in my life. Come and see for yourself and take what you want for yourself.

There is no compulsion, there is no sense of feeling that you must do it. If you want to do it, okay! If you don’t want to do it, still okay!

But I will be excited, don’t you think? if I can change some part of my life too. So during this journey here I have also learned something. I could walk out of this house and say, “Okay that’s all, hmm, fine I am going.” But I am interested to know what you’re going to do with yourselves as I leave. How are you going to carry on in your life and begin to make it good so that life will be better tomorrow? That’s how I want you to do it for yourself.

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