“There is a fundamental need for the human nature, an essential goal of the incarnated life – that of pursuing, consciously or not, the infinite experience starting from a finite ground.” (Sri Aurobindo)
Have you ever considered what makes you strongly believe in your ideals and stick to them? Have you noticed your whole being uplifted by a sublime ideal you aim at?
Aspiration means in fact the unifying gear of some mysterious, highly divine forces connected to the most sublime aspects of our being. Aspiration is also a specific form of desire that triggers states of RESONANCE, but at a superior level and which is awakened by the ideal patterns involved in the spiritual evolution.
It has a profound, positive influence upon all our decisions and it also enables the inner states evolution and therefore the psychic, mental and spiritual progress.
The more we advance in age, throughout the outer circumstances our aspirations triggers some ineffable processes of inner RESONANCE in a remarkable complex sequence of stages. Given these conditions, there is a high importance that falls to self-knowledge, to the right evaluation of the latent chances of fulfilment, to the acquired experience of the individual and to the divine models, intuitively chosen. Milosz, a modern philosopher said: “The inner evolution in our being leads us sooner or later, in close connection to our efforts, from the physical to the spiritual”.
Faith – The Key to the Paramount Knowledge
A sacred treatise of wisdom says: “One day, Parvati asked Shiva: “My adored master, please tell me what is the real key to knowing God?””
Then Shiva answered:
“The only key is the firm, unshakeable faith in God. The truly firm and unshakeable faith is always almighty. Reason can never led you that far as strong faith can do. Reason will finally stumble at one point or another. As for the firm, unshakeable faith, even an ordinary man can cross almost without difficulty the vastness of an ocean. Facing a strong, firm, unshakeable faith even the nature’s forces will bow and give up. And, moreover, even the sin and the restlessness, the ephemeral and the ignorance hastily recoils in front of the strong and firm, unshakeable faith in God”.
The New Body of Love
The great yogi Sri Ramakrishna used to say that the real pursuer in spirituality should love and think so deep of God that he must thus create a genuine “body of love”. This “new” secret body is completely different of the ordinary human body. The heavenly and mysterious enthusiasm of divine joy during a deep state of ecstasy can never be compared to any kind of joy in this world. Ramakrishna would say in this respect: “A frantic divine craziness, this is the word. You must become crazy about God to attain Him for real”.
When we feel like this, the aspiration to the Absolute, to God, will arise in us a huge, supernatural force that will amazingly open our hearts toward Infinite. The frenzied longing for the Divine is essentially a mind and heart focus that enables our access to the spiritual world where we can reach a mysterious and ineffable inner resonance to the ultimate immaterial basis of the world.
Therefore the spiritual sense can be compared to the keen need of oxygen. Aspiration should subsequently be considered as a completely natural state of our psyche, of our mind and spirit. The human being will always stand in great need for God, just as he stands in great need of air, love or happiness. For he who discovers all these, the Divine is all these together and even more. The ineffable spiritual sense, closely merged to intuition, to ethics, to the beneficial sense of beauty and to the sublime light of intelligence will render human personality the complete flourishing and power.
The highest form of aspiration is the aspiration towards Absolute (GOD)
Across ages, people’s need to pray or franticly strive for God has often been as strong as the need to work, to build, to love and rejoice. The ineffable sense of sacredness is thus a mysterious urge, from deep inside, a fundamental emotion uplifting and overwhelming.
It is not enough for the human being to contemplate in deep amazement the beauty of the sea, of the mountains, of the clouds, of the masterpieces or of the mathematic formulas expressing laws of nature. The human being must be a soul to continuously strive for a high, sacred ideal.
A soul looking for the divine light deep inside the darkness of things and which, throughout the sublime paths of the spiritual evolution will abandon himself in order to reach the divine, apparently invisible, absolute background of this world.
In a thorough and cautious approach, the spiritual force is equally required in life, just like the intellectual or vital strength are. That’s why the spiritual aspects of our life must be restored for, more than the intellectual or the vital ones, they give sense and strength to our being and, mostly, enhance in us the Sense of Sacredness, the sense of the Divine.
The deep and intense living of time and space sacredness triggers a fundamental transformation in our life. From now on the nature is no longer stiff, but alive. There is nothing left out of God; everything is His expression. This authentic, deep and unique life can be felt all over, in minerals, in flowers, in animals, in people and in the whole Universe. The ineffable sense of sacredness changes and fundamentally enlightens everything around us and, at a different level, guides the highest aspirations of being toward the supreme accomplishment, to perfection. This profound sense can often be found at extremely pure and chaste human beings. It also appears and gradually increases in those human beings who are daily blessing others or themselves through the Art of Blessing.
The Present Moment is Unique and Invaluable
The longing for the Absolute can find different expressions, from the short and intense prayer to the deep meditation; from the plain touching words uttered in front of the cross to the deeply inspired chants in the cathedrals. The frenzied aspiration towards God sometimes means a moan of the soul, inner tears and not mere pointless words.
The great yogi Ramakrishna would say: “What is the authentic strength of a disciple about? It is about his tears longing for God. Just as a mother cannot resist helping his crying baby, God Himself fully offers His Supreme Grace to His child longing for Him in tears.”
There’s no need to be eloquent for God listen to us. The blind, the deaf, the skeptical, the lost, even the mean and the last forlorn, each of them can sincerely and franticly pray God, for everyone’s prayer is ALWAYS listened to if it comes from one’s heart.
When we pray to God we must first of all do it from the bottom of our soul. We have to say what we really feel, not what we think He would like us to feel. We have to be completely sincere, for we can never conceal our inner emotions in front of God. The moment we live is unique and that’s why it is invaluable. Every magic moment when our mind, our unyielding aspiration, our unchained love rise toward God and call Him in our soul, stands as a basic support, a genuine ground to sustain us hereafter. No matter what we have done so far, or what we have not done yet, regardless the prospects in the future, it’s now and only now, in this magic moment that we can act and change something.
Therefore, if we keep living this magic moment, everyday, we’ll be delighted to see how our being is uplifted and attains perfection by acquiring more and more divine qualities.
By continuously and frantic striving for God we therefore surpass our restrictive human condition and we ceaselessly expand our being in order to reach right here and right now the Ocean of the Universal Bliss, the fusion to God, our Father.
Note: The human being is gifted with five senses and the corresponding organs of sense. The five senses are the smell, the taste, the sight, the touch and the hearing. The yogi tradition considers the mind (manas) as the sixth sense. Hence the phrase in the title: “the seventh sense”.
By yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru