Devotion means longing for the Supreme. Now the question arises, is devotion natural or unnatural for living beings?

All the conscious or crude things we see in the manifested universe bear attraction for one another, and as a consequence, the continuity of the thought-projection of the Cosmic Mind is maintained. It is on account of the mutual attraction of myriads of heavenly bodies oscillating in the infinite space that balance is maintained in the firmament.

The world is a changing phenomenon. Therefore, it is unwise to be attached to any object in the ever-changing world. The very name and form will undergo changes with the change in time and place. The child changes into youth, the youth into the old, and the old into the corpse.

But if wise people take every object of the world as the expression of the one and single Cosmic Consciousness, then on seeing the changes in the name and form of any particular object, they will not be affected by pain or pleasure.

Now what is devotion? Leaving all the relative things, when the mind moves toward the Absolute, that alone is known as Devotion. When the mind moves toward the Supreme Soul, the nearer it comes to Him, there is an unknowing change in it. The caterpillar does not know when it becomes a butterfly.

The mind does not know how changes occur in it. Thus, one day it sees that it is no longer an individual being and hence the individualistic feeling disappears. When the mind is free from individualistic feelings, that alone is the Supreme State.

To attain complete success in life, one must have mental equipose, mental balance. There must not be any complex in the mind – neither superiority nor inferiority complex.

Now, to bring about mental balance, you should behave with every human being in such a way that this superiority complex or inferiority complex develops neither in you nor in those with whom you behave.

Complex of any sort – superiority or inferiority – is a psychic malady, a mental disease. You must maintain a psychic balance. That balanced mind will be able to move towards the Supreme Consciousness. That’s why it has been said, “One should be humbler than the grass.” Usually superiority is found more in humans than inferiority complex. Even those who possess mere knowledge of the alphabet, feel themselves quite superior to those who are totally illiterate.

From the inanimate to the animate goes the process of evolution.

Consider a piece of stone for instance. It has neither the power of action nor the sensation of mind. What is the reason? It is because hitherto there has been no manifestation of mind in the stone at all.

Consider the trees and plants that are more animate than the stone. There is activity in them. They grow, draw the vital juice from the earth, maintain their species by creating seeds in their own bodies, and enjoy and suffer pleasure and pain when taken care of or hurt. We see in them the manifestation of consciousness, for mind has awakened in them.

Thus progressing on the path of mental development, we see in humanity its greatest manifestation. Just as evolution takes place from the subtle to the crude, similarly the unit entity reverts step by step from the crude to the subtle, towards the same Absolute Consciousness from whence it came. It is just like the waves of the sea, rippling back from whence they have come.

The Supreme Consciousness has concealed Himself within your mind. He is hidden behind the curtain of your “I-ness”. You need not go to the Himalayan mountains to find out the thing that is concealed in your own “I”. Does one need a mirror to see the bangle on one’s hand? The Supreme, therefore, is within you. There is need only of removing the veil of ego.

You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars, guides you too.

- from Baba’s Grace, 51

In simple terms, what we have to do is to return home from where we came. We have all come from the Supreme Entity, the Nucleus of the universe. We have to return to the same destination.

The child has played throughout the day away in the fields, and now that evening has come, he returns home. He thinks that his father must have returned home: “Let me return home and sit near him.”

When one is tired of this world and worldliness, one yearns to go back to spirituality – one’s home. And what is our permanent abode, our home? The Supreme Consciousness.

Spiritual practice (sa’dhana’), therefore, is the process of returning home. It is a simple task. It requires no scholarship, no knowledge, no intellectual faculty, no long and tedious lecturing.