One of the chief characteristics of true bhakti or devotion is that our love for the world and worldly things keeps getting less and less. Whenever we find that in spite of following the spiritual path our attachment is not getting less, our love for the phenomenal world is not decreasing, we should know that there is something seriously wrong with our spiritual practice. Sri Ramakrishna pointed out that vairagya, or renunciation, means ‘dispassion for the world and love for God’.
You must cultivate more and more the tendency to associate
only with good people, with people who are pure minded, for if you do not consciously
avoid impure company, you will be unable to destroy the evil or impure
tendencies in your own mind. All impure men and women with whom you associate
awaken in you — in a very subtle way — your impure thoughts, either in the form
of desire or in the form of disgust, and disgust is only desire with a negative
sign. There are many people who say that one must experience all the different
experiences of life oneself. But, how do you know what experience you have
already had in your previous lives? If you really want to pass through all
experiences yourself, then your mind will be so weak and full of ruts in the
end that nothing will be possible in spiritual life. In that case you would
merely want to offer your dirt and filth to God.
People often find nice theories to justify their own worldly
conduct. We turn sceptics because it is comfortable for us to be sceptics,
because it justifies our own conduct to some extent. As a result of
your worldly conduct your body becomes diseased, your mind weakened, no energy
is left for spiritual practices, and what spiritual path could be followed with
such a worthless body and such a worthless mind? No, this theory of experience
is out and out wrong, because very few find their way to spiritual life in this
manner. The others become diseased in body and mind and can never regain their
energies in this life. Besides, how can you pass through all experiences of
life yourself?
When you handle a flower to smell it, you press it; then it
becomes rotten. And then you dare to
offer it to God. If you want to offer body and mind to God, why not do it now?
Why offer them when
they have become tainted and diseased?