Page 80 - Showers of Divine Grace

SHOWERS OF DIVINE GRACE
and proceed on with the same feeling, the course would be easier. The result that will follow in due course would be, that God himself shall become the lover and we the beloved. This is really the fourth stage of meditation. But if we think at this stage that we have realised the Goal, it is a blunder. Much remains ahead still. But that being beyond words is related with practical experience only. By all this I mean to emphasize the things which are most useful for further spiritual progress.
But unfortunately the standard of final attainment, nay, perfection even, has so much gone down and bhakti has become such a cheap affair that they have altogether lost their real value. Even a peculiar motion of the eye is taken as bhakti and the experience of its effect as a high attainment, which, as I understand, is sufficient to make one a present- day guru. The times have changed for the worse, making us all the more so. Degeneration has set in, diverting the minds of people from the right course. When they got completely tarnished with it, the idea of degradation began to haunt their minds. But in their state of degradation they had accepted wrong as right, and they went on and on with it, thinking it
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