When we speak about spirituality, we are compelled to speak of the external and internal, the exterior and interior. But really there is no exterior and interior. It is only a convention, because I do not want people to think that physically we have to go inside or some such thing. A thought, yes, but there is no going from somewhere to somewhere. The closest I can come is saying that we go from ourselves into ourselves.

In another way, we can say we are now looking outward through the senses. In spirituality, we try to go inwards with the senses, and here is the great secret: because the senses cannot help us, we abandon the senses without a second thought. It is not a conscious thing. It is like a carpenter who takes different tools for different work. You cannot say he is renouncing this tool in favour of another tool.

Therefore, when we are able to accept the need to turn inwards, this wonderful thing happens, which my Master has spoken about again and again, that the senses lose their control over us, which they have now in a very, very wrong way. This truth my Master put in a very short form. He said, “Turn from here to here and there is everything that you have to realize.”

The only need is to turn the attention of the senses from outwards inwards. If you are able to do that, in that moment spiritual life begins.

Heart to Heart Vol IV, p.157-160 Cugy, Italy, 17 September, 1989

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Therefore you have this conception of God as the ultimate, smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest—everything. And if you seek Him in the greatest, why not in the smallest? He is everywhere, why not within you? People ask me, “What is the logic of meditation? What is wrong with pooja : murti pooja (idol worship), temple pooja ?” There is nothing wrong, but it is a limitation. And if God is everywhere, it is a denial of that truth to have to go to a temple to find Him there. If He is in everything, surely He is in me as much as in that temple. Why not seek Him within me, within my self?

So the simple spiritual truth is: He who is everywhere, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, if He is not in me, I would not exist at all. So where is the logic in going out, seeking in the temples, mosques, churches, tirtha yatras (pilgrimages)? So the spiritual message is very clear: Seek within.

Principles Vol Ten, p. 156

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It is my experience, and my conviction arising out of the experience that God or the Master—both terms are synonymous for me—have no location in space and no existence in time, because the Master is not, and cannot be, bound by either space or time. It is a well-known truth that anything which has spatial dimensions must cease to exist at some point in time. This only means that anything having a spatial existence is also automatically bound by the time dimension, that is, it has a definite life period.

It is, therefore, obvious that to possess the attribute of eternity one must be non-space-bound and non-time-bound, too. One cannot conceive of such a situation with the normal, rational apparatus of the intellect. But by meditation, which teaches us to look inwards within ourselves, one is able to internally intuit at what the Master or God must be. Such a person, or such an individual, must have transcended both the space and time dimensions, because eternity is not an extension in time. It is not even infinite time, but it is an aspect of eternity. As one cannot conquer space, or transcend space, by traversing the vast physical reaches of this universe, which in any case is impossible within the lifetime of a human being, similarly eternity cannot be thought of as an infinite extension of the time dimension.

I believe that, as we exist in space, and all space is the same, the only way of transcending space is to go beyond space. Similarly, existing in time, we have to transcend time and get approach to the infinite, which we call eternity. I personally believe that this is possible only by going inwards and inwards, and yet inwards, until we become the Being with no space dimension and therefore no time dimension, too. Because, after all, time and space are mutually inter-dependent. It is for this reason that the Master cannot be located in physical space nor in temporal time but, being beyond both, having transcended both, is one having His existence in a timeless, space-less eternity. Of such a Being alone can it be said, “He neither exists nor is He non-existent!”

Principles Vol 12, p. 44-47