Will you speak about realization of God?

Now what is God realization? God realization, the kind of God realization that dissolves this world of appearances is the realization that there is no god, no presence, no power, no life, out here separate and apart from me. God realization is the realization that God is the very identity and life and substance of individual being, my being. And we have not fully realized God as long as we have a god out here some place, where there is no such god. God is the very essence of my being, and God realization comes in its fullness when we know that there is no separation between God and me, for we are one. I know no life divided. I know no life separate and apart from the one life. When we have that absolute conviction, that absolute certainty that there can be nothing except God at the center of my being, well, what is that? It’s the very I that I am. In that realization the whole earth of error and discord melts and dissolves before that very Presence. Self-completeness is. And that is the truth, that you and I are self-complete because God is our individuality, God is our identity.

At first we don’t know that, at first we are just human beings. And a human being is a state of self-deception. A human being does not know his relationship to the divinity within him. That takes discipline to discover. The discipline of being willing to sit down and meditate, sit down and ask Within that every barrier and every obstacle to the realization of that divinity that is within be dissolved in the light of the spirit. It takes a surrender. We sit down with a state of unknowingness, realizing that as a human being, separate and apart from the source of life, I am nothing and I know nothing. But, there is that within me which knows all things and in my realization of that, I am self-complete. But that self-completeness is true of everybody. Everybody in this world, all the people out here on the street, all the people all over the world who are suffering, they’re already self-complete. Why aren’t they experiencing it? It’s because they have not realized it. They have not known that it is true, and then they have not had the discipline, taken the time to sit down, to give up their desires, and their hopes and their fears, and trust this infinite invisible. It takes discipline to do that. You don’t do it in a second.

Don’t be discouraged if right now you find it hard. I don’t know anybody on the spiritual path who hasn’t found it hard. And I think I have news for you. It gets harder, it really does. Oh, but it’s so beautiful and it’s so glorious. Just the same as some of the things that I see people doing on television such as playing football. To me that looks like pretty awfully hard work, but I think they probably enjoy it or why would they do it otherwise. Well, the spiritual path is much more wonderful, but it’s hard. Because we have to surrender, we have to surrender this personal sense of self. But you see it’s paradoxical, because I don’t know how you can surrender your hopes and your desires as long as you think you need something. But when you remember that you’re self-complete and that you don’t need anything out here, then it’s easy to give up your desires. But as you work with it, somehow it works together and you come to a realization that it really is true. I don’t have to cater to this little personal sense of self. Why, it doesn’t even matter whether it gets any food or not, for I am already fed, I am already clothed with the garments of righteousness, so what difference does it make what I wear or what I have out here. The difference is that I know that within me is the fullness of life.

Well, some of us have been working with this for years and years, and we’ve come to some degree of awareness of it. And there are moments when we really know and we are totally there. What do I mean by there? We are in that consciousness of absolute self-completeness and fulfillment. And then there may be other times when the fears, the universal fears and suggestions of the world come in and we fall for them, momentarily. But then again quickly we pick ourselves up and remember the wholeness and abundance of spiritual good, not materiality, but spiritual wholeness, and the abundance of all spiritual good, are already embodied within me. That’s the discipline of the spiritual path.