So joyous am I to contact you again. My question is, how can I remember God when I have to do something like learning engineering and keep myself blissful? I feel terrible to have to learn engineering when thinking of God. At other times, I may be so engrossed with the subjects that I forget Him. If I’m not interested in the subject because I feel it to be tasteless when I think of, say, Master, I’m just not able to learn. How can I balance both rightly?
—Kailash, India
Dear Kailash,
As it happens I am in India right now, Delhi, on pilgrimage to holy Badrinath. Thank you for writing.
Your question is good and you are right, balance is needed. How to achieve that balance?
It is indeed difficult to study a difficult topic while remaining entranced in devotional bliss. Such devotional inner contact can work during manual labor, but usually not while studying or doing mental work. Therefore it might be best to accept your time of study as a different kind of training: not for devotional bliss, but for example a training of strong concentration, doing one thing at a time, with all your energy and focus. That too is a most important yogic quality to develop, for all of us.
Then set your clock to beep after each hour or two, and at these moments allow yourself a sweet dip of devotion, saying, “I love you my God!” After that resume your study.
In the morning and evening do exactly the opposite: forget all engineering, and in your sadhana concentrate only on one thing: sweet God-contact, love, bliss, Master.
If you keep your sadhana strong, there will come a time when the subtle presence of God is with you all the time, even while studying. By then you will have reached an advanced inner state. You will have become a Mt. Kailash, a sacred mountain, whose base is very grounded and practical, but whose inner peak in the sky of divine consciousness.
God bless you, in divine friendship,
Jayadev
