ask him to help you?" The devotee replied, "God's will be done". He did not allow the peace of his mind to be disturbed. He then lost his wife also. But he continued to remain resigned to the Will of God and remained happy. Others said, "He has a good reputation that keeps him happy"; and they became jealous, though he had lost so much at the hands of fate.

He then happened to catch a nasty disease, abominable germs entering his body all over and rendering it ugly, painful and loathsome to look at. His body began to stink so horribly that even his best friends and nearest relations who used to flatter and obey him, began to keep themselves at a distance. But even then he retained his equanimity, resenting nothing and accepting the Will of God with undaunted fortitude and unyielding cheerfulness. This was his real test. He passed through the ordeal of accepting the Will of God without protests and retained his faith in Him under the severest and most trying circumstances. He was then hailed by others as being the lover of God, which he was.

Utter submission to the orders of the Master means renunciation of all argument or questioning. Meeting what life brings in its wake with contentment is the real test of the surrenderance, love and faith, which a disciple has in his Master. His love is true and unchanging because it does not ask anything. He faces all the good and bad vicissitudes of life with unchallengeable equanimity.

True spirituality requires the surrenderance of the ego-centered out-look and attitude. The ego-centered consciousness looks upon everything and the entire world as a possible field for its own enjoyment and appropriation. It tries to glean the meaning of everything that exists or comes within the ken of its experience from its own point of view. A thing is good or bad according to how it affects that particular ego-centered being. If it does not, in any way, affect that being or `I', it has no meaning at all. This mode of gleaning meaning from life is disastrously false and misleading. The query is vitiated by wrong assumptions from its very starting point.

A wrong perspective must give wrong results. It is not correct to look upon the one reality as being intended solely for any one manifestation of itself. It is saner to look upon each and every manifestation as being intended for the one Reality. This means that the ego-centered point of view has to be fully surrendered to appreciate and know the Truth. God does not merely exist for any one form. All forms exist for the sake of God. God is in all forms; but the significance of His being is not to be measured or understood in terms of any one form. The significance of all the forms taken collectively must be measured and understood in terms of God or Truth. They have no meaning in themselves apart from God.