When we enter the spiritual life, by our very nature we will normally follow one of Gurudev’s paths to perfection. Either we will Serve, do karma-yoga; we will Love, our path will be one of devotion; or our practice will be to Meditate; or we will try to Realise the truth through enquiry and discrimination.

In any case, no matter how different our basic paths may be, as time goes on, if we are being successful we will have a sense of the oneness of all life. Either through our intellect or through our emotions we will come to an understanding that it is all one. Indeed it may lead us to very profound experiences of the unity of all life and that we are That.

And so we all come together in that understanding. But is that exhalted understanding the purpose of the spiritual life, or is it possible that we’re missing something? Or perhaps the question is: how are we living our life? No matter how little or how much we have realised through our spiritual practices, does our life reflect what we have learned, what we have experienced? We have seen or understood the oneness of all life. Does our day-to-day life reflect that understanding?

When we are talking to someone else, do we feel that it is the Universal talking to the Universal? God talking to God? If we are serving someone else, is it God serving God? If we are having to admonish someone else, is it the Universal admonishing the Universal? In other words, are we bringing what we have seen in our spiritual practices into our day-to-day life?

If not, why not? If this isn’t our experience, if we find that in our day-to-day life we are acting much the same as we always did, it is perhaps because we haven’t understood that the whole purpose of our spiritual life, the whole purpose of our spiritual practices, the whole purpose of realising the oneness of all things is to know that we as a separate individual, as an ego, don’t exist.

Therefore, if we’re still acting the way we always acted, it means that that ego is as alive as ever, and we are missing the whole point of the spiritual life. The whole point of our spiritual practices, the whole point of realising the oneness of all things is to apply it in our day-to-day life. We are meant to work upon ourselves moment by moment, hour by hour during the day, applying what we have learned in our spiritual practices to our day-to-day life.

This is the only test of our spiritual progress. Otherwise, we will wake up after 5 or 10 or 20 years with the terrible shock that we have accomplished nothing over those years. We may have had many experiences, learned a lot, but basically we haven’t changed at all. The same arrogance, the same anger, the jealousy, the same negative qualities are still manifesting in our life.

This is one of the points that Swamiji is continuously trying to make to us. How is your life? What are you doing hour by hour, day by day? This is the test. The whole of the spiritual life is to eradicate our ego. This we must keep in mind continuously, and thesis how we must test our spiritual life.