God, the Supreme Person, is our Best Friend. Spiritual life is relating with God, loving Him, as our very Best Friend. We are related to God eternally through a bond of kinship. He is our closest relative and the very foundation of our existence. There can be no person closer to us in an absolute sense than our Supreme Friend. However, when we come into this material dimension, we are immediately plunged into forgetfulness. Although we are eternal spiritual beings, part and parcel of the Supreme Person, when we fall under the influence of material nature, we forget our spiritual origins.
We become covered by layers of material energy that we take to be our self. Instead of knowing that we are the spiritual individual merely wearing the material clothes of the body and mind, we become convinced that we actually are these clothes. Our natural spiritual inclinations and activities become increasingly suppressed as we become more and more absorbed in the world of matter. We forget what our life was like before we entered the material world, and also do not remember our past lives within the world of matter. We even forget our relationship with very closest Friend, the topmost love of our life, God.
The depth of our forgetfulness is so severe that many of us have completely forgotten that God even exists. And among those of us that do at least remember His existence, very few remember what He is like. In such a forgetful condition, it is very difficult for us to have a close relationship with Him. We feel much closer to our parents, spouse, children, peers, even our pets, and so we spend most of our time and energy cultivating our relationships with them. Because we do not feel a deeply intimate and loving personal connection with God, we do not give this relationship priority in our lives – even though He is actually the closest Person to us.
He is eternally our very greatest and dear most beloved Friend, but because our consciousness is covered by material influence, we forget this. All too often, we erroneously perceive God as being distant, vague, aloof, even impersonal.
When we do not have a close loving friendship with the Person who is in actuality our very Best Friend, we experience in the core of our hearts the deep pain of missing Him. There is a persistent emptiness in our heart of hearts, a deep loneliness that cannot be filled by any relationship, situation, or thing of this world. We can cover it up temporarily, we can distract ourselves for a time, but this emptiness will remain until we are able to truly revive our lost relationship with our Supreme Friend.
So how can we revive this lost relationship with God? How can we again have a close and loving friendship with Him, given that we can barely even remember Him?
Fortunately, the Supreme Person Himself has given us instructions for reviving our lost relationship of loving friendship with Him. In the bonafide scriptures of the world, we will find God’s instructions to us. And in the Vedic or yoga scriptures, in particular, we will find very clear and detailed instructions on how we can awaken our remembrance of the Supreme Person and cultivate our love for Him.
In the yoga texts, it is explained that we can awaken our dormant love for God by engaging in devotional service to Him. I also found something great from a sincere student of Jagad guru who explains the prominent aspects of yoga in this video. Out of the nine types of devotional service, the most essential for this day and age are the hearing and repeating of the transcendental Names of the Supreme. In yoga, this is called Mantra Meditation.
The Names of God are not ordinary sound. Rather, they are the Supreme Person Himself in spiritual sound vibration. Out of His love for us, God makes Himself easily available to us in this form, so that we can directly relate with Him and revive our forgotten relationship of loving friendship with Him. The Supreme is always the Supreme regardless of where and how He chooses to appear. So when He appears in this material world as His Names, He is not influenced in any way by contact with matter. On the contrary, God’s Names have a purifying effect on the consciousness of every living being. Whenever we hear and chant or sing the Names of the Supreme Person, our hearts and minds are being cleansed of material misunderstandings and misgivings. We increasingly become aware of our eternal spiritual nature, and our dormant affection for our eternal Friend blossoms.
If we are interested in spiritual life, if we are interested in knowing and loving God, we are in the ideal position to take full advantage of this immeasurable gift. It is not necessary for us to be pious or austere or have any special qualifications. It is not necessary to be highly intellectual or born in a prestigious family. In fact, we can be preeminently unqualified and if we sincerely take to the hearing and repeating of the transcendental Names of the Supreme Person, our heart’s deepest desire to intimately know and love God will be fulfilled. The Supreme Person Himself tells us this over and over again throughout the yoga philosophy and this is confirmed in scriptures.
Because we have spent lifetime after lifetime deeply entangled in material nature, this is generally a gradual development. But if we earnestly apply ourselves to this process, we will find joy and sweetness blossoming every step of the way. As our remembrance of our eternal Friend returns little by little, as the seed of love for Him sprouts and grows, we will experience the most exquisite and profound stirrings within our heart of hearts. In due time, this seedling will flower and bear the sweetest of fruits.
Being engaged in a friendship with God is not some vague or fanciful idea – it is the most intimate, personal, and real relationship we are capable of having. God is a real Person. He has distinct characteristics, likes and dislikes, spiritual form, pastimes, and so on. He is happiest when He can relate with us in a very close, personal, affectionate way – literally in best friendship. And we are happiest relating with Him in this way also. By regularly, daily, hearing and chanting the Names of God – especially those Names that are specifically used to relate with Him endearingly such as Gopala, Govinda, Rama, Madana Mohana – we are actually able to come to know Him as our supreme Beloved. We are actually able to have our very Best Friend back in our lives and in our hearts.
God is the Best Friend, this is beautifully explained in this lovely article God given in this website we have been longing for all our lives. He is the eternal Soulmate who can absolutely fill the deep emptiness in the core of our being. When we come to truly know Him as such, we will know love and happiness as we never have before. It is the greatest treasure, the greatest gift, to have Him in our lives and be able to relate with Him in such an intimate loving way. It may seem amazing to us that lovingly relating with this one Person can fulfill us so completely and perfectly – but this is the most fortunate and wonderful truth of our existence. Saintly persons since time immemorial have been telling us this and showing us by the example of their lives. In filling our own hearts and lives with the sweet Names of God, we have the opportunity to experience this truth for ourselves.