In English
Develop friendship with God
Spiritual practices like chanting, meditation, sever austerities, and devotional singing, are all subsidiary practices. The basic spiritual practice is love. Love should be the undercurrent of all these. Any one practice is enough if you have love. There are nine paths of devotion: listening, singing, contemplating on , serving His Lotus Feet, salutation, worship, servitude, friendship, and self-surrender ( , , , , , , , , and ). Friendship comes before self-surrender. So, develop friendship with God. When you are a friend of God, you are one with Him. Then, it becomes easier to reach the next stage of selfsurrender. Try hard to have friendship with God. He is the only real friend. The world is the book, time is the teacher and God is the true friend. Your worldly friends will stay with you as long as you have power and position. Nobody will talk to you when you lose these. As long as you have money in your pocket, they will say, “Let’s go to the hotel, let’s see a movie.” They will go away as soon as your pocket becomes empty. This is the nature of friendship.