Faith in God and in spiritual discipline has declined due to want of enthusiasm among the elders in these matters. It is the responsibility of all pious men to demonstrate in and through their lives that piety is not weakness but strength; that it opens up a vast spring of power and that a person with faith in God can overcome obstacles much more easily than one who has not.

I do not insist that a person should have faith in God. I refuse to call any person a nastika (an atheist). Beings exist as a result of His Will, in accordance with His Plan; so no one is beyond His Grace. Besides, every one has Love towards some one thing or other, and that Love is a spark of the Divine; every one has ultimately to base his life on some one Truth; that Truth is God. No life can be lived out in complete defiance of Truth; one has to pay heed to truth and speak the truth to some one in order to make life worth living. Now, that moment is God s moment and at that moment when he utters the truth or loves, or serves or bends, he is a theist.

So, it is not even bhakti that is essential. It is Love, truth, virtue, the eagerness to progress, to serve, to expand one s heart, to take in the whole of humanity in one s Love, to see all as Forms of the Divine Consciousness. (SSS Vol.1)