When we spend time with God during our Sadhana, what are we supposed to be doing?
There is a story.
Once a girl, she pleaded with a Saint to come to her house to pray for her father, who was not well. She told the Saint that her father was so ill that he could not even move. The Saint kindly accepted her request. So he came to the house, and he found that the old man was laying in his bed with his head on two pillows and there was a chair in his room. The Saint assumed that chair had been placed for him. So when he entered, he said, “Oh! So I guess you were expecting me”. The father asked him, ”Who are you?” The Saint introduced himself and the father of the girl said, “Please close the door behind you.” The Saint was a bit surprised, but he did so anyway.
The father began to confide in the Saint and he said, “I've never even told this to my daughter, but I'm telling you. That, you know, I used to go to the temple. I used to hear the priests chant. But I never felt any connection. It all went over my head. I never felt any connection whatsoever. It wasn't until a few years ago when my friend told me that reciting verses isn't the way to gratify God. No, he told me to place a chair in front of me and imagine that God is sitting in the chair and remember and talk to him just as I'm talking to you right now.”
So the man said, “That's what I started doing. I placed a chair in my room. This is the chair, and I imagine that God is sitting in the chair in front of me, and I talk to him. And I spent hours talking to him. This is what I do. And I felt and experienced such a transformation from within. I felt such affinity and affection and closeness with God as a result of remembering him in front of me and talking to him, just talking to him.” So the Saint then bid farewell, he placed his hand on the head of the old man, and he left.
A couple of days later, the daughter called the Saint and told him that her father had passed away. The Saint asked her, “Did you see anything unusual, unusually different, about your father? Was he okay when he passed on?” She said, “Yes, he had a very peaceful and a very serene look. In fact, when I was going to work, he called me and he kissed my forehead that morning. And when I came, he had closed his eyes. He was gone, but there was one thing that I noticed, which is rather unusual. I noticed that when I came home, his head was in the chair as if his head was in the lap of God, in the lap of God. That's what I saw.” And the Saint's eyes welled up in tears and he thought, “How I wish that when I depart from this world that is exactly what I do, that my head is in the lap of God, in the lap of God.”
