After Realization, it is only one in millions who regains normal [gross] consciousness, and he spontaneously experiences his divine state side by side with the awareness of the gross world. Such a One alone is Real, and no amount of Vedanta reading can give this experience.
Baba continued:
On the spiritual path one must have 100 percent honesty. The slightest tinge of hypocrisy leads one away from God. It is better to be an unbeliever [atheist, agnostic] than to be a hypocrite or false saint. And it is better to deny God than to defy Him!
God is nearer to you than your own breath, but at the same time, He seems so far away from you. I know by actual experience that I am God, and that you all are God. This, my Experience, is a continuous Experience without a break. You do not have this Experience because there is a veil between you and God which separates you from God and prevents you from knowing Him. And this veil of separateness is you yourself! This makes it so difficult and impossible for anyone to know God.
Only the grace of a Perfect Master can make you experience the God-state in a flash after he makes you drink the Wine of his divine love, and when you have imbibed that wine, you lose all consciousness of all your worldly attachments and gain the consciousness of God, Who is the only Reality. That state is beyond description.
Until you drink that cup of Wine of divine love, your mind plays tricks with you. Your desires fill and dirty your heart; they prevent your heart from being cleansed and you cannot see God. Once the desires are swept away, your heart becomes pure and you see God. But this needs the grace of the Perfect Master.
At this point, Professor Abdul Karim walked inside the hall and sat facing Baba in the first row.
Baba asked, "Where have you been? Have you heard what I have been explaining? Did you follow it?"
The professor replied that he had been standing outside the hall and that he had heard and understood Baba's explanations.
"It is good that you came in," Baba stated, "otherwise, you would have remained 'out' for all time."
Conversing with him, Baba quoted a few couplets from Hafiz to the effect: "When one's mind is completely annihilated, one finds oneself in All. The soul then at times plays the part of man, and at times the part of God. The state is so indescribably high that it is beyond mind, intellect and understanding. It is like the drop gulping the Ocean of Effulgence and Light! And the bliss in that 'I-Am-God state' is so infinite that to come down to the awareness of the world [gross consciousness] is an indescribable agony in itself."