BEST APPROACH

There are those of us who hold that spiritual awakening is inevitable, that it is only a matter of time before each of us experiences it.  Awakening happens of itself, we say, and there is nothing we are supposed to do to aid it.

This is true insofar as the Atman in each of us is drawn to its source, the Brahman, like the needle of a compass is drawn to a magnet.  The Atman, however, has great difficulty in making this connection because the "dust," i.e. the relative world, the "particulars" of the empirical world, is so thick that the awakening can be stifled from happening.

Ramakrishna taught, by contrast, that we can facilitate the awakening, can brush away the dust, by "yearning" for God, which is to say by actively seeking God.  The combination of our longing for God and the Atman's attraction to God is, according to Ramakrishna, the best approach to take.  It assures that the awakening will occur in this lifetime rather than in a later one.