Progress in most cases is very gradual and anything very gradual will be difficult to notice, say, like the slow movement of the hand of a clock of huge circumference. Even when we study a language as infants, it is very difficult for us to observe our progress, although it is all the while taking place. The Holy Mother compares the progress of a spiritual aspirant to a man asleep who is being carried on a stretcher. He is not aware of the progress he is making, but only finds himself at the destination when he wakes up. Though unaware of it, he was all the while progressing, provided he had really been taken on the stretcher.

Our outlook in respect of spiritual life must be entirely different from that which we bring to bear on our worldly enterprises. In worldly matters our outlook is quantitative, and measurement is our technique to ascertain progress or success. But until we have given up this idea of calculation we have not entered the realm of spiritual value. A spiritual aspirant should be one ‘committed’. He has been compared to an angler who casts his line with the hook and bait, knowing full well that some fish will swallow it, however long it might take. Sri Ramakrishna compares him to a hereditary cultivator as contrasted with a cultivator who takes to agriculture as a business. As soon as there is a drought or fall in the price of grains, the latter gives up the work and takes to some other occupation. But not so the hereditary cultivator.

The genuine spiritual aspirant considers spiritual practice as the only thing worth doing and carries on without making a profit-and-loss account from time to time, firmly established in the hope that it is bound to fructify some time or other. As Sri Sarada Devi said, every genuine spiritual aspirant is making progress whether he knows it or not, like the sleeping man who is carried on a stretcher.

We can, however feel reassured in our Sadhana if we find our faith and aspiration getting generally stronger and stronger. There will be periods of depression and dryness when the thin flame of aspiration seems to get very dim. But in every genuine aspirant these are passing phases, when he will have to wait patiently for the mood to move away like a gust of wind or a passing cloud. If our longing for God is becoming more and more insistent and absorbing, we are on the safe track and are going forward. More and more peace, purity and strength will become manifest in us.