Selfless Service a Source of Joy
The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence. The secret of happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation is life. Indulgence is death. Therefore everyone has a right and should desire to live 125 years while performing service without an eye on result. Such life must be wholly and solely dedicated to service. Renunciation made for the sake of service is an ineffable joy, of which none can deprive one, because that nectar springs from within and sustains life. In this there can be no room for worry or impatience. Without this joy, long life is impossible and would not be worth-while even if possible.
The soul is omnipresent; why should she care to be confined within the cage-like body, or do evil and even kill for the sake of the cage ? We thus arrive at the ideal of total renunciation and learn to use the body for the purpose of service, so long as it exists, so much so, that service and not bread becomes with us, the staff of life. We eat and drink, sleep and awake, for service alone. Such an attitude of mind brings us real happiness and beatific vision in the fullness of time.
Service Meant for Self-realization
I am here to serve no one else but myself, to find my own self-realization through the service of these village folk. Man's ultimate aim is the realization of God, and all his activities - social, political, religious - have to be guided by the ultimate aim of the vision of God. The immediate service of human beings becomes a necessary part of the endeavour, simply because the only way to find God is to see Him in His creation and be one with it. This can only be done through one's country. I am part and parcel of the whole, and I cannot find Him apart from the rest of humanity. My countrymen are my nearest neighbours. They have become so helpless, so resourceless, so inert that I must concentrate on serving them. If I could persuade myself that I should find Him in a Himalayan cave, I would proceed there immediately. But I know that I cannot find Him apart from humanity.
Service Leads to Salvation
I am striving for the Kingdom of Heaven, which is spiritual deliverance. For me the road to salvation lies through incessant toil in the service of my country and my humanity. I want to identify myself with everything that lives. In the language of the Gita, I want to live at peace with both friend and foe. My patriotism is for me a stage on my journey to the land of Eternal Freedom and Peace. Thus it will be seen that for me there is no politics devoid of religion. They subserve religion. Politics bereft of religion is a death-trap because they kill the Soul.
Service Should Be Constant
A life of service must be one of humility. He, who could sacrifice his life for others, has hardly time to reserve for himself a place in the sun. Inertia must not be mistaken for humility, as it has been in Hinduism. True humility means most strenuous and constant endeavour, entirely directed towards the service of humanity. God is continuously in action without resting for a single moment. If we should serve Him or become one with Him, our activity must be as unwearied as His. There may be momentary rest in store for the drop which is separated from the ocean, but not for the drop in the ocean, which knows no rest. The same is the case with ourselves. As soon as we become one with the ocean in the shape of God, there is no more rest for us, nor indeed do we need rest any, longer. Our very sleep is action. For we sleep with the thought of God in our hearts. This restlessness constitutes true rest. This never-ceasing agitation holds the key to peace ineffable. This supreme state of total surrender is difficult to describe, but not beyond the bounds of human experience. It has been attained by many dedicated souls, and may be attained by ourselves as well.
Disbelief, A Disease
It is the fashion, nowadays, to dismiss God from life altogether and insist on the possibility of reaching the highest kind of life, without the necessity of a living faith in a living God. I must confess my inability to drive the truth of the law home to those who have no faith in and no need for, a power infinitely higher than themselves. My own experience has led me to the knowledge that fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a living Law, in obedience to which the whole universe moves. A man without that faith is like a drop thrown out of the ocean which is bound to perish. Every drop in the ocean shares its majesty, and has the honour of giving us the ozone of life.
It is easy enough to say, "I do not believe in God" for God permits all things to be said of Him with impunity. He looks at our acts. And any breach of His Law brings with it not its vindictive but its purifying, compelling punishment. God's existence cannot be, does not need to be proved. God is. If He is not felt, so much the worse for us. The absence of feeling is a disease which we shall someday throw off, nolens volens.
Need of a Living Faith
No search is possible without some working assumptions. If we grant nothing we find nothing. Ever since its commencement, the world, the wise and foolish included, has proceeded on the assumption that, if we are, God is, and that, if God is not, we are not. And since belief in God, is co-existent with the human-kind, existence of God is treated as a fact more definite than the fact that the sun is. This living faith has solved the largest number of puzzles of life. It has alleviated our misery. It sustains us in life, it is our solace in death.
Testimony of Saints
True faith is appropriation of the reasoned experience of people whom we believe to have lived a life purified by prayer and penance. Belief, therefore, in Prophets and Incarnations who have lived in remote ages, is not an idle superstition but a satisfaction of an inmost spiritual want.
They say that anybody following the path they have trodden, can realize God. The fact is, we do not want to follow the path leading to realization and we won't take the testimony of eye-witnesses about the one thing that really matters.
Faith and Reason
There are subjects where reason cannot take us far and we have to accept things on faith. Faith, then, does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the perview of reason.
Faith only begins where reason stops. But there are very few actions in the world for which reasonable justification cannot be found.
Experience has humbled me enough to let me realize the specific limitations of reason. Just as matter misplaced becomes dirt, reason misused becomes lunacy. If we but render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's all would be well.
Limitations of Intellect
There is something infinitely higher than intellect that rules us as even the sceptics. Their scepticism and philosophy do not help them in the critical period of their lives. They need something better, something outside them. And so if someone puts a conundrum before me, I say to him: "You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer unless you reduce yourself to a cipher. You must be humble enough to see that in spite of your greatness and gigantic intellect you are but a speck in the universe. A merely intellectual conception of things of life is not enough. It is the spiritual conception which eludes the intellect, and which alone can give one satisfaction. Even moneyed men have critical periods in their lives. Though they are surrounded by everything that money can buy and affection can give, they find at certain moments in their lives utterly distracted. It is in these moments that we have a glimpse of God, a vision of Him who is guiding everyone of our steps.
Intellect takes along, in the battle of life, to a certain extent, but at the crucial moment fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and our human reason is beaten down to the ground, that faith shines the brightest and comes to our rescue. It is such faith that our youth requires and this comes when one has shed all pride of intellect and surrendered oneself entirely to His will.
Have Childlike Faith
I would have brushed aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it but from their lives you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas, we, in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
I claim to be a man of faith and prayer and even if I were to be cut to pieces, I trust God would give me the strength not to deny Him, but to assert that He is. ... I am surer of His existence than of the fact that you and I are sitting in this room. Then I can also testify that I may live without air and water but not without Him. You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my faith in God, and I am dead. You may call this a superstition, but I confess it is a superstition that I hug, even as I used to hug the name of Rama in my childhood when there was any cause of danger or alarm.
Power of Living Faith
We want the steady light, the infallible light of religious Faith; not Faith which merely appeals to the intelligence but a Faith which is indelibly inscribed on the heart. First we want to realize our religious consciousness, and immediately we have done that, the whole department of life is open to us; and it should then be a sacred privilege of all, so that when young men grow to manhood they may do so properly equipped to battle with life.
It is Faith that steers us through stormy seas; Faith that moves mountains, and Faith that jumps across the ocean. That Faith is nothing but a living and wide-awake consciousness of God within. He who has achieved that Faith, wants nothing. Bodily diseased, he is spiritually healthy; physically poor, he rolls in spiritual riches.
How to Acquire Faith?
But Faith cannot be acquired by force of intellect. It comes but slowly after deep meditation and continuous practice. We pray, sing hymns, read books, seek the association of men of God, and perform the spinning sacrifice in order to attain that Faith.
Nature of Prayer
The Divine Mind is unchangeable, but that Divinity is in everyone and everything - animate and inanimate. The meaning of prayer is that I want to invoke that Divinity in me. ... I beg it of myself, of my Higher Self, the Real Self, with which I have not yet achieved complete identification. You may, therefore, describe it as a continual longing to lose myself in the Divinity which comprises all.
Prayer really is complete meditation and melting into the Higher Self, though one occasionally does lapse into imploration like that of a child to his father. I would not call it lapse. It is more in the fitness of things to say that I pray to God who exists somewhere in the clouds and the more distant He is, the greater is my longing for Him and I find myself in His presence in thought. And thought, you know, has a greater velocity than light. Therefore, the distance between me and Him though so incalculably great, is obliterated. He is so far and yet so near.
Source of Peace and Light
There is an eternal struggle raging in man's breast between the powers of Darkness and Light, and he who has the sheet-anchor of prayer to rely upon, will not be a victim to powers of Darkness. The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world and the man who goes about the affairs of world without a prayerful heart will be miserable and will also make the world miserable.
It is a universal experience that every calamity brings a sensible man down on his knees. He thinks that it is God's answer to his sins and he must henceforth behave better. His sins have left him hopelessly weak and in his weakness he cries out God for help. Thus millions of human beings used their personal calamities for self-improvement.
Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness and peace and repose in our daily acts.
The Essence and Power of Prayer
He who hungers for the awakening of the Divine in him, must fall back on prayer. . . . But it is not a repetition of an empty formula. ... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart. It must be in clear response to the spirit which hungers for it. And even as a hungry man relishes a hearty meal, a hungry Soul will relish a heartfelt prayer. And I am giving you a bit of my experience and that of my companions when I say that he who has experienced the magic of prayer, may do without food for days together but not a single moment without prayer. For without prayer there is no peace.
Prayer is no flight of eloquence. It is no lip- homage. It springs from the heart. If, therefore, we achieve that purity of the heart, when it is emptied of all but love, if we keep all the chords in proper tune, they "trembling pass in music out of sight". Prayer needs no speech. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with utmost humility.
Our prayer is a heart-search. It is a reminder to ourselves that we are helpless without His support. No effort is complete without prayer, without a definite recognition that the best human endeavour is of no effect if it has not God's blessings behind it. Prayer is a call to humility. It is a call to self-purification.
Patience Necessary for Success
Real prayer is an absolute shield and protection against . . . evils. Success does not always attend the very first effort at such a living prayer. We have to strive against ourselves, we have to believe in spite of ourselves, because months are as our years. We have, therefore, to cultivate illimitable patience if we will realize the efficacy of prayer. There will be darkness, disappointment and even worse; but we must have courage enough to battle against all these and not succumb to cowardice. There is no such thing as retreat for a man of prayer.
It may take time for the recitation to come from the heart, even as a seed sown has to be nurtured and bears fruit only in due season. If the desire to have God within us is there, progress, however slow, is bound to be. Man cannot be transformed from bad to good, overnight. God does not exercise magic. He too is within His own Law. His Law, however, is different from the law of the State. There may be mistakes in the latter but God cannot err. If He were to go beyond the limits of His Law, the world would be lost. He is changeless, unchanging, unequalled, the same yesterday, today and forever. His Law is written on the tablets of their hearts. They could become changed men and women, only if they had the desire of reform and if they were prepared for ceaseless endeavour.
Period of Prayer
There can be no fixed rule laid down as to the time these devotional acts should take place. It depends upon individual temperaments. There are precious moments in one's daily life. The exercises are intended to sober and humble us and enable us to realize that nothing happens without His will and that we are but "clay in the hands of the Potter". These are moments when one reviews one's immediate past, confesses one's weaknesses, asks for forgiveness and strength to be and to do better. One minute may be enough for some, twenty-four hours would be too little for others. For those who are filled with the presence of God in them, to labour is to pray. The life is one continuous prayer or act of worship. For those who act only to sin, to indulge themselves and to live for self, no time is too much. If they had patience and faith and the will to be pure, they would pray till they feel the definite purifying presence of God within them. For us ordinary mortals there must be a middle path between these two extremes. We are not so exalted as to be able to say that all our acts are a dedication, nor perhaps are we so far gone, as to living purely for self. Hence have all religions set apart times for general devotion. Begin and Close the Day with Prayer. I believe that prayer is the very soul and essence of religion and therefore prayer must be the very core of the life of man. . .
Begin, therefore, your day with prayer and make it so soulful that it may remain with you until evening. Close the day with prayer so that you may have a peaceful night free from dreams and nightmares. Do not worry about the forms. Let it be any form; it should be such as can put us in communion with the Divine. Only let not the spirit wander while the words of prayer run on out of your mouth.