(1) Spark of Divinity
We may not be God, but we are of God even as a little drop of water is of the ocean. Imagine it torn away from the ocean and flung millions of miles away. It becomes helpless, torn from its surroundings and cannot feel the might and majesty of the ocean. But if some one could point out to it that it is the ocean, its faith would revive, it would dance with joy and the whole of the might and majesty of the ocean would be reflected in it.
(2) Man Is the Image of God
Man alone is made in the image of God. That some of us do not recognize that status of ours, makes no difference, except that we do not get the benefit of the status, even as a lion brought up in the company of sheep, may not know his own status and therefore, does not receive its benefits; but it belongs to him, nevertheless, and the moment he realizes it, he begins to exercise his dominion over the sheep. But no sheep masquerading as a lion can ever attain the leonine status. And to prove the proposition, that man is made in the image of God, it is surely un necessary to show that all men admittedly exhibit that image in their own person. It is enough to show that one man at least has done so. And will it be denied that the great religious teachers of mankind have exhibited the image of God in their persons?
(3) Life Is a Mere Bubble
Our existence as embodied beings is purely momentary; what are a hundred years in Eternity? But if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity. To feel that we are something, is to set up a barrier between God and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something is to become one with God. A drop in the ocean partakes of the greatness of its parent, although it is unconscious of it. But it is dried up as soon as it enters upon an existence independent of the ocean. We do not exaggerate when we say that life is a bubble.
(4) Life and Death
It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. In fact, tribulation and death, seem to me to present a phase far richer than happiness or life. What is life worth without trials and tribulations, which are the salt of life? ... I want you all to treasure death and suffering more than life and to appreciate their cleansing and purifying character.
The body must suffer for its ill-deeds. We die to live once more, even as we live to die at last. Life, therefore, is not an occasion for joy, nor is death an occasion for sorrow. But there is one thing needful. We must ascertain our duty in life and continue to discharge it till we die.
Death is at any time blessed, but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause, i.e. Truth. Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. He helps us against ourselves. He ever gives us new chances, new hopes. He is like a sleep, a sweet restorer. Yet it is customary to mourn when a friend dies. The custom has no operation when the death is that of a martyr.
(5) Freedom of Choice
Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man being a free agent, knows these distinctions and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute but when he follows his baser nature, can show himself lower than the brute.
But this free-will we enjoy is less than that of a passenger on a crowded deck... Man is the maker of his own destiny in the sense that he has freedom of choice as to the manner in which he uses his freedom. But he is no controller of results. The moment he thinks he is, he comes to grief.
It is man's special privilege and pride to be gifted with the faculties of head and heart both, that he is a thinking no less than a feeling animal, as the very derivation of the word shows. ... In man reason quickens and guides the feeling. In brute the soul lies dormant. To awaken the heart is to awaken the dormant soul, to awaken reason is to inculcate discrimination between good and evil.
(6) Man's Primary Duty
It is the duty of every human being to look carefully within and see himself as he is and spare no pains to improve himself in body, mind and soul. He should realize the mischief wrought by injustice, wickedness, vanity and the like and do his best to fight them.
Man's estate is one of probation. During that period he is played upon by evil forces as well as good. He is ever prey to temptations. He has to prove his manliness by resisting and fighting temptations. He is no warrior who fights outside foes of his imagination and is powerless to lift his little finger against innumerable foes within or what is worse, mistakes them for friends.
It is not man's duty to develop all his faculties to perfection; his duty is to develop all his Godward faculties to perfection and to suppress completely those of contrary tendencies.
It is inherent in man, imperfect though he is, ceaselessly to strive after perfection. In the attempt he falls into reverie. And just as a child tries to stand, falls down again and again and ultimately learns how to walk, even so, man, with all his intelligence, is a mere infant as compared to the infinite and ageless God.
The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
The Divine
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PART I: INTELLECTUAL SADHANA
World
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3. World
(1) The World Is One Body
God has so ordered this world that no one can keep his goodness or badness exclusively to himself. The whole world is like the human body with its various members. Pain in one member is felt in the whole body. Rot in one part must inevitably poison the whole system. Let us, therefore, cease to think in terms of the whole country. We must put faith in God and be careful for nothing. We hold our destiny in our own hands and no one but ourselves can make or mar it.
(2) Universe - A Family of Nations
Nations cohere because there is mutual regard among the individuals composing them. Some day we must extend the nation law to the universe, even as we have extended the family law to form nations - a larger family. God has ordained that India should be such a nation.
Indeed, Hinduism teaches us to regard the whole humanity as one indivisible undivided family.
(3) The Problem of Evil
Why is there evil in the world, is a difficult question to answer. I can only give what I may call a villager's answer. If there is good, there must also be evil, just as where there is light there is also darkness. But it is true only so far as we human mortals are concerned. Before God there is nothing good, nothing evil. We may talk of His dispensation in human terms, but our language is not God's.
I cannot account for the existence of evil by any rational method. To want to do so is to be coequal with God. I am therefore, humble enough to recognize evil as such. And I call God long suffering and patient, precisely because He permits evil in the world. I know that there is no evil in Him and yet if there is evil, He is the author of it and yet untouched by it.
(4) Pair of Opposite Forces
The distinction between good and evil thoughts is not unimportant. Nor do these thoughts come haphazard. They follow some law, which the scriptures have tried to enunciate. There are certain problems in mathematics, for the solution of which some workable assumptions have to be made. They help the solution of the problem. But they are purely imaginary, and have no other practical use. Similarly, psychologists have proceeded upon the assumption that a pair of opposite forces is warring against each other in the universe, of which one is divine and the other is devilish. The distinction is made by all the scriptures of the world. I say this distinction is imaginary. God is one, without a second. He alone is. He is indefinable. In reality there is no war between God and Satan.
(5) God's Hand Behind Good and Evil
In strictly scientific sense, God is at the bottom of both good and evil. He directs the assassin's dagger no less than the surgeon's knife. But for all that, good and evil are, for human purposes, from each other, distinct and incompatible, being symbolical of Light and Darkness, God and Satan... respectively.
God's hand is behind good, but in God's hand it is not mere good. His hand is behind evil also but there it is no longer evil. 'Good' and 'Evil' is our own imperfect language. God is above both good and evil.
It is we who entertain thoughts, and it is we ourselves who repulse them. We have, thus, to strive against ourselves. The scriptures have, therefore, said that there is duel in the world. This duel is imaginary, not real. We can, however, sustain ourselves in the world by assuming the existence of the imaginary duel to be real.
(6) Blessings of Calamity
It is the 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 that he must henceforth behave better. His sins have left him hopelessly weak, and in his weakness he cried out to God for help. Thus millions of human beings used their personal calamities for self-improvement. Nations too have been known to invoke the assistance of God when calamities have overtaken them. They have abased themselves before God and appointed days of humiliation, prayer and purification.
Truth
(1) What Is Truth?
What is Truth ? Adifficult question, but Ihave solved it for myself, by saying that it is what the Voice within tells you. How then, you ask, different people think of different and contrary truths?
It is because we have at the present moment everybody claiming the right of conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever, there is so much untruth being delivered in a bewildered world. All that I can, in true humility, present to you is that Truth is not to be found by anybody, who has not got an abundant sense of humility. If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth, you must reduce yourself to a zero.
Truth is within ourselves. There is an inmost centre in us all, where Truth abides in fullness. Every wrong-doer knows within himself that he is doing wrong, for untruth cannot be mistaken for Truth. . . . Truth and Righteousness must for ever remain the Law in God's world.
The Law of Truth is merely understood to mean that we must speak the Truth. But we understand the word in a much wider sense. There should be Truth in thought, Truth in speech, and Truth in action.
(2) Truth Is the Source of Character
Character is based on virtuous action, and virtuous action is grounded on Truth. Truth, then, is the source and foundation of all things that are good and great. Hence fearless and unflinching pursuit of the ideal of Truth and Righteousness is the key of true health as of all else.
(3) How to Realize It?
But how is one to realize Truth, which may be likened to the Philosopher's Stone or the Cow of Plenty? By single-minded devotion (Abhyasa) and indifference to every other interest (Vairagya).
Silence is a great help to a seeker after Truth like myself. In the attitude of silence, the soul finds the path in clearer light and what is elusive and deceptive, resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is long arduous quest after Truth, and the Soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height.
Experience has taught me that silence is a part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of Truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or to modify Truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech. He will measure every word.
(4) Need of Fearless Vigilance
There is so much superstition and hypocrisy around, that one is afraid even to do the right thing. But if one gives way to fear, even Truth will have to be suppressed. The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right.... The danger is that when we are surrounded by falsehood on all sides, we might be caught in it and begin to deceive ourselves. We should be careful not to make a mistake, out of our laziness and ignorance. Constant vigilance under all circumstances is essential.
(5) Its Supreme Value
How beautiful it would be if all of us young and old, men and women, devoted ourselves wholly to Truth in all that we might do, in our waking hours, whether working, eating, drinking or playing, till pure dreamless sleep claimed us for her own. God as Truth has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to everyone of us!
Therefore, the pursuit of Truth is true Bhakti. It is the path that leads to God. There is no place in it for cowardice, no place for defeat. It is the talisman by which death itself becomes the portal to Life Eternal.
Reverence
(1) Truth and Love
Love and Truth are the faces of the same coin, and both very difficult to practise, and the only things worth living for. A person cannot be true, if he does not love all God's creatures. Truth and Love are therefore the complete sacrifice.
Without Truth there is no Love. Without Truth it may be affection, as for one's country, to the injury of others; or infatuation as of a young man for a girl. . . . Love transcends all animality and is never partial.
True Love is boundless like the ocean and swelling within one, spreads itself out and crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world.
(2) Love Unites
Scientists tell us that without the presence of the cohesive force amongst atoms that comprise the globe of ours, it would crumble to pieces and we would cease to exist; and even as there is a cohesive force in the blind matter, so must there be in all things animate and the name for that cohesive force among animate beings is Love. We notice it between father and son, between brother and sister, friend and friend. But we have to learn to use that force among all that lives and in the use of it consists our knowledge of God.
(3) Love is Life
If Love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. Life is a perpetual triumph over the grave. If there is fundamental distinction between man and beast, it is the former's progressive recognition of the Law and its application in practice to his own personal life. All the saints of the world, ancient and modern, were each according to his light and capacity, a living illustration of that supreme Law of our being. That the brute in us seems so often to gain easy triumph, is true enough. How should it be otherwise with a Law which is as high as Truth itself? When the practice of the Law becomes universal, God will reign on earth as He does in Heaven. ... I need not be re minded that earth and heaven are within us. We know the earth, we are strangers to heaven within us.
It is my firm belief that it is Love that sustains the earth. There only is life where there is Love. Life without Love is death. Love is the reverse of the coin of which the obverse is Truth.
Hatred ever kills; Love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by Love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred, proves a burden in reality, for it increases hatred. The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote Love.
(4) The Law of Love
The Law of Love, call it attraction, affinity, cohesion if you like, governs the world. The universe continues in spite of destruction incessantly going on. Truth triumphs over untruth. Love conquers hatred. God eternally triumphs over Satan.
We will have ample cause to congratulate ourselves, if we learn to substitute the Law of Love in society for that of the jungle and instead of harbouring ill will and enmity in our bosoms against those whom we regard as our enemies, we learn to love them, as actual and potential friends.
(5) The Religion of Ahimsa
The world is full of Himsa, and Nature does appear to be "red in tooth and claw". But if we bear in mind that the man is higher than the brute, then is man superior to Nature. If man has a divine mission to fulfill, a mission that becomes him, it is that of Ahimsa.
I am not a visionary. I claim to be a practical idealist. The religion of non-violence is not meant merely for Rishis and saints. It is meant for the common people as well. Non-violence is the law of our species, as violence is the law of the brute. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to strengthen the spirit.
Man as animal is violent, but as a Spirit is nonviolent. The moment he awakes to the Spirit within, he cannot remain violent. Either he progresses towards Ahimsa or rushes towards his doom. That is why, the Prophets and the Avatars have taught the lesson of truth, harmony, brotherhood, justice etc. all attributes of Ahimsa.
So let no one doubt that the salvation of all the exploited peoples of the earth and therefore of the world, lies in the strictest reliance on the coin on whose one face is written Truth and on the other Non-violence in large letters. Sixty years of experience has taught me no other method.