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Paramahamsa Omkarananda Saraswati

 

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Life and Its Grand Fulfilment

An Analysis of the Dilemma of Life

Bewildered by contradictions in life, and speaking in contradictions, sometimes the critical and cynical intelligence thinks that God perhaps made a mistake in creating us in His own Image, a mistake which is, like His other mistakes, an act of His unerring and all-seeing Wisdom. If He did not do so, we would not hunger for Him, and there would be no need for a philosophy of life, the Master, the Scripture, the spiritual progress. If He did not mean us to have dominion over everything, we could not attempt it, nor resist attempting it.

In the scheme of creation, we are strange creatures. The Immortal and the mortal dwell together in us. We have a surprising strength and happiness when we are conscious of the Immortal, and we feel weak and helpless when our intelligence is wholly absorbed in the mortal. Our reason tends to deny the Immortal, yet our hearts secretly long for it.

We are full of contradictions: this is our weakness, yet our glory. It is at once a challenge and an urge to accomplishment. In it lies the circumstance of our manhood and the possibility of our Godhood.

We do not want God, but long for happiness; but, we cannot have happiness unless we have God. Truth, we do not want, but desire peace, and peace without Truth, we can never have. The Eternal, we dismiss as a subject for speculation, and get busy with perfecting everything about us, but perfection lies only in the Eternal.

We are caught up in strange, yet delightful dilemmas. That which we deny most vehemently, turns out to be the most real. We denounce the Invisible, with the strength which is, on a deeper analysis, found to be derived from the Invisible within ourselves. We dislike God, yet use Him in ourselves, love Him in the wife, kiss Him in the child, serve Him in the friend, and admire Him in the nature. We hate religion, yet express it through our good works, in our love for the wife, the tenderness for the child, the services for the friend, in the admiration for nature.

God is fully everywhere, and shows Himself up even in the blows we administer Him. We are like the troubled dog before the huge mirror; not knowing that the other dog in the mirror is its own reflection, itself, it barks at it, and finds the other dog returning the bark. Tired and exhausted, it turns back, discovers there is no other dog besides itself, and is happy. God is that which we do not want, but without which we cannot subsist. He is as much in our wanting Him, as in our not wanting Him. He is as much in our denials of Him, as in our acceptance of Him. He is as much all of Himself in Himself, as He is all of Himself in ourselves. The Truth of His unconditioned Being renders us ridiculous. He is that which we oppose, also all that with which we oppose Him, and what is more, He is Himself the opposer. Tired, defeated, depressed, we slip into Him, become Himself, and find all is good.

Your Essential Nature and the Fundamental
Problem of Life

God is all that is highest, strongest, best, wonderful, in yourself. He is your real Being, Self, the Life of your life, the Light of your existence. He is your essence, treasure, intelligence, joy. Why run away from yourself? Face yourself. You are a container of endless Consciousness of all kinds of powers and possibilities. Unfold that higher Consciousness. See yourself. Think for yourself. Understand and know yourself.

God is the supreme Reason, the infinite creative Intelligence. Nothing in life is so rational in nature as God. You cannot escape Him; you cannot run away from Him. You cannot live without Him. Can the sun subsist without light? Can the air exist without space? Grow more and more conscious of the Light without which you cease to be, and discover fully the infinite Ground of Being without which you have no subsistence. What is this Consciousness within you, from which your intelligence rises, your love emerges, your qualities, characteristics, attributes, have their source?

Face yourself. Say no more that you need no God, no Reality, no infinite Consciousness. Mistake not your fleeting thought for yourself, your passing experience for yourself, your changing circumstance for yourself.

You are always more and other than all that belongs to you and all that is not yourself. Your wishes and aspirations change, your nature is transformed, your conditions are altered. All is subject to change, but not your real Self, yourself.

Know this God in the heart of your life. Then, you shall fully know your mind, your world, and all else. Then, you shall find real and eternal Life, Peace, Power, Strength, Joy, Perfection.

What is the Solution to the Problem of Life?

Our life is a problem, with God as the only solution. Not economics, not politics, not education, not sociology, not ethics, not science, not psychology, not any of these by themselves, can resolve the problem of life. They are purely instruments of particular ends that man strives for at lower stages of development.

Man is a rational being, whose reason shall not stop asking questions until it arrives at that which is the fulfilment of reason, - God. Man is a happiness loving being, who shall not stop his quest until he finds a happiness that is imperishable and unconditioned, - God. Conclusively, then, the answer to the problem of life is God. The solution to the problem of life lies in making the limited, troubled love in the human heart universal, cosmic, unlimited, unconditioned, divine Love, - God.

Man, Science, and the Meaning of Life

Deceived by the spectacular advancement of scientific knowledge, modern mind in all countries and continents, has not cared to understand the fundamental meaning of life. It has sought its satisfaction in a sensational floating upon the apparently attractive scum of existence.

Such has been the spirit in which science has taken its marvellous strides in progress, that it has nothing in its constitution to drive it towards a grasp of the deep and significant changes that man undergoes beneath his scalp, towards understanding the potentialities of man as a mind, as a heart, as a spirit, as a creative entity, towards directing his aspirations, towards aiding the blossoming of the noblest forces that lie buried and latent in his bosom.

Life is a Challenge and a Circumstance for Fulfilment

Life is a wonderful challenge and a great circumstance for the expression of the all-illuminating Love, the all-transforming Wisdom, the Heaven-making Delight, and the all-conquering Power enshrined in the inner recesses of our consciousness.

Life is granted us not for rejecting, or negating it, but for enriching it by touching that which is beyond it. Life is entrusted to us, not for renunciation, but for fulfilment in that which transcends it. Life is a circumstance which can be best maintained and enjoyed only by filling it with the treasures of the timeless Divinity. The river is fulfilled in the ocean, the smaller in the greater, the limited in the Unlimited. The time is fulfilled in the Timeless, the finite in the Infinite, and the life of man in the life of God. The fulfilment of human life consists in relating itself in love and in knowledge to, and expressing the fullness of the peace and the delight of, God.

Essentially Life is a Divine Phenomenon

Life is a complex circumstance, in which we are required to express actively that which is most precious, fundamental, highest, all-creative, all-enriching, all-luminous, - God, and that which the life itself bears as the fundamental ground of its being.

Life is a divine phenomenon, disfigured by the ignorant and the impatient, and disclosed by the wise and the illumined intelligences. The proper conduct of family, the administration of the country and the society, is a part of the eternal, universal Government, run by the all-creative divine Intelligence, which looks at the entirety of beings with a strictly impartial eye. We can be neither wise, nor happy by disregarding the evolutionary aims and laws inherent in the wider framework of the cosmos we inhabit.

We live because God exists, and our life is to be perfect, peaceful, creative, joyous, even as God is perfect, peaceful, creative, joyous.

We exist in God's Being, we breathe and move in Him. How wonderful we are rests upon how fully conscious and actively related we are to that in which our being is grounded, that which is the Light of our intelligence, the Being of our being, the Power of our power, the Perfection that sustains our perfection!

The Purpose of Life on Earth

Life is a war between the instincts and the intellect, between the forces of the darkness, all that is undesirable, and the powers of God. Life is a steady growth; a progressive evolution characterizes it. This earth-arena is a field of self-development.

The perception of the one Life Principle, or God, in all, the merging of the personal self in the divine Self of all creatures, great and small, is the ultimate meaning and end of life. To rise from this world of limitations while yet breathing on earth, into the boundless world of Freedom and Beauty, Power and Joy, is the purpose of our brief, but meaningful, existence.

Fear not Life, Rule It

Fear not the thorns that bring you the rose. Take the rose with the thorns. Fear not the duties, the troubles and the trials that bring you the joys and the achievements of your life and your growth. Take the joys of life and growth with all their accompanying struggles, duties, trials, and await the divine Perfection which is the natural result of your struggle to grow.

The Foundations of the Life Divine

Two things are essential for the obtainment of undying Happiness, Peace, Power, Freedom, Perfection:

one, a strong faith in that which is infinitely higher and greater than all that we are; a strong faith in the supreme Reality, - God, who is infinitely more real than the body we live in, the mind we use, the will we exercise;

two, a dynamic knowledge of our high destiny that consists in the attainment of the infinite all-illuminating Consciousness, Happiness, Peace, Power and Perfection subsistent in that Reality.

That there is God here with us, sustaining our life by His eternal Life, supporting our consciousness with His infinite Consciousness, impelling our will, with His omnipotent Will, - this faith, is the first requisite.

That the meaning, aim and destiny of our life consists in the experience of God, through a continuous growth in Love, Knowledge, Works and divine Nature, - this knowledge is the second requisite.

With this twofold equipment, our life on earth becomes the most delightful journey from freedom to endless Freedom, from happiness to the everlasting Happiness, from peace to the infinite Peace, from power to the absolute Power, from perfection to the illimitable Perfection.

The Poetry of Life

It needs a microscope to detect the presence of tiny life-organisms which are invisible to the naked eye. It requires the penetrating intelligence and the luminous and all-seeing vision of the unfolded divine Consciousness within man, to perceive the infinite Glory of the infinite Godhead everywhere, here on earth even as in Heaven.

Beneath the physical disease and physical death, beneath the mental problems and mental pleasures, beneath the good and bad actions of man, beneath colour, sound, form of life, - there is the infinite Harmony of the timeless divine Consciousness. Discover it. Know it. Experience it. Life is a Poem of God. Those that do not seek God first, find life a pain, a problem, and at best, a field of suffering relieved rarely by fleeting moments of pleasure. Those that know God, know life to be an epic, a song, a glorious episode, that takes man apparently away from God, and brings him back to God. From God to God, and in God, is the whole history of Life on earth.

Every phase of life has in it some poetry. Every facet of life is aglow with the eternal Energy and Light of the infinite Truth. Every circumstance of life is rich with the splendour of spiritual glory. The whole world is throbbing with the divine Consciousness that is the source, the soil and the fulfilment of all that is. Man's primary duty consists in knowing, and being in harmony with, this all-pervading, all-sustaining, infinite Light of the supreme Reality, Being, Existence, Consciousness.

All Life is a Divine Song

Even under the most trying difficulties, let us not be conscious of our weakness, nor of our strength; let us be intensely conscious of only one thing that matters, - the supreme, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-merciful, all-powerful, all-containing and all-granting Godhead. The extent to, and the intensity with, which we sustain ourselves in this inner discipline of consciousness, determines the degree to which the invisible energies of God's Peace, Power, Joy, flow into us and make of our whole life a divine song.

All Life is Divine

Feel the divine Presence everywhere. Accept the physical body as the temple of God. Behold the Divinity within yourself and in all beings. Take the grounds whereon you stand, as holy. Pour out your Love on all things and beings, as you do on God within and around yourself.

Offer every act, every work, in the house, in the office, in the broad world, to God. Do everything for the Glory of God, with the strength and the joy that comes from the Love of God, the Truth and the Beauty, the Light and the Life.

Elevate your feelings. Exalt your reason. Expand your consciousness. Change your attitude. Acquire the divine vision. Eliminate from the heart all that cuts you off from the immediate enjoyment of the divine Presence and Perfection. Know that the breath that you breathe in, the brain you use, the hands you employ in service, the world you live in, were not made by you, do not belong to you, but to the supreme Creator. Find His Energies seeing through all eyes, hearing through all ears, working through all hands. Be cosmic in your feelings, universal in love, divine in experience and in life.

All life is divine; wrong cannot subsist; evil cannot endure; untruth cannot triumph; all that is bad, disharmonious, distorting, is already in the process of being dispelled. Concern yourself with Light and Love, Thought and Power, Presence and Perfection of God. You will live and move in the realm of the Divine, while living and moving in a time-space world of limitations.

The Symphony of Life

Like a light unto yourself, move. Like a genius, think. Like a giant, work. Like a saint, live. Let thy heart be a sea of love, and thy mind a sea of luminous knowledge. This is the real road to peace, joy and perfection.

Flood the Life with the Light Gained in Contemplation

On the full-moon night, go out into the open and gaze for fifteen minutes on the moon. Then, suddenly look around. Wherever your sight falls, there you see the moon.

Even so, if you gaze in contemplation on God's dynamic Presence, Love, Light, Peace, for fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes in the noon, and fifteen minutes in the evening, you will find that wherever your eye falls, there you will behold God's Presence and Peace, and your life will be full of light and joy.

To be with God's Power and Perfection, while all the time living and working in the world, the way lies through brief contemplation on God's Nature from time to time.

- Swami Omkarananda
 

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