Man and his goal⁵

My dear friends, you are fortunate, you are special. A significant branch of the State University helps you to specialise here in horticulture and agriculture. Soon you are going to be at home in the science of plant life and soil cultivation. In a broader and purer sense, you are making a solemn promise to the world at large that you wish to be true children of Nature and Mother Earth.

I am sure you all know that it was an Indian scientist, Sir JC Bose, who discovered life in plants. He was born in Bengal. I am proud that I was born in the same province.

Your genuine love of nature enables and entitles you to receive special love, concern, favour and blessings from the Universe, the Universal Life and the Universal Mother.

A man said to the universe, “Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe, “the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”

Though it may be true for others, this striking pronouncement of Stephen Crane’s does not apply to you in the least. I wish to tell you that the Universe, the Universal Life and the Universal Mother will proudly bless your devoted heads and dedicated hearts, for you love Nature, you adore Nature. What is Nature? Nature is God the Mother. In His masculine aspect, God is Transcendental. In His feminine aspect, God is Universal. Let us invoke the presence of God the Universal Mother before we enter into “Man and his Goal.”

[A three-minute meditation follows.]

Man’s false goal is human love. Human love sadly fails. Man’s false goal is physical beauty. Physical beauty is only skin deep. Man’s false goal is money and material wealth. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Man’s real goal is Truth. Truth awakens him from his ignorance-sleep. Man’s real goal is Peace. Peace feeds him, his life inner and outer. Man’s real goal is Bliss. Bliss immortalises him, his life-breath.

Self-realisation: this is what man needs from God. Love: this is what God needs from man. Faith: this is what God always has in man. But, alas, man has yet to develop faith in himself and faith in God.

Man unfalteringly says, “If I had time, I would love God. If I had time, I would worship God. If I had time, I would even cry for God.”

But poor God has time. He has time to forgive man’s unending stupidity. He has time to bless man’s shameless mind and grant him all his real necessities. He has time even to cry for man’s still unborn sincerity.

Man and God. Try to realise God. Both God and man will say to you, “Wonderful, go ahead.” Try to explain God. Man will immediately tell you, “Stop. Don’t belittle God, don’t torture God.” God will voice forth, “Stop. For My sake at least, don’t deceive men, don’t deceive My children.”

Let us not try to explain God. If we do that, our ignorance will be exposed. Let all of us strive to realise God. For that, what we need is meditation. Let us meditate, meditate on God.

Man has to walk far, very far. He has to reach the Shores of the Golden Beyond. Slowly, steadily and unerringly he has to walk. But he must walk forward, not backward. Lincoln welcomes man, his fellow traveller, to sing with him,

We believe in evolution. Man is not going back to the animal kingdom. Man is proceeding towards the Kingdom of Heaven, which perpetually breathes, grows and glows in the inmost recesses of his heart.

Friends, you are cultivating knowledge. We all do it. Each human being must own a bumper crop of knowledge.

Somebody said, “A college degree is often the receipt a young man gets for bills his father paid.”

I will be bold enough to say that I reject this eyeless idea outright. Your parents want you to learn how to swim in the sea of knowledge. Your professors, who are expert swimmers in the sea of knowledge, teach you successfully and gloriously how to swim. I deeply admire your zealous sincerity and your professors’ enormous capacity. But, alas, knowledge, book knowledge, is not enough. You all know it. I have not discovered something new or fantastic. Far from it. I am just reminding you of the soulful fact that there is another sea. This Sea is the Sea of Divine Light, Peace, Bliss and Power. This Sea gives you realisation and liberation. You will have the realisation of your conscious and indivisible oneness with God. You will have liberation from your bondage of millennia. This Sea gives you Fulfilment Infinite. Something more: this Sea makes you feel in a perfectly convincing manner that you are truly and unmistakably the God of tomorrow.

Who says that man is sleeping? This is not true. Man woke up with his teeming desires, but he was shamefully early. He discovered that God was not ready and would never be ready to receive him.

Man woke up with his flaming aspiration, but he was unpardonably late. Yet God was eager to receive him, embrace him and finally place him on His own Transcendental Throne.