AUM — Vol. 3, No. 7,8, Feb. — 27 Mar. 1968

Joy unlimited¹

When I think of God, my mind gets Joy. When I pray to God, my heart feels Joy. When I meditate on God, my soul becomes all Joy.

God has given me the body, mind, heart and soul. It is I who have to use them with a view to achieving an everlasting Joy. God has given me the body. I shall have to use it to serve Him in the world of manifestation. God has given me the mind. I shall have to use it to think of Him in the world of determination, Will. God has given me the heart. I shall have to use it to love Him in the world of self-sacrifice. God has given me the soul. I shall have to use it to feel my identity with Him in the world of self-revelation.

I shall have to have Joy of my own. Unless and until I have it, I can never totally become one with others' Joy. There is considerable truth in what Shakespeare wrote, "O how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!"

Yesterday I was compelled to accept the belief that human life is strewn with difficulties and sufferings. But today I am given the opportunity, the golden opportunity to release that old thought of mine. I can accept this belief instead, that I inherit my life from God's Life of Bliss and my existence on earth is the ever-renewing and ever-unfolding expression of God the Blissful.

If I have just one aim and if that aim is to be myself, then I am bound to discover Joy, true Joy, eternal Joy in my inner march towards my Goal.

I think not old thoughts. I live not in old consciousness. I grow with new thoughts and flow with a new consciousness to reveal my life of imagination, inspiration, aspiration and realisation.

What to do? Stop thinking.

How to do? By running, flying and diving.

Needless to say that you must realise the value of time if you want to have the unlimited Joy in you, with you and around you.

To kill time is to see the face of failure more and more.

To value time is to live in God's own Core.

To go beyond time is to become God's Transcendental Lore.

You are happy because you know that the world loves you. Someone else is happy because he feels that he loves the world. I am happy because I have discovered the truth that the world is love and my God is the only Lover.

Blossoms of the heart —- God is my personal experience

What do we get from the inner life?²

What else do we get from the inner life? We get a growing, flowing and energising consciousness to illumine and perfect our thoughts and feelings and to accomplish our aims. We can also grow into active and effective participants in God's cosmic experience.

To live an inner life is to become fully conscious of God's existence. To become fully conscious of God's existence is to love humanity's breath with a boundless heart.

If we need a golden opportunity to see God's Face, the inner life is ready to grant it. If we need a faultless assurance that we are God's chosen children, the inner life is eager to give it.

When I truly live the inner life, I can dare to say, "God is mine." Doubt and fear will forever forget my name, form and address. I dare to say, "I am God's." The journey Supreme and the Goal Transcendental will forever be mine.

God with His light awakens my love. God with His Bliss intensifies my devotion. God with His Blessings immortalises my surrender. With my love I discover God. With my devotion I feed God. With my surrender I fulfil God.

My surrendering soul's journey begins with God's concern. My craving life's journey begins with God's Compassion. At the end of my soul's journey, I shall see God the way He wanted me to see Him. At the end of my life's journey, I shall see God the way I wanted to see Him.

Life is for man. Man is of life. Life is man's necessity. Man is life's ability.

I have two I's, the small and the big. The small "I" is the ego which is still unnoticed, while the big "I" is the Self, which is still unknown. I shall notice the unnoticed to learn the Truth. I shall know the unknown to become the Truth.

It is in our inner life that we come to learn that the soul is noble. It embodies the Truth. The heart is noble. It realises the Truth. The mind is noble. It expresses the Truth. The vital is noble. It admires the Truth. The body is noble. It serves the Truth.

Blossoms of the heart —- When I discover God

I discover God's infinite Power and cry out: "Give me your infinite Power." God says: "It is yours."

God discovers my limitless weakness and cries out: "Give Me your limitless weakness." I say: "No, my wealth, absolutely mine."

The spiritual life³

What is ignorance? It is the breath of limitation. Limitation is the breath of death. Ignorance breaks open the door of our consciousness. It touches, soils and finally blights our consciousness. Consciousness is now forced to change its name. Its new name is ego. Ego is blind self-assertion. This self-assertion is founded on stark bondage and not on freedom. To say nothing of heavenly freedom, the ego sorely lacks even earthly freedom. Ego wants to devour the world. Alas, it is not aware of the fact that its own life has been already devoured by its own impurity, obscurity and futility.

The spiritual life is the natural life of our soul. It is also the life of boundless Eternity. Where is God? He is both in our outer life. In our inner life He is. He breathes and He embodies His Transcendental Divinity. In our outer life He grows, He reveals and He manifests His absolute Reality.

Each human being has to realise his ideal in the world of manifestation. There is no escape. When an aspirant lives in his highest ideal — realisation, liberation, divinisation — his life becomes God's peerless pride and God's brightest smile.

Sri Ramakrishna says, "There are three different paths to reach the ideal: the path of I, the path of Thou and the path of Thou and I. According to the first, all that is, has been, or ever will be, is I myself. In other words, I am, I was and I shall be, to all eternity. According to the second, Thou art, O Lord and all is Thine. And according to the third, Thou art the Lord and I am Thy servant or Thy son. In the perfection of any of these three, God is realised."

One may not believe in God. But he has to believe in something, either here on earth or there in Heaven. Let him go deep within and in no time, he will realise that his very belief in something is another name for God. One may not believe in the existence of the soul. One wants proof of the soul's existence. Here, Emerson's clear and direct reply is, "The desire to seek for the proof of the existence of the soul is the strongest proof itself."

To come back to our spiritual life. The spiritual life does not abide in the world of dreams. On the contrary, it is the outer life that is dreaming in the world of ignorant and unconscious sleep. The inner life is always awake. It denies dreams. It affirms Reality within and without.

Again, just as there are people who do not believe in God, in the existence of the soul, so also are there people who do not believe in miracles. They disclaim all supernatural powers. But I tell them that one day they themselves will neither be able to deny miracles nor will they be able to free themselves from becoming the true and genuine miracle makers. When they start walking along the inner path, the path of spirituality, they will realise that impossibility is a mere word, utterly meaningless. They will display the great miracle in realising the Infinite in the finite and manifesting the Infinite in and through the Finite.

Blossoms of the heart —- I sought and he caught

He caught my fear.

I sought God's Wisdom-Light.

I sought God's all-illuming Truth.

I sought God to own Him.

I sought God because without Him I can do nothing.

I sought God.

God caught me.

God's visiting hours⁴

When I see my God in faith, He is Protection.

When I see my God in will, He is Vision.

When I see my God in truth, He is Fulfilment.

My breath invokes God throbbingly, my soul silently, my heart lovingly, my mind hesitantly, my vital unconsciously and my body fearfully.

There are two choice hours for my God to visit me.

Questions and answers —- Guru in Puerto Rico

Question: Sometimes in my meditations, I come to think about the feeling of Eternity, you know. I come to feel that human beings have lived forever and will live forever. This feeling, instead of causing me pleasure and a good sensation, on the contrary causes me great anguish and pain. I feel then that I am all alone, that I am living a life of my own, different from everything. I feel that I have no world left, that by the power of my mind, I have destroyed the world and am alone by myself. This thought causes me a great deal of pain and I have wanted to mention this state of mind. I want to know if I am taking a wrong path.

Now, what is actually happening in your meditation is that at times your aspiration, before it reaches its goal or before it finds its abode in the Goal, ceases. Your heart's mounting flames rises upward, but there are a few stops and breaks. If there were a gradual and continuous flight and if it were uninterrupted, then you would not feel the loneliness at the lower levels of your consciousness. Please try to keep your aspiration uninterrupted at all times. The inner runner must complete his race divine.

The infinite Eternity and the eternity that you are speaking of is in the motto of our Aum Centres: "Man is Infinity's Heart, Man is Eternity's Breath, Man is Immortality's Life.” The breath Eternity possesses is man. Most of us have had countless lives and some of us will have countless more. In your case, it is the divine realisation or the spiritual realisation that you need. One can attain the achievements of twenty incarnations in one lifetime provided one takes to spirituality in all sincerity and dedication and listens to one's spiritual guide most devotedly. Since you have the intense aspiration, you are accomplishing it successfully. That is why the spiritual masters say, "Take to the spiritual life and enter into the divine. This divine is your own infinite self. The sooner you start your journey, the better for you."

Question: I have been reading the minor Upanishads and I want to ask you something about them. If they are "minor", why are they so profound in the script and in the meaning?

The thing is... in India, many great scholars accept sixteen or eighteen Upanishads as authentic and original. Some accept only twelve which they take as 'major' and others accept only eight; the rest they consider 'minor'. These people feel that not all but some of the Upanishads are momentous in their depths and in their embodiment of Truth. But you yourself will be the best judge. You kindly read the major ones first. According to me, the most significant ones are: Katha, Isha, Kena, Prashna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka, Svetasvatara and Kaivalya.

Question: Another question about the Upanishads: why was the King of Death, Yama, not there when Nachiketa arrived?

Question: When the soul is going to re-incarnate, is it forced to do so or does the soul have the privilege of making this decision?

The soul, as I have already said, is not compelled, but if a soul wants to descend, before doing so, it investigates the family, the environment, the circumstances and a few other things. Before actually entering into the family, the soul has to have an interview with the Supreme. Then the Supreme either approves of the soul's decision or He may merely tolerate it. There is a great difference between approval and tolerance. I am sure you know this.

Then there are some souls who have had enough of earthly experiences, that is to say, sufferings and frustrations. These particular souls usually take the oath of Nirvana. They do not come down again. They remain in the Void. But there are aspiring souls who will not accept any defeat. They will come down to have the Divine Victory in spite of their repeated defeats. These souls will come and go until the Divine Victory has been fully established on earth. Truly you are one of these divine warriors.

Question: I wish to ask something further, regarding Sudha's question. Religion has told us that we have come from the Spirit and we go back to the Spirit at the end of our present incarnation. Now if we go back to our Father, then what is the use of re-incarnation, realisation and so forth?

AUM

Man is Eternity’s Breath.