A Divine Life

Submission or surrender is not the end of things. It is only a means to a beginning. It is the central path. Renunciation is the path to success.

What are we seeking? Some meaning to this life, right? We have this urge, a calling to go beyond what we see around us, to question, to find some answers, to evolve. No one is really content with what they have or what they are. Life makes sure that we do not become too complacent and edges us on. Some people need that extra push from life to make sure they start looking for answers, some people are born that way. At any rate, most people will end up seeking.

This urge to evolve is not anything new. It is latent in nature itself. It is the reason for evolution and the appearance of man. Man is conscient. The very opposite of conscient is what we call inconscient, matter, but even there you see the beginnings of what has led to this evolution. Science accepts that there were myriad ways in which universe could have evolved but it cannot explain why it chose this way.

So this latest to come on the scene of evolution, man, what is he? What makes him so special? How is he different from the plants, the animals, the bacteria? They all follow their nature and do not question it but man, he looks and ponders and questions the very nature of things. He looked inward and found many answers and thus religion was born. He looked outward and found some too and thus science was born. Reason and intuition, he uses them both though this being the age of reason, intuition is a bit scoffed upon.

If you observe your thoughts, you can find that they seem to come like waves from different sides, some good, some bad, like suggestions floating in the wind. Some we like to identify with and we make them our own, some we discard. When we look at a thought it seems so alien that we cannot even call it our own. Deeper observation exposes the myth of individuality and what we call me and mine.

Most people do not observe their thoughts and consider this aggregate of thoughts, this surface self to be the real I. They strive hard to protect and preserve this I, this unreal aggregate of ever changing thoughts, and spent much energy in feeding it and cherishing it. We even kill others to uphold these fickle thoughts. If we were only these passing clouds, how futile this elaborate evolution that brought us to existence would have been?

Some people looked deeper and found something that did not change with passing time, something they found to be in everything, something that even life and death could not tarnish. All life seemed to be the becoming of that. This being while in the midst of all, the enjoyer of all, all was that but it was all that and more. Everything is real as it comes from this. What we see is the becoming and it is all driven by the being. The being does not need to have this becoming but as it has all the freedom, you must ask not why, but why not? Being has infinite peace and wisdom and knowledge and Ananda. We cannot look down upon the becoming as it is the will of the being. The becoming has no existence independent of the being but the being is more than that.

Inconscient, the very beginning of the becoming is driven by this secret will and so every time it will evolve in the right way. It will throw up the conscient from the inconscient. Nothing can resist this urge as it is the will of the being. The becoming will have to discover the being. This is where evolution is going.

The being is all powerful and from that power comes the ability to bring about a becoming. So the descent caused the inconscient and the ascent has thrown up something in the midway, a conscient but not yet the supraconscient, a possibility. This is man. Here is something that can look deeper and have the joy of self discovery.

Man can and some do but the surface self of man, man’s idea of what he is, limits him. His progress is cut off because of his attachment and the false sense that he is only his surface self. Man contains all the things that inconscient needed for this evolution, the many twists and turns for the survival. He must discard them as he does not need them anymore and move on.

So what in plants and animals look to be just means of survival, in man looks to be evil. Man has a tool called morality to uproot this baggage that he carries around with him from the evolution. He must use it to weed out the lower urges in him and go to the higher. When he is inside, at this stage of evolution, he must fight and run and do all that he can to get away from evil. Once he has passed beyond, then he will understand evil for what it is, a program that was thrown up in the evolution and it does not need our attention beyond that.

Evolution has thus thrown up a lot of things, many things and beings we do not know, many that aid the evolution and many that try to stop it because they misunderstand and do what they think is best for their survival. Having acknowledged the existence of these things and understood them as being only distractions, we need not be preoccupied with them. We must keep away from all that and never bring out anything evil otherwise our progress will be hampered. Even powers can sometimes be demonic and it is best to keep away from the trappings of that.

As I stated earlier, once we have passed a certain stage, we will understand the truth of it all.

The being has infinite powers, infinite freedom, infinite wisdom and is not bound by anything. It can be personal or impersonal. As it is all that is, there is no question of being cruel or trying to make other things servile or such misunderstandings. Only if we think of an extracosmic god ruling the things he created can we come up with all such mistaken notions so here none of these questions even arise. There is no “other” here. There is only the being. The becoming is one of the poises of the being. The being is more than that.

Man has to keep growing and exceed what he has become now or else he is doomed to be blotched out as evolution does not wait for any man. The secret will or urge will drive things forward. If you need a personal god, a god who loves you and nourishes you and in whom you want to seek refuge, that is also there. If that is not your idea, fine, that is also there.

Rejoice in the glory of the being. Never stop seeking and you can never too.

Peace, peace, and peace. Shanti, salam.