RAMA - THE APOTHEOSIS OF HUMAN PERFECTION -5. Swami Krishnananda

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Chinmaya Mission -Deepavali Celebrations

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Wednesday, October 26, 2022. 09:00.

Post-5. 

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One of the central questions in your spiritual diary should be, “What am I in the eyes of God?” But this question is never put and you do not want  to know the answer. You always wish to know, “What am I in the eyes of people, in the eyes of my neighbours, in the eyes of the public? What does the country think about me? What do the vote-givers about me?” Never for a moment do you think, “What does God think about me?” Let this be your contemplation. The moment you begin to know what God thinks about you, you will not speak  afterwards; your mouth will be hushed. 

It will be hushed for two reasons. One reason is that you would look so small and insignificant, a nothing, and all your importance vanishes in toto when you compare yourself in His light. The other reason is that you would feel lifted up into a state of joy that the time has come for you to realise your true duty as a human being, which is nothing but realisation of Rama—The Apotheosis of Human Perfection God. This is what Sri Rama teaches us in the Rama Gita, as His final message—how the soulshould come out of the cage of flesh, like a lion breaking  its boundaries and roaring in its majesty or power. 

The moment you begin to recognise your true status in this world, you become powerful, not because you possess large wealth or you have a seat in the Parliament or in the cabinet, but because you have a seat in the constitution of the universe. When this seat is given to you, you become a member of the government of the cosmos. And here the powers are not given by votes or by plebiscite. People do not raise hands to make you a member. Something else—mysterious and miraculous— takes place. 

Your cells become revitalised. They get charged with a power totally unknown up to this time. From where does this power come? It does not come from anywhere. You keep yourself open to the powers that are and allow them to enter into you, while up to this time you were preventing them from entering into you.

What are we doing now? It is something like building a house with four walls, without any ventilation, and sitting inside in pitch darkness while the sun is shining outside in all its might and glory. The sun has come up, wanting to enlighten the  whole world with its lustre and force. But we live in a dungeon, covering ourselves with a blanket and closing our eyes so that the energy and the light of the sun may not have any effect on our personality. 

This is what we do in our relationship with God and in our relationship with the forces of the universe. The forces of the universe are just here, within this hall—wherever we are. They are not far away in the skies. You can keep yourself open to them or keep yourself shut to them. Thoughts which are directed to the body and to the centre of the personality, called the ego, prevent the entry of universal forces into our personality, so that the more important we look in our own eyes, the more impervious we are to the entry of the forces of the cosmos. The bigger we are in the world, the worse we are from the point of view of spiritualstrength and knowledge, because this self-importance, self-assertion, ahamkara, personality-consciousness, body-consciousness, social-consciousness and status-consciousness—all these put together act as psychological barriers which shut off the forces of the cosmos from entering into us. These forces of the cosmos are not absent. They are just here, and the moment we think in terms of them, they enter into us. When we think in terms of our own personality, they run away from us. 

So contemplation on the Masters and Incarnations and the recognition of the forces of divinities which manifest as incarnations and sages are the ways in which a sadhaka should observe Ramanavami, the day of God’s incarnation or a celebration of a birthday of a superhuman Master. Our birthright is to imbibe the grace of the Masters, to assume the contour and personality equal to theirs, to attain sarupya or equality of personality with them, to become like them and to imbibe their characteristics by meditation upon them.

To be continued 

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