Satsang With Swami Chinmayananda-The Spiritual Quest

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A : You are perfectly right in your cry to protest against a God who is not coming forward to protect and save the world which is suffering from sorrow and miseries. If the coolness of ice does not reach to console the finger that is in the fire, it must certainly be the impotency of the ice to cool! Or else we will have to accept that the suffering of the finger is because of the stupidity of the person behind the finger and this is rather inconvenient!

If one has the intelligence to know and recognize that both heat and cold exist in life and that each is the immediate antidote of the other then how can a person court the persecutions of the one crying out the impotency of the other? If you are feeling persecuted by the cold, move toward the fire, invoke its grace and bask in its warmth. If you are suffering from heat, move toward the cooler embrace of some refreshing shade.

Just as we have been running after the world of sense cravings, lust and passions of loveless cruelties and of empty values, thus courting "these days of sorrow", we can now turn to seek the opposite virtues and enjoy their comforts.

This positive state of harmony and peace which can be invoked by an intelligent person of will and courage is called God. He is present everywhere as the warp and the woof of the entire tapestry of life, as the thread in a piece of cotton. We must have the ears to listen to the raga, we must have the understanding to see the canvas, and we must have the knowledge to recognize the thread in the cloth. The hurried existence of busy experiences diverts our attention and we must necessarily fail "to see, hear or know Him."

In the form of a letter, I can do no better than sing in chorus with Hans Denk: "Oh my God, how does it happen. In this poor old world that thou art so great and yet nobody finds Thee, that Thou callest so loudly and nobody hears Thee, that Thou givest Thyself to everybody and yet nobody feels Thee, that Thou givest Thyself to everybody and yet nobody even know Thy name? Men flee from Thee and say they cannot find Thee: they turn their backs and say they cannot see Thee; they cover their ears and say they cannot hear Thee."

What is the purpose of my being here?

Whose purpose? The purpose of the perceiver-feeler-thinker or the purpose of the Reality? Purpose can only be for the imperfect. The Lord can have no purpose. In fact from His standpoint. there is no world! Is there a dream and a dreamer from the standpoint of the person who is now awake?

Purpose can only be for the perceiver-feeler-thinker who is imperfect. The dreamer's purpose is never fulfilled by acquiring from himself anything in the dream: the dreamer's life is transcended only when he wakes up. In the same way, the purpose of the perceiver-feeler-thinker seems to be the attainment of infinite happiness and a total state of contentment and both of these are gained only when one realizes that one's true nature is OM, the Reality. Rediscovering our identity with God, and thus awakening to a higher state, is the purpose of life.

About the author

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda the great master's lectures were an outpour of wisdom. He introduced the Geetha Gnana Yagna. He wrote a lot of books on spirituality, commentaries to Vedantic texts, children books etc. He then started spreading His teachings globally.....