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Let Us Be Gods-Part IV

By Super

You have to get hold of the idea that you are divine, however strange it might seem to you. And you need not in your cowardice say it is blasphemy. Why do I call you a coward if you consider it as a blasphemy? Because you want to hang on to your little weak self, and you call it humility. You give it all kinds of fantastic names. But oftentimes when we do not want to face these ideas it is because we want to continue in our enfeebled state, in our state of ignorance. You see, you must take the total man. Didn't the Bible say that man was made after the image of God? I should say man was made in the image of God. Man, the true man, is a reflection of God, the same as God Himself. There is no difference. But we do not want to face this; we want to remain the sinful man. In that there is a comfort. We don't have to struggle. Don't you see where the trap is? You don't want to become any better than what you presently are.

Of course you want to kneel down before the altar of the Lord. You want to shed lots of tears, you want to read holy books, and you do all kinds of things. And, of course, you are better than the average man and the wicked man. But if it comes to the question of whether you have realized the truth––the truth about which the Christ said: 'Thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,'––if it comes to the question of whether you have realized the truth, you are a million miles away from that. Rest assured that that's not the way to find the eternal truth.

You see, we sometimes feel horrified at this idea. Yet how do you think you will know God if you do not become Godlike? How? Would a brute beast understand a man? Only an intelligent man would be able to understand another man. Isn't it true? You have to be a man to understand a man. You have to be God to understand God. And that is going to the very heart of truth. The truth about man is that he is God.

But if you don't want to acknowledge this truth, my understanding is, it is because you want to live like something other than what you really are, what you truly are. You want to eat; you want to drink; you want to sleep; you want to be merry; you want to earn money; you want to be egotistical; you want to have the joys of the flesh. That is what you want. You would deny it, but there you are. If you are honest you will find that is what you want.

If you but begin to think that you are divine spirit, you can no longer say: 'I am this body.' You cannot contain these two ideas in your mind simultaneously. You cannot. And if you hold them successively, then one will kill the other. The idea that we are this body, we are finite living things, that we should eat, sleep, and so on, is so strong within us, that even if for a moment this other idea—that we are divine—arises in our mind, that consciousness is at once destroyed. You cannot entertain both these ideas in your mind. You have to learn to think in the other way.

Story first published: Monday, April 2, 2012, 10:00 [IST]
Read more about: vedanta god swami ashokananda