Turn
towards God to become supremely happy
So long as your face is
turned towards sense-enjoyments every forward stride you take takes you in the
direction of enjoyment alone, and not in the direction of God. If a man intends
to reach Badrinatha in the northern part of India but has his face turned
towards Madras in the south, he will continue to advance in the direction
opposite to Badrinatha, until he turns his face towards the North, and will
recede farther and farther from Badrinatha. Similarly the life of a man moving
with his face turned towards sense-enjoyments recedes farther and farther still
from God.
The mistaken notion that joy
inheres in sense-enjoyments and the resulting attachment to sense-enjoyments
does not allow you to turn Godward. You feel inclined to turn towards Him and
even try to turn your face slightly towards Him; but aforesaid attachment to
sense-enjoyments catches hold of your turning face and forthwith turns it
towards sense-enjoyments and your face is consequently unable to turn towards
God.
Living in seclusion and
residence in a sacred place and so on are no doubt helpful to your cause; but
the main thing is absolute unattachment to sense-enjoyments, which is
predominantly helpful in turning Godward. When your face turns completely
towards God, every forward step that you take will lead you Godward and the
more you advance towards God your zeal, your keenness and your capacity to
advance will proportionately grow. Godliness, tranquillity, even-mindedness,
dispassion, love and the leading to God, will continue to fall to your share.
Wonderful of progress will be made by you on the Godward path. Relieved of
suffering caused by pairs of opposites and rid of despair worry, fear,
melancholy, desire, craving and so on, you will become supremely happy.
So long as you trudge along
with your back turned on God and your face turned towards sense-enjoyments, joy
and peace will never be attained by you. The more you advance on the path of
sense-enjoyments the more you will naturally find yourself encompassed with
despair, fear, melancholy, worry attachment and aversion, animosity,
disquietude, ill-will, hypocrisy, proneness to accumulate riches, violence
desire, craving, the possessive instinct and other evil propensities and evil thoughts,
that infest the path of sense-enjoyments, spring from the soil of enjoyments
and are the natural outcome of enjoyments, and will ever remain plunged in an
ocean of misery. Whithersoever you turn in the hope of attaining joy you will
find yourself faced with a terrible heap of sorrows; for it is these alone that
figure in the realm of enjoyment. A man stuck in the realm of enjoyment can
never enjoy peace or happiness, however glibly he may talk of peace, joy,
dispassion and disinterestedness. Disquietude and sorrow will remain his
constant companions. Hence make it a point to turn towards God, however it may
be. Do it even forcibly.
Your face will be considered
to have turned towards God completely and irretrievably only when your mind and
reason get dedicated to God and remain constantly and exclusively devoted to
Him. But so long as this does not happen, unremittingly continue to link your
mind and reason with God. Go on contemplating and dwelling on the names,
virtues and form of the Lord and investigating His truth, Abiding and real
absence of attachment to the Lord constitute the main discipline.