God: The goal of life

God: The goal of life

"You are filled with light and warmth, joy and peace. You realise that the life you have lived until then, a life of creature-comforts, and of pride, pelf, power - was no life at all." - Dada JP Vaswani

God is the goal of life. And God is to be realised, not merely ‘understood’ or talked about. Long have we chanted hymns and recited from the scriptures and rung temple-bells and offered unending prayers, while our minds have strayed afar. Long have we kept God out of our lives, ‘Tis time to call Him in.

To move Godward, we need to get up and open the door and let God in. This happens only when man realises the need for God. Out of the very depths of his heart, there awakes the cry: “I have need of You, Lord! I cannot live without You!”

This is known as spiritual awakening. Something happens deep within you and your life becomes new. You are filled with light and warmth, joy and peace. You realise that the life you have lived until then, a life of creature-comforts, and of pride, pelf, power—was no life at all. You exclaim with Tolstoy: “To know God is to live!”

To many of us, God is a distant being. He is far off, a shadowy presence, dwelling on a distant star.

One of the reasons why we do not connect with God is because God has not become real to us. To many of us, God is a distant being. He is far off, a shadowy presence, dwelling on a distant star. I ask so many people, “Where dwelleth God?” With an uplifted finger they point to the heavens above, as though God dwelt way beyond our reach. True, God dwells in the heavens above, but there is not a corner on the earth, where He does not dwell.

We need to know God. We need to move close to Him. We need to make God real in our daily lives! Many of us are apt to imagine God as a sort of Old Testament figure—with long, flowing robes and a white beard, seated on a cloud, hurling lightning and thunderbolts at the sinful world. God lives within you, in the temple of your heart. He speaks to you through your intuitions, visions and dreams. Every person you meet is a manifestation of God.

Every creature that breathes the breath of life is an aspect of the Maker. Each and every one of them can teach you valuable lessons in a new, unexpected and unique way. Therefore, is the Lord described as Deenabandhu and Deenanath—he is the friend, the brother of the humble and lowly. When we take them seriously, we will surely find the answers we are seeking.

Alas, many of us do not feel His presence. He is not yet real to us. What we need, above all else today is the rediscovery of the great truth that God is; that He is real; that we need to renew our faith in Him. It was Tennyson who said: “Close is He to us than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.”

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