Mar 26, 2004, 12.00am IST
Swami Kriyananda.
It is easier to visualise God in the starry heavens than in our own homes. The stars, so remote from our humdrum earthly existence, suggest to our minds infinite stillness, harmony, and wisdom. By contrast, our homes are often scenes of strife and rivalry.
To the extent that we hold God aloof from our daily realities, we alienate Him from the life we know. We need a concept of God that will bring Him into our kitchens, our bedrooms, our living rooms — yes, even when those living rooms are crowded with guests.
If God is everywhere, He must be quite as near as He is far away. We should make Him our immediate reality. We should seek His guidance and inspiration in our most intimate thoughts and feelings; relate to Him when the world is most demanding of our attention; seek His influence in every lightest undertaking. If we don't see our need for Him simply in order to exist, we reduce Him to a mental abstraction: useful in mathematics, perhaps, but without any closer, more personal significance. Ultimately, God alone can satisfy every personal need.
In our dealings with other people, He is our conscience. In our labour, He is the satisfaction it gives us. When we read a good book, or listen to uplifting music, He is our inspiration. In everything we do from the performance of duty to the most trivial pursuit, He is there; watching, joining in if we invite Him to, and giving us our strength. To ignore Him means to go stumbling blindly through life, unaware that there are innumerable pitfalls before us. We need a concept of God that will motivate us to love Him. He is, whether we know it or not, our own nearest and dearest. How we relate to Him is crucial to our happiness.
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