Yoga for Health, Happiness and World Peace-15. - Swami Chidananda

13/09/2018
15.

We cannot by any means think that the Supreme Universal Spirit has got some sense of humour that He sends these individual souls into the world of pain and death and suffering and then gets some kick out of it. We cannot think of that all-compassionate, all-loving, all-good Supreme Being in that manner. He is not like Nero who ordered people to set fire to some parts of Rome and then went on the hillside and played upon the fiddle. They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burnt. Then how come, if this world is a world of Janma, Mrtyu, Jara, Vyadhi, Duhkha (birth, death, old age, disease and suffering) one great fact, one great truth about this human life in this earth, is suffering, how come He has sent us here? Very simple. This is inevitable. He did not send us because He wanted to send us to a world of suffering.

He sent us here because, if rightly lived, rightly made use of, this human state of ours can become the royal road to supreme blessedness, supreme bliss, transcendence of all suffering, pain and sorrow, the total cessation of all pain and sorrow once and for all, forever, and entering into a state of supreme bliss, Paramananda, Paramshaanti, the supreme peace that passeth understanding, the indescribable Divine. He has sent us for that. Not for the sake of this suffering in this world but because this world happens to be a Saadhana kshetra, a field, where you can enter into a certain spiritual way of living your life, and certain practices of discipline and through such practices and through such discipline, and through living this spiritual way of life in and through this world of sorrow, pain and suffering, disease, old age, death and bereavement, you can transcend and go beyond and become established in a state of supreme happiness, supreme indescribable divine joy.

This way of living your life, and those practices that ultimately bring us to that state of Sarva Duhkha Nivirti, Paramananda Praapti (alleviation of misery and attainment of Supreme Bliss) and limitless Shanti, Param Shanti, fearlessness and freedom, this art and science were systematised and made into certain graded sets of discipline, graded sets of practices and that became known as the science of attaining supreme blessedness, the science of Yoga. Peace comes out of it; supreme blessedness comes out of it, and sorrow is replaced with happiness. Joy comes; because, ultimately joy and sorrow is a state of mind. It is not to be found in objects. Yoga teaches us the secret of creating that state of mind.

To be continued ...