God within

What is the goal of life? Absorbed, as we are, in the pursuit of the shadow-shapes of wealth, pleasure and power, we do not pause to ask ourselves the question: “What is the goal of life?” The goal cannot be wealth or possessions, pleasure or power, for we leave all these things behind, the moment we drop the body. What, then, is our life’s goal? The Goal is God!

Find Him

And where is God? And how may we reach Him? Significant are the words of the great German mystic and brahmagnani, Meister Eckhart: “Where creature stops, there God begins. All God wants of thee is for thee to go out of thyself in respect of thy creatureliness and let God be God-in-thee!”

Yes. All that is asked of us is to let go of ourselves—our petty selves of desire and passion and pride, and to let God in. For He is our True Self, our Real Self, the Self of our self.

Keep Him in sight

All the time, while we are attending to our daily work, let our heart be fixed on the True Self within us, on God!

Even as the ship moves hither and thither, the needle of the ship’s compass is ever turned northward. Just like that let the ship of the body move hither and thither, attend to its multifarious duties, but let the needle of the heart’s compass be ever directed towards God.

This will happen through practice. Everything that we do, let it be done for the love of God. “For Thy sake, O Lord!” let this be the one mantra of our life.

Wondrous beyond words is the teaching of the Lord [Krishna] in the Gita: “O Arjuna! Whatever you eat, whatever you give in charity, whatever austerity [tapasya] you practise, whatever you do, do it all as an offering unto Me!” This is true yoga.

Become a hidden yogi

Yoga does not consist in flying through the air, or walking over the waters, or drinking poison or eating pieces of glass, or materialising things out of thin air. Yoga is living in the midst of the world’s temptations, but being ever united with God.

Sri Ramakrishna, the great Indian Saint, spoke of two classes of yogis: the hidden and the known. “Those who have renounced the world are known yogis,” he said. “All recognise them. But the hidden yogis live in the world. They are not known. They are like the maidservant, who performs her duties in the house but whose mind is fixed on her children in the country.”