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You Are an Embodiment of Many Powers
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Endless Is Your Power
The little drop of water can support and bear millions of ships, and sustain billions of tons of icebergs, if it sinks into the ocean, and becomes all the ocean. The Image of God in the little petty man has the infinite freedom, power, peace, joy, perfection, and becomes the supreme Lord of all creation, the moment it liberates itself from the limitations of phenomenal existence, and obtains oneness with the Being of God.
The space in the balloon can support all the creation, all the stellar regions, all the worlds, if it knows, has faith in, the boundless space without, liberates itself from the confines of the balloon, and becomes one with the space everywhere. Even so, if man can know and have faith in the universal, supra-cosmic, all-pervasive, absolute divine Consciousness-Power, God, he liberates himself from his own human limitations, limitations in knowledge, in love, in light, and becomes one in all his being with God. Nothing, at this stage of perfection, is impossible for man.
Until this highest stage is arrived at, man can always work wonders, and do impossible things, by contact in devotion, faith, prayer, love, with Him who is the supreme Power, the infinite Consciousness, all-creative Light.
The creeper lying on the earth that covers the mountain can survey all the panorama, all the world around, if it wraps itself to the trunk of the tall pine-tree, and soars high. Even so man, the insignificant crawling creature that he is, can wrap himself round the highest, the greatest, the Absolute, the infinite Being of God, survey and enjoy the entire creation, and command supreme suzerainty over it.
Everything great is within yourself. Yonder is a huge stone. Looking at it, we can remark that therein is a lion, or a deer, or a beautiful maid, or the Greek philosopher Plato, or an Eastern sage, or a Western thinker, - and we can go about chiselling the stone until that lion, or that deer, or that maid, or that philosopher, or that sage emerges.
Infinitely more true is this of the Consciousness within yourself. You can set about working on it, and produce from it a philosopher, or a sage, or a person of supernormal knowledge, wisdom, love, powers; or an angel, or a joy, a peace, a grace, a perfection, - anything you desire. Everything great is within yourself. Work on yourself, and fashion any type of greatness or perfection you envision.
Children look at the snow with which all the earth is covered. One says that there is a little house in it, and sets about making that house from the snow. Another asserts that there is a toy in it, and begins fashioning the toy. The third one claims there is a man in it, and starts building up the snowman. Thus, each produces from the snow the image it has in his mind.
You Are an Embodiment of Many Powers
All the extraordinary qualities of nature that are characteristic of the world's greatest saints, are there in you. If not great purity, some purity is present in you. If not endless knowledge, some amount of knowledge, you do possess. Though not superhuman patience, a little patience you do command. If not great and all-absorbing love for God, some love for that which you recognise as the Good, or the Beautiful, or Truth, or God, is active in you. That amount of faith which moves mountains you may not have, but you cannot deny that there is in you some little faith. If all in you is not receptive to the all-perfecting Divine Presence, yet there lurks in you something which appreciates readily the things of Love, Light, Beauty, God.
Your love, when fully grown, is the saint. When the little faith in you fully flowers, it is the wonder-worker. Your wisdom, when fully developed, is the sage.
Love is the Power of powers. Love all, at all times, in all circumstances and conditions, and even in the most difficult situations. Let nothing external, or internal, dry up the perennial springs of the silent, unobserved flow of your love for all.
Transformation of our entire inner nature, of our thoughts, emotions, energies, is a wonderful way of acquiring tremendous spiritual powers. When we exceed the animal and human nature, refine, exalt and illuminate our minds and hearts, wills and inner spirit, we gain the numberless powers that belong to our inner self-luminous spiritual nature.
Constant experience of the Presence of God endows us with rare powers. The power to remain unaffected by difficult circumstances, the power to rule the environment and not to be ruled by it, the power of remaining peaceful, joyous, unshaken, are among the many powers that accrue to us from the practice of the Presence of God.
Faith developed is a great power. It moves mountains. Self-surrender to the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving, all-protecting, all-perfecting Divinity, fills us with extraordinary powers.
Special concentration exercises awaken the divine powers in us. Meditation unfolds the higher powers of perception and divine nature.
Mantra-practice, the constant repetition of the Mystical Syllables, puts us in touch with the various Powers of God. The Might, the Light, the Grace, the Peace of God, find their manifestation in our daily lives.
Years of devotion, and strict adherence to truth, bestows on us the power of making true everything that we say, or wish, to anyone.
Magnanimous nature, generosity and free bestowal of charities, liberate us from every type of want, and secure for us material and spiritual welfare and prosperity.
We acquire the power to live long by deep and rhythmical breathing. We also gain by it peace of mind, freedom from physical and mental ailments, and get closer to the knowledge of God.
When we go on wishing welfare to all, praying for everyone, every creature, and desire the happiness of all that has life and breathes, we find ourselves in possession of great inner Light, Joy, Peace, Power, and our life is made secure against accidents, losses, misfortunes. We become a great blessing to the whole creation.
EXERCISES FOR ATTAINING SUPERNORMAL POWERS. -First Exercise:
Carry a heart of love and blessings for everything, at all times, and in all conditions.
Look at the birds and say, "Darlings, I love you!"
Look at men and women, and mentally say, "Darlings, I love you!"
Look at the trees, the plants, the houses, and say, "Darlings I love you!" Look at the sea, the rivers, the moon, and say, "Darlings, I love you!" Look at everything in your house and say, "Darlings, I love you!" Look at the snow, the chill and ‚bad' weather, and say, "Darling, I love you!" Look at the fine weather and say, "Darling, I love you!".
Keep up this discipline, day after day, for years. You will be full of rare magnetism, all the great Powers of God will dwell with you. Wherever you go, there is good news. Whoever thinks of you, finds rest and relief. Whoever talks to you is blessed. You will be the great Light of God on earth. All the world will be full of your real, silent friends, and dear ones. You are needed everywhere in the world. Everyone will cherish you.
-Second Exercise:
Raise the consciousness from the lower to the higher planes.
From bodily preoccupations, exalt your consciousness to mental preoccupations; from mental preoccupations, shift your consciousness into a continued reflection upon the various attributes of the divine Being, such as Beauty, Love, Peace, Joy, Power, Immortality. As these attributes soak into your entire being, - your whole consciousness, your nervous mechanism, your bodily being, - as you evolve, you will find unfolded from within you, new powers, new faculties, new qualities, that deepen, heighten, enrich and fulfil your life on earth.
-Third Exercise:
Pour yourself upon the world, as a Song of Love. Pour yourself upon all humanity, as a Light of Wisdom.
Close your eyes and, mentally and with all the concentrated energies of your blessed heart, wish welfare to all breathing beings. Wish earnestly and intensely, health, peace, joy, success, prosperity to all mankind.
In your inner heart, dissolve yourself in a powerful goodwill for all beings. Close your eyes, and mentally fill the pockets of all men with money, and their houses with comforts.
Adore God in the children, God in the women, God in the men, God in all. Keep up this discipline day after day. Your life will be full of the powers of God. You will be a being of supernormal powers and tremendous soul-force.
What is Omniscience?
Most of you must have on one occasion or the other, reflected upon the nature of the omniscience of God. Those of you who have done so, must have wondered at the marvellous way in which the divine Intelligence is operative at every point of the universe.
Reflect again upon the nature of this omniscient Mind of the Supreme Reality. How is it possible for the infinite Being, or God, to know simultaneously every little thing about every human individual, not only around this world, but around all the other worlds? How does it know an unending number of details about infinite numbers of things spread out in our cosmos, and in the preceding and also in the coming cycles of cosmic manifestation? It is a mystery of mysteries. It is a matter of great amazement to us, how this infinite Intelligence of God knows everything about every being. This mystery ceases to be a mystery, the moment we resolve our own mind into an experience of God's Nature.
The omniscient Intelligence of God knows everything about everything and everybody, by being the very Essence in everything and everybody, everywhere. It is the Essence that, while being in things, remains completely unaffected by whatever is happening to the things, or by anything that the things themselves are; and therefore in a position to observe, understand, govern, change, dissolve, or recreate things.
Even as the dreaming-consciousness in Thomas creates, sustains, and witnesses the ocean, the great fires, the many happy and unhappy people, and is yet not made wet by the waters of the ocean, nor burnt by the great fires, nor yet touched by the happiness or unhappiness of the people, - the all-knowing, all-creative, all-sustaining divine Essence in everyone and everything, remains unaffected by all that is happening, and all that it is witnessing, within and around itself. It can dissolve, or recreate, everything, if it so will.
The all-seeing divine Essence indwells and recognises everything and everyone, but nothing, and no-one, recognises It. It is all-luminous and witnessless.
The Omniscience of the omnipresent Divinity is sleeplessly, eternally, observing everything. Everywhere, at all times, in all conditions, it is all-witnessing.
Also the universe we live in is, by virtue of the fact that the infinite Intelligence is resident in it, vibrant with Life. What we do here affects the remotest things in the scheme of the universe, and also touches, in a way, things even in the other worlds.
The universe is an organic whole, and no individual can do anything, without the whole universe being involved in it and without the Infinite in the Universe growing conscious of it. No-one and nothing can drift out of His sight. It is the Intelligence that is seeing us from within, below, above ourselves. It is at once immanent and transcendent.
From the all-observing Intelligence of the Divine present, unseen, everywhere in the universe, we can never conceal our good or our bad thoughts. We are being judged by our feelings, and answered back by our own thoughts. Our greatness, or our meanness, rests upon the greatness or meanness of our feelings, our thoughts, our deeds. Our life's beauty, power, or grace, or richness, depends upon the beauty, the power, the grace, the richness of our thoughts, feelings; and nothing but a kind of blindness alone could drive us to feel that we are living in an irresponsive world of sheer matter, a world where each has an isolated existence apart from the others, and from the All.
Supposing the ocean is full of consciousness. Will it not, then, simultaneously know everything about every wave on its boundless surface, and within its own depths? Even so, nothing and no-one within the cosmic manifestation which is a tiny little projection of, and in, the boundless divine Consciousness, can have any experience without the Divine knowing it instantly.
Just imagine the marvellousness of the working of that divine Mind, which knows all about us here, and also of everything about every woman in the African forests, everything about every little boy in New York, everything about every little leaf in our garden, everything about the fishes in the Pacific Ocean, everything about every little bird around the world. It knows every little detail about everyone's past, and it knows everything about the future of everyone. How marvellous is our God!
This all-seeing, all-knowing, all-governing Intelligence of the supreme Being is constantly watching us, constantly seeing us; automatically registering and reacting to everything that we think, feel, do, are. Its telegraphic, telephone and television services are everywhere, in every square centimetre of the open space. This Intelligence is all-seeing, and therefore in a position to govern everything. We can conceal nothing from It. Even in the most secret places that we can escape ourselves into, It watches us. In fact, there is no rock, no spot of darkness, no place whatsoever, wherein it is not all-seeing, active and operative. It is all-seeing in the very throbs of our heart and the pulsating blood of our veins. It is indescribable and marvellous.
Being also all-loving, this Divine Essence forgives our failures, errors, blunders, and devises ways and means for enabling us to overcome all these.
This Divinity which is always watching us and knows everything about us, is the Life of our life, the Soul of our soul, our real Essence and Substance. It is all the inexhaustible Wealth, creative Consciousness, the one Kingdom we need. We may run away from everything, but not from It. We would be just wonderful, if only we grow constantly conscious of this all-seeing, all-watching Eye of God, this Omniscience of the Divine. If we were powerfully conscious of all this all-seeing Eye, all-knowing Intelligence and Consciousness of the Divine, we would never make grievous mistakes in life, never be in a position to think any wrong thought, never feel anything that is not in harmony with the Truth and Love, never do anything wrong, unjust or hurtful. If we were constantly aware of the fact that we are being watched everywhere by this all-seeing Intelligence of God, our life would convert itself into a continuous process of transformation, and thus make possible for us the obtainment of illumination, and higher grades of evolution.
What was the secret of the saints? They have lived as though they were constantly under the Eye of the all-seeing and all-knowing God. Hundreds of blessings will belong to us provided we are always conscious of this all-seeing and omniscient God. We need not have to forget that this all-observing God is also all-loving, and therefore all-forgiving, all-blessing and all-protecting.
Karma in a Sensitive World of the Divine
There is a swimming-pool. You take a dive into it, and under the water every stroke you make disturbs the entire water of the swimming-pool, and produces effects at every point of the water of the swimming-pool. In the same way, every thought that we think does produce its own effects around the universe, and everywhere in this mysterious world of God. Everything that we think, or feel, or do is at once announced around the world. Whatever we thought, we felt, we did, is in its effects standing before us, right now. We are judged by our own actions, and our own thoughts. All around us, and within us, are the resulting effects of all that we thought, felt, did, were.
If good feeling had arisen in your heart, this morning, about seven o'clock, it has at once made its own impress upon your bodily system; its power has, however small, sunk into your subconscious being; its nature is announced around the world. If you walk through the forest at this hour, every leaf on every tree of the forest will be able to announce to you the nature of the feeling that you had in the morning at seven o'clock!
Our world is formed of the subtlest forces. So are we. However, the grossness and limitations of our physical senses enable us to experience only the crudest effects of these finest forces. Exceedingly limited in their capacity, our senses report to us that the world around us is constituted of matter, is physical, and the only real world. -This is not the report of a thinking, reflecting intelligence. Also it is not the report of the scientists, who constantly seek to supplement the power of their understanding and senses, by special devices.
Whatever may be the nature of that energy to which the scientist seeks to reduce the material world, one thing is certain: that this world is constituted of something like a psychic substance. The world is in fact a world of mirrors, constantly showing back to every individual everything that he has thought, or felt, or did.
Therefore, from this we must understand that it is possible to make ourselves great, saintly, godly, divine, and not succumb to the common errors, blunders, mistakes, characteristics of a man in ignorance. Constantly aware of this fact that we are living under the eye of God, that we are making our own destiny, good or bad, by our thoughts, feelings and actions, we must try to be yet more discriminative, yet more intelligent, yet more full of refinement and goodness, and seek to divert the courses of our lives towards progress, evolution and God-experience.
Repeated reflection upon all that has been said here, thus far, will compel us constantly to think of only such things which would result in our inner development and growth; and will constantly constrain us to such courses of thought, feelings, activities and experience, which would result in the full achievement of divine perfection.
In our love, there is a magic and magnetism. Every thought, every feeling, every action performed in love, released by the forces of love, would stand by us as a great angel and a beneficent power. Every noble good fine thought is a tonic to us. We can charge ourselves with rare divine power, by altering our energies in the direction of God. Our healers, our angels, our protectors, are in ourselves. Also our spiritual guides, our leaders, and our masters are in ourselves. They are the various powers and qualities of the inmost divine Consciousness. At the psychological level, they are our great thoughts, divine thoughts, divine sentiments, our high aspirations, the purity resulting from our devotion to the all-seeing Divinity which is absolute Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Power, Life.
Man's Spiritual Inheritance from God
Since God is the foundation of our existence, the basis of our consciousness, the background of all the processes of our knowing, the timeless and all-creative Essence in us, the Soul of our soul, it is an undeniable fact and a self-evident truth that a poetic power far greater than that which resided in the mind of Shakespeare of England, or Homer of Greece, or Goethe of Germany, - a scientific capacity for invention greater than the one that resided in the mind of Edison, - an intelligence more brilliant and luminous than the one that subsisted in Plato of ancient philosophy, or Kant of modern thought, - a courage, a fearlessness greater than that which was displayed by the best of the world's greatest soldiers or conquerors, - a compassion and a love wider and deeper than the one that throbbed in the hearts of the saviours of mankind, - a mystical and spiritual power to perceive, experience, and live deeply in the wonders and dynamisms of the Divine Consciousness that grew so eloquently operative in the lives of the world's great mystics, - all these, this poetic power, this scientific capacity, this creative intelligence, this courage and fearlessness, this compassion and love, this mystical and spiritual power, are latent in each of us; and to make something of them manifest in our everyday modes of living is the meaning and mission of human life on earth.
In order that we may grow increasingly conscious of God, realise the glorious light that is in each of us, touch God as we would touch any physical object, see Him as well as we see each other, there are special disciplines.
God does not give Himself in experience to those who are unintelligent, unwary, lazy, self-satisfied, conceited, and therefore limited in the power of thought, will and life. God is for geniuses, the soldiers of the spirit. God is for the great in mind and the great in heart, the great in purity and the great in love, the great in faith, and the great in goodness and light. Simple souls can also experience God - but that simplicity has to be exalted to a very great extent. Otherwise the experience of God is not possible, and the experience we think we have of God is only a deception, a self-delusion. Therefore we have to acquire all qualifications and work like geniuses. We have to discover the Godhead. Columbus discovered America. Copernicus discovered the rotation of the earth. Socrates discovered his own Self. Christ discovered the Kingdom of Heaven in each of us.
Look at the scientists, the philosophers, the technicians, the artists, the great medical men, the big-business magnates. Their lives are characterised by restless operations of intelligence, industry, search, activity. It is not possible for them to be idle, they are always up and doing. They are hard-working, ever vigilant in intelligence, and find no time and no inclination to dissipate their precious energies in easy sense-pleasures. They are occupied with great goals and great ideals, their objectives are great.
The spiritual individual stands incomparably superior to them. He is far more reflective, far more industrious, far more vigilant and hard-working, far more richly endowed in mind, heart, will, than these people. He has the highest goal and greater objectives to realise. The lover of God tries, in his inner consciousness and experience, to break all the limitations of the body he dwells in, of the mind he uses, of the space-time universe in which his body lives and moves. He has a transcendental aim or ideal before him, and that aim or ideal is God.
God is not visible to the ordinary human individual because the ordinary person functions merely through the five limited physical senses and through the physical mind. He has purely empirical experiences in a material world and a sense-universe. His soul and heart are imprisoned in the experiences of this limited, little sense-world. His mind is riddled with problems, and his life is a pendulum that swings between a tear and a smile, depression and elation, failure and success, disease and health, trouble and harmony, pain and pleasure, until the hand of time closes his eye to the world he sought to grasp in the delights of the senses.
Simple in heart, pure in soul, brilliant in intelligence, the daring aspirant has outgrown an earth-worm-view of life, has submitted his passions to reason, and his reason to an all-seeing Consciousness. He is earnestly seeking for the experience and perfections of God. In his restless search after the transcendental object that God is, and as a result and reward of a number of higher and unusual disciplines he has imposed upon himself, the higher senses and capacities of perception and experience come into operation. The reports and impressions from the external world come to him through senses other than the five physical senses constantly used by the ordinary human individual. He experiences life and world with the newly unfolded faculties and powers of perception.
It is the unavoidable destiny of every man on earth to rise to higher and higher states of evolution and perfection, until he becomes as perfect as the Father in Heaven, until all that is of God is his own. May the divine Grace help us to grow more and more, each day, in love, in knowledge, in peace, in goodness, in usefulness to humanity, in purity, until we consciously live, move and have our being in the endless perfections of God.
Swami Omkarananda
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