Self Knowledge

Let us try to know ourselves. Let us try to observe what we truly are. Very often we feel that we are insignificant creatures. We have nowhere to go, nothing to achieve and nothing to give. This is what we feel in our day to day existence. But what we truly are is totally different from what we feel. We are all God's children. At each moment, God is pouring into us something divine and something truthful. He expects much from us, but nothing beyond our capacity. He knows what we can consciously offer to Him. Right now, we feel that we are weak, unimportant, useless. But in God's eyes, we are divine, we are fruitful, we are Infinite.

We are constantly making mistakes. The root of our mistakes is our body, the physical. We feel that there is nothing beyond the physical and, at the same time, that there is nothing in the physical. It is here that we are making a most deplorable mistake. If we go beyond our body, beyond our physical consciousness, we see Infinite Peace, Infinite Joy, Infinite Bliss and Power all eagerly waiting for us.

Then if we go deep within, deep inside our body, we see and feel the soul. This soul is the messenger of God on earth. If we can be in tune with the constant, spontaneous music of the soul, our lives will be free from suffering, misery, frustration, fear and worry. Our lives will be a constant success, a constant achievement and a constant fulfilment, a fulfilment that can and will be both inner and outer.

So either we have to go deep inside the body, into the inmost recesses of our heart, or we have to go beyond the body, beyond the physical sheath, beyond the physical consciousness. We have to discover our true Self, either today or tomorrow or the day after. Mere preaching will not do; book study will not do. If we at all preach the Truth, the gospel, the spiritual philosophy, then we must preach what we live and practise what we want to be. We have to practise what we want to be, and, if we preach, we must preach only what we live.

God's Vision is man and man's reality is God. Man can deny God. His ignorance can make him feel that there is no God and no need for God. But God's Compassion can never deny the existence of man. God is made of Compassion, Infinite Compassion. Man is made of ignorance. Whenever I say "man," I mean the human mind, the human body. For man is in reality the descendant of God. To realise God is man's birthright. Divinity is his heritage. But man is tired, man is frustrated, man wants to live in darkness. Man is very often satisfied with his limitations. So what can God do? If there is no sincere seeking, no striving, no aspiration, God has to lower Himself into this unlit, ignorant human being.

Man needs God, but he denies it. God needs man, and He is proud to tell the world of His need. Man certainly wants to get everything from God, but he wants to give God no credit for His infinite Grace and Compassion. But God openly shows His pride in human achievement. If we are aspiring, we will in no time see and feel the truth of this. God is constantly proud of our achievement, our aspiration, our existence.

So I wish to tell all of you not to cherish the idea that God has failed His Creation, that God has been a failure. These ideas are completely wrong. God has not failed. It is we who constantly feel that God and God's Creation are two totally different things. We think, "God is in heaven and we are on earth. God does not care for us. Or if He does care for us, He has no strength to correct, rectify or perfect His Creation." This is a wrong conception of the Truth. What do we know about God's Perfection, God's Vision, God's Reality, God's Consciousness? With our human eyes, what do we seek? Perfection, achievement, success. To God's Eyes, these things look totally different. Man's success and God's success are not necessarily the same. God's success is experience, and that experience can take the form of either success or failure. He gives us these two kinds of experience.

When we live in the soul, we feel that our soul has all responsibility for us. When we live in the body, we see that our body is nothing but stupidity. So if we live in the soul, we shall have the spontaneous experience of fulfilment. But if we live in the body, we shall have the spontaneous experience of frustration and misery. Our success and our failure have very little to do with God's Wisdom, God's Experience and God's Operation in the physical world. He is our failure, He is the doer and He is the action. If we can see God's presence in each action, and then see the action itself as God, and later the result- success or failure-as God, and finally the Doer Himself as God, then all our problems are over. We can claim ourselves to be God's Pride. We are truly God's highest Pride and Vision if we know the secret of living here on earth and there in heaven.

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/*October 30th, 1969*/
/University of San Carlos, Cebu City,/
The Philippines