BLISS OF THE ATMAN

Everyone who is in the grip of struggle for the attainment of the eternal values of life knows that life’s fulfilment and its ultimate fruition depends upon the immortal bliss and peace of the Atman. He further knows that this unchanging Truth can be his, only when the mind is withdrawn from the external attractions of the world, only when he has conceived a revulsion of feeling towards the pleasures of the senses, only when the false cravings of his soul for the unstable and ephemeral things of life have ceased and disappeared. These are the necessary conditions for the realisation of the immortal peace and joy of the Atman. 

The Sages have declared: There is no higher gain in this existence than the bliss of the Atman. When you have once found it, you are utterly free from the clutches of mental turmoil and the fetters of death and misery. Suppose a man has come by a perennial spring of nectar at which he can quaff to his heart’s content and thus satisfy the thirst that parches his soul, would he hanker after the unwholesome water of dirty ponds that brings disease and consequent pain and misery?

If you would really enjoy the blessings of a true and independent life, then by a concentrated and sustained effort seek the bliss of the Eternal. Nothing else in this world can quench the flames of desire that rise and burn in your heart. Liberation is spoken of as the realisation of the Immortal Divinity dwelling within you. Be intoxicated with the joy that never changes, that ever exists. Joy, bliss and peace are your quest. Independence and freedom are your goal.

If you have understood, by ransacking the depths of your desire-ridden heart, the true purpose of your life, you will surely have discovered that nothing short of the attainment of an immortal state would completely satisfy the innate aspiration of your soul. The passing glamours of life, the gilded pleasures that you pursue, are the will-o’-the-wisps that delude the mind and throw you into the prison of ignorance and death. Therefore, seek the Eternal, seek that which never dies, never changes - that which is your real spirit, the one deathless truth of your being. Do not be deceived. Wake up from the sleep of ignorance. Be aware of your eternal Self. Tear up the veil between you and your God, and know that you and He are one. Declare with all the joy that you can command: “I am the all-pervading, indestructible, beginningless and endless Truth, whose nature is perfect peace and bliss. I am the self-existent, all-powerful Reality. I am the free, ageless, birthless, everlasting Spirit. Disease, poverty, fear and want have nothing to do with me. l am bliss - pure bliss; peace - pure peace. I am the Light of lights. I am the primeval source of all things. I am God and there is none but ‘I’.” Meditate thus until you are inebriated with the thought of your Divine state, until you merge and lose yourself in the limitless ocean of your immortal existence and make this blessed human life abundantly blessed.