YOU CAN NOT BREATHE OR LIFT A FINGER WITHOUT GRACE
Meditation and spiritual practices, properly prescribed for each person’s individual needs, bring about the integration between man’s three aspects: body, mind or soul, and spirit.
By systematically diving deep within ourselves, we draw forth from that infinite reservoir of energy and allow it to permeate the soul, the mind, and the body so that man functions as a whole being, as an integrated being, and not as a fragmented being—for fragmentation is another word for suffering.
That is why we teach meditation and spiritual practices and encourage people to put some effort into their lives in their waking state so that they can better the things that are not so good. Meditation and self-help do another job: They draw to oneself an incredible, indescribable, but experienceable energy that we call Grace.
Grace is everywhere, like the sound waves of broadcasting stations. We should tune the radio and open ourselves through meditational practices to draw this Grace to ourselves.
GRACE
All kinds of meditational practices taught by true gurus only play thirty percent of the part. Ten percent is your self-effort, and sixty percent is Grace. Without Grace, you cannot breathe or lift a finger – you can do nothing.
Grace flows through us, but we only use that force on a very gross level, not on life’s finer levels. We complain of the room being stuffy. Have we ever thought of opening the window so fresh air can flow in? Then, the room would not be stuffy. Psychologists try to probe minds and stir up the dirt there, the samskaras, without being able to resolve or dissolve them.
THE MANIFESTOR AND THE MANIFESTATION
Only one thing could dissolve the samskaras and bring greater clarity to the mind. It is the spiritual force that is latent, that is within every man. Man is potentially divine.
As you sit here in front of me, what do I see? I see gods and goddesses. You are That. The Manifestor cannot exist without its manifestation if you do not exist. For the Manifestor to exist, it requires its manifestation – and for manifestation to exist, it requires the Manifestor.
This entire universe has been a natural product, from beginless time, endless, eternal. The Manifestor has not created this universe. This universe has been the manifestation, a spontaneous manifestation, of the Manifestor. It is like a flower giving off fragrance spontaneously. It is like fire giving off heat spontaneously. Manifestation has been a spontaneous product.
THERE IS NO SEPARATION
How can we separate heat from the fire? How can we separate the fragrance from the flower? It is all but one.
The process of the soul is to start realising, by diving deep within through meditational practices, that the manifestation and the Manifestor are but one. That is why Jesus said, “I and my father are one.” There is no division – there is no separation.
And that is the greatest illusion man suffers because he tries to create a wall around himself to preserve his little ego. The wave tries to preserve itself, thinking it is a wave, but is it the ocean?
Man must start with his self-effort of daily living with the assertion that I am Divine. If you say, “I am weak. I am weak. I am weak.” You will become weak—and you will get weaker still. But if you start with the assertion that “I am Divine,” nothing can stand in your way. As the old saying goes, which is so beautiful but so little understood, “If God is with me, who can be against me?”
So, spiritual practices are important. The happy thing is this: before man started searching externally and finding dissatisfaction in all the technological and mental progress he has made, he has now begun to search inwardly – and that is the way, that is the life, that is the truth. For all that there is, all that exists, exists within you.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1980 – 21
