"Everything will be all right. All shall be well. Peace shall reign in the world. The millennium shall come. God shall rule the world.â
Does not a voice from within us speak in this manner? From where does this voice come? It is That within us which is not involved in time, which is not limited in space, though we are involved in time and confined to space. Spatially we are confined to one particular location; temporally we are limited in our age, our span of life. Yet we always feel that there is a grand thing before us, ahead of us.
Everyone, even the most miserable man in this world, feels that a good day will come to him: âSomehow I shall be free from this misery, this sorrow, this suffering.â
The language of Eternity is the literature of joy, happiness, blessedness, irrespective of the fact that we seem to be shrouded in the limitations of space and time. We live a dual life: a life of death, mortality, and a life of deathlessness immortality.
We know that we shall not live in this world for a long time, and yet we feel that we should do good things. If tomorrow is the last day for us, what benefit is there in doing good things today? That which tells us that in spite of the fact that tomorrow may be the last day, today we should be goodâthat which tell us this, is the Eternity that is speaking to us: âYou shall not perish.â
Though the temporal encasement in us shall perish tomorrow, the Eternity in us shall not perish. The deeds that we perform have an eternal characteristic also in them, apart from their perishable nature. Every work that we do perishes when the work is overâit has an end, it comes to a closeâbut it produces an effect which shall not come to an end.
All work is perishable in its nature; that is true. Yet, in this perishable framework of our actions, there is an eternal future embedded, a seed sown, which shall be an asset for us in our future. What do we mean by the future? If we leave this body tomorrow, where is the future for us? If all that we have done in this world, all our meritorious works are to cease together with the cessation of this body, what good is this life? This question may arise many a time when we are in a mood of despondency, but we forget that we are not merely mortal bodies and our actions are not entirely perishable or temporal in their nature. Perishable is this body, perishable are our deeds, yet immortal is our soul and deathless is the effect produced by our actions. This is the reason why we feel that tomorrow shall be a better day.
God speaks within us in the language of the Eternal that is operating within us and tells us, âAll shall be well with you.â Suhrdaá¹ sarva-bhÅ«tÄnÄmá¹ jñÄtvÄ mÄá¹ ÅsÄntim á¹rcchati (Bhagavad Gita 5.29). The Lord says in the Bhagavadgita, âKnow me as your friend. Knowing this, you shall have peace.â
Our friend is our Eternal in us; it is our real asset. Whatever we do in this world, if it has even a modicum of the Eternity in it, it shall be a credit for us to be carried forward to our future life.
Last one for today, but I really thought this one would be appreciated here because I know that a lot of you admire Hitchens as I do, but I am no longer a devout "apostate" and follower as I was in the 90s when I thought the gravest danger to our Republic was the separation of church and state...wow has that notion changed. When there is very little church even left and where religiousity is equated with Neanderthalism or domestic terrorism in mainstream society it kinda deflates the danger in that now, innit? And mind you this comes from someone who has never been a part of any religion in my entire life, agnostic wire to wire. Anyway the intellectual giant; Sir Christopher Hitchens:
