Living implies the operation in the individual of the life principle that activates all beings. The attributeless Divine assumes certain qualities as Its nature and becomes saguna. The individual thus formed seeks to know and experience the variety of names and forms that are exposed to Its senses of perception and its mind. This is, in short, the process of living, the project of "knowing", of expanding one's awareness. The process has a beginning and an end, it involves success and failure, good and evil. "I am Jivi, a live individual", "I am a spark of Consciousness", "I am embodied Atma" - declarations such as these do not reveal the complete knowledge of the life principle. The Jivi is Divine Consciousness in Its entirety, installed in a chariot. It is not a bundle of inert stuff moulded into a form and labelled with a name. There is only One all-pervading Consciousness but man experiences It in fragments and, mistaking It as many, he gropes in the confusion caused by his own ignorance.
- Divine Discourse, Mar 22, 1985. |
