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"LOVE ALL SERVE ALL" "HELP EVER, HURT NEVER" Sai Baba

We Are Spiritual Beings Living A Human Experience

On the morning of the great war of the Mahabharata, Arjuna requested Lord Krishna to drive his chariot to the front line of the battlefield so that he could see the opposing armies arrayed for battle. As he stood there surveying both armies, Arjuna saw on each side his intimate relatives, respected family elders, teachers and close friends, ready to do battle against one another. Arjuna was suddenly overcome by grief at the prospect of having to kill his own people. The mighty warrior became confused and despondent, and lost his determination to fight.

This was the setting for the transmission of the timeless spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita by Lord Krishna. The Lord proceeded to enlighten Arjuna on the spiritual basis of human existence, the purpose of life, the nature of the soul, its relationship to God, and other spiritual truths. Lord Krishna explained that the body is mortal and unreal, but the Self which dwells in the body is immortal and real. The Self is indestructible and remains untouched when the physical body dies. Lord Krishna told Arjuna:
“You speak sincerely but your sorrow has no cause. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There has never been a time when you and I, and the kings gathered here, have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.”

Lord Krishna stressed that as the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body, and the wise are not deluded by these changes. The impermanent has no reality. Reality exists only in the eternal. Since the body is impermanent, it is not real. It is the eternal Self which is real. In the context of human existence, it is the Self, which inhabits the bodily residence, that is the reality.

Jesuit priest, palaeontologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955) wrote, “We are not human beings seeking a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings living a human experience.” But does it really matter that it is one thing rather than the other, since we already strut about the earth in human form? Chardin’s quotation is not just a clever play on words. The difference in meaning is very significant. It has to do with reality, our true Reality and the reality of our experiences.

We walk, talk, do things, eat, enjoy and feel elated when good things happen, and suffer and become depressed when they go wrong. There is no doubt our actions and feelings are experienced as real. Similarly, when we dream, our beautiful dreams and horrible nightmares also seem very real, that is, until we wake up.

However, the Masters tell us that the world we live in is one of illusion, and when our temporary stay in this physical world comes to an end, we awaken to our true reality. Although we have incarnated in human form we are spirit and are all connected; we come from the same source of divine consciousness and are together One. This is the reality. The sense of separation we feel, the perception that we are all individuals separate and distinct from one another, is illusion.

If we always stay centred on our spiritual essence and live a spiritual life we will not be distracted by the trials and travails of human life and will always have inner peace.

The Sufis often teach through stories of the inimitable Mullah Nasruddin. Mullah means teacher, and Nasruddin is a very wise teacher. He pretends to be a fool but thinking about his foolishness teaches people to be wise. One day Nasruddin addressed a large crowd and shouted, “Do you want wisdom without pain, knowledge without effort, truth without discrimination, achievement without hard work, and success without sacrifice?” Everyone shouted “Yes” in reply. Nasruddin then told the crowd, “This is wonderful! I do too. If I ever find out how to accomplish this, I’ll be the first to let you know.”

As spiritual beings, we look at life and our values very differently. We realise we do not exist primarily for the enjoyment of physical pleasures and comfort, or for the pursuit of love, fame and fortune. Our human existence is limited in duration and within this short span of our life we have no time to waste, for we have many experiences to undergo.

Our whole life is a series of experiences and all the things that happen to us, the wonderful and the not so wonderful, provide lessons from which we learn and grow spiritually. Our experiences would fall short if they were only pleasant, no matter how much we, as ordinary human beings with the usual frailties, would desire only that.

Our life is determined not so much by what happens to us as by the way we respond to the experiences we encounter. In relation to the setbacks and disappointments of life, or hardships we have endured, the question is whether we have learnt from such experiences so as to become a wiser, stronger and better person.

There are no accidents in life and the experiences we bring upon ourselves are necessary for the lessons we can learn from them. The Daoist sage Laozi explained, “You understand what is beautiful when you see the ugly; you know what is good when you recognise the bad… There is nothing good or bad in experiences, only in our reaction to them.”

The realisation that we are spiritual beings is very reassuring. It is not death that we are afraid of since it is only the termination of our human experience, and we return to the spiritual realm. What we fear is not daring to live and not embracing the whole spectrum of human experience: the pleasant and unpleasant, the beautiful and ugly. Human life is a precious gift from God and we thank Him by living to the fullest, and accepting good and bad as it comes.

Life is infinitely beautiful but we cannot experience it fully by living timidly or miserly. The writer Father Anthony de Mello said, “Life is a banquet. And the tragedy is that most people are starving to death.”

On our deathbed, in retrospect we will be more disappointed by what we did not do than by the things we did. The great Sufi mystic and poet Rumi said, “You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?”

Life is a quest for self-knowledge and a struggle for self-conquest in order to win freedom from the endless cycle of birth and death. It is a process of experimentation and becoming, steps towards the realisation of who we truly are. It involves not only exploring, expressing and learning, but also loving, rejoicing and suffering. It is living fully and with passion in celebration of life. We celebrate life by manifesting the courage to face new experiences, even the vicissitudes of life.

We need courage for many things, not least to live a human experience fully. The American author Henry Miller wrote:
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realise it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognise it as such.”

We are here to learn lessons from life on earth, and at some point we will depart. As fellow travellers on the same journey it is in our mutual interest to encourage, support and take care of one another. We need to be constantly aware that we will ultimately return to the same ocean of divine consciousness, and dissolve and merge as One. This awareness will enable us to put aside differences and any personal dislikes, prejudices we might feel towards one another. Even the time when our paths cross in the worldly plane is very brief. We should therefore love, help and be kind to one another as we are all fighting a hard battle to reach the same destination.

We must not be disheartened or despair when things do not work out smoothly, or even when they turn out badly. Whenever we get carried away by our delusion that this human existence is real, we bind ourselves to the physical world through our desires and attachments, forgetting our true reality. Loss, pain and suffering remind us that we are not permanent residents here and it is futile to identify solely with our body and mind, or cling on to worldly attachments.

When we remember who we truly are we are able to take a detached view, from the stand of the eternal spiritual being who cannot be harmed by anything that happens on the physical plane. We can then look upon the drama unfolding around us with perfect calmness.

As we live through our human experience we abide by Swami’s advice:
“Life is a Challenge, Meet it.
Life is Love, Share it.
Life is a Dream, Realise it.
Life is a Game, Play it!
This is the real pilgrim’s progress. This is the lion’s march across the forest—fearless, masterful,

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