How to Reach the Divine?

The prime question, that every spiritual seeker asks to him and the world every moment is, “How to reach the Divine?” Let us get some insight into the question and its answer.

What does this question mean?

To reach the Divine means to achieve oneness with Him. To achieve oneness with Him means to have to the Divine realization to the innermost core.

Now what is this realization?

The Divine realization is the state of being almost the same as the Divine. We have qualities similar to Him, such as purity and eternity. But, in many cases we are also different from Him, for example He is Omni-potent and is free from all bondages where as we are bound of our own actions. To achieve the Divine realization means to achieve a state as same as that of Divine by eliminating all this dissimilarities. If I want to understand you, I need to bear all your responsibilities, powers, environment and everything related to you. Then only I can understand your point of view and way of thinking and behaving. Then only I can realize all that you realize and you are. Similarly, to become one with the Lord I need to become like Him. To mix something with milk without changing the quality of milk, I need another bottle of milk of same quality.

So, this question actually points to the ways of becoming like Him. Please understand that a drop of water remains and drop of water always even if it merges with the sea. It may boast that it is sea now, but its existence is as a drop of water alone. Yes, a drop of soft water when merges into the sea, become as salty and hard as that of the sea water. Similarly, the God-realized man remains a soul always and not become the God but becomes as same as the God in most of the attributes.

Why this question?

Now, one may ask why do we need to ask this question or what is the importance of this question in our lives.

There are many reasons to ask this question. Many people turn towards the Lord everyday because the find the need of doing so in their daily life. But, it is very unfortunate that most of them do not continue on this path with firm determination.

When I see all around, I find the words of Bhagavad Gita materializing it beautifully. Everyone in his/her very way is trying to reach Him alone. Whether you are running behind money, love, peace, fame, knowledge, or anything material or immaterial, all at their best, lead to the Lord alone. I or many sages at the past only posted this question in the straightest fashion.

We have been evolving for thousands of years. We have evolved from insects to humans. But, does this mean, we are at the top of the evolution pyramid. No, we have to go a long yet. The existence of the Deities are considered above our existence as they fulfill our needs through rain and other things for which they are assigned but we have to go beyond. Deities also fall inside the cycle of birth and death. The Divine/God/Almighty is the ultimate end of the evolution pyramid.

We bear mind and intellect. And to make them busy also a wide range of questions standing before us, laughing loud at us. These questions are related to our existence, the existence of this cosmos and our interrelations. All of us try to seek answers to these questions at our small scale. Even science is doing the same work at a larger scale. After all science is the outcome of human mind. How can it not investigate into our prime concern?

The answer…

Already through the above discussion, we have seen that for reaching Him, we need to become like Him. The Lord Has two forms one is Sagun (with attributes) and other is Nirgun (beyond attributes). It is hard to move toward the Nirgun nature of the Lord. So, we should try to attain oneness with His Sagun nature.

Swami Vivekananda said, “Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by work, worship, knowledge or devotion, by one or all of this and be free. This is all of religion. Books, discussions, rituals, dogmas are just secondary details.”

All the ways to achieve the Lord are unique and true. Even if you do not make any effort, you will reach Him at the time of final dissolution. But, the word is that, “Anything not achieved with your own effort is not yours and won’t remain with you for long.”

I have written a long article. You might get bored reading it. I must end it now. You can’t find the God with a narrow point of view. Neither inaction nor knowledge alone is enough for this endeavor.

Before going into details, I must say about the basics. In spirituality, you won’t find when basics melt into profound philosophies. To achieve the Lord first thing we need to do is to follow Yama and Niyamas. Yama include mainly truthfulness (Satya), non-violence (Ahimsa), non-stealing (Ashteya), celibacy (Brahmacharya) and non-possessiveness (Aparigraha). And Niyam mainly include contentment (Santosh), cleanliness (Sauch), austerity (Tapa), self study or study of scriptures (Swadhyaya) and devotion and surrender to the God (Ishwar-Pranidhana).

I must tell you something important. The God cannot be achieved by your efforts alone till He Himself allows you to find Him. You can try your level best to be like Him and attract His special attention and grace. You need to surrender yourself completely to Him for your advancement to the Highest.

I can assure you that if one practices the above basics of spirituality for few years with firm determination and unfailing faith, the Lord will become restless (in another sense) to achieve Him (the devotee).

For following the above ideas at their best, one need to understand the depth of all of the above ten limbs of Yama and Niyam. I will try to discuss them in detail in my next blogs.

Thanks a lot.