Can Man See God?
What is it to be Comforted?
Reading and Affirmation for February
From the book The Beatitudes: Their Inner Meaning by Swami Kriyananda
Can Man See God?
Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.
The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.
There is a saying in Chapter 1 of the Gospel of St. John that would seem to respond with a definite No to the question, Can man see God? The saying is:
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Many great saints, however, claim to have seen God. If we ask, then, “Can God be seen?” rather than, “Can man see God?” the answer is, “Yes! Else those saints lied; and, else, the Scriptures themselves lie.”
The point is, it is not man – this human body, these human eyes – that sees God. God can be seen only with spiritual vision – with the eye of the soul.
As the Bhagavad Gita puts it in the eleventh Chapter:
“Thou canst not see Me with mortal eyes. Therefore I now give thee sight divine. Behold My supreme power of Yoga!”
With these words Hari, the exalted Lord of Yoga, revealed himself to Arjuna in His infinite form.
Paramhansa Yogananda, in Autobiography of a Yogi, describes the supernal experience in words more readily comprehensible to modern minds than the poetic phraseology of the Bhagavad Gita. The chapter “An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness” is one of the most inspiringly beautiful in all mystical literature. Here is a brief excerpt:
An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light.
[I saw] the divine dispersion of rays pour from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster; fire became firmament.
I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure.…The creative voice of God I heard resounding as Aum, the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.”
This, so the great masters aver, is what God is. And this also, they insist, is what we are in our deepest reality.
Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
Whispers From Eternity
212. With the Torch of our Devotion, blaze away our dark indifference
Divine Mother, let every slap of correction administered by Thee wring from us, Thy children, only cries for Thy love. Change any moans of suffering we utter into unceasing wails to be lifted comfortingly onto Thy cosmic lap.
O Divine Mother, teach us, even when we are bludgeoned by pain, to sing only Thy exulting songs of joy. Melt our pride in Thy purifying furnace of all necessary trials, to transmute the lead of unseemly arrogance into the pure gold of humility.
Divine Mother, clear out the brooding slum of our selfishness wherein crouch, huddled in pain, the starving, ill-clad urchins of our ignorance. Build there, instead, Thy temple of omnipresence, wherein noble votaries of devotion, solemn reverence, and aspiring love can worship Thee with pure hearts, dressed in the simple, clean garments of single-minded intention.
In that golden temple, softly echoing Thy whispered inner guidance, Thy devotees will offer before Thy altar the frankincense of unceasing remembrance, as they sing to Thee their soul-chants.
O Divine Mother, we lay eagerly at Thy feet all the fresh-cut flowers of our devotion. Our humble prayer to Thee is this: Convert the little altar of our united hearts into the blazing light of Thy omnipresence.
Divine Mother, be Thou the only love of our souls. Ignite our damp wood of earthliness with the flame of infinity. Let the torch of our own devotion blaze in the dark forest of our indifference, restlessness, and ignorance.
Inflame our minds with Thy thoughts! our hearts with Thy love! our souls with Thy eternal joy!
Paramhansa Yogananda
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