Spiritual Message for the Day – Peace is Your Essential Nature by Sri Swami Chidananda
Baba Times Digest© | 6 November 2014 12.56 EST | New York Edition
Peace is Your Essential Nature
Divine Life Society Publication: Peace is Your Birthright by Sri Swami Chidananda
Peace is your birthright. For, in reality, your essential nature, your innermost real nature, Nija-svarupa, is peace profound. The great Universal Reality whom we refer to as God is immeasurable peace—profound, unfathomable and limitless peace—Santo ayam Atma. This Universal Spirit verily is of the very nature of profound peace. Peace, therefore, is the eternal, unchanging reality. Peace alone exists—timeless, transcending time, without beginning and without end. Peace is the eternal reality.
God Himself is peace. But the restlessness, the clash and conflict, the violence and warfare we see upon the surface of this planet earth today, is the outcome of man’s intransigence. It is the outcome of man’s deliberate rejection of the sublime message of peace that God has been sending to this human world from time to time through His great messengers, through His divine messengers, the prophets, the saints, the messiahs, who have come to declare to man that he should walk the path of goodwill, harmony and friendship.
That Great Universal Reality which is the source and origin of all existence is the common meeting ground of all beings and under His universal, spiritual fatherhood all humanity is a single family related in terms of brotherhood. We are all children of the Divine. The recognition of this fact is the key to establishing and bringing about peace in this world.
God’s peace is perennial and permanent but man superimposed upon it hatred and violence, insecurity and restlessness, warfare and conflict. There is no harmony. Discord has become the order of the day. Instead of trying to decide issues by love and understanding, mutual give and take, harmony and peace, in a friendly manner, we take recourse to violence.
In truth what man wants is comfortable living and whatever policy the government adopts, if it is able to provide for him these things—comfortable living, good job, steady income and a salary and the good things of life—he does not care whether the government is engaged in peace or in warfare.
Under these conditions if we would still like to bring about a climate for peace, we have to re-educate the human individual into right thinking. People think in a haphazard way. There is no positive thought, there is no thought in the right direction and all this has resulted due to two or three very important factors. First and foremost, God who is an infinite ocean of absolute divine peace and blessedness, has tried to give to man this awakening message that peace is your birthright. You are of the very nature of peace. Deep within you there is an innermost centre which is purely spiritual and that inner spiritual centre of yours is a part of the Universal being. Therefore, by its very nature it is absolute peace. There abides peace in your heart.
To enter within to a life of introspection and meditation and to experience that peace within and thus become established in inner individual peace, is the first step towards world peace. When individuals are established in inner divine peace, they will begin to radiate this peace in their own environment, and into their own particular circle of beings with whom they have to live and move. Thus, everywhere there is an inner awareness that man’s real nature is spiritual and that real nature is of the very nature of absolute peace, Santi, Shalom.
Happiness is the outcome of peace. Santamu leka saukhyamu ledu (Without peace there is no happiness)—thus sang the great saint-poet Tyagaraja. Therefore, if you want happiness you must first of all establish peace in yourself. You must be able to give up the hard adamantine ego-sense and selfishness. The ego-sense and selfishness of the individual nature is one of the greatest obstacles to harmony, unity, brotherhood, love and peace.
Education is meant to draw out from within the human individual all that is sublime, all that is good and auspicious and blessed. It is not merely putting into the human brain a great deal of facts and figures and information. It is not like feeding statistical data into a computer; on the contrary, the process of education is a reverse process. It is a positive, creative process of bringing out from within the human individual these great hidden qualities of love, unity, harmony, brotherhood and peace. It is only when our entire educational system becomes reoriented in this manner that the future humanity will grow in an atmosphere of goodwill and brotherhood, love and harmony, of peace and tolerance, and then alone will world peace become a fact.
Prayer is a great power. It can bring peace, for it can link our inner self to the universal being who is of the nature of profound peace. Therefore, right education through unfailing daily prayer, individual as well as collective, and by giving up our selfish nature, hard-hearted egoistic and selfish nature, we can work towards the establishment of peace, first within the individual heart and then within this immediate environment and thus onward into ever widening circles. Peace can be brought about in this whole world among nations, races and all humanity. Peace be unto you. Om, Santi, Santi, Santih.
Excerpts from: Peace is Your Essential Nature - Peace is Your Birthright by Sri Swami Chidananda
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