Uniqueness of Sri Bhagavan
K.Subramanian
Grace
When something good happens to us, we are grateful to God and say that it is due to His Grace. When something bad happens to us, we blame God or our past karma. In other words, we associate Grace with what is beneficial to us and lack of Grace with what is not beneficial to us. God appears to be gracious only when we are successful, happy. So we feel that Grace flows only occasionally as we are not always successful, as we don’t always get what we want.
But Sri Bhagavan says categorically that Grace is always flowing and there is no time at which it is not flowing and no person towards whom it is not flowing. That which is, he says, is only Grace and there is nothing else. While most others have said that Grace is what we don’t deserve, Sri Bhagavan has said that there is only Grace and it is always flowing towards everyone.It is difficult to accept our bad, unpleasant experiences as being due to Grace. We generally think that our sufferings are due to lack of Grace. Sri Bhagavan says that our sorrows are not due to lack of Grace but due to our wrong identification of ourselves with our body.
“Creation is neither good nor bad; it is as it is. It is the human mind which puts all sorts of constructions on it, seeing things from its own angle and interpreting them to suit its own interests. A woman is just a woman, but one man calls her ‘mother’, another ‘sister’, and still another ‘aunt’ and so on. Men love women, hate snakes, and are indifferent to the grass and stones by the roadside. These value-judgments are the cause of all the misery in the world. Creation is like a peepul tree: birds come to eat its fruit, or take shelter under its branches; men cool themselves in its shade, but some may hang themselves on it. Yet the tree continues to lead its quiet life, unconcerned with and unaware of all the uses it is put to. It is the human mind that creates its own difficulties and then cries for help. Is God so partial as to give peace to one person and sorrow to another? In creation there is room for everything, but man refuses to see the good, the healthy and the beautiful. Instead, he goes on whining, like the hungry man who sits beside the tasty dish and who, instead of stretching out his hand to satisfy his hunger, goes on lamenting. Whose fault is it, God’s or man’s?”
>p>Once the delusion that we are the body is gone, there will be only joy, says Sri Bhagavan. We are not able to experience Grace all the time because of our desires and expectations. It can be experienced only when our desires cease. Grace is always there but it becomes manifest when the mind merges in the Self, either through surrender or through meditation.God’s very nature, says Sri Bhagavan, is Grace and this can be experienced at all times only when a person surrenders. A person who surrenders accepts everything as His will. He does not consider anything as good or bad, success or failure. After surrender, there is no individual will. In this state, which is the result of Grace, one feels Grace all the time.
“Grace manifests itself when the quest for the Self begins. The quest itself is the result of Grace. There is not a single moment when Grace is not operating in us. Grace is beyond time and space. Grace is always there. It is the beginning, middle and end. Grace is the Self,” says Sri Bhagavan.