Page 76 - Liberal Exposition of Pranahuti Aided Meditation

than these? And all these things are transient, all these things are temporary. You are a son one day you are a father today, grandfather day after. What are you? What are you? In relation to somebody you are somebody. What are you? This is the first and the foremost question that a man faces in spiritual life. Who am I? And if by God’s Grace you have already got into the principle of sharing and service then you will know that I am a person to share, that I am a person to serve. Other than these two things there is nothing else that is permanent with you. These two things are permanent with you from your childhood. You are somebody to share and you are somebody to serve. Who that somebody is, you can call yourself by Narayan or Adinarayan, or you can call purushotham, you can call Govinda, it does not matter much by what name you call yourself but your essential nature is one of sharing and serving and that leads us to a metaphysical concept about which I will not be in a position to talk much.
God in essence and God in manifestation. God in essence talked briefly earlier saying that there is no way of knowing Him, He is beyond all understanding. What is God in essence? We said we don’t know, Divine light without luminosity we said we just don’t know. Na Tatra Vak Gacchati Na Mano Na Vijno Na Vijanimo. This is what He is. God in manifestation it is you and me, it is this stream, it is this mountain, it is this river - we are the manifestation and we are Gods in expression. And what did God do first? He did first Purushamedha as we call it. The Purushasuktha of the Vedas is the most important one, the first one that is stated namely, God has sacrificed Himself to come into manifestation. It is God who sacrificed Himself to come into manifestation. He ceases to be His essence and He wanted to be His manifestation and we are all He and the principle here is He wanted to share, He wanted to serve.
Sacrifice is another aspiration we have got. We have got to sacrifice. Mother sacrifices, instinctively you know that mother sacrifices lot of her interests for the sake of the children. Imitating the mother the father also sacrifices, he learns the value from her. It is the mother who tells, you have got to attend to the child more, it is time to educate, it is time to give him food, it is time that you should go and do something for him. It is the mother who teaches the principles of sacrifice, which is reason why the Vedas always used the word Mathrudevo Bhava, please note it. For no other reason we use that word. This is the reason why she gets a precedence