Why God Created The World
Every Sai devotee knows
Swami’s declaration, echoing the declaration of our shruthis- “I separated myself from myself to love myself”!!
God says, as though, I created
this world as a sport, as a leela, to witness countless creations of my own
image.
But a man, witnessing never
ending calamities in this creation starts conversing with the Lord
Man: “If You wanted a
hobby, why did You create pain and cancer and terrible emotions as part of it? It
may be a play to You, Lord, but it is misery and death to those who don’t know
it is just a play”
(Two people marry and think
they have found the perfect love, and then one of them dies —what a tragedy! Or
someone who has made lots of money thinks he is happy and then sees the stock
market crash, and in despair jumps out the window—how terrible! And in the
sense traps of sex, wine, and money there is temptation not only from the
outside, but from within. How is man going to justify all this? And why are
there gangsters, and persons who are insane, and all kinds of dreadful
going-ons)
Please answer o God, Why are
there germs that kill so many people every year? If the bones of those who die
of disease were heaped together, the pile would be as high as the Himalayas;
and yet it is a hobby to You, God. What about those who are victims of Your
hobby?”
God: “I have made all men
in My image. If you know you are a part of Me, you can live in this world and
enjoy it as I do.”
(We can say that God made this
earth not only as a hobby, but also because He wanted to make perfect souls
that would evolve back to Him. He sent them out under the cloak of delusion, or
maya, but endowed with freedom. That is the greatest gift of God. He has not
denied mankind the free choice that He Himself has. He has given man freedom to
be good or evil, to do exactly as he pleases—even to deny God. Both good and
evil exist, but nobody compels you to be evil unless you choose to practice
evil; and nobody can compel you to be good unless you want to be good. God
created us with the ability to exercise His gifts of intelligence and free
choice, by which we can choose to go back to Him. God certainly means to take
us back when we are ready to go. We are like the biblical prodigal son, and God
is continuously calling to us to come Home.)
God: No joy of the
senses, no joy of possession, can match the joy of God. Though I had everything
from eternity to eternity, I began to think, “I am all-powerful, and Joy
itself, but there is no one else to enjoy Me. I will make souls in My image,
and clothe them as human beings with free choice, to see whether they will seek
My material gifts and the temptations of money, wine, and sex; or whether they
will seek the million times more intoxicating joy of My consciousness.”
(God is very just and fair. He
gave man freedom to accept His love and live in His joy, or to cast it aside
and live in delusion, in ignorance of Him. Though all created things belong to
God, there is one thing God hasn’t—our love. When He created us, He did have
something to attain, and that is our love. We can withhold that love, or give
it to Him. And He will wait endlessly until we are ready to offer our love to
Him.)
(Extracts from a lecture
delivered by Sri Paramahamsa yogananda, with the sequence changed suitably to
drive home the message)
Dear ones, What do we
learn from the above?
- Like a painter who does not complete a painting unless he stands near to the portrait he makes, sometimes a little far, sometimes from more height, sometimes bending down, goes back and gives few more strokes with his brush and then smiles to see the perfection in his own created painting, God has created this world, you and me, with the perfection at His level, at His state, pure, blemish less (Niranjana as we sing in Bhajans)
- He gave us the discrimination, the choice, to either BE HIM when we were born or to become slaves to the petty joy of wine, woman, wealth.
- He engaged us in the rope game, keeping Himself at one end and the world at the other end and observed, whether we reach to Him or to this maya jagath.
- If we, all of us, the entire world of beings, had chosen, when we came into this world for the first time, to just remain as we were created by the supreme lord, as His image, as He himself, then how wonderful this world would have been, with each man existing as God, witnessing the other man also as God!!
- All the disaster, all the calamities, all the war, all hatred emerged only when man chose to take side of wine, woman and wealth (That is GREED)
- Is it justified then, to blame God for what we have done unto ourselves?
- Having gone far away from Him, the time has come now to retrace, go back to Him, merge with Him and exist as Him!!
- One man cannot take charge of transforming the entire creation and to make every one return to the kingdom of God. But each one, in his individual level, can surely start the journey to the Lord’s abode!!
- For this world to be wonderful, there is no choice but for every man to retrace and find his lost love for God and rush to God and live as God ( Swami’s call- God is Love, live in Love)
- Like we learnt in a bhajan, we cry out to the lord “O God, is there anything in me which you have not created, is my own creation and can offer to you, perhaps nothing. Still, there is one thing, which is not created or bestowed on me by you, but it is just YOU, WHICH IS LOVE!
- AND I KNOW, THIS ONE AND ONLY THING, IS WORTH OFFERING TO YOU AND YOU WOULD LOVE TO ACCEPT MY LOVE, WHEN I EXIST AS LOVE
- TERA TUJH KO ARPAN KYA LAAGE MERA!!! PREM DAKSHINA SVEEKARAO BHAGWAN!!
From tomorrow onwards, we will get deeper into how precious is our
birth, how sacred is this birth granted by Lord and how we can make use of this
birth, to ultimately EXIST AS HOW HE BROUGHT US INTO THIS EARTH!!
Love
