You are the most fortunate human individuals on earth, in that in this present incarnation you have been brought into the spiritual life. You have been drawn towards the Eternal, and you have been endowed with aspiration, enquiry, dispassion and discrimination between the real and the unreal. You are most fortunate in that you have been provided with all facilities for your evolution, but also the inconveniences and obstacles. Due to them you evolve spiritually, round off your angularities, and arouse into wakefulness your inner resources. These obstacles allow you to gain inner resources, endurance and innate wisdom. Great has been the grace, greater still have been the blessings, and greatest of all has been your determination to stick it out in spite of all apparent obstructions. One might say, "This is all part of God's divine plan for me. I accept it in toto and deal with it with understanding, patience and perseverance. I have total trust in the Divine. When He has called me into this life, He will never abandon me. There is a meaning behind everything that He is now making me undergo. The Divine never abandons. Believing in Him, no one is lost. I shall persist until I reap the golden harvest."
Such indeed is the stuff of those who achieve, those whose lofty examples fill the Upanishads. Therefore, I ask each one of you to persist, persevere and forge ahead! Think only of the Divine. Set your mind, heart and your entire being upon that one and only Reality of which you are an inseparable part, with which you are essentially one. Have your being fixed upon the glorious destiny that is yours as a birthright, which is beyond time and space, name and form, and beyond this petty and deceptive human identity. The human identity is the greatest of all obstacles. It is the last to be overcome, and truth to tell, the one and only obstacle. All other obstacles are offshoots of this one great obstacle-the 'I.' "Then shall I be free, when 'I' shall cease to be. I am samsara, I am maya, I am my own bondage. But in truth, I am ever free. I am never bound. I have neither birth nor death, but this false 'I' stands in the way of realising the me that I am in reality."
May the Divine continue to shower grace upon you, as it has been showering upon you since birth. Unknown to you, the Divine has been shaping you gradually for this noble, sublime life through various means from infancy up to adulthood. He has been putting opportunities in your way, bringing obstacles, giving bitter experiences so that you may realise what life is, and bringing noble experiences so that you are confirmed in your faith in the goodness of God. As a mother does for a helpless infant, he has brought you all that is needful, preparing you for the path that leads to the Eternal Reality. If you look back you will understand many events that you did not understand at the time. God does more miracles through painful and unpleasant experiences than he does through sunshine and picnics! When we understand, we are filled with gratitude, and we wonder why we did not understand. Therefore, we are filled with a deep emotion of humble acknowledgement of His perennial grace and blessings in our life.
I tell all of you that the Divine has lifted you up from unrealities into the Reality; I assure you that He has lifted you up from darkness into Light. This is thrice true. He has lifted us up from spiritual death into that flowing stream, that great upward movement to immortality. Rejoice, be humble, be grateful and do not stop till the Goal is reached. Do not move in any other direction. Do not lose any opportunity. Live in the awareness that God is here and now. He abides within you, and you ever abide in Him. His is the only truth. All others are fancies and fantasies. Glory be to each and every one of you! Glory be to God who has thus graced you!
