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Achieving God
Very few will be inclined to turn to God. Most people are distracted in the direction of the objects of the senses. People are in search of satisfaction which is empirical, physical and egoistic. The bliss of God is not the concern of the ordinary man, it is impossible even for thinking and understanding. Not many have this endowment by which the mind will agree to turn to God in his reality. But even among those who are truly aspiring for the realisation of God, only some will really succeed in the attempt. It does not mean that everyone who files an application will be chosen, because success in this path of the Spirit is hard to attain in the case of the individual who is lodged in the body and limited to the empirical categories of the mind.
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The whole universe is constituted of the five Elements and certain phases of the universal consciousness, the Elements being grosser than the latter;--earth, water, fire, air and ether,--the Mind, Intellect, Ego.
The lowest category of reality that we observe is the earth plane, physical matter, solid substance, gross objects, all which can be grouped under the category of the Mahabhutas, or the five elements. Anything that is perceptible to the senses is regarded as material. The five elements, so-called, are not five different substances as we might have heard it said earlier. These elements are rather five degrees of the density of the cosmic substance. It does not mean that there is a total distinction of one from the other.
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These physical elements,--earth, water, fire, air and ether,--therefore, form the sum and substance of the physical universe.
Above the five gross elements, beyond the Tanmatras or the subtle essences, behind all these, is the Cosmic Thinking Principle. This is something which we cannot conceive and cannot perceive. From the practical point of view, the Cosmic Reality beyond the elements can only be an object of direct realisation and experience, and it can never become a spatio-temporal object. But we can infer the presence of the Cosmic Mind, by logical deduction from facts of present experience. It is certain that the mind conditions the objects in some manner. But it is not proper to say that an individual mind can condition the objects, though it is true that a large contribution is made by the mental structure in the perception of an object, so that it can be said that no object is seen as it is in itself. Yet, at the same time, we cannot be sure that any individual mind is the creator or a total conditioner of the object of perception. There is some sort of a reality in the object, not withstanding the fact that there is a conditioning of the object by the perceiving subject. What sort of subject is it that conditions the object? It is not 'my' mind or 'your' mind, and there seems to tie a Total Mind which extends far beyond the ken of the individual minds, not only in quantity but even in quality,--a subject which is outside the scope of our present studies. This is referred to in the verses of the Bhagavadgita when the word "Manah" or the 'Mind' is mentioned in this context. The mind is superior to the physical elements. We would be surprised to hear that the mind is superior to the elements. And a little common sense will tell us that it cannot be 'our' mind that is mentioned here, because nobody can say that our mind is superior to the whole physical cosmos. Naturally, We have to identify this "Mind" with the Cosmic Mind.
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