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I wish to give a short talk on one of the mottos of
South Carolina. As you all know, South Carolina has
two mottos. "Prepared in mind and resources,"
is one motto; the other motto is, "While I breathe,
I hope." I wish to say a few words on the second
motto, from a spiritual point of view.
Hope is Life. Hope is progress. Each individual life
is an idea of God's, a Plan of God's and a dream-fulfilling
Reality of God's. Hope likes the God idea; Hope loves
the God plan. Hope serves the dream fulfilling Reality
of God.
There are two lives: desire life and aspiration-life.
Desire life starts with self enjoyment and ends in self
destruction. Aspiration life starts with self enquiry
and ends in God discovery. Today's life for us is God
in preparation, and tomorrow's life for us will be God
in perfect Perfection, God in His Manifestation on earth.
Two lives: human life and divine life. Human life
cries to live; divine Life lives to offer. Human life
is counted in years; divine Life is measured by progress-illumining
and fulfilling progress. Human life always wants to
enjoy without learning. Divine Life wants to learn first
and then enjoy. Human life does not want to learn and
does not learn anything. It is satisfied with what it
gets, which is ignorance. It enjoys ignorance to its
heart's content. Divine Life wants to learn, it wants
to learn the lessons of Eternity. While learning the
lessons of Eternity, divine Life is enjoying the Bliss
of Immortality.
Life and hope are inseparable. Life is the body, and
hope is the intuitive divinity in us, the divinity that
wants to transcend the reality which we presently are.
Hope is man's seeking, hope is man's inner urge, hope
is man's upward flight into the Beyond.
We are all walking along the road of Eternity. When
an unaspiring, ordinary human being walks along this
road, he is followed by some of his so called friends:
fear, doubt and anxiety. When these friends reach him,
they make of him what they themselves are: fearful,
doubtful and anxiety-stricken. God is the Goal; He is
the Way; He is the eternal Traveller. When God walks
along His eternal road toward the ever transcending
Beyond, all the world can follow Him, led by hope. When
hope reaches Him, God makes hope His dearest friend,
eternal partner and eternal fulfiller of His Dream.
Life and hope entirely depend on inner wisdom. Here
on earth we have two types of wisdom: earthly wisdom
or earthly knowledge and heavenly wisdom or heavenly
knowledge. Here on earth vidya and avidya, knowledge
and ignorance, together move, together dance. Thousands
of years ago, the Vedic seers offered this message:
Vidyam cavidyam ca yas tad vedobhyam saha
Avidyaya mrtyum tirtva vidyayamrtam asnute.
He who knows and understands knowledge and ignorance
as one, through ignorance passes beyond the domain of
death, through knowledge attains to an eternal Life
and drinks deep the Light of Immortality.
What they call 'ignorance' is earthly knowledge, and
what they call 'knowledge' is heavenly wisdom. With
earthly knowledge we try to go beyond the domain of
death, and with heavenly wisdom we try to enjoy the
Bliss of Immortality.
When we enter into the spiritual life we see and feel
at every moment that God is the Doer, God is the Action
and God is the Fruit. On the strength of this realisation,
we feel we have ample opportunity to reveal our inner
divinity. A life on earth is not meant for pleasure;
a life on earth is meant for self-offering. Self offering
eventually makes us what God is. Each day is a golden
opportunity for us to bring to the fore a new life,
a new dawn. With each day we expedite our earthly progress.
We enter into God's Domain, which is within us, in the
inmost recesses of our heart. When we pray and meditate
regularly, devotedly and soulfully, we come to realise
that life is not only meaningful and fruitful, but is
actually God's manifesting Reality on earth. And we
come to understand that hope is the precursor of tomorrow's
all revealing and all fulfilling Reality.
Life is the car. Hope is the engine. Aspiration is
the fuel. God is the Destination.
February 20th, 1974
Foreign Student Lounge
Clemson University
Clemson, South Carolina
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