A Garden of Spiritual Life By Sri Radhakrishna Swamiji

[Guest guest]

Spiritual Blossoming

Sri Ramakrishna said, " The greatest purpose of human life is to see God, to

realize God. " God has to be brought into every fiber of our being - in our

body, in our senses, in our will, in our emotions, and in our knowledge.

When this happens, our life becomes like a flower garden in full bloom. Such

a flower garden cannot be kept concealed. People will stand by such a garden

and enjoy it, even if they have not worked in it. Whoever comes into contact

with a genuinely spiritual person imbibes the peace, the sweetness, the

love, the compassion, and the faith emanating from that individual. It is in

the gardens of full blossoming that we find the treasures to humanity.

 

But spiritual life requires care. A person cannot bring forth a vegetable or

flower garden from the soil overnight. At first it seems baffling. You clean

out the weeds one day and then, only three days later, the weeds come again.

Gardening requires patience and hard work. You plant a seed, but it may take

one or two years for that seed to grow into a shrub and become beautiful. So

it is in our spiritual life with whatever we plant. We plant faith, we plant

love, we plant detachment, we plant self-control, and we plant knowledge.

All of these seeds must be planted, and we must not be impatient. We must go

on watering and feeding and weeding the soil until, slowly, the barren plot

is transformed into a garden of beauty.

Spiritual interest comes to a man as a result of great, good karma. The

Bhagavad Gita says, " Manusyanam sahasresu kascid yatati siddhaye " ; " Among

thousands and thousands of human beings, maybe one person becomes interested

in the search for God. " This person is not satisfied with his normal life of

pursuing pleasures; intellectual achievement, honor, fame - none of these

things satisfy him. His life may be fully successful from the worldly point

of view, but he feels emptiness, a vacuum.

 

What is lacking is spiritual Truth. Or, as we read in the Taittiriya

Upanishad, " The great Paramatman, infinite Spirit, who is ever pure,

eternal, immortal, who is of the nature of infinite Bliss; that immortal

Spirit, after creating these jivas, entered into those individuals. " In

other words, the spirit of God, that infinite divine Being, resides in the

heart of every man.

 

But in most men He is neglected. He is covered over with our distractions or

what we call the worldly life, the ignorant life, the life in Maya. Among

thousands of people, maybe one becomes restless for God. Even then, the

Bhagavad Gita says, " And among thousands of people who are struggling for

that spiritual enfoldment, maybe one becomes really successful " . If it is

the highest fulfillment, one cannot have it too easily. One must carry on

the search with patience, with perseverance, with faith, with courage. Only

then does the garden slowly become living.

 

The important step then is the awakening of this spiritual interest. Let a

spiritual seeker compare his life to a plot of land; let him resolve to make

that land into a beautiful garden. It will be a garden of enjoyment, but not

in the worldly sense, it is a refined enjoyment to feed the emotions and

bring harmony to the mind and nerves.

 

In this way spiritual experience grows as a garden grows. One season we have

certain plants; next season we replace some with different kinds of annuals.

But the garden is all the time filled with shrubs and flowers. Our journey

has come to an end. God is the totality of things; God is the totality of

all experiences. What more do I want? There is nothing for which to ask.

There is no more fear. Where shall I go?

 

All these questions are relevant only in the life of ignorance. But when the

Light of God has come, when that experience of God has come, these questions

cease because we find our true Self, our eternal companion. We become

eternally linked with that truth. This truth will not deprive us of our

normal activities and ideas; it transforms them, giving them new colour, new

fragrance. Such is the glory of spiritual life. If we compare it to our

known experiences, indeed a spiritual life is like a beautiful garden, a

source of joy and peace to us and to ail those whose lives we touch.

 

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