Divine Governance

[Gauracandra]

I found this article at www.srilagourgovindaswami.org

 

Divine Governance

 

By His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Maharaja

 

Political troubles are not bad in themselves. They are part and parcel of Divine Governance. We feel troubled for our present ignorance their real significance. But it is not given to us or anybody who know the ways of God fully. We, however, know that much of the Divine activity as is helpful to us for His service. But the least particle of such knowledge is more than sufficient for all the purposes of our pure souls.

 

The person who knows God does not understand His ways in the sense in which Godhead understands them. He understands them in the measure that necessary for having his conscious share in those activities as a subservient of His subservients. Admission to the plane of service is equivalent to the cessation of spiritual ignorance. Spiritual enlightenment does not mean that the person so enlightened understands all things, as God Himself understands them, either of this or of any other world. What such a person actually understands is his own relationship to and location in the uncovered plane of the Absolute Reality. Instead of being an insignificant ignorant actor in this mundane cosmos, he finds himself to be no less than the most insignificant conscious entity in the plane of the super mundane sphere of all-existence, all-knowledge and all-joy. He consciously shares in the life of the said realm in the tiny measure of his eligibility for the service of God.

 

On this mundane plane in the conditioned state, we are anxious to know all things in the fullest measure, even as God Himself knows them. This bad ambition should properly enough be impossible of realisation. If it were possible for us to know everything, the distinction between ourselves and God would cease. Such ambition is the outcome of our attitude of disloyalty towards God. It proves that we are not willing to tolerate the domination of God. We are anxious to become God. This unnatural delusion is kept up by our experiences of this world.

 

We seem to be constantly progressing towards the knowledge that will give us final mastery over everything. But do we really possess mastery over anything? Or is it the fact that we are made to serve the Purpose of Godhead by the driving force of His irresistible deluding energy, even while we are dreaming of establishing our own impending supremacy? But why are we permitted to progress in the apparently dominating knowledge of the entities of this world? Why are we permitted to consolidate our seeming power over the things of this world? Is it not intended by God that we should enjoy this world and other worlds as proprietors even as God Himself, or at least as His co-partners? But is such consummation compatible with the existence of Godship? Over whom also are we to exercise our Godly rule? If everybody is God, there would be no entity over whom it would be necessary to exercise any power at all.

 

The idea that it is possible for us to have any real power over any entity is philosophically ridiculous. Have we any control over our own body and mind? Why do we die, if we are really masters of our own destiny? Why are we ignorant at all? If we can be made ignorant, can we not also be made enlightened by the same Agency? But can such enlightenment really make us any other than the subservients of the Agent?

 

Knowledge gives us power only so long as it is not taken away. Such permitted knowledge is not at all like knowledge that is possessed by God, in His own right. Permitted power also does not belong to us as its real proprietors.

 

But what do we find to be the current views regarding the nature and possession of political power? Every nation anxious to acquire power for the purpose of doing what it likes, with the same freedom and in the same dominating spirit as God Himself. Which of the nations is seriously thinking about the purpose of God in permitting them to have power for the time being? Why does every nation want to have more power than the other nations? Is it for serving God with its greater permitted power? Can God be served at all by mundane political power? Can the dead serve the living? Does God require food and drink that are apparently created by the bodily power of mortals for the nourishment of the body of flesh? Does He require speculations about the earthly existence that are vainly spun by the mental activities of erring man? If He requires neither, what can any nation really offer to God by way of their service? How can any nation suppose that it is being permitted to serve God by the intensification of present Godless physical and mental activities?

 

God is afflicting mortals by permitting them freedom to shape their course in their own way without seeking His conscious Guidance. The present scientific age is so sure of its capacity to take care of itself without reference to God that it is almost hopeless to expect it to reconsider its position in the light of these old and familiar truths.

 

No real good can come out of any mortal endeavor, political or otherwise, if it is not undertaken with the conscious purpose of serving the will of God. It is necessary to seek to know the purpose of God. It is never possible for any person to know the full purpose of God. It is never possible for any person to know even the nature of His purpose in regard to oneself, unless God is pleased to impart such knowledge out of His causeless mercy.

 

God always keeps Himself aloof from the concerns of those who choose to keep their concerns to themselves. That is the plight of the nations of our day. That is the plight of the empiric scientists. They never ponder over the wise words of the Bible, ‘What will it avail if we gain the world and lose our souls?’

 

Nothing is lost, everything is truly gained, if we can only find our souls, if we can only find the purpose of God in those activities in which we are permitted to be engaged by His will. But it will be demanded, ‘How can we at all know about God with our present resources?’ The answer must be that we shall be permitted to know by His Causeless Mercy, if we are only sincerely willing to submit to His Guidance, but not otherwise. But are we really willing to submit to God in the manner that is directed by Himself?