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પરીક્ષા, ચકાસણી, કસોટી

કે નથી ભરવાની ઉત્તરવહી

આત્મજ્ઞાન તો સ્વ-પ્રાપ્તિ 

ને પરમ પ્રભુ છે કરુણામૂર્તિ.

ફરતી હોય છે જરૂર વલોણી

યોગ્યતાની યોગ્ય ફેરબદલી

નવેસરથી અનુકૂલન બાંધણી

વિશેષ ચેતના સ્વાગત તૈયારી.

ઇન્દ્રિયવત મનની સાફસૂફી, 

સ્વચ્છ સ્વસ્થ થતી પ્રાણવૃતિ,

શારીરિક કોષોમાં સંચારસમૃદ્ધિ,

આત્મસ્થ થવાને નવ ગોઠવણી.

એક માર્ગ સમજાય છે સુરક્ષિત.

જો સદૈવ પ્રભુમય, મય દોરવણી

આગ્રહ ધરે, ટકાવી રહે પસંદગી

ને અભીપ્સુ રહે નિષ્ઠ સમર્પિત. 

પછી ન કોઈ ખાણ, ખડક કે ખીણ

સરળ સહજ રસ્તે, આત્મ ચીંધ 

વિના કોઈ વિરોધી ઘડતર કે બીક

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'મોરલી'

સપ્ટેમ્બર, ૨૦૧૮

Faced with the sense of a Power or perhaps a number of Powers greater and higher than himself by whom his life in Nature is overshadowed, influenced, governed, man naturally applies to it or to them the first primitive feelings of the natural being among the difficulties, desires and dangers of that life, — fear and interest. The enormous part played by these motives in the evolution of the religious instinct is undeniable, and in fact, man being what he is, it could hardly have been less; and even when religion has advanced fairly far on its road, we see these motives still surviving, active, playing a sufficiently large part, justified and appealed to by Religion herself in support of her claims on man. The fear of God, it is said, — or, it may be added for the sake of historical truth, the fear of the Gods, — is the beginning of religion, a half-truth upon which scientific research, trying to trace the evolution of religion, ordinarily in a critical and often a hostile rather than in a sympathetic spirit, has laid undue emphasis.  But not the fear of God only, for man does not act, even most primitively, from fear alone, but from twin motives, fear and desire, fear of things unpleasant and maleficent and desire of things pleasant and beneficent, -therefore from fear and interest. Life to him is primarily and engrossingly, — until he learns to live more in his soul and only secondarily in the action and reaction of outward things, — a series of actions and results, things to be desired, pursued and gained by action and things to be dreaded and shunned, yet which may come upon him as a result of action. And it is not only by his own action but by that also of others and of Nature around him that these things come to him. As soon, then, as he comes to sense a Power behind all this which can influence or determine action and result, he conceives of it as a dispenser of boons and sufferings, able and under certain conditions willing to help him or hurt, save and destroy.

In the most primitive parts of his being he conceives of it as a thing of natural egoistic impulses like himself, beneficent when pleased, maleficent when offended; worship is then a means of propitiation by gifts and a supplication by prayer. He gets God on his side by praying to him and flattering him.

...

A confused mixture of all these motives, variously developed, often modified, subtilised or glossed over, is what constitutes nine-tenths of popular religion; the other tenth is a suffusion of the rest by the percolation into it of nobler, more beautiful and profounder ideas of the Divine which minds of a greater spirituality have been able to bring into the more primitive religious concepts of mankind. The result is usually crude enough and a ready target for the shafts of scepticism and unbelief, — powers of the human mind which have their utility even for faith and religion, since they compel a religion to purify gradually what is crude or false in its conceptions. But what we have to see is how far in purifying and elevating the religious instinct of worship any of these earlier motives need to survive and enter into the Yoga of devotion which itself starts from worship. That depends on how far they correspond to any truth of the Divine Being and its relations with the human soul; for we seek by Bhakti union with the Divine and true relation with it, with its truth and not with any mirage of our lower nature and of its egoistic impulses and ignorant conceptions.

* The Synthesis of Yoga – II: The Motives of Devotion

Flower Name: Acanthus ilicifolius
Sea holly

Significance: The Guardian
Vigilant and thorny, it knows how to protect what it guards.