Living a Life as if God Mattered
Sailen Routray
For many of us, a life of work and a life of spiritual/religious seeking do not go together. We see an adhyatmic life as dealing with esoteric matters. And our work life is supposed to consist of matters eminently practical. However, this just might be a confusion of terms.
Mrinalini Mata (1931-2017), fourth president and spiritual head of Yogoda Satsanga Society of India/Self Realization Fellowship, in her pocket sized book, 'Manifesting Divine Consciousness in Daily Life,' shows us why seeking God is the most practical of things that we can do, why our work lives make sense only in the context of this larger seeking, and what we can do to lead an integrated life.
According to Mrinalini Mata, religion is not about scriptural erudition, nor is it about blind belief. Religion, to be truly universal, is essentially a method of ending the miseries that we experience in our minds, bodies and souls, permanently. Surely then, this is the most practical of all endeavors. What are we all seeking if not the ending of sorrow and the gaining of permanent joy?
Why are we all unhappy then? We are sorrowful because we think that we are ego-bound entities, separate from God. The path and the goal of sadhana is to realize our oneness with the omnipresence of God, so that we know unfailingly, all the time, that the joy we seek is within us, that the Kingdom of God is truly within our hearts.
This belief that we are conditioned beings causes us sorrow by breeding attachment and ignorance. One way in which we can free ourselves is by trying continuously to go beyond the preferences of the ego. Another path to do this is by building up one's will. Cultivating evenmindedness when faced with pain and suffering also helps in transcending one's identification with the ego; so does rising above one's moods.
But the moot question is how does one cultivate these virtues, which also help us in being more effective at the service we provide at our work spaces? The book discusses regular daily meditation as one key way in which we can experience God's presence in our daily lives.
In the second part of the book, the author discusses one particular tradition of meditation, that of Kriya Yoga. In this section of the booklet Mrinalini Mata shares her understanding of the appropriateness of Kriya Yoga to the modern era, and how it can potentially help in being 'anchored in God while active in the world.'
This tiny book is a crisp and concise introduction to a key spiritual tradition of our times. For those of us who want to reduce the distance between our work lives and our journeys as spirits, it answers some important queries and opens up spaces for exploring some additional, relevant questions.
Mrinalini Mata. 2018 (First Indian Paperback Edition in 2013). 'Manifesting Divine Consciousness in Daily Life'. Kolkata: Yogoda Satsanga Society of India. 108 pages + viii. Rs. 45.
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