THE DIVINE HERITAGE OF MAN

 
In all climes and in all places, man is constantly striving for happiness; but there are very few who have it, because there are very few who truly know the secret of happiness. Man is constantly feeling thwarted and limited, and he is ever in the clutches of unrelieved agony of suffering, because, not knowing his own true nature, he identifies himself with the body or the desires or the limited individual mind, and thereby becomes a victim to their respective limitations and sufferings.

It is only by knowing himself to be different from and beyond all these that he can fully enter into the Divine Heritage of the Abiding Happiness, which is inalienable from his true being as God.

The man, who through sanskaric attachments identifies himself with his body or desires or the individual mind, is caught up within the prison of his ignorance. All his efforts to break through his shackles only lead to his being in their firmer grip, just in the same way as the parrot which desperately beats his wings against the bars of its cage succeeds only in injuring its own wings, without being able to make any headway towards its freedom. It is like a person, who is stuck up in deep mud, and who, because of his very efforts to extricate himself, finds that he is more deeply stuck up in it.

The individual and the unaided efforts of the aspirant are so often unsuccessful, because the very source of such efforts which is the ego, is rooted in ignorance.... This does not mean that the aspirant should not try for spiritual freedom and fulfillment. He must try his best for their realization; but he must at the same time open himself out to the abundant and indispensable help that comes to him from the Master.

The Master does not give to the aspirant something which is not already within the aspirant in a latent form; he only unveils the real Self of the aspirant himself and enables him to come into his own Divine Heritage which is rightfully his.