FAITH IS THE GREATEST HEROISM OF STRONG SOULS

Man performs great stratospheric voyages in the solar system, and nowadays, intergalactic satellites manage to travel out of this system, showing stupendous images of the creation in the outer space. For man, these trips seem to be relatively easy. Immeasurably more difficult is the journey to the centre, the great journey of man within himself - and very few can fulfil this single and necessary adventure satisfactorily. And since “the Kingdom of God is within man”, many men live and die without having discovered it, which is the only reason-of-being of man’s earthly existence. On the tomb of these unfortunate people should be written this sad epitaph: “Here lie the remains of a man who lived for many years – but not knowing why.” Man prefers to discover realities externally from him when in the very planet where he lives, chaos reigns because he does not know himself. India, for example, the birthplace of Gandhi, Tagore, Bose, Maharshi, Yogananda and other great seers of the past is today a very powerful military state; has a satellite orbiting Mars has recently been capable to destroy one of its satellites orbiting the earth with a ballistic missile (an unprecedented fact), but most of its population of 1.339 billion (2017) does not have yet an efficient sewage system! i.e., when this system exists! nor did it solve the shameful situation of the social castes.

For man, from the peripheral state of his human profanity, to attain the divine centre of his spiritual initiation, he must establish within himself a favourable atmosphere so that this delicate plant may germinate and develop.

The essential condition for this divine experience is in a permanent attitude of faith, revealed in everyday life.

Before knowing, man must believe that God IS. Faith is the greatest heroism of strong souls - disbelief is an invalid's home for crippled spirits. It is immensely difficult to believe in God before having personal experience of its existence. However, before there comes the certainty guaranteed by the immediate and personal encounter with God, man must pass through the sea of faith, before seeing God “face to face.” In the words of the apostle Paul, man must accept “the mirrors and enigmas” of indirect and nebulous certainty... “For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

Faith, before personal experience with God, is a mortal leap into the darkness of a vacuum - a leap that will prove to be a vital one into the luminous heights of divine plenitude. But man, before taking that bold leap does not know it; must believe it; he must admit that this is so, because others, before him, made it, and they all entered into this realm of ineffable bliss.

Knowing God by immediate experience is the last step of the long journey - but to believe in God is the first and also the penultimate and no one can take the last step before giving the first and the penultimate.

No one can know without believing first.

However, believing is not merely an intellectual act, but a vital attitude. God is not found in any perfect logical argument, correctly constructed - but at the end of a rightly lived life.

The mystics of faith must reveal itself in the ethics of life.

A man who found God finds within himself a “safe place” of an impassable fortress; knows that no one can make him unhappy, except himself. But also knows that this place disappears on the day and hour when he abandons the absolute code of morality, replacing it by some relative and opportunistic code - and therefore, disappears the feeling of firmness, security and inner tranquillity! Verifies then that the path to this soul fortress is obstructed. The foundation of living rock yielded to the uncertainty of the sand-shifting, of poor infrastructure. He can think that he is brave and intrepid, but in reality, he is a coward, and no display of bravery and outward audacity can liberate him from the torturous conviction of his weakness. There is no contraband in the Kingdom of God: whoever does not enter by the front door of absolute and unconditional ethics, does not enter it in any way.

The only way for man to find deep and undisturbed peace and happiness amid all external difficulties is to be truly good - and to be good means to have personal experience of God and to live in harmony with that experience. To have this encounter with God, man must periodically immerse himself, like all great religious geniuses, in a deep and intense consciousness of God’s presence. God, of course, is always present to man, omnipresent, but man is often absent from God because he is not aware of this omnipresence. Through the discovery of God within himself, man moves from its absence to the presence of God. Jesus spent long hours, sometimes whole nights, at the heights of mountains or in solitude, in close communion with God; and thus, came to him this imperturbable peace and indestructible serenity in all adversities.

Every true disciple, every man who not only defends one religion or plays with religion, but is deeply religious, knows from personal experience that he needs some time during the day to immerse himself in God to save his life from spiritual wreckage. Anyone who does not feel this need probably has already suffered shipwreck or has never left the beaches of profanity never raised anchor towards the spiritual world.

From this time of therapy under the divine heat, the man returns with new light and renewed strength to the labours and struggles of each day.

At first, upon leaving this therapy or meditation, man will sadly verify that the light is extinguished and the spiritual forces are weakened in the direct reason that he is moving away from that time of dialogue with the Eternal. Little by little, however, if he is persistent in his spiritual exercises, he will find that the beneficial effects of God’s communion endure for the rest of the day; that all the hours and works of the day appear as if enlightened by a halo of divine light. The once difficult jobs become easier, better, and more efficient; the day-to-day occupations have a taste of poetry. This man loses the taste of criticizing others; disappears the sick mania of finding fault with everything and everyone. The more severe a man is to himself, the more indulgent he is to his fellow men.

Almost always, the craze to censor others comes from the lack of self-censorship and control of our small and great whims; we are intimately unsatisfied with ourselves; we need a lightning rod to discharge the high voltage of our inner irritation, discontent with ourselves; but since our habitual and uncontrollable selfishness does not allow us to confess the truth and be honest with ourselves, we seek a victim, a scapegoat, who suffers the consequences of our lack of control and spiritual discipline. Meditation, the exercise of silence, neutralizes the tension of our nerves and gradually educates us to be wholly true, honest and sincere with ourselves. When the tyrannical ego dies, we reborn Christlike, thus eliminating the motives of our discontent with our neighbour and filling us with deep peace and the tranquillity of spirit.

For the man with the ability to bear himself, the whole world is bearable - but a man who does not comprehend his conscience comprehends no person or anything. Ah! everything is light - when my conscience is light!

To carry out this pilgrimage, from the periphery of the superficial profanities to the centre of the Kingdom of God within us, is the most important task, the only necessary one, of every man, whatever his profession or social position.

If I could become an initiate by doing certain things, or by the fact that some third party does something for me; if I, for example, could be initiated into the Kingdom of God by some secret formula, rituals or sacramental process, some magical and mysterious set of words that would automatically throw me into the spiritual world without the competent internal change of my being - if this were possible, there would be contraband and the world of God would cease to be a Cosmos to become chaos. However, the Kingdom of God is the only realm where there is no contraband or illegal entry through some secret hatch, either for money or wit or by the work and mercy of good friends and protectors. In it, one can only enter honestly and through the front door, that is, through the fact of being someone, of being precisely what one must be on the eternal level, to enter it; and this right of entry consists precisely in the fact that man is “reborn by the spirit”, a “new creature in Christ.”