Religiosity requires fearlessness

Vimala Thakar

Religiosity is to be in communion with the ultimate Reality of life. You may call that Reality, Godhood. You may call that Divinity, Supreme Intelligence, Isness, and after having used all these words, we find that we cannot name it. The scientist today says that within, behind and beneath matter is energy. Within, beneath and behind energy is emptiness. And in that emptiness is concealed the mysterious Source of life.

Religiosity requires fearlessness. I have not seen insecurity in my life. Whenever you stood up and lived the truth, the Divinity has protected you, not in some personified form, but in the majestic ways of cosmic life, the security, the protection comes. You haven’t even an idea from where it comes.

So, if there is the fearlessness and if there is the urge to live in communion with the Divinity of life, that Supreme Intelligence, which permeates the whole world, if you give It a chance to operate upon you, then it is called in the Indian traditional way, surrender, surrendering the ego.

You know that is the traditional language which the modern young people do not like, “Why should I surrender?” Don’t surrender! Give It a chance to operate! The ancient language of faith or surrender is a very pregnant tradition. It is pregnant with meaning. So many nuances of meaning are contained in that word.

Faith is the English word. Shraddha is the Sanskrit word. ‘Satye Pratishthita Dharana, Iti Shraddha’. Getting grounded in the truth that you have understood is ‘Shraddha’.

The word faith may not say the same thing to us. But I have seen the truth that this Cosmos, this whole life, is not man made, it is not shaped by man’s thoughts, concepts or theories. It is a self generated phenomenon and everything is born of it and lives in it and I am also organically born of it and live in it.

Once you see the truth, then how can you ever feel lonely? How can you ever feel afraid? As a fish born in water, of water, lives in it, we are born of that Supreme Intelligence, that Chaitanya, Divinity. Have I not been saying that Life itself is Divinity, the Isness of Life? So if we get rooted in the truth that we understand, then it becomes faith or ‘Shraddha’.

And when that happens, the I, the self, the ego, recognizes the field where it has to operate and also recognizes the field where its movement is irrelevant. So it operates at the physical, the material level, the social level. But in relation to the Divinity of life, the mystery of life, it relinquishes all effort.

Relinquishing hold on mental effort, is called surrender. It is called dedication, ‘Samarpanam’. Please do not mystify the term ‘egolessness, but understand its true meaning. So in those moments of egolessness, that is to say when the ego has become non-operative, the ego does not get destroyed. It becomes non operative as the centre of consciousness. It is not the source of perception. It is not the source of your responses.

So when it becomes non operative, goes into abeyance, goes into nonaction or non-motion, then the all pervading, all permeating supreme Intelligence, takes charge of your being. It takes charge and uses your senses, operates through them, then what you call the grace of Divine is on him or her. In modern language, the blending of the individual consciousness and the cosmic consciousness has occurred.

Excerpted from ‘Living a Truly Religious Life.’ The 99^th birth anniversary of Vimala Thakar was observed on April 15