We mortals lead our lives facing ups and downs, experiencing prosperity and penury and, in broad terms, periods of sorrow and happiness. We run smoothly through the good times and find the passage of adverse times difficult and often excruciating. While trying to sail through the hard times, we often find ourselves helpless, insecure and full of despair.
When we experience hopelessness, we are at a loss to understand whom to turn to for help or hope. Some of us who firmly believe in the karmic retribution theory are also disturbed as to what vicious actions of ours in the past life led to the present sorry state of affairs.
In the above situations, when human sources of aid have been tapped, the believers among us have to lean on only one entity: the divine, the all-powerful creator and controller of the universe who also regulates and governs each individual life. He is just and compassionate. Being just, he operates the law of retribution of human karmas with perfection. Therefore, the adverse turnout of events in our lives can be attributed to our own sinful actions of the past and that thought can save us a lot of mental pain. But more importantly, the thought of leaning upon that ever-beneficent, omniscient, omnipotent God to assuage our sorrow and help us wriggle out of difficult situations can relieve us from despondency.
The Yajurveda talks of seeking the support of God that helps one to navigate through all times—difficult and not so. There is a silver lining to every dark cloud and days of adversity are always numbered. We must lean on God to help us maintain our composure in adversity and continue performing our duties wholeheartedly. A constant feeling in our subconscious mind that God will help us to come out of bad times triumphantly will actually make that happen. We shall, through worship of that supreme divinity, tap his power to maintain mental equipoise and make the best use of our time for our progress, both temporal and spiritual. The support of our divine creator is the greatest of balms for painful conditions; it is the greatest facilitator for peace, which is the basis of progress. And where there is peace, there is happiness.
We humans are limited in physical strength, sensory faculties, mental capacity and intellect. We possess little knowledge of things—mundane and spiritual. We are often in half-knowledge, illusion and delusion. That is why our divine creator has imparted to the first generation of humankind divine knowledge base in the form of the four Vedic texts. These are timeless texts for all humanity. Through them, we can remove knowledge gaps and climb out of the illusionary states. Even after removing gaps, we need to lean on God to acquire mental equanimity, essential for maintaining the tempo of our regular, constructive actions.
Time flies and life goes on. The process of spiritual development of humans goes on in this manner set and engineered by the almighty. We must bank and lean on him in all our worldly matters where we can perform actions to the best of our abilities, but cannot choose the results. They are decided by the almighty based on our past life actions, which we are not required to remember in his grand scheme of things.
Getting his support will relieve us from the burden of our expectations of rewards against our actions. It will also enable us to perform our duties diligently and efficiently because we shall then concentrate on our actions without worrying about the rewards thereof. We shall become tension-free and peaceful within. His support is crucial and is the most powerful facilitator of the performance of our constructive karma. It will guarantee our growth because progress that means the fructification of good karma occurs only in the fertile soil of peace.
Sehgal is the author of Guide to Inner Wellness and The Essence of Bhagwadgita—70 verses at its core