If God Exists
March 15,1993
At the University of Cornell among the few thousand students, one pretty girl was sought after by many. There was also a young engineering student whom many girls admired. But he admired that one girl whom everyone was after. She responded to this handsome young man, but it was hard for her to make a decision. Periods of life like this keep one aflame and tense. The boy knew that the girl fully liked him but it had not flowered into a love of passion. After a few weeks of passionate pursuit, he discovered that the girl was as undecided as before. The tension was too much to be prolonged. He returned home having exhausted his efforts, but not hope. At that moment it struck him that there exists a God! He was skeptical of HIS existence. Suddenly he uttered to himself, "If God exists, he must give me this girl." The phone rang and it was she. She called to say that she agreed. At least for him, God did exist!
Having a skill like tailoring or engineering or teaching, we take to an assignment with zest and finish it with satisfaction. It is a full round of work that fully rests on the physical skill of man. If the skill is good, it rarely fails. Great skill of teaching sometimes fails to keep the attention of the audience when the teacher employs his charms to control the class. The engineer who exercised a flawless skill finds the client refractory when there is a crack in the wall for no fault of his. The engineer exercises his theoretical knowledge to explore ways to overcome a difficult situation. Physical skills, vital charms, mental knowledge are the successive grades of man's capacity. They mostly reward. Generally they fail to fail. Yet there are rare occasions where all these combined do not yield the result. It may be the disappearing market or an indecisive girl or uncertain weather. There are moments where man is at his wit's end. Now man resorts to prayer. The prayer often succeeds, often fails.
The soul is on earth as an embodied being, the human being. Mind, vital (nerves), body and soul are the four parts of the being. Skill, charms, knowledge are endowments of parts. That which combines all the four is the being whose endowment is personality. Often, when his best efforts fail, man is lost in thought and is in a daze. He hits upon an idea and it works. Or the situation changes enabling him to overcome the obstacle. This is a phenomenon known to all of us and we exclaim, "Good Lord!" or "Thank heaven!" We explain it to ourselves as luck, a fortunate turn of events. In fact, it is the response of personality. As we move from the physical to the vital and from there to the mental, when all of them fail, we move to the personality by deep thought or being in a daze. This is each man's 'God'. Appealing to this god from a depth, we often get a response to our prayer. In other words, man seeks a remedy from a fuller part of his -- personality -- when others fail. This is the basis of the Gita's saying, "We can become what we aspire for."
In truth, this fuller personality is in live touch with our environment. Therefore when we act from there, man is able to command the environment to obey. This is mostly successful at this level. When the spirit in us becomes live in this personality, it is unfailing. That is the God in us which we invoke saying, "If God exists..."
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