How God Came Into My Life

Jaideo, Namdeo, Lila Shuka, Kabirdas, Sakkubai, Narsimh Mehta, Eknath, Tukaram, Bodhendra, Saraswati, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Devendra Nath Tagore, Annie Besant, Rabindra Nath Tagore, Vivekananda, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Frank Buchman, Upton Sinclair, Ramana Maharshi, Ramdas, Sivananda, Chembai

Through the ages, great souls have appeared who have seen God, face to face and have walked with Him during their lives. They may belong to different times and they mayors been born in different lands. But they are all of them, Pilgrims to the Eternal who lived, moved and had their entire being God. Some of them had this instinct for God implanted in their hearts even from birth. The souls of some others, which they had ignorantly mortgaged to the enticements of the world, were miraculously redeemed by God and they turned a new leaf in their lives. A few others had to struggle the hard way against obstacles to their devotion and had to face privation, poverty and even persecution. But like the true devotees that they were, they transformed these hindrances into opportunities to strengthen them in their resolve not to be deflected from their quest for God. Some of these God-intoxicated Saints often broke forth are strains of devotional poetry in which they proclaimed the glory of the great Original from which everything has sprung. This book attempts to give glimpses of the way that God confronted these saintly personages and annexed theme to Himself. They are published in the hope that they will invite the reader to greater intimacy with these devotees of the one universal God.

THE Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan—that Institute of Indian Culture in Bombay—needed a Book University, a series of books which, if read, would serve the purpose of providing higher education. Particular emphasis, however, was to be put on such literature as revealed the deeper impulsions of India. As a first step, it was decided to bring out in English 100 books, 50 of which were to be taken in hand almost at once. Each book was to contain from 200 to 250 pages.

It is our intention to publish the books we select, not only in English, but also in the following Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

The scheme, involving the publication of 900 volumes, requires ample funds and an all-India organisation. The Bhavan is exerting its utmost to supply them.

The objectives for which the Bhavan stands are the reintegration of the Indian culture in the light of modern knowledge and to suit our present—day needs and the resuscitation of its fundamental values in their pristine vigour.

Let me make our goal more explicit:
We seek the dignity of man, which necessarily implies the creation of social conditions which would allow him freedom to evolve along the lines of his own temperament and capacities; we seek the harmony of individual efforts and social relations, not in any makeshift way, but within the frame-work of the Moral Order, we seek the creative art of life, by the alchemy of which human limitations are progressively transmuted, so that man may become the instrument of God, and is able to see Him in all and all in Him.

The world, we feel, is too much with us. Nothing would uplift or inspire us so much as the beauty and aspiration such books can teach.

In this series, therefore, the literature of India, ancient and modern, will be published in a form easily accessible to all. Books in other literatures of the world, if they illustrate the principles we stand for, will also be included.

This common pool of literature, it is hoped, will enable the reader, eastern or western, to understand and appreciate currents of world thought, as also the movements of the mind in India, which though they flow through different linguistic channels, have a common urge and aspiration.

Fittingly, the Book University‘s first venture is the Mahabharata, summarised by one of the greatest living Indians, C. Rajagopalachari; the second work is on a section of it, the Gita, by H. V. Divatia, an eminent jurist and a student of philosophy. Centuries ago, it was proclaimed of the Mahabharata. "What is not in it, is no- where." After twenty-five centuries, we can use the same words about it. He who knows it not, knows not the heights and depths of the soul; he misses the trials and tragedy and the beauty and grandeur of life.

The Mahabharata is not a mere epic; it is a romance, telling the tale of heroic men and women and of some who were divine; it is a whole literature in itself, containing a code of life, a philosophy of social and ethical relations, r and speculative thought on human problems that is hard to rival; but, above all, it has for its core the Gita, which is, as the world is beginning to find out, the noblest of scriptures and the grandest of sagas in which the climax is reached in the wondrous Apocalypse in the Eleventh Canto.

Through such books alone the harmonies underlying true culture, I am convinced, will one day reconcile the disorders of modern life. I thank all those who have helped to make this new branch of the Bhavan’s activity successful.

Saints and Seers are scientists in the realm of the Spirit. They have ‘experimented’ with God and they have experienced Him. They have seen God face to face as clearly as the scientist sees the things which he deals with.

Such Saints are birds of Heaven and bards of the Spirit. They come to Earth for a brief sojourn. When their day is done, they fly back to the regions of the Immortal. Detachment and Devotion are the wings with which they soar. Soaring still, they sing the Name of God; and singing still, they soar higher and yet higher, high above the wastes of mortal life.

When man walks towards God, God runs towards man. Religion is a two-way traffic. It stands for man’s ascent to the foot• stool of God. It also means the descent of God into the soul of man.

Sometimes God comes to man invited by his prayer. Not unoften too, He invades man, lays siege to his rebellious heart and annexes it to Himself. None so depraved or derelict as to be totally undeserving of God’s grace. He blocks the errant course of the sinner’s life, cleanses his mind, purifies his heart and re- generates his soul. To some others. He comes as a Voice or a Vision inveigling them to find their heart and home in His own Self. One cannot foresee how He will come, or limit the manner of His coming. But sure as anything, "He comes, He comes, He ever comes" if only man will keep his door open; why, even if man should shut his door against God.

It the world today is not more sordid than it is, and if there is still hope of the survival of the vital values of Truth. Goodness and Beauty which are the substance of God, it is because of the procession of saintly persons "who have walked with God" and showed the way for others to follow. And, praise be to them, such Personages are not in short supply even in these decadent times. The lives of these holy ones keep on reminding us, it only we hearken to their calls, that we too can make ours sublime. The pages that follow provide glimpses of How God came into My life" as told by some of such Saints and Seers or as gathered from their writings. They describe how God trans- formed their entire being and oriented it to Himself.

Verily, every one of them is a Pathfinder in the Adventure of the Spirit; and all paths ultimately converge towards One Goal. For, the roads were not made by man; they were laid by God for His children to reach Him from wheresoever they may start.