Happiness is Union with God

Marcello Sandri was a student from 1992-2001 at the Sri Sathya Sai Higher Secondary School, Prasanthi Nilayam. Currently, he is a senior software engineer in Italy.

After having been in the Divine fold for the last many years, after having observed Him, after having talked with Him many a time, the only thing of which I can be sure about Bhagavan is that He is love, love, and nothing other than love. The way He looks at everyone, the way He smiles at everyone, the way He moves, are all reflections of His inner being, of what He really is, and that is love alone.

Often, we may feel that He is ‘angry’ with us, but we should never forget that He is the greatest actor in this drama of life. He acts so well that we fail to recognize the love. He acts ‘angry’ to correct us, for we do not change otherwise. So His main aim is our happiness. Isn’t that love?

When He gives discourses, when He sings bhajans [holy songs], we are all exhilarated and feel overjoyed though we may be far away from Him. How does this happen? It is because His love is like a wildfire, which spreads out making everything and anything burn in the same fire. At that moment we really feel happy. The only problem is that we do not keep that fire alive, we let it die out and thus we return to our normal state.

Our life as a student seems to be like in paradise, for we have everything that we need around us, and to top it all we have Bhagavan Himself who lives with us. But why is it that He then emphasizes the point: “Look within, start your inner journey.” A journey within! And where is the destination? First of all, what could we possibly find inside us that is not already outside us?

I am reminded of a small poem, which answers all these questions beautifully. It goes like this:

God wanted to hide, He said:
“If I hide on top of the highest mountains, man will climb it and find Me,
If I hide in the atom, He will split it and find Me,
If I hide on the stars, He will spy me out with His telescopes.”
So, God decided to hide in the place where man would never search,
And that is in the depths of his heart.

So God is there inside us, in our heart. That is what our Dear Lord means when He asks us to look within. He gives us a clue to this treasure hunt and the treasure is immense, immeasurable. It is up to us to find this treasure so well hidden. It is said that the best way to hide something from someone is to keep that object right under his nose! That’s exactly what Bhagavan has done. The biggest treasure of all is not under our nose, it is with us already, but we do not know it! How foolish is it of us to go around searching for what we actually have already?

‘God’, ‘Consciousness’, ‘Bhagavan’ and ‘Inner Being’ is all synonymous. Bhagavan is no different from us except that He knows that He is God while we do not. In the Bible, too, it is written: “God made man in His very form.” Does it mean physically? I don’t think so. Our soul is the same as His. We are just a part in His endless whole. How beautiful it is to think of this! We are God, God is we. So if we are God, we can achieve anything! We can do what others can’t. We can now do the things we were afraid of. This is great. All this would be true only and only if we really believe that we are God. Another poem springs up in my mind in this connection:

A small boy looked up at a star and began to weep.
And the star said, “Boy, why are you weeping?”
The boy said, “You are too far away,
I will never be able to touch you.”
And the star answered, “My dear boy, if I weren’t
Already in your heart, you would not be able to see me.”

When I read this poem for the first time, I was out of breath. I was really astonished. This poem clearly describes the way we are living today. We are like the small boy weeping for the worldly things around us knowing not that we have them already inside us. This is in accordance with what Bhagavan says, “Everything is a reflection of your inner being.” Everything we see around us, if at all we can see anything, it is already inside us. The worldly things we see are just reflections, and reflections are not real. This is what is called maya [illusion]. The whole world is maya; it is unreal. But we are very much attracted by it. You may ask me how it is possible to have everything inside. This is indeed possible because we have Bhagavan inside us. Then we have the whole universe and much more, too! It all comes back to the point that we have God inside us.

Then how is it that we do not hear Him or why doesn’t He talk to us? It is because we do not try to listen, and we do not give Him the necessary time to talk. Once a student went to Socrates and asked him, “Master, how can I find God?” The great master then took him to a river. The boy obediently followed him into the river. Suddenly, Socrates pushed the boy into the water. The boy began struggling for breath but in vain. When the boy became blue in color, Socrates pulled him out. The student was very angry and abused him. Socrates then said, “Dear boy, when you were under the water, what did you want most?” The boy answered “air.” Then the great truth was revealed, “My dear boy, you can find God only if you want Him as badly as you wanted the air then.”

We can hear the Lord inside us only if we really want to. The choice is in our hands. It is up to us to make this choice fast, for God is waiting.

Finally, another big question arises. Why should we create a bond with the inner Lord when we have Him physically with us? This question makes real good sense right now; [in] the future when Swami sends us into the world to spread His love and mission to everyone, it would make no sense at all. Then we wouldn’t have Bhagavan physically anymore. What would we do then? Should we just forget everything that we have learnt here in Prasanthi Nilayam? No. It is then that an inner Lord takes over. Therefore, we should create a very strong bond with Bhagavan within. Just imagine, we would have Him however we want Him to be, wherever we want Him, whenever we want. There would be no physical limitation then. He would be available to us at any time ready to love us, help us, and rescue us. He will then surely guide us on to the right path. He will enact through us. He would become us.

And that is the final stage of our life where we would feel the real happiness, which we feel so often in Bhagavan’s presence, so often but for so less time. But now it would be a never-ending happiness, for, “Happiness is Union with God.”

I would like to conclude with a poem. But this is a poem with a difference, for it was written by Bhagavan Himself:

Come one, come all; See Yourself in Me, for,
I see Myself in You all. You are My life, My breath, My soul.
You are all My forms. When I love You, I love Myself.
When You love Yourself, You love Me.
I have separated Myself from Myself so that I could love Myself.
My beloved ones,
You are My Own Self.

Source: Sai Nandana 2000 (75th Birthday Offering)