Page 260 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1
P. 260

 The world in which we live is itself a great area of suffering. Both in respect of oneself and in respect of others around, we have a world soaked in suffering of all kinds, physical, vital and mental. A world in which ups and downs are the rule is a world of transient happiness and pleasure. All seem to be gripped by the principle of vanity and pain.
Sri Ram Chandra affirms that the world of samsara itself can be shown to be the training ground for higher life. To run away from it, or depart from it into solitude and silence as such, may be one way, but certainly not the only way. That path is the path of austerity and penance and outer renunciation, which finally has to bring about inner renunciation and nothingness. One does not develop a void within by running to a void. If one has to achieve the void within, so that God may be installed in it, one must look after the within alone. Undoubtedly the others may be said to be of help in achieving renunciation and nonpossession. We know that those who have sought the outer silence or solitude had tried, sooner or later, to return to civilization with all its original foibles, ostensibly to cure it of them.
The samsara itself is a training ground for renunciation. Here, too, Love plays the part of renunciation of possession, and develops the attitude of sharing. Disinterestedness can develop in the concrete setting of the family and community life more naturally, and without casting any aspersion of uncleanliness and sin on family or community life.
The real difficulty, till now, had been that few indeed of the saints thought about the Divine Force or Grace as capable of being brought to the sinner without his having to be taken out of his social life and environment or, in one sense, abstracted from it. The spiritual modification made by the transmission of the Divine Force makes it possible for the human individual, male or female, to grow in the context of the environment which begins to undergo change, pari passu with the changes in the consciousness of the individual. The consciousness of sin, so essential to the call to be saved, is overcome, if it subsists by the growing dependence and assurance of liberation and salvation and forgiveness. The naturalness of the process, so spontaneous and unaffected, consists in the simplicity of the happening. Thus God is seen not to insist on any radical or spectacular departures from those who had surrendered to Him wholly for, verily, these had been































































































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