Positive Thinking 29 – See the invisible, feel the intangible, achieve the impossible

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our discussion on positive thinking. We are discussing the last of the principles in the energy sutra.
Why? That is, say yes to God with faith. We will discuss in this session the power of faith. Canadian physicist William Osler stated that without faith a man can do nothing, with it all things are possible.
It’s interesting that this is not a theologian or a religious teacher, it’s a physicist who is talking about the power of faith. Faith can in a generic sense refer to confidence in what we are doing, but faith in a spiritual sense refers to an understanding that there is more to life than what we see at the surface and faith is the subtle power that enables us to see the invisible, to feel the intangible and to achieve the impossible. To see the invisible.
When we stay stuck at seeing only the surface of things, then when adversities come, at that time we can be overwhelmed thinking that, oh, why are things going so terribly wrong? What can I do about these? And we end up feeling frustrated. But when we see that below the appearance of things is their substance, that the material reality is not the whole reality, beyond that is the spiritual reality and in that spiritual reality there is always benevolent intention. Even if at the surface level there appears to be malevolent action, just as a doctor who is treating a patient, sometimes the doctor may give an injection or do a surgery, which appears painful, but beyond the instruments which appear to cause pain is the doctor’s benevolent intentions.
All of us are being treated, all of us are being cured, all of us are going through the refiner’s fire and we are becoming purified, we are becoming just like a gold, which purged through fire becomes effulgent, like that through the course of life, the problems that come, they are purging us, they are strengthening us and the latent goodness that is there within us at our spiritual core that will manifest as we move onwards in our life, press on. So by studying scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, we can see the invisible, we can see the benevolent hand of God and beyond the malevolent adversities that may afflict us in our lives, it is faith that enables us to see the invisible. Actually when big problems come in our life, at that time our power, our wealth, our position, our learning, these things which normally enable us to achieve a lot of things and which enable us to solve problems also, sometimes life sends our way such devastating problems that none of these help and at that time we realize that we need something much bigger in life and that bigger thing which we need in life is what scripture offers us.
Spirituality through the wisdom given in scripture enables us to see the invisible, to see the unchanging spiritual below the changing and threatening material and then feel the intangible. Faith enables us to feel the intangible. What is intangible? Suppose there is a knife cutting us, a knife pointed at our back or at our stomach, we can feel that is physical, that can be sensed by our senses but what does it mean to feel the intangible? That is the benevolent presence of God.
God is not just above us, somewhere far up there in the sky. God is with us. God is not causing our problems.
He is enabling us to go through the problems that are caused by our own karmic misdeeds in the past. We discuss the principle of karma and we understand that whatever happens to us are reactions to our own past actions. So when we recognize that God is not the cause, He is the relief, the solution.
By taking shelter of God, we learn to move onwards in our lives and to attain His lasting shelter. So to the extent we recognize this reality and harmonize with this reality, to that extent we can be happy. We can be happy in life.
When we feel the intangible, especially when we practice mantra meditation, when we chant the holy names of God, the spiritual sound vibration therein enables us to feel the presence of God and we realize that this presence is the reality, indeed the supreme reality. It enables us to go beyond the agitating, frustrating, disturbing ups and downs of life. So it is faith which enables us to practice processes for higher spiritual experience such as meditation and thereby we feel the intangible and then we achieve the impossible through faith.
Now we see that quite often failure comes not because people don’t have the ability to achieve success but because people don’t have the stability to achieve success. Even when we have talents, the talents alone don’t lead to success. What we need is persistence, consistency and many times when people are temperamental at that time despite having the talents they are unable to muster the commitment to translate talent into achievement.
So when we have a spiritual vision of life and we have a spiritual sensibility developed through meditational practices then the what would have otherwise seemed impossible becomes achievable. We see people become so disempowered at times by the upheavals of life that they just give up. Not just give up mentally but they physically give up and they sometimes commit suicide.
Over 1 million people commit suicide every year. It works out to be almost several people committing suicide every second and this figure is more than the number of people who commit suicide more than the number of people who are killed in wars and terrorist attacks and all forms of murder combined together. So more than the number of people who are being killed by others and the number of people who are killing themselves and this happens because when we have a materialistic worldview then when material things go wrong there is nothing left to live for but when we have a spiritual worldview then we understand that no matter how many things go wrong at the material level still the spiritual level remains unchanging and keeps beckoning and therein we can always find shelter, strength and satisfaction and by cultivating the spiritual vision adversities which would have been impossible to overcome otherwise they become navigable, they become livable, they become transcendable and thus faith enables us to see the invisible the spiritual reality beyond the material reality to feel the intangible, God’s protecting, guiding, uplifting presence and achieve the impossible, grow gracefully through adversities and emerge stronger through them.
Thank you.