Preface

World is God

THE theme of Ramdas’ first book “In Quest of God” was the dawn of his new life and its unfoldment during the first year of the great change that came over him. After some time, in continuation, he wrote the book “In the Vision of God”. In the second book Ramdas has described practically all he had experienced in the spiritual path before he reached the culminating point in his realization of the Eternal.

The present book is the outcome of the world tour on which he went about a year ago and from which he returned after five months. It chronicles Ramdas’ impressions formed in the course of this tour and the observations he made in the various places visited. In the course of his itinerary he met a variety of people in whom he saw none other than his beloved Ram. Ramdas’ love flowed out to them all alike. His vision, ever pure and glorious, saw the one Spirit pervading everywhere, assuming all forms of life. In this tour he saw the world, looking at it as one unit, as a revelation of God, as the global expression of the Divine.

All differences and distinctions which, through the eye of ignorance, one beholds in this variegated world-show, disappear in this exalted and comprehensive vision of the Divine. Verily, from the fullness of his experience, Ramdas can boldly declare that World is God. This does not mean that the other worlds—the innumerable planets, stars and other heavenly bodies forming the cosmos—are not God. The entire universe is God. The all-inclusive and transcendent vision and the spiritual realization from which it springs have already been described and stressed upon in his earlier books.

It must be understood that Ramdas’ spiritual perfection was achieved before he started on the tour. So this book has nothing new to present about his spiritual progress, evolution or the ultimate attainment as a result of this tour.

In this tour Ramdas beheld at close quarters the world as the embodiment of the Divine. It was not merely a mental contact he had, but a deep spiritual experience of oneness with the Divine Power that pervaded this world body—the Virat. The physical proximity, leading to the spiritual communion and fusion with all beings on the globe, was the foremost significant feature of this tour.

In the light of all that Ramdas felt and saw, which are recorded in these pages, the book can rightly bear the name ‘World is God’. In it two aspects of existence are described and stressed, one the Spirit which is infinite and eternal, and the other the world as the body of that Spirit, containing all beings and creatures within it. The title of this book stands for the essentially-to-be-reached milestone in the march of humanity towards the goal of world-union, goodwill and harmony.

The purpose on which Ramdas was sent by God to travel round the world was to spread the message of Universal Love and Service. This great ideal can be practised by looking upon all mankind as the revelation of God. In this view earth is the centre of our thought. Earth is the theatre on which we play the game of life. It is the scene where we live and struggle to attain the supreme beatitude of life. It is the Karma Bhumi, the place where our physical body is shaped and born, on which it lives and acts, and into which it ultimately returns and dissolves. It is the Dharma Kshetra, the field in which we prepare ourselves for our ultimate destiny of liberation and realization. It is on the earth that we put into practice the loftiest principles by which we recognise our relationship with all beings. It is here that we train and fit ourselves, through self-control and discipline, for the final plunge into the infinite ocean of spiritual light, power and joy. Humanity is the heart of this world in which we live and move. Identity with humanity is identity with the universe, and vice versa.

Ramdas’ travel in different countries of the world is also significant in another respect, that is, so far as his mission relating to mankind is concerned. The tour signifies the fulfilment of his life mission. He went out of India clothed with the authority from his Divine Master, to point out to the world the right way to world unity and peace. This unity and peace can be attained only when we realize that all human beings are children of the same Divine Father and Mother, that all humanity is the expression of one universal Self, that all lives and things are the forms of one infinite Consciousness—nay, that the entire world is the manifestation of God.

As man begins to discover the universal Spirit, of which he is a form, he begins automatically to see the Divine in all his fellow-beings and creatures. Ultimately, the whole world appears before his transformed vision as the veritable embodiment of the Spirit. He sees on the face of every man the light of God. Truly, he sees things not as they appear to be, but as they really are. The goal of mankind is the realization of this spiritual unity on the basis of which alone peace can prevail.

If all human beings unite as one man by resolving their unnatural differences and take their stand upon the basic reality, God, then by the power and grace which they unitedly release, they can effect a revolutionary change and thereby bring about a universal wave of peace-consciousness.

The world in which we live, and the countless other worlds, in the midst of which ours is placed, have a common link, as all of them are pervaded by the one eternal and limitless Truth or God. The microcosm is the macrocosm. The individual is the universal. God dwells in every being and thing, however small, in His entirety and perfection.

It is rightly said, when we realize God within us and know that our body is His body, then the whole world or the universe is also known as His body. Conversely, when the whole universe is realized as God, we know we are also He.

God has made Ramdas into a ripe fruit on His huge tree of manifest life for presentation to the world as a gift. Under His guidance, care and grace, Ramdas’ life grew, budded, bloomed and fruitioned until at last it became ripe, sweet and fragrant. Surely all the glory for the production of such a fruit is His—Ramdas’ beloved Master’s.

Ramdas’ life has no future, as it has transcended time and space. It has nothing new to achieve or attain. It is one with Cosmic Reality. Birth and death have nothing to do with it. Eternal stillness and eternal movement are its centre and circumference—the centre fixed in eternity and circumference encompassing infinity; boundless existence reduced to a point and a point expanded beyond all conceivable limitations.

God took Ramdas into the world to see God in all beings and teach them thereby that they are forms of God, to grant them the vision to see the world as God.

Ramdas’ voice is the Voice of God. The cosmic sound is caught and made audible through God’s vibrant vehicle—Ramdas. The cosmic light is caught, focussed and made to shine in and through the transparent tabernacle—Ramdas. The cosmic joy is caught, condensed and revealed through the innocent child—Ramdas.

Thus Ramdas’ life is resounding with the music of Eternity. Its sweet strain is never-ending. It is a divine symphony of sublime serenity, calmness and peace that is ineffable, harmonised with spontaneous activity embodying the spirit of Universal Love and Service. Waves and waves of Bliss rise from it to dance on the bosom of Satchidanand and lose themselves within itself. Its creation is destruction, its beginning its own end. A resonant Silence! That is Ramdas!