World Religions Conference November 1957

SR No.: 034661
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Sushil Muni
Publisher: Achal Singh Seth
Publication Year: 1957
Total Pages: 192
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

Page 128

Reception at Sawan Ashram
Truly speaking, Man was born as Man and he is the highest of all creation, you know. A Man is the ensouled body. He is composed of the physical body, intellect and Soul. So as a Man, one has to develop alround. We have developed physically. We have found so many sciences like Allopathy, Homeopathy, Vedic, Unani and other systems like Naturopathy etc. We also know so much about our social and political life. We have also developed a lot in so far as intellect is concerned. We have to a certain extent become Intellectual giants. We have developed Radio, Television, various types of Rockets and Missiles, Atom and Hydrogen Bombs. Intellectually we have made wonderful progress, it is true. But we are ignorant of our own Soul. But this physical body and its outer relations as well as, our intellectual attainments depend on Soul.
So we are Souls-conscious entities, environed by mind and matter. Soul is identified with the physical body, so much so that it has forgotten its true nature. Now the ultimate goal of all mankind is to know God, the ultimate reality. But for that we must know our own self first : who we are? and what we are? We see we are bodies, but we do not see our real self and we cannot differentiate it from the body. So we have to practically know ourselves first, who and what we are ? Are we this five or six feet of bodily moulds that we carry about us or something else. So to know God we have to know our real self first. Self-knowledge precedes God. knowledge.
How to know ourselves? is the basic teaching, I mean the motto of all great men who came in the past. Old Greeks called it ? Gnathi Seautor which is the same thing as know Thy self: Christians also say the same thing. Guru Nanak also said the same thing. So our ultimate goal is to know God, to come into contact with God. For that purpose we have to know ourself first, which is a practical question. Intellectually we know of so many things but practically we have done little or nothing in the way of analysing our self from the body so as to rise above body-consciousness and to know the real nature of the self as apart from the body. Only then can'we know God and not before. So this is the basis of all religions.
Man is the oldest of all creation. God made Man and Man made the social bodies. It is we who have made them. The purpose of all mankind, and of all social religions, is to know God, to reach God. Before man can know God, he has to know himself. The purpose of social religions was just to prescribe a mode of life so that we may have a peaceful existence during our sojourn on this earth, in the first place, and then to analyse ourselves so as to know our self and to know God. This is the aim. of all religions and all the great Masters. They all said the same thing. All Masters who came in the past, for that purpose, laid down two principles;
120