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14
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
and not in any creature, or god, or goddess of a lower degree. You need not be afraid of exciting the anger of God by this seemingly audacious ambition. When you understand the nature of things, you will see that Godhood is the goal of evolution.
A question which is often asked is why should one be religious at all? In other words, why should not one go on living as usual in this world and enjoying its pleasures, rather than renounce them to become religious? It is certainly a legitimate question, and religion has got to answer it, in order to maintain its claim and to sustain its position.
Religion is the SCIENCE of bliss; it is the department which deals with the attainment of unalloyed happiness. It sets out with an enquiry into the very nature of bliss which it proclaims to be different from the pleasures of the world. A mere tickling of senses, worldly pleasure is essentially fleeting, transient, full of trouble in its procurement, and liable to give birth to suffering and pain in its experience. Pleasure and pain are thus opposite terms in a sense; the one is the re-action of the other, and neither can be had alone by itself. If the action is pleasant, its re-action is bound to be painful, and vice versâ. Religion declares that pleasure which is liable to change and to be followed by pain is merely a counterfeit imitation, not the genuine article. Real bliss is very different from the pleasures of this world. It is that condition in which one experiences nothing but uninterrupted peace, tranquillity and joy, wave upon wave, as it were of life-giving ecstasy, the becoming rather than enjoying bliss itself which is God's eternal svabhâva (nature).
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