Union with the Divine

Life is incomplete without union with God. It is quite natural that a matured mind and a receptive heart strive for this union. Since long, philosophies were born, debates happened, music, art and literature evolved from this very need.

Religions, philosophies, practices, customs and austerities have all pointed to one thing: union with the Divine. On an average, any person who wakes up to suffering in his life wants to be free from it.

For this, he looks to the superpower of creation. The more he looks at the misery and shortcomings in his life, the farther away he feels he is from the Divinity that is his very nature. His heart yearns to establish contact with the Supreme.

Since ages, we’ve been striving to reduce the gap between ourselves and God. There are two ways to do this: one way is to elevate humankind towards Divinity — this is called Siddha, and the person who achieves this state is believed to have attained perfection.

The second way is to bring God to human level in avatar form. Here, Divinity manifests itself for the sake of humankind. So, man rising up to God is Siddha; God coming down, because he cares for you, and wants to communicate directly with you, is avatar.

Avatar is God in human form and in that humanness, you can get a glimpse of Divinity. In the Puranas, all the devasare depicted with human emotions and tendencies. They experience ‘normal’ feelings of anger, love and resentment.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji