Does Ultimate Realization Come with Supreme Joy? | Steve Beckow

By Steve Beckow, July 2, 2021

(Golden Age of Gaia)

Another way of looking at spiritual evolution – Ascension being one step in it – is to say that it’s a process of aligning the will and the heart.

I don’t need to say “with God’s Will” because, aligning the will with the heart, one finds, means aligning with the inner tsunami of love and the Ocean of Love it leads to. And what is God’s Will, I venture, but Love?

I’ve been describing the purpose of life for God as allowing God to meet God. What I’ve never allowed myself to say was that God was apparently acting for the pure en-joy-ment of it, the pure delight and play. I’ve worried that work-oriented North Americans would rebel at the thought.

But, in other research, I came across two sages saying just that. I gather my courage and repeat their comments:

Swami Vivekananda: This world is a superstition. We are hypnotized into believing it real. The process of salvation is the process of de-hypnotization. … This universe is just the play of the Lord – that is all. It is all just for fun. (1)

Swami Nikhilananda: The creation is sometimes described as the lila, the sport of Brahman [God], who creates the universe out of sheer sportive pleasure from the very fulness of His nature. (2)

Given that the higher up Jacob’s Ladder of Consciousness we go, the more joyful we get, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the punch line causes an outburst of mirth. It was all for this? Yes! Regrets? None!

I’m led to believe that many a Buddha, in the moment of realization, has rolled around on the ground laughing. Hakuin for example. … Well, it didn’t hurt that he fell face down in a mud puddle.

I imagine that the ultimate realization comes with supreme joy.

Further: If I let my joy out now, I hypothesize that I’ll find that I’m going in the direction life is going in.

I am beaming.

Footnotes

(1) Swami Vivekananda Swami Chetanananda, God Lived with Them. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1997.

(2) Swami Nikhilananda, Hinduism. lts Meaning for the Liberation of the Spirit. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1968, 41.