Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/186

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164
PERSONALITY

cravings of self, and own me as your child,—your child, not the child of this world of death."

This is the prayer we use when we want to realize full consciousness of life in our Father. The greatest obstacle is the selfish life. Therefore the prayer of man to God is not for worldly goods, but for the establishment of complete relationship with the Father.

Yad bhadran tan na asuva. What is good give us.

We very often utter this prayer and ask our Father to give us what is good, but we do not know what a terrible prayer it is if we were to receive its full answer. There are very few of us who, when realizing what is the highest good, can ask for it. Only he can do that who has been able to make his life pure, free from the shackles of evil, who can fearlessly ask God to fulfil his work, who can say, "I have cleansed my mind and got rid of impulses of selfish desire and the fear and sorrow of the narrow life of self, and now I can claim with fullest hope, 'Give me what is good, in whatever form—in sorrow, loss, insult, bereavement—I shall be glad to receive it, for I know it comes from Thee.'"

But however weak we may be we have to utter this prayer. For we know that even