Experience in the difficulties gives you the proof of the status of your soul Experience in the difficulties gives you the proof of the status of your soul
The difficulties are really pious because they serve the Lord on the earth when He comes down bored with continuous happiness in the upper world. The servants of God are always your real guides in the spiritual path. Getting detachment from the difficulties is not the aim of the Lord. If that were the aim, the Lord would have not created problems at all in this world. The difficulties serve as a good intervals between two happy scenes. After misery the happiness gives you the real taste just like the sweet after tasting pickle. Therefore, to enjoy the happiness, misery is a pre-requisite. God enjoys both happiness and misery equally like sweet and hot dishes in the meal. Even the soul has to enjoy in this way only, if it wants to reach the state of God. The difficulties are real preachers even to Advaita scholars. In the lifetime if the soul is enjoying the difficulties also with equal entertainment, such a soul is certainly the Brahman. Thus, the experience in the difficulties gives you the proof of the status of your soul.
Logically you may arrive that you are God but experience is different from logic. Logically one may prove that the food eaten is another form of the excretion of the human being itself. The pigs eat the excretion of human being and excretion of pigs is used as manure for the fields. The manure becomes the material of the crop. All this logistic cycle proves that the human being is eating its own excretion. But such conclusion is not correct because the experience in tasting the food is quite different from tasting the excretion.
Logic is useful in rejecting the non-divine items but not in experiencing the divine nature of God. God is beyond logic. Therefore, if you are God (Brahman), why don’t you enjoy the problems like the tragic scenes in the cinema? For you (Advaita scholar) the entire creation is only imaginary like the cinema. Therefore, the difficulties prove that the soul is not God by itself inherently. But the soul can become God when God charges it to enter this world as the human incarnation. If the soul enjoys the difficulties, the soul reaches the state of God even though the soul does not become God. When the soul becomes God (when the soul is charged by God and becomes human incarnation) such soul is the creator, maintainer and destroyer of the world. But when the soul attains the state of God, the soul is equal to God in all aspects (Matbhavayopapadyate—Gita) except in the above-mentioned three aspects because it is not actually God.
Re: Experience in the difficulties gives you the proof of the status of your soul
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The difficulties are really pious because they serve the Lord on the earth when He comes down bored with continuous happiness in the upper world.
God is bored with eternal happiness? But then that isn't REAL happiness, is it?
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But the soul can become God when God charges it to enter this world as the human incarnation. If the soul enjoys the difficulties, the soul reaches the state of God even though the soul does not become God. When the soul becomes God (when the soul is charged by God and becomes human incarnation) such soul is the creator, maintainer and destroyer of the world. But when the soul attains the state of God, the soul is equal to God in all aspects (Matbhavayopapadyate—Gita) except in the above-mentioned three aspects because it is not actually God.
Datta, I think you're trying to hit on a truth, but you're theology is hindering you from the whole truth. For example, we can never be equal to God. Our goal in this life isn't to be equal to God (such as Satan tried). Our goal in this life is to know, love, and serve God in this world, seek communion with Him, so that we may be with Him for eternity in the next.. We are only "godly" as much as it is He who lives in us. Only as He increases in us and we decrease.
I think the truth you almost have is this:
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Romans 5:1-5
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. (RSV)
and this:
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1 Peter 4:12-19
12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; 16 yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. 17 For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And "If the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?" 19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will do right and entrust their souls to a faithful Creator(RSV)
Let me restate it this way. In this world we suffer. It's a fact of life. But if we suffer because of Christ and in Christ, our suffering not only has meaning, but also helps us and others in "working out our salvation in fear and trembling." So rather than go through life as if the goal of life is to avoid suffering at all costs, we should see the trials we experience in this life by God's grace as part of God's plan that will ultimately work out for our eternal good in the end.
Easier said than done, however. Easy to say in theory in a thread like this, but difficult to say when it's your wife or parent or child who is going through a debilitating illness and suffering to the very end.
But the message is that even in such apparent evil, there is still hope. For example, even in the midst of the stench of physical evil in the Nazi concentration camps, deeds of love came forth. I think of St. Maximilian Kolbe and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, especially.
