A good life is, in a way, the Godly life. Goodness is a resplendence, a reflection of a modicum of divinity. The more is man divine, the more is he also good. In fact, goodness is a characteristic to be found in God alone, and man is good only in proportion to his proximity to God. When we are advised to set apart a little time daily for the purpose of meditation, it is also essential for us to carry this mood of meditation through our day-to-day activities. While it is difficult to bring about a rapprochement between the religious and the secular, for obvious reasons, a heightened form of religious consciousness should be able to effect this harmony. The whole of life is a single presentation, and not a bifurcated community of independent units. The unwholesome dissociation of psychological functions from one another is the reason behind the distinction man makes between the secular and the religious. Man has emotions which are of a given nature, demarcated from other types of feelings, due to which he carries this distinction outwardly to his practical life, and sets aside a group of his activities, dissociating them from his religious aspirations. And, often he lives an entirely different life when he is not in a mood of religion. The spirit of religious worship and meditation has to saturate and seep into the secular life, if life is to become a healthy whole. Even as cloth soaked in water absorbs into its very fibre the whole of water, the apparently secular life has to become a living step to the more organised dimension of religious experience.

Meditation need not necessarily mean a withdrawal in an antisocial or unsocial manner. Nothing can be more natural than meditation. Meditation need not suggest the shutting oneself off psychologically from certain other functions of life. The psyche is a whole, a Gestalt, as they usually call it. It is not a partitioned house divided against itself. The psychological organ is a compact indivisibility. Every thought is a whole thought. Thus, when we enter into meditation, the entire psychic wholeness gets charged, even those aspects which are connected with the well-known secular engagements.

Though all this may appear a hard thing, especially for beginners, students may follow an alternative with advantage, viz., the maintenance of a background of thought at all times. This is something important to remember. Everyone has a background of thought apart from the way in which one projects one's thoughts when one is busy working through the chosen career in life. When we are tired, we withdraw ourselves into the background of thought. Birds retire to their nests during the close of the day; the mind should be made to retire into its background. There is a stable ground to rest, and this ground is to be perpetually there. We should not be off our ground even when working in an office. The advantage of the presence of this background in oneself can be availed of even while engaged in any work. One may have to be for eight hours in an office, for instance. It does not mean that one should forget everything else and be absorbed in a mathematical calculation or the preparation of a register for all the hours, to the exclusion of even one's health and other essentials. The background of thought should be maintained, and it cannot be lost sight of even in an hour of hard labour. An important occupation cannot be forgotten in spite of other activities which may engage one's attention on the surface. Though a person may be an officer, or a worker in a specific occupation or business, while under these circumstances when he is wholly engaged in his work or the execution of official responsibilities he cannot afford to forget a principal responsibility of his, or an important function to be performed even in the midst of the present duties.

Here, one should be able to distinguish the essentials from the secondary aspects of life. While the secondary aspects are important enough, they lose their meaning when the essentials are forgotten. The essentials are the soul, and all the other things are the body of this soul. Even when one is working, one can close one's eyes for a few minutes. This can be done even in an office. It is not necessary to think, "I am in an office; I have to go to the temple for meditation after five hours." One can put one's pen down for a few minutes, and the heavens are not going to fall. There should be no difficulty about it. Meditation is not so much a quantity as a quality of one's inward attunement. It is the way in which one thinks that is important, and not the time that one spends in thinking. In a second, one can be qualitatively roused up into an immense strength of union with God. It will take only a moment to do this feat. It is not conceivable that the work-a-day occupations can be a real hindrance in this practice of maintaining a background thought to rejuvenate oneself. The capacity on one's part to rouse oneself into this spirit of union will depend on the intensity which one feels for the ideal, the love that one evinces for this achievement, the aspiration for the liberation of spirit from every shackle and limitation.

Sage Patanjali advises in some place, "The achievement is rapid where the feeling is intense (tivrasamveganam asannah)." Quick is the result where the aspiration is burning. Patanjali uses the term 'adhimatra', which means 'intensely intense', to designate the quality of aspiration that is essential for the attainment. It is not enough if the longing is 'merely intense'; it should be 'intensely intense'. The extent of the intensity of feeling will depend upon the extent of one's understanding of the nature of the goal to be reached. The love and the feeling can become lukewarm on account of the inadequate understanding of the whole undertaking, and, often, a subtle reluctance on one's part to accept that the ideal is all-in-all. While intellectually, philosophically, through the conscious mind, one may accept this truth, the heart will not always accept this conclusion; it will not receive this reasoning for a reason of its own, which reason cannot understand. Very few can persuade themselves to believe that this is the principal occupation of life. It does not mean that this is generally not accepted; all long for it in some way. But, man is not what he appears to be at the conscious level. He is far hidden deep beneath his own self. A shell of his personality is working as his waking awareness. The outer crust is operating even when one is conscious in the ordinary sense. The deeper iceberg of the psyche is buried in the Pacific of the unconscious. And unless one accepts this position honestly, mere philosophical deliberations would be no more than academic information.

It is said that after sravana there should be manana and nididhyasana. After listening or studying under a preceptor or a teacher, it would not be enough to turn the mind away into the ordinary occupations of life as if nothing has been learnt at all. After listening, after studying, after imbibing knowledge from a teacher, which is sravana, the next duty would be to reflect upon what is told and what has been heard. A personal in-depth analysis has to be done of all that is studied, or understood; and a profound reconciliation has to be arrived at with the truths that have been imparted by way of the lessons, through the teachings or the instructions from one's superiors. It is not enough if this reflection, which is manana, is merely conducted. The truths have to get absorbed into oneself and become one's very being. One's very life is to be consumed in the acceptance of the truths communicated in instruction. This self absorption is called nididhyasana, the sinking of these truths from the conscious level into the deeper levels of self. Generally, in studies, or during the moments of listening to lectures or teachings, only the conscious mind does function. But, in reflection, the subconscious mind also begins to act. One deeply ponders over things at the subliminal level when one is conducting manana. In nididhyasana the unconscious is roused into activity, and the whole of one's being is now meditating, not a part of oneself as is the case in listening to a lecture or a teaching. Sravana, manana, nididhyasana - hearing, reflection, and deep meditation - are the traditional routines of meditational practice. Not much attention is paid to this requirement by most students. Nowadays, everybody is contented to be a bookworm; one goes to libraries, browses over tomes, runs after many teachers, takes notes, and then the whole thing ends there, but they do not find time to reflect and allow the thoughts to become part of their being. The thoughts remain outside one's being. They are cloaks but not essential ingredients of one's existence. Thought has to become reality; consciousness is being; chit has to melt into sat. This is possible only when the external operations of thought become a part of one's life and the breath that one breathes.

Mankind lives in a world which is hard to face at this juncture of the twentieth century. People have difficulty of every description. But, accepting facts as they are, and not imagining ideologies which ought to be, one has to make the best of one's circumstances. We hear it said that one has to take bath in the ocean even when the waves dash upon the shore; one cannot wait till the waves subside, for they will never subside. So, one cannot afford to wait for favourable circumstances in the world; they will never come. The world has been of this kind since ages, and it is not likely to be something else, suddenly. The difficulties of life are partly our own making. Man attracts what he deserves; injustice is not meted out to him by the law of Nature. There is some mystery in things, which we are not able to understand. Our complaints are part of our ignorance. We may have to endure some hardship with fortitude. "What you can change, you change; and what you cannot, you bear." This is a little truth, a little commonsense, which man can apply to himself. We mix up the can's and the cannot's, and, then, rack our brains unnecessarily. Let a clear distinction be drawn between what we can do and what we cannot. If we can do this, we would be learning how to live. Man places himself in a state of anxiety. Clarity of understanding is known as viveka - discrimination between the real and the unreal. It can also be a distinction between the possible and the impossible.

With this perspicuity of thought, we should try to live the way we are expected to live, in the light of the laws that operate everywhere, and try our best, from the bottom of our hearts, to seek final succour at the hands of the Almighty, whose benignant look is ever upon all.