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Peace is your Goal

Swami Sivananda Saraswati

Everyone in the world is restless and is striving after something. What it is he does not know. In the accomplishment of ambitious projects he seeks the rest that he feels he is in need of, but he finds that worldly greatness, when secured, is a snare and a delusion. He does not find any real happiness or peace in it. He gets degrees, titles, honours, power, name and fame. He marries, he begets children and he attains all he had supposed would give him happiness. But he finds no rest. Pious men, saints and sages declare that this restlessness, this state of discontentment, dissatisfaction and discomfort, of being ill at ease with oneself and one's surroundings, is solely due to the loss of the companionship of the partner of the soul - God.

Peace is absolute serenity and tranquillity, wherein all the mental modifications, thoughts, imaginings, whims, fancies, moods, impulses, emotions, instincts, etc. cease entirely and the individual soul rests in its own native, pristine glory, in an unruffled state. It is not, of course, the temporary condition of mental quietude that worldly people speak of in common parlance, when they retire for a short time to a solitary bungalow in a forest for a short rest. Peace is the fourth state of superconsciousness. It is the realm of supreme bliss, eternal life and eternal sunshine, where the cares, worries, anxieties and fears which torment the soul here dare not enter; where all distinctions of caste, creed and colour vanish altogether in the one embrace of divine love and where desires and cravings find their full satiety.

Peace is within. Search for it in the chambers of your heart through one-pointed concentration and meditation. If you do not find peace there, you will not find it anywhere else. Remember, dear friends, that the goal of life is the attainment of peace and not the achievement of power, fame and wealth. Desire is the greatest enemy of peace. There is no peace for one who has no concentration. There can be no happiness for the unpeaceful. In that supreme peace, all pains, all sorrows, miseries and tribulations vanish forever.

The peace of the eternal lies near those who know themselves, who are disjoined from desire and passion, subdued in nature and of subdued thoughts. The one who is endowed with supreme faith and who has mastery over the senses quickly obtains supreme peace.