There is no need to break these God-ordained limits; rather, by adhering to them, one advances easily along the path of joy. By way of example, consider those two temporal boundaries I spoke of: the first brings about concentration, attentiveness, and unwavering devotion to God. The Lord has established His laws such that when we follow His prescribed limits with precision, those very limits gradually expand, bestowing upon us the taste of liberation and steadily making us pilgrims upon His path of freedom. When the sun grows too heated by its own warmth, that very heat causes something within it to rise outward, creating clouds; and from those clouds water falls, cooling the sun's surface somewhat.
In like manner, when we follow God-given limits—such as the continuous desire for greater knowledge—and then that limit begins to strain, when the urge to break through and reach Him grows strong, and when the boundary, resisting us, threatens to cast the heart into momentary desolation, then a certain radiance emanates from our heart and rushes toward God's infinite being. The Lord then pours forth His mercy, washing away that earlier boundary in torrents of compassion, expanding our sphere of movement, and replacing our desolation with an incomparable ocean of joy that cools and soothes the heart.
What we commonly call sorrow or joylessness in this world arises from the narrowness of limits—either inherited through our lineage or self-imposed. Let me give an example of an inherited limit. Suppose a man has become gluttonous through the failings of his parents. God's appointed boundary regarding food is this: when one eats in hunger, health comes to the body, vigor to the mind, and a sense of joy is obtained. But the glutton wishes only to eat—he knows neither hunger nor satiety; he desires only food. He lives confined within the narrow limit of eating alone and cannot step beyond it. Therefore, whenever food is unavailable, he suffers greatly; joylessness descends upon him.
There was once a great wrestler whose life held no other purpose: morning and evening he wrestled, and all day long he ate. He needed seers and seers of ghee, seers and seers of rice—vast quantities of food to fill his belly. Many wealthy men provided for him, but who could sustain such feeding forever? A time came when he could find no food sufficient to satisfy him. The result was that one day he began looting the sweet shop in the great bazaar and eating his fill, and for this he ultimately had to go to prison.
Even within the limits we create for ourselves, there comes sufficient joylessness. When we behold beauty in beautiful things, we feel pleasure—this much is the boundary set by God. But if we corrupt that love of beauty, becoming mad only after outward loveliness, and on that account steal something beautiful from another, then we have fashioned a boundary of greed for ourselves. From that greed, perhaps we shall suffer punishment, and joylessness may come as a result. Even without punishment, the very fear of being caught in theft becomes sufficient punishment for the greedy one. Many self-created or inherited boundaries cause us great suffering. These may be divided roughly into six categories: desire, anger, greed, delusion, intoxication, and envy. From these six boundaries we suffer so greatly that we commonly call them the six passions or six enemies. Often we confine ourselves within these self-created limits and, like a mouse caught in a trap for the love of food, suffer tremendously, and from time to time even lose our will to live. The people of China, wishing to keep large trees like bamboo in their homes, press them down with vessels at their points of growth, and the tree loses all its free, expansive nature. So too, the more we narrow our range of movement, the more we walk not the path of life but the path of death. We are human—if we will it, we can destroy these narrow confines. Why then should we sink into the ocean of joylessness and merely lament? Break down all these barriers instead, and advance toward the infinite. From all that has been said above, I trust you understand at least this much: to attain God, to dispel joylessness, to comprehend the Lord as the very embodiment of bliss, we must break down the barriers of all six passions; whether inherited through generations or self-created, both kinds of limits must be destroyed. In the obstacles that come from God-given limits, there lies a barrier that propels us forward on the path to the infinite. But for that, consciousness must be awakened. Since we have come to know that God is the very form of bliss, why should we allow any sorrow, grief, or joylessness to enter our hearts? Let us, together with the sages, speak with unbound voice and declare: he who has known the bliss of that fearless Supreme Lord never fears, and none can frighten him; joylessness flees from his presence. Never abandon that infinite blissful Supreme Lord; hold Him in your heart as the sole solace of life, as life's one true friend, and in unison with the sages, chant with the mantras of the Vedas: there is nothing but the essence of Brahman. This essence is God's bliss, the pure joy of the Self.
God is immortal. He transcends death; death cannot touch him. Whatever is born must die; whatever is unborn cannot die. God is eternal. Since he has neither beginning nor end, how could he possibly be born, and how could he possibly die? God has cast the shadow of his own eternal nature upon two things in particular, and in these two things we perceive most clearly the truth that whatever is unborn cannot die. These two things are space and time. This infinite expanse of space that lies before us—where is its beginning, and where is its end? This infinite expanse of time that stretches endlessly—where does it begin, where does it end? When was it born, and when will it die?
What do we mean by death? The absence of life that was once present—is that not so? Consider: I light a lamp, and the wind blows it out. We say the lamp has gone out, though strictly speaking, it is the light of the lamp that has perished. But when any creature—whether a microscopic organism or a human being, any living thing whatsoever—ceases to live, we say that creature has died. Break a stone in two, and no one will say the stone has died. Cut down a tree. If no leaves or flowers emerge from that felled tree, we say the tree has died, that its life has departed. But if flowers and leaves do sprout from the severed wood, we say the tree still lives. So it becomes clear: we call the absence of life death.
In this world, the play of life that we witness—does life cease to exist in death or in any other state? What truly is life? Life is a form of energy. Through this energy, every living creature gathers food, digests it, moves and plays, and brings forth new life in the form of fruits, flowers, and offspring.
Now the great scholars have determined with absolute certainty that no energy can be destroyed—that is, no energy can ever truly die. Energy does not perish; energy transforms. It means energy can shed its form and nature and assume another form and nature. Imagine you have confined ten watts of electrical energy in a vessel. Now release those ten watts into something flammable—coal or some other substance that burns when ignited. The result: that substance catches fire and yields, perhaps, one hundred watts of heat. What has happened? The ten watts of electricity did not vanish entirely; it simply relinquished its electrical form and nature and took on the form and nature of one hundred watts of heat.
The strength in your muscle is not something distinct from you; when you lift an object, that muscular strength merely takes on a particular form—the form of lifting. The grand calculations by which learned scholars have established this conclusion are exceedingly difficult, nearly impossible, to explain to you. Their fundamental argument runs thus: if energy could be utterly destroyed, they would be at a loss to calculate the work performed by any energy whatsoever.
From all that we have said above, we arrive at this understanding: life is a form of energy, and life knows neither true destruction nor death.