He reveals himself. His revelation dwells in the atoms of creation. To perceive that revelation, we must have the will, and we must adopt the proper means. If at midday, when the sun blazes overhead, I choose to darken my room completely and sleep through those hours, and then declare that I have not seen the sun, and therefore the sun never rose—can such a claim be accepted? The God whose revelation shines in the sun, whose revelation pervades all things; the God whose revelation lives in the vital realm of the world, whose revelation dwells in the knowledge-realm of humanity; the God whose revelation exists in every atom, in every moment—is it not wrong to doubt His existence merely because our negligence prevents us from feeling Him in our hearts?
Look deeply into your own hearts; you will find the Supreme God dwelling there. But the more you perceive Him, the more you will long to perceive Him still. As you gaze and gaze, discovering no end to Him, your heart will grow still with wonder, and from that stillness will arise a profound question…Where does His end lie, where does His end lie? The answer the sages gave to this very question—seek your peace in that answer. That answer is: Om Sat-yam Jnanam-Anandam Brahma—He is Truth itself, Knowledge itself, Infinity itself, the Supreme Brahman. Hold this mantra in your heart like a priceless jewel, and attain boundless peace. To know yourself is to know Him. To love yourself is to love Him. To commune with yourself is to commune with Him. To dwell in your own work is to dwell in His presence. You must seek Him within your own depths. This intimate journey of discovery is what is called the attainment of self-knowledge, or knowledge of Brahman. Therefore, the name of the infinite Brahman is Truth, or Knowledge.
God manifests Himself as Bliss. Whoever has reflected deeply upon Him, whoever has immersed themselves even once in God, whoever has touched Him for a fleeting moment by uniting themselves with Him—such a one speaks with certainty: God reveals Himself as Bliss in all places and at all times. Wherever pure joy dwells, there dwells God. The sages were not content merely to call Him Bliss. Having come to know God Himself as Bliss and tasted that incomparable joy, they immersed themselves in that bliss and spoke of His manifestation as Rasa—the very essence of Taste, of Flavor, of the sublime. In this word "Rasa," all the joy of the sages, all their love, every noble feeling of the heart seems to crystallize and unite in one expression. If you too strive to know God with single-minded devotion, you will perceive that He Himself, in His nature as Bliss and as Rasa, dwells in every corner of the world and in your hearts.
Because He is Bliss itself, the world overflows with joy. When you play with your friends, what delight you experience! When your mother caresses you, runs her hand gently over your head, shows you tenderness and care; when your father teaches you noble things, gives you gifts of your choosing, takes you out to see the world—what profound joy fills you! When you play and your body is free from illness, what exuberance and happiness rise in both body and mind!
Where does all this joy scattered throughout the world come from? Think about it carefully—such abundance of joy cannot simply fall from the sky of its own accord. I have seen it before: all the knowledge we possess is but a shadow of one God's knowledge. Just so, all the joy spread throughout this world must surely be a shadow of one great, indivisible joy. There must be a primary source, a fountain, from which this wellspring of joy flows down and covers the entire world and all its creatures. You see how much water fills the rivers—so much that it bears hundreds of great steamers, ships, hundreds of trees and animals. Yet this water did not come into being by itself. Far away, in mountains countless leagues distant, there are innumerable springs, and from those springs water falls ceaselessly, and from such constant falling, these great rivers have been born.
In exactly the same way, the abundance of joy that covers the world must surely have its own primary fountain. When you are moved by a beautiful song and find yourself drowning in joy; when you listen to the words of dharma from a pious person and, forgetting the small troubles and sorrows of the world, feel a wondrous joy—where would this joy come from if there were no original source of it? The incomparable joy you feel sitting in the open southern breeze on a summer evening, savoring the majesty of dusk; the infinite joy you experience in the autumn moonlight of the full moon after the rains—can such joys come into being by themselves? Is there any doubt that all these feelings of joy have flowed down from a primary fountain?
That there exists one great joy at the root of all joy finds particular proof in this: whether we speak of humans or beasts and birds, a common element can be seen in the joy of all creatures. When you are hungry and receive food, you feel joy just as I do; animals and birds, all living things, experience that very same joy. Again, observe: when I express joy, you understand it, and I understand your joy as well. The joy of humans is comprehended by beasts and birds, just as the joy of beasts and birds is comprehended by humans. Consider further: thousands of years ago, someone perhaps expressed joy about something, and today, reading the account of it, we too experience that very joy. It is because there exists a fundamental, universal element within these different expressions of joy that we are able to understand one another's happiness in precisely the same way. Joy is the universal language of this earth. Though the manifestations of joy may differ across different times and different places, their source remains of one and the same nature.
Now the question arises: why is there unity within this diversity? From where does this unity come? We have already seen that God is knowledge itself, and all knowledge in the world has descended from that great knowledge, which is why there is a fundamental unity among them; and because of this unity, we can enter into the knowledge of inhabitants from land to land; indeed, we even claim to have understood the nature of inhabitants of star to star. In exactly the same way, because this stream of joy in the world has flowed down from the same blissful Person, we perceive a fundamental unity within all joy, and from this very place we can feel in our hearts the source and nature of joy of the distant English, French, Chinese and Japanese, the dwellers of both poles—the Arctic and Antarctic—of the earth. This blissful Person himself is the supreme God of our eternal worship.
When there exists a God who is bliss itself, why does joylessness come into the world? Living within limits and being born with limitation—this is the cause of that joylessness. God is infinite, and eternal unbroken bliss belongs to him alone. We are finite, and therefore unbroken eternal bliss cannot come to us—somewhere, somehow, its limit will exist, and wherever there is a limit, there is the absence of joy. We cannot exist without being limited, and so the joy within us cannot help but have some limit or deficiency. Because God is infinite, we are finite. If we were not limited, we would become utterly one and identical with the infinite God. Then creation itself could not have been. Since we have come into the world bearing limitation, we must recognize and accept that our joy too has a limit or lacks fullness.
This open sky—even this sky is limited before that infinite Person. That is why the face of this sky is sometimes seen shrouded in clouds. Clouds come, rain descends, and then once again the open sky remains open sky. This freedom in time—even this is limited before that infinite Person. That is why the face of this age too is sometimes seen clouded. The clouds of war arrive, the rain of blood falls, and then freedom in time remains freedom in time still.
So we see that to dispel joylessness, we must break through the limits of our joy and move forward on the path toward the blissful God. When being born with limitation itself has brought limitation to our joy, then to break through the limits of joy and advance on joy's path, we must also break through the limits in other matters. To know how to break limits is most necessary. We perceive two kinds of limits—one ordained by God, and two, inherited or self-created. The limits of space and time are ordained by God. A single thing cannot occupy more than one space at the same moment—this is the limit of space; in a single moment, the mind cannot hold more than one thought—this is the limit of time; the moment that passes never returns—this too is the limit of time.