Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Essence and existence are contrasted in ontological philosophy and theology. The distinction is highly useful and phenomenological (experienced).
Essence is what we really are, which is hidden but which we experience inside ourselves, sometimes most keenly. Our essential being is that which we truly are in unity with God and our world, without any experience of separation or non-peace.
Existence is what we experience in our daily lives. It is characterized by experiences of VUCA (Volatility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity) and, deeper yet, anxiety, guilt, sin and the threat of non-being. All of those experiences are summarized in the word estrangement because that word describes not only the experience itself but also its cause, namely, separation from our essence.
During our existence, during our life in this world of estrangement, struggle and the threat of non-being, we also experience, fragmentarily and in an anticipatory manner, our essence, God, in many ways but all of them summarized in the word love. Love overcomes estrangement because it reunites what is separated. As Swami says, love is the Royal Road to God, to our own essential nature.
So we are not given over to despair just because we have existence. Far from it. God seeks us out with foretastes of his love, his nature, through our families, our friends, our associates, our animals and plants and the overall beauty of this world. Our experience of all of these phenomena is experience of God, of our essential nature. Such experiences are sweet and satisfying … because they are God.
These experiences drive us to transcend estrangement in general and particular estrangements as well. They inspire and enable us to deal creatively with the conditions of existence, which are summarized in the word estrangement.
By ultimately assigning all consequences to God, we express the fact that our lives are lived in and through the Faith in him that he has granted us — as what is called Grace — even from before the foundations of the world. We live in that Faith, we die in that Faith and we are reborn in that Faith in His Body and Presence.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
