April19, 2014: Prabhavapyayau hi bhutanam: Everything comes forth from Him and everything returns to Him, and everything is sustained, also, in His Being. Our movements cannot take us outside the Body of Isvara. Even if we travel millions of miles in the distant space, to the stars, we are within the Body of Isvara. We cannot go outside it. Let our thoughts, let the soul fly into the heights of the empyrean, or come down to the nether regions, it is within the purview of Isvara's knowledge and is contained in the Being of Isvara. Whatever be the freedom of the kite to fly to the skies, as long as it is tied with a rope to a peg on the earth, its movements are restricted. Our freedom seems to be within the radius of the operation of our Prarabdha-Karma, and beyond that limit we cannot go. We have freedom, but limited freedom, not absolute freedom. It is the freedom that a mother gives to her child. The child has a freedom, but within limits; beyond that the mother will not make any allowance. Isvara gives us freedom in the sense that there is capacity in us to understand, ratiocinate and judge situations, but all these judgments are determined by the law of Isvara, and we cannot overrule that law; we have to abide by that law. And, if our egoism so acts, occasionally, as to violate this law of Isvara, then there is a reaction set up, and this reaction is what is called the law of Karma. Karma that binds is nothing but the effect of the violation of the law of Isvara, and abidance by His Will is unselfish Karma. This is Karma-Yoga. When we abide by His Will, follow His law, and then act, we perform Karma-Yoga. But when we violate His Will and act according to the dictates of the ego, we perform a binding Karma. Isvara, therefore, is everything, the coming in and the going out of all things, of all beings. Such is the glory, the magnificence and the greatness of God, Isvara, whose integral parts, organic limbs, are the Jivas, and all things, animate or inanimate. The distinction of living and non-living beings, the inorganic and the organic, do not obtain in the realm of Isvara's Being. For Him, it is all Consciousness. There is no Jadatva, or no dead matter, for Isvara, because it is His Being. He permeates all things; He is Antaryamin. This is the Causal Condition of the universe, corresponding to which there is the causal experience of the Jiva, called Prajna. The individual causal state is Prajna; the Universal Causal State is Isvara. The individual subtle state is Taijasa; the Cosmic Subtle State is Hiranyagarbha. The individual gross state is Visva; the Cosmic Gross State is Vaisvanara, or Virat. Isvara is often understood as that Total Being, in which all the cosmic states are united.

                                                                                                ---Excerpts from Sri Ravi Shankar Guruji’s preaching