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May 27, 2024

Book Review: Ishvara in One's Life by Swami Dayananda Saraswati




 I read "Value of Values" by Swami Dayananda Saraswati sometime last year. He articulates his thoughts so beautifully and conveys the wisdom of Shastras to the present-day audience in a relatable way. I picked up the book "Ishvara in One's Life" from Blossoms. It's a 90-page booklet (with the perfect font size) where Swamiji explains how one can relate to Ishvara (the Divine).

He elaborates on certain qualities that make one an adult - the ability to be dispassionate and objective, detaching oneself from the various roles one plays in life and one's relationship to the total. 

He then discusses the qualities of the Divine - to be able to intelligently put together to serve a purpose, the maker of all, the all-knowledge conscious being. There were amazing insights in these chapters and I was nodding my head while reading a couple of chapters. As I study more about the anatomy & physiology of the human body, I can't help but wonder how meticulously and intelligently the human body is put together. The maker and the material cause are not separate. One has to deeply introspect on this concept and imbibe it to view the Whole as the manifestation of the Divine.

His arguments on why God is not a matter of belief were so thought-provoking. God has to be understood in the form of various orders that we observe in this Universe - physical, psychological, biological, and the order of Dharma. 

This is a gem of a book that needs to be revisited multiple times to comprehend the often misunderstood portrayal of God.