Karma Sutra: What role does God play in our life

If everything we want from the material world gets fulfilled through walking the right path or in karmic parlance sowing good deeds, then what role does God have?

Life is all about learning our lessons and evolving as human beings. Karma helps us in fulfilling our material desires. All the things of the material world- the gold and the glitter, the fame and the fortune, the ships and the island that we want to possess, gets fulfilled through good karmas.

However, while we are in the process of the fulfilment of our desires and dealing with the odds of life, we realize that no matter how heavy our baggage, there is an energy that is protecting and sustaining us. We also observe that a bad phase is always followed by a good phase. And no matter how dark the night, that energy propels us to carry on with hope. This energy which sustains us and protects us is God which resides in each of us.

It is this divine energy which designs our life in a manner that we are never given more burden than what our frail shoulders can carry. The purpose of this energy is to help us get rid of our ignorance and become aware of the way, the universal energy (cause and effect) works. It teaches us this lesson through – shankh (warning), chakra (obstacles), gada (punishment). And finally when you have learnt the lesson, He blesses you (padam).

This energy also inspires us (prerak) to break free of the karmic shackles of birth and death when we get disillusioned and disheartened by the world. We realize that as soon as we quench one desire, another one crops up almost instantly. We move hastily from quenching one desire to another, to another… till the time we are on the outskirts of our grave.

No matter what we possess the void continues to roar in the bottomless pit of our desires. Tired of its inexhaustible demand we seek the grace of this divine energy and return to our true nature which is in a state of fulfilment (paripoorna) in itself.