Why is the realization of God easily achieved in old age?

[This is part of a mahā satsaṅga or a great spiritual discussion between Swami and several devotees who had come from various places, seeking the clarification of their doubts.]

Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! During old age, the person has the leisure to review his or her entire life passed. The person can correlate several incidents carefully to conclude and repeatedly confirm that God certainly exists and that He gives good fruits for one’s good actions and bad fruits or punishments for one’s sins. The person is able to make the correlations due to the similarity in the nature of action and result. For example, if an old man had spoiled somebody’s marriage during his young age, in course of time, someone else spoils the marriage of the man’s own son. On observing this, the old person realizes that the unimaginable God certainly exists and that God also possesses unimaginable power to punish souls for their sins. Similarly, the old man may also find that someone saved his son’s marriage. He recalls that he had helped some other person’s son or daughter get married in the past. Upon analysis, he realizes that his son’s marriage being saved in the present was the result of his similar good action in the past. With this, the old person again confirms the existence of the unimaginable God, who gave him the good fruit for his good action.

After thus analyzing their own actions done in several practical situations and the fruits of those actions, old people certainly develop a strong belief in the existence of the unimaginable God’s administration on earth. Despite this strong realization, old people neither have much time nor much energy left to worship God. If this same realization comes to a person at an earlier age, that person is indeed very lucky. The person has sufficient time and energy to concentrate on devotion to God. Sometimes, a soul may develop a very strong realization in old age. Due to the advanced age, the soul is not able to practically serve God and earn His grace. However, the strong impression of that realization gets carried forward to the next birth, in which the soul attains such a realization at a much younger age. Then the soul can serve God, sacrifice to Him and attain His permanent grace.

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