B. THE UNDERSTANDING AND PRACTICE OF THE SUPREME TRUTH
All scriptures proclaim the omnipresence of God. All the great stotras and chants proclaim the presence of God in all names and forms. They all grandly proclaim this glorious truth. Nevertheless, knowing this truth, chanting and uttering this truth, our actual life and actions day by day do not demonstrate this truth.
How difficult it is to remember this truth, to retain it and to make it the basis of our being and doing, our living. How easy it is to shove this truth into some corner of our knowledge and very conveniently go our own way refusing to see the God who is standing before us—ignoring Him, shoving Him aside. Strange contradiction! Strange dichotomy!
This is the reason that the ship of our life does not reach the other shore of Immortality. This is the reason why, in spite of japa and meditation and scriptural reading and pilgrimage and vows and austerities, we don’t seem to be making any headway. We are pressing upon the accelerator and putting on the brake at the same time. Sometimes we even put the vehicle into reverse.
Ponder this truth, this strange fact pertaining to your life and your spiritual life. Knowing, being and doing must be integrated. We must realise that this integration is necessary. We must strive for this integration. We cannot be split personalities in the spiritual field.
66. BRAHMAN IN TIME AND SPACE
We are told that the supreme, ultimate Divine Reality baffles thought, reasoning and human language. It is transcendental, beyond time and space, unmanifest. How can we, bound up in a consciousness limited and confined by time and space factors, depending solely upon an inner instrument made up of mind and intellect, how can we ever hope, ever have the possibility of comprehending that great Reality?
He being unutterable, imponderable, it would seem to be impossible. Nevertheless, those who have scaled the tremendous heights of the realisation of the Absolute have suddenly discovered when they have come down from the dizzy heights of superconsciousness and supra-consciousness—the dizzy heights of a transcendental experience absolute, aparoksha’nubhuti— another facet, another aspect, another truth about that great Reality.
And this has been a discovery so great, so wonderful, so tremendous and significant for us, for you and me and all of us, that it would be the greatest thing if we could grasp it, live in that truth and base our sadhana upon that truth. It would make a revolutionary change in the quality of our spiritual life.
And that second facet or aspect that they experienced and which overwhelmed them they have shared with us. It is the truth that the supreme, almighty God, the absolute Being, Brahman, who is transcendental, absolute, imponderable, beyond mind and intellect, eternal, infinite, boundless, unfathomable, immeasurable is at the same time manifest in the relative and finite dimension. Otherwise, there would be no possibility of our spiritual quest, of our aspiration, of guru and sishya, of sadhana, of yoga and meditation or the consummation—realisation. All these things would be impossible.
And what these great men of wisdom discovered was that this transcendental Being, beyond time and space, infinite and eternal, when manifest in time and space is YOU. Ponder this! Transcending time and space It is that Brahman. When that same Brahman is manifest in time and space, that great Brahman, that Divinity, that perfection, is YOU.
Therefore, be what you are. Live life as a manifestation of what you are, namely, Divinity. Live such a life. Scatter divinity in everything that you do all the days of your life. And when the time comes, go laughing, laughing at the so-called termination of this earth incarnation—not smiling, but laughing. For it has no meaning for you. It has no meaning. There is no termination. You are eternal, infinite.
Therefore, be what you are. Be awake and aware of this great fact that God, Brahman, manifest in time and space is no other than you. Live as you are. Make your life a manifestation of your truth, of this fact.
Live your life filled with a radiant divine quality. Live with joy. Live with light. Spread this joy and light each minute, each moment, with each breath, everywhere, all the days of your life.
Then go forth radiant, joyful, triumphant, victorious. Thus is life to be lived. That is indeed life. This has been said.
67. THE CENTRAL PURPOSE OF ALL SPIRITUAL PRACTICES
Worshipful homage unto the eternal Reality that is also a present reality, because eternity includes the past, the future and also the present. If a thing is beginningless and endless, it automatically also becomes present every moment in this timeless eternity. The endless cannot be absent at even a single split moment in time. Therefore, when we pay worshipful homage unto that transcendental, eternal Being that transcends time, we immediately affirm that transcending time He is always present. He is omnipresent. Therefore, it is not that we are drawing near to Him when we walk towards a temple or a church or a mosque, we’re walking towards Him even when we step out of the temple or church or mosque and walk towards our home. In all that we see, hear, taste, touch and smell, in all that we think and feel, in all that we do in thought, word and action, we are moving towards that Supreme Being.
Better it to be said that there is no moving towards the Supreme Being. In all that you do mentally, verbally and physically, you are doing it in Him, for you exist with Him as your eternal ground. When a beautiful, long-stemmed flower is put in a tall vase filled with water, not only does the water-filled vase support it, keep it upright, but the life-giving water supports its life, keeps it fresh and blooming. Even so is every creature created by the Supreme Being. Every creature on earth, every form of life derives its life from God who upholds it. Because it is in God, it also lives in God for God is life.
God is the source of life. If you are alive, it is because of His living presence within as life itself. He is satchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute). He is Existence; therefore, you exist. You think, feel, move and are vitally alive because He is within you as chit, Consciousness. And, if only you will maintain the purity of this inner essence of your being, learn to abide and to be aware, and to keep a continuous stream of this abidance and awareness as your life breath, then you will find that you also abide in Bliss.
For, this pure essence of Existence and Awareness cannot be anything but the distilled quintessence of absolute, unadulterated Bliss, for all other relative experiences, all other dual experiences, pertain to the dimension of the intellect, mind and body, to the plane of the physical and psychological, which is always subject to change because this is a world of transience and a world of the pairs of opposites—sweet and bitter, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow—whereas the essence of your being has nothing to do with this dimension, for it is not in the relative, not in the frame of time-space. It is in the noumenon whose essence is Existence and luminous, radiant Consciousness that is aware. Nothing is hidden from It. As such It is jnanasvarupa (the embodiment of knowledge); It is gnosis; It is omniscient precisely because of this truth about Its being.
Hold on to That. Be in that centre. Know that you are ever centred in It; you are rooted in It. It supports you. It is your beginning, middle and end. It is your all-in-all. You abide in It the same as all things that exist abide in It.
And in this transcendental dimension of the noumenon, the fitful, feverish flux of relative experiences have no approach. The entire range of earthly human experiences being confined and limited to this relative plane, that which transcends it is totally free. Therefore, It is not just Existence and Consciousness, It is also unutterable Bliss. Those who experienced this therefore declared: “Brahman prevails as Bliss and Bliss alone.”
And you ever are rooted in this Bliss. You ever abide in that Bliss. In your true essential being, as the spiritual essence, you ever abide in that Bliss. If you recognise that you are essentially pure Spirit, then instantaneously you will recognise that you abide in Bliss. Therefore, the importance of knowing yourself: Instantly, you know that Bliss alone is real, that sorrow does not exist.
And to this end, all the great philosophers, teachers and masters of wisdom have tried to tell you who you are, have tried to introduce you to your real Self, nija svarupa, even as Adi Sankaracharya does in his Vivekachudamani where he teaches how to separate the Self which you are from the non-Self which you are not.
This separation of the Self from the non-Self is not something that suddenly happens. You have to gradually lead yourself up to it by a constant non-stop process of affirming the Self and rejecting the non-Self as not being your identity. The non-Self may exist; it may prevail everywhere. That need not bother you. But you don’t exist in it. Therefore, don’t feel that you are one with that part of God’s creation, but identify yourself with your true Self. Then even while being in this plane of multifariousness, in this earth life, because of the inner process of separating yourself and affirming your reality, ultimately that consciousness unfolds, opens up and becomes yours, you abide in It.
So, it is the experience Absolute, the experience Ultimate that you have to lift yourself up to as one climbing a ladder rung by rung. When an air balloon that is tied to the ground is untied from its moorings, it rises up. But if you want it to rise higher and higher you have to remove the ballast. Even so, we have to throw out of ourselves all that is unnecessary to this ascent of the Spirit.
So, first you have to untie yourself from the moorings which hold you bound down. This is the inner, hidden form of the outer spiritual practices. Whatever the variegated outer forms of spiritual practice may be, the one central purpose of all these practices is unitary. It is the liberating of yourself from being tied up to this erroneous, wrong, human consciousness, earth consciousness, body-mind consciousness. To liberate yourself from this consciousness and rise up into the true consciousness of your essential spiritual being is the inner, central, single purpose and objective of all the outer variegated forms of spiritual disciplines and practices.
And this practice should be kept up whether you are engaged in some sort of a formal spiritual exercise in your room or whether you are engaged in your daily duties. It does not matter. But you must make sure that as far as you are concerned there is no such thing as being in sadhana and out of sadhana. You are always in sadhana. Sadhana should be your continuous, unvarying inner state.
This is the one thing that is needful. Your interior consciousness will ever be in a state of continuous, non-stop, unbroken sadhana. It means facing the Reality, moving towards the Reality, abiding in the Reality, and being aware that you abide in the Reality, being aware that you are sat-chit-ananda.
May the supreme Eternal Reality bestow the grace of satchidananda-consciousness upon you. May this temporary earth existence of our physical and psychological personalities be to us not a bondage that holds us tied down, but the means, the golden opportunity, the field and the framework of thus being in a continuous unbroken state of inner sadhana, namely inner satchidananda awareness, Reality awareness. May God grant you this gift, and make it possible here and now, not in the distant future!
68. THE HEART OF THE SPIRITUAL PROBLEM
What is the heart of the spiritual problem of the individual soul upon this earth plane, who is in a state of bondage to an earth consciousness, a limited individual consciousness which is referred to as jivahood? It is important to try to understand or to get to the essence of this metaphysical problem, this cosmic problem of the individual soul imprisoned in a structure made of flesh and bones, in a labyrinth, a net, of constant, unceasing thoughts, fancies, imaginations, memories and projections into the future.
These constitute an inner mesh or net in which we are caught and held firmly, for the identification with the psycho-physical dimensions of our personality is so total, so complete, that it has become normal. It has become the one and only consciousness that we know. It has become our natural condition although Vedantic psychology would describe it as abnormal. It is an aberration.
Thus, Swami Vivekananda, trying to make his Western audience understand this subtle, inner metaphysical point a hundred years ago used the term “dehypnotise.” When they suggested that Vedantic affirmations such as “I am Atman, I am immortal, I am without birth and death, name or form,” were only a form of self-hypnosis, he replied: “On the contrary, you have been hypnotised into thinking ‘I am the body, I am a human being, I am so and so, I belong to this family, to this country.’ What Vedanta wants to do is to dehypnotise you from the hypnotised condition you have fallen into through birth after birth of wrong thinking.”
Thus it is that we have to go through a process of trying to discover what it is into which we have landed through ages of wrong thinking. That state Vedanta pinpoints as a state of identification with that which we are not, a total moving away from the centre of our real, natural awareness of what we are. Moving away, completely forgetting and becoming disconnected, as it were, from the awareness or from the consciousness of what we really and truly are, we have entered into a state of consciousness identifying ourselves and thinking ourselves to be something which we are not.
We are immortal Spirit, but we think we are people subject to birth and death, a beginning and an end, a birth day and an epitaph. So, Vedanta precisely pinpoints our situation as this state of forgetfulness of our real nature and being totally caught up, entangled and overcome by a wrong awareness, an identification with a personality consciousness which is not our real consciousness.
Out of this wrong identification has arisen a false ego-sense, and we are held in bondage to this wrong, vitiated consciousness dominated by ego and totally pervaded by selfishness which is the outcome of ego and which leads to a self-centred, self-seeking life. This is the present malady. And, this condition seems to be our real, natural condition, whereas it is a diseased one. It is called bhava-roga (disease of transmigration).
The bondage of earth life is not outside you. It is not made up of anything other than your own self. It is not the outer world perceived by the five senses that constitutes prapancha or samsara or earth life. It is this inner state of becoming completely deprived of our true awareness and becoming enslaved by a wrong consciousness dominated by a false ego and further complicated by selfishness that is the natural immediate outcome of the ego and its attachments to so many things.
It is this wrong awareness of ourselves, this self-centred, self-seeking life that is the root cause of all clash and conflict with others, differences of opinion, disharmony, discord, prejudice, bias, hatred, misunderstanding, envy, jealousy, suspicion and anger. Everything stems from this basic state which constitutes your bhava-roga. Bhava-roga is not outside, it is inside. Samsara or prapancha or bandhana (binding) are not outside, they are inside.
Therefore, the first process is to somehow or other clearly perceive this. Because, as long as you do not clearly perceive this and honestly accept this state of yours, kaivalya moksha, liberation and illumination are all far, far away. They are only so much of fancy. They are only a vapour of imagination. We must clearly perceive this state, and we must be honest enough to admit this very painful truth about the actual inner state of our consciousness.
It is not at all flattering, but unless there is honesty about oneself we cannot step into spiritual life even if we know all about Vedanta. For the spiritual life has two dimensions. One is the Vedanta siddhanta (doctrine) of the ultimate experience, but the other is vyavahara (worldly activity). Unless Vedanta is brought over into vyavahara, it is only a burden to us.
Siddhanta is useless unless it is brought down to the level of abhyasa (practice), and takes the form of sadhana in day-to-day living—in your everyday activity, thinking and feeling, reaction to things around you, and your relationship with others with whom you have to live. These have been provided by God Himself for the jivatma as a field of sadhana so that siddhanta can be applied, so that one may begin to move towards Truth-experience, Reality-consciousness.
Unless we understand our position in samsara to be thus, unless we see it as a gymnasium in which to exercise and strengthen our inner spiritual sinews and muscles, we are the losers. We shall ever be in a wonderful field, yet we will not be able to take advantage of it, because we will be thinking that sadhana is somewhere in a forest or inside a cave. It is inside a cave, but the cave is inside us.
We must see very clearly that it is here, it is now, it is in this way that I have to evolve. There is not going to be another opportunity given. If we fail to recognise and bypass the opportunity that God has given, then we are losers. Every moment, every day that dawns is a great, golden chance and opportunity given. The field is immediately reopened afresh for you to exercise practical Vedanta, for you to put siddhanta into abhyasa. This constitutes practical spiritual life. It is the practical aspect of Yoga and Vedanta.
69. BY WHAT LIGHT IS CONSCIOUSNESS KNOWN?
In ancient times, your ancestors went upon a great, extraordinary, unique quest, a quest after the unknown, the unseen, a quest after that which is hidden and occult, behind and beyond the seen and the known. They went into a quest after this unknown something, not knowing what it was or even whether it existed.
What was the need of going in search of something whose existence they were not sure about? The need was because they discovered that all that is seen, all that is perceived by the five senses, is temporary, changeful, unstable, perishable, subject to decay and dissolution; they saw that everything that is beheld is in flux. They also saw that everything has a beginning and an end, is limited in space, and unreliable because of its changing nature.
They felt that this was unsatisfactory and they wanted to know: “Is there something which is permanent? Is there something that is changeless, imperishable, eternal?” Thus they commenced this extraordinary quest into an unseen inner realm that to them was strange. They became explorers who chanced upon a great discovery in the course of their quest. They discovered that indeed there was such a thing as they were searching for, something beginningless, endless, changeless, imperishable, permanent, beyond time and space, eternal and infinite.
That they declared to be the Reality, OM TAT SAT, the eternal beyond the non-eternal, the unseen reality behind and beyond the seen, passing unrealities, the imperishable and indestructible behind and beyond all that is perishable and subject to decay, dissolution and destruction. And because that was the state of the light of awareness and knowledge, they called it the great Light of lights beyond all darkness, the source of all that shines. It was the causeless cause, the sourceless source, the eternal.
That discovery and experience they left to posterity for all times. And that Light has never faded because it is an eternal light. It is That that is upholding today in this world of ours all that is lofty, sublime, pure, noble, worthy, holy and sacred. It is the essence in an otherwise essenceless and also senseless human existence that is characterised by birth, death, old age, disease, decay, hatred, violence, unrighteousness, criminality, falsehood, dishonesty and vice.
In this darkened state of affairs of present day humanity there shines this Light and you are that Light. Your life, your human status is a rare opportunity and occasion to rise beyond this darkness and come into the dazzling light of Self-awareness, the dazzling experience of the effulgence that you are.
Long ago, in bygone ages, to show us step by step the way to that Light, a teacher asked a disciple: “Beloved student, by what light are all things here seen?” “Sir, it is by the light of the sun.” “Beloved student, when the sun sets and night falls, by what light are all things perceived here?” “Sir, by the light of the moon.” “When it is new moon day and no moon shines in the sky, by what light are things known here?” “Sir, by the light of the stars.” “And upon a dark, cloud-filled night in the middle of monsoon, when no moon or stars can be seen, by what light does one perceive things here?” “Sir, by the light of a fire.”
“And if one descends into a cellar on a dark, moonless and cloudy night and the light you have is blown out by a gust of wind, everything is plunged into total darkness, then by what light are things perceived, by what light do you know that you are in a cellar, that there is a staircase that you have descended and that there are four walls and other objects there?” “Sir, by the light of the previous memory of these things seen before.”
“Beloved student, who is this perceiver who through memory is able to recollect things, to see with his mind’s eye? Who is that being? By what light are things thus perceived by the mind’s eye? What is that light that makes one aware when nothing is seen, nothing is perceived—no name, no form—nothing is known to exist even though the eyes are open? What is that light?
“It is the light of consciousness—a being who is conscious of things even when nothing is perceived, a being who is aware. What then is the essence of that being? It is awareness, it is consciousness. That thou art. Thou art that light of consciousness that needs no other light to know, for it is the essence of knowing. It is knowledge absolute, and it is beginningless and endless. That is the great Reality, the Truth, Brahman, the Light of lights beyond all darkness. It alone is real and That thou art.”
When we are in a state of non-perception of that Reality, when the seen alone is real to us, when the many alone is real to us, when the unseen, the one and non-dual is not the reality to us, then—in this state of spiritual ignorance, of spiritual non-perception—it is a crucial question for seekers and spiritual aspirants to know by what light That is to be known.
It is a crucial question, and that light is the light of truthfulness. It is by the light of truthfulness that It is known. One who is truthful knows the Reality. That light is the light of purity. One who shines with the light of purity becomes the all-pure Brahman and knows the great Reality. That light is the light of dharma, the light of righteousness. One who worships dharma, one who tries to follow dharma, comes to realise Reality through the light of dharma.
Therefore, truth, purity and righteousness are the blazing torch that leads the seeker upon this pathless path that ultimately leads to illumination, enlightenment, realisation and liberation. This, therefore, is the light by which we should illumine our life until we attain the great goal of merging into that Light of lights beyond all darkness. This is the light that illumines the life divine. It is the light that is enshrined at the very centre of the shrine of divine life—truthfulness, purity and righteousness in daily life.
We offer our worshipful homage and heart’s gratitude to that great Reality that has given us the gift of this morning hour that we may ponder these eternal truths that never change, even when everything else may and does change. They are eternal values, and in the changing drama of human life upon this earth plane, in this ever-changing flux of the phenomenal appearance, these are eternal verities, eternal values that abide forever—unchanging, forever valid, forever applicable.
May we contemplate this truth and be blessed!