When the Upanishads address you and declare: Thou art That, you should be very clear in your mind what the term Thou implies. Then alone, when this is grasped with clarity and subtle receptivity, can you truly and immediately understand what That connotes and how this relationship of oneness, or being the same as, is possible.
If you think that by the vocative term Thou, the Upanishads mean you who are listening with your ears and trying to understand with your mind and grasp with your intellect, then the very purpose of the declaration is thwarted. Because, if to you the term Thou still seems to mean a physical entity, that means that you are still identifying yourself with the body, mind and intellect. And as long as you are still in that state of understanding yourself, in that state of consciousness, the Upanishads have failed in their mission, for they are not referring to this thou.
When the Upanishads say Thou, they are not using human language but are trying to convey to you a divine experience. They are neither using Sanskrit, English, Hindi nor any other language. They are declaring an experience which is imponderable, beyond the knowing of the mind or the grasping of the intelligence: yato vacho nivartante aprapya manasa saha (whence all speech turns back with the mind, not reaching It).
So, if instead of trying to understand the term Thou upon that level—where mind and speech could not enter, they came back unable to comprehend It—you persist in taking it to mean a physical and psychological level, then the inner implication of Thou has not yet dawned upon you.
They are not saying that Mr. or Mrs. So and So is Brahman. That is an absurdity. There is a saying in Hindi which means that what you are understanding and what they mean are as different as the earth and the sky.
Therefore, you first have to understand what this Thou is that they are referring to when they declare that Thou art That. They are not referring to the seen you, the name and form you. They are referring to the unseen you. They are not referring to anything whatsoever that is seen; they are referring to you as the hidden, unknown seer of all things seen, the knower of all things known. In that dimension, Thou, the hidden seer of all things seen, art That, that which alone prevails.
That verily is your source, your alpha and omega, your be-all and end-all—You, the unseen. You, who may know the world, but the whole world can never know You. Even your father and mother cannot know You unless they themselves have already understood the true meaning of the terms Thou and That.
Therefore, the need of long study, the need of sitting at the feet of a knower of Brahman and listening to what he has to say about Brahman, about maya, about yourself and about your interrelationship. When he expounds on whether maya really exists or does not exist and your relationship to Brahman—day after day, over months and years—then you must reflect: “Guruji says I am not this gross body and mind. What does he mean? Then, who am I?” You must listen, reflect and meditate.
They say Rome was not built in a day. God is not understood, realised, even in one lifetime, what to speak of a day. Yet they say He can be realised within a twinkling of an eye; it takes no time. How can we reconcile these statements?
If a dry match is struck against a rough surface it will immediately burst into flame. Try doing that with a toothpick on a cake of soap. You can go on striking it all your life and nothing will come because the toothpick does not contain the crucial factor. On the other hand, consider the amount of work and the number of steps that go into the manufacture of a match head. And then it has to be struck against a suitable surface.
Thus, when the interior of a seeker is ready, fully prepared through years of study, listening to the truth and reflecting and pondering over what has been studied and listened to, then, ultimately, when the Upanishads declare to you Thou art That, you know perfectly well exactly what is implied, what is meant by Thou. You understand that it does not mean this I which you are using in common parlance upon the field of outer worldly activity, but it means the real I, distinct from the three bodies, transcending the five sheaths and not experiencing or undergoing any experience of the changing states of consciousness of waking, dream and sleep.
“I am the unchanging fourth state of consciousness, calmly witnessing the ever-recurring cycle of waking, dreaming and sleep. I am watching; I am experiencing. I am neither awake, nor dreaming, nor sleeping, because I have never slept in order to be awake. Eternally, I have been what I am. I am that I AM. Wakefulness is my name. Awareness is my name.”
It is this meaning that the Upanishads are trying to address. Therefore, it is easy, simple. At the same time it is not easy, not simple. It depends upon how much you have worked upon yourself in order to gradually cleanse and refine your consciousness, raise it from its normal physical, psychological level and keep it upon a supra-physical, supra-psychological spiritual level, divine level—a divine level where inwardly you have climbed Jacob’s ladder and fixed yourself in the Kingdom of Heaven that is within you. Then this heavenly utterance which introduces you to yourself will be grasped and understood. When the word That is understood, then only can its relationship to the word Thou also be grasped.
Therefore, they say that it is the subtlest of all subtle things. You must make your consciousness attain this subtlety. If it is still involved in dualities, in likes and dislikes, joy and grief, and identification with the body, how can that level be attained? You may fancy, you may fondly think, but a fancy is a fancy only, a fond thought is a fond thought only. This is not a child’s play or a child’s game.
One sage said that grasping this truth is like chewing on steel peanuts and digesting them. It is not a little thing. Therefore, there is a need for humility, for clarity of thought, for clearly understanding what this truth is and where you stand. Then, humbly, with patience, diligence and fortitude try to move towards it and keep on moving, moving, moving. Make your life this slow movement— minute by minute, hour by hour, day after day—never changing direction, never changing your objective, never allowing anything to divert you this way or that from moving towards that centre and living in and for that great centre with every breath, every thought.
This is sadhana, this is spiritual life, this is yoga abhyasa, this is meditation—dwelling on it, contemplating it. Therefore, meditation is every minute, all twenty-four hours of the day. It is not only when you are alone in your meditation room. Meditation is throughout the day and night, even when you are working or serving or in a crowd. If the meditation stops, your sadhana has stopped, your progress has stopped.
You may be alone inside your meditation room, but in thought you may be in the middle of the world. Therefore, this is not play; it is not an ordinary thing. It requires humility and a clear understanding of your real identity. Then a positing of the question of Thou is not ridiculous. How can this thou be That? It is not this thou that is meant. It is something that is inside this thou that is meant when they used the term Thou.
Therefore let us fully understand. Let us first assess our present state and see where we are. Then, let us do all that is needful to reach where we ought to be if we want to understand Reality, if we want to grasp the Truth!
71. THE REALM OF 10,000 AWAKENINGS
A couple of generations ago, there was a writer, a great lover of Eastern philosophy, thought and spirituality, who was a frequent visitor to India and Tibet. He used to frequent ashrams, and I remember an occasion when he came to visit Gurudev. The title of one of the books he had written was The Land of the 10,000 Buddhas. A significant title!
We know of only one Buddha, the unique historical “Awakened One” who made his advent more than 2500 years ago. He was born in a royal family and grew up in the lap of utmost luxury. It was arranged that his life should be all pleasure—no negative factors whatsoever. Eventually he married a beautiful princess, and they had a baby boy. One could not imagine a more idyllic life.
However, slowly, in an almost natural, spontaneous, unpreplanned manner, an awakening was brought into his heart, mind and intellect. He saw sights that set him thinking deeply about life and what it constitutes. His whole being was fired up with this light of awakening as he pondered deeply what he had seen and what he had been able to feel and understand.
This turning point launched him into a vast realm of a quest of the unknown. From the lap of royal luxury he took to the forest, a lone wanderer in search of something he knew not what. But he knew that it was a search that should take him beyond sorrow. The path should lead him to supreme blessedness where sorrow shall cease to be.
For he saw this world as a ball of fire—hot within and hot without. There is not an iota of happiness here. It is a place of tapa-traya (threefold afflictions): those inflicted by elements beyond our control, those inflicted by other forms of life, and those inflicted upon ourselves by ourselves from within—envy, jealousy, ego, anger, frustration, disappointment, despair, hatred, resentment, dissatisfaction, and a hundred other such inner states.
Such psychological states torment the Being who, in truth, is supremely above and beyond, ever what one is, untouched by any psychological state, the never-changing Reality that is the great stillness, the great silence, the great peace. That Being has moved away from that experience and become embroiled, entangled, involved and totally enmeshed in things that go on in a much, much lower part and aspect of one’s human personality. One moves away from one’s centre and gets enmeshed in the non-Self.
Sankaracharya described this process in his great, illuminating and inspiring work, Vivekachudamani. By descending into a state of identification with the non-Self, instead of ever abiding in one’s own Selfhood, the consciousness is made to come into a lower plane through an error, through lack of right enquiry, through lack of discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal, the Reality and appearance, the Self and the non-Self. And by this root error, this original sin of identifying ourselves with the non-Self, of moving away from an awareness of ourselves as we are—the ever-present I AM, the Divinity within—and getting involved in this “thing” universe, one allows oneself to become subject to the third affliction, the self-created tapas arising out of oneself and based upon this flimsy, non-existent ego. The ego, which is nothing, seems to be everything because of the power given to it by our identification with it.
We, due to our little thinking, make our human personality, which was given to us as an instrument for liberation, the means of our bondage by identifying with its lesser outer physical aspect and not taking the plunge inward as that royal prince, Siddhartha, did when he came to realise that all is vanity, that everything is ephemeral, fleeting, transient, an appearance only. He took a great step. He was assailed by many problems and temptations, but just as the magnetic needle of the mariner’s compass always points to the north in calm and in storm, no matter how the ship is tossed about by wind and waves, so he ever fixed his mind upon the Goal.
Even so, if within your human personality, within your innermost state of identity awareness, you always dwell in the Reality, then there is no bondage for you. You are in a state of liberation even though in apparent bondage.
And this process is a gradual one that has to be initiated and kept up. For the spiritual realm is a realm of 10,000 awakenings. Because the old samskaras are so deeply rooted and because they constantly draw one back into the sleep of non-awareness, the sleep of erroneous consciousness, one must keep up the counter-process in an unbroken continuity of ever-repeated awakenings, coming out and becoming aware of the dazzling sunshine of the ever-present Reality, the Truth that ever prevails as the one glorious Fact of this universe.
There is no bondage. Liberation is the only state that is real. It is eternally present everywhere within and without, in every atom. Everywhere, liberation alone is present; illumination alone is present; that great state of perfect, restful Divine-consciousness alone is present. For that is Brahman, that is the Tao, and That is infinite and everywhere present.
Anything else might be cancelled, be declared to be unreal. But this is impossible of being conjured away by the finite mind. It is the one Fact, it is the bedrock of existence. Awakening, awareness, perfection, bliss, joy, blessedness, is the one unalterable Fact of existence, and into That one has to keep on awakening.
So, let us know that we are living in a realm of 10,000 awakenings. For that is what constitutes spirituality. That is what spirituality is in fact. And that is what the spiritual life should be for one who would attain supreme blessedness here and now within this very body.
Awakening is the truth. Awakening is what you are meant for. It is an ever-present experience and it is within and without. The potential for it is in all beings. Fortunate are you who have been given the fullest scope for making this potential patent, evident, and for making it manifest as your own experience.
72. ABIDE IN YOUR SELF!
The innermost part of your being, the very essence, the fundamental, eternal, central principle of your being, is identical with the supreme, cosmic, universal Spirit Divine. It is not in any way different. For the Universal Soul is the source, substratum and fulfilment, the very stuff of the individual soul. But something has been added on to it, so there is a duality. The added factors do not in any way change the divinity of the essential, innermost Divine Principle. It remains the same, unvarying. For it is reality, and reality does not change. Reality is ever the same.
Therefore, there is within you an unchanging reality—that is you—plus an ever-changing, temporary additive which limits your consciousness, makes you unable to feel your reality in all its glory and grandeur, in all its pristine, primal purity. These added factors that limit your real Self are referred to as limiting adjuncts or upadhis. They are the five organs of action, the five pranas, the five inner organs of perception—sight, sound smell, taste and touch—and the fourfold inner instrument of thought, feeling, memory and intellect.
You must be able to clearly perceive this duality. In this lies the key to liberation and blessedness. In this lies the solution to all the problems that you may be experiencing. For, practically everything that goes to harass, vex, torment, and trouble you is in the part of your being made up of these limiting adjuncts. In your real Self, the inner part of your duality, there is no problem, no vexation, no elation or depression, no complication, no trouble of any kind.
That innermost part is a centre of blessedness, a centre of joy, peace, light and serenity.
There you find the cessation of all vexations, all restlessness, all problems, all that makes you suffer, complain, weep and wail. All those things that belong to the outer half of your duality—that vex, harass and trouble you—cease to exist when you reach your inner centre. They do not exist in the real You. They are only the play, the various moods and modes of this outer half.
If you can think deeply about it, and perceive the truth that everything that makes the human being miserable upon this earth plane pertains to the earthly half of this duality only, while the solution to all this—the way of transcending and liberating yourself from all this—lies in the inner half, the eternal, spiritual, divine half of this duality, you will suddenly realise with a shock, a pleasant surprise, that within the problem lies the solution. And what is more, you will suddenly exult in the realisation: “For all the harassments I seem to be undergoing, I am the solution, I am the solution!
“Not only in this duality of the Self and the non-Self (of the eternal and the temporary, added-on limiting adjuncts) lies the solution, but I myself constitute the ultimate solution—the total, unfailing and only solution. If I practise the sadhana of being myself, of abiding in my reality, then I am applying the solution and solving all problems. This one single sadhana, this one process will instantly, within a moment, liberate me from everything that constitutes this samsara, this prapancha, this world and all that this world implies.”
Joy and sorrow, love and hate, pleasure and pain, elation and depression, happiness and misery and all desires and restlessness pertain to the mind, intellect or emotions—to the non-Self, to the upadhis or limiting adjuncts. They cannot touch YOU who constitute the positive, glorious half of this duality. Even while in this state of associating yourself, or being associated with, these limiting adjuncts, you are still liberated in your innermost real identity.
It has no bondage. You have no bondage. You are an ever-liberated being. Bliss is your eternal, unchangeable natural state. Peace profound is what you are at all times, whether waking, dreaming or sleeping. At all times you are immeasurable, profound peace, which means that you are unchangeable divine joy—awareness, joy, peace. That is you, and you hold the key.
You constitute the solution to all these temporary, evanescent, passing, little vexations that go to make up this world. You may not be able to change the world, to alter all these conditions, but you can always be your Self. That does not require great acrobatics. It does not require any intricate, complicated, involved process. It is the simplest of all things.
It is as simple as it is for a rainbow to be colourful, for a flower to be beautiful, for music to be melodious, for honey to be sweet, for sandal paste to be fragrant. It is as simple, as easy, as it is for the sun to be bright, for fire to burn, for water to flow, for the wind to blow, for space to contain everything—for it is your inherent nature. You are That. You are peace. You are joy. You are light.
Therefore, ponder this fact, this truth, that while you may not be able to change the world outside or even what happens in your temporary added adjuncts like mind etc., it does not matter because you can be your Self. For this is natural to you, and this is the most effective of all solutions to all problems. And this solution is called you, your own Self.
Be your Self. Abide in your Self. Be what you are and see what it does to you. This is the greatest sadhana. This is true religion. This is Yoga, this is Vedanta, this is common sense, and this is wisdom. To search for solutions when the solution is right there within you does not make sense.
To be your Self, solve all problems and go beyond them makes sense. Therefore, glorious, immortal Self, be sensible. Be your Self, and it is instant bliss, instant peace, instant fullness. For then you abide in eternity and in infinity.
May Gurudev’s hand of benediction help you to perform this inner miracle—the greatest of all miracles. May his glance of grace give you the insight, the intuition to simply be what you are, to be your real Self, to be the Atman, not the anatman, to be the tattva, not the upadhis.
In other words: be bliss, be peace, be radiant light and put an end to this myth and dream of anything else other than the light, peace and joy which is eternally and unchangeably what you are. Be your Self!
73. HOW WE SHOULD APPROACH GREAT TRUTHS
It is good to try to see God in deep meditation. It is good to see Him in a temple, church, mosque, synagogue. It is good to try to understand Him in the scriptures. But all these are mainly meant to be a help to generate in you Reality-awareness, the true, clear vision of the truth that you behold Him in all things everywhere, every day. If these spiritual practices serve that purpose, they have a place in your scheme of things. If they do not serve that purpose, they are a sheer burden.
Actually, if you think you have done all that is required by meditation in the morning, studying some scriptures and going to the temple, if these practices have lulled you into a false sense of piety, religiosity and spirituality—you think yourself as being a right person doing the right thing—then this is a serious situation. You have to shake yourself out of it, because this is not dynamic and progressive spirituality. You meditate, read scriptures, listen to discourses, precisely to understand what it is that you call God.
There was a period and it has not yet gone from me when I never liked to say the word Brahman. What right do we have to say Brahman? Brahman is That greater than which there is nothing. Brahman is awesome, the imponderable, before which you are struck dumb; the mind stops, words fail. When someone chants “Sivoham, sivoham, satchidanandoham (I am That),” I don’t repeat it. I keep silent. Is sivoham a refrain to be sung? You have to take your bath, purify yourself, do pranam, pray, purify your heart and feelings. Then, in the secrecy of your own room you may utter that word.
The more often you repeat such sacred words, then gradually, progressively the less they mean anything to you. And when great truths lose their meaning to you, then you have to pause, stop short and ponder whether the practice should be continued. Because when things become commonplace and lose their meaning and significance, their power no longer has the ability to transform you. You take it for granted and continue on your usual course.
If you say sivoham, it is nice and comfortable. But what is important is that you try to gradually go on uplifting your consciousness higher and higher day by day; because it is to raise your consciousness to that great, sublime height that the truth sivoham has been proclaimed. But unless it has been Vedantically taught by a fully realised guru and you have been taught how to read the scriptures, how exactly to interpret and to grasp the subtler than the subtlest inner implication of such great truths, then the mere articulation of these truths should be studiously avoided. They are to be pondered in the deep secrecy of your own inner heart.
They say that in order to understand these truths your intellect should be as sharp and penetrating as the tip of a blade of kusha grass. You have to create that type of deeply penetrating sattvic intellect through a great deal of devout service, setting aside all pride and vanity, humbly prostrating at the feet of a guru who has the fitness to teach the truth, questioning him and becoming fit to grasp these great realities.
Therefore, as we study let us all simultaneously engage ourselves in a purifying and refining process through prayer and meditation, through paying honour to those who are learned, so that we become more and more subtle and pure, more and more capable of grasping the inner implications of these great truths.
And the most blessed of truths, the most important central truth of the experiences of our great sages is God’s all-unifying presence as a common factor present in all His creation, in all His creatures, in everything. And it is this that should be made the basis of your life and conduct and your day-to-day behaviour with others. Then this type of activity itself will become a spiritual sadhana supporting, augmenting, enhancing and enriching your inner spiritual life.
There should be a perfect concord, a perfect harmony between our spiritual sadhana and our outer life of being, our moving about in this world and dealing with this world. There should be a constant effort on the part of the sadhaka to keep up this consciousness of atmaupamya (likeness of the Self). Then the sadhana becomes not only unified, holistic and integrated, it becomes complete.
Such a sadhana has the great power and potential to gradually take you into a state of constant God-awareness. And this God-awareness must become to you spontaneous, your second nature. To this end let us all strive!
74. PRACTISE THE GREAT REVELATION
Each day, as you emerge out of your period of silent meditation, you repeat: “namostv anantaya sahasra-murtaye sahasra-padakshi-siroru-bahave; sahasra-namne purushaya sasvate sahasra-koti-yuga-dharine namah (Salutations be to the Infinite, who has manifested as the innumerable forms, who has innumerable feet, eyes, heads and arms; salutations be to the One who has innumerable names, who is the Eternal Person, and who holds thousands of crores of ages). All forms are His forms. He has neither name nor form, but, nevertheless, He has infinite forms.
Another sloka begins: “harir eva jagat; jagat eva harih—This universe is but the Supreme Lord, the Almighty Being, and that Almighty Being Itself is this universe.” It was with this vision that the Lord graced and blessed Arjuna in the unique Yoga of the Universal Form during the course of His Srimad Bhagavad Gita teachings. It is this manifestation that you adore every morning as you come out of your meditation.
Let this adoration be the very inner vision of your life. Let this adoration be a permanent and ongoing spiritual sadhana within you. And even as the great Adi Sankaracharya gave to us his immortal line: “yadyat karma karomi tat tad akhilam sambho tava aradhanam (Whatever action I am doing, everything is a worship of You, O Lord Siva),” even so Arjuna, addressing the Universal Form, says: “O Thou Supreme Being, O Thou Cosmic Being, I bow to You, I adore You, I salute You from all directions. I salute You above, below, within and without, to the right and left, in front and back. Everywhere I behold Thee. Everywhere I adore Thee.”
That should be the vision with which one begins the day. Let the entire day be filled with this sat, filled with this selfsame spirit of adoration, this bhava. Then everything that you do will be directly connected with God. All actions—mental, verbal, physical—will be raised to a higher dimension of the Spirit, to the higher dimension of a process directly involving you in the Divine, which your ancient, illumined forefathers, ancestors, discovered to be an ever-present Reality, an all-pervading Presence. And they left for posterity, for global humanity this great vision, this great experience as the most priceless part of their heritage.
God is a nowhere experience. This entire experience is summarised and epitomised for humanity for all times in the Isopanishad. The greatness, the grandeur, the vital importance and necessity of the Isopanishad is in this central truth and fact, in this central experience that the Isopanishad tries to expound: the fact that this central experience makes us isvaramaya, makes us God-filled. The Isopanishad brings to us a vision and a formula which makes it impossible for the individual soul to escape God. Unless one deliberately tries to alienate oneself from God, it is impossible to escape God.
To forget the world is very easy. But to forget God is very difficult. This is the achievement of the Isopanishad, if only you absorb it, study it seriously, reflect upon it and if you keep the Isopanishad vision, the Isopanishad truth and revelation, in your heart and mind always. It helps you to become God-filled, isvaramaya. That is why it was put at the very beginning of the Isopanishad: isavasyamidam sarvam yat kincha jagatyam jagat (All this whatsoever in this universe that moves or moves not is indwelt by the Lord). Life is in God, and God is in every part of life. All other things are commentary.
This is the great central revelation of Satya Sanatana Vaidika Dharma. This entire existence, entire creation, entire universe is God-filled, and if the entire universe is God-filled and if you are part of this universe, then you are also God-filled. Deeply ponder this. If God pervades this universe, does He not pervade you? Are you not part of this universe which God pervades? Is it not a logical conclusion?
The great world teacher Bhagavan Sri Krishna also tells us about this central fact of life, tells us about this subtle spiritual truth of the universe: “samam sarveshu bhuteshu tishthantam paramesvaram vinasyatsv avinasyantam (the Supreme Lord existing in all beings, the Imperishable within the perishable).” That should be perceived; that should be seen. One who tries to see that hidden Reality is the real seeker. And one who sees It, he is the real seer. Others, even having sight, they see not, for they fail to perceive the ever-present Reality.
Gurudev concluded his well known Universal Prayer with: “Let us abide in Thee for ever and ever.” If this is to be realised, if it is to become a fact of our day-to-day experience, if it is to become the basis of our inner state, our inner consciousness, then the only possibility, the only way is to practise the Presence in the light of the declaration of the Isopanishad and this statement of Sri Krishna. This is the one thing needful so that we will ever dwell in God. This is to be perceived. This is to be seen.
That is the one way of being in the world and yet not being of the world. That is the one way of being in the world and yet not allowing the world to come and possess us, dominate us, take charge of us, enslave us. If you do not wish worldliness or the world idea or the fascination of the world to come and estab