For those who come across these terms for the first time, self-realization and God-realization, doesn’t make much sense. Further, it makes us wonder what the connection between self and God is. While it may be practical to talk of God-realization when it comes to discovering the true meaning of prayer, how does self-realization come into the picture? If we want to realize the truth of God, first it is necessary to realize who we are. Only then can we discover the true meaning of prayer.
Prayer is important. It strengthens a human being’s life. Especially at times of tragedy in our personal life, or a global catastrophe or pandemic, people don’t have any alternative but to pray. When we pray without meaning, then those prayers don’t really work. For prayers to work, we must know whom we are praying to and what we are saying. Thus, praying to the Divine without knowing the truth about both prayer and the Divine makes no sense. Let us first attempt to realize the Divine Power as we also discover the truth about ourselves.
We do not doubt that God exists. The simple fact that the Earth rotates on its own axis once in 24 hours and it revolves around the Sun causing seasons, makes us realize that the universe has a Creator who has created universal laws by which the Universe is preserved day in and day out. We know of several such laws. They include the Law of Gravity, the Law of Cycles, the Law of Opposites and the Law of Action and Reaction, often known as the Law of Karma, amongst the many other laws. While there is no doubt about the existence of God, we need to go on a quest to realize the truth about the Divine.
How do we realize the truth about God? No doubt it is important to believe in God and to pray. This creates hope, faith and trust. But unless we really love God and yearn for God, we will not go in search of the truth about God. We may not realize it now but those who go on a quest, start their journey of enlightenment with realization of the self. This self-realization leads to God-realization. How does one achieve self-realization?
Self-realization is knowing the truth of who we are. We human beings think we are a body-mind complex that has a Soul. Most of us believe in this and we live and die with this ignorance. Because of our ignorance of who we are, we do not realize the truth about the self. The way to realize the self is to go on a quest, to ask and to investigate until we get to the bottom of the root. Most often, it is essential to have a Spiritual guide, a Master or a Guru who can lead us to the realization of the truth. This is because while knowledge is important, and it will make us know whom we seem to be, it will not let us realize the truth. Realization is an intuitive experience and we need the help of a Spiritual Master.
What does the quest help us discover? The quest starts with finding out who we are not. Are we the body? No, we are not the body that we wear. We are the ones that wear the body. The body lives and dies, but we don’t. We are the ones who are alive in the body.
Many people are fortunate to reach level one of this realization. Level one makes us realize, ‘I am not the ‘I’ who will die. I am the ME – the Mind and Ego. At death when the physical body dies and the life or Soul inside us departs, the ME will continue to live in a new body based on our past actions or Karma by taking rebirth.’
The world today believes in the Law of Karma, the Law of Action and Reaction, or the Law of Cause and Effect. The law works like a boomerang. What we give is what we get. This law is universal and we see it operational all around us. Have you seen apples growing on a mango tree? Impossible! The universal law doesn’t permit it. Ancient scriptures state the law, ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’ So how does this law work?
When somebody dies, the body returns to dust. But the one who was alive moves on. We human beings often say – ‘Tom passed away, he departed, he expired. Let us pray for the departed one. These are only the mortal remains of Tom.’ What do we infer by this? We infer that the one who was Tom has left the body and moved on. Tom will never be reborn because his body will return to dust. But the one who was Tom will carry his Karma or unsettled actions only to be reborn in a new body.
This logic of the Law of Karma and rebirth gets ratified when we look at how children are born in this world. Some children are born in fortunate circumstances while some suffer. Some are born in rich families, but others in poverty. Why would a new-born child be born blind? Is God cruel? No! This is the Universal Law of Karma unfolding, the Law of Cause and Effect which executes the principle as you sow, so shall you reap. The infants who are born, seem to be the babies we see, but within them, lies the ME—the Mind and Ego that has completed not just one life but probably several lives and is carrying Karma, good or bad, due to the unsettled actions of the past.
Therefore, in the quest for self-realization, we realize we are not the body. There are many methods of realizing this. Earlier, it was only spirituality that advocated that we are not the body. But today, even science declares that though we appear to be a mass of flesh of human cells, in reality, each cell is nothing but energy. Based on the famous equation E=MC2 and new findings in quantum physics of the principle of Wave-Particle Duality, scientists have discovered that a human body that seems to be made of cells is actually not just made of atoms, electrons, neutrons, protons, but also tiny particles called quarks which appear to have mass but are in fact only energy. These were the findings in what was called the Higgs boson experiment and what scientists termed, ‘God Particle’. If one were to study modern science, one would realize we human beings are nothing but energy!
There are several methods of realizing the truth about the self. While there is no doubt that we are not the body, the surprising fact is that we are not even the mind. Several centuries ago, a Hindu prince Siddhartha Gautama left his palace, his wife and young child in the quest of enlightenment, to realize the truth. In his quest, he wondered, ‘Why must we human beings suffer on earth?’ While there is no doubt that we experience happiness, nobody who is born can escape from suffering. The prince went on to become the Buddha, the Awakened One when he woke up to the reality of life. He himself attained the state of enlightenment and he called this self-realization as nirvana. Nirvana is nothing but mukti or moksha of Hinduism. It is what the Western world refers to as ‘Enlightenment,’ which then leads to salvation. Different religions call it by different names. Those who are evolved in theology and climb the ladder of spirituality, arrive at this state of self-realization.
What is enlightenment? It is the realization that while the body dies, the one that is alive takes rebirth in a new body, and this happens again and again. Each time one takes a new birth, one has to suffer. There is triple suffering—suffering of the body, misery of the mind, and agony of the ego. This cycle of suffering continues again and again until one overcomes their ignorance by the realization of the truth. As long as we are ignorant and believe we are the body, mind, and ego, we will continue to suffer in this cycle of death and rebirth, referred to as transmigration. The ultimate goal of life is to escape from this cycle through self- realization.
What is the state of self-realization? It is when we realize that we are not the body, and we are not even the mind and ego that is born again and again to suffer – this, in turn, makes us realize that we are the Divine Soul, the Atman, the spirit that actually gives life to us. The realization of this truth is self-realization.
How does one achieve self-realization? One achieves a state of self-realization when one continues their spiritual contemplation with deep love and longing for the Divine. In that state, one realizes the truth of who they are. There are several methods that one may use. One such method is to find the mind. Can you find the mind? You can find your eyes, your nose, your ears, and several parts of your body. If you would like to find your heart, brain, kidneys, and lungs, you can see them on an X-ray or MRI. But has anybody seen the mind? You can’t find the mind because it doesn’t exist. The thoughts seem to come from every part of the body. It is an illusion - something that appears to be but is not. Have you seen a rainbow? It appears when the white light of the sun splits through droplets of rain, creating the seven colours of VIBGYOR. But you can’t catch a rainbow. It is Mithya—illusion, something that appears but in reality, is not.
The Mind is a bundle of thoughts. Together, it captures our attention and holds us to ransom. It is our biggest enemy and stops us from self-realization and beyond. The Mind along with the Ego, ME, is the cause of our suffering as we are born again and again on earth. To escape from this suffering, we need liberation from ignorance or what we call, enlightenment.
Those who go on a quest for self-realization, realize the importance of a Spiritual Master or Guru. It is a Spiritual Coach who can help us realize the truth. Realization is not an act of just reading or listening and discovering the self. Self-realization happens in 3 steps. The first is reading or listening, the second is contemplating and the third is realizing the truth. For this, we need a Spiritual Master. It was my Spiritual Master who made me understand that just like a computer has hardware, software and a power supply, we human beings too have the gross physical body or the hardware and the subtle body or the software comprising the mind, memory, intellect, and ego. Without the software, the computer cannot work. So also, without the subtle body, human beings cannot act. The gross or physical body is a slave to the subtle body. But most important is the Soul. It is just like the power supply to the computer. It is the Soul that creates life in us. Unfortunately, we don’t realize this truth. Unless we use our intellect to transcend the mind and be the master, we will continue to be slaves imprisoned behind the bars of ignorance.
Self-realization, ultimately, leads us to the truth that we are the Divine Soul, not the body and n