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Mind Has to Die While It is in
a Human Body
The real Goal of life is not the
death of the ego but the death of the mind. When Mohammed or Jesus or
Zoroaster talked of being born once and of dying once, it was of the mind
[and not of the body]. When mind dies totally, the false ego becomes Real
I [i.e., false ego is completely effaced and Real I manifests]. In reality
ego is not born and as such it does not die. Ego [as witness
consciousness] is always Real. It is only due to mind that ego acts and
feels limited and false.
Mind takes the body according to its
good and bad impressions. Taking up and giving up of bodies is not the
mind or the ego taking birth or dying. Every time when body is discarded,
mind survives, impressions remain. These impressions press on mind to
spend them by taking another body. So mind takes another body according to
the impressions; ego witnesses. And another body and another.
When you are in sound sleep, ego,
mind and sanskaras are there. Sanskaras wake up mind. They
say, "Go on, spend us." Waking up from the sound sleep is, in a
way, an everyday birth for the body. When one body is left, another body
comes up though there is a time lag between the giving up of one body and
taking up another. Mind exists even when a new body is not given to the
ego; it is the mind-state of heaven or hell. But mind has to die while it
is in a human body, retaining full consciousness. This is the Goal.
God-Realization
To arrive at true
self-knowledge is to arrive at God-realization. God-realization is a
unique state of consciousness. It is different from all the other
states of consciousness because all the other states of consciousness
are experienced through the medium of the individual mind; whereas the
state of God-consciousness is in no way dependent upon the individual
mind or any other medium.
To realize
the Self is to realize God
A medium is
necessary for knowing something other than one’s own self. For
knowing one’s own self no medium is necessary. In fact, the
association of consciousness with the mind is definitely a hindrance
rather than a help for the attainment of realization. The individual
mind is the seat of the ego or the consciousness of being isolated. It
creates the limited individuality, which at once feeds on and is fed
by the illusion of duality, time and change. So, in order to know the
Self as it is, consciousness has to be completely freed from the
limitation of the individual mind. In other words, the individual mind
has to disappear but consciousness has to be retained.
Throughout
the past life-history of the soul, its consciousness has grown with
the individual mind and all the workings of consciousness have
proceeded against the background of the individual mind. Consciousness
has therefore come to
be firmly embedded in the individual mind and cannot be
extricated from this setting into which it has been woven.
Consciousness
intertwined with the mind
The result is that if the
mind is suborned, consciousness also disappears. The intertwining of
the individual mind and consciousness is amply illustrated by the
tendency to become unconscious when there is any effort to stop mental
activity through meditation.
The
everyday phenomenon of going to sleep is not essentially different
from the lull experienced during meditation, but it is slightly
different in its origin.
Explanation
of sleep
Since the individual mind is
continuously confronted by the world of duality it is involved in
ceaseless conflict; and when it is wearied by its
unrelieved struggle, it wants to lose its identity as a separate
entity and go back to the Infinite. It then recedes from the
world of its own creation and experiences a lull, and this lull is
also invariably accompanied by the cessation of consciousness. The
quiescence of mental activity in sleep entails the complete submerging
of consciousness; but this cessation of mental life and conscious
functioning is only temporary, because the
impressions which are stored in the mind goad it to renewed activity.
Resuming
wakefulness
After awhile the psychic stimuli
of impressions result in stirring the mind and reviving the conscious
functioning which is performed through its medium. So the period of
sleep is followed by a period of wakefulness and the period of
wakefulness is followed by a period of sleep, according to the law of
alternating activity and rest. As long as the latent impressions in
the mind are not completely undone, however, there is no final
annihilation of the individual mind or emancipation of consciousness.
In sleep the mind temporarily forgets its identify but it does not
finally lose its individual existence. When the person awakens he
finds himself subject to his old limitations. There is a resurection
of conswciousness, but it is still mind-ridden. The limited mind is
the soid in whcih the ego is securely rooted, and this ego perpetuates
ignorance through the many illusions in which it is caught.
Obstacle of
the ego
The ego prevents
manifestation of infinite knowledge which is already latent in the
soul; it is the most formidable obstacle to the attainment of God.
A Persian poem says truly, “It is extremely difficult to pierce
through the veil of ignorance; for there is a rock on the fire.”
Just as a flame cannot rise very high if a rock is placed upon it,
a desire to know one’s own true nature cannot lead to the Truth
as long as the burden of the ego is placed on consciousness. Success
in finding oneself is rendered impossible by the continuation of
the ego which persists throughout the journey of the soul.
In old age, an aching tooth can give untold trouble because it is
not easily uprooted, although moving within its socket. In the
same way the ego which might become feeble through love or
penance, is yet difficult to eradicate. It persists till the very
end. Though it becomes looser as the soul advances on the Path, it
remains till the last stage which is the seventh plane. Ego is the
center of all human activity. The attempts of the ego to secure
its own extinction might be compared to the attempt of a man to
stand on his own shoulders.
Difficulty
of overcoming the ego
Just as the eye cannot see
itself, so the ego is unable to end its own existence. All that it
does to bring about self-annihilation only goes to add to its own
existence. It flourishes on the very efforts
directed against itself. Thus it is unable to vanish althogether
through its own desperate activity, althouth it succeedsd in
transforming its own nature. The disappearance of the ego is
conditioned by the melting away of the limited mind which is its
seat.
The
problem of God-realization is the problem of emancipating
consciousness from the limitations of the mind.
Parallel
between sleep and God-realization
When the
individual mind is dissolved, the whole universe which is
relative to the mind vanishes into nothingness, and
consciousness is no longer tied to anything. Consciousness is
now unlimited and unclouded by anything and serves the purpose
of illumining the state of the Infinite Reality. While
immersed in the bliss of realization the soul is completely
oblivious of sights or sounds or objects in the universe. In
this respect it is like sound sleep,
but there are many important points of difference which
distinguish God-realization from sound sleep. During sleep the
illusion of the universe vanishes, since all consciousness is
in abeyance, but there is no conscious experience of God,
since this requires the complete dissolution of the ego and
the turning of full consciousness towards the Ultimate
Reality. Occasionally, when the continuity of deep sleep is
interrupted by brief intervals, the soul may have the
experience of retaining consciousness without being conscious
of anything in particular. There is consciousness; but this
consciousness is not of the universe. It is consciousness of nothing.
Such experiences anticipate God-realization in which
consciousness is completely freed from the illusion of the
universe and manifests the infinite knowledge which was
hitherto hidden by the ego. In
sleep, the individual mind continues to exist
although it has forgotten
everything including itself; and the latent impressions in the
mind create a veil between the submerged consciousness and the
Infinite Reality. Thus, during sleep,
consciousness is submerged in the shell of the individual
mind, but it has not yet been able to escape from that shell.
l.
Difference
between sleep and God-realization
So, though the soul
has forgotten its separateness from God and has actually
attained unity with Him, it is unconscious of this unity. In
God-realization, however, the mind does not merely forget
itself but has (with all its impressions) actually lost
its identity. The consciousness which was hitherto
associated with the individual mind is now freed and
untrammeled and brought into direct contact and unity with
the Ultimate Reality. Since there is now no veil between
consciousness and the Ultimate Reality, consciousness is
fused with the Absolute and eternally abides in It as an
inseparable aspect promoting an unending state of infinite
knowledge and unlimited bliss.
The
manifestation of infinite knowledge and unlimited bliss in
consciousness is, however, strictly confined to the soul
which has attained God-realization. The infinite Reality
in the God-realized soul has explicit knowledge of its own
infinity; but such explicit knowledge is not had by the unrealized
soul, which is still subject to the illusion of the
universe.
God-realization
is personal
Thus if God-realization
were not a personal attainment of the soul, the entire
universe would come to an end as soon as any one soul
achieved God-realization. This does not happen, because God-realization
is a personal state of consciousness belonging to the soul
which has transcended the domain of the mind. Other
souls continue to remain in bondage and though they also
are bound to receive
God-realization one day they can only attain it by freeing
their consciousness from the burden of the ego and the
limitations of the individual mind. Hence the attainment
of God-realization has a direct significance only for the
soul which has emerged out of the time-process After the
attainment of God-realization, the
soul discovers that it has always been the Infinite
Reality which it now knows itself to be, and that
its regarding itself as finite during the period of
evolution and spiritual advancement was in fact an
illusion.
What
was latent in the Infinite becomes manifest
The soul also
finds out that the infinite knowledge and bliss which
it now enjoys have also been latent in the Infinite
Reality from the very beginning of time and that they
merely became manifest at the moment of realization.
Thus the God-realized person does not actually become
something different from what he was before realization.
He remains what he was, and the only difference which realization
makes in him is that previously
he did not consciously know his own true nature, and
now he knows it. He knows that he has never
been anything other than what he now knows himself to
be and that what he has been through was but a process
of finding himself.
The
whole process of attaining God-realization is just a game
in which the beginning and the end are identical.
The attainment of realization is nevertheless a
distinct gain for the soul.
Two
types of advantages
There are two
types of advantages: one consists in getting
what one did not previously possess, the other
in realizing fully what one
really is. God-realization is of the second
type. However, this creates an infinite difference
between the soul which has God-realization and the
soul which does not have
explicit
knowledge of all that it really is, has been and
will ever be, makes God-realization all-important.
The soul which is not God-realized experiences
itself as being finite and is constantly troubled by
the opposites of fleeting joys and sorrows; but the
soul which has realization is lifted out of them and
experiences the infinite
knowledge and the unlimited bliss of being God-conscious.In
God-realization the soul drops its separate
consciousness and transcends duality in the abiding
knowledge of its identity with the infinite Reality.
Value
of God-realization
The
shackles of limited individuality are broken; the
world of shadows is at an end; the curtain of
illusion is forever drawn. The feverishness and
the agonizing distress of the pursuits of limited
consciousness are replaced by the tranquility and
bliss of Truth-consciousness. The restlessness and
fury of temporal existence are swallowed up in the
peace and stillness of Eternity.
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