I am that I AM – Part Six
In the cases mentioned earlier, each woman prayed to a source within or beyond their personal selves. While some visualised this source as “God”, another directed her plea to the Virgin Mary, and Mani Sahukar addressed her prayer to her personal Guru, Sai Baba of Shirdi.
In each case the ladies believed that there was some superior power that was able to intercede on their behalf. But the fact that beliefs are verified by experience does not necessarily vindicate the substance of the beliefs themselves. For, as Carl Jung has pointed out, “a belief proves to me only the phenomenon of belief not the content of belief.” 36
According to the mystics, it is the phenomenon of belief which is responsible for the desired results in life. The content of individual belief matters little. A person who prays to God in whatever manner this God is visualized, will obtain results in direct proportion to the strength of the underlying belief.
It does not matter whether this God is visualized as being personal, transcendental, male, female, animistic, or beyond conception. The very idea of God is a natural outgrowth of our materialistic world.
Because we find ourselves surrounded by a bewildering universe of energy, form and power, we imagine that there must exist some supernal Creator, whom we call God, who was responsible for creating it all.
But the universe does not exist as some vast cosmos outside of ourselves. Each one of us creates this universe within our own minds. The universe itself is a construction of our minds. We are the authors, protectors and sustainers of this universe of ours, and all the powers which we see manifested within the universe, are powers that are resident within us.
There is no other God but the “I am” within ourselves. This is the divine source which lies at the root of all experience. When we appeal to God to help us out of our predicaments, we answer our own cry, in a manner which is exquisitely tailored to our needs.
Does the idea that each one of us is God seem blasphemous? Certainly in many societies, such a statement would in the past, and no doubt still today, lead to a painful death. Jesus was himself threatened with death by stoning for suggesting just so monstrous a claim. When confronted by his attackers, Jesus asked them why they wanted to stone him.
“The Jews answered Him, saying, for a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods’?” (John 10:33-34) 11
Each generation is incensed anew at the revelation that they themselves are their own gods. There is no other God save the “I am” that resides within the heart of each one of us. Its powers are illimitable, its nature indestructible.
The entire pageant of experience serves no other purpose than to bring us to an understanding of the truth of the words, “I am that I AM”. Each one of us is rooted in this “I AM” – the great Atman – which is the source of the entire universe.
Each one of us is the personal architect of our universe, just as we are the sole creators of our dreams, visions and hallucinations. But we have deluded ourselves into believing that we are hapless creatures tossed upon the tides of life.
Yet when we search for the true nature and source of the “I AM” that exists within us, the imagined personality vanishes into the sun of pure Awareness. It is then that we come to realise that we never were bound by the limited ideas of our limited personalities. We had simply trapped ourselves in our webs of personal belief.
The idea that each one of us creates the incredible variety of nature that we see around us, the vast canopies of space and the whirling galaxies that populate them, seems initially to be too ridiculous a thought to be seriously entertained.
For how can we have created such diversity and splendour, when we ourselves appear to be so limited? If we are not even able to order our own lives effectively, then how we may ask are we able to account for the measured beat of the cosmos, and the wisdom which lies at the heart of all manifested life?
It was just such an incredulous questioner who confronted Maharaj:
Question: “What strikes me as exceedingly strange is that while you say I am merely a product of my memories and woefully limited, I create a vast and rich world in which everything is contained, including you and your teaching. How this vastness is created and contained in my smallness is what I find hard to understand. Maybe you are giving me the whole truth, but I am grasping only a small part of it.
Maharaj: Yet, it is a fact – the small projects the whole, but it cannot contain the whole. However great and complete is your world, it is self-contradictory and transitory and altogether illusory.
Question: It may be illusory yet it is marvellous. When I look and listen, touch, smell and taste, think and feel, remember and imagine, I cannot but be astonished at my miraculous creativity. I look through a microscope or telescope and see wonders; I follow the track of an atom and hear the whisper of the stars. If I am the sole creator of all this, then I am God indeed! But if I am God, why do I appear so small and helpless to myself?
Maharaj: You are God, but you do not know it.” 37
It is precisely this helplessness and limitation in the ordering of our daily lives which makes us refute our noble heritage. We simply cannot bring ourselves to believe something which seems so contrary to the evidence of our senses. Like another disbelieving visitor to Maharaj, we say:
Question: “The world is so rich and complex – how could I create it?
Maharaj: Do you know yourself enough to know what you can do and what you cannot? You do not know your own powers. You never investigated. Begin with yourself.
Question: Everybody believes in God.
Maharaj: To me you are your own God. But if you think otherwise, think it to the end.” 38
Those who are convinced of the existence of, and necessity for, a personal God, and who find their lives comforted and guided accordingly, do not need to give up this belief. But it remains a belief, a limit which prevents them from understanding their true prowess.
For as John Lilly has affirmed, every form of belief, no matter how lofty and ennobling, serves only to limit the free expression of our lives.
“In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits.” 24
Those who believe implicitly in the existence of a personal God, will find evidence in their lives to verify this belief. This is not proof of the reality of God, but of the efficacy of their own belief.
As the mystics have revealed, the phenomenon of belief is self-serving. We experience what we expect to experience. In this way divine entities may take form before us, and parade in the imagery of our beliefs. The reality which they appear to portray is that reality with which we ourselves have endowed them, as we learn from the following discussion between Ramana Maharshi and an orthodox Brahmin.
Question: Are the Gods Iswara or Vishnu and their sacred regions Kailasa and Vaikunta real?
Maharshi: As real as you are in this body.
Question: Do they possess phenomenal existence, like my body?
Maharshi: They do exist.
Question: Where do they exist?
Maharshi: In you.
Question: Then it is only my idea – that which I can create and control?
Maharshi: Everything is like that.
Question: Do devas (celestial beings) and pistachas (devils) exist similarly?
Maharshi: Yes.” 39
The celestial regions of heaven and the raging infernos of hell do exist, and can be experienced by those who choose to visit them. To those who experience these conditions these regions will seem utterly real, yet they are no more than the magical crystallizations of their beliefs.
Unless the limits of these beliefs are transcended however, they will never come to know the eternal freedom of their illimitable potential. For as Nisargadatta Maharaj concludes:
“God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and now I am’. Remove the ‘here and now’ the ‘I am’ remains unassailable. The world exists in memory, memory comes into consciousness; consciousness exists in awareness and awareness is the reflection of the light on the waters of existence.” 40
All that we see around us, from the stirrings of primeval life to the pulsing beat of cosmic quasars, remains a picture painted in consciousness by our thoughts. The atom and the galaxy both describe our inherent nature. If we seem to inhabit a universe born of divine decree, its creator is that divine principle within us.
For we truly are the Gods of our own creation, and every one of us possesses the power to influence this creation. Our divinity beckons from within the silent centre of our inmost self, where the sense of the “I AM” resides.
References:
11 King James version of the Bible. (KJ21)
24 John Lilly, “The Center of the Cyclone”, Bantam, New York, 1973, pp. XV-XVI.
36 Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”, recorded and edited by A.Jaffe, Pantheon Books, New York, 1961, p. 319.
37 “I Am That”, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, Book II, pp. 308-309.
38 “I Am That”, Book I, op.cit., p. 204.
39 “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi”, recorded by Swami Saraswathi, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 1968, pp 34-35.
40 “I Am That”, Book I, op.cit., p. 228.
