The Kingdom of God – Part Five

In this final instalment, the 20th century Indian Sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj continues his dialogue about the state of mind of one who has attained the Kingdom of God, witnessed the Truth, overcome death, and is no longer bound by the limitations of matter, energy, space and time.

Jesus promised all those who truly sought the deathless state, which was likened to a jewel beyond value, that their wish would be fulfilled. But the price that would have to be paid for this supreme gift was personal sacrifice – the voluntary dissolution of the ego.

Jesus coerced no one. He merely invited those who wished to be like him to adopt the path which he had followed. He was the Way, and his life was the Truth. His Way remains equally valid to this day, and has been trod alike by every Sage.

Question:  “To become an engineer I must learn engineering. To become God what must I learn?

Maharaj:  You must unlearn everything. God is the end of all desire and knowledge.

Question:  You mean to say that I become God merely by giving up the desire to become God?

Maharaj:  All desires must be given up because you take the shape of your desires. When no desires remain, you revert to your natural being.”  1

The transcendent Sun of Reality can only be seen when all the clouds of personal desires have finally been swept aside.

Question:  “How does one reach the Supreme State?

Maharaj:  By renouncing all lesser desires. As long as you are pleased with the lesser, you cannot have the highest. Whatever pleases you, keeps you back. Until you realize the unsatisfactoriness of everything, its transiency and limitation and collect your energies in one great longing, even the first step is not made. On the other hand, the integrity of the desire for the Supreme is by itself a call from the Supreme. Nothing, physical or mental, can give you freedom. You are free once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you.”  2

The idea of giving up personal identity, of surrendering individual desires, is a prospect which fills us all with horror. What lies beyond appears as forbidding as the grave, shorn of all laughter, fun and joy, and of every quality which makes our lives worth living. The Sage coaxes us to trust, and not to fall prey to these fears.

“Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that, truly, by losing all you gain all.”  3

He who would save his life, declared Jesus, would lose it. But he who was prepared to sacrifice his own life would gain all things, in a life of boundless joy. This is the acid test of the mature seeker, the willingness to sacrifice the known in the anticipation of the unknown.

“Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything.”  4

We shrink from this call to impersonality, fearing in this sacrifice the loss of personal identity, which is the vital core of our being. As one doubter remarked:

Question:  “To be free from like and dislike is a state of indifference.

Maharaj:  It may look and feel so in the beginning. Persevere in such indifference and it will blossom into an all-pervading and all embracing love.”  5

The Supreme Reality is not an uncaring, lifeless, amorphous Void – a quantum field of blind energy. As Maharaj reveals:

“Reality is not a shapeless mass, a wordless chaos. It is powerful, aware, blissful; compared to it your life is like a candle to the sun.”  6

This Reality is ever-present, and is without beginning and without end. It is Awareness stripped of personal limitations and the confines of matter, energy, space and time.

“Immortality is freedom from the feeling: ‘I am’. Yet it is not extinction. On the contrary, it is a state infinitely more real, aware and happy than you can possibly think of. Only self-consciousness is no more.”  7

This profound Awareness is not something new to be gained, nor is it a reward for a certain course of action. It blossoms of its own accord when the conditions are ripe, and the cloying business of the mind is stilled.

“When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognize it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision, but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.”  8

Of all the preoccupations of the mind, the most persistent and captivating is the idea of personality. At each moment of our lives we are involved in a constant search for satisfaction according to the dictates of this identity. We are all obsessed with the idea that we are bound to a particular body that was born in time, and will in turn, succumb to death.

“Take the idea ‘I was born’. You may take it to be true. It is not. You were never born nor will you ever die. It is the idea that was born and shall die, not you. By identifying yourself with it you become mortal. Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world. Look closely and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory names on the ocean of consciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like the pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving, and there will be no world. Look within and you will find that the point of light is the reflection of the immensity of light in the body as the sense ‘I am’. There is only light, all else appears.”  9

No action of the mind can restore this pristine state. Every effort conducted by the striving personality merely causes it to recede, by covering the sun with yet more clouds. The soul does not come to know its source by means of action, but by recognition of the folly of action.

“Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may change your mind and your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all to change? Realize once and for all that neither your body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding. Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge, or rather, it will take you in.”  10

“It is the absolute in you that takes you to the absolute beyond you – absolute truth, love, selflessness are the decisive factors for self-realization. With earnestness these can be reached.”  11

The Truth cannot be grasped by the conscious mind. Every attempt to encompass it must inevitably fail. Yet the earnest desire to experience it creates the conditions which allow it to suddenly shine forth.

Question:  “If there is no such thing as the knowledge of the real, then how do I reach it?

Maharaj:  You need not reach out for what is already with you. Your very reaching makes you miss it. Give up the idea that you have not found it and just let it come into the focus of direct perception, here and now, by removing all that is of the mind.

Question:  When all that can go, goes, what remains?

Maharaj:  Emptiness remains, awareness remains, pure light of the conscious being remains.”  12

In order to become aware of this burgeoning emptiness, we need to pursue our awareness of the “now”, without being caught up in the past or future. By refusing to be trapped in the web of our ideas, we cease to participate as an individual experiencer.

Maharaj:  “The mind craves for experience, the memory of which it takes for knowledge. The gnani (enlightened being) is beyond all experience and his memory is empty of the past. He is entirely unrelated to anything in particular. But the mind craves for formulations and definitions, always eager to squeeze reality into a verbal shape. Of everything it wants an idea, for without ideas the mind is not. Reality is essentially alone, but the mind will never leave it alone – and deals instead with the unreal. And yet it is all the mind can do – discover the unreal as unreal.

Question:  And the real as real?

Maharaj:  There is no such state as seeing the real. Who is to see what? You can only be the real – which you are, anyhow. The problem is only mental. Abandon false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true ideas. There aren’t any.”  13

“There is no such thing as the experience of the real. The real is beyond experience. All experience is in the mind. You know the real by being real.”  14

“As long as you are engrossed in the world, you are unable to know yourself: to know yourself, turn away your attention from the world and turn it within.”  15

If there are few who experience this fullness of Reality, it is because there are few who are willing to lay down the burden of their lives. They would rather strive to improve their temporal condition than abandon it completely.

The Sage is immersed in this Reality, and is anxious to reveal the way to overcome all suffering. The Sage sees no difference between himself and other persons. All are rooted in the one Reality. Because he knows this Reality, he is ever free from the limitations of unreality.

Those of us who have mistaken this illusory world for reality, continue to be trapped in its limiting web. The Sage points out the nature of the web that imprisons us. It is then up to us to extricate ourselves from its cloying strands.

“What I am you are and what you are – I am. The ‘I am’ is common to us all; beyond the ‘I am’ is the immensity of light and love. We do not see it because we look elsewhere; I can only point out at the sky; seeing of the star is your own work. Some take more work before they see the star, some take less; it depends on the clarity of their vision and their earnestness in search.”  16

“The true teacher will not imprison his disciple in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings and actions; on the contrary, he will show him patiently and fully the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behaviour, to be vigilant and earnest and go with life wherever it takes him, not to enjoy or suffer, but to understand and learn.”  17

For many, the effort to understand and learn dwarfs their analytical powers. They instinctively resent the mental struggle that is necessary to seek out the origin of their selves. Yet for them, burdened by the weight of many sorrows, there is still hope and the promise of salvation. Enlightenment can still be gained, but only if they truly want it above all things.

The choice is always ours. We are always free to abandon the ways which have led us into pain, sorrow, illness and despair. But it is only when we have truly come to see the folly of our ways and long for release that we are ready to turn within and awaken to our Reality. We have to be convinced of the need for change.

All too often we confess that we are simply unfitted for this task. Yet as Maharaj has challenged us:

Maharaj:  “What else are you fit for? All your going and coming, seeking pleasure or meaning, loving and hating – all shows that you struggle against limitations, self-imposed or accepted. In your ignorance you make mistakes and cause pain to yourself and others, but the urge is there and shall not be denied. The same urge that seeks birth, happiness and death shall seek understanding and liberation. It is like an ember in a cargo of cotton. You may not know about it, but sooner or later the ship will burst in flames. Liberation is a natural process and in the long run, inevitable. But it is within your power to bring it into the now.

Question:  Then why are there so few liberated people in the world?

Maharaj:  In a forest only some of the trees are in full bloom at any given moment, yet everyone will have its turn.”  18

Each one of us inhabits a universe of thought. Each one of us has learned to spin a web of thought that is the playground of our dreams. It is the product of desire, and is sustained by our desire for experience.

Within this web, we are free to experience whatever we desire. We are also free to construct our universe in any manner that we choose. There is no limit to the way in which it manifests. We are always free to select the pattern of our thoughts, and it is this pattern which determines the nature of our experience.

Yet however exalted our dreams, however sophisticated our patterns of thought, and however refined our art of spinning, we can never escape the confines of the web. In our yearning for experience we live enthusiastic lifetimes of endeavour, each dedicated to the pursuit of various objects of desire.

For as long as we remain dominated by the desire to experience, we are obliged to keep on spinning. And in this spinning we bind ourselves to the unending cycle of life and death. Birth leads to death which leads again to rebirth. Whatever the fruits of our spinning, they are lost each time we die, and we start each life anew with nothing save the desire again to experience.

Once again we laboriously spin our cosmic web which is the arena of our desire. For as long as we choose to spin, we are bound by the limits of our web. It is only when we have become satiated with the chore of spinning that we are finally ready to begin to unravel the web that we have spun.

Only then do we begin our journey back to the centre of the maze, by steadily unravelling the luminous thread of the “I am”. When we have succeeded in pursuing it to its source, we rediscover our One true nature, and the fact that we were never bound.

We are free to spin for as long as we choose to experience. We are under no duress to change. There is no timetable to our lives. We have all eternity to spin. Yet in the course of spinning, there will come a day for each one of us when we will long to be free of our cosmic web.

No skill or expertise in spinning will then satisfy this yearning. The pangs of this desire will prompt us to unravel the web that we have spun, and voluntarily destroy the personality which we have built. In the course of this unravelling we will come to face the threshold of death, yet a death which leads to a glorious resurrection. We will be reborn into a world of immortality, beyond the clasp of pain and the trammels of time and space.

The moment we choose to don this cloak of bliss depends on us. We can do it now, or we can leave it for a billion lifetimes hence. Yet whatever our condition, whatever heaven or hell we have personally constructed for ourselves, we are destined to be free. No amount of spinning can ultimately deter us from this goal. We will be free because we are already free. We have only to shed the blinkers from our eyes.

The morning of this awakening advances on us   NOW!

If only we could understand the bliss that awaits us. If only we could grasp that peace which passes all understanding. If only we could glimpse the unbounded joy that true freedom brings, we would stand at the very portals of the Kingdom of God.

We would then experience the mystical union with God that is the ultimate destiny of every person now living on this planet. We would sing in exultation like the fifteenth century saint Kabir.

This basket weaver from Benares was a simple and unlettered man. Although Muslim by birth, he sought wisdom from a Hindu guide. Being a married man, he was scorned by other Brahmin disciples. Yet Kabir sought union with the divine with a blazing passion. It was his unyielding fervour that brought him to his goal.

Here, in a single song, is the good news proclaimed by Jesus, as well as the founders of all the religions of this world.

“The Lord is in me, the Lord is in you, as life is in every seed.
O servant! Put false pride away, and seek for Him within you.
A million suns are ablaze with light,
The sea of blue spreads in the sky.
The fever of life is stilled, and all stains are washed away;
When I sit in the midst of that world.
Hark to the unstruck bells and drums! Take your delight in love!
Rains pour down without water, and the rivers are streams of light.
One Love it is that pervades the whole world, few there are who know it fully:
They are blind who hope to see it by the light of reason,
That reason which is the cause of separation.
The House of Reason is very far away!
How blessed is Kabir, that amidst this great joy he sings within his own vessel.
It is the music of the meeting of soul with soul;
It is the music of the forgetting of sorrows;
It is the music that transcends all coming in and all going forth.”  19

References:

1  “I Am That“, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book II, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, pp. 83.
2  Ibid, pp. 48-49.
3  Ibid, p. 277.
4  Ibid, p. 117.
5  Ibid, p. 305.
6  Ibid, p. 200.
7  Ibid, p. 114.
8  Ibid, p. 53.
9  Ibid, p. 150.
10  Ibid, p. 294.
11  Ibid, p. 226.
12  Ibid, pp. 184-185.
13  Ibid, p.112.
14  Ibid, p. 201.
15  Ibid, p. 247.
16  Ibid, p. 226.
17  Ibid, p.246.
18  Ibid, p. 241.
19  “Songs of Kabir“, translated by Rabindranath Tagore, Samuel Weiser, New York, 1977, pp. 142-143.

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