The Kingdom of God – Part Three
The driving force of life is the motivation of desire. Life is nothing more or less than the desire for experience, and the search for ever-new ways in which to experience all the possibilities that life offers.
Desire stirs the waters of consciousness. The Central Sun of Awareness shines on this surface and is reflected in a myriad tiny ripples, each of which appears to be a miniature version of that sun. Yet each separate sun is illusory. Each reflection is a product of the turbulence of the water. When this disturbance ceases, each wavelet disappears, and with it the image of a separate personality.
The way to transcend the limits of experience is by renouncing the desire to experience. Since it is desire which stirs the waters of consciousness, it is the absence of desire which stills them.
The rediscovery of the Central Sun of Awareness is not the fruit of desire, but the absence of desire. It is by voluntarily relinquishing the desire for individual expression that the personality becomes absorbed in the universe, just as the individual raindrop is absorbed into the amorphous sea.
By sacrificing individual existence, the personality rediscovers its universal nature. The price of surpassing all human limitation has always been to surrender individual motivation, the desire for individual experience in life.
For as long as the personality marches to the beat of an individual drum it can never experience its universal nature. It is only by voluntarily surrendering the desire to be a person that the personality submerges into the infinite. Individual identity is lost forever, but Universal Awareness is regained.
It was this message of redemption through personal self-sacrifice that was the central feature of the life of the Christ.
“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life will lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16: 24-25)
“He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” (John 12: 25)
The cross which Jesus bade his disciples take up was not mere death of the physical body. It was the ultimate sacrifice of the personality; the voluntary relinquishment of individual existence, for it was this self-sacrifice which opened the doors of redemption, by resurrecting the soul in eternal life.
As Jesus himself proclaimed, he was the way to eternal life, and his life was the pathway to everlasting Truth.
“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” (John 14: 6)
The soul that strives for personal expression is bound to the cycle of rebirth. The individual appears to undergo a series of incarnations which always ends in death. It is only the soul that has voluntarily surrendered individual existence that transcends the power of death and is born no more. It takes off its mortal garb to don the cloak of immortality.
The purpose of Jesus’ life was to reveal the good news of the joy of illimitable freedom which lay beyond all mental thinking and intellectual understanding.
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
This common refrain has been told by Sages throughout the ages. Their message has been simple. Reality exists. Furthermore, this Reality exists within the heart of every individual, manifesting as the “I am” presence within.
Those who are prepared to break the chains which bind them, can experience this Reality in a dynamic fullness of expression that transcends all limitations, and is resplendent with inexpressible joy.
In spite of the various ways in which this message has been repeated, it still falls strangely on Western ears. Most Westerners not only cannot conceive of such a Reality, but instinctively seem to mistrust those who claim to have experienced it directly.
This problem has been neatly summarised in a discussion with the 20th century Indian Sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:
“The Westerners who occasionally come to see you are faced with a peculiar difficulty. The very notion of a liberated man, a realized man, a self-knower, a God knower, a man beyond the world, is unknown to them. All they have in their Christian culture is the idea of a saint – a pious man, law abiding, God-fearing, fellow-loving, prayerful, sometimes prone to ecstasies and confirmed by a few miracles. The very idea of a gnani (enlightened being) is foreign to western culture, something exotic and rather unbelievable. Even when his existence is accepted, he is looked at with suspicion, as a case of self-induced euphoria caused by strange physical postures and mental attitudes. The very idea of a new dimension in consciousness seems to them implausible and improbable.” 1
This gospel of triumphant liberation has been echoed from generation to generation. It was the same good news which Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj conveyed to the young Maruti, who was later to become Nisargadatta Maharaj.
But whereas most hearers of this message have preferred to ignore it, Maruti actually made these words the ally of his heart. Within the space of three short years, he had shed the last vestiges of individual existence, and become absorbed in that blissful state which transcends all definitions and limitations. He described how this transformation came about.
“My Guru showed me my true nature – and the true nature of the world. Having realised that I am one with and yet beyond the world, I became free from all desire and fear. I did not reason out that I should be free – I found myself free – unexpectedly, without the least effort. This freedom from desire and fear has remained with me since then. Another thing I noticed was that I did not need to make an effort; the deed followed the thought without delay and friction. I have also found that thoughts became self-fulfilling; things would fall in place smoothly and rightly. The main change was in the mind; it became motionless and silent, responding quickly but not perpetuating the response. Spontaneity became a way of life, the real became natural and the natural became real. And above all, infinite affection, love, dark and quiet, radiating in all directions, embracing all, making all interesting and beautiful, significant and auspicious.” 2
Nisargadatta Maharaj followed the inward spiral of the sensation of the “I am”, pursuing this thread remorselessly until he found himself at the heart of Reality. In achieving this crown of enlightenment, he had first to conquer the Minotaur of desire, thus snapping the links of those chains which had bound him to phenomenal existence.
When the thread which creates the entire universe is followed to its source, it ends in the emptiness of the Void. The heart of the “I am” yields nothing but emptiness. Yet it is an emptiness that contains the fullness of all created life.
To reach the fountain of Supreme Truth, it is necessary to transcend the Void, that Ungrund of outer darkness which shields the inner light. Those who finally reach this inmost Sanctuary, have to pass through that ring of darkness which St John of the Cross has called “the dark night of the soul”.
These who persist in their efforts to cross over to the farther shore, however, find a joy that is beyond all telling. It is living at its most abundant, unlimited and without end.
The idea that there can be life beyond the nihilism, emptiness and darkness of personal extinction, defies the intellectual mind. We simply cannot comprehend life other than through our customary conscious experience.
The difficulty which confronts the mind is that it attempts to form a concept of illimitable experience. This attempt is doomed to failure. The limited mind is quite unable to conceive of an experience that is without any form of limitation. All words fail in their efforts to describe it. No concept, no matter how subtle, can define it.
Visitors to Maharaj constantly sought to reduce the essence of his state to a mental concept, attempting to capture the unknown within the parameters of the known, as we can see from the following conversations:
Maharaj: “I know myself as I am in reality. I am neither the body nor the mind nor the mental faculties. I am beyond all this.
Question: Are you just nothing?
Maharaj: Come on, be reasonable. Of course I am, most tangibly. Only I am not what you think me to be. This tells you all.
Question: It tells me nothing.
Maharaj: Because it cannot be told. You must gain your own experience. You are accustomed to deal with things, physical and mental. I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy, neither body nor mind. Once you have a glimpse of your own being, you will not find me difficult to understand.” 3
Like the following questioner, we find it paradoxical to think of unlimited being which is capable of expressing itself in limited form. We are caught in this conflict of logic, due to the limitations of our mental powers of reasoning.
Question: “I have understood that personality is an illusion, and alert detachment without loss of identity is our point of contact with the reality. Will you, please, tell me at this moment are you a person or a self-aware identity?
Maharaj: I am both. But the real self cannot be described except in terms supplied by the person, in terms of what I am not. All you can tell about the person is not the self and you can tell nothing about the self which would not refer to the person, as it is, as it could be, as it should be. All attributes are personal. The real is beyond all attributes.
Question: Are you sometimes the self and sometimes the person?
Maharaj: How can I be? The person is what I appear to be to other persons. To myself I am the infinite expanse of consciousness in which innumerable persons emerge and disappear in endless succession.
Question: How is it that the person which to you is quite illusory, appears real to us?
Maharaj: You, the self, being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. ‘Being’ applies to the now only.” 4
Yet the mind still struggles with these mental contradictions. Not only do we wrestle with the difficulty of unlimited expression intertwined with limited form, but there is also the problem of Absolute Awareness apparently confined within limited consciousness.
Question: “You say you are the silent witness and also you are beyond consciousness. Is there no contradiction in it? If you are beyond consciousness, what are you witnessing to?
Maharaj: I am conscious and unconscious, both conscious and unconscious, neither conscious nor unconscious – to all this I am witness – but really there is no witness, because there is nothing to be witness to. I am perfectly empty of all mental formations, void of mind yet fully aware. This I try to express in saying I am beyond the mind.
Question: How can I reach you then?
Maharaj: Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness. That is all. Very little can be conveyed in words. It is the doing as I tell you that will bring light, not my telling you. The means do not matter much; it is the desire, the urge, the earnestness that count.” 5
Yet the desire to eat of this divine confection is countered by the fear that we might not like its taste. Anxious to forestall this possibility, we attempt to derive beforehand an idea of what it is we may finally hope to achieve. Even though we can acknowledge the limitation of the mind, we nevertheless resolutely seek to reduce Reality to corporeality, and so dress the illimitable in clothes of thought, before deciding whether it really is worth striving for.
Maharaj explains the distinction between corporeality and Reality.
“I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food to be served on time. When starved or sick, my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it. I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached. Even not aloof and detached. There is aloofness and detachment as there is thirst and hunger; there is also the awareness of it all and a sense of immense distance, as if the body and the mind and all that happens to them were somehow far out on the horizon. I am like a screen – clear and empty – the pictures pass over it and disappear, leaving it as clear and empty as before.” 6
Having severed the knot of identity which strings images together in consciousness, the Sage does not react to these images from the standpoint of personality. They come and they go, and there is no desire to link successive images. Yet from the viewpoint of the observer, the Sage continues to act and speak just like a normal, rational human being.
Question: “When I ask a question and you answer, what exactly happens?
Maharaj: The question and the answer – both appear on the screen. The lips move, the body speaks and again the screen is clear and empty.
Question: When you say clear and empty, what do you mean?
Maharaj: I mean free of all contents. To myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I can point out and say: ‘this I am’. You identify yourself with everything so easily; I find it impossible. The feeling: ‘I am not this or that, nor is anything mine is so strong in me that as soon as a thing or thought appears, there comes at once the sense ‘this I am not’.
Question: Do you mean to say that you spend your time repeating ‘this I am not, that I am not’?
Maharaj: Of course not. I am merely verbalizing for your sake. By the grace of my Guru I have realized once and for all that I am neither object nor subject and I do not need to remind myself all the time.
Question: I find it hard to grasp what exactly you mean by saying that you are neither the object nor the subject. At this very moment, as we talk, am I not the object of your experience, and you the subject?
Maharaj: Look, my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention is on the thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger – the self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness – love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both and neither and beyond.” 7
References:
1 “I Am That”, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book I, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, pp. 191-192.
2 “I Am That“, Book II, op. cit., p. 10.
3 Ibid, p. 46.
4 Ibid, p. 302.
5 Ibid, p. 75.
6 Ibid, p. 8.
7 Ibid, pp. 8-9.
