EXPERIENCE INFINITY

 

The finite mind could never understand the infinite because the finite mind, being a manifestation of the infinitude or of eternity, being a manifestation or a reflection, could never maintain its eternal value.

The finite mind has no permanency at all because it is forever changing. That which is forever changing, how could it grasp that which is never changing? But without trying to understand, one can experience infinity through our meditations and spiritual practices. The experience is not through the mind, but the experience is of your Heart, and by Heart, we mean the core of your personality.

When one reaches the core and experiences through our spiritual practices, we experience infinity. When I say we, it is not the mind experiencing it, it is not the ego-self experiencing it because they are all limitations, manifestations of reality. So, from where does the experience come? Infinity experiences itself, and therefore it is beyond verbalisation or thought processes.

As you start your practices and are regular with the practices, you will discover a certain truth. After a while, you will say, “not this, not this”, which is a very good thing because by saying “not this”, you will progress further into that enquiry which we call Jnana Yoga. As we progress into the enquiry, we reach a point where we cannot go further beyond.

AWAKENING AND UNDERSTANDING THROUGH SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

Through spiritual practices, we awaken the brain cells more and more, and by awakening the cells more and more, the greater the mind filters through because the brain is not the mind. The mind is universal. There is only one mind, and the only reason the mind is individualised is that we have not given full scope to its potentiality. This is possible where the mind can appreciate the entire universe by getting it out of sleep to its fullest capacity. You just know, and in that knowingness, you start the experiential process.

There are many ways of doing this – through extreme devotion, through analysis, through action and of course, as you would know, that action really strengthens the thought. Then those thoughts get planted deeper and deeper into the subconscious level of the mind and from there, it is transmitted back to the conscious level, and that is how you act.

Those actions control the limitations of your mind. The actions of a certain person with a greater awareness would be far different from those who have a less aware mind. Spiritual practices bring us awareness. It brings us an understanding that is very true according to its limitations. But that is not what we want. We do not want to understand only, although it is necessary, but we want the peace that passeth all understanding, and that is infinity. That peace is infinite, beginless and because it is beginlessness, it will never end. It is a continual or a continuation of a process that goes on and on and on.

INFINITY IS DIVINITY

Universes are created, and at this very moment, there are so many galaxies and stars that are a million times, a billion times larger than our tiny planet Earth, exploding at this very moment. Exploding but to reform its atomic structures back again into another universe, and their growth begins and evolution begins because of the force of that explosion.

How much does it help a man to find understanding when understanding has its particular limitations? For example, I have been told this by thousands of people that “Guruji, I have a tape that you did in a Satsang three years ago, and when I listen to it again today, I find different meanings in it.” Finding different meanings in it because their awareness has developed.

You know there was this boy of fourteen, and he says, “My Father is so stupid, he knows nothing.” But when the boy turned twenty-five, he says, “Oh, my father knows a lot.” The father has the same knowledge, but the boy’s awareness developed a greater understanding and a greater awareness because of his growth from fourteen to twenty-five.

To repeat, understanding has its value. Understanding can make us kinder, more loving, more compassionate, more sympathetic, but to know the value of infinity and what is infinity after all? Infinity is Divinity. Divinity and infinity are the same in their eternity. When this manifestation comes around, it is also infinite because as soon as infinity starts, it starts emanating. It is the nature of everything to emanate all the time, like flowers emanating fragrance.

MAN’S CONSCIOUSNESS IS INFLUENCED BY VARIOUS FACTORS

Everything is vibrations, and the manifestation is just a reflection of the Manifestor. If we should go deeper into these details, we will find that a reflection is an illusion. So, does your mind exist? That is the question. You are only relying on the sensory input into the lower level of the mind, and your whole life is guided by it. There are five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. To find reality, to make the manifestation merge again into the Manifestor, the experience is there of the Manifestor himself. In other words, you become Divine, and it can be achieved in this lifetime, or else it can take millions of lifetimes.

I do not know where they got the numbers from, but Hindu theology, especially the Puranas, those are some Hindus’ scriptures, maintains that it took eight million four hundred thousand lifetimes to reach the stage of man. Because in everything we see around us, man has the highest consciousness. But his consciousness is influenced by various factors, his environment, the impressions that he has in his mind, and the subconscious level of the mind, and these bring about limitations.

People sitting here might look at these beautiful flowers, but everyone will see them differently from their personal experiences. The realised man will see the flower in its totality. The unrealised man will only see the surface of the flower, this lovely pink and the green, only it is the surface, but the realised man who has become one with infinity will see the entire molecular structure, the invisible sap that makes this flower. He realises then that look how beautiful even the manifestation is. It gave these flowers the right amount of sunshine, the right amount of rain, the right amount of mineral combinations in the ground to make it grow. All this comes all at once to the man of that awareness or realisation. It means that he looks further than the surface value of things.

THE PRACTICAL LEVEL

You would know that I would like to bring even the highest philosophy or metaphysics down to its practical level.

We all look at things only at the surface value. A person says a nasty word to you or does something you do not like, and you stop liking that person. Why do you stop liking that person? Because you have not got that deeper understanding yet to understand his motivation or his entire mental, psychological structure, to be able to interpret it in a right way that, look this poor fellow, he got very angry that there must have happened something to him. Therefore he is very angry. So let me not look at the anger.

We look at the anger only, and we react. But if we do not look at the anger and peer deep within the person, we will see the causes of his anger, and we will feel sorry for him and sympathetic towards him and disregard the anger. For anger is a weakness, and are we all devoid of any weaknesses? Perhaps his anger is felt more by you because there is anger in your nature. His anger, really speaking, reflects our inner self, of the angry self within us, which is just externalised or objectified.

To repeat again, spiritual practices remove these qualities, which are not beneficial to us and from us. Every day you go along, and I know because I have a lot of consultations with people, individual consultations, and I find that they live in turmoil and turbulence all the time and never in that quietude or never even in solitude. I have seen people’s homes where you will find the whole day the T.V. is on or the radio is on and they are bombarding themselves and when they go outside, all the noises of the cars and traffic and what have you. So, the mind is just being bombarded all the time.

EFFORT BECOMES EFFORTLESS

Because of it being bombarded all the time, it has not been allowed to go into the introspection of oneself and to ask, “why am I doing this?” Without the understanding of the little mind, you will keep on doing it. The mind can also tell you that let me have that quietude fifteen or twenty minutes a day and regenerate myself, and that is the meaning of the Bible – “Be still and know that I am God.” We need that stillness. But we do reach a stage to find action in non-action and to find non-action in action. That is the secret of life. So, life becomes effortless. For effort can only achieve few things. You need the effort, but the effort can become effortless if you are established within yourself, which comes about by meditation, spiritual practices and Gurushakti.

WE LIVE IN MEMORIES

We say infinity is infinite, beginless and endless, OK, and the mind, of course, is finite. The mind measures things in space and time. I flew twenty-odd thousand miles to reach here, more I think because I had to go to England first and from there to Chicago and then to Vancouver and then from here. So, I say I have covered twenty-two thousand miles, and I measure it with time, saying that it took me about forty-odd hours or more of travelling. People measure things in time and space, and that is what the mind does.

For we live in memories, and we project those memories of the past into the future. Therefore, living in that state, one’s progress also becomes limited, not to say that we must not learn from our experiences. Learn from your past experiences but do not live in your past experiences. That is the secret. That helps you to give the mind greater and greater expansion, greater awareness.

MERGING AWAY INTO THE BEGINLESS AND ENDLESS DIVINE

Blessed is he who can become so aware that he regards the entire world, nay, the entire universe as himself. When he truly experiences this unity, then his manifested mind merges into the Manifestor. Everything has to express itself. The flower is expressing itself in fragrance. This bulb is expressing itself. Even God or the Manifestor has to express itself by its manifestation. Else what is the purpose of God? Why should He exist although it is eternal existence if it cannot express itself, and we are the expressions of the expressionless? But the expression can merge into the expression expressionless, and then you could say, “I and my Father are one.” You become as vast as your Father, and then you do not think in terms of time, you do not think in the terms of space, because the mind is so expanded then that it just can do nothing else but merge away into the beginless and endless Divine. That is the secret of life, and one should not be discouraged at all for his limitations, for everyone will reach the Divine. Everyone will say, “I and my Father are one.” Why do they use those words, “I and my Father are one”? They use the word Father because the “I” that is mentioned is the Son, and naturally, the Son is the product of the Father. That is why that expression is used and is used poetically.

But of course, this is very much misinterpreted by many theologies, thinking of a father figure sitting up there in heaven somewhere on a throne and a father is always expected to be kind, protective and looking after you, but that is absolute nonsense. He is not looking after you at all. That Father that we speak of is just neutral energy permeating every cell of your body, and it is the limited mind that creates the bondage. So, what one has to do is to merge the limited mind into that infinite energy.

BECOME AN OBSERVER, AND LIVE IN THIS WORLD

In other words, you proceed from bondage to freedom, for that energy is freedom itself because it is boundless, and the word boundless should mean that it has no boundaries, boundless-ness. It is only then, when one has that mergence, that man can find his totality. If man can just become an observer; he has to live in this world, he has to act in this world, he has to do the things that have to be done in this world, but if he could do it in every action or every happening or everything in the environment – if he can act as an observer, he observes all happenings. For example, I am also subjected to pain, but I observe the pain and it disappear. I do not get involved in the pain and say, “I am paining, I am paining, I am paining”, because then it will pain more. As soon as you can stand apart, you still have to live this life, but if the mental processes can stand apart, everything becomes beautiful. Then you can say, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” because everything is beautiful. Even the vilest person on earth, a thief, a murderer, a rapist, he is not hated. You have gained the understanding that his mind has been perverted due to his karmas, or samskaras, his actions, and he cannot help it. He has become habituated to certain kinds of actions, so one day, he too will rise above his patterns. He, too, will rise above that. Then you do not look down upon him. You too will say, “Look, he is a manifestation as I am.”

GREAT SPIRITUAL MASTERS FEEL THEMSELVES ONE WITH EVERYTHING

Coming from the Manifestor, which is total purity, the manifestation is also pure. All the conflicting things we see around us are the relativity of the relative side of life, and this process has to be there. These conflicts have to be there. This contraction and expansion have to be there in order to find harmony. Or else without the opposites, how are you going to realise the middle, which is harmony? The opposites bring themselves together in this process of the universe that makes man realise himself, which you can call God-realisation, and he finds harmony with everything. Therefore, great Sages, great Spiritual Masters have no hatred in their Hearts. They feel themselves one with everything. They have Unity Consciousness which is pure consciousness. Therefore, Jesus said, “If they slap you on the one cheek, offer them the other.” For the person who has smacked me is no one else but me and I have smacked myself, and I am not going to do anything wrong. Perhaps I needed to be spanked, and who in this world does not need a spanking? I do a lot of spanking, verbally, of course, to teach.

INFINITY IS, WAS AND FOREVER WILL BE

You can never control your mind because it is finite. You but try to control, but you are just creating greater and greater inhibitions and repressions in the mind, and by dwelling in the process of controlling something, it becomes stronger and stronger in your subconscious mind. But in your actions, whatever they are, you can become the observer and the actions or words or whatever loses its strength. The mind cannot realise the endless infinite.

The mind can be brought to a stage of appreciation but not to realisation. But appreciation is a step, and when the mind in its most entire awareness realises the unity that exists in the universe, between himself and the universe, then it takes a jump into the unknown. That unknown is the energy which is the Manifestor.

You came from the unknown, and you go back into the unknown, but the unknown experiences itself in its expression. Like a drop of water being dropped into the ocean, the drop of water is not lost, but its ego-self has been lost. But look at the great benefit; it has become one with the ocean, for is the ocean not composed of all the drops put together in unity? Then you proceed from the suffering of the little self to the greater bliss, ecstasy, and indescribable joy of the ocean or the infinity that is beginless and endless and forever there. It was, is, and forever will be.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang CAN 1985 – 01