FINDING EXISTENCE

 

The ultimate purpose of life is not only to exist but to find existence. Naturally, existence has many levels. That which we are calling existence in our personal, relative plane is not true existence. We exist partially; only a very small part of the real existence is brought to the fore in our daily lives.

This means one thing: we are not functioning in totality, and when a person does not function in totality, then he is not a complete person, and all of you will know that ninety-nine cents does not make a dollar.

We try to find the meaning of life but finding the meaning of life is not done overnight but through a progressive process. To find true existence is a process because existence itself is a process. A process with so many factors that revolve around each other, intermingling, intermixing. Within all this mixture of the various elements that composes a human being, one has to find the pivotal point, one has to find the centre, and when the centre of yourself is found, then you could say, “I am that I am. I exist and I am existence.”

To find the totality of one’s Self is to find what existence is. It is not only a mental cognition, but it is an experience, the greatest experience anyone could ever achieve.

How many of us could say, “I am existence”? When you say, “I exist,” it is only a thought form that comes from the Chitta, from the memory box in your mind. Because of previous experiences and impressions, that memory box tells you that you exist. Then, of course, the memory box, or you could call it the subconscious mind, transmits those impulses to the conscious mind saying, “I exist,” and then your conscious mind starts analysing, “Do I exist?” You say, “I exist because I have hands and I have feet, I have eyes, I have ears.” That is what existence means to you.

Because you are looking at the surface level, your requirements are your primal urges; urges of sex, urge for food and various few other things that are needed to keep your supposed individual existence alive. Naturally, this is an outcome of the conscious level of the mind and the memory box and the analytical portion of your mind. That is only as far as psychology goes. But there is something far beyond that.

YOU ARE, THEREFORE YOU THINK

Freud and Jung, one of the proteges of Freud, talked about the unconscious. How can there be anything called unconscious when everything is existence, and true existence is alive and functioning and in motion all the time? So how can it be unconscious? I find consciousness even in a piece of stone, and there is consciousness thereof a lower level, perhaps, because millions of molecules are swirling and swirling around in it. To me, this couch here is alive, and I can feel the life in it. That is existence, where you can feel and experience everything in the universe with the higher level of your mind, and then you can say, “I exist.” And when you say I exist, you are existing in totality.

Descartes had said, “I think; therefore I am.” What he meant there was that I am a product of thought formation. What is the value of thought that is forever changing, changing all the time? Descartes is wrong. He said that “I think, therefore I am.” I say, “I am; therefore, I think.” The amness comes before the thinkingness. Because if you were not there in totality, as you are, though unrealised and unrecognised as yet, you will not be able to think. So, “I am. Therefore I think.”

If I pattern my life around Descartes’s view, I think that I am, then it brings about a falsity. For where does this thought come from? Where does it originate from? There is only one source where everything can be manifested from, and that is from the Manifestor. Every thought that you think comes from the Manifestor because the Manifestor is totally unchanging.

DIVINITY IS ALSO CHANGING BUT WITHIN ITSELF

I will give you a different view, that although the Manifestor is regarded as unchanging, it is still changing. This is a revolutionary thought. In the ocean, you find the turbulent waves, which are the surface level of yourself, your thought level, and calmness in the ocean below. But that calmness also has currents because that calmness cannot exist without those currents. So, the Manifestor is also changing in a very, very subtle form while you are changing, and changing, changing in a very, very grosser form. To appreciate existence in its truest value, we got to move away from the grossness to the subtlest level, which we call Divinity. If Divinity stands still, and if He does not change, this universe would not be there.

The change that we find in our lives is, of course, a progressive change. It goes from one step to another step to another step, with all these experiences gained, good or bad, but even good and bad are learning processes. But the changingness of Divinity is a change just within itself. It does not move; it is just there. But you are moving, and what purpose has your movement?

Where are you coming from, and where are you going to? Where are you moving to? Nowhere. In reality, your real Self, your real existence, is not moving. We are sitting here in this room, and when we come back this afternoon, this room will still be here, which you would assume it to be. But it is not. This room is not where it was two minutes ago. This entire planet is hurtling through space, at millions and millions of miles an hour. Two minutes ago, we were in a different spot to now, and even as I say these words, we have travelled another few million miles. We are travellers. We are travellers to where? To nowhere. We are travellers to find that stillness which also has that changing quality but within itself.

SWITCH ON THE LIGHT

The idea of life, the concept of this kind of relative existence, is to observe. You observe everything without being biased. Something is not so good; it is not so good, okay. Something is good; it is good, okay. What difference is it going to make as far as the whole world is concerned? But it is going to make a lot of difference to you that you are prepared to accept anything that life brings.

Life only brings to you what you are conditioned for. Everything that happens in anyone’s life is not produced by anything else but by themselves. They let themselves open to all kinds of things because of their mental patternings. If I were to see a beautiful, nude woman standing there, I would say, “Oh, God, look at Your glory. Look at the beauty You have created,” because a woman is God’s finest creation, that is for sure. I can tell you that. So those would be my thoughts, “Oh, thanks to the Lord. Look at this beauty You have created.” Some other person would look at the same naked woman, and his thoughts would be running so fast he would not even be able to catch himself. A totally different, lustful direction. Therefore, everything can be viewed in a different way, and if it is viewed by a good way, you are manipulating your subconscious mind and getting rid of, and pushing out, past impressions by better impressions.

When it is dark, you switch on the lights. That is what it means. You are pushing out the darkness from the memory box that influences your day-to-day life, and when this is pushed out, a greater clarity comes. The method of pushing this out is by developing greater awareness.

The man that saw the naked woman and had lustful thoughts, his awareness is just limited to his physical body and base instincts. The man who sees that naked woman full of God’s glory and God’s beauty and appreciation of his creation, he is drawing from a vaster awareness. Because his perception includes the higher levels of his mind, which are pure. Here, one man is just operating from his bodily and internal instincts, while the other man is viewing the same object from a higher level of pure mind. In other words, he has gone beyond the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and to the Superconscious level of the mind.

THE BRAIN IS AN ORGAN THROUGH WHICH THE MIND WORKS

People know so little about the mind. They are primarily assumptions. They do not even know much about the brain. This brain has twelve billion cells, and man is only using one-millionth part of twelve billion cells. So, are you awake, or are you asleep? Ask yourself that, and then you say, “I exist?” You even have no control over this two-and-a-half-pound little thing up here.

The purpose of the brain is not to make you think. The brain does not think. The brain is an organ through which the mind flows, and the mind, which is beyond the brain, is what thinks. The brain is like a radio. If you tune it well, then all kinds of broadcasts will come through. That is all that the brain is, an organ. When you, through spiritual practices, go beyond the conscious mind and through the various layers of the subconscious mind, you reach a level of that purity, that unchanging, changeless Divinity: The Superconscious level of the mind.

It is at such a high vibration because everything in this world is nothing but vibrations, and the theologists also say that. I must have told you this before, “First was the word, and the word was with God, and the word is God.” Is a word a sound? A vibration. You hear me speaking; you understand me. But what comes first, before your understanding of what I say or what I am saying? Vibrations. I am making contact. My vibrations are making contact with your vibrations, your receptive ears, which passes it on to the conscious mind, where you start thinking, and if your thought flows to another thought from my thought, if it conjures up in your mind some thought which you have read, perhaps, or find similar or seem to understand, perhaps, not in this life, in another lifetime, you are comparing there, you say, “Aha, what Guruji’s saying is right.”

So, your conscious mind is working with the subconscious mind. Fine. That is not the end; it goes further to that area, the analytical side, and then it still goes further from the analytical side. It goes to ahankara, or the I that is within you. And the I within you, which is also your form, or your own mental formation, decides and sends it back through the same line, and it comes to the conscious mind which registers, “Yes, what Guruji is saying is right.” That is the process of the mind?

FINDING EXISTENCE IS THE GREATEST EXPERIENCE YOU COULD EVER ACHIEVE

Repeat this again; through meditation, we are trying to use the brain and open up more and more of those cells, and as the brain cells open, through the vibration you set up by your spiritual practices, the more the mind is filtering through. And with more of the mind filtering through the brain cells, you develop greater and greater awareness. And until you develop the totality of awareness, you have no right to say, “I exist.”

We do acknowledge existence, but do not say I exist totally. I exist as I am in this relative world. Of course, to keep up that kind of existence, I find various kinds of sustenance’s to sustain this existence.

To find the totality of one’s Self is to find what existence is. It is not only a mental cognition, but it is an experience, the greatest experience anyone could ever achieve. People can do it in one lifetime, or it might take a few hundred lifetimes, but you will reach there. It depends on what effort you put in. In the beginning, it sounds like effort, but later the effort becomes effortless, for the finest action is produced in inaction. You do not act, and things happen just by using the mind.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1984 – 33

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