HOW TO LIVE IN THE CENTRE
UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
“I am the way. I am the life. I am the truth.”
Which “I” did Jesus speak about? Jesus never said that as Jesus the body, but he said that as Christ, for there is a difference between Jesus the embodied little being and Christ, the Universal Consciousness. To become one with the Father, one has to reach that level of consciousness, and that level assumes or becomes just as vast as God. Then truly can you say, “I and my Father are one.” For, there is no other way, there is no other way at all without achieving this consciousness. You could call it Christ Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness, it means the same; the emphasis is not on the name of the man. The emphasis is on consciousness, the totality of consciousness, pure consciousness, which embraces the entire universe.
Those sayings are very true, and that is the only way, and the only way can only be the truth, and is everything not alive? There is no such thing as death. Nothing can die. It is only because of your conception that you say when I leave this body, “I am dead.” Which part of you says you are dead? You will not even know it. Someone else will say, “Oh, Guruji died.” No, they will never say that.” The day when I go say, “He passed over. There is only life, and life is that love and love are that God.
LIVING IN THE CENTRE
You see how the way, the truth and life are but different aspects of the same thing. He who can live life lives God. But we do not live life; we only exist, like anything else, like even a piece of stone that exists. But we think we live because we walk around, talk, think, do this, and do that. Is that life? If it was real life, then how come all the contradictions in our lives? Because life itself has no contradiction.
How come all the conflicts come about if we live life. We have forgotten what life is. We only have the peripheral view of things and not of the centre. We live off-centred. If you have a cart, and the hub is not in the centre, the wheels will go – guff, guff, guff. They will not turn smoothly, would they? That is why our lives are not turning smoothly. Therefore, you go through this guff, guff, guff.
Our spiritual practices are aimed at bringing us to our centre; the centre is life. Like a wheel, the periphery, with its spokes and the rim, should be controlled by the centre so that the wheel can run smoothly. Most people live in the peripheral world that we are so conversant with; only the true spiritual seeker will try to find the centre.
You will find, and I made a very large study of this, that in the beginning, when ninety-eight percent of people join a spiritual organisation, they do not enter it because they want to find the centre or find Divinity; they join it because of all kinds of troubles they go through. That could be emotional problems, physical problems, domestic problems, job problems. That is why they start on the spiritual path, but they have started; that is important. By going nearer and nearer to the centre, these things would smooth themselves out.
GURUSHAKTI BRINGS TRANSFORMATION
I have been hearing of many of the experiences of our meditators in these past few days, and they just find this mercy, which we call Gurushakti, so miraculous that such transformations come.
What are you transforming? Not the centre, the centre is perfect. You are transforming the spokes and the periphery and fitting it into the centre. That is the transformation of man, for the inner Self, the centre requires no transformation. Transformation means change, while the centre in man is changeless. As soon as Divinity starts changing, it would lose its Divineness, and yet the periphery we see, the unbalanced wheel, is an expression.
EVEN THE PERIPHERY BECOMES PERFECT
Let us look at this from a different angle, that if everything emanates from the centre, why is the rim buckled and does not run smooth. Goodness can only come from goodness. Manifestation comes from the Manifestor, and every Manifestor is Divine, then its manifestation must be Divine. From a rose, you will have a rose fragrance. From a Jasmine, you will have a jasmine fragrance. True or not, but then why this? Is there any reality at all in this? There is no reality in the world you see around you. We live primarily in an illusory world like Shankara would say in his Vedantic philosophy, that you go through a street in semi-darkness perhaps and see a piece of rope lying there, and you mistake it to be a snake. But on close examination, you find that it is not a snake; it is a piece of rope.
When one approaches the centre of ourselves, what happens to the periphery that seems imperfect? That too becomes perfect. When you observe the perfection even in the manifestation, you would only say, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” for then you see everything to be Divine; even the buckled wheel is Divine. So why that, ”guff, guff, guff.”
Because we bumped the cart through our samskaras and past lives, that is why we are experiencing that, and it is only the ego-self that is experiencing that, not the authentic Self in you. When we have eyes to see and ears to hear then, we will be looking at everything from the hub, the centre, and every imperfection which the ego-self conceives of; by not looking at it from the mind and ego centre, you will find that that too will seem perfect.
Therefore, we say, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.” But which part of you is the beholder? Your centre or the periphery? As we go deeper and deeper in ourselves, we learn to accept; we surrender the periphery to the centre because we recognise in the beginning the value of the centre, the value of that immortality of the centre. We realise this eternal quality or eternalness, and then the periphery is of no consequence at all.
Yet it is necessary to carry on this little body, for you have always been and you always will be. By viewing everything from the centre of our soul, the past, the present and the future becomes one, for the eternity of existence is but a split second. Yet this split-second, we divide up into many parts and start experiencing the parts and not its wholeness. It is only by diving deeper into the centre that we can experience everything in its wholeness.
VIEWING THINGS WITH A TOTALLY DIFFERENT ATTITUDE
There is a very favourite analogy of mine; it is dark down here because the sky is overcast with clouds. Where did the clouds come from? From that sun that drew water up in the form of water vapour, and because the clouds became dense, things look dark down here. The sun is unaffected, but we are observing the darkness. If only we realise that all this must pass away too, the clouds must disperse, and the sun is there again, giving such beautiful sunlight. So, who is the creator or the Manifestor of the darkness? That light, the sun.
Do you see how we can view things with totally different attitudes and a totally different way of thinking? That is why I go round the world talking, talking, talking, to give people an understanding so they could better appreciate life and regard life to be life and start living instead of being the so-called living dead. When you live, then you are awakened. That is why Buddha was called “The Enlightened One” or “The Awakened One.” There is no difference between you and me and Buddha and Christ and Krishna, no difference at all. One is awakened, and one is sleeping.
When you are asleep, you are unconscious. When you are awakened, you see and observe everything around you. The Queen’s Parade could pass by when you are sleeping, and you will miss it all because you are asleep. But if you are awake, you will enjoy the beautiful pageantry of life. Do you see how simple it is?
These very things I am telling you in the simplest way possible. I could tell it to you very, very technically. If I were to speak to a group of University Philosophy Professors, I would say the same things but differently. Yet that would be a lot of play with words, and some people get so mixed up in their words that by the time they have finished saying something, they do not know what they have said. So, be simple. Be accepting. Be surrendered to whatever there is, for it is only by surrendering to that “Isness” within us that we come to learn and know the true “Isness”.
EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY BEAUTIFUL
Therefore, in one of our prayers, we say, “you have to die to be born again”. You have to die to find everlasting life, and that does not mean discarding this physical body. You are discarding turmoil and turbulence; that is all, and everything is calm and beautiful. In this acceptance, we would appreciate the rose more despite the thorns because without thorns, would the rose be there?
Many times people come to me for consultations on their various kinds of problems. The best thing you could say after the long explanation, what the guru would tell his chela, discard not the thorns, because if you discard the thorns, you will discard the rose but accept the thorns and the rose together, in its wholeness, in its fullness. Everything in life is so, so beautiful, totally beautiful; there is no ugliness at all.
If Divinity is omnipresent and we know that there is no difference between Divinity and beauty. Anandam Aaram Sukham, that Ananda, the joy inside is the greatest joy to which one could ever aspire. Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. Satyam, truth. Shivam, God. Sundaram, beauty, is but one. When you look at everything through eyes that show you beauty, you realise this: you will see not through the patterned eyes but the eyes of Divinity – and that is truth. I am the way, the light and the truth.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1983 – 17