UNFOLDING AWARENESS

 

We all know that those who want to hear shall hear.

It all depends upon one’s awareness, how much one is aware of things. If we, through meditational and spiritual practices, unfold our awareness, we would be able to view anything in its larger perspective.

At present, we might find many things to be so wrong, but are they wrong or are those things really required to teach man some lesson for his evolution – for his progress or the development of awareness?

Many people might view the same object, and yet they would find different meanings in it, and that applies to all scriptures as well. There are so many eternal truths, and truth will forever remain eternal.

But people interpret them differently, and that has been the cause of having so many denominations in one faith. It is because people interpret things differently.

INTERPRETATION IS OF THE MIND

Interpretation is solely of the mind, of the analytical ability one has, but how complete or how pure is your power of analysis because most things of life is not a matter of 2 and 2 makes 4 or 4 and 4 makes 8. There are deeper and subtler levels where no amount of mathematics could ever answer a question or probe into a problem. Yet it is the very mind, the analytical power, the intellectualisation of things that creates problems where no problems exist.

In interpretation the quality that would be added to it would be discrimination. How do you discriminate between things that you wish to interpret? How can one discriminate in the things the mind is already interpreting because interpretation depends a lot upon discrimination? You discriminate this to be this and that to be that, but how valid is that discrimination?

With a limited mind naturally, discrimination or interpretation would have its limitation. In other words, we view something in its limited aspect depending on how much we are aware. If you stand outside this building, you would only see the frontage, but if you have the ability to stand high up on some tall tree, you will see the entire building.

That is how differences begin in this world where there are no differences at all. It is the old story of four blind men going through a forest where they came upon an elephant. One touched the tail; one touched the trunk, one touched the ears, another touched its legs. The one at the tail said, “God or truth is like a rope.” The other at the legs of the elephant said, “Oh, truth is like a tree stump.” And like that each and everyone had a different viewpoint of truth, and they were quarrelling, and that is what is happening in religions today, that I am right, and you are wrong. Then a man with eyes came along and explained to them that, “You are all right and yet wrong, for you are only having a limited view of that which is.”

AWARENESS

The awareness of these blind people was limited to the things that they were touching. Awareness is something different – is that quality which everyone has within himself. It might be dormant, but it is potential, and it is developed to a lesser or a greater degree. Awareness has nothing at all to do with mental analysis as it is only when we go beyond thinking that we become aware of the truth.

When we look at this beautiful flower and try to analyse it, we would see a beautiful yellow centre, beautiful white petals, and the green stalk. That comes within the range of our five senses: seeing, touching, feeling, smelling, hearing. But being aware of the flower is a different thing altogether where you would see the entirety of the flower and yet not exclude your five senses. You would be aware of the energy of this very same flower. You would be aware of its molecular structure; you would be aware of the life which is pulsating in this flower.

Your awareness being able to feel its very pulse identifies its pulse with your pulse, so you find oneness with the flower as with everything else, with this glass, this table, these chairs. You would find that oneness for awareness is not of intellection or analysis, awareness stems from the deeper THAT which is within, the “Kingdom of Heaven” that is within.

Through meditation and spiritual practices, you touch that area which is your inherent right. You are made of that sap of Divinity that is within you, just as this flower is made of the sap, the invisible, colourless sap, and yet assuming different forms and different aspects in its petals and its stem and its roots.

Everything in this world has its place. The mind has its place, and within the mind that quality which we call the intellect also has its place. But the misplacement is that we assume whatever the mind can analyse and what the senses can perceive or conceive to be the totality of things.

Awareness brings the essence so close to you that you are identified with the essence that is in a flower, in a thief, a murderer, or a prostitute. Then you will not judge. Discrimination is gone. Intellectualisation is gone, but a deep feeling would remain; not a feeling of the emotions, for emotion is also a part of the mind, but from the core, the central point of your personality which is connected with the entirety of this universe, and you are aware of the universe because you are aware of that which is within you – for the entire universe is existent in you and you in it.

Awareness does not expand; it only unfolds for all is there within you. Man is divine, and when that awareness unfolds, your perspective changes and then the murderer and the rapist are no more that to you for those are surface values. Those are the waves upon this vast ocean of Divinity, and then you perceive it in totality. You do not miss the ocean for the waves and discriminate this is a big wave, and that is a small wave, for they are just waves playing, frolicking, enjoying on this vast ocean.

JUDGE YE NOT THAT YE BE JUDGED

How beautiful; that is awareness. Through spiritual practices and meditation, one becomes aware of the essence of things. Then you do not say this man is good or this man is bad, this man is a murderer, or this man is a thief, or this woman is a streetwalker. You say, “He or she is also the child of Divinity as I am.” And when I say he or she is as I am, very spontaneously we would stop judging. “Judge ye not that ye be judged.” Very spontaneously, it is no effort of the mind. It is not a thinking process that we go through but a spontaneous act, and when judgment is not there, nothing is a vacuum. What comes in its place? Love. Love comes in its place for there is no vacuum in this universe. Every bit of it in the measurement of space and time according to your minds is filled, forever full. But to find fulfilment in this fullness, which is ever filled, that is the secret of life.

Only by bypassing the mind through meditation, experiencing that Divinity in the form of Grace or Love, can we truly practice the injunction, “love thy neighbour as thyself.” If you try to do it with your mind, you are a hypocrite. It is not true. Because the neighbour has been kind to me because he did not throw the garbage over my fence, he is a good man; I love him. Tomorrow he might just whisper some word which you might not like; then the neighbour is no good. The love is gone. That love is just pure mental analysis of things which are pleasing to you. Why must things be pleasing to me only? It must be pleasing to all. But then again, why pleasing or why pleasantness, for that is only the other side of the coin. Pleasantness is always accompanied by unpleasantness. Happiness is the other side of misery. So, we have to go beyond happiness’s and unhappiness’s, for both, are transient. One is the blood brother of the other. Going beyond that, we enter the area of joy which has no opposite, and that is the essence of everything existent. That is the essence, and that essence is love, that essence is truth, that essence is God.

WHO AM I

When the awareness unfolds, we become aware of everything and find within itself the true essence of what all this is about. Then the question that everyone has in their mind, spoken or unspoken, “Who am I?” will be answered.

Who am I? The answer can only be one: that I and my Father are one. That am I – Tat Twam Asi, Thou art That – Brahmasmi, I am That. – We all are That, without quality, without quantity, without attribute: a neutral energising divine force.

When things go wrong, we blame our wives; we blame our bosses, we blame our children. We blame this one, we blame that one, and when we are tired of blaming everyone, we blame God. This cunning little animal called the mind does that.

As we grow in this awareness, in this beautiful unfoldment, everything assumes a different aspect. Everything assumes a different glory. Then we would truly know the glory of God. When you say these words, your blood must pulsate, your heart must quiver in the beauty of that glory, for you do not perceive glory. That is a matter of the mind. But you are experiencing this glory, this glory divine, inexpressible, inexplicable, inexpressible, ineffable. But experiential.

TRUTH NEVER CHANGES

Truth forever will remain the same. Truth never changes. For if truth changes, then it is not truth. It has to be eternal. But we change. The mind changes in its unfoldment of awareness. This world has not changed at all. The same things that happened in the time of Krishna five thousand years ago, the same things that happened in the time of Jesus two thousand years ago, are the same things that are happening today. People are non-different than they were non-different. Technological progress does not mean expanding awareness or becoming closer to Divinity. Technological progress has done a lot of harm to the world. It has its other side as well because with every harm there is also something beneficial. It is an ongoing process, an unending process.

… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1981 – 16

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