Our divine nature and self-realisation

Part One

A human being is fundamentally and essentially divine in nature, or so the ancients taught. For them, neither the body nor the senses were real—they were only instruments of varied expressions and actions associated with their temporal world [aspect] of the soul, the Divine Self. It was, as they believed, on realizing the soul that man becomes aware that he is essentially a fragmented part of the Supreme, or the Universal Tao. The individual consciousness though infinite and one, was, for the ancients, manifested infinitude of body and mind. The goal of life was attaining oneness with the infinite, or the Supreme and Universal Tao.

The question was not whether or not a soul existed, but on how man could best go about uniting the individual soul with the Supreme, and what was the best method for realizing this goal. All agreed that nothing could be attained, not even begun, without living a virtuous and humble life. That was a given. So in addition to living an ethically pure and righteous existence, the ancients also discovered that man had to get over his body-mind consciousness, since this was the biggest impediment to seeing the Divine within. As far as they were concerned, this body-mind consciousness made man's journey into the metaphysical world of ultimate reality next to impossible. Until man could go beyond this body-mind consciousness, they maintained, man would continue searching for meaning and fulfillment of life in the fickle and temporal realm of materialism and sensory experience. For them, the ideal state was that state which was beyond sense-level perception, where all duality and illusion disappeared. Where the pairs of opposites would not only lose their significance, but where they would no longer trouble us anymore either. 

For the ancients, the attainment of the highest goal of human life was possible only on being blessed with an awareness and knowledge of the soul. To them, human beings alone were privileged to be endowed with the capacity to be able to perceive this knowledge and awareness. Realization, however, was not something to be acquired; it came as a revelation of the Supreme secret of the Divine. It was essentially the manifestation of the inherent divinity of man. This supreme knowledge, so to speak, consisted of instant experience of divine light, cosmic vision and nectar—which were all present a plenty in the human body. That was the laboratory of human experience, where man could literally find himself. That was where man could 'see the light.'

As described in many of the ancient texts, The Supreme was divine light. As there was fire hidden in wood, or the ocean in a drop of water, in the same way there was an energizing force or spirit within us all, which could be seen and known by all when blessed with this sacred and Divine Eye to see. For them, this light or energy transcended language; it was not important to discuss this sacred aspect of man, but to bring it forth by listening to the inner music within, and manifesting it by one's deeds without. That was the harmony they spoke of—when man's inner and outer worlds were in perfect balance. When man's self mirrored the SELF.

The caterpillar gets entangled in its own self-woven cocoon. So man gets caught in his own web of self-woven desires. Just as the caterpillar develops into a butterfly bursting the cocoon to enjoy freedom, so too man must make a supreme effort if he hopes to free himself from his incarceration and self-imposed exile. But in order to do that, in order to find real freedom, man must first admit and understand that he is indeed in prison, which, as the ancients admonished, he could only do by embarking on a spiritual path. Once equipped with this spirituality, he will begin to live a life oblivious of body and mind consciousness and the associated delusions and destructive habits—and the motivating forces behind his imprisonment. His individual consciousness with name and form will merge into the ocean of universal consciousness. Not only will he see the light, he will become one with it. The prison gates will open, and he will become self-realized.

As far as the ancients were concerned, true realization takes place on knowing and seeing the Supreme in His/Its transcendental form. For them, it was a metaphysical experience in the body, not an intellectual exercise in the brain. The manifestation of the inherent divinity was in reality the revelation of the divine self of man. This was not different from, as they perceived it, the Universal Tao that permeates even the tiniest particle in the universe. It is accessible to all human beings. It was upon this trans-sensuous experience that man became truly spiritual.

Mere reading and recitation of religious texts and scriptures did not, they maintained, make one learned, nor did it help one in attaining salvation. As the ancients used to say," Without taking the medicine, by just repeating the name of the medicine, no malady can be cured. Likewise, without practical experience and perception, merely repeating the words, no one can attain salvation." For the ancients, the Supreme could not be attained just by reading the scriptures or texts, or by listening to religious discourses. They argued that the Supreme could neither be attained by the mind nor logic. It was accessible only to those who had a strong craving to know, and courage enough to live outside of convention. For them, it was only through mystery that one could know the truth, and it was only by living a mysterious life that one could unravel the great secret and essence of the Supreme.

Truth had to be known personally, salvation was not possible without diving head long into the abyss. The ancients spoke of the inner world which could not be perceived by mind, intellect, and sense organs. Instead, they exhorted the people to cast away knowledge for the real truth to be discovered from within. They emphasized that one should not limit oneself to reading only but should also strive to know and attain the divine. Reading the holy scriptures, recitation of mantras and hymns and singing of devotional songs alone could not make us religious or spiritual. On the contrary, more often than not, it made man far more arrogant, less tolerant and more disdainful of others. The immanence and transcendence of the Divine in human embodiment could not be understood by mere intellect and logic. This, they argued, was comprehensible only to those who had journeyed into darkness and had seen His/Its cosmic vision......

Part Two

The vision within is the revelation of the divine in man, or so the ancients claimed. All one had to do was look within and he would undergo a super-sensuous experience, which was instant and spontaneous in every aspirant at the time he/she chose to suspend the rational mind and plunged head long into the inner world of abstraction and feeling. Who among us today is willing to suspend the rational world so as to plunge into the world of mystery? Who even believes in mystery anymore? Who among us has an urge to navigate in such uncertain and treacherous waters? Most of us are too busy 'doing things' to concern ourselves with the quietude of the inner world and non-activity. Most of us take the self to be the Self, and spend the large majority of our time busying ourselves chasing after money, power, fame, and various sensual delights. Few people today have either time or inclination to concern themselves with such fancy or abstract ideas as one's inner divinity, let along with Self-realization, whatever that means. In this day and age of practicality, utilitarianism taken to its extreme, most people would ask what could be gained from it. Besides, we are just too busy spending our conscious lives in self—forgetting to care much about realizing a greater self within.

In the past, people were not so easily dissuaded by or terribly interested in arguments of pragmatism. People understood that they were not living up to their real potential and were willing to undergo tremendous hardships to make an effort at improving themselves, or, at the very least, minimizing their defects. They really cared about how they acted and a lot of conscious effort went into performing good deeds, since for them, spirituality was not only a necessary imperative for salvation, it was also a practical means to living a good and rewarding life. For as they perceived it, in realizing one's Self, which they did by overcoming the self, one was realizing life itself, since what was contained within the micro world was also contained in the macro one.

For the ancient ones, balance was the key to living a healthy and spiritually rewarding life. And the only way of finding a balanced life was by remaining calm. They believed that it was impossible to remain calm, however, unless one was able to balance the inner and outer forces. Since life, as they saw it, was typified by change and, as such, fraught with uncertainty, their only hope for salvation was not in believing they could change this reality of impermanence, but in adapting to it ,and this they did by remaining calm. Spirituality was the way and means to help them to maintain this calm, since it instilled in them a sense of peace and quiet within, and understanding that, despite all the whirling about and impermanence on the outside, the inside was stable, predictable and forever permanent. 

For the ancients, however, discovering the inner self was no easy feat, since it meant shattering or tearing asunder our illusion of security and everything upon which we had constructed our [false] sense of being and existence. For them, living a spiritual life meant de-constructing ourselves, and breaking free from an entire lifetime of societal and cultural conditioning. If we were to find out who we really were, we would have to find out who we weren't first. Knowing the inner self for the ancients meant: "I am not the body, not the imagination, not memories and not thoughts. I am the inner self, the being and soul which is separate from imagination, memories and thoughts." 

According to the ancients, the inner self could never be identified with imagination, memories and thoughts. But that is everything about our world that is emphasized, everything about our world that is understood—our imagination, thoughts and memories. It is what we hold so dear and near to our hearts, and what we define as so real. It is the breath of our existence, our personality, and all that we understand, highlight and praise in life. It is the 'object' upon which we heap so much adulation and spend so much time sacrificing everything and everybody for. How could they say it is not real?

The ancients would say that we are chasing illusions, things that are substantially unreal and intrinsically destructive. They would say if you want to chase something so badly, why not chase something that is real? Why are you chasing after fool's gold, when you can have the real thing in the palm of your hand? Or more precisely, a finger breadths below your navel. For them, the only thing real was our divinity within and it was also, as far as they were concerned, the only thing worthy of chasing too.

Nowadays, if anybody thinks or cares about man's nature at all, it would be defined by scientists in bio-chemical terms, devoid of anything save its DNA structure. Not even a mind would exist in purely scientific terms, since it cannot be located, observed and measured under a microscope. The ancients considered spirituality to be the science of life. While we confine our reality today to the study of objects and particles in the physical domain, the ancients considered spirituality as the only basis for and way to truth. After all, they would argue, can anything be known outside the self, without the self observing it? Though they did not deny the existence of the physical world, they refused to accept that it was an ultimate reality; in the same way we would not consider a cord to be the ultimate reality of an electric current. As they saw it, physical reality was simply a denser form and manifestation of a deeper and more profound reality. For them, ultimate reality could only be observed from within, from our inner world and was, therefore, beyond the comprehension [and study] of sense organs, gross body, subtle mind and intellect.

The ground on which a physical science claims superiority over other streams of secular knowledge is that its theories are based on and verifiable through laboratory tests. But for the ancients, this would have been mistaken and deluded thinking. According to them, if one wanted to be scientific about anything, one would have to be 'scientific' about the self, and its true motivation and origin. Looking at material phenomena could never answer why we were here, nor could it help us where we came from either. And as far as they were concerned, these were the only questions worth asking, as the way we answered them would influence everything we did in life. They never would have seen discovering truth by using a process of separation and analysis of its individual parts as a valid method. One had to look at life in its entirety if one ever hoped to understand truth; one could not look at things in isolation, one had to see things holistically—from the outside as well as from the inside, from above and below, not separately, but in relation to their connections and interdependence.

And, they would have added, the good news is that we don't have to go far to do that, either. We don't have to be physicists or theologians to discover truth. We don't have to spend years in the university or a lifetime reading books, either. On the contrary, the less we knew the better. It was for better, they would have argued, to be empty than full of ideas and theories. After all, how can anything enter us if we are already so full? For them, all we had to do was to look within, and all of the great wonders and mysteries of life would be revealed. Not the material phenomena that we experience through our senses, but the cosmic vision we experience from within and which reveals to us the inherent divinity of man. Until we had personally experienced this world, we would not be able to understand the cosmic process and destiny. But in order to do that, they maintained, we would have to find the courage of a warrior and the strength of a lion. Otherwise, we would never be able to burst out of our self-imposed exile and the world of delusion. Then and only then, after we had found our true freedom, unencumbered by the world of artificial values and outside conditioning, would we be able to go beyond the self—and find the real Self. That would be our true Self-realization, when we found the divine within. That would be when we truly understood life, when we became one with it.

Part Three

The ancients believed that world peace could come about only if each individual was at peace with himself. As they saw it, we are a microcosm with the macrocosm. What happens on the inside is bound to reflect on what happens on the outside, and vice versa. Few people truly understand how our evil and unhealthy deeds are but manifestations of the inner sphere of the individual. A disturbed, troubled and violent inner core will generate only destructive, aggressive and hostile thoughts. Such negative thoughts are then translated into bad habits and unhealthy deeds, the undoing of any so-called civilized society. 

The tragedy is that most of us are oblivious of our true nature. This ignorance of our true divine self, the ancients would have argued, has led to our separation from the Supreme who is absolute truth, knowledge and bliss. This ignorance of and lack of connectivity to the divine creates in us feelings of despair, depression, feelings of abandonment, worthlessness, frustration and meaninglessness, just to name a few, which in turn only creates greater negativity and further unhealthy behavior. The divine within us is, as the ancients would have said, for all intents and purposes lost, since we have forgotten or no longer see that the soul is our real self. We have become purely material beings, with only residual trappings of the immaterial, which given enough time, can be controlled and suppressed by modern drugs, medicine, or all the modern hi-tech distractions.

The present atmosphere of worldwide distrust and disharmony defies any hope of revival. The goal of global peace continues to be a mirage not because of lack of effort, but due to a wrong approach by those in positions of influence. Perfect world order is not going to come about by UN edict or by US soldiers policing the world. Perfect world order can be ensured by establishing a harmonious relationship with divinity. In all of us divinity is inherent, that is what the ancients always taught. The crucial thing is manifestation of divinity in man so that he can become truly, and just formally, religious. Then, divine attributes will naturally and automatically flow out of an individual, without any need for outside interference. "It is the revelation of the Supreme secret or mystery that will enable one to understand the meaning and essence of 'oneness' of humans."

Pursuit of a perfect order has to begin with an individual. It is not the global but individualistic approach that is needed to attain the goal of world peace and salvation. Here the subject matter to study is not the physical [or atomic] body of an individual, but his mind, which is the breeding ground—or petry dish—for good or evil thoughts. "What and who we are today is because of what we said, thought, felt and did in the past. Who and what we will be tomorrow will be because of all that we think, say, feel and do today."  Many of us talk about value-orientation to education to develop a positive mindset. But according to the ancients, this would have its deepest impact only after divinity in man has been manifested. For them, it would have had a two-fold impact. One is that people would realize that the same divine force operates through all of us, and second, people would realize that our real Self is above the body-mind consciousness. It is only then, the ancients would have opined, that the value-oriented education would prove beneficial to man, when it is naturally pure, selfless, and spiritual.

A negatively charged mindset has a propensity for carrying out evil deeds—even when claimed to be done in the name of justice, peace, or god—and can stoop to all manner of manipulation and rationalization to justify it. A flustered and agitated mind, or an insecure or fearful one, is inimical to the interests of the family, society and the world at large. It can only sow seeds of discontent, hatred, and animosity. It cannot and does not see or feel the divine in others, and therefore cannot act with loving and selfless motivations. 

 A positively charged mindset is thus a prerequisite for individual peace and global peace. If we want world peace, we should first learn to be peaceful ourselves. A positive mindset equips individuals with endowments of purity, self-control, equanimity, uprightness, non-violence, truth, calmness, love, compassion, and eschews geed, anger, hatred and violence of any kind. Such divine characteristics and propensities are conducive to God-realization and the individual who understands and lives this way remains ever mindful of his divine nature and connection. Upon realizing one's divine self, love and happiness will no longer remain confined to the words written in holy books, but will flow out from the individual just as naturally as sap from tree.

 The time has come, the ancients would have said, to spread the message of knowledge of self. It is the only way out of the present imbroglio. There must be a spiritual revolution that is what they would have called for. That is the need of the hour. It is only through the realization of ourselves today that we can save the world tomorrow. Our destiny, and the destiny of the planet, depends on it.