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This is just to indicate the principle behind the recognition of a
relationship between the individual and the cosmic even in the subtle body, and
not merely the physical body. The eyes have gone to the Sun, the ears have gone
to some other divinity; the smell and the taste and the other senses, even the
powers of grasping and locomotion, all go to the presiding principles which are
internal to the physical universe. Even as there are layers of the individual
personality, internal to the physical system of ours, there are planes of the
cosmos. The planes are the levels of existence; we call them lokas, the
different densities of the manifestation of the cosmos, internal to the physical,
and functioning as the vital, the mental and the intellectual realms. These
cosmic vital, mental and intellectual planes are internal to and transcending
the physical cosmos which we see with the physical eyes.
So, the whole physical universe is the owner of our physical body, and the
whole astral or the causal or the subtle universe is the owner of our subtle
body. We have technical terms for these cosmic principles, as we find them in
the Vedanta philosophy. The whole physical cosmos animated by a co-ordinated
function is called 'Virat'. The internal subtle universal co-ordinating
principle is called 'Hiranyagarbha'. The individual layers of
personality are inseparable, not merely in spirit but even literally, from the
existing system of the universe. The physical body having gone to the five
elements, the senses going to their divinities, the mind to the moon and the
intellect to Brahma, and so on, we will find that there is practically nothing
remaining in us, to call our own. We have not only become beggars with nothing
belonging to us, but it appears as if our very existence is getting threatened.
We cannot exist, even. This seems to be the point towards which we are slowly
heading, a most uncomfortable thing for every one of us. We are not going to
get even the least recognition of even being an existent entity, let alone as a
person with property and individual status. What can be worse for the ego than
this?
When all the property has gone, a person would at least want to live, but
even that we are not going to be conceded. We cannot even live. What does one
say to this? The universe wants to swallow us completely even to the utmost
extent, and meditation is nothing but a conscious awakening of ourselves to
this great truth of our reality belonging to a different order of things and
not suddenly getting perplexed or surprised at the revelation of this fact
thrust into us by force, by the process of universal history. All the processes
of events we call history, even the processes of birth and death, are only the
forceful introductions into ourselves of the law that operates in the universe.
If we would not abide by the law - we are not prepared to abide by the law
voluntarily and honourably - we are perforce brought into its acceptance by the
sufferings through which we pass in life, the sorrows we call our fate, and the
penalty of reincarnation.
It is nothing but the urge of the individual to unite itself with the
universe that manifests itself as all these events, visible or otherwise. Now
we revert to the point with which we started in the beginning. This system of
meditation has a cosmological suggestiveness, whereby we may be seated in a
calm and sober posture and rouse ourselves to this consciousness of our
belonging to all things. We belong to everybody. Literally, we are a property
of all things. We are not supposed to have any personal property, because we
are a property of all. Nothing belongs to us, but we belong to everybody.
What a change of affairs! Earlier I thought I am the owner; now I realise
I am owned by somebody else, and by everyone everywhere. This is the death-blow
dealt by knowledge to the ego's complacence. The ego cannot tolerate these
things any more. It resents vehemently even a talk about these possibilities.
It will hush you up and say "talk not", and then the vehemence of the
affirmation of the personality will get stirred up so intensely that, if we are
not careful enough to go stage by stage without being in a hurry, there is
likely to be a revolt from the ego, a revolt from everything that we are,
because we have been accustomed to think in terms of personality and
self-affirmation, and today there is none to do it reverence. Our parents teach
us false values: "This is your friend, this is your enemy." We are told this
from the very childhood. "This is your land, this is not yours, this is your
uncle's property, that is your enemy's business." We are told this, and it is
told so many times that we get totally brainwashed early. We are taught these
very same things in our schools and colleges, so that we become embodiments of
stupidity and we know nothing of the true nature of things.
We can imagine what an effort is necessary to counteract this erroneous
notion that has become an incrustation on our personalities, a part of our
false being. What effort is necessary! Do you think a few minutes of sitting
with closed eyes will be of any avail? We have taken many births. In all the
births that we have undergone, down to this incarnation, we have been thinking
wrongly, and a mountain of errors has grown over our personalities; and now,
today, since a few years, or months, or a few days, we have been trying to
rectify these errors. If we do not recognise any tangible progress in our
practice, we should not be disappointed. We should be able to understand our
position. After all, since how long have we been trying to think rightly? For
ages and ages we have been thinking wrongly and now since five years or so we
have been trying to think at least rightly. Well, it is a good attempt, and
praiseworthy, and we must be happy about it that we are blessed with a proper
thought. But we should not be in a mood of melancholy, or disappointedness that
no success has come. How can there be visible success when the effort has
started only a few years back and there is a huge ocean-like atmosphere which
has to be encountered in our meditation? We have to be, however, confident that
we are on the right path. Part of the success is in the confidence that we have
in our minds. "Yes, now I have understood what the matter is."
This satisfaction of certainty and confidence in our minds is a large
percentage of our success, and we will gradually realise that things are not so
bad as they appear on the surface. If our heart is really given to this
practice with a sincerity that arises on account of a hundred-percent
conviction of our going to achieve success, this truth will triumph, and under
the law we are bound to succeed. It may be that we may take years to realise
tangible results, or it can be that we may achieve results more quickly by the
ardour and intensity of the practice. What is conducive to the success is not
merely a study of books or listening to discourses but the welling up of
feelings, the stirring of the spirit and the ardent longing that we evince in
ourselves for the realisation of this truth, which alone is, and nothing else
can be.
This ardour of consciousness is the principal prerequisite for success in yoga,
and, in fact, no other qualification is necessary. There is no need for a great
academic qualification or a learning in the manner of a library. Nothing of the
kind is the essential in yoga. It is a concentratedness of the whole spirit due
to the realisation of this great fact and awakening that matters finally, and in
reality.
We have already observed that there must be regularity in practice. There
should not be a slip-shod approach to the things of the spirit. Habit
strengthens the practice. Anything that is continued daily becomes strong, by
the very continuance of it in a systematic manner. What do we think every day?
Among the many methods of meditation that may be there, we are to choose only a
few, because there is no use burdening our heads with hundreds of techniques. A
few essentials will do, from which each individual can select what is suitable
to one's own predilection and make-up of the psychic personality.
This, then, is the peculiar technique adopted in Indian systems, by which
the various components of the individual personality are recognised to be part
and parcel of the different orders of things altogether. To recapitulate, the
earth-element in the body goes to the earth; the water-element goes to water,
the fire element goes to fire, the air-element goes to air, and what remains is
space, which is everywhere. We have heard chemists and physicists telling us
that if one is pumped out of all the space that is within, one's whole material
body would be compressed into a cubic centimetre of substance. You are not six
feet tall, as you are imagining. There is the space inside, and so you look
bulky. If you remove all the space and compress yourself, you will be so
little, less than the pigmy of Lilliput. We are not really so important as we
appear to be. There is nothing in us, ultimately. We are unnecessarily
imagining ourselves and pompously parading our false show in this world of
vanity. We would, on analysis, turn out to be empty shells, vainglorious
individuals, patting ourselves on the back for nothing, while there is the
danger of our being threatened out of our wits by the law that operates.
It is up to us to realise the presence of this universal law, transfer
this body to the five elements, and transfer the senses, mind and intellect to
the deities. Let the sun take the eyes, the ears go to their divinities, the
mind end in the moon, the intellect go to Brahma, the ego merge in Rudra, and
the conscience go to Narayana. All things that we are have gone to their
causes. 'Pure Being' remains, and there is only an awareness of Being, not the
awareness of being so-and-so or such-and-such, but an impersonal characterless
continuity of Being as such. This is the point we noted earlier also, the fact
of Existence-consciousness-bliss, sat-chit-ananda, which is our
essential nature. We are God-Being in essence.
We are not the body, not the senses, not the mind, not the intellect, not
anything of the kind. These are all expressions of the higher order of the
universe. What remains in us is not a property or a substance or an object but
that basic residuum of truth, which is commensurate with the truth of
All-Being. When we go deep down into the base of any wave in the ocean, we will
find that we are touching something which is everywhere, that which is at the
root of all the waves. When we go down into the barest minimum of our
personalities, at the root, we touch that which is within everything also, at
the same time, and we, then, need not have any difficulty in universal
communication. When this end is achieved, one is supposed to become
cosmic-conscious, like the wave becoming ocean-conscious because of the entry
of itself into the very substance of it.
At present, we are individually conscious, 'I'-conscious, 'You'-conscious,
'This'-conscious, 'That'-conscious. It is like a this-wave-consciousness, to
the exclusion of that wave, but when the wave subsides into the very base of
them all, it touches that root, which is the root of all other waves, all
individualities. Try to meditate like this. Let the whole wave of your
individuality subside into the ocean of Pure Being, and then you become, not
merely your being or somebody's being, but All-Being, and this is what is
called God-Consciousness. This is what they call samadhi, in technical yoga
terms. This is moksha or liberation. There is no rebirth afterwards,
because the causative factor of rebirth, which is the clinging to personality,
has gone altogether; it has been dissolved in meditation.
Why should you be reborn into phenomena? Who will force you when you have
become the very cause of the entire manifestation of things? This is freedom in
the real sense of the term. Until this is achieved, you cannot be regarded as a
free person. You are always under the thumb of the universal law that compels
you to abide by its requirements. Our so-called political independence or
social freedom is no true freedom. We cannot be regarded as really free until
we are absolutely independent. And that independence is called kaivalya, Aloneness, with no counterpart of other's aloneness, in which every other
aloneness gets subsumed and included. This is the Supreme Goal to which
meditation directs us.
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