In Search for Ultimate Reality by the ancient seers

The purpose of this writing is to emphasize the relationship between man and his Creator. To indicate that nature with its infinite variety of inexorable laws, is veiled by maya, the magical measurer that makes the One appear as the many, in its embrace of individuality, form and intelligence.

As in nature, so also in man God has separated His consciousness as individualized soul from His own Being, but endowed with ego which leads man to believe that he is separate from Him.

To escape the illusion of separateness, one needs to renounce the ego. This can be achieved through abandoning all selfish desires springing from its interaction with the environment and through union with the Infinite in the practice of yoga meditation. In this practice, one detaches himself from the forces of nature that otherwise perpetuate the delusive dichotomy between Self or soul and Spirit.

It should be emphasised that God realization is difficult to attain by merely reading a book, but rather by primarily dwelling every day in the understanding that this world is play of ever changing, intelligent forces emanating from God, of which man is a part and in which he plays his role as a spiritual being.

For us to obtain a better understand of the creative processes of the world in which we live, we may want to take a look at how the seers and sages saw it.

The ancient seers and sages in their quest for understanding the world around them were turning inward to analyze the data that perception presented to their mind. Penetrating below the senses, they found, not a world of solid, separate objects but one of ceaseless process of change in matter coming together, dissolving and coming together again in a different form. Yet below this flux they found something changeless: an infinite indivisible reality. They called it Brahman (God), the divine ground of existence.

This analysis of existence corresponds much with contemporary physics. A physicist would remind us that the things we see are ultimately not separate from each other and from us. We perceive them as separate because of the limitations of our senses. If our eyes were sensitive to a much finer spectrum, we might see the world as a continuous field of matter and energy. Nothing would resemble a solid object.

In examining themselves, the sages made a similar discovery. Instead of identifying a single personality, they discovered various components, such as senses, emotions, will, intellect, ego all being in a constant flux at different times  and when in company of different people. The same person seems to display different personality trades under different conditions. They recognized the mood shifts, as well as changes in desires and opinions over time.

Western philosophers like David Hume reasoned their way to a similar conclusion, but with them it was an intellectual exercise.

To the sages what they perceived were not logical conclusions, but personal discovery. They were actually exploring the mind, testing each level of awareness by withdrawing consciousness from the mind through the process of meditation. They found that when consciousness through profound concentration and meditation is withdrawn from the body, mind and senses, the idea of ego or separate existence disappears into a state which is beyond time and space in which all is one. They called this the Self.

To summarize, this paper presents an explanation of how sages came to realize Brahman or God and the Self, or soul in man; God immanent and God transcendent. We have seen how in meditation sages discovered unity: the same indivisible reality without as within, oneness.

Every interested person through deep meditation can for himself realize the same truth. The Self, is the same in everyone and can be realized by everyone. It is the essence imminent in all creation and it is eternal.

“The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided, and all together not more than one alone. In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life”.

                                                          Flemish mystic Jan Van Ruysbroek.

In deep meditation, Samadhi every trace of separateness disappears. Life is seen as a seamless whole. But the body cannot remain in this state for long and after a while awareness of body and mind returns and the conventional world of multiplicity rushes in again. The memory of unity once again seems like a distant dream. Yet after many super conscious, experiences, in meditation, one sees the One underlying the many, the Eternal beneath the ephemeral.

We may ask, what is it that makes undivided reality appear to be a world of separate objects?

In yoga it is called maya, (illusive, veiled) where the One becomes the many, through the creative power of the Godhead, the primal creative energy that makes unity disappear into innumerable separate things with names and forms.

Philosophers explained maya in contemporary terms. The mind, they say, observers the outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consist of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space and causality, because these are the conditions of perception. The mind looks at unity and sees diversity. It looks at what is timeless and reports transience. In fact, when man is in an ego state, this multiplicity is his reality. Man’s mistake is when he sees the ego state as ultimate, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except the dream. 

We are what we behold. When we look at unity through the instrument of the mind, we see diversity. When we transcend the mind, we enter a higher mode of knowing, a higher state of consciousness in which duality disappears. This does not mean that the phenomenal world is an illusion, but the illusion is the sense of separate existence.

To see the world as it is, it must be viewed from a perspective of wholeness, where one sees himself as the impartial witness of ever changing events without any sense of becoming attached to the objects of observation.

Looking at it from physics, the world of name and form exists only as a condition of perceptions. At a sub atomic level, separate phenomena dissolve into a flux of energy. The effect of maya is similar. The world of the senses is real, but it must be known for what it is: unity appearing as multiplicity.

The person who misidentifies himself with the condition of perception in maya may eventually, through the process of meditation wake up into a higher state of knowing in which the unity of all life is realized.

In this state the individual realizes that he is not a physical being, but the Self, a spiritual being and thus not separate from God. Then he sees the world not as fragmented, but whole and sees in wholeness the manifestation of God.

Once identified with the Self, he knows that although the body will die, his Self will not die and that his awareness of this identity with the Self is not severed by the death of the physical body. Thus, he has realized his essential immortality which is the birthright of every human being. He knows death is no more than taking off an old often worn out coat.

Life cannot offer any higher realization. The one who realizes the Self and God, has everything and lacks nothing. He cannot be shaken by the heaviest burden. Life cannot threaten such a person. All life holds for him is the opportunity to love, to serve and to give. Let it be so.