Metaphysics on Existence

When we study Metaphysics, (Metaphysics is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world), we come to understand that the world is one. There is no separation between the spiritual, the material, the mental, and the world of energies. They are all one, but appear different.

Also, when we think of ourselves as a body, we forget the mind, and when we think of ourselves as a mind, we will forget the body. We see only one aspect at a time, either matter or body or mind or spirit depending where we place our attention. It is all a matter of perspective.

The same applies to birth, life, and death. No one was ever born, none will ever die; one changes one's position and that is all. We are existence and consciousness.

Western thought makes a lot of death; always trying to catch a little more life. We ponder life after death. We say, give us life! We are so happy if someone tells us that we are going to have an afterlife. Yet how can we ever doubt that we are eternal? How can we imagine that we are going to be dead?

Let’s try to imagine ourselves as being dead, yet we see that we are witnessing our dead body. We may as well doubt that we exist. The first fact of consciousness is, I am. Existence is the most self-evident of all truths. The idea of immortality is inherent in man.

We must learn to see the whole universe is a unit, from whatever standpoint we view it.  But it is not what it appears to be to our sense perception.  Just now, this universe appears to us as air and space, of force and energy. But like all other basic principles, this is also contradictory. For what is this force that which moves matter? And what is this energy which is moved by force? Some of the fundamentals of our reasoning are most curious, in spite of our boast of science and knowledge. In Sanskrit this state of things has been called Maya. It has neither existence nor non-existence. We cannot call it existence, because that only exists, which is beyond time and space, which is self-existence. Yet this world satisfies to a certain degree our idea of existence. Therefore it has an apparent existence.

There is however the real existence in and through everything; and that reality is caught in the meshes of time, space, and causation.

There is the real man, the infinite, the beginningless, the endless, the ever-blessed, and the ever-free. He has also been caught in the meshes of time, space, and causation. So has everything in this world. The reality of everything is the infinite.

This is not idealism; it is not that the world does not exist. It has a relative existence, and fulfills all its requirements, but it has no independent existence. It exists because of the Absolute Reality beyond time, space, and causation.

The Silent Voice of Prayer – Paramahansa Yogananda

True prayer is an expression of the soul, an urge from the soul. It is a hunger for God that arises from within, expressing itself to Him ardently, silently. Vocalized prayers are wonderful only if the attention is on God, and if the words are a call to God out of the abundance of the soul's desire for Him. But if an invocation becomes merely a part of an ecclesiastical ceremony, performed mechanically—concentration on the form of religion rather than its spirit—God doesn't much like that kind of prayer.

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. And thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly"
                                                                                                                                                (Matthew 6:5, 6).
These words of Christ refer to entering into the "closet" of inner silence. Through scientific techniques of meditation such as Kriya Yoga, one learns to "shut the door" to outer distractions by withdrawing the life force and attention from the sensory nerves. Only then is prayer truly effective, the mind having been freed to concentrate wholly on the Father who responds "in secret"—in silent communion with the soul.

One who prays loudly is liable to become hypocritical if his attention is focused on the practiced intonation of his voice falling on his auditory nerves—words spoken for effect, to attract and impress others. This is the tendency of many otherwise sincere spiritual people—to show off their love for God, rather than strive to touch the heart of God alone. Unless there is simultaneously an increasing intensity of zeal and love for God, loud prayer can thus be spiritually dangerous. No matter how wonderful it is within, spiritual realization loses something of its intensity when it is expressed outwardly.

When your prayer comes from deep within, and your words are tipsy with love for God, then others around you consciously enjoy your contact with God and drink of the contagion of your love for Him. But if you are not very strong, they may steal that love from you. They begin to praise you; and if you feel flattered that because you have inspired others, therefore you must be great, then you become weakened—your love is stolen from your heart, and pride takes its place.

Sometimes, no loud or even whispered words can I pray; for when deep feeling for God possesses you, you cannot utter any words. That love is sacred within, an inner communion, silently giving its oblations into the Spirit. Like a secret fire, that love burns the darkness from around the soul, and in that light you behold the mightiness of Spirit.

In all our pursuits we are seeking the fulfillment of love and joy. The motive behind the evil ways of even the greatest sinner is that he expects to attain there from something that will lead to happiness. God is that happiness. But the urge to seek Him is drowned in the urge to indulge in sense pleasures. When that sensory urge disappears, then the urge for God automatically appears.

Sensations pouring in through the sensory nerves keep the mind filled with myriad noisy thoughts, so that the whole attention is toward the senses. But God's voice is silence. Only when thoughts cease can one hear the voice of God communicating through the silence of intuition. That is God's means of expression. In your silence God's silence ceases. He speaks to you through your intuition. For the devotee whose consciousness is inwardly united with God, an audible response from Him is unnecessary—intuitive thoughts and true visions constitute God's voice. These are not the result of the stimuli of the senses, but the combination of the devotee's silence and God's voice of silence.

God has been with us all the time, talking to us; but His voice of silence has been drowned by the noisiness of our thoughts: "Thou didst love me always, but I heard Thee not." He has always been near; it is we who have been wandering away from His consciousness.

In spite of our indifference and pursuit of sense pleasures, still God loves us, and always will.


When we are in tune with God, we will hear His voice: "I have loved thee through the ages; I love thee now; and I shall love thee until thou comest Home. Whether thou knowest it or not, I shall always love thee."

Cultivating Real Love

The world as a whole has forgotten the real meaning of the word love. Love has been so abused and crucified that very few people know what true love is. To define love is very difficult, for the same reason that words cannot fully describe the flavor of an orange. We have to taste the fruit to know its flavor. So is it with love.

All of us have experienced love in some form in our hearts, yet we know very little about what it is. We have not understood how to develop love, how to purify and expand it into divine love. A spark of this divine love exists in most hearts in the beginning of life, but it is usually lost, because we don’t know how to cultivate it.

Love is not just in the feeling, but the joy that feeling brings. Love gives joy. We love because it brings us happiness. Love is not the ultimate; the ultimate is bliss. God is Sat-Chit-Ananda, ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss. We, as soul, are individualized Sat-Chit-Ananda. From Joy we have come, in Joy we live and have our being, and in that sacred Joy we will one day melt again.

All the divine emotions, love, compassion, courage, self-sacrifice, humility would be meaningless without joy. Joy means exhilaration, an expression of the ultimate Bliss.

Our experience of joy originates in the brain, in the subtle center of God-consciousness in yoga terms the Sahasrara, or thousand-Petaled lotus. Yet the actual feeling of joy is experienced not in the head but in the heart.

From the divine seat of God-consciousness in the brain, joy descends into the heart center, and manifests there in the Anahata chakra.

Paramahansa Yogananda stated that our life and consciousness are maintained by the power and activity within the "tree of life." The trunk of the tree represents the Sushumna, in which the seven subtle centers or chakras are located. From these centers comes the power for all our physiological and psychological functions and abilities.

Yogananda stated that there is a definite connection between the physiological function of the heart and the subtle spiritual center of feeling in the heart. Working together, they express the great emotion of love, both human and divine.

That joy comes from God's bliss, being the essential and ultimate attribute of Spirit.

Though joy may be born in relation with certain outer conditions, it is not subject to conditions; it often manifests without any material cause. Sometimes we wake up in the morning almost as walking on air with joy, and we don't know why. When we sit in the silence of deep meditation, joy bubbles up from within, we are not roused by no outer stimuli. The joy of meditation is overwhelming. Those who have not gone into the silence of true meditation do not know what real joy is.

We feel happiness in the fulfillment of a desire; but when we were young, we often felt a sudden happiness that came as if from nowhere. Joy expresses itself under certain conditions, but it is not created by those conditions. In our human experience, certain events are often required to bring out joy, but the joy itself is the perennial state of the soul.

Love also is native to the soul, but love is secondary to joy; there could be no love without joy.

Universal nature of love

In the universal sense, love is the divine power of attraction in creation that harmonizes, unites, and binds together. It is opposed by the force of repulsion, which is the outgoing cosmic energy that materializes creation from the cosmic consciousness of God.

Repulsion keeps all forms in the manifested state through maya, the power of delusion that divides, differentiates, and disharmonizes.

The attractive force of love counteracts cosmic repulsion to harmonize all creation and ultimately draw it back to God. When we live in tune with the attractive force of love, we achieve harmony with nature and our fellow human beings, and are attracted to blissful reunion with God.

Divine Love

Divine Love

When a great master comes into this world, he comes to show us not who he is, but who we are. In trying to find who we are, it also helps us to understand who we aren't. Most of our self-definitions are false because they’re based on externals.

Different saints come to earth with different missions. In one way or another, all of them have love, but they don’t always show it because that may not be their mission.

Yogananda’s mission to was express divine love, and because of that he talked of God in a new way. He spoke of God as the Divine Mother. Now, in truth, God is neither mother nor father, but He’s that Absolute Consciousness beyond creation. However, God does manifest Himself in different ways, so we can say that God is also both father and mother.

There are two aspects to human nature, reason and feeling. Science has taught us, and unfortunately we’ve bought into this, that the only way to come to truth is to exclude feeling and be so objective that we’re primarily intellectual.

The truth is that if we get to know any really great scientists, even if only through their life stories, we find that they were passionate men and women. They were absolutely dedicated to the search for scientific truth. Nor could they have accomplished what they did without deep feeling and enthusiasm for what they were doing. It has been said that no great thing has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

There are Scientists who perform small experiments that go primarily by the intellect, but many particle scientists are people of deep mystical awe before the wonders of the universe. Awe is expressed in their experiments and their theories. Without that sense of wonder, they could not have discovered the great things they did and are still doing? This enthusiasm is a part of the heart quality. We, as human beings, have both heart and intellect, but we can never reach true understanding with only the intellect.

We also have to try to love our own potential, to have respect for who we are as children of God.

To understand how to live our life better, to understand other people, and to understand truth, we can’t do it without the heart. To think of God as the mother aspect, is a way of helping us to love from our heart and to approach God in an infinite way.

Yogananda used to say, “Mother, naughty or good, I am your child.”

God is unique to each one of us, because as we visualize Him, so will He come to us in the form we hold most dear.

We have to long for God. We have to reach that point where nothing means anything except God. That’s why the best thing we can pray for is devotion, the ability to love God more and more deeply.

Salvation is nothing without the love of God. If we achieve it, perhaps we go to another plane where we don’t have to eat food, or carry around a heavy body, but there still are problems. Without God, we’ve got problems. We need to think of God as the nearest and the dearest of the dear.

Each one of us is an example of the inner soul that’s at the center of life, striving to come out and discover who it really is. In a way, the life of any individual is the life of all individuals.

Characteristics of Divine Love

Divine love makes no demand. It is spontaneous and constant. It is unlimited in every way. It is like the sun. The sun is for everybody. Everybody enjoys the sunlight, but if we keep our doors and windows shut, what can the sun do?

It is God’s divine Love that expresses through our human love. But if we do not open ourselves to this love that is flowing around us and wants to flow in us, then the divine love cannot express in and through us.

Human love binds, Divine love illumines. Divine love starts with our awareness of a higher reality. It represents the highest truth. Divine love at every moment illumines us, and in this illumination we find total fulfillment.

God loves unconditionally each and every human being.

The very nature of human love is unfortunately reserved for only a small number of people, but in divine love, which is unlimited and infinite, the question of acceptance and rejection does never arise. In divine love there is no possession, but only a feeling of oneness.

Divine love tells us that our life is infinitely more important than we imagine. Divine love means constant transcendence toward God.

Divine love connects with our soul. It liberates and expands our consciousness. Love means oneness of divinity, oneness of reality, oneness of the individual consciousness with the unlimited Universal or Christ Consciousness.

When we enter into the Universal Christ Consciousness through our meditation, we do not think of human love. We think only of divine love and oneness and our capacity for divine love becomes unlimited.

Divine love will come from God and from our own meditation, but only when we do not cherish expectation which results in limitations.

When one becomes unconditionally surrendered in God’s Will, one gets infinite divine love. Everything will come in the form of love. We will get peace, but it will come in the form of love; and this peace we will need to share with our brothers and sisters.

God Himself manifests everything through Love, here on earth and in any other realm. God is the highest and most illumined influence in our lives.

Everything that comes from God is unconditional. His Love is given unconditionally; all we have to do is receive it with an open heart.

Mysticism

Mysticism is for many an uncomfortable word, because it is more than a concept that can easily be accepted by the mind.

The dictionary defines Mysticism, taken from the Creek “to conceal.” In the Hellenistic world, which followed the Creek Classical period, ‘mystical’ referred to “secret” religious rituals.

A more detailed Explanation of mysticism is communion, identity with, or conscious awareness of Ultimate Reality, Divinity, Spiritual Truth or God, through experience, intuition, instinct or insight.

In early Christianity the term came to refer to “hidden” interpretations of Scriptures and to hidden presences. We can see this in the words of Jesus.

“And he said, unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand”.

                                                                              (KJV) Luke 8:10

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

                                                                              (KJV) John 16:12

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him .....

                                                                                 Corinthian 2:12 –14

Buddhists, Christian Mystics and Yogis show us the way to mystical experiences through a process of discipline of the mind and the senses in order to experience higher levels of consciousness. They speak of emptying of the mind of all things. Emptiness is not what is known in Western thought as nihilism. It is rather the idea of renouncing one’s own ideas. This for many people is scary as they would have to give up their own ego involvement in order to attain emptiness. The mind needs to be empty of all phenomenons.

A way to achieved this is through meditation, prayer and stillness.

Let us envision for a moment a world where anything is possible, than accept that things are not just possible but also probable. We often fail to see possibilities arising because we are so attached to our limited, re occurring thought patterns, our ego and its pathetic predictability, that we impede any progress toward higher levels of consciousness.

We need to realize, that there is a higher force acting upon us at all times, call it spirit or whatever you want to name it, and that we can connect with that something only when we suspend our own thoughts and our own ego. By doing so, we open up a Divine gap of peace and silence, where the power of the Infinite can enter the picture and do it’s magic.

It is through meditative practice of emptying ourselves of every thought and every attachment, as both eastern sages and western mystics have taught for thousands of years, that we can make leaps into the realm of the unimaginable, the land of true creativity.

When we open ourselves in silence to this higher force and accept its guidance, we will soon realize that we live in accordance with the will of God.

It is here where the much debated discourse of free will fits in, since we open up the possibility of Divine direction in our lives. We now talk about freedom from choice rather than freedom of choice. This Divine direction gives us freedom to rejoice every second of our existence without the stress of being confronted with our own choice, for everything always flows gracefully in an ocean of infinite bliss.

Nadis

In addition to the seven chakras of the subtle body, the Tantras have described a network of subtle channels known as nadis through which the life force (prana) circulates.

Nadi means "stream". According to the tantric treatise there are fourteen principal nadis. Of these, Ida, Pingala and Sushumna are considered the most important.

Ida is the left channel. Ida is feminine and represents the moon. Originating in Muladhara, Ida ends up in the left nostril.

Pingala is the right channel. Pingala is masculine and represents the sun. Originating in Muladhara, Pingala ends up in the right nostril.

Sushumna is the central channel. Within the Sushumna nadi there are three more subtle channels: Vajra, Chitra and Brahma nadi through which Kundalini moves upwards from the Muladhara chakra to Sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head.

The Muladhara chakra is the meeting place of the three main nadis. In the Muladhara, Shakti, the static unmanifested Kundalini, is symbolized by a serpent coiled into three and a half circles around the central at the base of the spine.

The technique of awakening Kundalini is in using Prana (the vital air), guiding its circulatory movement through Ida and Pingala down to the base of the spine into the space where Kundalini lies coiled. The vital energies of the opposite forces circulating in Ida and Pingala will be unified and Shakti Kundalini will then awaken and rise up Sushumna, energizing the seven chakras.

From Muladhara chakra, Ida and Pingala alternate from the right to left sides at each chakra until they reach Ajna chakra where they meet again with Sushumna.

Once the Kundalini Shakti has ascended through Sushumna to Sahasrara, the highest psychic center at the crown of the head, it is made to reverse its course and return to rest in the base center again.

Need to attain liberation

Only Self Knowledge can destroy ignorance and free us from samsara, the world of change and becoming and its constant sense entanglement. In the case of a un- awakened person, the mind, through the sense organs illumines the external world and its objects. But the Jivanmukta (liberated soul) withdraws the sense organs from the outside world and turns the mind inward. His mind then perceives the light of the Spirit. The knowledge of the Self shines within him.

As has been discussed under the sutras, we need to purify the mind, perform our necessary duties without attachment to the results, practice self control and compassion and love toward our fellow human beings.

 Cultivating a peaceful mind is aided by a peaceful heart that is unperturbed by pleasure or pain; that discriminates between what is real and unreal and does not lust after sense pleasure.

The goal ought to be Liberation from suffering of various kinds that are the result of selfish desires and actions

The Self, soul is deathless, birth-less, eternal and of real substance in every individual. It is the unchanging reality behind the changing body, sense organs, mind and ego. It is Spirit which is Pure Consciousness and is unaffected by time, space and causality

As the unchanging Reality in the individual is the Self (in Sanskrit Atman), he unchanging Reality in the universe is called Brahman. Brahman is also beyond time, space and causality and is the all-pervading Spirit. Vedanta declares, the Atman and Brahman are the same. The knowledge of this identity is called Self-Knowledge which upon realization delivers the aspirant from the bondage of the world and brings liberation.

Atman as the embodied soul derives its experience in the relative world through three stages of consciousness. In the waking state it experiences the gross objects of the outside world; in the dream state it experiences subtle impressions, purely mental and created by the experiences of the waking state; in deep sleep it enjoys peace and remains as the witness of the absence of activities of mind and senses. In this state, it is close to its real nature and the subject, object relationship is absent. All these three stages still belong to the realm of relativity and ignorance. The fourth state, which in reality is not a state, is called Turiya. Here the Self is realized as pure consciousness without subject and object – pure Being. Turiya pervades all three states and forms their substratum. In other words, Turiya is the source from which the other stages are happening.

Emptiness is an idea derived from the insight that all things contain the essence of everything.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Nothing exists independent in and of itself.

I am both connected to all that preceded me and to all that will follow me, being all things, I therefore cannot be one thing.

Without singular characteristics I cannot be defined solely as this or that.

I am empty because I am everything.

All various forms exist in the mind of the perceiver. Their substratum is Spirit. Names and forms associated with different objects of the phenomenal world are changeable and therefore unreal. Only that which does not change is eternal and real.

All things in the phenomenal world are endowed with 5 characteristics: existence, perceptibility, attraction, forms and names. Of these the first three correspond to Sat, Chit, Ananda or Existence, Knowledge and Bliss belong to Brahman or the Self which is the basis of everything and the other 2 to the relative world

The aim of Non-Duality is to prove that there is no distinction between living beings and Brahman or God and between the different living beings themselves. The one Lord is concealed in all beings.

There are 3 aspects associated with the Self. They are the gross body, the subtle body and the causal body. One should distinguish them through discrimination from the Self. The gross body, is the medium through which the Self, Soul experiences pleasure and pain. The subtle body consists of 5 pranas (prana or in-breath, apana the downward moving principle expels unassimilated food and liquid vyana the circulating force, udana the ascending life force, which helps the soul to pass out of the body, samana fostering digestion.

The all-pervading Atman or Self does not shine in everything. It is manifest in the buddhi (that which determines the true nature of things, intellect) like a reflection in clear water or in a stainless mirror. Atman, Self is the Witness of all functions.

The Soul or Self interpenetrates the body and the sense organs yet it is totally different from them. It is the eternal subject and unchangeable consciousness. One may reason that the Atman or Self is not just the witness but also the participant. The answer to this is: just as the moon seems to be moving when in actuality the clouds move, so also the Self appears active when in reality the senses are active.

On Attachment – attachment, pleasure and pain etc. exist as long as the buddhi or mind functions. They are not perceived in sleep, when the mind ceases to exist.

An individualized soul (when identified with ego) is conscious of the existence of other beings and their Creator, God. It regards itself as limited by time and space and the law of causation. It thinks, it is samsara, or relative being subject to birth and death, thus becoming pray to fear. If a person sees the slightest difference between himself and others, he feels uncomfortable. He who thinks God is separate from himself has a tendency to be overcome by the fear of God. But the Self in reality is not the individualized living being; therefore the fear is groundless and due to ignorance.

The mind, the sense organs are illumined by the Self alone. They are insentient by themselves. That which cannot be seen by the eyes, but by which the eyes see other objects – That alone is Brahman; realize that and not what people worship (through ignorance).

Their own Self – The Self, or all pervading consciousness, and that alone, is the substratum or real essence of the mind, ego, and sense organs.