We are Spiritual Beings

 

 

Namaskar, I salute the divinity that lies within you with all the divine charms of my mind and the warmth and cordiality or my heart. This is a traditional Indian greeting that honors the divinity that lies within all of us.

To salute the divinity within another from the divinity within you is to realize the essentially spiritual nature of all beings. It is simply that we have taken residence in our human forms for a limited duration on this earth. There is much joy on the occasion of taking up residence in a new human form at or before the physical birth, and often much sadness at the thought of leaving the earthly form behind. We become attached to our incarnation, who we are, who our friends and family are and all of the events and objects of our world. But we are simply in this world and not of it. As Tillard de Chardin said.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Have you considered the truth of this assertion? What does it mean for us and how do you go about attaining a state of understanding and to embody this deeper experience of the world around you?

The science of yoga is the science of consciousness, not just the individual consciousness but the Comic Consciousness, that one unitary consciousness that in which all other conscious life lies, the ocean of love. This science is not only about the unit self and its relation to the cosmic self, but the whys and hows of attaining the merger as an individual consciousness with unitary consciousness. When a salt doll enters the sea, it does not lose consciousness of itself, it has awareness and experience of all consciousness which includes little self also. The salt doll loses nothing, only the limitation of the perception that it is some how different and differentiated from the sea from which it came and the sea unto which it will return.

Are you like the salt doll that yearns once again to return to the sea, to merge in the warm waves of unitary consciousness, to become one with the sea of love? How do you get there?

First one cannot fill a cup that is already full, and if you are already full of knowing who you are then there is very little room for new teaching.

In yoga there are ancient practices to empty the vessel of the self and take the shelter of the great teacher and the teaching. Two of these are Guru Daks'ina and Guru Puja. Guru literally means “Remover of Darkness.” In all of these practices one releases, lets go of, surrenders self limiting beliefs and concepts as a preliminary step to accept a larger understanding and outlook onto the world. In Buddhism one accepts the shelter of the teaching. In Yogic practice one accepts the shelter of the Great Teacher, the one who is beyond all form. However knowledge is transmitted or carried through the Grace and love for all humanity and all beings by utilizing the form of Sadguru who may talk, write books and utilize the example of His or Her life on the earth as a teaching for many. There are many Gurus that may come to serve at any given time, but there are also a rare number of examples of Sadguru, the pure guru who is not only an enlightened being, but one who comes to teach many, to have a great impact on society, to assist to shift and uplift it from one age into another.

So it is to the Great Teacher the consciousness presented through the Sadguru to whom we release our worries, cares and concerns. We release our body, our mind and our soul into the shelter of the Great Teacher, to one who has sent Sad Guru to assist and instruct in a time of change and upheaval.

The ancient ceremony for releasing is to place the colors of the mind into the lotus flower and to release the lotus flower into the stream and let it float away. It leaves us open, refreshed and willing to take on the true teachings of who we are and what is our very deepest nature. We let go of who we think we are in order to know and experience who we truly are. Guru Puja and Guru Daks'ina are the expressions of the human mind’s desire to know and become one with the Great. It is the putting down of the attachment to worldly burdens, emotional roles and mental mind games to visualize letting them go, to clean out the attic and the basement of the mind so you are fresh and ready to receive. You allow the sea of consciousness to flow into the life that was previously one of definition and restriction, to let the salt doll dissolve into the sea of infinite love. And then there is no more pain or sorrow, no loss and no worldly gain. You only to know that your work is done, that you can live and embrace the consciousness of a spiritual being living an earthly life. You are truly only in the world and not limited or bounded by it.

We are but visitors to this world, here to throw off the chains of small identity that binds us to endless repetitions of pain and joy and again pain. We are but a moment in time, an infinitesimally small speck of dust in the whole of the universe but we are eternal without boundary of time, space and person. We have always been, we are present now and we always will be. Simply stated, we must put down the attachment of who we think we are and instead take upon ourselves our true “I”dentity.

“I am one with the Great, the Cosmic Consciousness, that which is far beyond my mind. I offer the smallness of my mind on the lotus so that I may fulfill my heart’s desire. I want to know and become one with the Great.”

 

Ac. Madhusudan

Marc Nevas

 

© Ananda Seva Mission