Om

This is actually just a copy of a post in the philosophy forum, in response to a thread by Blaze.

Questions which come to mind for me are "are we bound, or are we free?" If we are bound, how can we be free? Are we this body, a small self, or are we a greater self? Who are we and what is reality? What is truth? These are questions which we've heard all the time. You've often said that truth is beneath everything, beyond everything. I agree with this, truth is the source of all, beneath the rest.

How to be free? Sometimes sages in ancient India came to the state where they realized, "I was never bound." I've experienced this myself and I am always struck by the similarities, parallels, and identitcal patterns of different mystics. I experienced a state in which I told myself: do not ever forget this; this alone is true. It was a state of boundless expansiveness, bliss and peace. I do not think any religious rituals are necessary for it. Nor are any drugs. It is surely different for every individual.

For me as George Harrison said, "many things in life can wait, but the search for God, that cannot wait" is true. I believe George was one who among humanity understood God, or source of things, more than many or almost any other. He is in the category of Swami Vivekananda, and anyone else. This is not something he wished to be known for, he was not attached to anything about this. Yet I can understand that he was deeply spiritual.

God for every person is something different. And yet there are similarities, again, between the mystics of different times and cultures. They found it to be quite simple, and quite extraordinary.

The highest goal is peace. People are struggling for this, and for that, for fame, for money, for gratification; and yet greater than all these is peace. As Sri Ramakrishna said, "The nearer you come to God, the more you feel peace. Peace, peace, peace-supreme peace! The nearer you come to the Ganges, the more you feel its coolness. You will feel completely soothed when you plunge into the river." Greater than everything is self-realization, or Awakening, or Enlightenment. All we need is peace. Again, as both Swami Vivekananda and Black Elk have said, only when one knows that they are one with the universe, will they know peace.

But this is not doctrine or dogma. Swami Vivekananda said it is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite, than to speak of something one has not known, felt, or made one's own. Swami Vivekananda taught to believe in the self rather than to believe in God, and yet he did not deny God; his description of God was akin to Meher Baba's: infinite peace, power, bliss, and knowledge.

This is also what I find God is, the ground of reality. Suffering and trouble is but part of the apparent reality, and if one grasps the greater truth, one knows that all is light. Inside everyone is an inner light; as Emerson wrote, it lets us become aware that it is all, and we are nothing.

This may seem like abstract philosophy, and I know it is not welcome to those who do not believe in the soul. My position is that within everyone, and everything, there is divinity - that nothing is lacking, for each individual, as E. Tolle explained, was Life itself. As Alan Watts said, you are "the works" - the universe. Alan Watts said that in the divine consciousness, nothing is wrong or stupid. Even waste, absurdity, is not wrong, but it is part of an infinitely beautiful painting. He wrote this when observing the example of a broken or wrecked car, grown around by weeds.

As other Eastern philosophers have said, even Buddhists; everything is whole. Does the world need Christ? Does it need a prophet? Everyone is Christ. The universe merely is a state of evolution; from unconscious matter into conscious Infinity.

The main question is what or who are we, and what is reality? Is there a God, a source, an infinite One? An infinite life force? Why fight about it? The goal is peace. The poem "Chase them Away" describes a Buddhist master's journey from youth to old age, and his final state was not desiring any disciples, he would chase them away with stones.

My only purpose here is to present ideas. Philosophers, Sri Aurobindo among them, as well as Gopi Krishna, have said that there is a danger of life or self-negation in the camp of materialists as well as the camp of spiritualists. Both end in dogma, and both result in life-negation. The life-negation of materialists says there is nothing spiritual.

Though it may be difficult to realize - there is something more, something greater than materialism.

We feel separate, and we feel like we do not know ourselves. Or even if we do not - there is a state beyond what we know, which in relation, our current state is one of ignorance.

We are transcendental, and we are the creators of our reality, of the universe. We are always creating reality. But we do not realize that we are the authors of our life. Once we wake up, in terms of becoming self-realized or enlightened, then we realize we are free to move anywhere, to be anywhere, to know anything; we wake up and realize, our life is a sentence on a paper, we are holding the pen - our surroundings - an infinite universe, of which, to this point, we were not aware. I beg the reader's forgiveness at my inability to describe this, but this metaphor is one I realized and it is the best metaphor I know to describe the state in which one realizes one one is transcendental, or in other words, the author of one's life - the author, as opposed to be controled. Only when we know who we are will we be free.

These are just my experiences and descriptions. They may or may not be true for anyone else. My main philosophy is that we are the author of our life, and should seek what can only be known by self-realization. Yet more important is to be true to one's self. To live with strength and purity, exactly as Vivekananda said. I only encourage people to seek for their source, and to seek for the answer to the questions I said, and whether or not it is true that "all is connected." If we are connected, then what is the nature of our connection or relationship with the Universe, or with reality?