A common space for harmonic peacemakers

II: 21

Chapter 2, Verse 21

"Knowing it birthless,

Knowing it deathless,

Knowing it endless,

For ever unchanging,

Dream not you do

The deed of a killer,

Dream not the power

Is yours to command it."

Ram Dass:

"Your body, your mind, and your personality package are all part of nature. It's all lawful stuff running its course. Why get uptight about it? Let it flow in its lawful manifestation. Don't struggle so hard. Live your life more lightly. Don't get so trapped in your own melodrama. How we all love our own melodramas. We each have them.

'I've got to have sex tonight or I'll die.'

'I'm so lonely.'

'I can't meditate.'

'I'm so high.'

We all get so involved in our melodramas, so busy thinking we're the actors, so busy thinking we're doing it all…and it's really all this lawful stuff running its course. In order to appreciate the lawfulness of the unfolding, we need a little perspective. Take a seed, and put it in a bit of earth. Put it on a windowsill, and watch it grow into a plant, into a flower. Observe it every day. Use it as a daily meditation exercise. See the way the whole process unfolds. Then turn the lens back on yourself. Watch yourself the same way you watched the seed growing. Watch your own life, your own actions, with that same kind of detachment and curiosity, until you can see the laws of nature working in you. You'll see what leads to anger, what leads to love, what leads to desire. Watch it all. Don't argue with it. Don't judge it. As you begin to develop that perspective, you'll find that your actions gradually come less and less out of attachment and more and more out of the simple, lawful flow of things."

[With this perspective, we become like the bird in the story in the Upanishads which is watching the other bird partake of the fruit. We become the witness of actions, just as the birthless, deathless, endless, unchanging Self forever remains unaffected by nature's unfolding. The trick is to become the witness without shutting out the feelings that emerge from action. When we honor both, we find that the feelings come and go, while the witness lasts and lasts.]

Paul Brunton:

“We can make sense of our experiences only if we apply to them, and to our understanding of them, the double standpoint: Immediate and Ultimate, or Appearance and Reality, or Relative and Absolute. The ordinary, normal point of view takes the world as the five senses find it, that is, as it appears to be. This is easy for everyone to understand and accept. But the deepest possible examination presents a totally different result: The One, That which IS, has undergone no change at all.

Let us see through the multitudinous forms of the world into the unity upon which they are grounded, without, however, letting our consciousness lose the forms themselves.

From the first standpoint, we see the necessity and must obey the urge of undertaking this quest in all its practical details and successive stages. From the second one, however, we see that all existence, inclusive of our own and whether we are aware of it or not, dwells in a timeless, motionless Now and a changeless, actionless Here. The first bids us work and work hard at self-development in meditation, metaphysics, and altruistic activity, but the second informs us that nothing we do or abstain from doing can raise us to a region where we already are and forever shall be. Because we are what we are, we are forced to hold both these standpoints side by side.

These two views need not oppose themselves against each other but can exist in a state of reconciliation and harmony when their mutual necessity is understood. We have to remember both that which is ever-becoming and that which IS. We are already as eternal, as immortal, as divine as we shall ever be. But if we want to become aware of it, then we must climb down to the lower standpoint and pursue the quest in travail and limitation.

There is the immediate view and there is the ultimate viewpoint. The first offers us a convenient way of looking at our activities in the world and of dealing with them whilst yet holding firmly to the Truth. The first tells us to act as if the world is real. The second viewpoint, the ultimate, tells us that there can be only one true way of looking at everything, because there is only one Reality. Since it deals with the Absolute, where time and space disappear and where there is no subject to view and no object to be viewed, there is no thought or complex of thoughts which can hold it. It transcends intellect.

If the worldly man agitatedly sees an event against the background of a moment, if the student calmly sees it against the background of an entire lifetime, the sage, while fully aware of both these points of view, offsets them altogether by adding a third one which does not depend on any dimension of time at all. From this third point of view, the event itself and the ego to whom it happens is understood to be illusory. The sage feels the sense of time and the sense of personality as unreal. Deep within his mind he holds unshakeably to the timeless character of Being, to the eternal life of the kingdom of heaven. In this mysterious state time cannot heal, for there are no wounds present whereof to be healed. So soon as we can take the reality out of time, so soon can we take the sting out of suffering. The ego lives like a slave, bound to every passing sensation, whereas the Self lives in the timeless peace of the kingdom of heaven. As soon as we put ourselves into harmony with the Self, we put ourselves into harmony with the whole universe. We put ourselves beyond the reach of calamity. It may still happen, but it does not happen to nor is it felt by the Self. There is a sense of absolute security, a feeling that no harm can come to us. The sage solves the mystery of timelessness, which redeems humanity.”