Who am I? - David Jevons

[Guest guest]

Who Am I?

By David Jevons

This is a personal statement, which simply reflects my own spiritual journey and

it may or may not be applicable to you. No criticism is implied and no offence

is intended if you are walking a different path.

Many of you, I am sure, are aware of the words in the letter of Saint Paul to

the Corinthians, when he says "For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy

is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I

was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a

child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." Inherent in this

statement is the fact that it is perfectly natural and acceptable for a child

to think and to act as a child. There is nothing wrong in a child being a

child. Indeed one has to be a child before one can become a man. However,

when one becomes a man, one has to start behaving like a man and letting go of

one's childish ways, no matter how comfortable or accustomed one is with them.

It could be argued that Saint Paul is referring to physical change and social

behaviour, but I feel that he is talking about spiritual change and spiritual

behaviour. In my own case I see Saint Paul's words as a commentary on my own

path to spiritual awakening in this life. At first I was a churchgoer, then

an agnostic, then a medium, and then a follower of a guru. Now, however, I

have reached a state of being when I can look back and see that all those

stages were but stepping-stones to that moment in time when I gave up all

those, what St. Paul calls, childish ways and became a man. I now believe that

I am an actual part of God, that I am actually God in manifestation, as is

everything around me, and that any separate identity from that God is an

illusion. The perfect understanding has come, and so the imperfect must pass

away.

Over the years, as I have walked my spiritual path in this life, I have been

privileged to meet many wise men and women. I can recall meeting a wonderful

lady who was in her eighties, a Theosophist, who moved me on from the ritual

and dogma of Christianity, when I was in my thirties. Then in my forties I

became a medium and published books of channellings and teachings received from

the White Brotherhood, and whilst on a trip to the Carmel Valley in California I

met another wise soul, a retired English professor. I was full of enthusiasm

for the channelling process and the messages that I had received and I offered

him one of my books. He declined very politely saying " No Thank you. There

was a time when I would have been interested, but now I have gone beyond all of

that. I am reading nothing. I have turned within." I remember that at the

time I was rather shocked by his attitude and thought to myself "How is it

possible to go beyond channelling? Surely channelling provides the highest

source of Truth that is available to Man?" Then in my fifties, after

discovering the limitations of channelling, I came into contact with Sri Sathya

Sai Baba and was introduced to the concept of the avatar, of the long awaited

messiah returning to Earth, and the statement by some of his devotees that he

was God on Earth. At first I found this concept very difficult to accept,

because it conflicted with all of my spiritual understandings, for here was

duality carried to the extreme! However I slowly succumbed to the glamour of

this proposition, especially when I was at Sai Baba's ashram and was surrounded

by long-standing devotees, who constantly affirmed that he was God on Earth.

The concept of a man of miracles, a messiah, who was supposed to have raised

people from the dead, and turned water into wine, was very alluring. In

retrospect I am amazed that not once did I ask any of those devotees on what

personal experience, rather than second hand experience, such as reading books,

they made this claim. If one has never seen or experienced God, how can one

possibly identify Him? Moreover Sai Baba himself has asked his devotees not to

worship his form. Now, in my sixties, I have come to the stage in my life when

I feel the need to reject dualism in any form and I have become attracted to

the fundamental philosophic principle of Advaita or Non-Dualism, which simply

states "Not Two, but One." If there is no two, then everything is an actual

part of the One God, of the One Consciousness. So there is no me; there is no

you; there is only God! So who am I? I am God!

After almost seventy years of living I have come face to face with the question

that I have avoided answering up to now, the one that I have been too lazy to

answer, hoping that someone else would do it for me, namely, "Who am I and who

is this I that is asking the question?" As I look back at some of the

spiritual concepts that I have embraced over the years, I smile inwardly, and

realise why I have placed them aside. It was because I was thinking as a

child. I was firmly fixed in duality. I was seeing myself as separate from

God and all of His creations. When Sai Baba said to me in one of my earlier

interviews with him, "Remember, you are God, you are God, you are no different

from God", I did not really believe him. All my religious and spiritual

conditioning had taught me that I was separate from God, that I had fallen from

grace and that the purpose of my being was to journey back to God. I believed

that in order to achieve this goal I either had to endure thousands of physical

lives on the Earth, practising great austerities, or else I had to follow a guru

unquestioningly, who would grant me liberation if I led a pure life and balanced

out my karmic account. I was, I must admit, very comfortable with this

philosophy, because it was much easier to keep on coming back for life after

life or to follow a guru who promised liberation than it was to discover the

reality of the Godhead for myself.

Then, quite recently, whilst reading a book about Non-Dualism, I came across the

following statement, which hit me like a lightening bolt; 'any guru is simply

sitting on the bank of the river offering a cup of water'. The implication

here is that what the guru is offering is just a sample of the river. In order

to fully experience the river (the river of God Consciousness) one has to dive

in and experience it for oneself. The guru cannot do this for you. Only you

can do this, and it comes not from reading books, not from attending spiritual

workshops, not from following any guru, but from immersing yourself in that

stream of God Consciousness. So why wasn't I prepared to climb up on the bank

and to dive into the river? Why was I satisfied to accept the cup of water and

not to question whence that water came? It was because the cup of water was

more readily available and, more importantly, was less daunting than the task

of finding the source. Moreover I realised that just as any water in a cup

would lose all of its identity when it was poured back into the river, rather

like a raindrop falling back into the ocean, so would I if I gave up my

apparent individuality and merged back with the Source of All Life. I

discovered that I was attached to my spiritual identity, not just in this life,

but also in my past lives. The continuation of my identity as a separate,

unique and identifiable soul was important to me. It gave me comfort and

security. Yes, I was going to die, I was happy to accept that fact, but at

least a part of me would live on after death. But was that part real, or was

my soul just another false identity, another false mask? Was there something

behind the soul? When I say 'I am a soul', who or what is the 'I am' that is

asking this question?

Throughout my life I have been aware of what I call the 'I am' presence

manifesting in me. At first I regarded it as on over-soul, as a spiritual

presence standing behind my soul, but gradually I began to realise that it was

not an individual source, but a universal source. It was the Divine Presence.

It was totally universal. It was totally unconditional. It was all-seeing and

all-knowing. Wherever it guided me was always for my highest good. Whatever it

prophesied always came to pass. Amazingly, whenever I wanted it to appear, it

rarely did, and whenever it did appear, it was usually unasked for. I soon

realised that it sought me; I did not seek it. I could not make it appear.

Whenever it did appear, there was absolute certainty in my life. I felt

totally at one with the whole of creation. There was no question of whether or

not to accept its wisdom and guidance. It just flooded my being and I was at

one with it. The 'me' of this life, or of any past life for that matter, did

not enter into it. There was no 'me'. It was a very strange feeling, mainly

because I was unaccustomed to it, but nevertheless one with which I felt

totally at home.

Perhaps because I thought that it was for the most part inaccessible, even if it

was the highpoint of my spiritual life, I did not dive deeply into the true

nature of its being, but turned instead to more accessible inspiration,

believing that the cup of water was a fair substitute for the river. I did not

dive deeply to find the pearl of great wisdom, but chose instead to stay near

the surface with lesser jewels, with which I was more familiar. Looking back

on my life I have no regrets for making this decision, because I simply did not

appreciate the value of what I was missing. Today, however, on reading about

the experiences of the few people who have found that pearl, who have become

one with the Source of All Life, who have experienced and indeed live in

non-duality, I realise that my whole life has been but a preparation for this

final act of surrender. In truth, though, there is no act of surrender. The

'I am' is the totality of everything, so what is there to surrender, and who is

doing the surrendering? It is more a case of seeing the reality and the

unreality will automatically drop away.

So today I seek to always place myself in a frame of mind that sees only

non-duality. Of course I am still living in duality. Non-duality is still

only a concept for me. I really don't feel that I am God. However, when I

catch myself acting out of duality, when I find myself seeing division and

separation, when I observe myself judging and comparing, when I feel the little

'I' rather than the 'I am' rearing its ugly head, then I try to empty my mind of

those thoughts, I try to create an atmosphere within me, a receptive energy

field, so to speak, in which the 'I am' presence can appear. To this end I

follow a threefold path. Firstly, I try to practise total acceptance of

everything that comes into the aura of my being, every waking and sleeping

minute of the day. God's energy impels everything. I am simply God meeting

God, so who am I to question what God has decided either for me or for anyone

else? There is no good or evil, no pleasure or pain, no loss or gain, for

everything is God, so everything is perfect. I recognise that what I am seeing

simply reflects what I am within. Every day I appear to be faced with choices,

but the reality is that I really have no choices to make. To use the analogy

of a hero in a film; in the beginning of the film the hero might appear to be

agonising over the choices he has to make, which will supposedly determine his

future, but if we jump forward to the end of the film, we can see that his

future is fixed and that he really has no say in the matter. The director has

already decided his future and God is the ultimate Director!

Secondly, I try to base my daily life on the principle of unconditional love

and, as such, I try to stop judging and comparing, I try to be alike to

everyone; I try to see everyone as the presence of God standing before me. I

try to help everyone who comes into my path each day in whatever way I can. In

any situation of conflict or criticism I simply say, "I am God meeting God. I

will only be a channel for God's love." The old saying that love makes the

world go round is so true, but we should realise that it is not physical love,

but divine love that impels our lives. If we love God, and if we love

ourselves because we are God, then we can only exude love and everywhere that

we go and every person that we meet will be touched by our love. If you

squeeze an orange you will get orange juice, there is no choice in the matter;

similarly, if a person filled with love is 'squeezed' by some conflict or

outside pressure, then you will get only love from that person, there is no

choice in the matter. Conversely, if you 'squeeze' someone who is filled with

hatred and bitterness, then you will get only hatred and bitterness out of

them.

Thirdly, I try to be happy with my situation in life, no matter what is

happening to me or around me. Bliss is the inherent nature of realised beings,

which are untouched by the so-called troubles of the world, because they are one

with the God Presence, Whose very nature is bliss. Spiritual ecstasy, as

opposed to physical ecstasy, is the bliss that we seek, because it is permanent

and lasting. It is our birthright. Sai Baba is constantly exhorting his

devotees to be happy and is forever saying, "I am always happy." The 'I am' is

always happy. If we are unhappy then it is because we have separated ourselves

from God or, rather, because we think that we are separate from God. We are

not prepared to accept that God is in everything, that God empowers everything.

We are saying that the drama of life should be in accordance with our wishes,

not God's, and as that will never be, so we are doomed to be unhappy.

So I invite you all to go on a journey of self-discovery, of self-enquiry, a

journey that will probably begin by you establishing what you are not. Start

with the fact that you are not your body and progress onwards from there.

Ultimately, I believe that you will come to the simple statement 'I am

God-consciousness', which is the basic tenet of Advaita or Non-Duality. I am

one, existing without a second. Follow the ancient Socratic injunction of

'Man, know thyself'. Is it not amazing that our modern educational systems

encourage us to 'know' or to learn about everything that is around us, but not

what is within us? Is it not the case that the pursuit of self-knowledge is

often regarded as an indulgence in this materialistic, goal-orientated society

in which we live? Most people today would rather watch television than observe

themselves. They believe that the external world, as seen on television is

real, and that the internal world is unreal. We have been taught to learn by

looking out, rather than by looking in, and yet the greatest source of wisdom

and truth lies within us.

When you meet a realised being, it is apparent that they view life very

differently from the average man in the street, in fact sometimes their views

are 180 degrees opposed to conventional thinking. For instance, here in the

Western World, we usually are very happy when a baby is born, and are very sad

when someone dies. We laugh at birth and cry at death. A realised being once

said 'I cried when I was born, and I will laugh when I die!' The implication

here is that the 'I', not the body, was unhappy about leaving the state of

Oneness it inhabited before it incarnated into the world of duality on the

Earth, but was very happy about returning to the state of Oneness again after

death. Many realised beings talk about life in the physical body as being 'in

prison'. It is self-knowledge, the knowledge of the 'I am', that makes

'prison' bearable. The end of ignorance is self-realization; it is the

understanding that the 'I' is not a separate identity, separate from all the

other 'I's around us and separate from God. Before and behind the 'I' there is

God-consciousness. We are created by and inspired by God-Consciousness. Look

behind the veil of illusion, the body of name and fame in this life, and know

that you are an actual part of God. Constantly affirm that you are God. Know

that you are not your body. Challenge yourself every day with the question

"Who am I?" and one day you will experience the reality of your being and will

know that all is one, and then you will be able to say the ancient Vedic words

"I am that I am" and truly know their meaning.

Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter, March 2004

http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter03_04_02.htm

[Guest guest]

Sairam,

 

That was really too good and really reflects the life a sai devotee (inner

fight always going on in our life) !!

 

Lot of thanks once again for this wonderful self enquiry mechanism

presented in the article. Please convey my wishes to the author Mr. David

if possible.

 

Loving sairam to all,

Madhusudhan Rao.