SOME THOUGHTS ON ATMA-----93

[Guest guest]

Loving Sai Rams,

In the previous posting it was stated that the Highest can be reached only when there is divine fusion in our experience that the Self in us is the Self in all. Let each one of us introspect within ourself whether we are really putting into practise what we are told to by our scriptures. Many a times we find fault with God for not listening to our prayers or for our sorrows and sufferings. Before we expect something from God let us conduct ourselves in such a way so that we deserve His Grace. Identifying ourselves with our matter vestures, we come to experience the ego-centric concepts, and come to suffer the imperfections of the gross, the subtle and causal bodies. Even an intelligent man, in his native instincts, believes and acts as though he is the body and expects nothing more saintly and divine in himself. To unwind this misunderstanding, is the means of escaping from all its consequent sorrows and despairs. This release from the thraldom of matter, from the unsatiable hungers of the flesh, from the endless agitations of the mind, from the demands of the intellect---is to rediscover the Soul of freedom, the Nature of the Self(

Atma).

 

If false imaginations have brought about a mass of tangled thoughts to constitute our agitated mind of to-day, through logical reconsideration, we must learn patiently to disentangle the thought-processes in ourselves. Ignorance

(Avidya) breeds delusions;wisdom brings forth knowledge. In not apprehending the nature of the Self, we misapprehend It to be the various matter-bound vehicles, and thus establish our identity with them and their countless imperfections. The process of negating our oneness with them and asserting our true nature as the Self, is the highest meditation. The realm of matteris subject to change and inertness which are the antithesis of the very nature of the Self. Like lightning which lasts only for a moment, the body is ever-changing, impermanent and transitory. The body is made up of essentially dead inert matter. There is only as much inelligence and dynamism in the body as in a piece of ,say, firewood. The body which is thus ever-changing and totally inert can not be the true nature of the meditator. Hence he has to negate this body saying,'I am not this body " . The unreal has to be negated and the real asserted. This double-function taken up ardently by a matured intellect working through a disciplined mind and controlled body is the highest meditation

(Nidhidhyasana). Assertion of the real follows immediately after negation of the false. That assertion is " I am the Atma " . As the Self I am ever changeless. Though I am the Pure Atma, in contact with the matter vehicles I am conscious of my perceptions, emotions and thoughts. Matter is inert. Therfore, I am Consciousness in nature and it is Me who provides the similitude of consciousness for all the perceivers, feelers and thinkers.

 

 

When an individual thus detaches himself from his delusory relationships and ignorant identifications with matter envelopments, he comes to wake up into the realm of the Atma which is changeless, Eternal,Blissful Consciousness. All sources of sorrow are in the field of matter, and when we observe more closely, we find that it is the property of change in matter which is the source of all sorrows. Since I am the Consciousness Infinite and Eternal, the Changeless Truth, which has nothing to dowith matter, Ia m ever blissful. The meditator when he accomplishes this much, will naturally come to experience that he is the Atma, the Eternal All-pervading

Brahman. Realisation of the Self within the meditator ,is at once the recognition of the Self to be the Self in all.

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian