THE NIGHT OF BRAHMAN
When individuality started, there was this deep, extreme silence. In Sanskrit, we call it a Night of Brahman, or another word that is used is “Pralaya,” where everything is stilled. But within this stillness, this stillness operates in varying cycles. One cycle starts and ends, and then another begins and ends, and another starts and ends, and this goes on ad infinitum. In one particular cycle, when everything is stilled, it is called Pralaya, or the Night of Brahman.
Within this stillness, there is still a samskara. It is not only the individual soul that has a samskara, but also the entire universe, or the particular universe that we are in, has a samskara. These samskaras remain in a very subtle form and would stay in a subtle form as currents remain in very still waters. We might observe a pond or the lake outside, and it seems very still, but there are still currents in the stillness, in the still waters. It is the regeneration, the currents becoming more powerful, or one current clashing with another current that creates this upheaval again that makes the turbulence in the water again, and that is how another cycle begins. According to modern scientists, when that cycle starts, that very turbulence created is called the Big Bang. From there, the propulsion takes place.
We begin from that silence, and in self-attainment, we reach the silence again. As far as the spiritual self is concerned, there is no journeying because it is the underlying factor, the unchanging factor, and it forever remains. It has nowhere to go. It is here, and its progress, or its journey, is from here to here. It goes nowhere.
THE SOUL DOES THE TRAVELLING
The soul has the journey, and the soul, the ego-self or the subtle body of man, does the travelling. It does the travelling on this vast ocean of the Spiritual Self, and the Spiritual Self of each and everyone is the same—the same Spiritual Self. Therefore, we say theology says God is one. That is what is meant by it. It is just one ocean; all individualities are bubbles or waves upon the same ocean.
The soul, too, or the subtle body, has not very far to go, even in this propulsion, because it starts in silence, it ends in silence, and silence is everywhere. The real journey is the experience it gains.
This cannot be measured in terms of time or space because there is neither time nor space in the realms of the subtle. In certain forms of occultism, where they have self-projection, what they are doing is projecting their subtle bodies outside themselves. Faster than a thought or as fast as a thought, they could be anywhere they desire. Here we are in America, and as quickly as I thought, we are in Japan. There is no time or space in that realm of subtlety, but the subtle body is still subject to causation. The physical body is subject to time, space and causation.
TIME, SPACE & CAUSATION
With the physical body, we measure time and space, and we know that all this has been caused, and every cause has its effect.
The subtle body is beyond the time and space concepts of the physical body, but it still has the powers of causation because it carries within itself all the impressions that caused it. It operates within the causation framework; if it did not, it would not be able to evaluate itself to take on another birth.
This is a very important point to remember, and it is worth repeating: the physical body is subject to time, space, and causation, while the subtle body is subject to causation only because it is beyond time and space, and the spiritual body is beyond all three.
There is no time, space, or causation in the spiritual body. It is omnipresent; therefore, there is no space. Being ubiquitous, it is never measured in terms of space. Being eternal is never measured in terms of time, and being beyond time, being immortal, you cannot measure it with linear time. Being omnipresent and universal, you cannot measure it with linear space, and it has no causation. It just Is, and that is the isness that people talk about, and as the scriptures would put it, “I am That I am.”
That is the spiritual body. The spiritual Self expresses itself through these various mediums. The Spiritual Self cannot enter the realms of gross physical matter directly. It, too, has to grossify itself through degrees and stages. The subtle body is necessary, bringing about the grosser body.
The whole process of self-attainment would be the total dissolution of the physical body. The subtle body is dissolved until those two are dissolved, and then everything is attained because the spiritual body is always there. When one is conscious, really conscious, even with the mind, or experience the am-ness, “I am That I am,” then here, even though he is entrapped in the physical and subtle bodies, still can experience that spiritual body of his, that am-ness. That is the soul’s progress, the individual soul’s progress, to become the Universal Soul, the am-ness. That is self- attainment.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1977 – 28
