LIFE IS TRUTH, AND THAT IS KNOWN BY ITS VARIOUS DEGREES
There is only one form of life, really speaking, and this form of life has its separate gradations. Scientists have even discovered a heartbeat in a cabbage, and they found that when you grow flowers, if you tend them with love, they grow much more beautifully. You can communicate on that level even with a flower. So that flower has life. Everything existing in the universe is nothing but life. It is all life.
But why are there differences in different forms of life? It is due to the evolutionary process. In a mineral, in a stone, there is also life. It might seem inanimate to us, but if you leave it out for a few years, you will find changes in the stone, and those changes are not only caused by the external conditions but also by what is within itself. So, even in the stone which seems so inanimate to us, there is life. This table standing here, we think it is dead, but by studying it, we will know that there are millions of molecules swirling around. There is motion, and wherever there is motion, there is life; a specific energy propels it, and that energy itself is life. So basically, the force between the stone, between the plant, between the animal, and man is still the same, and that force is life, that force is the breath of life.
The human being might be at a far more advanced stage. On this planet, the human being might be considered the most advanced at various stages of life. Still, there are other existences with higher forms of life that are even further beyond the capacity of the human being. So, it is a matter of gradation. Life is truth, and that is known by its various degrees.
BECAUSE OF FREE WILL, THE INTELLECT CAN BE USED TO DEVOLVE OR EVOLVE A PERSON
The human life that we possess has a unique value. The difference between animal life and human life is that humans have the thinking ability. The human can think, and it is only his power to believe that differentiates him from the animal. But what do we do with our thinking power? We have been given the intellect that can evaluate various things. We can determine from the cold to the hot; we can discriminate. We can distinguish between black and white, and we can differentiate between all the various laws that constitute the law of the opposites. But the human intellect can also be an instrument to unfathom the deeper levels within himself, and yet the same intellect, with its power of discrimination, can decide wrongly.
Why can the intellect be taken into devious paths? It is because with the intellect we have something called free will. What is free will, and what is the relationship of free will with Divine will, for example? Divine will is a pattern that says water flows down a hill, not up a mountain. The sun rises in the east and not in the west. And like that, in the machinery of the Divine will, the human intellect functions with an ability to have free will. If we have to go to Birmingham from here, the intellect can decide, weigh the pros and cons, which will tell him which is the best road to take, which is the shortest route, which road has the least amount of traffic, and the road that will take him there the soonest. Exercising that intellect would be due to free will. Yet the intellect, being cunning as it is, can use the ability of free will in things and in ways which will prove to be a retrogression instead of a progression. It could be evolutionary, and it could also be used to devolve a person rather than to evolve one.
Through meditation, we develop the ability to use free will to lead us to that which is evolutionary.
So there lies the choice of man, the free will. When we, through meditation, develop the ability to go deeper and deeper into the subtler and subtler levels of the mind, our awareness increases. We expand our awareness, and in that expansion, we gain a greater perspective. Our perspective, our vision, our conception, our perception widens, and in the widening of the perception, when we have a general, a wider view, we develop the ability to be able to decide and evaluate with our intellect, so that the free will could lead us to that which is evolutionary and not to that which is retrogressive. That is the purpose.
So, across all the realms of existence, there is only one life, and there are gradations within it. Man, the highest on this planet, has been given the power of thought that elevates him above the animal. And yet in man himself, the plant life exists. In man, the mineral life exists. In man, the animal life exists. And in man, also exists that Divinity which can take him and make him a God-man whereby he could live more in tune with his higher nature than his lower nature. And this is the primary purpose of meditation.
The incredible benefits we receive in meditation: greater harmony, whereby one’s blood pressure is regulated, one’s heart condition is controlled, various psychosomatic diseases are eradicated, and organic diseases are helped towards a remedy that makes one feel better. It could act as a cure, but these are side benefits. The main benefit and primary purpose are to become one with the source, to return to that source from which we have come. So, we have progressed from all these various gradations of the one life, and because of the intellect, because of the ability in man, we want to become one again with that one life.
THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS IS THE REAL COMPULSION FOR MAN TO BECOME ONE WITH HIS MAKER
So, what is the purpose of creation, and if the purpose of creation was to separate us from the one source, then what purpose would it serve to go back to that source again? Who creates? A poet creates a poem. He establishes a poem to find an expression. A poet creates a poem to find perfection. A musician composes a piece of music to express himself and to find perfection within himself, creating that symphony. An artist paints a picture to express himself, so through the image, he can find perfection.
If we regard the Creator to be perfect, how can perfection want to perfect itself? What need is there for the Creator to express itself? Expression naturally implies some form of imperfection. So, I believe that we are not a creation but rather a manifestation. It is the nature of fire to give heat. The fire does not create heat; it is the inherent nature of fire to do so. In other words, the heat is just a manifestation of the fire. And if it is a manifestation, would the manifestation be a superimposition upon that which is Divine?
There are certain schools of thought that regard or believe that all that we see around us, this whole creation, is illusory because that which is perfect did not need to recreate itself. That is one school of thought, but that argument can only be valid from the point of the Absolute, and when one reaches absoluteness, then the relative becomes a dream. The relative becomes non-existent. But we who are in the relative must accept the principle of the Manifestor and the manifestation. We are the manifestation of the Manifestor, and because of the infinity between the Manifestor and the manifest, there exists a magnetic force that compels us, which draws us because of the inherent nature of the manifest and the Manifestor; the nature of both is the same.
Therefore, we say that Divinity is within us. If that spark has been individuated or separated, in truth, there is no separation, but for the sake of the conversation, if the spark has been separated from the fire, the spark, naturally, because of the magnetic pull, would want to be one again with the fire. And the purpose would be the magnetic force as well as the search for happiness. That is the purpose. And the search for happiness is the real compulsion for man to become one with his maker.
IN THIS UNIVERSE THERE IS NO DESTRUCTION, ONLY A TRANSFORMATION IN NAME AND FORM
The self does not die. The mind might die or transform itself. When we talk of self with a capital S, we are talking about the infinite quality, that infinite something that is within man. That which is within man cannot die. It is immortal, and even this body cannot die. When the grosser body is separated from its subtler body, then even the grosser body disintegrates and becomes one with its original elements. In this universe, nothing is ever destroyed. There is no destruction but only a transformation in name and form, just as vapour exists in ice, vapour also exists in the water. The constituent of the vapour, the water, and the ice is still H2O. The principle forever remains the same. H2O, the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, remains the same forever; it is there, it is eternal, but because of various combinations that have become self-perpetuating, we see it under different names and forms.
Even the mind is not destroyed. Every thought we think is indestructible. Every word said by you or by me in this hall is also unbreakable. It is floating around, flowing around, and floating around in the universe, in the form of a vibration.
We hear the common saying that there is nothing new under the sun. When a poet writes a poem, he is not creating a new thought. He is only tuning in to an existing idea that might have been thought thousands of years ago. The transmitting station is forever broadcasting. It is we, with our little radios, who have to tune in to the proper meter, and that we call inspiration. So even though the minutest matter is not destroyed at all. But what finds destruction is the ego. The ego, which is an assumed ego, has no reality because it is forever changing. The ego is like a cinema where the unchanging realities, the screen, and the ego play upon it like the moving picture. Yet the screen behind remains unchanging and white, and superimposed upon it are the various images we see.
THE FOURFOLD STRUCTURE OF THE MIND AND THE ROLE OF THE EGO
So, you will ask what creates this ego that hides the reality from us? The human mind has four sections. The first section would be the carrier of impressions. Those impressions might go back into various lifetimes if you believe in them, or let us just take the impressions of this lifetime. That section of the mind is the carrier of impressions or the memory box. From there, we have the intellect that weighs the pros and cons of the impressions that the impressions bring to it. The intellect then, in turn, sends the thought further forward to the judge to decide on the pros and cons that the intellect has produced. But in between comes the ego. And the ego weighs, ego accepts according to its own development, according to its own colouring; the ego accepts what the intellect has brought forward and presents the evidence to the eternal judge who sits behind that mind, who rules that mind. And that is how, when we are sitting engrossed in a book, the doorbell would ring, but we would not hear it because the mind is fascinated; the carrier of impressions is not in tune. When the carrier of the impression and the organ of hearing are not in tune, it cannot take that forward further to the realm of the intellect for weighing.
So all these things, all these four factors, the carrier of impressions, the intellect and the ego, the presenter to the judge, the presenter to the essence that stands behind the mind, have to be present for any perception to take place. For any perception to take place, all these factors of the mind have to be present and awake and in tune. So, what distorts information is really the ego, which has been conditioned. These conditionings have been taking place because of our method and way of life, our education, our environment, our upbringing, and various past impressions that go back, very, very far. These are the constituents of the ego.
Through meditation practices, the ego is clarified, and we appreciate the true self.
Through meditational practices, the ego is clarified. It is subdued, and in subduing it, the intellect has a chance of presenting present impressions, present living style directly to the judge and thereby get the proper answer for better living, for good living, for happier living.
The self never dies. Nothing is destructible. It is forever there. The only thing that disappears is the ego because the ego, in the first place, was an illusion. And it is by coming to grips with ourselves through meditational practices that we wipe away the value of the ego, which in reality is valueless, and then we appreciate the true self. Then we understand the Divinity that resides in us. Then we appreciate the true nature of immortality. And that is how we become one with our maker. And that is what Christ meant when He said in the Bible that “I and my Father is one.”
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1976 – 03
