Non duality

Advaita

This video has a few clips from different satsangs in which Gururaj referred to this concept which is embeded somehow in his teachings, bacause he encompassed duality and non-duality as a process of spiritual unfoldment. Bellow is a satsang transcript that complements the video above.

Questioner.  The most important part of your message has been to make us aware of the Divinity within us and others.  That also presumes that we would be aware of the human-ness within all of us.  Is there a danger that meditation and spiritual practices could make us more egocentric, more escapist, less tolerant and therefore less charitable towards others.

Gururaj.  No.  Thank you.  Lovely question.  You see when a person is unkind, when a person is unkind and uncharitable and intolerant, it is a sure sign that he’s only functioning with a very small part of his mind, while through meditation, one starts gradually to function in totality, mind, body and spirit.  So, naturally when you function in totality, you would become the reverse of what you have been.  If you are uncharitable, you’d become charitable.  If you are unkind, you become kind.  If you are uncompassionate you become more compassionate because you are functioning in totality.  So, there is no danger at all in meditation as far as the ego build-up goes, because meditation rids one of the egoistic samskaras that you have.  Now your ego is formed of samskaras which as you know, means the impressions and through the experiences that you have had.  Now that builds you into an individual being.  And once you recognise yourself exclusively as an individual being, you become an individual ego, expressing all the impressions that are already implanted in your mind.  While meditation does the reverse.  Meditation takes you away from that exclusive individuality without discarding it.  It takes you away from that individual individuality, exclusive individuality into a universality.  And therein lies the message of love.  Because if you cannot feel that universalness of everything, then as I might have said before, you would not know the meaning of love.

So the process is gain that awareness that all is one.  And this process is a simple process.  You do not lose individuality.  You are still the human being and there has been no totally perfect human being on this earth.  They could only reach ninety eight percent perfection and that includes Krishna, Buddha, Christ and the lot.  Because without the two percent imperfection, you’d never be able to maintain this body.  You’d become totally unaware of your physiological and biological functions and things like that.  So, that bit of ‘I-ness’ which is the ego, will remain.  That little bit of ‘me and mine’ will remain but ninety eight percent of you will rather be ‘Thee and Thine’.  For example you take the word me, ‘M – E’.  Put a mirror under it and the reflection would be we, ‘W – E’.  So that is the sense we develop from that Me to We.  One.  And yet it can, that awareness does not only apply to human beings only.  It applies to everything where you identify yourself, feel that oneness with the entire creation, the entirety of existence.  And when you can feel that oneness then all the virtues would be there in you.  For example if there’s a flea in my bed and I change beds every few nights travelling round the world, I would not have the heart to kill the flea because its life.  I’d pick up the flea and throw it out of the window.  Let go into the next door people’s bedroom (General laughter).  You see?

So you do, you do develop that sense.  Man, everything is conscious, as I said even a stone has consciousness but in man the consciousness is more developed because he is more evolved than a stone or a plant or an animal.  But that consciousness could be used so wrongly, where you only become conscious of yourself.  You feel that the entire universe revolves around you, that I am the most important person and to hell with the rest.  Do you see?  That is where the expansion of consciousness or awareness lies.  Now, awareness and consciousness are synonymous.  The more conscious you become, the more aware you become.  Do you see?  So all the consciousness is there in you, and to use a word, for the lack of a better word, you reach the area of pure consciousness where the consciousness is such that no evil thought could ever enter your mind.  That is the way to live a positive life when no evil thought is allowed to enter in your mind and you don’t block it off.  You don’t resist the evil thought.  As the Scriptures would say, ‘Resist not evil’.  This is what is meant.  But at the stage of pure consciousness that never happens, the evil thought never comes about.  And another word for pure consciousness is total love.

So, now all these things happen through the process of meditation and meditation could never cause any harm.  In the beginning stages when a person starts, through meditation in that quietude of mind, you look at yourself squarely and you discover your weakness.  For example a doctor, if he does not diagnose your problem properly, he won’t be able to give you the right medicine.  So this is self diagnosis where you find your weakness and you try to correct your weakness.  And this requires not only meditation but a certain measure of self help.  Many people are incapable of helping themselves because for one reason only, they have not got the strength.  Now meditation leads you to greater and greater integration which gives you the strength to face your problems.  Problems will always be there.  But how do we look at the problems, that is the important issue.  So, through the greater amount of awareness we look at problems in a different perspective, in a totally different perspective.  For example, say a close one to me, my children, my wife, my beloveds, if someone passes away, I will not shed a tear.  I will not.  Not because I have no sympathy or the love or the feelings in me, but because I have realised that the person has not passed away.  He is alive, he has thrown off his body and he will take on another body but that eternal spirit in him is alive and it is there.

So you see, it is a matter of how we look at things.  It’s a matter of perspective.  So you go crying and moping weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, what is it going to help.  It’s not going to help any.  So therefore a greater amount of awareness is needed by the people of this world.  And when they develop this awareness, a lot of the problems of the world individual and international problems will disappear.  If America feels, the people of America feel that look the Russians are non-separate from us, we all belong to one human race and the Russians feel the same way that we are blood brothers really.  Do you know if you go back in genealogy, you’d find that and I’m not talking of Adam and Eve, if you go back in genealogy, you’d find that we are all related.  And it has been worked out mathematically.  Say the two people have three children for example, the three children would multiply and their three each nine, those nine children multiplies by three each twenty seven, twenty seven times three – I forgot my calculator.  Do you see?  So at the stem, we are all one.  We are non-separate and that stem is Divinity itself.

Now, it is a biological factor that a child cannot be born without man and woman.  Right.  And if the Manifestor, people call it Creator but I call it Manifestor, who did he sleep with, if he was the only force of power in the world.  Who could ever say that God was married?  No.  This universe came about as a manifestation of the Manifestor.  It is the Manifestor or Divinity, the neutral energy.  It is like a flower that gives off fragrance or a fire giving off heat.  It is the nature of the flower to give off fragrance and it is the nature of the fire to give off heat.  So, that giving of the heat is the manifestation.  And in many religions, many theologies regard this manifestation to be female and He that we call Divinity is the only male.  For whatever He has produced is regarded as female and you find in many religions the worship of all the Goddesses, in Hinduism, Kali, Durgal, Luchsmi, blah, blah, blah, in the Christian faith, Mother Mary.  And if you go back into anthropology, Divinity was first worshipped as a woman.  And then later on you know you started being worshipped as a He.  And I think that’s unfair, male chauvinism.  Male chauvinism.  He’s neither, he’s neither he and he’s neither she.  And I’ve seen many meditators that are on the borderline, what do you call them, hermaphrodites, transvestites, hermaphrodites, whatever.  And I think you know they say what can we do about this, I say ‘Look well you’ve been born that way and you can’t do really anything much about it.  But don’t worry about it.  You’re combining both of Divinity within you, the he part and the she part’.  For in every man there is a bit of woman, and in every woman there is a bit of man.  In you there’s a balance.  So you’re neither man, you’re neither woman, you’re on the borderline.  So don’t feel sorry for yourself, you’re born that way and enjoy it.  Do you see?  I am speaking without any sexual connotations whatsoever.  I’m speaking about the psychology of that person that they feel like outcasts from normal society.  So, Divinity being a neutral force would naturally inhabit or become a he or a she.  And I tell you one thing that no person can become one with God, or one with Divinity if they have not lived in the bodies of a woman.  You have to take births as a female in order to develop certain qualities.  And you have to take births as a male in order to develop other qualities.  And the combination of all these qualities make up that manifestation which is Divinity.  Good.  Fine.

Now, as you know his mind has three section, the conscious mind, the sub-conscious and the superconscious level of the mind.  Now, the superconscious level of the mind is the highest stage man can reach and the superconscious mind is the finest stage of relativity.  It’s not total God yet.  But the finest stage of relativity and you cannot go any finer.  And once you reach the finest stage of relativity, then automatically you merge into Divinity, total Divinity.  Yet it must be remembered that all these various stages and you are just mind, – this body is just concretised mind that’s all what it is – so, everything down from the finest stage of relativity to the sub-conscious stage of the samskaras, to this physical, the conscious mind, the thinking mind to this physical body is Divine.  Do you see?  And that is the message that everything is Divine.  Can you tell me of anyone unless he’s a nut that would say Divinity is bad?  No one would.  No one.

So, you through your practices, approach that goodness and because you believe that God is good.  It’s fine to believe.  So the second part of our teachings is that we want you to experience that goodness within yourself not only believing it’s not enough.  You can believe anything.  You go to a magician show and the chap is performing wonderful things on the stage, the magician, cutting a woman in half and making an elephant disappear.  Do you see?  But cutting the woman in half – you know they normally have a battle afterwards, who’s going to take which half (General Laughter) but thank God the magician joins her together.   Fine.  Makes a motor car disappear on the stage.  Makes an elephant disappear on the stage.  Illusions aren’t they, illusions.  They’re not the truth.  But you believe that they have made that elephant disappear.

So the point is this that belief could be erroneous.  It could be filled with error.  But the inner experience cannot be erroneous.  It is not an illusion.  Some of the Monists or Mayavedists regard the entire creation to be an illusion, which is wrong.  This is a chair and I can feel the chair and I can smell the chair and I can sit on it.  It is not an illusion.  The illusory factor is this that substances are subjected to name and form.  You take a piece of wood and you make it into a chair and the same wood you make into a table.  So the one you call table, the other you call chair and not realising the factor that it is wood.  Or another instance, you take gold, you could have it made into a bracelet or a necklace and you say, you ask your maid or daughter or whoever, you know ‘Where is my necklace?  I don’t know where I’ve put it’ or your bracelet.  So you have given it names, while in reality it’s nothing but gold.  We forget the reality of it.  It’s only when you want to show off, you say ‘Ah, twenty two carrot, pure gold’.  Do you see?

So, if it’s gold or mud or whatever, it is still constituted of Divine substance of that Divine energy.  So man is essentially Divine but because of name and form he is more involved in the illusion than in reality.  For there is only one thing that is really real or totally real and that is Divinity.  Other things are also real but in a relative way, in a limited way, in a finite way.  It does not lose its reality.  It is only, it is only when you reach that stage of self illumination that you would, looking at it from that angle, you’d find the world to be illusion.  Like the ocean, you go to the seaside what do you notice.  You just notice the waves on the surface up and down and up and down, you notice the waves.  But you fail to notice that under those turbulent waves, there’s such a calm sea.  The sea is calm underneath.  We fail to recognise that because we do not want to dive deep enough into those waters or deep enough into ourselves where all calmness resides.  Remember one thing for sure that whatever problems you are going through, do not stem from that which is within you.  It is only surface level like the waves.  So the more attention you give to the surface waves, the more would you feel those waves as if they were dashing and crashing against the rocks of life.  Do you see?  But if the attention is just slightly turned deeper in, you will not take notice of the waves.  And what’s wrong with waves?  Let there be waves but become a surfer then and enjoy surfing on the waves.

For everything can be turned into beauty.  Everything in life, never mind what.  Because there is no such thing as a problem and if anything you find problematic, be sure to know that the solution of it is inbuilt into the problem.  A problem cannot exist without a solution.  The solution is inbuilt in the problem.  Just to find the solution and you know the popular saying – a business man wants to make a deal so he gets handed the documents to sign, so he says ‘Let me sleep it over, let me sleep over it.  I’ll let you know tomorrow’.  The reason is this that in that discussion you do not get swayed by the man selling you something.  You know you get some Smart-alecks, smart talkers they can sell you anything.  You can take a piece of mud and wrap it in beautiful chocolate paper and sell it to you as chocolate because what you are buying is the wrapping, and not what’s inside.  You still have to open the wrapping to see if it’s a nice chocolate or a piece of mud.  You see you get these Smart-alecks.  Fine.  So you say, let me sleep over it.  That means this that you want to think over it and in the quietude of your mind, you make your decision that is this deal worthwhile or not.

So, that only means that you want to reach the quietude where you can decide properly.  Right.  And in that quietude as we spoke I think last night, you could hear the inner voice.  At that time when you’re doing the deal, you could be very impulsive and sign the wrong papers.  While in quietude you would be more careful.  There is something to guide you.  And there is always something to guide you inside.  Always, always, always there.  But to discover it, that is the secret.  And what is a greatest secret to me is realising why people cannot find the secret of this simplicity of diving inside.   Do you see?  And we know, even if you start with belief that everything existent is Divine.  You will start at first with duality, I and Thou, but as you progress further, you’d find yourself merging into the Thou, and you become that Thou.  And you say ‘Brahmas me’ or ‘Tat Vam ma si’ – these are Sanskrit terms meaning ‘Thou art That’.  ‘Tat Vam ma si’ – ‘Thou art that’.  Thou.  What does that mean?  That means Divine.  Thou art that.  And then we were talking about God earlier – I just for the sake of explanation, I would call Him a He perhaps but it’s actually It, since He’s neither He nor She.  It is It.  And you are It.  Do you see?  You’re It.

That’s the way I live my life.  If I love someone very deeply, it will never be for any other reason except just for the sake of loving.  Anything else happens it would just be a natural flow but the intention or the feeling would be of total love for the person.  Always.  Because Thou art That.  I see the Divinity in you and I love that Divinity.  You see?  So a man says to a woman ‘I love you’, it’s a false statement.  It is said everyday, but if you analyse that statement, it is false.  I love you.  That means we are separating, while love is bringing together.  Do you see?  I and the you, you are separate.  But real love is a bringing together and in bringing together, proceeding further away from that duality, the I and the you, the me and the thou, you become one with Divinity and you experience it.  It cannot be analysed with the mind.  The mind is too finite to experience that which is infinite.  So, but we have to work with the tools we have on hand.  What I would personally like to do is have fifty self realised people and send them all round the world ‘Go and teach’ and take your partner along with you, go teach in pairs.  Could be male or female, it doesn’t matter, female the better, at least she can cook and wash you clothes. (Gururaj laughs)  Male chauvinism.  You know that could become a Mantra, ‘Chauvinism’ because every mantra ends with the M sound, every Mantra does.  That’s the universal sound and it incorporates Aum.  So if your Mantra ends with Yem, mmmm.

Many people might not be doing their Mantras properly, so just let me talk about it.  You must put more emphasis on the M, more emphasis on the M.  Say for example your mantra is Rad-daa-yam, you would say Raddaayammmmm, Raddaayammmmm, Raddayaammmm, Rad-daa-yammmmm and you float away with it.  You don’t do things – most Mantras are three syllables representing you know the Trinity of your present state of your evolutionary state and where you can reach.  But if someone’s name is MacDonald, you don’t say Mac Don Ald, Mac Don Ald, no you say Macdonald.  Fine.  Same thing with the Mantra, although I write it in three syllables to make it easier for the teachers to teach it.  So you don’t say Rad… Daa…. Yam, Raddaayaammmm, Raddaayaammmm, Raddaayaammmmm and you float away.  Do you know why you, – I’m sorry I’m regressing from the subject but these things are important, – do you know why we use a gong in meditation, is to learn, is to teach you to use your Mantra properly.  As the sound fades away when you bang the gong, so must your Mantra too fade away so this, the gong gives you an idea of how the Mantra should fade away.  That’s why we use the gong.  It’s a very old ancient Tibetan method.  Good.

So we are all Divine.  Anyone wants to defy that.  It cannot be defied, it cannot, we are all Divine.  We just got to uncover the veils, the veils of ignorance that puts us into the illusory state of not knowing that we are Divine.  Now by knowing, realising and experiencing that I am Divine, all your sense of guilt will disappear which is the biggest disease in the world.  All the other negativities, all the misdeeds that you might have done will melt away and you become a real positive being.  But until that stage is reached, there’s nothing wrong with negativity.  For example, this light that is burning requires a positive and a negative current to create the circuit to produce this light.  Do you see?  But it is used, that negativity, the negative current is used in a right way.  A circuit is created with the positive current.  You just can’t have the positive current – many of you that do a little work at home with putting in light bulbs and repairing the fuses would know that you got to, you can’t run electricity, the light just with a positive current, you got to have the negative current to form the circuit.  So, why not regard life that way?  That look, these negativities that I have, they are necessary, but let me join on that wire of negativity, let me join on that wire of negativity onto that other wire of positivity.  Do you see?

So, everything, everything, everything in life can be looked at in a totally, totally different way as soon as you lose the idea of ‘me and mine’.  My chair, my table, my flower, my this.  Nothing belongs to you, not even your body belongs to you.  Nothing belongs to you.  Everything is Divine and you cannot possess Divinity.  You cannot own Divinity.  You can become Divine yes and merge into Divinity, but you can never possess it.  People want explanations what is God.  You can’t explain it, you can only experience it.  People can’t even explain what is electricity.  People can’t even explain what’s an atom because the deeper they go into an atom, they find sub-atomic matter.  And when they still go deeper and deeper, they find still more sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub atomic matters and they can never reach the end.  Because once they reach the end, the essence of that atom, they would have found God.  You see?  Now, that with science is not possible.  It can take you short way but the real way to lead one to the totality of things is found inside here.  And finding it inside here, you find it everywhere.

So, the message that we are all Divine is the truth and nothing but the truth.  At first you will find duality and this, I have quoted this before, the Bible says that also, to the peasants that could not understand him he used to say ‘Pray to Thy Father in Heaven’.  Duality.  To some that could understand a bit more he would say that ‘God is like the trunk and you are the branches of the tree’.  And that is called qualified Non-Dualism.  But to those that were very close to him and that could understand him, he would say ‘I and my Father are One’ because he had found that unity.

Now the question arises why did he only start teaching when he was thirty, when he from the time of his birth was born with all the Divine powers, with Divinity.  Every Avatar, every Incarnation can only start teaching when they reach thirty, forty because they too have to go through a process of self discovery.  They too have to find their real selves.  And true Masters when they find their real selves and find themselves to be Divine, then only would they start teaching.  And that happened with all the great Masters, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, you name them.  You see?  So even Avatars, I’m telling you this to encourage you, I’m telling you this as an encouragement that even a Divine being that is born Divine, he still has to go through those years of experiences to discover who he really is.  So do not be discouraged, for you too will discover who you really are and that is the destiny of man.  Everyone has to reach home and that is home.  When you leave the Course on Friday, you might go to other places if you have some things to do, some errands to do, but eventually you are going home.  Yes, you are.  That’s in the physical.  I’m talking of this home where all of you will definitely reach because it is there and if it is there, you must reach it.  If it wasn’t there then you can’t.  But it is there.

So man progresses step by step.  First Duality, as I explained and then qualified Non-Duality, and then Monism, Advaitaism, that total unity, that I and my Father are one.  Each and every one sitting here is entitled to say that, that I and my Father are one when you experience that oneness.  But bear it in mind that I and my Father are one and that is my goal in life.  That is my goal where I have to reach and sooner or later you will.  But the sooner you reach it, the less your problems will be.  You would not have to go through all the various lifetimes of what you would call suffering.  You will not.  So, to reach that goal can be done in one lifetime.  It can be done in one lifetime.  It can be done through total devotion, Bhakti.  It can be done through Jnana, knowledge and wisdom.  It can be done through action, to do good actions and then you enter Raja Yoga, the royal path where all these three merge, wisdom, action and devotion.  Devotion is another name for love where all these three merge and you are on the Royal path which is accompanied with certain kinds of practices.  Do you see?

I have come across many people, you know, that are sceptical about meditation.  And what I always tell them is this ‘That the proof of the pudding lies in the eating’.  If you don’t like the pudding, throw it away.  If you don’t like the pudding, throw it away.  But do one thing, be good, do good and for that you’ll need inner strength.  Let every action be such an action which will not produce any friction, which will be harmonious and that will lead you to the very action of life.  It’s no good just thinking, sitting at home and thinking about it.  I knew a man, he used to sit from morning till night and study all the Scriptures, the Korans and the Tora and Vedas and the Upanishads and the Bibles and all works of the great philosophers, Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, all of them and his wife and children were starving.  So I said ‘You better get off your backside and start working.  What’s the sense of you getting all this book knowledge if you cannot provide a piece of bread for your wife and children?  Action, act, go and work, earn and provide for your wife and children and then you can always find time and still pursue your studies, your scriptural studies.  You still can do that.’

So, life has to be very, very practical and practical means action, Achtung, action.  But good action, that is non-friction producing.  If a child is naughty you strap him on the backside a few times.  That’s not friction because it’s hurting you more than what it’s hurting the child.  You’re teaching.  Friction is when your mind goes into deep conflicts.  And if your mind, your action is ruled by those conflicts you harm others.  And by harming others, look at the amount of karma you’re bringing upon yourself.  And that makes things worse.  It becomes a vicious circle.  Instead of discarding the samskaras, you’re adding more and more and more.  Do you see?  That is why some of you here that are teachers are doing one of the greatest things in the world, leading a person in a very systematic, kind, compassionate way to Divinity.  I would never promise anyone self realisation, God realisation.  Never.  If any man comes to you and says ‘I will give you God realisation’, please run far away from that man.  He can’t do it.  You gotta do it yourself.  What I say is this ‘I will show you the path because I’ve been through it and you can go through the same path for yourself to reach your Divine goal.  And then the beauty is this that the path and the goal becomes one.  Then you look back you turn around and you see the path and that path would seem Divine to you.  And you’d say, ‘Ah, the path and Divinity is but one’.  What have I been wasting all my time for?  You see?  That’s the beauty of it and that oneness would be realised where the path and goal becomes one.

So it is the easiest thing in the world to reach Divinity, easiest thing in the world.  Because it is not something that you’re going to acquire.  It is something which is already there.  You see?  It is just a change of the attitudes we have in life, the perspectives, our spiritual practices and once you become – I’m speaking to new meditators that have just been initiated – once you start practising regularly, you’ll find that you’d get so hooked on to it, to use that stupid word, that you won’t be able to do without it.  I know of thousands and thousands of people that go to work and watch the clock and say ‘Ah, its five, when is it going to be five so I can go home and meditate’.  Right.  Yes.  Because it gives you bliss.  It gives you a certain joy.  It makes you know that you are throwing off a lot of dirt.  It also makes you know and you’d feel this that all the tensions of the day, of a hard working day would disappear.  You shed it in half an hour.  All the stresses would disappear, tension and stresses would disappear.  Now forget God, okay forget Him, just for your tension and stresses do it.  Okay.  Right.  The others will follow on its own.  The others will follow on its own.  Let’s say ‘I am going to meditate to remove all my strains and stresses and feel relaxed’.  Just adopt that attitude, forget God.  Like as I told you the other day, this man who said he’s an Atheist, he says «I am an Atheist, thank God».  So that ‘Thank God’ will follow in its own wake.  And as you go deeper and deeper within yourself, you will say ‘Ah, there is a power greater than me.  I thought I was so wonderful and mighty.  But there’s a power far greater than me.  And I am that power and through my practices I’ll be able to express that power’.

Now the other word in your question was escapism.  You can only escape if you go outside yourself.  Then you’re escaping from yourself.  It could be with drink or drugs or whatever, an external thing is used.  But here you’re going internally, so you are not escaping anything.  And if you feel that you’re escaping and if you want to escape, escape into God.  Right.  You see everything can be looked at in a very, very positive way.  Even the word escape, which people always misconstrue, but the word is good.  Yeah.  Escape into God, instead of into drugs or the bottle or Soho area – what do you call those places.  Do you see?  Always laugh before you eat.  Yes.  It aids to your digestion and makes you enjoy the meal.  And you know Hayes is like a five star hotel, they give you their best.