The Many Faces of the One: article 18 - the unpublished esoteric writings of an aging yogi.
'I-am 'Spirit' daily affirmation
"I allow the grace of 'Spirit's pure peace, love, beauty, plenitude and wisdom to support and guide me in every area and facet of my life. With pure 'Spirit' I am always truly blessed. I am always open and receptive to the peace, love, beauty, well-being, plenitude and wisdom of pure 'Spirit'. I am always one with pure 'Spirit' in mind and body, regardless of worldly appearances, dramas and situations. All that I am has its true foundation and form in my faith, trust and knowledge in pure 'Spirit'. 'I-am' by the grace and love of pure Spirit'. 'Spirit' has given me life and I am a divine and perfect creation of pure 'Spirit'. I always live my life in the absolute fullness, beauty, peace, love, plenitude and knowledge of pure 'Spirit'. I always act on whatever fully honors the truth and love of pure 'Spirit' and I find divine joy, well-being, peace and beauty in the fullness of life as a perfect creation and expression of pure 'Spirit'. I radiate pure 'Spirit' at all times, in all places and in all my thoughts and actions. I am always deeply connected and at one with pure 'Spirit'. OM, shanti, shanti, shanti. 'I-am', peace, peace peace.
"The true and pure transcendental mind is like a beautiful garden where all things can freely come and go to dwell in the unchanging bliss and love of its radiance, peace, plenitude and beauty. It does not discriminate or pass judgement. All are welcomed and all can freely leave or stay. It is not altered or affected by the coming and going of things and their ever-changing behavior. Be it thoughts, feelings, moods and forms. This transcendental universal mind remains forever still, awake and silent. This is our true essence, identity and nature of 'I-am'." Of this I am certain. Of this I am clear.
BEYOND THE REALMS OF BIRTH AND DEATH
The body dies, so are we dead?
Surely all that happens in association with there being a body disappears and dies with it, but then again still something appears to recognize this truth. This recognition appears to be the voice of 'I' within me which when looked for appears to have no actual form, other than the 'I' thought itself. And yet this 'I' thought is known too. It only takes form when it identifies itself with the body and yet the body is temporary. The other question is that the 'I' thought appears to be localized to the mind/body experience. It is not like we experience ourselves outside of the mind/body experience as a day-to-day occurrence. Most of us have the sense of looking out into the world, and internalizing that experience. When examined we realize that beginning and end arise together, like inside and outside. When we create an inside there immediately is an outside. They are inseparable, as are birth and death. There is no death without birth. These too are inseparable. One cannot exist without the other. It is all interconnected and inseparable. We would like to separate birth from death, and youth from old age, and pleasure from pain, so there is no death or old age or pain, but this is impossible. These things are inseparable. This is what it means to live in a dualistic universe of phenomena. We might like there to be no death but this can only be achieved by finding that which has no birth. The challenge here is we would like birth but with no death. We would like to have the sensual pleasures of youth, gain, pleasure and vitality but without the pains of loss, decay, pain and old age. And yet it is all inseparable. One defines the other.
Atman-Yoga tells us that 'emptiness' is everything and everything is 'emptiness'. I am 'Spirit' transcending the body. The body dies and yet pure 'Spirit' that transcends it cannot be touched, threatened or affected by death as it too is not affected by life. It is life eternal. It is what it is regardless of life and death. Therefore all is the 'Deathless Spirit'. All is 'emptiness'. Absorption and abidance in the Impersonal Self is to dwell unceasingly and completely in the identity of the unmade and unchanging pure 'Spirit'. This eliminates the 'I' as a separate individuality or person. This is the Deathless Self. Overcoming the mistaken tendency to see the unreal as real. Self-realization removes the fear of death that threatens the dissolution of the ego (this being the feeling and thought of a separate individuality isolated from all that is).
INTIMACY WITH THE ONE
In spiritual Self-realization there is a genuine self-recognition and awakening that we are already one with the Deathless Self (Pure Being) which is 'Spirit' and the Absolute of all creation and phenomena. All this is the Self-realization of awakening to the true self (the unmade Self), which is our real, unborn and eternal essence. The sense or feeling of 'I' is related to the mind/body experience, and the physical and mental faculties. The real Self is beyond the mind/body experience. Here lies the spiritual certainty and self-reliance of Self and all that is. Here is the Self-realization that we are already free, whole, perfect and complete. This is the renouncing and letting go of the false idea of I-am-the-body or I-am-the-doer. We are falsely and wrongly burdened by assuming the I-am-the-body or I-am-the-doer identity. In the recognition and Self-realization of our true nature, identity and essence what is there to become or be? We are already that which we are and this is already complete, perfect and whole in and as itself. Always has been and always will be. Regardless of the phenomenal world, we are - 'I-am'.
We are all. 'I-am' is all, and all is 'I-am'. Experiences and the phenomenal world do not define us. They simply are what they are. The Self is all, and yet it is free of all things. No name, no past, no future, no history, no story, no drama, no fixed identity, no form, no birth or death, no beginning or end. It is the perfect realization of an essence which is the Impersonal Self underlying and transcending everything and all experience, and yet always one with all that is or is not. We are identical with it even though we have mistakenly identified ourselves as separate and individual. We can conclude that the spiritual endeavor is to have an unbroken and constant awareness and knowing of the Unmade and Impersonal Self, 'Spirit'. It is the dissolution and removal of the false and mistaken identity with the mind/body experience as the true Self and the continuous fully conscious identity with the Absolute, which can be permanently established in all worldly activities, endeavors and situations of life. It is unburdened and unhindered by all that is, and all that will ever be. It has always been so. It is always free, unlimited, unaffected, plentiful and eternal. It is free of all experiences and conditions and yet at the same time it is one with them, as they are one with it. It is free of space, time and form and yet it is one with all that is, and all is one with it. This is the light of Self.
For the one who has attained Self-realization there is no seeking of it. They have transcended the duality of 'I' and the Absolute. They realize and know the oneness of the wave and the ocean, therefore there is nothing to fear in life or death. Only 'Spirit' is all reality and identity. Only 'Spirit' is real and enduring, and all is of, in and with pure 'Spirit'. The Awakened Atman or 'soul' has transcended the limited identity of the wave with all that is changing and has returned willing to its true identity which is one with the ocean, which is the deathless 'Spirit'. Traditionally in pure yoga 'sahaja samadhi' is the highest state of esoteric Self-realization. It is the complete and final state of Self-inquiry. For one who has attained and realized this state there is on longer the seeking of it. It is considered to be pure uninterrupted God-consciousness, transcending the mental and physical plain of experience, and yet with full awareness of the manifested world, and the full use of the mental and physical faculties. This is pure 'I-am'. Pure Being-ness (Sat-Chit-Ananada). It is the true meaning of renunciation which is both within and without. It is overcoming the false idea of the unreal as real, and it is the knowing of the real, and all creation as the real. It is the giving up our false limited individual identity and realizing our true identity with the Absolute. This is true renunciation. Nothing to do. No one to become and be. No fixed identity or form to attach to except the Absolute. All is spontaneous arising of Pure Being, 'Spirit'. No fixed idea or concept of what life should look like, or be like, and yet the Divine is lived in all things, situations and places. All is that which alone is - 'I-am'.
UNIFICATION WITH THE ALL
We can ask ourselves in the pursuit of seeking and having Self-realization, "is is really possible to perform all worldly activities of worldly life with true detachment and indifference to all that shows us and to regard only the Unmade Self as the real? It is considered that the genuine recognition and knowledge of Pure Being, 'Spirit', as one own true essence, identity and state, and as being the Self of the universe and all phenomena is the unsurpassable and ultimate truth. Certainly I know nothing that surpasses this Self-realization.
Atman-yoga suggests to us in our pursuit of Spiritual Knowledge that only the Absolute, 'Spirit', is real, That in fact only the Absolute is and all phenomena are unreal as they are only the Absolute manifested in temporary forms and constructs to which we, or should I say the mind, attaches a name, label and idea. The entire universe and its endless myriad of forms and phenomena exist with and within the transcendental mind of the Absolute, having no intrinsic or separate reality of their own but merely manifesting the Absolute in different illusory and transitory expressions of reality. All this plays itself out in the changing sensory perceptions and realms of mind-consciousness. However, despite this unending dance of infinite realms of consciousness the Absolute remains unchanged and formless. As with the people and events in a dream that exist within the dream and mind of the person who is dreaming, then the same is true for the Absolute and all creation. As with the dream, the people and the events dreamed have no separate reality independent of the the person that is dreaming them. The people and events of the dream do not add anything to that person by their creation and take nothing away from that person by their not existing. So too with the appearances and disappearances of worldly phenomena and events. The Absolute is as it always is, regardless of the coming and going of endless realms of existence, constructs and phenomena.
The purpose of the spiritual endeavor to ask, "who am I?", is to fully realize our true identity with the Absolute (God). In Atman-Yoga, phenomena are seen as illusionary when viewed as separate from the knowing of the Absolute, and real when experienced as the knowledge and knowing of one true Self. The Absolute is the only true and enduring reality and identity which manifests as all things, and remains unchanged despite being one with all things, and all things being one with it. Only the Absolute is real, and all alone is this despite the impressions and projections of separateness and individuality. It is beyond time, form and space, It is beyond mind, body and the intellect. It is beyond the phenomenal world and the recognition of it. Any yet it is one with all this and all this is one with it. In ignorance, we are like fish in the ocean that are constantly swimming around and always searching endlessly for the ocean not realizing that even whilst we are in search of the ocean we are already one with it. We seek to be one with the ocean when all the time we already are. We go in search of God or Self-realization only to find we are already one with it. Like the wave that is always one with the ocean, despite appearing as a wave, so too with us. Separateness and individuality are the real illusions. Only God is real.
This is the essential and core message of Atman-Yoga. The Deathless Self, alone is.
Atman-Yoga Daily Mantra: "I am. Life is. I am one with all life and all life is one with me. Oneness in body. Oneness in mind. Oneness in all things."
Song of the Deathless Yogi:
I am 'emptiness'. All is 'emptiness'. 'Emptiness' is all.
Form is 'emptiness'. Only 'emptiness'. 'Emptiness' is form'.
This esoteric blog is dedicated to my earthly mother 'Rita' who transitioned on the 12th December 2021.
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