The Journey of the Soul – I

Gururaj Ananda Yogi used to speak in his satsangs about the path of unfoldment, to emphasize the fact that there is no development, the soul is completely developed, there is just an unfolding. But in this path, that  goes from Silence to Silence: What is traveling? Have we traveled a path or have we not traveled at all. And if it has been a journey: Who experiences this journey?

We “know” that the spirit of the human being, or the universal spirit, is omnipresent. It has nowhere to go and nowhere to come from. It just is. So what journeys? Is it really and experience, or is it an illusion? Even if it is an illusion, then how is illusion experienced? All illusion or delusion is just a counterpart of reality, as it’s own “non-existence” exists within that It that we call reality.

We come from nowhere and we are going nowhere, but just give a little space between the “w” and the “h”. You are now here and that is the important factor to recognize in practical life. Nevertheless, the mind has a habit of inquiring.

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The  mind is conditioned through the process of evolution into going through various stages whereby it gains these experiences. Who gains the experiences? The mind gains the experiences.

A HUMAN BEING HAS THE CAPACITY TO EXPERIENCE THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE; THE SPIRIT CANNOT

So, the experiences having been gained by the mind, of the mind, and from the mind bring us to a simple idea: There is nothing outside the mind. The human mind is as vast as the entire universe, and if you individualize it, it only means that you are viewing one bubble in a vast pond. And that bubble has no separate existence from the pond. A human being has the capacity within himself to experience, with the mind, the entirety of the universe; while the spirit remains aloof, for the spirit cannot experience this journey. Therefore we say, “From Silence we proceed, and we return to Silence.” It means that the mind that has been manifested, as fragrance is from a flower, goes through this journey, be it illusion or not, and then finds itself at total “at-one-ment” with the spirit. That is the journey, so in reality there has been no journey.

But the mind assumes that this is a  journey, that there is a journey. What are the reasons for this? The spirit just is, while the mind travels thinks it is traveling from here to there. From the beginning of the present cycle of this universe there is a manifestation, wrongly called creation, because creation requires a will behind, while manifestation is just an emanation. It is the nature of the manifestor to manifest, like it is the nature of a flower to give off fragrance, but there is no will involved. The powers in the manifestation are known in sanskrit as the three gunas, tamas rajas and satvas. It is this interaction between darkness and light that operates in the manifestation of this universe, which is the Universal Mind also.

THE MIND CREATES EXPERIENCE

The entire mind, or the universe, is nothing else but a propulsion which seemingly goes forth in our concept of linear time and space. In the third dimension that we exist in, we find this movement proceeding from A to B, while beyond the mind there is no space and no time. Like Blake said, “Eternity in an hour”, we would rather say, in a moment.

Gururaj Ananda Yogi and Raman in Cyprus

In this process put forth through manifestation in which the three gunas operate, the mind feels itself traveling. Why does it feel itself traveling; why does itself feel mixed up in the process of evolution? In this process of contraction and expansion generated by the three gunas, matter and it’s various atomic structures is always in motion. The mind enmeshed in this process of contraction and expansion thinks it is moving.

If you watch a wave in the ocean, you think the wave is coming from a distance and going to the shore. This is not so. There is a rhythm in the ocean created by currents where each wave is bobbing up and down where it is, and the next then bobs up and down, and so on so forth giving us the illusion that the wave is moving from that end to the shore. Likewise there is the flux of the universe, the perpetual motion that perpetuates itself, within itself, by itself, because its nature is motion. What we are trying to find is that which is silent behind all the motion: for that which is motion cannot be silent, and that which is silent can have no motion. Very simple.

The mind because it has the ability to act and interact within its own components, becomes more and more complex, and it is this very complexity that adds onto the motion of the mind. The  mind creates the experience, and the mind itself is the experiencer, for the eternal spirit within humanity is beyond all experience of motion or anything else. It just is. Here it is a question of a superimposition.

Heat rises from the sun. The sun does not intentionally create the heat: it is the nature of the sun to give off heat. Similarly, that eternal energy, in its very silent form, first manifests itself as mind.

When mind assumes this motion, it also finds a direction, and this direction is what we term as will- Divine Will. Because there was Divine Will, all this you observe, including our individual wills, has come about.

This is very true from from the theological point of view and the philosophical point of view. But from the mystical point of view, this truth assumes a totally different approach: In the manifestation which one could call Divine Will , the Will itself becomes the individual mind. Here there is no differentiation between mind and will. Ordinarily it is the directed activity of an individual mind, which is self-created, that is called will.

When manifestation occurs, this divine force, in the process of manifestation, has to grossify itself in the form of matter, or grosser energies. From the subtlest level of that silent energy, ever inaccessible like in limits in mathematics, this divine force assumes the form of activated energy, and the more that energy is activated, the grosser and grosser it becomes. This is why science today can neither reach nor explain the entire structure of atoms. Scientists talk of sub atomic matter and sub-sub atomic matter, but when coming to experimental experience it will be impossible to capture the nature of that energy, as the very test-tube they are using is made of the same energy in which they are trying to trap it in.

What can be proven is only that which has motion. Yet motion  is such that at the moment you view it, it changes, and viewer in it’s own changing cannot have a true picture of that motion at its most subtlest level. That is why we know so little, from laboratory experiments, of the mind.  (to be continued…)

Gururaj Ananda Yogi

International Foundation for Spiritual Unfoldment

Meditacion Barcelona