These numbered posts are companion pieces to my weekly meditation and self inquiry classes and are designed to be read in order to allow the topics to unfold deeper. But they can also be read as standalone pieces.
Life seems to have a direction, like a path. But is it? And where does it lead to?
For now, let’s think about it as a path.
The path is not simple, it appears to be a great tapestry of paths. A mace. No map.
Moving through this mace, we are looking for something. No matter what the direction we are going in, we are drawn by a desire for satisfaction, safety, happiness. Love. Even wisdom.
As we are going from situation to situation, we experience feelings and thoughts, let’s call them responses. We judge these arising responses to determine whether we have arrived at something “good and right”. The responses are invisible and interior. The varying situations of the word are seen as exterior. That is how our senses work.
We look outside at the tangible. Then we examine the intangible response that this ”outside” produces “inside” us. We judge. We conclude. Should we move closer or away from the outer “object” that we think has caused this response?
This is how we are taught to navigate.
The outside is seen as a cause, the inside feeling is seen as an affect. We often think of this as an almost mechanical, automatic interaction. Cause and effect. “That made me feel bad. This made me feel good.”
This is a useful working thesis on a simple physical level. It is a great survival mechanism when we want to know if a fruit is edible. If an animal is dangerous.
But we have a habit of generalising this animalistic instinct. We transplant the crude principle of cause and affect into the sophisticated emotional and spiritual life of a human being.
What if that is a mistake?
When scrutinised, it becomes clear that the outer reality does not automatically produce the inner state. The response to an experience is highly individual. It is changeable, unpredictable. We can’t really call it a response, rather it is an inner interpretation.
So, is inside and outside a true distinction? Is cause and effect even real on the level of emotions and thoughts?
It is worth examining.
I will propose, just for now, that we can think about is as if there is an “inner path” that is essentially intangible, emotional, and an “outer path” that deals with the material.
The happiness we seek in a material world is in essence a non-material phenomenon. How do we reconcile that contradiction? Is it really a contradiction?
The material world is a shifting field, an unstable field. Emotions and thoughts as reactions to something inconstant is by nature changeful.
In this way, nothing lasts in either field.
The outer and the inner paths seems to have a similar nature. Both appear as a field of cause and effect, beginnings and endings. Both are changing. Reactive. Interactive.
Are they truly separate?
Is the idea of an inner and an outer reality just a result of how our senses work? Are they really one unbroken reality?
If we step back and observe, it becomes apparent that how we feel about a thing changes our experience of the thing, which again change how we feel, and the feeling changes what we experience. The inner life and outer phenomena flow into each other. The inner and the outer can be seen as one single wavering field of unpredictable change.
They can be seen together as one single path, not inner, nor outer. Just a universal path of impermanence. Birth and death. Coming and going. Constant change.
The path of constant change deals with the body, mind, senses, emotions, ego. It is rooted in the material realm. It is obvious that all efforts to create stability and contentment on the material level results only in short lived phenomena. Why? Because it is the nature of the material realm to change, to never stay the same. To transmute.
So, why do we want something constant and lasting? Something essentially unstable can never provide us with anything stable. It erects a vortex of complications whose roots are veiled. Whose roots needs to be examined.
Do you see that?
Who is the knower?
Then who, in this moment, is the knower of this phenomenon? Who is observing and analysing this instable world of things and emotions, of fluttering thoughts and opinions? Who is thinking about the idea of the two paths being one field?
This knower must be another factor beyond the two paths. Beyond outer and inner. Beyond mind and body. That factor is you. You, beyond the idea of paths.
YOU who sees the born and dying and who wants to find the constant, the unchanging. The eternal peace. Happiness. Freedom.
If the inner and outer paths of change are really one, this search, this longing for the eternal must be another path.
Let’s call it The Spiritual Path. Because it is not physical. It does not belong to the senses.
So, lets propose there are two paths. The material (including our reactions to the material) and the spiritual.
The path of the individual, of the body, is material, mental, emotional and timebound.
The path that goes beyond the individual, is spiritual and eternal.
There is a path towards freedom, and a path towards bondage.
To know which path we are walking, and why we are even walking, is crucial. Otherwise, we are lost. Lost inside and outside.
But how do we distinguish the two from each other?
We need to pause, to examine what we think we are doing.
How does the mind work? How does our senses function? What are we? Where does happiness and peace come from?
These are questions pondered by seers, sages and philosophers for ever.
If we don’t know what the source of happiness is, how can we find it? How can we know which foot to start on? Which path to take for what purpose?
What we try to achieve in these two spheres, the changing and the unchanging, and how we imagine it will make us feel, can lead us towards either clarity or confusion.
The astounding fact is that no matter how disappointed or lost we become, our longing does not go away. We still want something lasting, something constant. Something trustworthy. Something true. Something simple. We call it happiness. We call it peace. Love. God. We call it many names.
Maybe when, through disappointment, we realise the limitations of the physical path, of the body-world, we may start paying more attention to the path of spirit.
We become seekers.
At the beginning of our spiritual search, we tend to mix our expectations and experiences from the material-emotional field of cause and effect, into the spiritual field of pure being. We adopt a new identity. We think we can “produce” happiness. Manufacture bliss. Accumulate wisdom. Buy peace.
But the path of spirit is not like the mechanisms of the manifest.
We walk both paths at the same time. They are intertwined in the confused mind.
We are split but we don’t know it. Yet.
This veiled split clouds our minds. Actually, it is our unrefined mind that is itself the veiling power. The mind unrefined, unexamined, fosters half-conscious expectations based on unexamined identifications.
Mistaken expectations and wrong identification are the roots of all suffering.
The spiritual work, your sadhana, is to first disentangle these two paths. To know when you walk one, and when you walk the other. To know which desire propels you forward, and towards what. To know what to expect from these two paths.
To know what action is for the body and what effort is for the awakening, the liberation of the “soul”, the freeing of individual consciousness. The surrender of ego.
How do we achieve clarity about the two “paths”?
We need to start by examining where we are, what we are. We need to refine the mind so we can distinguish the eternal from the time bound. We need to arrive at an understanding about what to expect from efforts on the body level and from efforts on the level of liberation from time and space.
That work is the eternal way. We have walked it forever.
The Eternal Path
The eternal path of the spirit is not a path of construction, it is the path of letting go, it is the path of surrender, of simplicity. It is the path of trust.
This path invites you to let go of the parts until the imperishable truth of wholeness is seen shining.
The eternal way does not belong to any particular culture or religion. It would not be eternal if it did, because religions, and civilisations are not eternal. The eternal way belongs to each of us. It is within us all. We are preprogramed for awakening. Individuals in all eras and all cultures have walked this path. The ones who have arrived, all tell us the same story, whether they are Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhist, Mystics, Jews.
All path merge into one.
If an eternal truth exists, everyone who seeks beyond dogma and concepts will realise it eventually. It is beyond method. Beyond time and space. Beyond mind. All spiritual paths fearlessly taken will merge into one. As attachment and aversion are dropped, realisation dawns.
This pathless path that, when walked by the individual, dissolves the idea on an individual. It dissolves the identification with body-mind-ego. It does not give you a new identity. It is the place that has no location, where the goal is your true nature.
The goal is you. And who is closer to you than you? What is more intimate than timeless truth?
Our very closeness to what we want, is the reason why this insatiable desire for truth, peace, happiness is constant. Timeless.
This is why the path is eternal. And this is why it is not a path but an illusion of separation.
An illusion of someone walking towards a distant goal. An illusion based on the phantom of ego and mind.
All differences fall away when we drop the opinionated mind. When we go beyond speculation, beyond the ideas of separation, there is nothing to dissolve or break through.
What do they say, the teachers who have seen beyond the surface of differences?
You are already there. You are it. You are the infinite. The eternal. The all permeating.
And what you permeate, is also you.
“You are the seed of awakening in the sleeping world.”
All things, they say, all things will crumble but your inner sense of “I”, the eternal, unlimited, impersonal sense of “I”, is a drop of the eternal truth.
A wave in the ocean of infinite being.
Drop your identification as a part. Know you are the ocean, not the wave.
They all tell us about Oneness, Love, God.
They say: The path itself is an illusion.
There is no destination. You never left.
You are already there, whole, complete.
You are what you seek.
There is nowhere to go.
You are free.
You are God.
Vijay Shyam, 15.2.25
Astvakar Gita:
"There is nothing to accept. Nothing to reject, Nothing to dissolve!
Nothing to hold on to, Nothing to let go of. Nothing to dissolve!
This is the truth:
There is nothing to grasp, Nothing to Spurn,
Nothing to dissolve!
This is the whole truth.
There is nothing to embrace, Nothing to relinquish.
Nothing to dissolve!
Free from attachment, Free from desire,
Still.
Even so am I, The Real One,
O how wonderful!
But in this me,
There is nothing to embrace,
And nothing to turn away.
When there is not this shoddy little "I", there is freedom.
When there is "I", there is bondage.
Consider this. It is easy.
You are the clear Space of awareness. Pure and still, Limitless and free, Serene and unperturbed. In whom there is no birth, no death.
No activity of mind,
No "I"
Know you are free. Forever and truly free.
Free of "I”. Free of "Mine",
When you know this in your heart,
That there is nothing,
You are very still,
As you are finished.”