Category: Swami Rama

The first task for a seeker of trust is to understand the words “coordinated effort.” This means that one should always follow the dictates of his conscience. When a normal human being considers doing something, his conscience helps him to choose what he will do by placing the consequences of his actions – good and bad, helpful and damaging, right and wrong – in front of him. And if he has a firm will, he will be able to carry out the action he chooses. Samkalpa shakti (will power) is a powerful force in the human being. If it is not utilized, there will always be failure, regardless of the external efforts made and the means applied. True sadhakas are taught to be vigilant, to not allow the light of samkalpa shakti to be diminished or extinguished. If the knowledge of that light is protected and allowed to grow, the aspirant becomes self-reliant, and self-reliance is an essential virtue. Self-reliance, courage, a one pointed-mind, and determination all unite to build the force of samkalpa shakti, without which the aspirant cannot fearlessly tread the path of life.

---

Editor’s Note

This passage has been taken from the book Perennial Psychology of the Bhagavad Gita, pp 19 – 20, by Swami Rama, published by Himalayan Institute Press.

For all Swami Rama’s and Swami Veda Bharati’s published works, please visit www.yogapublications.org or email info@yogapublications.org.

Published works of Swami Rama and Swami Veda Bharati are also available at other venues.

As love travels on its way it becomes increasingly powerful. In fact, love is the only force that can every really change the world or help people to grow. The greatest kind of strength that a human being can have is the gentle strength of love. Once, many years ago, in my travels in the Himalayas, I went to see a sage living far away from anyone else. As evening approached he told me that I should leave, because he needed to make dinner for his children, and I was very surprised to think that he had children there in the wilderness. But before I could leave I heard a low growl – the sound of tigers! I was somewhat alarmed until he explained that those were his “children”. He had tamed two wild tigers with the force of his love, and they came every evening to take bread that he would make for them.

Love can tame all that is wild and uncontrolled; love is the only force that will help us end the violence and destruction in the world. Wherever we find young people who are growing up in a positive way, strong and self-confident, with the capacity to give to others and contribute to the world, we will recognize the effects of having been loved.

No one needs to learn to love; love is the natural capacity of human beings, if a person is not suppressed or constricted. Children will naturally develop the capacity to love and care for others, if their natural tendencies are allowed to be expressed. Certainly a person can learn to become negative and to hate, but that is not the natural pattern; it is a distortion. When we reach a certain stage in our development as human beings, we feel for others. Then, if someone else cries or is in pain, our hearts also feel their pain and we express our empathy. A person could be cold and cruel to another, but that is not the natural pattern.

Throughout life, love grows and matures, seeking its final fulfilment, the capacity to love all. When we have learned to love and eliminate all barriers, we achieve the highest state of consciousness.

---

Editor’s Note

This passage has been taken from the book Love and Family Life, pp 89 – 90, by Swami Rama, published by Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust.

Energy Relationships

Those whose awareness is bound to the earthly level frequencies know, as the real person, only the physical body. Others, who refine their self identification by attuning to finer frequencies, know of an undying consciousness. To know this is to know that we are immortal. But before we can reach the point of comprehending the immortality of our universal consciousness, it is essential that we understand the relationships between and among various hierarchical levels of energy. This understanding is not an intellectual process. It is a matter of letting our interior awareness travel along the lines of the diffuse patterns of energy so that we can actually perceive all their modes of power and its operation. The yogi does this. He sends his awareness on this incredible interior journey and returns to chart for others the maps of consciousness. There is no other way to comprehend what consciousness is, what roles it plays in running our personalities.

The yogi finds that the energies (of various levels of subtlety ranging from the low frequency, earthly solid manifestation to the very high frequency, almost undetectable mental waves) all interact with each other in many ways; he finds that the relationship between the denser and finer energies is that of interdependence. The denser ones affect the finer ones in a more immediate way, but the finer ones turn out to be the masters in the long run. Take, for example, our dense body. Its bad posture adversely affects the flow of breath, but when the will in our consciousness decides that the breath be made to flow perfectly, the body has to arrange itself in a posture that will facilitate the flow.

The relationship between the body and prana may be viewed similarly. A bad posture clogs the pathways of prana. But it is the experience of those who practice the subtler varieties of hatha yoga that once the blocks on the prana’s pathways have been removed through the practice of postures, the prana itself begins to give little surges into the organs so that the body rights itself inadvertently into correct postures. What is more, many practitioners of kundalini yoga report that as a result of their practices, an involuntary cleansing of internal systems takes place which affects the prana matrix and thereby influences the body.

The relationship between prana and mind energies is no different. An incidence of low prana may befog the mind for the time being. But again, the will of consciousness infuses the mind with a certain illumination, and then prana has no alternative but to obey the mind. Thus, through deep meditation, the mind can be used to intensify the strength of prana.

As we have hinted above, the key to the relationship between the various energies is the will that is inherent in consciousness. Will, however, should not be confused with the much used term, will power, which has become a word that almost connotates violence. Will power is an exertion of the lower mind. Will is simply an inherent quality of consciousness through which consciousness directs all its operations. These operations then affect our exterior environment and become our actions. One who cultivates self awareness observes and, through the will, consciously controls all the interior operations of mind, prana, and body.

The higher frequency energies contain within themselves all the power of the lower frequencies, but not vice versa (again, they are hierarchical in nature). By the same token, the mind can measure all the powers of the body and senses, but they in turn cannot measure much of the mind’s power. It is for this reason that some modern scientific instruments can measure physiological signs of a certain mental state but are powerless to measure the state itself. In other words, one may measure delta brain waves, but a depth gauge to measure the experience of sleep itself has not as yet been invented.

This leads us to some very interesting observations about the mental state of sleep. The body, of course, shows that one is asleep. The question then arises as to whether the signs seen in the body can tell us everything about the mental state of sleep. The answer, certainly, is “No.”

---

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from Revision, Vol 3, No. 1, Spring 1980

The universe is a dance of energies which vibrate at many frequencies. They ebb and flow, merge and part, form ripples, tides, currents, eddies, and whirlpools. They become units of all sizes, from atoms to stars, individual souls to cosmic beings. Again, they dissolve into each other. As rays, streaks, streams, rivers, oceans of light, they flow into each other and separate again, changing frequencies—and changing frequencies, they become suns, galaxies, spaces, airs, winds, fires, liquids, solids. They become the bodies of human beings into which the energy called consciousness comes and is embodied.
Of all the flowing energies in the universe, consciousness is the most dominant, the one from which all the others proceed and into which they all merge. The ancient texts are fond of the phrase, “from consciousness down to the solid earth,” for all this is a single matrix, a tantra, of energy, and within it are myriads of matrices, woven and interwoven. The human being is one such matrix of energies—ebbing, flowing, dancing at frequencies ranging from those of solid bones all the way to the subtlest waves of consciousness. Those who can understand this personality-matrix will understand the whole universe.

Observe the creation of a single human personality. As two human streams of consciousness love each other, the force of their love invites a third one for whom they provide a minute body. This third one brings along in his wake a matrix of energy, and his body grows along the lines of this energy. The fetus is connected to the mother at the navel, and it is from the navel that 72,000 energy-channels, or nadis in Sanskrit, fan out into the personality system. Since the energy pattern is arranged in a symmetrical manner, the body grows beautifully symmetrical. For instance, look at even the hairlines of the body, and you see how they are patterned along the symmetrical paths of the energy flow.

The personality of the fetus or of that of a fully grown human being is not separate from the universal dance of energies. Observe how many forces interact with the biosphere, how many energies enter into it and emerge from it unceasingly. Observe how they body clock responds to solar, lunar, stellar times, and how the blood responds to the tides in the oceans. Although all these times, tides, forces often seem to operate individually, each answering to its own constituent rhythm, their patters are all vibrant subsystems within the single master system of consciousness whose dance it all is.
The vast all-pervading oceanic energy of consciousness barely touches us with its outer fringes, and we come alive, becoming persons. Where the vibration frequencies in us are too solid, too dense, not subtle enough to flow in consonance with consciousness, it becomes our material body, the non-I. Here energy, condensed, becomes a cell. The cell is filled with the vital energy called prana which is maneuvered by the mind energy. The “I” in us is pure consciousness. It owns and operates the body vehicle, and it guides the mind. It is the purest, finest vibrating energy.

Thus, like the rest of the universe, we are layer upon layer of energy or light, which form complex patterns—the subtler layers are aware of the grosser ones but not vice versa (which is why they are hierarchical). Through the process of meditation and self-awareness, however, it is possible for us to attune ourselves to these energy processes. In fact, all of our information in this regard comes to us from the experiences imparted, through the oral tradition, by great meditation masters. Others who follow this path of self awareness will eventually know the dance that the personality, and the universe, and all the energies flowing between and within them, are dancing. There is no greater excitement than that of suddenly discovering that the universal ocean of prana is flowing right through us, that our brains are but so many stepping areas in the great dance of the universal mind, and that all that I claim to be is simply a thrill passing into this person “I” from the universal consciousness. And then the single point of this dynamic thrill becomes diffuse, and its millions of sparks, like an incredible display of fireworks, rush out into a vast network of energy channels which are spread throughout my person, to vitalize me, to make me mentally and physical a living being, to illuminate me so that I can say “I”.

---

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from Revision, Vol 3, No. 1, Spring 1980

When for a moment I cast aside all rationalism and transport myself into the clear mountain air on the solitary rock, I spontaneously go into silence.

Solitude keeps me alive in a society that knows no laws of love and harmony.

Violence, violence, violence everywhere.

I do not understand the law that prompts mortal beings to injure each other.

How do they forget that all creatures are breathing one and the same breath?

Why are they ungrateful and why do they forget that all breathing beings are the children of one Father who is giving the life breath to all equally?

From where arises this violence Which is that power that instigates them to annihilate each other’s existence?

I return to my silence without any reply and with a simple conclusion that human beings have not yet really found out the art of living harmoniously.

The evil that forces one to commit such heinous crimes is because of himsa, the absence of love, consideration, kindness, and awareness that we all belong to One.

By killing others we are cutting the roots of the same tree whose limbs we are.

---

Editor’s Note

This passage has been taken from the book The Essence of Spiritual Life, pp 104 – 105, by Swami Rama, Published by Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust.

For all Swami Rama’s and Swami Veda Bharati’s published works, please visit www.yogapublications.org or email
info@yogapublications.org.

Published works of Swami Rama and Swami Veda Bharati are also available at other venues.

The Yamas are five restraints which regulate one’s relationship with other beings. They are Ahimsa or non-violence, Satya or truthfulness, Asteya or non-stealing, Brahmacharya or abstinence from sensual indulgence and Aparigraha or non-possessiveness.

Ahimsa literally means non-hurting or non-violence. One normally thinks of violence only in terms of physical violence and most people in civilized societies refrain from gross acts physical violence. Ahimsa , however, refers to non-violence in thought and word as well as in deed. Violence in speech or in actions is almost always preceded by violent thoughts. Violent thoughts have serious repercussions on the mind and on the body and should be avoided if only for this reason. On the positive side, careful cultivation of Ahimsa leads to a spontaneous, all-encompassing love towards all creation. One begins to see the unity in all creation and thus progresses towards the goal of Self-Realization.

Satya or truthfulness is an essential part of all codes of morality in all societies. One should be truthful to oneself and to others in thought, word and deed. As most people know, one lie inevitably leads to another. Soon deception becomes second nature an leads to a fearful and scheming mind. It is said that if one makes truth the central focus of his life, all his utterances will come true, for such a one is incapable of untruth.

Asteya or non-stealing includes refraining from misappropriation, the acceptance of bribes and the like. The desire for what another owns can be very strong. The mind, when possessed by this desire, is capable of little else. Such an attitude of mind is based on underlying feelings of inadequacy and jealousy, a sense of having been cheated and a desire for retribution. One is haunted be the thought that “someone else has what I need to feel complete and fulfilled.” But stealing an external object does not get rid of the basic sense of inadequacy. So one surreptitiously takes again and again, but the underlying feelings remain. Cultivating Asteya counteracts such attitudes. It helps to develop a sense of completeness and sufficiency, and leads to freedom from the bondage of such cravings.

Brahmacharya literally means to walk in Brahman or the Supreme. One who cultivates this Yama is, therefore, aware of Brahman alone. Such a state is possible only if the mind is free from all sensual desires. Of all sensual desires, the sexual urge is the most powerful and the most destructive. Brahmacharya is, therefore, often translated as abstinence from sex or celibacy. In reality it refers to continence, applying either to celibacy or married life. Sexual excesses lead to dissipation of vital energy which could, instead, be used to attain deeper states of consciousness. Brahmacharya should not be interpreted as repression of all sensual urges. Such repression only leads to frustration and an abnormal state of mind. Brahmacharya means control of and freedom of all sensual cravings. The bliss that accompanies Self-Realization is far greater than any transient sensual pleasure. One whose goal is Self-Realization would, therefore, overcome the obstacles of sensual cravings without any kind of suppression.

Aparigraha or non-possessiveness has been misunderstood to mean denying oneself all material possessions. But as is the case with each of these restraints, this practice is essentially an inward attitude rather than an outward appearance. It involves not being addicted to, or dependent on one’s possessions, rather than the outward denial of them. A beggar can be more attached to his begging bowl than a king is all his treasures. The danger lies not in having material possessions, but in becoming attached to them or in craving more.

---

Editor’s note

Article corrected by adding the word “not” in the sentence below which reads “Brahmacharya should not be interpreted as repression of all sensual urges.“

This is an excerpt from Lectures on Yoga, Practical Lessons on Yoga by Swami Rama, Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the USA, 1976, pages 17 – 19. This book was later published with the title The Royal Path, Practical Lessons on Yoga.

Jesus says of John the Baptist that he is the best if those born of women but that the least of the kingdom of heaven was greater than he. For example, John speaks to us of salvation through moral life; he tells us what to do, but he does not tell us how to be. Jesus insists on inner transformation. John asks us to become better; Jesus asks us to become new. John the Baptist was puzzled when he heard that Jesus and His disciples drank wine and did not fast. He could not understand it when they plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day or when Jesus healed on the Sabbath. John is still a man born of woman; he has not experienced rebirth. Jesus tells us, “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3),and Paul says, “Awake, thou that sleepest and arise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14) Originally Christian teachings – before they became externalized and dogmatized – focused on awakening from sleep through the light shed by inner wisdom. Jesus Christ was one who had done this and who taught others the way.

Religion is not theology, and it is not magic or witchcraft. It should not spoil the simplicity of truth. Religion is not limited to the data of perception or introspection; it is an experience to be lived, not a theory or belief to be accepted. When a person surrounds his soul with a shell, such as national pride or the empty presumptions of dogma, he suppresses the breath of the spirit. Christianity, on the other hand, is a liberating power that is based on the life and experience of Jesus. The cross becomes significant when we make it our own and undergo crucifixion. Only then can we experience rebirth. “Seek and you shall find” (Matt. 7:7), said Jesus, but each of us must seek independently. The truth that is latent in every soul must become manifest. Then shall we be able to work in newness of life. “Marvel not that I have said unto thee, ‘Ye must be born again’”(John 3:7). In this spirit, says St. Paul, “… Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? … You are the temple of the living God” (I Cor. 3:16-17). One who enters inwardly penetrates intimately into himself and, going beyond self, becomes perfect.

---

Editor’s Note

This passage has been taken from the book Meditation in Christianity, pp 3 – 5, by Swami Rama (Rama, S., 1983.
Meditation in Christianity. Himalayan international Institute if Yoga Science and Philosophy of the USA.)

For all Swami Rama’s and Swami Veda Bharati’s published works, please visit www.yogapublications.org or email info@yogapublications.org

Published works of Swami Rama and Swami Veda Bharati are also available at other venues.

In Yoga Science the analogy of a lake is used in explaining the mind. The mind is like a lake disturbed by the rising waves of thoughts or vrittis. The practice of concentrating helps to still the waves. And when the thoughts are stilled, the aspirant can see his own reflection in the water of the lake and realize his true nature. The purpose of concentration is to wash off all the aspirant’s impurities, gather together the dissipated energies of his mind, and then lead his concentrated mind along one channel to the state of super consciousness.

In everyday life we concentrate in many ways. We concentrate while inserting a thread through the eye of a needle and while driving a car through a busy street. However, this concentration is called external for it is something in the external world that holds our attention. Concentration, or Dharana, as described by Patanjali, is an internal mental process and not a muscular exercise. This process takes place entirely within the field of consciousness and is directed by our will. With internal concentration, the attention of the aspirant is drawn to an object and is held on it through the use of his will power. Continued attention leads to concentration.

Attention is, therefore, a preliminary to concentration. There are two kinds of attention –voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary attention is attention directed toward an object or idea by an effort of the will. Voluntary attention needs will power, determination and mental training. Involuntary attention on the other hand, is spontaneous. It is a common occurrence and does not demand any practice or will power. Involuntary attention is particularly noticeable among children. Concentration requires voluntary attention.

Some modern teachers formulate and advocate theories which are designed to justify their own way of teaching. They even say that meditation is possible without concentration. This is a false claim because concentration itself, in its advanced stage, becomes meditation. If the wandering mind is not brought home the so-called “meditational methods” practiced these days will be futile. The aspirant therefore should understand that concentration is absolutely necessary and he should not be swayed by teachings which suggest that concentration leads to tension.

---

Editor’s note

This is an excerpt from Lectures on Yoga by Swami Rama, Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of USA, 1976, pages 80 – 82. Later publications of this book are titled The Royal Path.

There is one single characteristic that has existed in all the great people of the different traditions in the world, and that is selflessness. Christ, the Buddha, and Krishna all attained the highest wisdom, but they remained themselves. Your outer individual shell will remain exactly the same, but your inner light will expand and expand to universal consciousness. That individual flame of love will become a forest conflagration and will burn up the precarious weed of your selfishness. Selfishness is not needed; it will get in your way. Truth will automatically come to you if you learn how to love. Don’t approach love in a merely external or superficial way; offering your body to somebody is not love, it is merely lust. I am talking of that kind of love in which you are completely selfless. In such love, you want to give and you feel great joy in giving, and you feel that this is something great for you to do as a human being. You need to learn to give and truly love, and compassion is the first step.

While you are learning to teach your children, you should also have another goal: you should develop an enthusiasm about learning from your children too—children are also teachers for their parents. You can learn many things from your children; often the parent doesn’t have the intense desire to learn that a child has. You should learn to keep that zeal alive. Never close the gates of learning; they should remain open. There is no end to knowledge; don’t allow yourself to think that you know everything. Always remember that you still have more to learn, because there is no end to your learning. This knowledge is ananta, limitless. With such a love, you teach your children and attend to each child personally.

Set a time for your practices, because that is how you develop habit patterns and teach your children to do so. If you are used to eating lunch at one o’clock, you will feel hungry at one o’clock, no matter where you are, even without a clock. If you have developed the habit of waking up at five o’clock in the morning, your eyes will suddenly open at five o’clock, even if you are tired. It is helpful to form a habit of doing your exercises, breathing practices, eating your meals, and going to bed at exactly the same time every day. These are four important functions that you should regulate. You will enjoy life better if you do this.

Actually, all four of your appetites should be controlled. When you learn to regulate all your drives, that is real human development. When you are married, you know you have a spouse and do not go with another partner. This is part of what is meant by regulation of the sexual urge. You should also regulate the temporal aspect of your behavior—the times in which you do things. Don’t just decide to have sex the moment that you come home—learn to prepare yourselves for the experience. Sometimes a woman does not feel prepared for what her husband wants. Sexual desire does not originate in the body. Sexual desire has nothing to do with virility or strength; it has something to do with emotions and the way you channel and express your emotions. It is better to have an understanding of your partner and his or her feelings so that you are not disappointed in your expectations of the relationship.

You should also regulate your food intake and teach your children to do so. If you eat regularly at the same time, it helps the system to function. Your sleep schedule should also be regulated. Yogis reduce the amount of sleep to two and a half hours, and finally to no sleep. They call it “sleepless sleep,” and they go to a state of deep meditation instead of sleep. When meditation becomes your whole life then this change naturally occurs.

In a healthy lifestyle, you should have time for exercise, breathing practices, and meditation. You should also understand that you were born and anything that is born is sure to die. Brooding on death and creating fear is not a helpful thing to do. Sooner or later everything changes and everything dies. You will lose only body, which dies and decays. Why should you be afraid? Again and again you need to remind your mind of this, because you have not been taught to do so; you have been taught to look after yourself fearfully. People said, “Don’t go here, you will fall. Don’t go there, you will have an accident. Don’t go here, someone will kill you.” All those kinds of negative suggestions are stored in your mind, and thus, you become afraid. Most of the fears in your mind are imaginary. You analyze many things in your life, but because of your fears, you never analyze your own fears.

When you go to a teacher, you want to get rid of your fears. You explain them to him, and he gives you strength and inspires you. But the teacher can only inspire you. It is your responsibility to see that your children improve, progress, and remain fearless and happy. Even if you live for only five days, if you live those days cheerfully and fearlessly, they are wonderful. If you live miserably for five hundred years, then those five hundred years are of no use. If you want to live for a long time, learn to be cheerful.

---

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from Dawn magazine, vol. 10 no. 2

All of life’s events try to teach that out of death comes life. In the process there is an urge to know and feel something that cannot die. Jesus taught that “whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall save it.” In the next sentence Jesus asked, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Jesus meant that whoever is attached to the wordly life and this earthly body will lose them in death. But whoever lets go of attachments to this worldly life and this earthly body and identifies with the permanence or God-consciousness that Jesus represented, will never die. What good will it do to have all the riches of the world and all the world’s pleasures? They will all disappear in the flash we call a human lifetime. Focusing on the pleasures of the world keeps the mind too distracted to search for the inner Self.

Buddha’s four noble truths state that life is suffering, the suffering has a cause, there is a cessation of suffering, and there is a means to that cessation: a solution. Buddha’ s solution was to live life correctly and to travel through life productively and enjoyably. This path requires dealing with the desires and attachments that are the cause of suffering.

“For him who is wholly free from attachment there is no grief, much less fear. From craving springs grief, from craving springs fear; for him who is wholly free from craving there is no grief, much less fear,” said the Buddha.

Another Buddhist text states: “Through the abandonment of desire the Deathless is realized.”

“Put to death what is earthly in you,” said St. Paul.

Commonly we get the message early in life that happiness is earned by acquiring things and getting something from relationships. Things are lost, relationships change, and pain is the consequence. We have a parade of emotions and thoughts that we identify with, and this brings pain. We think we are our bodies, and when our bodies are sick or they age, or we watch the bodies of others get sick or die, we experience pain.

Pain is an alarm system that indicates that something is not in balance. What is the pain of lost objects, changed relationships, shifting emotions and thoughts, and deteriorating bodies telling us? One possibility is that is simply how life is. We arrive here, strive to obtain whatever we think we need, and suffer pain in the process. End of story. That doesn’t make much sense though. If someone felt pain in his foot, and the pain alerted him to an infection, would the person simply say, “Well, that’s the way it goes—have a foot, get an infection.” The infection would spread through the leg and kill the person. That’s not rational. The person would use the pain to identify an issue in his body that needed attention. He would see it as a problem that needed a solution. Life’s pain is telling us that we are perceiving our relationship to things, people, feelings, thoughts, and bodies incorrectly.

We are dependent on those things, people, feelings, and bodies. We identify with them and are attached to them. When they go or change, we feel pain. These attachments, along with ignorance, are the source of the fear of death. The more we are attached, the greater is the fear we have of death. Those without any attachments—those who do not perceive themselves as owning anything in their lives and who know that their bodies are just instruments—they are free from fear.

What does it mean to be attached to or to identify with something? Attachment means we believe we need something for our existence. This is the ego operating. It says, “I am so important and I need to have this car. This car is mine, this car means I am successful, this car helps identify me.” Or, “I need a relationship with this woman. Without her I cannot be happy. If she leaves me I will be forever broken, and life will be meaningless.” People get attached even to the idea of things. For example, in American culture people have been raised with certain images of what life ought to be. They see themselves from the time of childhood growing up to have wonderful marriages, living in white houses with picket fences and flowers, and having devoted children. They see themselves getting bigger houses, second cars, second homes in resort areas, and retiring early. These are the ideas the culture creates, and when these things don’t come about to match their ideas, they are miserable. They feel as if some bad trick has been played on them.

This is identifying with images. You see yourself, your identity, as this person in the white house with flowers and a perfect life. You think that is you. But that is not you. Don’t be attached to these images. Learn to flow with life and all of its ups and downs.

The same tendency works in the lower mind with emotions. We get angry, and we think, “I am angry.” Who is angry? To say “I am angry” is to identify with the emotion, to believe that the emotion is us. We cannot be an emotion. As humans we are capable of having anger and experiencing anger, but we are not anger or any other emotion.

Similarly, we are not our bodies. We have bodies. They are instruments for our use. We say, “I am 6’1″ and blond with blue eyes.” We are not that. Yet this is what we think. When someone criticizes our appearance we feel hurt. When we see our bodies getting older and slowing down, it scares us. Most of us remain in body consciousness and that is why we identify ourselves with the body. When one learns to separate the mortal self from the immortal Self, the faculty of discrimination dawns.

Death does not touch the real Self. That is difficult to believe only because we so strongly identify ourselves with our bodies and the world around us. Just because we are not conscious of something does not mean it doesn’t exist.

Yama says to Nachiketa, “When all desires and passions are removed, when perfect stillness prevails, the mortal becomes immortal.” That is the key. Death cannot mean an end because death has no effect on the Self. The cycle of life and death is not a random, unfortunate reality. It is an instructor. The Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu stated:

“Birth is not a beginning, death is not an end. There is existence without limitation, there is continuity without a starting point. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing it, that is the portal of God.”

Life is an ongoing Upanishad that directs a person to search for the eternal and identify with what is permanent, not with that which is impermanent, and thereby overcome death.

According to Vedanta we exist not because of our bodies but because of our very being. The inner self creates the body. During sleep we are not conscious of our bodies, but still we exist. Materialistic thinkers turn it the other way around. They look to the body, declare it is evidence of our being, and assume if there is an inner being, it comes by way of the body. Vedanta says just the reverse. Consciousness makes our body appear to exist.

Death is not something to fear but its function in life should be understood. Accepting death is a reality that will help you to realize that this life here is temporary, that the world is only a platform, that you have come here on a journey to learn and grow, and then the journey ends.

St. Paul referred to life as a slight, momentary affliction that prepares a person for eternal glory. “Everything in human life,” he said, “is for spiritual work.” In somewhat darker imagery, but with a similar message, Chuang Tzu said to “look upon life as a swelling or tumor and upon death as the draining of a sore or the bursting of a boil.”

At the same time remember that God, or the eternal Reality, is within you. Death reminds you not to attach yourself to this world. Learn from the world and let it go. See your body as just an instrument. It serves a purpose and then its work is done.

---

Editor’s Note

Reprinted from Sacred Journey