HOW TO RECONCILE THE SPIRITUAL AND WORLDLY ASPECTS OF ONE’S LIFE?
The world is examined and proved to be non-existent, through your own experiences:
1. By comparing impartially the dream and waking state experiences, and finding them to be exactly similar.
2. By proving that the objective world has no existence, independently of the subject ‘I’ or Consciousness.
You understand this fact, and accept it completely and unreservedly. Think about it more intensely, until it descends into your heart, becoming experience itself. Then you become what you mean by ‘jivan-mukta’, and all your problems automatically cease. To an ordinary man, life constitutes actions, perceptions, thoughts and feelings – one of these alone being experienced at any given time. In other words, you stand detached from all activities, excepting the one in which you seem engaged at the given time. To this list of four categories (actions, perceptions, thoughts and feelings), the spiritual man adds just one more, which indeed is the most important one: ‘Consciousness’. This last one is doubly important; because, over and above its importance
as a separate entity, it shines in and through the four categories already mentioned. You are simply asked to direct to the consciousness aspect the attention legitimately due to it. This is all.
When you are engaged in thought, you are not engaged in action, perception or feeling. When engaged in action, you are not engaged in thought, feeling or perception. So also, when you are engaged in knowing, you cannot be engaged in any other kind of activity. The presence and recognition of subjective Consciousness, your real centre, is the one thing needed to make your life possible and connected. Make it so, by knowing that knowing principle to be your real centre. You never go outside it, and you can never leave it, even if you will. This does not deny or negate your worldly life, as is ordinarily supposed, but makes it richer, firmer, truer and more successful. To have deep peace and not to be disturbed from it, even for a moment, is the ardent desire of everyone. For this, you have necessarily to be at a centre which does not change. That is the real ‘I’-principle or Consciousness. To be it and to establish oneself there is the end and aim of life. This alone makes real life possible.
Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
1. By comparing impartially the dream and waking state experiences, and finding them to be exactly similar.
2. By proving that the objective world has no existence, independently of the subject ‘I’ or Consciousness.
You understand this fact, and accept it completely and unreservedly. Think about it more intensely, until it descends into your heart, becoming experience itself. Then you become what you mean by ‘jivan-mukta’, and all your problems automatically cease. To an ordinary man, life constitutes actions, perceptions, thoughts and feelings – one of these alone being experienced at any given time. In other words, you stand detached from all activities, excepting the one in which you seem engaged at the given time. To this list of four categories (actions, perceptions, thoughts and feelings), the spiritual man adds just one more, which indeed is the most important one: ‘Consciousness’. This last one is doubly important; because, over and above its importance
as a separate entity, it shines in and through the four categories already mentioned. You are simply asked to direct to the consciousness aspect the attention legitimately due to it. This is all.
When you are engaged in thought, you are not engaged in action, perception or feeling. When engaged in action, you are not engaged in thought, feeling or perception. So also, when you are engaged in knowing, you cannot be engaged in any other kind of activity. The presence and recognition of subjective Consciousness, your real centre, is the one thing needed to make your life possible and connected. Make it so, by knowing that knowing principle to be your real centre. You never go outside it, and you can never leave it, even if you will. This does not deny or negate your worldly life, as is ordinarily supposed, but makes it richer, firmer, truer and more successful. To have deep peace and not to be disturbed from it, even for a moment, is the ardent desire of everyone. For this, you have necessarily to be at a centre which does not change. That is the real ‘I’-principle or Consciousness. To be it and to establish oneself there is the end and aim of life. This alone makes real life possible.
Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
posted by Krishna at 10:33 PM
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