The Road to Realisation
The sole purpose of existence of the embodied soul is realisation of its true nature as Brahman. First there is the omniscient power of Brahman (chit-shakti), which is constantly trying to pull the soul up towards Brahman. Then there is the illusive power of Maya (maya-shakti), which is always trying to push us back down towards the material plane. Life is the expression of the struggle between these two for supremacy. Every desire we have, every action we perform and every breath we breathe are an expression of this very struggle between these two forces. Brahman is Absolute Tranquillity and oneness, Maya is vibration and apparent multitude. We begin as pieces of cork pushed down by Maya to the bottom of a glass of water. There is a period of great activity as the bits of cork rush towards the surface with no other object than the recovery of their former equilibrium. Then, when they finally reach the surface, Absolute Tranquillity is re-attained and our play is done. Then Maya pushes some new bits of cork down, and the game of life begins anew.
The Animal Man
Human life can be analysed into three stages. First there is the animal life, then there is the pre-spiritual life, and the highest form is the spiritual life. The animal man lives solely for material pleasures in an endless cycle of illusion (samsara). His mind follows his material desires around like a dog. The man takes the dog for a walk. The dog doesn't take the man for a walk; the man takes the dog for a walk. The mind doesn't take material desire for a walk; material desire takes the mind for a walk. The mind of the animal, wholly materialistic man is the slave of his desires. Through the power of Maya, little does he realise that such a life is vain.
People are different from animals in that they have a significantly more powerful intellect. However, that intellect is so often not put to efficient use. People looking for transient pleasures are covering their eyes, wandering around in circles in the darkness. Unless they remove their hands from their eyes and walk towards the light, they will never truly fulfil themselves. What are most people who spend all their energy getting extremely high academic qualifications and high-powered careers doing? They are not just sauntering around in circles in the dark, rather running round as fast as they can. They, too, will never be able to properly fulfil themselves unless they uncover their eyes so that they can see in order to walk towards the light. By running about at a hundred miles an hour, they are only making themselves unnecessarily tired. The true difference between an animal and a human being is not the presence of an intellect, but the useful employment of one. Using an intellect uselessly is just the same as having no intellect at all. If anything, it just diverts you from what is truly important in life and blocks the wisdom-giving intuition.
The Dawn
People in the pre-spiritual life are searchers. They are characterised by a desire for self-development, which usually manifests in much exploration of pastures new, looking for new experiences and knowledge. In the depths of their being, a concerted search has commenced for the underlying meaning of life. What that meaning may be, exactly for what they are searching, their minds do not know, but the soul knows, and so the greater force coming from a stronger flow of the omniscient power, chit-shakti, after the obliteration of a quantity of ignorance covering the soul, is propelling the mind here and there, trying to force it to develop its knowledge and fortitude in preparation for the Royal Road to the Wisdom and Bliss of Brahman.
When a person has got some solid knowledge of the goal and how to reach it, and has absorbed a certain amount of spiritual energy from a true sage, he embarks on a fully-fledged spiritual life, a scientific approach to spirituality. People in the pre-spiritual life cannot approach spirituality scientifically, because they do not know the nature of the field. First of all, a spiritual master is completely necessary. If you want to trek to a village one thousand miles away through virgin jungle, you need a guide who knows the way. If you try to do it yourself, you are only wasting time and will get lost. Pleasing though it may be for our own ego to tell itself that it is its own teacher, that it can learn everything itself from its own life experience, it is simply not true. Spirituality is not passed from an intellect to an intellect, it is passed from a heart to a heart, and only one whose heart is fully open, a genuine spiritual master, can generate enough spiritual power to trigger the opening of someone else’s heart. If we do spiritual practices on our own, then we may reach a certain level, but we will ultimately find that there is a point beyond which we simply cannot go. It stands to reason that, if we are practising in the presence of sages, our progress will be faster.
The Science of Spirituality
What exactly do we mean by treating spirituality in a scientific way? Any process that we carry out can be approached in two ways; a scientific way or an arbitrary way, the second of which, of course, is not of interest to serious aspirants. The sage Swami Vivekananda gave two criteria which would have to be fulfilled for a method to be called scientific. The first criterion that a scientific approach must fulfil is that it must seek for an answer within the subject studied. Before Newton, people used to say that a stone comes down again when you throw it up into the air, because a demon catches it and throws it down. This is not a scientific explanation because the answer has not been sought within the subject studied, and there is no reason to consider that this answer is correct, because the demon cannot be demonstrated. However, Newton searched within the subject area and discovered the law of gravity, which attracts the stone and the Earth to each other. As this theorem can be demonstrated both theoretically and practically, it must be considered a logical conclusion.
The second criterion is that it must seek to find a higher generalisation. A scientist finds two people, Jack and Jill, and wishes to know the common factor behind them. He does research on other people, and decides on the generalisation of human being. He then finds an elephant, and wants to find its relationship with human beings. Therefore, he investigates further and decides on the higher generalisation of animal. He then finds a tree, and generalises the tree and animals into the classification of life. Having encountered a stone, he then seeks its common factor with life and decides on the generalisation of existence.
This Existence is the highest generalisation possible, the Universal. Nothing exists which is not included within Existence. This Existence, Brahman, is like an ocean. People, animals, trees, stones and everything else in the material world manifest as waves on this Ocean of Existence. They are formed, are manifest a while, then once again dissolve into the sea, but the truth is that they never had any true permanent individual existence, for the wave is still a part of the ocean. It is the knowledge and realisation of this Existence, the Ultimate Truth from which everything springs, which is the goal of spirituality. We run after the waves, try to know the waves, but it is in vain, for they are insignificant as they last but a day. We should endeavour to know instead that permanent substratum behind all this illusory phenomena, disassociate ourselves from the waves and dive deep into the Ocean of Truth, thereby achieving immortality. Spirituality is the greatest science as it is the only science that aims directly at the pinnacle of the triangle of knowledge instead of working up the triangle layer by layer, which takes far too long, and because it enables you to not just know intellectually about Truth, but to become Truth. Intellectual truths change every year as scientists make new discoveries, but when you have realised Truth, it constantly manifests in your heart, providing you with an eternal internal mandate. Know that Ultimate Truth, and all your questions will have been answered, and any of the manifestations of that Truth further down the triangle will be far easier for you to understand, too.
It is said by some that spirituality is not a scientific discipline because it does not have any instruments such as microscopes and telescopes, and because no-one can show you your soul, that is the individual consciousness. Instruments like microscopes and telescopes are designed to sense material objects. Studying physical matter is relatively easy because our senses are designed to sense physical phenomena, and because, if we want to study the nature of a chair, for example, it remains a chair for a long time, and we can easily cut it to pieces if we wish. Mind, however, is a much more difficult study, because we do not have the senses to observe it, it changes every half-second, and we cannot cut it up into pieces. Psychologists do not directly examine people’s minds with this and that instrument. They may examine the brain to an extent, but the brain is not the mind. They have to talk to their patients and study the manifestations of their minds in their speech and behaviour, simply because they cannot see their patients’ thoughts. This is second-hand information, but psychology does employ logical methods and is therefore considered a science. A science is not defined as a science because of the instruments it employs, but because of the attitude of the researchers.
To see the soul, or more strictly speaking, realise that you are the soul, you have to get rid of the disrupting influence of the mind. The mind has to become still, and its influence fall away. You cannot control someone else’s mind to the extent that its influence will completely fall away. A hypnotist may put a weak mind into a static state, but its influence is still present, obscuring the consciousness. Making your mind fall away, the purpose of meditation, requires great energy and concentration. A meditator’s mind is certainly not in a static state. Only you yourself can make your mind fall away, but you can only do it if you develop the required discipline and purity of mind to be able to make this happen. Furthermore, you cannot show someone his soul, because he is his soul. Somebody’s eyes cannot see themselves. The mind and the body are merely instruments which the consciousness empowers. These instruments, being grosser than the consciousness, obscure it, so to experience the consciousness in its pure state, requires the instruments to be switched off, as it were.
Spirituality can indeed be considered a science, as it can fulfil the above criteria, if the practitioners have an appropriate attitude. It does indeed have its instruments, but as one of the main ones is self-discipline, idle investigators from the material culture do not take a liking to it! Furthermore, his own mind must become known completely to the aspirant meditator, warts and all, which is not a pleasant experience for the insincere!
The Result of Knowledge
When we know what the goal is, and what to do to achieve that goal, our minds start being less of a disruptive influence and begin to provide some help. The language of the mind is reason, and it is imperfect, as the mind is imperfect and its knowledge limited. The language of the soul is intuition, which is indeed perfect as it comes straight from the all-pervading, omniscient Cosmic Consciousness. When we have a choice of following one of two paths, one recommended by reason, and the other by our intuition, and we choose to follow reason, we often find it does not work out, and end up regretting it. If you do have the ability to reliably recognise pure intuition, unassociated by defilements from the mind, such as attachment or rationalisation, it is always better to follow the heart over the mind. When the mind does not know what the goal is, the intuition has to force its way through a tough obstacle course. When it does not succeed, we end up pursuing animal, or at least, from the highest standpoint, which is unknown to pre-spiritual people, illogical, activities. When it does succeed in forcing its way through an uncooperative mind, we find ourselves propelled about, doing all sorts of activities, which seem useful and rewarding to us, but if we question why we are actually doing them, we can find no good answer beyond, "I wanted to," or, "I felt a calling towards this place or doing that". This calling is the soul’s own cry for Self-Knowledge, the realisation of its true, divine nature as Brahman. When the mind understands what the purpose of life is, it starts to open itself up to listening to the intuition, and help, rather than hinder the soul’s progress on its divine journey.
Every movement of life is an expression of the soul’s struggle against Maya to realise its true nature. Realising Brahman will free us from the shackles of the material world. We are limited by our bodies, our intellects, our fears, our weaknesses, social rules and regulations, our restlessness, our sorrows, in fact everything in the material universe. We must transcend it! We must attain to freedom! Every sage assures us it is indeed possible. Every desire we have has as its root cause the soul’s yearning for freedom, whether the logic behind it be wise or irrational. The fool sees you, thinks you may have a few coins in your pocket, and believes he will be freer if he can get hold of those coins. Therefore, he tries to rob you. This is an unscientific method of attaining Total Freedom. The pleasure from the articles bought with the coins will soon be finished, the mind will become yet more impure, obscuring yet more the divinity struggling to push its way out, and, of course, he may end up in prison. The sage knows the goal, knows the way out, and does the appropriate spiritual practices to attain to that Absolute Freedom, verily becoming the omnipresent, ever-free Universal Consciousness, and lives out the remainder of his days, immersed in the Bliss of Brahman, all impurities, attachments and low material desires transcended, free while still in the body.
We are Ferraris. However the animal man, realising this not, is wasting his latent divine qualities, roaming about at random in the jungle, looking only for rotten tidbits of sense-pleasures lying about in mud holes. The pre-spiritual man is looking for the way out of the jungle to the highway to Truth. He travels rough, mud-tracks he hacks out of the wilderness with his own two hands, with big fat off-road tyres on his wheels. Dirty hands, dirty skills are indeed necessary to find a way forward in a dirty material world! However, we are Ferraris, we were not made for the rough-hewn mud track, we were designed for the Royal Road to Divinity! So when the moment comes and we find that royal highway, we must shake off the mud of the material world and say, "thank you very much for the work done," then remove the big fat off-road tyres to put on the racing tyres for which we were designed. The spiritual path, too, just like our paths through the material world, has its methods, and those consist of purification of the heart, great mental discipline, one-pointed devotion to the goal, shaking off all our old attachments in the material world, and, though we will keep our individual personalities, complete obliteration of the individual ego, replacing it with Universal Love for all. Thus have said all the true sages of all great spiritual traditions past and present, and as it worked for them, it will surely work for us, too.