September 21, 2024
Vichara is the light that illumines all that we do in our life – all thoughts, words and deeds. There is guidance as to what should be done and what should not be done, what should be renounced and what should not be renounced, without attachment. In that light one realizes what one's own position in life is, without comparing, without feeling superior or inferior to others. Thought becomes inspiration or inspiration becomes thought, and emotion becomes devotion. The vision is freed from division, diversity is seen as identical with unity and unity with diversity. I remain I, without feeling somehow that I'm different from you. I am what I am meant to be, I do what I am meant to do, without distinguishing myself from you. How to bring this about is the business of yoga.
The secret of what my guru Swami Sivananda called Integral Yoga is integrating the entire personality, sacrificing the entire personality, making the entire personality sacred. The whole personality is offered to God, so that life is as God meant it to be. God is that intelligence, that power which created you, me and everything. I didn't ask to be born, how is it that I was created? That 'I" does not know what it is and therefore it is asking all the time, "Lord, what am I, what am I supposed to be, what am I supposed to do?" In that inquiry lies our salvation.
When this light of inner inquiry is bright, then what happens in our life is integral yoga. That is very beautifully defined in The Bhagavad Gita: "May your mind to become Me," May the mind become totally saturated with God — "Love Me". Where is that 'Me'? 'Me' is everywhere. God is omnipresent, so "Love Me," means love all. Any love that is restricting is not love I cannot love you and hate your enemy (then in my heart there is division.) "Do everything for My sake," or realize that all your actions spring from God, flow towards God. "I salute the God in you, in everyone." In this way, when your whole being is totally united with this omnipresent God, you reach Him, you realize your non-difference from the Omnipresence. Then your whole life is dedicated to or devoted to God and what was known as the self dissolves in the Infinite.
We are all cells in the cosmic body of God. One life, one body.