September 25, 2024
Self-realization is considered to be the goal of yoga and Vedanta. In that case, what is the self? Do you have a nice image of the self seated in the heart, shining resplendent like a tube lamp? The self or the subject is 'That which cannot be seen". Then how are you going to see it, to realize it? Because you can become aware of what can be seen, you say that it is an object and that it is not the self. Yet there is a dreadful misunderstanding or confusion that the body is the self. Whatever happens to the body you assume happens to you — "I'm suffering", "I am happy", "I am hungry", "I am full". Whether you use these expressions or not there is an inner experience which still identifies the self (subject) with the body (object).
That is wisdom which directly perceives a certain oneness in diverse beings — in all beings. As Gurudev very beautifully put it in the Universal Prayer: "let us behold Thee in all these names and forms". When we became swamis we put on these orange clothes and changed our names. The name is merely like a collar you put around your dog in order that you may recognize it and not throw a piece of bread to another dog. It has no more value than that. Many great saints did not have names at all. A saint doesn't need a name. He doesn't have a bank account, a passport or legal documents. But in order to recognizing you give him a name.
So, name and form are creations of your own mind, meant to make your life easy. This does not imply that diversity is somehow affixed to reality. If you go to the ashram kitchen right now, you will see a mountain of roti, rice and vegetables which will be consumed by all of us and will become all of us. The same mountain of rice becomes diverse bodies. It is one, yet later it somehow appears to be different, diverse. That which recognizes this is wisdom.
He seems to be he, I seem to be I, but in and through this there is something which is one, indivisible. This hall seems to be a certain entity, the library another, the temple a third, and so on. But if all the walls are pulled down, that which was, is, and every will be, the space being forever indivisible. That which recognizes this is wisdom. All else is non-wisdom.